303. Never on Sunday

Song - Roxanne (The Police)

Movie: Never on Sunday - Pote tin Kyriaki (Jules Dassin, 1960)

Homer (Jules Dassin) walks into a Greek bar...and is utterly out of place. The boisterous locals sing, shout, drink and smash their glasses, while he skittishly scriblles in his little notebook. And when he orders a coffee the waiter admonishes him; "real men drink ouzo." Real men also dance after drinking ouzo, to Homer's enthusiastic applause, a gesture the dancing drunk doesn't appreciate. His 'pertformance' isn't intended for an audience, he does it for his own delight, not because he seeks to satisfy the needs of a strange man like some sort of circus animal. It's a clever little bit of screenwriting - Never on Sunday is about Homer's futile attempts to re-educate Ilya (Melina Mercouri), the most popular prostitute in Piraeus, into a better life. The film makes clear in many different ways that Homer's efforts are wrongheaded, highlighting that Ilya doesn't want or need to be saved. The film stops just short of explictly promoting prostitution as a potential form of feminist self-expression, but it doesn't take the most attentive viewer to understand what the angry dancing drunk is a metaphor for.

Never on Sunday is the third Pygmallion-inspired story discussed here, and the least succesfull one. Educating Rita and My Fair Lady both end up complicating their basic premise, questioning the idea that a working class girl will neccessarily be better off embodying the qualites/characteristics of elite society. And they do so by revealing that their supposedly sophisticated mentor is to some extent a phony. But for that to work, the basic premise still should be believable. Both movies present the assumption that their heroines would be better off if they are taken under the wings of these somewhat eccentric/flawed professors as a realistic one. In Never on Sunday Dassin wastes no time in making clear that Homer is a bumbling fool and that Ilya is pretty much the most resourceful citizen in all of Piraeus. The rest of the film keeps reinforcing this same idea,the story and characters don't really have anywhere to go.It may theoretically be pretty ironic that in trying to save Ilya (who remains an independent contractor throughout, choosing her clients herself depending on who she likes more, regardless of earnings) it's Homer who ends up being on the payroll of the town's main pimp, but it is entirely in line with what we know about Homer or Ilya. There is no real one-upmanship here, and the film, in particular Dassin's performance, is also too broad to really work as a sharp satire or parody. 

Still, the film is not without its charms and is at times quite funny. Jules Dassin is clearly a good director who has a lot of fun with shooting group dynamics around Ilya. Whenever there is a difficult situation in town he stuffs the frame with exasperated, slighlty overweight men wating for Ilya to find just the right thing to do or say. She usually does except when she has to interpret a Greek tragedy. She finds happy endings in the stories of Medea and Oedipus, driving Homer to insanity. I liked that although the film presents these misinterpretations as laughably naive, it also lets Ilya explain how she gets to them, explaining to Homer the story elements that make her view these tragedies in her own way. It's a nice contrast to Homer's purely encyclopedic knowledge - he knows Medea is a tragedy, but has never made up his own thoughts on it. It's interesting too that this discussion takes place in an amphiteater on top of the town's acropolis, the one remnant of the classic Greek culture that Homer came to find. Homer is at his place here, but so are many of the Greeks we see in the bar and at the port. The folks we have seen get drunk on ouzo and walk around in half-ripped dirty undershirts are now well-dressed for a theater performance of Medea they watch with great attention. They need no Homer to educate them.   

302. Romeo + Juliet

Song - Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits)

Movie: Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996)

"I always look annoyed. When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you are busy."

I may cite Seinfeld too much, but it's only fitting when writing about another great innovator of English language. In truth, that George line has had a similar effect on me as Shakespeare's works on the average British theatre actor. In all walks of life, I am skeptical of ostentatious displays of blood, sweat and tears, of desperate attempts to showcase the effort behind the work, It's one of the many reasons why I've never liked the Lord of the Rings, or Marvel's Avengers project, why I will always prefer Messi over Cristiano Ronaldo, why I wouldn't ever wanna get involved with Sillicon Valley startup culture and why I am allergic to politicians cosplaying as Max Weber. Its total rejection of these attitudes is also what makes Seinfled itself so great. The show happily presents as a lightweight lark 'about nothing' and highlights the ease and fun of its own making, letting entire scenes stand where all main actors are visibly on the brink of breaking character, with Seinfeld himself barely even feigning an effort to act. 

