Spotlight on José Mojica Marins

Before City of God came out in 2002, the only Brazilian films that were available for rent in my city were José Mojica Marins’ Coffin Joe films. I often picked up the eye-catching VHS covers with titles such as At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, or This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse but always put the videos back. Then after City of God was released, a slow influx of new Brazilian films starting appearing on DVDs. So Coffin Joe was no longer the only Brazilian choice available and I moved on. Yet, José Mojica Marins’ fictional character was never totally invisible from my eyes. Sometimes a clip from one of Coffin Joe’s films caught my eye on TV or some reference in a film magazine kept his name lingering around. Of course, his appearance was not easy to forget either -- the black top hat, the cape, the beard and those ultra long finger nails.

However, I had no desire to visit his work. All that changed when I came across Sight and Sound’s September 2010 Issue on Latin American Cinema.

In an insightful and wonderful article titled No Turning Back, Sergio Wolf talks about the Latin American cinema explosion in the last decade. The following lines stuck with me:

In Brazil, João Moreira Salles reinvented the international career of Eduardo Coutinho, who had been living in difficult circumstances and making television for many years until Moreira Salles helped him with the outstanding Edifício Master (2002). The documentary-maker Paulo Sacramento, meanwhile, rescued another Brazilian - José Mojica Marins, the John Carpenter of São Paulo - by producing Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio, 2008) after Martins had endured almost ten years of inactivity.

If someone from a new generation of Brazilian cinema helped a filmmaker from another generation, then I just had to find out what was worth rescuing. So I decided it was time that I faced Coffin Joe in his full attire, nails and all.

This spotlight contains six films directed by Marins and one documentary on his work.

At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul (1964)
This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967)
Awakening of the Beast (1970)
End of Man (1971)
Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1975)
The Strange World of José Mojica Marins (2001, André Barcinski/Ivan Finotti)
Embodiment of Evil (2009)

The Coffin Joe Trilogy

At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse and Embodiment of Evil are the three films that constitute the Coffin Joe Trilogy. There are several other José Mojica Marins films where the director plays the Coffin Joe character but those other films features his character in different scenarios or limited roles where his character is mostly restricted to the opening credits to give speeches about the universe and purpose of life.

In the trilogy, the same character of Zé do Caixão (played by Marins) continues his obsessive search of finding the perfect woman to mate with so that he can have his perfect son. Zé wants a son because his believes he can achieve immortality by having his lineage continue through a heir. In his pursuit of that perfect woman, Zé rapes, tortures and kills many women, along with killing any men that stand in his way. His torture methods get more gruesome with each film and the body count of his victims increase. The extent of torture in the first two films is restricted mostly to having women in lingerie tormented by spiders and snakes. Such torture methods would not have sufficed for the third film because Embodiment of Evil was released in 2009 at a time when torture and gory films were no longer underground but openly shown in multiplexes, in 3D no less. So Embodiment of Evil is by far the most graphic of all three films and features naked bodies hung up by hooks and tortured repeatedly. Blood is on ample display and there are scenes which are meant for shock value only, such as a nude woman extracted from inside a pig’s body and covered in blood. Blood was not that much of a factor in the first two films mostly because of the lack of color. At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul is completely in black and white while This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse is also in black and white except for a small segment near the end which features Zé descending into hell.

Overall, Embodiment of Evil is the weakest of the three films and features scenes of needless violence and torture. Although the film is also updated to represent modern times in Brazilian cinema and features police-gang clashes in favelas. At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul is made with the least budget and does a decent job of laying out the character and his motives. This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse features an amazing opening credit sequence. The titles and crew names appear in shaky and vibrant letters against visuals of spiders and snakes crawling on women with a background score of screaming women. This combination produces a jarring effect and prepares one for a horrific cinematic ride.

Note: the image of Coffin Joe under the title At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul misled me. I believed those words were Coffin Joe's threats towards his victims but as it turns out, those words were meant for Coffin Joe. After he is cursed, he is told that he would die at the stroke of midnight.

Drugs and censorship

Awakening of the Beast depicts a drug culture and features a panel discussing the impact of drugs in corrupting the morality of ordinary citizens. The panel led by a doctor also debate the role of José Mojica Marins’ films in corrupting citizens. Marins is invited to the panel to present his side and also stands trial in a fake segment within the film to defend himself and his films. As part of his experiment to observe the effects of drug usage, the doctor administers LSD to five volunteers. The effect of those drugs causes the volunteers to slowly drift away from reality and land up in a nightmarish world where their fantasies and fears play out in a hellish setting. The visuals of this hellish world take up almost the last 20 minutes of the film and are similar in set design to the version of hell shown in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse. There are several dialog free sequences in the film, including a sequence where a woman high on drugs dances on a table in a room full of men. The woman’s dance sequence flows quite easily without any dramatic cuts and is one of the best extended scenes found in any of José Mojica Marins’ films.

The final conclusion of the doctor’s experiment is that drugs do not corrupt moral citizens but only awaken inner demons within humans who already have devilish intentions buried within their psyche. José Mojica Marins is also cleared of any wrong doings both by the panel and the fake trial. Such a conclusion and the scenes of drug usage were probably reasons why the military dictatorship in Brazil banned this film in 1970. The film was eventually released 20 years later.

A prophet emerges

The opening sequence of End of Man has a tiny glimpse of Coffin Joe but otherwise End of Man is the only film in this spotlight which is entirely free of the Coffin Joe character. Marins plays a man who emerges naked from the sea and goes about preaching to the locals and performing miracles. He develops a cult following and is considered by locals to be a prophet. It is only at the end of the film that the prophet’s true identity is revealed and that revelation is another poke by Marins on the blind faith that people have in religion. José Mojica Marins always questioned the value of religion and its rituals through his characters starting from At Midnight I’ll Steal Your Soul onwards and End of Man continues that trend, especially the ending.

Technically this is the weakest out of the six features and contains substandard acting, editing and camera work. In fact, watching this film reminded me of some of the worst Bollywood films from the 1970’s to 80’s, minus the nudity.

Note: A party sequence in End of Man where the crowd chants “everybody naked” is duly expanded in Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures.

Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures

The title says it all. A hostel where strange occurrences take place and where people are either naked or seeking pleasure, or both. The opening ten minutes of the film are almost dialog free and depict an elaborate dance ceremony which resurrects Coffin Joe from the dead. Coffin Joe then gives his customary speech about the universe, existence, fate and life before taking charge of this special hostel. All along Joe’s eyes see everything, the future and past of the guests arriving in the hostel to seek pleasure. In fact, a trailer of the film could be cut with Coffin Joe’s voice as such:

Ladies look at my eyes
now look at the room with naked people
now back to my eyes
look at another room where an affair is happening
back to my eyes again
now look at that room with people gambling
now back to my eyes again.

One can find repeated shots in José Mojica Marins’ films but Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures takes that to an extreme with plenty of repeated closeups of Joe’s eyes, naked flesh and shots of the hostel in a dark stormy night with lightening.

A documentary to bring it all together

The Strange World of José Mojica Marins is a well made documentary that introduces us to the world of Coffin Joe and gives us as a closer look at José Mojica Marins. Marins love of film is apparent from this documentary and he relishes the fact that he is a self taught filmmaker. He mentions that he was literally born in a cinema as his parents owned a cinema hall and he grew up watching plenty of films and spending all his time in a theater. That love for film resulted in him making plenty of films at an early age. In fact, no opportunity was too good for Marins to pass up to make a film. When he went in for eye surgery, he had a camera crew in the operating room and directed them while being under the knife. His plan was to use the footage for a later film but that film was never completed. At the end of the documentary, we are told that there are another dozen or so uncompleted films by Marins. Since the documentary was released, Marins did finish his Coffin Joe trilogy with Embodiment of Evil and he may get a chance to make more of his films.

