Author: Ray Lobo

Director Park Chan-wook captured the world’s attention with 2016’s The Handmaiden.  The film’s mix of eroticism and intrigue won him much praise from critics.  Park Chan-wook, going all the way back to his much beloved Oldboy, has cleared a respectable career middle ground.  His films appeal both to the arthouse crowd and general audiences. 

The Handmaiden serves as Exhibit A.  While the film’s1930s setting and plot involving the strenuous relations between Korea and an occupying Japan appealed to the arthouse cognoscenti, the sex-driven narrative and the plot twists—the hooks that are sure to catch general audiences—won its director widespread appeal.  Reviewers and audiences swooned over The Handmaiden.  Park Chan-wook achieved that most difficult and sought after Spielbergian prize of all—middlebrow success.  I must confess, plot twists have never done it for me.  Films that hinge on a plot twist are like magic tricks. 

I am briefly wowed; but once the trick is over, I delete it from my memory and move on.  The Handmaiden was fine.  It was a nicely crafted piece of filmmaking with some amusing plot twists; and that is all.  Nothing memorable.  

Decision to Leave is evidence of a director being rewarded for the elements that won him praise in the past and his decision to double down on those elements.  The film centers around an experienced detective, Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), and a mysterious Chinese émigré, Seo-rae (Wei Tang).  There are several factors that strongly suggest that Seo-rae murdered her husband. 

As Hae-joon investigates the crime, he becomes increasingly captivated by the beautiful and seductive Seo-rae.  The line between suspect and lover become blurred to the point of compromising Hae-joon’s professionalism and his marriage.  Along the way, plot twist after plot twist follows each other like compartments on a moving train.  

Undoubtedly, Decision to Leave is beautiful to look at.  And yes, there are references to Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Rear Window.  The film cognoscenti will surely feel proud of themselves identifying the Hitchcockian elements as I’m sure Park Chan-wook felt in including them.  But once one gets beyond the gloss, there is not much there. 

The film’s quick cuts are just one step slower than any franchise action film.  If seduction is at the core of Decision to Leave’s narrative, fast edit cuts make the film less sexy.  Seduction is all about lingering expressions and slow reveals.  Decision to Leave is the antithesis of seduction.  It is hyperactive.  It is ADHD in nature.  Just when your brain is figuring out one plot twist, it must jump to the next one.  

Toward the last third of the film, I became lost.  I am not sure if this was due to the barrage of twists and turns in the plot or to the fact that I lost interest.  Regardless, Park Chan-wook is exploiting the two elements that middlebrow American audiences love—sex and plot trickery.  If for his next film he decides to do a film in English with Western actors, his overwhelming success is assured.  That is unfortunate.  The film world needs less middlebrow and more risk-taking.  We await his inevitable success.

Dogwatch: Raindance 22 Review

Remember when Somali Pirates were the cause of all kinds of breathless media coverage?  Movies starring Tom Hanks were even made — Captain Phillips.  Media coverage declined due to the fact that vessel owners wised up and took precautionary methods to prevent hijackings.  One of these measures was the hiring of highly trained onboard mercenaries. 

Eventually, even the pirates wised up and realized hijackings were not worth the effort.  Director Gregoris Rentis’s documentary, Dogwatch, follows these mercenaries as they train and dawdle about preparing for action, awaiting pirates that hardly ever come around anymore.  

We glimpse the mercenaries assembling their weapons, shaving their heads, shirtless and engaged in physical exercises, and even dancing in sweaty clubs surrounded by other male bodies.  Dogwatch feels like the documentary version of the Claire Denis classic, Beau Travail. 

But while Beau Travail had lots to say about masculinity and colonialism, Dogwatch is as tedious a watch as the repetitive exercises the mercenaries are expected to perform.  

Rentis is going for the poetry of the eternal wait—beautiful shots of follicles drifting down from shaved heads, the ebb and flow of mercenaries carrying bags up and down the stairs, the feel of an everlasting standby of waiting for Godot, for pirates, for some action, any action.  And as viewers, we also wait, wait, wait, and grow bored. 

