Category: Must-See / Masterpiece

Denis Villeneuve | 2hr 46min

“Power over Spice is power over all,” chants an unseen Sardauker priest in the opening prologue of Dune: Part Two, though what exactly that signifies varies drastically depending on who wields it. For the native Fremen, Spice is a key component of everyday products, while its value as the rarest commodity in the universe guarantees wealth and status to whichever Great House rules Arrakis. As for Paul Atreides, its implications are far more mystical. It is through Spice that he is granted the prescience to see himself leading a Holy War as a Messiah destined to lead the Fremen towards liberation, as well as the means through which he may control an even greater resource – the zealous faith of millions.

As tremendous as Denis Villeneuve’s epic achievement was in the first instalment of Dune, it is clear with the context of Part Two just how much of that was simply setting up Paul’s subverted monomyth, where we witness his evolution into one of cinema’s great antiheroes. Lawrence of Arabia is the clearest comparison to draw given its challenging of a ‘white saviour’ who leads foreign civilisations through unforgiving deserts and into battle, though The Lord of the Rings trilogy seems more fitting. When entering production, both Peter Jackson and Villeneuve were respectively met with the obstacle of adapting ‘unfilmable’ material, but with sharpened instincts for strong visual storytelling and a recognition that such expansive narratives cannot be confined to a single movie, both also defied the scepticism of critics.

To draw the similarities closer, the foundations of these grand narratives are rooted even deeper than Frank Herbert or J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing. These are stories of theological significance, interrogating notions of spirituality through symbols of prophecies, resurrections, and salvation, especially with Dune framing Paul as a saviour descended from the skies of Arrakis to cleanse the world – or the universe – of evil.

Timothee Chalamet’s return in this role only continues to prove why he is one of the most promising actors of his generation as well, mirroring Anakin Skywalker’s descent into darkness, though with a far firmer grip on his character than Hayden Christensen. Beautifully fragmented dreams of the war and starvation he will wreak haunt him in ethereal slow-motion, cautioning against his journeying south, and yet the pull of fate eventually proves to be too strong. By the time he is standing upon platforms and delivering rousing speeches to followers and enemies, his voice has shifted down to a deeper, gravelly register not unlike the Baron’s, and he exudes a megalomania that leads us to mourn the humbler Paul we met in Part One.

Villeneuve’s build to this apotheosis is carefully paced in Part Two, confronting Paul with a series of challenges he must complete to meet his destiny. The iconic sandworm ride arrives about an hour into the film as his first major milestone, and Villeneuve doesn’t waste its potential as a defining moment of his directing career, anxiously building anticipation as currents of sand ripple through the desert like waves before it is kicked up into a furious, dusty tempest. The lack of detail in Herbert’s book around how one rides these sandworms gives Villeneuve the freedom to creatively imagine the act with hooks and ropes, bringing a tactility to the scene that is magnified by the camera’s immersion in the thick of the action, while only occasionally cutting back to the Fremen who distantly watch in reverent awe. The guerilla warfare Paul wages with them against invading Harkonnen forces similarly gives shape to their customs and practices, as even with limited resources, their stealthy manipulation of the natural terrain allows them to easily overpower their armoured enemies.

Freed from Part One’s pressure of setting up this epic narrative, it is clear in instances like these that Villeneuve feels more comfortable experimenting with a greater sense of visual wonder and terror. Silhouettes set against blinding white landscapes and close-ups of Spice glistening upon the sand are carried over here from the first film, while the burnt orange magic hour lighting calls back to the radiation polluted Los Angeles of Blade Runer 2049, yet Dune: Part Two especially excels when it begins exploring more far-flung lands. The fundamentalists who live in the south of Arrakis are acutely distinguished from their northern counterparts, not only by their barren plains of dark rock, but Villeneuve also captures their culture of devout worship in a dazzling overhead shot that loses their Paul in a sea of pale headdresses.

Even more astonishing though is our extended stay on Giedi Prime, home of House Harkonnen, whose desaturated exteriors are as splendidly severe as their brutalist interior architecture. Where Arrakis’ skies are distinguished by their double-eclipsed, crescent sun, here the land is cast under a black sun, absorbing any colour that falls beneath its rays. Cinematographer Greig Fraser’s decision to shoot these scenes with a black-and-white infrared camera accomplishes an eerie monochrome aesthetic, and stylistically sets the austere tone for the psychopathic, reptilian Feyd-Rautha, youngest nephew of the Baron. Within the gladiator arena filled with bloodthirsty spectators, he viciously slaughters a trio of survivors from House Atreides for his birthday celebration, and from there is effectively set up by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood as a foil for Paul in contest over the sovereignty of Arrakis.