The film also shows what a wildly popular character Coffin Joe is not only in Brazil but internationally. Marins made many personal appearances dressed as Coffin Joe and attracted plenty of admirers. Unfortunately as per the film, Marins was never financially well off. No details are given but that fact becomes clear with the Sight and Sound article when Paulo Sacramento had to help produce Marins’ Embodiment of Evil, more than forty years after Coffin Joe first appeared on screen.

This is not the end...

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.

Slightly changing this The Usual Suspects quote:

The greatest trick Coffin Joe ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.

Because every time Coffin Joe is supposed to be dead, he comes back. He is left for dead at the end of At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul but makes a remarkable recovery at the start of This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse. He sinks to his demise in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse but through magical cosmic powers is resurrected several times until he finally materializes in flesh serving time in a jail cell at the start of Embodiment of Evil. The ending of Embodiment of Evil shows that Coffin Joe more than gets his wish after all, with not one son but multiple offsprings on the way. Coffin Joe always believed the only way he could be immortal was with a perfect son. So if there are indeed multiple sons of Coffin Joe on the way, then maybe he will be a cinematic presence for many decades to come.

Comments..

I had low expectations from this spotlight and there were many moments which confirmed those low expectations but there were also some aspects with surprized me. In a way, I agree with Neil Young’s assessment:

But the odd thing about the Mojica Marins pictures is that, despite their numerous individual deficiencies, they do cohere and combine into a whole that's much more effective than their separate parts….

One can see the full cycle of action-reaction consequences cycle through the various Coffin Joe films where his mistakes come back to haunt him and further curse him.

Finally....Christoph Huber’s article on José Mojica Marins is worth reading.

The Direct Cinema of Michel Brault

"This is Canada?"

These were the words that came to my mind when I first saw Michel Brault’s Les Ordres a few years ago. The film showed how in 1970 hundreds of citizens in Quebec were arrested without a warrant and held indefinitely without ever getting a charge laid against them. It was eye-opening to see such an incident took place on Canadian soil and Brault’s film was my first introduction to this portion of Canadian history. As it turns out, Les Orders was also Brault’s most accessible film on DVD and part of that reason might be because the film won him a best director award in Cannes 1975. Brault's remaining films remained out of reach until I came across National Film Board’s (NFB) box-set of his earlier films from 1958-1974. The five disc collection contains four features, nine shorts and two bonus documentaries on Brault.

My spotlight of four features and four shorts is based on a subset of films from that box-set:

Les raquetteurs (1958, 15 min)
La lutte (1961, 28 min)
Québec-U.S.A. ou L'invasion pacifique (1962, 27 min)
Pour la suite du monde (1963)
Geneviève (1964, 28 min)
Entre la mer et l’eau douce (1965)
L'Acadie, l'Acadie?!? (1971)
Les Ordres (1974)

The NFB package also contains an excellent collection of essays & articles on Brault’s films in French and English. However, as per the introduction all the essays are presented in their original language without translation, which means there are more French essays than English ones. Still, the few English essays provide an essential look at Brault’s filming methods and even the concept of "cinéma direct" ("Direct Cinema"), a movement that I was completely unaware of.

Candid Eye

The road to Direct Cinema starts off with the Candid Eye productions of the CBC. In the essay How to Make or Not to Make a Canadian movie (La Cinémathèque canadienne, Montreal, 1967) included in the box-set, Wolf Koenig describes how the inspiration and genesis of the Candid Eye movement started. The original idea that Koenig and others proposed to the CBC for their films was:

..Record life as it happens, unscripted and unrehearsed: capture it in sync sound, indoors or out, without asking it to pose or repeat its lines; edit it into moving films that would make the audience laugh and cry (preferably both at the same time); show it on TV to millions and change the world by making people realize that life is real, beautiful and meaningful, etc. Management was understandably puzzled by this proposal. We were told that films cannot be made like this -- that there would be difficulties...

Some of the difficulties that Koenig and other Candid Eye filmmakers encountered are still a challenge for art, independent and foreign filmmakers today.

....We roamed the grounds with haunted looks searching for reality, ready to siphon it into our Bolex whenever it should appear. We got some pretty pictures but it was impossible to cut them into film.

This unconventional kind of documentary film presented new and disconcerting problems. For instance: How does one get an audience to look at a film that doesn’t have a story or even a conventional message? Worse: how does one get script approval from management for a film without a script? Or: how can one get close to the subject with all those clumsy cameras and lights and microphones, without scaring him off? And how, in God’s name, could we be sure of being present when the moment of truth arrives? We couldn’t very well shoot every boring minute of the hero’s life, waiting for his soul to reveal itself (although, at times, we did). There were many such questions...

The breakthrough and inspiration for Koenig came courtesy of a ..book of photographs called The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Koenig goes onto explain that the book’s "foreword became our bible. We followed it verbatim."

Sections of the foreword are included by Koenig and those are reproduced below.

The picture-story involves a joint operation of the brain, the eye and the heart. The objective of this joint operation is to depict the content of some event which is in the process of unfolding, and to communicate impressions. Sometimes a single event can be so rich in itself and its facets that it is necessary to move all around it in your search for the solution to the problems it poses -- for the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude towards something that is moving...

We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory...for photographers, what has gone, has gone forever...Our task is to perceive reality, almost simultaneously recording it in the sketchbook which is our camera. We must neither try to manipulate reality while we are shooting, nor must we manipulate the results in a darkroom...

...In whatever picture-story we try to do, we are bound to arrive as intruders. It is essential, therefore, to approach the subject on tip-toe --even if the subject is still-life. A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye- --these we should all have...

The profession depends so much upon the relations the photographer establishes with the people he’s photographing, that a false relationship, a wrong word or attitude, can ruin everything. When the subject is in any way uneasy, the personality goes away where the camera can’t reach it. There are no systems, for each case is individual and demands that we be unobtrusive, though we must be at close range...
There is subject in all that takes place in the world, as in our personal universe. We cannot negate subject. It is everywhere. So we must be lucid toward what is going on in the world, and honest about what we feel.

Subject does not consist of a collection of facts, for facts in themselves offer little interest. Through facts, however, we can reach an understanding of the laws that govern them, and be better able to select the essential ones which communicate reality...

If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of form must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality. What the camera does is simply to register upon film the decision made by the eye...One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it...

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds -- the one inside us and the one outside us. As a result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate. -- English translation of "Images à la sauvette" (èd, Verve, Paris, 1952).

And so the Candid Eye movement was born.

Direct Cinema

Our films have, above all, been
an impassioned appropriation
of the social environment.
The picturesque (the outsider’s view)
has yielded to the familiar; the myth
has yielded in the face of reality.
-- Gilles Carle, Parti Pris, 7
(April 1964)

David Clandfield’s insightful essay From the Picturesque to the Familiar: Films of the French Unit at the NFB (1958-1964) begins with this quote from Carle, who was a member of the French Unit at the National Film Board. As per Clandfield, Carle made the above comment when the direct cinema movement was coming to an end because "..the tightly knit group of francophone filmmakers at the NFB was dispersing."

David Clandfield describes the emergence of direct cinema, its similarities and differences from the Candid Eye films of the NFB.

Technically, of course, both movements had much in common: shooting without script or conscious staging, use of light-weight equipment, a search for the real which deliberately shunned the dramatic of the heroic.

However, the two movements differed when it came to the involvement of the filmmakers with the project.

For the Candid Eye filmmakers, the subject of the film was its subject matter rooted in objective reality. The starting point was a social or human event-- ephemeral, inscribed in an ephemeral world-- the form and meaning of which require the mediation of the filmic process to become evident. The function of the filmic process, then, was not to mould but to reveal form, and with it meaning.

