Category: Highly Recommend

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Yorgos Lanthimos | 2hr 44min

Whatever affection the title Kinds of Kindness promises to explore in its three surreal fables can only be considered ‘kindness’ on its most shallow, depraved level. Given how scarce a resource it is in Yorgos Lanthimos’ bleakly absurdist world of abusers and manipulators, perhaps the provisional security they offer is the best that any individual lost in the senseless void of existence can hope for. After all, when order lapses into anarchy, what is there to cling to but the unyielding directives of one’s employer? Where can love be found outside of one’s spouse, and what is purpose without a divine imperative guiding one’s life?

Gone is the whimsy of Lanthimos’ most recent films The Favourite and Poor Things, and replacing it is a familiar deadpan bleakness that harkens back to the early Lanthimos of Dogtooth and The Lobster. In the absence of his intricate period sets and fisheye lenses, Kinds of Kindness marks a disappointing step down visually, though this is not to say his world-building is any less bizarre. The rules that these characters live by are completely alien, forcing each to submit their agency to powers that we struggle to wrap our minds around, yet which they must never question for fear of greater ramifications.

Kinds of Kindness marks a return to the bleak, muted visuals of Lanthimos’ early films, using a wide-angle lens to stretch out this handsome shot here of Robert standing in the corner of his office, as if about to topple from security into oblivion.

The first chapter in Lanthimos’ anthology may be the clearest rendering of this social critique, observing a toxic relationship that holds corporate businessman Robert under the thumb of his boss, Raymond. Every aspect of his life is minutely controlled, from the books he must read right down to his weight-gaining diet. In return, he is given a large house, a wife, and a collection of valuable sports memorabilia – all handpicked by Raymond of course. Meanwhile, Robert’s comically petty acts of self-harm manifest as small rebellions, giving him a chance to whine for attention and take ownership of something beyond his employer’s grasp. When Raymond demands he commit vehicular homicide by recreating one of his staged car accidents though, Robert expresses doubt for the first time and risks losing everything.

Cutting social commentary by way of absurdist narratives and settings. Lanthimos is a Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco for modern cinema.

He shouldn’t feel guilty over this, Raymond assures him, as the intended target has agreed to this proposition. Going by the embroidered monogram on the victim’s shirt, his name is R.M.F – the same initials which appear in the title of all three chapters. He is a passive enigma of a character, barely taking up a few minutes of screentime in each tale, and yet his role is always pivotal. The foreshadowing is apparent here in the first chapter ‘The Death of R.M.F.’, though later when Lanthimos plays out the second and third chapters ‘R.M.F. is Flying’ and ‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’, the relevance grows increasingly oblique.

Those trying to penetrate the deeper symbolism behind R.M.F. will either conjure up some fantastic theory or be left sorely disappointed. Because he is fatefully tied to Lanthimos’ eccentric main characters and even takes precedence over them in chapter titles, we might expect him to represent some grand, metaphysical concept. Ultimately though, he is little more than a mundane peculiarity in this outlandish world – and quite ironically, it is exactly that which makes him stand out, further defining his environment as one of incongruous chaos.

At least when he appears in the second chapter ‘R.M.F. is Flying,’ he takes somewhat of a heroic role, rescuing marine biologist Liz from a desert island after she and her colleagues are shipwrecked. Unfortunately, her husband Daniel is not so ready to welcome her home. This new Liz is different, having apparently been replaced by a doppelganger who smokes, no longer fits her old shoes, and suddenly has a very active libido. Bit by bit, Lanthimos shifts the perspective of this story until Daniel’s role as a delusionally unreliable narrator comes into focus, and we begin to consider whether he is simply unable to comprehend his wife’s sudden psychological trauma.

Jesse Plemons’ deadpan presence is a perfect fit for Lanthimos’ understated humour, playing outlandish character beats with comical nonchalance.

Fulfilling her husband’s requests of self-mutilation appears to be the only way that Liz can prove her authentic love, and thus this chapter moves into some of the most viscerally disturbing scenes of the film, revealing its grotesque metaphor of toxic dependence. She has felt the horror of true isolation, and so this abuse seems a small price to pay for the security of marriage, even if it erodes the physical substance of her being.

In one key monologue elucidating a dream she had on the island, we can at least find a partial justification for this in her mind, imagining a world where dogs and humans have swapped places while the rest of society remains unaffected. It is not the first time Lanthimos has likened people to animals, contemplating the narrow divide between civil order and savage chaos, though here the metaphor explicitly pays off in a short epilogue revealing this off-kilter alternate world – dogs relaxing with friends, driving over human roadkill, and hanging themselves to death.

Black-and-white dreams and flashbacks are where Lanthimos’ surrealism takes off, especially in the closing of the second chapter where we witness Liz’s dream of dogs and humans swapping places.

There is evidently a prophetic power to dreams throughout Kinds of Kindness, especially given how closely they are bound to characters’ memories, with prescient visions and flashbacks being consistently depicted in black-and-white. These interludes may exist purely inside their minds, and yet they frequently manifest in their lives later on like eerie echoes, sometimes even right down to the identical repetition of shots as we observe in Robert’s dreamed and actual confrontations with his boss in the first chapter. As such, the use of ‘Sweet Dream’s by the Eurythmics makes for a fitting theme song, lyrically contemplating the toxic behaviours of Lanthimos’ characters.

“Some of them want to use you,

Some of them want to be used by you,

Some of theme want to abuse you,

Some of them want to be abused.”

Indeed, “everybody is looking for something” in Kinds of Kindness, and bit by bit we begin to wonder whether their cryptic dreams are the key to finding it. Specifically in the third chapter, devoted cultist Emily is haunted by a nightmare of her hair being caught in a pool drain, until another woman sets her free – a visual metaphor which later manifests in her mission to find a foretold Messiah figure. Believing that bodily fluids hold the essence of human corruption, she and her brainwashed peers fall naively under the sway of their leader Omi, whose twisted, manipulative love holds the ultimate judgement over whether or not they have been “contaminated.” Once we witness the abuse Emily suffered back in her old home life though, we at least come to understand her desperate need to find belonging at whatever humiliating expense, even if it means a complete dedication of one’s soul and body to an unhinged belief system.

A mission to find a Messiah figure with the ability to perform miracles is tainted by the utter disregard these characters have for true divinity, destroying it to heal their own loneliness.

As we should expect by now, the divine is not something to be exalted in Lanthimos’ self-serving society, but to be drugged, kidnapped, and traded for the arbitrary approval of others. Its power is transcendent, yet it is ironically degraded by those who hold it up as an icon of spiritual glory, committing sordid acts in its name. Whatever hope or salvation may have been found in religion is lost the moment it is fashioned into a tool for simple, worldly desires.

Emma Stone’s performance as Emily in this final chapter may be the most memorable of the film, leaving a distinct mark in her copper-coloured suit, auburn hair, and flashy purple sportscar. As a totality though, it is the revolving cast through each fable which makes even more impactful formal statement, additionally featuring Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau in multiple roles. Through the connection of R.M.F., we understand that they all exist within the same world, though perhaps one which is more akin to a Kafkaesque purgatory trapping souls in various forms of psychological torture than a logical, organised civilisation.

Emma Stone shakes and thrusts to ‘Brand New Bitch’ in her copper-coloured suit, as her drugged victim slumps in the background – she is the clear standout in the third chapter.

Further lifting Kinds of Kindness beyond the realm of reality is Jerskin Fendrix’s minimalist music score, setting shrill, discordant piano melodies against deep, pounding chords, while acapella male choruses sing ominous Greek hymns and sustained warnings of “No…”. These might as well be vocalisations of our own internal thoughts, watching these poor souls degrade themselves to earn the conditional love of employers, spouses, and religious leaders, yet only ever finding cold, empty embraces at best. For Lanthimos at least, the period to grieve this total loss of self-worth has long passed. By the time each tale in Kinds of Kindness has run its course, we inevitably realise that the only reasonable response to our own inhumanity is pitying, sardonic laughter.

