This review contains various thematic spoilers but only vague allusions to plot spoilers. Read at your discretion.
A Brighter Summer Day is a truth epic, a four hour journey into the abyss of teenage disillusionment. It's about the reality of growing up and the consequences of an aimless life. It's a quiet movie, of people kissing in the dark, with conversations happening between people offscreen, of themes muted in favour of shapeless ideas. It's paced like life itself, with threads…
Werckmeister Harmonies is a film of constant symbolism and allegory. It is the greatest philosophical and political allegory since Sátántangó, another film by master auteur Béla Tarr. Werckmeister Harmonies is Tarr's most exciting film (although Sátántangó remains his best) because it's the most brimming with ideas. Adapting the novel The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies more than matches the quality of the masterful original text. The film is more implicit in some ways, taking the dense metaphorical nature of the novel but…
The Man Without a Past is a darkly comic look at Finnish society, finding both compassion and cruelty. As per usual for Kaurismäki, the film is filled with deadpan humour and difficult circumstances. However there seems to be something rather pointed here, about a man struggling through bureaucracy and suspicion just because he has no documents or memory. He is treated as an illegal immigrant, becoming a member of society's hidden underclass. The Man Without a Past is excellently made,…
Drifting Clouds is a film of economic insecurity, about the people who suffer when the economy is weak. It is quite dispiriting at times, following the process of a couple both losing their jobs. What follows includes drink and a decline in mental health. Yet like so many Kaurismäki films Drifting Clouds finds hope in difficult times. While the story seems similar to a Fassbinder melodrama full of endless setbacks, Drifting Clouds finds an upbeat place to land its ending.…
Bad people are complicated. There is something dark at the centre of The Lost Daughter, a film which viciously tears apart the idealism we often have about motherhood. It is a film of mothers, but not one of love. Instead we see a rot, mothers who find children a burden. The Lost Daughter is an uncomfortable movie, with a constant unease and sense of dread. We wait to be given answers, for characters to be uncovered and exposed, and yet…
Princess Mononoke is Hayao Miyazaki's epic, his greatest work. It is profound and complex, and dense in mythology and history. For a man whose career was solidified by the soft and sweet nature of My Neighbour Totoro, it was bold and ambitious to make a film this long, grim, and nihilistic. Princess Mononoke is Studio Ghibli's most thematically sophisticated work. It is also the finest original animated film in history. It is one of the most perfect films ever made…