For the cinéma direct filmmakers, the point of departure is the filmmaking process in which the filmmaker is deeply implicated as a consciousness, individual or collective. It is this process--this consciousness--which gives form and meaning to an amorphous objective reality. Instead of effacing their presence, the filmmakers affirm it.

Instead of rendering the technical process transparent (supposedly), they will emphasize its materiality. Instead of standing apart from their object of study or enquiry, they will implicate themselves within in. Their search for the authentic will involve not only the critical detachment of the empirical investigator in order to strip away “myth” or misconception, but also commitment to the social project under investigation in order to avoid the pitfalls of he aesthetic or the “picturesque.” The overt personal involvement of the subject-filmmaker in the object-reality of the pro-filmic event was, then, the key distinguishing factor of the Québécois cinéma direct from the Anglophone Candid Eye.

.....Instead of standing apart from their object of study or enquiry, they will implicate themselves within in.

These words from David Clandfield’s essay about the Direct Cinema technique made me think of embedded journalism. In the last few years, embedded journalism has come to refer to the reporting style where journalists travel along with the military units they are covering. This also means that the journalists share the same working space as the military officers. It turns out that Direct Cinema used such closeness a long time ago as part of its filming methodology. The personal involvement of Brault is apparent from L’Acadie l’Acadie?!?, a film which shows the Acadian identity struggle that took place in the University of Moncton in New Brunswick. As part of their protests, the university students locked themselves in the university buildings. Brault was also locked indoors with the students and that allowed him to get close to the students and record their true feelings/actions.

In a sense, embedded filming was a key component of Direct Cinema, which means Direct Cinema was a pure form of cinema because the filmmaker inserted himself/herself into the environment of their subject and filmed without any inhibitions or filters. The filmmaker did not direct his/her subjects nor did the filmmaker interfere in the subject’s words or actions. This detachment allowed the filmmaker to portray reality as objectively as possible.

Heavy camera, Mobile movement

One of the original problems of the Candid Eye movement that Wolf Koenig posed was the difficulty of heavy camera equipments:

Or: how can one get close to the subject with all those clumsy cameras and lights and microphones, without scaring him off?

Nowadays with light digital cameras such problems do not exist. However, this was a relevant problem back in the late 1950’s through early 1970’s. Yet, this problem did not prevent Brault from making remarkable films where his camera’s presence is non-existent. His films demonstrate mobile camera movement that captured a wide array of shots, often taken with a single camera and no multiple takes. Such a feat would be difficult today, but it is truly remarkable to think that he and his crew managed this five decades ago. The film that is a shining example of Brault’s techniques is L’Acadie l’Acadie?!? where the camera directly places the viewer within the same university halls as the students thereby making the audience a silent member of the political discussions taking place. Brault does now allow the camera to merely record at a distance but manages to allow the audience to get close with a few select vocal leaders of the student union by varying camera angles when the students are shown during heated debates or in moments of silence. The camera moves in close when it needs to and pulls away appropriately to provide a more complete picture. Such movement and closeness of the camera allows the camera to be an invisible interviewer that is probing the subject to get their true feelings out.

Culture, Rituals & History

Michel Brault’s films are not only about beautiful technique but they document Canadian cultures, traditions and history that would otherwise be lost over time. Les Raquetteurs records the celebration and tradition surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950’s while La lutte shows the rituals that were identified with professional wrestling in Montreal Forum and also in back-street wrestling parlours across Montreal. Pour la suite du monde shows a traditional whale-catching practice that was part and parcel of life in Île-aux-Coudres, a small island in the St. Lawrence River. The film is also a reminder of the complex nature of Canadian history. In the film, a short discussion about Jacques Cartier between two town residents shows that Canada’s history changes when it is viewed either via French, English or Native perspective. In his wonderful book A Fair Country John Ralston Saul mentions that a true picture of Canadian history has to take Métis and other First Nation ethnicities into account. Such an inclusion would mean a three pronged view of Canada’s past as opposed to the current situation where Canadian history is only viewed through either English or French eyes. Pour la suite du monde is from a French perspective but it raises the point if the origin of some rituals, such as Beluga whale hunting, would change when Natives would recount their history.

In 1969, New Brunswick became the first and only bilingual province in Canada. However, the journey to get bilingual status was anything but easy. L'Acadie, l'Acadie?!? shows a fraction of this struggle by highlighting the efforts of students in the University of Moncton to get bilingual status so that they could continue to speak in French and thereby preserve their Acadian identity. The film is from the perspective of the University students but a segment shot in city hall illustrates the divide between the English speaking majority and the Francophone minority in Moncton. In the city hall meeting, every time the University of Moncton students tried to speak, their voices were attempted to be drowned out by coughs and disapproval from the English speakers. Interestingly, this divide over language extended to cultural differences as well about Acadian identity. Such debates about cultural and language freedoms have reignited recently in Canada, especially in Quebec, as new waves of immigrants enter Canada. So L'Acadie, l'Acadie?!? is a timely reminder that a society can never be fully functional if one side tries to ignore the history and cultures of another side.

Les Ordres shows what happened in Quebec under the cover of the 1970 War Measures Act. As part of the War Act’s wide ranging powers, ordinary citizens were arrested without cause. The citizens were not physically tortured and eventually released but as the film shows, threats of death and murder were used to keep some prisoners in a constant state of mental agony. In a few segments it becomes apparent that some of the prison guards were on a power trip and were enacting their own version of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Les Ordres is based on a collection of interviews from some of the more than 400 arrested citizens and is essential viewing because it shows how easy it is for a democratic society to descend into a police state.

Identity, Modernity & Roots

Brault’s first fiction feature Entre la mer et l’eau douce is a fascinating film that shows the rise to fame of an ordinary young man who leaves his small isolated village to find work in booming cosmopolitan Montreal. The film’s title is explained perfectly by André Loiselle:

The title comes from the diary of Jacques Cartier, read by Alexis Tremblay in Pour la suite du monde, in which the 16th century French explorer describes beluga whales as snow-white fish that live in the river between the sea and fresh water. For Brault, however, what lives between the sea and fresh water is less the whale than the young French-Canadian man who is torn between two worlds: the sea, the past, the country and the elders, and the fresh water, the city and modernity.
-- André Loiselle, Tradition and Modernity from Montreal to Acadia and Brittany. Entre la mer et l’eau douce, Éloge du chiac, L’Acadie l’Acadie?!? and Les enfants de Néant.

In Entre la mer et l’eau douce Claude Tremblay (played by Claude Gauthier) leaves behind his Native lover in his village when he goes to Montreal, where he drifts in between jobs and affairs. Yet, he cannot forget his original love or his country roots despite swimming in a modernized city. His past is a contradiction with his present situation and that tension offers inspiration for his music. Claude’s portrayal and the film title can also refer to the tensions regarding Quebec’s nationalistic identity with the rest of Anglophone Canada and even with its native past. The fact that Claude left his Native lover behind could be taken to mean that in order to proceed ahead Quebec and thereby the rest of Canada moved away from its true origins. In the film, the question of Quebec’s independence is brought up by an Anglophone in a bar. The stranger who made the comment was drunk but his words are ones that have been echoed by many sober people across Canada over the decades. Even though Entre la mer et l’eau douce was released in 1965, questions about Quebec’s independence have never gone away and have been exploited over the decades by various politicians (both anglophones and francophones) to divide the country.

Films & Comments

Michel Brault’s films are essential viewing not only because of the fascinating Direct Cinema technique but also because they are a valuable asset to understand Canadian history. His films may be centered around Eastern Canada but one needs to hear the French Canadian perspective in order to get a better understanding of how Canada has evolved to become what it is today.

