film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Ray Lobo

  • Night Of The Kings: Review

    Night Of The Kings: Review

    Director Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings plunges us into Côte d’Ivoire’s infamous Maca prison.  We quickly learn that the prison warden has little control over the inmates.  The prison is essentially run by a Dangoro—the master inmate—named Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu).  Maca is far from being a pleasant place, though it is not exactly a Hobbesian state of nature either.  There is a hierarchy and there are rules and rituals that are strictly observed by all.  The rule that sets the plot of Night of the Kings in motion decrees that when the Dangoro falls ill, he must take his own life so that a new Dangoro can take power.  

    Blackbeard is indeed very ill; but he tries to delay the unavoidable deed—the taking of his own life.  As a ruse, he anoints the new prisoner, Roman (Bakary Koné), to tell a story that will distract his allies, foes, and the inmates vying to become the next Dangoro.  Roman launches into a meandering tale centered around the life story of a notorious gang leader, Zama.  The tale involves Zama’s father, how he became advisor to a bellicose queen, and Zama’s eventual move to Abidjan’s “lawless quarter.”  Roman must keep the story going not only to prolong Blackbeard’s life, but his own—the anointed storyteller gets sacrificed after the story ends.  

    Lacôte creates a wonderful mélange with Night of the Kings.  It is a prison drama with cinematic shout-outs to City of God and literary roots going back to One Thousand and One Nights.  It is incredible what Night of the Kings does in a mere 90 minutes.  We get a story that involves postcolonial African politics, a sociology of prisons, and a gorgeously shot film that captures bodies trying to overcome confinement. 

    Some of the most fascinating scenes in Night of the Kings involve the dancelike movements done by inmates that dramatize Roman’s story.  Night of the Kings captures the poetics of dance, of movement, of storytelling that goes beyond the traditional oral delivery.  Amidst all this beauty and these poetic bodies, there are some inexplicable decisions made by Lacôte.  A scene involving CGI animals feels totally out of place.  The ending also feels rushed, clipped, almost as if the film ran out of ideas.  

    Night of the Kings is perhaps an allegory referencing the relationship between artist and audience.  Sure, the artist needs the audience as much as the audience needs the artist.  Tensions do exist, however, in this relationship.  Roman is anointed as storyteller, as artist.  His life hangs in the balance based on the whims of his audience—once the story is over, and they get bored, they have no use for the artist.  Today, when the production of “content” is dependent less on artistic craft or vision and more on audience whims, algorithms based on “if you like x, you may like y,” and crass commerce; the allegory at the heart of Night of Kings is more relevant than ever.    

  • John And The Hole: Review

    John And The Hole: Review

    The feeling that runs through director Pascual Sisto’s full-length debut, John and the Hole, is ennui.  It is a particular type of ennui, the type that arises in a young person living in a contemporary upper middle-class household.  John and the Hole occupies the same space as We Need to Talk About Kevin and the more recent Luce.  John (Charlie Shotwell) is a pre-teen incapable of displaying anything beyond flat emotions perhaps because he lives in a regulated bourgeois environment devoid of passion.  John’s mother (Jennifer Ehle) is medicated.  His father’s (Michael C. Hall) advice regarding John’s drone is: “Always read the instructions.”  John’s activities consist of playing with his drone, playing tennis on a video game console, and taking actual tennis lessons that are focused and precisioned to win tournaments and not meant for mere enjoyment.  Sisto effectively conveys in two scenes the unimaginative and rule-dependent universe John inhabits.  The first scene involves an off-camera teacher grilling John on a math problem.  John answers correctly.  When the teacher presses him to elaborate on how he arrived at the correct answer, John does not know.  In the second scene, John’s sister (Taissa Farmiga), abruptly leaves a family meal when she hears a car honk outside.  It is her boyfriend picking her up.  A bourgeois line has been crossed and displeasure is clearly conveyed by John’s parents.  Boyfriends are expected to knock on the door and introduce themselves.  

    That is a sketch of the John in John and the Hole.  What about the hole?  It is a hole in the ground discovered by John one day while flying his drone in the forest surrounding his home.  We learn that it was an unfinished bunker.  John grinds up his mother’s pills, drugs his family, drags them through the forest, and plunges them down into the hole.  John then goes on to live the life of an adult.  He has the house all to himself.  He can eat whatever he wants—mostly fast-food.  He gets to drive his parents’ car and takes out as much money as he wants from the ATM.  In short, imagine a moodier Home Alone.   Occasionally, he pays a visit to the hole and throws down some food for his starving parents and sister. 

    Is John rebelling against the constraints imposed by his parents?  Is he roleplaying at what it is like to be an adult?  Are there psychoanalytic/Freudian processes at work here?  It is very hard to say.  The ambiguity may bother some.  It does not bother me.  What really bothers me about John and the Hole are the scenes involving John’s family once they are in the hole.  The majority of the film is spent on John and his life after dumping his family down the hole.  The scant time spent on his family feels like filler, like an attempt at a palate cleanser after so much focus on John.  This is understandable given that one can only take so many scenes of John driving, playing with the house lights, and running wild through the house.  But again, if the scenes involving the family were meant to break up the narrative, they should have been richer, they should have added more to the story.  There is also a subplot involving a young girl and her mother.  There is some thematic connection between John and the young girl, though the connection is quite nebulous.  Is the young girl being told a story about a boy named John and the once upon a time he threw his folks down a hole?  It is very hard to tell.  

