Author: SceneByGreen

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 39min

The final part of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy would also be the final film of his career. He announced his retirement after Red’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994, and then two years later he passed away, leaving behind a confounding masterpiece that pays off on stylistic fascinations and fatalistic meditations threaded all through his work. The set of circumstances which bring young model Valentine to the door of Joseph, an elderly retired judge, are about as arbitrary as those which keep her separated from Auguste, the law student whose life is locked in a tangential criss-cross pattern with hers. Formal parallels abound between characters, and Kieslowski lays heavily into the dramatic irony of their hidden interconnections. Fraternity is his focus here, the third part of France’s national motto, and it is undoubtedly a powerful force within this small ensemble, pulling individuals together into an invisible club they don’t even realise they are part of.

Out of all Red’s characters, it is perhaps Joseph who possesses the clearest understanding of this fraternity. From his living room he taps the phone calls of all his neighbours so that he may spy on their private affairs, and as such it is reasonable to consider him the closest thing to an omniscient God figure, bridging gaps between strangers. At the same time though, Joseph is decidedly flawed, and just as prone to the whims of chance as anyone else. The story he tells Valentine of how he passed his studies after his dropped textbook opened to the page that would be relevant in his final exam directly mirrors what we witness happen to Auguste earlier in the film. In fact, the similarities that emerge between both men might as well make them the same person separated by a few decades, so that Valentine’s friendly relationship with Joseph essentially becomes a stand in for her potential relationship with his younger counterpart.

In Kieslowski’s fluid tracking shots, he traces the gaps between both Valentine and Auguste’s paths, elegantly craning and panning his camera to observe their unwitting entwinement through the streets and shops of Paris. Virtually everything that he is formally setting up here points them in the direction of a fated relationship, and while we eagerly anticipate their eventual collision, such gratification does not come easily. In fact, it is arguable whether it comes at all. There is no logic in assuming that just because the two share similar qualities and frequently rub shoulders that they should eventually fall in love, just as there is no logic in Valentine and Joseph being born several decades apart. Perhaps if he was younger their relationship would blossom into something romantic, as it might with Auguste if she knew of his existence. Such is the nature of life’s fickle obstacles keeping us apart from our potential futures that they go entirely ignored until the right paths happen to line up, and we wonder “Where would I be if that one small thing never happened?”

Despite all these missed connections between individuals, Kieslowski still delights in imbuing his film with an abundant warmth. Shades of red saturate his mise-en-scène with a deep passion, uniting each character inside the cosy embrace of his décor and lighting. In the very first shot as we speed along red telephone wires running through the ocean and ground to connect complete strangers, the colour is immediately associated with the hidden interrelations ridden all throughout the film, and it doesn’t end there. In brake lights, slot machines, wallpaper, and theatres, scarlet hues continue to dominate Kieslowski’s gorgeous compositions, and in the most striking visual display of colour in the film, it becomes the visual foundation of Valentine’s bubble gum ad, plastering her face up on billboards around the city. In returning to this image several times she becomes more than just the protagonist in our story, but also in her surroundings, unconsciously touching the lives of virtually everyone who passes by.

Slowly, the scope of consciousness for these characters begin to expand, and as they do we find Kieslowski returning to the motif of glass, often intact when barriers remain up, and broken when individuals reach out to lives beyond their own. Specifically, it links Joseph and Auguste via smashed windows, fractured beer glasses, and broken ornaments, often being given specific focus in Kieslowski’s symbolic diversions from the main narrative. Rather than his usual cutaways though, instead he will often drift his camera away from his characters to linger on these thoughtful representations of broken boundaries.

Still, it is almost impossible for anyone living inside Kieslowski’s world to fully understand the complex connections that link them to each other, spanning beyond the peripheries of the film to glimpse characters from the rest of the Three Colours trilogy, united in the final minutes by a freak accident. Whether it is chance or fate, seeing the full structure of this interconnected fraternity might take the perspective of an all-seeing God – or at least a philosophical filmmaker with a pensive, wandering camera.

Three Colours: Red is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Mubi, and available to rent on iTunes.

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 32min

At Karol’s lowest, white is the colour of bleak desolation, encasing him in a snowy garbage dump flooded with seagulls. What changes in Three Colours: White is not Krzysztof Kieslowski’s stylistic palette, but rather our perception of it. As Karol claws his way back up the ranks of society that his ex-wife, Dominique, banished him from, an alabaster bust bearing a likeness to her becomes a reminder of his end goal, a pale hotel room becomes an image of privilege, and when the two make love, Kieslowski fades to white right over her orgasm. The middle colour of the French flag, as it stands in the second instalment of Three Colours, is equality – a neutral mix of hues that restores balance where justice cannot be found, and which lends itself perfectly to the softer tone of this relatively light-hearted narrative.

