The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
This review was 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.
Tokyo Story (1953)
A review 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.”
Tokyo Story premiered in Japan on November 3, 1953 (according to IMDB.com), and did not play on screens in the U.S. until March 1972. But that hasn’t stopped his “cosmic embrace” from influencing many of the world’s greatest filmmakers. You can see that influence in Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Café Lumiere, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Hirozaku Kore-eda’s Still Walking, and Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, just to name a few. And yet, its history reveals a surprising origin story: Ozu was enchanted by an American movie: Leo McCarey’s 1937 family drama Make Way for Tomorrow (and the significance of that connection led The Criterion Collection to eventually add that film, which still plays like a true masterpiece, to their esteemed library of landmark cinema). And yet, even though it was inspired by that American melodrama, 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.”
The Green Mile (1999)
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.Read more
Summer Hours (2008)
This review was originally published at Image.
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Olivier Assayas’ beautiful new movie Summer Hours begins as three successful, well-educated siblings reunite in the backyard of the rural French house where they grew up. They’re celebrating their mother’s birthday with a leisurely party on her beautiful property.
And yet their mother Hélène (Edith Scob)—whose family history is full of art-making and art acquisition—is jumpy and distracted. She’s nearing the end of her life, and everyone is dancing around a discomforting question: What will happen to this house full of history, and to all of the valuable works of art within it, when the matriarch passes on?Read more
Get on your boots.
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...
Read more
In memory of Lena Horne
Lena Horne died today at 92. Here's the NPR story. And here is the television performance of hers that I'll remember most...Read more
Congratulations, Raven's Ladder contest winners!
Okay, I'm running late with these photo contest results, but better late than never. Read more
The Trouble with Trailers
Steven Greydanus describes a growing problem for moviegoers, and he's absolutely right. Read more
Babies (2010)
[This review was originally published at Seattle Pacific University's Response magazine.]
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When we're introduced to the four stars of Babies, they’re still in the womb.
But not for long. After a few moments of anticipation and preparation — they’re off! They’re screaming, groping, suckling, drooling, and crawling all over the place, discovering the world beyond their mothers' bodies. An extraordinary tapestry of stories begins.
This is not a haphazard collection of sentimental home videos. It’s an attentive consideration of how babies encounter, learn, and grow in the world. And it’s a provocative display of differences in their surroundings, families, personalities, and cultures.
We’ve been conditioned to see a lot of familiar sights on the big screen. Not newborns. Infants on the big screen are usually exploited as blasts of cuteness, comic relief, or wisecracking, diaper-clad versions of grownups.
Thus, Babies is a welcome relief: It shows us a world in which babies play an important role. That is to say — the real world.
Four Drooling Heroes
The four spotlighted infants are remarkably different, but all compellingly watchable. Instead of making this a quest for cuteness, French documentarian Thomas Balmès — himself the father of three children — attends to these tiny individuals with a reverent care, as if every moment is sacred. Whether they're playing, posing, pounding on one another, or peeing, these babies are a joy to watch.
We have Hattie, born in San Francisco to parents who are able to provide her with excellent care, exercise, storybooks, teaching, and equipment.
Then there's Mari, born in Japan, whose well-to-do family gives her the best kind of upbringing the big city has to offer.
Ponijao is born in Namibia, and spends her days crawling around in the dust under the watchful care of her mother and eldest sister, who is already raising children of her own.
Bayar basks in the colorful interiors of his family’s yurt, learning an extravagant and ancient way of life among Mongolian shepherds. (What is it about this region — also featured in Close to Eden and The Story of the Weeping Camel — that is so cinematically enthralling?)
Balmès brings us in close to the sphere of each baby's immediate experience. The babies wriggle inside blanket-cocoons, run to the end of their tethers, fold themselves into family embraces, and strive urgently at their mothers' breasts. Adults seem like mysterious giants. The world is ablaze with bright colors. The ground is littered with objects that might become toys, might become trouble. And, unless they’re well-schooled in languages, moviegoers will have no more idea of what their parents are saying than the babies do.
