October 24: Europa Report (2013 -- Sebastián Cordero)

★★

Europa Report is not the low-budget, concept, sci-fi film of the summer in the tradition of Gattaca, Moon or Never Let Me Go.  Instead, it’s a predictable procession through the sequential demise of the members of the crew of a spaceship heading to Jupiter’s moon, Europa.  It’s an old formula, I think most recently used successfully in 1979 by Ridley Scott in Alien.

Director Sebastián Cordero spices the formula with some jittery camera and lots of partial views of the threat, but even this variation mostly owes its predecessor, Cloverfield.  All the fuzzy transmissions, soundtrack static, flashbacks, flashforwards, and unsteady cameras ultimately annoy more than engage. 

Not among my anticipated films of the summer, Europa Report still disappoints.  It should fit in well with the fare on Syfy when it finally lands there.

October 23: Le ciel est à vous/The Woman Who Dared (1944 -- Jean Grémillon)

★★★★
The third of Jean Grémillon’s wartime films, Le Ciel est à vous is markedly different in tone from either of its predecessors.  It’s not a pessimistic religio-political statement like the Poetic Realist Remorques, and it’s not an over-the-top melodrama like Lumière d'été.  Le Ciel simply tells the inspirational story of a couple who sacrifice to achieve their dream against considerable odds, but as in all three of the films, moments of sheer cinematic beauty pop out unexpectedly and delight the viewer.

The visual is important in all Grémillon, and Le Ciel is no exception.  Some parts of the film are tour-de-force cinematography, like the visually startling opening.  In the first image of Le Ciel, we see a triangle of walking sheep heading into the frame from bottom right.  The camera starts to rise, and as our perspective widens, we see a shepherd leading the flock at a short distance.  The camera doesn’t stop at that point, though; it continues to rise until the flock is a small element in frame and we see black circles rotating in an open field.  We move in that direction to find children in black uniforms dancing in big circles, and the camera ultimate descends past them to a sign pointing to an orphanage.  It’s a delightful crane opening fraught with significance we’re prepared to see realized further into the film.

The first arrival of the aviatrix Lucienne Ivry  is another opportunity for bravura filmmaking.  We first hear the plane approach and begin to land as we are watching Pierre in a conversation elsewhere.  As he perks up and heads out, the camera rises and Pierre becomes part of a crowd surging toward the plane.  From above, the camera sweeps along with Pierre as he rushes to the plane as part of the crowd, and as the Lucienne exits the plane and starts towards the banquet hall, the camera, maintaining its height, stops its forward rush just as the crowd does and reverses direction with them to return to the hall with Lucienne.  Grémillon is known for tracking shots, and this one is one of his more remarkable.

But Grémillon’s visuals go beyond merely making his films interesting.   Maybe because of his silent film Grapes of Wrath, but shortly afterwards, Pierre has a tow truck and Thérèse is driving a sporty roadster.  Their furnishings transition from the simple, rural items of the opening to the embroidered fussiness of a bourgeois household, and the simple piano they could barely afford early in the film is replaced by a big, shiny new one.  Le Ciel also makes a point of commenting on Pierre’s new neon sign, a symbol of their increased affluence. And when Pierre becomes obsessed with aviation and Thérèse gets a job in the big city, the messiness of the house and the shop indicate the lack of familial attention.  Later in the film, the image of the disappointed couple peering through the café window at the celebration in honor of Lucienne’s forthcoming conquest of the women’s distance record says as much about the situation of the couple at that point in the film as any amount of exposition would.  Throughout Le Ciel, Grémillon shows us information rather than telling us with tedious explanations.
background, Grémillon’s images tell us important information.  For example, he tells us of the changes in the Gauthier family fortune by the way the family’s circumstances look.  When they leave their rural garage, the Gauthiers travel in a rickety truck that would have been at home in 1940’s

But for all that, one of the most intense pleasures of Grémillon’s imagery is the occasion eruption of a completely irreducible symbol, an image that is packed with meaning that we can’t articulate in simple terms.  The recurring appearance of the orphans is one such element.  The film opens with a strong emphasis on circles of dancing orphans, and we see the orphans two other times in the film as well.  The opening suggests a parallel between the sheep/shepherd and the orphans/priests, both sets of images carrying religious overtones.  However, Le Ciel, whose title itself is a pun on sky/heaven, doesn’t have an overtly religious theme.  The orphans may carry a visual suggestion of Pierre’s opinion that obsession doesn’t lead to anything good, implying that some control of impulses is desirable; in fact, the next time we see the orphans, this need is even more urgent as Thérèse and Pierre are risking the family’s finances and even Thérèse’s life.  In this and their last appearance, the orphans carry a multifaceted significance, one that is vaguely foreboding, and perhaps moral, yet there is no explicit meaning to draw from the recurrent image.

