1980s – Page 2 – Scene by Green

The Sacrifice (1986)

Andrei Tarkovsky | 1hr 29min

The line of influence between Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman is an intricate one, both being European filmmakers from the late twentieth century who were equally inspired by each other’s artistry, and in turn expanded the world’s understanding of cinema as an artform. It is hard to argue with Bergman’s assessment of the Soviet director as a master “who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream,” though perhaps the greatest praise of all comes from Tarkovsky in the form of The Sacrifice.

The concerns of faith, atonement, and material reward in this modern parable could have belonged in a film written by either man, positioning us right on the edge of a potential nuclear holocaust that may destroy everything our protagonist Alexander holds dear. Still, in Tarkovsky’s collaboration with Bergman’s frequent actor Erland Josephson, his cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and production designer Anna Asp, he is clearly curating an aesthetic and tone that bears similarities to the Swedish director’s austere style. On top of that, The Sacrifice’s barren landscapes feature the stony coastlines of Gotland, a neighbouring island to Fårö where Bergman had lived and shot many of his own films since the 1960s.

*A superb opening composition that pays homage to Bergman on two levels – not only is it filmed on the stark Swedish coastline, but the single withered tree calls back directly to The Virgin Spring.*

*That opening frame then turns into a ten-minute long take, tracking Alexander, Little Man, and Otto as they walk inland and discuss matters of faith.*

Even within the very first shot, Tarkovsky is paying reverent homage to Bergman through the lonely, withered tree that overlooks the Baltic Sea, referencing the solemn imagery of The Virgin Spring as an illustration of life persevering in sterile environments. Where such a tree became part of a violent, pagan ritual in Bergman’s film though, Tarkovsky holds onto it as an icon of Christian hope. As Alexander plants it in the soil with his mute son Little Man, he relays the fable of a monk who would climb a mountain every day to water a dead tree until it blossomed back to life. Through simple faith in a methodical ritualism, Alexander believes, life can be saved from the precipice of death, and rewards may be reaped. Despite all this, he also claims to have no personal relationship with God, only finding salvation from a “defective” civilisation in his small, pragmatic actions that exact change in his environment.

*Tarkovsky uses these trees to divide this shot, creating a narrow frame that hems Alexander and Little Man into the middle.*

*A beautiful arrangement of staggered bodies, embodying a precision that has come to typify Tarkovsky’s style.*

*The seventeenth-century map of Europe is a curious gift from Otto, considering deeply – is the sacrifice of the giver the source of a gift’s value?*

Much of Alexander’s complex characterisation could be just as easily found in a Bergman film, though where the distinctness of Tarkovsky’s style begins to emerge is in the meditative pacing stretching out through this long shot. Between the two, only Tarkovsky would have been willing to play out Alexander’s philosophical discussion with Otto the postman in a single ten-minute take that refuses to push into any close-ups, choosing instead to slowly dolly the camera with them from a distance as they slowly walk inland.

It is in this minimalist aesthetic that he subtly underscores the rich symbolic details of his scenery, especially once we reach the seaside house where Alexander lives with his wife Adelaide. It is his birthday, and a small group of friends have come bearing presents, one of which is a seventeenth-century map of Europe. “Every gift involves a sacrifice. If not, what kind of gift would it be?” Otto enigmatically foreshadows, perhaps planting the thought of spiritual offering in Alexander’s mind. Later when low-flying jets pass over the house and shake its foundations, Tarkovsky’s camera does not pay attention to his characters, but rather holds on a cabinet of glassware. The vibrations gradually increase from a gentle rattle to a violent shudder, before toppling a precariously balanced jug of milk off the shelf, shattering it into pieces, and spilling its liquid contents of maternal nourishment across the floor.

Delicate, fragile imagery as the milk jug falls from the cabinet and shatters on the ground. One could read into this as a symbol of maternal nourishment perishing with the onset of war, though it is the visual and emotional impact which Tarkovsky prioritises above the intellectual.

Not one to encourage such explicit readings of his iconography though, Tarkovsky often strives to separate his sensual, dreamlike imagery from clear-cut interpretations, much preferring instead to hypnotise us into an impressionable state that frees us from the constraints of traditional plotting. Each shot thus delivers its own story of ineffable emotional complexity, slowing down time as the camera gently drifts by Alexander standing motionless among black trees on a snow-covered ground, or elsewhere submitting us to the rhythmic trickling of water as it leaks through a ceiling and pools on the floor. As if filtered through the prism of one man’s existential trepidation, Tarkovsky casts a delicate ethereality across the earthy textures of his mise-en-scène, capturing actors and props in precisely arranged shots that might collapse with the slightest atmospheric shift.

*Tarkovsky slowly drains his film of colour, drifting his camera past these dark trees in a hypnotic trance.*

*More of Tarkovsky’s precision in the way he sets each shot, laying out his furniture in arrangements that somehow express an ethereal presence in the absence of actors.*

Especially when prophetic visions begin to intrude on Alexander’s consciousness and reveal an impending apocalypse, Tarkovsky lulls us into a soothing despair in a desolately ruined courtyard, tilting the camera downwards to close-ups of the debris below. Wet newspapers caught in a dirty stream, a single wooden chair remarkably still standing, and a glassy reflection of the ruined city above illustrate the remnants of some pending disaster, while Tarkovsky’s camera floats overhead. The black-and-white grading of this shot is devastatingly bleak, emphasising the ash fluttering through the air while light disappears entirely into the burnt interior of a wrecked car, foreshadowing a progressive colour desaturation of the entire film from the moment Alexander’s eerie dreams manifest in his reality, and war is officially announced.

A mesmerising yet nightmarish tracking shot that starts high on this urban ruin, and slowly tilts down to the debris below, white ash fluttering through the air. Tarkovsky has always been a master of high angles that use the ground as mise-en-scène, and this is one of the best examples of this.

The news immediately dampens the spirits of Alexander’s party, settling ominously over a composition of eerie disconnection, with each guest facing their body outwards from a round table while their gazes are fixed on the flashing television light in the background. Their reactions are diverse – after Alexander’s wife Adelaide is sedated from her hysterical outburst, he quietly disappears upstairs and begins muttering the Our Father in anxious desperation. Josephson has never given a greater performance than he does here, his breath shaking and eyes wide with tears as he collapses to his knees, frantically trying to strike a deal with the God he has not prayed to for a long time.

“I will give Thee all I have. I’ll give up my family, whom I love. I’ll destroy my home, and give up Little Man. I’ll be mute, and never speak another word to anyone. I will relinquish everything that binds me to life, if only Thou dost restore everything as it was before… as it was this morning and yesterday. Just let me be rid of this deadly sickening, animal fear! Yes, everything!”

*Erland Josephson’s best acting to date as he prays to God out of fear and desperation, the camera moving forward and peering down at his face in a slightly raised angle close-up.*

Very slowly, Tarkovsky pushes us forward into a close-up of Alexander’s fearful face as he misses the contradiction of his intended sacrifice. If the world is to end the way he expects, then all that he is offering now will be destroyed regardless, thus rendering the propitiation useless. Still, in the madness of his terror, this goes entirely ignored. The Sacrifice does not impose judgements of whether Alexander may be a madman, a coward, or an altruist, leaving just enough in the subtext for us to find our own connection to him, though one thing is made undeniably clear – his habitual self-reliance has been rendered totally inept in the face of such immense existential dread. How can we blame him for resorting to such extreme, unfamiliar methods?

