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Det sjunde inseglet (1957)
God's silence
We are in Europe, 14th century. After ten long years, the knight Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow) makes his return trail from the Crusades with his Jöns squire, Squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) in the ancient land. Antonius Block has the semblance of those who have seen and gone through everything and fear nothing, a fascinating character, in fact this actor is extraordinary.
Bergman's cinema is full of meanings, or rather symbologies. It may go unnoticed but it's there. Right in the first scenes we have a powerful semiotic sequence that indicates the scope of the conflicts treated within the drama.
We open the first scene with a sky that is difficult to describe, the tension is perceptible, it is not a sky that conveys peace, it is not only dark either, there is a conflict. The intensity rises to the volume of orchestrated music and signals the imminence of something on the way all in a few seconds, right after.... Silence.
A crow flies over a rocky, typically Scandinavian, rocky coastline, under the low light of high latitude, an unmistakable cinematographic photograph when, in Bergman's film, only the second scene is created. "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour... Then I saw the seven angels standing before God: they gave them seven trumpets". Silence.
They sleep on the beach, the horses drink water, the sun is over the horizon. Antonius Block lifts his face in the sea and looks beside him, and there is a macabre figure, Death, also known as The Reaper (Bengt Ekerot)
Here's the dialog:
Knight: Who are you?
Death: I am death.
Knight: Have you come to get me?
Death: I've been with you for a long time.
(...)
These are just the first 2 minutes of the movie. It is very dense and at the same time beautiful how Bergman quickly builds an immersive, dreamlike and fantastic environment imbued with a psychological density, building a surrealist situation but absolutely embedded in a realistic and pertinent logical discussion.
Then we move on to the key metaphor of the film, the very enigmatic, incredibly symbolic classic scene. Antonius Block proposes to Death, always in fabulous dialogues, a game of Chess, the game would last several days, each move in a place on the path of his return, if he won, Death would leave him. Death just smiles in acceptance. Here we have another subtle interesting point, why would death accept and smile so confidently? Chess is a game of many possibilities... Philosophically we can think that no one can ever escape death and she knows that, so by accepting it, what does she intend?
This scene of the beginning of the chess game between Antonius Block vs Death is perhaps one of the most famous scenes in cinema, it is full of meanings. We have here, infinite paths. My intention is to create an environment of immersion and reflection, proposing multiple interpretations. In my view, I found a beautiful metaphor, chess as dialectic, each move is an argument and so on. This dialogue will develop in a profoundly poetic, philosophical way about human existence and the meaning of life in the face of death throughout the film.
Here, a possible point of conflict for the character, also due to the historical context itself, begins to emerge. What was the point of fighting for faith in God for 10 years, winning and receiving death after a sacrificed victory? We only try to sharpen awareness of some possible points of analysis, as there are many. Survive through the Middle Ages, survive famine, survive disease, fight for God for 10 years in a religious war, survive, return on a long journey and be surprised by death.
Stalker (1979)
Tarkovsky's Hidden Keys
Andrei Tarkovsky left in his work a true puzzle of those of the most difficult pieces. They are all scattered, some already found, others are beyond our time and others don't even exist. The pieces are hidden in all the details of the scenes, the dialogues, sounds and objects of the scenery, cinematography, script, texts these fragments can be subtly identified in certain enigmatic patterns and philosophical possibilities. The connections are diverse even between the films, they are completely different works in terms of context, time, proposal, characters, in short, categorically different. The actors themselves are unrecognizable with such provoked immersion, explored within their genius.
Here I introduce a metaphorical concept that I will call Tarkovsky's Hidden Keys.
As Tarkovsky, within his art and style, proposes precisely this, the freedom of the narrative, the lack of commitment to cinematographic standards that obey a logic, I will use this "key" metaphor as the significant link (there is no such pretension, neither by the author nor by the viewer). My key is not the same as yours and so we move forward, because the keys do not exist, they are ideas, they are interpretations that climb hermeneutic interpretative and visionary suggestions in the eccentric sense of the break in the proposed language allowing full disengagement with meanings and intentions.
In the so-called "zone", the Russian army isolated an area after a series of mysterious events, described by witnesses as events related to sightings of light phenomena "meteor shower". No troops returned justifying isolation and quarantine of the place. The film inhabits a suspended territory, we only have this introduction described above.
Only the first scene would be possible to teach a whole lesson in semiotics and photography, here we are talking about a cinema that in terms of filming Kubrick would already be nervous due to the great virtuosity of this filmmaker, camera perspective, planes, colors, contrasts, without exaggeration I made a an exercise in pausing and analyzing and it is simply a frame, and the best part is endless scenes like this throughout the film.