The sinking beacon at the Nice airfield is another image that has multiple layers of significance.  Disappointed that their home-built airplane will never outdistance Lucienne Ivry’s well-financed technologically-advanced plane, Thérèse and Pierre leave the Nice airfield on a foggy evening to return to their hotel.  As they start to head out, the tall beacon that they have been standing beside begins to recede into its silo.  As the two leave the frame, the camera stays on the beacon, drawing attention to it as an image that captures so much of what is happening at that moment.  This high-tech machine is part of the same aviation technology that has wrecked the Gauthier’s dreams, and in it we see technology unrelentingly performing its task, oblivious to whatever tragedy that has just occurred.  Not only is the technology unrelenting, but it is also a little point of light that is going out in an already dark night.  Grémillon ties together several aspects of Le Ciel in this one unexpected image.

There is also a complexity to the relationship at the center of Le Ciel because we watch two well-rounded characters working out the parameters of their relationship.  Charles Vanel creates a compelling Pierre, deeply sympathetic and likable.  Pierre has renounced his love of aviation for his wife but finds himself drawn back into it.  After an flying accident, he recognizes the dangers of flying and again renounces it.  But when his wife, Thérèse, develops her interest, he reverses himself yet again, and the two of them intensify their love by pursuing flight for Thérèse rather than for Pierre.  Such back-and-forth makes the story of Le Ciel somewhat turgid, but it’s a pleasant complexity.  And though Pierre has plenty of complexity, his pales in comparison to Thérèse’s.  She evolves from a rural housewife to a successful , urban saleswoman to an bossy, intolerant wife and mother.  Soon, though, she’s obsessed with flight and willing to lose the entire family fortune to set a flight record.  With both of these central characters so variable, the relationship at the film’s center occasionally becomes confusing.

Even 70 years later, we don’t see many female characters like Thérèse.  She is brave and self-determined, and it’s her husband who makes compromises in order for her to further her career rather than vice versa.  In fact, were it not for the empathy that Vanel generates onscreen, Pierre would mostly be a reflection of the heroine of Le Ciel.  The film is also unique in having two women, Thérèse and Lucienne, competing for fame instead of a two-man rivalry or two women competing for a man.  This element is another of the unique pleasures here.

Le Ciel is not without some problems and unevenness.  The story is too choppy, and the reversals of the individuals at the center are too frequent.  The film also leaves unanswered some important questions like what, for instance, is going to happen with Jacqueline’s piano and the rather brutal way her parents took it from her.  In fact, the character of Jacqueline gives rise to several unaddressed concerns, too, as her determination to continue playing piano seems to echo her mother’s determination, yet Jacqueline’s story remains undeveloped. 

Such reservations aside, Le Ciel is a real cinematic pleasure, both for its imagery and its characters.  We have only to embrace its excess and irreducibility to have a unique and wonderful filmic experience in Grémillon’s world here.

September 29: (1943 -- Jean Grémillon)

July 14: Remorques/Stormy Waters (1941 -- Jean Grémillon)

★★★★★
In 1941 Occupied France, Jean Grémillon found a way to get this Poetic Realism-tinged melodrama released, but if Remorques is a Poetic Realist project, the emphasis is on “poetic.”  Andre Prévert’s script is theatrically artificial, and many of Grémillon’s directing decisions move Remorques in the direction of poetry rather than realism.  The slightly bourgeois Jean Gabin is a Poetic Realist, hard-working captain of a salvage tug, but the script, visuals and sound all push Remorques into a world of cinematic poetry rather than a gritty confrontation of the realities of the working class.

