SceneByGreen

Ordet (1955)

Carl Theodor Dreyer | 2hr 6min

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s parable of dwindling spirituality is stark in its dogmatic minimalism, enveloping Christians and non-believers alike in rural landscapes of harrowing scarcity. The few who maintain a relationship with God are often still isolated from their own souls, left to speak and move in slow, mechanical patterns like empty husks. Seemingly the worst of them all is Johannes, the middle son of devout widower Morten. While his family is busy quarrelling with neighbours and aiding sister-in-law Inger through the late stages of her pregnancy, he unhelpfully wanders around in a daze, preaching the delusion that he is Jesus Christ and lamenting their lack of faith.

“People believe in the dead Christ, but not in the living. They believe in my miracles from 2000 years ago, but they don’t believe in me now. I have come again to bear witness to my Father who is in heaven – and to work miracles.”

Atop a hill of long, swaying grass, he gazes up at a dreary Danish sky, speaking to no one in particular. There is a novel curiosity expressed in Dreyer’s low angle, marvelling at this strange figure who apparently drew such fanciful convictions from his time spent studying the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, but it also contains a trace of contemplative awe. He speaks of wondrous miracles brought about through the simple act of belief, and yet which so many now deny, with even the local reverend claiming that they break the laws of nature – “and naturally God does not break His own laws.”

*Johannes stands alone against the dreary, overcast sky, looking to the heavens yet speaking to no one. Dreyer’s exterior landscape is sparse, void of life and vitality.*

Dreyer is calculated in the perspective shift that unfolds over the course of Ordet, gradually expanding the scope of what we are willing to believe. Religion is represented as little more than a petty feud in the first act, seeing Morten’s conservative neighbour Peter refuse the marriage of their children due to their opposing beliefs. Morten’s faith is joyful but weak, while Peter’s is rigorous but dour, cruelly hoping that his foe might be taught a hard lesson through the death of his ailing daughter-in-law. This is the state of religion in modern Europe, Dreyer illustrates, losing sight of the brotherly love which underlies its core tenets and dividing believers over trivial differences.

“You think Christianity is sullenness and self-torment. I think Christianity is the fullness of life. My faith is for all day long and joy in life. Yours is longing for death.”

It is easy to brush off the image of highly idealised Christianity that Johannes represents given how distant he seems from reality, and yet there is a frightening accuracy to his portentous predictions. Inger’s baby will not survive birth, he announces, unless someone should believe in him and pray for Christ’s salvation. Even when this tragedy strikes exactly the way he described, few people are swayed in his favour. He is not yet done with his prophecies though, as right after Inger’s condition appears to stabilise, he claims to see the man with the scythe walk through the wall to fetch her too.

*Dreyer’s parable is rich in its biblical archetypes, with the mysterious Christ figure prophesying tragedy and demonstrating ambiguous miracles.*

The profoundly sombre tone that up has previously only lingered on the periphery of Ordet manifests viscerally in this double tragedy. Dreyer’s deliberations on matters of faith, death, and divine miracles carry great weight, emerging through the biblical archetypes represented in his characters and their dialogue, though the subduing power of his austere camerawork is crucial to his spiritual examinations. It navigates rigorously curated sets in long, slow movements with heavy restraint, letting us feel each passing second in its refusal to cut. When Johannes sits with Inger’s daughter and speaks of her mother’s impending death, Dreyer’s camera spends three minutes rotating from one side of the conversation to the other, absorbing his prophecy in pensive reflection.

*Dreyer’s camerawork is slow and measured, moving inch by inch from one side of this conversation in prayerful meditation.*

The emotionless detachment that has sunken into the souls of Johannes and those around him continues to manifest in Dreyer’s sparse mise-en-scène, stripped of life and joy. When his set dressers laid out the décor for each scene, it is said he went about taking pieces out until he achieved his desired minimalism, and the results are strikingly austere. In the negative space, he engages us in a cinematic meditation, removing extraneous distractions so that the deepest flaws of his characters may rise to the surface of each scene. In this sense, there is a clean line running between Dreyer’s work and that of his Swedish contemporary, Ingmar Bergman, who would similarly absorb the solemnity of his characters’ spiritual doubts into his severe visual style. Where Bergman’s dominant close-ups sought to draw out some cinema’s most profound performances though, Ordet’s emphasis on wide and mid-shots keeps a reserved distance from outward displays of emotion, draining scenes of life while maintaining a rigorously composed beauty.

Dreyer strips his sets of decor to create a bare minimalism, and then goes another step further by draining his actors of emotion and connection. The result goes beyond banality, and into a hypnosis that seems to suspend time altogether.

It isn’t until Inger’s funeral that Dreyer lands the film’s most striking image of irrevocable despair, symmetrically splitting the frame down the middle with the open casket. Even the bouquet of flowers at its base is arranged in perfect balance, while Morten and Inger’s husband, Mikkel, flank either side with a pair of white menorahs and carved wooden chairs. The tremendous grief that encompasses the scene moves even Peter to see the error in his puritanical beliefs and make amends with his old foe, and yet this is not the only miracle to be found through restored faith in Ordet.

*One of Dreyer’s single greatest compositions, imposing a rigorous symmetry on Inger’s funeral with the carved wooden chairs and white menorahs on either side of her open casket.*

When Johannes enters the funeral, it appears that he has snapped out of his stupor, but still he mourns the lack of faith among those who could have saved Inger from an untimely death – “Why is there not one among these believers who believe?”. As Christ sermonised though, those who take the lowly position of a child are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and Dreyer proves his film to be in deep conversation with the Gospels as Inger’s daughter steps forward for a second time to reveal a sincere, uncorrupted wisdom.

“Thy faith is great, thy will shall be done,” Johannes proclaims, singling her out as the sole believer among the many whose devotion is strong enough to raise the dead. Suddenly, within the cold stillness of Dreyer’s mise-en-scène, Inger’s hand twitches, and her eyes open. “It is the God of old, the God of Elijah, eternal and the same,” Peter proclaims in astonishment, though Dreyer finds an even greater blessing through the transformation of those who once rejected God altogether. With the resurrection of life in Ordet comes an equally astounding resurrection of faith, and thus as Mikkel espouses their total indivisibility, hope for a prosperous future is finally restored in Dreyer’s severe landscapes of spiritual isolation.

“Now life starts for us.”

Ordet is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel. You can also buy the full Carl Theodor Dreyer collection on Blu-ray from Amazon.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Martin Scorsese | 3hr 26min

The Osage Nation had already suffered one great upheaval in the 19^th century when the United States government forced them to relocate from Kansas to Oklahoma, cutting them off from their historical and cultural roots. Given the discovery of abundant oil in their new territory almost immediately after the funerial burial of a ceremonial pipe though, it appears as if the spiritual forces of nature have come to deliver them from their tribulations, sending manna from heaven that guarantees them a prosperous future. From their great loss springs new life, but while “the chosen people of chance” dance in slow-motion beneath the gushing well of newfound riches, the colonial powers that be are not so ready to let this opportunity slip through their fingers.

*Nature delivers the Osage people from their persecution, raining down manna from heaven. The slow-motion dance is joyous, revelling in newfound riches that bring a new kind of danger.*

Just as Martin Scorsese seems to have had his final say on the gangster genre with The Irishman, a new spate of violent assassinations and underground conspiracies emerge in 1920s Oklahoma, though the victims in Killers of the Flower Moon are not rival mobs or compromised associates. The primary orchestrator of this plot is William King Hale, a wealthy rancher who purports to be a good friend to the Osage people, speaks their language, and even offers a reward to whomever comes forward with information regarding their senseless murders. He has the untouchable evil of Noah Cross from Chinatown, and yet Robert de Niro applies a genteel Southern charm to this chilling façade of warmth, consequently giving his best performance in almost thirty years.

Each murder is a brutal interruption of the narrative’s easy pacing – cold, dispassionate, often played out in wide shots. Victims are lulled into a false sense of security before being gunned down, following a pattern set in Scorsese’s previous gangster films.

From the perspective of the FBI agents coming to investigate these murders, this narrative could have very easily been a murder mystery, and indeed the early drafts of Scorsese and Eric Roth’s script were close to following this route. As it is, Killers of the Flower Moon does not play this game for very long, explicitly revealing which men have been killing the Osage people, and under whose orders.

At the centre of Hale’s plot as well is a cross-cultural marriage intended to grant him a large portion of the local wealth, and his nephew Ernest Burkhart is perfectly positioned in this matter. There is no doubt his budding romance with Osage woman Mollie Kyle is at least partly genuine, but there are few characters here as stupidly craven and weak-willed as him. He is a pawn in his uncle’s long game, blowing up his neighbour’s home and poisoning Mollie through her insulin shots, and yet somehow still finding the audacity to feel guilt over his despicable actions as he obediently carries them out.

Lily Gladstone might walk away with the best performance of the film, even while going up against acting titans Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro. She is softly spoken, resilient, and intellectual – but also trusting to a fault.

This is the first time since This Boy’s Life in 1993 that Leonardo DiCaprio has starred opposite de Niro, and though there is a palpable screen chemistry between the two defining actors of their generations, Lily Gladstone stands toe-to-toe with them as the unfalteringly resilient Mollie. Having made a small name for herself in Kelly Reichardt’s indie dramas over the past few years, she now brings her softly spoken yet self-assured presence to a larger canvas, letting those moments where grief and fury break through her usually composed demeanour land with absolute devastation. Even as she pursues justice for her people, there is little that can sway her from her husband’s side, convincing herself that he may be the only innocent white American in the entire county. After all, how could anyone keep such a dangerous lie from their own family for so many years?

