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Reviews
Vodka Lemon (2003)
"Why is it called Vodka Lemon when it tastes like Almonds? Well, that's Armenia."
I was a bit numb after watching the film. The film I believe was about relationships and how important that is to these people. Relationships bring them hope in a world where hope seems to be getting harder and harder to find. To someone like me that isn't familiar with the Kurds and their life in Armenia, this film gave subtle glimpses of their quite contented past. Their lavish wallpapers, the few tasteful furniture that are left, the wall rug, the richly painted or wallpapered interiors of their houses, their clothes - these all point to a recent past where life was not as hard as it is in the present. Little by little, the director tried to give us an insight to these people's lives, at the same time making us feel how difficult it was to share this with us how hard it was to communicate this visually without making us feel like we're watching a melodrama and take pity on such a proud people. Surrealism and humor was his tools and I believe he made good use of them the guy on horseback snatching our attention away from certain scenes, the comic skits, a photograph changing its face, a floating piano, the director snaps you out of that heavy feeling building inside you with these tools, only to fill you up again
snap
fill
snap. And in the end, you only feel numb because of the emotional roller coaster ride but feel pity? No.
The story revolves around this village where life got harder and harder as the days went by. The days slowly becomes unbearable to the point that those that can, went out to look for greener pastures bringing with them their family's remaining glimmer of hope. Those left behind that looked to them for hope only learned that those in the outside couldn't offer them anything to make their lives any easier. When all they needed was a little financial help, they were given more complications and uncertainties, even gave them a glimpse of political problems from their native homeland to which they have been long disinterested and detached from.
Everything in the village is slowly crumbling and you can actually see the wallpaper chipping off, the cracks and the stains on the walls, furniture that had seen better days and there was even that sidecar motorcycle that just died on its own and after a few minutes, mysteriously came back to life again. Everything was deteriorating even the resolve and values of the characters themselves. As they get more hopeless by the day, they slowly sell things that they hold dear, their heirloom, their memories even themselves. If they're not doing that, they're trying to get something from each other by dangling false hopes.
They are stuck in an eternal winter. They are trapped in a small village surrounded by snow-covered mountains and the only road leading out of that place leads to "Vodka Lemon" a booze stop, where you get a swig, forget your problems and head on right back to the village in a seemingly eternal loop of being knocked into reality and being zapped into a booze-induced stupor. In between these two points is a cemetery where fittingly, men who are half awake and half dreaming spend time talking to the dead relatives whose faces are stuck in a perpetual scowl. The other end of the long road leads to a dead end, a place where despite its affluence people from the village couldn't get anything from unless they sell something precious to them - couldn't they get work there? An old beat-up bus plies this route and its driver is probably the only person not from that village that understands these people.
As the film progressed, we see that the snow slowly melts and brown and green earth slowly peeks out of its white blanket spring is here, change is here. The landscape changes, but the characters situation never got any better; their hope actually seems like they are melting away with the snow and like a proverbial final nail to the coffin, Vodka Lemon closes down. The director offered us no assurance that the situation of those people would get better, he offered no solution nor resolution. He only pointed us to the people's culture and how that in itself makes for a good enough ending.
The filmmaker offered us not only glimpses of the people's culture, their marriage, their burial ceremonies, their music as well as the dynamics of their relationships, he also offered to those curious enough to search the internet, a bit of their history, telling us to find out why the years 1915 (genocide against the Armenians) and 1941 (end of the Armenian war) are important to them. He also showed how dependent these people have become of their Russian colonial masters and how lost they have become without them. He showed us how happy these people are despite their hopelessness. He also showed that despite their apparent dependence on money and material things, they still firmly hold on something a lot of rich people take for granted the value of family and relationships, even if it doesn't give much of a solution to the problems they currently face.
Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)
Mr, Bean is an indie filmmaker
If you like watching Mr. Bean on TV, and if you've seen the first movie as well, you'd find that Atkinson did nothing special in this movie. Mr. Bean is Mr. Bean and it's either you love him or you find him corny, no gray areas here. You'll see the same antics, the same absurdity and the same stupidity that would make you cringe one minute and then make you laugh yourself out of your seat the next. Personally, watching the TV series is a lot funnier because like all jokes, the sooner you get to the punchline, the better. Movies last for two hours on the average and it would be very hard to keep the audience laughing from start to finish. The build-up is crucial and the punchlines have to be delivered with as much spontaneity as possible and that in itself is hard already. Now what makes this even harder is the fact that the movie used very little dialog. The underlying plot and story had to jive with Mr. Bean's brand of comedy and at the same time Mr. Bean had to work with a 2-hour narrative structure, all the while trying to keep the acting and comedy as spontaneous and as natural as possible, even Charlie Chaplin or the three Stooges would've surely had a hard time.