Romeo + Juliet does Shakespeare a great disservice whenever it pulls out all the stops to show how hip and up to date he still is, most notably in the absolutely ridiculous opening scene where Luhrmann films a gun fight at a gas station as if he is trying to combine the most over the top elements of Spike Lee, Michael Bay and Quentin Tarantino in one go. The camera moves in a frenzy between various groups of flashily dressed urban youths as they insult each other while doing wheelies in way too expensive super cars. Title cards in explosive fonts introducing the players are accompanied by freeze frames and self-consciously cool music. Expressive, fetishistic zoom-ins to guns being brandished are followed by slow-motion shots of a lit match being dramatically thrown on the ground, evoking a cowboy getting ready for the big battle in a western. The whole scene plays as if Luhrmann is an insecure tryhard theater major who has to prove to his mentor that Sheakspeare can still be relevant in the 1990's, repeating the same argument in increasingly convoluted ways. He is ultimately saved by the man himself. No mattter how bloated and obnoxious the scene gets, somehow Shakespeare's original dialogue always seems to fit.

I hadn't seen Romeo + Juliet since I was a teen, when I absolutely loved it, and I can see why. When it leaves the side characters off the stage and purely focuses on Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) it is really good, in particular for teenagers. Luhrmann's direction heightens and validates every emotion of its lovers. DiCaprio is introduced broodingly sitting on the beach as a Radiohead song plays on the soundtrack and it feels as if all of the world should feel like he does. And when DiCaprio and Danes woo each other, their passionate intensity almost really does convince that their love for each other is the only thing that can possibly matter. The two have an incredible (effortless!) chemistry from the very first shot in which they appear together; without the bene0fit of hindsight it would be very hard to believe that Danes didn't go on to have the same superstar career as DiCaprio. 

301. Pele: Birth of a Legend

Song - We Are The Champions (Queen)

Movie: Pele: Birth of a Legend (Jeff Zimbalist & Michael Zimbalist, 2016)

Birth of a Legend presents Pele's life between 1950 (when as a kid in the favelas he experienced the heartbreak of Brazll losing the World Cup final on home soil to Urugualy) and 1958 (when he led Brazil to its first ever World Cup victory). It does so by combining dutiful Hollywoodised 'accuracy' with artistic flourishes that happily distort reality, showing in the process that historic fiction is much more insightful when it does the latter than when it does the former. Everyone remotely interested in the World Cup will have seen archival footage of Pele's header in the 1958 final against Sweden. There is little added value in recreating it here, especially when the digital effects behind the recreation are so obvious. If you are going to show a fake football game you might as well go all the way and warp time and space to highlight how Pele's genius is a direct expression of his experiences as a poor, black Brazilian. 

The central confilct is between Pele and Jose Altafini, the white star of Brazil who believes that the national team should model itself after Italy. When Altafini gets injured in the final stages of the 1958 tournament, he is replaced by Pele who shows that the 'joga bonito', with its origins in capoeira, the forbidden dance of Brazilian slaves, is the way to go for Brazil, on and off the pitch. No, Pele didn't regularly stop mid-action 'to think about his entire life" before playing on, but a conceit being common doesn't necessarily make it unsophisticated. These in-game flashbacks, present a tension between the African and European elements in Brazil's culture that's much more unsettled and complex than the tidily resolved friction between Pele and Altafini, or the Disneyfied change of heart by coach Vicente Feola. In the locker room before the final he gives a speech to his players imploring them to forget about his 'European' tactics and to just play with 'Brazilian ginga'. There is a difference between arguing that Brazilians need freedom to express themselves on the field and arguing that Brazilians get confused when they have to think about overlapping fullbacks, but sometiems you just gotta comfort those who need to believe that even the most accomplished non-Westerners are in fact noble savages.  It's an idea that the film had been actively resisting until then, and to make it more disappointing it's set up by its best moment

