"Nausicaa: Of the Valley of the Wind" (1984)

Post-apocalyptic worlds often work best when they feel fully inhabited, as if, no matter how implausible, this strange world is only a few steps out of sync with the one we’re familiar with. To create that lived-in quality requires careful world building, and that makes director Hayao Miyazaki with Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind a well-suited match for crafting a world that bears almost no resemblance to our own yet eerily feels like the remnants of some formerly great civilization. In all of his films, Miyazaki cares an awful lot about attention to detail, and he often seems more concerned with world building than actually telling a story – it’s as much about texture, tone and atmosphere as plot and narrative. Nausicaa is an anti-war film and a conservationist tale, but it’s foremost about stepping into a fully formed world and being dazzled by the wonders that exist in it. This world feels something like a cross between Game of Thrones and Mad Max, but despite the violence and power politics the film’s world is filtered through far too much of a whimsical, bittersweet perspective to completely bare resemblance to anything else. This is partially due to seeing much of this world through the eyes of the protagonist Nausicaa, a free-spirited princess who is carefully attuned to the beauty of the natural environment. Nausicaa’s world is set in a time after the industrialized world has imploded in on its own destructive tendencies. Much of the environment bares this mark, bereft of vegetation or signs of human life. The few places where forests still exist are inhabited by super-evolved bugs and toxic atmospheres. Nausicaa gets caught in the middle of in-fighting between various feudal-like states vying for global domination. While the film often seems like an epic medieval struggle, it has a lot more of the qualities of a Japanese fable, drawing out deep emotion and themes from a seemingly simple narrative about human nature.  

Grade: A

This Years Oscars and 2013 in Film

The editor of my school's newspaper altered a fair bit of the language of my article on the Oscars and 2013 in film, making some of it a bit questionably hyperbolic ("golden era" is really oversimplified wording that I don't really stand by, and didn't write) and cutting out some of the things I had to say about The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers. But on the whole, this sticks to what I wanted to say; 2013 was a very good year for film, and the Oscars don't acknowledge that fact in all its totality.

My Review of "Dallas Buyers Club"

I've been really fortunate in the opportunities I've been given over at my school's newspaper, The Lafayette, where I have a lot of freedom to write about essentially whatever I please on the subject of film, so long as its fit to print. I'm excited about the article coming out this week related to the Oscars and 2013 in film, and I hope if you're interested you'll look out for it, but in the meantime here is my review of Dallas Buyers Club. I had previously discussed it in far less detail on the blog, but this new review goes more extensively in-detail on my thoughts on the film, as well as my broader feelings on films like Buyers Club.

"Byzantium" (2013)

Vampires have to be one of the most miserable fictional creations. The world changes, people die, but they remain the same, infinitely stuck at the point they were sired. Vampires, of the modern Anne Rice conception, don’t experience things so intensely because they have heightened senses, but because after 200 years of loss and regret they have to live life with an intense passion or else they might as well feel numb. Vampires are nothing less than manic depressives with a blood addiction. Byzantium is about how isolating this type of existence must be -- constantly moving, barely making connections, and debasing oneself to survive in a world that would hunt you down if it knew your secrets. Byzantium may be romanticized, but it’s far from romantic; this is brutal, unforgiving world that occasionally is sexy in that way moping loners can sometimes be. Director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire) and cinematographer Sean Bobbit create a film that tonally aches with unbearable, unrequited yearning. It’s the film’s exquisite longing that make it feel worth inhabiting even when its plotting and pacing feel a little out of sorts. The film is mired, particularly in the middle, in a series of clumsily handled flashbacks depicting the terrible life events that have made the film’s two characters, mother and daughter vampire duo Clara and Eleanor (Gemma Arterton, proudly using her looks as a potent asset and weapon, and Saoirse Ronan), such passionate brooders. What sets apart Byzantium from most vampire tales though is its emphasis on the desires and troubles of female vampires first and foremost. The story uses its vampire trappings to hone in on the exploitation and mistreatment of women across the centuries. While that might sound too broad or under thought, and it occasionally is, the film finds way to show the complicity, as well as the empowerment, of its characters in the systems that limit them. But before I get too serious and overwrought: Byzantium is primarily a moody, sensuous vampire story. It's a high melodrama about characters with passions and temperaments that are volatile and intoxicating in equal measure. And that is an under-appreciated pleasure all its own.

Grade: ★★★

"Fruitvale Station" (2013)

On New Year's Day 2009, a twenty-two year old black man named Oscar Grant was shot and killed by police at the Fruitvale Train Station in San Francisco. The incident was recorded by on lookers and stirred up a national controversy. Fruitvale Station dramatizes the last day of Grant's life leading to up to his death. The film plays itself like a Greek tragedy in the making, hanging the inevitability of Oscar's fate over everything that occurs. While sometimes this plays out a little too neatly with people saying things steeped in dramatic irony or Steve Coogan's script painting Oscar as an almost too exceptionally nice and decent person, it plays mostly fair with who Oscar Grant was, given the nature of the film. Coogan doesn't leave out some of the more problematic elements of who Oscar was: he sold drugs, was formally convicted, cheated on his girlfriend, and occasionally lost his temper. But Coogan's ultimate task is to humanize a man who could so easily just have been a symbol or a statistic. Even in its most unbelievable of moments, such as when Oscar goes out of his way to help give a woman he's never met before his grandma's fish fry recipe or comforts a dying dog in a foreshadowing heavy moment, Michael B. Jordan's charismatic performance carries the day. Due to Jordan's performance, even at his most reproachable Grant is never less than sympathetic. He's a man trapped in by circumstances; he's a man cut down by larger systems beyond his control that make it difficult for black individuals to improve their lot in life. We know we're being pushed to feel deeply upset about the events at hand, but it's often easy enough to forgive the film because it's just brimming with humanity. Fruitvale Station's primary goal is to show the humanity underlying not just Grant but everyone around him, including major supporting characters like his girlfriend (Melonie Davis), and his mother (Octavia Spencer), but even passing characters as well. There's a beautiful moment towards the end of the film where one of the police officers realizes how out of hand things had gotten and demonstrates his total agonized regret. It would be so easy to depict the police as merely a force of evil, but Coogan in stead reminds us that they're just people, as much victims of the system, in their own way, as Oscar. While race is a major thematic interest at hand (as well as class), it's never the end all be all. This is about celebrating one man's brief life as much as it's about mourning why that life was so short.

