DaViD´82

Tornatore professes his love of movies. Ennio composed background music with a capital M. The story is set in Sicily and concerns everything from love, through humor, to drama. And no, this isn’t Cinema Paradiso. If anything, though, this is more like Cinema Paradiso 1½, but with a hustler who, for a fee, does camera casting of villagers for big movie studios. The Star Maker is perfectly directed as only Tornatore knows how. For instance, that several minute long, continuous camera ride through the village when everybody was learning the final dialogs from Gone with the Wind, and so even the word perfect isn’t right for this. Or else... No, I’d rather not get into that... Tornatore is simply on his best form here and the movie says much more about his qualities than any enthusiastic review could.

In some places this was without exaggeration simply genius, but in other places it was unbelievably dumb. Because it’s just too overcomplicated, so more than once it finds itself having to talk its way out of situations along rather convoluted paths. However, in acting and technical terms, no complaints. And it’s still a marvelous crime movie, despite its defects, no doubt about that.

Is it really necessary to repeat the same old interviews, while almost ignoring the opinions of the other camp? Would it really have been such a problem to go a little under the surface and into wider perspectives instead of a hundred versions on “oh, you know, he was like this and like that and used to sit over there on that bench next to Pepa Mažňák"? It doesn’t matter what my opinion of Palach’s act (he burned himself alive in Wenceslas Square in Prague, Czech Republic) is (ok, my opinion lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes most presented in the reviews), but it seems sad that nobody in this country is capable of creating such an “historic event" objectively. Lucky that Mariusz Szczygiel did it for us.

I understand why it's so long, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't gladly give it back to Melville to cut. And it needed Ventura instead of Bourvil, no one can tell me otherwise.

During the Occupation by the Germans, a single young attractive atheistic mother with lesbian inclinations learns about God through the spiritual guidance of a young and attractive priest. And of course she falls in love with him. The cast wouldn’t be complete without characters like a Christian (non)informer or (non)prostitute in Vichy who plays the game on all the sides, just to be safe. Simply a black and white slow passing movie where the characters are not at all black and white with a strong final twenty minutes. P.S.: Apparently there is more than one version (three maybe?). I watched the one that is almost two hour long where the cuts were noticeable mainly with regard to the supporting roles. Almost all these storylines were lost. The above mentioned Vichy woman and the daughter of the main female hero suffered from the cuts the most. P.P.S.: Vernon gave us all the best of his role in Melville’s feature debut in the few seconds he was on screen. Well, almost.

It’s like a B-movie emanation of Crash where the racism and xenophobia were replaced by destinies entangled around the betting business. The action isn’t bad, but the dialogs are so staged there’s no use in waiting for a single line that anyone would really say. Not even a thought line. And the acting is either total overkill (Whitaker, Roth) or totally resigned routine on the other (Basinger, Liotta). All hail the exception of DeVito.

Kurosawa needed seven virtuous samurai for his masterpiece. Melville only needs one charismatic ronin to do the same, along with an atmosphere so stuffy and full of tension that it almost seems out of place in a film like this. Almost.

Melville’s feature movie debut is a great radio play, but a bad movie. Why? Because it suffers from a mass of unnecessary words. We can see riders coming on horses and we hear an inner monolog with information that the riders on horses are coming. We can see a girl coming into a room and at the same time hear inner monolog about a girl coming into a room. The visual side completely lost any meaning in this movie. And to make things worse Robain is terribly stiff and unnatural. Even a simple situation like drinking his evening cup of coffee looks like it is performed by a robot – "now bend a little, take hold of the cup with your right hand, in a smooth motion lift the hand towards your mouth, have a silent sip and in another smooth motion put the cup back on the saucer. Now, repeat the whole action again." On the other hand, Howard Vernon is fantastic, the camera is great too (even though it doesn’t move from the room with the fireplace) and even the story is not bad, as it heralds Melville’s weakness for powerful topics concerning the Second World War.

An unmissable experience. A packed movie theater (what a miracle, everybody was silent, no rustling, unbelievable...), two girls accompanying me and a movie where Clint masterfully changes genres perhaps more stylishly, more accurately and faster than he could shoot his Colt as a young man. And it doesn’t stoop to emotional blackmail, despite the subject matter crying out for it. This is the sort of movie where you need to take an oxygen canister to. Just in case it knocks the breath out of you. And that could easily happen. But what I would change is my very vague awareness of the story. On the other hand, if I had gone to see it in complete ignorance, I don’t think even the oxygen would have saved me.

Nvotová investigates her attitude to God and films it. At one point she meets up with former classmates and form teacher from a rather “different" type of church school. They confront him with their opinions about how the “divine tuition" influenced their lives. Now that would have been interesting. However, despite the presence of psychology and theology students, this meeting is reduced to the type of dumb class discussion that we all know from grade school. As a class reunion this would have been fine, but not for a feature-length documentary. Then there is the second part, which is interesting, but incomprehensible from a point of view of investigation. If I was looking for an answer to the question “me and God", I certainly wouldn’t go on a four-day sect camp to find it (or maybe I would, but I would certainly look elsewhere too). A sect that functions identically to certain firms founded on a “personal approach". The only difference is that instead of crying out “Amway", here they cry out “Jesus". But it works out the same, behind the counter one talented actor talking a hole in the heads of the congregation while next door they are processing the next generation. In the end they demonstrate the wonderful capabilities of a detergent or the curing strength of good old Jesus. And that's it. Nvotová doesn’t share her views with us. But logically she can’t because throughout the entire documentary she presented no argument and so she got nowhere, because she has “strayed from the path" and so she isn’t looking for anything anymore. Next time she should concentrate on one theme and not jump around from one thing to another. Either on sects as a whole, and to go in hard from several different perspectives. Or on the inner aspect, but that would need someone like Halík. Somebody who has something to say and gives food for thought. Here we get nothing for almost seventy minutes. And a documentary that brings nothing new and doesn’t make you think is a superfluous documentary. At least for me it is.