Kieslowski calls back in Zbigniew Zamachowski and Jerzy Stuhr from Dekalog: Ten as brothers once again, playing to the former’s comedic strengths in scenes that see him resourcefully make use of what little he has to overcome obstacles. To get back to Poland from France, he smuggles himself inside a travel bag, and yet awkwardly finds himself being stolen by a group of thugs looking for money. His plot to finally get back at Dominique pays off on this ingenuity as well, involving a complicated fabrication of his own death that frames her as the murderer.

Given the vaguely comic sensibilities of White, Kieslowski does not indulge so frequently in those symbolic cutaways that he often uses to momentarily remove us from the immediate narrative, and yet when they do appear they leave a mark. Most gratifying of all is the close-up image of Karol and Dominique’s grasped hands, finally making contact again after months of separation, and this time very much as equals. It sets an even playing field for Karol’s final power play, sending her to the pits of society where she once left him to waste away. Even so, there is a sense in the final shot of Karol’s teary face that this exile may only be temporary – vengeance is only so useful in restoring balance before reconciliation organically emerges between both parties.

As we glimpse in flashbacks to Karol and Dominique’s wedding day shot through a dazzling, bleached filter, there is a pure happiness that once existed between them, as Kieslowski’s point-of-view shots gaze at her smiling face with adoration. It is misty, dreamy, and far removed from the modern day where Kieslowski’s colour scheme emerges in the architecture of train stations and courtrooms, each location carefully selected for its visual impression upon Karol’s journey. In expansive snowy landscapes, even the sun shines a plain white light across the clear sky, mirroring the pale ground in an image of equal counterparts.

Whether through retribution or through exoneration, Kieslowski seeks a similar balance in Karol and Dominique’s contentious relationship. He deals out justice in his narrative not with emotional passion, but rather with a cool, fair judgement, finding poetic irony in the eventual reversal of fortunes. Wedged in between two more serious films in the Three Colours trilogy, White can easily be overlooked for its lighter thematic material, and yet as the centrepiece it also appropriately offers the same balance that it examines, holding them all together as a comical yet uniformly profound equaliser.

Three Colours: White is currently streaming on Mubi and The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 39min

The Three Colours trilogy is not the first time Krzysztof Kieslowski has woven cultural ideals deep into the structure of his cinematic work, and nor is it the first to shift styles so dramatically between each part. But where his Dekalog series took the Ten Commandments as its the foundation, it is the French values and flag colours which he takes particular interest in here, centring his first instalment, Blue, on the virtue of “liberty” as laid out in the motto of the French republic – “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. This is not a revolutionary or political liberty, overthrowing some oppressive elite, but rather an emotional liberty seeking independence from the chains of past trauma. The blue palette that pervades this film in every shade imaginable sinks it into a deep melancholy, as one woman, Julie, tries to build an entirely new life to move on from the loss of her husband and daughter in a fatal car accident. 

Kieslowski’s blue hangs in the evening sky, gently tinting it with a pale shade of indigo. It artificially lights up an entire swimming pool, encasing Julie in a royal azure that leaves her paralysed with grief. It is also suspended in tiny sapphires that dangle from a mobile her daughter once owned, refracting light through its shards. While she goes about destroying every remnant of her old life, trying to free herself from the depression, she can’t quiet bring herself to part with this glittering memento. She is entranced by it, and in close-ups Kieslowski obstructs her face entirely by its delicate beads. 

The use of glass as prisms through which light is distorted is infused with Kieslowski’s filmmaking right down to his lens flares, dancing flashes of blue around Julie at her lowest moments. In one moment that seems to hit like an epiphany, he even passes a close-up of Julie’s face through an intense cobalt filter. Such skilful manipulation of colours makes for a sensitive framing of Juliette Binoche’s devastating performance, within which we witness a swirl of powerfully conflicting emotions that can’t quite break through the all-consuming numbness. Sleeping with her husband’s old musical collaborator, Olivier, doesn’t do much, nor does she find success in trying to erase memories that only bring pain. 

But every so often, something does find its way through to move her on some level. Kieslowski’s trademark cutaways to tiny symbols of larger ideas flourish in Blue, not just in those representations of the distinct colour scheme, but in small displays of Julie’s overwhelming emotional state. In one shot as she tunes out of her immediate surroundings, she lightly dips the corner of a sugar cube into her tea. Kieslowski only holds on this for five seconds, but it is enough for us to see it absorb the brown liquid before she drops it into the cup. Perhaps Kieslowski is painting out an image of Julie’s gradual succumbing to her depression, or perhaps it is more positive in elucidating her need to re-join society. Either way, these impressionistic close-ups draw us into a mind disconnected from the larger world, searching for meaning and beauty in the smallest, most fragile objects we typically look over. 

