Tiny Furniture (2010) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4) : The Unbearable Aimlessness of Being Graduated

Posted on April 25, 2012 by kaist455

Although it has the mood and feelings I can understand and appreciate, “Tiny Furniture” somehow kept losing my interest in spite of its admirable achievement on the screen. It virtually has no plot at all and I do not have any objection about its approach, but I constantly had the feeling of being stuck with very superficial persons I do not want to meet again, so I frequently felt bored by them despite its small good moments revealing the new emerging talent behind the camera.

Maybe, as the other reviewers said, I should accept its intended tediousness as the realistic presentation of the unbearable aimlessness of being graduated. Aura, played by the director/writer Lena Dunham, has just graduated from her university in Ohio, and she is coming back to her mother’s apartment in New York when we first meet her. She knows that she has to lead her life as a grown-up, but she has no particular plan about her future except that she does not want to do boring jobs for earning money. She says she will stay at the family home for a while because she has no money to start with, but she may be stuck there forever with her family.

The family home is a nice, clean, and comfortable apartment with modern style in lower Manhattan, but it is not easy for Aura to get along with her detached family. Her mother Siri(Laurie Simmons, Dunham’s real-life mother) is mostly occupied with her work unless she is distracted by her daughter. Aura’s younger sister Nadine(Dunham’s real-life sister Grace Dunham) is a typical case of flat, moody passive aggressiveness. While Aura was absent, Nadine has formed the close relationship with her mother, so Aura frequently feels alienated.

Her ‘friends’ do not help Aura a lot. When she goes to the party held by one of her friends, Aura meets again her childhood friend Charlotte(Jemima Kirke). Charlotte is a funny but shallow girl who can amuse you for around 5 minutes at the party and then makes you desperately search for others to talk with in the room, but Aura starts to spend the time with Charlotte, probably because there is nothing else to do for her at present. Anyway, she gets a nice job in some fancy restaurant not far from her home. All she has to do is taking reservations before the restaurant is opened.

Meanwhile, two men come into her life, and neither of them can be considered as a good boyfriend. At the party, Aura comes across a guy named Jed(Alex Karpovsky), who has recently gained a short-term fame thank to his goofy YouTube clip called “The Nietzscherian Cowboy”. I have no idea about how such a superficial clip like that(he rides a mechanical horse while quoting Nietzsche with a toy gun) becomes so popular like that on the Internet, but I know anything can be regarded as funny or ‘creative’ on these days. Jed is a pretentious prick who hides his plain status behind his petty rationalized excuses; when he has no place to stay with no money, he deliberately makes Aura allow him into her family apartment, and then he continues to stay there until his presence is not tolerated by Aura’s mother anymore. Despite all of these caddish behaviors, he still behaves as if nothing serious happened.

In case of Keith(David Call), a chef working at the restaurant where Aura works, he is no better than Jed – or worse than him. Aura seems to like him, but she is stood up by him on their first date, and Keith currently has a girlfriend, which is his main excuse for not appearing on that date. You think her circumstance is messy, wait until you see how low it hits the bottom at some unlikely place for having sex during one lonely night. It is really depressing and pathetic to watch two people desperately trying to get what they both want with the absence of the passion in their miserable behavior.

Though I lost my patience from time to time, I could admire how carefully Dunham made her first film. She makes good use of the places in the movie including her mother’s home, and the urban atmosphere of lower Manhattan is established well around her characters. It shows that the shots in the movie are thoughtfully composed, and the cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, who briefly appears in the film, does a fine job with Canon EOS 7D HDSLR digital camera. Even though they had little artificial lightning during the production, the movie always looks clean and crisp while watching its characters with cool detachment, and you will be surprised that its production budget was around $50,000 only. This is a good example of the efficient filmmaking.

Though the characters in the movie are unlikable in various degrees, Dunham’s screenplay presents some of them as the understandable people through good dialogues and sharp humor. Though Aura is a self-absorbed lazy girl who keeps making unwise choices, I could see that she is also a nice girl painfully wandering with no direction while searching for love and happiness she wants. It is only a matter of the time until she gets wise up to recognize her reality and think about 1)what she actually can do and 2)what she really wants to do for her life, but when will it happen at last? I have to admit that it is quite frustrating to look at her wandering, probably because I went from the kindergarten straight to the graduate school without any serious stop. Maybe my turn will come when I finally get a doctoral degree and then I am demanded to start leading my life on my own.

While giving a competent acting, Dunham also succeeds in pulling good realistic performances from most of her co-performers. You may wonder whether the interactions between Dunham and her family members in the film are based on the reality(like her character, Laurie Simmons is a well-known artist in real life), but I heard that Simmons is a lot warmer than her character. Although it is said that the movie is part-autobiographical, this is a work of fiction, after all.

Even with considerable degrees of appreciation, I still remain not so sure about whether I like “Tiny Furniture”. I understand what it is about and how it is about, but I feel distant to its subject and approach. It comes to my mind that the similar thing happened when I saw Michael Tolkin’s “The New Age”(1994) at 2010 Ebertfest. It was another well-made drama about the characters struggling and wandering in their shallow aimlessness, and, though it had some interesting aspects, I was not entertained sufficiently. As one of my friends said to me at that time, the reason might be that I was not particularly thrown to that movie as a non-American audience not so familiar with its subject, and I guess the same thing probably happened while I was watching “Tiny Furniture”. At least, you and I can agree with each other that Lena Dunham is a talent to watch, right?

