Francis Veber's The Valet (2006)

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Ishiro Honda's Gojira (1954)

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Édouard Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1978)

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Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes (1997)

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Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998)

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Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002)

In honor of the Lunar New Year, we leave our teenage angst perspective for one with a different color, a foreign taste. Enter our Eastern friends with Chinese kung fu. When exploring the realm of martial arts, the first noticeable trait that the eye catches is no doubt how ridiculous these actors look flying in the air with their unrealistic swordsmanship. In fact, Hero is an entire spectacle of ridiculous notions. From a warrior warding off thousands of arrows with nothing but her sleeves to a battle taking place solely on water, Hero upholds the standard that has somehow become essential to any kung fu movie.

I used to hate that about my favorite Asian films. As a child, my movie was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I worshipped every scene and every score of music as if I was its creator. Frankly I still do, and I cringe whenever I hear someone talking about it as if it was just another movie. It lures me in with an intense and emotional pull that I cannot describe other than nostalgia. But one day (the first and last), I decided to share this personal treasure of mine with a friend who had never seen the film. The only reaction from her was laughter. For how could anyone take a movie like this seriously, where people are ricocheting off roofs and balancing on bamboo trees?!

I used to think that this ridiculous aspect took away from the important themes and lessons that one can find in a martial arts film. But honestly, the immense fakeness is necessary. It is a mirror of ourselves as people, who do ridiculously evil things to each other all of the time as nations, as races, and as opposites (who are not as opposite as we think).

If you are new to the martial arts scene, I suggest Hero as the perfect starting point because it exquisitely incorporates the inescapable sense of hysterics with the realization of deep morals. This may seem like an odd pairing to put together in a movie, but is perfectly balanced with an immense and indescribable beauty that renowned director Zhang Yimou has once again created. It may then be surprising to learn that the most beautiful movie I have ever laid eyes on is about nothing but war. Let me explain.

Hero takes place during a time in China’s history when the warring states were still struggling for control over one another. Though it is a period film, the movie’s underlying messages transcend any time or culture barriers because it is about war, an ugly complex that humanity fails to avoid again and again. War is the dirty little secret behind civilization and remains an inescapable truth throughout world history. And because death is a part of life, it is also beautiful in its twistingly human way. Hero magnifies that beauty and morphs the crude nature of humanity into a simple lesson of morals. Movie reviewer Roger Ebert states that it is violent only incidentally. But perhaps the movie suggests that violence itself is incidental in the grander scheme of understanding ourselves.

Peace and honor are hard words to take seriously in our time and society. Laughable even. Possibly the root to why kung fu movies seem so ridiculous. But for me at least, this movie brought back the inspiration that is hidden in these concepts. If anything, watch Hero to fall back in love with the romanticism behind honoring one’s country or with the primitive instinct to put your love over yourself. Watch the movie for the colors, the cinematography, the music, everything that is so brilliantly put together in order to give us a sense of who we are and how we can learn to do the right thing.

Gina Nguyen
Guest Commentator

Michael Verhoeven's The Nasty Girl (1990)

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Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1999)

I was riding down the sunny streets of New York City on a motorcycle. As I sped toward Times Square, the former owner of my new bike’s parents shuttered through my mind: I wondered what their reaction would be when they found out that their son had just been murdered for his Tetsuo brand motorcycle. The thought passed, and I kept riding.

It wasn’t the first homicide I had committed that day. Just minutes earlier, I aimed the barrel of my gun at a propane tank parked at a fueling station and pulled the trigger. I wasn’t able to count the bodies before I could get away from the Five-O on the unidentified man’s Tetsuo bike, the same who lay dead on the pavement in the middle of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

The cops were catching up to me now. Fifty, sixty, seventy the speedometer read. I was the Minnesota cowboy who could not be caught; something in my teetering bulb of dread and dream knew I would never be. And so I killed again

The police were cut off by a walk only street in Greenwich Village. My newly hijacked motorcycle, a Kaneda model, was acquired from an Eastern European gentleman below an underpass off of Highway 78 running alongside the Hudson River. The man’s neck snapped sharply between my fingerless leather gloves. It was the last noise his body would ever make as his legs twitched silently beneath my feet. Sirens blared. This time, I didn’t have enough time to think about his parents.

I raced down the east end of Broadway St, weaving in between a combination of pedestrians, limos, and pigeons. A police officer flew out his windshield into oncoming traffic behind me, sporadically bouncing across the concrete safari of the city for blocks. I knew an acquaintance would be waiting in Brooklyn with a chopper to take us out of the sights and minds of the NYPD, but it would take more than a motorcycle to get there.