Kinds of Kindness is currently playing in cinemas.

Fellini’s Roma (1972)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 8min

The two eras of Rome that Federico Fellini displays in his offbeat homage to the Italian city are set apart by three decades, though the boundaries separating one from the other aren’t always so clearly outlined. Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s, air raids send civilians running for cover in the 1940s, and yet still life goes on for those who seek the simple pleasures of sex, entertainment, and good food. After all, what else is there to cling to in a world eternally bound within a state of perpetual chaos?

This is not quite the Rome chronicled in history books, nor the Rome captured with authenticity in the films of the Italian neorealists. This is Fellini’s Roma – an absurd, urban landscape defined more by its culture, politics, and traditions than any individual icon. Not to say that Fellini’s film lacks idiosyncratic characters – in fact virtually everyone here sets themselves apart from the colourful crowd – but they are simply threads woven into a larger, vibrant tapestry. Despite its familiar interrogations of modern Rome’s debauchery, Roma bears far greater resemblance to the surreal, episodic madness of Fellini Satyricon than the focused character study of La Dolce Vita. Such a grandiose defiance of narrative convention comes with some structural unevenness, though Fellini’s recreation of the city he both loathes and adores is nonetheless rich with impressionistic detail, filtering moments in time through the wily incongruity of satire and memory.

A city littered with millennia of history – fading, crumbling, yet always to be replaced with new artefacts and stories.
Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s while bombs drop on Rome in the 1940s – parallel timelines marked by war and celebration.

If there is a consistent character in Roma whom we are to follow beyond Rome itself, then it is the strange presence of Fellini himself in two forms. The first is a semi-autobiographical representation of the director watching silent films about Ancient Rome as a child, and later moving to the Nazi-occupied city as a young man. The camera moves with him past magnificent fountains and cathedrals in travelogue-style tracking shots, before he finally finds lodging at a shabby guesthouse bustling with vain actors, rowdy children, and religious zealots. The insanity seemingly has no boundaries, populating the streets at night with noisy al fresco restaurant patrons, and still we continue weaving through the crowd as our attention jumps from a waiter carrying a plate of pasta to the young Fellini being invited to eat with friendly strangers.

Fellini self-autobiographically enters the film as his younger self moving to Rome, embracing all that the city has to offer.

This version of Fellini is often little more than a passive observer accompanying our journey, while the second cinematic representation of the filmmaker manifests as an older, wiser extension of the same man – an unseen tour guide of sorts, offering amusing descriptions and opinions on Rome’s eclectic culture through omniscient voiceover. He is our constant companion through this adventure, possessing a whimsical self-awareness as he introduces a “portrait of Rome” exactly as a young, naïve Fellini once perceived it – “a mixture of strange, contradictory images.” Later as we stumble across Italian actress Anna Magnani walking home to her palazzo, this voiceover even holds a conversation with her, distilling all the facets of Rome down to this living symbol who has lived out its many lives on film.

“Rome seen as vestal virgin, and she-wolf. An aristocrat, and a tramp. A sombre buffoon.”

Rome’s proclivity towards fascism echoes through time, dominating the culture with fervent nationalism and authoritarianism.

On occasion, Roma does not always handle these fourth wall breaks so well, leading to some patchiness in one highway scene that turns the camera back on Fellini’s own crew capturing the traffic jam. Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend is the obvious influence here, as we observe anarchy unfold on the roads one stormy night. Dead animals, burning trucks, hippie protestors, and police barricades are illuminated under harsh spotlights to paint an image of societal breakdown, but for once the chaos seems to escape Fellini’s control.

Some vignettes in Roma are more effective than others, and the highway set piece is one that suffers in comparison.

It is evident that Fellini handles the mayhem with greater poise when he is aligning these disordered elements under unified set pieces, digging into the bedrock of culture and history the city quite literally rests upon. The wondrous regard these people hold for their heritage is not to be outdone by their relentless pursuit of progress, as industrials drills paving the way for a new transit system smash the walls of an ancient Roman house to pieces, revealing alabaster sculptures, mosaics, and frescoes that have miraculously survived for two thousand years. “Look how they seem to be staring at us,” one woman remarks as these artworks cast a stern eye upon their new visitors. Suddenly, the paint’s exposure to the outside air triggers a rapid deterioration, and thus these representatives of the ancient world cast their final judgement on modern civilisation for its graceless, irresponsible ineptitude.

The tension between past and present comes through bleakly in the industrial dig site. Attempts at establishing a new underground transit system are frequently halted by historical discoveries, and inadvertently ruin them in the process.

Still, little can erase the immense pride of a culture that annually celebrates the Festa de’ Noantri – literally translating to ‘Festival of Ourselves.’ Fellini stations his handheld camera in a car as it passes by colourful lights, bustling crowds, and folk musicians filling the air with joy, capturing a slice of the real celebration in an almost documentary-like manner, and even bringing in American writer Gore Vidal to reflect on his life in Rome. “This is the city of illusions,” he ponders to an audience of rapt listeners. “It’s a city, after all, of the church, of government, of movies. They’re all makers of illusions.”

Fellini’s location shooting soaks in the sights of the Festa de Noantri – the lights, the food, the community, everything comes together to form a lively picture of Roman celebration and joy.

Fellini does not attempt to escape from beneath the shadow of this reputation either, but rather devotes his vision of Rome to its extraordinary artifice, understanding that the truth never lies far from its projected façade. With Roma’s production taking place a few years after Vatican II, this is especially relevant to the church’s struggle of identity in a modern world, and thus he launches a scathing attack upon its attempted reinvention through a hilariously gaudy fashion show.

“Model number one: Patience in a classical line of black satin for novices,” the emcee announces to the crowd of cardinals, bishops, and nobles, as a pair of nuns walk down the catwalks in glossy habits and leather boots “suitable for Arctic wear.” Next, two more nuns with headdresses that flap like turtledove wings, priests on roller skates clad in “robes for sport,” and then men in frilly doilies swinging thuribles with choreographed panache – “Elegance and high fashion for the sacristan in first-class ceremonies.” The ecclesiastical accoutrements only grow more ridiculous, eventually culminating in the arrival of the Pope himself on a blinding white set, radiating sunbeams as the audience collapses to their knees in awe.

The true highlight of Roma comes in the form of an ecclesiastical fashion show, sending up the material obsession of the Catholic Church is it seeks a connection to modern culture. Particularly magnificent costume work from Danilo Donati.

Costume designer Danilo Donati must be commended for the visual extravagance of this vignette, though it is Fellini’s genius which unites each garment under a single, scathing criticism of religious hypocrisy, and its attempts to win modern audiences through material spectacle. Then again, how can we blame the church for appealing to the masses in such an excessive manner when the people themselves are so blinded by escapist self-indulgence? Men from across the lower and upper ends of this society are far more likely to frequent local bordellos for a taste of intimacy, as Fellini only separates their endeavours by the sophistication of the facilities themselves. In the shabbier brothel, a long corridor fills with working class men hoping to pair off with a woman, before it is eventually shut down by police. In the more luxurious one, older men take their pick of the escorts before taking an elevator up into grand bedrooms decorated with red wallpaper and classical paintings.

An up-class and rundown brothel continue to draw parallels between different segments of Rome, uniting its men as seekers of physical pleasure.

Art and entertainment similarly prove to be effective distractions from the ills of the modern world, manifesting in the 1970s as a film director neglecting to depict the negative aspects of Rome, and in the 1940s as a vaudeville show that unites audience members in laughter, bawdiness, and nationalistic sentiment. The musical and comedy acts run for a little too long here, but the announcement of Germany and Italy’s successful defence of Sicily that interrupts the performances is worth it, erupting in disconcerting cries of support from the crowd.

The irony that this jubilant resolve dissipates into pandemonium the moment sirens start blaring a few short moments later is not to be missed. “Whose baby is this?” one patron shouts upon discovering a baby left alone in the evacuated theatre, while outside Fellini shoots the emptying streets in a chilly blue wash. Though present-day Rome has long moved past the terror and instability of World War II, the insecurity that comes to light here is a ghost that continues to haunt this city – a city which, as Vidal elucidates, “has died so many times and was resurrected so many times.”

