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DaSchaust
Reviews
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Wisdom, not naivety
Having read some critiques to the extent that this was a film about a naive, childish woman who refused to take life seriously, I was hesitant whether I'd be able to bear this movie.
Luckily, it turned out to be one of the most entertaining cinema experiences since quite a long time.
Poppy isn't the person refusing to become an adult which her misanthropic driving instructor Scott accuses her to be. Our time indeed seems to bring about such people but they could hardly be more different than this lovely young woman. The first scene, with the girls drunk and chatting nonsense, is perhaps a bit misleading on this issue. (In fact, several people left the cinema during this scene, seemingly annoyed of all the giggling.) Rather, Poppy is wise and strong, trying to see the positive in everyone and everything. Humour, and sometimes benign derision, are her ways of keeping sulkiness out of her life. But, as everyone with a heart should feel, that is a gift, not a deficit. What damage can it cause to have a nice word or a smile for your fellow humans? On the other hand, she doesn't shut her eyes on the sad sides of life, such as a traumatized homeless man or a boy beaten by his mother's new partner, and one understands that she is deeply sad about not being able to help Scott, even if she would have had every reason to simply hate him for his bad temper, his racism and his stalking.
The director has done a superb job with this production; it is packed with intelligent, witty dialogs and convincingly drawn characters.
Our world needs a lot more people like Poppy, or at least -- if they don't possess her strength and optimism -- people who are sympathetic with her values instead of feeling threatened by humaneness. Yes, life is difficult and often sad, so let's tackle it with a smile!
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
Pathetic and dated
In case you always wondered what was so special and important about Queen Elizabeth that she has remained one of the best-known persons in English history, this film surely won't tell you.
Its way of storytelling is at least 50 years behind. There is not one realistic and believable character in the entire film and although the images are splendid and Cate Blanchett does her best, the weaknesses of the script, in particular its puppet-like portrayal of the main protagonists are blatant.
Constantly, Elizabeth is referred to as an exceptional, unique person but it remains completely mysterious why we are supposed to believe this. She reacts all but calmly when she learns about the love-affair between Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth Throckmorton. If this is supposed to demonstrate a monarch's privation of personal wants, we have seen this much more convincingly elsewhere.
What is it then? Neither is Queen Elizabeth convincing as a Joan-of-Arc-lookalike addressing her soldiers nor as a war strategist maltreating a mosaic map with a stick. And when it comes to the death sentence of Mary Stuart, she is portrayed as the prototype of the "typical" woman too weak to bear the inevitable.
This film is not only pathetic and overblown, its look at gender is dated (and this is not because the time it is set in is the 16th century). Many a classical theater play about Elizabeth is more informative and innovative than this film.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
I want to be a hippie
I was very eager to see this classical Western for which I'd heard so many recommendations.
To my big disappointment it turned out to be a completely boring movie about men trying to be as "masculine" as possible, i.e. drinking whiskey, looking fierce, dirty and cynical, using women, shooting each other for no reason and leading non-content conversations. Come on, that's not enough to turn a film into a legend! In the 70s all this might have gone through as an innovative look on the Western genre; today it just looks completely dated and offers a distinctive hippie interpretation of what life in the "good old West" meant, and which is all but convincing. James Coburn does what he is expected to do, the rest of the acting is quite poor, including Kris Kristofferson's.
And then, there is Bob Dylan himself -- what the hell is his appearance good for other than simply promoting the film? His character is almost as embarrassing as Madonna in most of her movies.
This film would have deserved a '4' but I give it a '6' for the slight but unlikely chance that I might have missed something important.
2 Days in Paris (2007)
Quite enjoyable
I must say that this not a boring film at all, although I found the endless little quarrels a bit tiresome. It is hard, though, for a non-French person to judge just how much of all this is meant to portray the character of "the French" (if anything like that exists) and how much is mere parody exploiting and playing with the cliché that French people always think about love and sex. For example, is Marion's father supposed to be a prototype or simply a caricature? Knowing this would be of great help in evaluating this movie.
On the other hand, the film is very balanced in its attempt to weigh Marion's delight in experiment against Jack's conservative rationalism with regard to relationships. In other respects, of course, Jack is not rational at all, for example concerning his hypochondria. Whether one wants to call him touchy and easily offended will probably also depend on whether you think that, in the first place, he is being treated badly by all those slightly crazy Parisians or whether you would rather want to say that he is a bit stiff and inhibited.