I headed for the docks on the Lower East Side, where I might be able to hijack a jet ski to take across East River into the borough to the south. The plot thickened when I tried to pass the SWAT teams on South Essex Street, where spotlights blinded and helicopters deafened. I was about to finally be roped in. The tires of my Kaneda were shot out by a rooftop sniper. For a moment, I flew. The next, I lay dead.

The masochistic nature of my killing spree in Grand Theft Auto IV left me thinking about those motorcycles I rode in my final hour of play. I suspected the names were Japanese, and I knew for a fact that they were fictitious.

Fictitious, but not original. A Google search took me to a character list for an animated film called Akira. Rockstar Games, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, branded their virtual motorcycles under the veil of an Easter egg, the names of Akira’s central characters.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg labeled the film unmarketable in the United States, but Akira managed to achieve cult status after its national 2001 release.

Tetsuo and Kaneda are cyberpunk motorcycle gangsters, members of a society described as “low life and high technology.” Akira has an advantage over live action films in the genre in that the special effects options that went into making a dystopian Tokyo circa 2019 were limitless in its art form.

Akira is much praised as an animated cult movie that managed to influence live-action blockbusters. The Matrix (1999) drew from Akira’s account of a human’s attempt to do right in a corrupt, technology-based society, a remarkable feat for a film without any actors. Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA looked to director Katsuhiro Otomo’s methods of audio engineering when creating the sound effects for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004), compositing the noise produced by a 1929 Harley Davidson with that of a jet engine.

Word of a live-action remake of Akira arises in the media every so often. Warner Brothers Studios bought the rights in 2008, and the various proposed cast lists have been exclusively white A-List: Ryan Gosling and James Franco as the leads, Mila Kunis as femme fatale, Helena Bonham Carter typecast as the villain. No deals between the studio and the actors were ever secured, and production has shut down a total of four times as of January 2012. It’s better that way. The power of Otomo’s storytelling with the animated art form is timeless.

Watch for the respect Kaneda gives his brethren in light of their losses, dissimilar from the respect I failed to give my victims back in my Grand Theft Auto IV days. Hayao Miyazaki fanboys could never stomach the violence you are about to witness.

August King
Film Club Co-President

Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993)

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Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930)

The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, is an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. It stars the iconic Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola, a cabaret singer, and Emil Jannings, as Immanuel Rath, a teacher at a boy’s Gymnasium.

This film is known for marking the start of the historical Dietrich-Sternberg collaboration, and also being one of the first German films to employ sound. But, this film provides more than just these two milestones.

Lola and Rath are two drastically different characters. Rath embodies austerity while Lola epitomizes liberation. The narration follows the authoritative Rath down his path of self-destruction. The film begins with Rath catching his students looking at risqué photos of Lola Lola, the headliner at the local cabaret The Blue Angel. Rath then goes to the club, in attempt to stop them in the act. Much to his demise, there he meets Lola, the infatuation begins, and his integrity crumbles.

Many look at this film as an allegory for the state of Germany before the first World War – Rath symbolizing Germany’s peremptory disposition and Lola representing the countering force. Rath’s downfall, then, would represent Germany’s ruin. Whether or not this was Sternberg’s intention, The Blue Angel captures the sentiment of the time and the downtroddeness that defeat yields.

Cinematically the dark shadows render a sinister effect, and the characters always seem at the edge of danger. Lola personifies this mood. She embodies a dark exoticism not seen in prior films, an unbridled sexuality not present prior in the cinematic world. Her sexuality, however, is not what makes Lola a compelling character; it is her inaccessibility. She possesses both masculine and feminine traits, passivity and muscle, and her fluctuation between these traits give her power and depth. This energy inspired the femme fatales of the later film noir movement.

Looming danger, sexuality, cultural revival, and the emancipation of women were prevalent in the Weimar Republic, and this film provides a window into the condition of the German state.

This film’s significance, however, does not solely lie in its historical context. It is also an examination of the human psyche. Stemberg uses the relationship between Rath and Lola, and their fluctuating dependence on themselves and society, to question man’s self-reliance. Ultimately he questions whether or not satisfaction can be derived from others, and from the self.

