Best TV Shows

In the last few years, articles about the excellence of TV shows have become quite common as have the number of people who watch entire seasons of a TV show in a weekend. After managing to stay away from these shows for a while, I decided to watch a few episodes. But as it turned out in most cases, I could not stop at a few episodes and over the last 2 years, I managed to watch complete seasons of many shows.

Here is a rundown of the shows that I saw, followed by thoughts about the best shows & other aspects of the series:

24, Season 1 and 8 
Boardwalk Empire, Season 1 
Breaking Bad, Seasons 1-4, Season 5, part 1
Dexter, S3 & S4, few episodes
Game of Thrones, S1, Episodes 1-4 
Homeland, S1 
House of Cards (USA), S1
Justified, S1-S3 
Mad Men, S1-S6
Person of Interest, S1 & S2, few episodes
The Walking Dead, S1-S2, S3 Episodes 1-3 

I am currently caught up with all seasons of Mad Men & Breaking Bad. I would like to be in sync with Justified as well but since the show is not on Canadian channels, I am forced to wait for the DVD release, thereby causing a delay.

Judging Criteria for best show

All the above TV series have different stories and take varying approaches in handling their material. So it is not straight forward to compare them but I used a simple gauge to measure their performance, Excellence Per Minute (EPM) & Soap Opera Moment (SOM).

1) EPM measures the dramatic high points of the show. Every minute of the show is not excellent, no matter what some TV critics say, but one can often pick out those great jaw dropping moments which involve a great piece of acting, repeatable dialogue or a memorable event. A rough tally of all these EPMs was used to determine which show had the best content per minute.

2) SOM is a negative indicator which will to be used to subtract from a  show’s EPM.

These two criteria were used to structure the overall ranking of a show.

In addition, each show varies in length. For example, an average Mad Men and Breaking Bad episode is either 47 or 48 minutes long while a single episode of Justified averages anywhere from 38 to 48 minutes. Plus, Breaking Bad has a shorter first season while Mad Men has the most episodes to choose from. As a result, Mad Men has a benefit of having more EPMs than the other shows. On the flip side, it also has more instances to have SOMs which will undermine a lot of the good work. Therefore, in order to have some sort of relative EPM/SOM comparison, I only picked shows for which I had seen atleast one complete season. This made Dexter, Game of Thrones and Person of Interest ineligible.

The following shows were eligible to be judged:

24, Season 1 and 8 
Boardwalk Empire, Season 1 
Breaking Bad, Seasons 1-4, S5, Part I
Homeland, S1 
House of Cards (USA), S1 
Justified, S1-S3 
Mad Men, S1-S6 
The Walking Dead, S1-S2, S3, Episodes 1-3

Comparisons were be done in the following manner: using only Season 1, Seasons 1-2, Seasons 1-3, Seasons 1-4, All seasons.

Best show: Season 1 comparison

Top shows in order of EPM/SOM:

1. Mad Men 
2. Justified 
3. House of Cards 
4. Homeland 
5. Breaking Bad 
6. The Walking Dead 
7. 24 
8. Boardwalk Empire 

Season 1 of Mad Men stands head and shoulders above the competition while House of Cards has atleast 9 stellar episodes out of 13. The first 6 episodes of House of Cards offer plenty of intrigue and addictive viewing but episodes 7-10 take a slight dip before E11-13 pick up the pace and end with a flourish.

S1 of Breaking Bad only had 7 episodes and nicely set the tone but there were not enough moments to catch fire as the later seasons do.

Boardwalk Empire, which finishes bottom of the 8 shows, does feature some very good acting but the supporting cast and framework is not as solid as the other shows. Also, the show has the least memorable production values, which seems surprizing given some of the big name producers involved. For example, Boardwalk Empire uses similar shots of people walking repeatedly on the pier and some of the sets are not as polished as the other shows. The only reason 24 finishes ahead of Boardwalk Empire is because of Kiefer Sutherland’s presence.

Best Show: Seasons 1-2

1. Mad Men 
2. Justified 
3. Breaking Bad 
4. House of Cards 

Mad Men still holds the lead but Breaking Bad makes up a lot of ground and starts firing up all cylinders.

Best Show: Seasons 1-3

1. Breaking Bad 
2. Justified 
3. Mad Men 

Breaking Bad finally takes the #1 spot while Justified continues to hold down the #2 spot. Mad Men takes a slight decline even though the overall show is still strong.

Best Show: Seasons 1-4

Both Breaking Bad and Mad Men had an excellent Season 4 which made this a tough comparison.

1. Breaking Bad
2. Mad Men 
3. Justified 

It is hard to pull both Breaking Bad and Mad Men apart after the first four seasons but I have to give a slight lead to Breaking Bad.

Best Show: All Seasons 

This is where the negative factors of soap opera moments comes into play and hits Mad Men hard with weaker Seasons 5-6 taking away a lot of the positive EPMs earned from S1-4. Also, the first half of Breaking Bad's S5 features some negative SOMs. While, Justified always managed to maintain a consistent level of excellent dialogue and acting, despite having the weaker story compared to Breaking Bad & Mad Men. So this results in the following surprizing table:

1. Justified, Seasons 1-3 
2. Breaking Bad, Seasons 1-4, S5, part I 
3. Mad Men, Seasons 1-6 

At this particular point in time having seen the above seasons, Justified has to be the best show on TV as it has only featured a few weak moments over its three seasons. Even though the show has never hit many riveting dramatic high moments like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, it has never hit some of the lows like the other two shows.

Of course, this rating could change if the second half of Breaking Bad S5 features some of the sharpness and high points that S4 did. Also, Justified could finally collect some negative SOMs in S4 as it is hard to imagine how the show can continue after an excellent S3, which appears to have reached a creative zenith and offered an appropriate point to end the show as most of the negative characters had been dealt with. But Justified returned for S4 and will now have a S5 as well. It remains to be seen if the show can still maintain its consistent level of fierce word play with a breathless mix of wit, sarcasm and verbal punches.

Other notable category mentions

Best Story 

1. Breaking Bad 
2. Mad Men 
3. House of Cards 

Best Dialogues 

1. Justified 
2. House of Cards 
3. Mad Men 

Best Lead Actor/Actress 

1. Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad 
2. Jon Hamm, Don Draper 
3. Claire Danes, Homeland 
4. Kevin Spacey, House of Cards 
5. Timothy Olyphant, Justified 

Best Supporting Actor 

1. Giancarlo Esposito, Breaking Bad 
2. John Slattery, Mad Men 
3. Walton Goggins, Justified 
4. Robert Morse, Mad Men

Giancarlo Esposito’s Gus Fring has to be one of the best villains ever seen on a TV show. He appears friendly yet is a cold blooded killer capable of ripping one’s heart out (literally) in a blink of the eye.