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Future (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : Their whimsy and uncertain future

Posted on April 20, 2012 by kaist455

“The Future” will definitely be one of the quirkiest movies I saw in this year, and, though it is only April, it will stay on or near the top of the list assigned to such films at the end of year. It features several moments of sheer whimsy to confound me and interest me; I watched them with the certain degrees of curiosity, and the movie turned out to be a lots more than fancy whimsy. It seems aimless at first, but it looks at its characters with warm understanding, and there is the sad poignancy generated from the strained relationship between two people who try to prepare themselves for the next stage of their life but find it more difficult than they thought.

The life of Jason(Hamish Linklater) and Sophie(Miranda July) may not be affluent, but they are happy and satisfied although there has not been much change in their life. Sophie teaches dance to the children in the community center(I do not think she was a professional dancer), and Jason works at their cozy home as a counselor technician on the phone. There is no kid between them, and I do not know whether they have friends or not, but they have a fun with each other’s oddities like young children playing house.

Well, they are about to have some change at their home. They decide to be more responsible than before as grown-ups, so they go to the center for abandoned animals, and they choose one sick cat which will likely die within a few years even at the best condition. Taking care of a sick pet takes lots of efforts, and that means Jason and Sophie really have to change their lifestyle a lot. They will not probably have free time between them as much as before.

Because the cat has to be at the center at least for a month before it is all right to be taken care of by them, Jason and Sophie has one good idea about their upcoming change. It is true that they have been pretty much free for a while, but why not live a far more freely as themselves for a month before wholly committing themselves to their cat for a long time? They immediately start their plan; Sophie quits her job and tries to make a YouTube clip every day with her dancing at the home. Jason also quits his job, and he chooses to work a solicitor selling trees from door to door.

In the ordinary reality, nothing much would happen, but this is a quirky film where something interesting keeps happening out of the coincidence, and soon Jason and Sophie meet interesting persons respectively. After visiting several houses without any significant results, Jason arrives at the house where one resourceful old man(Joe Putterlick) lives. This old guy is good at fixing many things, and Jason eventually buys a fixed hair drier for Sophie, rather than selling him the trees. He also gets some wisdom about the relationship from the old man, who had lived with his deceased wife for a long time and knows one or two things about how the relationship develops into the next stage – or gets terminated instead.

Meanwhile, Sophie also has the interesting time of her own. In another coincidence, while frustrated about the lack of her creativity, she happens to get acquainted with one middle-aged guy(David Warshofsky) through one phone call. She soon visits his home, where he lives alone with his daughter(she keeps digging a hole at the backyard for another whimsical reason to be revealed later). When they are together at the living room, you can see what will eventually happen, but the director/writer/lead actress Miranda July handles this uncomfortable situation in a tactful and sensitive way. After all, he is not a bad man, and Sophie probably understands his need.

Because of what happened between him and Sophie, the relationship between Sophie and Jason becomes rocky, and the movie goes into a weirder moment when Jason is able to stop the current of the time when Sophie is on the verge of telling the truth which may hurt the bond between them. While the time is stopped, Jason even talks with the moon high above the sky. It is surely bizarre, but what do you possibly expect from the movie whose narrator is their sick cat? Shown only with its cute paws(one of them is bandaged), it talks to us about its hope and expectation to us in the manipulated voice of Miranda July. This sounds silly, but it is not as silly as you think, and the cat’s narration eventually leads to one sad moment later in the story.

Miranda July, who is also well-known as the performance artist with established career, made a nice impression on me and others through her first film “Me and You and Everyone We Know”(2005). Like “The Future”, that movie made me both confounded and curious with various odd, funny scenes to be remembered when I saw it in 2007. I liked it though I did not think I completely understood it, but, when I saw it again later with DVD, I found it more admirable and lovable than before. I especially love the warm hilarity resulted from the interaction between two characters who come to face each other for the first time after the series of their very creative dirty chats on Internet.

I am afraid I am hopelessly too inarticulate to describe the offbeat charm of “The Future”. While this second work from Miranda July is relatively less impressive than her previous work, “The Future” certainly confirms July again as the interesting director with her own distinctive style. It may be too quirky for your taste, but I liked how it delightfully and effortlessly moves between humor and sadness with its quirky heart put in the right place. You may also like it, too, perhaps, if you think a talking cat is not too strange.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Ides of March (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : Idealism has no place in politics

Posted on April 20, 2012 by kaist455

One main weak spot of George Clooney’s “The Ides of March” is that its sharp message is hardly regarded as cynical in our days. It is virtually impossible for everyone to remain clean in the mud field called politics, and most of us know that too well through what we have witnessed from our politicians. Even when we try to maintain a little piece of idealism during the elections, it is bound to be betrayed and stabbed, like Julius Caesar was on the ides of March as told by Plutarch and Shakespeare.

The ides of March, or March the 15th, is the important date for everyone in the movie. It is the day of Democratic Ohio primary, whose result will be a major factor to determine the Democratic presidential Candidate for the upcoming election. Because there is no serious competition in Republican Party, everyone knows that the winner in the Democratic Party will virtually be the next president of USA, so there have been fierce competitions inside the Democratic Party and, as you expect, the picture is not so pretty.

