Author: BRWC

The Settlers: Review. By Alif Majeed.

Very late in The Settlers, a character says, “Wool stained with blood loses its value”, which appears as a powerful statement about colonialism. It says a lot about how nations or history often become glorious when the victims who endured the violence to get there have to be swept under the rug to get there. 

Felipe Gálvez Haberle makes an impressive debut with The Settlers transporting you to late 19th century Chile to depict a part of their history that has been erased. The violence against the indigenous people, Onas, now known as the Selknam genocide, takes center stage here. The circumstances that led to the tragic massacre have their roots in European colonialism and the urgent need for people to stake claims of ownership by quickly grabbing land. One such person is José Menéndez, a real-life figure who has hired three horsemen, Alexander MacLennan, a British soldier accompanied by Bill, an American mercenary, and Segundo, a Chilean mestizo or a mixed-race person to help him do so.

The Settlers is a movie where the cinematography often looks like it could trump everything else. We are at the end of the earth is the general way in which the characters describe their situation and cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo shoots the movie. Like an empty sweeping vast of beautiful nothingness which is as good as any revisionist Western has looked like. Take the scene through the swamp where the misty fog clouds the cries of horrors of nameless, faceless people the mercenaries are picking off. They have shot Chile in all its glory and it looks gorgeous, which makes it sadder because of the violence that unfolds on screen. 

The three actors portraying the perpetrators of the violence take center stage without ever trying to upstage each other. Benjamin Westfall, as Bill the American, may be distrustful of the other two. Especially the “Half-Indian, Half-White” Segundo, but he knows he needs to be careful with MacLennan and doesn’t dare antagonize him. At least more than required while treating Segundo like dirt because he knows the latter cannot fight back. Camilo Arancibia plays Segundo as the point of view character with unsettling dignity. The horrors he is witnessing haunt him, but because of his place in the food chain, he can do nothing but remain a mute participant in the proceedings. His monologue in the climax about a massacre he was involved in is an illustration of this. We can vividly imagine what happened without the need to depict it on-screen. 

It is strange then that they chose Alexander MacLennan, played by Mark Stanley, to portray the character illustrating the savagery inflicted upon the Onas. Much of the depiction of the violence revolves around him, both on-screen when he takes part in the brutality or offscreen, where others are describing what he has done or his role in the various parts of the genocide. All that comes to a full circle when he meets a group of English mercenaries whose leader shows him who is the top dog and MacLennan’s status quo to him. The violence meted out to him is supposed to be satisfying but can come across as odd in its placement. 

In the end, The Settlers is also about the world and people’s place in it with its order. How everyone is always inevitably answerable to someone greater and more powerful up the order. How men we thought were in complete control can just be lap dogs with bosses who own them. Segundo, who is frequently reminded of his mixed race by his fellow horsemen, is considered to be only slightly better off than the people he is working to dispatch. While Bill treads with caution with MacLennan, the latter is answerable to his boss, who sent him to “clear” the land for the glory and prosperity of the country. The time shift in the end also depicts how the boss may not own the land and might be just a gatekeeper of it for the government whose representative, in a thinly veiled threat, politely reminds him they can easily take it away. 

The underlying subtext remains the same. Whether it is with direct, brutal violence or polite niceties over tea or alcohol, people have to be shown, or reminded, of who is boss. 

Weak Layers: Review. By Richard Schertzer.

This film by Katie Burrell certainly seems funny, if you can try and find the laughs somewhere. I’m certain if the CW was optioning for a comedy tv series, it might work, but not as a movie.

Director Katie Burrell seemed to have a decent cast on her hands but failed to do anything new with them. It’s almost as if the cast has been thrown into an improv room and were given a setting but rather than be able to do something revolutionary and différent, it comes off as a forgettable episode of “Whose Line is it Anyway”.

The film starts off with three millennial friends getting kicked out of their ski lodge home and having to move into their van. They see an idea to make a ski film in 72 hours as part of a film contest to win some money and get some notoriety as filmmakers.