Thankfully, some of Brault’s films are available for free viewing on NFB’s website.

Note: I have only verified the films are viewable in Canada and I am not sure if they will also play in other countries.

Goodbye 35mm film, Hello digital movie

Over the years, it has been a slow disappearance of 35mm film from commercial theaters in my city but now the transformation is complete. Not a single multiplex in the city shows 35mm anymore and every film is a digital presentation, shown either using a DVD/Blu-Ray disc or a file downloaded via satellite. This seems to have been a change that has happened without any fuss or even much discussion. Although there are a good number of people who love the change to digital and praise the "pristine" quality of digital movies. As far are these cinema goers are concerned, they do not have to put up with scratches or tiny circles in their film anymore. Distributors and studios love digital as well because they can save the cost of producing 35mm prints. In the past, studios had to spend millions of dollars in order to produce thousands of 35mm prints for mass delivery but now studios can get their product out to hundreds of locations cheaply. Theater owners also love digital because the newest film can be beamed via satellite immediately and they can screen multiple shows of a film on the same day. For example, if it were not for digital, then multiplexes would not be able to book 19 to 27 shows of the newest Hollywood film in a single day. Also, with digital, theaters require less people to look after movie projectors. Some theaters have all the shows programmed to be played via a computer and a movie automatically starts on time, even if no one is in the theater.

Even though theaters earn more profit from multiple showings of a film than previously, the ticket price has not changed from the 35mm days. The ticket price for seeing a digital copy of a new Hollywood film in a Calgary multiplex is still $12.75 (Canadian dollars), the same as it was when multiplexes still showed 35mm. However, one can argue that the cost is justified because theater owners have had to spend a lot of money to upgrade to digital projectors, which start from atleast $60,000 per projector to upwards of $150,000. So theaters have to recoup their costs, which is why they are happy with keeping the ticket price the same as previously. Interestingly, theaters who are upgrading to even more “state of the art” digital projectors are charging $3-$5 more per ticket, raising the ticket price to $15.75-$17.75. As it stands, 3D theaters charge a $3 markup for an average price of $15.75.

So is something lost in this transition to digital? If the answer was yes, then one would have seen more debate and even passionate discussions. As it stands, I believe this is one change welcomed by the masses. Although I am not finding much to cheer about. My reason does not have to do entirely with nostalgia even though this past weekend I found myself thinking fondly about the good old days after enjoying a great 35mm print of Attenberg. The film started off with some scratches before the images cleared up and from then on, it was a beautiful film presentation. I am not a purist either who believes 35mm is the only format that should be shown in a cinema. In fact, for the longest time I have argued that seeing a particular film was more important than the format the film was in, which means I was fine with 35mm, VHS tape, DVD or even a stream of bits & bytes. The biggest reason for my dissatisfaction has to with the cost of a digital movie ticket being the same or higher than for a 35mm film. My view is shaped by experiences acquiring 35mm prints for a theatrical showing. Getting all the reels of a 35mm film involved a few hundred dollars of shipping costs plus some hassles involved with getting film reels across customs/borders in time for a film showing. On the other hand, the costs for shipping or downloading a digital file is minuscule. Of course, distributors and studios still probably charge theaters the same fee or pricing structure from the 35mm days because of the newness of their product. The digital delivery of the movie is just a tiny technicality and something that saves studios cost while still ensuring a steady flow of profits. If the studios/distributors are not going to change their rates, then theaters can claim they have no choice. This argument ignores the fact that theaters are showing more shows per day now as compared to a few years ago.

The least theaters can do is openly advertise that audience are going to be watching a DVD/Blu-Ray/downloaded file of a new Hollywood film. Cineplex does advertise the digital presentation of its classic film series and yearly digital film festival where older films are shown for $5. However, things are different with new Hollywood films where no such statements about the digital nature of the film is made. Will that knowledge of seeing a DVD/Blu-Ray of a new film deter some people? Probably not. The novelty of seeing new movies in a theater has to do with the fact that people want be among the first to see a new anticipated blockbuster movie. Also, there is something to be said about the social atmosphere of attending a theater and enjoying the latest gimmick the multiplex has to offer. And multiplexes are indeed doing their best to get crowds to come back in droves by emphasizing the entertainment values of a theatrical experience, first by adding 3D and now by going further with D-Box motion systems. A moving chair in a theater certainly brings to mind the tricks used by John Goodman’s character in Matinee but in a few years more gimmicks will be added. In the last few years, many multiplexes across Canada have expanded beyond films by regularly showing live operas and sporting events on a regular basis to fill their seats and earn revenue. Unfortunately, multiplexes are still not expanding their offerings to include foreign and independent films.

The burden of handling the large array of global cinema falls to a few independent and art house theaters. And it is also these independent theaters who will stick with 35mm because they cannot afford to spend a huge chunk of their revenue to go 100% digital. Considering that these theaters struggle to attract crowds, a move to digital would not make much financial sense. The three art house theaters in Calgary (The Plaza, The Globe and the Uptown) still have the ability to show 35mm and I believe that case will apply for other such venues across North America.

35mm will not disappear completely but it will certainly become harder to find. Just like gramophones and vinyl records can still be found, 35mm theaters will be continue to exist, albeit in limited numbers. It may just happen that if in the future people want to see 35mm films then they would have to pay more for a ticket than for a digital movie because the infrastructure to produce 35mm prints might not be as affordable or accessible.

El Clasico, one down, three to go

Sat, April 16: Real Madrid 1-1 Barcelona
Wed, April 20: Real Madrid vs Barcelona, Spanish Cup final
Wed, April 27: Real Madrid vs Barcelona, Champions League Semi-final, 1st Leg
Tue, May 3: Barcelona vs Real Madrid, Champions League Semi-final, 2nd Leg

Very few rivalries in world football can match Barcelona vs Madrid, so it is something unique to witness these rivals play each other four times in eighteen days in three different competitions. Saturday's 1-1 draw meant that Barcelona are still in a comfortable position to win the Spanish league title but things will get really interesting starting with Wednesday's Copa del Rey final. One of these two teams will win their first trophy of the season on Wednesday, along with bragging rights. Regardless of what happens on April 20, it is next week that will be most important for both teams. Jose Mourinho's entire selling point for getting the Real Madrid job was that he talked about bringing back the Champions League trophy to Madrid, a trophy Real have not won since Zidane's brilliant winner against Bayer Leverkusen in 2002.

Interestingly, the last time both teams played each other in the Champions League was in the semi-finals of 2002. That time, Madrid prevailed 3-1 on aggregate en route to their 9th Champions League trophy. So if Jose is to make good on his promise, then Madrid have to overcome the powerhouse that is Barcelona football club. Last year, Jose had no problems selling himself as the best candidate for Real Madrid even when Real was managed by Manuel Pellegrini. Yet, things have not been easy for Mourinho. Just like he did in Italy, Jose has complained about referees in the league and blamed everyone else but himself for his team's shortcomings. The fact is Madrid have done worse in the league compared to this stage last season under Pellegrini. Plus, Pellegrini never led his Madrid team to a 5-0 defeat at the hands of Barcelona, like Jose did back in November.