There is a startling intimacy to these scenes. I'm not just talking about close-ups of nursing infants. I felt a joyous feeling of liberation from the tyranny of narrative conventions, as human beings were allowed to be human beings, and animals were allowed to be animals. Dogs and babies lick each other. A Namibian mother cleans her infant's face with her mouth. An infant, lying down, pees freely into the air. I like what film critic Steven Greydanus says: "[Babies] is about families made up of people who have bodies. If your children have bodies, and are aware that other people do too, I see no real reason they can’t see this movie."
Four Worlds to Explore
Babies might have become a 90-minute episode of “funniest home videos,” in which babies take a hundred hilarious spills. And there are some spectacular accidents. But there is much to enjoy and consider in this movie.
Nature! We see babies encounter the animal kingdom — from cats to birds to livestock. (One child, deciding to take the family cat for a walk on a leash, provokes what is one of the film’s funniest moments.)
Violence! Bayar screams while his brother, Degi, whips him with a rag. Playing at rock-grinding, one Namibian infant struggles with another until the loser is left crying. It’s that forced kind of wailing any parent will recognize as an appeal for attention and justice … the kind that the wailer can shut off if she realizes there are more interesting things to do.
Adventure! Mari explores an apartment, shielded from the elements, surrounded with possible playthings, and visited by a cat. Ponijao crawls through the filth, poking at flies, and when she finds a filthy bone, she sets about sucking on it — a behavior she may have learned from the dogs that prowl through the camp. A rooster visits Bayar’s bed, and a goat drinks his bathwater. Ponijao learn to balance objects on his head and walk.
Fashion! Bayar is wrapped in an elaborate, intricately designed, traditional costume. In the hospital, Mari is folded up in a blanket as if she’s a burrito. Ponijao and her family, quite comfortable with nakedness, make their bodies into living canvasses for vivid art, painting with bright hues of clay and dust. Hattie’s outfit gets the lint-roller treatment.
Anatomy! Ponijao plays with another baby, noticing certain intriguing similarities in their design. This scene cuts immediately to the sight of a baby girl, all alone, playing with geometric shapes that seem to hold a profound mystery for her future. The juxtaposition of these moments makes wonderful sense.
The differences in their environments, circumstances, families, and cultures deliver striking contrasts. Babies left alone express themselves dramatically as they experiment with their surroundings. Those with siblings have interactive adventures, sometimes looking at one another in a sense of shared wonderment. While these families represent a wide range of economic situations — some enjoying life with a plethora of privileges to choose from, some seeming to enjoy life quite differently with only life's necessities at hand — it is clear that the one thing all four children have in common is the gift of love from their families.
If the film overlooks any aspect of a child’s young experience, it overlooks religion. The closest thing to a spiritual ceremony here is a yoga course, in which the mothers and fathers chant to their children about how the earth, their mother, will care for them and give them all that they need. (I know some parents in New Orleans and Nashville who would argue with that.)
A Movie to Cherish
Fortunately for moviegoers, Babies never turns into any kind of propaganda. Those who reduce the movie to some kind of pro-life ploy only reveal their own narrow-mindedness. This is a movie full of babies, pure and simple, and this addresses a significant deficiency for moviegoers. When was the last time you saw a film in which an infant was something more than comic relief, something better than a diaper-soiling inconvenience to adults? I can think of a few, but only a few.
If more artists would take children seriously in their work, depicting a world in which all human beings — older than 40, younger than 4 — are created equal, we might begin to see children treated with greater care and compassion. We might be more careful with the world they’ll inherit. And we might be humbler, remembering just how dependent we were, once upon a time. We might realize that we will be dependent again on these rising generations, who will determine the shape of the world in which we’ll grow old.
But let’s face it: It's easy to disregard what remains unseen. It's easy to stop believing that human beings, in the earliest stages, out of sight and out of mind, are of any consequence. But according to Christ, the meaning of life is closely related to our understanding of children. When we meditate on the mystery, individuality, and vulnerability of these little ones, how can we come away unchanged?
All stages of human development and behavior deserve contemplation. Our culture, obsessed with declarations of personal independence, preoccupied with glamour, eager to present ourselves as gods, would do itself a favor by spending more time watching babies. And watching Babies!