Author: SceneByGreen

Steven Soderbergh | 1hr 55min

It starts with a small, simple job – send a businessman to retrieve an important document from his boss’ safe at the office, and keep his family hostage back home in the meantime. Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro are the contractors, Curt and Ronald, though the identity of whoever is hiring them remains suspiciously elusive. Bit by bit, No Sudden Move spins out into a wild, sprawling caper across 1950s Detroit, as Steven Soderbergh calls in Bill Duke, Julia Fox, Jon Hamm, Ray Liotta, and Matt Damon among other stars to fill in his ensemble of low-level criminals, high-flying gangsters, business executives, and police officers. The narrative itself is a gripping labyrinth of double-crosses and power plays, all pointing towards an inevitable conclusion – it’s the big guy that will always get the last say.

Comparisons might reasonably be drawn to Coen Brothers films where carefully planned crimes descend into chaos and perpetrators wrestle with questions of fate, though the dark irony of No Sudden Move is rarely so farcical. For the most part, Soderbergh plays his thrills and drama straight, leading us through a frenzied first act before taking his foot off the pedal and letting his plot unfold at a milder, though no less engrossing pace. Ed Solomon’s dialogue moves rhythmically, and with this in mind Soderbergh exerts a fine control over his suspenseful atmosphere, deliberately running it up against the fast pacing of his editing and at one point shrilly ringing a telephone in the background, building the scene to a panicked crescendo.

As Curt and Ronald navigate their way to the top of corporate and criminal ladders beyond their understanding, Soderbergh slowly builds an underworld of shady business secrets hidden within the quiet, conservative suburbs of Michigan. His characteristic yellow lighting is put to superb use in this setting, complementing the mustard-coloured 50s décor ridden all through seedy motels and wallpapered living rooms.

In his skilful camerawork, Soderbergh lends a paranoid edge to these lavishly designed sets reminiscent of Alan Pakula’s political thrillers in the 70s, especially as Soderbergh’s high and low angles turn patterned carpets and ceilings into visually sumptuous backdrops. Every so often this world is tipped off-kilter with the occasional Dutch tilt, and if that isn’t uneasy enough, Soderbergh’s slightly fish-eye lens distorts his shots just that little bit more, compressing the edges of his frames in such a way to throw this familiar, all-American setting into a permanent state of agitation.

Of course, Soderbergh’s visual flair always works to underscore how out-of-depth Curt and Ronald are in their journey to find who is pulling the strings at the top. With a large sum of money waiting for them on the other end, and an ensemble of gangsters, police, and businessmen blocking the way, the stakes are nail-bitingly high. To think that the little guy ever stood a chance against the total sum of these forces though is foolish. While low-level crooks are fighting among themselves, there is a dry irony to the ease with which the money is claimed back by those holding real power. As one wealthy executive puts it:

“It’s money, and I have lots of money. I will continue to have more still. It’s like a lizard’s tail. Cut it off, the damn thing just grows back.”

It is almost frustrating seeing this character give in so easily to blackmail. The stakes that have been set so high for us are minuscule to him. Such is the way with virtually every narrative thread in No Sudden Move though. In Soderbergh’s carefully crafted world of greed and treachery, victory only manifests when it is granted by the elite, and it is snatched away just as easily.

No Sudden Movie is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 30min

Much like Dekalog: Five, the sixth episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Ten Commandments-inspired series was expanded into a feature film, giving us A Short Film About Love. The Hitchcockian setup is very familiar – a man with a telescope spying from their apartment into a neighbour’s unit, developing an unhealthy obsession with their life – and yet in place of a suspenseful mystery leading our young voyeur along, Kieslowski instead absorbs us in a compelling morality play. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is the commandment upon which this instalment is based, though by the end it is evident that his sights are set on the more intricate distinction between sex and love, and the complete denial of the latter.

Before nineteen-year-old Tomek has even spoken to the much-older Magda, he already has a good idea of her life and routine. A series of men come in and out of her apartment looking for sex, and though he admits he used to pleasure himself to the sight, recently he has chosen to turn away. Perhaps he considers this a form of respect or even love, but his stalking continues to take on other forms of harassment – calling her phone without speaking, sending fake postal notices so she visits his workplace, and taking on a job as milkman as an excuse to go to her apartment.

