QUILOMBO (Carlos Diegues, 1984).
In 17th century Brazil, a group of slaves revolts against its Portuguese
masters, and then flees to Palmares, a community of escaped slaves in
the rain forest. One of the new arrivals, Ganga Zumba (Tony Tornado),
is declared king by Palmares' ancient priestess. Under his leadership,
the ex-slaves successfully resist Portuguese attempts to conquer them.
But one young boy is captured in a raid and becomes the slave of a Catholic
priest. When he grows up, Zumbi (Antonio Pompeu) escapes and finds his
way back to Palmares, where he becomes a courageous warrior, challenging
the authority of the aging Ganga Zumba.
In telling this story, which closely follows actual historical events,
Diegues uses a style more akin to that of folklore or mythology than
"realistic" narrative. It's not that the events seem supernatural or
unlikely -- far from it. But the film is carried along by a rich undercurrent
of tribal atmosphere: dance, song, chant, and ritual are part and parcel
of the story's progression rather than elements set off against it.
The different phases of the tale -- the ascent to prominence of Ganga
Zumba, the return of Zumbi, the great debate over whether to accept
a peace offering from the Portuguese -- are presented through an emphatic,
sometimes even abrupt editing style that raises the material to something
close to epic stature. The scenes involving the whole community are
wonderful -- Diegues is brilliant at orchestrating large groups of people
in convincing and dramatic movement. Although there are occasional missteps
and awkward moments, this is a very impressive achievement, a film that
succeeds in portraying the subjective quality and agency of an African
slave rebellion culture, vividly and seemingly from the inside. The
picture illuminates a fascinating episode in Brazilian history, while
also attaining a sense of timeless significance. This is an important
film -- certainly one of the greatest movies from Brazil, and it should
be better known.
WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD
(William A. Wellman, 1933).
Their parents thrown out of work in the Depression, and unable to find
jobs where they live, two teenagers (Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips)
hop a freight out of town to try to find work elsewhere. They join a
growing mob of desperate young people who travel from town to town,
chased and harassed by the police, and eventually reduced to beggary
and stealing in order to survive.
Warner Brothers was practically alone among the major studios in making
films that attempted to reflect and comment upon actual social conditions
in Depression-era America. But Wild Boys was unusual even for
Warners -- a no-name cast, graphic depictions of privation and injustice,
even a scene where a railroad hand tries to rape a homeless girl. Wellman's
direction is superbly taut, clipping along at a brisk, no-frills pace.
The story and script (Daniel Ahern and Earl Baldwin) favors tough realism
over sentiment most of the time (although the film opts for an unconvincing
but predictable ending). One of the greatest scenes has an army of hobo
kids battling with police -- and the police are not the good guys.
The movie didn't do well at the box office, though. It seemed that
audiences, just like they do today, preferred escapism. Some of the
ready-made studio qualities bring the picture down: the stereotypical
street accents of Darro and friends, Sterling Holloway as comic relief,
the kindly judge heralding the hope of the New Deal. But the film's
virtues outweigh its faults. It has a vigor and freshness about it that
hasn't faded.
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
(John Cassavetes, 1974).
Nick (Peter Falk), a manager at a construction firm, loves his wife
Mabel (Gena Rowlands), but her mental instability and extremely erratic
behavior leads to a crisis in their marriage.
Cassavetes developed an approach to telling this story that is unusual
in its directness. Instead of constructing a narrative through editing,
he tries to create an unmediated experience by having the actors behave
as their characters in long scenes, that sometimes seem to occur in
something close to real time, creating a powerful effect of observing
life as it's lived in the moment. For example, an extended sequence
in which Nick brings his coworkers to his house, where Mabel cooks them
a spaghetti dinner, goes on for a length of time and with a degree of
detail that would normally never be considered a proper way to tell
a story. But Cassavetes doesn't want to tell us a story, he wants to
give us the illusion of actually being there with these people. Amazingly,
he pulls it off -- the events we witness in this movie range from riveting
to boring, but it all seems strangely "real," as if we were seeing something
more elemental than acting. Of course it's an illusion -- the picture
seems improvised, but it's actually one of Cassavetes' more carefully
scripted works, and a completely unmediated work of art is impossible
-- but in the attempt we get a film that is profoundly, uniquely unsettling.
Rowlands' performance is spellbinding. In almost every film depicting
mental illness, there's a certain predictability in the way a disturbed
or insane person is portrayed, as if we were meant to understand the
character and thereby come to some sort of conclusion that the writers
and directors intended us to have. In contrast to this, Rowlands' character
seems completely unpredictable and outside the realm of what we expect
to see, and thus she seems exactly like an actual "crazy" person. There's
nothing romantic about it, nor does the film adopt a judgmental, clinical,
or tragic point of view regarding her behavior. She's just there,
in all her aspects (some of which seem quite "normal," others not) and
the force of her disturbance is allowed to be felt in all its perplexity,
difficulty, and pain.
Which is not to say that we can't draw conclusions. As we get to know
Falk's character, it becomes evident that he's unable to govern his
rage, and that his need to control everything around him makes him possibly
as nutty as his wife. But the fact that he's a man makes his behavior
somehow more acceptable to the people around them. Mabel's episodes,
which look a lot like manic depression, occur in the context of an idea
of passive wifehood and motherhood that is intolerable to a person with
her pride and energy. Nevertheless, I don't think it would be accurate
to call the film feminist -- Cassavetes is interested in the particular
drama and tension of relationships rather than in ideas about them as
such.