After playing Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, Austin Butler couldn’t have chosen a more different character to follow that up with than Feyd-Rautha, stripping away his natural charisma and replacing it with pure derangement. He stands among the strongest of the supporting cast, right next to Rebecca Ferguson whose dark journey as Lady Jessica in Part Two mirrors Paul’s Messianic ascension, and Javier Bardem whose comic beats as Stilgar miraculously do not hamper the weight of Villeneuve’s drama. Zendaya meanwhile leaves slightly less of an impression as Chani, though it is Christopher Walken who delivers the weakest performance of the lot, lacking the presence needed to play the Emperor.

Still, each of these parts play an integral role in Villeneuve’s strategic manoeuvring of his pieces towards a roaring climax, supplemented by a score from Hans Zimmer that intrepidly builds on the war cries and blaring electronic orchestrations from Part One. As the Emperor’s enormous ship drifts over Arrakis, Villeneuve’s low angle anxiously gazes up at its metallic underside distorting reflections of the mountains below like an ominous warning of colonial subjugation, and leads into an explosive battle which has us questioning Dune’s hazy divide between good and evil. So brilliant is Villeneuve’s direction here though that the smaller-scale duel which follows can’t help but feel like a step down in stakes, and perhaps would have been better positioned earlier as part of the rising tension.

If the Dune series is to end here with a gutting fulfilment of Paul’s hero’s journey, then it would at least be a complete story unto itself, though Villeneuve’s teasing of Dune Messiah certainly remains a tantalising prospect. His ability to build on existing science-fiction material was already evident in Blade Runner 2049, and now his work committing Herbert’s unfathomably vast imagination to film additionally demonstrates his own, pushing the limits of big-budget spectacle to extraordinary lengths. When it comes to fully realising its elemental iconography and grand narrative on a cinema screen, Dune’s insurmountable parable of fanatical hubris deserves nothing less.

Dune: Part Two is currently playing in cinemas.

Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1hr 15min

Caught in the transition from silent to sound film, Carl Theodor Dreyer constructs a peculiar aberration of a horror film in Vampyr, absorbing us into a waking nightmare that only occasionally disrupts its eerie quiet with isolated lines of dialogue. Though it is a work of primal, symbolic imagery, it still presents exposition to us through intertitles, lifting passages from the book that occult fanatic Allan Gray is given at the start of the film – “The Strange History of Vampires.” Accounts of these creatures’ enslaved victims and mortal weaknesses are divulged here, guiding Allan through a supernatural conspiracy located in the castles and villages of rural France, and weaving an astoundingly cryptic allegory of European fascism.

Still, Vampyr cannot be so easily reduced to its plot or politics, both being relatively minimal compared to Dreyer’s hallucinatory dreamscape of shadows and shapes. While directors like James Whale and Tod Browning were establishing genre conventions within 1930s Universal monster movies, Dreyer’s horror was holding his audience at an obscure distance, calling on existential fears of violated self-agency repressed deep in our subconscious. If any stylistic comparison is to be made, then Vampyr draws on a heavy influence from F.W. Murnau’s silent expressionism, referencing the Gothic iconography of Nosferatu and traversing intricate sets in steady, measured camera movements like Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Conversely, the dark spirituality interrogated here would also prove foundational to Ingmar Bergman’s severe minimalism a couple of decades later, sinking the warped souls of humanity into a lifeless, misty greyscale.

As for Dreyer himself, Vampyr marks an odd follow-up to The Passion of Joan of Arc, shifting from an aesthetic primarily consisting of close-ups to intricate wide shots composed with haunting precision. Interiors come alive with dancing shadows cast by invisible beings, while spoked wheels, curved scythes, and clawed angels imprint geometric shapes on giant canvases of negative space. Being shot on location in the pastoral commune of Courtempierre, much of the architecture here is authentically carved from stone and wood, and the sparsely patterned wallpaper of fleur-de-lis subtly infuses the setting with an air of historic French nobility too.

Even Dreyer’s characters frequently appear ornamental to his mise-en-scène, striking vivid poses and expressions in true silent cinema fashion. Our two main villains, the vampire Marguerite Chopin and the ghostly Lord of the Manor, are both withered old crones preying on the vitality of youth, which Dreyer archetypally represents here in the innocent Léone and her virginal white robes. After she is found wandering the castle grounds in a daze with a pair of bite marks on her neck, she begins acting erratically, baring her teeth in a sinister grin as her gaze mysteriously drifts across the ceiling. For our leading man Allan, it is his wide, curious eyes that capture our attention, and which also become the filter through which Vampyr’s second half is distorted into surreal visions of skeletons and corpses.

