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Stander (2003)
Portrait of a Man (possible spoilers)
I saw this movie a few months ago during its limited release, and I just loved it. I actually walked into the movie expecting something different than what I ended up experiencing. I had vague ideas that the movie would be full of dark humor and irony, and that Stander would be portrayed as a man irreverently thumbing his nose at the apartheid system by causing random mayhem. But instead, the movie that I watched was a beautiful and incomplete (and this is a good thing here) portrayal of a very elemental man who must deal with the chaos of life and the meaningless violence he has witnessed.
Rather than experiencing some sort of a moral awakening during the riot, I think that Stander (at least the character, if not the actual man) was just filled with inchoate horror during this experience. *Possible Spoiler* The scene where he's dancing in the middle of the night is one of the greatest scenes in the movie. It shows us just how elemental (sorry to keep using that word, but I can't think of a better substitute) a man he is -- he deals with his role in the brutal killings by dancing naked to loud music only he can hear. (Just imagine saying to someone, "he's the type of man who deals with incomprehensible horror and pain by dancing naked while listening through headphones to loud rock music in the middle of the night." Doesn't that just paint a picture?)
There also is no intellectualized reasoning behind his bank robberies. There is only the pain and terror that he feels, and his dancing and his robberies are his coping mechanisms. *Spoiler* Even when he goes to find the father of the young man that he killed, there doesn't seem to be any premeditation or reasoned approach to his actions. He's seeking atonement for his actions, and there's perhaps some unformed idea that allowing the father to beat him bloody will somehow balance the scales. (If this were a different movie, Stander would (anonymously) give the money he accumulated from his robberies to the father of the dead young man. But I say with relief that I was watching a different movie altogether.) But he still doesn't get what he's looking for. It may come down to the fact that Stander is in no way a humble man -- but to achieve atonement, one must humble oneself.
The film reveals the nature of Stander's character slowly, bit by bit through his various actions and interactions with other characters. *Possible Spoiler* And the ending (which I understand may have been fictionalized) only reinforces the characterization of Stander as a man who acts out in extraordinarily self-destructive ways due to his inability to deal with his guilt and the horror of which humans are capable.
Angela (1995)
Lyrical (and Eventually Disappointing) Movie
The movie Angela, although entertaining in its beginning as a lyrical commentary on the precariousness of childhood, eventually puzzles and disappoints as it declines into David Lynch-like lines and imagery that really don't add anything (except perhaps atmosphere) to the film. In the first half of the film, Rebecca Miller provides us with glimpses and feelings of childhood that trigger vague remembrances of half-forgotten feelings of our own childhood -- the seemingly contradictory juxtaposition of the helplessness of being a non-adult forced to deal with adult problems (e.g., irresponsible or sick parent), with the powerful strength that comes from an ability to believe in worlds that cannot be seen. Unfortunately, the second half of the movie degenerates into cryptic dialogue and confusing imagery and scenarios that are reminiscent of Lynch at less than his best. Mixed in with an increasingly prominent religious-hysteria-in-young-girl story line, the movie just left me feeling annoyed that I'd invested my time in such an unsatisfying film. The main character also began to alienate me, and ultimately cause real antipathy in me, during this second half, where she continues to drag her sister along in her quest for salvation, appropriating other people's property (e.g., horse, family's picture) without compunction because they are "signs" of some holy grail that only she can detect.
And although this may seem contradictory to my earlier comment about the cryptic dialogue and imagery, I found the second half to be much too intellectualized. It seems that the filmmaker was trying to tie in the fall of Satan/Lucifer with the fall that every human must experience in his/her maturation process -- through the realization of one's sexuality (signified by Angela's clothing and a particular event), and through the realization of one's own mortality (signified by Angela's search for the way to heaven). But I found these efforts to be generally unmoving (perhaps because they were so confused) and thus, as previously stated, ultimately taking away from the enjoyment of the movie. (Also, I thought a 10-year-old was a bit too young to illustrate these themes, and the film would have been better off staying away from them altogether.) Consequently, the latter half of the movie became a rambling essay on the painful awakenings each child must experience on the road to adulthood, rather than the poem or short story it could have been on the terrible beauty of childhood in an imperfect world.