Sometimes the film goes astray, with the style producing emotional
effects that contradict what the script is saying. With this sort of
method, you have to take the messiness as part of the deal -- I think
the rewards are worth sitting through the longeurs, and that Cassavetes'
intense focus on the momentary and the concrete produces an emotional
involvement that you rarely see in the movies. The long ending sequence,
when Mabel comes home from a psychiatric hospital to be a welcomed by
her nervous extended family, is a masterpiece of rising tension and
discomfort. The film ends on a curiously hopeful note which I found
unconvincing, but the picture's special atmosphere, and Rowlands' incredible
performance, stays with me.
CLOSE UP (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990).
The true story of an unemployed man who pretended to be the prominent
film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, insinuating himself into an affluent
Tehran family under the pretense of making a movie about them, and eventually
getting arrested for attempted fraud.
It's no surprise that such a story, connecting a theme of invented
identity with the practice of film directing, would intrigue Kiarostami.
But whereas the conventional idea would be to dramatize this tale using
actors, the Iranian auteur persuaded everyone in the story to play themselves
in reenactments of principal events, and then intersperses these scenes
with a filmed record of the actual trial. Thus the blurring of reality
and fiction comes full circle: the impostor now gets to play himself
in a film depicting his imposture and its consequences.
The intent of the film, however, is not to play clever, reflexive narrative
games. Kiarostami's methods are deliberately simplified and self-effacing.
Necessity may even play a part -- he produces his films as cheaply as
possible in order to retain the freedom to make the kind of movies he
likes. But it's also an essential aspect of the director's vision that
we sidestep dramatic forms in order to observe the lives and behavior
of actual people. This can lend his films a somewhat dry quality --
we are denied the conventional pleasures of performance, suspense, heightening
of action through music, etc. On the other hand, and this is especially
true of Close Up, there is much less distance between the audience
and the people on the screen. The transparency of the presentation prevents
us from discounting what we see as "mere" fiction.
After a typically low-key opening sequence involving a journalist who
has been tipped off to the upcoming arrest, the picture follows Kiarostami's
efforts to learn more about the case and get permission to film in the
courtroom. Once the trial begins, the inherent fascination of the story
itself begins to take over. The man who pretended to be Makhmalbaf (Hossain
Sabzian) is soft- spoken and personable. As he tries to explain his
motivations to the court, he seems to come to a greater understanding
of himself. The legal issues involve whether or not he was trying to
case the family's house for a burglary, but it becomes evident fairly
early that he was pretending to be a famous director because he was
a film fanatic who felt useless and unimportant in his life, and this
game of make-believe actually helped him feel better about himself.
The film presents a gentle series of revelations about one man's (and
by extension, our) sense of self, how we connects with others through
performance, cinema as a symbol of self-awareness, our need to forgive
and be forgiven, and a host of other little insights that add up to
one quiet, intriguing film. For all his love of toying with narrative
conventions and shifting the boundaries between fiction and real life,
Kiarostami's guiding passion is a simple love for people, and ultimately
it's love and respect that come through in Close Up.
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!
(Michael Powell, 1945).
Joan (Wendy Hiller), a headstrong young woman who has always known
what she wants, and never hesitated to then go and get it, becomes engaged
to a millionaire in order to smooth her way for the pursuit of all the
finest things in life. On her way to an island in the Scottish Hebrides,
on which the wedding is to take place, bad weather strands her on a
coastal village. While waiting for the storm to subside, she makes the
acquaintance of the inhabitants of the village, including the charming
laird of the island, played by Roger Livesey.
Most of the films of Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger that
were made during the war have a patriotic air about them -- in the truest
sense of the word, celebrating as they do the land and the people of
Great Britain rather than the government. Here they turn a loving eye
to the rugged life of western Scotland, with its rich folklore tradition
and almost mystical bond with nature. The black and white photography
(Erwin Hillier) is absolutely stunning, and Powell interweaves fantasy
effects (especially in the amusing early sequences with Hiller traveling
to Scotland on a train) with seamless skill.
Hiller's character is lovable, but inexperienced and a bit foolish,
and she manages to juggle these aspects without losing our sympathy.
Her notions of getting ahead are contrasted with the sincerity and heartfelt
directness of the villagers. (Pamela Brown is marvelous in a small role
as a sort of wild woman of the heath, traipsing about with a herd of
Irish wolfhounds.) The young nobleman played by Livesey, with his soft
purr of a voice, causes Hiller to question her ideas about love and
marriage, but on a subtler level the film also questions common notions
of respectability and propriety, countering them with a vision of a
more authentic way of life that is rooted in the land and in warm human
relations.
It becomes fairly obvious that Hiller and Livesey are meant for each
other, with the mystery being how exactly they will end up in each other's
arms. But it seems to me that Powell and Pressburger, with all the attention
focused on portraying the life of a Scottish village (including a great
scene where the laird takes Joan to a traditional dance), they skimped
on convincingly developing the romance In those days, movie leads fell
in love quickly as a matter of course, but I still think this film could
have used a few more intimate scenes between them.
It's a small complaint, though, because the picture is lyrical, emotionally
satisfying, and as enjoyable as you'd expect a Powell-Pressburger film
to be, which is saying a lot. Amazingly, as I discovered later, Livesey
never set foot in Scotland for the shoot, because he had a stage commitment
in London. All his outside shots were either done with backdrops or
with a double. Quite a trick!
©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