Although this film possesses many cinematographic conventions of the time it still holds poignancy. Stemberg’s use of imagery, jest, and character interplay provide a palpable gateway to the past and a connection to the current cinema

Ella Coon
Film Club Co-President

Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

Your Humble Commentator wants to talk about something fairly peripheral to tonight’s film, but the gist will be that you want to watch one of Sylvain Chomet’s films in a particular way, and it may be slightly different from how you expect to be watching The Triplets of Belleville. Let’s begin with a little story.

This summer I took daughter #3 to see Disney’s Tangled at the Riverview Theater. A impressive show, Tangled provides the usual well-drawn storybook characters – repressed but plucky heroine, roguish but vulnerable hero, cute animal sidekick (a chameleon), exasperated animal sidekick (Flynn’s horse), and a witchy villain. And the plot moves along with deftly handled comic and tragic turns. The laughs come easily and so do tears. Watching Tangled, one is reminded why Disney has been the best at providing animated features since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937; honorary Oscar for innovation in 1939). I walked out of the theater thinking, “it’s hard to make an animated feature more polished than that.”

And I drove home, dropped off daughter #3 and picked up daughter #1, and drove back to the Riverview to see Sylvain Chomet’s most recent animated feature, The Illusionist (2010). In it, a down-on-his-luck vaudeville prestidigitator travels around Europe performing in run-down theaters to nearly non-existent crowds. In one inn, he meets and befriends a waifish girl, who decides to travel with him to the big city where he is trying to survive on what engagements he can scare up. They live together, she explores the big city, dreams about a better life, finds it, and that’s about it. It may not seem like much, but it is an undeniably beautiful film. I found myself as impressed by what it didn’t do as by what it did. And I found myself comparing the two films, struck by how different they were, and how much that revealed about what our culture has come to expect of the animated feature film.

For one, where Tangled was polished, The Illusionist was rough. One feels free to follow where it leads, to peer into its nooks and crannies, to ponder its suggestions. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard’s film (the Disney film) leads you to clear, familiar places. It’s hard to watch Tangled and not see reflections of earlier Disney movies, subtly shifted to give the impression of newness. Likewise, the Disney film controls your emotions, giving you big laugh gags followed by tear-jerking melodrama (the hero dies! after sacrificing first his selfishness, then himself for the heroine! then – get another handkerchief – he comes back to life!). Chomet paints a more muted, bittersweet picture – you may chuckle but at moments that are slightly disturbing, and you may be disturbed at moments that are darkly funny. But what emerges from the Chomet experience is a sense that you’ve encountered a true portrait of what life is like. And that it has been presented to you with a simple charm, like a small gift hand-wrapped in yesterday’s giftwrap.

Yes, Disney’s Tangled is presenting a fairytale, not at all the same thing. We want romance, intrepid heroes overcoming adversity, and neat conclusions from those movies. And Disney gives that to us with panache and professionalism. That’s expected.

From Chomet, though, Your Humble Commentator wants you to relish the unexpected, the magic of depicting human life in all its quirkiness. The Triplets of Belleville has an awkward narrative, not easy to follow at first. But the story in not the priority. Watch the characters. Watch the magic. Watch the life.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963)

In Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 fantasy and emotional stratum coalesce in a visceral story centered on the egotism that motivated Fellini. This iconic film accounts Guido Anselmi’s (Marcello Mastroianni) attempt to make another hit film. Ultimately an autobiographical confession, based on Fellini’s own self-doubt and emotional state, 8 1/2 delves into the realms of narrative obfuscation and internalized moral skirmish through the self-righteous protagonist, Guido.

Federico Fellini’s last film shot in black and white, 8 1/2 exhibits radical changes from his previous neorealist films. This film centers on the theme of egotism and introspection, which is arguably what Fellini’s earlier films focus on also, but 8 1/2 tackles the subject differently. Instead of the focusing on a brooding search for acceptance of oneself and the absurdities of life Fellini tackles the subject of failure and the artistic process.

He diverges from his connection with Guido towards the end of the film. Plagued by procrastination and the malady of idleness, Guido retreats into himself, he becomes his primary focus. This self-involvement however is not constructive. Guido fails to complete the film he is working on, unlike Fellini. Fellini narrates the difficulty of the artistic process through Guido, describing the sensations that accompany.

Copious with surrealist and absurdist imagery Fellini draws the audience into a world similar and dissimilar to reality. Connected to the emotional response invoked by these scenes the audience fixates on ambiance of the film and less on empiricism. It enraptures the audience bringing them closer to the actualities of life that most commonplace cinema possesses.

