Reviews

At the turn of the seventies and eighties of the 20th century De Palma had a fertile period of making thriller/horror genre films; during which period he directed some 10 of these. Thriller drama Obsession is among them. Although the film did not succeed in reaching a cult status such as Blow out, Dressed To Kill, Carrie, Sisters... it features a lot of interesting characteristics present in all De Palma's films from that period; continuous uninterrupted shots, 360 degree rotation camera, unusual angles of view that emphasize psychedelic atmosphere (Dutch angle), a subtle way of revealing details... Besides the director's recognizable signature, the film abounds in a series of clumsy solutions and archaisms and this is the reason why it fell into shadows and oblivion giving way to more accomplished films of that period. Today's anonymity of the film does not, however, mean that at the time of its release it did not arouse considerable interest among the public and yield profits.

His attitude of admiration towards and references to Hitchcock are much accentuated. This work could be described in a summary as a hybrid between Rebecca and Vertigo. The story is about a wealthy businessman, Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson) whose wife and daughter were killed during a kidnapping attempt. The fact that he did not follow kidnappers' instructions, but those given by the police causes him to feel deeply guilty. From that tragic event on the time stopped for him. He spends his years in mourning his family until the day he meets a young woman Sandra (Geneviève Bujold) strikingly resembling his dead wife. He becomes obsessed with her. He enters quickly into relationship with her and wants to marry her. But we later discover that she is his daughter driven by the desire for revenge. She is acting in conspiracy with Michael's partner Robert (John Lithgow) who actually planned the first kidnapping, spared little Sandra, brought her up and made her hate her father. His motive is anger towards his partner whom he blames for business inefficiency and wish to take possession of his fortune. Michael kills Robert and realizes with his daughter how they were manipulated and forgive each other.

A premise as such contains some inconsistencies and arguably elaborated thematic of incest. An excellent acting could have given more strength to the film, but the opposite is what has happened - poor and unconvincing performance finished it completely. Cliff Robertson was an unlucky choice for the protagonist. He's lacking the necessary intensity and his gestures are packed with mannerisms. He gives impression of a wooden doll that expresses to experience strong emotions by starting to stare and blink. Romantic scenes are presented without any passion or obsession. It is interesting that there are no signs of aging, although the story covers 20 years. His co-protagonist, Geneviève Bujold showed greater acting capabilities, however she gave an uneven performance. She brought her character as an unfortunate person, not showing an obsessive need for revenge – that was supposed to be her main driving force and characteristic. Incest based approach applied through the whole film – in an unusually easy and romantic way. The question stays hanging in the air- What kind of a woman would accept to inflict vengeance upon her father through an incestuous relationship? And how is that possible that this dark, ill side of her character is not a theme treated in this film? John Lithgow (Michael's business partner) as far as he's concerned hasn't much to offer to this work, except for the evidence from the very beginning that he is the main villain. Through that the tension and culmination of final conflict are lost for the film.

The attempt to accentuate dramatic moments through long shots resulted in extremely boring sequences. As the acting is shallow, continuous shot just gave more emphasis to it. Neither the music was of great help, although made by one of top-level composers, Bernard Herrmann (Battle of Neretva, Psycho, Taxi Driver). The main theme is well elaborated – accentuates tension, however, playful symphonic scores in certain parts entirely ruin the course of film's plot. It is interesting, as well, to note that the first third of the film happens in the last decade of the 50s, nevertheless many style characteristics (footwear, hair styles, fashion...) belong unequivocally to the 70s. The film abounds in such inconsistencies which make it look antiquated and naive. This mediocre thriller seems to call for remake which would be able to explore the theme more deeply, put more emphasis on macabre ambiance, illnesses of obsessive impulses and incest of main characters. Such a story does not tolerate superficiality and glamorization, so eagerly adopted by De Palma for no reason.

A Teacher

The film focuses primarily on the personality of a teacher having an affair with one of her students. In a noninvasive manner, the story gradually reveals her anxiety, loneliness and psychical fragility. The excitement brought to her by the love affair with a young person that for a brief moment fills out empty places in her existence is lost again to result, as we can see near the end of the film, in her complete psychical crumble.

A young film director, Hannah Fidell has an interesting approach to the exploration of this delicate thematic. The clichés are avoided in the construction of an immoral teacher, otherwise often structured as constantly sexually aroused sensuous women, or miserable women with cold husbands. Fidell's teacher (Lindsay Burdge) is a shy, young woman typical for educational milieu. She distances herself from her environment - often trivial and burdensome – searching for intensity in an illicit affair. Her young lover, Eric stays two dimensional in a thought out manner as this is how she sees him. Her obsessions are connected to him as to an intensity carrier and not as to a person. Only at the end of the film, with the appearance of boy's father, we understand how young Eric is unprepared to be entangled into such an exhausting relationship.

The film's deficiency, besides arid visuals, is its wobbling development. It is flirting with possible culmination or with the stagnation in a painfully slow and intensity-lacking world of the teacher. When the film ends with the culmination it seems forced, the development of plot and characters did not give space for expressive pathos. An anticlimax would end the work with more naturalness as inner turmoil that induces teacher's breakdown and young boy to confide their secret to his father stayed unknown to the spectator closed in a gloomy inner world where moral and spiritual questions stay covered in shadows.

