Gangleri – filmreviews

“On The Silver Globe” is Zulawski’s “best known but least seen film” according to the box and I understand why. It proved hard to see! I heard about a Zulawski box with this one, “The Devil” and another film in it. I thought I ordered that box, but got another one with three French films, one of Zulawski. The Polish box that I did want to get turned out to be very expensive, but “On The Silver Globe” and “The Devil” fortunately have been released on DVD separately too. Also quite expensive though. Then there is the story of the film itself. Zulawski started filming in the 1980′ies, but the Polish government forbid the continuation of the project and to destroy all material. Zulawski fled to France and was 10 years later allowed to return and finish his project. He chose to complete what was left of the originel tapes and what we see are the parts that are left, the holes are filled with the read out texts of Jerzy Zulawski’s (Andrzej great-grandfather by the way) novel that this film is based on with random images on the background. The film is obviously based on a book. The dialogues (also mostly overdubbed because of the destruction) are mostly long and philosophical monologues which give the impression that you are watching an ancient play of, say, Shakespeare rather than a film. The gigantic ‘overacting’ adds greatly to this. The long monologues in Polish also make that I constantly had to try to keep up with the subtitles leaving but little time to watch the visuals. All this resulted in the fact that I do not really have a good idea of what it is all about. A group of spacetravellers (called “astronauts” while I would have expected “kosmonauts” by the way) land on the moon that looks a lot like earth. The astronauts that survive settle and then at high speed a new population grows who on their turn run into the original population of the silver globe. The new population creates its own worldview with the original astronauts as gods.
“On the silver globe” is a weird film that I will probably have to watch a few times again before things really start to make sense.

I noticed the posters for this film (that just premiered in the Netherlands) downtown, but Leonardo DiCaprio, the tagline “of the creators of The Dark Knight” or the poster that looks like an action movie did not really catch my attention. Then my girlfriend noticed that the director is Christopher Nolan. I do not immediately think of Nolan when I hear “of the creators of The Dark Knight“. Visitors of these pages of course think of “Following” and “Memento” when hearing the name of Nolan. When I think of it, Nolan is not really my favourite director with two Batman’s, the mediocre “The Prestige” and a remake of “Insomnia” that may be good, but unnecesary (the original was great enough). In my case he got enough credit with “Insomnia” for me to keep watching his films and in the general case it seems that “The Dark Knight” has earned Nolan enough credit of financers to be able make a big-budget of his own liking. When I write this, Inception gets a 9.3 out of 10 from almost 60.000 voters on IMdB! Now things start to get interesting!
Contrary to “Insomnia” there is no mystery about the story. That story is, in fact, given away in all reviews and announcements. Let me remain with saying that when the Kaufman brothers had written the story of “The Matrix” the result might have been something like “Inception”. Imagine a story as weird as that of “Being John Malkovich” poured over the earlier mentioned, and already not too straightforward in story, “The Matrix” and you have an idea of what to expect. I must say that “The Matrix” is better worked out in details, but “Inception” is impressive in its basic simplicity that is worked towards a few extremes with amazing filmographic (and psychological?) experiments. Just as in the last Matrix, there is a lot of focus on impressive action with top-notch techniques, completely ear-shattering in a 1200 watts Imax theatre by the way. Like I said, the story is not hard to follow and might not be the ultimate filmscript, but Nolan managed to create that uncanny “Matrix” atmosphere and the suggestion that the story may be more complex afterall. All in all a maybe bit too spectactular film, but a very, very good one.

Unfortunately I had to watch this film on a laptop, so the sound- and videoexperience are probably not what they should have been. Moreover the film is slow and vague and I think I have missed a thing or two. The story seems to be about a group of men who have to establish the borders between Russia and Sweden (or Finland?) after a 25 years war. Eerik has fought in the bloody was and his younger brother Knut did not. During their travels the group stumbles upon a mysterious village with an even more mysterious sauna. Eerik’s past seems to come hunting him.
“Sauna” has a very pressing and mysterious atmosphere using grim images of the present and dark images for flashbacks to tell a story that I did not entirely comprehend. It looks very nice, but I need to see it again on a bigger screen and with better sound some time.

“Calvaire” (or “the Ordeal” as the international title goes) starts as a ‘normal’ film in which an artist gets stuck somewhere in the Ardennen (the Belgian mountainous area). His path leads to a remote inn where Marc is taken in friendly by Bartel, the owner. It is a strange character (Boris) who leads him there, but Marc does not think much of that yet. Bartel gives Marc shelter, breakfast and offers to fix his truck. Meanwhile Marc takes a walk, stumbles upon a near village where he witnesses a strange excess of the local population. Returning to the inn, not only Bartel, but also the film gets stranger and stranger. “Calvaire” brilliantly derails with incomprehensible characters, violence and nightmarish scenes. Nothing much can be made of the characters after a while and the film suddenly ends. Indeed, this film is pretty disturbing and pretty good. “Calvaire” reminds me a bit of “Mørke“, but where “Mørke” remains a drama, “Calvaire” is closer to horror. For the lovers of the weird stuff.

