JFL

In terms of location and cinematography, Figures in a Landscape is an absolutely captivating project in which a straightforward story about two prisoners on the run from somewhere to anywhere dissolves into an existential parable about escape in all of its possible meanings and connotations – from prison, from guilt, from society and the system, and from oneself. Losey stated that he (or rather Shaw, who wrote the screenplay) intentionally separated the film adaptation from the specificity of the source work in terms of the historical and geographical setting in order to get to the substance of a universal treatise on the general levels of the situation involving the escape of two men who are different from each other across a land that is hostile to them in a number of respects.

This is just one big WTF, every second of which radiates an entirely distinctive creative and, at the same time and in equal measure, complete inability to competently express it in accordance with the principles and rules of the language of film and narrative. However, it is appropriate to note that all of the creative ambitions are limited to the space of a run-of-the-mill trash framework involving the commonplace motifs of punishment for a crime and the clash between good and evil. Nevertheless, the less you know about Dangerous Men, the more you will be astonished by the unexpected narrative alleys, or rather the gutters of incoherence into which the one-man crew Jahangir Salehi, hiding behind his moronic pseudonym John Rad, will lead you. With this feverish work, which he began shooting sometime in the 1980s but which was released only in 2005, Salehi/Rad secured a place of honour in the pantheon of irrational and clumsy purveyors of trash alongside Scot Shaw, Neil Breen, James Nguyen and Tommy Wiseau. After all, he shares with them not only a very “distinctive” way of handling cinematic means of expression, but also the chaotic mystery in which he shrouds himself with his delirious koans. So, there is nothing left to do but to believe him when he says that he is not only a self-proclaimed director, writer, poet and composer, but also an alleged former multimillionaire and architect from Iran, which he fled during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and started completely from scratch in the United States.

An epic film about personal identity and a moral drama about war.

For all of the whiners who have the need to point out that the Twilight saga has vampires and werewolves but isn’t horror, I have just two words: CGI, baby. Otherwise, Breaking Dawn – Part 2 is a magnificently goofy series finale and a masterful display of fanservice that, thanks to the final twist, manifests the “to have your cake and eat it” paradox. Cheapness and silliness are combined with WTF moments and spectacular violence, while fake emancipation shakes hands with idealised creepiness. However, all of this is transformed into an enchantingly exuberant experience thanks to the phenomenal atmosphere of the Twilight marathon held at the Aero cinema in Prague (more about that in the review of the first Twilight film).

Breaking Dawn – Part 1 is a wildly drawn-out case of milking the franchise and its fans for all they’re worth. In the context of a Twilight marathon with 150 female viewers who love it ironically, it is a wonderful experience (more about that in the review of the first Twilight film). Bonus points for unexpectedly powerful horror throughout the pregnancy storyline.

This is my new peak viewing experience at the cinema (and I’ve had more than a few of those). I definitely got a diametrically different impression of Twilight when watching it alone at home. The ideal first time to see it was 14 years after its premiere, when a Twilight marathon was held at the Aero cinema in the company of 210 female viewers (and about 20 guys), and it was incredibly amazing. That distance in time was the essential aspect, as the audience comprised people for whom these films were formative for various reasons, so those people still like them, but they now watch them with a sense of amused detachment. Mainly, however, they came to the cinema to enjoy them together, with all the good, the dubious, the bad and the absurd that the whole franchise involves – so, this is not a guilty pleasure, but an ironic cult flick in its most concentrated form. The first fraction of a second, when the Summit Entertainment logo began to appear on the screen, elicited the first explosion of applause and squeals, which was repeated with the entrance of each key character. Contrary to my unknowledgeable assumptions, the biggest ovation was received not by Edward (though it was huge), but for the two fathers, which brought the powerful daddy (or even DILF) storyline of the whole movie into focus. There was also the mass shouted recitation of iconic lines, the choral crooning of songs, the scene in the woods with the echo of recited dialogue throughout the screening room, and the cheering during the vampire baseball game that would make the World Series envious. At the same time, however, every absurd scene, every overwrought expression of the actors and every seemingly peripheral element was accompanied by volleys of laughter and loud reactions and ironic comments. It may sound sacrilegious, but that’s how I somehow imagine the initial spontaneous atmosphere at early screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show before the interactions with that ancestral cult movie were codified. There was nothing organised here. Rather, it was just the pure immediate enthusiasm of a shared experience and the enjoyment of the togetherness of an audience on the same wavelength. Today, Twilight thus transcends the pigeonholes of pop, camp, mainstream and fringe, and despite the dismay of all kinds of purists, elitists and macho fanboys, it remains an essential cinematic phenomenon. PS: #TeamAlice