Alexander’s newfound faith is driven by fear, not love, and as a result his devotion is totally fragile. He is willing to hang all his material possessions on the tiny chance that God will bring salvation, while hedging his bets that other pagan forms of spirituality might do the same. Having learned from Otto that his housemaid Maria is a witch who can help him save the world, he approaches her with an open mind, ready to perform whatever ritual she asks.

Hunched in shame, he tells her another parable mirroring that of the devoted monk which opened the film, though this time it is a personal confession of the time he accidentally ruined his mother’s beautiful garden, despite his good intentions. Grace has been escaping him his entire life, he believes, and to recapture it now would earn his redemption. Soothing his anxiety, Maria wraps him up in a coital embrace, floating and rotating weightlessly above the bed. Jet planes continue to fly overhead, yet through this surreal, ritualistic imagery The Sacrifice offers a tranquil hope for deliverance.

*Calling back to Mirror from eleven years earlier, levitating these bodies in a coital embrace, and forming an entirely new, almost angelic shape.*

In the film’s broader symbolic reflection between paganism and Christianity though, there is also a mirroring between the act of life-giving creation that Alexander performs with the witch, and the act of blazing destruction he dedicates to God in the film’s grand climax. Not content that his bizarre sexual encounter was enough to save the world, he follows through on his initial promise, stacking wooden furniture inside his house before setting it alight. Outside, Tarkovsky commences one of the single most impressive shots of his career – a six-minute take sitting several metres high off the ground, watching this giant wooden structure burn to its charred bones.

How ironic that one of the great cinematic set pieces of the 1980s emerged not from any Hollywood blockbuster, but from a Soviet director whose artistic inclinations are almost diametrically opposed to his American contemporaries. That Tarkovsky’s initial effort to coordinate this breathtaking sequence was ruined by a camera malfunction makes the feat all the more admirable, as the entire house had to be rebuilt in two weeks for the second take that eventually made the final cut. His dedication to harsh, elemental visuals pays off enormously too in the fire’s contrast against the cold island landscape around it, reflecting its dazzling orange light in the surfaces of stagnant puddles, and restoring colour to the heavily desaturated film. Beneath the enormous plumes of smoke and flames billowing into the air, Alexander is but a tiny, shrunken figure running madly about in a black kimono, trying to escape the reach of his family and the paramedics who have seemingly turned up out of nowhere.

Again, Tarkovsky using the ground as mise-en-scène in perhaps the greatest set piece of his career. Water forming puddles on the ground, reflecting the fire billowing up into the air – this is incredibly elemental imagery.

Beyond the spectacle, it is also astounding how much character detail Tarkovsky instils in this shot. Given the sudden arrival of these ambulances, one must wonder whether Alexander’s birthday party was really a final farewell before committing him to a mental institution, which then leads us to question how much of what we have witnessed have been the delusions of an unwell man. Alternatively, this could also be evidence of a world that cannot understand his true spiritual enlightenment.

For those who take Alexander’s offering to be totally futile, Tarkovsky’s final scene keeps The Sacrifice from becoming a totally pessimistic tale. He employs his biblical metaphors with care, drawing multiple connections to the fall of man and Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac, but the only true miracle among them arrives with Little Man’s first words as he lays beneath the withered tree from the film’s opening.

“In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?”

Quoted from the Gospel of John, Little Man appears to carry on a faith that is scarce to be found elsewhere on this island, and which was tainted in Alexander’s pure self-interest. The parallels to a virtually identical miracle at the end of The Seventh Seal indicates yet another tie to Bergman too, though where the previously mute servant girl there greets Death with Christ’s words “It is finished,” Tarkovsky’s selected bible passage implies a spiritual hope. Therein lies the greatest philosophical division between the two auteurs. Alexander’s sacrifice may or may not have averted the end of the world, but as Little Man dutifully waters his father’s tree, we can at least be assured that Alexander’s demonstration has planted the seeds of faith for future generations.

*Ending with a true miracle, much like The Seventh Seal, referring back to the tree from the start which Little Man continues to water – spiritual hope for future generations.*

The Sacrifice is not currently streaming in Australia, but can purchased on DVD and Blu-ray here.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

Paul Schrader | 2hr 1min

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have lost my dream for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the Rehearsal (1984)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 20min

The theatre stage is not just a canvas for director Henrik Vogler to mount his eloquent artistic expressions of pain and desire. After each rehearsal, when it has emptied of cast and crew, it also becomes place of deep meditation, where the stories and lives that have passed across its floorboards settle inside him.

“All the emotions, real and make believe, all the laughter, rage, passion, and who knows what else. It’s all still here… enclosed… living its secret, uninterrupted life. I hear them sometimes. Often. Sometimes I think I can hear them. Demons, angels, ghosts… ordinary people… intently going about their lives. Closed off. Secretive. Sometimes we speak to each other, but just in passing.”

The line between life and fiction fades away, lifting him outside time itself until he too becomes an actor in his own fantasy. Not that he would accept that label – Henrik is adamant that he does not participate in the drama, but merely gives it form. His rehearsals are operations, he claims, “where self-discipline, cleanliness, light, and stillness prevail.”

Ingmar Bergman couldn’t disagree more. With After the Rehearsal playing out entirely on Henrik’s stage, everything that unfolds here effectively becomes a play in itself, frequently setting wide shots far back in the audience to frame the theatre director as a character in his own drama. Like his actors, he too is subject to the chaos of art that exposes his true self, letting his internal voiceovers disdainfully drown out his conversations with the two women who approach him mid-reflection.

The first of these is Anna, the lead in his production of A Dream Play. Her search for a missing bracelet is evidently little more than an excuse to talk with her director, seeking one-on-one guidance for her character of Agnes, the daughter of a Vedic god who has descended to Earth and now witnesses the suffering of its mortals. On top of this, there may also be romantic intentions here too – the same kind that Henrik has shared with so many other actresses before her, including her own late mother, Rakel. Anna’s memories of the woman are bitter, recalling in a pained monologue the way she fought with her father and pushed her into a theatre career, though it is Henrik’s recollection of Rakel which proves to be even stronger.

Just as Anna reaches the peak of her resentful nostalgia, reality shifts, freezing her in a single moment of time while Rakel approaches Henrik with a smile. For the first time in Bergman’s career, we are finally afforded the opportunity to watch Erland Josephson and Ingrid Thulin play off each other – one as a prideful director, the other as a volatile actress, and both caught up in a passion that swings between extremes. “Distance. Indifference. Weariness. Fear. Impotence. Impotent rage. Distance,” his internal voice mutters, convincing himself of his own apathy towards her, though at the same time her ability to cut through his sensitive ego is apparent.

“Theatre is shit, filth, and lechery. Turmoil, tangles, and trouble. I don’t believe for a second your theory about purity. It’s suspect, typical of you.”

Henrik speaks of his desire for order and precision, and yet his affection for Rakel tells a different story, seeing her embody all the chaotic emotions that inevitably manifest in his artistic expression. Meanwhile, a frozen Anna continues to burn the imprint of her red outfit into the faded blue couch between them, becoming an enduring reminder of the impact Rakel has left on his life long after her passing.

These memories and distortions barely seem out of place within Henrik’s mind, especially as the illusion of real time persists, yet Bergman’s understated surrealism weaves its way through in subtle ways. In the corner, he sees a younger version of himself hiding under a thunder sheet, while actresses playing Anna as an adult and pre-adolescent appear to swap places without so much as a cut. Only in the theatre could Henrik create a bubble of nostalgia so cut off from the outside world that it conforms to the whims of his own subjective mind, spurring a profound self-reflection on his art and relationships.