*De Niro gives his best performance since the 90s as the chilling William King Hale, simultaneously befriending and murdering the people of the Osage nation.*

He’s not Michael Chapman or Michael Ballhaus, but cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is on a solid run here collaborating with Scorsese, following up The Irishman with another impressive visual work of sprawling significance.

Just as the enormous running time of The Irishman sinks in the sad weight of a former hitman’s hollow life, the fact that the crimes depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon continued for so long without any legal ramifications is made all the more despairing by its sprawling scope. With a pace that thoroughly teases out each side character and subplot, Scorsese fully realises the enormous depth of this divided community, and further brings its setting to life through his authentic production design and sweeping camerawork.

*Scorsese’s long shots are a marvel in Killers of the Flower Moon, especially using the oil fields to brilliant effect as icons of industry and capitalism.*

*The high angle establishing shots of these train stations and rural settlements feel very influenced by Sergio Leone, carrying great historical weight and detail.*

There is a touch of Sergio Leone in these dynamic long shots, craning up above train stations, rural settlements, and oil fields to reveal the marks of white colonisers seeking to capitalise on the Osage people’s wealth, but Scorsese does not relinquish his own visual style so easily either. In one long take, he tracks his camera through a busy house hosting a party of Native Americans, and later when a ranch burns to the ground he envelops us in Ernest’s guilt-ridden fever dream, distorting silhouettes of men trying to fight the fire through its ethereal, orange haze. Hale and his men have unleashed hell on Earth, and there is little salvation to be found in this biblical blaze, embodying a fast-spreading, bitter derangement that sees a self-loathing Ernest drop a small dose of Mollie’s poison into his own whiskey. Conversely, Scorsese also draws on the animalistic iconography of Native American spiritualism, twice over haunting those targeted by Hale’s men with owls – an omen of death in many tribes.

One of the great scenes of Killers of the Flower Moon sinks us into a hellish fever dream as the land lights on fire, melding images of destruction, guilt, and sickness through Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing.

In moments like these, Killers of the Flower Moon shifts away from the impression of factualism and reveals the inherent subjectivity that comes with dramatising history. Composer Robbie Robertson’s fusion of bluesy guitar riffs, humming vocals, and traditional pipes accentuates this point in its anachronistic delirium, and sadly marks his final film score before his passing earlier this year. Its formal consistency is unfortunately not a feature shared by the silent newsreel interludes that almost completely drop off after the first half hour, or the fourth-wall shattering epilogue that lacks any kind of setup. In moments like these, Scorsese’s film reveals itself to be a slightly more uneven work than The Irishman, angling at some critical point about reconstructing the past through storytelling, but never quite unifying it with the broader narrative.

As far as historical epics go though, Killers of the Flower Moon does not waste its length, and Scorsese’s reflections on the racial tensions of 1920s Oklahoma are never oversimplified. White man’s fetishisation of Indigenous people’s ethnic purity and skin colour is often written into the subtext of their creepy exchanges, and the Native American symbol of abundance represented in the titular ‘Flower Moon’ is effectively tarnished by the timing of Hale’s genocide.

*The cutaways to silent newsreels and old photos would have been a great formal motif had they been carried through more consistently. As it is, they drop off in consistency after the first half hour.*

*The flower moon is a symbol of growth and prosperity in Native American culture, and one that is totally corrupted by white men.*

This is a two-faced villainy bred not from ignorance, but from an intimate knowledge of one’s economic rivals, and the capitalistic belief that only the ruthless deserve to prosper. Not even family ties will stand in the way of Hale’s accumulating wealth, and the justice eventually delivered by America’s legal system is only a half-hearted indictment of the perpetrators accountable when their web of lies begins to unravel. For once, the existential despair that Scorsese leaves us with does not hang solely on his criminal characters and their catastrophic life choices. In the end, Killers of the Flower Moon is just as much a wistful lament for the exploitation of America’s Indigenous people, and the trust many of them placed in allies with warm smiles and greedy hearts.

Killers of the Flower Moon is currently playing in theatres, and will soon be streaming on Apple TV Plus.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sidney Lumet | 2hr 4min

Over the course of a few hours on one hot summer day, crowds congregate around the First Brooklyn Savings Bank in New York City, with journalists and television crews eventually joining the mix. Inside, a failed heist has turned into a police stand-off, with the two robbers taking the entire building hostage, and incidentally providing a bit of light entertainment for the masses. A pizza delivery guy milks his time in the spotlight when he brings lunch around, and the head teller excitedly flirts with the cameras while being used as a human shield, momentarily putting aside the present danger to feed her ego.

It appears for a time that Sonny, the brains behind the operation, doesn’t mind the attention either. Despite being out of his depth in this robbery gone wrong, he quickly learns that many viewers see him as a hero of the common man, railing against the police and throwing cash out to feverish onlookers. A small riot starts as they burst through the barricades, undermining the police’s attempts to control the situation, and yet media sensationalism is an unwieldy beast. When a more complicated portrait of Sonny begins to emerge, revealing a man desperately seeking money for his transgender wife’s gender affirming surgery, audiences aren’t quite sure how to reconcile that with their preconceived notions. The breaking news story soon becomes solely about his queerness, and the praises once thrown his way become nasty jabs. There is no regard here for the figure at the centre of it all, rich with flaws and personal struggles. Looking in from the outside, he is just the latest television character to capture the fleeting interest of the public.

To the general public of New York, this failing bank heist is little more than afternoon entertainment, with hostages and pizza delivery boys alike relishing their moment in the spotlight. In this context, Sonny and Sal’s humiliation is made even worse – they are victims of a ravenous media frenzy.

This is not the perspective Sidney Lumet decides to take in Dog Day Afternoon though. The real events upon which the film is based are readily available in historical records, while this fictional interpretation lends a greater sensitivity to those trapped inside the bank. The false confidence that Sonny and his friend Sal initially project dissipates almost instantly when the third part of their trio, Stevie, nervously backs out and leaves them stranded. They have clearly never done anything like this before, caving a little too easily to the demands of their hostages and even developing somewhat friendly relationships with them. These are not the heroes nor sick-minded villains that the media would like to believe – merely short-sighted victims of their own poor decisions.

The uneasy nuances of these characters offer a wealth of rich material for both Al Pacino and John Cazale to deliver two standout performances as well. In Cazale’s case, Dog Day Afternoon would be the second-last film of his short career before passing away in 1977, though he makes every minute of his screentime count as the nervous, simple-minded Sal. He partly serves as comic relief from time to time, telling Sonny that the country he would want to escape to most of all is Wyoming. Most of all though, we feel pity towards this man who takes offence at being mislabelled a homosexual, and who we come to realise is too easily exploited by both the police and his own friend.

*This is not a film that gets by on visual style like so many others on its level, leaving Al Pacino to singlehandedly carry many scenes with his powerhouse performance.*

Pacino may be the feature, but John Cazale shouldn’t be slept on. Along with his performance as Fredo in The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon features some of his best acting as the tragically dim-witted Sal.

The true tour-de-force of acting in Dog Day Afternoon comes from Pacino though, who in 1975 was coming off a hot run of the first two Godfather films and Serpico. His portrayal of Sonny treads a fine balance between the deep, internalised performances of his early career and the loud personas he would play further down the line, generating an instability that cuts through layers of insecurity and anger. His incendiary evocation of the Attica Prison riot which saw police carelessly mow down hostages and inmates alike becomes a powerful catch cry as he furiously paces outside the bank, inciting a righteous anger in the anti-authoritarian crowds.

Still, the longer we sit with him inside, the more we understand the sensitivity of those wounds being picked at by the mass media. His trans wife Leon has been hospitalised for attempted suicide and now, despite Sonny’s good intentions, wants nothing to do with these criminal plans, while his estranged cis wife Angie laments his stubbornness and abandonment of their family. Even his mother is brought in to help the situation, though she is insistently blind to his culpability, blaming everyone in his life but him for his own mistakes. Sonny may be reckless, but he does not lack self-awareness, as Pacino’s face slowly breaks down with guilt, self-loathing, and a tragically weakened resolve over the course of the film.

*Sidney Lumet may not develop a strong cinematic style, but his blocking can’t be faulted in many scenes, using the camera’s full depth of field to keep the ensemble dynamics visually alive.*

*A tangible arc unfolds on Pacino’s face throughout Dog Day Afternoon as we watch him grow shabbier, sweatier, and increasingly anxious.*

On top of all that, Lumet never quite lets us forget the physical factors of the environment that Sonny must contend with, observing the sweat form on his face from both the humid summer heat and the sheer stress of the stand-off. Though Lumet is picking up a few techniques from Hitchcock with the long camera takes and tight, suspenseful editing, he is largely committed to the authenticity of the piece. By and large, Dog Day Afternoon does not draw the same breathtaking beauty out of its New York location shooting as we see in The French Connection or Taxi Driver, and yet there is still a cumulative effect in the grounded urgency of its gritty aesthetic and pacing, pulling a highly-strung Pacino into an uncontrollable whirlpool of rapidly escalating stakes.

