The King's Speech (2010)

Title: The King’s Speech (2010)

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce

Review:

The King’s Speech was the big winner on Oscar night 2011. It won four Academy Awards: Best Actor (Colin Firth) Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler), Best Director (Tom Hooper) and Best Film of the Year. I thought it deserved the awards that it got, because it is a good film, with excellent performances and a well written screenplay. Personally, I was rooting for Darren Aronofsky to win the Oscar for Best Director for Black Swan, but whatever, as it turns out The King’s Speech was the big winner of the night. You know how The Academy loves an inspirational film with characters conquering their fears and achieving their goals. Black Swan was probably too dark a movie for The Academy, who we all know likes their winning films to be happy, shinny and up lifting. The King’s Speech certainly fits those prerequisites.

The King’s Speech is a film that focuses on the pressures and stress that fall upon a political figure. You and I (read: the common man) can’t really grasp what it means to suddenly become such an important political figure for a whole nation, so the movie does a wonderful job of doing it for us. It’s interesting to note that King George VI (played by Colin Firth) became king only when his brother, King Edward VIII (played by Guy Pearce) renounced the thrown. When King Edward VIII inherits the throne, moments after his fathers death, the first thing he does is burst into uncontrollable crying. At first we think he is crying over his fathers death, but it soon becomes clear that he is crying because he doesn’t want all the responsibility that comes with the title. Apparently, all King Edward VIII wanted to do was have a good time through life, partying, falling in love, he didn’t care about being a King, which is why after a short tenor as the King of England, King Edward VIII renounces the thrown and hands it over to his brother King George VI. Problem is, King George VI has a speech impediment, he stammers and the stammering gets worse when he has to addresses the nation. Enter Geoffrey Rush, speech therapist, to help him with his problem.

The most interesting aspect for me about this film was how The King of England has to come down from his royal palace to meet with a common man to help him out of his dilemma. Geoffrey Rush’s character Lionel Logue isn’t a high class aristocrat, nope; he is just a common man who is good at what he does. He doesn’t even have a degree! Yet here he is; the kings’ last hope. The film constantly questions the seat of power; it literally tries to bring the high and mighty King, the ultimate representation of political power, down to a more human level. Lionel Logue constantly tries to humanize The King, begging for him to come off his high horse. I think the movie quite cleverly squeezes these themes in the film, sort of reminding governments, hey, you know, you wouldn’t be up there if it wasn’t for the help of the common man, the poor guy who has a family to feed and does an honest days work. And I really liked that about the film. It’s the king actually listening, spending time, and thanking the commoner for his services. I liked that idea, because it’s something that those in power sometimes forget: that the governed are real people, with real situations, they aren’t just statistics. So kudos to the movie for that.

It also questions the power that a political figure actually has. I mean, just how powerful is a King or a President of a nation? In certain cases, and this holds true for the United States as well, the King or the President is just a symbolic figure, the big honchos making the decisions are really back stage, while the king or president is just there to talk to the people. One scene has the King saying: “If I am King, then where is my power? Can I declare war? Form a government? Levy a tax? No! And yet I am the seat of all authority because the people think that when I speak, I speak for them” There is another scene where Lionel sits in this royal chair where only kings and queens have sat in. The king gets his panties all up in a bunch over this telling Lionel to get off the chair, that he is trivializing everything. Lionel tells the king: “I don’t care how many Royal assholes have sat on this chair, its just a chair.” I liked this aspect of the film because sometimes people tend to deify political figures and forget that they are just humans, with fears and limitations, same as you or I.

I enjoyed the film mainly because it’s a film that begs governments to show a thread of humanity with its ‘loyal subjects’. It bets for governments to treat their subjects, however common they maybe, with the dignity and respect they deserve. Because who knows, maybe one day they might need us for something. It’s a movie that gives value to the common man as an important part of society. I loved the performances; Geoffrey Rush plays such an adorable, goofy and candid character. I love it how he confronts the king, brings him down to a more human level. Colin Firth starts out as a stubborn guy who hates himself and his stammering, a guy who is filled with anger. He slowly, with the help of Lionel, learns to deal with his anger, conquer his speech impediment and finally addresses the nation in the proper way. It’s the reason why the film won four Oscars, it’s an uplifting tale, where a man goes through this whole evolution, and conquers his fears. In the process, he learns a thing or two about humility, sympathy for others and true friendship.

