Shariq’s Département

Ok, so I agree that the film loses something in its translation from the wildly successful stage musical - specifically, the direction is overrun with close-ups, so we lose the panoramic experience of group joy in the dance scenes (and this movie is about joy and simple happiness); also, it’s more difficult to just stand up and dance in a movie theatre, especially when the music is recorded, and not live.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  What a wonderful ode to simplistic, joyful, “in the moment” fantasy living that creates new realities and new opportunities.  The music of Abba has been panned over the decades for being fluff pop with pitiful lyrics.  But, let me ask you to reconsider.  There is a reason these songs stick in your mind and don’t let go.  I just have to say “Money, money, money” and you think “it’s a rich man’s world”; I say “Voulez-vous” and you think “ain’t no big decision” and throw in an “a-ha”.  My point is that these songs are melodiously extremely inventive and have hidden harmonies that make you feel good as you hear them.  You want to bounce up and down - and that is what this movie is about.

It’s also about living in the “NOW” moment, taking risks, being spontaneous, and hence enjoying life.  And this is where the lyrics of the Abba songs come in - they might seem like fluff but that is because we are trying to over-intellectualize them.  Sometimes messages are simple.  The movie begins with Sophie on the threshold of her wedding sends out missives to three men her mother Donna (the amazing, is-there-anything-she-can’t-do Meryl Streep) slept with over one summer, any of whom could be her father.  Sophie sings to a starlit sky, “I have a dream, a fantasy…if you see the wonder of a fairty tale…you could take the future, even if it fails”.  She is setting the stage for the themes (yes, themes!) of the movie.  In the fantasy world the movie creates, you create your future by believing in a positive reality and acting from your heart at the right moment.  When Julie Walters comically sings “Take a chance on me”, she is taking a risk, putting herself out there, but without her asking and imagining this future, the man she fancies (the excellent Stellan Skarsgard) will never consider it.  The follow up lyrics to “Voulez-vous” are “ain’t no big decision” because indeed we shouldn’t over-think our positions but act spontaneously to generate happiness.  Without revealing plot details, let me just say that because of spontaneous (and surprising) decisions both Sophie and Donna make about marriage in the final scenes of the movie, they set the stage for their own happiness.

I now have to talk about the amazing turn I witnessed by Meryl Streep that had goosebumps flowing through my body.  Some critics just don’t get it, wondering why an actress famous for her flawless character studies and accents would take on such a frivolous role.  Well, because to play Donna like Streep does is pretty damn hard.  Her accents come through in her beautiful singing voice - she actually uses the different pitches and keys in her voice as she sings Abba to suggest depths of character and waves of emotion.  Her body and physicality expresss as much as her face.  And she looks beautiful and radiant at 59.  Streep makes the movie work - the audience is transfixed on her (although the director does try and upstage her by giving her goofy sight directions to mimic some of the lyrics). 

At the movie’s closing credits, Streep, in platform shoes and an Abba 70’s costume leads the cast in two final concert songs - she is having the time of her life and so should we!  Her courage to let herself go and dramatically reinvent the Abba musical should be an inspiration to us to live our lives in the “NOW” and take risks; to have fun and enjoy ourselves!

What a fantastic movie for kids and adults!  Wall-e, the cute, insouciant, futuristic robot hero in this movie has a heart of gold and courage to boot.  He encounters a new robot, Eva, on a deserted planet earth piled high with vertical towers of trash.  Eva, programmed to search and destroy, is initially resistant to Wall-e’s romantic selfless love that rhapsodizes the holding of hands or dancing.  Most of this part of the movie is without dialogue, but instead punctuated with expressive robot sounds (think of R2D2 and C3PO in the original Star Wars).  The plot moves forward when Wall-e follows Eva to a remote spaceship where humanity is marooned in a self-contained, somnambulent isolation.  I won’t reveal more except to say that integrity and a courage to change the world against all odds win the day.  What a great message for kids.  Take them - they’ll love it!

A muddled, frenetic Norwegian movie with meta-alternative-what-if pretensions, Reprise, although hyped by critics like Manohla Dargis of the New York Times (who is generally spot-on), is fluffy and disappointing.

On the positive side, the movie, about close friends Phillip and Erik, in their twenties who both write and publish their first novels, successfully conveys the exuberance of youth where passion, optimism, loud music and sex rule.  But this has been done so many times before - what makes it a little bit unique is that we get to see contemporary Norway, a country which does not generally export many movies to the U.S.

The plot, focused on Phillip’s nervous breakdown post-publication and obsession with a woman he is in love with, might have worked quite well, except that the director, Joachim Trier, is so focused on quick editing and quirky “this would have happened if Erik did this” voice-overs that we, the audience are left emotionally numb.  Why does the audience care if Phillip is heartbroken or falling apart if the scenario is continously shifting in a post-modern fashion?  Essential parts of character and plot seem to be missing.  But perhaps that is part of the point.  Is young adult angst really definable or understandable?

Go see it for the thrill of a Norwegian rush - but you might be a bit disappointed.