Inside, her unit is shrouded in deep reds, from the hanging artworks and stained windows to the bed sheets and telephone. It isn’t just eye-catching, but entirely beguiling and seductive, capturing the mind and heart of this young man whose experience of the world has largely been confined to this cold, blue corner of Warsaw. As Tomek finds himself being drawn into her burning red orbit, Kieslowski remains composed in his development of both characters, meticulously revealing two opposed yet equally twisted perceptions of love.

When the two finally converge in that beautiful scarlet room, Kieslowski puts these two ideologies head-to-head – the romanticisation of one-sided affection, and the denial that there is no such thing as love, but only sex. That Magda chooses to engage with Tomek at all after discovering his secret is not just a surprise to us, but to Tomek himself, who completely freezes up after being confronted with a woman significantly more experienced and confident than himself. His fantasy of admiring one from afar cannot stand actual reciprocation, and when he finally experiences an orgasm, she simply leaves him with a crushingly cold statement.

“Love… that’s all it is.”

With that pivotal meeting, Kieslowski begins to set in motion an inversion between both parties. As a devastated Tomek goes home and slits his wrists in a tub, he is now the one surrounded by the red of Magda’s world, with clouds of blood floating through the water. Meanwhile, she finds herself plagued by the guilt of what she has done, and from afar begins to develop her own sort of affection for him. It may not be sexual or romantic, but it is a moving, profound compassion comparable to that of a maternal figure or perhaps a friend, filled with genuine care and a heavy dose of shame.

Now in Tomek’s place, longing after another from afar, she visits his apartment. Just as he entered her world and understood her better, now she is entering his to look through his eyes, and in turning both journeys into mirrors of each other Kieslowski finds remarkable narrative form. Through his telescope, she imagines what he might have seen, most significantly the sadness and pain that few others have recognised in her. And then, fully submitting to the fantasy of her love, she envisions him there as well, comforting her at her lowest, and bringing A Short Film About Love to its poignant, hopeful end.

A Short Film About Love is currently streaming on Mubi and The Criterion Channel.

Krzysztof Kieslowski | 1hr 24min

When Krzysztof Kieslowski created his Dekalog series with the intention of making ten one-hour episodes reflecting each of the Ten Commandments, he was pushed by TV Poland to expand two into full-length feature films. Dekalog: Five thus became A Short Film About Killing, as well as the strongest instalment in the series, disturbing our senses in both style and narrative while taking on the Fifth Commandment as its focus: “Thou shalt not murder.”

Though set around the same apartment block as the other episodes, A Short Film About Killing couldn’t have taken a more distinctive aesthetic approach. Kieslowski’s intent to use a different cinematographer in each story often leads to small variations in the aesthetic, but his collaboration here with Sławomir Idziak stands out among them like a grotesque pimple on an otherwise attractive face. This vision of Warsaw is a barren wasteland of mud and shadows, strained through a jaundiced yellowish-green filter that seems to permeate every image with a sickly pestilence. He also lays a vignette effect over virtually every shot of the film, narrowing our field of vision to the characters surrounded by a thick, oppressive darkness. Beneath it all, a chamber ensemble of strings drone with sustained, dissonant chords, heavy with foreboding and a creeping, existential horror.

From the opening frames of dead cockroaches, a drowned rat, and a hanging cat, an aura of death immediately settles over the film. We see a group of children running away from the animals, perhaps struck with a guilty realisation of what they have done, though these characters will not be our focus. Taxi driver Waldemar, young lawyer Piotr, and mysterious wanderer Jacek are the subjects of our fascination here, each one a stranger to the others, yet unknowingly interweaving their individual paths in a braid of plot threads until they collide over a single incident.

Kieslowski is patient through all of his setup. We know what is coming, if not from the film’s title, then at least from Jacek’s sadistic and bizarre actions. Standing atop an overpass, he throws stones down on cars below. He attacks a stranger in a bathroom who makes a sexual advance. He carries around a metal stick and a rope, waiting for the opportunity to put both to use. Waldemar doesn’t seem all that different, as he leers at young women from his driver’s seat and exerts petty control over who he decides to give rides to. Piotr may be the sole bright light in this desolate landscape, asserting his views against capital punishment during his bar exam and later celebrating his success at a café where he fatefully encounters his future client, Jacek.