No one may truly understands the job John Slattery’s Roger Sterling does in Mad Men but it is clear that the room gets brighter and a more fun place everytime Roger Sterling walks in.

Walter Goggins’ Boyd Crowder is a perfect foil to Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens in Justified. When Boyd Crowder & Raylan Givens are together in the frame, it appears we are watching an electric scene from a Western, where two old friends are calmly talking before they will go out and kill each other in a stand-off.

Best Supporting Actress 

1. Christina Hendricks, Mad Men 
2. Natalie Zea, Justified 
3. Jessica Paré, Mad Men 

Christina Hendricks’ deserves more screen time in Mad Men as her character is far more riveting than most of her male colleagues. Unfortunately, the writers decided to relegate Joan Harris to the sidelines and included a needless scenario where she is forced to sell herself for the sake of the firm, a situation which ensures that her character will never earn the respect she deserves.

Best Visuals 

1. The Walking Dead 
2. House of Cards 
3. Game of Thrones 

The Walking Dead maintains a darkish palette which is in keeping with the story’s theme. In fact, it is the only show which looks and feels like a film in the way the camera moves about confined space. Unlike other TV shows, The Walking Dead features many tense moments where there are no dialogues and the camera follows characters as they look for zombies or quietly make their way around a city or a confined space.

The opening few minutes of Game of Thrones are eye-popping in terms of their graphic nature & pure darkness. I have only seen a few episodes of the show so far but even that limited viewing is enough to warrant a high placing of this show in a visual comparison.

Best opening credit sequence 

1. House of Cards 
2. Boardwalk Empire 
3. Dexter

The opening credits of House of Cards appear simplistic with shots of the city at nighttime yet those shots & background music embody the cool, slick look of the show and highlight that the best moments in the episodes take place at night time, at a time when half the city is asleep and the other half is scheming.

Dexter: it is appropriate that a show about killers features an opening sequence where every object looks like a dangerous weapon capable of shedding blood.

Long form novel vs short story

Many articles about the golden age of TV emphasize how contemporary TV shows are better than movies. Such comparisons do not appear to make much sense as TV shows and movies are completely different forms. By its nature, TV shows are a long form narrative arc which span multiple seasons. The average cable TV show season (such as AMC) contains about 13 episodes, with each episode lasting anywhere from 42-50 minutes. Taking an average of 45 minute per episode means an entire season would consist of 585 minutes or 9.75 hours. Multiplying this over 4 seasons would yield a total running time of 39 hours. Such a length ensures one can follow some characters’ development in fine detail, ranging from their personal life to career, affairs to relationship issues. On the other hand, an average film runs under 2 hours. Since 2012, many Hollywood movies have come close or exceeded the 3 hour mark but an average 1 hour 45 minutes running time is still common. Given their length, most movies will not dig too deep into a character’s psyche and will instead illustrate a snapshot of their lives or a critical period in their lives. While, TV shows have the luxury to go as far back into a character’s life as they want and also have ample time to focus on multiple events in their lives. So a comparison between TV shows and films is never a like for like comparison not only because of the length but the differing approaches they take to character development and plot.

David Bordwell put these differences best a few years ago:

We get to know TV characters with an informal intimacy that is quite different from the way we relate to the somewhat outsize personalities that fill the movie screen. We learn TV characters’ pasts, their hobbies, their relations with kin, and all the other things that movies strip away unless they’re related to the plot’s through-line.

That is why TV shows with the best developed characters end up being engaging and mesmerizing as they manage to draw audience into their world and can hold their attention for long periods. Shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Justified, House of Cards (2013) & Homeland have electrifying lead characters and an excellent supporting cast that help support the framework created by the writers and directors.

A show's creative life

Although, as excellent as these TV shows are, each show still has a shelf life with an expiration date. There is a point beyond which a show’s framework cannot support the characters and still maintain a fresh, invigorating spirit. A creative story with multiple subplots can go a long way in determining how long a show can continue on air but ideally a show should end just as it reaches its creative zenith. In this way, the show will go out on top and leave audience clamoring for more. But if a TV show overextends itself, then a natural decline will start which will end up undermining all the creative work done in the past.

Mad Men is a perfect example of a show that appears to have continued past its shelf life. Season 4 of Man Men was excellent and it finished with an open ended future, with the characters looking out of the window at the wide world they wanted to conquer. It offered a perfect end point yet the show has continued for 2 more seasons and next year’s 7th season will be the final one. Season 5 of Mad Men headed off in a different and even darker direction with death and suicide thrown in with a seductive song. S5 didn’t offer the same high dramatic points as many of S1-S4 did but it was still intriguing. However, Season 6 of Mad Men has largely been a letdown. With the exception of a few episodes, including an excellent Episode 6, Season 6 has managed to reduce Mad Men to a glorified soap opera with predictable sequences of affairs and break-ups. For the most part, Season 6 lacked the creativity and spark that made the show such a riveting watch. It remains to be seen if Breaking Bad can avoid this downfall. Season 4 of Breaking Bad was also the show’s high point when Gus, probably one of the best villains ever seen on TV, was eliminated. It was natural to expect a dip after Season 4 and the first half of Breaking Bad’s Season 5 has tried to maintain the same level of excellence in terms of acting and script but the driving force has not been there. It may be premature to judge the show with the second half of Season 5 still to be played out but atleast Breaking Bad will not return for a 6th season, which means it will avoid the soap opera path that Mad Men has gone on.

And finally...an AMC Pattern

There is an interesting pattern in both AMC shows Mad Men & Breaking Bad with regards to the shows strongest and weakest moments. Both shows have magnetic leads and the best moments of each show usually occur when the camera is focused on Don Draper and Walter White. And the weakest moments in both shows take place when the camera starts to follow the character’s wives. When Breaking Bad takes a diversion to examine Skylar’s (Anna Gunn) dealings with her company, the show loses some traction. While, Mad Men loses all energy and drive when Don’s first wife Betty (January Jones) is highlighted. Interestingly, both women have an affair with men who look similar in appearance. In Breaking Bad, Skylar has an affair with her boss Ted Beneke (Christopher Cousins) while Betty falls for Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), a politician who she first starts to work with. However, the outcomes of the affairs takes a different turn as Skylar still stays with Walter while Betty divorces Don.

William A. Wellman's films

In early 2012, Sam Juliano’s excellent round-up of William A. Wellman’s films was an eye opener as it highlighted the need to visit Wellman’s films. This is the first of a multi-part examination of the cinematic works of William A. Wellman.