The day before the final, the Brazilians are having diner in a posh hotel in Stockholm. Their trainings have gone badly, they have been insulted as 'subnormal' by the Swedish coach, and are now expected to perform 'European' civility. The mood is sour until Pele sees the lighthouse in the hotel garden and decides to a adapt a game they played in the favelas. "To the lighthouse, no bounce" means the whole team should work together to get to the designed spot passing the ball to each other without it ever touching the ground. Their movement is filmed with an intoxicating energy that's contrasted by the sterile environment of the hotel, and it plays like a contemporary Nike commercial, placing the Brazilians far ahead of their time. It's the one time in the film, Brazil is presented as the center of the world and of 'modernity'. The scene is as outrageous an invention as Pele's on-field memories of his youth, but in many ways is a better expression of the historical context than most of the scenes that purport to stick to the facts. Part of the problem is that the film suffers from presentism and sees the World Cup as a far bigger, and more legacy-defining event than it was at the time. You wouldn't know if from the commentary here, but before 1958 the World Cup had only been held 5 times, and had only three different winners: West Germany, Italy and Uruguay. I can't tell you a single player from any of those teams, and the oldest World Cup goal I've seen is Pele's header in the 1958 final. Technological developments played a role certainly in turning the World Cup into what it is (it's a nice touch that for the 1950 final everyone in Pele's village is gathered around a radio. By 1958 they are watching it on a small television), but in alignment with Pele. The film's gravest mistake is that it presents this as an underdog story of a man made a legend by the World Cup, without ever fully realising that Pele was the first to make the World Cup legendary.  

300. The Flying Dutchman

Song - Ren Lenny Ren (Acda en De Munnik)

Movie: The Flying Dutchman - De vliegende Hollander (Jos Stelling, 1995)

The Flying Dutchman begins with a title card explicitly situating it at the end of the Eighty Years War when the Low Countries were rebelling against the Spanish monarchy. It's somewhat confusing then to see in the opening scenes a Flemish rural village being attacked by French speaking nobility. The Francophones keep appearing at random moments in the film, leaving little clarity to their role in it, until it's suddenly revealed that these are actually Spanish troops. It's one of the many moments that help clarify why what should have been a blockbuster - at the time this was the most expensive Dutch film production in history - turned out to be a complete (commercial and artistic) flop. Stelling's storytelling is so incoherent that even if he would have established the Spaniards as Spanish from the very beginning, we'd still have little idea of how they relate to anything or anyone in the film. It doesn't help that the main protagonist 'Hollander', who is supposed to be around 21 years old, is played by Rene Groothof, 46 at the time of shooting. I have never been a stickler for accurate casting (or accents), but it's so egregious here you'd almost doubt your basic understanding that Groothof is supposed to be the representation of Dutch youthful naivete and innocent idealism.

Of course many national epics have been founded upon the adventures of young everymen imagined as the embodiment of their nation. The Dutch have some (good!) stories like that, but they are not as globally renowned as their counterparts from surrounding nations, which seems to have given the film an inferiority complex; you get the sense too often that Stelling doesn't really believe that Dutch cinema has as much room for patroitic myths as other cinema cultures and that it needs those cultures to justify itself. As a result the Spaniards speak French (a language that is much more associated with artistic world cinema than Spanish) and the young 'Hollander' is guided by a harlequin, played by legendary Italian comic actor Nino Manfredi, as if he has come straight from a commedia dell' arte. Later on, we get plenty of shots of large groups of people trekking through the countryside to reach the sea, shot as if they are American pioneers going west. And Stelling definitely cannot get away with his ice scenes being more influenced by Doctor Zhivago than by Dutch painters. 