A haunting juxtaposition between Rome’s nationalistic celebration and the violent bombing a few short minutes later – this is a snapshot of a city in turmoil, at odds with its own contradictions.

More specifically, it is Rome’s historical inclination towards fascism which can’t quite be expelled from its culture, and which becomes the subject of the town fool’s rhyming couplets comparing Italian dictators across time. “This fascist shit, his head is split,” he cackles at a damaged statue of Julius Caesar, before turning his insubordinate poem to the 1940s.

“Now we’ve got another meanie,

By the name of Mussolini.”

Fellini’s obvious disdain towards the police in the 1970s timeline formally brings this partisan statement full circle, noting that despite the political lull, there remains an oppressive, authoritarian influence quashing freedoms in contemporary Rome. These people may find any excuse for a communal celebration of family, art, food, or religion, and yet such lively passions can sway dangerously towards prejudice with the right provocation. “It seems to me the perfect place to watch if we end or not,” Vidal predicts, and by the end of Roma, Fellini has thoroughly substantiated his claim. Within this vividly surreal portrait, its culture is a vibrant epicentre of history and modernity, community and intolerance, highbrow art and lowbrow entertainment – and worth cherishing in all its wonders, contradictions, and flaws.

Fellini’s Roma is currently available to buy from Amazon.

Il Bidone (1955)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 52min

So desperate is the working class of Il Bidone’s post-war Italy, it seems that they are ready to believe any stranger who comes bearing dubious promises of financial stability. Perhaps with some retrospect, they might realise how strange it is that government bureaucrats would promise public housing to anyone in a crowd who comes forward with a deposit. Even more ludicrous a scenario is Vatican clergymen visiting a farmer’s property, bearing papal orders to dig up their land and uncover a repentant criminal’s bones, treasure, and will that stipulates the landowner must pay the church before receiving any money. Those who carry an air of confident authority can easily gain the trust of the needy, and naturally as the oldest and most experienced of his crooked crew, that is exactly Augusto’s greatest strength.

True to Federico Fellini’s contemplations of morality and corruption in modern Italy, Il Bidone is deeply engaged with lives of parasitic cruelty and the weight they bear on one’s conscience. Religion is effectively reduced to empty icons in their hands, stripped of the virtue it preaches and irreverently wielded as a means to an end. There may not be any of Fellini’s usual carnivals or entertainers present here, but Il Bidone’s conmen are nevertheless performers who profit off their carefully constructed spectacles. Much like their show business counterparts, total commitment is required from any swindler who wishes to succeed in his craft, and Augusto leaves no room for confusion regarding what sacrifices must be made.

“People like us can’t have families. One must be free to move. You can’t have a wife. You must be alone. The most important thing when you’re young is freedom. It’s more important than the air you breathe.”

The priest scam is a classic in the books of Augusto and his crew of conmen, displaying an ingenuity and efficiency that holds no regard for the sacrilege being committed.
Broderick Crawford carries an imposing, authoritative presence as Augusto, winning the trust of strangers before running off with their money.

Not that the companionship that these men find with each other instead is terribly fulfilling. At night they excessively indulge in luxuries purchased with their stolen money, drinking and dancing their guilt away. If there is any hope of escaping this cesspool of debauchery, then it comes in the form of family members longing for their husbands and fathers to be truly present, though such clean redemption is no easy objective. Just as the friends in I Vitelloni are awed by their leader’s overconfidence, the naïve Picasso here sees his associate Roberto as a model of masculinity, and ultimately finds himself torn between his charismatic lure and his wife’s desperate pleas to leave this unethical life behind.

Even in her small role, Giulietta Masina makes an impact as the moral centre of Il Bidone, pleading with her husband to leave his life of crime.

Perhaps the most compelling relationship of Il Bidone though arrives through Augusto’s chance run-in with his estranged daughter Patrizia, just as he is on his way to another con. The humanity that had previously escaped his characterisation begins to manifest here with delicate caution as he attempts to rekindle this connection, offering to pay for her studies and bestowing gifts that she doesn’t realise have been stolen. It is a real tragedy that he is recognised as a conman during their outing together at a cinema – not so much for the judicial slap on the wrist, but rather for his humiliating exposure in front of the only person who still holds him in some esteem. The dramatic irony that stations Patrizia in the foreground watching the movie and Augusto’s confrontation in the background is made all the more discomforting by the crowd’s eyes slowly turning towards the commotion in a ripple effect, suspensefully edging closer to his oblivious daughter.

Salvation appears out of the blue one day when Augusto runs into his daughter Patrizia. Her discovery of his crooked line of work is heartbreaking, as Fellini foregrounds her obliviousness while her father is caught by authorities in the background. Very slowly, heads turn towards the commotion, rippling out across the crowd until Patrizia’s attention is similarly caught.

Even if Il Bidone is a step below his prior masterpieces I Vitelloni and La Strada, Fellini’s visual storytelling and blocking still land with bold dramatic impact in moments like these. His neorealist tendency towards shooting real locations with deep focus lenses constantly keeps the struggling communities being hurt by Augusto’s gang in view, and at the very least turns rough-hewn stonework and dusty rural farms into bleak backdrops. As long as the conman can keep an emotional distance from his targets, then he can continue exploiting them with little mind for their future wellbeing, and yet soon we begin to realise that his daughter’s broken belief in him has fundamentally altered his worldview.

Neorealist tendencies in the poverty-centric narrative and location shooting, turning Italy’s towns and countryside into rugged backdrops.
Augusto’s encounter with the disabled girl of the family he is scamming is the last straw – his moral corruption can no longer bear the weight of his guilt.

By laying small reckonings of morality like these all throughout Il Bidone, Fellini earns the final step in Augusto’s redemption arc, formally returning to the religious scam which he conducted so effortlessly in the film’s first scene. When realising his victim’s daughter is a polio-afflicted teenage girl with a pure faith in God, his conscience can no longer bear the weight of his guilt. Torment and shame uneasily mount in Broderick Crawford’s flustered performance, though it is only when he makes away with his crew that they ultimately manifest as a bald-faced lie – he did not end up taking the money, he claims, but instead returned it.

Wondrous depth of field in Fellini’s blocking, as Augusto’s crew grow suspicious of their leader and turn on him.

It is at this point that we witness a religious icon be imbued with real meaning for the very first time in Il Bidone, rather than become a weapon of exploitation. As Augusto is robbed by his associates, beaten, and left on a hill to die, Fellini symbolically alludes to Christ’s sacrifice, bearing the sins of the world on the cross. Augusto’s honourable attempt to keep the stolen money from falling into criminal hands may be in vain, yet through physical and spiritual suffering, his soul is liberated. Rocky is the path to salvation in Fellini’s cinematic parable, but so too is it purifying, stripping back the lies and depravity of a modern world to uncover the grace that lies dormant in even the most dishonest man.

Fellini evokes Christ’s torture and sacrifice in Augusto’s death, cherishing the purification of his soul at the tragic expense of his life.

Il Bidone is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on DVD or Blu-ray on Amazon.

49th Parallel (1941)

Michael Powell | 2hr 3min

The fight that the western world puts up again Nazi Germany in 49th Parallel is not led by individual heroes or organised military units. It takes a communal sense of justice, democracy, and moral fortitude among everyday civilians to not only pick off the six Nazi submariners who have been stranded in Canada, but to also thoroughly undermine the narrow-minded, hateful ideology which guides their actions. With the United States still being considered neutral territory in 1941, the Niagara Falls border crossing is their destination, and so all Lieutenant Hirth and his men need to do is keep their heads down for the journey south. If these fugitives are to successfully find sanctuary though, then it isn’t just a victory for them – it is an alarming affirmation of fascist indomitability.

