Author: SceneByGreen

Stanley Kubrick | 3hr 5min

Stanley Kubrick has never been one to engage empathetically with his characters and their deep sentiments of love and pain, but it is ironically in his single most focused character study (at least on par with A Clockwork Orange) that he expresses his utmost disdain for humanity in all its self-aggrandising monuments and traditions. The ironic detachment with which he approaches Barry Lyndon is several layers removed from any genuine attempt at historical appreciation of the man himself, or the high society surrounding him. After all, this a 20^th century film adapting a 19^th century novel that narrates fictional events from 18^th century Britain, and much of the text as written by author William Makepeace Thackeray is preserved in the form of narration, archaic and reserved in manner. It warns us of narrative developments before they occur, keeping us from identifying too strongly with any characters, and yet even this filter through which we interpret the past is rendered entirely obsolete by its own self-importance, and its desperate attempts to insert itself where it is not needed. Just as the voiceover will often speak over character dialogue, so too does Kubrick fade out its rambling into silence as Barry Lyndon approaches its intermission, condemning it to its own antiquated spot in history for matching the vapidity of its subject of interest with its own equally insipid musings.

Barry Lyndon was not a well-loved film upon its initial released. Begrudgingly respected, perhaps, but ultimately condemned for its self-conscious arrogance and emotional distance, the exact same qualities that were celebrated in previous Kubrick films. Perhaps it was the glacial pace that frustrated audiences, combined with its colossal three hour run time which was typically reserved for epic, action-packed Hollywood blockbusters like Ben-Hur. Or perhaps it was the tension between Kubrick’s astonishingly beautiful visual compositions and his scorn for the subjects of these cinematic paintings that rubbed people the wrong way.

If anything though, this grating contrast only lends itself to his wickedly dry sense of humour. Whenever Kubrick cuts to a new scene, we are often immediately struck by the sheer artistry of the frame, whether we are laying eyes upon the green, rolling hills of Ireland, shaded and textured as if gone over with a fine brush, or the interior of an exquisite manor lit entirely by candles, adorned with giant paintings stretching across walls as magnificent backdrops. The camera’s stiff, controlled movements are as equally rigid as those formations in which Kubrick blocks his cast, maintaining a stillness that turns each scene into oil paintings, much like those hanging in the characters’ chambers and galleries.

Often the only movement to be found is in a slow zoom out from a close-up, this specific aesthetic device not only keeping intact the two-dimensional, painterly quality of each image that an alternative dolly shot might destroy, but also physically expanding Barry’s world around him, revealing immaculate compositions that appear almost too perfect to be real. But then, every now again, there are small breaks in the performances – Captain John Quin’s attempt to charm a woman through a ridiculous dance, or Ryan O’Neal’s meek line delivery of “I’m not sorry”, feebly asserting Barry’s refusal to back down from courting his own cousin.

It is towards this conflict between the perfectionistic standards of British high society and the messy, flawed beings who built them that Kubrick angles his most significant cultural critique of humanity in all its inflexible customs and traditions. It isn’t that he can’t engage with Barry emotionally, but why should he when it is evident from his behaviour that he is not a figure worth taking seriously on any level? As a young man, Barry’s cocksureness and imprudence are qualities which allow him to work his way up the ranks of aristocracy, engaging in fights and duels bound by rules which attempt to boil down the savage human instinct for violence into civil demonstrations of strength and marksmanship. He joins an army of redcoats in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, and as these stoic Brits march defiantly towards the enemy’s ranks and are picked off one by one, they maintain their worthless honour even in the face of certain death. Fortunately for Barry, he will only play the part for as long as he is held accountable for it, and with no sense of loyalty to any nation, leader, or woman, he finds himself rising up this dishonest society as a con artist.

It is here where Kubrick bisects his narrative right down the middle in a show of great formal ambition. Where Part I is named “By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon”, Part II is titled “Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon”. His new stepson, Lord Bullingdon, is the first person we meet to call him out on being a “common opportunist”, but before we attach to him for his apparent insight, Kubrick is sure to identify him as simply another fop caught up in a pallid social hierarchy. It is a little surprising that Barry is earned a shred of our sympathy in the way he lovingly interacts with his biological son, Brian, though even this relationship gets caught up in questions of how it simply propagates his own empty legacy, and one that he nevertheless has some part in destroying through his own coddling and overindulgence. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,” recites a priest at Brian’s funeral, though it might as well be a summation of Barry’s own life as he continues into this downward trajectory, finally ruined by his own hubris, gluttony, and cowardice.

The fight that earned him respect in the first half is mirrored here with one that reveals a degrading loss of control, and just as he once came out on top in an earlier duel, here a similar conflict marks the loss of everything he had remaining – his title, his home, even one of his legs. How cruel it is as well that this duel might have actually gone his way thanks to the same random chance that lifted him up the ladder of success, had he not chosen that moment to do the first noble, fair thing in his life and let his opponent shoot again. In a final display of acerbic irreverence, Barry is sent off on his way out of high society with a zoom into his behind, and a freeze frame immortalising this image of him as his final appearance. The narration does not get the last say either though, but rather simple some plain text reading:

“It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.”