The motif of incomplete orchestral music composed by Julie’s late husband, Patrice, also cuts through to her closed-off soul, though rather than wilfully applying her precise focus to it, it haunts her everyday life like a stubborn ghost, arriving at the most unexpected times. The reminder is enough to cripple her physically, and often Kieslowski will also fade his screen to black as if mentally blacking out before returning to the exact same scene, disorientating our perception of time. It mostly manifests in her head, though there is something fatefully mystical in the way it emerges within the melody played by a random street busker who claims to merely be improvising. 

It would seem that Patrice’s half-written choral composition cannot be put to rest until it is finished, and for as long as Julie denies her connection to the music, she cannot find peace with it. Although Olivier is the one taking the lead on this project, it is evident only she, the one who was married to Patrice and knew him better than anyone, who can understand his legacy in a meaningful way to let it keep on living. 

This is but one level of her reintegration back into society though. While Julie runs from the past, she also meets new people in need of emotional support much like her. The boy who witnessed the crash and now needs closure from its sole survivor, a neighbour who has been ostracised from others in the apartment block due to her sex work, Patrice’s mistress who is pregnant with his baby – the ways that Julie touches these lives is not always fully planned or conscious, but in the small ways she has turned her grief into compassion, she incidentally obtains a healing within herself.

The graceful montage that ends Blue drifts the camera past all their faces, finding completion in their own stories as Patrice’s finished piece of music plays out operatically over the top. In finding reconciliation with the colourful and musical displays of melancholy that Kieslowski embeds intohis film, there is still ultimately some closure to be found for Julie – not in banishing these ghosts entirely, but rather in making wistful companions out of them.

Three Colours: Blue is currently available to stream on Mubi and The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Eric Rohmer | 1hr 51min

Jean-Louis’ night at Maud’s is a test of faith brought about by chance. Where his newest love interest, Françoise, is a blonde Christian who lives traditionally, Maud is a dark-haired, secular, modern woman, playfully pushing his rigid boundaries. It is important to Eric Rohmer’s philosophical drama that she is not some antagonistic seductress though, looking to ruin or corrupt his perfect moral standard. After all, his sympathies with his God-fearing protagonist aren’t so clear-cut either, with Jean-Louis being a man struggling to reconcile his conscious actions with his faith. It is rather Maud’s transgressive incitement which motivates him to seriously consider his own life as it pertains to his values, as well as the erratic universe which pushes his fate in whatever fickle directions it may choose.

With the character of Vidal, a Marxist university lecturer more aligned with Maud’s worldly sensibilities than those of his theological friend, Rohmer rounds out this four-person chamber drama. It is a dense script of mathematical, social, and ethical quandaries which drives My Night at Maud’s, and not one that affords its audience any time to lag behind. Lengthy conversations take place inside apartments and cafes, as Rohmer stages different combinations of character interactions without ever bringing them all together in one location. Many of these discussions are not planned, but rather emerge organically from crossings of unlikely paths, thus immediately setting the stage for an in-depth debate over the mechanics of probability.

“Our ordinary paths never cross. Therefore, the point of intersection must be outside those ordinary paths. I’ve dabbling in mathematics in my spare time. It would be fun to calculate our chances of meeting in a two-month period.”

From there, conversations regarding Pascal’s wager open up, considering the risk that human’s take with their lives in deciding whether or not to believe that God exists. It is a gamble that both Jean-Louis and Vidal play safely, though within different contexts. The latter, being an academic, chooses to believe that history holds inherent meaning, as it is only then that his life’s work can hold value. For Jean-Louis though, moral choice is an imperative he wishes to keep putting off, and it is that “half-heartedness” which Maud skewers him for.

Such heavy philosophical dialogue rarely hampers Rohmer’s cinematic staging of this drama, particularly in Jean-Louis’ pivotal conversation with Maud that sees him uncomfortably move around her apartment, while she lies still in bed. As he oscillates back and forth in this scene, the temptation becomes real, eventually leading to his decision to sleep next to Maud – though categorically not sleep with her. Later, Rohmer blocks Françoise in a similar position and sets up a counterpoint between both characters, though one that strikes a different note when she offers him a different room.

The clean order of Rohmer’s symmetrical compositions is consistent with the mathematical precision of the screenplay, but in his framing of characters behind glass windows and doors he also creates a cold distancing effect. In this environment where roads are slippery with ice and sidewalks are dusted with snow, such camerawork makes for a fitting choice, as if silently encouraging these characters to break down barriers and find warmth with each other amid the winter weather. This frigidity is also somewhat offset by the festive lights and decorations that smatter scenes with religious undertones, grounding these philosophical discussions in the Christmas season where Christians congregate in churches and meditate on their faith. With this in mind, Rohmer sets in motion the first tangential crossing of paths between Jean-Louis and Françoise at a mass, as he eyes her profile from across the congregation.