Even in the objective reality of the setting though, this stage is filled with artefacts of past plays, each one with some story behind it that Henrik could talk at length about. This is not an exceedingly beautiful film, particularly given its confinement to a single location, but Bergman blocks his actors around its stained mirrors, rustic furniture, and lighting rigs with delicate care, and especially builds his visual storytelling to a peak following our return to Henrik’s reality in the final act.

It is here as After the Rehearsal winds to a close that Anna’s attempt to make their relationship more intimate is met with a gentle rejection. “If I were ten years younger!” Henrik softly laughs, accepting the maturity that has come with age, and perhaps a little bit from his relationship with her mother. With his arm around her shoulder though, they walk among painted backdrops and discuss what could have been, narrating all the ups and downs of their hypothetical future together. Against the image of a city street, their romance becomes argumentative, and though they try to salvage it from jealousy and anger, their breakup is inevitable. Still, they will remain on amicable terms, Henrik muses, before breaking the immersion.

“That’s how it would be.”

This is clearly the work of an older director not just looking back on his career, but his relationships as well. It is no secret after all that Bergman conducted multiple affairs with his leading ladies over the years. There is some regret and self-loathing mixed in with this, but also a great appreciation for those women who have softened his edges and offered him inspiration. After the Rehearsal may mark the beginning of a final chapter for Bergman that never saw him reach the heights of Persona or Fanny and Alexander, but even as the scale of his ambition decreases, there is a new humility and maturity here taking eloquent form.

After the Rehearsal is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Ingmar Bergman | 4 episodes (57min – 1hr 32min) or 3hr 8min (theatrical cut)

There is a whimsical horror threaded through Fanny and Alexander that only its ten-year-old protagonist has the open-minded curiosity to confront. He gazes in wonder at his toy paper theatre illuminated by nine flickering candles, before wandering around an exquisitely cluttered apartment draped in red, green, and gold fabrics, like a lonely child lost in a world of endless possibilities. He calls out to his family’s maids, but no one replies. The clock chimes three, a set of cherubs rotate on a music box, and a half-nude marble statue in the corner slowly begins to dance. Suddenly, a soft scraping noise emerges beneath the eerie melody, and we catch a glimpse of a scythe being dragged across the carpet. The grim reaper has arrived, but not for young Alexander. Though this magical realist prologue might be the most undiluted manifestation of his vivid imagination, the heavy presence of death underlies all five hours of this Gothic family drama set in 1900s Sweden, marking his childhood with both merciless damnation and divine salvation.

A fantastical prologue setting up Alexander, his imagination, and the huge, magnificent apartment of his grandmother, Helena. Drapes of green and gold hang over cased openings and windows, creating immaculate frames all through the interior space.

In the haunted Christmastime setting of Fanny and Alexander’s opening, an air of Dickensian fantasy settles over the extended Ekdahl family, revelling in the warm festivities of their annual traditions. Religious celebrations and commemorations form the basis of these gatherings, rotating through the generational cycles of life in funerals, weddings, and christenings. Accompanying these occasions are large meals spread across expansive dining tables, though none are so magnificent as the spread on Christmas Eve night which dominates the first act of the film.

Here, Ingmar Bergman delights in splendidly designed sets of vivid crimson hues, weaved all through the patterned wallpaper, velvet curtains, and holiday decorations illuminated by the golden light of chandeliers and oil lamps. With such profuse warmth commanding the mise-en-scène, there are abundant opportunities to embellish it with small flourishes of emerald-green, popping out in festive wreaths, holly, and indoor plants that snugly crowd out the foreground of his shots.

One of Bergman’s finest achievements in production design, dotting his rooms with candles and festive decor, and filling them out with red, green, and gold hues in stunning arrangements. These shots are cluttered but cosy, immersing us into 1900s Sweden.

Matching Bergman’s rich use of colour is his impeccable blocking of a large ensemble, defining the status and identity of each character by their position within immaculately staged shots of family unity around overflowing dining tables and across plush lounges. For all the misgivings and arguments that arise within the theatre-loving Ekdahl family, there is no doubting the intimacy between them as they gather in the vast, splendid apartment of their widowed matriarch, Helena.

*Warmth and unity in Bergman’s blocking during the first act over Christmas Eve, bringing the entire extended Ekdahl family together within gorgeously composed frames.*

*A noticeable shift in the staging following the death of Oskar – reserved distance between each family member, each relegated to their own position and pose.*

It is a lengthy setup which Bergman conducts here, insulating us in these family celebrations like a warm, protective barrier from the freezing snow that blankets the village outside. Within its open living areas, we witness their artistic passion emerge in scenes of poetry recitations and musical performances late into the night, each becoming extensions of the plays they perform for the local community. Between the elegantly draped frames connecting each room as well, Bergman stages them like actors within proscenium arches, turning the apartment into its own theatre brimming with enormous personalities. Even greater depths are revealed behind closed doors, bringing a delicate texture to the family’s joys and troubles – Alexander’s uncle, Adolf Gustav, is a cheerful womaniser with a fragile ego, and Carl Ekdahl possesses significant contempt towards his German wife.

Bergman transforms the Ekdahl family home into a theatre of sorts, with the drapes framing its key players in a proscenium arch – remarkable formal mirroring between these scenes and those sets in actual theatres.

It isn’t hard to see where Alexander fits in here with his elaborate tall tales and instinct to escape into fiction when reality grows too harsh. Right from the film’s first frame of the young child peering into his toy paper theatre, there is a robust formal mirroring between the Ekdahls and their art, manifesting with levity in their lively Christmas festivities, and tragedy in the Hamlet-adjacent death of Alexander’s father, Oskar. It is fitting too that he first collapses during a rehearsal of the play, while he is performing the part of Hamlet’s deceased father. “I could play the ghost now really well,” he jokes on his deathbed, leaving his wife to remarry the cruel Bishop Edvard who presides over his funeral – a truly compelling stand-in for Hamlet’s treacherous uncle Claudius if there ever was one.

*Even outside the scope of family homes, Bergman finds a bright but chilly beauty in the frozen streets of Sweden, even while he lights up his interiors with a blazing warmth.*

The narrative that follows is heavily Shakespearean in both structure and characterisation, though there is also a touch of dreamy self-awareness as Bergman considers the multitude of stories woven into the fabric of his art. “We are surrounded by many realities, one on top of the other,” Alexander learns as he takes refuge within a curiosity shop of puppets, and indeed he seems to possess an imagination that can penetrate each of its metaphysical layers. When the voice of God speaks to him from a dark cabinet, he is filled with a great existential terror and total belief in its veracity, right up until he sees its true form – just another puppet, propping up the artifice of Christian piety.

In this consideration of organised religion as a hollow construct, Fanny and Alexander becomes an act of catharsis for Bergman who, in playing to these archetypes of corruption and innocence, reflects large portions of his own childhood. The fond memories of a flawed but welcoming family exist in stark contrast to the oppressive dynamic that pervades the bishop’s bare, colourless home, and caught between the two is the overly active imagination of a boy who struggles to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

*The curiosity shop of puppets once again turns theatre and art into a sanctuary for Alexander, and doubles as a metaphor for the many stories that make up the lives and worlds beyond our own.*

As such, there is also a distinct fairy tale quality that takes hold of Fanny and Alexander, accompanying the introduction of the wicked stepfather with ghosts and demons directly inspired by those religious tales which the children are raised on. Being deprived of a supportive father figure himself, Bergman carries great empathy for Alexander, understanding his immaturity and naivety as a natural stage in his own creative development.