It is the application of surrealism that makes this film so celebrated. Interweaving fantasy, memory, realism, and absurdism it is considered to be Fellini’s most influential film. By describing the difficulties of film making he created a masterpiece. This intimate exposure is what makes the film special. Not circumventing self-criticism or immorality Fellini admits to fault in a spritely way.

Lauded, this film has received two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design was nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. It has received praise from the New York Film Critics Circle, and received all seven prizes at the Italian Natioal Syndicate of Film Journalists.

Ella Coon
Film Club

Costa-Gravras’s Z (1969)

What is “Z”?

“Z” is a massive cross-breed. It’s in French, takes place in Algeria, and its director is Greek. More importantly, it combines two rarely crossed genres: politics and thrillers. Political films are often deeply grounded in the reality of a situation, looking at things in the simplest format. Thrillers often move far beyond logical motivation, showing only what will send the most adrenaline into our bloodstream. “Z” not only combines these genres, it makes them brilliant.

“Z” was shockingly relevant at the time of its release. It was not the average politically connected film that immortalized political situations fifty or five hundred years ago. “Z” looked at the death of the politician Grigoris Lambrakis under circumstances still being debated at the time. Its worldwide recognition, complete with a Cannes Palme D’Or, spread the word about Lambrakis.

“Z” is entertaining. Jean Louis Trintignant won awards for his performance as The Examinating Magistrate. Mikis Theodorakis’ score made him a household name (Mr. McVeety brought his vinyl copy of the soundtrack to school, referring to it as “a relic”), along with “Zorba the Greek.” It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, extremely rare for both foreign and experimental films.

“Z” is a landmark. Ty Burr, Boston-based film writer, notes its “slick cinematic urgency” and its “ease with genre filmmaking.” Most films that deal so poignantly with political themes do so with dull period piece work and Hollywood gloss. “Z” stands apart from all these films.

The title comes from a Greek word meaning “He is alive,” a protest phrase relating to Lambrakis’ death. Despite the fact that this film, too, is out of political relevance, as a work, it is still very much alive.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s A Town Called Panic (2009)

As you walked in to the film tonight, you got a little plastic army man, common plaything of 1960s and ‘70s children, or as we here at Film Club Central are calling it: Your Stop-Action Animation Starter Kit^©. Because, really, this is all it takes. You find some small objects or clay, grab your camera and take a picture, move the object a little bit, take another picture, and repeat until you’re famous. Like Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park. You can do this with your Barbies (as Todd Haynes did with his famous bio-pic of Karen Carpenter, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”) or GI Joes (if you go to www.gijoefest.com, you’ll find a whole film festival devoted to stop-action films starring the macho dolls) or simply random objects (post-its, rubber bands, Pixie Sticks, dice, a dollar bill, candy corn, Rubik’s Cubes as in “Western Spaghetti by PES” on YouTube).

Now the trick is obviously to get enough stuff moving that you can approximate life, humor, character, story, and all the other stuff that makes a good film. Stépahne Aubier and Vincent Patar have done that with Panic au Village or, as it is called in English, A Town Called Panic. Using a wide variety of small plastic toys, they’ve created an entire rural community where one’s shape, be it pig or horse or indian or cowboy or Atlantean, is not an impediment to one’s role in life or ability to behave in hilariously human ways. In fact, one might argue that it is not in spite of the actors being small plastic toys but because of their being small plastic toys that we’re able to explore more fully the comedy of human nature.

When the film opens, Cowboy and Indian are coming to realization that they’re unprepared for their roommate Horse’s birthday. What ensues, which involves an over-abundance of bricks, a robot penguin, a crushed house, piano lessons, stolen walls, tractors, kleptomaniac sea people, mad scientists with a snow-ball catapult, and more that we aren’t going to list here, is less panic than manic. The insanity of the plot stands in stark contrast to the warmer domestic comedies of Nick Park’s claymation Wallace and Gromit films or the alien jerkiness of Ray Harryhausen monsters in 1950s and ‘60s sci-fi films like Jason and the Argonauts. Aubier and Patar’s world has the same innocence, charm, and crazy non-sequitor rambling that one would expect if children really were just playing with these toys.

And that’s what there is to love about stop-action work. It has a D.I.Y. quality that means it never moves very far from your imagination. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of craft, cleverness, and pain-staking work in Aubier and Patar’s film. But it looks like they simply made it in their bedroom one weekend.

Now, not everyone who watches a movie secretly wants to be a film-maker, but as movies become increasingly technical and expensive (Avatar, anyone?), they feel in some ways more alien, more distanced from our own imaginations. Certainly James Cameron or George Lucas would argue that computers are allowing us to expand our imaginations in ways we never could before, to create fantasies that look like reality. But you don’t sit in the theater saying, “I could do that.”