It isn’t long after this that he becomes convinced he will one day marry her. When Maud comes in, she is not simply drawn up as a seductive obstacle to this goal manifesting, but Rohmer rather uses her openness to expose Jean-Louis’ hypocrisy. He is a man concerned with his own respectability, and is willing to forget about his own history that carries contradictions with his faith. So too does Françoise come to a similar conclusion, asking that neither of them speak of their pasts again when their shameful misbehaviours surface.

Perhaps though it is this course of action which grants the greatest happiness, as we see Jean-Louis and his now-wife, Françoise, run into Maud five years later – by chance of course, the same way almost every other meeting in the film has taken place. At the moment that Jean-Louis realises that Françoise was in fact the woman who slept with Maud’s husband and thus set in motion their divorce, he once again chooses to bury the past in favour of a blissful marriage.

It is telling that Rohmer chooses to stage this scene against a sunny beach rather than the snowy urban landscapes that have dominated the rest of the film, revealing a fresh warmth in Jean-Louis’ life that has failed to manifest up until now. In true philosophical fashion, My Night at Maud’s isn’t ready to deliver firm answers to its academic quandaries, and yet in this narrative built on a series of formal happenstances Rohmer also crafts an absorbing examination of fate, free will, and history as they fall under theological and secular perspectives.

My Night at Maud’s is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Jean-Luc Godard | 1hr 43min

During his peak of activity in the 1960’s, Jean-Luc Godard took a brief respite from sending up beloved Hollywood genres to aim his incisive wit towards the “gods” of storytelling themselves, be they Greek poets or contemporary filmmakers. The tension between the ancient and the modern is evident in Contempt as writers, directors, producers, and actors argue amongst themselves, trying to determine the motivation that drove Odysseus’ epic ten-year adventure across the eastern Mediterranean. It is indeed a curious thing that so many ancient myths take the emphasis off the internal journeys and onto the external, and yet this allows for some universality in which individuals can imprint themselves on these legendary figures. In the case of these artists making a film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, it is the perfect story upon which they can map their own relationships and ambitious endeavours.

Cutaways of Greek god statues with their eyes and lips coloured in with reds and blues run through the film, as Godard’s low angles powerfully frame them against the sky. In fact, Contempt’s mise-en-scène may be his most classical we have seen to date, even as Godard’s primary “French” colours keep bursting through in its set dressing and lighting. Back at the apartment of Brigitte Bardot’s actress, Camille, and Michel Piccoli’s playwright, Paul, the occasional bright blue chair or red towel worn like a toga pierces the beige, modern architecture, marking the breakdown of their relationship as a tale just as fresh as it is old, woven into the archetypes of human storytelling. Is it sexual jealousy that has driven them apart, or rather a loss of respect for Paul’s integrity as an artist? Was Odysseus’ journey driven by a faithless wife back home, an indifference to her growing contempt for him, or something else altogether?

Unable to agree on the source of their own woes, Camille and Paul are driven to the extreme ends of Godard’s compositions, divided by huge amounts of negative space in the walls and door frames of their accommodation. Even when the two finally come face to face, it is as if they can’t stand to be captured in the same image together, as Godard’s camera instead shifts side-to-side in close-ups of their profiles. This ebb and flow between casual conversation and shouting takes up a full half hour of the film’s modest 100-minute run time, letting them attempt some sort of direct expression of their feelings before returning to the film set for the remaining third.

In the villa where the shoot is taking place, several of Contempt’s characters venture up a cascade of steps to a flat rooftop, overlooking the same Mediterranean Sea which played host to the hero of Homer’s epic poem. Godard knows what he has with this gorgeous set piece as he returns to it over and over, further isolating his characters in long shots as lonely, modern idols wandering a corner of the Earth so famous for its stories. The potential to contribute to the mythos of humanity is right there for the taking, but for those who degrade it with their visions of dishonest, crude entertainment, it ultimately holds nothing but contempt.

Contempt is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan | 2hr 37min

Through a nocturnal Turkish countryside of rolling hills and open fields, three cars wind their way around barren slopes in single file, piercing the darkness with their bright headlights. The harsh glare invades the beautiful natural scenery with a penetrating observation, as if trying to expose some grim, hidden secret. Inside these cars is a group of professionals – police officers, a prosecutor, a doctor, some grave diggers, and armed forces, all being guided by two suspects who have murdered and buried a man somewhere in the rural regions of Central Anatolia.

The identity of the victim and the killers’ motivations remain elusive for much of the film, as do the personal trials of the prosecutor and doctor who speak of their own lives in oblique ways. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is in no rush to deliver the answers we seek in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, and the pay offs are often subtle, but sure enough, this quietly languid narrative eventually pulls each story together in a meditation on sin, regret, and the passing of one’s transgressions onto the next generation.