If we were to entertain the slightest notion that Barry or this empty culture he lives within possess any substance whatsoever, Kubrick cuts it down at the stem with this derisive jab. Like the voiceover fading into obscurity, the pomp and circumstance of these histories and cultures fade over time, unable to live up to the impossible standards of perfection set by humanity’s own foolish ambitions as displayed here in Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Jacques Demy | 2hr 5min

In the small French city of Rochefort, seven hours outside Paris, musicians, painters, dancers, and carnies idle around, longing after whimsical dreams they believe will manifest elsewhere. That anyone would want to leave this pastel-coloured paradise seems absurd – where else could one bump into Gene Kelly walking down a pristine street, or have their likeness randomly painted by a mysterious, dreamy stranger? It is telling that the departure of Delphine, a beautiful young dance teacher, also becomes a deadline for her to finally find the man she has been seeking this whole time, and the question of whether the two entwined paths will meet becomes a source of enchanting suspense. Little do these men and women realise how close their romantic ideals are, even as they remain just barely out of sight.

The central predicaments which plague this ensemble of characters seem to be the inverse of those which haunt Lola, the first in Jacques Demy’s Romantic Trilogy, where the ghosts of old lovers trap men and women in wistful, nostalgic memories. The Young Girls of Rochefort possesses some yearning for the past, but it is predominantly towards the bright, hopeful future that our characters direct their attention, as they hang onto pieces of art and music that evoke their creator’s essence. Lola and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg certainly both revel in the exuberance of expressive musical numbers, and yet there is no bittersweet edge present here. Instead, there is a wonderfully formal use of dramatic irony in the multitude of coincidences that keep bringing these sweethearts close enough to touch, only to let them finally collide in marvellously grandiose expressions of love.

The Young Girls of Rochefort opens with what might as well be a musical warm-up for both performers and director alike, as a caravan of carnival trucks arrive in town atop a cable ferry. This slow crossing of the river provides the perfect chance for the travellers to jump out and stretch in synchronicity to the overture, though the actual landing heralds the first major dance number of the film, and an introduction to Rochefort itself – a city where orange trucks, pink fire hydrants, and blue window shutters burst forth in bright urban landscapes, and where vibrantly dressed strangers accompany each other in leaps and twirls down sidewalks with joyous exuberance. Few other filmmakers have proven as thorough an understanding of colour theory as Demy, whose compositions move beyond photographic and into the realm of truly kinetic cinema through the interweaving of choreography and rich production design.

On top of that, Demy’s camera floats airily through this space, as we witness early on when it lifts up from the town square into the window of a dance and music studio, where our two main characters are finishing up a class. Delphine and Solange Garnier are a pair of twins “born in the sign of Gemini”,an auspicious omen that grounds their very existences in coincidences and good fortune. After observing the fair being set up outside, the two suddenly turn and snap to the camera, and with that sudden shift they launch into the opening musical number as a manner of introduction. The days of songs emerging organically from narratives are gone – like so many other auteurs of the French New Wave, Demy is reinvigorating his chosen genre by acknowledging its artifice, letting his actors directly address the camera as if to invite us into their vivid lives.

Despite this blatant disregard for movie-musical convention, The Young Girls of Rochefort could not be a more jubilant expression of Demy’s love of the genre. These stylish, vivacious films certainly carry the potential to wrestle with deeper psychological quandaries, and there is even a nod to this sort of darkness here in a jarring subplot regarding a violent murder, but even such tragedies cannot exist without simply being brushed aside as the result of romantic passion gone astray. Heartbreaks only ever belong in the past for these men and women, and second chances are handed out to those who wait with patience. In theory, this hearty belief in the inevitability of destiny takes a good deal of power out of the hands of these characters. But as Demy envisions them onscreen, the lovers who inhabit this small, French town are simply caught up in some remarkable force of romance greater than themselves, inspiring in its artistic expressions of dance, music, and outrageously beautiful colours.

The Young Girls of Rochefort is available to stream on Stan, Binge, and Foxtel Now.

Jia Zhangke | 1hr 51min

An expansive concrete dam, a mossy green river, and a crumbling grey city – this is the setting for Jia Zhangke’s greatest cinematic experiment in neorealism since Platform, and its three-pronged geographic metaphor is absolutely devastating. At the start of Still Life, the village of Fengjie is already half-submerged in water, as the flow from the soon-to-be-completed Three Gorges Dam has partially flooded the valley. But this project isn’t done yet, and in order to finish it off, everything else in its path must be torn down as well. 
 