Stephen Meyers(Ryan Gosling) is the junior campaign manager working for Mike Morris(Geroge Clooney), the incumbent governor of Pennsylvania who is the leading candidate in the Democratic primary. He is pretty popular with his openly liberal progressive view which would make Barack Obama look like a conservative GOP(his campaign poster is clearly derived from Obama’s, by the way), but his status as a candidate has not been completely clinched yet. If he loses in Ohio Primary, it will be a major setback in his campaign, and the senator Thompson(Jeffrey Wright), who can significantly affect the primary with his 356 delegates, may choose to side with Morris’ major rival.

With his direct boss, the senior campaign manager Paul Zara(Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Meyers has been working hard for the man he believes in. He is young but he is not that naive; he has some experiences about how to react to playing dirty and how to play dirty. He and others know that winning is indeed more important than anything else in the election, but he also believes Morris will bring the change to the country, and he is determined to do everything he can do for him.

However, although he thinks he knows how tricky the world of politics is, he finds himself in the circumstance more treacherous than he expected. First, there comes a suspicious offer from Tom Duffy(Paul Giamatti), the senior campaign manager of the opposite camp. Does he seriously consider Meyers as an important talent to be scouted, or does he have the other sneaky intentions? While realizing that Duffy’s offer is not as trivial as he thought, Meyers also comes to face some truth which can potentially be fatal to the campaign – he must do something about it.

While we may complain that the story is familiar and predictable, the director George Clooney, who adapted Beau Willimon’s play “Farragut North” with his partner Grant Heslov and Willimon, presents us an interesting, if not revealing, look at the combative political process before the main election. While it is very hard to go through the presidential election, it is also really hard to go through the selection process before that. Even though they are in the same party, they can be ruthless and nasty to each other because of the political success in front of them. Having observed the GOP primary in this year, which is darkly and insanely comic compared to this film, I was not that surprised at all by what I saw in the film. As a matter of the fact, considering the recent news about South Korean politicians(we’re also ready for the presidential election in this year), this trend seems to be quite universal.

While you may not be enlightened by what Clooney tries to tell you, you can be at least entertained by the good ensemble assembled by him. While Clooney takes a backseat as the smooth politician you can like, Ryan Gosling is dependable as the hero who comes to learn that he should know better about the field he runs into. Gosling can be likable as shown in “Crazy, Stupid, Love”(2011) and also can be enigmatic as shown in “Drive”(2011), and here he shows us the plausible progression of his character’s inner transformation while rarely overstating it. When we see his face in the last scene, we come to see how much different Meyers becomes as a wiser political animal. As other people around him realize, he is a quick learner who can apply his lesson to the situation as soon as he learns it.

Gosling and Clooney are surrounded by the colorful supporting cast. As the experienced and jaded seniors of their dirty world, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti respectively have the dialogues to be delivered with gusto, and both do deliver them as well as they are demanded. Jeffrey Wright is notable as an opportunistic politician willing to side with whoever gives him a better offer, and Marisa Tomei is sexy and sparky as a journalist who cannot be stopped unless you give her a tasty scoop, and Evan Rachel Wood is a young intern who gets close to Meyer and then turns out to be a crucial factor in the second half of the story.

While I was watching “The Ides of March”, Mike Nichols’ “Primary Colors”(1998) instantly came to my mind and I noticed several similarities shared by both. I think that movie is a better movie about politics due to its more insightful view on politics and its inherent negative sides resulted from human flaws, but I want to say that “The Ides of March” is a good film with the message of which we have to be reminded again from time to time whenever we are supposed to vote. Cynicism is not good for us – but neither can idealism be.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Jesus Hospital (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : An uncomfortable story about family and religion

Posted on April 19, 2012 by kaist455

The unlikable heroine of South Korean independent film “Jesus Hospital“ felt pretty repellent to me at first. Though the Christian people I have known or met were very nice people I still remember with fondness, I also know that there are the other Christians in South Korea who are the big insult to the benevolent teaching of Jesus. I have never come across such people fortunately, but I have heard a lot about their embarrassingly fanatic behaviors to the non-Christians like me, including openly saying in public that they will go to hell if they do not believe in Jesus.

Hyeon-soon(Hwang Jeong-min) will say like that if I tell her that I am an atheist. She will be also very hostile if other relatively conventional Christians question her belief. Rather than going to the church like others, she has the periodic meeting with her fellow believer where they pray or read the bible. I know some of Korean Christians say a prayer with rather hysterical chanting, but what they say during their prayer in the movie is odd and incomprehensible to understand to my ears.

She and her family have been distant from each other for years. She lives alone at her home while her grown-up daughter Soo-jin(Han Song-hee) lives separately from her. In case of her siblings, it is apparent during their family meeting that Hyeon-soon and her siblings are not on good terms. Only family member liked by Hyeon-soon is her aging mother, who knows that there is little time for her life but does not worry about that a lot because she thinks she lives enough. If that is God’s will, than so be it.

Two months later, what Hyeon-soon’ mother has expected eventually happens, and now she has been in coma for six months with a very little chance of recovery. Her children except Hyeon-soon decide that it is the time to let their mother go. They are tired, and the medical care bill has been quite burdensome to each of them. All they have to do is signing the papers and then removing the respirator from their comatose mother while saying goodbye to her.

However, Hyeon-soon does not let that happen. She believes God is speaking to her, and she thinks her mother will wake up someday just because God told her so. Her siblings are naturally angry about her when she blocks them. They have a good reason to be furious because Hyeon-soon did not bear any expense for caring their mother, but we cannot completely side with them. Hyeon-soon lives poorly while barely making the ends meet through her milk delivery, so it may be not right to dismiss her opinion just because she did not pay any of the hospital bills for her mother. But we also can say that Hyeon-soon’s siblings suffer enough financially or emotionally and letting their mother die is the best solution for all of them and their mother, who showed no attachment to her remaining life before being hospitalized.

