Category: 1996

The Dardenne Brothers | 1hr 34min

The story of Igor’s relationship with his father, Roger, in La Promesse can be understood through the three-act journey of his signet ring. He first receives it as a stolen gift, and proudly compares it to the matching one Roger wears on his own hand. When he is forced to do his father’s dirty work, it gets grimy. Afterwards, Roger is right there to polish its surface, erasing all traces of what went down. In this unjust world it is his most treasured possession, both for its sentimental and monetary value, so his final, selfless decision to pawn it off for the benefit of someone else in need marks a major shift in his loyalty. The Dardenne Brothers are dedicated realists on every level of their filmmaking, tying their narratives up into knotty moral predicaments, and yet it is through these tinier symbolic developments that La Promesse progresses with archetypal formality, leading Igor down the path to maturity and the responsibilities that come with it.

In 1996, this film marked a cinematic breakthrough for the Dardennes, who carry the neorealist traditions of 1940s Italy into contemporary Belgium and its own unique set of social issues. Exploitation of undocumented immigrants, trafficking, gambling, and petty theft thrive in this small industrial town, swaying the prospects of its local youth away from respectable occupations and towards the corruption of their elders. Right in the opening minutes, Igor steals a purse from a woman without a whole lot of guilt, clearly following in his father’s steps as an amoral, opportunistic criminal looking to take advantage of the system. Being a teenager though, his childhood innocence has not yet entirely faded. He would much rather ride bikes and go-karts than pursue his dead-end future, and in the formal repetition of these shots hanging in close-up on his untroubled face flying through town, the Dardennes uncover a youthful desire for freedom which no adult can harness.

That goes for his father too, who squanders every opportunity to model upstanding behaviour. Roger will easily transition from beating up his son and then continue working on his tattoo in an instant, and in tying these two acts together we find a powerful representation of his desire to make another man in his own image. Igor searches for guidance, but all he finds is his father’s warped direction, obliterating the intimacy of family by asking to be called Roger rather than Dad, thereby making his denial of responsibility just a little easier. This means that when Hamidou, an undocumented immigrant they have been exploiting at work, falls from scaffolding in a panicked attempt to hide from inspectors, Roger has no issue getting Igor to help cover it up. In this instance they are not a father and son, but merely just work buddies, equally culpable for the ‘accident’ that has occurred.

The bonds we hold to others can be tricky though, and Igor quickly discovers this when a dying Hamidou makes him promise to look after his family, directly conflicting with the loyalty he has to his father. This is the dilemma upon which La Promesse pivots its entire drama, holding us in the grip of Igor’s torn mind as he tries to figure out compromises between the two.

Back home, Hamidou’s wife, Assita, speculates that he has run away due to gambling debts, and for a while Igor can entertain this theory, even setting up a co-worker to drop off 1000 francs under the guise of repayment. Really though, measures like these to soothe her worries are only temporary. Doubts keep creeping back into her mind, seeing her resort to traditional African divination readings from chicken entrails and a local seer to provide the truth of the matter. It is a strange dose of mysticism the Dardennes inject here, obscuring our view of the whole situation with the consideration that there may be some grander, divine force at work. These readings are never precise enough to convince us of their truth, but neither are they entirely inaccurate, with the seer sensing the rage of justice-seeking ancestors in Assita’s sick baby. Whether this is real or not may not even matter – the diagnosis haunts Igor all the same, pinning the baby’s fever on him and driving him deeper into his own guilt.

It is a bitter, unjust society which these characters persevere through, persecuting them systematically, as we see in Roger’s attempt to sell Assita off as a prostitute, as well as in bouts of random cruelty, typified by the two strangers urinating on her for their own entertainment. The Dardennes are no great cinematic stylists, but their grainy 16mm film stock, handheld camera, and long takes do serve to underscore the pure joylessness of this setting, sitting in the back of cars and holding tightly on Igor’s face as he crumbles under pressure. Any actor would be envious of a debut performance as vividly pained as this, as Jérémie Renier bears the gradually increasing strain of Igor’s predicament with discomposed weariness.

His final, decisive action does not come as a shock, but the timing is certainly unexpected. There are no didactic monologues or urgent stakes pushing Igor to come clean – just the slow, mounting shame weighing on his conscience, spilling the truth out in a train station after a long, burdensome silence. The Dardennes land this ending with precision, resisting the urge to have Assita respond with anything other than a resolute turn around and walk back into town, now reinforced in her mission by the answers she has so desperately sought.

Lesser filmmakers might have hinted a little at the aftermath, though it is insignificant here for two reasons – this is the point where the story is is no longer purely in Igor’s hands, and it is also where he decisively puts his stake in the ground, resolving to be a man with integrity rather than a passive bystander. La Promesse is not about a death, a lie, or a fight for justice, though the messiness of each are unavoidable. It is about the promise a boy makes to be better than the world around him, starting with the sworn oath itself, and ending with his first step towards fulfilling it.