So right now pick up your army man. Walk him across your leg. Maybe you make him say “Hi there. Does this gun go with my outfit?” And maybe, if your friend is taking pictures, you could make it into a short film. And just like that, you’re a star.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

We entitle this accompaniment to our screenings “Why We Picked This Film,” but we really want to call this one “Why You Should Watch More Silent Films.” The reasons we hear not to watch silent films are legion and often non sequitor – they’re old (?), they’re boring, they didn’t know how to make “real” movies back then, they might be hard to understand because they don’t have words, etc.

But really there’s only one thing keeping people from seeing some really great films from the silent era – they’re different – and that’s not really a good reason to skip what might be a very fun experience. So here are three reasons why you should jump at the chance to see silent films, not that those chances materialize very often.

1. Silent films have retro cool potential. In an era when most of us are wearing ‘70s t-shirts, listening to early rock-and-roll music, and letting “Mad Men” return us to the style and sexism of the 1960s, there’s caché in exploring the style and stand-out examples of film-making dominant at the beginning of the form. Now, it’s not like folks are dipping into the silent era and stealing techniques, looks, or content for modern “retro” silent films. But “coolness” is a state of mind. If we are excitedly reliving the patriarchal oiliness and style-over-substance vibe of the ‘60s, why shouldn’t we celebrate the kooky human-as-clown comedies of Max Sennett or revel in our knowledge of the first filmed versions of vampire flicks (Nosferatu, 1922) or westerns (The Great Train Robbery, 1903) or animated cartoons (Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, 1906). If we don’t think of silent film as a archaic technology but more as a style of film-making, then, seeing Battleship Potemkin becomes a social interaction, the establishment of a certain kind of cultural cred, and you’re only “in” if you’ve seen a few.

2. Silent films are wacky. We won’t go into the history of the form, but very little in a silent film looks like movies today. There’s a certain goofiness – part technology, part style of the time, part viewer’s unfamiliarity – that comes off the screen. So in that sense, watching a silent film, from the comedies of Buster Keaton to the historic epics of D.W.Griffith, is not like going to the a movie but like going to a completely different visual experience, and because it is an unfamiliar one, it’s weird. But weird is often fun. Think about the strangest food you’ve ever eaten, or when you and your fiends jumped into a hole in the ice at Widji, or maybe the first time you heard a Tom Waits song, and you thought, “okay, that was weird ... but fun.” Weird + fun = wacky, really, and many of the things we do for the first time, if we’ve never thought about doing them before or they don’t conform to our conventional expectations, are wacky. That’s the silent film experience. So you get home from Battleship Potemkin, and your parents ask “what have you been doing?” You say, “I’ve been watching this wacky movie where people don’t speak out loud, so they do a lot acting with their faces and gesturing with their arms. It was pretty cool.”

3. Silent films are fun because they’re different; it’s all the other stuff that becomes boring. We suspect that this summer you are likely to watch only movies that are made only in 2011, and not only that but maybe only movies made in 2011 about male superheroes (Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America, X-Men: First Class). There’s a certain sameness to the American film-going experience. Then every once in a while a movie comes along that’s a lot different from what we’re used to seeing, something like Blair Witch Project, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or anything written by Charlie Kaufman, and we celebrate its difference, its breath-of-fresh-air-ness. The fact that silent films are different, that they give us a moment to cleanse our palette and to rethink what it is that we get from the other films we go to, that they’re wacky, is their value to us. While people do like familiarity (the only reason MacDonald’s exists), failure to experience “the different” traps us in a culture of mediocrity. Difference is experience; difference is life. And life is better if you’re becoming more experienced, trying new things: ice hole baths, grasshopper tacos, muy Thai martial arts films, Tom Waits’ cover of “Heigh Ho,” Snakefinger, black lighting, hot dog eating contests, Tiny Tim and his ukelele ... well, you get the picture.

In some ways, Battleship Potemkin is neither that cool, nor that wacky, nor that different. It tells a simple story of a group of sailors, fed up at mistreatment, protesting their condition, and the resulting revolt against authoritarian rule. We hope, though, that viewers set aside any fear of the no-longer-conventional techniques and style and enjoy one of the best films ever made.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Chen Kaige’s Farewell, My Concubine (1993)

To the Chinese, history is the most important teacher. There is a Chinese saying: 前事不忘后事之师 (qiánshì bú wàng hòushì zhī shī) or “The past not forgotten is a guide for the future.” In order to understand the present and predict the future, one must look to the past. Some of the most well-known Chinese novels, plays, and movies illustrate the importance of history to the Chinese. Farewell, My Concubine is no exception. The film is an exploration of Chinese history and the place of the individual who is caught up in its epic sweep.