What made me appreciate this film is not its brand of humor, but the story itself. Behind Mr. Bean's comedic facade, absurd humor and rehashed antics, the movie boasts of an underlying story that makes it way above the first movie in terms of substance. This movie isn't shallow at all. I don't know if you saw it the way I did, but I believe the film is a critique of the independent film movement! Remember the movie's climax, where there's this highly- acclaimed art film director who was about to showcase his latest film to a highly film-literate Cannes audience, only to end up showing Mr. Bean's home video instead? And when the director thought he was ruined for sure, the crowd suddenly erupted to a standing ovation, much to his surprise. Remember that sequence? What does this say about art-films? Simply put, an art film is what the critics and the audience say it is. If it is a simple home video but the audience thinks its art, it is art. No amount of special effects, eerie soundtracks and fantastic editing can equal the magic of a filmmaker who dedicates himself and puts his all on his personal work, and Bean's video was just that, a collection of his absurd yet real adventures while going on his merry way to experience that Cannes beach vacation he won on a lottery. In the end, you'll see that same art-film director going around shooting like Mr.Bean, as if saying that filmmakers and directors today do just that - they don't make use of their own styles, they simple apply the styles that work in making their films. That is what I think the director of this film tells us with Mr. Bean's holiday. This film is not something he plans to see at Cannes nor is this film a simple clone of the first Bean movie. He knows his craft and he wants to tell us that he is simply doing his thing without using past Mr. Bean formulas that worked. Personally, I think he did a good job.
Jakob der Lügner (1974)
The Best East German Film Ever Made
The Holocaust has been told in many different ways. We have seen the brutality of it in documentaries on cable as well as in a number of contemporary films. The visuals of Aryan supremacy in Leni Reifenstahl's Nazi propaganda films, images of mountains of dead Jews and extremely inhumane conditions in death camps in Schindler's List, serve not merely to drive the film narrative but stir our emotions as well. These images have conditioned us to read such films and documentaries using stereotypes of both the Jews and the Nazi Jews are good and the Nazi, evil. The film Jakob the Liar explores the holocaust in a new light, presenting anti-Semitism in a relatively subtle way without compromising its substance as well as the film's power to move human emotion.
The music is monotonous suggesting the monotony of the protagonists' lives in the ghetto. Shots are limited to medium shots and lots of close-ups making one feel claustrophobic, enveloped, and asphyxiated even. This immensely adds to an atmosphere of hopelessness and despair. Close-ups also give specific information about the character, their feelings, the way they live, the things they've gone thought and their relationships with each other. The personal information provided us makes us develop a sense of closeness with the characters. Midway in the film, we already have a bond with the characters, we already know their real feelings despite the lightness, surrealistic and oftentimes humorous treatment of the scenes.
It is also quite extraordinary to depict the Nazi they way this film did considering that this is a holocaust film and one of the first East German film to tackle the subject. Unlike in other film where the Nazis are portrayed as unreasonably evil and sadistic, here we are given a glimpse of their humanity. In the introductory scene where a tower guard tells Jakob to report to Gestapo headquarters for not complying with the curfew, we saw instances where Jakob would have surely been severely punished or even killed but the officers were surprisingly reasonable and just. One officer caught him eavesdropping but lets him go, Jakob then wakes up a sleeping head officer to report his misdemeanor yet even with being irritated for being roused awake, he lets Jakob go without a scratch. The tower-guard, proved wrong, lets Jakob go as well. We also saw guards who are not necessarily the perfect Aryan depicted in Riefenstahl films. There was one guard who walks with a limp and another having the runs. There was also a scene where one guard beats up a Jew (Kowalski), then later returns and drops two sticks of cigarettes for Kowalski - an unspoken apology for having beaten up the Jew. A Nazi apologizing to a Jew in a holocaust film! Is that something or what?
But then, the film doesn't make us hate the Nazi guards or to view them as the villains in the film. Instead we are made to understand the situation and the circumstance is the real enemy here. This is not a movie pitting the Jews against their Nazi guards like the director's own "Naked among Wolves"; this is a film about a people's struggle to maintain their dignity and humanity amidst the hardships they have suffered.
The film started with glimpses of the ghetto and Jakob checking out his sick niece, all these visuals already gives us an idea of the life of the protagonist and the place he lives in. Then in a very short verbal exchange with one of the ghetto's denizen, Jakob gives us a background of his situation, that a guard took his watch from him. The guy he was talking to on the other hand warns him about the curfew to which he answers that without his watch, has no way to tell time. This sequence tells us that first, the guards can take and do take from the Jews anything they want and second, that the people are in constant fear of the guards and dare not disobey any rules lest one wants to be severely punished or killed. It also tells us that in the event that Jakob gets killed, he will be leaving his young and sick niece to care for herself.
The character's actions and mood also imply of a prevailing state of constant fear - whether that of being killed or seeing someone close to you die a meaningless death.The Jews in the film were waiting for an inevitable annihilation, a fate they have long accepted until Jakob gave them an alternate view of the future because of his news of a possible liberation by the Russians.
Through out the film, we are still constantly given pieces of Jewish life before the ghetto. Through flashbacks and what the characters say, we are presented concrete glimpses of how their lives of the films protagonists were before the ghetto. We also shown that in the ghetto, former actors, lawyers, businessmen and even people from the church lose their former identities. In the ghetto, they are made to wear the star and made to work and follow rules like everybody else, albeit their former position or affiliation. Everybody suffers, everyone is subjected to the harshness of ghetto life everyday there's no distinction in class, social status, age and/or sex. We see old people doing hard labor, children getting sick and eating mere crumbs or pieces of vegetables. We see the protagonists picking flies out of their soup and making a feast out of minced onion and a slice of bread. Frank Bayer told the story and made us feel what the characters felt using visuals and very powerful visuals at that.