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An abridged version of this review by Jeffrey Overstreet was published earlier as a summary for the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films List.

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“Ponderous”? Yes.

“Slow”? Indeed.

But Robert Bresson’s 1951 film Diary of a Country Priest is an undisputed classic. It was the third of thirteen films by Bresson who, according to Francois Truffaut, is to French movies what Mozart is to German music. And it may be the best entry point for appreciating his unique style.

If this were a “Christian movie,” it would be the story of a cleric who moves into a troubled town and inspires everyone to cultivate compassion for one another through his courageous example. Persecuted villagers would be liberated. Doubters would find God. Bad guys would be exposed and locked up, or else they would crumble into confession. Some dark secret in the cleric’s past would be exposed as a misunderstanding, and he would emerge triumphantly righteous, an example for us all.

Instead, this is a story that is relevant to the world we live in. Things begin messy, and lead to further messy-ness. There are victories, but they are memorable because they are hard-won, faint glimmers of grace in a dark world.

A sensitive new priest (Claude Laydu) moves into a parish in Northern France so he can serve a small village called Ambricourt, only to discover he is less than welcome.

As the town’s dark secrets emerge, his attempts to provide insight or comfort fall on deaf ears, and the weight of the troubles threaten to crush him.

He doesn’t get along well with the older priest up the road, who shows little concern for how the villagers have hurt his feelings.

A local countess is in pieces over the death of her son. The countess’s husband is carrying on an extramarital affair with their daughter’s governess. And their daughter, a cynical and resentful adolescent named Séraphita (Martine Lemaire), is becoming quite a monster.

Exhausted by stomach trouble, the priest relies on what little nourishment he can draw from a strict diet of hard bread and wine. His “godless” doctor does little to lift his spirits.

Thus, the priest’s plight inspires our sympathies, even though he lacks any kind of charm.

A master class in visual composition and sound design, Diary has influenced filmmakers for generations by proving the gravity of telling cinematic stories without many of the common enhancements we’ve been conditioned to expect. Its rare glimpses of the French countryside are stark and striking, suggesting that any man who would truly pursue holiness will walk hard roads through desolate lands.

This brief review by Jeffrey Overstreet was written as a summary for the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films List.

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The great and final act of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s remarkable career was the production of a trilogy called Three Colors — Blue, White, and Red — that represents the colors of the French flag, and the values they represent: liberty, equality and fraternity.

This symphonic, poetic trilogy intrigued me in my first encounter with its opening chapter, Blue. Then it began to haunt me, and I returned to see that film four times in the theater. As I began learning to translate Kieslowski’s unconventional, intuitive form of storytelling, I fell in love with his images, with the performances he drew from his actors, and with the work of his musical partner, Zbignew Priesner. Since then, Three Colors has become my favorite cinematic achievement. I return to it again and again, blessed by its visual beauty, its musical invention, its astonishing performances (especially Juliet Binoche in Blue), and its inspired spiritual exploration.

Filmed in three countries (France, Poland, Switzerland), their plots overlap only slightly. Watch closely, and you’ll see the different main characters pass each other and remain strangers.

Blue, empowered by what may be Juliette Binoche’s greatest performance, is the first: In it, the grieving widow of an internationally renowned composer must decide whether to assist in the completion of her husband’s unfinished work — a symphony about the reunification of Europe. As she tries to begin a new life and escape the pain of memory and loss, she becomes entangled in the lives of her husband’s assistant Olivier, a prostitute named Lucille, and a beautiful stranger named Sandrine who keeps a scandalous secret. Blue is a personal journey of grief, forgiveness, and healing, but it is also a story about the heart of Europe, which history has broken to pieces, and all that will be necessary for reconciliation and hope.

White is a dark but whimsical comedy about Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish hairdresser whose wife (Julie Delpy) humiliates him and abandons him. Furious and vengeful, he makes a devil’s bargain with a depressed stranger named Mikolaj, finds his way into wealth, and then stages a disappearing act that will help him carry out a wicked plot. Even as the film focuses on Karol’s misery, his unexpected failures, and his attempt to “dominate” Dominique, it’s also about Poland’s uncertain future and how cultural transformation may bring in a whole new wave of problems.