In this enjoyable but way-too-long movie about finding love, and seeking happiness through close friends, children and plenty of sex, the nymphomaniac from the show, Samantha ends up being the subtle heroine of the movie.

Carrie, dumped by Big on her wedding day, loses her make-up to expose sallow, sagging post-40 skin, reflecting a diseased fear that she will be deprived of committed, intimate love all her life.  But, without revealing too much of the plot, let me just say that Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda all end up revealing an inherent insecurity within themselves without a man or children.  Samantha, the only one who is not married, or looking to get married at the start of the movie, ends up chucking a relationship that she has outgrown.  She believes in herself, and is not afraid to be alone in order to grow.  She also displays tremendous maturity in not cheating on her boyfried, despite several voluptuous Playgirl-type nude opportunites with her hot next-door neighbour.

Unlike the TV show, there is an undertone of pathos in this movie.  All the characters are older, look tired and have lines on their faces.  There is a sense of desperation surrounding them at this mid-life crisis age.  They seem to be wondering is this all there is - is there more I should expect or want out of life?  It is Samantha in the movie, and not Carrie, who (perhaps unconsciously on the screenwriter’s part) provides the answer.

So I finally went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, which debuted at Cannes this month, and although the movie is entertaining enough, the main attraction is not the flimsy plot but the fun of seeing great actors having a good time.

Harrison Ford, although in his sixties now, has not lost his boyish, rakish charm that continues to make him an effortless, fun-to-watch hero.  You can’t help but root for him, no matter how silly the dialog is.  Cate Blanchett is also good as the evil Russian Dr. Irina Spalko, looking for paranormal ways to control the world - she seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself, especially when kicking Shia LaBeouf’s butt in a nicely choreographed fight across two jeeps.  LaBeouf, who has been charismatic on the screen before in Disturbia, is oddly muted here and completely overshadowed by Ford.  There is a scene at the end of the movie where LaBeouf tries to take Indiana’s hat, almost as if to say: hey, its my turn now.  Ford, as Indiana, grabs the hat back, and you can almost hear the audience breathing a collective sigh of relief - no, LaBeouf will not be able to sustain the franchise on his own.  Karen Allen is also a delight to watch, and her fascination with Indiana Jones is infectious.

The plot will not appeal to a lot of people who find New Age approaches to relics and archeological sites too fantastical to entertain.  I will say that the movie feels well researched on New Age topics ranging from groupthink, collective consciousness, interdimensional portals, intuitive symbols, to the transparent crystal (embodying light and sound) nature of other planes.  However the climax seems cheesy and unlikely.

Not a classic, but worth watching!

The insightful documentary Up the Yangtze, playing at the Quad cinema, uses the creation of the Three Gorges Dam in China to explore changing aspects of Chinese daily life.  Peasants who are forced to move from areas being flooded must seek alternative forms of income to support themselves in a post-Communist economy where cash instead of a paternalistic communist government handout is necessary to survive.  Meanwhile, foreign tourists from the US, Canada and France are crowding tour boats along the Yangtze river to see this disappearing world before the flooding occurs. 

The movie documents the attempts of two young Chinese teenagers learning to work on these ships.  For the girl, Cindy, from an extremely poor family, she has to work and give up high school to support her peasant parents who are illiterate.  We watch her struggling to come to terms with the reality that she must forgo an education to feed her parents; the film juxtaposes images of fat American tourists gorging on plates of heaping buffet food to make the point that we live such wonderful lives in the West that we cannot imagine the difficulties others go through in the developing world just to survive.  I’d recommend you see this movie just to remind yourself that no matter how bad your life might seem to you, you have it pretty good!  One American woman leaving the cruise at the end of the movie congratulates a young Chinese aide/porter for not being as “obtrusive” on her cruise as she had feared.  She has a lot to learn.

The movie reminded me of another film about the Three Gorges Dam I saw a couple of months ago, the excellent Still Life, directed by the very talented Jia ZhangKe. 

This movie won the best picture prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and is successful in using the Dam to explore what the meaning of change is for two different protagonists: a man who is in search of a wife who left him many years ago, and in a parallel story, a woman who comes to the Three Gorges area to seek her husband who is involved in constructing a new bridge across the Yangtze.  The images in this movie are as real as the ones in the documentary (pre-flooding), and one almost thinks that the two movies must have been shot at the same time. 

But what is really interesting in Still Life is that Jhangke suggests that although change is occurring in China, people feel like they are trapped in a limbo as they wait for a future to arrive, not knowing what form it will take.  A pre-dam life has ended, but where do the people go from here?  The male protagonist is shown to be the wiser one, as he silently accepts life and seeks new possibilities when life does not go his way, accepting that the future will reveal itself in its own time.  The woman protagonist is more limited, struggling and crying as she realizes she has lost her husband, bewildered at fate’s hand.  She is stuck in the limbo, as probably many are in China, the movie suggests.  The movie is filmed in washed out colors and has many long takes, suggesting the faded, meandering quality of a life that is changing but is arrested, and has not yet fully birthed the future.