When the murder does finally take place, it lands almost exactly at the film’s halfway point, and is dragged on for eight gruelling minutes. Kieslowski doesn’t falter here, using every shot to play out the torture that seems to lack any purpose beyond one man’s instability. In a close-up, Waldemar’s foot hangs limp on a car seat. Below a sickly mustard sky, the taxi lifelessly rolls to a stop. From within the car, we watch Jacek pull the body down to a river through a claustrophobic frame created by the open door, before the wind blows it shut. Still, Waldemar is not yet dead, and with his final breath he begs for his life before a rock is slammed down on his head.

That Kieslowski is able to find any shred of pity for Jacek after this point is astounding. It is evident he is not a skilled murderer, as it doesn’t take long before is caught, charged, and sentenced to death. Recognising him from that day in the café, Piotr holds some remorse that he didn’t do something to prevent it, though of course he cannot shoulder any blame for the outcome here. The best he can do is sit down with Jacek and simply understand what could have motivated such a disturbing act.

Though there is a backstory regarding the death of Jacek’s death which he feels partially responsible for, we are not asked to offer him redemption through this alone. It is what comes after that is truly chilling, bringing yet another layer to the Christian commandment against killing. Jacek’s murder at the hands of the state is just as brutal as the one he committed, as he screams and struggles against the firm hold of the guards – and all for what? In the way that Kieslowski presents the complete destruction of two human beings mirrored in both halves, it is tough to reconcile them as being all that different, besides the state considering one abhorrent and the other righteous. Like the rat left in running water and the cat hanging from a noose, these humans are victims of a malevolence that will try to justify the destruction of life, and in the sheer distortion of Kieslowski’s artistry here compared to the other Dekalog episodes, he unnervingly finds the true horror in such a sacrilegious transgression of nature.

A Short Film About Killing is currently available to stream on Mubi and The Criterion Channel.

Joanna Hogg | 1hr 46min

It isn’t long after Anthony’s death that Joanna Hogg picks Julie’s story back up in The Souvenir Part II. If its precursor was an examination of her first love, then this counterpoints that with a thoughtful study of her first major loss, and with a significantly larger emphasis on the young director’s professional life, the parallels between both women are closer than ever. We see the comparison in Julie’s efforts to make a film inspired by her troubled relationship with Anthony, but we also witness it in her increased confidence and emotional insight. Perhaps this mental shift is a result of Anthony’s influence beyond death, but it may just as well be her own messy, existentialist grief that gives way to such rich character development. Like the flowers we open on and frequently cut away to in her mother’s garden, she is still learning and maturing, gradually becoming the person that Hogg is today.

It is harder to parse The Souvenir Part II out from its predecessor in terms of style though, as Hogg remains remarkably consistent in her use of static wide shots dramatically narrowed by interior corridors and doorways to build oppressive frames around her characters. Perhaps the greatest visual shift here though is in location – there is no feasible way Julie can continue living in that apartment that is so full of Anthony’s overbearing presence. When she first returns to it, idly touching its walls and furniture, the space feels like a foreign world she no longer belongs to. It is her parents’ large home in the countryside to which she escapes, and its nourishing green gardens where we see her at her calmest.

The organic rapport between Honor Swinton Byrne and her real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, is even more present in Part II with the increased time they spend simply talking through their heartache. The latter gets a particular affecting scene in which she speaks of experiencing love and pain through her daughter, offering a soothing presence to an ensemble that is otherwise full of hyper-critical film students and professors. Richard Ayoade is back once again and is thankfully given even more screen time than the first film as Patrick, a delightfully hipster filmmaker whose response to Julie’s positive feedback to his direction is a flippant “That’s marvellously generic.”

Though the challenges of film school are still present, there is a distinct contrast between the way Julie pursues her creative ideas between both films, and it is especially notable in her discussions with university mentors. While they savagely pick at her script for its messy presentation and threaten to withdraw the school’s support, she speaks with a more direct passion than we have seen before. Perhaps the lack of precision they accuse her of is a result of her own chaotic state of mind following on from Anthony’s death, but even then, there is still a fresh self-assuredness to Swinton Byrne’s line deliveries.