Red, the last chapter, follows a young fashion model named Valentin (Irene Jacob) who catches a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in an act of voyeurism. Frustrated by the legal system’s inability to uncover the truth of a matter, the old man sits at home and uses sophisticated surveillance to listen in on the “truth” of his neighbors’ private telephone conversations with some sophisticated surveillance. While the judge has given up on law, Valentine’s legalism makes her judgmental and condemning. Slowly they explore a middle ground — fraternity — until the film brings all three of the trilogy’s episodes together in an unexpected and dramatic finale.

While the films explore themes of liberty, equality and fraternity, don’t let those limit your experience or narrow your interpretation. They do not begin to summarize the wisdom that these films convey — many other themes, questions, and insights suggest themselves to us through the course of the stories.

But the three themes indicated can prove helpful as starting points for those who want to engage with and discuss the trilogy. And they are best phrased as questions: In Blue, what happens when Julie pursues personal “liberty” from her past and her pain? What would true, life-giving liberty look like? Or in White, what kind of “equality” is Karol seeking? These themes are suggested like lenses that will reveal different paths into understanding the riches of these stories.

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, written as a summary for the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films List.

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The great French comedy director Jacques Tati starred in four of his own films, playing one of cinema’s most beloved comic figures, Monsieur Hulot.

Hulot has a charming, Chaplin-esque presence, but the wonder of Tati’s films come from the extravagant activity that plays out in the world around him. You might consider Hulot an ancestor to Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, and plenty of directors have shown Tati’s influence on their work. (Tom Hanks has something of Hulot’s demeanor in Steven Spielberg’s fish-out-of-water comedy The Terminal.) But Hulot isn’t exactly a clown; often, he’s merely an awkward observer stumbling through a world fraught with hilarious, barely controlled chaos.

In Playtime, the subject is not Hulot, but the developing civilization around him. Paris is growing and changing at such a frantic rate that many of the film’s absurd and elaborate sets seem to be in a constant state of simultaneous construction and deconstruction.

The film, a failure at the box office, was a project of extraordinary ambition with a huge price tag, and it shows. The Paris of Playtime is a prophetic vision of this present high-speed society, in which architecture sacrifices style for practicality, and the trends of the fashionable are often downright ridiculous. (The city may remind you of Metropolis or the chaotic cityscape of Brazil. You may not even recognize that it’s Paris until you catch a fleeting reflection of the Eiffel Tower in an opening door.)

Tati’s physical comedy is relentlessly clever, sometimes playing out in several situations at once. Watch the glass-front apartment complex as a man watching TV in his living room seems to be responding to the woman undressing in the next apartment. In another confounding sequence, a restaurant’s glass door shatters, and the doorman picks up the door handle so he can pretends to continue to dong his job, while the arriving diners fail to notice.

Playtime may frustrate viewers who demand a compelling plot, and it takes some getting used to as its widescreen spectacle keeps us at a distance from the action. Remember, this was meant to be seen on a Cinerama screen. And some may find it a tedious expression of cynicism about contemporary trends. (Where is the natural world? Has humanity wiped it out?)

But the more you pay attention to Tati’s intricate details, the more you’ll find that this film delivers exactly what its title promises. It’s a panoramic frenzy of elaborate sights and sound design. What we hear in Playtime is almost as overwhelming and encompassing as what we see. If you’re lucky enough to see this in a theater, don’t miss it. Otherwise, settle for nothing less than Criterion’s DVD presentation. You’ll want to see this on the largest screen you can find, with the best surround-sound you can set up.

Even as it reminds us to have a sense of humor about ourselves, Playtime is full of affection for the relentless circus of human creativity.

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, written as a summary for the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films List.

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The Wind Will Carry Us is often hailed as the masterpiece of Iran’s most celebrated filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami.

Apparently lost, some men who claim to be treasure hunters drive their jeep through rugged country in what seems like Middle Of Nowhere, Iran. It’s actually a Kurdish province, and a polite young boy guides the driver — a man called the Engineer (Behzad Dourani) — into the town of Siah Dareh.