The fact that this is one of the few Michael Powell films to be shot in black-and-white rather than Technicolor does not mean he is any less confident with his chosen aesthetic. While other works of his such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes possess a similarly haunting wickedness, they are also far more fantastical than 49th Parallel, whose grim severity simply would not be suited to the same stylistic vibrance. In small scenes of contained drama, cinematographer Freddie Young instead captures Powell’s rich blocking and rigorous military formations with a deep focus lens, remarkably uninfluenced by his contemporary Orson Welles who was making Citizen Kane at the exact same time.

Michael Powell was primarily celebrated for the lush beauty of his Technicolor cinematography, but this visual style would have not suited the bleak austerity of 49th Parallel, capturing grim compositions of soldiers and civilians in severe black-and-white.

Even more impressive is the grand visual scale which Powell quite comfortably inhabits, executing spectacular stunts of exploding sea vessels and crashing planes, and flying his camera over vast coastlines in extraordinary aerial shots. When the Nazi fugitives make it to Winnipeg, he confronts them with a rainy city of neon signs and busy streets where bulletins call for their capture, though it is more often the expansive alpine terrains where these ill-prepared men are mentally worn down. Dressed in suits and fine shoes, they traverse sprawling pine forests, hike up barren mountain ranges, and follow raging rivers in the hope of finding some sort of civilisation again, yet the North American wilderness is not kind to these foreigners. With long shots as sweeping as these, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Young’s work here thoroughly prepared him for his incredible landscape photography in Lawrence of Arabia twenty-one years later, especially since the editor on 49th Parallel is David Lean himself.

Thrilling spectacle in the opening act of 49th Parallel, crashing planes and exploding sea vessels to set up the large scale of the narrative to come.
Aerial shots of the Canadian wilderness, revealing the enormous scope of Powell’s narrative spanning hundreds of miles.
Harsh mountain scenery consuming suited men ill-equipped for their environment – a deeply ingrained mismatch between characters and setting.

Underscoring the incongruency of the Nazis’ survival in Canada even more than the natural environment though is the people they encounter, each of whom possess some liberal value which they view as weakness through their dogmatic perspectives. Powell gathers an impressive cast in his ensemble here, including Laurence Olivier as a jovial trapper whose optimistic trust sees him shot and killed, and Leslie Howard as an English novelist who camps by a lake to mentally separate himself from the war. He is thoughtful and sensitive, shrewdly analysing the repetitive rhetoric used by fascists to manipulate the minds of susceptible listeners, and yet Hirth is nevertheless quick to label him a soft, degenerate coward who would rather talk than fight.

Lawrence Olivier’s brief cameo as a jovial Canadian trapper is worth savouring, as Powell pits his naive optimism against the opportunism of the Nazis.
Leslie Howard’s English novelist offers the film’s sharpest indictment of Nazi ideology and rhetoric, embodying a sensitive sophistication that Hirth and his men disparage as weak.

49th Parallel may be a piece of wartime propaganda, but it is tough to deny the astuteness of its humanitarian arguments, especially when the fugitives are welcomed into a Hutterite farming community that houses German refugees. Anton Walbrook plays their leader Peter, an amiable man who views himself as a servant of his people, rather than the other way round – a shocking discovery for these fascists who are so used to heiling their Führer. Their blind belief that this community is a cover for Nazi sympathisers would almost be comical if Hirth’s impassioned speech inviting them to join him wasn’t met with such damning, disgusted silence, followed by a solemn response from Peter that further reveals how distant these humble Christians are from the monsters of their homeland.

“You think we hate you, but we don’t. It is against our faith to hate. We only hate the power of evil that is spreading over the world. You and your Hitler are like the microbes of some filthy disease, filled with a longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world. No. We are not your brothers.”

The stupid arrogance of the Nazis is revealed in Hirth’s attempted alliance with the Hutterite community, defiantly ignorant to the fact that many of them are refugees.

It is not these words alone which moves one of the fugitives to ally himself with the Hutterites, but Vogel’s brief experience of working as their baker and finding heartfelt acceptance among their ranks is enough for him to decide to stay permanently. We can only imagine what his reformation might have looked like had he been allowed to follow his own enlightened path though, as Hirth coldly executes him for treachery before departing with the remaining party.

The readiness of Nazis to abandon their own companions is plain to see all throughout Powell’s narrative, defining its very structure as their group gradually diminishes one-by-one in a similar fashion to Agatha Christie’s murder mystery And Then There Were None. Through plane accidents, executions, arrests, and physical assaults, each fugitive is stopped in their tracks, while the others continue their relentless march south to the Canada-United States border where they might finally be safe. The danger around them increases tenfold once they start drawing attention in the media, but so too does the subsequent news from back home praising them as national heroes spur them on, right up until Hirth is left as the sole survivor struggling to the finish line.

Like Agatha Christi’s novel And Then There Were None, Powell picks off his characters one by one, giving 49th Parallel a rigorous formal structure.

It is there on a freight train heading past Niagara Falls into New York that the German lieutenant encounters Andy, another stowaway similarly keeping a low profile due to his desertion of the Canadian army. “You’re a deserter because you have a legitimate grievance against your democratic government,” Hirth acclaims, but this disloyal soldier does not take so kindly to the Nazi once he learns of his true identity.

“You can’t even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it. And when things go wrong, we can take it. We can dish it out too.”

True to Andy’s patriotic sentiments, it is exactly Hirth’s underestimation of the power that democracy vests in ordinary citizens which brings about his downfall. That the deciding moment of his victory rests on the shoulders of a lowly Canadian deserter and a US Customs inspector makes for a tremendous formal pay-off to this narrative, which has consistently underscored the ability of trappers, farmers, and writers alike to weaken fascism’s forward advance. Sacrifices must be made in the struggle, and yet Powell’s wartime fable effectively cloaks these in glory, vigorously rousing the then-neutral United States of 1941 to take up arms against Nazi Germany with egalitarian pride and honour.

It is not a concerted military effort that stop the Nazis in their tracks, but rather the democratic actions of ordinary civilians, right up to Hirth’s attempt to cross the Canada-United States border as the last man standing.

49th Parallel is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.

Challengers (2024)

Luca Guadagnino | 2hr 11min

When aspiring tennis player Tashi first meets doubles partners Art and Patrick at the US Open, she lays out the metaphor at the centre of Challengers quite plainly. “Tennis is a relationship,” she romantically opines, binding opponents in perfect harmony. As long as they are locked in this combative back-and-forth, they see into each other’s minds in a way that no one else could possibly imagine, anticipating and performing manoeuvres with an impassioned, instinctive efficiency.

The pivotal Challenger match woven through Luca Guadagnino’s narrative is clearly the purest distillation of this ethos, telling a story of friends-turned-rivals that only those who bore witness to their journey might comprehend. Art and Patrick’s end goal here transcends merely winning the game – that would be far too simplistic a motive for men with as complex a shared history as theirs. In reality, there is another player here who has taken her place on the sidelines. Tashi may not have played professionally since her career-ending knee injury, but her impact on this match is just as impactful as Art and Patrick’s, becoming the third person in a love triangle that has spent thirteen years fluctuating between cold resentment and fervent desire.

“Tennis is a relationship” becomes the central metaphor of Challengers, and Guadagnino goes out of his way to infuse it in every level of his back-and-forth narrative structure, camerawork, and editing.

With his laurels resting on the success of Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino is no stranger to exploring queer romance, and so it should be no surprise that the polyamorous, homoerotic relationship of Challengers remains so compelling throughout its lengthy runtime. From the moment Art and Patrick lay eyes on Tashi at the US Open as naïve 18-year-olds, they are instantly entranced by her vibrant passion and charm, locking their eyes on her side of the court while everyone else’s heads follow the ball. Later that evening, they are astonished to discover that she has accepted their invitation to their hotel room, and even more surprised when their truncated threesome brings their latent bisexuality to light. Whoever wins the junior singles final the next day will have her number, she promises in the aftermath, incidentally driving the first of many wedges between them. Patrick thus claims his prize and begins dating Tashi shortly after, though it is ultimately Art who marries and takes her on as his coach.