The tension between China’s fading history and the nation’s relentless pursuit of economic development has always been a critical target for Jia, but his use of architecture to reflect that has rarely been so stirring and visceral as it is here. Unlike Platform, we aren’t just watching a gradual decay, but rather the violent actions of an ancient village’s own inhabitants bringing about an apocalyptic vision of modernity. The layering of shots is especially important here, as Jia will often foreground quiet interactions against magnificent backgrounds of vast, hollow structures, and then aggressively rupture that tranquillity by collapsing those buildings before our eyes. It is arresting imagery, if not a little terrifying, and the impact is only intensified when we move in closer to montages of the deconstruction crews fiercely hammering away, taking the city apart brick by brick.

Just as impressive is Jia’s attention to the symmetrical, trifurcated narrative structure of Still Life, splitting the story of one man’s return to Fengjie to search for his long-lost wife into the first and third acts, and then paralleling that journey with a middle act which follows a woman’s search for her husband. Just like Wong Kar-wai’s mirrored narratives of Chungking Express, neither of these plotlines meet directly and yet they share crucial similarities – Han Sanming and Shen Hong are both coming from the Shanxi province, are confronted by the destruction of a city that their memories are intertwined with, and must grapple with uncertain relationships being repressed by social changes. Even more remarkably, both bear witness to the most bizarre breaking of realism that Jia has attempted in any of his films thus far, as he transitions from Han’s story to Shen’s through their silent observation of a flying saucer flying above the city. As Jia himself puts it:

“Such a quick destruction of a 2000-year-old town is simply unimaginable. It’s as if there was an alien invasion.” 

Perhaps it’s all the same to the locals who witness this destruction every day, but to these two outsiders, it is an absurd sight to behold. Jia digs even further into this metaphor in continually returning to a shot of a building that looks a little out of place in its uneven design, and then, the final time we visit it, suddenly blasting it off into space. Elsewhere, workers in hazmat suits comb through the city’s ruins, looking uncannily like extra-terrestrial visitors, while droning, futuristic synths underscore it all. The Antonioni influence goes far beyond Jia’s extraordinary use of architecture to define his characters and their relationships – his overt blending of science-fiction tones with an otherwise realistic narrative and visuals strongly evokes a similar atmosphere captured in the final scene of L’Eclisse, where another ghost town vacated of its humanity is filled with an eerie, otherworldly emptiness.  

Of course, it is important to remember that much of this ancient village has already been well and truly forgotten by its own citizens. When Han goes looking for his old house where he hopes to find his wife, he instead finds that it is submerged beneath the lake that ferries now lightly skim over, unmindful of the lost history that lies beneath the surface. Beyond its metaphorical implications, this flooding also practically complicates Han’s quest to reconnect to his own past, as he finds it has also erased many of the links that might have helped him find his way back. The motif of China burying its humanity is reflected in one especially cruel instance where a worker is crushed beneath a falling pile of rubble, and is nearly forgotten and lost completely until his colleagues hear his ringing phone. And as Jia reminds us by framing the Three Gorges Dam construction site in the background of Shen’s eventual breakup with her cheating, greedy husband, all of this cultural and personal devastation is wreaked by China’s inexorable economic ambitions.

Much of Han and Shen’s wandering through this dying city is permeated by a sickly, green haze that seems to cling to the river and forested mountains, simultaneously suffocating its remaining residents while bringing an ethereal beauty to its scenes of rapid decay. Nestled in a peaceful valley, geographically cut off from the rest of the world, this setting might have once been a quiet retreat from the industrial progress of modern China. But now, with the violent, aberrant influence of globalisation invading the far corners of the nation’s most sacred regions, the Fengjie of Still Life is a ghost town both utterly disconnected from its cultural identity and actively destructive of its own history.

Still Life is available to stream on Stan, Binge, Foxtel Now, and The Criterion Channel.

Sergio Leone | 2hr 55min

Sergio Leone isn’t exactly known for his conciseness, and yet there are few directors as skilled as him in stringing along audiences through extended sequences of agonising suspense rendered in painstaking detail, right down to the timing of each sound effect and cutaway. We cling to these minor shifts in mood like drops of water in an arid desert, promising to quench our thirst for action if we hang on for a little longer. Just as cutting Once Upon a Time in the West down from its epic 175-minute run time would be a grave mistake, so too would it be to cut down its 15-minute opening scene, as it is partially through the sheer length of both that we feel the gravity of the situation at hand, and remain compelled to learn the clandestine motives of the mysterious characters we spend time with.

On the surface of this opening, we are watching three gunmen swagger into a train depot and forcefully take it over with barely a word spoken, but then in the background a windmill-powered pump squeaks to its own rhythm, a fly buzzes around the men, and water drips slowly into a bucket. Leone’s status as one of the great cinematic montagists who can stand proudly alongside Sergei Eisenstein is on full display here in the precise rhythm of each individual edit, and the understanding of how a simple cut from a wide to a tightly-framed close-up can keep us in the grip of the narrative. These shadowy men continue to wait around, and although very little happens, we can’t tear our eyes away. Then, very faintly, we hear the whistle of a train, they all stand to attention anticipating some unknown arrival, and we too lean forward in our seats.

