Filmography
Dec. 2nd, 2007 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyEuripides' Medea
This is cheating a bit, because this is actually a video of the Kennedy Center of 1982, with Zoe Caldwell as Medea and Judith Anderson as the nurse. It was recommended to me by a colleague at the CAAS conference, and it really is jolly good - the acting is excellent and it's a very good example of how to film a tragedy 'straight' - that is, with exodoi, a central door, a traditional chorus and so forth. I think it has made itself a place on the syllabus for my hypothetical Classics in the Cinema course; it looks like good place to begin introducing them to tragedy before shuffling over to the more naturalistic (and yet in some ways more faithful) work of Cacoyannis. The script has been heavily doctored, there are some themes emphasised that I have to say I understand in a 1980s context but need a bit of unpacking in terms of critical evaluation, but it tries to convey the idea of being 'a stage play' in a very literal way. Of course, it is a stage play, it is a film of a production - and in that sense, students taking said hypothetical course deserve to at least be exposed to the idea that people can film things in a very literal and (one might argue) boring fashion.
The acting, however, is excellent. Four stars.
Good Bye, Lenin!
This was nominated for a Golden Globe and I'm not really sure why I put off watching it for as long as I did - something just made me a bit uneasy. But I heard great things about it in my German film class, so many semesters ago, and thus it made it on to the watch list. I'm glad I bothered.
The plot is essentially the quest of a son to keep the fall of the Berlin Wall secret from his mother. She had a heart attack seeing him being arrested for protesting, fell into a coma, and thus missed the collapse of the GDR, the fall of the wall, the process of unification - the whole shebang, including the rapid flood of capitalism into the East. When she comes round, the doctor says she must be kept quiet and away from any surprises so that she won't have a second heart attack. Alex, the son, played excellently by Daniel Bruhl, therefore reconstructs East Germany in his mother's bedroom, decanting modern Western groceries into the old Eastern-style jars (his search for a particular brand of pickle is especially obsessive), making sure people are wearing the right sorts of clothes - and, eventually, through the connivance of a workmate with pretensions to being a film director, falsifies news broadcasts so as to explain things such as the appearance of a Coca-Cola flag outside her window and West Germans moving in next door.
It's all quite impressive, touchingly done, and tells one far more about the insides of Alex's own head than his mother's. There's a thread running through about his fascination with space travel and the first German astronaut in space which I'd unpick more if I were less tired. The Germany that Alex creates for his mother is, as he himself admits, the Germany he wishes he lived in. It reflects his own disillusionment with the capitalist system, the frustration and (one suspects) disgust with his sister and her new partner's willing dive into the world of Burger King (she gives up university to work at a drive through. Go figure) and all the other things that unification does not provide.
Of course, he falls in love with Lara, the nurse who he meets at aforementioned demonstration and then, conveniently, happens to look after his mother - and be from the Soviet Union. The viewer is let into the secret that, as she looks after his mother in her last few days, back in the hospital, Lara explains that Alex is keeping her inside this fantasy land - but Alex never realises. His mother lets him hold on to the illusion - it ends up that this is what keeps him happy rather her. In the end, the charade is for his benefit rather than hers. She recedes and recedes from our vision until we really see how Alex has wrapped himself up in the false world as much as he has wrapped up her. In terms of a mechanism for coping with grief, I do wonder how effective it would be.
Four stars. There are a few weaknesses, and you'd have to know quite a bit about East German culture to get all the references (and I know I certainly didn't). But it was a good film.
If anyone is curious, the irony of posting about a film concerning the collapse of communism and the acceptance of capitalism just as LJ is sold to a Russian firm is not lost upon me.
This is cheating a bit, because this is actually a video of the Kennedy Center of 1982, with Zoe Caldwell as Medea and Judith Anderson as the nurse. It was recommended to me by a colleague at the CAAS conference, and it really is jolly good - the acting is excellent and it's a very good example of how to film a tragedy 'straight' - that is, with exodoi, a central door, a traditional chorus and so forth. I think it has made itself a place on the syllabus for my hypothetical Classics in the Cinema course; it looks like good place to begin introducing them to tragedy before shuffling over to the more naturalistic (and yet in some ways more faithful) work of Cacoyannis. The script has been heavily doctored, there are some themes emphasised that I have to say I understand in a 1980s context but need a bit of unpacking in terms of critical evaluation, but it tries to convey the idea of being 'a stage play' in a very literal way. Of course, it is a stage play, it is a film of a production - and in that sense, students taking said hypothetical course deserve to at least be exposed to the idea that people can film things in a very literal and (one might argue) boring fashion.
The acting, however, is excellent. Four stars.
Good Bye, Lenin!
This was nominated for a Golden Globe and I'm not really sure why I put off watching it for as long as I did - something just made me a bit uneasy. But I heard great things about it in my German film class, so many semesters ago, and thus it made it on to the watch list. I'm glad I bothered.
The plot is essentially the quest of a son to keep the fall of the Berlin Wall secret from his mother. She had a heart attack seeing him being arrested for protesting, fell into a coma, and thus missed the collapse of the GDR, the fall of the wall, the process of unification - the whole shebang, including the rapid flood of capitalism into the East. When she comes round, the doctor says she must be kept quiet and away from any surprises so that she won't have a second heart attack. Alex, the son, played excellently by Daniel Bruhl, therefore reconstructs East Germany in his mother's bedroom, decanting modern Western groceries into the old Eastern-style jars (his search for a particular brand of pickle is especially obsessive), making sure people are wearing the right sorts of clothes - and, eventually, through the connivance of a workmate with pretensions to being a film director, falsifies news broadcasts so as to explain things such as the appearance of a Coca-Cola flag outside her window and West Germans moving in next door.
It's all quite impressive, touchingly done, and tells one far more about the insides of Alex's own head than his mother's. There's a thread running through about his fascination with space travel and the first German astronaut in space which I'd unpick more if I were less tired. The Germany that Alex creates for his mother is, as he himself admits, the Germany he wishes he lived in. It reflects his own disillusionment with the capitalist system, the frustration and (one suspects) disgust with his sister and her new partner's willing dive into the world of Burger King (she gives up university to work at a drive through. Go figure) and all the other things that unification does not provide.
Of course, he falls in love with Lara, the nurse who he meets at aforementioned demonstration and then, conveniently, happens to look after his mother - and be from the Soviet Union. The viewer is let into the secret that, as she looks after his mother in her last few days, back in the hospital, Lara explains that Alex is keeping her inside this fantasy land - but Alex never realises. His mother lets him hold on to the illusion - it ends up that this is what keeps him happy rather her. In the end, the charade is for his benefit rather than hers. She recedes and recedes from our vision until we really see how Alex has wrapped himself up in the false world as much as he has wrapped up her. In terms of a mechanism for coping with grief, I do wonder how effective it would be.
Four stars. There are a few weaknesses, and you'd have to know quite a bit about East German culture to get all the references (and I know I certainly didn't). But it was a good film.
If anyone is curious, the irony of posting about a film concerning the collapse of communism and the acceptance of capitalism just as LJ is sold to a Russian firm is not lost upon me.