Between this fateful meeting in 2006 and their reunion at the Challenger event in 2019, Guadagnino energetically hops between timelines with incredible deftness, intercutting the years of their youth, the week leading up to their final game, and the climactic showdown itself. As a result, this rich formal structure uncovers hidden signifiers and motivations in Art and Patrick’s decisive match, from a subtle shift in the way Patrick serves the ball to his purposeful double faulting. The editing remains dynamic in the transitions too, gliding across eras through match cuts that seamlessly maintain the narrative’s brisk pacing, and elsewhere shifting between contrasting scenes that bear hidden connections. This is especially evident when Art and Patrick reunite in a steamy sauna before their Challenger game, where Guadagnino breaks up their oddly intimate argument with Tashi and Patrick’s brief liaison eight years earlier. In the years since, Patrick has maintained his fiery passion despite a meagre career while Art has burnt out on professional success, yet both still share a common belief in Tashi as the key to unlocking their true potential.

Old lovers collide through pure accident in flashback, bouncing Josh O’Connors reflection off the window as their paths meet.

As for where Tashi sits relative to this broken brotherhood, Guadagnino’s opening scene paints a perfect picture, symmetrically aligning her with the net as the camera briskly dollies across the court to her position in the dead centre of the crowd. Challengers is not an extraordinarily beautiful film, but in moments like these he works in vivacious flourishes of style to vibrantly match the temperamental dynamic between Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor, as well as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score of propulsive synths. During a pivotal argument between Tashi and Patrick, Guadagnino volleys his camera between both sides as if watching a game of tennis, and later an even greater breakdown unfolds in the middle of a storm furiously whipping leaves of loose paper around them.

Inventive camerawork offers fresh, invigorating perspectives at tennis matches, sinking the camera beneath the ground in extreme low angles and lifting it up into overhead shots.

Ultimately though, Guadagnino reserves his most invigorating visuals for the court, where Art, Patrick, and Tashi release their frustration through raw, physical power and skill. Between games, the camera will often patiently survey the field through panning and tracking shots, while during rallies we flinch as Guadagnino lets the ball fly right past the lens. By the time the match interlaced throughout Challengers reaches its final sets, he similarly lets it build to a cinematic apex, making for one of the most thrilling games of tennis put to film. Close-ups keenly observe sweat pour off faces and extreme low angles dramatically peer up from beneath the ground itself, but it is the extreme slow-motion photography which most triumphantly imbues this sequence with stylish tension, apprehensively drawing out split-second decisions and reactions. As this tightly edited sequence approaches its climax, Guadagnino uses Tashi as the division in a split screen and even attaches us to the disorientated point-of-view of the ball, throwing us onto the court like another participant in this match.

Tennis may be a relationship according to Tashi, though by capturing both aspects of these characters’ lives with the same primal passion, Guadagnino pushes this metaphor even further – tennis is sex, revelling in the exhilarating union of synchronised bodies and building to an explosive finish. When it comes to matters of carnal expression, who wins and loses is entirely inconsequential, with such concerns only leading to discontentment. For what is otherwise a relatively inexplicit film, Challengers intersects lust, love, and loathing with electrifying sensuality, fulfilling a mutual desire for intimate connection through relentless, heated competition.

Endlessly creative shot choices as Guadagnino ramps up the chaotic tension in the final scene, attaching his camera to the ball’s point-of-view as it ricochets across the court.
Sweat drips onto the camera in slow-motion – visceral, carnal imagery.

Challengers is currently playing in cinemas.

Civil War (2024)

Alex Garland | 1hr 49min

If award-winning war photographer Lee and her team of journalists are to accurately capture images of Civil War’s dystopian conflict, then it is necessary for them to first detach emotionally from their work. Their job isn’t to intervene, Lee stresses, but merely to chronicle reality so that other people can ask the hard-hitting questions instead.

Frequently when these reporters snap photos on the frontlines, Alex Garland thus cuts away to black-and-white still shots of their subjects, briefly muting the sound design to remove us from the fervour of the moment. At times it is a relief to breathe just for a few seconds, even if we are still being forced to gaze upon brutal executions and massacres. It is exactly in that silence though that a new, unexpected horror comes to light – one which has taken root in supposedly impartial outsiders who try to deny the personal impact of such visceral psychological trauma. Lee’s hardened mental barriers aren’t indestructible, though equally her sensitive protégé Jessie can only take so much of a beating before she sets up similar defences, as Garland sets both on inverse paths towards a self-destructive conflict of human instincts.

Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny lead the film along a pair of inverse character paths, converging at the point of psychological self-destruction.
These cutaways to still, black-and-white photos are a superb formal choice with a devastating pay-off, desensitising us to the carnage.
Each stop along the odyssey brings its own threats and twists, revealing the sadistic penchant for violence within ordinary Americans.

Even more than Annihilation’s surreal venture into the unknown, Civil War marks Garland’s largest, most ambitious project yet, setting out an odyssey across a future America that has been violently split into loyalist and secessionist states. The world building is remarkable here, covering an enormous scope from the ferocious riots in New York City to the military siege of Washington DC itself, and positioning a tyrannical, three-term President at the centre who sanctions the murder of journalists. Seemingly untouched towns trying to live in blissful ignorance and gas station attendants torturing dissidents in their garage continue to develop this divided America at a ground level too, revealing the lives of civilians desperate to maintain some semblance of normality, and those viciously buying into the carnage.

Nick Offerman’s three-term is only in the film’s opening and closing scenes, but his impact is felt strongly across a divided America.
There is a huge scope to Garland’s staging and narrative, set up in establishing shots covering military units, camps, and helicopters – clearly one of his biggest budgets yet.

At the same time though, the history and politics of this civilisation is not Garland’s primary focus. Much to the chagrin of audiences hoping for a hard partisan stance, Civil War purposefully neglects the granular details which might have made pigeonholed this film into a shallow take on left-right ideologies, and in doing so saves us from overly didactic monologues stopping the narrative in its tracks.

The unlikely alliance of California and Texas as the Western Forces only further distances Garland’s war from the United States as it exists today, though not so much that we are totally alienated from his characters. This team of photojournalists may have a better contextual understanding than us, but this information is irrelevant in hostile environments where survival is the only meaningful objective – besides their endeavours to record such scenarios in digital snapshots. Even more protective than their Kevlar vests identifying them as press are the cameras which separate them from reality, imbuing Garland’s disorientating cinematography with a cutting self-awareness. The shallow focus close-ups visually isolate his characters when their PTSD kicks in, though even more unusual are the chromatic aberrations and smeared lens effects reminding us of the prism we are viewing this world through, purposefully distorting our perception to save us from the maddening truth.

Shallow focus close-ups shift us outside the immediate reality, and into Lee’s detached mind.
The chromatic aberrations around the edges of the frame are another nice formal choice from Garland, filtering PTSD through a prism.

Garland continues to reveal an uncanny beauty in scenes of Lee’s team driving through blazing forest fires while sparks fall around them in slow-motion, but when he does let the horrors of Civil War unfold in a full view, it is easy to see why such filters are so necessary. The bloodshed is often visceral and downright shocking, grotesquely revealed in one particularly disturbing overhead shot of Jessie crawling out from a mass grave of white, bloodied corpses, and marking each episode in this cross-country journey with its own unique threat. Apocalypse Now is evidently a key influence here, as Garland lets its carnivalesque chaos emerge in the depressing sight of a derelict Christmas fair hosting a shootout between enemy snipers to the depressing sound of ‘Jingle Bells.’ Unsure of which side is which, Lee questions the nearest combatants, and the response she receives is eerily evocative of the insanity at Do Lung Bridge.

“No one’s giving us orders man. Someone’s trying to kill us. We’re trying to kill them.”

Lens flares and slow-motion as the crew drive through a forest fire – an unearthly beauty tainted by the traumatic stench of death.