2011 marks the completion of the first century of a Chinese republic. The overthrow of the Qing Dynasty was the end of two-thousand years of imperial rule. China was thrown into chaos as warlords and imperialist powers divided it up. Growing up, I always heard stories of my grandfather’s childhood in China, before his migration to Jamaica, West Indies. He was born in the last years of the Guangxu Emperor, and was a young boy when Puyi, himself only three years old, was crowned the Xuantong Emperor. He was to be the last emperor of China. My grandfather’s youth in early republican China was marked by battles between warlords and bandit raids. Indeed, China had been thrown into turmoil. My grandfather chose to emigrate and left his ancestral land for the stability found in the British Empire, of which Jamaica was a colony.

My grandfather’s story is not unusual for those of his generation. Born in the Qing Dynasty, millions of Chinese were thrust into the brutal twentieth century. They suffered through civil and world war, as well as political and social upheaval. This film shows in stark realism and even brutality the revolutionary nature of recent Chinese history.

Throughout the film, we follow two actors, childhood friends, as they are caught-up in the traumatic events of twentieth-century China: the period of the warlords, the rise of the Republic of China, the second Sino-Japanese War, the rise of the Communists and the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and finally the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The commitment of the actors to the Beijing Opera, a Chinese art form rooted in traditional Chinese history and culture brings them into conflict with a rapidly changing China. They become confused and disheartened as Chinese history comes crashing into their lives.

Because actors, alongside prostitutes, fell at the bottom of the traditional Chinese social ladder, the film is able to capture Chinese history through the lens of the marginalized. This includes not only actors, but homosexuals as well. There are no proscriptions against homosexuality in Confucian philosophy, and it has a long history in China. As long as a son or daughter married and produced grandchildren, they were fulfilling their filial duty. However, with the rise of Communism in China, with its emphasis on conformity, homosexuality was suspect. This stark treatment of homosexuality and its realistic and horrifying depiction of the Cultural Revolution led to the film being banned in China.

In 1966, Mao Zedong declared the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in an effort to expand his personal power. He came to believe that there must be a perpetual revolution in order to usher in the Communist utopian society. Mao declared the removal of all that was traditional in Chinese society. Writers, artists, filmmakers, teachers, religious leaders, and intellectuals had to conform to strict revolutionary norms. Those who did not demonstrate proper revolutionary enthusiasm were persecuted. Thousands of families were torn apart. Schools closed down. Teachers and parents were turned in by their own students and children. “Struggle sessions” were held in order to accuse and mock counter-revolutionaries. Palaces, temples, libraries and churches were turned into storage places or destroyed. Thousands died at the hands of others, or at their own. The Cultural Revolution was ten years of social turmoil from which China is now only beginning to recover.

Farewell, My Concubine not only explores Chinese history, but also the interplay between art and life. The Beijing opera Farewell, My Concubine is itself quite short; about fifteen minutes. Its protagonist is the concubine of the King of Han, whose kingdom is about to fall. As soldiers surround the city, his favorite concubine offers him wine and asks for his sword so she can dance with it. Fearful of the troops who will soon storm the city, the concubine commits suicide with the king’s sword. Surrounded by animosity, and fearful of being outcast, the concubine dies. In the movie, the play becomes a timeless depiction of fierce loyalty in the face of adversity. Parts of the play echo events in the actors’ lives. Art and real life become intertwined until it becomes hard to discern where one begins and the other ends.

Farewell, My Concubine is ultimately about the decision of ordinary people to survive and adapt or to recoil from the events around them. In the end, the film leaves us with these questions: how do we treat those who differ from us, how do we remain loyal to our friends, what is the relationship between art and life, and how do we shape our own destiny in the midst of history’s grand sweep?

Mr. Aaron Bohr
Guest Commentator

Michel Hazanavicius’s OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

Film Club is proud to present tonight’s guest commentator, M. Aimeric Lajuzan, Upper School French teacher. M. Lajuzan graduated from the University of Toulouse, where he studied geography and sociology, and moved to the United States in 2006. This country is lucky to have him. The expertise of the French is well known, for there is nothing that they do not know, and their superiority, both intellectually and culturally, must be acknowledged. For example, the French have been the only people in the world sophisticated enough to recognize the comic genius in the films of Jerry Lewis. For this reason, we have asked M. Lajuzan to opine about tonight’s film.