In the gorgeous long shots of cars following twisted roads and disappearing behind curved hillsides, one is particularly reminded of a similar visual conceit used in Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry, another barebones piece of minimalist cinema in which a man drives through the Iranian countryside searching for a stranger to assist him in his suicide. A series of discussions inside a car similarly provide the philosophical framework through which both director-writers contemplate death, all the while teasing the possibility of an actual corpse making an appearance on the other end.

For all its intelligent scripting though, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia does not possess the same succinctness or efficiency as Kiarostami’s film. In its first half, it deliberately meanders from one site to the next as one of the suspects, Kenan, leads the men on a trail of guesses as to where he buried the body. The painstaking precision of the investigation can be trying, dwelling on details that carry little to no emotional weight, and yet every now and then Ceylan breaks through the monotony of these conversations with a delicate flourish of style and symbolism. As one character shakes a tree branch, an apple falls onto the hillside, rolls into a stream, and drifts away. It is the first major break from the film’s main narrative, and as it gets stuck at a dam where several other apples are rotting away, it calls to mind both the forbidden fruit of original sin, and the journey of every living thing arriving at the same inevitable location where so many others have terminated before.

In this manner, Ceylan imbues his film with a sense of mysticism that hangs in the air. Later when the men stop over at the mayor’s house to eat, the power goes out, but not long after this happens his daughter enters the room carrying a tray of tea and an oil lamp that lights up her face like a holy angel. Her quiet, graceful presence moves each of them deeply, but none more so than Kenan who begins to cry. As discussions around children being punished for their parents’ sins develop, she stands for an untainted image of purity over whom they mourn, wracked with sorrow for what she may have to suffer. Earlier in the film one police officer remarks with a hint of sarcasm that this night might be looked back on like a fairy tale, and although there is little whimsy to be found here, Ceylan’s collection of archetypal characters and symbols certainly lends itself to a fable-like reading of his existential narrative.

Just as the unearthing of a human body exposes the relevance of such questions to the killer’s life, so too does the exhumation of other secrets via adjacent allegories and off-hand conversations reveal the scope of generational sin through the rest of the ensemble. Kenan’s feud with another man over the true paternity of a 12-year-old boy is revealed to be the motivation for his drunken murder, yet in the act he also ostracises and traumatises his son. The police chief answers a call from his furious wife who is caring for their sick child, though he ignores her pleas and keeps on working. A tale that the prosecutor narrates about a woman who predicted the exact date of her death is revealed to possess hidden depths relating to his own infidelity, ultimately destroying his daughter’s chance at a normal family life. As he tells his new confidant:

“It’s the kids who suffer in the end, doctor. Everyone pays for the things they do. But kids pay for the sins of adults.”

With this in mind, the divorced, childless doctor who is so dedicated to the objectivity of science cannot help twisting a small piece of evidence in the autopsy room to save the victim’s son from the traumatic knowledge of his father’s true fate. As he gazes out his window at the wife and boy, we also notice a small bloodstain on his cheek. Perhaps there is a little piece of himself that identifies with that lifeless cadaver lying on the operating table, with no partner or child. It is remarkable that even in spite of these characters’ melancholy journeys towards existential enlightenment, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is still so elegant in its formal progression, bringing together an ensemble of flawed, shame-filled men over twelve life-changing hours.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is currently streaming on Mubi and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Michael Mann | 2hr 20min

Notorious bank robber John Dillinger is a slippery man, but he at least can’t be faulted for his honesty. The same day he meets his soon-to-be lover Billie Frechette, he also confesses to her the truth of his shady career. He moves fast with no inhibition, knocking down her uncertainty with a suave openness that comes naturally to Johnny Depp, so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that when he is finally arrested and driven through crowds of Americans in Depression-era Arizona, he finds them cheering for him rather than hurling abuse. In such trying times where masses are suffering beneath the crushing capitalist system, his legacy effectively becomes a success story – not of a rule-follower rising to the top, but rather a criminal who dubiously levels the playing field by targeting the wealthy elite.

Michael Mann is well-acquainted with such urban crimes dramas as these, where criminals and law enforcers circle each other inside sprawling cities and ultimately discover something of themselves in their foe. It is a well-worn convention that he perfected in Heat and resurrects here in Public Enemies with Depp and Christian Bale, chronicling the final years of the real John Dillinger as he is tracked down by FBI agent Melvin Purvis across 1930s America.