*Solid location shooting out on the streets, grounding this story in real world stakes.*

*Instead of shooting on a studio soundstage, Lumet converted a warehouse into the bank interior, and then slowly dims its lights as the stand-off stretches on and night begins to fall.*

Paramount to Lumet’s realism is the pained sympathy he has for these complicated characters, both naively believe that some happy ending is still possible at the end of it all. When the two men finally secure a deal that will let them fly out of the country, one of their hostages takes the time to comfort a nervous Sal who reveals he has not been on a plane before. It is a small twinge of unexpected kindness in an otherwise tense sequence, enveloped by Lumet’s cutting between Pacino’s anxious face and the suspicious police activity unfolding around him.

*Remarkably tense editing from Dede Allen all throughout, but especially as Sonny and Sal secure a deal and nervously make an exit while surrounded by police.*

Dog Day Afternoon’s denouement unfolds rapidly from there – a fatal shot to Sal’s head ends his life before he even knows what’s going on, while Sonny is arrested at gunpoint. The shame we have seen him bear throughout the film is nothing next to the guilty anguish on his face as he watches Sal’s body taken away, recognising the role he played in the death of his far more innocent friend. Within this great tragedy though, Sonny’s delicate story of queer love and financial desperation was never going to survive the noise of sensationalist journalism. All that is left is a cheapened legacy embedded in New York’s quirky local history, destined to be recalled by strangers as that bizarre, failed bank heist they spent one hot, summer afternoon following on television.

*Lumet lands a devastatingly tragic blow to end the film – robbed of hope, Sonny submits to the police, as he gut-wrenchingly watches Sal’s lifeless body wheeled away.*

Dog Day Afternoon is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, or Amazon Video.

El Conde (2023)

Pablo Larraín | 1hr 50min

The grotesque metaphor that El Conde poses is simple enough in its Gothic iconography, comparing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s legacy to that of a vampire parasitically living off society’s most vulnerable. The social context surrounding Pablo Larraín’s satirical target certainly hits closer to home for the director than the other cultural figures he previously examined in Jackie and Spencer, and yet there is a universality to this historical revisionism which sees Pinochet take his oppressive totalitarianism to the world stage.

Horrified by the subversive violence he witnessed in his youth fighting against the French Revolution, this fictional version of the famous tyrant subsequently spent centuries combatting further uprisings across the world, before beginning his despotic reign in late twentieth century Chile. Larraín’s sardonic depiction of Pinochet is not so much a faithful rendering of the former president as he is an outlandish icon of dictatorship, feverishly feeding on citizens of the working class who won’t be missed, while his disloyal inner circle desperately hope that their close acquaintance might grant them their most selfish desires.

*The historical revisionism swings hard from the start, reframing Pinochet as the enemy of many revolutions over several centuries before he became the famous dictator.*

*Larraín’s ominous expressionism is a perfect visual fit for this vampiric allegory, cutting out ominous silhouettes from Pinochet’s billowing cape.*

*Decrepit mise-en-scène inside Pinochet’s rural farmhouse, wearing away with his age and relevance.*

After many years of estrangement, the five Pinochet children who have denounced their father’s evils arrive at his hidden estate in the Andes to claim their inheritance, hypocritically disregarding how the fortune was unethically amassed. The nun who has come to exorcise the devil from his body also falls hard for his seductive promises of power, inspiring jealousy in his wife Lucía who wants nothing more than to be bitten and become similarly immortal. As for the retired dictator himself, there is very little tethering him to his miserable half-life, leaving him to consequently give up drinking blood and let himself die. If only it were that simple – the curse of vampirism has doomed an aged Pinochet to eternal banality, never quite regaining the vitality of his youthful rule, and equally never finding the cold release of death.

*Larraín announces the deadpan satire early with the bright pink opening credits set against gorgeous monochrome cinematography.*

*El Conde has the severe framing and landscapes of an early Ingmar Bergman film, emphasising the complete barrenness of the Chilean countryside.*

Right from the opening credits, Larraín’s bright pink font sardonically nods at the campness underlying the darkness of Pinochet’s decrepit existence, though between here and the final scene he does not waver from his bold, monochrome aesthetic. The harsh silhouettes cut out from Pinochet’s caped figure as he stands alone in Gothic interiors bear striking resemblance to the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, but the severe landscapes of foggy coastlines and mountains call back even more distinctly to Ingmar Bergman’s early work in The Seventh Seal. With Pinochet standing in for the physical manifestation of Death, Chile’s cities and countryside are similarly haunted by unholy abominations and mysterious deaths, revealing a rot that has infected the soul of humanity – not explicitly the result of an absent God, but rather the lingering trauma of modern fascism.

*An excellent early frame of the nuns in their church, defined in opposition to Pinochet’s black silhouette with their stark white habits.*

As Larraín would have it, God in fact plays a very active role in this dark fairy tale, distorted through the corrupt vessel of the Roman Catholic Church. Sister Carmen emerges like a spectre from a choir of white-clad nuns in a vast, stony cathedral, prophesied to “destroy dreams and bring misery” with her “white, innocent flesh.” Disguised as an accountant, she enters Pinochet’s estate and immediately charms the vampire with her fluent French, before sitting down with each family member and conducting a thorough audit of his extraordinary wealth. Larraín lands us right in the middle of these interrogations too, intimately centre framing both Carmen and the subjects of her probing as they spill secrets of Pinochet’s criminal exploits, figuratively embodied in parallel scenes of his vicious, bloody hunt.

*Larraín’s editing proves to be a sharp tool in this Gothic metaphor, visually comparing tales of Pinochet’s historical exploits against his bloody hunt for fresh victims.*

The intercutting here is harsh in its visual juxtaposition, associating tales of Pinochet’s unrestrained political power with images of him ravenously licking the blood of an elderly woman off his fingers, and disembowelling a labourer working a late-night shift. His legacy has not been officially memorialised through busts in Chile’s presidential palace, leaving him to pathetically fill his own empty spot among its sculpted leaders, and yet it continues to creep into the homes and workplaces of ordinary citizens who still feel its insidious reverberations.

*Political satire savagely cutting down Pinochet’s legacy in a single image, feebly positioning him between the busts of those Chilean leaders remembered more fondly.*

If there was any hope of good triumphing over evil in El Conde, then it lies in Carmen and her holy quest to rid the world of Pinochet once and for all. As she grows closer to her target though, another political allegory begins to emerge, chillingly illustrating a conspiratorial alliance of the church and state. As she takes to the overcast skies and learns to fly for the first time after being turned, Larraín delivers what may be the singularly most beautiful scene of the film, floating his camera along as she awkwardly tumbles and falls over Pinochet’s farm like Jesicca Chastain in The Tree of Life. Just as her clumsy flailing strikes a very different image to his smooth gliding over cities and islands, her billowing white robe also contrasts boldly against his black cape stretched out behind him, framing them as two halves of a single power – light and dark, youth and old age, church and state.

*Carmen soars and tumbles through the air above Pinochet’s farm – a beautifully surreal demonstration of the church and state’s supernatural alliance.*

Meanwhile, Pinochet takes to the sky in these gorgeous overhead shots, his cape stretched out behind him as he surveils the land he once ruled as president, and continues to wield considerable power over.

Unfortunately for Carmen though, this romance will only survive for as long as it serves her new master. Pinochet’s gruesomely comical obsession with Marie Antoinette serves up the perfect inspiration for his muse’s latest look, ironically imposing on her an oppressive control that bears significant resemblance to the French Queen’s deprived agency in her own lifetime. The arrival of a new power on the estate also brings a sharp end to her story beneath the blade of a guillotine, finally revealing the identity of our mysterious narrator whose clipped British accent and English speech has curiously mismatched the rest of the cast’s Spanish and French.

*Pinochet worships Marie Antoinette’s legacy, keeping her head as a souvenir and dressing up his muse in her likeness – an amusing touch to this historical satire.*

Larraín’s hilariously flamboyant twist will not be spoiled here, but the global cabal of blood-sucking vampires it paints out with dark humour can at least be mentioned without ruining any major surprises, expanding the scope of El Conde’s satirical revisionism. While the descendants of fascism are quietly profiting off its hoarded plunder and its self-interested lovers are realising they are only safe for as long as they remain useful, the only other figure that can truly understand a tyrant like Pinochet is a fellow tyrant. “This is what the count achieved,” our notorious narrator acutely observes. “Beyond the killing, his life’s work was to turn us into heroes of greed.”

These immortal manifestations of authoritarianism have spent their entire lives putting revolutionaries across the world in their place – not always succeeding, but never dying out either. History traps us in a cycle of never learning from our own mistakes, and so while the man known as Augusto Pinochet may have withered away, Larraín pessimistically hints at a younger form of totalitarianism restoring its historical ideals. El Conde’s formal switch from black-and-white to colour in the final scene may offer its Gothic aesthetic a similar rejuvenation, though the dark, angry hearts of these human parasites continue to beat in the chests of future generations, waiting for the day humanity grows complacent enough to let a new Pinochet kill and pillage their way to unlimited power.

El Conde’s switch to colour in the final minutes makes for a powerful formal device, rejuvenating Larraín’s dilapidated aesthetic as a modern form of totalitarianism is reborn for a future generation.

El Conde is currently streaming on Netflix.