The Ox-Bow Incident 

No film perfectly illustrates the phrase “Shoot first, ask questions later” than The Ox-Bow Incident. As a result, this film is essential viewing in understanding how blind revenge can override common sense and result in a serious crime. In the film, this thirst for blood possesses a group of men who go hunting for a rancher’s killers even though they have not seen the rancher’s body or verified any details of the crime. The men are repeatedly asked to show patience and calm down but those words fall on deaf ears as the men’s desire to kill overrides any shred of common sense.

The Ox-Bow Incident is an uncompromising film that never lets any glimmer of hope creep in and shows how a group of men can become vicious savages when their heart is set on revenge. One can extrapolate this blind revenge quality of a small group to a nation and understand why certain nations march into war with the slightest of pretexts. This may be a 1943 film but it is highly relevant in explaining the war mentality that exists in today’s world and how nations and groups of people can easily be forced into an act of violence without any evidence of a crime.

A true masterpiece. I placed this #3 on the Top 60 Western countdown.

Yellow Sky 

A visually stunning Western that features some of the most rugged and brutal terrain ever shown on cinema. After a group of bank robbers go on the run with their latest loot, their journey brings them face to face with a flat endless unforgiving landscape. They don’t have a choice to turn around so they head off into the flat land only to slowly get beat up by the heat. The horses start collapsing and the men are on the verge of death. Their spirits are lifted when they see a town in the horizon. But as it turns out, the town named “Yellow Sky” is a ghost town. The once prosperous town is empty and falling apart, mirroring the men’s situation. A young woman with a gun appears and tells the gang that a spring is nearby. After the men have had some water in their system, they start getting their strength back and discover that the young woman lives with her grandfather in a house. Examination of the surroundings leads the gang to conclude that there is gold buried in the mountains which is why the grandfather and the girl have not left. The thirst for gold results in fissures in the group and loyalties are put to the test.

Placed at #14 in my top 60 Westerns.

Track of the Cat 

This 1954 film features the most unusual villain in any Western film because the killing is not done by a human but instead by a panther. As a result, this film takes on a man vs animal scenario plus the cold snow background adds a man vs nature conflict to the mix. On top of that, family fights and tensions result in plenty of internal turmoil and personal demons which have to be conquered. This could have been a very dark feature but the color cuts through some of the tension.

The Conquerors

The rise and decline of America from the 1880’s to 1930’s is illustrated through the fortunes and struggles of a single family. Using a few characters, the film manages to depict the rise of a banking empire, followed by a stock market rise and crash, the backdrop of war and the progress caused by the railway. As family members age, the nation goes through a recursive pattern of excessive growth followed by an economic crash, immediately followed by another growth. After each crash, people call it the end and claim that America is finished but the nation recovers again. This 1932 film can be used to draw a lot of parallels with America post-2008, especially in showing the closed factories, no help wanted signs and people struggling to find work after a stock market crash. The stock market bubble is shown literally when a stack of money is shown growing until it bursts and in another sequence, money is shown to be piling up to become a large tower that comes crashing down.

Essential Western Films

Cue music. The camera moves slowly from the muddy ground to the tension packed air above. Two men stand on opposite sides, facing each other. Each is dressed in Stetson hats, suede vests, collared shirt, jeans with leather chaps, leather belt with a big shiny buckle, gun holster around their waist and leather boots. The man on the left is a stranger to the town (the man with no name); he has an unshaven look with a red scarf tied around his neck. The one on the right is the town sheriff, a man intoxicated with greed; the sheriff is wearing a bola tie around his neck and a shiny badge on his shirt. The two opponents have their hands suspended in mid-air, around their waist, aching to pull their guns out. And then the clock strikes noon, and with a flash of the hands and silver bullets breaking the tension in the air, the standoff is over. After the smoke clears, only one man is left standing. The outlaw has prevailed and order is restored in the West. -- Sachin Gandhi, "Stetson Hats, Smoky Bandits and a century of gun toting vigilantes", NFDC's On the Western Front, Pune International Film Festival 2003. 

Growing up, westerns were one of my favourite film genres and the above words aptly describe images I formed of a typical Western film. Of course, as a young teenager I knew nothing about the sub-genres and whether a Western film was Spaghetti, Curry, Acid, Revisionist or a Classic. All I knew were the two opposing characters, the Outlaw and a Sheriff with a badge. As I grew up and expanded my film viewing scope, I forgot about Westerns until 2003 when the knowledgeable film critic Deepa Gahlot mentioned that the Pune International Film Festival was doing a retrospective on Westerns. She asked if I wanted to submit an article on the genre for the National Film Development Corporation Limited (NFDC) festival magazine titled On the Western Front which she was editing. I didn’t hesitate in writing the above article Stetson Hats, Smoky Bandits and a century of gun toting vigilantes and as it turned out, it was one of my earliest film articles to be published in print format.

I again put the genre aside until 2012 when Sam Juliano’s trip to see spaghetti Westerns at the Film Forum inspired me to do a quick spotlight on the Da Pasta sub-genre. My plan was to do a proper spotlight on Westerns in the summer of 2013. So I was naturally delighted when a few months ago Sam mentioned that Wonders in the Dark would be doing a top Western films countdown in the fall of 2013. He invited people to submit their ballots for a top 60 Western list by August 1, after which the results would be tallied and essays printed on the website starting September. In order to do justice to the genre, I viewed a total of 82 Westerns over the last two months, revisiting many works and viewing essential works for the first time. Unfortunately, there are still a dozen key films that I have missed seeing. And due to personal commitments, I had to wrap up my viewing this week and send in my ballot. For now, the following top 60 list is provided without any reviews or notes. But over the next few months, I will be adding some comments on the website about some of these excellent films.