Perhaps it is this lack of emotional inhibition which grants the young boy the means to deal with his grief, letting him lash out in ways which, while not entirely polite, are honest to his thoughts and feelings. In one evocative scene after he hears his mother’s guttural cry erupt from somewhere in their grandmother’s apartment, he creeps out of bed with his sister Fanny to peer through the crack of a door, where they see her wailing in private over her husband’s cold body. Unlike Alexander’s coping mechanisms that are freely expressed out into the world, the overwhelming feelings of adults must be repressed to those small, remote corners where no one else can see. This is a lesson that the bishop beats into him even harder with a “strong and harsh love,” reframing Alexander’s innocent efforts to understand the world as sinister transgressions that will damn him to hell.

*A thin frame caught in the crack of a door, as the children get out of bed to see their deceased father and their wailing mother pacing back and forth.*

With a shift in location to the bishop’s house, the splendid drapes and decor of the Ekdahl home is replaced with austere, colourless walls and quiet, unwelcoming dinners. Not a trace of eye contact to be found in these family gatherings.

The move from Helena’s vibrant, festive home of expressionistic décor to the stark white halls of the bishop’s Spartan house lands with a quiet dread, and with it comes a shift in Bergman’s blocking. Gone are the large family gathering of characters arranged in relaxed formations across plush couches and dining halls. These rooms are made of stone and wood, unembellished and projecting the bishop’s cold hostility through every communal space. The housemaid, Justina, effectively becomes a scary old witch in this household as well, using the children’s wild imaginations against them through her unsettling cautionary tales. Harriet Andersson refreshingly proves her range here in playing the total opposite of what she represented in her earliest collaborations with Bergman – tedium and severity, in place of youth and beauty.

Harriet Andersson is superbly cast as Justina the housemaid – she is thin, severe, and unsmiling, representing the inverse of the young, beautiful protagonists she played in Bergman’s earlier films.

The grip that both villains hold over our protagonists is suffocating. The bishop’s demand that Emilie and her children lose all their old possessions as if “newly born” is delivered with a faint chill, forcing them to conform to his pious standard of sparse minimalism, and kicking off a long line of attempts to rewrite their identities. Bergman captures this devastating isolation wreaked upon the young siblings with harsh, angular frames, gazing out the windows of their depressing bedroom, and crumpled on the attic’s grey, dusty floor beneath a fallen crucifix, as if slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.

*Bergman shoots the bishop’s house like a prison with his desolate compositions, trapping Fanny and Alexander in these restrictive frames.*

*A fallen crucifix and the crumpled body of Alexander, banished to the attic for his disobedience, and slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.*

His immaculate staging of his actors goes beyond wide shots too though, as he particularly focuses on the thoughtful arrangements of their faces to understand their joys and frustrations on a psychological, intimate level. As Oskar lays on his deathbed with his face turned to the side, Emilie’s profile leans up against his cheek in pensive mourning, simultaneously revealing both the intimacy of their final days of marriage and the tension that is pulling them apart. In contrast, a later shot at the bishop’s house which frames Fanny, Alexander, and Emilie lying on their sides in bed captures them all looking towards the camera, united in their melancholy. With each face slightly obscuring the one behind it, Emilie is set up at the back as the quiet protector of her children, shielding them from the bishop who stands alone and unfocused in the background.

*Bergman shoots arrangements of faces that uncovers the subtlest emotions, expressing melancholy longing, maternal protectiveness, and a ghostly terror.*

Jan Malmsjö brings a sadistic venom to this role, though he takes care to only reveal his villainy bit by bit. His first handling of Alexander’s lies is stern but relatively fair, keeping us at a distance from the bitter, angry man who lies beneath the cool veneer. It is difficult to get a good reading of him here, but by the time we arrive at his next chastisement of Alexander, his malevolence is exceedingly clear. In response to the bishop’s degradation and punishment, the young boy grows more obstinate in his disobedience, and yet even he can only stand so many beatings before being forced into submission. Watching on, Fanny silently recoils from the bishop’s touch, and Emilie’s contempt for her husband grows. With all paths of escape cut off, they become a broken, trapped family, suffering in an austere hellhole.

*Alexander facing the bishop’s wrath, isolated even from his own sister in this shot while the bishop sits back with his family and house staff.*

Still, visions of Oskar’s ghost continue to haunt Alexander like reminders of a brighter past, bearing witness to the depression left behind in his wake. These transcendent experiences extend to other family members too, as late in the film Oskar also appears to Helena, his bereaved mother. He speaks little, instead simply becoming the audience to her eloquent soliloquy on the process of accepting her grief, as well as the multiple coexistent truths at the core of Bergman’s dramaturgical metaphor.

“Life, it’s all acting anyway. Some roles are nice, other not so nice. I played a mother. I played Juliet and Margareta. Then suddenly I played a widow or a grandmother. One role follows the other. The thing is not to shrink from them.”

*Oskar’s ghost manifesting to both Alexander and Helena, always in his white suit and silently pacing the halls of the family home.*

And yet, even as an actress with a deeper understanding of the human condition than her grandson, the pain is no less present.

“My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them, they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remained broken ever since… and oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So, I don’t bother to mend it.”

Bergman’s screenplay flows like poetry through these thoughtful contemplations of life-changing events, bringing this story full circle with the restoration of the family unit. Just as celebrations of Christ’s birth open the film, so too is new life breathed into the Ekdahl clan with the christening of Alexander’s newborn baby sister, reviving the cycles of tradition which connect one generation to the next. Still, even as the conclusion of this epic drama sees the bishop damned to hell in a house fire, four words punctuate its ending with a lingering thread of trauma, keeping his ghost alive in Alexander’s mind.

“You can’t escape me.”

*Surreal visions emerging at moments when Alexander is overcome with emotion, transporting him to a new location altogether as he is entranced by a story*.

The fantastical imagination of Bergman’s young protagonist is evidently as dangerous as it is enchanting, filtering the world through a lens that distorts every intense emotional experience into a memory that will never fade away. Not only does it manifest as supernatural creatures and visions, but it is also baked right into those dazzling bursts of colour that decorate the fabrics and textures of his family’s home, leaping out like nostalgic recollections of a youth that was only partially lived in the real world. By simply dwelling within this perspective, Fanny and Alexander becomes a deeply sentimental work for Bergman, magnificently distilling his own dreams into expressions of childhood wonder and terror.

A return to family tradition, though with a change in decor – the reds and greens of Christmas Eve are replaced with pastels to represent a christening, signifying a birth and renewal within the Ekdahl clan.

Fanny and Alexander is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 44min

Ingmar Bergman splits Peter Egarmann’s visit to the brothel where prostitute Ka works in two halves, but much like the rest of From the Life of the Marionettes, they do not unfold in the order they occur. His sudden snap, brutal murder of Ka, and necrophilic rape makes for a viscerally disturbing opening, seemingly coming out of nowhere during a gentle embrace between the two. Red lighting drenches the interiors with an air of lust and danger, but Ingmar Bergman also continues to draw that palette through the walls and furniture that Ka hides behind in terror.

When the terrible deed is done, all colour drains from Bergman’s cinematography in a single fade to black-and-white, not to be seen again until the film’s final minutes. When that time comes though, we finally witness Peter’s initial arrival at the brothel, quietly nervous but not hinting yet at a murderous rage. Ka, we find out, is short for Katarina – the same name as his wife, who we know by now has been the subject of his barbaric dreams. This time, Bergman spares us from witnessing his brutal eruption, but afterwards as we hang on a close-up of his eyes, his monochrome perspective slowly fades back into colour.

While everything in between these segments cuts non-linearly across the greyscale months preceding and following what Bergman labels the “disaster,” the implications that Peter only finds colour in his world through this murder are horrifying. His defiling of Ka’s body is an atrocious expression of the psychological torment that has plagued him since childhood, breaking through his pretence of masculinity with a vivid, honest assertion of his repressed anger and desire. Bergman has long considered the fragile minds that lurk beneath mild personas, but From the Life of the Marionettes is easily his most violent rupturing of that veil, seeking whatever logic lies at the source of this random outburst.