If that first scene feels like it stretches out to oblivion, then it is even more astounding that Leone holds off for a full 21 minutes to bring in Ennio Morricone’s glorious score – a minor chord struck on an electric guitar, punctuating the moment a young boy runs right into a close-up and is hit with the devastating realisation that his entire family has been massacred. As for the identity of the perpetrators, we are left to watch from a low angle as several men in flapping, dark coats emerge from the distance, lit from behind like angels of death. And then, as Leone’s camera moves into close-ups, we finally discover their identities. Henry Fonda, the Hollywood actor known for his characters of pure goodness, appears with his bright blue eyes appearing more malevolent than we have ever seen them before, piercing through his greasy visage. Charles Bronson’s turn as the heroic gunman Harmonica certainly impresses in his quiet reservation and mystique, but there is no competing with Fonda as the frightening outlaw Frank, delivering a landmark performance that belongs among the best of both the Western genre and his own illustrious career.

As outlaws, lawmen, and pioneers face off against each other in wide, open spaces for precious resources and personal vengeance, the impact of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films on Leone’s exquisite staging of actors in both static shots and action scenes becomes visible, manifesting the imposing presence of these characters and the tension between them. This widescreen aspect ratio may not be designed for close-ups, and yet with his deep focus photography he still continuously finds the most exciting ways to frame them against their environment, often with his subject off to the side while another occupies the background next to them in equally sharp focus.

His flair for staging goes beyond small groups though, as in one early scene we follow Mrs McBain, a new arrival in town, along the outside of a train station, before we are lifted high into the air through a magnificent crane shot, expanding the scope of this environment before our eyes as we discover an entire bustling town of horses, carriages, and villagers. Just outside its borders, we find a photographic vision of Monument Valley that hasn’t looked this beautiful since The Searchers, caught in some of the film’s greatest establishing shots. Much like Kurosawa, Leone possesses a keen eye for compositions that range in scale from personal to epic, and here in Once Upon a Time in the West he puts that to use in delivering a tale that creates mythical figures out of complicated, nuanced characters.

That said, it is hard to ignore the fundamental difference between the chosen genres of the Italian and Japanese directors. Given the abrupt nature of pistol duels, the climactic eruptions of violence that Leone promises in his long, tense build-ups are often over far quicker than a sword fight. It is almost cruel, given how much of everyone’s lives seem built around the anticipation of conflict. Still, these pay-offs are never unsatisfying, as it is in Leone’s compelling characters that he invests his time and attention, even more so than the physical struggles themselves, and so the moment that their survival is decided in a lightning-fast pull of a trigger becomes absolutely paramount to all our hopes and fears. 

As for those motivations which drive such vicious confrontations, one must dive a little deeper than the surface level plot that follows a conflict over land ownership. These characters are complex and fluid in their loyalties, shifting their allegiance to whomever aligns most with their own personal objectives, whether that is a business tycoon’s desire to build a railroad that will let him see the ocean before he dies, or a former prostitute’s hope of a more prosperous life. For the two forces of good and evil that circle each other at the centre of this narrative, Harmonica and Frank, we are left for a long time wondering what specifically is binding these adversaries together within such a complicated, thorny relationship. We are assured though that any answers we might receive regarding Harmonica’s true nature will emerge “only at the point of dying”, whether that it be Frank’s or his own. Within this cryptic piece of foreshadowing lies a quiet acknowledgement of death being the single moment in our lives that we gain all the perspective and wisdom we could have ever wished for, even if it arrives far too late.

And indeed, it isn’t just the source of Harmonica’s motivation that is revealed in these final minutes though, but the very creation of his essence in the cruel hands of Frank himself. In a poetic mirroring of the past and present, both men deliver the humiliating gesture of placing a harmonica in the mouth of their incapacitated victim, though Frank’s defeat carries more mortal consequences. Just before collapsing in the dirt, he nods with a conspicuous look in his eyes. Is it regret? A recognition of his own sins? The resigned acceptance of a fate he inadvertently carved out for himself decades ago? Just as its title suggests, Once Upon a Time in the West is more a legend than anything else, and so perhaps as he looks back on his life with his dying breath, that is exactly what Frank is seeing – his own despicable place in the saga of American history, immortalised as a monster for centuries to come.

Once Upon a Time in the West is available to stream on SBS On Demand, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Martin Scorsese | 1hr 37min

There is a version of After Hours which might play out more as a straight farce or screwball comedy, as we follow corporate yuppie Paul Hackett along a twisted journey through a bad night that only keeps getting worse. He has two simple objectives in mind: get home, and, if he can find the time for it, get laid. He wanders through the apartments, clubs, and streets of New York, ingratiating himself with strangers who might offer him solutions to one or both of his goals, though oftentimes when we get our hopes up, they are quickly dashed by some extraordinary turn of events, each one more utterly absurd than the last. After Hours is truly Kafkaesque down to the very fabric of its premise, dragging us through an oppressive nightmare that erodes our faith in a chaotic universe that only ever cooperates with itself at the worst possible times.