While judging neither of their conflicting views which are based on their respective religious belief, the director Lee Sang-cheol and the director/co-screenplay writer Shin A-ga makes a dark, compelling family story about how the religion affects not only the views on the serious matter of life and death but also the relationships inside the family. Although the past of Hyeon-soon and others is not fully explained in the film except a few moments, it goes without saying that Hyeon-soon’s fanatic belief has been a major factor in making herself alienated from others. Her husband seemed to leave her a long time ago because of that, and her daughter, who begins to live her own life with her well-meaning but clueless husband, looks not so pleased when her mother calls.

But Hyeon-soon and Soo-jin are still a mother and a daughter, and the movie goes into a more complex family situation when Soo-jin agrees to help the other family members’ plan for stopping Hyeon-soon. She feels no qualm about that at first, but there comes the moment when she finds that something valuable is missing at her mother’s home, and she makes an important decision after knowing that why it was gone.

The original Korean title is “Mink Coat”, which was the present given to Hyeon-soon’s mother in the film which works as the crucial factor in the story. The directors said that they decided to choose it as the title because of the contradictory nature of fur coat, whose warm comfort is provided by the savageness beneath it. The similar thing can be said about family; it provides the comfort you need, but it also can be a suffocating cage filled with anger and resentment.

Through its realistic hand-held camera approach, the movie sticks close to the characters with the suffocating feeling intensified by the performances. Hwang Jeong-min, who appeared in a few movies including “Save the Green Planet!”(2003), gives a captivating lead performance as a firm fanatic believer with lots of grudges against her family, She looks as crazy as Kathy Bates in “Misery”(1990) at first, but we come to understand indirectly how she has clung to her religion while shunned by other family members, and we feel a little sorry for her when her belief gets almost crushed when she faces an agonizing dilemma. Her co-actors are also instrumental in making the drama work as Hyeon-soon’s antagonizing family members. We come to see their hypocrisy behind them, but we also regard them as the human beings with understandable flaws and hurt feelings inside them.

“Jesus Hospital” is a small but intense and uncomfortable drama with one of the best female performances in South Korean films of this year. Compared to its engaging narrative, the climax and following ending feel hurried and artificial because it is a little hard to believe that almost everything in the film happens for less than 24 hours, but, folks, those stiff believers are usually persuaded or awakened by not our common sense or logics but how the world(or the hand of God, shall we say) slaps them hard, aren’t they?

 
Sidenote: I was born on March 3rd, 1983 at Jesus Hospital in Jeonju, South Korea. It is sort of amusing to see my birth place used as the movie title, although the movie has nothing to do with that hospital.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Monsieur Lazhar (2011) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : A substitute teacher in charge of the class in grief

Posted on April 15, 2012 by kaist455

The terrible incident suddenly happens in one Canadian elementary school during the mundane but shattering opening sequence of “Monsieur Lazhar.” While the students enjoy the free time outside the building, one of the schoolteachers is found dead, hanging herself up in her classroom. The other teachers quickly cover this tragedy from the kids as soon as they come to know what happens, but it leaves her students in shock and grief as a consequence even after some time has passed and the classroom has been repainted.

When the principal, Mademoiselle Vaillancourt(Brigitte Poupart), needs a substitute teacher for the deceased teacher’s class, one man appears in front of her out of nowhere. He is an Algerian immigrant named Bachir Lazhar(Mohamed Fellag, who is credited as Fellag in the film), and he is willing to work as a substitute teacher. According to him, he was an elementary school teacher for 19 years in his country he has recently left from.

Lazhar is a gentle, likable man, so he is instantly hired by Mme. Vaillancourt, and soon he meets the kids in the class assigned to him. The start is a little rocky at first because he sets his standard a little too high for his young students(he uses Balzac’s novel for the dictation test) and there is the cultural gap between them. But, after some few quick adjustments, everything goes pretty smoothly as before in the class; the students like him, and so do the other teachers in the school.

However, Lazhar discerns that there remain unresolved emotional matters beneath his class. He thinks his students should be more opened about how they feel about that incident. Although they get the periodic counseling sessions with a child psychiatrist, he believes he and other teachers should be more active about his students’ problem. Most of the other teachers, including Mme. Vaillancourt, understand his point, but they are reluctant or object to Lazhar, because the rules like the zero-tolerance-for-touching policy have confined their roles so much that dealing with their students is like, as one teacher in the movie says, handling radioactive waste.

The director Philippe Falardeau, who also adapted Evelyne de la Cheneliere’s one-man play for his movie, does a good job of setting the daily rhythm and atmosphere of the school life on the screen for his story. His story is not locked in the predictable conventional plot we can expect from the movies about teacher or teaching, so it moves with its free will around its hero and the other characters surrounding them while establishing them as the real people with the serious matters to deal with. The movie does not feel the need to push them into the plot, and it calmly observes their interactions with cool restraint while never overplaying its deep emotions beneath the surface. We learn a lot about them while watching them even though they do not tell about themselves or their backgrounds much.

One small but important fact about Lazhar provides a little tension to the story. It is revealed early in the film that he was not a teacher as he said. As the matter of fact, he has not even been accepted by the Canada Government yet because he is currently under the examination for deciding whether he can be judged as a political refuge seeking asylum.