If the point of Dogwatch is to capture the boredom of the mercenaries, then mission accomplished!  All this has been done before, and done better—again, Beau Travail.  Rentis certainly captures the quiet on the front; and this front sure is quiet, all too quiet.

Having recently watched director Johannes Grenzfurthner’s outstanding depiction of lonely frenzy, Masking Threshold, I was quite looking forward to Razzennest.  Masking Threshold’s brilliance lies in its employing minimalist ingredients—dialogue, detailed images, and sound—to conjure a maximalist descent into madness.  Razzennest is trademark Grenzfurthner. 

We get shot after shot focused on objects—mostly crucifixes—along with mold, slime, fields of wild grass, and assorted symbols of derelict in rural Austria.  If it helps, think of the Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker without a shot of a single human figure coupled with a running meta-commentary/plot and you have Razzennest.  Grenzfurthner uses the already cliché found footage schtick and injects comedy and meta/alienation techniques which result in what I can best describe as Brechtian horror.  Razzennest is the macabre humor of the court jester.    

The story takes place in a recording studio.  As a documentary titled “Razzennest” runs on our screens, we hear the voices of several characters engaged in an audio commentary of the film.  Babette is an enthusiastic Rotten Tomatoes Approved critic interviewing “Razzennest” director Manus Oosthuizen along with his publicist, Ellen, and his DP, Hetti.  We also hear the voice of the sound engineer, Pat, who’s intonation is the unctuous one affected by American radio DJs and local news anchors.  Grenzfurthner effectively uses dialogue and even accents to create archetypes that serve his comedic ends. 

Babette is the uninformed but politically correct American.  Manus is the uber-pretentious filmmaker who pedantically corrects the pronunciation of non-German speakers.  Ellen only speaks one language–Public Relations.  Pat’s attempts at soothing every little problem with his smarmy intonation makes him quite the creep.  And finally, there’s the unpretentious and pragmatic Hetti.  Razzennest truly starts when Hetti begins vomiting.  The sound of his vomit splashing on the floor is disgusting and brilliant at the same time.  It is disgusting in the sense that we hear very detailed retching and splashing, and brilliant in that mere sounds, when done with such sophistication, can inspire such disgust in the viewer’s imagination without any visuals.  Grenzfurthner is truly a master at using sound to craft imagery and story.  Alec Empire’s eerie score also serves to create a dark oppressive mood. 

But it is the sound of vomit that signals that things are not right here.  “Razzennest” is a documentary composed purely of images.  Those images are supposed to have some connection, in director Manus Oosthuizen’s mind, to The Thirty Years’ War.  Without giving too much away, let’s just say that spirits involved in said war begin invading the studio.  As things begin unravelling, Oosthuizen’s pretensions fade, and his crassness becomes evident.  

Razzennest’s merits are worthy of mention.  There’s an irreverent quality in Grenzfurthner that is very admirable.  Here is a filmmaker that is willing to take risks and is not scared to faceplant if those risks fail.  The commentary on American exceptionalism/naivete, political correctness, and artistic pretentiousness really hit the mark comedically and in terms of social commentary.  Grenzfurthner’s potshots at luminaries such as Malick, Aster, and Eggers are endearingly punkish—a quality you want your indie directors to possess.  However, several of the jokes in the film are bland and have no edge.

Also, the voiceover work and the character dialogue often feel stilted.  If one can put aside those issues, Razzennest takes more risks, is more erudite, and is simply better than the majority of indie horror out there. 

Razzennest is Wisconsin Death Trip if that film took place in the strange interzone of a studio in Echo Park, California and Rohrwald, Austria, mixed with Anselm Kiefer visuals, with added dashes of comedy—expect mentions of Nutella juxtaposed to shots of feces.  If all that sounds like your kind of death trip, then turn off the lights, and enjoy Razzennest.       

Director Patricio Guzmán has dedicated his life as a filmmaker to chronicling Chilean history.  Documentaries such as The Battle of Chile, Salvador Allende, and his most recent, My Imaginary Country, focus on Chilean politics and the indelible trauma left by the coup d’état that led to the installment of the Pinochet dictatorship—a coup d’état facilitated by the United States.  The political Guzmán goes hand in hand with the naturalist Guzmán.  Documentaries such as Nostalgia for the Light focus on Chile’s sublime landscape while delivering once more a political message—for Guzmán, the political suffuses into every aspect of life. 