Not that the eventual resolution Bergman presents us with is terribly compelling. The psychiatrist’s reasoning that involves latent homosexuality and emotional blackouts is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s similar diagnosis at the end of Psycho, with its heavy-handed superficiality doing little to tie it all together. It is rather by sorting through the build-up and aftermath of the disaster that Peter’s mental unwellness properly comes into view, pieced together by the fragments of second-hand stories.

The structure of From the Life of the Marionettes thus takes the form of a Citizen Kane-inspired narrative, though with clumsy intertitles between scenes unfortunately over-explaining the context of each. Bit by bit, we come to understand Peter’s childhood through his mother, his sexual insecurity through his wife, and his final days before the disaster through her coworker, Tim. It is his spiteful jealousy and sexual feelings for Peter which became the catalyst for the disaster in the first place, seeing him purposefully introduce him to Ka so that a wedge may be driven into his marriage. Peter’s attempted suicide two days before murdering Ka also heavily indicates a man on the verge of doing something drastically destructive, but even this cry for help falls on deaf ears. This is a man who has been isolated by others, and thus further isolates himself.

Perhaps the most revealing sequence of all arrives when From the Life of the Marionettes fully penetrates Peter’s subconscious mind, consuming him in the vast, white void of his dreams. Within this realm, Bergman fully expresses his trademark surrealism in dreamy dissolves, low frame rates, and obscured close-ups as Peter examines the body of his naked wife, trying to make love to her yet failing. In response to her mocking smile, he attacks her in a frenzy, and although his rage quickly dissolves in her warm, maternal embrace, it comes too late. Katarina is dead, and he knows he is responsible.

“Do I live at all? Or was that dream, as it was, my only short moment of life? Of truly experienced and conquered reality?”

More than any psychiatrist’s diagnosis, it is this surreal passage which most profoundly roots Peter’s action in some psychological foundation. To destroy what he deems the source of his masculine insecurity is to finally see his life in vibrant colour, despite there being new emotional prisons confining him inside a physical one. If he considered himself emasculated before, then he is even more sapped of his identity here, spending his days playing chess against computers and neglecting any contact with the outside world. As he lays in bed, he clutches his only shred of self left – a teddy bear kept from his childhood. Perhaps some blame can be pinned on society at large for failing Peter in From the Life of the Marionettes, selfishly manipulating him into emotional isolation, but this murderer’s retaliatory self-degradation is totally of his own tragic making.

From the Life of the Marionettes is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

White Dog (1982)

Samuel Fuller | 1hr 30min

The primal horror at the core of White Dog does not come down to standard psychological questions of whether it is nature or nurture guiding the titular beast towards its most hateful, vicious instincts. There is absolutely no doubt to be had at all that it is a product of the abhorrent environment it was raised in, motivating it to attack Black people on sight. The truly terrifying question that Samuel Fuller poses is whether this conditioning ingrained in the dog’s mind from a young age can ever be overwritten, saving the animal from its own upbringing, and potentially many Black lives from its violent racial prejudice. To achieve such a feat as this would be a professional milestone for African American dog trainer Keys, though on an even broader level he recognises the social significance of the mission too. The exploitation and weaponisation of innocent creatures to do one’s malicious bidding is a perverse act against nature itself, soiling their pure white coats with bloodstains, and so to prove that such virulent racism is fully reversible would mark a victory in Keys’ small crusade for justice.

*Blood tainting the pure white coat of the dog, revealing its monstrous persona.*

That Fuller deftly imbues this allegory for bigotry and indoctrination with all the tension of a pulpy horror film makes for an extraordinarily creative triumph too, framing the dog as a two-sided creature akin to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He draws this comparison directly in the dialogue, but it is also plainly evident in the suspense he builds around the dog’s behaviour, never quite letting us be sure whether we are about to get the loyal friend who lovingly gazes up at the camera with big, brown eyes, or the salivating beast ready to rip someone apart.

In the hands of a lesser director, White Dog could have very easily been a cheap melodrama falling back on stilted dialogue, and Fuller doesn’t entirely smooth over these flaws written into the screenplay either. Instead, he compensates for them by driving the film even deeper into thriller territory with his subjective camerawork, cutting between tight close-ups of Keys and the dog as a tenuous connection is forged between the two, and gradually closing the gap between black skin and white fur.

*Strong iconography in the black skin and white dog, suspensefully closing the distance between both.*

*Fuller has a sharp sense of unconventional camera angles, peering through Keys’ legs as the dog bounds towards him.*

*Fuller drives the film even deeper into thriller territory with his subjective camerawork, cutting between tight close-ups of Keys and the dog as a tenuous connection is forged between the two.*

At the same time, Fuller is also wisely discerning in those moments where he pulls his camera back from the action altogether, sitting in a wide shot as the dog sniffs at a pile of garbage on a streetside, momentarily ignorant to the African American boy we see playing just around the corner. Later when it launches into a bloody attack inside a church, there is a morbid irony in the camera’s calm movement upwards to a stained-glass window where St Francis of Assissi stands in harmony with a canine companion. With camera placement as bitingly precise and anxiety-inducing as this, Alfred Hitchcock’s influence is overtly present in Fuller’s direction, only magnified by Ennio Morricone’s persistent flutes and strings score uneasily haunting the background.

*Hitchcockian suspense in the framing of this wide shot, underscoring the dramatic irony that threatens to erupt into violence.*

*During one bloody attack, Fuller’s camera pans over to the stained glass window of St Francis of Assissi – with a dog by his side, no less.*

At the same time though, Fuller’s style is far from plain imitation. Perhaps White Dog’s most compelling visual choice is also its most distinguished, forcing us to helplessly watch in slow-motion terror as the German Shepherd bounds towards its victims, teeth bared and face pulled into a tight snarl. In each instance, time reaches an agonising crawl, finally building to a nail-biting climax within Keys’ giant cage that harshly wraps around them in the dog’s final test.

*Fuller’s slow-motion is a brilliant stylistic choice that lifts the quality of the entire film, forcing us to helplessly watch the dog’s attacks in visceral terror.*

If the culmination of this scene doesn’t leave us defeated by the animal’s seemingly untreatable conditioning, then we are at least totally disturbed by the sudden appearance of Wilbur, the man who raised it and who now intends to take it back home. His warm, genial demeanour is at complete odds with our knowledge of his hidden cruelty, which sees him manipulate the course of nature to create killers in his own image. With two granddaughters by his side as well, Fuller hints very strongly at the chilling indoctrination likely going on behind closed doors, only with children in place of animals.

If we are to hold onto any hope and make a judgement based off the dog’s very last actions, then we might have reason to believe that one can indeed be cured of bigotry, paving the way for a far more compassionate and open-minded society. The deeply ingrained hatred which fuelled that prejudice, however, is a different beast altogether. In White Dog’s closing minutes, Fuller finally delivers one last twist of the knife, revealing the ugliness that lies at the sensitive root of the matter. This resentment bred by old prejudices does not necessarily seek racial violence to quench its bloodlust – it just seeks violence.