The movie suggests that Lazhar may understand what some of his students are struggling through as a person still in his personal grief, but it does not choose an easy way of handling this connection between M. Lazhar and the students, and neither does Mohamed Fellag, who gives a quiet honest performance as a humble decent man with lots of empathy. Though he is not really a teacher(but his deceased wife was), Lazhar has the right stuff to be a good teacher. He cares about the students, and he likes to be with them while helping them. Maybe he lacks some professional knowledge for teaching a class, but he can manage the difficult situations in his classroom tactfully with common sense. What he says to his students at one fragile moment is the universal truth that can applied to any school on the earth; “A classroom is a home for.. it’s a place of friendship, of work, and of courtesy. A place full of life – where you devote your life”

It should be mentioned that the kids in the movies give the believable performance as a group under Falardeau’s direction. Even you do not know all of their names, each of them is a distinctive part of the class, and, how they generate the mild but busy dynamics together under the cool gaze of the camera in their classroom is nothing less than natural.

Two young performers are especially notable as the crucial supporting characters in the story. Sophie Nélisse is a smart little girl more outspoken about the incident affecting her and others than her classmates. She is curious about her substitute teacher who comes from the other country, and she comes to like him probably more than anyone else. She becomes his close ally when he attempts to deal with the grief problem of the class, and Nélisse and Émilien Néron, who is also good as an anguished boy hurt a lot by the incident and the following guilt resulting from it, have a calm but intense scene with quiet emotional power.

“Monsieur Lazhar”, which won Six Genie awards(it’s Canadian Oscar) including Best Picture and was recently nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscar early in this year, is a touching drama whose emotions slowly and powerfully resonate after it is over. Teaching is a lot more than passing the knowledge to the students and, in its simple but subtle storytelling, the movie shows us how important the connection between the teacher and the students is in that process. The last scene is particularly moving though the camera looks at the characters from the distance. Sometimes, the teacher also gets something valuable from the students in the class.

 
Sidenote: The movie will be shown on May 1st and 3rd at 2012 Jeonju International Film Festival in my hometown. Don’t miss the chance if you have the time to go there.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The photos from several days of 2012 April

Posted on April 14, 2012 by kaist455
                            
It is warm now, and the flowers are everywhere – and the cats are hungry.
Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Terri (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4): A lonely teenager getting out of his shell

Posted on April 14, 2012 by kaist455

It is always better to have someone who cares about you than to be alone, and that is what the hero of “Terri”(2001) learns gradually through one of his high school teachers. Because of what I have just said, you will probably think this is another “the teacher of my life” movie, but “Terri” is a different film free of such a convention like that. With the considerable level of intimacy and low-key humor, the movie observes how its characters roll or spin in its seemingly loose plot. Through that process, we get to know more about them than before, and that is why even a small step forward gives us lots of optimistic feeling even though not many things are changed in the end.

When you look at him, you won’t be surprised to know that Terri Thompson(Jacob Wysocki) is one of those lonely teenagers in high schools who are alienated or ridiculed by other students. He is a big, obese kid with disinterested attitude, and he does not particularly care about how others, including his teachers, think about him unless they keep annoying him. For instance, he goes to his school while still wearing a pajama just because he is comfortable in it. At least, he alternatively wears a striped one and a black one.

He has been pretty much content with his solitude. He has no friend, so he spends his free time at his house, where he lives with his uncle (how Terri was left alone with him is not clear; judging from one conversation, his parents were presumably dead). Though his uncle(Creed Bratton – you may recognize him as one of the funny supporting characters in American TV series “The Office”) is ill and senile, Terri’s life with his uncle is not as bad as you think. Their little home is a cozy and comfortable place(I guess his uncle worked as an artist before his illness), and Terri has taken care of his uncle well; though he suffers frequent lapses, his uncle gets a little better than usual from time to time.

But on one day, someone comes into his quiet life. He is the vice principal of his school, Mr. Fitzgerald(John C. Reilly). Mr. Fitzgerald calls Terri to his office, and he tells Terri that he cares about him because he thinks Terri is one of the “good-hearted kids”. Although Terri is reluctant about Mr. Fitzgerald’s approach, they start to have their private meetings.

While there is no big change coming from that, Terri’s life is a little more crowded than before. First, indirectly through his meeting with Mr. Fitzgerald, he comes to get acquainted with Chad Markson(Bridger Zadina), one of the other school kids counseled or disciplined by Mr. Fitzgerald. Though they are a lot different from each other in many aspects including appearance and character(unlike Terri, Chad is a nervous troublemaker desperate for attention), the relationship is somehow formed between them. Soon Chad comes to Terri’s house as his friend, and he is greeted by Terri’s uncle with the toasts with baked bean.

Terri also gets close to one girl named Heather Miles(Olivia Crocicchia) with whom he attends the home economics class. During the class, he happens to witness that she lets one nasty male student touch her private part after being importunately demanded by him. When Heather is called to the Mr. Fitzgerald’s office due to that happening, Terri stands up for her. When she becomes a pariah in the school after the incident, he sits next to her. When she is about to get herself into a trouble, he becomes more active than usual to dissipate the tension. She is grateful for his acts, and the mutual affection grows between them. Their exchange through the notebook is one of the warm, sweet moments in the film; he is nice to her, and so she is.