Mean Streets (1973)

Martin Scorsese | 1hr 52min

When low-level mafioso Charlie Cappa tentatively reaches for the flames of candles and gas stoves in Mean Streets, he does not do so lightly. There is a reverent trepidation written across his face, but also a mindful curiosity seeking to glimpse the fiery wrath of God. The act borders on self-punishment, becoming a reminder of the damnation that awaits him should he fail to atone for his sins.

“The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite. Now, you don’t fuck around with the infinite. There’s no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand, the kind you can feel in your heart. Your soul, the spiritual side. And you know, the worst of the two is the spiritual.”

*The vast Roman Catholic cathedral is not to be seen again after the film’s opening minutes – this place is not meant for low-level gangsters like Charlie.*

The vast cathedral where he seeks counsel from priests radiates a grand opulence that is scarce to be found elsewhere in Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough gangster film. In the hierarchy of the Italian American mob, these characters are about as distant from the high-ranking Dons and Consiglieres of The Godfather as they are from the icons of Christ and the Madonna that decorate the church’s stained-glass windows. Instead, Charlie can often be found frequenting the underground, Mafia-owned bars of New York City, submerged in a hell that burns blazing red lights through every corner. The visual impact is daunting, though Scorsese is clearly at home here with his handheld camera effortlessly floating through its dingy interiors. It is no wonder Charlie needs to intermittently feel the fiery heat of hell to remind himself of the present danger, given how ordinary it has become in his everyday life.

*Keitel holding his hand close to open flames is an inspired motif that runs throughout Mean Streets, forming the basis of his Christian faith and fearful desire for redemption.*

For a large portion of Mean Streets, this limbo-like banality is a punishment in itself. Charlie has his own dreams of making something more out of his secret relationship with Teresa, an epileptic woman shunned for her condition, as well as starting a nightclub where he can support those he cares about. In the meantime, his time is spent carrying out odd jobs, and pulling his reckless friend Johnny Boy out of trouble. There is little plot to be found in this hangout film, but while it lacks the narrative momentum of greater gangster films such as Goodfellas, its inertness also refuses to move Charlie any closer to his dreams. If anything, the fragile grip he has on keeping his life together brings a far greater threat of them slipping even further away.

*A young Robert de Niro making a loud entrance – Johnny Boy is volatile, reckless, and a complete idiot, blowing up a mailbox the moment in his very first scene.*

After all, it is Charlie’s neck on the line should Johnny Boy’s reckless misadventures and gambling debts put him on the wrong side of any dangerous men. Charlie’s brotherly shouldering of this responsibility is more than just a reluctant duty. It is his form of spiritual atonement, proving to himself that he has some capacity for goodness despite being consumed by a life of crime. If he can protect what he believes is a paragon of childlike innocence in Johnny Boy, then he can fulfil the directive offered in the film’s opening minutes.

“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.”

The Johnny Boy that we see though is a far more unscrupulous figure than Charlie would like to think. Robert de Niro’s performance here couldn’t be more distant from his intensive take on Vito Corleone a year later, as he violently blows up a mailbox in his very first appearance and proceeds to walk through every scene with an aloof, upbeat swagger. Innocent may not be quite the right word to describe him, but rather stupidly naïve, like a sociopath who lacks the brains to recognise the consequences of his wild behaviour. Believing that there is some capacity for goodness or reason in Johnny Boy’s immature mind is Charlie’s fatal flaw, and it is through his internal struggle that Harvey Keitel delivers a magnificently nuanced performance that outdoes even de Niro’s.

*Though often compared to Goodfellas, this narrative does not have the same forward momentum, instead sitting in the uncomfortable, day-to-day routines of these characters.*

The New Hollywood movement is truly alive in these morally grey characters, but it reverberates with just as much purpose through Scorsese’s location shooting on New York’s gritty streets, rundown apartment buildings, and grimy bars. The visual similarities to The French Connection are striking, following in the footsteps of William Friedkin’s crime film while developing a distinct style that audiences would identify as Scorsese’s unique voice within a few years’ time. Those scenes spent driving through the city at night with neon signs, shabby storefronts, and lights bouncing off wet roads presage the brilliant visuals of 1976’s Taxi Driver, while the heavy jump cuts, triple-edits, and montages draw a direct line from the French New Wave through to his later career.

*One of the great New York films, basking in the modern architecture of its iconic skyscape.*

*This shot could easily be from Taxi Driver with the bright neon lighting, wet pavement, and of course the creative placement of the camera on the roof of a taxi.*

Scorsese’s famous triple jump cut, borrowed from Agnes Varda and later returning in The Departed. It is used to especially brilliant effect here as Keitel lays back down in the intro, and we launch into ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes.

*We are witnessing the birth of Scorsese the master filmmaker here with the tracking shots in Mean Streets, hanging on the back of Keitel’s head as he dances through the bar.*

Scorsese’s camera becomes even more creative in one reverse-POV tracking shot that hangs on Keitel’s sweaty face as he drunkenly wanders through a party, downing spirits while the world seems to sway around him. He is the disorientated centre of this shot, much like he is for the film at large, bearing multiple burdens that pile on his conscience as the wildly energetic scatting of ‘Rubber Biscuit’ plays in the background. The broader doowop soundtrack it is part of marks another innovation as well, with Mean Streets being one of the first films next to American Graffiti to use existing pop songs rather than original scores, and forging an even closer connection to the contemporary American culture that envelops and isolates Charlie.

*A brilliant, frenetic tracking shot literally attached to Keitel’s sweaty face, disappearing into a fever dream set to the disorientating scatting of ‘Rubber Biscuit.’*

It is a struggle for anyone in an environment so steeped in secular modernity to maintain any sort of connection to their spiritual roots, and so while Scorsese formally cuts away to those festivities celebrating the Feast of San Gennaro in the streets of Little Italy, he simultaneously frames the mafia as a mutated outgrowth of such deep-rooted traditions. Roman Catholicism does not embody pure moral virtue to these men, but rather encourages them to accept sin as a fact of life, leaving penitence as the only path to salvation.

*Scenes of Catholic icons and Italian traditions out in the open, acting as formal reminders of the culture these gangsters have distorted and exploited.*

*Blazing red lights flood the underground bars where Charlie hangs out, trapping him in the pits of hell.*

In Charlie’s case, this relationship becomes one of unhealthy dependence, driving him into mortal peril in the hope of spiritual redemption. Blind to the fact that Johnny Boy’s soul is unsalvageable, he remains loyal through his friend’s lies and transgressions, right until their last moments together. After almost two hours of spending time with these characters, Scorsese ramps the tension up in the final act as Johnny Boy gets close to paying off his gambling debts, only to pull out his gun and foolishly threaten a loan shark. It appears to be a stroke of good luck that Charlie defuses the situation without casualties, and safety even seems to be within reach as the two men drive out of town to lay low for a while, and yet our sense of security is completely shattered when a car that has been tailing them starts shooting.

Johnny Boy’s wound in the neck seems fatal, though his fate is left decidedly ambiguous. Whether or not he survives, Charlie’s misguided path to redemption has effectively been redirected as he collapses to his knees in a position of prayer. With the gunshot in his hand drawing direct allusions to Christ’s suffering, and a burst fire hydrant dousing him in a baptismal fountain of water, Scorsese’s theological symbolism effectively canonises Charlie as a saint among gangsters. Still, the tragedy he has suffered from seeking atonement in a godless inferno is devastating. In Mean Streets, there is no saving those demons that have fallen from grace into the pits of hell. For as long as he is trapped in his own personal purgatory, Charlie must look towards the heavens to be redeemed from his own mortal sins.

*An ambiguous yet deeply spiritual ending, spraying a baptismal fountain of water over Charlie as he collapses to his knees – a saint among gangsters.*

Mean Streets is currently streaming on Paramount Plus, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

Lola Montes (1955)

Max Ophüls | 1hr 56min

It is tempting to glamourise the life of Lola Montès, the famed dancer and courtesan who ventured across multiple continents and conducted affairs with some of 19^th century Europe’s most famous men. After all, there are few women who can honestly say that their paths have intersected with so many key historical events, and even fewer who have used each as a platform to propel themselves higher up a cultural hierarchy that once towered above them.

The metaphor is not easily lost on the ringmaster of the circus that has essentially turned Lola into a novelty attraction many years later. “Just as every single action in her life has been, every single movement of her act is fraught with danger. She risks her pretty neck!” he cries, narrating her ascension up a grand trapeze, and labelling each acrobat who catches her in their arms as a new lover.

“Paris! Destiny sends her from the famous journalist Dunarrier to the journalist Beauvallon whose newspaper had a larger circulation. The great and celebrated Richard Wagner. The even greater and very famous Frédéric Chopin falls on his knees for her. Higher, Lola, higher! With dance and music, Lola rises from the world of art to that of politics!”

Lola Montes’ life has become little more than a humiliating circus act for the cheap entertainment of spectators, and Ophüls wields his metaphor with visual and formal brilliance as we slip between her past and present.

At the summit of this towering web of ropes and ladders, King Ludwig I of Bavaria awaits, ready to commence what will be “the most fantastic episode of her story.” Still, there is more than a hint of phoniness in the ringmaster’s theatrical rendition. His claim that her marriage to one Lieutenant James was a happy one is immediately undercut by her recollection of his drunken, abusive behaviour, exposing the scam of this fanciful historicising. As Lola Montes progresses, this tension proves to be key to Max Ophüls’ elaborately symbolic framing device, glamourising her rise to fame while forcing her to relive decades of objectification in her neatly interwoven flashbacks.