But Martin Scorsese’s pointed critique is not aimed at some metaphysical force that exists entirely beyond the control of humans. This trap which Paul has worked himself into is one devised by industrial America, setting up an inefficient system that rejects nuanced judgement in favour of clumsy, automated assumptions. Of course, much of After Hours takes place outside the sterile offices where such bureaucracies are created, but beyond those walls, corporate culture continues to shape urban life in its own awful likeness. It is omnipresent and inescapable, even when the lights are turned off and everybody has left the building. For Paul, there is no existence outside work – there is simply eight hours of soul-sucking fatigue, and then another sixteen hours of the same thing.

As such, it isn’t the setting of New York that feels like its own character so much as it is the society, made up of artists, bartenders, businessmen, cab drivers, and burglars. The extent to which coincidences underlie each of Paul’s interactions with these people is rigidly formal in its development, as unrelated misunderstandings and minor accidents from early on later interweave in a series of increasingly unlucky diversions, to the point that it isn’t just the whims of fate holding Paul back from getting home, but the active efforts of an angry mob operating under the misguided belief that he is a criminal who must be brought to justice. Even as After Hours traverses dark territory including suicide and drugs, Scorsese’s screenplay remains wickedly funny, particularly as Paul grows self-aware of his own ridiculous situation, and at one point, after witnessing an entirely unrelated murder, bleakly muses:

“I’ll probably get blamed for that.”

Early on a horrific plaster sculpture evoking Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ is used to foreshadow the sort of torment nightmare that awaits Paul, but by the end of the film this comparison is fully literalised as a shell within which Paul is trapped, unable to move, speak, or even scream out in pain. It should be no surprise that the woman who moulds this sculpture around him is just another false ally in a long line of them, and yet her betrayal does pack an extra sting given the moment of tender understanding the two shared. “I just want to live,” he tells her honestly, cutting through the miasma of confusion that pervades the streets of New York outside the bar where they slow dance to Peggy Lee’s hauntingly existential rendition of ‘Is That All There Is?’

The subtext is potent all through the film, but in this moment as Paul becomes objectified in the most literal sense of the word, Scorsese’s metaphors rise to the surface in an overwhelming wave, washing over and incapacitating the young upstart. It only makes sense that with his eventual escape from his physical encasement comes the rising sun, and an all too convenient drop-off out the front of his workplace just as his colleagues file in. With no other choice but to sit back down at his desk and start another day of work, he remains a feeble commodity, lacking any ability to achieve his most basic personal goals. In a mirror of the very first shot, Scorsese’s camera hurtles through the office at a breakneck pace, frantically turning corners with no destination in sight, damning Paul back into the crowd of suits he came from. There is no end to the modern-day nightmare that After Hours so dismally paints out – it is defined by the absence of anything that gives life meaning, isolating Paul in a limbo with no partner, no friends, and no home.

After Hours is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Billy Wilder | 1hr 53min

Sabrina may not have the reputation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Roman Holiday, and yet there is a good argument that Billy Wilder’s first collaboration with Audrey Hepburn features the actress at her most nuanced. Here, she combines two roles she would be commonly associated with – the fresh-faced innocent and the stylish fashion icon – and grows up before our eyes in a gorgeous transformation, confidently inhabiting a new look which turns heads that previously went unturned. Even before this takes place though, Hepburn is a screen presence to behold, with Wilder soaking her face through close-ups as she watches a young William Holden from afar. Though Sabrina carries great loneliness she is still evidently immature, as an ill-thought-out suicide attempt over her unrequited puppy love reveals a naïve belief that there is nothing else out there in the world for her.

The two years she spends in Paris changes that quite drastically though. To David, her then-crush and now-suitor, she is an entirely new woman, bearing no resemblance to the one who left. To her father, she is still the young girl with no wider understanding of the world. To her, the truth is more complicated. She is still carrying insecurities that haunted her before, as we are reminded in the instrumental motifs of ‘Isn’t it Romantic’ recalling that night she had her heart broken while watching David flirt with another woman. But now she has lived and experienced more, and she finally sees her own great potential.

“You’re still reaching for the moon.”

“No, Father. The moon is reaching for me.”

Up against Hepburn, Holden is struggling in what is easily one of his lesser performances, hitting comedic beats that land quite clumsily in a film that is otherwise extraordinarily elegant. Faring better is Humphrey Bogart, playing David’s older brother, Linus, carrying a magnificently commanding presence even if he doesn’t run away with the movie like Hepburn. Both are the sons of a wealthy family of whom Sabrina’s father serves as a chauffeur, and yet as they develop romantic interests in her, the clearly defined class boundaries dividing them are challenged in complex ways, giving rise to a web of intricate relationships that Wilder relishes in his staging and luscious deep focus cinematography. Of all the romantic set pieces we witness here, by far the greatest is the indoor tennis court upon which the figures of all three leads stand out prominently, whether they are isolated in the wide, open space or caught in a moment of tender affection.