“Terri” is the first film in Jacob Wysocki’s short career, but this newcomer actor effortlessly gives a nuanced performance as a shy, gentle teenager who slowly gets out of his shell while being connected with the others approaching to him. Terri looks disinterested at his school, but, he is a smart kid, and sometimes there comes the moment when his intellectual curiosity is stimulated, such as when he comes to observe by coincidence how the food chain in the nature works. Right after he throws away the dead mice killed by the mousetraps in the attic, the bird flies in and eats one of them. He is delighted, so he tries to get more dead mice with the mousetraps for getting another chance to observe. As his uncle points out, what he does is a rather cruel act, but at least his motive is not sadistic at all, and he learns a lesson from his wrongdoing.

Wysocki is supported well by John C. Reilly, one of the most reliable supporting actors in Hollywood who can lift his co-performer without drawing any attention to himself. While Mr. Fitzgerald appears to be a funny guy at first, Reilly makes his character a sincere man with good intentions as well as human flaws. Though he is not one of those inspiring teachers we have seen in other movies, Mr. Fitzgerald really wants to help the students he is concerned about because he also went through hard time during his school years. Reilly is especially wonderful when his character honestly admits to Terri that he lied to Terri and he may disappoint Terri again in the future while imparting a simple but truthful life lesson to him(“Life is a mess, dude, but we’re all just doing the best we can.”).

Like Wysocki, Bridger Zadina and Olivia Crocicchia are natural as their respective characters, and they and Wysocki make the crucial scene later in the story precise and believable in its progression. They decide to spend the night together in the shack next to Terri’s house, and, though they just want to have a little fun, the circumstance becomes a lot more awkward and unpredictable with the alcohol and the drug stolen from Terri’s uncle. Regrettable things could happen in such a situation like that, but, fortunately, they manage not to cross the line.

The director Azazel Jacobs, who wrote the story with the screenplay writer Patrick Dewitt, made a warm coming-of-age drama about how not being alone can make some difference in one’s life. The movie made me recall when one of my middle school teachers said I was the loneliest student in that class. I did not take it seriously, and I was not interested in having a friend, and I remained one of the infamous students in the school(every student knew me), but I was helped by my teachers(mainly due to my excellent grade). I have to say that some of them were not model educators, but I am still grateful for them – I visit them whenever I get the chance to drop by the school.

Even when the movie is over, many things remain unresolved for Terri and others. Their life will go on, and there may be other complications in their relationships in the future. But now Terri has someone he can talk with, and he also has friends. Someday, maybe he will find that he can be comfortable in other clothes besides his pajamas.

Sidenote: The movie will be shown at 2012 Ebertfest on April 26th – and it will be also shown on April 27th and May 2nd during 2012 Jeonju International Film Festival held in my hometown. I can’t go, but you can go, perhaps.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Dangerous Method (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : The analysis of an academic triangle

Posted on April 12, 2012 by kaist455

The characters in “A Dangerous Method” talk, listen, discuss, disagree, and argue during the most of its running time, and they are very serious about what they deal with. The movie is surely a talky period drama, but it is not as ponderous as you think, and it is a intriguing and intellectual drama about the early age of psychoanalysis represented by the two influential pioneers of the field – and the woman who happened to be academically associated with both of them.

The story opens with one unstable patient being sent to the mental institution in Switzerland in 1904. Her name is Sabrina Spielrein(Keira Knightley), and her extreme behaviors apparently show that she is suffering from the severe case of hysteria. Dr. Carl Jung(Michael Fassbender) takes an interest in her, and he thinks her case can be a good subject of the clinical study for supporting the theory recently proposed by Dr. Sigmund Freud(Viggo Mortensen),

What we see through Jung’s trial is the interesting presentation of basic psychoanalytic methods in early stages, which is essentially not so different from what the analysts of our era do. While they are alone in the room, he lets Spielrein talk about her past experience, and he attentively listens to her while sitting behind her. They also have some privation conversation while she is relatively relaxed and comfortable.

Regardless of how you think about psychoanalysis or how much it has been helpful to the scientific understanding of the human mind, it certainly helps talk more openly about the inner problems inside us. Jung’s trial is very successful; he discovers the Freudian origin of Spielrein’s hysteria, and then Spielrein gets recovered enough to start studying, ironically, psychoanalysis in the college for getting her doctoral degree.

And, through this success, Jung gets acquainted with Freud. As the first pioneer of his field, Freud regards Jung as the heir apparent to his psychoanalytic theory, but, though he enjoys the lengthy conversation about the interpretation of dreams with the man he admires, Jung has a different idea about how their field should be developed, so, as some of you know, they are bound to conflict with each other. Jung start to advocate the mythicism as the tool for exploring their undiscovered country, which Freud stubbornly rejects it as nonsense.

The situation gets more complicated when the intimate but inappropriate relationship between Spielrein and Jung(he’s a married man, by the way) gets overlapped with the strained academic relationship between Jung and Freud. Though this triangle is not as kinky as you might think, the director David Cronenberg’s cool, analytic approach to the story makes their interactions, which mostly consist of lots of conversations and discussions, fascinating to observe. I am just vaguely familiar with their metaphysical knowledge and theories, but I kept listening to what they say with the constant amount of fascination. The movie is based on Christopher Hampton’s play “The Talking Cure”, which is based on John Kerr’s nonfiction book “A Most Dangerous Method”, and Hampton, who adapted his play for the movie, provides the conversations compelling enough to hold our interest to his episodic plot. After all, the characters in the film are professionals; they know what they are talking about, and they really talk about something while using familiar terms like ‘libido’.