In fact, the Engineer is a treasure hunter of sorts. He’s come to document the community’s rituals as they prepare for the death of a respected old woman. That is to say, he’s ready to exploit a family’s sufferings for the sake of a film.

You can probably see where this is going:  Kiarostami, is exploring his own artistic impulses and motivations even as he imagines an original fiction.

To get what he wants from the locals, the Engineer feigns compassion for the boy’s ailing grandmother, and for the family that is gathered around anticipating her death. But his real concern is for his project, and for his difficulty in getting good cell phone reception in this dusty, labyrinthine town.

Kiarostami film draws us into this extraordinary place, and into the conversations of the locals. We share their tea time at a tea bar. We learn about their rituals. There’s a hint of romance as the filmmaker shares sensual poetry with a pretty local girl. And there is some marvelous, understated comedy along the way, including a scene in which the Engineer chats with a voice from below ground — a ditch digger who is digging up the town cemetery for a questionable purpose.

But we also observe this filmmaker and his growing realization of detachment from his people and his homeland. The film is a healthy act of self-questioning. Kiarostami could have just made a documentary, and it would have been fascinating. But his narrative is a way of humbly questioning his own ethics and methods, and in doing so he asks us to consider why we might take this journey with him.

The title, then, becomes a multi-faceted banner. It’s a phrase from a poem about loneliness that the Engineer recites. But the “wind” might also be the light that channels this remote experience to our eyes, or the mysteries that connect us through space and time to such customs. Or it might just be the Engineer’s feeble cell phone signal, which reminds him how difficult it can be to transmit truth from one culture to another.

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, written as a summary for the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films List.

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Until very late in Yasujiro Ozu’s film Tokyo Story, there is no crisis more dramatic than some uncomfortable silences. So what is it that makes this film one of the most revered dramas ever crafted?

It’s the simplest of stories: An elderly couple — Shukichi and Tomi — drop in on their adult children in Tokyo, only to find that time and change have increased the cultural gap between generations.

The death of their middle son in World War II is a wound that binds them to his widow Noriko, who has never remarried. But Noriko seems to be the only young person who treats them with honor. Their relationships with their own children are breaking down due to the accelerating lifestyles of the younger generation — a theme recently revitalized by Olivier Assayas’ in Summer Hours.

Ozu’s dislike for the ugliness of an evolving technological age may have influenced similar imagery in the films of Robert Bresson and David Lynch. Like Ozu himself, the old father in Tokyo Story has a way of expressing a great deal while saying very little; the quietest character becomes, in a way, the most powerfully evocative.

Ozu, one of the cinema’s most influential masters, frames each scene with great restraint — no dramatic music, no slow zooms to tell us which character is important, no sense of manipulation. His camera is set low, approximately the view we’d have if we knelt watchfully on a tatami mat in a Japanese home. Places are as important as the characters passing through them; note how the camera lingers on rooms after people have left them.

By the conclusion, these characters have never surprised us with anything showy, lurid, or sensational. They’re modest, ordinary human beings, treated with a fierce attention that feels like deep respect. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, “To accept people when they are doing essentially nothing, between the moments when they make decisions, is to accept their souls; and Ozu’s acceptance transcends toleration and empathy — it is a kind of cosmic embrace.”

The influence of that “cosmic embrace” can be seen in films as varied as Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Café Lumiere, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Hirozaku Kore-eda’s Still Walking, and Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm. Instead of feeling like “the Movies,” Tokyo Story feels like life. Ozu is tuning — or better, re-tuning — our attention to what is happening all around us, what is important, the slow changes in relationships that we often realize too late and then regret.

Ebert calls Ozu “not only a great director but a great teacher, and after you know his films, a friend.” He adds, “With no other director do I feel affection for every single shot.” But the phrase that best describes the virtues of Ozu’s work is this — Tokyo Story “ennobles the cinema.”