Plenty of drama to unfold over the next two weeks. In the meantime, another look at some past El Clásico games:

Real Madrid 2 - 6 Barcelona : May 2, 2009, a double by Henry

Real Madrid 4 - 1 Barcelona: May 7, 2008



Barcelona 3 - 3 Real Madrid: March 10, 2007, Messi hat-trick



Real Madrid 5 - 0 Barcelona: January 7, 1995, Zamorano hat-trick



Barcelona 5 - 0 Real Madrid: January 8, 1994, Romario hat-trick

Gaspar Noé Films

Two films by Gaspar Noé:

Seul contre tous / I Stand Alone (1998)
Enter the Void (2009)

Enter the Brain

I Stand Alone allows unfiltered access to the inner thoughts of a jobless butcher (Philippe Nahon) whereas Enter the Void visually depicts images that are circulating in a soul’s memory bank. The differing method of words vs images in the two films drives each film’s presentation and style. I Stand Alone is packed with words due to a constant stream of thoughts that bounce around inside the butcher’s head. He does not talk much to others but since he is always thinking, the film is never short on words. On the other hand, most of Enter the Void is from the perspective of Oscar’s (Nathaniel Brown) soul, who can only observe people. The camera accordingly allows the audience to see what his soul is seeing, so the film is short on dialogue and the only words that filter through are bits of conversation Oscar’s soul can make out. The camera also dips inside his brain and as a result, the audience visually sees the memories that are getting triggered. This perspective also explains the repetitious scenes of Oscar’s parents accident that are shown in the film. A human being often thinks of certain situations over and over again, which means the same thought is recirculated in the brain usually with similar associated images and feelings. Oscar is haunted by the death of his parents and cannot forget that tragedy, so he is often thinking of that accident. His thoughts may initially drift off in different directions but no matter what path his memories take, the destination is always the car in which his parents were killed.

Enter the Void

Near the end of I Stand Alone, the butcher wants to enter a void by ending his life but he manages to stay in the real world. However, in Enter the Void Oscar literally enters a void (via a different route than what the butcher intended) and also manages to re-emerge from that void. Interestingly, a tiny spliced shot in I Stand Alone shows a birth but that birth does not take place until the ending of Enter the Void.

The end is just the beginning

Commercial cinema is never short on happy endings but incredibly, Gaspar Noe also provides a happy ending in all three of his features albeit with a slight deviation. Irreversible moves backwards and ends on a calm note as all the brutality and ugliness is shown long before the end. Enter the Void also ends on a positive note when a birth is meant to signify a new beginning. At first it looks like I Stand Alone will end on a miserable note but the audience is given a 30 second warning to leave the theater if they want to avoid seeing any violence. For those that stay, the film shows the butcher succumbing to the demons inside his head and falling to the lowest depth imaginable. However, it turns out that evil act was just in his imagination and the camera pulls out of his brain to show that some form of morality still exists.

If the film had ended at this point, the ending would have been happy indeed. However, the final words uttered by the butcher hint that he may just go ahead and do whatever he wants. So that means after the final credits bad things could happen but as far as the audience is concerned they can leave with some measure of hope.

However, getting to the ending in all these films is anything but a pleasant experience. Irreversible has two segments (fire extinguisher & the rape scene) which cause discomfort while Enter the Void shows an immoral world of drugs, sex and corruption where happiness is always out of reach. I Stand Alone drags the audience through the butcher’s sickening thoughts and actions but the film also shows that society around the butcher is not that hopeful either. Poverty, joblessness and racism is rampant and one wonders how many more butchers are wandering around the streets.

Yes there is a director here

The final credits of I Stand Alone say “You have been watching a Gaspar Noe film”.

It is hard to imagine audience can ever forget his name after watching any of his features. His films cannot be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders but instead warrant a reaction of some sort, be it positive or negative. Of course, his films divide audience but one truly feels that Noe has directed his films and everything shown is as per his vision. The camera bounces around when it is needed to and if the camera is not moving, then it is stationary for a reason. Majority of Enter the Void is from the point of view of Oscar’s soul, so a hovering camera angle is essential for creating that feeling. To this effect, the film manages to sustain a floating point of view right until the end and does not take any shortcuts. The start of Irreversible features a camera that spins around giving an impression of a fly navigating around buildings before landing up inside a room to listen to the wisdom of a naked man (Philippe Nahon). However, the camera is absolutely still during the nine minute long rape sequence because that is what Noe intended. If there was any moment in the film that the camera needed to look away, it was during that sequence in the tunnel. Yet, the audience is not offered that option. In I Stand Alone quick zooms and cuts, punctuated with offscreen gunshots, point to the volatile mental state of the butcher. The butcher’s mind is working in overdrive and building up hatred for everyone around him. He cannot sit still even for a minute, is constantly agitated and often acts out the first thought that enters his brain. So the rapid fire editing gives the film an accelerated pace and highlights his restlessness.

Also credits in Noe’s films are a talking point in themselves. Irreversible features credits that run backwards and sideways while Enter the Void assaults the senses with a brightly colored credit sequence that zips by in a flash and uses various eye-catching fonts.

Personally, I think I Stand Alone is the most complete film out of the three while Enter the Void is the best directed film. Irreversible is a few notches behind the other two but it is also the film that got the most attention and ensured his other two films were accessible.

Pere Portabella Spotlight

I had never heard of Pere Portabella until I came across Jonathan Rosenbaum’s wonderful book Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia in which Rosenbaum has two essays discussing Portabella’s films. In the first essay, published in 2006, Rosenbaum talks about the joy of discovering Portabella’s film Cuadecuc, Vampir at Cannes in 1971. Jonathan also talks about the lack of availability of Portabella’s films on DVD which is a reason why his films never got much attention in North America. Thankfully, a DVD set was available by 2009 for which Jonathan wrote his second essay. Pere Portabella’s films are even more accessible now thanks to mubi.com who have almost all the director’s shorts and films available for online viewing. Certainly, all the films that Jonathan talks about in his essays are available on mubi.com. So Jonathan’s essays are a direct reason for selecting films as part of this spotlight:

Nocturne 29 (1968)
Aidez l'Espagne (1969, short 5 min)
Miró l'altre (1969, short 15 min)
Vampir (1970)
Umbracle (1972)
Informe general (1976)
Warsaw Bridge (1989)
The Silence Before Bach (2007)

Starting point

It is always a pleasure to dive into a director’s work without having read much about their films. This allows a person to navigate through the work on their own terms without any context or history getting in the way. Of course, there is always the danger that one can go off course in interpreting the films but the pure unfiltered joy in discovering the films surely overrides the risk. Although when it came to Pere Portabella, it was hard to approach his work without any filters. He is a Catalan filmmaker and my first instinct was to wonder whether his Catalan identity would have any political attachments associated. The only reason I would consider that is because my first introduction to Catalan identity was via FC Barcelona, Catalunya’s most visible global symbol. Barcelona are one of the best footballing teams in the world but the roots of their bitter rivalry with Real Madrid is dipped in political fire. Francisco Franco did his utmost to suppress Catalan identity which included Barcelona football club. The Barca fans could not criticize Franco without suffering any backlash but they could direct their hatred towards the team that Franco supported, which was Real Madrid. In fact, Franco used to attend matches between the two teams in Barcelona’s stadium, Nou Camp, where Barca’s fans could openly shout at Real Madrid without any consequences. The origin of Barcelona's rivalry does not mean that all Catalan film directors depict political topics. For example, no political trace exists in director José Luis Guerín’s In the City of Sylvia or Guest. As it turns out, in the case of Pere Portabella the political tag sticks not only because Portabella made films that were brave enough to deal with nationalistic questions head-on but because he was selected as a Senator in 1977. From his official website, pereportabella.com:

”Since the 1960s, Portabella always maintained a political commitment with all those movements against the Franco dictatorship that supported individual and collective democratic liberties.

In 1977, he was elected Senator in the first democratic elections and he participated in the writing of the present day Spanish Constitution.”

