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Reviews
La cérémonie (1995)
Over Arty by Half
The last 15 minutes of this movie are preposterous, the rest slow as molasses. What a waste of time.
La dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil (2015)
It's hard to imagine how this movie could have been worse.
A preposterous plot with a harebrained explanation at the end, where one of the main characters is killed. Far better to have killed the script writer. Probably all the actors are competent, main-stream actors, but a second-rate high school cast could have handled the roles. It's something about a secretary being framed for a murder committed by the wife of her boss, and it's kind of a movie about the end of innocence.
The Quiet American (2002)
Mired in Quag--But Whisky and Opium Don't Help
Perhaps. Perhaps only Americans buy a map of the road to failure and follow the curves of its route precisely to the very end. Perhaps not. American viewers above a certain age may bring passionate emotions and unwavering opinions to The Quiet American. That will be too bad. Maybe even in spite of director Phillip Noyce's intention, this movie is not about the war in Indochina. It gives us a glimpse into that time, condemns, it seems, the incipient American presence, and denounces, apparently, wars of colonial conquest, but all these things merely provide a context in which the lead characters have to make, or evade, moral decisions.
Stepping carefully into Viet-Nam the way one of Fenimore Cooper's leather stocking heroes stepped into the tracks of their enemies so as to leave no trace, the US insinuated itself into the French-Indochina war for the purpose of . . . well, the purpose is never quite clear. Walking, almost sleepwalking, through events in Viet-Nam is British reporter Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), who also lacks purpose. Besotted by whiskey, opium and a fetching young woman, Fowler has made his own peace with war as well as with life. He is no James Bond, preferring one specific drink but many different women. In fact, he has it the other way round. He wants one woman, Phuong (Do Hai Yen), but any drink will do. He is also no Humphrey Bogart trying to mind his own business by running a popular bar. Instead, he tries to have no business at all. He has neglected, almost forgotten, his London newspaper employer. An aging libertine, he only fitfully and half-heartedly partakes of his self-indulgences, pursuing them as if reluctantly following doctor's orders. He has long since come to his own terms with the war, such as they are, whose sporadic noise in the streets of Saigon annoys him from time to time, but it is nothing more to him than the barking of a neighbor's dog. In fact, it turns out, dogs annoy him more than the war does.
Then into his complacent world steps one of those leather stocking heroes, the "quiet" American, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser). Young, congenial, modest, courteous, sober, knightly, even "Boy Scoutly," Pyle comes to Viet-Nam bringing medical aid and supplies for the Vietnamese people and a belief in freedom. He annoys the French for some reason, seems to know everybody who matters, and befriends (or is it the other way round?) Fowler. Then, almost immediately, he falls in love with Phuong, Fowler's mistress, apparently for no other reason than that Fowler seems to love her. True to some kind of misguided Victorian code, he requests in a peculiar way Fowler's permission to court her.
Pyle does not forget his mission. Very quickly he learns to distinguish between the sound of the backfiring of a car and the sound of a detonation of a grenade. Old-hand Fowler grins in triumph to see him learn the difference.
The viewer of the movie must make even finer distinctions. Author Graham Greene did not shy away from making political or moral judgments, nor does the movie. However, the viewer has no easy time deciding just what judgment should be made. All we have to go on seems to be the fact that the grand sweep of conflict depends most decisively on the moral decisions of individuals. From some decisions come certain results: people will die. The question is, do you want people to die, and if you do, why?
There are other questions. Do native women who shun common prostitution come off any better sleeping with married men? Should men who want and love children embrace the need to kill them? Can civilized men and women who abandon morality be depended upon to defend humanity from barbarity?
By movie's end we are left with men and women most of whom are, however congenial and however civilized, too distasteful to face and too dangerous to turn our backs on. Both in the movie and beyond it, the major powers continue to engage the rest of the world. As they must, if only because the rest of the world will not let them disengage. Not being in positions of world leadership, most of us, we the viewers must content ourselves with observing the Fowlers and Pyles and Phuongs around us and deciding what decisions we would make in their place.
Would we do better? Perhaps, though what is better?
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)
Aguirre: The Wrath of Herzog and the Art of Darkness
It's not over till it's over, but halfway through this movie, it's over.
Spectacular is the only way to describe the opening scenes: members of the expedition trudging down precipitous trails, crates of chickens plunging down cliffs, distant cloud-bound blue mountains. Moreover, director Herzog has a deft touch with (very bleak) irony and a nice way of letting camera shots and silence tell his story. Alas, he doesn't know when to stop.
There are too the obvious comparisons with *Apocalypse Now*, the journey into the heart of darkness, the grand sweep, and the clear fable about political megalomania. Unfortunately, where *Apocalypse* ends in a muddle, *Aguirre* tells its story all too clearly, so that half way through the film we definitely have gotten the picture. I began to fiddle with my watch, wonder if I needed more popcorn, decided on dinner plans. I stuck with the movie to the end only out of deference to reviewers I respect who rated the movie so highly (you're forgiven).
Amarcord (1973)
More or Less (than) a movie
Federico Fellini enchanted me with 8 1/2, bored me with La Dolce Vita, and teased me with Amarcord. Like all masters of cinema, Fellini can achieve any effect he wants, paint any picture he wants, portray any character he wants, and win all the accolades he wants. Amarcord won both an Oscar and a place in lists of great movies (Roger Ebert's, for example). Amarcord dazzles us with scenery, with ideas, and with Fellini's usual suite of well-defined situations and characters. Fellini also fondly reveres the movies of other great directors. One homage among many others is to the grand snow fort and pillow fights in *Napoleon*, by Abel Gance. Clearly Amarcord captivated many perspicacious viewers and reviewers. But I am not sure why, because the movie lacks a perceivable plot. Oh, there is a plot of sorts, which I shan't give away, but the movie mostly stands on its Turner landscapes, its Velazquez *family* portraits and its Rota score. Marvelous in its way, of course, but this Amarcord is, after all, a movie, and, for me at any rate, a movie should have a plot. If you feel the same way, then Amarcord is going to leave you unsatisfied.