Grade: ★★★

"Lore" (2013)

I've always found it fascinating that some of the most damning examinations of Germany's actions in World War II put to film are so often in German films, but then again often people are their own harshest critics. Lore isn't entirely about the atrocities committed by Germany but it's a major lingering theme, especially during the mid-third of the film. We typically think of the conclusion of WWII as this glorious thing where all the evils of the war were suddenly put to bed, but as most lore passed down through the ages this sugar coats the fact that post-war environments are nightmares, as much carry overs of the wartime hostility, confusion and indvidual struggle as recovering peacetime reprieves. Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) must traverse the fraught post-war landscape with her siblings to find safety with relatives in Hamburg. Her parents were part of the Nazi party and therefore are taken away. As Germans have become suspect by the Allies since occupation, making it to their destination involves taking indirect and problematic paths towards salvation. In the wake of the war's conclusion, a power vacuum forms with everyone taking advantage of the semi-lawlessness on the fringes. Lore and her family encounter weirdos, rapists, thieves and opportunists of every variety. The most significant indvidual they come across is a man named Thomas (Kai Malina) who appears to be a Jew but chooses to aid them in spite of this, using his papers to make it more easily past soldiers. The film's finest material derives from the interplay between the Thomas and Lore. She's torn between her anti-Semitic feelings ingrained into her and the remarkable kindness the man demonstrates. There's not entirely simple kindness from the man however; a fair amount of weird, complicated sexual tension builds between the two -- much of it foisted on her begrudgingly and against her will. While the obvious suggestion over the loss of innocence during war is present (never more bluntly than towards the end of the film), the film is really more about the generally hellish nature of war. Cinematographer Adam Arkapaw gives the film a lovely bluish-greenish hue (reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan), which gives it the requisite period piece vibe, but the film's look, especially when setting its eye on the ambiance of the ravaged and natural landscape, is more often like a sleepy, feverish dream, almost unreal. This is fitting as so much of what takes place, amplified by being witnessed by children and individuals just on the cusp of adulthood, is unfathomable and disturbing.

 ★★★

"The Past" (2013)

It's something of a small miracle to see a film where not a single character is in the wrong. Typically we're led to root against somebody, or at least identify primarily with one character. To watch a film with a large ensemble that asks us to understand all of its characters perspectives is rare (Perhaps because it is much more difficult than it sounds to appropriately and believably craft this kind of drama). Writer-director Asghar Farhadi's breakthrough A Separation did just this. It told a story of people stuck inside their opinions and point of views, and hurting one another due to their limitations and short sightedness. A Separation is a consistently engrossing family drama that edges on melodrama but earns its sense of high emotions through careful plotting and pacing. No one intends for anyone to get hurt but then human nature gets in the way and basic facts of life make it impossible for a neat outcome. Farhadi's follow up, The Past, raises the stakes of the drama while losing none of the emotional acuity and deft plotting. At the center of A Separation was a story that in the wrong hands could have felt like it was playing with our emotions: a soon to be divorced couple paired with the accidental miscarriage of their new housekeeper's baby leads to a series of devastating misunderstandings. The Past keeps the expiring marriage but puts a comatose woman into the picture almost as an ante-raising move. It also moves the setting from Iran to France, but keeps the film trained on the experience of Iraqis by keying in on Iranian immigrants. While The Past lacks some of the immediacy and groundedness of A Separation, it's every bit its companion piece. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) left France and his estranged wife Marie (Berenice Bejo) four years ago, but returns from his stay in Iraq when she asks for him to finalize a long in the making divorce. Ahmad has conveniently dropped back in the middle of a complicated time. The Past thrives off of what people say and what they do not say. What people don't say is for well intended reasons but ends up causing more harm than good. Some of these unspoken things turn into some stirring yet completely plausible twists. Marie has hidden the information of a new boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim), from her soon to be ex, and her boyfriend, among many other complications, has a wife clinging to life in coma after an attempted to suicide. Marie also has two daughters from another marriage (one of three she has had). The oldest of these, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), is troubled by her mom's new relationship, for reasons that, like all the tension, are revealed in time, and are heartbreaking but also completely make sense. "There's always room for doubt in these situations," a doctor tells Samir late in the film, and he might as well be describing Farhadi's films. We're never entirely sure who is right in any of the many fights and arguments in the film, and the characters wonder whether they should have revealed the secrets they long kept buried, or whether things would be any better off if they hadn't. We also never learn everything about the past of these characters where so much of the film's issues and conflicts derive from. Ahmad attempts to reveal one more piece of information about the past to Marie towards film's end, and she outright refuses to hear; she's had enough unloading -- and so have we.

Grade: ★★★★