The result is a crime period piece that luxuriates in the extravagance and dilapidation of the Great Depression, studying this vast inequality to understand the frustration which motivates Dillinger and his crew of robbers. All of them are so used to the inside of jail cells that escaping almost comes as second nature to them, pulling it off twice in this film much to the frustration of the FBI. The first comes right at the start with Dillinger executing a carefully plotted prison break at Indiana State Penitentiary. The second comes much later and happens entirely spontaneously, proving him to be particularly resourceful in his use of a fake gun.

The foundation of Mann’s success in Public Enemies is made up of thrilling set pieces like these, as well as his production design which opens ripe opportunities for marvellously imposing compositions. With a deep focus lens and a penchant for low angles, Mann turns majestic bank ceilings and opulent light fixtures into gorgeous backdrops for Dillinger’s crimes, setting him up as a dauntingly confident figure unafraid to take what he wants. Elsewhere, forest hideouts and concrete prisons become settings for action sequences beyond Dillinger’s comfort zone, forcing him to reckon with the grittier side of his job. Mann achieves a beautiful crispness in these set pieces, and yet in darker lit scenes he also occasionally lets through an ugly digital grain that is difficult to excuse.

Even beyond his long shots and excellent staging though, Mann brings an intimacy to his widescreen frame with close-ups of Dillinger and Purvel, their mental fortitude gradually wearing thin. Though their direct interactions are scarce, they are also incredibly revealing, as the two share a common understanding of the heavy conscience that comes with taking a life. With this established, the tension that leads into their final confrontation is immense, as Mann cuts between the FBI’s advance upon the movie theatre that Dillinger is inside, and the Clark Gable film he is watching. Just before he leaves, it delivers some wise words of advice.

“Die the way you lived, all of a sudden, that’s the way to do it. Don’t drag it out, living like that doesn’t mean a thing.”

There might be a roughly equal balance of screen time between Purvel and Dillinger in Public Enemies, but it is clear which one Mann is more fascinated by. As this notorious bank robber is gradually drained of his resources and his allies, he begins to shatter and take even greater risks, at one point walking through a police station in disguise and asking them the baseball game score out of sheer audacity. Public Enemies may not be the intensive study of opposing equals that Heat so effortlessly pulls off, but in Mann’s superb staging and Depp’s magnetic performance, it nevertheless becomes a compelling examination of an unjust system slowly squeezing out its most vocal dissidents.

Public Enemies is currently available to stream on Binge and Foxtel Now, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Denis Villeneuve | 1hr 17min

The tragic college shooting that takes place in Polytechnique is bookended by two voiceovers, both reading out letters. The first belongs to the unnamed murderer, writing his suicide note that lays out his bitterly sexist motivations. Though he does not speak much throughout the film, it is this pungent misogyny which hangs over the film like a monstrous shadow, stalking victims down hallways and mercilessly taking their lives. The other voiceover which closes the film belongs to a survivor, Valérie. In the letter she writes to his parents she expounds the devastation their son has left behind, but she also speaks of the guidance she will provide to the child now growing inside her belly that they never gave to theirs.

Between the two voiceovers, Denis Villeneuve creates a terrifyingly bleak reconstruction of the 1989 Polytechnique Montreal massacre as seen through the eyes of two students. One of them is Valérie, who is badly wounded in a brutal attack. The other is Jean-François, who may be the closest thing we get to a hero in this hopeless situation. The model of masculinity that he projects exists in stark contrast to the killer’s toxic ideologies, and yet not even his selfless efforts to rescue his peers is enough to conquer the overwhelming despair that the shooter brings inside these halls.

Villeneuve plays out this massacre twice over from the alternate points-of-view of Jean-François and Valérie. It goes without saying which version carries even greater mortal terror to it, given the killer’s motives. The first time we see him enter a classroom and send the men outside, we carry their guilt for not staying behind and doing more. The second time we watch this play out from the inside with the women, the fear is immediate and inescapable. Such is the impression that Villeneuve captures in this structure that even in repeating it twice over, we never quite feel that it really comes to an end. Just as it plays out in the minds of traumatised survivors for years to come, so to do we feel doomed to live out the same soul-shaking torment on repeat.

Outside this engineering school, snowy landscapes set a dismal, unforgiving tone that matches the killer’s cold isolation and bitterness. For these students, Polytechnique doubles as both a place of growth and a comfortable shelter from the icy Canadian winter, and as the lone shooter enters its premises, he destroys both. Those who manage to make it out scatter into the blizzard, looking like small black dots facing an equally dreary world than the one they just came from. For one survivor haunted by the trauma, this snow-white exterior similarly becomes the setting of his own eventual suicide, wrapping the young man up in the same pernicious grip which took away fourteen other students and teachers, and prolonging the massacre long after the killer’s death.

