October 2: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007 -- Paul Greengrass)

★★★

Of the three Bourne movies, this is my least favorite, thought that might not have been the case if I hadn’t watched Supremacy just last night.  Unfortunately though, I had, and I found Ultimatum to be a rehash of the same – same story, same techniques, same issues, same lack of empathy for the hero.  Ultimatum is capable but covers little new ground.

I will credit Greengrass with introducing some of the political issues that have arisen since 9-11 because the main concern here is with a government agency that is happy to target Americans in the name of national security.  That aside, this film is starting to feel a little formulaic: compelling chase scenes; compelling fights; exotic, European urban locations; omnipotent CIA; girl interest; handheld camera; fast editing.  There are even parallel scenes like Bourne leaving his arch-assassin rival stuck in a wrecked car and the love interest cutting and dying her hair. 

Bourne Ultimatum is a good, fun movie, but this is the second go round with all this stuff.  I would've hoped for a little more innovation.

October 1: The Bourne Supremacy (2004 -- Paul Greengrass)

★★★★

Another rockin’ thriller.  With the change in director from Identity to Supremacy, there are changes in approach to film, but the changes are more or less a wash to me.  I enjoyed the film.

A plus in this film is the technique.  Greengrass amps up the handheld camera here, always giving the viewer a sense of participation.  Sometimes the POV is though the eye of Bourne, but the camera is often the eye of an independent viewer who is right in the action, trying to see what’s going on, to see where the danger is.  So Supremacy is constantly pulling us in but also disorienting us, making us strain to see what’s happening while the camera jogs through the action.  It’s an extremely effective technique, and it’s coupled with editing that reinforces the participant view.  There are rapid cuts in action sequences and longer takes in meetings, though the latter use editing to keep us involved in the film.  In one CIA meeting, while the handheld camera follows what’s happening, there are a several cuts to close-ups and super close-ups, surprising us in their contrast from wide shot to close-up but also duplicating the way a spectator would look to study a reaction.  I think of music video when I think of a technique like this, and in Supremacy, the hand-held camera and fast editing keep you involved throughout.  You’re never lost in chaos, either, even in the chase scenes and fights.  Greengrass skillfully follows the narrative line as he cuts and jostles the camera though the fights and chases.

Supremacy is also strong on the level of image.  The opening sequences in Goa are bathed in warm reds, oranges and browns with bits of more saturated colors dribbled in, and you appreciate this pallet even more because it’s contrasted with the cold blues and greens of Berlin that it’s intercut with.  Greengrass also uses architectural elements to create bold patterns across the screen, like the banks of windows outside the temporary CIA office.  And though there are many woman-underwater-with-floating-hair scenes in film, that scene in Supremacy feels like it owes a special debt to the parallel scene in Night of the Hunter.  Greengrass clearly has a skill at creating strong images.

As skillful and engaging as Greengrass’ technique is here, there is one loss in the move from Identity to Supremacy – a loss of warmth and personality.  In Identity, there is at least some psychology to Bourne, and viewers can feel some empathy with him.  In Supremacy, though, narrative has top billing, and there is little real character development.  Even scenes that should involve some audience sympathy, like the time Bourne spends at the site of his earlier crime and his later visit to the girl, fail to involve us as much as the action and meeting sequences.  Maybe that's a limitation of Greengrass’ technique since you don’t get much intimacy or empathy if you’re at the mercy of an active camera and active editor.

Still, Bourne Supremacy is a great, fun action movie, clearly a notch above much of what is around.

September 30: The Bourne Identity (2002 -- Doug Liman)

★★★★

What’s not to enjoy in this film?  It’s a thriller that thrills, a suspense movie with tension, and an action movie with a lot of fights and chase scenes.  And they’re all done well.   It has very effective, fast editing and the story never rests.  Matt Damon brings real presence to someone who is lost, and you empathize with Bourne’s quest and qualms throughout even if you can’t identify with his prowess.  You’re pulling for the guy throughout the film.

And Identity is a revved-up version of one of my favorite genres -- the great 60s thrillers that are set in exotic European cities.  The combination of action and Europe works in films like Charade and The Italian Job, and it works here under Doug Lyman’s skillful direction. I thoroughly enjoyed his rhythmic, economic editing and the cinematography of the urban Old World.  And the soundtrack song by Moby, “Extreme Ways,” complements the action and story.

I didn’t miss the lack of philosophical aspiration or thematic ambition in Bourne Identity.  I liked the characters, and I felt invested in them as the story unfolded.  The film is a pure cinematic pleasure that you can spend two good hours involved with.

September 29: The Makioka Sisters/Sasame-yuki (1983 -- Kon Ichikawa)

★★★★

September 27: The Hedgehog/Le hérisso (2009 -- Mona Achache)

★★★★

September 26: Street of Shame/Akasen chitaii (1956 -- Kenji Mizoguchi)

★★★★

There’s an awful lot to like in this film; it may be my favorite of the Mizoguchi series I’ve been watching. 