It’s Grémillon’s camera that creates most of the poetry here.  In an opening dance sequence, the camera follows Cpt. Laurent and his wife, Yvonne, as they enter the dance floor and progress through room.  Arriving at the end of the room, the camera follows a server back to the other side again and there picks up the newly-wed couple as they enter and cross.  It’s one of the elegant tracking shots that Grémillon is known for.  Shortly afterwards, we watch a variation on the tracking shot as the messenger from the boat enters the room from the right.  The camera is outside at this point, and it tracks the messenger as he makes his way along the outside of the dance floor, and the columns between us and the man create a graceful pattern.  And again later, we see a similar interest in texture as Yvonne is looking in a mirror after the reception.  With the camera peering over her shoulder as she puts her old bridal veil on, she moves the veil from in front of her to behind and the camera registers a series of filter effects that alternately reveal and cloud her image.  More than mere narrative camera, such work stands out in its effort to create on-screen beauty.

Perhaps the most artful sequence in the film is the one when Cpt. Laurent and his rescuee, Catherine, visit a
house that Laurent is considering renting.  It opens on a matte painting that imitates an impossibly high crane shot of two tiny shadow figures on a beach speckled with shadow.  There’s then a cut to the shadows of two people walking, and we realize it’s the couple who are strolling along the shadow-streaked beach. It’s a beautiful opening to the sequence.   After some repartee which shows Catherine’s interest in Laurent as the two enter the house, Catherine goes upstairs while Laurent lags behind to follow later.  When he goes up, he discovers a bedroom, and the two carry on a conversation on the balcony with gauze curtains billowing from the sea breeze and a loud soundtrack of wind blowing, cinematic correlatives to the emotions in the room.  As another touch, Grémillon has had   Michèle Morgan remove her coat before Laurent arrives, a suggestion of undress, and the only recognizable piece of furniture is the uncovered bed in the background.  This is one of the emotional high points of the film.  But Grémillon doesn’t end the sequence at this point.  Instead, we again the couple’s shadows from the familiar leg-level angle that we experienced in the sequence opening, there’s a cut to a starfish (an important symbol in the sequence) and we return to that original matte that shows the shadow-speckled beach scene.  None of these last three images is particularly important to the story, but they give a rhythmic lyricism to the sequence that provides an aesthetically pleasing closing.  Which is to say, they’re just included because they’re beautiful.

The soundtrack is another of Remorques' poetic elements.  In addition to the loud wind sounds in the bedroom which add to the drama of that moment, while the Cyclone is rescuing a freighter in a storm at sea, the soundtrack is filled with the boats’ horn sounds, which are more like long screams than horns.  This produces an on-edge feeling that reinforces the danger of the moment.  And at the end of the film, as Laurent leaves the bedside of his deceased wife and runs back to his tug, the eerie soundtrack is filled with the sound of a howling storm layered over with a loud reading of a requiem mass that has no mimetic place in the narrative at all but rather evokes the Laurent’s state of mind.  In all these cases, the soundtrack is following an aesthetic imperative rather than a realistic one, which helps make watching Remorques a deep cinematic experience.

Grémillon also uses rich, full symbols in Remorques that won’t readily be reduced to a metaphor.  As the tug
pulls out of the harbor after the initial wedding, the camera surprisingly doesn’t follow the boat and the action.  Instead, as the tug sails off to the right, the camera holds on the empty harbor stairs leading down to the boat and then rises to look at a rainy streetscape with no one on it and no lights.  This is perhaps the plight of those left behind or perhaps a suggestion of the danger the men are sailing into.  Or perhaps it just sums up a sailor’s life in an image.  In such deliberately highlighted symbolism, Grémillon realizes one aspect of the cinema as poetry by creating significance that only exists in the film.  The starfish that Catherine picks up on the beach is another such irreducible symbol.  When the couple pick it up out of a boat, the starfish seems to represent the moment, but the moment isn’t happy or sad as much as it is informed by a range of conflicting emotions and desires.  We refocus on the starfish when the couple consummate their passion, and we see it again when Catherine leaves and gives it to a mate to use in supporting Laurent later.  The starfish is the ambiguity of the nature of their relationship—a relationship that doesn’t have a good outcome for either of them—and there’s a bit of the crusty, abandoned Catherine in it, too.  Like the harbor steps, the starfish can’t be reduced to a simple metaphor.

