The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

Rabu, 25 Maret 2009

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Mark Herman, 2008)

Absolutely nothing differentiates Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas from any other conventional Holocaust film except for the fact that Herman's film, especially because its protagonists are innocent children caught in the middle of man-made tragedies, reeks of emotional blackmail. While Herman manages to keep the film's affairs told from a comfortable distance, more like a dark fable rather than a historical anecdote (which it is not, since the film is adapted from a novel by John Boyne, and the novel's very premise, about a Jewish kid living and working inside one of Nazi's concentration camps, is a near-impossibility since Jewish children never lasted in concentration camps as they are immediately killed by the Nazis), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does not graduate from merely reiterating the blatant absurdity of the Holocaust, only this time, without an ounce of subtlety.

That is precisely the biggest problem I have with Herman's Holocaust film. Other than depicting those turbulent times from perspective of an innocent kid (looking back though, Roberto Benigni's syrupy Life is Beautiful (1997), with its annoyingly clueless father Benigni wrote and portrayed, is the top offender in utilizing both innate and manufactured naivete to questionable acclaim from the Academy), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas hardly has anything new to contribute to the largely stagnant genre. To make matters worse, Herman handles the material with such unnecessary reverence, gathered from the overly tasteful cinematography and its ceremonial plotting, that it becomes unbelievably off-putting and quite ironically, rather tasteless, quite similar to being lectured on elementary morality with the intricate yet infuriating flourish of an overly eager kindergarten teacher.

Bruno (Asa Butterfield, pale and wide-eyed, like a wet hatchling), the film's juvenile protagonist who was plucked from the city with his older sister (Amber Beattie) and mother (Vera Farmiga) by his father (David Thewlis) who is a high ranking Nazi officer newly assigned to the countryside, becomes the audience's eyes and ears in the film. We follow Bruno when he, out of curiosity and boredom, sneaks from his new home to the nearby concentration camp, which he mistakes for a farm, where he befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon, whose exaggeratedly pitiful exterior elicits the same predatorial feel from an overly eager mendicant), a Jewish kid from inside the camp. Unfortunately, Bruno is such a feebly conceived character, a character that lazily and conveniently utilizes childhood as an excuse for absolute gullability and dumb curiosity, that following the narrative through his perspective becomes such a difficult chore because his character stretches the bounds of plausible human psychology for the purpose of arriving at its much-awaited glory note.

The film's glory note, a climactic sequence that pits the sad fate of Bruno and Shmuel and the desperate scramblings of Bruno's family, is hardly glorious at all. When the pandemonium, the onscreen suffocation, the dullness and drabness of the reality that Bruno has realized takes over the initial glossy and stately trappings of the film, the shift is so incomprehensibly sudden and forecful that it borders on being ridiculous and laughable. I understand that the finale only emphasizes the grandiose absurdities of the Holocaust, yet Herman's operatic finale, oddly reminiscent of such cult Nazi treats like Tinto Brass' Salon Kitty (1976) or Don Edmonds Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) where shock substitutes for empathy, only backfires, especially in a way that it seems to be the only entertaining bit in the entire film.

The result I got then is rather confused: when Herman should have elicited empathy, or at least disbelief, shock, even anger, what I got, however, was a guilty moment of befuddled delight. If one needs a reminder of the atrocities of the Nazis without the pseudo-artistry and bluntness of a misguided craftsmen, Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1955) is what I recommend. It is only a third of the running time of Herman's overindulgent Holocaust film, but Resnais' meditative explorations of a real concentration camp is haunting and deep enough to leave a lasting dent in one's senses. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, being a tasteless redundancy, is just a waste of time.

The Reader (2008)

Senin, 02 Maret 2009

The Reader (2008)

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

Romances, I believe, are not grounded on the similarities that would-be-lovers share but by the differences they would have to overcome to be together. Cinderella stories are not so much about their lovers, the stereotypical Prince Charming and his hapless amore, but the differences that set the characters apart, and their struggles and accompanying acts of fate that would lead to their eventual reunion. Half of Stephen Daldry's The Reader has the makings of a great romance. The film's would-be lovers are implicated in an affair by a twist of fate, pushing the two individuals separated by age, social status, and, as revealed later on in the film, moral standing, together. The success or failure of their union rests solely in their ability to wrestle with their differences; and Daldry exploits this wholeheartedly, infusing the film with a sensuality that is at once seductive and bizarre.

