Despite Alejandro González Iñárritu’s ability to weave together multiple storylines and characters in seamless and intimate ways, his need to create the absolute worst possible scenario at almost every turn can be frustrating, perhaps because it seems impossible that the absolute worst could happen to every one of his characters. But it is exactly this that makes his new film, Biutiful, devastating, incredible, and his finest work to date – there is a small set of characters centred on one man and his troubles, and the troubles are terrible and yet believable.
Anchoring the film is Javier Bardem, who proves himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. He plays Uxbal, a working class man living in a dingy apartment in Barcelona with his two young children. He makes a living coordinating the often-illegal work of recent immigrants: Africans who sell counterfeit merchandise on the streets, and Chinese who work in the small factory that makes the goods. Uxbal is also dying of cancer, with only a few months to live. He doesn’t tell anyone this, but instead continues to hold his life together by a few shaggy threads. He is a good father to his children, whose mother is bipolar and sleeping with his brother. He is not cruel or manipulative to the immigrant workers, but cutting corners on their survival leads to their destruction.
Bardem may carry the film on his shoulders, but he shifts that weight to Uxbal’s efforts to hide his illness while struggling to create a decent environment. Uxbal knows his time is short; he knows that his children’s lives will likely fall apart without him. Iñárritu fixes the camera on Uxbal for almost the entirety of the film, slowly sinking through each layer of this fascinating character; which makes for far more satisfying viewing than the constant narrative shifts at play in his previous films.
When the camera settles on Uxbal’s face, Bardem expresses the character’s huge responsibilities solely through the movement of his eyes. He has allowed the character to come in this doorway and settle through his entire body, in the hunch of his shoulders as he walks, and even his hands as his gives a precious stone to his children. Instead of perhaps imposing a script upon multiple actors, Iñárritu simply follows where Bardem takes Uxbal and the film. The intimacy of the film belies its length, which even at 150 minutes, hardly seems enough time to understand this complex and deeply flawed man.
Superhero movies never seem to disappear, especially as geeky young boys who love them come to the age where they can make films themselves. One particular theme of superhero movie that seems to be popular is the ‘everyman’ who attempts to don the mantle of his own hero, only to find his lack of superpowers a detriment (see Kick-Ass, Defendor, etc). Director James Gunn takes the most definite black comedic approach to this tale with the refreshing and off-the-wall Super.
Rainn Wilson plays Frank, a fairly ordinary, perhaps a bit too kind, short order cook whose recovering drug-addict wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon, in one of his finer performances). As he prays to find the answer, he apparently gets it through a strange late-night television show and comic book called the Holy Avenger: Frank will become a superhero. He will rid the city of its drug dealers and save his wife. Frank becomes the Crimson Bolt, a man dedicated to ridding the streets of drug dealers, paedophiles, and those who would cut in line.
Unlike previous movies of this ilk, there are no great heroic acts that will cause amaze and wonder. While Frank has some success, the beauty of this film lies in the absolute horror the viewer experiences in the realism of his endeavours. Kudos must go to the sound editor for the realism behind the various weapons and fist strikes Frank employs. As Frank spirals further into madness, he meets a strange young girl who finds his superhero antics a turn on, and becomes his sidekick, Boltie.
Ellen Page in this role pretty much steals the film, which is incredible considering the other strong performances. Her Libby is the obsessed fangirl gone completely wrong; a complete lack of decorum or sense of Frank’s utter madness makes her an even worse maniac than Frank. When Frank or Libby hurt someone, they are truly hurt; they do not immediately get back up or shake off a blow to the head. And yes, they are fighting criminals, but they are out of their depth, and things will not end up in a Hollywood-cliché ending. Gunn’s decidedly twisted sense of humor cranks up the story just far enough past the point of believability to make the viewer laugh at what they should not, and in doing so realise there is probably a bit of Frank in all of us: we would not understand the insanity of our behaviour, and we will not have the mental or physical capacity to face the consequences. And yet, we would still do it.
Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film The Housemaid revolutionised Korean cinema, giving it status on the world cinema stage that it had not had before. It also proved that the erotic thriller was one of the best generic models, able to combine mystery and sex in breathtaking ways. The 2010 remake directed by Im Sang-Soon was a big hit at Cannes this past May; the lead actress, Jeon Do-yeon, won great praise for her performance in the title role. She plays Eun-Yi, a young girl hired to be the nanny for an incredibly rich and incredibly attractive young couple who have one daughter and are expecting twins.
The wife, Haera, wants to have several children in order to continue her pampered and lazy lifestyle; the husband, Hoon, is hardly ever at home and seems perfectly content with a wife who is merely a mother to his children. One night, though, bored with his wife, Hoon comes to Eun-Yi’s room with a bottle of wine and sexual intentions, ones that the girl does not deny. All the while, they are spied by Mrs. Chan, the bitter and all-knowing housekeeper who inadvertently causes Eun-Yi’s destruction.
The first half of the film is pretty good; there are no surprises, but it looks beautiful and the actors play their typical but nonetheless interesting parts well. Tension is built, and the climax of the affair is believable. There is enough subtlety to keep the story interesting and, indeed, Jeon walks a fine line between innocence and ambition. Unfortunately, as soon as the affair begins, the film falls apart.
Erotic thrillers need to keep a few cards hidden to keep them interesting; the more the audience can see and/or predict, the less fun it is to watch. Haera’s evil mother arrives and sets upon destroying Eun-Yi in the most obvious and boring ways. Jeon never seems to be quite sure whether her character is genuinely in love, merely manipulative for money, or perhaps just crazy. The film does not seem to decide either, and the characters run rudderless. All the quiet brilliance of the original is lost. The erotic thriller is not new, nor is Korean cinema unknown. It is unclear what Im’s intention was with this remake, but unfortunately it fails.
Takashi Miike is not known for his subtlety. When his film Ichi the Killer premiered in 2001, the audience were given vomit bags (several of which, apparently, were used). He is also one of Japan’s most prolific filmmakers, often churning out more than one film a year for the past several years. It is not often, though, that he focuses on true historic events.
His latest film, 13 Assassins, looks to 19th century Japan, when an evil lord wreaked havoc across the Japanese countryside, using his power to torture, kill, and mutilate innocent citizens whenever it struck his fancy. One man, Dir Doi, decides he must be stopped and assembles a rag-tag group of men (and boys) from various clans in order to band together to kill the Lord, though they know that by doing so they risk several decades of chaos.
Miike’s films can usually be counted on for straightforward plots and lots of blood. Enough to fill a blood bank. As such 13 Assassins stands out as atypical. This is his Seven Samurai; the band bonds as they travel across the Japanese countryside, practicing the almost lost art of the samurai as the older men prepare the younger men for what is most likely their deaths in the name of justice. After the initial introduction of exposition (which seemed to confuse many), Miike focuses on the men and their initial small battles. But this is all builds up to the final battle, which takes up almost a third of the film’s running time.
At this point it feels much more like a Miike film. As the evil lord and his troops are trapped by fantastic walls that rise up in front of them like enormous gravestones, the band of assassins ready themselves to take on the 200 plus enemy guards. Of course, these are ridiculous odds, and in reality they would surely lose, but this matters not to Miike or the audience. The battle begins as soon as that first wall blocks the enemy’s path, and it does not let up for nearly 40 minutes. And yet, rarely is it boring.
Miike moves deftly between great battles, where one or two samurai slaughter 50 or so guards, great explosions, and one-on-one fights. It’s difficult to contemplate the level of choreography required to plan a scene like this, as Miike uses every available inch of the set. Arguably, the film could have been cut by about 15 minutes (though not necessarily from this tremendous battle scene), but Miike has a unique way of making even this historical violence both grossing and engrossing.
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010 – PART II (text) by Shelagh M Rowan-Legg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