The Cordillera of Dreams starts as a meditation on the Andes Mountains.  We see majestic overhead shots of the snowcapped mountains accompanied by Guzmán’s soothing narrative voice.  This is all reminiscent in style of Warner Herzog’s blending of the natural with the poetic.  The difference with Guzmán, and the reason I dare say he is a superior filmmaker, is that while Herzog’s politics exist in the subtext, Guzmán’s are at the center of everything he does.  Guzmán’s politics are personal, interpersonal, historical, passionate, and have teeth.  For Guzman, politics resides everywhere, from the cracks on the rocks of a mountain, to the cobblestone streets of Santiago, to mining deposits extracted from the mountains, to the very melting snowcaps on said mountains. 

The most significant shot in The Cordillera of Dreams is of a fresco mural of the Andean Cordillera in a Santiago subway station.  In their rush, not a single commuter stops to appreciate or contemplate the magnificent fresco.  The intention here is not to attack the blunted aesthetic sensibilities of the average Chilean.  Guzmán’s deeper critique here is of the neoliberal capitalist order’s emphasis on hustle culture and everyday survival. 

If your daily experience is one of precarity or hustle and bustle, you don’t have time to appreciate the fresco, the Andes, you don’t have time to reflect on how Chile got to this present moment.  You know your history, you know of the hope created by the Allende government, the eventual coup, the economic shock therapy of the Chicago School, the torture and disappearance of dissidents by the Pinochet regime, and finally the daily extraction by multinational corporations of Chile’s copper.  But all these things are in the background of your memory and consciousness.  You don’t reflect on it too long for the subway is about to get there and you have a deadline to meet at work, or you must figure out how you will scrape by today and eat something.  

If the neoliberal order’s aim is to not make you reflect critically on the present moment, then Guzmán’s aim with The Cordillera of Dreams is to remind you of how Chile got here.  He interviews visual artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers and has them reflect on the significance of the Andes and the past and current political situation.  These interviews contribute to making Cordillera an outstanding piece of filmmaking.  The interviewees reflect on everything from the particular smell that is carried by the wind as it sweeps down from the Andes to the changing nature of street protests and the challenges associated with capturing these protests on film. 

Anyone that accuses Guzmán of being rambling in Cordillera is not really paying attention to the nature of his lifelong filmmaking project.  There’s a connection between the rattling caused by plate tectonic shifts and that of tanks rolling through Santiago’s streets.  Guzman’s message is clear:  Chile has been shaken by both volcanic eruptions and coup d’états.  The natural world and the political are indeed intertwined.

Moshari is an intriguing Bangladeshi short that draws you into its dark narrative in its opening shots.  Director Nuhash Humayun sets the mood with images of flies buzzing on an animal carcass juxtaposed to images of a lush marshy plain brimming with vegetation.  Perhaps the reason the vegetation is thriving may be due to a pandemic wiping out most of humanity. 

At a camp with some of the few people left in the world, a loudspeaker announces that religion will offer no salvation and that most of the Western world has not survived “them.”  The “them” the voice in the loudspeaker refers to are the carriers of the pandemic—mosquitoes.  

“Moshari” translates to “mosquito net.”  Our protagonists are two sisters—the older one (Sunerah Binte Kamal) acts as a protective guardian of her younger sister.  Older sister is meticulous in sealing off any entry points for mosquitoes, including a mosquito net over the bed.  Moshari is beautifully filmed.  The cinematography blends colors and darkness in magnificent fashion. 

It is also a film brimming over with thematic depth.  Blood is used as an allegory for both life and death.  Blood suckers in Moshari run the gamut—from mosquitoes, to vampires, to Western colonial powers who have exploited much of the Global South.  While Humayun does a great job of building dread, the film’s turn toward magical realism and horror will lose most viewers. 

This pivot toward horror seemed unnecessary given where Moshari seemed to be going.  One can only hope that Humayun’s future projects veer away from genre conventions.