Existentialist drama with elements of comedy tells the story of a writer from the high society of Rome, who suffers from a lack of inspiration for decades, spending days of partying and getting even more cynical and full of apathy. In search for something grandiose - the great beauty - he often returns to the memory of long-past adolescent romance...

The film functions through contrasts - moments of debauchery, meaningless, unnecessary philosophizing..., and then quiet moments, when the main protagonist contemplates about life, usually through intimate conversations or walks through the deserted Roman beautiful landscapes. These contrasts and the transitory nature of life are emphasized with active, engaging camera.

La grande bellezza is definitely interesting artistic search for meaning and sacred moments of individual affected in glamorous and completely meaningless routine. It points out that neither the status nor the money answers any of life meaningful questions. But above interesting theme and impressive Toni Servillo, The Great Beauty does not bring intensive engagement. It tackles things through hyperbole and very pronounced misanthropic streak, without opening the possibility to feel the details and become aware of the fact that beneath the surface of blather and futility - there are tiny sparks of great beauty and human misery.

It must be noted that the film was affected by plague known as - selective nudity. Many artistic films are often referred to freedom of the human body, but in fact they only routinely emphasize already enthroned gender bias.

Ki-duk Kim built his career on films containing bizarre motifs that outline deeper layers of human nature. However, in some of his latest works the priorities have changed. Complex themes have become superficially elaborated frameworks within which a whole range of disturbing contents has been featured. So, in his film Amen (2011), we follow the story of rape (the director himself plays the rapist) to finally understand the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. In his latest work Moebius (2013), the castration of a minor reveals to us that the family goes through a crisis, while in Pietà-I (2012.) Kim teaches us that the obedience by the suffering of rape and humiliation may warm up even the coldest hearts. But this is not where the director stops; he gives to his film a politically involved prospective, as well, criticizing the capitalist system through the mutilation of the poor.

The debt collector Gang-Do (Jung-Jin Lee), fear and trembling of the neighborhood, totters through the overcrowded city suburb. He perambulates stuffy hovels of helpless debtors just following his orders. There, he mutilates them, remaining completely cold, in an ambiance filled with menacing machines that impose by themselves the variation in the choices of the ways to inflict lesions ... This established routine is disturbed by a mysterious woman Mi-Son (Jo Min- su) that abruptly enters into Gang-Do's life stating to be his mother. The son reacts to this information by raping her, as it wouldn't be okay to leave her non-raped – because in such a case the director would miss the strike combination of incest and rape! However, regardless of violence she was subjected to, Mi-Son offers unconditional love through which she gradually acquires confidence of her son.

Pietà has won the Golden Lion at Venice. The film has a really intriguing plot (although the South Korean revenge film patterns were entirely followed), as well as visual homogeneity in the representation of cold atmosphere and nauseating thematic. However, shock effect is here mostly to affect the audience, and Kim uses it artfully to cover the weaknesses of the film such as poorly dramaturgically elaborated theme of empathy. Its elaboration is so shallow that the director resorted to an awkward explanation of his work. We had to endure the final monologue of the female protagonist who in an outburst of pathos explains from alpha to omega motives of the film and its punch-line. Through the accentuation of flaws present in the character of victims (wimps, invertebrates, people with a lack of morals ...) he supports his misanthropic vision of life and thus calls into question the alleged message of the film and whether the motives of the director were indeed humanistic.

For quite some period of time no other thriller film gave us the opportunity to exceed the level of our expectations that much as "Prisoners". If we take into account the fact that the whole genre is characterized by a small share in the overall production, scarce production budgets and minimal promotion, no wonder that we rarely get more than a medium-quality generic job work. However, the Prisoners' pedigree implicitly suggested that that could yield something much more interesting. The starry cast leaded by Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal together with a promising Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve and scenario writer, Aaron Guzikowski, definitively have brought some new blood in a stagnant genre.

The plot of Prisoners intertwined with dilemmas and intriguing reversals maintains a high level of tension throughout the whole 153-minut period. The search for the lost girls leads us through dump houses, depressive landscapes, endless rain, cold, from a clue to a clue just to end up in a vicious circle and falling down deeper and deeper into hopelessness under a watchful eye of sophistical-dark vision created by the director of photography Roger Deakins. And while the solution starts to stumble in the attempt to find the connection between the clues, the skepticism retreats under a strong atmosphere dominated by the contrasts of light and dark bringing about a surreal space – a space where the battle between good and evil is fought . Precisely the emphasis placed on that dimension allows the film to pass beyond the limits of the whodunit framework and places the work above an average thriller.

Exceptional Japanese historical drama with horror elements follows lives of two women, in cruel times of war, struggling to survive by killing soldiers in a vast field of susuki grass. Doors between dream and reality are opened here with a fantastic monochrome visuals. The characters and their development are intense and unique, especially the display of female sexual desire , which is liberated from the mannerisms often imposed by a mainstream movie industry. Sites of the film (endless field of high grass) brings the obscurity of the vastness as a latent premonition of catastrophic climax that brings war, death, poverty, cruelty, fear and jealousy.