It is sort of strange to see that Cronenberg made such a mild conventional period drama like this, but, considering how he has evolved from the master of bloody body horror to the master of intense psychological drama, it’s not that surprising. In his early movies like “Videodrome”(1983) or “The Fly”(1986), the bodies of his characters are the anarchic stage for their inner conflicts, which would fascinate both Freud and Jung. In his recent films, Cronenberg moves from the body to the mind with the more subtle approach for the examination of human psyche, and this movie seems like a logical arriving point.

The three main performances are all commendable, and the most notable is Keira Knightley, who embodies the sheer intensity of the tumultuous state of an unstable mind. Looking at the early scenes where she struggles to speak while her body uncontrollably twitches, you will not be surprised even if she turns into something freakish like the characters of the early Cronenberg films. After dialing down her intensity later in the story, Knightley becomes more convincing as an intellectual and passionate woman who struggles to find her place as a scholar between two giant figures of her field with her eclectic theory.

Michael Fassbender, who gets lots of acclaims through his uncompromising performance in “Shame”(2011), is less showy in this film, but he is effective as a stern man struggling with his dark conflict. Though he recognizes the desire inside him, Jung also knows how professionally and privately dangerous his relationship with Spielrein is. How he eventually treats her is very cruel, but it also makes him miserable a lot.

While Vincent Cassel, who plays a libidinous rogue psychoanalyst Otto Gross, has his own fun moment as the impish devil whispering the temptations into Jung’s ears, and Viggo Mortensen gives a humorous performance as Dr. Freud, who always looks like he has all the answers – with a cigar in his hand(if his cigar were a little longer in the film, I could describe it as “phallic”). As much as Jung is afraid of advancing his relationship with Spielrein, Freud is protective of his precious field, and it is one of the main reasons behind his disagreement with Jung. The movie also makes an interesting point about the class difference between Freud and Jung as a Jewish and a protestant; when they board the ship to America, Jung goes to the first class cabin while Freud has go to the second class cabin.

When they are about to arrive in America, Freud asks Jung, “Do you think they know we are on our way, bringing them the plague?” Though most of their theories have been changed or revised during the last century, their ideas have certainly influenced our perception on the human mind a lot while infiltrating into our consciousness. I must say I do not know much about psychoanalysis, but, to be frank with you, I won’t deny that I have a small fun whenever I get the chance the use terms like “Freudian” or “Jungian” in my reviews.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A Cat in Paris (2010) ☆☆☆(3/4) : One charming night adventure in Paris

Posted on April 11, 2012 by kaist455

“A Cat in Paris” is an enjoyable lightweight animation – and I had a good time with this breezy entertainment. Though it is pretty short(the running time is less than 70 minutes), but that is enough for its simple adventure tale of an adorable mute girl, a good-hearted criminal, and one likable pussycat which happens to be shared by them without their knowledge.

Zoé(voiced by Oriane Zani) has been mute since she lost her father, a cop who was killed in the pursuit of one of the most notorious criminals in Paris. Her mother Jeanne(voiced by Dominique Blanc), who is also a cop and worked with her husband, is also still hurt by her husband’s death, but she must work to support her little daughter. While her mother goes out for a work, Zoé is taken care of by her nanny(voiced by Bernadette Lafont), whose perfume seems to smell far more nauseating than its soft purple color suggests.

Zoé spends her daytime mostly in her bedroom, but she has one black cat as her close friend. It has a rather unpleasant of hunting lizards outside the house and then giving them to Zoé, but she is not disgusted about that, and we see the box full of carcasses of those unlucky lizards. Well, because this is the animation film, so it is less disgusting to look than you think, and at least it is certainly far less disgusting to appreciate than my childhood pencil case full of slimy snails or cute wood louses.

We know from the beginning that the cat has been leading a double life. Besides spending some time with Zoé during the afternoon, it has a secret night life with a young burglar named Nico(voiced by Bruno Salomone). He and the cat swiftly move above the rooftops without being noticed, and then Nico smoothly sneaks into his target building while evading the watchful eyes of night guards with the flexible agility probably only possible in the world of animation.

Through the cell animation drawn with care and details, the director Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol provide the beautiful and lovely background for their story. The streets and buildings of Paris are drawn with a broad, warm pastel style, and it is especially wonderful to look at when it shows the night landscape of Paris. Sure, we have encountered Paris many times through other movies and animations before, but this case is as good as it can be.

The characters are also drawn like broad caricatures, so you can instantly sense which character is good or bad. Though he is not wearing a black hat or a mustache to be twirled, it goes without saying that the crime boss Victor Costa(voiced by Bruno Benguigui) is certainly a vicious hateful criminal you don’t want to mess with. This mean guy is also quite a megalomaniac, and he is determined to steal one big valuable artifact from Nairobi, Kenya, with which he alarmingly obsessed with. I may say his relatively short stature compared to his bumbling henchmen tells a lot about his obsession.

What is their plan, by the way? I don’t know, and the story does not waste its time on the explanation; they seem to have some plan, and Jeanne and her colleagues know well that Costa is determined to snatch the artifact by any means necessary like he was during the previous attempt in which he killed Jeanne’s husband. She becomes busier than before while having to deal with the serial burglary case, so she spends less time with her daughter. It’s hard for Jeanne because she is concerned about Zoé, but she has the works to do.