Top 60 Westerns: Spaghetti, Curry, Acid & a whole lot of Whiskey

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)
2. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, Sergio Leone)
3. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943, William A. Wellman)
4. The Gunfighter (1950, Henry King)
5. My Darling Clementine (1946, John Ford)
6. Decision at Sundown (1957, Budd Boetticher)
7. Sholay (1975, Ramesh Sippy)
8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)
9. The Westerner (1940, William Wyler)
10. Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)
11. For a Few Dollars More (1965, Sergio Leone)
12. The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)
13. Ride Lonesome (1959, Budd Boetticher)
14. Yellow Sky (1948, William W. Wellman)
15. Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
16. Johnny Guitar (1954, Nicholas Ray)
17. 3 Bad Men (1926, John Ford)
18. Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)
19. The Professionals (1966, Richard Brooks)
20. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges)
21. Shane (1953, George Stevens)
22. 3:10 to Yuma (1957, Delmer Daves)
23. Winchester ’73 (1950, Anthony Mann)
24. High Plains Drifter (1973, Clint Eastwood)
25. Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)
26. Jeremiah Johnson (1972, Sydney Pollack)
27. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
28. The Shootist (1976, Don Siegel)
29. The Great Silence (1968, Sergio Corbucci)
30. The Proposition (2005, John Hillcoat)
31. Keoma (1976, Enzo G. Castellari)
32. Destry Rides Again (1939, George Marshall)
33. Hang ‘em High (1968, Ted Post)
34. Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)
35. Seven Men from Now (1956, Budd Boetticher)
36. Warlock (1959, Edward Dmytryk)
37. The Magnificent Seven (1960, John Sturges)
38. High Noon (1952, Fred Zinnemann)
39. Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller)
40. Comanche Station (1960, Budd Boetticher)
41. Pale Rider (1985, Clint Eastwood)
42. Heaven’s Gate (1980, Michael Cimino)
43. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, Andrew Dominik)
44. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, Clint Eastwood)
45. A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone)
46. Django (1966, Sergio Corbucci)
47. The Naked Spur (1953, Anthony Mann)
48. Wagonmaster (1950, John Ford)
49. Dances with Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner)
50. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)
51. Meek’s Cutoff (2010, Kelly Reichardt)
52. Tumbleweeds (1925, King Baggot)
53. The Furies (1950, Anthony Mann)
54. Rancho Notorious (1952, Fritz Lang)
55. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973, Sam Peckinpah)
56. The Shooting (1966, Monte Hellman)
57. The Big Trail (1930, USA, Raoul Walsh)
58. Silverado (1985, Lawrence Kasdan)
59. The Man from Laramie (1955, Anthony Mann)
60. El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Neighbouring Sounds

Neighbouring Sounds (O som ao redor) (2012, Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho)

This IS a film. Aided by a rich sound design & visuals, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film ensures an immersive cinematic experience. A viewer gets a ringside seat in one of Recife’s neighbourhoods to witness the daily activities of the residents, including their morning and nightly routines. Depicting the everyday reality would have been good enough, but Kleber Mendonça Filho enhances the experience by adding layers of memories and nightmares with a few smart cuts. As a result, the multi-layered film contains a subtle sense of dread but in a much subtler note than Michael Haneke's Caché. This means that even when viewers witness harmless events in and around an apartment complex, there is a sense that something sinister is going to happen. The viewer can't be passive and is instead forced to examine each frame and its accompanying sound to know what the characters are up to.

The Recife setting of a closed off apartment complex echoes the gated colonies of New Delhi, another city where each street is constantly watched by a number of people, ranging from drivers, cleaners to night watchmen. In New Delhi, there is a tension between urban and rural because people leave their village and smaller towns for the city on a daily basis. As Neighbouring Sounds progresses, it also becomes clear that there is a link between some of the city residents and the countryside and their actions committed in a rural region will result in an opposite reaction in the city.

2012 ---- 2013

After I saw Once Upon a Time in Anatolia at the end of April 2012, I wondered if there would be another film in 2012 which would knock the Turkish film from the #1 spot in my best of the year list. In the end, only one film, Holy Motors, managed to place above Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Now I feel the same about Neighbouring Sounds and wonder if any film in 2013 will remove it from my #1 spot for 2013's end of the year list. Of course, Neighbouring Sounds is a 2012 film and if I had seen it last year, it would have finished at #1, easily moving past Holy Motors. And Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a 2011 and it would have surely finished #1 had I seen it in the year of its release. As it stands, for the second straight year, two worthy foreign films are pushed into another calendar year’s evaluations.

The rest of the world have 7 months to deliver an excellent film otherwise the Brazilian film Neighbouring Sounds will be #1 end of 2013.

 

Rituparno Ghosh

I am absolutely shocked by the sudden death of Rituparno Ghosh, one of the best contemporary Indian directors, who passed away at the young age of 49.

My view of Rituparno changed significantly with 2006's Dosar, an absolutely lovely film. But even more memorable was the experience of helping acquire this film for the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF). It turned out that CIFF had the international premier of Dosar.

Back in 2005, I was tipped off about Dosar by a good friend who is a film critic in Mumbai. Then in early 2006, my friend put me in touch with a Bengali critic who provided me Rituparno's home phone number in Kolkata. I still remember being nervous about having to phone him at home. In the early 2000's, my attempts to interview Bollywood actors was a horrible experience. I was once shouted at and treated rudely by a famous Bollywood actor's wife. And Rituparno Ghosh was an exceptional director with multiple award winning films to his name in 2006, with Utsab, Choker Bali & Raincoat. So I was not sure what to expect.

The phone rang and someone picked up. I asked for Rituparno and was told to wait. The phone must have been placed on a table as I could hear the morning street noise heard on most Indian streets. Those street noises of passing cars, horns, vendors and birds chirping allowed me to calm my nerves a bit. After a brief passage of time, Rituparno came on the phone and his calm soothing voice immediately put me at ease. He was incredibly polite and so respectful. Even though he was not aware of CIFF, he didn't hesitate about having his film premier at our festival. In fact, he even talked about flying over to present his film but that didn't happen as our festival dates didn't mesh with his schedule. Rituparno put me in contact with the film's production company, Planman Motion Pictures, who were exceptionally co-operative and friendly in flying the film over. I never interacted with Rituparno after that and never got a chance to tell him how much our audience loved his film.

Rituparno Ghosh's films have a poetic touch to them, with some films depicting riveting dialogue one often finds in plays. Plus, he also managed to extract some memorable performances from Prasenjit Chatterjee, Konkona Sen Sharma, Raima Sen, Kiron Kher, Amitabh Bachchan, Annu Kapoor, Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. He will be sorely missed.

CUFF 2013

This past April marked the 10th anniversary of the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) and the festival celebrated it by having the strongest lineup in their history. The remarkable aspect about the selection was that it felt like someone read my mind in booking the films. 7 titles from my must-see list played at the festival. I had been eagerly waiting to see Berberian Sound Studio, Computer Chess, Frances Ha, Pieta, Sightseers, The Act of Killing and Upstream Color. So I was delighted CUFF booked them. Unfortunately in the end, I could only see 5 of those titles:

Berberian Sound Studio (2012, UK, Peter Strickland)
Upstream Color (2013, USA, Shane Carruth)
Pieta (2012, South Korea, Kim-ki Duk)
The Act of Killing (2012, USA, Joshua Oppenheimer)
Computer Chess(2013, USA, Andrew Bujalski)

I also missed out on Clip, Vanishing Waves, The Rambler and The Final Member, films that got really strong word of mouth buzz.

Here are some brief notes on the films, arranged in order of preference.

1) The Act of Killing

Even though the documentary is rooted in Indonesia, it is universal in depicting how men kill with the aid of media and politicians. The depiction of torture/killing could easily be set in Latin/South America/Africa while the media manipulation applies to most nations. But no individuals will ever admit their crime with such brutal honesty as those in The Act of Killing, making it a living digital document. The killers walk about the city freely, sometimes boasting about their murders. Such honesty ensures the film hits like a ton of bricks but it is one of the most essential and relevant docs ever made.

