Army of Shadows (L’Armée des ombres) (1969, Director: Jean-Pierre Melville): Incredibly, this film was not released in the United States until 2006. As a result, many critics named it among their top films that year, despite it being nearly 40 years old. Army of Shadows follows a small group of French Resistance fighters in the middle of the war (1942–1943) as they try to survive in the midst of occupied France. Despite its epic length (145 minutes), it feels intimate and gripping due mostly to the sparing use of music and dialogue, and the moody cinematography that gives the impression that most of the film takes place in twilight.
The entire group display a sort of doomed heroism. We see very little of their actual resistance work, since they always seem to be on the run, hiding out, worrying about informers or getting arrested. It’s not that they’re inept, it’s just that the crushing paranoia makes it difficult to operate. The atmosphere of claustrophobia is pervasive from the first frame to the last. Even amongst themselves, there’s very little affection or humour. It’s as if their humanity has been reduced to just the instinct to survive. And to do that requires trusting other people, which is perilous.
Despite the setting, this is far from an action movie. It’s more of an anxiety movie, with every moment holding the possibility of danger. And in the end, it’s an incredibly sad film. These are good people, reduced to the simplest forms of right and wrong by a greater evil. Their physical survival is far from assured, but the hope that their humanity can remain intact makes this a very different kind of thriller.
Buy from Amazon.ca
Buy from Amazon.com
(9/10)
Tagged as:
DVD,
france,
worldwar2
Commune (Director: Jonathan Berman): Black Bear Ranch is 300 acres of land which was purchased in 1968 by a group of “hippies” who wanted to live communally. They raised the $22,000 to purchase the land by soliciting donations from musicians like Frank Zappa, The Monkees and The Doors. Jonathan Berman’s film uses archival footage and present-day interviews with many of the people who chose to abandon what they felt was a corrupt American society to try something new.
All of us have heard stories about “hippies living in communes,” but this is a mostly clear-eyed look at what it was really like. The counterculture of the 1960s was a mishmash of dozens of different causes, political movements, and religious explorations, not to mention people who were just curious or lonely. What happened when a group of people came together under the slogan “free land for free people” was perhaps predictable in hindsight, but in the heady days of countercultural revolution, they thought anything was possible. We meet several memorable characters, principally Richard Marley, who with his wife Elsa was one of the founders of the commune. Already in his mid-30s at the time, he might have thought of himself as a father figure. He’d been a labour organizer and was disappointed that these idealistic youngsters didn’t seem to want to be organized at all. Despite that, he and Elsa decided to stay and see what these “anarchists” might teach them. A remarkably resilient community grew out of these humble beginnings, and though it’s not completely clear from the film, Black Bear Ranch still functions in many ways as a community for alternative living.
Not that there weren’t a lot of bumps along the way. The group grew beyond Richard and Elsa’s expectations, and nobody ever really asked what they hoped to achieve. People came to Black Bear for different reasons, and because human nature never really changes, idealism was accompanied by a lot of blind spots and hypocrisy. There were issues of sexism, racism and classism which were touched on, but I was hoping the film would be more insightful here. Why, for instance, did everyone seem to be white? Why did they all seem to come from affluent homes? The physical labour required in this kind of “back to the land” homesteading revealed men and women reverting back to their traditional gender roles at first, which caused some controversy. Soon enough, women were out cutting wood with the men. But despite that, their experiments in communal parenting and free love seemed to end in miserable failure, and many couples eventually moved away to find schools for their children. More exploration of why they thought things went wrong would have helped the film here.
One chilling incident occurred in 1979, when the commune invited an itinerant group called the Shiva Lila to join them. The Shiva Lila had all the trappings of a cult, following the teachings of one man, dropping lots of acid and worshipping children. After a while, the original Black Bear inhabitants had to ask them to leave, a sobering realization for people who thought everyone could get along.
Human beings are endlessly idealistic, but we are also petty, jealous, power-hungry, lustful, lazy and self-righteous. Jonathan Berman’s film provides a look into the muddled and beautiful mess that was the 60s counterculture. Listening to people with colourful names like Cedar, Mahaj, Wakan, Osha, Creek, and Kenoli made me smile. Sure, they were a bit too optimistic, but they actually went out and tried to live their idealism. It was heartening to see that many of these rainbow warriors are still involved in community activism and social justice, but they’re wistful about those years when it looked like they might actually be able to change the whole world. Perhaps the communes of the 21st century won’t look like Black Bear Ranch, but the people who lived there still have a lot to teach us.
Buy Commune from Amazon.ca
Buy Commune from Amazon.com
Black Bear Ranch web site
(7/10)
Tagged as:
Documentaries,
DVD
I’ve just heard about the passing of NOW’s longtime film critic John Harkness. I never had the opportunity to meet John, but his reviews have been a staple in the pages of NOW since its inception in 1981. He also contributed articles to Sight and Sound and Take One, as well as writing for the Cinematheque Ontario programme guides. Over the years, I’ve absorbed thousands of his carefully-chosen words and I hope at least a little of his talent has rubbed off. He will be sorely missed by the film community in Toronto and far beyond.
His friend and fellow critic Norm Wilner has a more personal remembrance.
Tagged as:
Critics
I’d read about director Martin McDonagh’s upcoming feature In Bruges a few weeks ago, and was intrigued by the setting (I’ve spend long stretches here on both my backpacking trips around Europe in the late 1980s) and the casting (Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes). Now the trailer is up and I’m convinced this will be a winner.
I’ve never been much of a Colin Farrell fan, but here he gets to play a Dublin hitman sent to a Belgian tourist town after a botched hit. The accents and dialogue are spot-on and the humour in the trailer promises to make this a unique spin on the hitman genre.
By the way, the trailer is hosted on Film in Focus, a new advertorial site from Focus Features that actually features a lot of great content.
In Bruges Trailer
P.S. Martin McDonagh is actually much better-known as a playwright, and I remember seeing his play The Lonesome West back in 2002 and having a very mixed reaction to it.
P.P.S. Watching this trailer brought back memories of another great Irish mob film with Brendan Gleeson called I Went Down. Inexplicably, it’s not available on DVD. It was briefly released in Region 4 (Australia) but is now out of print. Considering that this was the highest-grossing Irish film at the time of its release (1997), its unavailability seems criminal, if you’ll pardon the expression.
UPDATE (January 4, 2008): I’ve just learned that the film will be the Opening Night presentation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so we shouldn’t have to wait too long to hear what the reviewers there thought of it.
Tagged as:
belgium,
ireland,
Theatrical Release,
trailers