It is here that the influence on Bergman becomes even more apparent, particularly in Allan’s nightmarish discovery of his own body in a coffin which mirrors a strikingly similar dream in Wild Strawberries. Dreyer’s avant-garde experimentations express a deep mortal terror, lifting our hero outside of his body through an eerie double exposure effect, and directly taking his point-of-view from inside a coffin as he is carried to a grave and buried.

If there is any hope to be found in this bleak scenery, then it is smothered by the dense, grey clouds observed in Dreyer’s formal cutaways, holding back the daylight from reaching the village. Only when Allan eventually drives a large, metal stake through Marguerite’s heart do sunrays begin to pour through, beckoning him across a foggy river with a rescued Léone to a bright clearing on the other side. At the end of a long, dubious path of existential horrors, Allan finds love, heroism, and salvation, and yet it is only by exploring his nightmares that any of this was made possible to begin with. Whether Dreyer’s horror is to be interpreted as a political allegory, a spiritual fable, or merely a hypnotic progression of expressionistic images, Vampyr is designed to lull us into the same impressionable state as its victims, eerily calling upon our own subconscious desire for complete, psychological submission to the darkness.

Vampyr is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the Blu-ray can be purchased on Amazon.

Pier Paolo Pasolini | 1hr 38min

Though Pier Paolo Pasolini imbues Teorema’s structure with the same rigidity as the bourgeoisie’s arbitrary social conventions, his fleeting cutaways to Mt Etna’s chaotic, elemental landscapes are never far away. The volcano is a natural catalyst of transformation and destruction, with its fissures blowing sulphurous steam across slopes of black dust and threatening to erase any semblance of social order within its reach. It wreaks turmoil and madness, both predating and outlasting the entire span of time that humans have lived on Earth. When a mortal being truly grasps a force as primordially unfathomable as this, the effects are wildly unpredictable, though the entropic family portrait that Pasolini paints here captures the complexity of such a world-shifting spiritual experience with mystifying acuity.

In the case of Teorema’s lonely aristocrats, it is not the secrets of God’s earthly creation which they must grapple with, but rather a mysterious figure who seems to come from another realm altogether. The Visitor’s eyes are a bright blue that seems to pierce the defences of whoever gazes into them, and at times he is even accompanied by a blinding sunlight forming a halo behind his head. The ease with which he falls into the family’s life is surprisingly intimate, but also offers them a strange emotional healing from their private insecurities.

When Emilia the maid attempts suicide with a gas hose, the Visitor rescues and consoles her. As Pietro the son lies in bed at night, his new roommate soothes his fears. Outside on the grass, he approaches the sexually frustrated mother Lucia sunbathing in the nude and wraps her in his arms. The immature young daughter Odetta invites him into her virginal white room, opening herself up to new experiences. And finally, the ailing father Paolo finds a comforting peace in his guest’s presence, as both walk along a misty river and talk among wild, overgrown bushes.

These are not merely innocent encounters, but Pasolini connects these characters’ spiritual awakenings to physical self-discoveries through explicit sexual seductions. As a result, each family member is individually bound to parallel journeys, methodically unfolding in the same, formulaic sequence established in the first act, and referenced in the film’s title Teorema – or ‘theorem’ in English.

Following the announcement of the Visitor’s imminent departure, it is according to this order that Pasolini subsequently moves through their confessions in their respective locations. They have all faced the transmutation of their own souls, and now all they can do is contemplate the irrelevance of their old lives, and the uncertainty of their futures. “I no longer even recognise myself,” Pietro reflects in his bedroom. “I was like everyone else, with many faults, perhaps, mine and those of the world around me. You made me different by taking me out of the natural order of things.”

Out on the lawn, Lucia reveals the “real and total interest” the Visitor filled her life with during his stay, and inside Odetta expresses thanks for helping her grow up and explore her sexuality. As for Paolo, who has always believed “in order, in the future, and above all in ownership,” this guest has destroyed everything he understands about himself and the world. The only way he can imagine rebuilding his identity would be through “a scandal tantamount to social suicide,” separating himself from the materialism and ego of the modern world to seek a deeper truth in his existence.