2) Computer Chess

A playful look at various computer programmer personalties, ranging from the very shy to those whose supreme confidence borders on arrogance. The black and white visuals coupled with the video footage give the film a 1980’s look and feel, at a time when computers were bulky machines that required some effort to transport from room to room. The humor is derived from the collection of eccentric personalities and as a result, the scenarios feel natural and not forced. As a bonus, the film also literally depicts HAL's birth.

3) Berberian Sound Studio

An eerie slow-burning film that smartly uses sound manipulation & cues to abstract a horror genre. As a result, one can appreciate the few elements that make a horror film nerve racking and terrifying. This aspect is reinforced by the decision to not show the film-within-film, thereby letting viewers fill in their own worst images.

4) Upstream Color

A multi-shaped puzzle that assembles the look and feel of a Lynchian nightmare with a Malickian landscape. The film manages to find a balance between sci-fi, horror and nature by rapid fire editing and a score that contrasts the mood of the images that the viewer is seeing. The film’s two editors, Shane Carruth and David Lowery, cover a lot of ground in the opening minutes. One can make 2-3 features from the opening 20 minutes of Upstream Color. After the fast paced opening, the film settles down a little, allowing viewers to get a brief footing before heading off in a different direction altogether.

Credit must be given to Andrew Sensenig whose wordless performance speaks volumes and lends the film a graceful covering. Also, Upstream Color also extends Godard's quote: "All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl" plus some pigs & worms.

5) Pieta

I believe Kim Ki-duk made this film on a bet. He must have wagered with friends that he could make a sloppy film in a few days and throw enough heavy references to fool critics into thinking the film meant something. And his ploy appears to have paid off with the top prize at Venice 2012, even though festival rules prevented The Master from getting that prize. Still, it is hard to imagine that jury, which consisted of Michael Mann, Matteo Garrone, Pablo Trapero, Marina Abramovic, Ursula Meier, Ari Folman, Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Laetitia Casta, Samantha Morton, could not have picked any other film if they could not select The Master. Maybe the jury picked Pieta to prove a point that if they could not pick the best film in the competition, they would pick the worst. But given the praise Pieta has gotten in some quarters, it does feel like maybe some in the jury gave the prize on merit.

The entire film feels like a joke on the audience. Pieta contains shocking scenes for no reason other than to get a reaction from people while the acting and editing give it a B-grade appearance. As painful as the experience proved to be, I managed to get through it. Thankfully, the many other stellar films at CUFF quickly washed away the experience of Pieta.

The Cinema of Neveldine/Taylor

With the exception of Ghost Rider, the remaining three films of Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor are perfect examples of Video Game Cinema.

Crank (2006)
Crank: High Voltage (2009)
Gamer (2009)
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)

The premise of Crank is setup like a video game where the main character Chev (Jason Statham) can only go for a limited distance before he needs to recharge himself otherwise he will lose his single life, thereby ending the film. The reason Chev needs to recharge is to keep his adrenaline level up otherwise the drugs injected in his body will slowly stop his heart. He can keep his adrenaline level up either by natural or artificial means such as usage of epinephrine. Such a premise allows the movie to freely incorporate whatever is required for him to survive. This means Chev pumps himself full of drugs, gets into fights, steals a car (Grand Theft Auto anyone?) in order to move to a new location in search of an antidote. The script also includes Chev’s attempted rape of his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) so that he can keep his heart from slowing down. Chev’s aggressive sexual act starts out as rape but is turned into a semi-consensual act after Eve stops fighting back, much to the shock of an onlooking bus of tourists.

By giving the film a video game premise, the directors get away by including any over the top sequence in the script which ends up making the movie critic-proof. Any questions about the film’s logic can be countered with the explanation that Chev’s desperate need to survive mandates inclusion of abundant excess and crudity. For example, if Chev doesn’t try to rape his girlfriend, then it is game over. If he does not inject himself with drugs, then lights out. On a scale of 1-10 for crudity, Crank breaks the scale with a whopping 11. Incredibly, Crank 2 shatters the scale even further and outdoes the first movie. Although, Crank 2 just follows the template laid out by Crank and the only variation is to ensure every aspect from the first movie is super-sized in the second one. And to hammer the point home, a mock Godzilla like fight scene is included in Crank 2.

Crank and Crank 2 are single player video games where one character has to navigate his way through an urban jungle filled with danger at every corner. Both movies also contain moments when Chev is depicted like a pixelated 1980’s style arcade game. On the other hand, Gamer is a multi-player game designed to follow the structure of a MMORPG, a game style which allows multiple players to control different online characters. A movie based on MMORPG would have been complicated enough but Neveldine & Taylor layer the movie with a “Simulation” style video game & wrap everything around a hyper-interactive social media world. The end result is a movie that bombards a viewer with a stream of information which is delievered in tiny chunks via fast cuts. Such an editing style requires a viewer to take some time to absorb the material and get used to the style. Only once the gaming style is absorbed, the smart social commentary becomes apparent. The directors want to convey a world where the line between an online virtual personality and a real persona is slowly erased. One can even say that the current world is close to what Gamer shows but the movie was released back in 2009, at a time when online gaming was growing substantially but bandwidth sucking smart phones and tablets were still in their infancy.

Fast Cuts

Crank, Crank 2 & Gamer all feature rapid-fire editing which at times appears to contain multiple cuts every second. Such an editing style results in a disorienting effect which does not make for easy viewing. These three movies are on the opposite spectrum of Slow Cinema and demonstrate that hyperactive films which can’t maintain focus for even a second result in an experience where the movies running time appears a lot longer than it actually is. One can only painlessly finish watching these movies if one is able to tune in to their rhythm.

On the other hand, Ghost Rider has no such accelerated video game style. Of course, given the material’s comic book source, such a style would not have made sense. Still, nothing in Ghost Rider indicates any whiff of Neveldine-Taylor's work. The only way one can even form a link to this movie with the directors is by the ending of Crank 2 which features Chev completely in flames showing the finger to the camera. The image of Chev’s head in flames evokes Ghost Rider so it is not a surprize that the directors next project was the Marvel Comic book character.

One can understand what the directors are trying to do with their style but the movies require an investment from a viewer. The blistering style also makes it is hard to recommend their films to anyone. Although, there are plenty of excellent articles that one can read about the directors style and save the trouble of watching any of their films.

Essential Reading

Adam Nayman article perfectly summaries the cinema of Neveldine & Taylor.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Gamer.

Steven Shaviro has a 10,000 word entry on Gamer!

3D challenge

Ghost Rider was in 3D but thankfully the other three movies were in 2D.  The first 15 minutes of Gamer are far more challenging to keep one's headache in check than any 3D movie out there. However, Crank 3 will be in 3D and that will result in a massive viewing challenge for those who see it in a cinema.