Informe General is an almost three hour documentary that looks at events after Franco’s death. The opening five minutes contain ominous music as the camera hovers around the structure that contains Franco’s tomb. The music ends when the camera focuses on his tomb and the name "Francisco Franco". Immediately after that shot, the music is upbeat and positive as if a cloud of darkness has finally been lifted. However, that music quickly gives way to tones emphasizing urgency before police sirens are added to the mix. The scenes that follow show violent clashes between police and protesters, scenes which in recent months have been all over the news, ranging from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and other Middle-East countries. In the film, the scenes emphasize the clashes that took place between the state, Franco loyalists and citizens aching for freedom.

The film then does something remarkable which is hardly ever seen in political films. It gives all the relevant parties a voice. So we hear from heads of political parties, unions and ordinary citizens whose lives were altered under Franco. In a remarkable sequence, near the end of the film, the heads of all five political parties discuss what the future holds for Spain.

The five parties, liberals, social-democrats, socialists, communists and christian-democrats, were never united prior to Franco’s death but they were all able to put aside their differences after his death. Their discussions helped usher in a new democratic phase in Spanish life.

A trio of black and white films, with a pinch of color

Cuadacuc, Vampir is a black and white documentary about the making of Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula. Portabella’s feature provides a fascinating look into the filmmaking process in general as we get to see various challenges and hurdles involved in making a feature film. The rich photography gives the work a 1930’s feel even though the documentary is about a modern day color feature. Reading in between the lines, it feels like the fake vampire in the film is a loose representation of Francisco Franco & his brutal blood sucking dictatorship.

Jonanthan Rosenbaum explains the film’s name change and the underground nature of the film:

It’s worth adding that the name of the filmmaker and the title of his film were both slightly different from the way we know them today, for reasons that are historically significant. The name of this Barcelona-based filmmaker was listed as Pedro Portabella and his film was called simply Vampir. Why? Because he was Catalan, a language forbidden in Franco’s Spain, making both the name “Pere” and the word "Cuadacuc" (which I’m told is an obscure Catalan term meaning both a worm’s tail and the end of a reel of unexposed film stock) equally impermissible. Furthermore, Portabella wasn’t present at the screening because, as I later discovered, he was one of the two Spanish producers of Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana one decade earlier, and the Franco government was punishing him for having helped to engineer this subterfuge by confiscating his passport, making it impossible for him to travel outside of Spain. And for those like myself who wondered how a film as unorthodox as this could play in Franco Spain at all, it eventually became clear that it survived, like the Catalan language itself (not to mention Dracula), clandestinely, via secret nourishment.

Umbracle highlights the kidnappings, torture and censorship that existed in Franco’s regime. The film starts off harmlessly with a man looking around in a shop. The ominous music indicates something is wrong but the images show nothing out of the ordinary. A phone starts ringing but no one picks it up nor can we see where the phone is located. Instead, the man walks out of the shop and stands at a corner, trying to light his cigar.

 
The street is empty except for one passerby. Suddenly a car comes around the corner and a few men jump out and grab the passerby and put him in the car. The phone continues ringing in the background. The man with the shades looks on. The same pattern is repeated on another day leading to another kidnapping. The phone assists in the flow of information while the ringing phone that is never picked up represents the citizen who has disappeared without a trace. By imposing a kidnapping with the sound of a ringing phone, Portabella is able to convey the ruthless and spy like nature of a cruel regime without using any dialogues.

The first words that are spoken in the film are around the fourteen minute mark when the rules of censorship in Spanish Cinema under Franco are outlined. The extensive rules were applied not only to a finished film but also to a film script in progress. As the commentator notes that such strict rules meant that some filmmakers started to self censor themselves in order to ensure their film was made. It is eye-opening to see such revelations about cinematic censorship in 1970’s Spanish society as one would not normally associate such strict rules with a Western European nation. When a government prevents freedom of expression and identity, then making a film can be an act of revolution and a film camera becomes a great political weapon.

Nocturno 29 is the most experimental of the three black and white Portabella films but it also manages to command the most visual attention due to the presence of Italian actress Lucia Bosé who is a pleasure to look at. The fragmented manner of presenting a love affair recalls Antonioni’s L'Eclisse.

The camera keeps a close watch on Bosé’s character and lovingly follows her, allowing the audience to observe her getting dressed, undressing, walking around gardens and smiling.

When her character goes to take a shower, the glass door disperses her image into a lovely mosaic which gives a sense of her figure but manages to hide her body.

A little bit of color makes its way near the end of the film.

The film does not contain any political elements but the title does not hide its implications as it refers to 29 “black years” of the Franco dictatorship.

Musical connections

Warsaw Bridge and The Silence Before Bach are joined by a love of classical music and manage to portray their stories with plenty of enjoyable musical pieces.

"What’s wrong with music?

No great composer has appeared in years and why is that?

Because silence no longer exists."

The following exchange at a party in Warsaw Bridge can also be used to highlight the importance of silence in films. Modern day commercial cinema is afraid to use silence and it seems that many directors are afraid of even having few seconds pass by without a dialogue, explosion or background music. Maybe it has something to do with the disappearance of silence from most major cities around the world? Whatever the case, silence is a key component of a film. It used to be and it should always be. Pere Portabella understood this which is why silence is present in most of his films.

The story of Warsaw Bridge is inspired from a real life incident when a scuba diver’s body was discovered in a burning forest. The rest of the film manages to put forth a possible theory about how the diver ended up meeting his death in that manner by incorporating loosely tied segments of a love triangle, engaging conversations about art, musical segments and intriguing visuals. One worthy visual sequence takes place in a fish market and manages to make a trio of dead sharks look terrifying and captivating at the same time. Another pleasing segment features a conductor who is standing in the middle of a market, with his orchestra located on individual apartment balconies and building roofs around him. His instructions are conveyed to the orchestra via television sets.

The Silence Before Bach appropriately starts off in silence as a camera moves around empty halls of a gallery. Suddenly music fills the screen and we quickly encounter the source -- a mechanical piano.

Then more music is played in the form of slow notes as a man fine tunes a piano while his dog quietly sits on the floor, absorbed in the music as well. There are multiple stories in The Silence Before Bach which take place in between various musical sessions. The stories range from the past to the present and tackle a variety of topics such as observations about Germans and their love for soccer and music, truckers talking about their lives and an enthusiastic butcher expressing delight about adding rosemary when cooking meat. As soon as one story ends, music comes on in the form of an unrelated segment, followed by another tale without music. This pattern of alternating dialogue and music makes for an absorbing experience. If there was ever a film to lose one self in, this would be it.

Overall

Pere Portabella’s films do not follow a conventional narrative but if one lets the images wash over them, then there is a chance to derive a pleasure from his films. Overall, a truly worthy discovery, all thanks to Jonathan Rosenbaum who is an amazing critic and a pure cinephile. Unlike most critics who are busy reviewing the latest Hollywood blockbuster, Rosenbaum uses his writing to talk about discovering new foreign/independent films and hunting down older films.

As a major aside: I am probably the only person to think this but I might as well say it. The camera angles which capture Lucia Bosé’s smile and beauty in Nocturno 29 made her look like Aishwarya Rai. Just saying...

2011 Copa America: Japan

Japan has pulled out of this year's Copa America tournament. The Japanese Football association president Junji Ogura said:

"The priority at this moment is to continue saving lives and rebuilding the country after the earthquake and tsunami"

The reasons are perfectly understandable but Japan's withdrawal is a loss for the South American tournament. Japan have improved considerably from the last time they played in Copa America (1999) when they managed only a single point from their 3 group games -- Japan lost the opener 3-2 to Peru, lost 4-0 to Paraguay before tying Bolivia 1-1 in their final game. Japanese football has been on an upward path since they co-hosted the 2002 World Cup. Japan had a fantastic 2010 World Cup where they showed considerable tactical and technical ability in overcoming Cameroon and Denmark to reach the round of 16 before they narrowly lost on penalties to Paraguay after a tight 0-0 game. Japan started 2011 in fine form by beating Australia to win the 2011 Asian Cup. The Copa America in Argentina would have given Japanese footballers another solid test to build on. But not to be.