*A heavy use of long dissolves in the flashbacks, offering a wealth of wall-art imagery as Lola’s face lingers over stunning establishing shots.*

Indeed, Lola’s eventual fate as a target of the male gaze is written into her destiny from the start, not just as a courtesan flitting between lovers, but simply as a woman born into a patriarchal culture with limited options. Whisked off to Paris at a young age to marry a banker, she quickly recognises the power of her charm and natural beauty to carve out a future of her own choosing. The attention that Lola receives wherever she goes cannot be avoided, and so the best she can do is use it to her advantage, embracing her feminine image whether she is posing for royal portraits or standing atop garish pedestals.

Lola has always been the centre of attention, even posing for royal portraits in Bavarian palaces, though Ophüls’ visual comparison of the two types of pedestals she has been placed on marks a huge difference between luxurious wealth and gaudy entertainment.

As Lola marches even deeper into the annals of history, the undercurrents of time and providence swirl around her, and Ophüls’ sentimental, untethered camera is there swaying with them. More than just linking one stunning composition to the next, it manifests an ethereal elegance as it cranes up and down through theatres in long takes, and tracks the movement of characters across ravishing sets. The effect is intoxicating, yet in the hands of cinematographer Christian Matras it is also totally controlled – not at all a surprise given the mark he left on the poetic realism of the 1930s, further solidifying the line of influence between Jean Renoir’s roving camerawork and Ophüls’ own distinctive visual style.

*Along with Carol Reed and Masaki Kobayashi, Ophüls is one of the few filmmakers of this era experimenting with canted angles, tipping his camera off balance to create some glorious frames.*

*Ophüls’ moving camera is his greatest and most recognisable trademark, resting on remarkable compositions as we glide through gloriously designed sets.*

Tied up in the work of both these directors is a tension between freedom and fatalism, and it is largely through the careful navigation of the camera in Lola Montes that both are so gracefully connected. For a long time, Lola would like to think of herself as a woman with boundless autonomy, even ripping open her bodice in her first private meeting with Ludwig I just to prove a point. Nevertheless, she still recognises on some level that she is trapped within the gendered rules of high society, and Ophüls frames her as such in opulent displays of Technicolor decadence, making this both his first and last film shot in colour before his untimely death a mere two years later.

*Lola makes a huge first impression with the King of Bavaria, ripping open her bodice and immediately winning him over. The people of his kingdom are unfortunately not so easily swayed.*

Whether actress Martine Carol is wandering through a rundown children’s dormitory of grey hammocks or draped in the finest royal garb, there is an air of delicate eminence to her, even as lush period décor and fluctuating aspect ratios press inwards like stage curtains. She is the luminous centre of each setting, asserting a screen presence that demonstrates why so many considered her France’s response to Marilyn Monroe, despite Lola’s dark wigs covering up Carol’s usual blonde hair. Cloaked in sparkling jewels and surrounded with extravagant historical décor, it isn’t hard either to see where the budget went for what was the most expensive European film of its time. Mirrors catch her reflection as she contemplates an uncertain future, transparent gauze drapes conceal her final goodbye to Ludwig, and the golden embellishments of Bavarian palaces frame her as another treasure added to the royal collection, lifting her to even greater heights as an inhuman object of imperial perfection.

Humble beginnings for Lola in this children’s dormitory of grey hammocks, and although it is missing the grand opulence of the rest of the film, Ophüls does not let the scene visually go to waste with its crowded mise-en-scène.

*Ophüls often closes in his aspect ratio like curtains, recognising when the widescreen format simply isn’t the right fit for his busy compositions.*

Josef von Sternberg did not have the precision of Ophüls’ moving camera, but he is a great influence on the German director’s elaborately ornate mise-en-scène, who obstructs frames all over the place with furniture and drapes.

Ophüls showing off his magnificent production design in the majestic palaces of 19th century Bavaria, decorating almost every inch with gold. It is easy to see how this became the most expensive European film of its time.

The majesty of Ophüls’ production design does not cease when we cut back to the present-day circus scenes, but for as long as Lola stands onstage under the vibrant wash of red and blue lights, she is much more exposed than she ever has been before. She has certainly suffered in the public eye before, even becoming a widely hated Marie Antoinette-like figure spurned for her perceived “insult to dignity, morality, religion,” yet while courting Ludwig I she at least had the safety and privacy of the palace to protect her. As a carnival attraction, she is thoroughly humiliated, and her autonomy is destroyed. Everyone’s eyes are still on her, but there is nowhere to retreat in the middle of this stage.

*Red and blue lighting in the present day scenes washing Lola Montes in shades of resentment and melancholy.*

After a lifetime of never finding the security she craved, this is the life she wearily resigns to. She is filled with miserable self-loathing as she escapes the March Revolution of 1848, rejecting a friend’s romantic proposition not because of his lowly status, but because she no longer believes she is worthy or capable of love.

“I’ve lived too much, had too many adventures. Bavaria was my last chance. My last hope of a haven. It’s all over… all over. You see, if this warmth you offer me, if this face which I find not too unpleasing leaves me without hope, then something is broken. Yes, it’s over.”

*Crushed spirits, rejecting a handsome suitor not because of his low class, but because of her lost faith in an authentic love.*

The Lola who is forced to recount her life through ostentatious circus acts bears a pale resemblance to the one who is said to have bathed nude in Turkey for the sultan and served champagne from her slipper. Backstage, we learn of her medical concerns that are carelessly brushed off by the ringmaster, maintaining that she performs her climactic acrobatic leap without a safety net. Just as she once lived at the top of European society with the King of Bavaria, so too does her fall risk destroying everything she once had, landing her in a menagerie of exotic beasts similarly trapped behind bars. The camera floats back over the heads of audiences lining up to stroke her hair or kiss her hand, revealing an enormous line that could singlehandedly keep this circus running for years, though it isn’t until a pair of clowns close the red curtains on us that Ophüls lands Lola Montes’ final, scathing critique. Everything from Lola’s childhood dreams to her multiple romantic affairs has been little more than a cheap show for this culture of perverse celebrity worship, seeking to degrade the lives of great women into objects of commodified, gaudy spectacle.

*The camera pulls back from Lola behind bars for the final bit of audience interaction, and then just keeps on moving to reveal the enormous queue lining up to completely degrade and dehumanise her.*

Lola Montes is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Steven Spielberg | 2hr 26min

The downfall of civilisation in Steven Spielberg’s dark vision of the future comes not through machines seeking to displace biological humans, nor does it arrive with an apathetic dismissal of emotions. Not once do we doubt that the Mecha humanoid robot adopted by the Swinton family holds anything less than a sweet, innocent love of his new parents, despite his odd and occasionally dangerous behaviour. In their home of rippled windows and reflective surfaces, his image is distorted into unearthly appearances, driving his surrogate mother, Monica, deeper into her fear and mistrust. As his creator Professor Hobby explains, it is not a question of whether these artificial children can love.

“Isn’t the real conundrum, can you get a human to love them back?”

The philosophical mysteries wrapped up in this single line are vast, drawing this heartrending fable of parents and children back through millennia of human storytelling. “In the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love him?” the professor asks his colleagues, laying out a biblical framework for Spielberg’s narrative which sees extraordinary creations offer their creator an infinitely selfless love that can never entirely be reciprocated. Like a devoted believer craving a connection to their deity, the lifelike Mecha child David has an unquenchable longing for motherly affection, driving him to the edge of death just so he might finally know what it means to truly be loved, if only for one day.

Even before Spielberg’s futuristic world building expands beyond David’s family home, he warily shoots a young Haley Joel Osment like an alien, refracting his face through this rippled glass window.

*Underscoring David’s inhumanity by giving him four eyes in this reflection – he poses no physical threat, and yet there through his mother’s perspective, he is an outsider.*

*Superb visual storytelling, keeping David on the outside of the family unit with his face reflected in the family photo.*

*Again, excellent framing from Spielberg that totally isolates David from his uneasy family.*

Most of all though, it is the fairy tale of Pinocchio which offers A.I. Artificial Intelligence its overarching narrative structure, as well as an intertextual guide that inspires David’s own journey. If he is the puppet wishing to be a “real boy,” then his companions, the robotic Teddy and fellow Mecha robot Gigolo Joe, fill in the Jiminy Cricket role as his conscience, leaving Professor Hobby as his Geppetto, and the Blue Fairy as a distant, ethereal promise of divine salvation. The Pleasure Island of Spielberg’s version is not a carnival that indulges the whims of naughty boys, but a Flesh Fair where humans express a violent, existential anger at their insignificance in a modern world by torturing and mutilating A.I. robots.

*The Pinocchio allegory is right there in the text, motivating David to become a “real boy” – though with this sci-fi twist, we are also being led to question what exactly makes a real human.*

A terrifyingly violent set piece at the Flesh Fair, exposing the worst of humanity’s vices like Pleasure Island from Pinocchio. A gratuitous feast for the senses with the flashing lights and violent entertainment.

The conservative undertones to the Flesh Fair’s slogan “A Celebration of Life” are readily apparent in Spielberg’s critique of society’s regressive nostalgia, making it not in the least bit surprising that A.I. Artificial Intelligence was originally going to be directed by Stanley Kubrick. There may be no filmmaker with a greater distaste for humanity than the one whose emotional coldness lifted 2001: A Space Odyssey to transcendent heights, and who cast misanthropic aspersions on arbitrary historical traditions in Barry Lyndon. Humanity is overrated, he believed, and so it easy to see how cleanly this film’s admiration of the inhuman would have fit into his broader filmography.