In the late fifties, a teenage Michael Berg (David Kross), suffering from scarlet fever, alights from his tram and finds himself in the entrance to the apartment building of Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a ticket dispenser who is more than a decade his senior. Hannah helps Michael find his way home. After recuperating from scarlet fever, Michael comes back to Hannah's apartment to show his gratitude. He catches a glimpse of Hannah's naked body as she is dressing out of her uniform; she sees him staring; and obviously flustered by his exhibit of his sexual attraction, flusters away from the apartment only to return, first in a stalking manner, and later on, as a familiar fixture in the apartment: naked while reading to Hannah classics before making passionate love to her. The strange affair lasted for a few months before Hannah suddenly disappears from her apartment. Michael retreats from his adolescent fantasies, graduates from high school, enters law school, becomes a lawyer, marries, becomes a father, and doing all that while carrying the lasting burden of his affair with Hannah.

Daldry explores the love affair through the eyes of Michael, and as Michael, Kross has the responsiblity to depict the initial awkwardness, overpowered eventually by sexual curiosity, that describes Michael's interest with Hannah. He succeeds in this regard. Kross' teenage Michael is hardly discreet in his sexual desires, stumbling in the codes of sexual language yet willing, very willing, to be guided. His sexual triumph does not go unnoticed; his newly found sexual relations suddenly lifts his spirits and gets him energized (when a waitress mistakes Hannah as her mother, he passionately kisses Hannah, not to express his feelings, but to show-off). However, he unwittingly falls into the trap that most novices fall under, and mixes love with the initial high of his first sexual contact. Winslet, as the film's object of desire, makes most of what essentially is a passive role. Perhaps her most difficult task, which Winslet was able to comply with, is to keep Hannah's shame of her illiteracy, a point which the film hinges its logic to, from utter ludicrousness.

Unfortunately, The Reader is not and was never intended as a romance. Midway, the film shifts tone and plunges into a discourse of moral philosophizing, taking into account the facts that Hannah used to be a prison guard in Auschwitz, illiterate and is thus, pressured into taking full responsibility over the atrocities that happened during her tenure in Auschwitz, and added to that, Michael's previous affair with her, which would later on, open an avenue for his very own sin of omission, something that would bother him for the rest of his life. Daldry opts to graduate from delivering the well-earned thrills of Michael and Hannah's many secret encounters and delves into the depths of post-World War II guilt, supposedly shared by everyone who opted silence despite knowledge of the ensuing war atrocities, juxtaposed with Michael's own guilt, of keeping to himself a fact that would have saved Hannah from incarceration.

The film is bookended by a side-story where Michael (Ralph Fiennes, unusually dull and drab) is about to meet a daughter he has not met in years, and the ending attempts at providing some sort of closure and redemption for Michael; which I thought was completely unnecessary (as with all the confusing time leaps from Michael's past to his present, and vice versa, that infest the picture) and adds only to the cluttery flow of the film. Ultimately, The Reader suffers from having split personality. Half of it is wildly entertaining: a frenzied coming-of-age tale that quickly transforms into a delirious love story. The other half obviously endeavors at imparting something important about shame and guilt, yet ultimately suffers from being graceless and unappealing.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Senin, 24 November 2008

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008)

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle's pseudo-Bollywood crowd-pleaser, is unabashedly treacly, with Boyle complementing the story of a boy from the slums who eventually wins both the grand prize in India's version of a famous game show franchise and the love of his life with his energetic aesthetics that indulge in quick cuts, bright colors, and depictions of chaotic beauty. Mumbai, the heart of India and one of the world's busiest urban centers, turns into an apt setting for this genuinely amiable fairy tale of boy and girl live happily ever after amidst a backdrop of poverty, religious persecution, corruption, and everything else that is wrong in this world of ours.

Boyle, who, like his fellow Brit filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (who I feel is a more consistent filmmaker), has jumped from one genre to another with relative ease, crafts a film that is plebeian in its sensibilities (I suspect this will be a hit in cinemas in India, drawing cheers and jeers from rowdy moviegoers, before finally getting slightly uncomfortable with the finale kiss (which is still taboo in Bollywood cinema)), but maintaining his trademark visual kinetics, with his camera gliding through narrow alleys, capturing colors and textures that enunciate the film's exotic value. In one sequence where a group of street urchins are chased by the police through the labyrinthine passageways of the slums, Boyle exemplifies his talent for hyper-kinetic editing, sufficiently complementing Mumbai's attractive chaos with his trademark artistry (of course, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza has accomplished a similar feat in the opening sequence of Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), done with only a fraction of Boyle's budget, but achieving greater results).

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is just a question away from claiming twenty million rupees from the local version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, when he is taken into custody by the police. Suspected for cheating his way through trivia questions professionals and intellectuals have a difficult time answering, Jamal, a Muslim boy who was born and raised in the slums of Mumbai and is now is working as a tea boy in a call center, is tortured and interrogated by the police because it is seemingly impossible for a man of his history and background to accomplish that much. His interrogator (Irfan Khan, who infuses what essentially is a token role with unusual intensity), whose initially tough exterior (and insistence on unconventional methods for forcing the truth out of his captives) melts to reveal a sensible and fair man, becomes the audience's barometer for the plausibility of Jamal's tales.