Those who remain inside though, whether by choice or because they are trapped, find themselves locked inside a labyrinth. Long tracking shots hang onto the back of our main cast’s heads much like Gus van Sant did in Elephant, his dramatisation of the Columbine High School massacre, though within the modernist architecture of Polytechnique Montreal where narrow corridors and angles trap our main cast in claustrophobic frames, Villeneuve effectively turns the environment into a complex series of passageways to navigate. In one shot he flips his camera sideways to track across a row of bookshelves seemingly rising upwards, and later it turns completely upside down to turn a hallway ceiling into a floor which he unnervingly dollies down.

Perhaps the most disturbingly quiet image in Polytechnique though is the overhead shot of the killer lying dead on the floor, next to the body of his final victim. As Villeneuve’s camera pulls back and twists around, their two pools of blood intermingle into one. Had this been shot in colour, perhaps we would have recoiled at the overbearing gore of such a grotesque sight. Instead, his monochrome photography simply considers the light and shape of such powerful compositions, letting the symbolism of this shot arrive at a more psychologically unsettling conclusion – the deaths of all these people will forever be tied to one violent, hateful man.

With Valérie’s final voiceover looking to the future though, Villeneuve delivers one last piece of hope. For those who lived and died through the massacre of Polytechnique, there may not be any more peaceful nights of sleep, trusting that the world is a good place. But in their children, there is always another chance for women to understand their value, and for men to do better.

Polytechnique is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Wes Anderson | 1hr 33min

There may not be a single Wes Anderson character more suited to the director’s mannered, self-assured affect than Max Fischer. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given how much of the ambitious underachiever is based off a younger adolescent Anderson, both being meticulously focused in their passionate endeavours, and perhaps a little misguided in their intentions. Bottle Rocket was where it all started for him as a comedic filmmaker, but Rushmore marks his first major breakthrough success as a genteel stylist setting up artificial barriers and then breaking through them to find the sensitivity inside his lonely, deadpan characters.

With its noticeably minimalist budget compared to his later films, Anderson’s roots in the 1990s American wave of independent cinema are abundantly clear. His artistic voice is pure and idiosyncratic, dedicated to the organised style and form that so clearly belongs to an off-beat world just slightly adjacent to our own. That so much of Rushmore is shot on location at a real school makes this feat even more surprising, as even with this element of realism there is still a curated symmetry and neatness to Max’s life. His camera almost never moves in curves or diagonals, but rather dollies in straight lines across his frame and towards his subjects, maintaining the air of civil decorum that Max holds about him.

Also integral to Rushmore’s visual style is the self-conscious, theatrical blocking that seems to take its humanistic drama and force it into the artificial shape that Max so desires it to conform to. Though he does not yet fully understand the emotions and principles of adulthood, he at least believes he does, and so there is a humorous overcompensation in his sophisticated presentation that continues to manifest within Anderson’s methodical staging of characters in lines and geometric patterns, much like the stage plays that Max directs. Such a distinguished manner continues to define Rushmore right down to the chapter breaks marking the months of the school year, opening curtains to formally introduce new stages of Max’s coming-of-age journey and closing at its end.

Jason Schwartzman carries a self-assured yet purposefully stilted conduct in his performance that matches Anderson’s own fastidiousness, and yet in both the acting and direction, the artifice is always very carefully applied, refraining from impinging on an otherwise realistic emotional arc. He is a teenage boy who carries business cards and goes about executing elaborately vengeful plots on those who have done him wrong, but he is also suffering deeply from the wounds left behind by his mother’s death. There may even be something a little Freudian about the way he transfers those unresolved feelings upon a schoolteacher, and when he discovers that she has lost her husband, he sees the absence as a gap waiting for him to fill.

“So we both have dead people in our families.”

Perhaps the greatest difference between Max and Anderson is the maturity the latter displays in understanding those other, slightly less eccentric people in his life. The isolating shot of Bill Murray’s disenchanted businessman, Herman Blume, within a cold, blue pool evokes a similar image from The Graduate, revealing a loneliness within him that is at least equal to Max’s. Perhaps the most obvious reference to the Mike Nichols film though comes in Anderson’s narrative study of a boy’s lust after an older woman, escaping from the narrowed perspective of adolescence and enticing the notion that adults don’t necessarily have life figured out either.

In that sense, there is a recognition that “coming-of-age” is not a thing that happens once and is then left behind. Anderson’s vivacious style of editing and visual comedy is drenched in the jubilant energy of youth, underscoring much of Rushmore with the songs of John Lennon, Cat Stevens, The Who, and The Rolling Stones among other British bands from the Swinging Sixties. He especially leans heavily on montages that do more than simply bridge gaps in time, but rather develop character in sequences that flash through immaculately constructed tableaux of Max’s various social clubs and vengeance-driven exploits. Even Anderson’s visual gags serve a similar purpose, using a shot as brilliantly simple as Max dressed in a fencing outfit being overrun by basketball players in the gym to let us know everything about his place in the school.

