Life of Oharu

It's been forever since I've done a movie review on this blog you are reading.  So, while I wait for the men's Ice Hockey event to get underway (it begins tomorrow at noon), today is a good chance to get a movie in, and as you can see from the picture, today's selection is Life of Oharu.

The basic plot of the movie follows Oharu's descent from lady-in-waiting to streetwalker in 17th century Japan.  The movie begins with Oharu having an unsuccessful run as a streetwalker, and from there, the viewer is treated to a lengthy flashback that starts from the lady-in-waiting phase of her life.  It is there that things begin to go wrong for her and her family, as she is caught with a page, and in that time period, a higher up could not be seen mingling with a lower class.  Because of that, she gets banished with her family to another town while the page simply gets beheaded.  From there, Oharu has unsuccessful stints as a concubine to an Emperor, a courtesan, servant, nun, and streetwalker.  Even when she finds happiness, as she does when she marries a fan maker, that doesn't last, as he gets killed by a robber soon thereafter.

Life of Oharu is a thoroughly depressing movie that touches on class rigidity and gender issues.  Throughout the movie, the viewer sees Oharu having to be dependent on the male for any level of success and failure to do so only serves to complicate her living situation.  The movie paces itself fairly well, but provides little in the way of excitement (for those who only seek such things).  It is also a movie that provides a different view of Japan from the normal Samurai fare that dominated the Japanese movie scene in the 1950's.  Ultimately, Life of Oharu peels the curtain back on an era that is typically romanticized with acts of bravery and courage and does so in a manner that demystifies the era in ways similar to Seven Samurai.

Nostalgia: It's a Powerful Thing

For as much as I've been into movies released by the Criterion Collection lately, I have never found the time to delve into movies made by Ingmar Bergman (mostly due to my leaning towards the Japanese titles)...until now.  I finally broke down and put on Wild Strawberries, a 1957 movie that centers around Isak Borg, a doctor who is about to receive his honorary degree from a college in Lund.  However, certain events on the way there force him to assess his life and confront his relations with people in his life, which to put it kindly, is not on good terms.  Driving out to Lund with his daughter-in-law, they encounter a trio of people trying to get to Italy, a bickering couple, and make a few stops at points of interest in Isak's life, namely a summer home and the house where his mother lives.

The performances in the movie are powerful, with Victor Sjostrom playing the role of Isak Borg to a tee while Bergman regulars Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin provide equally strong performances in the primary supporting roles.  The dream sequences that Borg has are generally tough to figure out, particularly the first sequence, but by the end of the movie, it will all make sense.  The younger generation isn't likely to appreciate this movie as much as the older generation, but it will tell a story that many, if not all, can relate to and perhaps even inspire to strive for the better.

Samurais...in Color

The movie Gate of Hell was one of the first samurai movies to be made in color, and thanks to Criterion Collection, it is now available for release.  The plot:

A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, Gate of Hell is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; even after he discovers she is married, he goes to extreme lengths to win her love. Kinugasa’s film is an unforgettable, tragic story of obsession and unrequited passion that was an early triumph of color cinematography in Japan.

The visuals, as in color, is glorious, and while the plot leaves a little to be desired (read: doesn't stand out from the other samurai movies released in the same time period), the last fifteen minutes or so is what really ties it all together and in dramatic fashion.  There aren't any special features to speak of, but here, it isn't such a bad idea, as the movie speaks for itself.

Critical Thinking about Religion

Today's movie review is Leon Morin, Priest, and since it is a Criterion release, there is a pretty good reason why it sees the light of day for State-side folks: it is a movie that is conducive to critical thinking.

The synopsis, according to IMDb:

In World War II, the widow Barny sees the Italian soldiers arriving in occupied Saint Bernard while walking to her job. Barny lives with her daughter and works correcting tests and feels a great attraction toward her boss Sabine. When the Germans arrive, Barny sends her half-Jewish daughter to live in a farm in the countryside and finds that Sabine's brother has been arrested and sent to a concentration camp. The atheist Barny decides to baptize her daughter to protect her and chooses priest Léon Morin to discuss with him themes related to religion and Catholicism and Léon lends books to her. Barny converts to the Catholicism and becomes closer to Léon, feeling an unrequited desire for him.

