Any instance where pure goodness and elegant beauty wins out over insensitivity in Magnificent Obsession is infinitely precious to a soft-hearted melodramatist like Douglas Sirk, as his leading of a spoiled playboy down a path of moral rehabilitation poetically transforms him into an image of the selfless man whose death he indirectly caused.
The breathtaking elegance of Hero’s martial arts choreography is only matched by Yimou Zhang’s own meticulous production design, its vibrant assortment of colour palettes defining several varying accounts of one swordsman’s epic quest to defeat three assassins in ancient China, and stylistically elucidating the historical value of each.
Such is Kathryn Bigelow’s fine control over action-driven sequences that even as Zero Dark Thirty delivers on its raw thrills, she also manages to coordinate them remarkably tightly in her narrative’s driving pursuit of justice, following the CIA’s lengthy hunt for Osama Bin Laden over ten gruelling years.
Michael Powell’s fatalistic contemplations are lifted to metaphysical levels in A Matter of Life and Death where one man who cheats death must argue his case to keep living, his soul hanging in a precarious balance between two worlds – one dominated by surreal black-and-white set pieces, the other a Technicolor assertion of life’s spectacular beauty.
For an idealistic filmmaker like Richard Linklater, the future has never looked brighter than it does in the hands of a child, and in blending the fantasy of a young boy becoming the first person to walk on the moon and the mundane details of life in 1960s Texas, Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood effectively justifies humanity’s own naïve ambition and excitement.
Krzysztof Kieslowski lays heavily into the dramatic irony of his characters’ hidden interconnections in Three Colours: Red, saturating his beautiful mise-en-scene with a fiery warmth that unites neighbouring strangers in an invisible fraternity, their intertwining paths governed only by the irrational whims of chance.
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s dazzlingly light tones seek to visually restore neutrality and balance where neither can be found in Three Colours: White, lending a soft edge to the vaguely comical sensibilities of one man’s attempt to claw his way back up the ranks of society and pursue justice against his ex-wife.
The rich azure palette that pervades Three Colours: Blue in every shade imaginable beautifully sinks the film into a deep melancholy, as Krzysztof Kieslowski examines one young widow’s attempt to find emotional liberty from the ghosts of past traumas which continue to haunt her musically and psychologically.
My Night at Maud’s isn’t ready to deliver firm answers to its philosophical quandaries, and yet in this narrative built on a series of unlikely happenstances and cerebral discussions, Eric Rohmer also crafts an absorbing examination of fate, romance, and hypocritical egos as they fall under theological and secular perspectives.
With a playfully postmodern approach to classical conventions of both mise-en-scène and Greek mythology in Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard aims his incisive wit towards the gods of storytelling themselves, while critiquing those who degrade history with visions of crude, dishonest entertainment.
