Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

Downfall was a very powerful film. The performances were excellent, especially Bruno Ganz (Hitler), Ulrich Matthes (Joseph Goebbels) and Corinna Harfouch (Magda Goebbels). And it gave a really, really scary picture of fanaticism – particularly in scenes like the one where Magda Goebbels says there is no point in living in a world without National Socialism. Other really powerful scenes included the one where she killed her children, and the visuals behind Eva Braun’s letter to her sister.

I gather the presentation of some of the characters has been rather controversial. They certainly weren’t painted as monsters, but I don’t think that any of them were glorified either. I though most of them came across as sad and pathetic. However, this presents its own problems, as it does incline you towards feeling sorry for them.

Not Hitler. With everything going wrong for him, you see him refusing to accept it, and making decisions that condemn hundreds to death. He also seems to show a total lack of sympathy for the German people – which is in stark contrast to the reverence you see them holding for him. So even in his more “human” moments – with the dog, for instance – you never really lose sight of what he has done. He’s not a monster, but he’s not sympathetic either.

But it’s a bit different with the others. There’s nothing in the film to remind you of the atrocities they were involved in. So what you see are broken men, who, when they decide to suicide, have a almost a dignity about them. Not glorified, or admirable, or heroic – they are sad, and pathetic, and inadequate. But they are suffering, and the incredibly strong performances really make you feel this. So unless you remind yourself that they were personally responsible for infinitely more suffering in countless others, you do feel sorry for them. You really have to work to keep perspective, and not just be caught up in the pain in front of you.

Didn’t enjoy House of Flying Daggers as much as Hero (see my comments on Hero). It had a more conventional plot, but I found I didn’t really care that much about any of the characters. And while the visuals were impressive, it didn’t have the incredible use of colour in Hero. It was less stylized – more like the first flashback in Hero than the later ones. Which was still pretty amazing, but it was the later Hero flashbacks that really stunned me.

I was also very bothered by an early scene in House of the Flying Daggers, in which some horses fall over. It looked as if the horses had been deliberately tripped, rather than being trained to fall in an impressive but non-dangerous manner. I couldn’t find anything on the Internet Movie Database that actually said whether any horses were injured (there was no Humane Society clause at the end of the film, but then I don’t think it was filmed in a location that has a Humane Society or equivalent). However, the IMDB did say, in its alternate versions bit, that the UK version was cut by 18 seconds “to remove three instances of real animal cruelty (in this case, three horsefalls)”. This is enough to make me unsure whether I will see any of Yimou Zhang’s future films.

Wow.

I guess it’s hard to distill an entire life into a couple of hours. Nevertheless, Kinsey did seem rather “bitty”. It felt as if there was lots of other stuff happening that we only saw segments of – e.g. his relationship with his son, and with the other researchers. Also, I felt that all the relationship problems were solved too quickly, too easily and too neatly. I found that side of it a bit hard to believe.

I also found the inclusion of the animal footage in the final credits a bit tacky. I assume it was footage taken for serious research purposes, but it seemed designed more to get a laugh – like something out of “Funniest Home Videos”.

Notwithstanding all of this, I didn’t dislike the film, and the performances were certainly good. But ultimately, it didn’t really engage me.

I enjoyed A Very Long Engagement much more than Amélie. I particularly liked the interplay between the uncle and the postman – in fact, I enjoyed pretty much everything that involved the uncle and aunt. I have no idea how true a representation it gave of life in the trenches, but it certainly felt very realistic. I found I had to work very hard to remember who was which among the six condemned soldiers. On the other hand, it is probably to the credit of the film that, for the most part, I did manage to do so. Normally I am very bad at keeping track of characters – particularly if they all look somewhat alike. The introduction of each character gave me a “hook” to remember him by (e.g. the different method by which each one was injured), although it was sometimes challenging when they were referred to by different names at different times.