Believing that there was no child actor good enough for its lead role though, and realising that the technology of the day was not yet advanced enough to create a computer-generated version of him, Kubrick passed the story along to Spielberg. Without seeing Kubrick’s finalised vision, it is impossible to assess whether it would have been greater than Spielberg’s or not, but it is tough to conceive it being so emotionally affecting.

Spielberg brings a much warmer touch to this tale than Kubrick would have, centring the sweet love a child has for his mother with gentle grace. This doesn’t make it better or worse than what we might have gotten otherwise – but it is honest to Spielberg’s artistic inclinations.

Of course, a large part of this has to do with Spielberg casting humans as his lead actors, rather than rendering them in CGI as Kubrick originally intended. Haley Joel Osment indeed delivers that child performance that Kubrick believed was impossible, exploring the existential depths of this artificial child coming to terms with a universe that created him and then left him to fend for himself. There is a particular poignancy in his performance as we edge towards the final act, where David discovers an entire factory of other Mecha products identical to his own design and recognises his true insignificance to his own creator. As he peers through the empty eye holes of a mask bearing resemblance to his own face, Spielberg distils his identity crisis down to a single, eerie image, revealing the heart and mind of a “real boy” trapped in the body of a machine.

Meanwhile, Jude Law’s turn as A.I. male prostitute Gigolo Joe offers David a warm camaraderie that is scarce to be found anywhere else, moving in energetic, dancelike movements inspired by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Through both his and Osment’s performances, we find an expressive, vivid humanity in the film that has been lost in the biological humanoids around them.

*David is just one of many identical models, bringing questions of identity and individuality into the mix as he peers through a mask of his own face.*

Jude Law is light on his feet as Gigolo Joe, basing his movements on Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly’s dancing. There is more humanity to be found in this Mecha robot than most other humans in this film.

Perhaps this is why David’s wish to be human is such a dauntingly impossible request when he finally meets his maker, given that source of his troubles lies not in his identity, but in everyone else. Human love naturally struggles to survive in a dystopian world of widespread moral corruption, and so the group of artificial outsiders who consistently outperform their natural counterparts become the perfect scapegoats. The settings that David must contend with are daunting in their tactile designs, setting an artistic challenge for Spielberg that plays to his strengths as a world builder and craftsman of powerful imagery. The cold blue lighting and isolating compositions of the first act set in the Swinton family home are carefully curated, but A.I. Artificial Intelligence truly lifts off when David is abruptly thrust into unfamiliar environments, where giant, glowing moons float through forests and sunken carnival attractions dwell in New York’s flooded depths.

*With the iconic shot from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Spielberg clearly relishes his giant moon shots – total awe at the universe beyond Earth.*

*A flooded New York City reveals another dystopian angle to this future society. A great failure on humanity’s part that has been totally abandoned.*

Most of all though, it is in the populated urban centres of Rouge City where Spielberg is at the top of his visual game, with cinematographer Janusz Kamiński drawing heavy inspiration from Blade Runner both thematically and aesthetically. The light pollution emitted by the coloured neon signs and buildings that line the dingy urban streets is blinding, projecting flashy holograms into the night sky like a ceiling to keep out the darkness. Spielberg weaves a glossy palette of red, blue, purple, and black through the architecture and costumes of these environments, while the Flesh Fair establishes a grittier aesthetic in a stadium illuminated by bright roving spotlights and flashing bulbs. Every detail captured by Spielberg’s camera is dynamic and bursting with life, telling the story of a culture entangled in a moral predicament of grand proportions, unable to reconcile its humanity with its artificial creations.

Spielberg draws a great deal of inspiration from Blade Runner. Not just in the question of identity and being, but in the magnificent production design of crowded urban spaces and futurist architecture.

Spielberg does not shy away from the air of fated devastation that hangs over this civilisation either, eventually embracing visions of a future where humans have died out. A.I. Artificial Intelligence could have very well ended on a demoralising downbeat as David finds himself locked in an eternity of constant, unfulfilled wishes, and yet Spielberg’s gracious leap forward two thousand years into the future alleviates some of that misery for a more bittersweet conclusion. The evolution of Mecha has brought about a more advanced race of beings that are kinder and more peaceful than humans ever were. They claim that they are unable to grant his wish, and yet the validation he seeks is nevertheless fulfilled through their generous gift – one last day with his mother, free from any worldly distractions.

Those two thousand years may have vanished in the blank of an eye for David, and yet these hours spent experiencing true, maternal love become “the everlasting moment he had been waiting for,” seeming to stretch on forever. Before they both drift off into a sleep neither will wake from, Spielberg tugs on the heartstrings one last time, recognising the compassionate acceptance that this child has found in his mother’s arms. It is one thing to have the emotional capacity to love another person, he concludes, and yet only by feeling the warmth of that equal, unconditional love in return can any living being experience the full joy of being human.

*Spielberg continues his narrative thousands of years into the future, revealing a total dilapidation in his enormous production design that also houses one last hope for David.*

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is currently streaming on Stan and Binge, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Jean Renoir | 1hr 50min

The social conventions that govern the lives of Jean Renoir’s ensemble in The Rules of the Game may be binding laws within a certain stratosphere of French aristocracy, but they are to be taken with a grain of salt. These are arbitrary customs, designed to create the façade of honour and dignity, rather than truly encouraging the adoption of such lofty ideals. “I can’t run off with the wife of a host who calls me friend and shakes my hand without an explanation,” Andre explains to Christine, despite him spending much of the film prior to their conversation doing exactly this. “There are still rules.”

Perhaps then the most significant rule of all is one that is entirely unspoken – as long as the adultery and back-stabbing takes place away from the eyes of others, then this behaviour is perfectly acceptable. Renoir’s critique of such hypocrisy has a sharp edge to it, undercutting the egos that entangle themselves in a web of affairs over one weekend at the country estate La Colinière, owned by the Marquis de la Chesnaye, Robert. The irony that he himself is cheating with his mistress Geneviève is lost on him when he discovers hints of a romance between his wife, Christine, and his friend, Andre. Complicating matters further is the parallel drama unfolding among the servants of the estate, with Christine’s maid Lisette being sought after by both her jealous husband, Schumacher, and the newest worker to join the fray, Marceau.

*A superb frame of class status in the literal depiction of the upstairs and downstairs drama, echoing formal parallels across both.*

Any pretensions that the upstairs folk of this estate are somehow more refined than those downstairs are thoroughly eroded in Renoir’s formal comparison. His deep focus serves an economic purpose here in shots that play out Christine’s drama in the foreground, while men squabble over Lisette’s heart in the background, drawing a hard line between the two social classes that should never romantically intermingle. Even when Robert eventually makes up with Andre, he confesses his relief that it was his friend who should almost steal his wife’s heart rather than anyone lower down, or else he may have suffered an even greater humiliation.

“I’m glad it’s with someone from our set.”

There is another more comedic purpose served by Renoir’s rich depth of field too though, underscoring the dramatic irony of his characters’ limited perspectives. As Schumacher furiously plots his victory over his wife’s new suitor, Lisette quietly beckons at a hidden Marceau to sneak out of the room. He tiptoes behind an oblivious Schumacher, nervously jumping at his indirect threats, though his stealthy efforts are for nothing when he inadvertently sends a bench of crockery crashing to the ground. Just as Renoir refuses to cut from his wide shot of the following chase weaving in and out of rooms, neither does he shift his frames of long hallways that diminish his characters into tiny figures, or the doorway which frames a frantic Robert pass by a trigger-happy Schumacher and amusingly fail to note the similarities in their circumstances.

“Corneille, put an end to this farce!”

“Which one, your lordship?”

*Foregrounds and backgrounds are to used to brilliant comedic effect, creating rich dramatic irony as characters remain oblivious to each other’s problems.*

Interactions such as these are played at a cool distance, letting us join fellow guests who observe the manic drama with bemusement, though it is also a rare occasion that the camera is so static. The most dominant stylistic feature of The Rules of the Game, Renoir’s artistic innovations, and poetic realism as an entire film movement is that fluid camerawork floating around sets in long takes, sensitively soaking in the intricacies of their environments. In Renoir’s case, it is through this device that we appreciate the absurd wealth on display, as we traverse lavish halls of chandeliers, statues, and mirrors, and push through frame obstructions of drapes and flowers.

*Mise-en-scène bliss in the opulent mirrors and chandeliers, puffing up these aristocrats as completely vapid materialists as we float through their rooms.*

Renoir’s floating camera does not simply immerse us in these characters’ opulent theatrics though, but there is also enormous economy in its navigation of their dynamics, connecting multiple narrative threads as it detaches from one conversation and joins another. As the servants sit down for dinner in one scene, he coordinates an incredible tracking shot that constantly shifts between Schumacher, Lisette, Marceau, and the grumbling chef, each of whom enter and exit at different points while cooks move through the background. When scenes expand to fit almost the entire cast within them, Renoir’s long takes emphasise how little distance there is between both ends of the social spectrum. Petty grievances drive men to violently lash out, and women form phoney alliances with their enemies, stifling any genuine affection among friends or lovers with narcissistic compulsions to protect their own egos. The camera’s pace may accelerate with their movements, especially during tracking Schumacher’s armed rampage throughout the manor, but Renoir’s perfect, controlled elegance never wavers.