Whatever deeply held convictions instigated this war have officially lost all meaning to those merely fighting to stay alive, and perhaps the same could even be said for those soldiers simply seeking excuses to indulge their most sadistic desires, represented in Jesse Plemons’ unnerving ultranationalist. As strong as Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny are in the two lead roles, he very nearly steals the entire film as the militant in red-tinted sunglasses who captures their entire crew at gunpoint, suspensefully toying with them in his deadpan voice. If Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore was the standout minor character in Apocalypse Now, then Plemons is the memorable equivalent in Civil War, playing a character who rests his entire life’s purpose upon the barbaric conquest of dehumanised enemies.

Jesse Plemons may very well steal the film with his deadpan sadism, playing easily the most terrifying character of the film.

Lee may claim to be desensitised, even suggesting that she would capture the death of her colleagues on camera if she found herself in such a situation, but she at the very least retains a humanity which so many others have clearly lost. By the time she arrives in Washington DC, Dunst has very much earned the major character shift that sees her break under pressure, yet still find the capacity for a rejuvenated selflessness. Not only this, but the cutaways to her team’s photographs throughout Civil War intersect her story arc here with formal aplomb, playing out a crucial turning point in an otherwise bombastic final set piece through a montage of silent, black-and-white stills. Remote objectivity is an impossible standard for any human to uphold in the face of severe trauma, yet after all we have witnessed in Garland’s gruelling wartime odyssey, the prospect of cynically detaching through media’s distancing filter regrettably looks a whole lot more appealing than the alternative.

Civil War is currently playing in cinemas.

Monkey Man (2024)

Dev Patel | 2hr 1min

Throughout the first two acts of Monkey Man, the only manifestations of the Kid’s childhood trauma come through splintered flashbacks, aggressively piercing the mental barrier he has placed between the past and present. They are just as disorientating as they are potent, triggering intense feelings of rage and grief at the sight of a familiar ring, or otherwise overcoming him with peace as he recalls the stories of Hindu gods his mother once read. Dev Patel’s handheld camerawork leans heavily into close-ups in these interludes, hazily singling out key details that have ingrained themselves in the Kid’s psyche, and yet which he must keep some emotional distance from if he is to exact clean vengeance against those responsible for his physical and psychological scars.

The fine control that Patel exerts over the non-linear structure of Monkey Man is an impressive feat for any first-time filmmaker, though the time he has spent acting under great directors such as Danny Boyle and David Lowery has no doubted imparted valuable lessons. Repeated images of corrupt police chief Rana Singh silhouetted against a burning village irrevocably binds the Kid to his fearsome nemesis, just as the recurring image of Hanuman the Monkey God is linked to the Kid himself, setting him on a spiritual journey from bloodthirsty retribution towards cathartic enlightenment.

Fragments of the past aggressively pierce the Kid’s psyche, binding him to feelings of fear, anger, and grief through sheer formal repetition.
Flashbacks often play out in extreme close-ups, offering both intimacy and a hazy disorientation.

The gorilla mask that the Kid wears as an underground fighter in the Tiger’s Temple may be the clearest representation of this, though when he opens a rift in his chest during a hallucinatory, spiritual awakening, Patel even more specifically evokes the iconography of Hanuman revealing his heartfelt devotion to gods Rama and Sita. Patel is wise to choose this moment as the reveal of the Kid’s full backstory, transcending mere exposition by marking it as a crucial turning point in his arc, and thus allowing him to stare his trauma in its face rather than let its intrusive fragments domineer him. All those shards of stray memories thus congeal into a pitiful portrait of corruption in modern-day India, recognising the Kid as a nameless avenger of not just his own family, but an entire caste of society that has been crushed by political oppressors.

Incredibly creative use of Hanuman the Monkey God as a symbol of the Kid’s journey, calling upon the imagery of him tearing open his chest.
For what is essentially a Hollywood action film, Patel’s work is extraordinarily spiritual, and in deep conversation with Hinduism’s core tenets.

The towering brothel that the Kid infiltrates to reach Rana becomes a magnificent metaphor for this ascension too, with each floor signifying distinct levels in a rigidly segmented social hierarchy, and respectively bringing our hero closer to shattering the fascistic branch of Hindu nationalism his archenemy serves. This movement is not to be confused with Hinduism as a religion, Patel is careful to illustrate, especially when the Kid aligns himself with a deeply spiritual community of Hijra – a third gender originating in India thousands of years ago, encompassing individuals who may be transgender, intersex, or eunuchs. Hinduism is an intricate belief system interlocked with an equally complex political landscape, and so it is a testament to Patel’s visual storytelling that both are weaved with such nuance into Monkey Man’s vibrantly textured setting, offering tangible stakes to the Kid’s brutal conquest of evil.

Endless creativity in the action set pieces much like John Wick, using a leaky aquarium as an obstacle that both combatants must contend with in a bathroom fight.
The camera often rotates in overhead shots, taking a gods-eye view of the Kid’s retribution and enlightenment.

Of course, a great deal of this also comes down to the sheer creativity and practicality of the visuals, destabilising the Kid’s world with overhead shots, canted angles, and slow-motion sequences. The settings are often as dynamically engaged with the action as the actors themselves, imposing obstacles such as a large aquarium slowly flooding a bathroom, and offering an array of improvised weapons in a kitchen where stoves, microwaves, and knives are wielded with gruesome resourcefulness.  While Patel keeps up an expeditious pace in his editing throughout Monkey Man, he also knows when to let his camera hold on longer takes and let his hand-to-hand fight choreography shine through, made all the more impressive by his dedication to performing his own stunts.

The Tiger’s Temple makes for a magnificent visual set piece, filtering a dirty golden light through the thick, humid air and often playing out the action in slow-motion.
The strip club inside the tower is defined by its soft purple tones, stylistically elevated above the lower-class levels below.
Emergency lights flood the elevator with red, heralding a climactic finale.

Patel’s direction continues to shine in his lighting’s vivid distinction of each location too, separating the humid, yellow atmosphere of the Tiger’s Temple from the dim purple ambience of a high-end strip club, and eventually even drenching the Kid in crimson as the tower elevator takes him to the end of his journey. There at the top, Diwali fireworks and an earthy red painting of Hanuman reigning over a battlefield become auspicious backdrops to his final confrontation, effectively rendering the Kid as a modern avatar of the Monkey God meeting his destiny. It is a rare thing to witness a first-time director meld such handsomely stylised visuals with mystical symbolism, yet by its marvellous conclusion Monkey Man has thoroughly proven Patel to be just as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it, crafting a Hindu allegory that envisions the righteous delivery of divine, cosmic justice upon India’s corrupt political landscape.

Hanuman makes one last appearance in the final scene, bringing the Kid’s journey full circle back to the Hindu myths that once inspired him.

Monkey Man is currently playing in cinemas.

Fallen Leaves (2023)

Aki Kaurismäki | 1hr 21min

In a cheap Helsinki supermarket, shelf stacker Ansa is let go for stealing expired food to supplement her meagre pay. Not too far away in the same city, depressed labourer Holappa is fired for drinking on the job, and booted from the shipping container dormitory that he shares with his blue-collar coworkers. There is no melodrama or heightened emotion surrounding these narrative beats in Fallen Leaves. They are facts of life, as fixed and unchangeable as those radio reports tracking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which constantly cast their relatively low-stakes problems against a backdrop of largescale warfare.

Still, Aki Kaurismäki remains sympathetic to those whose struggles are not notable enough to be broadcast internationally. The sickness that suffocates Ukraine similarly seeps over the Russian border into Finland, gripping its people in a constant state of unease with endless stories of death and destruction. The formal rigour of this news report motif is undeniable, using sheer repetition to grind us down into the same weary resignation that these characters have long inhabited, while occasionally breaking the dourness with beats of Kaurismäki’s trademark deadpan. When Ansa turns the radio on to set a romantic mood during her first proper date with Holappa, the grim Ukraine report that she tunes into instead makes for a darkly funny punchline, paying off on a long setup of news announcements begging to find some light in the mundane gloom.

Kaurismäki is a formalist above all else, and that is rarely so evident as it is in his use of the repeated radio reports on the Russo-Ukrainian War, constantly minimising the day-to-day problems experienced by Ansa and Holappa.