Another part of the beauty here is Andre Prévert’s script.  The numerous parallels in the script have an aesthetically-pleasing effect as when Laurent upbraids a shipman for infidelity only to be unfaithful to his own wife.  Likewise, Laurent is late for the Cyclone’s departure just as the shipman has previously been.  There is also irony in the script like when Catherine, as her seduction of Laurent approaches fruition, expresses the same appreciation for a bedroom with a sea view and breezes that Laurent’s wife Yvonne had previously articulated.  There’s a bitter irony in Yvonne’s death scene, too, as her wish to have him there saying he loves her as she dies comes true; she dies thinking he was faithful while he actually hasn’t been.  All these elements are melodramatic but part of their effectiveness comes from the over-the-top melodramatic plotting.

Other elements of the script are sophisticated, too.  Catherine, for example, is not a standard seductress who is out to get her man and wreck his family.  She has our sympathy early on as she calls out the captain of the Mirva for the scum he is, and the script is especially literary as Catherine attaches a negative connotation of powerlessness to “Catherine” and asks Laurent to call her by “Aimee,” a name connoting the love she feels she never had.  While Yvonne is somewhat the stereotyped chaste wife, Catherine has a lot of richness and depth that gives complexity to all the relationships and to the tragedy that ends the film.

There’s even an indirect nod to Poetic Realism and Grémillon’s historical context.   After France collapsed so quickly under German attack, some Frenchman blamed the spiritual malaise of France that characterized the period of the Popular Front.  Poetic Realism was seen to contribute to this paralyzing philosophy of pessimism, and when one of the mates of the Cyclone seems to be an intellectual who ponders more than taking action, it’s not hard to see an allusion to that contemporary opinion.  And indeed, Remorques has its share of pessimism.

Remorques is an underappreciated occupation era jewel.  Its melodrama doesn’t play well with today’s audiences, but its frequent sparkles of genuine filmic beauty make it a worthwhile investment of 90 minutes.

July 12: The Great Gatsby (2013 -- Baz Luhrmann)

★★★★
Count this movie among those of the summer that don’t disappoint.  It’s another big, splashy, digital sfx-travaganza, but unlike the last couple of Baz Luhrmann outings, Gatsby works.

Few directors can outdo Luhrmann when it comes to over-the-top surface excess, and he sets his sights on the perfect target when he swoops, cuts, choreographs and digitizes his way through his fantasy of the Roaring 20s.  Emphatically anachronistic music pulses, people jitter, fireworks explode and the viewer is absorbed into the glorious artifice of a film setting with no limit in reality.  These parts of the film that celebrate cinema’s inauthenticity are among the most mesmerizing, and they’re a true delight in 3D.

Other parts of Great Gatsby are calmer but just as artificial and just as interesting.  There’s the over-the-top lyrical beauty of Gatsby’s mansion as he shows it to Daisy and the flower-stuffed cottage that Nick loans Gatsby to facilitate meeting Daisy.  Then there’s the bleak foreboding of the wasteland between Long Island and New York City whose visuals suggest a period etching.  In every setting of the film, Luhrmann wrings out realism in favor of cinematic construct that is both self-referential but also answers to the needs of the story and characters.

Such artifice in Luhrmann has been there since his earliest work, but it doesn't always carry his films to the Gatsby.  The 2008 Australia uses the same mannerist cinema style, but the film’s artificiality keeps the viewer out rather than bringing us into what is happening onscreen as we experience in Gatsby.  A major factor in the different responses to the two films is the way Luhrmann uses his actors.  In Australia, Luhrmann has Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman act as artificial as the sets and pixels they are surrounded by, with the result that the audience has nothing to relate to in the film and remains disengaged.  Gatsby is an altogether different experience because Luhrmann has Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton bring nuance and depth to their characters.  DiCaprio’s Gatsby is deeply, obsessively in love; Mulligan’s Daisy is indecisive and conflicted; and Edgerton’s Tom is presumptuous, arrogant and threatened.  We see these qualities in the actors’ faces and gestures, and it’s the combination of these plausible characters and dramatic situations with Luhrmann’s impossibly baroque settings that gives Gatsby it’s uniquely cinematic aspect.  This intersection of the real and the irreal is the pleasure point of this film.
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Some viewers will be put off by the over-the-top digital work, the music-video camera and the theatrical staging of The Great Gatsby.  But this film is a rare treat for those who can embrace the artifice of cinema and still respond to a human heart beating at its center.