As for Pasolini’s stance on the sanity of it all, he approaches the matter with both delicate consideration and savage criticism. This wealthy family have been living a superficial lie for many years, consumed by worldly distractions and capitalist privilege, and so cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini infuses these scenes at their Milanese estate with a pristine fragility. Characters are blocked in rigorous arrangements worthy of paintings as they lounge on the lawn and seat themselves symmetrically around the dinner table, though these meticulous visuals carry a strange tension with Pasolini’s naturalistic, handheld camerawork. The stylistic contrast is unsettling, subtly detaching the family from the reality of the working class witnessed in the opening scene’s documentary footage, while containing them within a dream of sepia filters and ethereal green hues weaved through the mansion’s gates, lawn, cars, and décor.

Not that the extremity of their spiritual conversion is any less insane than the absurdity of their bloated privilege. Pasolini heavily implies that these nobles are so emotionally repressed they may simply be confusing the ecstasy of intercourse for divine revelation, further suggesting that the only two forces capable of tearing down oppressive class structures are sex and God – or at least, the unadulterated belief in them. Theological art and texts thus become ornamental in Teorema’s satire, displacing Ennio Morricone’s gloomy jazz score with Mozart’s haunting Requiem, and pondering Bible verses in contemplative voiceovers. Even here though, Pasolini is quoting the Book of Jeremiah to consider religion’s erasure of identity through sexual metaphors.

“You have seduced me, O Lord, and I have let myself be seduced. You have taken me by force, and you have prevailed. I have become an object of daily derision, and all mock me.”

On one level, Pasolini is adopting the transcendent awe of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s films, gazing at impossible miracles of fasting, healing, and levitation performed by Emilia when she returns to her hometown. As the only main character here who belongs to the working class, she alone has the capacity to truly perceive and absorb the sacred, being unattached to the bourgeoisie’s material lifestyle. Her eventual sacrifice through live burial and self-immolation is even shot with an astounding beauty against the orange Italian sunset, capturing a glimpse of the sacred as she humbly resigns her body to the Earth.

Pasolini’s rigorous blocking of the family around Odetta’s catatonic state also visually alludes to the tragic funeral of a devoted believer in Dreyer’s Ordet, but there is no profound resurrection to be found here. The rest of this newly inspired family is as lost as ever, seeing Lucia aimlessly search for fulfilment through affairs with younger men, and Pietro express his lustrous longing for the absent Visitor through abstract painting. Art may be elevated in the eyes of upper-class society, but the son’s internal self-worth is thoroughly degraded as he recognises the lowliness and misery of any honest creator.

“Nobody must realise that the artist is a poor, trembling idiot, a second-rate hack who lives by taking chances and risks, like a disgraced child, his life reduced to the absurd melancholy of one who lives debased by the feeling of something lost forever.”

This extends further to the other members of this family who now spend their lives searching for an irrecoverable connection to a higher purpose, though perhaps Paolo understands the insanity of it more than anyone. Driven mad by his own empty existence, he enters a train station and strips himself completely nude, before handing the entire factory over to his workers. A victory is secured for Pasolini’s Marxist politics, returning the means of production to the industrial proletariat, while the black, desolate dunes of Mt Etna which have appeared intermittently throughout Teorema beckon a demented Paolo away from civilisation.

Unfortunately, whatever secrets the ancient volcano holds are inaccessible to this former capitalist, whose renunciation of all material possessions has only exposed his own hollowness. He runs through these landscapes in agony, as if trying to find some justification for his total sacrifice, but there is no power great enough to heal those souls eroded by pride and entitlement. Finally seeing themselves for what they are, all the bourgeoisie of Teorema can do is scream into a void that even God dare not touch, devolving into a state of repulsive, primal desperation that Pasolini knows can never be fulfilled.

Teorema is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.

Sidney Lumet | 2hr 4min

Over the course of a few hours on one hot summer day, crowds congregate around the First Brooklyn Savings Bank in New York City, with journalists and television crews eventually joining the mix. Inside, a failed heist has turned into a police stand-off, with the two robbers taking the entire building hostage, and incidentally providing a bit of light entertainment for the masses. A pizza delivery guy milks his time in the spotlight when he brings lunch around, and the head teller excitedly flirts with the cameras while being used as a human shield, momentarily putting aside the present danger to feed her ego.

