True order is found not by trying to penetrate a complex universe in Pi, but rather by accepting its dazzling, wondrous incomprehensibility, as Darren Aronofsky conducts a character study of psychedelic focus that submits us to one mathematical genius’ delusional obsessions.
Nineteenth century China has never felt so tangibly cinematic as it does in Flowers of Shanghai, examining the blurred boundaries that lie between sex and business in its most frequented pleasure houses, and positioning us through Hou Hsiao-hsien’s floating camera and elliptical structure as silent observers of its sharply gendered politics.
All through Out of Sight, the individual paths of suave bank robber Jack Foley and federal marshal Karen Sisco wind around each other like a tantalising dance, passionately underscored by Steven Soderbergh’s hyper-stylised editing and non-linear structure that build a sprawling, fatalistic world, and which drive the two ends of the law together in a romantic embrace.
There is a jarring contrast between Terrence Malick’s violent imagery and his affecting spiritual expressions in The Thin Red Line, but it is exactly this disparity upon which he hinges his condemnation of war as an ugly stain on the natural world, playing out the human struggle between dominance and grace through stirring, lyrical rhythms.
There may not be a single Wes Anderson character more suited to his highly-curated affect than Max Fischer, as the slightly autobiographical characterisation of this ambitious school student imprints a comically organised style and structure upon Rushmore that matches the young filmmaker’s own idiosyncratic precision.
Where one might expect to find an intelligent, sharply-dressed detective at the centre of this neo-noir, the Coen Brothers instead give us the opposite – a bearded man dressed in sandals, baggy shorts, and a robe, stuck in the hippie movement that has long since grown out of fashion. In the world of The Big Lebowski where few people can be trusted, the Dude’s carefree lifestyle is the only constant which we can depend upon.
Run Lola Run is a showcase of remarkable rapid-fire editing and energetic camerawork, but just as compelling is Tom Twyker’s segmented formal structure, attacking questions of fatalism and free will across three alternate timelines of a single thrilling narrative.