In any case, this is a nice little film about the difficult task to lead a cross-national relationship and about the fact that thinking you know your partner is not the same as knowing her or his culture.
But don't expect to see a romance like in "Before Sunrise"!!
300 (2006)
Warmongering
Just as a side information: already Göring misused the battle of Thermopylae in a speech to appeal to that kind of mindless war euphoria while the German troops were about to perish in the hell of Stalingrad.
It just seems that this is an excellent example of a totally exaggerated form of heroism. But it's surely got nothing to with reality and the message it sends out is very dangerous. So think about that before diving into this movie's orgy of violence.
Maybe this sounds a bit lame and educational but I've been wondering for quite some while why on earth this sick competition of outdoing each other in the field of "artistic" violence, which to my impression started with "Pulp Fiction", has to go on and on and on. I already felt really bad after watching this films predecessor "Sin City". Has our life gotten so dull and numb that we constantly need this as a drug?
Elementarteilchen (2006)
Better than the book
I enjoyed this adaptation way more than the book, which -- despite all the pseudo-intellectual hype that was raised about it -- was mainly about pornography, perversion, and a "philosophy" that can be formulated in short as: unless you are perfect, beautiful and brilliant, better kill yourself. And even if you are, there is ample reason to get depressed.
By the way, it is not true that the director didn't try to talk to Houellebecq. But when he did the latter was seriously under drugs and hard to communicate with.
In contrast, this film surely picked out some of the more digestible parts of the book and luckily didn't portray the characters as if they were only some of God's worst jokes. What came out was a beautiful and intelligent story about life, human relationships, and the choices that we face between keeping up love even under difficult conditions or, instead, going the seemingly easy way and losing everything.
If that doesn't sound depressing enough for you, better go and buy the book...
The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Collateral Damage
The discussion has been held a thousand times. Is the "Merchant of Venice" antisemitic? (I think it is.) Isn't it unfair to always point out this little bit of antisemitism in an otherwise great piece of art? (I think it isn't.) Does this play stain Shakespeare's reputation as the world's greatest playwright? (I think it does.) Does it play a role if he didn't do it on a particular racist purpose? (I think it doesn't.) Michael Radford knew all this and this is why he added to his movie a prologue about the pitiful situation of the Jews in Renaissance Venice.
In vain; for the play remains what it has always been and the new make-up only gives a first (but futile) hope that someone has dared to set something right that remains a permanent outrage, not because its degree of antisemitism would be particularly shocking but because the play comes under the name of William Shakespeare.
Why spend so much time in portraying the hatred of a man -- Shylock? Why employ a great and serious actor like Al Pacino, if in the end everything is getting ruined in this outrageous (but hey, I'm-not-responsible-Shakespeare-wrote-it) court room scene. And now I'd like to be very precise, just like Shylock himself.
He's demanding his right, according to the contract which the -- not very responsible -- Christian Antonio, who always used to look down on him, signed in full awareness of the consequences. Sure, what Shylock demands is cruel and useless, but that's not the point. What we see (or should see) is a man who has been humiliated for all his life, to the point where all what remains on him is his hatred. I think, it is certainly a bit inappropriate to lecture such a man on things like compassion.
But what the play/the movie (they are one and the same now) does at this point is... become a soap opera! The cruel madman with his knife, the horrified (but rather short-minded) audience, the poor "victim" tied to his chair. True, Antonio accepts his fate but why can't he just say one word, "sorry"? I think we need not lose many words on the ridiculous verdict of the young Dottore from Padua; it's a truly "popular verdict" not much different from what would be seen 400 years later in the show trials of the Nazis. From one minute to the next this Jew is robbed of everything he owned, sentenced to being baptized Christian, and kicked out.
Isn't that outrageous??? Obviously not. The story moves on to the romantic intricacies of the rings and its happy end.
What one can learn in Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin and similar places all over the world is that antisemitism often goes unnoticed by the mass because what's so devastating for a minority or some individuals is embedded in the alleged greater good for the majority. It should be exactly the task of everyone of us to develop a sensitivity to detect and unmask such tendencies.
I don't accept the excuse that this film was made to create empathy with the badly treated Shylock (it just doesn't work out). I don't think that anybody can be forced to be merciful.
I don't recommend this movie; in particular not for an Oscar.