Nagisa Oshima always focused more on the meanings and ideas that he expressed in his films than on the craft of filmmaking. Therefore, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence can in some ways seem unfocused, drawn-out and even haphazard in places, especially today. However, that doesn’t mean that it can’t have an effect on viewers. Instead of spectacular displays of war, such as battle scenes and troop movements, Oshima made a war movie that focuses on the very nature of human conflict, as well as on the near impossibility of resolving it. The setting of a POW camp during the war in the Pacific enables him to develop several parallel and interrelated themes that go far beyond a specific place and time. The film’s central character is the interpreter Lawrence (Tom Conti), who is supposed to mediate contact between the warring parties and through whom the theme of understanding is developed in the sense of mutual sympathy, as well as mediation of dialogue. His work is fatally sabotaged by systems that dictate the order, rules and values of nations and their individual citizens. Through the context of war, the essence of which is destructive chaos, the concept of order proves to be utterly absurd. The anarchist redeemer Celliers (David Bowie) stands as the antithesis of these influences, which the narrative manifests in the characters of the guards and captured officers. Though the insertion of Celliers’s flashback into an otherwise linear narrative may seem clumsy and heavy-handed, it is absolutely essential for Oshima’s web of ideas. On the one hand, it shows that the two sides, riled up by propaganda and lifelong indoctrination, have more in common than they are willing to admit. They are essentially based on systematised and institutionalised cruelty, which strips people of their individuality and forms them into uniformed units that do not challenge the dictated order and status quo. At the same time, however, it illustrates that real heroes are not so fearless and flawless, and that they also struggle with the shadows and wounds of their past transgressions. A true hero is not just someone who has welcomed the deliverance brought by war from the oppressive shackles of the past and the relationships that he left behind at home, but rather a person who defies the system and, despite the rules of that system, shows his humanity, or rather a piece of his inner self. Throughout the film, Oshima emphasises such minor miracles of humanism in an inhumane system. Whether it’s the defiant actions of Major Celliers, the effort to understand and know Lawrence, Captain Jonoi’s longing for touch and freedom, or simply Sergeant Hara’s cunning yet kind Christmas gesture. But they have all been victims of men who think they are right, while also being guilty of sometimes thinking that they themselves are right. Throughout the course of the narrative, Oshima slowly reveals, from various points of view, the depressing tragedy of individuals caught up in a ruthless system, whether that’s war or a hierarchical society. All the more powerful then is the final line of the film, which sums up all of the above in a simple yet emotionally devastating gesture of understanding and belonging, with a touch of humanity that bridges all dictates of nations, ranks, hierarchies and the winning and losing sides.

Through the Quay brothers’ lens, the central building of the school becomes a labyrinth of unmappable dimensions, in whose dead, dusty interiors the identity of a person is transformed through repetitive actions into a machine devoid of personality. Or rather, that is the institution’s purpose, which is, however, undermined by the repressed desires and instincts of everyone present, particularly the pair of sibling teachers. The Quays build the narrative of their surreal tale around the myth of the chosen one, who in this case is supposed to be the perfect servant. However, he will bring about the ruin of the institute and liberate its sibling pair of leaders from the shackles of perpetual service. The above-mentioned storylines emerge only for a moment as glimpses of rationality from a dream woven by a creative duo of melancholic rag-and-bone men who are fascinated by the patina of extinction on the objects they collect, as well as by how those objects waste away and reveal their cadaverous nature even more in their interactions with the living. Institute Benjamenta can thus take viewers back to their own memories of the dingy interiors of adolescence. It evokes the emotions experienced during a summer spent exploring the nooks and crannies of their old grandmother’s house, where all of the objects covered in a musty patina evoke both fear and hypnotic fascination. Though the film clearly deserved the largest possible audience, the exceptional screening at the Aero cinema, whose large screening room hosted only a handful of scattered viewers, was the absolutely ideal space for Institute Benjamenta to make a flawless impression. That is also partly because it is a film that you can doze off to, as it splendidly stimulates the dreaming mind, so it is wonderful to wake up to it and look around to see where you are in the moment.

A beautifully fragile narrative about sharing loneliness, uprootedness and existential uncertainty in the midst of excessive affluence. Lost in Translation is a film about superficiality that lets us look beneath the surface and discover beauty there. It is also two hours in the company of someone you laugh at a little at the beginning and who by the end you feel will always be a part of your life, even if you never see them again.

In the hands of Tony Scott, making his directorial debut, the screenplay for a banal vampire one-act becomes a captivating audio-visual ode to eternal beauty. Scott was given a feature-length project for the first time and he turned the opportunity into an absolute exhibition of his style, shaped not only by his work on commercials, but also during the early days of his career with his brother Ridley in the youthful British indie-experimental scene. The Hunger is an impressionistic collage of fetishistically formalistic vignettes. It jumps from one moment to parallel and retrospective scenes, but it mainly enchants with wide-angle close-ups of the seductive faces and necks of not only the central trio of the dream ensemble of actors. Most of the film fittingly takes place in ostentatiously lit interiors that intentionally give the impression of artificially constructed mausoleums, enveloping the characters in the coldness of the ages as they yearn in vain to overcome the ephemeral nature of life, time and desire. Scott’s formalistic signature distils the essence of every individual moment and imprints it into the film, whether it’s a ravenous vampire attack, passionate lovemaking or merely dialogue laden with the tension of mutual attraction (the passage at the piano with Lakmé by Delibes holds a place of honour in the audio-visual erotica hall of fame). In the end, the main vampire is thus not so much the character portrayed by Catherine Deneuve, but the medium of film itself, which, through Tony Scott’s signature style, preserves the fleeting beauty of these moments in seductively undead perfection. ____ PS: Watching this on the big screen at Bio Oko was ecstasy for a cinephile.