This is the glimmer of hope that Kaurismäki keeps alive throughout Fallen Leaves, despite the many good reasons these lovers are given to disregard it. At first, it is shyness that maintains a distance between Ansa and Holappa at the karaoke bar where their friends strike up conversation, leaving them to simply make eye contact across the room. Their second encounter at a tram stop where Holappa has passed out is only tangential, only seeing him wake up a few seconds after Ansa has boarded, and from there fate continues to make an enemy of their potential romance.

A string of unlucky coincidences and missed connections keep Ansa and Holappa apart for a long time, and continue to haunt them even once they finally meet.

When Ansa and Holappa finally do make it to a first date, an ill-timed gust of wind blows her phone number out of his hand and delays their reconnection, though Kaurismäki is not one to let them off so lightly without any blame either. Holappa’s alcoholism can take full credit for their eventual breakup, yet this also in turn spurs him to conquer his addiction. Even as bad luck and personal flaws continue to rear their head, perseverance keeps love alive, forging unlikely bonds in a world where random misfortune is the only escape from soul-crushing tedium.

Visually, this optimism frequently manifests as vibrant interior décor decorated with bold primary colours, like a Rainer Werner Fassbinder melodrama minus the expressive performances. Kaurismäki lets his framing speak for his characters where they are otherwise incapable, in one instance shooting Holappa with a yellow shirt and Ansa with a red blouse on either side of a dinner table, and then uniting their respective colours through an arrangement of flowers in the middle. Conversely, the distance between them is emphasised when they sit on either side of a red couch in awkward silence, imprinted against the blue wall of Ansa’s apartment.

Kaurismäki colours and blocking are minimalist but powerful, conveying rich character dynamics in the absence of expressive dialogue.

Quite significantly, the image of modern-day Finland that Kaurismäki constructs around these lovers is also one that is strained by a lingering Communist influence from the nation’s most powerful neighbour, imbuing Fallen Leaves’ setting with a timeless, retro quality. Though set in 2024, Ansa and Holappa are entwined in a mesh of eras – radios haven’t quite been replaced with televisions yet, mobile phones are notably primitive, and the movie posters that decorate theatres and bars advertise the 1960s works of Godard, Visconti, and Bresson.

This world of downtown Helsinki is trapped in a mix of past eras, splashing backdrops of classic movie posters up on walls as backdrops.

When our protagonists do finally enter a cinema, the screening of The Dead Don’t Die is notably out-of-place in Fallen Leaves as one of the few modern movie references, and yet it also falls in line with Kaurismäki’s admiration for the deadpan comedy of Jim Jarmusch. Not only is The Dead Don’t Die an odd choice as a lesser film in Jarmusch’s career, but the absurd comparison drawn by two other cinemagoers to Diary of a Country Priest and Bande à Part underscores the scene’s offbeat incongruency even further, with Ansa’s straight-faced review that she’s “never laughed so much” completing the hilariously ironic sentiment.

None of this dissonance is without purpose in Kaurismäki’s rigidly minimalist world though, locating Ansa and Holappa in a culture that cannot quite figure out its own identity. It is no wonder that every interaction in Fallen Leaves is so burdened with awkward uncertainty, moving conversations forward at a cumbersome pace. When pressed as to why he drinks, Holappa explains it is because he is depressed, and when asked why he is depressed, he links it back to his drinking. Circular reasoning leads to loops of self-degradation in these characters’ lonely lives, and so when Ansa realises that Holappa isn’t ready to break out of the miasma with her, she seeks comfort in the innocence of a stray, abandoned dog.

Fassbinder-like visuals with the vivid colours and framing, though Kaurismäki’s deadpan comedy couldn’t be further from Fassbinder’s melodrama.

These lovers may be set back by their own flaws, but the greater cosmic joke being played on them can’t be ignored, testing their willingness to fight for a sincere, patient love. That Ansa and Holappa both remain totally unaware of each other’s names right to the romantic, Chaplinesque end of Fallen Leaves speaks eloquently to their incredible will and intuition, rejecting their lonely destinies seemingly written out for them and fighting for their right to happiness. When the potential for authentic, selfless love is discovered in a world as unpredictably offbeat as Kaurismäki’s, the power to nourish it lies solely with those at its centre, stubbornly overcoming whatever fated obstacles may seek to challenge their most basic human need.

Fallen Leaves is currently playing in theatres.

May December (2023)

Todd Haynes | 1hr 53min

There is always something authentically human lost in performative imitations of reality, and no matter how much actress Elizabeth Berry tries to capture it in her twisted attempts at method acting, that missing element continues to elude her. The subject of her research in May December is former schoolteacher Gracie, who was caught twenty-three years ago sleeping with her student Joe and was consequently sentenced to prison. The fact that they have since gotten married and raised three children together does little to quell the nauseating discomfort of her manipulation, but if Elizabeth is to deliver an accurate portrayal of Gracie for her upcoming movie, then such judgements must be put aside.

Not that the creative results are necessarily worth the pain inflicted. In Todd Haynes’ eyes, both the art and the humanity it imitates are drained of their dignity, tragicomically warping the suffering of Gracie’s abused husband into superficial imagery. Even at Elizabeth’s subtlest, her shadowing of Gracie’s everyday movements is entirely intrusive, offering insights that she later records as voice memos describing her subject’s visual features and odd mannerisms. When she runs a Q&A at a local high school drama class, she explains her acting process that compels her to study humanity’s darkness and spontaneously give into its organic rhythms, though it isn’t until we see this in action that we truly appreciate the emptiness of her endeavour.

Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton all give psychologically rich performances, each concealing malice or trauma behind attractive, idyllic appearances,

It is especially in the pet shop storeroom where Gracie was first caught with Joe that Elizabeth finds herself overcome with that passion. As she leans back against the wall, she begins to pleasure herself, while Haynes silhouettes her in a dim blue light and slowly zooms his inquisitive camera in on her shallow re-enactment. For the sake of her own full-bodied immersion, some degradation of Gracie and Joe’s lived experience is required, crossing the line of good taste so that it may be offered up for mass consumption in cinemas and living rooms.

A slow, uncomfortable zoom in on Elizabeth as she reenacts the notorious storeroom seduction, absorbing herself in an extremely private affair.

Later, this blurring of identities extends to an illicit affair between Elizabeth and Joe, though one which she claims no personal investment in. His heartbreak is made all the more tragic by his gradual recognition of the innocence he lost to Gracie, and his desperate attempt to find a real connection with a woman his own age. When he asks Elizabeth what their intimacy actually means to her, her response is chillingly condescending, with Natalie Portman’s deadpan line delivery reinforcing the same blasé attitude that Gracie used to justify her paedophilic molestation twenty-three years ago.

“This is just what grownups do.”

As Portman begins to adopt Julianne Moore’s unassuming lisp and self-absorbed naivety, a parallel contrast emerges between their characters’ outward mannerisms and internal amorality, marking a prime achievement for both actresses. While 1950s Hollywood melodramas are typically Haynes’ main source of inspiration, the probing of unstable psyches here bears the distinct mark of Ingmar Bergman, and follows in the Persona lineage of films that obscure boundaries between strikingly similar women.

Haynes lays mirrors throughout his mise-en-scène, here using one in a shop change room to surround Elizabeth with Gracie on either side.

The mirrors that Haynes formally lays throughout his mise-en-scène develop this idea of doubles further, catching their reflections in evocative compositions that suggest a hint of illusory deception, and at times even psychological domination. Behind the neatly patterned wallpaper and lush piano score, dark undertones creep forward to underscore the malevolent artifice of the entire power dynamic, carefully constructed to frame Gracie as an innocent victim of the judicial system. Even though she asserts that it was Joe who first seduced her, we can’t help but notice the glint of self-recognition in her eyes when she goes out hunting, encounters a fox, and shares a silent moment of understanding with her fellow predator.

Gracie goes hunting, but pauses as she makes eye contact with a fox similarly searching for prey, not unlike her relationship with Elizabeth.