Video Game Cinema

“Video Game Cinema” doesn’t only refer to movies based on video games but instead applies to movies which are constructed and edited like a video game. Video games have come a long way from the 1980’s style arcade action and shoot’ em games. Contemporary video games can be divided into multiple genres, contain numerous characters & complicated plots and often include a cinematic sequences called cutscene, which fills in the backstory about characters and their mission. Also, with the rapid evolution in computer graphics, most games feature life-like characters modeled after actors whose movements and facial expressions are captured to create authentic video game replicas. 

Although, as video games get more complicated and involve multiple role playing characters, most video game movies follow an arcade style plot where a single character achieves small goals leading to a final mission completion sequence. The Resident Evil series, Raid: The Redemption and the two Crank movies are examples of such video game cinema which feature a single character moving from one crisis to another. Gamer is also an example of a video game cinema but it is the only one in this spotlight which contains a richly defined complicated world with multiple characters competing for control in a single frame.

Part I of this spotlight looks at all five Resident Evil movies while Part II will cover the cinema of Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor.

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Resident Evil Movies

Any discussion about video game cinema has to start with Paul W.S Anderson. He directed Mortal Kombat in 1995, at a time when video game movies rarely made their way into cinemas. In 2002, he directed the first Resident Evil movie and has written all the movies in the series and directed 3 of the 5 movies so far. He will also direct the 6th movie in the series due in 2014.

Resident Evil (2002, Paul W.S. Anderson)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004, Alexander Witt)

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007, Russell Mulcahy)

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010, Paul W.S. Anderson)

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012, Paul W.S. Anderson)

The movies are based on a video game and for the most part, all 5 features follow a video game format where one central character, Alice (Milla Jovovich), moves from one action sequence to another. The first movie contains the most dialogue as it outlines the origins of the T-virus and how the infection ended up getting released from the Umbrella Corporation's underground facility (Hive).

Each movie recaps prior events so a viewer does not need to worry about seeing all the previous movies. Subsequent movies provide a little more information about Alice's past but for the most part, the movies are about Alice killing infected and mutated creatures. The subtitles in the movies refer to the creatures as zombies but that word is never used to describe the flesh eating walking dead in any of the movies.

The on-screen action is kept simplistic like an old fashioned arcade game where there are easily classifiable targets that have to be taken out. Once Alice or her allies kill the creatures, then they proceed to the next frame where more creatures await. Resident Evil: Extinction has some outdoor shots in the desert where multiple characters try to kill the zombies but usually Alice and just an additional character is present to do the killing. Alice finds new helpers as the movies progress with Claire (Ali Larter) doing her part in Extinction and Afterlife and Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) in Retribution. This is also a rare series where woman take centre stage both in terms of heroes and villains. The villain of the first four movies is the Umbrella Corporation headed by Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) but the fifth movie finally reveals that the Red Queen computer, shown in the first movie, has gone rogue and taken over. As the name indicates, Red Queen is a female and her personification is a little girl. 

Throughout the series, villains often become allies to Alice in taking out a bigger threat. Or characters that were dead often return back in different roles. Each movie has a well defined end goal that must be reached and the returning characters either assist or stand in the way. The last two movies Afterlife and Retribution are basically cliffhangers that end by revealing that a bigger threat lays waiting.

The 5th movie, Retribution, so far is the high point of the series video game look and feel. By showing the computer as the villain, characters are given a clue as to where their next threat will come from.

For example, as Alice and Ada move through the city simulated landscape (New York), Red Queen’s voice indicates that the New York sequence has been initiated, alerting Alice and Ada that threats are on the way.

The audience also gets their cue as to a fight will take place. Also, just like in a video game, the music changes when a villain is about to enter the frame. Basically, Retribution feels like seeing a video game in demo mode.

All the movies don’t get good reviews because if one treats them as conventional movies, then it is frustrating to watch repetitious sequences over and over. On the other hand, if one sees the movies as simply live video games, then it allows one to get through them. Also, one can see the influence of some shots from this series in The Walking Dead. The Resident Evil movies feature overhead shots showing cluster of zombies narrowing on a target. Such shots can be found in Season One of The Walking Dead. Of course, the TV series has more focus on character development and dialogue driven scenarios whereas Resident Evil strips most of the dialogue out.

Other reading

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.

R. Emmet Sweeney and Dave Kehr.

Universal Soldier

Like most friends, I saw the first Universal Soldier (1992) and ignored all subsequent sequels, including the official ones (three after 1992) and two TV movies. However, intrigued by some of the critical traction that Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning got in 2012, I decided to see both of the Universal Soldier films directed by John Hyams and revisited the first film to put everything in context.

Universal Solider (1992, Roland Emmerich)
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009, John Hyams)
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012, John Hyams)

Universal Soldier starts off in the Vietnam war, a starting point for many cinematic stories over the years, where a fight between two soldiers Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Scott (Dolph Lundgren) results in both of their deaths. Both dead bodies are indoctrinated into a US military program and brought back as Universal Soldiers or UniSols, android fighting machines. The concept of UniSols follows the Robocop pattern in reanimating a dead character to fight justice. In Robocop, Murphy is meant to fight crime on the streets and keep civil justice. Whereas, UniSols are meant to safeguard nationalistic interests. Both Murphy and Luc are also united by their desire to return home. Despite the efforts of scientists to erase both Murphy & Luc's memories, a tiny portion of their past lingers on and manages to guide their moral compass. This makes both of these characters heroes, who try to do some good despite being programmed to kill without question. At the end of Universal Soldier, Luc does reach home. But a happy ending in Hollywood is never a guarantee for conclusion and Luc was called into action in 1999’s Universal Soldier: The Return.

Two TV movies filled the gap without JCVD and Dolph Lundgren until John Hyams resurrected the series in 2009. Hyams rightly decided that both JCVD and Dolph Lundgren are not as young as they once were and instead made Andrei Arlovski’s UniSol the central character. Arlovski’s character is a pure representation of what a Unisol was originally meant to be as he has no moral compass and is free to kill without any filters. Regeneration is certainly a major improvement over the 1992 movie and takes the series into a much darker territory. Still, the 2009 film cannot predict the direction that Day of Reckoning jumps towards.