As much as we are drawn to Sabrina’s journey of independence, the callous duplicity of Linus also forms the basis of a compelling character who apparently lives to serve his family. In his efforts to ensure David doesn’t get distracted from a potential marriage that would be good for their business, he charms Sabrina with the intent to eventually send her off on a boat alone, and yet in the process of enacting this cruel plan, he incidentally falls for her. Like the hard, durable plastic he has obsessed over in his corporate ventures, it looks like no one is going to break him. And yet, ultimately, someone does.

“The man who doesn’t burn, doesn’t scorch, doesn’t melt suddenly throws a $20 million deal out the window.”

Essentially, Linus is a romantic pretending to be a practical businessman pretending to be a romantic. As he stands in a meeting room committing to the future of his company, Sabrina’s ship sails away in the background behind him, its whistle blowing like a final reminder of what he is losing. Before the rom-com trope of a man chasing down his lover in the airport, we had Bogart sailing after Hepburn on his boat, culminating in a romantic meeting of two movie stars that gorgeously ties off two parallel arcs – a man finding himself in love, and a woman finding herself beyond infatuation, realising that she has the entire world in her hands.

Sabrina is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Justin Chon | 1hr 52min

The American immigration system of Blue Bayou is a particularly cruel beast. Antonio LeBlanc was adopted from Korea as a three-year-old by Southern parents, and though his life up to this point has been troubled to say the least, he has found a stable home in New Orleans. With the wages of a tattoo artist and a nurse supporting him and the small family he has married into, they just barely scrape by. That he was never officially naturalised as an American citizen when he was a child may not seem like a significant issue, and yet it is within this tiny loophole that US authorities happily stick their fingers and pry open into a gaping pit, within which lies a devastatingly uncertain fate back in a country he barely remembers. Needless to say, this is a crushing story that swings hard for heavy, almost melodramatic emotional beats, and yet Justin Chon grounds it well in a realist style of handheld cameras, 16mm film stock, and symbols of corrupted innocence.

Judging from the very first shot of Blue Bayou, one might expect an entirely different, and dare I say more jaw-droppingly beautiful film. We watch from a distance as a woman rows down a calm river, framed by beautiful pink florals and trees draping down around her, the relevance of which emerges over time as we revisit Antonio’s infanthood in dreamy flashbacks, revealing the painful ties that bind family members together even as time wears on. A swampy bayou that lies just outside the city of New Orleans where he lives in the present day is often the catalyst for these delicate leaps into the past, as the tranquillity of this environment inspires a deep a sense of connection with both his daughter and mother who he barely remembers. It is within these waters that he reaches his lowest point twice over, facing his own inadequacy and mortality, but as we see in an expertly edited sequence that brings the past and present full circle this is also a site of great healing and redemption, where he is inspired by the love of his family to continue his fight for his life and freedom.

The dreaminess of these formal breaks that look into his past are welcome counterpoints to the tone of much of the rest of Blue Bayou, which often sinks into outright despair and anguish at the prospect of a life being destroyed by an inefficiently bureaucratic system. Even if the world around Antonio at times lacks nuance in its construction, Chon’s performance of a man who is slowly losing his grip of it is poignantly complex, especially in those moments he lets his fear and shame override his commitment to openness with his loved ones. While others talk around him about his own fate, the camera hangs on his face, and micro-expressions as small as an eye twitch reveal a slowly disintegrating composure.

Paired with Chon is Alicia Vikander having a particularly good 2021 with confident performances both here and in The Green Knight. As Antonio’s wife, Kathy faces her own dilemma between loyalty and stability, and in one gorgeous scene she holds our attention entirely with a beautiful rendition of Linda Ronstadt’s country ballad ‘Blue Bayou’. This may be a heavy, gut-wrenching ordeal for all these characters, and yet the flashes of beauty which emerge in moments of serenity lend a quiet joy to their relationships, underscoring the significance of family ties that cannot be broken by time, distance, or institutional forces beyond their control.

Blue Bayou is currently out in theatres.

Dario Argento | 1hr 39min

As brutal as the gore and carnage may be in Suspiria, Dario Argento’s assault on the senses in his Technicolour cinematography and imposing set pieces is more confronting than anything else we witness. The film is brimming with subtextual readings of fascism and sexuality, and yet the Italian director is no slave to his subject matter. Instead, he constructs one of the most audacious displays of stylistic horror to emerge from the genre since its cinematic inception, breaking from the tradition of dark, dreary aesthetics by reinterpreting its expressionist roots through an entirely different filter altogether – one that tunes into the striking contrasts of opposing colours rather than low-key shades of black and white. Most predominantly, conflicting neon tones of red and blue battle it out across Argento’s wildly violent mise-en-scène, lighting up this vibrant German dance school and its ugly, demonic heart.