The story seems to hop back and forth with plot points that never seem to truly go anywhere meaningful or intriguing. It lacks any depth for audiences to be invested in why these women are doing what they are doing because it seems that more than half of the cast don’t even care about what happens and are just sitting around waiting for things to happen.

Moreover, the script does the film no favors either as it seems like it was written for teenagers in high school. However, it seems like they replaced teenagers with millennials that act like teenagers. The term arrested development is strong here.

All in all, this film is about as emotionally inert as watching paint dry and fails to capture anything moving or redeeming even if some of the actors give some decent performances.

The Taste Of Things: The BRWC Review. By Joe Muldoon.

Over the span of seven feature-length films, Trần Anh Hùng has established himself as one of the most unique storytellers in cinema today. Substituting words for actions, his emotions are conveyed through the language of bodies and movements. In his newest film, for which he won the Best Director award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Hùng writes poetry through the most complex foods.

For twenty years, chef Dodin (Benoît Magimel) was the owner of a famous gourmet restaurant, the astoundingly talented Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) working closely by his side, the two developing delectable dishes together. Though deep feelings for one another grew over the years, Eugénie showed consistent reluctance to full commitment, valuing her freedom and craft.

Now, the two live with one another, Eugénie still cooking privately for the retired restaurateur, decorated chefs and acquaintances travelling from across the world to taste her food. The offerings are almost incomprehensibly impressive, many of them being nearly unrecognisable as food. The cuisinier very aptly quips to Dodin, “I converse with you in the dining room through what you eat”, and this is as much her character talking as it is Hùng speaking through her – what the film lacks in substantial dialogue, it makes up for in Eugénie’s food. As she remains reluctant to solidify any romantic commitment to Dodin, he takes it upon himself to reverse their roles and to start cooking for his beloved chef.

The Taste of Things takes food beyond its gastronomic capabilities and elevates it to the bounds of art. In places, food is curdled into bourgeois excess, one meal provided by an enthusiastic foreign prince’s chef lasting around eight hours, the courses and dishes becoming a dizzying laundry list of delicacies. It is also taken to its extremes, Dodin’s friends feasting upon orlotans in the traditional manner, the diners consuming the little birds under their dinner towels, shielded from God’s eyes, their decadence outweighing their humanity.

The film allows the food to tell its own story, but therein lies what is potentially a fundamental problem. If you have little or no understanding of gourmet food prior to watching, the true depth that the film offers to gastronomes may be missed. It is much like reading Baudelaire’s poetry in its original form without a command of the French language; though you can recognise the rhythmic lyricism and cadence of his writing, it is difficult to fully appreciate it without understanding what it truly means.

Hùng’s distinctive storytelling style will make his picture partially inaccessible to many viewers, an expressive language not shared in common. It seems rather fitting that Dodin remarks that ”it takes culture and a good memory to shape one’s taste” – without sharing the same culture, much of the culinary brilliance is lost in translation. To be clear, the craftsmanship behind his story is undeniable; few love stories have been developed so delicately through delicacies.

Though their performances are deliberately muted in order to allow for the cuisine to become the central character in itself, Binoche and Magimel have genuine chemistry with one another, Dodin and Eugénie’s affections shown with careful, subtle beauty. For a period piece set in the late 19th century, something about it feels so timeless. The dishes may be slightly dated (and occasionally alien) to its audience, but the emotions expressed are not. As life imitates art, The Taste of Things may be out of reach for many, but for those who regard gastronomy as an artform, it will likely leave a very pleasant taste in their mouths.

Anatomy Of A Fall: The BRWC Review. By Joe Muldoon.

As the body of Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) plummets from his attic window to the snowy ground below, so do the lives of Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and their visually impaired 11-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Sandra has been interviewed by a young student in her kitchen, the unseen Samuel has begun to blast disruptively loud music as he works upstairs, and Daniel has taken their dog Snoop (Messi) out for a walk – the border collie was awarded with the esteemed Palm Dog at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for his moving performance.