    Sisto gets the mood right in John and the Hole.  There are scenes that work quite well and convey that Sisto is a gifted director who knows what he is doing.  It is the unevenness and jaggedness of the story, its inability to gel, that punctures the film’s sails.  Given John and the Hole’s strengths, we can be confident in better work to come from Sisto.  

  • Bad Luck Banging: Review

    Bad Luck Banging: Review

    There are a few warnings I should get out of the way before reviewing Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.  

    1.  There are several very graphic sex scenes which, if you are prudish about those sorts of things, will definitely make you uncomfortable.  But, if you are truly prudish, you would not be watching a film with “Banging” and “Porn” in the title.  Moving on.

    2.   For those who like their films, or their art for that matter, tidily organized into highbrow and lowbrow categories so as to make appropriate choices, Bad Luck will throw off your taxonomy.  

    3.  If you are into minimalist storytelling, do not bother with Bad Luck; it is maximalist to the nth degree.  

    Having done my due diligence, let me get right to my assessment of Bad Luck.  In one word:  Wow!  Having seen and reviewed many films—quite a few of them very good films—I am rarely this blown away.  This is film at its boldest, its brashest, its most avant-garde.  It is art at its most erudite in terms of social commentary and its most absurd in terms of its analysis of the human condition.  Films like Bad Luck push the medium forward, open possibilities, they remind you that there are still directors out there with a truly distinct voice.  Romanian director Radu Jude (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians) reminds one of Pasolini or von Trier at their most transgressive while diving into an even deeper dark humor hole than those two ever dared plunged into.    

    Bad Luck is divided into chapters.  The first chapter puts us in the middle of a local scandal involving Emi (Katia Pascariu), a secondary school history teacher, who has a private sex video posted on public porn sites.  The video spreads and is watched by her school superiors, colleagues, parents, and students.  A parent-teacher conference—that plays out in the third chapter as more of a witch trial than anything—will decide Emi’s professional fate.  In chapter one we see Emi walking through Bucharest—shot in cinema verité style–running errands before her parent-teacher meeting, dealing with her society’s deteriorating sense of decency, its crassness, and the alarming consumerism that has become the status quo of most cities in advanced late capitalist societies.  Jude is holding up a mirror to the ugliness in his society, a mirror that reflects a Medusa so frightening that it turns others into apathetic stones incapable of striving for a different world.  Emi tries to maintain her dignity in the midst of such social decay while her private life has been exposed while her job hangs in the balance while dealing with COVID-19 social distancing and masks—it is stress layered upon stress layered upon stress.  

    Chapter one would be more than enough story content for any film, but for Jude it is mere story exposition.  Chapter two blows out of the water any expectations one may have had for the rest of the film.  Chapter two unleashes a montage of historical footage, clever cultural critique, and mentions of historical atrocities and hypocrisies aimed at societies offended by sex videos but not by their blood-stained histories—the United States comes to mind.  There are even more shots fired at consumerism—we are shown a drawing of the French Revolution and then shown a box of doughnuts named after the historical event.  Each chapter is shot in a different style and has its own distinct narrative flow.  Each chapter could be a film onto its own.  The final chapter even offers the viewer three different endings.  It is as if Jude is showing off his skill, his masterly flourishes, his bravura as a director.  When you are this good a filmmaker, you should be allowed to show off.  In Jude’s case, the audience is all the more rewarded by such smugness.       

    Bad Luck deservedly won the Golden Bear for best film at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.  A film packing so many ideas demands repeated viewings.  One can spend hours discussing Jude’s camera pans and how they come to rest on billboards, graffiti murals, advertisements, a book on Jesus, a flower emerging out of a crack on the concrete, naked statues on a building—this last one can spur a side conversation on the contradictions involving nudity, art, and porn.  There are commentaries on individuals parking on sidewalks and the breakdown of social norms.  As if that were not enough, Jude comments on the treatment of Roma people and COVID-19.  And oh, wait, there is even an amazing discussion on the role of memorization in pedagogy—it sounds like a dry topic for a film, but believe me, it is not!  Is Bad Luck a film for a select few?  Yes, it is.  I urge those select few to seek it out.  Filmmaking like this is rare.    

  • Deerskin: The BRWC Review

    Deerskin: The BRWC Review

    The less you know about Deerskin going in, the better.  You try to find your bearings by attempting to categorize it—looks a little like a Yorgos Lanthimos film, alludes to Hitchcock’s Psycho and Mary Harron’s American Psycho, and has dark/absurd humor à la Lynch.  In truth, director Quentin Dupieux has birthed a very idiosyncratic beast with Deerskin.  The beast in question here is a fringed deerskin jacket that most no one would be caught dead in but becomes the obsession of its wearer, Georges (Jean Dujardin). 