Speaking of conquering ones fears and all that, the screenwriter for The King’s Speech, David Seidler also stammered when he was a child, and King George’s story motivated him to over come it, so the film has a bit of authenticity to it when it comes to the whole psychological process of overcoming a speech impediment. Another Interesting thing about David Seidler is that up to this point he had been working mostly on writing straight to dvd and television films like the David Carradine vehicles Kung Fu Killer (2008) and Son of the Dragon (2006). His only brushes with theatrical releases were his scripts for Tucker a Man and His Dream (1988) and an animated feature film called Quest for Camelot (1998). He’d always wanted to write a film about King George VIII, so he started working on the screenplay which he’d always had in the back of his head. Low and behold, years down the line he ends up winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and the film itself is the big winner of the night! Seidler isn’t exactly a young pup (he’s well into his seventies) yet here he is in his Golden Years, winning an Academy Award. When he received the award he said “My father always told me I’d be a late bloomer!” He gave a great acceptance speech at the Oscars, without a bit of stammering to be heard! Hooray for late bloomers!

Rate: 5 out of 5

Biutiful (2010)

Title: Biutiful (2010)

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Cast: Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez

Review:

What I like most about Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu’s films is that they have this enhanced feeling of reality to them. It’s not only the documentary style he uses or how he lights them, or the excellent performances he squeezes out of his actors, which are all attributes that I love from his films; no, what I really love about Inarritu’s films is what happens in them; because when you watch an Inarritu film, you feel like you’re getting a slice of raw realism placed before your eyes. Inarritu’s films are filled with the kind of realism that most Hollywood films shy away from. Sometimes when I watch a film, and I see for example a character living in a house or driving a car that’s obviously way out of the characters financial reach, I feel disconnected and cheated. I mean, sometimes you can just tell that the filmmakers are putting their characters in these unrealistic situations just so the film can look pretty and so the characters end up surrounded by huge houses and expensive cars that only Hollywood can buy. Unfortunately, both you and I know that in films like those, real life isn’t being represented. This is something that does not happen in Inarritu’s films, where the common man, the poor man, lives in a humble home and has very little food to eat. Inarritu's characters wear worn out clothes and have to struggle to survive.

Poverty is a theme that not a lot of filmmakers like to address, or more appropriately Hollywood doesn’t like address. Why? Because poverty by nature is an extremely sad thing, real poverty and the kind of lives that real poor people live can bring you to tears...and the masses (read: the grand majority of people) want to go to the movies to laugh and to be entertained. There are exceptions of course. That scene in The Pursuit of Happiness (2006) for example, where Will Smith’s character ends up having to sleep in a public restroom with his son because he has no money, I bet you choked up with that one didn’t ya? Or how about that scene in Cinderella Man (2006) where Russell Crow’s character doesn’t have a job and all he has to give to his kids for dinner is a slice of salami? I know that one got the waterworks going for me, and with good reason. Damn, we can even go as far back as Chaplin and his tramp eating a shoe during New Years Eve in Chaplins Gold Rush (1925). Situations like these happen in the world every day, and worse, and its sad that this is so. Yes folks, poverty is a sad ugly thing that many choose to ignore, but not Inarritu.