As Daniel trudges through the snow back towards the family chalet, Snoop fusses over the lifeless body of his owner, his head bloodily wounded. The mortified tween cries for his mother, and so begins the worst period of their lives. The circumstances surrounding Samuel’s death being decidedly suspicious, Sandra finds herself in handcuffs and is soon the subject of a murder trial – has she killed her husband? There are three possibilities: 1) he fell, 2) he threw himself, or 3) he was pushed.

We leap a year forward, and Sandra’s trial is now underway, her legal defence being provided by her lawyer friend Vincent (Swann Arlaud). The sole witness at the centre of the trial is Daniel, meaning the defendant’s fate potentially rests with the testimony of an unreliable witness – her son, no less. The prosecution’s dissection is not so much of Samuel’s fall to the ground, but of his relationship; the trial is closer to Marriage Story than it is Anatomy of a Murder.

It is revealed that Samuel secretly recorded numerous conversations with his wife, some banal and some harshly argumentative, and the picture of a fractured marriage is painted, much to the defendant’s embarrassment. Sandra urges the prosecution and jury to trust her that the intrusive recordings represent a tiny fragment of a larger story. With compelling cases being made by both parties, we are as unsure as the jury with regards to the truth of the case – something that is cleverly kept from us until the film’s dying embers.

The tendency towards theatrics and impassioned outbursts is resisted, the melodrama prevalent throughout many of the most quintessential courtroom dramas being dialled down to a minimum. The film instead relies upon the mighty strength of the writing, for which director Justine Triet and her partner Arthur Harari are responsible. The machinations of the French legal process is subject to a forensic level of analysis, the justice system itself put on a trial of its own.

Hüller’s performance is simply fantastic, her steadily stoic demeanour preventing any read being made upon her thoughts and feelings. Though German, her mother tongue is never uttered, the dialogue instead being delivered through a mix of English and French – a home advantage is never granted of Sandra, her freedom partly reliant upon her linguistic abilities in her second and third languages. Antoine Reinartz is marvellous in his role as the leader of the prosecution, his fierce delivery and eloquent oration both viscerally frustrating and technically impressive.

Triet’s drama is complex yet not convoluted, dramatic yet not histrionic, lengthy yet not bloated. It is an examination not only of murder, but also of marriage, an examination not only of human fallibility, but also of institutional imperfections, an examination not only of grief, but also of acceptance. Few films of its kind are so thorough and far-reaching in their scope and concerns, and Triet and Harari make it look easy. Though the facts of the story are shrouded within a murky grey area, this fact about the film is clear: it is a masterpiece.

By Joe Muldoon

tOuch Kink: Review. By Richard Schertzer.

In Todd Carey’s splendor-filled BDSM documentary, audiences of young and old are introduced to the kinky and beautiful world of BDSM and sex work.

This documentary follows a few différent people that are a part of the BDSM scene and all are on their own différent path and having plenty of fun with what they are doing. The BDSM industry has so much rich history and is one of the oldest professions in the industry, which only proves why more people should respect their art and craft.

When it comes to Carey’s documentary and looking at the bare bones of it, Carey has a lot to be proud of. He was able to get into the hearts, minds and head spaces of the people actively interested and participating in the industry and giving them a platform to speak their peace, which is more than a huge feat in the endless attempts to help normalize sex work.

Moreover, the interviews and the film itself shed a much-needed light on the industry as they go over their history in kink and explain what BDSM is and how the domina and the sub conduct themselves when in this specific D/S (Dominant/Submissive) relationship. They show how intelligent and caring these dominas truly are to their submissives and they are not cold-hearted villains as the media might portray them.

While all of that is good, what Carey lacks is an outside perspective to the documentary. Carey talked to sex workers, which is fine, but that was the only thing that he talked about and the only type of people that he talked to. He never spoke with anyone outside of the industry that could stir a change or possibly provoke a dialogue to help change the laws and stigma surrounding sex work and their workers.

In conclusion, this documentary proves to be an incredible feat in educating BDSM-happy people even if it could have been a lot more than what has already been seen in other documentaries.