On set, Julie aggravates crew members by deciding in the last second to change the camera’s placement, offends old collaborators in choosing not to cast them in her project, and patiently weathers complaints that she doesn’t know what she is doing. Hogg’s dialogue is entirely true to the realism of the piece in these scenes, overlapping characters trying to be heard in the heat of arguments and delivering the sort of amusingly ego-driven conflicts recognisable to anyone who has been on a film set.

As troubled as Julie’s film production is, it also acts as a healing process, helping her work through her memories of Anthony and questions of how much a problematic person should be venerated after their death. In basing a character directly off him though, Julie runs up against the difficulty of giving his actor an idea of who he really was, rather than her concept of him. Perhaps to address this tension between fiction and reality, Hogg denies showing us the products of Julie’s efforts on the night of her film’s premier. Instead, she digs deep into the fantasy and plays out the purest representation of her mind that she could not bring to the screen – a surreal collage of dreamlike settings, costumes, and symbols that she runs through, while Anthony’s words echo in voiceover. Within this break from the film’s reality where hallways of mirrors lead her through a dark funhouse, Hogg hits on cinematic gold, deconstructing her own artistic and grieving processes by merging them into a singular representation and naming it The Souvenir.

Up until the very last scene of Part II, there is still the question of whether Hogg would consider building on Julie’s story further with another sequel. If we were to compare the final seconds of both parts though, it is evident that there is far more closure here. Not necessarily because of the characters or narrative, which could theoretically keep spinning out beyond Julie’s university years, but because of Hogg’s pointed decision to move her camera beyond the walls of the soundstage upon which it is shot. This Brechtian swing at the fourth wall is far removed from anything we saw in the first film, and yet in Part II’s meditations on cinema as a filter through which reality is processed, it feels like a strangely natural conclusion. That the actual painting The Souvenir only makes a brief appearance here is negligible – the actual “souvenir” in question emerges from the memories we wish to hold onto, and the loving mementos that are crafted from their remnants.

The Souvenir Part II is currently playing in theatres.

Joanna Hogg | 1hr 48min

Any clear-minded person can see that Julie and Anthony don’t make sense as a couple. One is an insecure though ambitious film student, trying to figure out what she can contribute to society beyond her own privileged background. The other is a haughty intellectual, slightly more experienced, but thinly concealing an innate brokenness. Through the casual conversations, dinner parties, student film shoots, and interviews of The Souvenir, Hogg studies both characters with a keen eye. It is a testament to her thoughtful screenplay and Tom Burke’s restrained performance that we are still holding onto a shred of pity for Anthony by the end, but given the autobiographical angle from which she is approaching this story, it is also clear that Julie is the one whom she looks upon with the greatest empathy and affection. Though Julie is a woman not yet fully sure of the space she inhabits in the world, Hogg quietly reassures us – she’s getting there, even despite her many blunders and setbacks.

Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda Swinton, slips into the role of Julie with a modest grace, and much like her mother she carries a cool composure about her, without being so refined as to be inaccessible. Quite fittingly, Tilda plays the mother of Julie as well, Rosalind, and in her few scenes we see a woman with years of wisdom behind her painfully recognising her child’s mistakes, though unable to fully protect her from the consequences. When Julie stays up late for Anthony to arrive one night, Rosalind is there to take over and let her daughter sleep peacefully. The gentle sorrow she projects when Julie wakes is heartbreaking. Bad news has arrived, and she wilfully takes on the responsibility of being the one to ease her child into it.

For Julie, her relationship with Anthony is a process of discovering unsavoury behaviours hidden beneath a veneer of ostentatious respectability. At a dinner featuring a cameo from a gleefully alternative Richard Ayoade, the secret of Anthony’s heroin addiction comes to light. After he stages a break-in at their hotel room in Venice and is caught out, he refuses to admit he did anything wrong, even going so far as to gaslight her into believing she is overreacting.

“You’re inviting me to torture you.”

The fact that he is so much more articulate than Julie is frustrating, and yet it is also one of his most attractive qualities. Where she anxiously stumbles trying to justify why she wants to make a film about downtrodden lives so distant from her own experiences, he confidently asserts the value of cinema that separates itself from reality. Where she gets flustered on film shoots and awkwardly bumps into equipment, he carries an air of self-assured stability.