La Promesse is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Anthony Minghella | 2hr 42min

A Hungarian, an Indian, and a couple of Canadians seek refuge in a bombed-out Italian monastery, each complete strangers, yet bound together by the trauma of war. The Hungarian, a badly-burned amnesiac who eventually recalls his name as László Almásy, is under the care of French-Canadian nurse Hana, while being sought out by the mysterious Canadian spy, Caravaggio. Meanwhile Kip, the Indian bomb disposal expert, has been tasked with clearing out mines from the surrounding villa, facing the possibility of death every single day while taking a romantic liking to Hana.

Both here and in the desert where Almásy spent many years exploring with a British expedition crew, national identities are broken down into meaningless constructs that are only ever secondary to individual character, though such a liberal ideology cannot thrive in wartime where divisions and allegiances are inescapable. Wistful memories and melancholy regrets swirl all through The English Patient’s vast, time-leaping narrative, developing its gentle ruminations into a dramatic epic of extraordinary beauty, compassion, and patience.

Anthony Minghella takes confident charge of this bold literary adaptation in the director’s chair, imbuing it with all the historical weight of a legend set in the not-too-distant past. His cinematic inspirations are plain to see in the largescale cinematography, implementing lessons learnt from David Lean by using the sprawling emptiness of the desert to underscore the majesty of the larger-than-life characters traversing it, only for it to inevitably trap them in its dry, arid expanse.

The aerial photography of sandy dunes shot from atop biplanes distinctly evokes the sweep and grandeur of Lawrence of Arabia, and when the Hungarian adventurer finally arrives in Cairo with his crew, the urban Egyptian sandstone interiors bring a warm, intimate touch to the romantic drama. Inside Almásy’s hotel bedroom especially, its delicate latticework opens onto the hazy cityscape outside, and it is against this handsome backdrop that he shares his first, secret kiss with his travelling companion, Katharine, away from her husband’s eyes. Even beyond sunrises and sunsets, there is a permanent orange hue hanging in the air, smothering Almásy and his fellow explorers in the sweltering heat of Egypt – a distant contrast to the cool greyness of the present-day monastery, where these flashbacks are contained.

Bridging these timelines set on either end of World War II are the sort of long dissolves that editor Walter Murch previously perfected in Apocalypse Now, and which now mesmerically slip between the explorer’s current bed-ridden existence and his slowly returning memories. His only possession, a copy of Herodotus’ Histories, contains a bundle of personal artefacts inside, and as we linger on them, small pieces of their context come trickling back. Even more significantly, Hana’s reading of passages from the volume itself begins to evoke the face and voice of Katharine, elegantly conveyed through Minghella’s intercutting between both recitations.

Juliette Binoche and Kristen Scott Thomas are thoughtfully grounded in these parts, offering a feminine sensitivity to both sides of the story, though it is Ralph Fiennes’ work in playing both the romantic lead and scarred survivor which stands as the greatest acting achievement here. Watching him bask in the freedom of the desert where national identities mean nothing lifts the spirits of the film high, right before the inevitable crash.

Perhaps the great irony of Almásy’s mental and physical injuries is that they effectively grant his wish of being truly nationless, and now as he recalls his identity, the dangers of such an attitude settles in too. When Katharine is left injured in the desert, he leaves to seek help, though only comes across further obstacles without proper identification on him. With his foreign-sounding name, he is arrested by British forces on suspicion of being a spy, and when he finally escapes, he is only able to make it back to Katharine by offering maps to a Germany army unit. After all, with no allegiance to any country, what difference does it make?

For Cairo, the difference is staggering, as in one stunning long shot we helplessly watch Nazi forces descend on the city in parachutes. For Caravaggio, it means losing his thumbs, as he is swiftly captured, tortured, and mutilated for his role as a Canadian Intelligence operative. As far as he is concerned, Almásy is a killer, not just responsible for the deaths of many in Cairo, but for Katharine and her husband, Geoffrey, as well. Surprisingly, Almásy takes at least partial responsibility for this – it was his own foolish love after all which stoked Geoffrey’s jealously and drove him to an elaborate murder-suicide via biplane.

Perhaps if there is any salvation to be found, it is in the end of this devastating war, as Americans parade through the streets in tanks proclaiming victory. For Almásy though, there is nothing left for him in this world. The morphine overdose that Hana administers is a merciful act, and as she reads Katharine’s final letter that was written while waiting in that cave before passing away, Minghella touchingly grants them death side-by-side, once again intercutting between both timelines. Just as Hana rides off through the green Italian countryside in these final moments, so too do we witness Almásy fly over Egypt’s rolling deserts, revelling in this land where all divisions of nation and culture fall away to boundless, sprawling freedom.

The English Patient is currently streaming on Stan and Binge, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Danny Boyle | 1hr 34min

There is a bitter contempt that burns through Trainspotting’s opening narration, moving with such repetitive vigour that it takes us a second to catch up to its derisive ridicule of middle-class Britain’s comfortable, monotonous lifestyles.

“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, choose a big fucking television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.”