It is not clear which team will replace Japan but Spain is the front-runner. I will then include the replacement team officially in my Copa America Book & Film Festival. I still plan to read the book and watch the film selected to represent Japan even though I will not be able to use the Japanese entries in the final competition results. So the two entries are:

Book: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Film: Tokyo Sonata directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Beware of the angry tire!!!

Rubber (2010, France, Quentin Dupieux)

Very few films come with an inbuilt cult classic quality like Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber. A film about a killer tire advertised with some stunning posters easily makes for plenty of buzz and anticipation.

The opening few minutes of Rubber strengthen that cult status with a hilarious monologue which features a cop who faces the camera to describe various sequences that happen in other films for "no reason".

His words prepare the audience to suspend any logic while watching Rubber. Of course, no amount of logic can ever explain a killer tire but the cop’s words ensure that the film gets a critic proof pass. The story then hilariously adds a fake audience within the film who are witnessing the same movie as us, although they are watching the action with binoculars.

The presence of the fake audience turns Rubber into a live reality show within the scripted film that we the audience are watching. The opening sequences of the cinematic reality tire show depict how the tire is awakened and slowly learns to master his psychic killing abilities. At first, the fake audience is amazed and shocked by the tire’s new found powers. Eventually, the novelty wears thin and the audience is bored, especially by long periods of the tire’s inactivity which involve the tire just staying stationery and pondering about his next move. Things take an interesting turn when the tire goes for a drive down the highway and falls for a young woman. The tire follows her and waits for an appropriate opportunity to make another move. In the meantime, the tire takes out his anger on other victims by blowing them up.

The film's posters point to a 1970’s kind of slasher/killer film with plenty of gore but that is not the case. Some blood is shed but not on the scale as indicated by the posters. Instead, Rubber tries to use the 70’s look to incorporate some absurd situations, dry humour and artistic elements. Unfortunately, thirty minutes into the film, the fake audience angle wears thin and the jokes dry out. Some life is injected into the film for brief periods before things come to a standstill again. It is not until the final moments when things truly get interesting after a tricycle gathers an army of killer tires. Alas, the film ends before we get to witness the army of killer tires in action. Why? No reason...

except to leave the door open for a sequel?

Bridging East & West

West is West (2010, UK, Andy DeEmmony)

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Rudyard Kipling.

Kipling’s overused line held true in the absorbing East is East (1999) when George Khan (Om Puri) failed to instill Pakistani values and traditions in his British born children. However, West is West shows that it is indeed possible to bridge East and West provided one has the right teacher and the right book, which in the film happens to be Kipling’s Kim.

West is West takes place a few years after the first film and once again depicts an authoritative George Khan. George’s ways have led all his children, except his youngest son Sajid (Aqib Khan), to leave home. Sajid is tired of getting bullied at school over his Pakistani roots and clashes frequently with his father. After yet another painful episode at school, Sajid insults his father’s heritage. George is shocked by his son’s behavior and decides that the only way to salvage Sajid is to force his son to live and study in Pakistan. George tells Sajid that they are going to Pakistan on vacation in order to visit his elder brother Maneer Khan (Emil Marwa) who left England more than a year earlier. Sajid only learns the truth about his trip after they arrive in Pakistan and is understandably upset. However, a wise sage, Pir Naseem (Nadim Sawalha) comes to the rescue and takes Sajid under his wing. Pir treats Sajid with respect and answers all his queries calmly. The fact that Pir explains the importance of traditions to Sajid wins the young boy over because Pir’s ways are completely opposite from George’s methods. George never explained why his children must follow certain rituals but instead always demanded that everyone obey him without question.

Pir also manages to broaden Sajid’s perspective so that the boy can better mesh his Eastern origins with his Western life. A simple example from Pir explains to Sajid why his father acts the way he does. Pir describes a scenario where he encounters a cobra on his usual way home one day. He questions whether he should continue along the path and risk getting bitten or seek an alternate path to get home. Through this example Pir explains to Sajid that the alternate path is a method to adapt to a different culture and a way of surviving in a foreign land. George never adapted to British life but tried to live his Pakistani life in England and continued moving in the only path he knew.

Sajid is not the only one who goes through a transformation or coming of age process. George is also forced to face his own values and old life. George left his wife and children behind in Pakistan when he moved to England and instead of returning back, he married again in England and had more children. He continued to send money back home in the belief that he was being a good man. However, he neglected his first wife and family, leaving them to endure a life of hardship and struggles. George returns back home after a period of more than thirty years to face his first wife Basheera (Ila Arun) and her wrath. She rightly blames him for abandoning her, especially since she was only fifteen when she got married and was forced to tend to the fields and look after the kids on her own. George is responsible for ruining Basheera’s life but he is also to blame for making life difficult for his second wife Ella (Linda Bassett). Ella is forced to concede that she spent her life trying to force her children to be more Pakistani than English while George himself abandoned his family back in Pakistan. There is a tender moment in the film when both wives sit face to face and even though neither of them can communicate in the same language, they are able to recognize each other’s misery. Puri’s character is constantly frustrated and abusive but unlike a sinister villain, his character comes off as a man caught in a war of traditions. He acts the way he does because he believes it is his duty to enforce the “right” cultural values on his children but in West is West he finally realizes that his ways have alienated him from both his traditional Pakistani and English lives at the same time. George’s behavior was always seen as hypocritical in the first film and that point is emphasized in West is West again, where it is pointed out that he changed his name from Jahangir to George and married a British woman, despite wanting his children to be Pakistani.

George may be a fictional character but his plight is similar to that of countless other immigrant stories. Millions of immigrants moved to new lands through the 1950’s to 80’s with a snapshot of values from their homelands. While their homelands moved ahead and adopted newer values, the immigrants kept their beliefs alive despite being surrounded by a differing set of values. The lack of satellite tv and internet meant that the immigrants had limited information about the changing values of life back home but instead continued to live in their new country with traditions and beliefs which were now frozen in time. Such a way of life may have been acceptable for the parents but it created struggles for their children who were born in foreign countries. East is East and West is West are just two examples of films that depict the cultural clash between first generation immigrant parents and second generation Western children. Even though many films exist on this topic, director Andy DeEmmony and writer Ayub Khan-Din manage to ensure their work is still engaging and contains a warm heart. Ayub Khan-Din had also written the first film and as a result, he is able to provide continuity with the characters even though the second film has been made more than a decade after East is East. It is credit to the returning actors as well that they are able to recreate the same persona from the first film. Om Puri deserves a lot of accolades for presenting his angry character with the same energy even though he picks up his character after a long gap. The new actors perform their parts quite well, especially Ila Arun and Aqib Khan. Arun is well known to fans of Indian cinema for her amazing vocals as a playback singer but she also sometimes plays small roles in Indian films. West is West gives her a bit more screen time than what she normally gets and this allows her to shine. Aqib Khan turns in a commendable performance in his debut film. At the start of the film his character is angry and constantly on edge as one would expect of a teenager, but as the film progresses, we see growth in his character and he matures to care for those around him. He even plays matchmaker for his brother and chases his brother’s dream woman in a hilarious sequence.

West is West contains the same style of humor that made East is East a pleasure to watch but this new film has a calmer core than the first film and that is solely because of the character of Pir Naseem. Pir’s warm smile and philosophical words takes the sting out of any anger that Sajid has. The story may not be new but the presentation and quality of acting manage to make this a pleasurable film to watch.