*Renoir is constantly reframing his camera in these long takes, tracking multiple conversations and plot lines at once around a dinner table.*

At least, that is the case within the boundaries of these sumptuous interiors, encasing them in worlds of superficial affluence. As guests and servants venture outside one fine morning to hunt wild game, Renoir exposes a more insidious evil that quietly resides within the bourgeoisie, and formally disrupts the fluid camerawork that pervades the rest of the film. Within the dense forest of thin, white trees that sits on the edge of Robert’s estate, we find a paradise of woodland creatures, exuding a far greater peace than the forced niceties of La Colinière. The camera nervously floats close to the ground as Schumacher and his men advance through this territory, banging their sticks and blowing their horns to draw out their prey, while Robert and company disperse themselves around the edge of the forest, rifles at the ready.

Renoir’s greatest set piece unfolds in the forest of the estate. A purely natural paradise of pheasants and rabbits, momentarily undisturbed by man’s vicious sport, until the camera begins floating along the ground with Schumacher and company banging their sticks.

Suddenly, a cacophony of gunshots erupts, and Renoir launches into a truly aggressive display of montage editing – pheasants fall from the sky, rabbits collapse mid-run, and hunters coldly shift their aim from one target to the next, taking perverse pride in their domination of the animal kingdom. Afterwards as they collect the carcasses, a pair of them even argue over the etiquette of the sport, imposing the arbitrary rules of high society on the natural world and consequently laying claim to that too. Renoir may shatter the illusion of bourgeoisie sophistication to the viewer, yet still these aristocrats continue living in denial of their own repressed, violent impulses. It is no great ordeal living with a bit of blood on one’s hands after all when such sacrifices to class pride are framed as necessary traditions.

*A harsh formal break from the long, flowing camera movements, as Renoir unleashes a montage of violence and murder – the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie is exposed for everyone to see.*

Renoir’s foreshadowing is thus laid out for the crushing tragedy that punctuates the final minutes of his film. He orchestrates here a masterful tonal shift here, preceding it with a farcical series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities that throw us off far off the scent of the imminent murder. The first sees Schumacher spy on Christine wearing her maid’s cape, confusing her for Lisette as she walks with the newest man to catch her eye – Andre’s relatively poor friend, Octave. The second sees Schumacher pursue a man he believes is Octave, yet is actually Andre wearing his friend’s cape. Driven mad with jealousy, and fully investing in a self-fabricated lie, Schumacher takes aim at the man he believes is Octave and shoots.

Delicate frames formed by branches and foliage as Schumacher and Marceau spy on Octave and a woman they believe to be Lisette, though is actually Christine – the first of two mistaken identities that will lead to disastrous consequences.

In effect, Andre is punished for the wrong crime by the wrong man who picked the wrong target, yet there is a fatalistic irony in the fact that he, much like Octave, is absolutely guilty of fooling around with Christine. Not even Schumacher had considered that separate classes might have romantically intermingled, seeing an upstairs woman fall into the arms of a downstairs man, yet it is this transgression of the rules which inadvertently leads to such tragedy. No one is quite sure how to make sense of this disaster, nor do they want to, should their illusions of order and security reveal weak foundations.

“He dropped like an animal in the hunt,” Marceau later recounts, and when Andre’s death is covered up as a hunting accident, the young aviator indeed becomes just another sacrifice to the status quo. There is no great fuss cleaning up the incidental bloodshed. Everyone is simply relieved that it wasn’t them who had the misfortune of wearing Octave’s cape, but the irony here does not escape Renoir’s pointed social satire. Today it was Andre, and tomorrow the unpredictable whims of their own volatile egos could put them on the wrong end of another reckless fool’s rifle. As long as this tacit danger continues to preserve their status and wealth though, then these self-centred aristocrats are content living with a constant mistrust of their own friends and lovers, and continue giving credit to the arbitrary rules of their empty game.

Incredibly sharp satire in the final minutes. The petty drama of these aristocrats erupts into flat-out murder, yet these stairs and this platform are little more than a stage for the entertainment of lower classes who watch on.

The Rules of the Game is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

Paul Schrader | 2hr 1min

The debate over whether we might better understand an artist through their creations or their life is rendered meaningless in Paul Schrader’s exacting study of Yukio Mishima. With one prophetically mirroring the other, the two make up balanced parts of an equation, filling in the gaps that are left behind in the wake of the Japanese writer and soldier’s premature death. This perfect synthesis of mind and body is just as essential to Mishima’s ideological mission as it is to Schrader’s formal representation of him, with both pursuing a beauty that encompasses the equal need for words and action to create a spiritual wholeness.

“In my earliest years I realised life consisted of two contradictory elements. One was words, which could change the world. The other was the world itself which had nothing to do with words. For the average person, the body precedes language. In my case, words came first.”

As much a biopic as it is an adaptation of his writing, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters splits itself into quarters, announcing the titles of each at the very start like a contents page – ‘Beauty’, ‘Art’, ‘Action’, and ‘Harmony of Pen and Sword’. Next to scenes of Mishima’s childhood, army training, and growing resentment towards the “big, soulless arsenal” that is modern Japan, the first three chapters also intercut his life with several adaptations of his novels too, titled The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kyoko’s House, and Runaway Horses.

*The scenes of Mishima’s childhood and young adult life are severe in their black-and-white photography – restraint and discipline as he trains in the army.*

The difference between these worlds of reality and fiction is striking. There is an austere beauty to the black-and-white photography that captures Mishima’s life, eloquently teasing out his traditionalist philosophies like poetry right next to his pensive voiceovers. Long nights are spent refining the craft of his writing, considering ideals of beauty, masculinity, and death with reverence, and then boiling them down to artistic abstraction. Seeing the decay of the human body as a total loss of dignity, and regarding his own poor health with insecurity, he spends an equal amount of time honing his physique as well. “Creating a beautiful work of art and becoming beautiful oneself are identical,” he proclaims, thereby embodying a rigorous discipline rooted in the samurai code of honour. Practically, this also manifests as a nostalgia for Japan’s proud history that was ousted with the introduction of democracy, and which now motivates him to restore the emperor’s rightful political power.

In contrast to the monochrome starkness of Mishima’s life, all three of his adapted stories explode with bright neon and pastel colours across rigorously curated sets, effectively becoming theatre stages bordered by darkness. Schrader does not shy away from the artifice here – every shot is imbued with the impressionistic imprint of Mishima’s artistic passion, separating these fictional tales into their own self-contained worlds. With red paper leaves fluttering around a golden temple, neon pink lights shining through Venetian blinds, and a white Shinto shrine standing askew and half-buried in a plain of white gravel, each tableaux represents a new, whimsical world that springs from Mishima’s dreams, carrying great symbolic weight.

*Incredible colour and artificial set designs on soundstages, disappearing into imaginary worlds that represent the total opposite of Mishima’s drab physical reality.*

*Easily Schrader’s most beautiful film, composing surreal images of immense spiritual and dreamlike power connected to Japanese culture.*

Schrader curates his deeply sensual colour palettes in these segments with care, accomplishing a painterly aesthetic that speaks directly to each tale of beauty, art, and action. No doubt there is a part of himself that is present in his protagonists too. In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, one man’s destruction of a Zen Buddhist temple asserts victory over the notion that beauty can be immortal, while Kyoko’s House follows an actor’s sadomasochistic relationship with an older woman that ends in murder-suicide, subscribing to the notion that life must end before one’s physical deterioration. Perhaps the most prescient of all though is Runaway Horses, which sees a right-wing radical attempt a coup on the Japanese government before committing suicide via seppuku.

*These soundstage sets are heavily theatrical, existing in black voids cut off from the real world – almost like a Wes Anderson film contained to small scenes.*

Despite their incredible visual distinction, the parallel editing between reality and fiction is deftly executed throughout the film, elegantly fusing the two in graphic match cuts and through a pacing that hurtles forward with all the urgency of a man desperately chasing down his destiny. So too does Philip Glass’ avant-garde score match its propulsive energy with wildly fluctuating arpeggios and ever-shifting tone colours, using string quartets for Mishima’s life and a symphonic orchestra for his adapted novels. There are few composers more suited to the task of scoring a Schrader film than Glass, especially given their shared artistic obsessions with minimalism, form, and the repetition of phrases that build rhythms to scintillating climaxes.

Absolutely crucial to these persistent patterns underlying Schrader’s narrative though is a third narrative thread, distinguished from both the black-and-white recounts of Mishima’s life and his vibrantly artificial stories. Its aesthetic finds a balance between both, being shot in colour yet very clearly existing in the real world. The glimpses it provides of Mishima’s last day punctuate the start of each chapter, seeing him dress in the uniform of his private militia and set out with four of his soldiers to make a final stand against the government of Japan. With military drums joining the mix of Glass’ score, there is a gravity to these careful proceedings, culminating in the final chapter of the film where it becomes the centrepiece of Schrader’s narrative. There is no fourth short story adaptation here, painted with bright pigments. Mishima’s martyrdom is the destiny he wrote for himself a long time ago, and which he now embraces with fury and passion.

