Change Your Image
MattN-2
Reviews
The Ninth Gate (1999)
Falls short of potential in intriguing premise
(Warning: This review discusses "surprise" ending of the film!) The Ninth Gate is a film with an intriguing premise that unfortunately promises more than it can deliver. Although Depp may be commended for a solid job playing the oily, yet obsessively scholarly bibliophile Corso, caught up between rival satanic factions in the quest to solve the rebus-like mystery of the "The Nine Gates," the film signals us very early to the mechanism by which the riddle may be solved, without ever bothering to convincingly "unpack" this solution. Although much is to be said for a suggestive, open-ending , Polansky makes the mistake of centering his plot around the "meaning" of a set of occult engravings that are never allowed to take on any greater significance for the viewer than that of a mere plot engine (i.e. the "get the girl" of Chinatown has become "get the engravings"). Thus, although Corso's guardian "angel" (the compellingly enigmatic Emmanuelle Seigner) reveals to us in the aftermath of the attempt to conjure the Prince of Darkness that the scheme has failed because one of the engravings was a forgery, even the final "revelatory" glimpse at the genuine engraving is not sufficient to clear the muddied waters of the occult undercurrents supposedly motivating this film. Perhaps the Perez-Reverte novel contains the insights so noticeably lacking in the film. On its own, however, The Ninth Gate suggests a fuzzy filmic hybrid of Rosmarie's Baby and Foucault's Pendulum, which never achieves the unsettling horror of the former because it is lacking in the "systematic" motivation of the latter.
A Letter Without Words (1998)
Amazing images of prewar Germany
An attempt at reconstructing a the life of a wealthy, amateur Jewish filmmaker of Weimar Republic and early-Nazi Germany on the basis of filmic testimony found by her granddaughter.
As noticed by other viewers, the film did exhibit some fragmentation -- only honest, however, in light of the fragmentary nature of the historical evidence in question.
Worth seeing for some very rare non-Nazi color (!) footage from the period 1933-7.
Verriegelte Zeit (1990)
East German technocrats passing the buck
One woman's attempt at Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, or coming to grips with the GDR's totalitarian past. Although there are moments you'll want to shoot the sound engineer, the psychological insights that slowly unfold over the course of this film make it worthwhile for those interested in the recent history of Eastern Europe.
One might question, however, as to whether the German Government's Bundesfilmpreis went to this film for it's modest technical virtues, or for its political legitimation value.
Echtzeit (1983)
self-reflexive catastrophe
This is a mind-numbingly boring, "dramatized" attempt at a film-essay on virtual reality. For the real thing, see Chris Marker's "La Jetée" (1962).
Der bewegte Mann (1994)
German comedy is not an oxymoron!
Based on the work of Ralf König -- the king (no pun intended) of the Teutonic queer comic strip -- Wortmann has made a film about the vicissitudes of coming out. Hand in hand, these two men from the country of "poets and thinkers" dare utter the words: "we are German, we are funny, and we are not ashamed!" In case you missed Wortmann's "Kleine Haie" (1992) -- a road film about three young men coming to grips with their thespianism -- here's proof that comedy is not merely a genre inflicted unilaterally by Hollywood on the rest of the world. Although this film does make concessions in order to be more palatable to its hetero viewership, it is clearly head-and-shoulders above recent Hollywood forays into the queer-exploitation venue such as the abysmal "In&Out" featuring Kevin Kline. After Fassbinder and Wenders it now looks like Germany has a commercially viable director with something worthwhile to say!
Kleine Haie (1992)
"Fahrbier ist auch gut!"
This is a road film about three young men coming to grips with their thespianism and living proof that comedy is not merely a genre inflicted unilaterally by Hollywood on the rest of the world. Upping the ante after "Allein unter Frauen," this is the film that put post-reunification German comedy firmly on the map. For those of you open-container-deprived North Americans, this film is worth watching just for the scenes featuring the camaro-pilot "Bierchen" and for the use of the fine technical pleonasm "Fahrbier."