I was recently at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam where I saw the film Fabula, which shows that a mish-mash of international styles can work fantastically well and also have a distinctly Dutch character. Fabula is a modern fairy-tale/gangster comedy about the exploits of sadsack Limburg criminals thwarted by the hystories, myths and legends hidden in the Limburgian soil and landscape. I'd never expected to see a film that can be described as Snatch meets A Canterbury Tale, but director Michiel Ten Horn's work also helps highlight that these two films may have a bit more in common than may appear at first sight. What makes it relevant however in the context of The Flying Dutchman is that it is interested in exploring how national/regional identity is shaped by the surrounding landscapes, in ways that go beyond dull close ups of its characters with their heads and feet in miuddy waters. The Flying Dutchman's opening few minutes should give you an immediate sense of how much its reach exceeds its grasp. The first frames show a giant stone head being pulled uphill. It's again a scene with an obvious reference to classic storytelling (The Trojan Horse) that lacks the confidence to let Dutch culture just stand on itself, but at least the stone head is a peculiar presence. Stelling realises it, but it soon becomes obvious that he has no real idea of what to do with it, leading to a whole lot of contrived shots that find different ways of framing the bizarre object. These shots can't help but be unusual and interesting, but fizzle out once Stelling has run out of ways and excuses for getting them. Like everything else in the film, the giant head is forgotten almost immediately after it's been shot.   

299. Keane

Song - Somewhere Only We Know (Keane)

Movie: Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, 2004)

Occasionally the voices in his head retreat, and when they do William Keane (Damian Lewis) can just about resemble a functioning adult. In one of these moments he meets Lynn (Amy Ryan) and her daughter, offering them 100 dollar to be able to stay in their New York hotel a couple more nights. She hesitantly accepts and invites him the next evening for some takeout in their room. An innocent dance follows and at the first hint of sexual potential she asks William to leave. He does without protest and with respectful consideration. In the next shot, it's the day after and we see a distressed William fussing about, hunched against a wall on a street corner. As the camera pans to the open space on the left it reveals a desparing Lynn in a phone booth, trying to reach her husband (Keane is the second film in a row here about a woman's unsuccesfull efforts to settle down in Albany with a man who may not be right for her) or at least find out whether he even is at the location she is calling. The scene evokes the painfully misjudged phone call from Taxi Driver for good reason. Both films are about a man in mental torment walking the streets of New York in the mistaken belief a woman will fall in love with him if he saves her from a situation she doesn't want to be rescued from. and both Scorsese and Kerrigan are compassionate in their understanding that their protagonists are still lucid enough to sense that human connection might offer a way out of their misery, but too far gone to have the capacity for it.  

Kerrigan's approach is however different to Scorsese's. Taxi Driver plays out as an expression of Travis' inner life, every scene feeling on the verge of boiling out, as if possessed by De Niro's volatile, vulnerable mania. Keane is an intense film where the camera almost constantly stays extremely close to William, seeing every detail of his anguish as he contorts himself around New York. Even so, it allows more distance between the audience and Keane than Taxi Driver, remaining at all times a naturalistic third-person account of a mentally unwell person. We first meet William at a major transit station in New York where he walks around in a daze trying to retrieve his daughter who apparently disappeared some time ago. The film's ending impliees that something like that really did happen, but Kerrigan leaves it relatively open for interepreation and his decision late in the film to show Keane look for jobs during one of his more rational episodes potentially flips the narrative even further on its head. The implication that only now we are finally watching Keane do what he actually came to New York for fully conveys how much his mind sidetracks him from acting on his correct intentions. 

I am a fan of urban and/or nocturnal odysseys with a sense of the absurd. Combine the two and you can barely ever go wrong, which is why After Hours remains Scorsese's greatest movie. The best of these films wouldn't work without its collection of strange characters that pester, confound or annoy the main protagonists in their attempts to stabilise their situation. Often there is an implication that these side characters suffer from a social or psychological ill, but even when they are not used for comic effect/building atmosphere they are quckly tossed aside and forgotten after they've served their purpose for the film. Keane is consciously presented here as one of those people society would prefer to ignore, and often does. Kerrigan frames him constantly around passengers in transit, cars, busess and trains, all passing him by, paying no heed to his agony unless he gets into their face. He builds a lot of sympathy for him in the process, and ends the film at exactly the right point, allowing us to leave Keane on a positive note, despite knowing full well that what is about to follow is gonna hurt even more than what came before. But we don't need to see that.