There is no waiting around for any opening credits or title cards here. In the very first seconds, we meet heroin addict Mark Renton on the run from security guards, spitting scorn at the pre-set pathways for conventional, material lives that have been drilled into his head from childhood, and which he and his friends now disdainfully reject. Ewan McGregor’s thick Scottish accent and heavy slang are steeped in the socioeconomic implications of lower-class living, and Renton isn’t one to keep quiet either. This voiceover runs all through Trainspotting like the first-person narrator of a novel, which shouldn’t be surprising given its literary source material. In this way, Renton is written like a more realistic variation of Alex from A Clockwork Orange, typifying a specific offbeat subculture of antisocial delinquents relishing freedom and spurning anything vaguely mainstream.

And like Stanley Kubrick’s own disturbingly uncompromising aesthetic, Danny Boyle does not hold back from indulging in his own audacious style to match Renton’s edgy manner, interrupting brisk camera movements around his characters with erratic freeze frames, and flashing their names up onscreen as introductions. Sick Boy, Spud, and Mother Superior are his mates, while Tommy and Begbie, an aggressive alcoholic, hang on the outskirts of the circle, abstaining from illegal drugs. “No way would I poison my body with that shite,” the latter declares with a Scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Boyle’s humour is often amusingly dark, and this talented cast of young British actors capably deliver it with a sting of irony, recognising the inherent comedy in the reckless overconfidence of these wild, young men.

The string of vignettes that lead this small ensemble through petty crimes, surreal trips, and devastating deaths may offer Trainspotting a loose formal structure that complements the drifting uncertainty of its characters, but it is in Renton’s troubled rehabilitation that it develops a more sincere forward momentum. The carnal temptation of one lifestyle versus the clear-minded stability of the other is a constant battle for him, and Boyle’s frantic editing often cuts right to the agitated centre of it, amplifying each injection and simmering solution with brief sound effects and close-ups not unlike the rapid drug montages of Requiem for a Dream, sensitising us to their immediate physical effects. Match cuts eagerly whip us between scenes in peppy transitions, impatiently leaping forward in time towards the next big hit or escapade, and in one scene that sees Renton, Spud, and Tommy each go home with a woman at a club, Boyle efficiently intercuts between each sexual encounter back home. While Spud daftly falls asleep before even taking off his clothes, Tommy and his girlfriend panic that their sex tape has disappeared, making Renton the only one to successfully bed a woman, Diane – only to disturbingly discover the next morning that she is underage.

To an extent, the kinetic pacing and intoxicating highs of Trainspotting are simply distractions from the crushing despair that lies just outside its bubble of energetic thrills. Perhaps more than anyone else, Renton holds the most self-awareness of where he stands in relation to this divide between reality and mind-altering distortions of it. More specifically, he recognises the cultural forces that drive him to occupy this lowly place in society, where such diversions are necessary to avoid living with the shame of his own identity.

“It’s shite being Scottish! We’re the lowest of the low! The scum of the fucking earth, the most miserable, wretched, servile pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilisation.”

By pulling us between such extremes of tragic realism and light surrealism, Boyle tempts us to look away from Trainspotting’s more harrowing scenes, such as that in which Sick Boy and his girlfriend, Allison, discover their baby has died in its cot due to negligence. Rather than pushing them to reconsider their lifestyles though, it has the opposite effect, as Allison joins Renton in his next high to dull the trauma. In contrast, another drug-induced dream early in the film hazily slips from the extreme decrepitude of the “worst toilet in Scotland” into a blissful underwater fantasy, revealing the full power of these substances in putting a shine on even the vilest circumstances.

Bit by bit though, Boyle turns Renton’s hallucinations against him, sinking him into a grave-shaped hole in the carpet during a particularly bad trip, and eventually pushing him into a full-blown nightmare when his parents lock him in his childhood bedroom and force him off drugs cold turkey. As McGregor writhes in agony, the dimensions of his wallpapered room stretch and compress, and Boyle presses his wide-angle lens right up against his face in distorted close-ups. In the background we can hear dance music pounding to the illusory manifestations of his most shameful insecurities, as Diane sings to him, his friends taunt him, and up on the ceiling Sick Boy’s deceased baby crawls and spins its head like the demon from The Exorcist.

Even once Renton is sober, Boyle’s editing finds a new language to express this strange shift in momentum, centring the reformed addict in a bar that moves around him in a time-lapse while he sits motionless, far from the dynamic, erratic force he previously personified. The journey to this new sort of freedom does not come easily, as old friends return and tempt him back to his abandoned life, but grounding him in his renewed purpose is also a recognition of their inherent selfishness, holding him back from becoming a version of himself he might actually like.

From the inside of a locker lined with mirrors that multiply his face across the screen, his future looks prosperous, and later the camera is tipped completely off its axis as he leaves the world of drugs and delinquency for the last time. For all of its fast pacing and vigour, Boyle still finds the right moments to inject Trainspotting with a dose of striking visual beauty in his blocking and backdrops, underscoring Renton’s search for health, stability, and self-assurance with a rousing wonder that makes all of life’s trials worth the pain.

Trainspotting is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes and YouTube.