Javier Bardem plays Uxbal, a hustler with no money to feed the kids

I love it when films explore the dark sad side of life, because all that sadness and darkness is part of the world we live in. What’s the point of ignoring it when we can learn something from it? Inarritu is a filmmaker that knows this and has become a champion of the dark side of life. From day one in his career back when he made his first film Amores Perros (2001), I fell in love with his style of filmmaking. It felt real somehow. You felt like these characters could very well exist in the real world. And they act and talk like real people, not an ounce of dialog feels unnatural. Inarritu’s films are filtered through the sadness and despair of real life. It’s why his films are so refreshing.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

In Biutiful we meet Uxbal, a hustler. This is a character rooted in duality, he is equal times a good guy and a bad guy. He’s a bad guy because he works running a sweat shop that employs illegal immigrants in the production of cheap imitations of big name brand products. Basically they make imitation purses, watches, sun glasses, you know the drill. He delivers the dirty money used to pay the police so they can sell these things on the streets without getting caught. He makes sure his workers have a place to sleep and are paid for their work. But he is also a good guy in the sense that he is a family man, and he is trying to give his children a better life. But no matter how much he tries, he just can’t seem to get out of the rut he is in. He barely has enough money to put some decent food on the table for his kids. One heart breaking scene has his kids begging for a good dinner, and all he has to give them is a bowl of cereal. As he pours the milk on it, he says “heres your steak and your potatoes”

So yeah, the film is about poverty and about money (or lack of it) and of how the world we live in has people back stabbing each other for it. It’s kind of similar to No Country for Old Men (2007) in that sense. Almost every single character in Biutiful is looking for a way to make that little extra cash by cheating, lying and betraying others. This is the kind of world we live in. Uxbal himself is always trying to take a little for himself, he takes money from the money he is supposed to give to the cops, he takes money that’s given to him to run the business. He does this in order to feed his family. He’s the kind of character that looks for the cheap solution to whatever problem, just so he can have some money left for his responsibilities as a father. He steals so that he can feed his kids, this is the kind of situation that he has been forced into. And it’s the kind of movie this is, actually it’s the kind of movie Inarritu has been making from the beginning where he shows us the lengths and risks that the poor will take to make some extra dough. Biutiful is a movie that shows us how the world we live in forces people to live this way. Does the world have to be like this? Why is Uxbal and his family struggling like this? Why can’t Uxbal get out of the rut?

Which brings me to the films title: Biutiful. The title of the film accentuates what it’s really about. The lack of education and the need for it in order to get out of the proverbial hole. One scene has Uxbal’s daughter ask him how to write the word ‘beautiful’ in English and Uxbal writes it the way it sounds in Spanish: Biutiful. It is misspelled, accentuating in this way the need for education in order to have a better life. But education is currently under attack in the world we live in, schools are being shut down, the price you have to pay for Higher Education has gone up to astronomical prices, hell, right now even federal grants are in danger of being taken away in some countries. And so, for me, Biutiful was trying to show us how much Education is needed for the poor to get out of poverty. My question is: why is higher education becoming so inaccessible to the less fortunate? Is there some sort of master plan to keep education out of the reach of the poor? If it is, then families like the one seen in Biutiful will continue to multiply. Yes, Biutiful is a bleak picture, the kind of film where nothing but bad things happen to the main character, so be ready for that.

And yet another theme that Biutiful addresses is death. Uxbal is a character stricken by cancer. He’s case is pretty hopeless, cancer has practically eaten him up, so much so that he urinates blood. So this urges him to do something for his kids, save money for them, because ultimately, that’s all that matters when you are a parent. The well being of your kids. When you are about to leave this world, you want to leave something for them, make sure they will be okay when you die. Sadly, in this difficult and complex world we live in, where ‘the people’ are the ones that have to end up paying for their governments economical “crisis’s” and “deficits” even that becomes a difficult task.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Antichrist (2009)

Title: Antichrist (2009)

Director/Writer: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Willem Defoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Review:

Going into a movie like Antichrist there’s one thing you have to know, it’s going to be a shocking, dark and depressing affair. This is probably why it took me a while to finally get around to watching it; I knew this wasn’t the kind of film you can watch at just any moment. You have to be in the right mood to watch a movie like this one, a deliberately dark psychological piece. So I guess I was ready for something dark when I finally got around to it. Antichrist is a film that caused a major uproar when it was first released, reportedly people even fainted during its screening at Cannes. Audiences were immediately polarized by the film as is usually the case with films that are graphic, violent and have strong thematic and psychological elements. Films like this one don’t subscribe to anyone’s rules, they exist on their own universe and you have to adapt to it if you’re going to go for this ride.