298. His Girl Friday

Song - Words (Bee Gees)

Movie: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

I will probably like His Girl Friday more on repeated viewings. Woody Allen bringing out Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall is one of my favorite moments in cinema; Cary Grant noting of Ralph Bellamy's character that "he looks like the fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy" paved the way for it (and for Woody Allen's entire persona). Besides, the idea that there is an entire host of peculiar characters outside of the frame that can enter the movie at any given time to divert whatever's going on is pretty much at the heart of Hawks' film. So is the notion that it's funny to watch people frenetically talk over each other about entirely different subjects, especially when they are pompous blowhards such as the professor in media studies complaining that there is not much to Fellini and Beckett beyond their technical proficiency. He is rightly put in his place by McLuhan, and anyone who's seen Annie Hall will know better than trying to sound like that guy. But what do you do when you see a classic that you find techincally impressive, but a little hollow? Blame it on Cary Grant, maybe? I think His Girl Friday is at it its best during its surpisingly long stretch in the middle when he is barely on screen. 

Another favorite, Tarantino, has never let an opportunity slip to declare his love for His Girl Friday, and it does play like one of the keys to his entire filmography. You can see Hawks' movie in all his work, even when he doesn't neccessarily make an explicit reference to it. The Hateful Eight for example is most succesful when it lets the door to the cabin take center stage, essentially becoming a film about the efforts to enter, exit and close it, and how power relations change depending on who is in and out. The same can be said for His Girl Friday, which I found a bit disappointing when it focuses on the relationship between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but rather marvelous when it is about the municipal press room as the city's center of power. Journalists, criminals, policemen, and crooked politicians all try to occupy it and are forced to constantly adjust their actions based on who is present and absent, and why. Everyone is always missing some crucial piece of information (or the ability to obtain it), and knows it without entirely being able to put their finger on what they lack. Hawks is a master in blocking, and in evoking group dynamics. Even when a specific combination of people is only on screen for a brief amount of time, you get a great sense of how they all relate to and act around each other. In the meantime the phones keep ringing, with every call having the potential to change the context. 

Of course the main thing that connects His Girl Friday to both Allen and Tarantino is its focus on dialogue, but there is a key difference. Tarantino and Allen write as if their dialogue would be memorable whichever actor says it. His Girl Friday is directed to to highlight that Grant and Russell will be memorable whatever they say at breakneck speed. I prefer the first approach even if Tarantino in particular is sometimes the writer equivalent of a basketball player ostentatiously admiring the big three he just hit. It's hard to blame him; it's incredibly difficult to write styllized literary dialogue that is self-conscious about the pleasures of its rhythms, structures, inventions and diversions, and also meaningfully moves the story forward, deepens the characters, and adds complexity. In His Girl Friday Russell and Grant play unscrupulously determined journalists and former lovers who are aware of each other's rhetorical skills and know that they can never lose their guard if they want to remain true to their intentions, feelings and ideas. One slip of the tongue and you may lose the argument. It's all quite entertaining but the film never really bothers to build upon what we learn of them. Instead Grant and Russell spend entire acts communicating the exact same ideas about each other, only worded differently. 

I absolutely don't mind exercises in style that serve little purpose beyond showmanship. However, a movie that is more interested in how its actors express themselves than in what is being expressed needs to get every key role right, and I felt that Cary Grant was somewhat miscast here. 'Friday' refers to Robinson Crusoe's slave and the title seeks to convey the nature of the relationship between an editor-in-chief (Grant) and his star journalist (Russell). Of course this dynamic only exists in Grant's mind; Russell is a much better and more ruthless journalist than he'll ever be and doesn't need his paternalistic sense of protection and guidance. That's part of the joke, but for a joke to work the set up has to be believable, and Cary Grant's meek, gently confused affect is at odds with his savvy scoundrel confidently pulling all the strings. It's hard to conceive of him ever being in a position to be the Robinson Crusoe to any Friday, let alone one with as steely nerves as Russell. As a result a lot of his dialogue comes off as completely inauthentic.  