The theme of the movie is one of religion with World War II as a backdrop, and though religion is often a tricky line to walk in movies, Leon Morin, Priest does a great job of not only walking that line, but also putting Catholicism in a good light.  While the movie will undoubtedly raise questions about the religion (director Jean-Pierre Melville is not religious), it does try to put its best foot forward and shows an evolution, and ultimately conversion, of Barny (Emmanuelle Riva) from Atheist to Catholic.  The road there is not an easy one, and the movie captures that route as well as it can, all the while showing Leon Morin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) as the priest who despite being faced with much temptation, as more attractive females seek him out for guidance in light of the war's effect on the number of males their age available, remains as strong in his beliefs and ultimately comes out on top.

The main focus of the movie is on Barny's interactions with Morin, and whether you are religious or not, the movie is sure to raise questions, though most of them are well suited to a critical thinking session.  If you're willing to think, then Leon Morin, Priest is a movie that will stimulate such ideas.

Badlands

In light of its recent release by the Criterion Collection, today is a movie review in the form of Badlands.  The basic synopsis is as follows:

Based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1958, in which a fifteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

The movie stars Martin Sheen as Kit, whose overall demeanor and looks could be mistaken for James Dean, something that is referenced in the movie, and Sissy Spacek as Holly, three years before her breakout role in Carrie.

The plot itself is rather basic and doesn't really have any exciting points to speak of, but where Badlands gets its notoriety is the way in which both Sheen and Spacek act throughout the movie, which is to say rather detached from the reality that they occupy.  Spacek's character narrates the movie, which reflects this detachment from everyday life and almost lends a dreamlike quality to the movie.  Everything lends itself to the rather laid back nature of the movie, from the scenery to the music, and even the killings themselves, which for all intents and purposes, isn't all that violent.  Badlands is a movie that works well when the viewer is not watching with an emotional investment in how things go.

Battle Royale

Not having done a movie review in a while, today is an opportunity to fix that, and today's movie is Battle Royale.  The story is that a class of ninth graders are picked to participate in a killing game that only ends with one person surviving.  The movie itself is based on a novel of the same name, and like the novel, the film was released to much controversy.  The central characters in the movie are Shuya Nanahara (Boy 15), Noriko Nakagawa (Girl 15), and Kitano (teacher).  Other central characters in the movie are Kawada (boy 5), Kiriyama (boy 6), and Mitsuko (girl 11).  For purposes of this review, these are the characters that do the most in the movie, so I will focus on them as opposed to the others, most of whom have one line or two before getting killed.

The film follows Nanahara, who was orphaned after seeing his father hang himself, and Noriko, who has a special relationship with Kitano (father and daughter like relations, to be specific).  Kawada and Kiriyama are transfer students with different motivations for being in this Battle Royale, with Kawada being the guardian angel of sorts for both Nanahara and Noriko while Kiriyama joins for the sport of it.  Mitsuko also plays a central role in this film, as other than Kiriyama, she is the most lethal player in this game.  Beyond all the killing, Battle Royale touches upon the themes of friendship, love, and relations with family gone awry.  You notice these things in the flashbacks that Nanahara, Noriko, and Kitano have, and even when Kitano inadvertently (?) saves Noriko from certain death at the hands of Mitsuko.  The violence within the movie will either draw you in or push you away, but it is the underlying themes that ultimately make this movie worth your time.

Seven Samurai

I have not done a movie review on this blog in a while, and since the lockout is hindering how much I can talk about hockey, today is a day for a movie.  The three and a half hour epic known as Seven Samurai is Akira Kurosawa's most famous work and takes a lot of the glamour out of the samurai that Hollywood puts on it.  The basic plot is that there is a village of farmers that need some samurais to help fend off some bandits.  This leads to seven out of work samurais to band together and protect them.  Up until the first battles begin with the bandits, Kurosawa focuses on the struggles that the samurais have in trying to gain the trust of the farmers, who themselves aren't exactly innocent in their dealings with past protectors.  The samurais do their job, but not without paying a steep price, as one samurai notes that he has lost every battle.  It becomes clear what he means at the end, when the final scene is focused on the four graves of the seven samurai who were slain in battle.

The pacing of the movie is deliberate, which may turn off some people, but Kurosawa is careful to not leave out any critical detail in the movie, something that was also present in Ikiru, a movie I reviewed earlier.  If you have the time and patience, do yourself a favor and check out Seven Samurai.