The frequent symmetry of Hogg’s compositions is integral to the framing of this tempestuous relationship, particularly as she shoots her actors through corridors and doorways that open into small, isolated frames. Traces of Yasujiro Ozu are evident in her decision to set her camera back in static wide shots and perpendicular to the actors, as if presenting them like creatures in their natural habitats, but at times it also powerfully diminishes her characters within their surroundings. In a cavernous Venetian room painted with elaborate murals from floor to ceiling, Julie’s breakdown plays out in a mirror on its far side, barely making a mark on the entire image. This fracturing effect is even more potent in the recurring use of a wall-length mirror back at Julie’s apartment, bringing visual layers to compositions that face her away from her guests, or alternatively split the frame down the middle with symmetrical reflections.

It is a compellingly character-centric aesthetic which Hogg crafts here, so it is somewhat ironic that one of the most affecting shots of The Souvenir is a landscape notable for its lack of any human figures. It returns three times over throughout the film, each time paired with voiceovers of Anthony’s poetic letters, though perhaps most curious aspect is Hogg’s framing of the horizon so far down in the shot that all we can glimpse is the canopy of trees reaching up towards a cloudy sky nearing sunset.

It is a romanticised vision of a relationship that can only exist when Anthony is absent, though perhaps this is the way he prefers it as well. With one of his letters, he also sends a postcard depicting Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting The Souvenir, from which the film gets its namesake. Within it, a young woman in a pink dress is carving initials into a tree, and we can presume from the letter at her feet that they belong to her lover. Julie thinks she looks sad. Anthony is sure she looks determined. The parallels to their relationship are evident either way, as he continues to live on in those spaces even where he is not physically present. When Hogg finally opens one giant door to the outside world in the magnificent closing shot of the film though, there is a sense of Julie decisively moving on with her life, embracing a world beyond her first love – even if the scars and lessons he left behind never quite fade.

The Souvenir is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Richard Linklater | 1hr 56min

The pretension and faux-philosophising of Richard Linklater’s untroubled Generation X characters is much more a distinguished feature rather than flaw of his wandering, nostalgia-ridden screenplays. The times we spend within these worlds are often defined within microcosmic bubbles, and yet his unhurried narratives unfold with the sense that they could go on forever, treading the line between hedonism and enlightenment with an air of self-assurance. That Everybody Wants Some!! acts is a spiritual sequel to his 1993 coming-of-age movie Dazed and Confused rather than a direct continuation is an important distinction to make – high school freshman Mitch Kramer will forever be 14-years-old as far as we are concerned, just as his older counterpart in this film, Jake Bradford, will eternally be 18, permanently existing within those three, carefree days leading into the official start date of the 1980 college semester.

As usual, plot is the least of Linklater’s concerns. Everybody Wants Some!! is richly character-driven, and while each member of this college baseball team is defined early on by their quirks and relationships, it isn’t until after the accumulation of time they spend together that we, along with Jake, begin to sink into the cool dynamic between them. This isn’t to say that they are all chilled-out pleasure seekers, especially given the egos running high among that always seem to have something to prove in the inanest competitions. These young men make each other’s knuckles bleed in feats of endurance, defiantly offer “triple or nothing” bets in games they are already losing, and the tempers in some run particularly short, leading to bar fights. But the stakes remain extraordinarily low all through this film, and it is through those scenes where their strengths, flaws, and idiosyncrasies emerge organically with little external pressure that we begin to accept them as they are. Beauter will always be unusually protective over his real name, just like Niles will always be a little highly-strung and Finn will always be a smart-ass. Even if they fail to identify it in themselves, there is real significance to their petty struggles, reflecting the trials of a young generation as equally disillusioned as they are idealistic.

This chasm between their surface behaviours and the philosophy Linklater thoughtfully considers beneath the veneer of masculinity only ever closes on rare occasions. It certainly doesn’t happen in those scenes where Willoughby rambles on about finding who you are in “the tangents within the framework” of a Pink Floyd song before taking a massive bong hit, though Linklater doesn’t cast heavy aspersions on his aloof, ostentatious behaviour. As it is revealed later, he is a 30-year-old who fraudulently adopts different names to keep returning to college, unable to let of the past much like Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused. This man is living with a huge amount of cognitive dissonance that no amount of drugged-out meditating will solve.

