About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009)
If anyone stumbles across this blog post and wants to point me in the direction of a really smart take on About Elly written by someone with a deeper knowledge of Iranian culture, I would love you to post that in the comments. Just from the craft of the film itself, it’s clear that Farhadi is assailing a specific cross-section of Iranian culture, and the film is expressively constructed, so a lot of it lands for me. But I also suspect that there’s a lot that’s not quite legible to me because of my ignorance. When I Googled the opening shot, for instance, I discovered that the audience is placed inside an alms box. The idea, it seems, is that travelers about to go on a journey donate to the poor, which amounts to a kind of pay-for-play travel blessing. To me, it’s a masterfully ironic opening, because the vacation taken by our characters turns out to be utterly disastrous. The one person who is said to have given something goes missing, and the other characters — who are all bourgeoisie, and can thus afford to donate — may or may not have given their alms. If so, that doesn’t work out so well; if not, it redounds on the fact that they could afford it but chose not to do so. It’s a Schrodinger’s trap of an opening, and that sense of entrapment compounds throughout the film. It’s a truly thrilling missing person chamber drama that manages to focus coherently on a single story while speaking volumes about so much else.
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
At a certain point, sometimes a movie short-circuits my ability to judge whether it’s actually good or not. For about the first half of Captain Phillips, I couldn’t decide from scene to scene whether it was working, but it certainly kept my attention. Tom Hanks always gives it his best, of course, and I thought the film was very well cast generally speaking; Barkhad Abdi is incredible as his antagonist. It wasn’t really until the climax, when Greengrass drops out the music and just lets Hanks scream into his own bloody hell that I really felt the hooks tighten in my flesh. After all the tension, where Greengrass ultimately lingers is in the trauma and grief of the adventure he’s unfolded before us. Not every denouement can sustain wallowing in the emotional destruction of its protagonist, and Hanks is just incredible in the final moments. Captain Phillips is ultimately a profoundly sad film, and the fact that it refuses to find joy in the resolution of its conflict moved me nearly to tears. What makes Capt. Phillips the hero of the story is that he is human enough to be genuinely shellshocked by what happens.
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Several months ago, I rewatched Blow Up, and finally I got around rewatching The Conversation. As with Blow Up, it had been maybe 20 years since my last viewing. What an experience. Thematically and semiotically rich, it’s also a fairly straightforward story of a genius craftsman inadequate to the task of grappling with the diabolical world in which he works. Coppola taps into Gene Hackman’s brand of brittle masculinity in the best way here, juxtaposing Harry Caul’s quintessential vulnerability and his incapacity to protect himself with the fact that nobody is better than he is at piercing the protective shells of others. Like Blow Up, The Conversation feels like a morality tale very anchored in its place and time, but it’s a much more interiorized story. Unlike Thomas, David Hemmings’s hedonist photographer in Antonioni’s film, Harry inserts himself into the conspiracy he uncovers by choice, because it’s his profession to spy on people, whereas Thomas uncovers an assassination by happenstance. The moral rot that’s dug its roots into Harry is self-inflicted and intentional in a way that makes him less a product of his time, and thus is not as much a critique of the culture more broadly. It’s an invaluable counterweight to Blow Up, and a masterpiece in its own right.
Dark Waters (Todd Haynes, 2019)
Not quite a legal thriller, but certainly rife with paranoia explosive speeches, I quite enjoyed how old-fashioned Dark Waters was. Though a bit tropey and conventional (Anne Hathaway tries so hard, bless her, but she’s still saddled with the totally underwritten Supportive-but-Harried Wife), the story really invests in the all-consuming process of the legal procedural. In this case, the story spans decades, during which a corporate lawyer learns that the law doesn’t quite even the playing field as much as he’d believed; not where billion-dollar corporations are concerned. By the end, the film strikes a populist note, with Mark Ruffalo bellowing about the system being rigged. Watching this in the direct aftermath of Jan. 6th, it was a stark reminder that populist conspiracism is a.) not the exclusive province of the political Right, b.) that sometimes the system is rigged, and c.) sorting out the truth about when the system really is rigged (and specifically how) sometimes takes decades and diligence not possessed by the vast swath of humanity. In the end, fighting one case at a time in a flawed system is the best one can do in an overwhelming situation. This is not always a welcome message in an age of agitation for sweeping reforms, but, even as it indicts the exploitable flaws in an inequitable system, Dark Waters honors the sacrifice and vocation of fighting the good fight in Capraesque spirit.
The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986)
I’ll accept the argument, if anyone wants to make it, that The Name of the Rose is not even a particularly good film. Though stuffed with memorably eccentric performances, half the cast seems to be beaming in from an alternate reality’s version of the film that’s directed by Ken Russell, including F. Murray Abraham, who vaults over the top and just hovers there in the air, keeping himself aloft of sulfurous batwings. In terms of production design, the medieval setting is suitably grimy, and James Horner contributes a haunting, evocative score. Despite the broadness and excess that plagues the film at times, I was drawn in by the relationship between Sean Connery and super-young Christian Slater. The reason I’m mentioning the film here is because of the final five minutes. Unearned though it may be, I found the entire dreamlike sequence of the final interaction, coupled with a desolate, transcendent final shot, to be melancholy, wistful, and poignantly delivered. It was almost incongruous with the rest of the film, and my transport in those closing moments rather took me by surprise, but indicated to me that the film must have done a few things right along the way. I don’t know that I’ll ever rewatch this, but I felt that those final moments of transcendent feeling merited remembrance, and I commend the film to you for your own consideration, should you feel so inclined.☕️
Catecinem 