The interrogation serves as the narrative device for Jamal to relay, in several prolonged flashbacks, the several pertinent chapters of his life that consequently led him to the answers to the questions in the game show. As we see Jamal grow up, escape the slums, separate from his streetsmart brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), the attention slowly drifts from the more facile rewards and consequences of his game show exposure to expose the true heart of the film: Jamal's heartfelt reunion with the love of his life, Latika (Freida Pinto), eventually turning Slumdog Millionaire from a witty rags-to-riches tale into a delectable, if not purely escapist, treat where, if we are to believe the Beatles, all you need is love.

Yet there is something more to Slumdog Millionaire than its infatuation with destined encounters with cash and love. The climax, where the entire city stops to see if Jamal can answer the final question and eventually win the loot, summarizes the film's inherent charm. Mumbai turns into one parking lot, with its citizens, mostly the poor (the rich are busy watching sports, perhaps because the hope that the game show delivers is no longer a necessity for them), tuning in and supporting their hero. During that sequence, Boyle enlarges the situation, from being a mere personal quest for Jamal to find Latika (and vice versa) into a national (if not encompassing the rest of humanity) quest to prove that there is something more to life than poverty and suffering, that lots improve, and there are real fairy tale endings.

One begins to understand what these game shows mean to the third world, that these shows are not purely consumerist visages but harbingers of hope to those who should be hopeless. In the year of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace, nth sequels of popular film franchises that have made the conscious decision to be darker and more in line with the supposed grim state of our world, getting popular and critical approval, Slumdog Millionaire, is a welcome breath of fresh air.

It's A Free World (2007)

Senin, 03 November 2008

It's A Free World (2007)

It's A Free World... (Ken Loach, 2007)

In Ken Loach's It's A Free World..., there are two generations of the working class that are separated not only by age but by their immense moral gap. Geoff (Colin Caughlin) is retired and spends his day taking care of his grandson. He lives comfortably with his wife, despite his acknowledgment of his limited financial capabilities, and goes about life with his head up high although his belt is tightened. He is representative of most of Loach's protagonists, those who maintain an adamantly dignified stance against the afflictions that plague the working class. Angie (surprisingly terrific newcomer Kierston Wareing), Geoff's daughter (and if we are to follow Geoff's logic, a severe disappointment) is in her early thirties, a single mother and has been switching jobs year after year and unable to find decent employment opportunities in a modern world of increasing wealth and diminishing integrities.

After being fired (presumably for violently reacting against the sexual advances of a male superior) from an employment agency that recruits immigrants for manual work in England, Angie returns to London and convinces Rose (Juliet Ellis), her flatmate, to start-up their own manpower agency in the backlot of a local pub. Angie's operations reflect her roots. Riding her motorcycle around town, recruiting overstaying aliens and convincing businessmen to provide work for her recruits, Angie's irresistable demeanor, consisting of a mix of unique confidence brewed from both desperation and years of economic and social struggle, would carry her entrepreneurial experiment to modest successes. She establishes rules at work (for example, she would not provide aliens without any papers employment), and in the process, protects whatever dignity and integrity from the probable repercussions of her chosen endeavor.

However, the capitalist world is not nearly as predictable as Angie thinks it is. Businesses fail. Employers become bankrupt and unable to pay wages. Commissions are unearned. Mobs of dissatisfied immigrants become unruly and her and her family's safety is compromised. Her rules are bent, first to favor an Iranian refugee who is desperate to find any job to feed his family, and later on, to finally complete her transformation from exploited to exploiter. No matter how Angie insists that there are borders to her profession, it is this uncomfortable meshing of her two roles (as a member of the exploited middle class and as the superior and empowered recruiter) in the bigger scheme of international economics and politics that forces her to choose which side she really belongs to: the abused, or the abuser.

To make matters worse, Angie's privilege is not her innate industry or other talents and skills, but the simple fact that the world also has arbitrary economic classes among nations, where Britain is hardly the working class as compared to its Eastern European neighbors whose citizens spend decades worth of their savings to gain entry to London, forced to be employed with meager wages and hardly any benefits, where promises of decent living and income is mutated into paranoia and nightmares of either being cramped into decrepit buses, factories, and inhumane working places or being chased out of the country by the immigrations police.

Loach's concern is hardly these impoverished illegal immigrants. Their stories have been told and retold by countless other filmmakers, almost always with the emotional efficiency of daytime soap. Loach pits his beloved middle class in the center of this contemporary world, where nations are interconnected by trade treaties, loosened borders, and easy communication. Although afflicted with the same working class problems (poverty, lack of professional recourse, and a youth that is being pushed to delinquency by lack of proper parenting), Angie's generation is provided with a pressing choice: of living the same lives as those who preceded them, or exploiting the more desperate and desolate members of the enlarged and supposedly freed world.