*The third strand of this story is Mishima’s last day, heavily realistic in style compared to the black-and-white flashbacks and colourful stories.*

For all his flaws, it is hard not to feel some level of pity for this right-wing radical as he shouts his message from the balcony of an army garrison, lamenting the loss of Japan’s spiritual foundations and demanding that his fellow soldiers join him in restoring the emperor to his throne. The low angle that centres him as a commanding figure backed up by the giant stone building behind him is almost immediately undercut by the jeers thrown from below. Refusing to let them drown him out, he continues his verbal crusade, long past the point that anyone else would have stepped down. Realising just how lonely he is in his noble convictions though, he pauses, and finally delivers a poignant admission of defeat.

“I have lost my dream for you.”

*Mishima’s last stand against the weakness of modern Japan is set against the army building at an imposing low angle, and yet he is totally isolated in his stubborn, old-fashioned sentiment.*

Retreating inside to where his loyal men wait for him, he draws his samurai sword to perform seppuku. At this moment, Schrader delivers a stroke of formal genius with the concluding shots of all three of Mishima’s stories, reconciling both art and action with a burst of vibrant images that were previously withheld. The temple burns in a symbol of fleeting beauty, the lovers lay dead, and much like Mishima himself, the radical nationalist of Runaway Horses plunges a sword into his belly, pursuing a greater moral idea to his own tragic detriment. Still, the voice of our protagonist remains, poetically situating himself at the forefront of his own narrative as he bears witness to his own blaze of glory.

“The instant the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up behind his eyelids and exploded, lighting up the sky for an instant.”

Mishima does not achieve the political victory he set out to accomplish, but as a man born out of time, that was never possible. Under Schrader’s steady hand, we instead bear witness to his spiritual enlightenment, as Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters unites those dispersed fragments of his art, philosophy, and being under the consolidating bond of death.

A dolly zoom in on Mishima’s face as he commits seppuku, strained with pain and grit…

*…and then a montage providing closure to each fictional story we have seen unfold, paralleling Mishima’s actions in life.*

*Visual poetry – a blazing sun sets below the horizon with Mishima’s suicide.*

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2023)

Wes Anderson | 4 episodes (17min to 41 min)

Not even two months out from the release of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson has continued to break down that fourth wall between storytellers and audiences with his deadpan theatrics, though this time in the spirit of literary adaptation. Having previously translated Roald Dahl to screen in 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, he is no stranger to the author’s modern fables of monsters and outcasts, both of which bear especially close connections to his own experiences living through wartime and post-war Britain in these four shorts. The brief, handwritten notes at the end of each instalment offer some context to their writing, whether inspired by the eccentric local townsfolk of Amersham where he penned The Rat Catcher, or a newspaper account of a real bullying incident that stayed with Dahl for thirty years before using it in The Swan. Even within the settings themselves, the relevance to his own military service is clear as well, with both Poison and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar using Britain’s imperial rule of India as a backdrop to stories of greed and racial prejudice.

As far as familiarity goes in Dahl’s work, these tales are not quite as widely beloved as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or The BFG, yet Anderson is purposeful in his curation, painting out a larger portrait of alienation across the entire collection. It is there in the rodentlike characterisation of the titular Rat Catcher who recoils from the disgust of others, Peter’s psychological and physical torment at the hands of two bullies in The Swan, and perhaps most cuttingly the vitriolic racial slurs spat at Dr Ganderbai that give a double meaning to the title Poison.

*Anderson’s creative angles, clean symmetry, and rigorous blocking carry through all four shorts, while his aspect ratios vary in each.*

When it comes to The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar though, the longest of all these short films, Dahl and Anderson angle their story towards a hubristic self-isolation resulting from one wealthy bachelor’s obsessive pursuit of greatness. Having spent years as a recluse in his London apartment trying to learn the ancient Indian trick of seeing without one’s eyes, Henry finds himself totally unfulfilled by the fraudulent success it grants him in casinos. His loneliness is entirely of his own making, emerging from an arrogance that is ultimately washed away by the ancient form of spiritual meditation he has been practicing, and guides him towards a lifetime of redemption.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the longest among these short films, and also the greatest highlight, as Benedict Cumberbatch leads a character study looking into one man’s greedy pursuit of fraudulent success.

Of the four shorts, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the only one that ends on such an optimistic note, while Anderson takes some liberties to end each of the others with unresolved bitterness. After Dr. Ganderbai exposes the snake apparently lying on one terrified man’s chest in Poison to be in his head, he does not brush off his humiliated patient’s racism with the happy-go-lucky attitude of his literary counterpart, but rather leaves him with nothing but cold silence. Similarly, Peter’s fate after being forced to jump from a tree in The Swan is a touch melancholier here than in Dahl’s version, with Anderson choosing to close on the poetic image of Peter’s adult self crumpled on the ground, unrecovered from his childhood trauma. To Anderson, worldly evils such as those suffered by our protagonists cannot simply be healed over with a cheerful shrug or a band aid. They persist in the memories of their wounded victims, and are imparted to the world through the eloquent expressions of great artists.

*A melancholy image of broken innocence in The Swan’s final shot, revealing the lingering effects of childhood trauma.*

It makes sense then why Anderson chooses to use a physical representation of Dahl as a narrator in each of these stories. More than any of his fictional characters, Anderson sees pieces of himself in the writer, both being storytellers who offer a veneer of whimsical innocence that may entice children, only to reveal quiet tragedies beneath the colourful surface. Anderson’s screenplay is dense with narration lifted mostly verbatim from the source material, passing from Dahl sitting comfortably in his home on the outermost layer to those characters within the stories themselves. From there, actors effortlessly switch between direct addresses to the camera and in-scene dialogue with barely a pause, moving narratives along at an extraordinarily propulsive pace that may be unforgiving to those viewers who let their attention wander for more than a few seconds.

*Anderson is playful with his cinematic artifice, showing the strings behind his tricks like a modern day Georges Méliès with this camouflaged box giving the illusion of levitation.*

For many directors, this endlessly babbling stream of descriptive soliloquys would be a hindrance to the visual medium of cinema, and though Anderson is slightly more limited here in his staging than usual, his craftsman hands deftly mould Dahl’s words into the equivalent of a pop-up storybook unfolding on giant stages. Specific props and characters are occasionally absent, encouraging a childlike imagination as actors mime and interact with empty space, while other illusions such as Henry Sugar’s levitation is achieved with little more than a camouflaged box. With his rear projection, pastel dioramas, stop-motion animation, and mobile sets visibly moved by backstage crew, Anderson lays the artifice on even thicker than usual, arranging every shot to a level of symmetrical perfection that keeps us at a Brechtian distance from any impression of reality.

*The studio soundstage around the edges of the rear projection are evident, pulling back the curtains on this cinematic storybook.*

*The walls are literally lifted from this bungalow diorama in Poison as we enter the giant dollhouse.*

*A brief yet charming return to stop-motion animation for Anderson with the Rat Catcher’s rat.*

*The backstage crew is everywhere throughout these short films, entering through random doors and windows in the sets to move around props like a stage play.*

Anderson’s aesthetic trademarks are distinctly recognisable from film to film, yet the theatrical designs and formal elements of these shorts bind them even closer as a single cinematic work, rarely even straying outside its single troupe of actors who rotate between roles. Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, and Richard Ayoade each play an assortment of outlandish characters, while among them Fiennes is the only one to appear in all four instalments, taking on the additional role of Roald Dahl himself. His gentle demeanour there is hilariously offset in The Rat Catcher when he comes to solve a small village’s infestation with claw-like nails, beady eyes, and a pair of long front teeth, suggesting his ethos to ‘think like a rat’ has spread to his grisly appearance and behaviour, and thereby showing off Fiennes’ impressive acting range. Perhaps just as impressive though is Friend’s solo command of The Swan, adopting the nasally voices of other characters in an enrapturing monologue like a parent might while reading to their child at bedtime, and Cumberbatch’s turn as Henry Sugar himself, easily the most fully developed character of the lot.

*Ralph Fiennes is the only one in this troupe of actors to appear in all four shorts, offering warm, gentle narration as Roald Dahl himself sitting in the comfort of his lounge chair.*

Fiennes’ second most prominent role is as the titular Rat Catcher – with stringy grey hair, long front teeth, claw-like nails, and beady black eyes, he has essentially transformed into a rat himself.

*Rupert Friend is also admirable, leading the entirety of The Swan with a single monologue that never loses its momentum.*

In an era of streaming that has seen directors like Barry Jenkins and Nicolas Winding Refn dip into auteur television, Anderson’s own fascinating formal experiment pushes the medium beyond the usual episodic series, while delivering a natural extension of his filmography up to now. Fictional magazines, plays, novels, and memoirs have inspired his inventive structures before, and now his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short stories into a loosely connected anthology continues that trend of exploring more traditional media through versatile cinematic forms. If there is any hindrance to his talent here, then it is the sheer difficulty of developing any character or story within the limited scope of 17 minutes, and yet at the same time there is far more excitement in any one of these isolated shorts than most films being made. The spirit of Dahl’s literature is alive, taking creative form in Anderson’s poignantly whimsical fables of scheming psychics, merciless bullies, zealous exterminators, and petrified patients.

Wes Anderson’s collection of Roald Dahl shorts is currently streaming on Netflix.

May I ask, why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

May I ask why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

[…] 13. Bringing Up Baby […]

Where would you place it on the list?

I have to say, Really shocked to see Hero not make the cut