Antichrist is the story of He (Willem Defoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a couple who are coping with the death of their baby boy. You see, one night, while they were having sex, their baby boy wakes up and decides he wants to walk about the house. He is then hypnotized by the white snow falling outside, so he takes a chair steps up to the open window to look at the snow. When he tries to reach out to the snow, he falls to his death! This of course traumatizes both parents, but because He is a psychologist, He deals with it better then She does. I guess being a psychologist, He knows how to deal with this kind of situation a little better. But She is destroyed, She doesn’t know how to continue with her life and blames herself. Will She ever recuperate? Will going to a cabin in the forest to deal with their inner demons make matters any better?

So this film caused an uproar for various reasons, one of them is its sexually explicit images that border on pornographic. Actually, scratch that, they don’t border on porn, they are porn. Antichrist reminded me of They Call Her One Eye (1974) a revenge flick from the seventies that did the same exact thing. It’s a film with a story, and a plot, but suddenly when characters have sex; it’s not simulated like in most films. When characters have sex in They Call Her One Eye (a.k.a. Thriller: A Cruel Picture) suddenly what you are seeing is a porn film, with as sexually explicit images as those you’d find in a porn flick. But don’t go on thinking that Antichrist is a porn film because it isn’t. It’s a regular film, with an involving story and plot, but when it comes to nudity or sex, it doesn’t hold back at all. Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg had no problem in showing their junk on this flick, though in the most sexually explicit scenes, it’s not them you are seeing, but their porn star body doubles. Still, these are very daring performances; these actors really exposed themselves both physically and emotionally.

But aside from the explicit sexual images, the film was also accused of being misogynistic. Meaning it was throwing a lot of hate towards females. I don’t agree so much with this point of view. I mean, this is a woman who lost her son, of course she is going to be depressed and angry and maybe even a little violent. What is the problem with portraying a character like that? When you watch this film you feel as if She is a ball of negativity, every comment, every thought that She says is downright depressing and sad. There is not an ounce of positivity on this female character; she spews hatred and anger with every word she says. I don’t blame her for it, and I think for all intents and purposes it’s an accurate portrayal of a woman filled with guilt over the death of her son. In this way, the film reminded me a whole lot of Fabrice Du Welz’s Vinyan (2008), another film about a couple dealing with the death of their sons. Actually, both of these films are similar in more ways then one, but I’ll let you discover that on your own when you see them.

Roger Ebert gave a very religious interpretation of the film, stating that the death of the son represented “the fall of man” and that He and She are Adam and Eve and what have you, but I don’t think this was Von Trier’s purpose with this film. And if you guys know me, if I find religious symbolisms in a film I will point them out if need be, but to me this is not really a religious film even though it’s called Antichrist. To me Antichrist was really just a catchy title looking to grab people’s attention; trying to create some ‘controversy’ which is always a good thing for any film. The forest where He and She run off to is called Eden, but it is not a paradise, in fact, its pure hell for both characters. Both characters can be seen as Adam and Eve in the sense that they are stripping their souls bare naked, same as Adam and Even walked naked in the biblical Garden of Eden. Defoe is seen as ‘Satan’ by She, but only because she blames him and herself for the death of the baby. So the film does use a couple of biblical references here and there, but I doubt Von Trier was trying to give us his interpretation of the bible or something. This was a film about death, and accepting it as part of life. There this scene in the film in which a bird falls from a nest to the ground, as soon as it hits the ground, we see it was already dead, and ants begin to eat its rotting carcass. She looks at this and begins to cry, the scene was a slap in the face towards She, a wake up call of sorts letting her know that death is a part of life and that sometimes nature is cruel and doesn’t play nice all the time. That’s a cold hard fact. You can be walking fine and dandy down the street one day, three seconds later, a bus passes by and kills ya. Who could have known? Nobody, that’s who. But that’s life, and randomness and chaos goes hand in hand with it.  