It is rather in a quiet, tender moment between Jake and another girl on campus, Beverly, where a touch of innocent self-awareness emerges. As they enjoy the last few hours of joyful freedom before classes begin, they disappear from campus and savour their time together in a nearby lake, sharing their loves for baseball and theatre. After spending the past three days quietly observing and learning the ways of college life, he finally opens up with his own personal interpretation regarding the Greek myth of Sisyphus. To him, the endless task of pushing the same boulder up a hill every day is a blessing, not a curse, creating meaning in the absence of any broader purpose, and through that both he and Beverly begin to understand each other’s passions a little more.

“Things only mean as much as the meaningfulness we allow them to have.”

This isn’t necessarily profoundly deep to anyone who has considered philosophy before, but Linklater fully recognises the beauty in these young people happening across such ideas for the first time. Save for a few gracefully languid camera movements that let us lazily drift between characters and colourful murals splashed up against walls as backdrops, Linklater does not imprint an overly interesting cinematic style on his film. It is rather his commitment to the subtle form of the piece that Everybody Wants Some!! gradually evolves into a compelling, unhurried study of young adulthood at the point that one is truly free from their parents for the first time. In the bottom right corner of the frame, Linklater will often reveal time stamps counting down until class begins, when some sort of routine and structure will be brought back into the lives of Jake and his friends. But in those three days set out from the start where the only rules given to them can easily be broken without consequence, time seems to stretch on in eternal excitement for whatever comes next.

Everybody Wants Some!! is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play.

Mia Hansen-Løve | 1hr 53min

The rocky isle of Fårö is laden with the cultural weight of renowned Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, and for those artists who come to the island looking to follow in his footsteps and the residents who can barely go a day without hearing his name, his impact is inescapable. It is evident in Bergman Island that director Mia Hansen-Løve is no exception, and neither are Chris and Tony, the foreign filmmaking couple at its centre. Their pilgrimage to Fårö may be motivated by Bergman, of whom they are both admirers, though for Chris it also possesses a light beauty which is not always present in his dark, psychological examinations of humanity.

The local populace here has at least capitalised well on their claim to fame, with Bergman Safaris whisking tourists around the island and historical shooting locations being turned into guesthouses. As Chris and Tony settle into the famous bedroom from Scenes From a Marriage, complete with an identical gold-and-white queen bed, they share a half-joking acknowledgement that staying there may not be healthy for their own relationship. And indeed, troubles do emerge along the way when Tony neglects to assist in Chris’ writing and she stands him up for a scheduled tour, though this does not motivate some magnificent artistic epiphany for her as it did for Bergman. Instead, Hansen-Løve uses this relationship to sketch out a divide in filmmaking methodologies between the tortured artist and the hopeful creator, both of whom struggle to understand the other.

It is when Bergman Island takes a dive into the film imagined by Chris during this retreat at the one-hour mark that it steps up to a new level, not necessarily for the pure power of its narrative, but rather for its formal interaction with the main storyline. As she narrates her ideas to a disinterested Tony, Hansen-Løve cuts straight to the imagined film in her mind, where two Americans, Amy and Joseph, travel to Fårö for a wedding and incidentally rekindle an old romance. Though this starts as a diversion from the main story, it eventually grows into a full act on its own, dominating a good forty minutes of this two-hour film, until Hansen-Løve begins to lightly toggle between both realities at once.

This may be the most Bergmanesque aspect of a film that is otherwise questioning how any Fårö-inspired piece of art could possibly escape from beneath the shadow of a director whose legacy has taken over the entire island. Objects and costumes begin to crossover between Chris and Amy’s respective worlds, until a collision of sorts unites them both into one, blurring boundaries in such a way that feels distinctly evocative of the Swedish auteur, though not entirely imitative. To point out those places where Hansen-Løve falls short of reaching the same stylistic or formal heights as Bergman is to neglect her statement about true originality in art, but regardless – one must wonder whether this might have been a little more even had its alternating structure been set up earlier on.

The history of art weighs heavy on Bergman Island, and it is evident that even in trying to defiantly escape its shadow, Hansen-Løve’s admiration and distaste for the European director is built into her artistic DNA. By endeavouring to peer past his creations and find that which inspired him in the first place though, fresh perspectives begin to emerge. In the lilting harps, bagpipes, and pan flutes that permeate the film, she also imbues this stony, Baltic island and its Nordic architecture with an expressive texture, building on her search for a new kind of sensitive appreciation. Where Bergman saw severe austerity in the landscapes of Fårö, Hansen-Løve discovers optimism and fantasy, and once Bergman Island hits its stride in its second half, she effectively weaves it deep into the layers of its storytelling.