If Regeneration showed shades of darkness, then Day of Reckoning is a full blown nightmare that is only connected to the Universal Solider series in name. The 2012 film does feature Luc Deveraux and Scott but Luc is nothing like the past films. He is more like Tony Todd's Candyman character who appears either inside John’s (Scott Adkins) head or in his house. The Candyman sequence is shown early in the film and follows a point of view nightmarish start reminiscent of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void. Day of Reckoning then stitches a David Lynch feel and mood throughout the film and includes nods to conspiracy stories and a few horror films along with the way, such as the famous axe breaking door scene of The Shining. It is impressive how many diverse ideas and sub-plots Day of Reckoning incorporates and it might have been better if the film had shed the Universal Soldier tag. As it stands, the UniSol reference will prevent others from checking out the film. The open ended nature of Day of Reckoning suggests a future possibility of another film but more importantly, it will be curious to see what John Hyams directs next.

Related Reading

The following three articles played a big part in my viewing these films.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's excellent mubi review.
Ian Buckwalter's review in The Atlantic.
Bilge Ebiri.

Lisandro Alonso

Some quick notes on all four of Lisandro Alonso’s features.

La Libertad (2001)
Los Muertos (2004)
Fantasma (2006)
Liverpool (2008)

All four films focus on a lonely male as he navigates his way through an environment. With the exception of Fantasma, the environment in the three other films is nature, free from the reach of any city, ranging from farmland, forests and mountains.

For a brief moment at the start of Liverpool, the camera is in a confined space but once Farrel leaves the ship, the camera soaks in the open spaced surroundings like it does in La Liberdad and Los Muertos.

Fantasma is the only film where a character, Argentino Vargas, the actor from Los Muertos, wanders within a confined space.

Argentino walks in a cinema hall before settling to watch a special screening of Los Muertos. The cinema hall setting is also the only city location depicted in any of Alonso’s films. However, the city is only viewed in tiny glances through the glass panels in the cinema’s lobby. Even this tiny glimpse of city life is a shocking aspect to find in an Alonso film. Lisandro’s other three features are devoid of people rushing from one place to another so it feels unnatural to see people walking at a brisk pace through the glass panels in Fantasma.

Fantasma

Even though Fantasma stands apart from the other three journey features, it forms a closed loop with Alonso’s first 2 features. Both the actors of La Libertad (Misael Saavedra) and Los Muertos (Argentino Vargas) are present in Fantasma while the cinema hall is playing Los Muertos. If Liverpool had not taken place in an open space, then Fantasma would have formed a natural trilogy with La Libertad and Los Muertos. However, in terms of location and style, La Libertad, Los Muertos and Liverpool form a natural trilogy. La Liberdad, Los Muertos and Liverpool evoke Bresson by depicting emotionless characters and stripping out any irrelevant details from the frame. The following quote from Robert Bresson applies to these three features:

One does not create by adding but by taking away.

Alonso’s films have removed any distractions from the frame thereby allowing an intense focus on a singular character.

Fantasma also deviates from the style of the other three features. The cinema hall in Fantasma evokes Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn and the large glass panels in the lobby and stairs remind of Tati.

Fantasma

Tati in Playtime

James Quandt’s excellent essay outlines this Tati connection in splendid detail:

But, oddly, it is Tati who most comes to mind in surveying the San Martín’s modernist horror of malfunctioning elevators, confounding staircases, and harshly lit hallways, rooms too ample or cramped, humanity subjugated to decor, architecture, mazes, and machinery. Like Tati, Alonso sees in this surrounding a kind of elegant inutility, a vast contraption in which people stumble, turn back, retrace their steps, push buttons that don’t work, tentatively position themselves in spaces not designed for their being, much less comfort. And, again like Tati, he embeds this vision of errant modernity in a musique concrète of mechanical sound: outside traffic; the whoosh, buzz, and hum of elevators; a computer whirring to life; an incessant, unanswered telephone; the squeal of an unoiled door; the roar of the projector showing Vargas the rural world of Los Muertos, with its contrasting quiet and cacophony of birds.

Alonso's new film (2014)

At first, the casting of Viggo Mortensen in Alonso's new film seemed to indicate a continuation of the lonely men journey structure but the following synopsis on imdb indicates otherwise:

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

Related Reading

James Quandt’s article.

Michael Guillen’s interview.

Srikanth (JAFB) on the films of Alonso.

Cinema Scope’s interview.

Gabe Klinger’s 2005 article anticipated the rise of Alonso.

Paul Verhoeven

It is easy to label Paul Verhoeven’s films as a cinema of excessive sex, blood and violence. However, these tags just refer to the surface of the films. Revisiting the following three films revealed the presence of multiple layers underneath:

Robocop (1987)
Total Recall (1990)
Starship Troopers (1997)

Robocop and Starship Troopers are razor sharp satires that are packed with social, economic and political commentary. On first glance, these references are overshadowed by over the top sequences which grab all the attention and become the film’s major talking points, such as the extremely violent killing of Officer Murphy (Peter Weller) in Robocop. Murphy’s killing is brutal but it fits in the film’s context of portraying a society where violence is used to drive all social, economic and political policies. For example, brutal force is used to evict the poor out of their homes in order to build a safer and cleaner new Detroit. And the residents have no choice but to use violent means to fight back. The rise of violence & crime is in turn used to justify the need for building more destructive killing machines so that peace can finally be achieved. RoboCop shows a society that is constantly in war with itself and depicts how once the war machine is started, it will never stop. The faces making the political decisions will change but an endless cycle of building bigger weapons will continue. In this regard, the film correctly anticipates the rise of private corporations in getting lucrative government contracts to protect society.

RoboCop not only targets private security firms but throws its net over all corporations. The appropriately named Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has its hands in every aspect of society and citizens can’t escape its influence. OCP not only thrusts its products down citizens throats but also creates weapons for them to kill or be killed. The media is not spared either and the hilariously depicted fake newscasts in both RoboCop and Starship Troopers shows how a culture of fear is created and controlled by a small group. When RoboCop was released back in 1987, news channels didn’t run 24 hours / 7 days a week. So the film can be credited as correctly predicting the state of contemporary news channels which repeat the same stories over and over again.

RoboCop and Total Recall also show that policies which deny basic equality to all citizens will force the have nots to fight for their rights. And when these citizens demand their rights, they will be labelled as troublemakers and attempt to be crushed by those in power. The enforcement of force is made possible by a collusion between government, corporations and certain elements of the police.

Even though Paul Verhoeven didn’t direct RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, those later films continue the story, themes and style explored by Verhoeven’s film. For example, in RoboCop 2 Murphy’s programming is altered by those in charge to make him more friendly so that he is not seen as a cold killing machine but instead a friendly killing machine. This example is another piece of witty satire which shows how corporations use media spin and public relations to shift public opinion.

Other related reading

Aaron Light has an excellent essay about Verhoeven & his "Cinema of Excess".

Robert Koehler’s interview with Paul Verhoeven.

Remake

It is not surprizing that the remake of RoboCop (2014) will be directed by José Padilha whose Elite Squad films contain a biting social commentary about violence between the poor and the police. Padilha’s films don’t feature any satire so his selection appears to indicate that the remake will be a more serious and darker examination of society.