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Stephen King’s long episodic novel The Green Mile about a series of strange and mystical occurrences on death row was an entertaining read, mostly because of the process in which King created and released it. He wrote a new chapter, published it, wrote a new chapter, published it…. It was interesting to see the way he choreographed the many characters and differing plots into a cohesive whole, even if the story was rather formulaic, predictable, and crowd-pleasing.

Frank Darabont, who turned a simple King short story into an ambitious movie called The Shawshank Redemption, restrained himself from embellishments this time around. This sprawling three-hour epic faithfully re-creates the story. The whole story. And nothing but the story.

Perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea.

While the cast of The Green Mile is very strong and the cinematography excellent, the story should have been condensed and tightened. In its fullness, it is not compelling enough to keep those of us who see a lot of movies from checking our watches. (I checked mine four times.)

Many have come to me teary-eyed to tell me how deeply they were moved by this movie, how wonderful it was, and wasn’t Tom Hanks good? I have yet to understand what it is about the story that moves them so deeply. There are a lot of superficial elements working on viewers to create emotional reactions, but the whole operation feels as manufactured as those slogans posted on the posters that say “There will be no better film this year.”

Are there better films this year? Dozens and dozens of them. 1999 has been a year of innovation and astonishing surprises. But people are beginning to recognize the sincerity of Tom Hanks, the inclusion of some generic God-talk and mysticism, and the context of death row as automatic big-screen guarantees of Importance. The Green Mile is determined to be Important. It even includes unnecessary old-man-reflecting-on-his-life bookend scenes that recall Saving Private Ryan, only this time they last fifteen minutes each instead of five.

Darabont, who again proves a talented director of actors, shows that he’s not terribly interested in subtle filmmaking or challenging storytelling. This is a good guys vs. bad guys movie. And it’s perfectly clear in the introduction of each character who’s a good guy, who’s a bad guy. Because this is a Stephen King story, we should expect that every good guy will win the day, and every bad guy will come to a violent and nasty end. The Green Mile is like a World Wrestling Federation event, setting up the good and handsome versus the bad and ugly. You can see hardly-subliminal signs flashing at the audience, coaxing “CHEER NOW” and “BOO NOW”.

As for the murder mystery at the heart of the story, there’s no mystery at all. There are no clues that might raise any questions about the innocence or guilt of anyone present. It’s clear from our first conversation that the gentle-giant played by Michael Clarke Duncan was convicted by a rash and prejudiced jury.

And even more disappointing, The Green Mile makes us live on death row for three hours without ever giving us a moment to think about the moral dilemmas present.

It’s really a shame. How often do we get to see such a great ensemble of actors? Hanks is good in spite of his cookie cutter character; I’d even venture to say he deserves an Oscar for this performance far more than he did for Philadelphia, where his one distinguishing characteristic was that he had AIDS.

David Morse, a strong but underrated actor, gets a rare chance to play a nice guy, and he makes warm and pleasant company.

Bonnie Hunt is the movie’s greatest delight, playing the closest thing to a real human being in the film; her scenes enliven this otherwise trudging affair.

Poor Gary Sinise seems to shrug, “I’m only in this movie ‘cuz my buddy Forrest Gump asked me to help him out.”

Michael Jeter offers us another memorable eccentric, but he gets upstaged in most of his scenes by the movie’s whimsical mouse.

And Michael Clarke Duncan as the convicted John Coffey (Note: Portentous initials!) thankfully shows restraint playing the giant at the center of the story, when he might have gone for broke and over-played the film’s emotional peak scenes. An Oscar nomination might be in order. Too bad his almost-interesting character has to step aside during key scenes and let the special effects department demonstrate his magical powers for him. I would rather have learned a little more about the human being and seen a little less of the digitally animated curses his body can grotesquely release into the air. Dave Kehr in Film Comment observes, “the Saintly John Coffey, as the most innocent and most misunderstood of the characters, is entitled, by King’s emotional algebra, to be the most ferociously vengeful.”