*A melancholy crane shot pulling back in the final seconds, letting the tragedy sink in.*

White Dog is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Reds (1981)

Warren Beatty | 3hr 20min

History buffs will recognise the name John Reed as that of the American journalist who travelled to Russia in 1917, wrote the most vivid firsthand account of its revolution, and published his observations in the book ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’, drawing acclaim and criticism from across the political aisle. If his Communist leanings manifested with full-throttled admiration in his descriptions of the new society as “a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer,” then Warren Beatty symbolically ties him even closer to the movement in Reds. It is an archetypal rise and fall narrative he follows, but one which is romantically mirrored across three separate layers in the evolution of early twentieth century socialism, Reed’s own political activism, and his love for fellow writer Louise Bryant. In this bright-eyed, intellectual man we find the living embodiment of a 1910s American counterculture, confidently promising a hopeful future of equality doomed to fall to bureaucracy.

Besides the epic storytelling structure, the other key to unlocking the brilliant form of Reds is in the interviews Beatty conducts with ‘witnesses’ who knew Reed personally, tempering his subject’s impassioned fervour with nostalgic reflections. With their faces framed off to the right against black backgrounds, these men and women offer an authenticity which distinguishes Beatty’s film from so many other historical epics.

As such, Reds practically verges on docudrama territory, bridging the gap between fiction and reality through formal rhythms that pulse with humour and sensitivity. Right after one woman fondly recalls the days when homosexuality and abortion were taboo, Beatty irreverently cuts straight to a man testifying that there was just as much sex going on then as there is now, playing to the amusing incongruency between personal accounts that keep us from forming an objective picture of the past. With such faultless historicity rendered impossible though, these different perspectives also make up a more complex view of our primary subject, Reed. As one witness states, “A guy who’s interested in changing the world either has no problems of his own, or refuses to face them.”

Beatty’s interviews with witnesses are seamlessly interwoven with great formal purpose throughout his narrative, edging Reds towards docudrama territory and keeping us conscious of its historical standing.

Beatty’s Greek chorus-style interludes are seamless, at times simply manifesting as voiceovers commenting on events while we are whisked from New York City’s bohemian Greenwich Village to the stunning white beaches of Provincetown, and further onto the frontlines of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd. The narrative scope is sprawling, and both he and his co-star Diane Keaton wear every bit of it in their performances, ageing Reed and Bryant from hopeful young radicals into disenchanted cynics.

For Keaton especially, this is an acting achievement that sits among her best, setting the screen on fire with feminist monologues lamenting how much society ties her success to her husband, and later proving her tenacious, unconditional love as she hikes through Northern Europe’s frozen wilderness to rescue him from prison. With Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, and Paul Sorvino confidently filling in supporting roles too, Reds stands as a testament to the power of excellent casting, representing significant historical figures with big names of 80s cinema.

*It may be the epic scope of Reds which Beatty’s film is most remembered for, but there is a sweetness to its intimacy as well in the romance between Reed and Bryant.*

Beatty does not stop there in his collaborative ambition either, pulling Vittorio Storaro onboard as cinematographer to instil his grand biopic with an antiquated, painterly quality. The period detail in his establishing shots of New York’s streets and the sweeping crane shots over Bolshevik crowds effectively establish the grand spectacle of Reds, but even more substantial is Reed’s association with them, manifesting the full scale of his political aspirations spanning entire nations. When the Czarist White Army attacks his train, he boldly runs right into the clouds of dust and smoke, while at a large Communist rally he steps up onstage to assure them of America’s favourable support. It could be the fact that he is once again working closely with Bryant, or perhaps it is the exhilaration of seeing history unfold around them, but the romance between both is also rekindled during their time in Petrograd, holistically revitalising his spirit with the fiery zeal of the Russian Revolution.

*Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography is reliably magnificent in its staging, lighting, and framing of epic scenes, embodying a socialist solidarity in its rigour.*

The novelty of such grand passion can only last so long though before its shine begins to dull and complications surface. The irony of Reed’s frustration with Russia’s new, inflexible governance isn’t lost on Beatty who correspondingly explores the journalist’s own fracturing socialist regime back in the United States, as his Communist Labor Party of America splinters off from the more centre-left Social Party of America. Reed’s efforts to have his new party officially recognised by Russian authorities are in vain – not only does Bryant threaten to end their relationship should he venture across the world for a second time in stubborn pursuit of validation, but the Bolsheviks reject his proposal anyway, and bluntly refuse to assist his illegal crossing of borders to return home. To Reed, Russia’s militaristic police state that spawned from a freedom-seeking movement has destroyed any hope of real communism, and in a single foolish decision, he effectively severs his ties to his homeland, his party, and his wife.

*Beatty and Keaton wear years of disillusionment on their faces in this poignant reunion at the train station, finding each other in the crowd.*

If there is any solace to be found at the end of Reds, then it is in that tenacious love he shares with the latter, sending Bryant across frozen wastelands and Reed through hostile territory to finally end up in each other’s arms. They look rough around the edges, but their eyes are also softer than ever, for the first time recognising the inimitable bond they share beyond the intellectual joys and constraints of their political interests. It is a reunion that comes far too late for their romance though. With Reed’s passing from typhus less than a month later, Beatty virtually canonises him as a saint of lost causes, illuminating his body in a white light through a narrow hospital doorway as Bryant’s silhouette kneels in grief by his bed. In this final shot, the death knell of American socialism is finally tolled, and Beatty signals the end of an era destined to live on in the wistful memories of Reds’ venerable witnesses.

*A shattering final frame shot through the hospital doorway – Keaton silhouetted in darkness, and Beatty lit up like a saint.*

Reds is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

The Elephant Man (1980)

David Lynch | 2hr 4min

At first glance, The Elephant Man does not hold to the definition of Lynchian which the surrealist director set for himself in his debut Eraserhead and would further refine in Blue Velvet. Its biographical narrative follows traditional Hollywood convention far more closely than those obscure, psychological dreams he is famous for, each of which strip back the illusions of modernism to expose uglier truths about humanity’s corruption. When interpreted through that sociological lens though, perhaps The Elephant Man doesn’t fall so far outside David Lynch’s realm of interest after all, as the severely deformed John Merrick simply becomes another device in his arsenal to expose the true essence of our moral being.

Tying this film even closer to his usual dreamlike style is the dark thread of surrealism emerging in a series of nightmarish interludes. Slow-motion close-ups of a rearing elephant and Merrick’s terrified mother are set against dark, smoky backdrops, playing out like a childhood memory distorted by years of shame and terror. John Morris’ tinkling circus score eventually gives way to the creature’s distressed trumpeting, though with the sound design’s constant clanging it could just as well be the whine of an old factory machine. Merrick is dehumanised by many people throughout The Elephant Man, and especially from those who liken him to that enormous, lumbering animal, but the harshest judgement of all comes from his own debased self-image.

*Lynch runs this thread of surrealism through The Elephant Man, like a memory of Merrick’s childhood that has warped into a nightmare over time.*

Aside from its relatively conventional narrative, the other aspect of this biopic that differs from Lynch’s usual standard is the hope it pulls from such melancholic tragedy. This is not sentimental in the way a 1950s Hollywood treatise on human kindness might be, but it rather walks a finer tonal line through the stagnant gloom of 19^th century London, positioning John right at the bottom of a social ladder defined by the era’s dog-eat-dog industrialism. When surgeon Frederick Treves first meets him, Merrick’s only purpose is to serve the cruel ringmaster of a freak show, entertaining and horrifying audiences like the tortured somnambulist of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Lynch continues to evoke Robert Wiene’s expressionistic aesthetic in his design of the carnival as well, matching it to Morris’ deranged circus waltz and continuing to escalate his morbid aesthetic from there.