OSS 117 is the best French parody of a spy movie ever made.

The last years of colonialism were a rough time for the best country in the world. The image of a unified French colonial empire harmoniously working to the beat of La Marseillaise was put to the test as local populations rose up to claim independence. The idea that millions of people around the world wanted to be French was fading and countries around the world emancipated following World War II. This part of History sets the scene for Michel Hazanavicius’s recent film OSS 117: Le Caire, Nid d’Espions, which portrays the adventures of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (UBDLB), special agent sent on a secret mission to Egypt for the glory of France and its (now completely forgotten) president René Coty.

UBDLB is not Austin Powers (Mike Myers’ character parodying James Bond and the mod England of the ‘60s) nor Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers’ bumbling character from Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films); he is Sean Connery … but French. He is incredibly self-confident, sexy, and smart; all these things that make us French so popular around the world. When information is faulty (wait! there are Muslims in North Africa?!?), he improvises and gets through problems unharmed. He might offend a person or two or twenty, but it is clear to any Frenchman that those people are just too sensitive. Everyone knows that no other civilization but the French has ever reached perfection, so why would they want to discuss it?

OSS 117 is best watched in French but for some reason there are people who don’t speak this beautiful language and need subtitles. (This is shameful. For centuries English kings spoke French. The founding fathers of the United States spoke French, which served well when they took field trips to France to get assistance in writing their little constitution and Bill of Rights. And you will notice that, in the movie, even the Nazis speak French. Is it too much to expect ordinary film-goers to have some respect and know this language?)

So enjoy this lampooning of French smugness movie in which French culture is captured so accurately and with such reverence. It may be the last time a movie does so.

Monsieur A. Lajuzan
Guest Film Club Commentator
SPA French Dept.

Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008)

I love being Scandinavian, especially when it comes to taking pride in my homeland. As a Swede, my people have conquered Europe and the North Atlantic as Vikings, made world-famous Swedish meatballs, and, pertaining to your cinematic experience tonight, produced one of the greatest kickassery vampire films ever.

Låt Den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One In), originally a novel, follows the struggle of a bullied twelve-year-old named Oskar (an extremely common Swedish name, think “John”). When Oskar comes home every day from school, he fantasizes about exacting revenge. One day, Oskar meets a pale (hint hint) girl about his age in appearance named Eli who is living with the man next door. Soon, the two pursue a close relationship.

Eli, who turns out to be a vampire and significantly older than twelve, proves to be in power fast. If you take only one thing away from this movie, remember that girls can wear the pants too. Think of Eli as a feminist superhero as you might Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Eihi Shiina in Audition, except slightly less realistic considering Eli commits murder after murder in order to survive off of the blood of her victims.

Tonight’s vampire in Let the Right One In holds many similarities to the ever so popular sparkly Twilight vampires, such as pale skin and the need for blood. Not only that, both Edward Cullen and Eli are mysterious, nice to look at, and stereotypically convince the opposite sex that they can never be together, which of course is completely untrue. Then why does Let the Right One In appeal to more than teenage girls? It doesn’t really matter what the story is about in my opinion, but rather how it is told. The romance in Let the Right One In is progressive, whereas the vampire in Twilight immediately decides he must be with the prettiest, dullest girl in school. Another appeal is the action in this film which may or may not make you terrified of little Scandinavian girls (watch out – you do live in the Midwest).

One of the most beautiful characteristics of this film is director Tomas Alfredson’s choice to focus on the relationship between Oskar and Eli rather than make it painfully violent like many American-made horror movies. Honestly, have you ever cared about any of the characters in a movie like Saw? Of course not, you don’t even know who those people are! The only thing you learn about them is their resistance to pain and how bad the actors portraying them are.

If you’re going to enjoy this movie as much as I do, let’s get some things straight: Do not watch the remake of this movie. Hopefully, you haven’t seen it, and if you are lucky, you never will see it. Let Me In, a 2010 American remake of the film you’re seeing tonight, did exactly what I hate about American horror movies. Director Matt Reeves took out the intimate components of human expression and threw in bad horror, along with introducing actors who got their roles because of their looks and not their talent. Stay true to the beauty of an original!