Bergman Island is currently playing in theatres.

Todd Haynes | 1hr 47min

It is a bold move to revise and deconstruct an out-of-fashion film genre within a modern context, but bolder still to dig deeper into its antiquated conventions as Todd Haynes does here in Far From Heaven. There wasn’t exactly a market for tender-hearted melodramas in 2002, and yet within this narrative of 1950s suburban house parties, nuclear families, and neighbourhood gossip he steadfastly proceeds with a film that speaks sensitively to the deep-rooted prejudices of middle-class America. Perhaps this bucking of mainstream trends puts Haynes even more in line with his greatest cinematic influence than ever as well, as in the era of post-war America when Douglas Sirk’s films were being derisively written off as “women’s weepies”, the classic Hollywood director similarly used artistic empathy as a weapon to defiantly challenge social norms. 

As sentimental as Far From Heaven may be and as naïve as his characters are, any accusations of phoniness are unfounded. The heightening of emotions present is not intended to force compassion for Hayne’s characters, but rather to tune us into those repressed parts of their identities they struggle to face, and the subtleties of ordinary life that go entirely unnoticed. Praise must go to Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert who capture that tricky balance between internal worlds and external expressions as closeted family man, Frank, and African-American gardener, Raymond, both of whom rub up against the strict social order. But it is especially in the ways that Julianne Moore relates to them as Cathy Whitaker, a housewife torn between her social duty and genuine love, that we can fully grasp the strain of 1950s suburbia. After catching Frank, her husband, having an affair with another man and growing closer with Raymond, the pressures of her narrow-minded neighbourhood begin to close in, and cracks in her idealistic life begin to manifest. 

Thematically, Far From Heaven falls right alongside Sirk’s Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows in its delicate studies of class and race, although perhaps the single most transgressive aspect that gives it a modern grounding is its candour in approaching homosexuality – certainly a taboo topic in the days of Hollywood’s Production Code. The only barrier to Hayne’s prodding of the issue is the repression of his characters, who awkwardly stumble around discussions and confrontations with an uncomfortable clumsiness. Beyond the walls of the home, the eyes of judgemental neighbours are ubiquitous in low-angle cutaways, and when social convention is thrown out in sudden developments, Sirk tilts his camera in canted angles, destabilising Cathy’s entire world. 

Most of all though, it is in Hayne’s long dissolves, saturated colours, and autumnal suburban landscapes where Sirk’s stylistic influence elegantly seeps through, tying its worldly innocence to the emotional honesty and wholesomeness of those characters quietly confronting rigid communal structures. Rich hues burst from manicured green lawns and warmly lit domestic settings with vivid passion, these palettes shifting from scene to scene like expressionistic outpourings of these characters’ emotional states. When Frank grows frustrated with his inability to perform sexually for his wife, chilly blue day-for-night lighting takes over their living room, pierced only by Cathy’s bright red dress standing within it as icon of vibrant warmth. As he explores shady basement bars, a neon green glow drenches him in an unnatural shade of green, pulling him into a new, covert world that, while possessing an entirely distinct tone, remains just as boldly luminous as the rest of his life.

It is fitting that this throwback to the 1950s marks the final score for classical Hollywood film composer Elmer Bernstein before his passing, his symphonic orchestra of woodwinds, strings, and piano floating through the film like a wistful, nostalgic dream. This dream though is one which is almost entirely artificial, constructed out of America’s naive mid-twentieth century ideals, and which motivates Haynes to go about puncturing it with sobering recognitions of its limitations. Through windows, Haynes often shoots Cathy within her home like a trapped creature, only beginning to consider her own role in perpetuating the same oppressive barriers she now nervously struggles against, and although she does not succeed in destroying them, she still ends her arc with far more self-awareness and compassion than ever before. Within every frame of Far From Heaven there seeps a beauty that makes an honest effort to understand each of its characters on that same level, drenched in the colourful expressions of a director not so much challenging well-worn conventions as he is playing right into their arms with loving affection.

Far From Heaven is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and to buy in the Microsoft Store.