Nacer Khemir's Desert Trilogy

Nacer Khemir’s Desert Trilogy:

Wanderers of the Desert (1986)
The Dove’s Lost Necklace (1992)
Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul (2005)

All three films have a wonderful myth + fable structure which incorporates motifs of journey and death. Music is also a key component and plays the biggest part in Bab’Aziz, a film infused with Sufi music. As the title of the trilogy indicates, the films are set against a desert background. In an interview, Nacer Khemir explains the beauty that comes with filming in a desert:

There is a Tuareg proverb that says: "There are lands that are full of water for the well-being of the body, and lands that are full of sand for the well-being of the soul." The desert is a literary field and a field of abstraction at the same time. It is one of the rare places where the infinitely small, that is a speck of sand, and the infinitely big, and that is billions of specks of sand, meet. It is also a place where one can have a true sense of the Universe and of its scale. The desert also evokes the Arabic language, which bears the memory of its origins. In every Arabic word, there is a bit of flowing sand. It is also one of the main sources of Arabic love poetry. In all of my three movies, which form a trilogy, The Wanderers of the Desert, The Dove’s Lost Necklace, and today, Bab’Aziz, The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul, the desert is a character in itself.

The Wanderers of the Desert

A bus drops a teacher off in the middle of the desert. The village that he is looking for doesn’t appear to exist.

But it does. The village exists even though it is mostly empty because the village men often disappear to wander off in the desert for days on end.

The concept of a journey is a key ingredient in The Wanderers of the Desert where characters yearn to leave for far-off lands, especially for Cordoba which is seen as the ultimate pilgrimage.

 
Myths and fables are found in almost every frame as the film feels similar to the multiple layered structure of One Thousand and One Nights. In fact, at certain moments, fairy tales manifest themselves into reality such as the appearance of Sinbad’s boat:

The Dove’s Lost Neckless

Hassan (Navin Chowdhry), a calligrapher, queries many wise men to gain their wisdom about the meaning of love. One elder tells Hassan that the Arabic language has 60 different words to describe love. At first, Hassan believes the discovery of all 60 words would bring him closer to an understanding of love. Unfortunately, he remains stuck at 35 words but his hopes are boosted by finding a single partly burnt page from a book about love. That page makes makes him yearn for the “Princess of Samarkand”, who haunts his dreams. He goes on a quest to find the book and perhaps his princess along the way.

The film is garnished with many thoughtful philosophical dialogues:

The Beginning is easy but the end is hard.

The above words are applicable to life and stories in general but they also perfectly describe the structure of all three films. The beginning of each film appears to be simplistic but the complexity of life is only revealed as the characters undertake a physical, emotional and spiritual journey. At the end of each journey, death greets one of the characters. But this death is not meant to be a final stop but just one of the paths in a cosmic journey that spans generations.

People often run after a dream. One day they run across it and don’t recognize it.

A basic truth where a person often loses sight of their goal during an exhaustive quest.

Bab’Aziz: The Prince who Contemplated his Soul

Unlike other trilogies, the third film of the Desert trilogy, Bab’Aziz, is the strongest work.

This is because the desert’s beauty comes through in virtually frame of Bab’Aziz. Also, the Sufi music against the background of giant sand dunes makes for a calm and mesmerizing experience.

Once Upon a Time....

These four words have started countless stories but they appropriately describe the Desert Trilogy as well. Each film contains scenes of story telling that peels off multiple layers of fables, myths or reality. Often, a character is mesmerized by a story they are listening to and slowly find themselves drifting into the realms of myth, where they in-turn become characters in stories that will be narrated to future generations.

Nacer Khemir deserves a lot of credit for creating a visually rich form of an ancient story telling tradition that is mostly lost in contemporary cinema.

It also seems appropriate that I came across two films in the trilogy in an old fashioned way by flipping through DVD racks in the library. With the disappearance of almost all rental DVD stores in the city, finding new films is down to online digital files. But my discovery of The Wanderers in the Desert and Bab’Aziz evoked memories of a time when DVD stores and the library played a big part in discovering gems. “Once Upon a time....” indeed!

Essential Reading

Chale Nafus, Director of Programming for the Austin Film Society, perfectly describes The Wanderers in the Desert, including the Arabian Nights references.

The Right IP Address

A few years ago, Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki’s Foreign Parts got some critical love and was a must-see film. The documentary’s setting in the Queen’s auto parts lanes besides the New York Metz stadium was also the setting for Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, a film which made it across Canada. However, Foreign Parts has remained foreign and not touched my local Canadian shores theatrically or rental DVD. Currently, Amazon.com streams the film for $2.99 (USD), a few weeks ago that price was $2.35. The website also sells a digital copy of the film for $9.99. But one can only rent or buy this digitial film if they live in the US. The only legal option for me to view Foreign Parts is to buy the film's DVD. Amazon.ca sells a DVD of Foreign Parts in Canada for $29.71 (CAD). Hardly a fair differential to view the same film but people in Canada are used to paying more for everything. Even Canadian oil is cheaper in the United States than in the Canadian spots that extract the crude variety out of the ground.

Often excuses of tariffs, taxes, population and currency disparity is used to explain the price difference. None of these excuses matter when it comes to a digital streaming file which does not have to travel across a physical border. In fact, the price difference feels worse when it comes to streaming a digital file from a remote server which may be located in one common location. For example, iTunes US rents most new releases for $3.99 (USD) while the same film costs $4.99 (CAD) in iTunes Canada. At the current currency rate, USD 3.99 = CAD 4.09. And this ignores the fact that for most of last year, the Canadian dollar was on par or above the American dollar.

Then there are the lack of legal streaming options in Canada compared to the US. Fandor and Hulu don’t stream in Canada while Netflix.com has almost 10,000 more titles than Netflix Canada. SundanceNOW also has more streaming films in the US than in Canada. Licensing rights are blamed for lack of film availability in Canada. But there are many titles that have no distributor or rights holder in Canada. To make matters worse, in a few cases Amazon.com won’t ship a DVD to a Canadian postal code even though there is no place in Canada that sells the DVD. I ran into this problem last year when Film Movement confirmed in an email that they don’t have legal rights to sell The Country Teacher in Canada. As a result, Film Movement and Amazon.com won’t ship a DVD of The Country Teacher to a Canadian postal address.

When seeking reasons for the lack of film title availabilities in Canada, some say it is due to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations. But the CRTC can’t be blamed in all cases. Regardless of who is to blame, the fact remains that many films remain unseen.

If one followed the legal path, then one won’t have access to most films. But if a computer has the right IP Address, an American one in this case, then one has access to a world of films. But if a computer has a Canadian IP Address, then one must continue to be frustrated and see the message that the film is not available.