Spotlight on Chabrol

Claude Chabrol’s unexpected death in September 2010 meant the world lost a core director of the French New Wave. Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette are now the last remaining Cahiers du Cinema New Wave directors although Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda and Chris Marker remain from the Left Bank group. Chabrol started his film career during a rich period in global film-making through the late 1950’s and 1960’s when mesmerizing films emerged from all corners of the globe. Incredibly, Chabrol remained a prolific filmmaker throughout his career, directing more than 50 features. Chabrol directed his first film in 1958 (Le Beau Serge) and last in 2009 with Inspector Bellamy, meaning he had a staggering average of one film per year over a span of half a century. Not only was he a key filmmaker, he was also a film critic who helped champion other filmmakers via Cahiers du Cinema.

The seven films selected for this spotlight start a decade after Chabrol’s first feature and thus fall outside his New Wave period:

Les biches (1968)
La femme infidèle (1969)
Que la bête meure (1969)
Le boucher (1970)
Juste avant la nuit (1971)
Les noces rouges (1973)
Nada (1974)

In A History of the French New Wave, Richard Neupert notes:

Le beau Serge and Landru mark the beginning and the ending of Chabrol’s contributions to the New Wave proper.....
His first eight films helped make a New Wave, but film enthusiasts had to wait five years, until Les biches and La femme infidele (both 1968), for Chabrol to help truly remake the commercial French Cinema. page 160, second edition.

Adultery & Murder

Adultery is present in four of the seven films but in three of these films, cheating on a spouse is directly connected to committing a murder. In La femme infidèle, Charles (Michel Bouquet) kills his wife Hélène’s (Stephane Audran) lover in a gush of anger while in Les noces rouges the wife (Stephane Audran) and her lover conspire to kill her slimy husband. In La femme infidèle, Michel Bouquet plays the husband who was cheated upon but in Juste avant la nuit his character cheats on his wife (Audran) with their neighbour’s wife and kills his lover in a fit of resentment during a S&M episode.

Que la bête meure features an obnoxious husband Paul (Jean Yanne) who cheats on his wife with her sister but that infidelity is not the reason for Paul’s murder. At the film’s start, Paul runs over a child and drives away leading the son’s father to track down Paul for revenge.

Murder as a battle for Identity

Jean Yanne’s character Popaul/Paul commits gruesome murders in Le boucher where he plays the title character who cannot curb his inner demons. Popaul is not portrayed as a calculative serial killer but as a man who kills whenever his dark self takes over and pushes him to commit the sinister crimes. One side of his personality yearns to be helped and saved while his darker side forces his hands to drive the knife into his victims.

In Les biches, Frédérique (Stéphane Audran) invites a young street artist (Jacqueline Sassard) into her Parisian apartment and tries to seduce the young woman. The young woman never reveals her name so Frédérique names her Why. Frédérique takes Why to her villa outside the city and surrounds her with luxury in order to woo her. When Why pretends to show interest in Paul (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Frédérique gets jealous and pounces on Paul herself. Initially, Why is not taken with Paul but after Frédérique dates Paul, Why wants Paul as well and craves a threesome but Frédérique purposely keeps Why at a teasing distance. The sexual atmosphere that Frédérique creates results in Why losing her identity so much so that she starts dressing and talking like Frédérique in the belief that will allow her to win Paul. Eventually, Why realizes that she will always be a double unless she eliminates Frédérique to fully assume her physical identity.

Arrest as a release from guilt

In Les biches, no guilt is associated with the murder but in some of the other films, the main character is tormented by their reckless murders. Michel Bouquet portrays this guilt with a cold precision in both La femme infidèle (as Charles Desvallees) and Juste avant la nuit (as Charles Masson). In La femme infidèle Charles is relieved to be apprehended so that he does not have live a life of lie. Charles murders his neighbour and best friend François Tellier’s wife in Juste avant la nuit but is tormented by his guilt. He confesses his crime first to his wife Hélène and then to François. Incredibly, both tell him to forget the incident and move on. At first, François’s forgiveness seems to relieve Charles but eventually his guilt possesses him. He makes up his mind to turn himself in but is prevented in doing so by Hélène who cannot bear the humiliation of seeing Charles behind bars.

In Les noces rouges, Lucienne Delamare (Stephane Audran) and Pierre Maury (Michel Piccoli) appear to get away with the perfect murder when they kill Paul Delamare (Claude Piéplu), Lucienne’s corrupt political husband. However, Lucienne’s daughter suspects wrong doing and writes a letter to the police which mentions her mother’s affair with Pierre. That letter leads Lucienne to accept her guilt and give herself up along with Pierre.

Political games & backstabbing

There is a tiny element of political manipulation shown in Les noces rouges where Paul Delamare (Claude Piéplu) is shown to be a shrewd politician who is willing to use people around him as pawns. Paul wants to use his mayoral position for personal profit and is even willing to allow his wife to have an affair with Pierre as long as Pierre assists in Paul’s profitable ways. However, Nada is the only true political film out of the seven which depicts a violent clash between police and a terrorist group over a hostage. The film also shows the sly political games that exist within the various arms of a government that can lead to back room deals and public scapegoats.

Familiar actors and names -- Charles, Paul and Hélène

Stéphane Audran was married to Chabrol from 1964 until 1980 and is the leading star in five of the seven films. In each film, her character is given a slightly different look but it is in Les noces rouges that her character is finally unrecognizable mostly because of her brown hair. Her character is named Hélène in three of the films. In four of the films her character has a passionate love affair whereas in the fifth film her character plays a quiet obedient housewife who stands by her husband even after he cheats on her and commits a murder.

Michel Bouquet gets a similar first name of Charles in La femme infidèle and Juste avant la nuit because both characters are cut from the same cloth of guilt and inner turmoil resulting from murder. Jean Yanne’s character is called Paul in both Le Boucher and Que la bête meure but his character is not entirely similar in the two films, which is why in Le Boucher his character is given an alternate name of Popaul. Claude Piéplu’s character of a corrupt politician in Les noces rouges is strikingly similar to Jean Yanne’s character in Que la bête meure, so it is not surprizing to see Claude Piéplu’s character is also named Paul. Interestingly, Michael Duchaussoy’s character who seeks revenge for his son’s killing in Que la bête meure is also named Charles and Paul's sister-in-law is named Hélène. A character of Paul is also found in Les Bitches but in that film the character is a passive observer of sexual games in between two women.

Dominique Zardi and Henri Attal get varying roles in five and four of the seven film respectively. Both get the most screen time in Les Bitches but after that, their roles get smaller yet both are easily prominent and recognizable in their few minutes of screen time. Zardi and Attal are also found in Juste avant la nuit, La femme infidèle and Nada with Zardi getting an extra appearance in Que la bête meure.

In closing...

Que la bête meure offers the most twist and turns in the planning and execution of a calculated murder. Charles wants to avenge for his son’s murder and plans for a long painful suffering of the murderer. Armed with an accurate theory about the criminal’s identity, a stroke of luck leads Charles to the killer’s sister in law Helene. Charles seduces Helene to get to Paul but once he meets Paul and his family, he realizes that everyone despises Paul, including Paul’s son. What follows is an elaborate game where even the son is involved in the killing of his father, thereby completing the murder cycle.

Chabrol was an admirer of Hitchcock and labeled a French Hitchcock by some for his use of similar motifs of murder and mystery. However, the films in this spotlight show that Chabrol was a bit more subtle than Hitchcock in his murder films and handled the turmoil and crime in a calmer manner. The killers do not panic after they commit their crime and none of them run away. So when police want to find the murderers in La femme infidèle and Les noces rouges, they simply go their homes and arrest the criminals with no fuss. Also, like Hitchcock, Chabrol uses music effectively to alert of impending danger but unlike in Hitchcock’s films, the music in Chabrol’s films is not heightened and does not draw too much attention to events.