Speaking of nature, in this film, nature takes a dark, cruel tone. The forest seems evil just by the way it was lit, or by how the shadows and natural light play on the trees. Animals aren’t cute little things like in a Disney film, they seem evil, imperfect. Nature in this film isn’t pretty, its dark and violent; not to be trusted. Von Trier mentions that we might hang a painting of a forest in our living room as if its something beautiful and sweet, yet at the same time it represents hell, with all sorts of different species trying to kill each other in order to survive, to Von Trier, the world is reigned by chaos and randomness. Same as the world we live in. In the film, the forest is also representative of the hell that He and She are living through. And finally, Im gonna comment a bit about the films violence, which is also pretty graphic. During its last half hour, Antichrist gets really intense and suddenly becomes the true definition of ‘torture porn’. Swear to god its even more torture porn then stuff you’d see in any modern horror movies! I wasn’t expecting that from an artful picture like this one! But the violence in Antichrist is pretty shocking in deed, I’d never seen anything like that on any film before. Kudos to Von Trier for conjuring up some truly disturbing images! And for directing a film that captures characters in dark emotion turmoil, not all films have to be about cute little animals singing and talking. There is a dark side to human nature and it needs to be represented in art as well, without a necessity to justify where the film goes. This is art, and art imitates life, can’t blame an artist like Von Trier for doing just that.

Rating: 5 out of 5

 

A serious film, from a very serious director

Santa Sangre (1989)

Title: Santa Sangre (1989)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Writers: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Argento, Roberto Leoni

Cast: Axel Jodorowsky, Adan Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison, Teo Jodorowsky

Review:

Horror films are made by many different kinds of filmmakers, sometimes a horror film is made by an unknown director whom we’ll never here from again. Sometimes, they are made by a director who has chosen to make horror films his specialty. Guys like John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper come to mind. But sometimes, horror films are made by directors who don’t normally make horror films. Sometimes they make that one horror movie and never revisit the genre ever again, but hey, they took at stab at horro, and they did it well. Sometimes these directors who never make horror films end up making the most interesting horror movies because they shy away from horror film clichés, and more then likely infuse the horror film they are making with their own unique style and flavor.

For example Stanley Kubrick, made The Shinning (1980), an amazing horror film; yet Kubrick never made another horror film again. And it is a film that is very distinctively Kubrickian. It contains many of the elements that make a Kubrick film great. Scorcese is another good example, he normally makes Gangster movies, or period pieces, yet he made two horror films in his life Cape Fear (1991) and Shutter Island (2010), both great horror films in my book. Alejandro Jodorowsky -the director I’ll be talking about in this review- usually makes surrealistic films filled with symbolisms and visual poetry. He is not the kind of director you’d imagine making a horror film. Yet here we are discussing Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky’s first and only horror film to date. How did Jodorowsky end up making a horror film?

When a director like Jodorowsky wants to make a film, it is never an easy thing. He is the kind of director that most producers will probably run away from because his films aren’t easy sells. His films are always a strong departure from what we call a commercial film. In other words, if you are a producer, making back the money you invested in producing a Jodorowsky film, is never a sure thing. The same can be said of some American directors like David Lynch for example. Lynch is respected and admired by many a film buff, but trust me, producers are not knocking at his door dying to produce his next feature, which is probably the reason why we haven’t seen a Lynch movie in a while. Right now, the only way Lynch can make a film is if it’s a very low budget independent affair like Inland Empire (2006). But directors like Lynch and Jodorowsky love working with little money because it means they will have more creative control over whatever film they will be making. These type of directors are artists, surrealists and visual poets, they’d rather make a film with little money, but more creative control.

Sometimes, artistic directors like Jodorowsky haven’t made a film in a while, and when the itch to make a film comes, they sometimes make compromises. In the case of Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky was offered the chance to make a horror film. Dario Argento’s brother, Claudio Argento offered to produce a film for Jodorowsky, but the conditions were set: it has to be a horror film. Jodorowsky agreed, but if you know Jodorowsky, then you know he was going to make a horror film, sure, but he was going to make a horror film that was very much his own. This is exactly what happened with Santa Sangre.