*Excellent production design and lighting to recreate Victorian London in black-and-white, often suffusing exteriors with a thick haze of smoke.*

This is a prime visual achievement for both cinematographer Freddie Francis and production designer Stuart Craig, who under Lynch’s direction craft a monochrome Victorian dystopia with incredible period detail and a rich depth of field. The lighting especially casts its streets in a smothering, smoky haze, and conceals Merrick in shadows up until his uneasy reveal. Lynch’s camera traverses this urban Gothic scenery with an eerie elegance mirrored in Anne V. Coates’ fluid editing, as her dissolves, match cuts, and elliptical fades to black generate a dreaminess seeking to penetrate Merrick’s emotional defences.

*Merrick is concealed in shadows for a long time before his proper reveal, teasing our imagination of his true appearance.*

*18 years on from Lawrence of Arabia, editor Anne V. Coates hits gold again with her dreamy dissolves in The Elephant Man – trademark of Lynch’s that begins here.*

This is no simple task either given how far he has withdrawn into his own mind when Treves rescues him, unable to communicate even the most basic ideas. The white hood he wears in public also makes it difficult to read his face, and only allows him the vaguest connection to the outside world through a single, rectangular eyehole. In one scene however it becomes a portal which Lynch’s camera travels through into one of Merrick’s dreams, paralleling the blue box of Mulholland Drive a couple of decades later, and formally running The Elephant Man’s idiosyncratic surrealism up against Victorian London’s rigid cultural structures.

*The camera moves through the mask’s eyehole and into Merrick’s mind – this is the shot entering the blue box in Mulholland Drive 21 years in advance.*

The Elephant Man is the whole reason the ‘Best Makeup & Hairstyling’ Oscar exists now. It wasn’t until the year after that the Academy introduced the category just so this kind of work would be rightfully recognised.

When Merrick’s mask comes off, it can often be just as hard to read his emotions given the outgrowths that impede his expression, though even beneath these layers of prosthetics John Hurt pours a great deal of sensitivity into his stammering speech. The arc that sees him transform from a carnival attraction rendered mute by his deathly fear of the world into a man who can dress in final formalwear and sit among theatre audiences is marvellously executed, centring his own self-perception as the key factor. As heart-wrenching as it is to watch him cornered by a clamouring crowd in one scene, his ability to cut their cruel shouts short with a guttural proclamation of his humanity marks a milestone in his self-acceptance.

“I am not an animal! I am a human being! A man!”

*The most iconic scene of the film packs an even greater punch when viewed in context – this is Merrick’s first major assertion of his own self-value.*

Not only is he a man, but he is wholly Christlike within the symbolic framework of Lynch’s narrative, taking on a spiritual significance in this world of corruption and exploitation. Despite his suffering, the widespread kindness he inspires is profound, breaking through the cruel pragmatism of 19^th century London with a plea for compassion. There is a beautiful biblical bookend in his dialogue that reflects this too, with some of the first lines drawing from the Book of Psalms, and his last echoing Christ’s words as he hung on the cross, peacefully accepting death.

“It is finished.”

No longer is he haunted by nightmares of elephants. Now his mother speaks to him directly in his dreams, asserting that “nothing will die.” Horrifying surrealism has effectively transformed into magical whimsy, with even the play he is watching in a theatre mutates into a fantastical counterpoint, flying fairies across the stage in slow-motion and seeing his innocent imagination spring to life. Merrick’s physical limitations only hold him back so much in The Elephant Man. It is rather in the hypnotically idiosyncratic landscape of his own mind that Lynch locates the true key to an abiding, dignified happiness.

*Lynch’s dark surrealism lightens at the theatre, turning away from nightmares of elephants and screaming women, and now becoming entirely fantastical with fairies and gardens.*

The Elephant Man is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

Ran (1985)

Akira Kurosawa | 2hr 42min

Akira Kurosawa is no stranger to adapting Shakespeare, but the connection between King Lear and Ran was not always intentional. In its early pre-production stages, the inspiration was a parable regarding Japanese warlord Mōri Motonari, who is said to have taught his sons the value of family through demonstrating the unbreakable strength of three bundled arrows. It was only when the Shakespearean parallels started to organically emerge that Kurosawa began playing into its resonant character drama. Such rich source material is not enough on its own to ensure a successful final product though. It takes a director like Kurosawa to fully understand the full cinematic potential of a text like King Lear, balance that with dramatic power struggles between its key players, and transpose it onto a setting as alive with historical beauty as feudal Japan to create something this immense in scope and emotion.

Sweeping battles are pitched against giant grey castles and rolling green hills, but it is in the thousands of costumed extras where Kurosawa lets loose with some of his most gorgeous colour compositions. The three main armies in question carry flags bearing the signature primary palettes of their leaders, charging in formations that demonstrate Kurosawa’s well-established flair for blocking and choreography on a colossal scale.

*Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of the long shot is on full display in Ran, filling landscapes of large, grey fortresses and rolling green hills with masses of soldiers.*

In one of the film’s most spectacular sequences, we watch in a long shot as red and yellow factions face off on either side of a burning fortress, its glowing flames complementing the heated colours below. In another, Kurosawa keeps his camera behind the galloping legs of a cavalry regiment to peer at the opposing military force firing their muskets from the remote safety of the woods, their targets falling into view right before our eyes. Few action films pay such attention to tactical warfare, but the conflicts of Ran are consistently authentic in how they are shaped by the intelligent strategising of leaders, rather than the basic, heroic actions of individuals.

*One of the finest shots of Kurosawa’s esteemed career, demonstrating an incredible composition of colour with the warm tones breaking through the darkness.*

*Also some of Kurosawa’s best displays of pure action on an incredibly large scale, with visual detail even in his blocking of dead soldiers and arrows.*

It is only natural for Kurosawa to keep a distant perspective in epic battle scenes such as these, but even when he turns his camera to the unravelling family relations which have fuelled these conflicts, he still keeps his camera fairly remote in wide shots. After all, even on its most personal level Ran is still a family saga stretching over decades, and so capturing an ensemble of well-defined characters allows Kurosawa to paint out their relationships and statuses in immaculately blocked compositions.

Take two of the most fascinating players in this struggle – Hidetora Ichimonji, the elderly warlord, and Lady Kaede, his scheming daughter-in-law whose family he destroyed in his conquest for power. Though we witness few face-to-face encounters between the two, their relationship is as vividly illustrated as any of the others. Together, Tatsuya Nakadai and Mieko Harada deliver the two most outstanding performances of the film in these roles, patiently developing their characters across years of trauma and rage.

*Lady Kaede is one of the most fascinating characters of this Shakespeare adaptation, as Mieko Harada brings to it a scheming, vengeful rage.*

When we first meet Kaede, she has been married to Taro, Hidetoro’s eldest son, for many years. Perhaps for all this time she has been helplessly resigned to her station in life, grateful that she at least survived the massacre of her family. Perhaps she has been waiting for the day her husband will inherit the land that was stolen off her parents, so she can eventually claim it for herself. Either way, she is incredibly resourceful in her manipulations, quickly adapting to new developments by slyly attaching herself to whoever holds the most power at any given time. In the space of a single scene, we watch her threaten to kill, seduce, and then draw sympathy from Jiro, Hidetoro’s second eldest son. She has no other long-term objective than to see the downfall of the family which took everything from her, even at the expense of her own life, and this hardened sense of nihilism sticks with her right to the end.

*Tremendous staging of actors against vast, mountainous backdrops – this adaptation of King Lear carries the epic weight of its historical context.*

Though Hidetora is our protagonist, he may also be considered the villain of the piece, having foolishly set in motion the sequence of events which lead to the conflict between his three sons. He is a man who built a life off of slaughtering thousands of innocents, and now in his old age he is left to powerlessly watch that empire crumble, ashamedly recognising that his own children may possess the same evil that resides within him. He is not granted a quick, easy death that might spare him the pain of life’s consequences, but instead he lives long enough for the anguish to wear away at his soul. His skin turns grey, his white hair grows long and wispy, and he mentally retreats into his past where he is haunted by the spirits of those he killed.