Street of Shame is about a band of women, prostitutes, who work together and become a team despite their various, and often competing, interests.  It’s a refreshing take on the many band-of-men movies I’ve seen lately, and one that subverts the bonded guys types of film by focusing on gender-specific concerns.  The women in this band focus on fathers, getting married, husbands, and children, all concerns that I’ve rarely if ever seen in films about teams of men.  Not bad for 1956, I think.

You have to suspect this film has some of its origin in Mizoguchi’s earlier Women of the Night.  Both open with a panoramic scan of an urban area before heading into the hardscrabble street to greet the characters.  And there is harshness and brutality here as in the earlier film.  An older woman is dumped by her john when he chooses a younger woman, a son learns of his mother’s profession and rejects her even though she has sent him money his entire life, one woman marries to discover her husband only wants her so he can have help at work, and a tricked businessman severely beats one of the women.  The women also face hypocrisy and exploitation as the one woman’s father begs her to leave the brothel although he himself is often a client.  And the brothel owners keep their workers under a crushing load of debt so they won’t leave.  It’s a hard life.

Mizoguchi takes Street of Shame beyond his early, unfocussed Women of the Night, though, by showing all the women in this film in some depth.  And there’s character development in each of the women here, each with her own character arc and each growing though the movie.  And though the women face ordeals, they find some redemption in their profession.  One woman realizes there is less hypocrisy in the brothel than in the family, and another discovers she can make more money in the brothel than in working with her husband.  One even manages to put enough money together to leave the brothel and start her own business, shrewdly targeting her former work mates as customers, too.  The women find an independence in prostitution that they don’t find outside.

There is a lot of beauty in Street of Shame, too.  Mizoguchi uses shorter takes than I saw in many of his films, but the frame is chock full of information because of the elegant depth of field .  Foreground, middle field and background are all often in focus, giving us lots of visual information to enjoy.  The opening scenes of the brothel decorated for Christmas there in Japan are perfect examples of Mizouchi filling the screen with interesting things to look at.  And perhaps suggesting an American connection to the practice of prostitution in Japan.

This is a very well-done, warm, humanistic view of life in a brothel.  Such a life isn’t filled with one bliss after another, though, and we see both its good and bad sides.  Though the stories of a team of sex workers,  Street of Shame is a mature, controlled, engaging  interpretation of this unique segment of society.

September 25: Women of the Night/Yoru no onnatachi (1948 -- Kenji Mizoguchi)

★★

I wanted to like this film and was prepared to.  I’d seen three Mizoguchi films that all addressed the concerns of women in a strong, unexpected way, and the title of this film does so explicitly.  And there was the added hook that Women of the Night had been filmed in 1948, only three years after the end of WW II and the dismantling of the social structure that had sustained the war,   And I knew Mizoguchi understood how to control cinema, especially his own auteur lexicon.   I saw the potential for a great film. 

So I was disappointed to see how muddled this ambitious, raw, angry, confusing film is.  The first jarring element was the character swings of the two sisters, Fusako and Natsuko.  Fusako starts as a sweet, traditional mother, but after some devastating news, the next scene has her as a forward, abrasive, hard streetwalker.  She stays that for a while before abruptly longing for purity.  At one point, the change is so dramatic that I had to stop the DVD and go back to be sure I was looking at the same character.  Natusko, too, veers from reluctant hostess to sister savior to hard-core prostitute.  These are perfectly good character arcs, but I needed to see more of the connecting points.  Even the child Kumiko goes from naïve waif to hard hustler in a cut.  She’s terribly abused, but there’s no real trajectory for her character; she’s all cotton at one moment and nails the next. 

I couldn’t figure out what the film was getting at with respect to the prostitution and the women who practice it, either.  One thing for sure: it’s dangerous, humiliating, harsh and ultimately futile.  But I couldn’t understand the film’s perspective.  It’s clearly anti-prostitution, but who’s to blame for it?  We’ve no real background on that issue after the first few scenes, so we’re left to wonder if it’s a social malaise or a product of patriarchy.  And what’s the alternative….life in a vacuous Christian mission?  exploitation as married labor?  It’s hard to see what Women of the Night was getting at other than that such a life is as inevitable as it is terrible.

I didn’t find the whole film a muddle though.  I thought one of the movie’s strong points, ironically enough, was the wonderful focus in the depth of field throughout.  In scene after scene, you see all the action in the foreground, midground and background.  Everything.  It has some of the most visually rich settings of his films I’ve seen so far.  And with that great depth of field comes some amazing landscape and settings.  Three years after the intensive Allied bombings, Mizoguchi has a wide setting of devastation that he uses throughout the film in these three areas of focus.  There are ruined interiors and ruined backgrounds.  People live and walk in ruins.  And they live in societal ruins.  It’s a perfect setting for this bleak, violent, defeated story.

I saw Women of the Night compared to Neorealist film, but it hardly fits the description to me.  The craft here is too ragged, and the visceral pain and anger stronger….and more unfocussed…than in the Neorealist work I know.