Santa Sangre is a film about a young boy named Fenix. His father (an American named Orgo) runs a circus in Mexico, the circus is called “The Circus of the Gringo”. Fenix’s mother, named Concha, is the religious leader in a church that worships an armless saint. One day, Concha catches Orgo when he is about to be unfaithful to her with a tattooed woman who has just joined the circus. In a fit of jealousy, Concha poors acid on Orgo’s genitals! This angers Orgo so much that he takes two knives and proceeds to cut Concha’s arms off with one swoop! Concha falls to the floor, apparently bleeding to death! Fenix, their son, watches this whole event taking place. It affects him so much that he ends up institutionalized for the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Once he is a grown man, he decides to break out of the mental institution to reunite with his armless mother, who has apparently survived Orgo’s vengeful attack. Now, Fenix is under his mother’s command once again! And his mother wants revenge!

What makes this film a very Jodorowsky horror film is all the surreal moments that it has spread through out. If you’ve seen a Jodorowsky film before (El Topo, Fando and Lis, The Holy Mountain) then you know that Jodorowsky is fond of speaking in visual metaphors. Often times his films won’t have that much dialog because his visuals do most of the talking. Jodorowsky’s style of filmmaking feels as if a mute had suddenly decided to make a film, communicating only through moments, actions, and situations. This is an interesting contradiction about Jodorowsky’s films; dialogue is scarce, yet his films say a whole lot. Whole sequences may be silent, but the images speak none the less, they say everything they have to say through symbolism. This, in my opinion is the best way to watch a Jodorowsky film. You can try and watch it like any other film, but to me, the best way to watch them is by trying to decipher what he is trying to say with his visual metaphors, which are constant.

Santa Sangre may appear to be another crazy Jodorowsky flick, filled with freaks and oddities and symbolisms (and it is) but strange as it may sound, it is also a film that has its roots in real life events. You see, Santa Sangre is loosely based on the life of Mexico’s most famous serial killer; one Gregorio Cardenas Hernandez also known as ‘The Tacuba Strangler’. Gregorio a.k.a. “Goyo” was a serial killer who managed to strangle four prostitutes before he was caught. Now, I know what most of you are thinking, killing four people is not exactly enough to make him so famous, at least not when compared to other serial killers in history. But actually, what makes Goyo’s story interesting is not that he had strangled four women. What makes his case interesting is what happened after that. He became a writer, a painter, he studied psychology, chemistry. His paintings became famous and where sold for high prices! The guy even got married while in jail! After many years in a mental institution, he was released and considered completely rehabilitated! Stage plays, documentaries and films were made based on his life story. Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre is one of them. It is a film that’s loosely based on Goyo’s life. I say loosely because it’s a film that takes Goyo’s story as a starting point and then goes its own crazy, surreal, Jodorowsky way with it. It’s an artistic interpretation of what happened to Goyo rather then a film that is strictly based on his story.

Goyo was a child that was very repressed by his mother, who was very domineering. In the film, Feni’x mother gets her arms cut off by her husband Orgo. So when Fenix reunites with his mother, she is armless. She ends up controlling Fenix’s arms and hands to do her bidding. She does everything through his hands, to the point where he can no longer control them himself! Santa Sangre reminded me of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) in this sense. The mother doesn’t let the child be, she makes him murder women whenever they try to make a connection with him. It is a story about a mother who is jealous of her own son. This is where the horror element of the film kicks in because the mother wants to kill any woman who wants to get close to her son on an emotional or physical level. The question arises: Will Fenix ever regain control of his life? The element of circus life adds a Felliniesque air to the proceedings as well. Finally, I’d say that Santa Sangre isn’t a horror film in the strictest since of the word. It’s more of a surreal film, with horror elements in it. It’s dreamlike, it’s symbolic, it’s trippy, it’s disturbing, it’s a Jodorowsky film every step of the way. Santa Sangre is a unique experience you wont soon forget.

Rating: 5 out of 5