2.26.2013

"Amour": Haneke's Mastepiece at Age 70





By Spence Blazak

For years, the name Michael Haneke has been synonymous with “unpredictability” and “abstract” in the film world. His latest film, “Amour” has scored an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a place on many best of the year lists, and is nothing like any of his previous films. The once inaccessible director has ditched his more outlandish experimental film techniques, and in return has crafted what just might be his masterpiece.
His 1997 film “Funny Games,” follows a unassuming family who lets two well groomed strangers into their house for a cold drink, but are then tortured by  competing in a series of titular “funny games” to fight for their lives. The film pushed the limits of onscreen torture, and is as hard to watch as it gets. Kneecaps are broken with golfclubs, pets are killed at the drop of a hat. At one point, one of the intruder’s lets his guard down, causing his partner's death at a tense point in the film. The man reacts by scrambling through the seat cushions of a couch, finding a television remote, and using it to rewind the last five minutes of the events on screen. Haneke then created a shot-for-shot American remake of the film ten years later. This sums up the director and his style to a tee. At his core, Haneke is unapologetically art house.
Another major Haneke work is 2005’s “Cache.” A man finds a videotape on his doorstep, containing surveillance footage of his front door and house. The film opens with the audience watching five minutes of the video, confused and disturbed about what is going on. The mystery unravels, and while accomplishing a disturbing level of paranoia that comes with feeling watched, "Cache" still leaves so much ambiguity in its ending that viewers are still debating what it actually meant. The film doesn’t particularly flesh out what it wants to say, and its take-it-or-leave-it style makes it very ostracizing to the average filmgoer.
With “Amour,” Haneke strikes a balance between his distinct visual style and a riveting story, rather than going over board with one or the other as he has often done in the past. “Amour” is a story of unconditional love filled with a purity and tenderness that rivals that of the opening montage of “Up”. It follows elderly couple Georges and Anne who try to cope when the Anne has a stroke. As Georges begins to see the handwriting on the wall, he at first ignores it, but as the story goes on, the inevitable begins to consume him.
The title just means “Love.” This beautiful simplicity permeates through Haneke’s film, and is a far cry from his in-your-face style of the past. The two lead characters are just everyday people who happen to be very much in love. The background stories on them are simple yet telling; they were both music teachers who, though retired, still follow the successes of their old pupils. At one point, Anne says to Georges, “Over the years, we’ve been through everything,” and that fills up the rest of the exposition.
 As Anne gets sicker and sicker, Georges’ optimism gets dimmer and dimmer. He looks for a confidant in his daughter, but she doesn’t seem to pick up on the emotional toll that the situation is taking on both of her parents. He tries to fight off his greatest fear: loneliness and seclusion. This all leads up to the climax that will make you remember how sad a movie can really be.
“Amour” is an example of a film that doesn’t need to be overcrowded to tell a touching story, and it seems that Haneke’s whole career until this point has been a learning experience through his failings in that aspect. With this film he has thrown aside all of his unnecessarily edgy material and his shots that are confusing for the sake of confusion, instead deciding to focus on the relationship at the center of the story. The film takes place almost exclusively in the couple’s apartment. Minimalist, yet larger-than-life in content, Haneke uses his latest, and arguably his greatest work, to show that a little can go a very long way.

2.18.2013

Pedro Almodovar And Getting Into Art House Joints





By Spence Blazak

Subtitled films have been striking fear into the hearts of filmgoers since before Michael Corleone got into the family business. That yellow lettered beast of distraction on the bottom eighth of the screen haunts the viewer from start to finish and has kept people from some of the best films of all time. Don’t make the mistake of your ancestors who passed up the likes of Fellini, Truffaut, and Bergman because “they weren’t in the mood to read.” A man who can make a case for best working filmmaker is still in his prime: the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar.

Almodovar is a man who directs his films with intrinsic accessibility-his art house movies for film snobs can also be enjoyed by the Average Jose. The term “art house” implies an exclusive, elitist club that looks down upon those who can’t spout off the complete works of Satyajit Ray (which this writer could not do for all the almonds in Catalonia). Almodovar embraces the term, and all the prejudices that come with it, when creating his works of art.

His films create a feel that is truly one of a kind: stunningly beautiful and filled with an expansive color palette akin to that of the old Microsoft Paint pigment chart, fluid camera work is slow yet deliberate while imbued with meaning, and a dialogue written with the verve of a Tarantino that cuts out the zippy one-liner shock value. Almodovar raises his arms in greeting to those that want to experience the classy beauty of film.

“The Skin I Live In” is Almodovar’s most recent work, and displays his knack for one of the greatest attributes a director can have: diversity in content. As Kubrick could go from the space opera “2001” to the scathing political satire “Dr. Strangelove,” Almodovar does the same throughout his career. An almost sci-fi thriller, “The Skin I Live In” follows Antonio Banderas as a Spanish dermatologist creating the perfect skin. He practices his craft on a woman that lives in a locked room of his home. A film that starts off creepily unravels into a tale of retribution that soon begins to spiral into one of the most traumatizing film endings in recent memory. Even more so than “Oldboy,” and that superlative is not given lightly.

An Almodovar classic on the other end of the dramatic spectrum is his tragic love tale “Talk to Her.” The Oscar winning masterpiece follows two intersecting stories: one of a man in love with a female matador, and one of an effeminate male nurse who might be falling in love with his patient, even though she has been in a coma for all the years he has taken care of her. A twist in the plot comes every several minutes, leading up to a beautifully heartbreaking ending and resulting in a film that might end up earning a spot on the list of your all time favorites.

Almodovar’s other gems include “Bad Education,” “All About My Mother,” and “Volver”. His maturity in portraying feminism in a way that feels neither preachy nor heavy handed is another one of the Spanish wizard’s flourishes. His films give an experience that is hard to come by in today’s film world: one that is personal yet addresses the human condition, with all the uplifting and tragic details that come along with the territory. Next time you find yourself flipping through your Netflix Instant Queue for the thousandth time, stop in your tracks, remember this article and remember Pedro Almodovar. At the very least, you can impress with your classiness at your next cocktail party!