297. Departures

Song - De Neus Umhoeg (Rowwen Heze)

Movie: Departures - Okuribito (Yojiro Takita, 2008) . 

Daigo (Masahiro Motoko) is a cellist who has spent most of his youth pursuing a musical career, knowing deep down that he is a merely moderate talent. When his orchestra in Tokyo disbands, he suggests to his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) to move back to his hometown, where they can live in the house of his mother who died two years ago (his father abandoned them when he was a kid). Daigo hasn't been back for much longer, missing the funeral because "he was living abroad." That might be technically true, but we get the sense that he was abroad precisely so he would have a good excuse to not deal with the complexities, both practical and emotional, of his mother dying. He's now reached the point where he can't run away from such complexities, but actually being an adult who takes responsibility for difficult decisions is different than merely acting like one. It requires a leap that's hard to make, and Departures is above everything else a really perceptive film about how it feels to be stuck in the strange confusing place between becoming mature and genuinely feeling that your maturity is an authentic part of your self you can act on.  I loved the small moment when, in conversation with his wife, Daigo strokes his chin in weary contemplation and becomes briefly self-conscious about it, baffled that such a distinctly 'adult' gesture suddenly comes so naturally to him.

Departures depicts Daigo's transition through a story of morticians following traditional rituals to prepare the dead for their burial or cremation, a controversial topic in Japan where there is a social taboo on dealing with death. When Daigo responds to the job ad looking for someone to work with 'departures', he thinks he will be some sort of travel agent. He remains convinced of the same after a phone conversation with his boss-to-be, and only finds out that he will be actually working as an assistant mortician after being offered the position, when he has essentially no choice but to accept it. At first sight, this may look like an obvious plot contrivance the film is forced into, being unable to show someone voluntarily wanting to work as an embalmer. However, earlier in the film we've seen Daigo lie to his wife about the true cost of his cello, and he continues to lie to her once he gets the job. When she finds out and leaves him in disgust, his dinners amount to bread and butter, while the dishes keep piling up. In other words, Daigo is exactly the kind of guy who may end up in a career he doesn't want, simply because he'll prefer to let life happen rather than get uncomfortable addressing potential frictions and misunderstandings. 

You get no points for guessing if his new vocation makes Daigo more comfortable with the acts of adulthood and whether it eventually makes his marriage happier. Such predictability isn't a major issue when a film is so immensely likeable and absolutely spot on in presenting the dynamics between a kindly, yet stern boss, his new apprentice/colleague and their supportive office manager during the first days on a niche job. I do think that in trying to make death feel more 'normal' it overcorrects a little, making it seem a bit too clean and agreaable, but I rather liked the patience and attention to detail with which Takita depicts the encoffining rituals. In front of their grieving families, the bodies are shaved, washed, dressed and cleaned up for their 'final journey, following a strict order the 'nokanshi' never deviate from. The families watch the procedure while sitting on the floor, with each ceremony creating a personal connection to the departed by incorporating objects that were important to them during their life. Takita shows it all from the point of view of the bereaved; the camera remaims close to the ground, making sure to not 'hover' over the dead, at least until they are placed in the coffin. Everything is filmed to emphasise as much as possible the dignity of the custom and to show how it creates the sense that everyone's life, regardless of background, was important enough to warrant such reverent treatment. It's notable that the film begins with the procession of a trans person. The family quibbles about whether they are burying a man or a woman, and they try to convince Daigo and his boss (Tsutomo Yamazaki, a veteran of Akira Kurosawa's films) to take a side. They remain stonefaced throughout. They might have an opinion, but their job is to give the dead a worthy farewell, regardless of their thoughts about them.