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Heimatklänge (2007)
Wonderful documentary about extraordinary musicians
Yesterday I had the chance to watch "Heimatklaenge" at the Berlin Film Festival. I was expecting that a documentary about folk music and Yodeling in Switzerland would be rather boring, but what I saw was simply amazing: The movie is a portrait of three musicians who take the traditional swiss folk style and combine it with experimental music. This sometimes sounds like Zappa, at times like Zen-Meditation or sometimes reminds of Klezmer music. We here some of the tunes in full length and I really enjoyed listening to all of them.
The documentary doesn't present a narrator, who tells us what to think about the artists or their music. The portrayed persons speak for themselves (in Switzerduetsch) and their stories and their story telling is so compelling that you forget that it actually is a documentary.
This definitely is one of the best music films I've ever seen.
Rashômon (1950)
Good tales don't have to be true - they just have to be good
This movie develops its power best, if you don't try to look out for the "real" and "true" events behind the four versions of the narration. I like that it doesn't moralize, it just states that things are only, what they seem to us. And here this shown in a very intelligent and artistic way, no silly plot-twists, no explanation in the end - it is open to your fantasy what happened, and perhaps that is more interesting than any explanation...
"Rashomon" is a important piece of cinematic storytelling and a really interesting way to reflect on the origin of tales and narrations.
The style of the movie and the acting may seem kind of strange today, as well as the pace and the editing. But especially this makes you not to think in clichés. Some scenes even remind me of Andrej Tarkovskijs intensive style - the rain, the ruin, the different levels of the story...
The movie has to tell a truth about the cinema in general, and this truth is not very happy, I think - but beautiful.
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988)
A fascinating movie about the fascination of watching movies
*** MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD ***
This movie is about a very touching friendship between a young boy and an old man, who are both in love with "the cinema". But further the movie shows interesting insights into the "culture of "movie-watching":
All the people of the village who watch the movies in their "cinema paradiso" are really moved by the films and express their feelings overtly and loud - not like today, where there has to be a very intellectual silence in the theater audience. The cinema is really part of their lives and it has a direct meaning to them - every film is a new event. Think of the priest, who calls the kissing scenes "pornography"! At first this hysterical man seems very ridiculous, but if you think of the existential meaning the moving images give to their audience, then it seems like he wants to try to defend "his" church from being occupied by a new technical god. But the film shows also, that movies have got no objective meaning unless they've got a special and unique meaning FOR YOU.
"Cinema Paradiso" is simply brilliant, the characters are very well portrayed and the setting is perfect. The thousands of short references to old french, italian and Hollywood movies are fun for every movie buff.
If you like movies, which know how to TELL A STORY - go and see this one, you won't be disappointed.
9/10
Rope (1948)
An extraordinary experiment of filmmaking, really worth watching *minor spoiler*
This movie's tension is not based on the plot or suspense but more on the contrast between the rules of the classic drama (unity of place, time and plot) and the modern techniques of filmmaking. The set is build like a theater stage and the acting is theater-like, too. While the whole movie is made in a few shots, which are linked smartly, theres still a lot of movement and very good "camera-acting". That shows, how clever Hitchcock has prepared every detail for the view of the camera (e.g. the kitchen door that swings back to show us Brendon putting the rope into the drawer.)
The script is very well written and the dialogues are witty and always to the point. Only the references on Nietzsches philosophy seem to be somewhat trivial and reducing the philosopher.
There are several hints for the homosexual subtext of the movie - this shows two things: On the one hand it surely was a taboo in the fourties to show homosexuality in the movies - on the other hand Hitchcock manages not to draw too much attention onto this fact, because the relation between the two boys is seems to be completely accepted by the other characters.
Often the movie makes "literature" and "film" a topic of the discussion, and I think the scene, where they talk about the new cinema releases and the musical, really is brilliant. The fact that they talk about Cary Grant, whom Hitchcock wanted for this movie actually, is typical for the irony of hitchcocks movie...
The acting is very good, especially Farley Granger, who plays the nervous flatmate of Brendon, is convincing.
The DVD-Comments show that Hitchcocks doesnt "dare" to let the tension grow until the end, but wanted to show the murder in the first scene too make the audience an "accomplice". Surely that takes a lot of the tension, but now, a few days after watching the movie, i think it is even better this way. Because now you can concentrate on HOW the thing gets discovered: the psychological development of the characters, the relation of the characters to the chest and the mechanisms of the arrogant and unscrupulous game, that Brendon plays.
Though not Hitchcocks best movie, I like it a lot: the macabre situation, the snobbish boys, the peculiar party, the dialogues, the colors of the cinema in the fourties, the idea of a "one-shot"-movie...
8/10