For me, the scenes involving Tina didn’t fit very well with the rest of the film. She seemed far too ruthlessly efficient to exist in the same universe as the other characters.

I was a bit in two minds about the ending. [Warning: spoiler to follow] The implication seemed to be that he was never going to fully recover, and she would effectively have to become his mother, but that she was content with this. It was certainly more interesting than a conventional “happy ending”, but I wasn’t sure I was entirely comfortable with it. Then again, this was probably the point of it.

I don’t know a great deal about the life of J. M. Barrie, but I do know enough to be fairly confident that Finding Neverland is quite heavily fictionalised. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it – I suspect a good deal more that if it had been faithful to the facts. Although it didn’t actually ignore the problems with his marriage and the impact of his brother’s death, it didn’t really ask you to think too deeply about his relationships with other people. He came across in the film as perhaps somewhat awkward, but not much more than that. As I said, I don’t really know much about his life, but I gather it is generally felt that the death of his brother was very damaging to his emotional growth.

The Barrie of the film, however, was a totally engaging character, for all his occasional naivetes. I loved Johnny Depp’s performance, and also that of the boy who played Peter. At times it was a bit overly sentimental, but not excessively so.

The only thing that I was a bit bothered by was the suggestion that imagination needs to equate to belief. I got the sense of a subtext was that unless you can actually believe the things you make up, then your imagination is somehow inadequate. But surely something can be wonderful and magical and life-enriching even if you know that it is not actually true. You don’t have to actually believe in something to completely lose yourself in it … do you?

Monsters Inc is still my favourite Pixar production, but The Incredibles probably comes in second. The characters were fun (it was especially nice hearing Wallace Shawn re-use his Vizzine voice from The Princess Bride), and the plot was enjoyable. There was one thing I did wonder about, though. Both Violet and Dash had names that reflected their powers (shrinking violet/invisibility; dash/speed). I assume this means that Jack Jack also had some connection with the baby’s power: maybe I’m being thick, but I just can’t work out what the link is.

I probably should have re-watched Ocean’s Eleven before seeing Ocean’s Twelve – with only a couple of exceptions, I found I could never remember who was which among all the minor characters. Of course, I am notoriously bad with faces, particularly in films with a large supporting cast.

While this film was quite fun, I didn’t enjoy it as much as its prequel – and my enjoyment of Ocean’s Eleven was not much more than moderate, evidenced by the fact that after seeing it once at the cinema, I have not bothered to borrow it for a second viewing on DVD.

George Clooney’s screen time was cut to make way for Brad Pitt’s character’s story, which should not have been a problem (I much prefer Catherine Zeta-Jones to Julia Roberts), except that they didn’t really do much in the way of character development with the extra time. There were a couple of good bits with Catherine Zeta-Jones, but for the most part he was fairly bland – as he was in the first film, but then he wasn’t meant to be carrying the plot of that one.

The film had some good – and even a few very good – moments, but overall I found the plot rather silly and unconvincing, even for a heist movie.

All in all, it was quite a pleasant romp, but I thought it could have (and should have) been a lot better.

I think Hero is one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen. The use of colour, slow motion, moving fabric and closeups of water absolutely blew me away. In particular, I loved the use of rain at the end of the fight with Sky, and the way every time there was a new version of the Flying Snow/Broken Sword flashback, the colours were different. The end of the first version of this flashback – with the red clothes and the autumn leaves – was also wonderful.

The plot was actually very slight, and yet at the same time it was quite compelling in its simplicity. It took me a while to get caught up in it, and except for the end I found the non-flashback scenes less interesting (probably because they were less stylised), but I was totally gripped by the flashbacks. I did sometimes feel that the scenes lasted a tiny bit longer than I would have liked, but I suspect this is more a reflection of my attention span than of the quality of the movie.

I’ve never seen the original, so I don’t know how this version of The Manchurian Candidate compares, but I enjoyed it. Particularly liked Liev Schreiber – nice combination of emotional control and childlike vulnerability.