    Georges’s backstory is murky.  He appears to have had some trouble in his marriage that has irretrievably broken it.  He sets off for the French backwaters, blows all his money on his talisman—the deerskin jacket—which he buys from a quirky older man, and barters his wedding ring for a night’s stay at a lodge that has seen better days.  Dujardin’s performance is magnificent in its range.  He plays Georges as deranged individual—he converses with and takes orders from the deerskin jacket—as existential drifter, conman, and even plays him as a hopeless dreamer trying to recreate his life in a small town.  Along the way, Georges falls into a lie that he is a film director, convinces the lodge’s bartender, Denise (Adèle Haenel), to edit his footage, pays townsfolk to act in his jacket-themed film, and gains even more deerskin apparel along the way—hat, pants, and gloves. 

    A story about a deranged individual taking orders from a jacket may sound unwatchable.  I certainly had my doubts after having very cursory knowledge of the plot.  But rest assured.  Dupieux commits to the script and makes it work.  The film’s pacing is tight; and, clocking in at less than 90 minutes, Deerskin does not prolong its stay.  A longer film would have ruined such an absurd premise.  Dupieux’s script is also good at showing us how Georges changes.  We often assume that change is an internal affair, a mental paradigm shift, a spiritual conversion.  Dupieux taps into what every make-up artist, fashion designer, or aesthetician knows—external appearance can change the internal.  In Georges’s case, the jacket transforms his psyche.  

    For a film to work, especially one like this, every part must function on its own and cohere with every other part.  Deerskin has all those components–great performances, a solid script, efficient pacing, and narrative themes that keep the viewer interested.  Though there are deeper themes running through Deerskin than merely a man obsessed with a jacket, viewers would be well advised not to seek an ultimate interpretation.  Seeking an ultimate interpretation with a film like Deerskin is like demobilizing a specimen and putting it on pins.  Perhaps the best approach with Deerskin, the only sensible thing to do, is to do like George—put on the jacket and let it direct you.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVT4jlEJYQA  

  • Gunda: Review

    Gunda: Review

    Anyone going into director Viktor Kosakovskiy’s Gunda expecting to see a customary nature documentary will be very disappointed.  That Gunda is not your typical nature documentary, however, is a good thing.  There is no human voice narrating the “action;” hence there is no anthropomorphizing of the animals or their “motivations.”  There are no quick edits that jump from animal to animal in an effort to satisfy short attention spans.  There are no “action” sequences of lions chasing water buffaloes.  Kosakovskiy allows the animals—pigs, cows, and a one-legged chicken–to take centerstage and dictate things at their pace.

    Gunda is filmed in black and white.  The play of light and shadow upon the animals, the dark intimacy of their enclosures and pens, and their roaming about in the light of day gives Gunda an otherworldliness, a timelessness, a feeling of time lived and not measured by ticks on a clock or months on a calendar.  The pacing is slow, but your patience is rewarded by breathtaking moments, too many to count.  One such moment involves the careful, deliberate step of a chicken.  Never before in the history of film has a suspended claw in midair, coming down, and finally meeting with soil been captured in such dramatic fashion.  Kosakovskiy captures the exact moment a sow is awakened by her hungry piglets.  A mad scramble for their mother’s milk ensues.  These scenes of piglets maneuvering for a better position in hopes of obtaining milk from their mother’s nipple are intimate, primal, and yet beautiful.      

    Gunda presents a world of wonder for a human species that has forgotten how to find wonder in other species.  Humans all too often see animals in terms of agricultural standing reserve, profit, and efficient exploitation.  Gunda presents these animals with dignity, with a vitality that goes beyond economic exploitation.  Cows stare at the camera, at us, in their eyes the sublime mystery of a consciousness we will never fully understand.  There is also an unexpected scene in which a passing storm allows the pigs a chance to drink rainwater as it falls from the sky.  As beautiful as the images in Gunda may be, it is the sounds created by these animals and their natural surroundings that steal the show.  Gunda’s pacing allows us to focus on a rich cacophony on non-human, non-industrial, and non-technological sounds—the squeal of piglets, the steps of a chicken upon soil, the buzzing of insects, and the varied songs of birds beyond the camera frame.

    Gunda makes you think about human time and its pacing.  Watch the news and you become aware of the hyperkinetic pacing of humans—breaking news, disasters every minute, murders by the second, constant updates on our phones.  Our phones buzz, traffic lights change, work demands make us move about hastily, and the hurly-burly of late capitalism captures us in its hyper-speed as our thoughts jump from one thing to another without pause.  Nature moves at a different pace.  When you go on a hike or even sit in your backyard you notice that nature is slower, more deliberate.  You also find that your mind and your senses slow down and become keener.  Once you allow nature’s clock to converge with your own clock, you may find yourself more aware of the sounds around you, the sights around you, and you are more likely to catch a wondrous natural event.  Gunda offers us many of those wondrous events.