“Small Gods” is a nice, Flemish Dutch spoken, independant film from our Southern neighbours. A young woman is kidnapped from a hospital by a young man who takes her somewhere in a camper. The film is a slow and mysterious roadmovie in which little is said. Along the way another young woman is picked up and as the film develops, conversations and situations during the trip and Elena’s of the events to her lawyer, draw and faint picture of what is going on. Some questions are left unanswered. The film is quite minimalistic, has a few nice experimental scenes and a good, strange atmosphere. Also the story is descent, but unfortunately the acting is a bit poor. Overall “Small Gods” is definately worth watching if you like the stranger kind of film and since it is only Karakatsanis’ second film, I am curious for possible future productions.

Even though German, this film seems to go under a Dutch title. Wyss’ debut is almost completely without talking and is a very slow and minimalistic film with a lot of focus on the visuals. Somewhere high up a snowy mountain in a tiny community lives a devoutly Catholic family with four daughters. We follow the daily pattern of the family, but the community seems to have a ‘dark’ underbelly in what appears to be an ancient men-bond. If that was meant to be such, Wyss portrays two conservative sides of a distant community. In any case, great imaginary of snowy landscapes, some darker scenes and a descent soundtrack make Wyss’ short debut (70 min) a very nice film. I do not think “Winterstilte” will be for anyone, but if you like minimalistic films without much story, you might want to see it.

My girlfriend read the book and then bought the film. Looking for the cover I noticed that there is also a 2002 American version with George Clooney. In any case, this film is usually presented as a science fiction, but besides the fact that a large part of this 3 hour film plays in some ship above the mysterious ocean of the planet Solaris, there is little scifi about it. The spaceship looks strangely earthly with statues, paintings on the walls, leather chairs and a library. “Solyaris” is more of a philosophical film about how humans react in different surroundings, what is reality, etc. For its time, this film of Tarkovsky must definately have been expensive and groundbreaking. Combining black and white and colour filming, elaborate stages, video-telephones, etc. makes this film not look oldfashioned at all. It is a bit long and slow, not really boring, but not as timeless as The Prisoner for example.

Hm, we pulled this film off the new releases shelf, but it is already from 2005. A 4.6 out of 10 on IMdB… not too promising. But I must say that this short film (75 min) is really not that bad, it just does not lead anywhere, but in my opinion this is exactly the purpose of it. There is not much of a story, mostly a collection of scenes. We follow a woman not knowing what she wants with her life and that is exactly what we see in “Room”. Weird ‘real-life’ scenes and even weirder ‘other scenes’ and all leaving me pretty much clueless. I happen to like that, if you do not, you better not watch this film; if you do, “Room” is a nice film.

Another film with the clue on the back of the box. The main characters have a gift that is more fun not to know when you start watching the film. It is a nice finding and makes an original story, but it gives the film away knowing beforehand. The gift results in the most crazy bets which gives this film a thrillerish atmosphere. Not badly done.

I rented this film because of the director and the information on the box, but when the opening titles started, I noticed that this film is based on a novel of Mircea Eliade. I knew that this scholar on the fields of comparative religion and comparative mythology also wrote novels and I even remember reading that one of them has been made into a film (three actually), but I had not connected Eliade and Coppola (I guess I forgot) or I did not remember this when I picked out the film. It immediately rose extra interest in watching it. Eliade’s book is called Tinereţe fără (1976) which supposedly translates exactly how Coppola named his film. We follow Dominic Matei (Tim Roth!, great acting), a student who later became a famous linguist always hunting for the origin of language. There is a lot that almost seems (semi)autobiographical of Eliade. Matei was born in Romenia, the story plays in the period of the two world wars, Matei is interested in different religions, particularly those of the East, he has to leave Romenia and continues his research using unconventional, even metaphysical methods. During the film you get all kinds of scholarly information on Eliade(-aligned) fields, dreamy esotericism, futuristic science, weird characters and deep philosophy. Coppola has managed very well to give his film an appropriate atmosphere and to make an interesting film with ‘difficult elements’. I think this film will appeal to people who like the “esoteric” novel and film genres that seem to be quite popular nowadays (but I do not have the idea that the actual books of Eliade are as well, even though this one for example, is available in English). “Youth Without Youth” surely is a good film, but be sure not to read too much about it before watching it, since even the back of the box gives away the ‘clue’.