It appears for a time that Sonny, the brains behind the operation, doesn’t mind the attention either. Despite being out of his depth in this robbery gone wrong, he quickly learns that many viewers see him as a hero of the common man, railing against the police and throwing cash out to feverish onlookers. A small riot starts as they burst through the barricades, undermining the police’s attempts to control the situation, and yet media sensationalism is an unwieldy beast. When a more complicated portrait of Sonny begins to emerge, revealing a man desperately seeking money for his transgender wife’s gender affirming surgery, audiences aren’t quite sure how to reconcile that with their preconceived notions. The breaking news story soon becomes solely about his queerness, and the praises once thrown his way become nasty jabs. There is no regard here for the figure at the centre of it all, rich with flaws and personal struggles. Looking in from the outside, he is just the latest television character to capture the fleeting interest of the public.

This is not the perspective Sidney Lumet decides to take in Dog Day Afternoon though. The real events upon which the film is based are readily available in historical records, while this fictional interpretation lends a greater sensitivity to those trapped inside the bank. The false confidence that Sonny and his friend Sal initially project dissipates almost instantly when the third part of their trio, Stevie, nervously backs out and leaves them stranded. They have clearly never done anything like this before, caving a little too easily to the demands of their hostages and even developing somewhat friendly relationships with them. These are not the heroes nor sick-minded villains that the media would like to believe – merely short-sighted victims of their own poor decisions.

The uneasy nuances of these characters offer a wealth of rich material for both Al Pacino and John Cazale to deliver two standout performances as well. In Cazale’s case, Dog Day Afternoon would be the second-last film of his short career before passing away in 1977, though he makes every minute of his screentime count as the nervous, simple-minded Sal. He partly serves as comic relief from time to time, telling Sonny that the country he would want to escape to most of all is Wyoming. Most of all though, we feel pity towards this man who takes offence at being mislabelled a homosexual, and who we come to realise is too easily exploited by both the police and his own friend.

The true tour-de-force of acting in Dog Day Afternoon comes from Pacino though, who in 1975 was coming off a hot run of the first two Godfather films and Serpico. His portrayal of Sonny treads a fine balance between the deep, internalised performances of his early career and the loud personas he would play further down the line, generating an instability that cuts through layers of insecurity and anger. His incendiary evocation of the Attica Prison riot which saw police carelessly mow down hostages and inmates alike becomes a powerful catch cry as he furiously paces outside the bank, inciting a righteous anger in the anti-authoritarian crowds.

Still, the longer we sit with him inside, the more we understand the sensitivity of those wounds being picked at by the mass media. His trans wife Leon has been hospitalised for attempted suicide and now, despite Sonny’s good intentions, wants nothing to do with these criminal plans, while his estranged cis wife Angie laments his stubbornness and abandonment of their family. Even his mother is brought in to help the situation, though she is insistently blind to his culpability, blaming everyone in his life but him for his own mistakes. Sonny may be reckless, but he does not lack self-awareness, as Pacino’s face slowly breaks down with guilt, self-loathing, and a tragically weakened resolve over the course of the film.

On top of all that, Lumet never quite lets us forget the physical factors of the environment that Sonny must contend with, observing the sweat form on his face from both the humid summer heat and the sheer stress of the stand-off. Though Lumet is picking up a few techniques from Hitchcock with the long camera takes and tight, suspenseful editing, he is largely committed to the authenticity of the piece. By and large, Dog Day Afternoon does not draw the same breathtaking beauty out of its New York location shooting as we see in The French Connection or Taxi Driver, and yet there is still a cumulative effect in the grounded urgency of its gritty aesthetic and pacing, pulling a highly-strung Pacino into an uncontrollable whirlpool of rapidly escalating stakes.

Paramount to Lumet’s realism is the pained sympathy he has for these complicated characters, both naively believe that some happy ending is still possible at the end of it all. When the two men finally secure a deal that will let them fly out of the country, one of their hostages takes the time to comfort a nervous Sal who reveals he has not been on a plane before. It is a small twinge of unexpected kindness in an otherwise tense sequence, enveloped by Lumet’s cutting between Pacino’s anxious face and the suspicious police activity unfolding around him.

Dog Day Afternoon’s denouement unfolds rapidly from there – a fatal shot to Sal’s head ends his life before he even knows what’s going on, while Sonny is arrested at gunpoint. The shame we have seen him bear throughout the film is nothing next to the guilty anguish on his face as he watches Sal’s body taken away, recognising the role he played in the death of his far more innocent friend. Within this great tragedy though, Sonny’s delicate story of queer love and financial desperation was never going to survive the noise of sensationalist journalism. All that is left is a cheapened legacy embedded in New York’s quirky local history, destined to be recalled by strangers as that bizarre, failed bank heist they spent one hot, summer afternoon following on television.

Dog Day Afternoon is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, or Amazon Video.