July 11: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013 -- J.J. Abrams)

★★★
Here’s a fun summer movie that’s capable and engaging.  JJ Abrams likes and respects the things that have made Star Trek one of the most enduring franchises.  Into Darkness has the dependable characters acting out their dependable tags as they deal with situations before them.  And the film has the little moral messages we all like such as the endurance of friendship and the importance of the heart.  There’s even a trip down to a planet with a remarkably stagy look.  For us fans, what’s not to like?

And Into Darkness even brings a bit of innovation.  For one, the film uses the very timely element of
terrorism, and it does so without trivializing it.  The terrorist attack here is real and important and not some gratuitous plot element.  The story has a bit of originality, too, despite its neatness, which almost signals what is going to happen.  But with so much of what you expect, it’s the visuals which often carry the film.  In

screen-packing Imax 3D, the faces of Abrams’ actors fill up the frame during the many unexpected close-ups, and the complex CGI effects resonate with a special force.  This is a visual film that calls for 3D.

The many distinctive elements in Into Darkness also contribute to experience of the film.  There are Abrams’ own 80s-inspired blue lens flares to touch the nostalgia base while giving a sense of immediacy, and we have to wonder if all the alien creatures in the Federation are partly practice for future Star Wars features we’ll see from Abrams.  There’s even decent acting, especially on the part of Chris Pine, who sells Kirk.

So this is a fun movie that actually has a little more takeaway than much of the other summer fare.

May 29: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2 (2012 -- Various)

★★★

This set of Pixar offerings looks like a creative studio becoming more cautious and a little stale.  Among the most cautious and stale are Mater’s tall tale of being a pilot, Air Mater, and his adventure in Time Travel Mater.  From the Cars franchise, neither of these two shorts is interesting or original but instead rely on what are now stock characters doing little unexpected.  Likewise, Hawaiian Vacation and Small Fry have the familiar Toy Story characters acting the same way they do in the three feature-length films and in the other shorts.  There’s not much new or clever here either but rather a remix of elements that fans of the movies already know.

Presto is pretty much a Warner take-off, though it’s so fast and visually witty that it scores a few laughs as a rabbit tries to get a carrot from his magician master.  The funniest film in this collection is the Wall-E spin, Burn-E.  Like Presto, Burn-E isn’t surprisingly original, but it mines the same silent comedy practices as Wall-E, and the laughs can bring tears.

Most of the other offerings here come from previous Pixar work, too.  There’s an overlong animated “documentary,” Your Friend the Rat, that is hosted by Remy and Emile from Ratatouille, but it lacks the snap and clever engagement of the feature.  The two Up spin-offs also lack sparkle .  Dug’s Special Mission has the good natured Golden Retriever creating Roadrunner-like situations for his aggressive pack-mates, and George & A.J. has retirees resorting to fantastic attempts to avoid the nursing home.  This film has a clever premise, but the animators don’t get much beyond silly in their conception. Overall, this entire group of nine short films in the collection imply a stagnation in Pixar's work on animated shorts, a reliance on tried-and-true characters and situations with little of the excitement of innovation that Pixar has brought to the genre in the past.

In fact, only three of the shorts in this collection represent original efforts in new directions, and only two of those have much engaging originality.  In Partly Cloudy, a dark cloud creates the bad babies of the world that a bedraggled stork has to deliver, while bright clouds create the good babies for the happy storks.  This film doesn’t develop anything unexpected.  On the other hand, Day and Night has two transparent characters whose outlines reveal scenes during, respectively, day and night.  Not only is this concept highly original, but the film even develops a story involving the two.  This is a fascinating short film that is simultaneously self-reflexive and traditionally narrative.  It’s one of the most imaginative shorts in either of the two Pixar collections.

La Luna is similarly engaging, though for different reasons.  This coming of age short has a boy caught between his father and his grandfather as he tries to create his own identity.  The film has wonderful imagination, like the way the boat anchors itself to the moon and the task the men have of cleaning the stars from the moon's surface, and it has a simple story that feels like a fairy tale.  An Italian feeling in the work ranges from the characters' hand gestures and speech rhythms to the costumes and the music.  La Luna won the Academy Award for animated short this year, and it deserved it.