Within Hidetora’s perspective, Kurosawa frequently inserts formal cutaways looking up at clouds, as if searching for a sign of some divine power. When all is well in his domain, the sky is notably much lighter than when there is conflict, but with no other reassurance, Hidetora is left a lonely, raving madman, cut off from both the heavens and the earth.

*Formal cutaways to clouds in the sky, not unlike a very similar device used in Rashomon.*

Tatsuya Nakadai might be one of Japan’s most underrated actors – his work with Kurosawa stretches all the way back to an uncredited cameo in Seven Samurai, and this is a fine capper to their decades of collaborations.

The long shot that Kurosawa leaves us with ties this idea off on a particularly nihilistic note, lingering on Tsurumaru, a blind man who has only played a minor role in this narrative, but whose symbolic presence has been incredibly potent. Tapping his way across the edge of castle ruins, he stumbles and drops his precious image of Buddha to the bottom of a gorge. Viewed from a distance, Tsurumaru is but a tiny silhouette, and now without even the icon of his faith to protect him he is left with nothing. To Kurosawa, this is the entire world – ignorant to the danger which lies ahead of us, and abandoned by our gods. For all the epic battles and characters that fill out Ran’s immense, complex narrative, every single development is at its core motivated by a simple, seething bitterness towards humanity’s existential isolation.

*Another excellent long shot to close this epic film, stark and minimalist in its composition.*

Ran is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and YouTube.

Videodrome (1983)

David Cronenberg | 1hr 29min

Once the factions of warring conspirators vying for control of a single television station CEO’s mind come to light in Videodrome, the question of how real his hallucinatory visions are becomes entirely irrelevant. On one side, the producers of the titular snuff program rail against the gratuitous, sensationalist media deemed poisonous to North American culture, and thus plan to broadcast their show through deadly radio waves that cause brain tumours in their degenerate audiences. On the other side, media scholar Brian O’Blivion firmly believes the transmutation of life into moving images is the future of humanity, making depraved programs such as Videodrome little more than an extension of our reality.

It is an inspired touch too that in death he has essentially transcended to this immortal state of being, keeping up public appearances through self-recorded VHS tapes. He may speak in long-winded passages and metaphors, but his philosophy is deceptively simple.

“The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena – the videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

*An incredibly creative character in Professor Brian O’Blivion, whose immortal existence has become purely digital.*

*Cronenberg’s camera floats with anxious anticipation through the base for O’Blivion’s bizarre operations – a mess of office cubicles where the homeless watch television marathons.*

When it comes to those aforementioned hallucinations then, does the distinction between Max Renn’s reality and perception really matter? O’Blivion might assert that when a brainwashed Max commits multiple murders at Videodrome’s climax, blows a hole in the side of the building, and walks out onto a calm street of passers-by who don’t throw so much as a second glance, we must accept the validity of what we just witnessed. After all, “there is nothing real outside our perception of reality” the scholar claims, encouraging Max to accept his distorted, subjective experiences as absolute truth. This frivolous ideology may be dangerous in its flattening of a complex world into two dimensions, and yet as a prediction of our culture’s direction, it is also remarkably prescient.

David Cronenberg’s blending of such intellectual musings on modern mass media with imagery as bizarrely grotesque as that which defines Videodrome’s visual aesthetic makes its dire warnings all the more visceral, and marks a triumphant success of filmmaking for the young auteur. He had certainly made a name for himself previously as a dabbler in high-concept body horror, but his reign over the subgenre was properly solidified here, uncovering its potential to not just represent, but to analytically examine the terrifying fragility of the human body.

*Technology fuses with humanity in Cronenberg’s landmark body horror, turning Max Renn into a weapon of mass murder.*

*The red light of Videodrome pierces the darkness of Max’s home, violently intruding his personal life.*

As it manifests in Videodrome, the illegal program’s depiction of real torture and murder is only the beginning. The content of its episodes always unfolds in the same red room against a clay wall, promising lust and danger in its very design. Max, who is thoroughly desensitised to the debauched schlock his television station has been broadcasting, initially refuses to believe that its violence is authentic – yet he is intrigued. These awakened desires manifest in his new relationship with radio host Nicki as sadomasochistic foreplay, erotically cutting and piercing her skin, and soon enough his psychosexual inhibitions come crumbling down as he deliriously imagines them making love in the Videodrome room.

*Techno-surrealism as this sex scene transfers to the red Videodrome room, breaking down boundaries of reality and fantasy.*

*This conspiracy runs deep in a distinctly noir-adjacent manner, even referencing the genre with the shadows of these Venetian blinds.*

Beyond the raw impact of Cronenberg’s body horror, his navigation of Videodrome’s noir-adjacent narrative of femme fatales and lethal conspiracies also takes on subtler, more foreboding undertones. His camera carefully creeps through sets, anxiously dreading whatever it might discover, and is often accompanied by Howard Shore’s eerie orchestral score gradually incorporating synthesisers into the mix, mirroring the hybridity of Cronenberg’s techno-surrealist imagery. There, we witness televisions become living organisms, breathing in slow, raspy rhythms as their screens bulge outwards and reach for Max. In one of his dreams, he finds himself back in the Videodrome room with Nicki, though this time she is only present as an image on one of these fleshy television sets. She gasps in pleasure as he whips her, before transforming into Masha, one of Max’s senior acquaintances in the porn industry. Later, he discovers that a fleshy cavity has opened in his torso, turning him into the perfect subject for brainwashing as he is now able to absorb whatever political programming is fed to him through VHS tapes.

*The television set becomes a living organism, breathing, pulsating, and stretching out towards Max.*

*Bloody VHS tapes penetrate Max’s body and program his brain – Cronenberg manifests cerebral contemplations with visceral horror.*

Just as O’Blivion predicted, that which is artificial has come alive, and life has in turn become artificial. In representing this, Cronenberg’s biotic practical effects are deeply unsettling, robbing characters of their humanity by fusing them with the technology they have become so reliant on, and urging them onto the next step in their synthetic evolution. O’Blivion has already reached that stage by escaping his physical body and becoming one with physical media, and soon enough it is Max’s turn as well to become what the anti-Videodrome faction enigmatically call “the new flesh.”

To Barry Convex, producer of the Videodrome program and staunch moral puritan, television has proven to be little more than a “giant hallucination machine” that will bring the downfall of modern North America, though given his murderous solution he is clearly no less corrupt than his rivals. The eyeglasses company he runs makes for a brilliant formal contrast against O’Blivions worship of screens, as while it seems to offer a clearer, more traditional view of reality, it is little more than a front for much shadier dealings.

*Moral puritan Barry Convex meets an ugly, bloody end, as Cronenberg basks in the pulpy spectacle.*

Max is just as objectified while under his control as he when is under O’Blivion’s, but such is the nature of this cruel political warfare that aims to wipe humanity clean of its very essence, whether that be in our free will, our imperfections, or our ability to distinguish fact from fantasy. Regardless of who wins, the rest of the world loses, and by the end of Videodrome there is little doubt to be had as to which dystopia will come out on top. Mass media is the weapon in these culture wars, Cronenberg posits, and our minds are the stakes, as disconcertingly frail as our own ailing bodies.

*A haunting, hallucinatory ending – “Death to Videodrome, long live the new flesh.”*

Videodrome is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

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

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

[…] 13. Bringing Up Baby […]

Where would you place it on the list?

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