Finally, as you watch Let the Right One In, remember that good things are still coming out of Sweden besides music piracy websites and intense rave music. Just because we don’t participate in World Wars doesn’t mean we are not talented! För Sverige!

Njut!

August King
Film Club

Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001)

On a Saturday night, it is not unusual to find my family sitting together on a couch watching a movie. No, they usually aren’t in English. They’re in Hindi. No, they’re usually not intense dramas, but they include song and dance. Welcome to the world of Bollywood. My family will start the movie around 8 or 9 o’clock, a decent time (if we were watching something from Hollywood). But remember, this is Bollywood, where it is not unusual to find a movie that is three hours long. Tonight’s movie, Lagaan, is even longer.

In India, going to see a movie is an experience by itself. You buy the tickets ahead of time, because the theater fills up fast for a number of reasons. They don’t just serve popcorn there, but delicious Indian street food. And for those people who don’t have much money, a movie ticket is expensive. So the longer the film the more it seems like one gets one’s money’s worth. In addition, it can get quite hot in some places in India; a longer movie means more time in an air conditioned theater. Consequently, people don’t just treat going to a film as three hours well spent, but they consider it to be a day well spent.

Generally, each movie features five or six songs with choreographed dance. Often times, it is between a boy and a girl. These musical numbers tend to add on 25 or 30 minutes to the length. It is not enough for the girl to act like she’s happy with a boy, but she has to sing and dance to express her feelings.

For American audiences, the biggest challenge from Bollywood is probably the length of the film. Why is it like that? Is it the American film industry that has limited our attention span? Is 90 or 120 minutes really enough for the movie to say something?

Lagaan is trying to say something, but at 225 minutes it has a lot more time to say it. It is a typical sports “underdog” movie, but with so many more elements. Set in the time when the British are governing in India, it has a romantic triangle between a British girl, Indian boy, and Indian girl. All of this is going on, while there is pressure on the villagers to pay three times the tax to the British, or lagaan, if they don’t win a cricket match, a game that they don’t understand. As Bollywood-ish as the movie is, it comments on underlying issues in Indian society. The Caste system is a social hierarchy in India. While not as enforced today, it plays a big role in whether or not they should let an untouchable play cricket with them.

Lagaan can be regarded as a key player for the crossover of Bollywood movies to other parts of the world. The main actor of the movie, Aamir Khan, who has achieved critical success since then in acting and producing, has the kind of appeal that transcends regional tastes. As recognition of its crossover qualities, Lagaan was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in the 2002 Academy Awards. It didn’t win (the Bosnian film No Man’s Land took the award), but it was still a big step for India. I hope you enjoy tonight’s special Indian treat.

Aditi Kulkarni
Film Club

Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979)

Everybody who sees Volker Schlondorff’s film Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) should have an opinion on whether it should be shown at school. You might be glad that Film Club has the freedom to show risqué movies, or you might be shocked that they would, or you may even be upset that the school supports to its showing. Even if the fact that SPA is showing The Tin Drum doesn’t shock you, the movie very well might. It’s groundbreaking, dark and somewhat comedic, and very surrealist. It is also graphically suggestive. (Unless that’s an oxymoron. Hey, it’s surrealism.)

The film’s sexuality earned it enormous controversy when it came out in 1979, and controversy over controversy, on into the 1990s. The state of Ontario banned it as child pornography. Later on, an activist group in Oklahoma County asked their library system to remove their copy of the movie. When they refused, the group showed a single scene from the movie to a judge. Through a snowball effect, he not only blocked the movie from the library, but deemed showing it illegal. Tapes of the movie were confiscated, and police demanded the names of people renting the movie from Blockbuster outlets so those films could be confiscated as well.

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union heard about the case. They filed suit, saying that the seizure of videos violated first, fourth, and fourteenth amendment rights. In the end, the film was re-legalized.

Among film critics, the film is considered a classic. It received the top prize at the famed Cannes Film Festival – the Palme d’Or, a mark of distinction for films as unusual as The Tin Drum. It also won an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film), an award rarely given to a film as dark or strange as The Tin Drum.

In fact, there are rarely films as dark or strange as The Tin Drum. It’s cited as a landmark of the terrifying type of movie that takes you way out of your comfort zone in the name of art. Premiere Magazine calls this type of film a “Dangerous Movie” – a movie which “puts square in your face all of the things Hollywood usually presumes you go to the movies to get away from.” Their examples of “dangerous movies” include Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic Weekend. It’s great that we live in a nation with not just the artistic freedom to make bizarre and shocking movies, but one with people willing to see them.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club