Change Your Image
nanelikek
Reviews
Sin City (2005)
new masculinity remakes the old honor- a feminist movie in the midst of all the balls and blood
this movie is amazing as probably all the commentators have noted so far. the cast, the lights, the cuts, the ambiance, the directing. Here though I want to talk about gender in the story. so a boring plot line sort of comment, this one.
all the stories are about men who want to rescue women out of some trouble. and these men come in the guise of undesirable qualities such as the violence and utter ugliness of marv, the old age of harrigan.. then these men fight other men who have done wrong in the male code of honor. they have hurt or tried to hurt women. so what we see is these ugly, violent men who take on other men in violent ways only in order to do something chivalrous in the midst of all this sin. they are like princes who rescue their princesses. these other men such as the cannibal, the child rapist, and the wife beater are sort of like their alter-ego as we see very clearly in the car scene where benicio del toro's head talks to clive owen. but the point is despite all their confusions these men end up delivering to the women they love. and they do this even though none of them can ever be together with them, either because of age, character, social status, or the simple reason of their sweethearts being dead.
and what do women do? they give gifts. for instance whitey coming as goldie in the last night of marv is such a heartwarming story. nancy's letters are the same. what is ultimately interesting is that this ultimately banal gender relationship of gift giving versus protection is taken to such a primal level that it allows women the space to protect themselves. women can build their own armies, they can do plots, they can kill, they are lesbians, they spy, and of course ironically they can also become housewives and be beaten up. but all in all, in the midst of this excess of violence and masculinity it is possible to see the rise of a new masculinity actually quite toned down in its male centredness.
the only place that this masculinity, the masculinity of the three heroes has excess is in violence. but then again that is coded as pure lust. they love killing like they love making love to women. and they kill the bad guys and love the women. women love them back but their actions do not have to be bound them. I don't know i really liked this deal. and enjoyed it. I know it is weird to find something so feminist in such a decidedly masculine movie. but i did.
10e chambre - Instants d'audience (2004)
a brilliantly simple account of how law fails to deliver justice as it tries sincerely to achieve it.
Just a few cameras placed in two or three spots in the courtroom. it is a court that deals with small crimes. The movie could so easily have been one of 'human drama' or 'human condition', or another easy cliché.
But the director tactfully avoids doing such a facile movie. In the silences, in the gazes exchanged you can see a black guy charged with marijuana dealing, be transformed from young boy to old man. you can actually see it in his eyes when his verdict is told. you can see what law does, and how it does it.
you can literally see class, gender and race in this simple movie. simple here is something that is attained after hundreds of hours of shooting, editing and a lot of thought. You can see how law with all the sincerity fails to deliver justice.
But most important is the pace of the movie, and the editing. First it gets us acquainted with the legal process, the characters are introduced, the judge, the prosecutors. We get familiarized with the setting, the bench, the process. These are done through the cases of characters that we can easily associate. Just when we are done we move to more complicated cases, that of the Arab thief, that of bans from France... It introduces us the process enough and leaves us at the right place to look through it ourselves. And the two conclusive sessions, of the nerdy sociologist -that just would not get what law is about- and of the guy who is just-too-honest-for-the-law are simply great. Such humor and mind boggling, simple, ambivalence.
The Girl from Monday (2005)
a meditation on sex and interpersonal distance at times of not-too-distant future advanced capitalism
It is a typical Hal Hartley in terms of the mood he creates. Long in-door shots, the disconcert between sound and sight. As always he uses cheap material. for instance one suspects that the black goggles that the cops wear -with the red light in the center- may be like a 10 dollar toy bought from Chinatown. But this combined with the camera moves and lights allows him to create a different world that is often visually convincing. Although I heard people in the audience murmur about the connection with the space being unconvincing, I totally disagree.
It is a meditation on capitalism where the term 'flesh market' gets literal. He weaves this theme in with reflections on the sense of the extremeness of the boundaries between individuals in modern capitalist society. How one feeds the other, in fact makes the other possible. I found it very successful although sometimes a bit didactic.