It is in the Vietnam War-inspired play that Max stages in the final act of Rushmore that we see perhaps the most acutely captured vision of Anderson as a young storyteller, creating extravagant dioramas complete with pyrotechnics and clearly artificial designs to bring his own eccentric artistic expressions to life. Together, both embrace the transitory affectations of young adulthood, and yet as they look towards the future where they might meet grown versions of themselves, they also acknowledge those bizarre characteristics that are intrinsic to their identities. For the juvenile creative types, middle-aged cynics, and grieving widows of Rushmore, there is no point shirking one’s most honest nature – just an understanding of how it can mature into something more mindful and compassionate with time.

Rushmore is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video.

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 38min

The mystical coincidences that bind French music teacher Véronique and Polish choir soprano Weronika together in an elusive, causal relationship beyond immediate comprehension reveals layers to these characters that neither can fully understand on their own. The Double Life of Veronique moves in such a lyrical way that while we can distinguish both women as separate individuals, we also can’t help but perceive them as two parts of a single consciousness, split right down the middle like the film’s own structure. The moment one passes away, we immediately shift to the other sitting up in bed several hundred kilometres away, struck simultaneously with an unexplained grief and a fresh sense of purpose. Irène Jacob plays both with a deep sensitivity, prone to blissful elation in musical sequences and profoundly affected by the tiniest shifts in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s bewildering cosmos.

Within the omniscient perspective that Kieslowski offers us across Véronique and Weronika’s lives, he carries on the ambitious form of his epic Dekalog series, where he watched his characters like an all-seeing God while still holding the utmost empathy for them. The interrelation of isolated segments similarly reaches across The Double Life of Veronique in the most unexpected places. There is the obvious parallel of both women being deeply involved in musical professions, but the orchestral piece that they share a soft spot for also emerges as a counterpoint between them, as does their common heart condition that gives us cause to worry about their health.

The singular point upon which these paths converge comes during Weronika’s section of the film before we have been properly introduced to Véronique. From Weronika’s perspective, it is a tangential meeting of two fatefully identical women, as she catches a glimpse of her counterpart snapping photos of Kraków while touring on a coach. Before she can think of what to do, Véronique is speeding away, none the wiser about what just occurred. In the aftermath, Weronika smiles, as if finally receiving an answer to a question she never knew she had. Later, Véronique will experience a similar sort of epiphany when reviewing her photos and noticing her doppelgänger. “All my life I’ve felt like I was here and somewhere else at the same time,” she reflects. “I always sense what I should do.”

Through ethereal lighting and lens filters that soak both women’s lives in tints of green, yellow, and orange, Kieslowski transports them into a dimension that seems ever so slightly separate from our own. Complementing these palettes are the reds that bleed through his production design, appearing in couches, flowers, and costumes that radiate a vibrant passion inside staggeringly gorgeous compositions. Also key to the beauty of Kieslowski’s cinematography and the formal notion of parallel lives are the visual manipulations of light through glass, whether they are catching reflections of characters or refracting visions of the world around them. As Véronique sits on a train gazing through a glass orb that turns the passing city upside down, we too feel as if we are looking into an inverted dimension, much like ours though recognisably distinct. Kieslowski employs such cutaways with symbolic contemplation, entering microcosms of reality that offer emotional insight where hard logic does not suffice.

As cryptically focused as The Double Life of Veronique may be, Kieslowski still has the grace to let his film zoom out a little in scope by the final act, introducing Alexandre Fabbri, the puppeteer and writer who draws Véronique’s eye. His marionette is a delicate instrument of expression, moving with elegance and fluidity, though unlike so many others in his profession he does not wear gloves and he handles the doll manually. Just as he does not hide his physical manipulation, neither does he hold back from revealing to Véronique that he is the one behind the assortment of items being sent to her in the mail as a test to see whether she would come to him. He too is the one who uncovers the image of Weronika among other photos from the trip to Kraków, and goes on to narrate a story of two women causally linked since they were born at the exact same time – when one burned her hand on a stove as a little girl, the other instinctually learned to recoil from the danger.

Much like Artur Barciś’ silent witness of the Dekalog, there is something supernatural about Alexandre that doesn’t entirely belong to this world. It only makes sense that he owns two identical copies of the marionette he performs with, moving them around like some powerfully transcendent being understanding more than he lets on. Or perhaps he is merely a puppet used by some higher power to contact Véronique and reveal the answers she has been longing for. As confounding in its formal complexities as The Double Life of Veronique is, Kieslowski’s absorbingly ethereal meditation on fate is also a magnificently moving piece of cinema, edging us towards an emotional understanding of humanity’s interconnectedness without ever fully letting us in on its mystical secrets.

The Double Life of Veronique is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Mubi, and to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video.