Suzy’s arrival at Tanz Dance Academie is not a welcome one, as she is immediately met by another student running away in the rain, muttering obscure words. By the end of the film we will have learnt the meaning of the clues “secret” and “iris”, but until then we are strung along a series of mysterious hints and murders, many of which hold little significance other than an immediate, visceral impact. In other words, Suspiria operates on dream logic, where a maggot infestation and a room full of barbed wire exists for no other reason than reaching deep into our subconscious and drawing out our deepest, most disturbing fears. On this primal level, the Hitchcock influence is immense, particularly in the suspenseful sequences of various characters wandering long, haunted corridors, many of which are ruptured by terrors emerging from the most unexpected places.

Running beneath these images of sensory and symbolic significance is a high-pitched, eerie score from progressive rock band Goblin, ringing out like an inescapable music box where ballerinas are manipulated, trapped, and forced to dance to the point of exhaustion. As each victim runs towards their grisly fates, its frantic pace keeps driving up our anxiety, flooding the atmosphere with a psychological terror that matches Argento’s wandering tracking shots and unnervingly fluorescent hallways. His disturbing sound design refuses to let up even when the music is absent, reverberating in a seemingly never-ending drone of disembodied echoes, and in one particularly haunting scene becoming a rattling, raspy snore emerging from the silhouette of the sleeping headmistress on the other side of bright red drapes.

Even as Suspiria begins to move into extreme violence, realism is the least of Argento’s concerns, as he focuses his camera on rubbery skin being torn and bright orange blood spilling forth from his victims. One particularly monstrous figure whose skin is peeling off in coarse, grey flakes is horrifying to look at from a wide shot, but even more so when we cut from its gaping mouth, to its rolling eyes, to its trembling, clawed hands in a montage of extreme close-ups. Of course, all of this serves to corrupt an innocent fairy tale world of ballerinas and adventures, plunging us into a hellhole that is only revealed for what it is when it goes up in flames, destroying both witches and schoolgirls alike in an image of infernal punishment.

Indeed, this is a bold experiment in stylistic horror that Argento doesn’t spare any effort in fashioning according to his very specific Art Deco-inspired vision. The yellow rehearsal room with stained glass windows, the red, black, and white geometric shapes of the cavernous entrance hallway, the massive mural of stairs and doorways that look as if they have been ripped straight from the mind of M.C. Escher – this school is a piece of architecture built to look like an inescapable trap, and then when the fluorescent lights are added to this aesthetic, it becomes even more confounding. Even the world immediately outside this school seems to exist beyond the natural realm, as a storm rolling by flashes through windows in similarly vivid colours as those which wash its interiors. Virtually any director who has worked with neons, from Nicolas Winding Refn to Gaspar Noe, has credited Suspiria as a major influence, particularly those who have also worked to destabilise our sense of security. But in working within Italian Giallo cinema, Argento effectively delivers a colourful electric shock to a film genre otherwise known for its dreary aesthetics, mapping a carnal nightmare onto a fable of witches, magic, and dancers.

Suspiria is currently streaming on Kanopy, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Bernardo Bertolucci | 1hr 51min

Bernardo Bertolucci’s carefully-curated geometric shapes and patterns of The Conformist construct an expressive yet inflexible world around Marcello Clerici, a man who seems to shift and meld to whatever his environment requires of him. Is he a fascist? An anti-fascist? Does it matter? Well, only insofar as it gives him social credit, even if it means taking out an old acquaintance should his superiors call for it. We keep returning to parallel tracking shots that follow him along unbending corridors in immaculately designed tableaux of wartime Europe, its sharp angles and lines as equally unyielding as the dogmatic socio-political landscape they make up.

Clerici strikes a respectable figure in his suit and fedora as he walks through this world’s monochrome architecture, and yet there is also something slightly off about his appearance. Perhaps it is the leather gloves he so often wears, as if to suggest a penchant for erasing traces of old loyalties whenever there is a change of guard. Being a man of little substance, he prefers not to handle these matters directly.
 
Much of The Conformist consists of flashbacks conjured up in Clerici’s drive to a secluded destination, where he is expected to assassinate Professor Quadri, a teacher with leftist ideals who he associated with at college. For much of this present-day plot thread, there is little that actually happens. Instead, the frequent cutting to memories of how he ended up here seems to slow down time, prolonging his dread over the murder that waits for him down the road.

Clerici’s earliest recollection is one of seemingly killing his family’s chauffeur, Lino, after the man molests him and suggestively lays a pistol between his legs, a merging of sex and violence. Indeed, this is the appeal of fascism within The Conformist, allowing its followers to indulge in their most perverse impulses, while injecting a heavy dose of shame into the mix, allowing for easy manipulation. Pistols continue to appear throughout the film, often in Clerici’s hands as pitiful demonstrations of masculine power, though both times we expect him to kill someone with them, Bertolucci subverts the outcome. By the end, the only deaths Clerici is responsible for are those which he sits back and watches unfold, his pathetic inaction eventually leading to the assassination of his own mistress.