Follow the scene. Here the scenography is pronounced, the objects speak, the silence even more, the sounds (example: a freighter train passing in the background, a leak.....), the walls with moldy wood... A room in an old house, highlighted an enormous bed in the style of the beginning of the 20th century, refined design, with very clean and white sheets, which possibly reveals a link between two times, golden and decadent, all in aged sepia tones, photograph not stating deterioration but preserving it as in a memory nostalgic. In my reading we are in a post apocalyptic futuristic scenario.
Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), is in a bar that looks like a rusty coke machine found and unearthed 200 years after a nuclear war with soda inside. The bar is empty, we have mud on the door, The external lighting is yellowish, as in a toxic environment, on the ceiling a light that fails and blinks. Aged wooden walls and obvious signs of degradation. A small waiter, like a character from a circus, sometimes appears well dressed and serves drinks that apparently are scarce in this place. Stalker waits standing at a table. Here begins the key encounter of the film, Stalker is known as the "guide". He knows the paths that entered the "Zone", from the entire process to break the Soviet blockade to the very trails and paths of the territory known for its deadly traps and situations that challenge the mind, senses and beliefs of those who try to explore it. There.
The three characters, who will spend the rest of a journey, finally meet. The dialogues are fabulous, everything happens at its own pace, it's as if there, they already knew that they would be challenging concepts to which time would never be absent. We have the "Guide" Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), the "Scientist" (Nikolay Grinko) and the "Writer" (Anatoli Solonitsyn), we can imagine that there are many possibilities here to assume the ambitions of these men, about their intentions in the search for answers in distinct fields, their anguish, dreams, once human, sometimes correspond. We can expect philosophical, existential, challenging duels... after all, what is the "zone"? What is time, mind, perception... Would you? Or we're already there.
Coronation (2020)
Inside in the eye of huricane
Excellent documentary. the opportunity to enter china within the epicenter of the world epidemic is rare through the journalism of Wai Weiwei with local images and the courage to challenge the blockade of information from the Chinese government doccumentay!
Ivanovo detstvo (1962)
The poetic narrative of horror
Ivan's Childhood (1962), a Soviet film directed by the genius of Russian cinema Andrei Tarkovsky. With photography and impressive cinematic poetry, he narrates the trajectory of a 12-year-old Russian spy, in the context of the Soviet resistance of World War II. Ivan's life is crushed by his tragic personal history. Memories of a childhood that had been brutally destroyed oscillate between revenge, survival, courage in the swamps of the Volga River, resistance trenches and forests of the Siberian taiga under the Nazi German siege.
With a poet's view of the war, Tarkovsky in the scorched earth scenario, leaves patriotism and military organization in the background to portray in the midst of chaos, the psychological and individual aspect of the characters. Red Army soldiers who find, care for and recruit Ivan, see the war with their own eyes, questions and needs.
Ivan is a survivor without a family and destiny. Seized by the feeling of revolt, struggle and war are his only survival instinct, to be traced to death. The beauty in the nightmare, the poetry amid the chaos, the pains, dreams and memories of the purity tainted by mud and destruction make this film a psychological and artistic immersion in history in a great work of art. Certainly one of the greatest films about the world at war.
The Americans (2013)
The Americans TV Series
The TV Series: The Americans was screened last night on FX television channel as the last episode of third season. Is created by Joseph Weisberg that worked in the CIA's directorate of operations from 1990 to 1994 and is produced by DreamWorks Television, which aims, recreate the high espionage that occurred during the cold war in the early 80's.
The Americans tells the story of a pair of deep-cover Soviet spies which are infiltrated in USA as a typical American family couple. At home, they are unsuspected parents of normal kids; at work, they pose as travel agents; but at night, they become a very dangerous KGB agents involved in complicated web of characters from the Cold War Era. The extreme realistic plot force the viewer to understand the high cost that was the undeclared war and how the intelligence of both sides worked.
The interesting of this series is because is based on the true story that leaked in 2010 of a cell of Russian agents who had been lived in the United States for decades working for the KGB. Several of them had had children, coworkers, friends, and neighbors who all had no idea that they were spies. The scenographic ambiance brings back in time the viewer by the original cars, furniture, clothes and the good interpretation of actors that talk in Russian language many times.
The TV series is in my opinion one of the best crime, drama and mystery series. The production team have been done a good job, for who likes espionage and history stories is obligatory appreciate the reproduced ambiance of Cold War and the instruments used in the 80's by the intelligences of the USA and USSR that had not limits to use all forces during the political threats.