The frequent cutaways to Joe’s caterpillars are employed with even more acute purpose in May December, tracing them through their chrysalis stage and right to their emergence as monarch butterflies, though this time it is the young husband’s evolution which is bound to Hayne’s primal metaphor. As Joe witnesses his teenage children coming of age and relishing the freedom of youth, he mournfully begins to recognise how much of his own was stolen from him, and the immense betrayal he suffered at a trusted adult’s hands. The trauma hidden behind years of denial begins to break free, and his gradual escape from Gracie’s grip brings the same bittersweet liberation that he offers his butterflies.

Haynes’ butterfly cutaways work as an effective motif next to Joe’s journey, as he too begins to undergo a liberating transformation.

Of course though, the entertainment industry would never show such interest in a character of actual substance. Joe’s side of the story is simply not as scandalous as Gracie’s, and he is thus doomed to remain a supporting role in Elizabeth’s cheap, second-hand recount of their illicit affair, the facts of which she can’t quite manage to nail down. The information that Gracie’s embittered son from her first marriage provides about how she was sexually abused by her old brothers becomes the bedrock of Elizabeth’s research, providing a rational psychological explanation for his mother’s actions, but her complete denial of these events muddies the waters even further. Perhaps he is fabricating a story simply to earn himself a movie credit, or maybe it is Gracie who is lying to maintain the illusion of a perfect life – though ironically this lack of a tragic backstory makes her appear even less sympathetic, and her actions unjustifiably cruel.

May December belongs in the Persona lineage of films, blurring identities between two women with sinister undertones.

Either way, Elizabeth finds herself immensely frustrated over the lack of answers keeping her from getting to the heart of Gracie’s character, if there is a heart there at all. With no comprehensible motivation for this actress to cling to, all she is left to play with are hollow mannerisms and an all-too-suggestive snake to stroke as she finally reconstructs the pet store seduction in front of a camera. “It’s getting more real,” she insists after the director calls cut on the third take, though clearly her attempt to reconcile easily digestible entertainment with a complicated reality is futile. After all, the amiable masks that Elizabeth and Gracie wear to conceal their parasitic habits are no replacement for a genuine, empathetic understanding of humanity, or even art for that matter. Within May December’s strange duality of life and fiction, all that matters is the artificial image of feminine sensitivity projected by its two women, winning the unearned sympathy of neighbours and audiences alike through performances of astoundingly shallow proportions.

Elizabeth’s research of Gracie comes to feeble fruition, as she delivers a performance that nails the voice and mannerisms but is stripped of interiority.

May December is currently playing in cinemas.

Saltburn (2023)

Emerald Fennell | 2hr 7min

Whoever or whatever Oliver Quick may be in Saltburn, he is not human. He wears the skin of a lower-class outsider from a troubled family, but his instincts are sharp like a spider’s – or perhaps he is a moth banging up against a window, trying desperately to infiltrate the wealthy Catton family who he is staying with for the summer. “Lucky for you I’m a vampire,” he purrs to Venetia Catton as he grotesquely licks her period blood off his fingers, and when he suits up for an Oxford ball, a classmate lightly jokes that he’s almost passing for “a real human boy.” Perhaps his eccentric hosts sense some animalistic depravity in their son Felix’s new friend, though for the time being they are happy to keep him around like a trophy proving their own generosity.

Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman delivers yet another subversive interrogation of power and privilege, and yet Saltburn proves to be far more obscure in its formal construction than that tightly plotted revenge thriller, layering mysteries upon secrets within the titular country estate. With a strong set of creature metaphors at her disposal, Fennell weaves a monstrously sinister fable around Oliver, stealthily wandering through a maze not unlike that which sits in the Catton family’s enormous garden. To those souls unfortunate enough to reach its centre, a giant minotaur sculpture awaits, frozen in the act of ripping apart a victim as it proudly bears its naked manhood. The visual parallels between this mythical creature and Oliver in his truest form are striking – in the absence of wealth and social influence, sex becomes his greatest weapon, and clothes are shed to reveal the aggressive masculinity lurking beneath.

The convention and order of the Saltburn estate slips into perverse chaos.
Fennell illuminates her scenes with a David Fincher-style lighting setup – dim golden lamps and candles drenching these scenes with a haunting atmosphere.

Through Fennell’s elegantly dynamic camerawork, we too find ourselves trapped in these characters’ magnificent habitats, following behind them in three long tracking shots which formally mark our introduction to Oliver, our introduction to Saltburn, and the brilliantly twisted final shot of the film. Especially in the latter two, Fennell relishes the classical architecture and production design that could be straight out of Pride and Prejudice, traversing cavernous ballrooms and lavishly decorated corridors that essentially form a maze of their own.

The severely narrowed aspect ratio contributes to this claustrophobia too, making for some particularly disorientating compositions of an upside-down Oliver reflected in ponds and dinner tables, and wide shots that close in Saltburn’s walls around us. Within these opulent interiors, Fennell draws a haunting beauty from the dim, golden lighting of lamps and candles, setting us up for jarring shocks each time she switches to a blood-red wash that encases its residents in mortal peril.

One of Saltburn’s most striking compositions – perfect lighting, symmetry, framing, and yet totally disorientating.
Blood-red lighting encompasses the residents of Saltburn in madness, anger, and grief.

This danger does not simply emanate from Oliver though, as Fennell also prompts us to question whether the Cattons’ peculiar traditions and behaviour are truly as innocuous as they seem. From this angle, Saltburn appears to be in direct conversation with Jean Renoir’s class satire The Rules of the Game, underscoring the complete absurdity of the family’s black-tie dress code for dinner, and the strange request to remain cleanshaven so as not to incite Lady Elsbeth’s irrational fear of beards.

Rosamund Pike offers brilliant comic relief in this role, right next to Richard E. Grant’s maddeningly gleeful Sir James, though the greatest achievement here belongs to Barry Keoghan. Looking back at his collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos and Martin McDonagh, it seems as if his career of playing unconventional misfits has built to this unrelenting portrait of obsession, perversion, and manipulation. Whether at Oxford or Saltburn, it is impossible for Oliver to blend into crowds, though he doesn’t exactly try hard either. His choice to wear a pair of stag antlers at his Midsummer Night’s Dream birthday party is subtly symbolic, asserting his primal masculinity in stark opposition to the men and women who dress in fairy costumes. When his outward meekness isn’t shrinking him in the frame, Keoghan confidently dominates Fennell’s compositions, most prominently while seducing his hosts. Venetia may be the one luring him out into the gardens late at night, but as he lines up his facial profile behind hers in a close-up and whispers commands into her ear, the link between his physical and psychological influence visually manifests onscreen with invasive intimacy.

Saltburn marks a prime achievement for Barry Keoghan, who after many years of playing supporting roles takes the spotlight with disturbing relish.

If we are to believe his voiceover’s claims that such actions are genuine expressions of love, then we would be severely underestimating the depth of his inner emotional turmoil, and the extent to which it robs him of the control he desires. To make matters even more complicated, the Cattons still view him as a lowly child of the working class, and so he must make certain capitulations for the sake of his hosts’ egos and sensitivities. Felix and Venetia are happy to exploit his insecurity when they demand he strip to join them sunbathing, and later when he is tricked into performing a demeaning karaoke song, his resentment only continues to build.

With a narrow aspect ratio, shadows, and sharp lighting, Fennell composes a shot that could be from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.

Perhaps then Oliver’s love of Felix is not so much a romantic or sexual attraction, but a desire to inhabit his very being, and to access the privilege that comes with it. In this way, Saltburn’s intricate examination of power plays within a rigid social hierarchy bears many similarities to other contemporary class satires such as Parasite and The Favourite, though Fennell’s eccentric characters have nothing to hide but repulsive, hollow hearts. Some may mask it with lavish displays of charity, and others with a superficial subservience to their superiors, but as Saltburn reveals at the centre of its brilliant maze, this twisted game of exploitation will only be won by whoever is prepared to sink the lowest.

Saltburn is currently playing in cinemas.