Though he moves between ideologies without conviction, Clerici finds himself especially at home within the fascist regime of Italy, and it isn’t heard to see why. Quadri draws a line between Plato’s allegory of the cave and the hollow baselessness of totalitarianism, whose followers show a lack of interest in the world around them much like the figurative cave-dwellers that believe that the shadows they see on the wall make up all of existence. When the illusion eventually dissipates Clerici is left a raving madman on the streets of Italy, proclaiming whatever incendiary statements might bring him into the folds of this new society.
 
There is a soothing indigo hue that Bertolucci often washes over his day-for-night exteriors, tempering the black-and-white palette that otherwise dominates his architectural and costume designs. Its effect is softening, perhaps even a little romanticising, but the gorgeous, noir-tinted austerity of The Conformist continues to come out on top, forcing Clerici along fixed paths and into rigid boxes. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this one of the great defining achievements of mise-en-scene in cinema history, though the incisiveness with which Bertolucci tears into unthinking fascist ideologies also lends this imagery an extra edge of bitter resentment.

The Conformist is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Edgar Wright | 1hr 56min

It’s not the first time Edgar Wright has played in the sandpit of horror, but where his previous homage Shaun of the Dead was a straight send-up of George Romero’s zombie flicks, Last Night in Soho treats its Italian Giallo roots with a little more earnestness and urgency. Its setup of a young woman moving to a new city to study her artistic passion even mirrors that of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film Suspiria, but the comparisons don’t end there. What follows is a pulpy, neon-tinted nightmare, isolating and disorientating our young female protagonist in a romanticised foreign world with a dark, angry, and bloody heart.

And with as bold an artistic stroke as the one Wright paints with here, it isn’t too surprising that there are some disparate elements which don’t quite stick, especially in the final act when a sudden character swing lacks the proper foreshadowing that might have allowed it a little more finesse. Such flaws are easily forgiven though as Last Night in Soho otherwise handles its tonal shifts with great confidence, especially as it begins to edge into Hitchcockian territory in its shocking narrative turns and perverse fascination with murder as a psychological weapon. More specifically, Wright engages with the cultural exploitation of women that pervades historical eras we are all too happy to filter through rose-coloured glasses, emphasising the shifts in perspective it takes to properly examine these historical injustices.

By endowing Ellie, a young, aspiring fashion designer, with the unique gift of clairvoyance, these points-of-view are very much literalised in the film. With this ability she is able to glimpse deceased loved ones in mirrors and, when she moves into an old London apartment, adopt the identity and perspective of Sandie, a gorgeous, blonde nightclub singer who resided in the same room back in the Swinging Sixties, through her dreams.

While Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy fully inhabit their own characters, they are also up to the challenge of shifting their performances ever so slightly in reflections of the other, especially as both represent two separate generations of women who have moved to London with big dreams, only to find gendered obstacles in their way. Wright delights in letting his fluid, kinetic style flow naturally through the duality of these identities, as both Ellie and Sandie switch in and out of each other’s positions in deftly choreographed sequences and find their reflections taking on their counterpart’s appearance, all while pieces of both identities are gradually absorbed into the other.

Mirrors are crucial to Wright’s formal ambitions in expressing this relationship, but they also prove to be integral in his stylistic statement as they distort and multiply characters in twisted compositions, become frames through which his camera moves, and force us to question our very understanding of Ellie’s physical reality. It doesn’t take long for him to entirely erode that sense of geographical space either, as the London of Ellie’s dreams gradually turns into an ever-shifting labyrinth of unpredictable doorways that throw her across the city’s clubs, alleyways, and buildings. Wright’s usual hyperactive editing style may not be entirely present here, but Last Night in Soho is still identifiably from the mind of the director whose inspired transitions and camera movements shape our perception of time and the manner in which it flows around his characters.

Wright has never been a slouch behind the camera, but Last Night in Soho may be his greatest effort in mise-en-scène to date, especially in his intensely expressive colour palette of reds and blues that emerge through lens flares and vivid neon washes, flashing through the windows of Ellie and Sandie’s apartment where the past and present converge in a gruelling, sensory nightmare. Though there are horrific figures that stalk and chase Ellie through her dreams and visions, the real threat here goes beyond any one monster – it is the violent, misogynistic exploitation filling every corner of this culture that poses real mortal danger to both women. Without a corporeal figure to pin this terror down to, it is instead in Wright’s haunting, disorientating atmosphere that we feel these physical worlds break down, and are led into the frightening liminal space that is left by the absence of such conveniently clear-cut divisions and identities.

Last Night in Soho is currently out in theatres.