With a record 14 Oscar nominations and only 2 Oscars awarded to Meryl Streep, the greatest living actress in the world, I feel optimistic that this could be the year that Meryl gets number 3.

Why?  Because she has two great performances to be released this year.

The first is in the movie version of the hit Abba musical: Mamma Mia!  Meryl looks phenomenal in the movie (see the pictures above), and this will be a wonder opportunity for her to showcase her beautiful voice.  The movie will be released on July 18th.

The second is the film version of the award-winning play Doubt, to be released in October.  The play is fantastic and provides a meaty role of strict nun for Meryl (the part was played to great acclaim by Cherry Jones on Broadway).  My only hesitation about the movie is that the priest accused of child molestation is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is a good actor, but always appears a little slimy.  This will change the dynamic of the movie, as the original play had a priest who looked innocent - somehow I don’t see Hoffman as looking innocent.

I look forward to seeing Meryl’s magic!

The fantastically talented director Laurent Cantet has won Canne’s top prize for his film Entre Les Murs (literal translation is “Between the Walls” but it is marketed in English as “The Class”), about a teacher’s role in a high school in a tough, multicultural section of Paris.  I was thrilled to hear of Cantet’s win, as I have been a big admirer of his since I saw his wonderful 2005 movie Vers Le Sud, or “Heading South”, about older women who went to Haiti for sex tourism in ’70s.  That movie was lyrical, haunting and pregnant with image and meaning, like a classic novel.  If Entre Les Murs is close to that, I am sure that it will be a wonderul film to watch.

Benico del Toro won best actor for Soderbergh’s marathon movie Che, and Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the best director prize for Three Monkeys.

The link to all the prizes is below:

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/article/56220.html

As the Cannes film festival draws to a close, it is appropriate to talk about one of my favourite movies from the 2007 official selection, “The Edge of Heaven” from the talented German-Turkish director, Fatih Akin, which has opened for a limited run at the Film Forum and won the prize for best screenplay at Cannes.

The movie, which starts off with melodrama (Turkish older male immigrant to Germany falls in love with a Turkish-German prostitute and then accidentally kills her), tells interveaving tales of multiple characters.  The accidental killer is jailed while his nerdy, bookish son, Nejat, travels to Turkey to find the prostitute’s runaway daughter.  The daughter, meanwhile enters Germany illegally and the movie shows them crossing paths without noticing each other.  One of the points the movie wants to make is that we are each on our own journeys, and sometimes we are not supposed to meet as we fulfil our destinies.

[The following paragraphs reveal significant plot details]

The son settles in Turkey, buying and running a bookstore, while the prostitute’s daughter, Ayten, is seduced by a caring, blond German lesbian who falls in love with her.  Ultimately, complications ensue as Ayten is deported from Germany, her girlfriend follows her and is killed accidentally by purse-snatchers.  Ayten is shown to be a user, while the German girl, Lotte, is a giver, wanting to help Ayten.

She dies for a reason, in this movie all about forgiveness, love and serendipity in life.  Her mother, an unforgiving German in the beginning of the move, who disapproves of her daughter’s lifestyle choices, has a vision of her daughter’s spirit in Turkey and is suddenly transformed by the love in her daughter’s smile.  She begins to understand about love and forgiveness, and continues on Lotte’s struggle and mission to help Ayten.  Ayten is herself reformed by all the kindness she receives.

Ultimately, Nejat and Lotte’s mother spend time together, and we begin to understand that they are at a similar point in their lives and can help each other.

The movie’s last scene shows Nejat staring out at the horizon at the shore of a beach.  To me, this scene is symbolic of “The Other Side” which is the literal translation of the German title of this fabulous movie: Auf der anderen seite.  A spirituality pervades the movie - we are being guided by our life’s experiences to learn and should approach unexpected events and misfortunes as a way to move forward, a little wiser, and, hopefullly, better, loving human beings.

This movie, which was part of the official competition for the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) in 2007, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year, so I was expecting a spectacular film; especially since the Academy chose to not even nominate exceptional films like “4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days”.

However, the movie disappoints because it is so predictable.  The Nazi horrors and despicable treatment of the Jews in concentration camps has been done many times - so to see the same story repeated here is not very new.  The twist is that our protagonist, Salomon, is an exceptional counterfeiter, and so manages to take a team with him to a special ward in the concentration camp where they are given priveliges, such as warm beds, food and the chance to live.

Although this is interesting in the beginning, part of the movie’s problem is that the characters are so black and white.  The Germans are racist brutes, while the Jews are brotherly and form a natural comaraderie, looking out for one another.  Salomon forms a treacly relationship with several prisoners, including a young man who he treats like a son, trying desperately to protect his life.  Yet we never really seem to get inside Salomon’s head - what makes him tick?  I felt an emotional distance through the movie which made it less moving than it should have been.

Honorable and important story, but I wish the screeplay and acting had been more complex and interesting.