Blow-Up

The 1966 movie Blow-Up is not what it seems.  Throughout the movie, there is a lot more than the 60's London Mod style and murder mystery.  Though the movie has Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles as the headlining stars of the movie, the reality is that both only really have a quarter of screen time combined.  As for the real main lead, played by David Hemmings, he is a photographer that while developing pictures from a park, believes that he may have captured a murder.  Yet, for director Michelangelo Antonioni's part, he doesn't even begin to focus on the murder, but rather Hemmings' slow descent into a world where the line between reality and illusion gets blurred little by little.  The mimes at the beginning and end of the movie are a metaphor for the invisibility that Hemmings' character feels as he tries prodding at what really happened in the park.

Blow-Up is a deliberately paced movie that benefits from the soundtrack of Herbie Hancock and sounds of quiet during the park scenes.  If you pay attention, you may spot the Yardbirds playing during a scene, which means you get to see Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page (pre-Zeppelin).

Special Effects Genius

Ever wonder how E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Dune, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Alien get the accolades they get?  Some of that had to do with Carlo Rambaldi, who did special effects works on those movies.  He died today at the age of 86, and his legacy in Hollywood is one of bringing to life one of the most recognizable figures in the sci-fi genre.  His works also included the 1976 version of King Kong, Dario Argento's Deep Red, and the 1981 movie Possession (seriously, what the hell is that thing having sex with the main female lead?).  Long before CGI ruined just about every movie today, you had Rambaldi, who himself hated the idea of CGI and any other type of computer-animated effects.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Today's movie review is a musical that has absolutely nothing to do with gore or metal music.  As a matter of fact, there will be many ABBA references throughout the review, so if your idea of fun isn't the Swedish foursome, then look away.

Okay, show of hands, who here likes ABBA?  Don't pretend that you don't, and if you do in fact not like ABBA, then turn in your music fan card now.  The movie in question is Mamma Mia!, and it is based off of the Broadway play of the same name.  As you can guess from the movie title, it is heavy on ABBA references, even going as far as incorporating songs from the band into the movie.  As for the premise of the movie, a young woman (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married, but does not know who her father is, so after leafing through her mother's (Meryl Streep) diary, she sends out invites to three men who could be her father (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth).  This is unbeknownst to her mother, who as you can imagine, is less than pleased to see all three men that were once in her life.  Of course, the fun ensues and you can imagine how this romantic comedy goes.

The plot itself is cliched on some level, but it serves more as a complimentary piece to the ABBA theme.  The songs picked for the movie obviously had to fit into the story, and many of them work, though you would have to be a big ABBA fan to recognize a few of them.  The people cast into the movie had to be able to sing, and for the most part, it succeeds on that level, though I would have liked to have seen some better casting choices (it's nitpicking here).  The DVD has a sing-along option, which puts up the words to the songs on the screen, so if you want to sing along, it's there for you.  Overall, it's not a masterpiece, but it's main purpose is to provide a fun movie that you can participate in, and that is where Mamma Mia! succeeds on every level.

A Clockwork Orange

Today's review is actually a double, as in both a movie and book review of the same thing.  As you can tell from the title, today is about A Clockwork Orange, a novel by Anthony Burgess that was later made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick.  The story behind A Clockwork Orange is that the main character Alex is telling his story of how he went from the de facto leader of a small gang to a proverbial sacrificial lamb for the Ludovico Technique and back to "normal."  The book actually has one more chapter added than what most American readers are used to, something that Burgess had in the beginning, but due to his American publisher's demands, had to cut the chapter out (the last one).  The novel paints a dark, unforgiving world that points out some social commentary.  The narration is in "Nadsat," a variation of Russian mixed with English, with influences from Cockney slang and the King James Bible.  After a while, the narration can get a little annoying, but it doesn't take away from the basic story, and one of the most endearing aspects of the novel is that it forces deep thought from the reader.  Many questions arise from the novel, many of them of the moral variety.

The movie stays mostly true to the novel, with a few exceptions.  Where the movie differs the most from the novel is that it becomes a little more of a dark comedy (e.g. the rape scene where Alex sings "Singing in the Rain" while doing so) and relies heavily on the use of color, particularly in Frank Alexander's residence.  The bright scenery in many respects clashes heavily with the overall message, which unintended or not, provides something for those who place great value on visual aspects while keeping the main story as the focus.  The movie is considered a cult classic for good reason: it portrays the novel as close to perfect as it can, and it helps that Malcom McDowell's portrayal of Alex ended up being perfect.