The second half of the story is about how the characters get involved with each other and how their encounters are led to the adventurous night to remember. At one night, Zoé gets out of her house to follow her cat out of curiosity, but she gets more than she wishes for unfortunately. She comes upon Costa and his accomplices when they discuss about their plan. She immediately runs away from them, but she is quickly cornered by them – and Costa does not like a potential witness.

Fortunately for her, Nico saves her from her imminent danger by chance, but they soon find themselves chased by Costa and his equally ineffectual gangs. In one scene, when they see Zoé getting away from them by the boat on the pond, they just go straight into the pond instead of going around it to the reach the other side. I really doubt whether they will really be able to steal that big stature even if they are not noticed by the police.

But they are not so bad at running along or jumping between the rooftops, so we get a couple of good exciting sequences where the characters do some stunts at the high places including that famous cathedral in Paris. There is indeed the danger with the Hitchcockian touches, but, because this is an animation film, they look less perilous, so we can enjoy them along with the outrageous but humorous end to its climactic moment.

Like “Chico and Rita”(2010), another charming cell animation, “A Cat in Paris” was a surprise nominee for Best Animation Oscar early in this year. Though I think its thin plot is stretched a little too much for the feature film length, this is a delightful animation on the whole, and I liked Zoé’s cat as much as its friends even though it does not talk. Now I wish the cats in my campus can be as sociable as that cat.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

A Better Life (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : A gardener and his son in LA

Posted on April 8, 2012 by kaist455

Some movies can bring me close to the life of the people I never have come across. “A Better Life”, a simple but heartfelt drama about one man struggling for him and his son in the world which do not welcome him openly, is such a case. Although I do not think I can talk or discuss about the issues it indirectly raises through his story because I am an outsider and there are the people who know more about these issues than me, I could feel a lot of empathy toward the human relationship at the center of the story while watching it, and it touched somewhere in my heart.

Carlos Galindo(Demián Bichir) is a gardener working in LA, and he can be a exemplar case of a hard-working American. He wakes up early at his home in the morning, and then, by his employer’s truck, he goes around several big houses for tending the gardens with his employer. This is a hard work, but Carlos is a man dedicated to his job and he is proud of what he has accomplished, a small but nice house for him and his son Luis(José Julián) with the backyard for growing plants for his works.

However, his daily life is very fragile, because he has been an illegal immigrant for many years. Even with one small wrong step, he can be caught by the police and deported back to Mexico. At least, thanks to his longtime employer/close friend who trusts him, he has a stable job unlike other illegal immigrant workers, who try hard to get the chance to work every morning in front of the potential employers like he once did before.

But his employer tells him that he decides to retire and he will move back to Mexico, so Carlos finds himself at the important decision point. His employer is willing to sell his truck and other equipments to him, and he can have the business of his own. He hesitates because it is a risky choice and he does not have enough money to buy them, but the offer is tantalizing, for he does not want to go back to where he was. Thanks to his sister, who gives him the money she has saved for her family, he eventually buys the truck, but, unfortunately, his happiness gets broken on his very first day as the employer – his truck is stolen right in front of his eyes.

Now, around this point, Vittorio De Sica’s great film “The Bicycle Thief”(1948) will immediately come upon your mind. Carlos is quite devastated by his misfortune, but, on the next day, he begins the search with his son. While looking at their quest to find the man who stole the truck, the movie shows us the shabby sides of LA such as a stuffy apartment where many illegal immigrants manage to live together while hiding from the authorities.

While following a familiar plot, the sincere screenplay by Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon presents us the small intimate moments between its characters. Carlos and Luis have been distant from each other mainly due to the difference of their daily life patterns(when Carlos wakes up early in the morning, his son is still sleeping in his bedroom; when Luis comes back to home late in the evening, his father, exhausted due to his work, is sleeping in the couch in the living room), but, through their search for the truck, they get the chance to reconnect with each other, and the movie observes the gradual change in their relationship with precision rather than pushing them along the plot.

Demián Bichir, who appeared in the TV series “Weeds” and several notable films including Steven Soderbergh’s “Che”(2008), was Oscar-nominated for his understated but resonating performance early in this year(I think that is the major reason for why this small film will be released at South Korean theaters earlier than I expected). Through one of the memorable performances in last year, Bichir gives his character lots of fine human details to make him far more than a stereotype, and Carlos comes to us as a human being with the strong sense of morality and the quiet dogged determination.

Bichir and his co-performers paint a realistic picture of the hard life in LA with the humane touches. When Carlos finally confronts the man responsible for his plight later in the story, they stare each other without a word, but what they respectively feel is clear to us. He is not a bad man, and Carlos understands that man’s motive well unlike his furious son, because, I guess, he had been there before.

The newcomer José Julián also does a good supporting job as the son who comes to understand his father more than before, who has raised him by himself since his mother left them when he was very young. Although he is almost close to joining the local gang in his neighbourhood, Luis is not a bad kid, and, through the journey with his father, he learns that the life is not as easy as he thought– and how much his father wants to give him a better chance.

You will be surprised that “A Better Life” is directed by Chris Weitz, who made a good debut with his brother Paul Weitz through their raunchy but sweet teenager comedy “American Pie”(1999) and then has filled his directing career with several diverse films including “About a Boy”(2002), “The Golden Compass”(2007), and “New Moon”(2009)(I heard that Bichir initially thought he would play a vampire gardener when he was approached by Weitz). This small movie movingly tells us how important the family is to some people on the fringe of the society, and how much they try their best for their family. It’s a sad, desperate tale with heartbreaks, but there are always hope and optimism – because they never give up.


Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | 3 Comments