ershkia Reviews

The Square (2017)

The Square

[7/10 · 22 November 2017]

Force Majeure, the previous film by the director of The Square, is centered around a cowardly act. When an avalanche hits a ski resort, a man flees leaving his wife and children behind and that sets in motion a series of events that made a pretty effective and darkly comical family drama.

But in his latest film, Östlund has more ambitious plans; This time he wants to show us all things that are wrong in the Swedish modern society and presumably by extension the whole Western world. In this crusade, he touches on our indifference about marginalized people, modern art, millennials, our obsession with safe spaces, sexual politics, parenting and the list is long but behind all of that there seems to be a similar lament: people has lost the courage to stand up for themselves and others. Cowardice is the modern world's biggest sin.

Whether Östlund is up to anything with his grand theory of everything is up for debate, but what is interesting is that the Cannes festival organizers eager to find a prognosis for the apparent malaise of their continent, decided to overlook the often didactic tone of The Square and reward it with their highest prize.

Elle (I) (2016)

provocative and more

[8/10 · 16 November 2017]

It is often unhelpful to try to squeeze a film into a single main idea and that is even more true if the film is a good one. But I am going to break my own rule here to talk about the latest film by Paul Verhoeven. Not that I think Elle lacks nuance, but without seeing the thread that binds this film together, the intentionally provocative tone of the film can detract from its merits and push the film into lazy pigeonholes: misogynistic, exploitative, incoherent and if you are looking for a longer list of pejorative adjectives, Richard Brody's review in the New Yorker is an excellent thesaurus.

Elle starts with a rape scene and what follows is how the main character, Michèle, deals with this presumably traumatic experience. I say presumably because her reaction to this incident throughout the film defies all expectations of how anyone might react to an assault. After the intruder leaves her house, she gets up, with some difficulty of course, sweeps the broken plates off the floor, takes a bath and orders takeout for dinner. And when she finally realizes that the rapist after all was her neighbour, someone whom she happened to have a crush on, the viewer is confronted with another what-the-heck moment when she, this time willingly, gets herself beaten down again.

Let's start with the easiest hypothesis to refute. This film is plainly not about the damage rape can do to the victims, the film doesn't even try to make the protagonist likable enough to get the viewer's sympathy. A revenge thriller with a strong female cast? Surely there is an element of revenge in the film but it is hard to reduce it to a revenge story when the protagonist is drawn to her rapist. A misogynist story, disguising itself behind a criticism of conventional morality to show rape as a common fantasy and not all that terrible in reality? If she, a woman with a strong and dominant personality throughout the film, subconsciously yearns submission, why does she have to ruin her dream came true by taking her revenge at the end?

And here is why I think a single main force behind Michèle's actions can save us from this confusion, and that force is not morality, or a sense of justice or shame or anger, or the society's pressure, but the agency to do what she desires to do in spite of all that. What the film is doing here is highlighting agency by taking the notion to its unnerving and sometimes darkly comical extreme. After the assault happens, she is physically hurt but mentally settled enough to order a takeout. She doesn't call the cops not because she is embarrassed or afraid of telling people what happened, she tells her ex-husband and friends about the story in the restaurant scene after all, but why bother with the cops if she can take matters in her own hand? Her reaction is no different every time someone reminds her of her mass murderer father out of spite, she keeps calm and carries on. But why does she willingly fall prey to the neighbour's sadistic behaviour? Is she a masochist? Well, the last thing she probably cares about is we pondering what she is or she is not.

This is not to say that Elle should be seen as a manual on how to handle sexual assault, or as a realistic character study of Michèle and her motives. What the film does though, so effectively and so outlandishly, is bring to life not perhaps the most lovable but a memorably strong character that leads her life with the ultimate agency.

Faces Places (2017)

Faces Places

[7/10 · 5 November 2017]

Prolific and delightful Agnès Varda teams up with the celebrated photographer J.R. on a road trip through rural France. JR, well known for his photography murals, this time mainly focuses on the images of rural French working class, but the conversations between the two artists, touch on other themes that are equally interesting to follow.

Faces Places is one of those disarmingly charming films that are hard not to like, but its main theme, maybe too easy to digest, can make you peckish for a bit more challenge by the time the film is over.

Two Days, One Night (2014)

A more accessible Dardennes'

[7/10 · 2 February 2015]

In the Dardenne brothers' latest film, Two Days, One Night, a woman is about to be laid off by her boss if the majority of her colleagues do not agree to forgo their bonuses. The story in its simplicity, and one could say its implausibility, becomes almost an allegory of our times. An allegory when it works, brings forth what is hidden behind the complex and the mundane. We live in a complex society where it is easy not take individual responsibility for our actions when there is always the "system" to blame. But beyond all that there is a question relevant now as it has always been in any society: Are we willing to make a sacrifice for our fellow human beings when it comes down to our benefit against theirs? And that's exactly the question that the film demands an answer.

If, for some, this society brings an easy excuse to shrug responsibility for their actions, for many it brings about a sense of helplessness in a system that is impossible to change by one individual. And here, the Dardenne brothers, by closely following how the main character is affected by this situation and how she overcomes her ordeal not necessarily by winning over the system, ultimately deliver a humane and hopeful message.

Winter Sleep (2014)

Worth the Three Hours

[9/10 · 21 January 2015]

Winter Sleep is a great movie on different levels. Unlike his previous film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Ceylan's use of poetic language is spare and not central to his new film. Instead, the focus has shifted to character studies through Bergmanesque scathingly revealing dialogues that makes the similarity of the title to the film Winter Light maybe not entirely coincidental.

But what makes the film unique is how it works well as a psychodrama but it doesn't confine itself to the inner lives and struggles of its characters. On a different level, the characters can rightly be coming out of a Dostoevsky story, each representing an archetype, the wealthy (the bored and jaded, the sensitive and empathic but trapped in a bubble of luxury, the distant and arrogant pseudo-intellectual taking his moral and cultural upper hand for granted) and the poor (the subservient, the frustrated and hateful, the resigned and meek.) Ceylan's keen observation on how the poor and the wealthy, each destined to live in their own bubbles, see themselves and fail to understand the other makes their inevitable clash, as the hunting scene might suggest, more like a law of nature than due to their personal demons and character weaknesses.

Maybe some of the arguments in the film can be read in the same Dostoevskian vein: the artists putting words into his characters' mouths to argue and counter-argue what he himself has been grappling with. But even during those conversations, the undercurrent of psychological drama is present; the question is not just what they are arguing or whether we agree or not but what motivates them to say what they say. What feels a bit thematically out of place from the rest of film though, is when Ceylan becomes Dostoevskian in a melodramatic way in a scene where Ismael refuses to accept the money from Nihal. And aside from a few scenes where it feels the movie is losing its steam in this more than three hours of a marathon, Winter Sleep is a considerable achievement and one of the best movies of the year.