Perhaps the most troubling thing about this film, besides its revelry in serving up ugly bloody justice to the bad guys, is its climactic sermon. In the end, one character delivers a speech about being tired of the evils of the world. He practically ASKS to be sent to the electric chair because he’s weary of these ugly and evil men in the prison. (Cue the audience to start bawling and nodding in agreement.) Is this movie making an argument for euthanasia and suicide? Should nice folks have the option of giving up the ghost when they get tired of darkness? If so, then we may find some moviegoers quietly killing themselves to escape this endless film. Perhaps there’s a better alternative. Perhaps it’s more honorable to live in the world in spite of its evils, resisting them and manifesting an alternative to the darkness… to be good and merciful and strong and faithful, not to give up.

And this movie is being described as inspiring? To me it just seems morbid, melancholy, sad, and far too long.

This fictional universe is as un-realistic as they come, and if it has anything significant to convey, beyond the shocking lesson that Big African-American Men Who Talk Baby-Talk might actually be valuable human beings (stop the presses!), well, I missed it. (Earlier this year, people were offended by the Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks, saying he portrayed an archaic and offensive stereotype of an African American. Why aren’t they up in arms about John Coffey? As the only African American in the film, he’s hardly a decent representative. In fact, he seems to have walked out of Disney’s Song of the South as an underdeveloped and even insulting caricature.)

Instead of taking this opportunity to depart from Stephen King’s color-by-numbers storytelling and create something memorable, Darabont gives us plenty of messages that we already agree with, and then sends us home feeling good about ourselves. How moral we are, hating those ugly bad guys and cheering when they get their violent judgment. How conscientious we are, shedding a tear when those poor nice criminals get the electric chair. And how intelligent we are, sympathizing with Tom Hanks, the only character with a brain on this long long mile…..

If it’s intelligent, deeply moving prison drama you want, skip The Green Mile. Dead Man Walking is available at your local video store.

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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It’s almost impossible to talk about any of the new films based on Jane Austen novels without comparing them. Emma is the most colorful, the simplest, the most fun of the three. While Sense and Sensibility loves subtlety, silence, and space, and Persuasion loves realism, repression, and understatement, Emma loves its star Gwyneth Paltrow and all the colorful scenes she inhabits.

And indeed, Paltrow’s magnificent, and she makes Emma the most memorable character of all three films. The supporting cast is effective as well. Jeremy Northam plays the romantic dark horse Mr. Knightly with a twinkle in his eye and a smirk that in most actors would have seemed cocky, but in Northam’s understated humor it seems merely warm and observant.

If only the director had been as subtle and confident as his actors. He’s too busy making things look good, and he distracts the viewers from the performances with elaborate, painting-perfect sets. As a result, the film’s too picturesque, in love with its own style… dare I say “cute”?

Still, the story is amusing and involved. Emma is a meddling matchmaker who wants to be everyone’s best friend, and usually is. In her mind, everyone is destined for romance, and it is her job to see to it. “The most beautiful thing in the world is a match well made,” she sighs. Knightly knows Emma’s tendency to manipulate, and warns, “Better to be without sense than misapply it as you do!”

In the middle of all this cheer and vigor, the abrupt plot twist halfway through the film is strikingly effective, like a slap in the face during a waltz. Everything turns on a remark, rather than a deed. When it happens, the audience is suddenly uncomfortable and very awake. What happened? Everything was moving along so nicely! I won’t spoil it by telling you the specifics, but it’s a powerful, wonderful moment, in an otherwise predictable film.

This kind of surprise comes about by drawing the viewer so fully into the immediate proceedings that we don’t have time to predict what’s around the corner; it’s the kind of surprise that makes Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion better films than this one all-around. Emma‘s happy ending is so clear and assured throughout that there is not enough suspense to engage us fully.

Still, it’s well worth seeing, as delightful as a picnic that has to take cover for a few minutes of rain.

Ebert says he has… (more…)

My review of my favorite film of 2009 is posted at the Good Letters blog of Image.

I’ve also written another essay on the film for Filmwell: “Where Your Treasure Is.”

This June, as I get in line for my second encounter with the U2360 tour, fans will be enjoying the DVD of their Rose Bowl show. Here’s the trailer…
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