Monday, December 25th, 2006
Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977, USA) - ****, A Masterpiece
One of the best movie about people dealing with aging matter, IMO it ranks as highly as the famous Ozu’s Tokyo Monogatari, De Sica’s Umberto D, Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Bergman’s Smultronstallet, Mankiewicz’ All about Eve, Manoel de Oliveira’s I’m Going Home, Aldrich’s Whatever Happened Baby Jane, or even the great Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard.
Cassavetes is so bold in making Gena Rowlands looks so creepy as an aging stage actress, manipulated by the owner of the play producer who is an old woman. The haunting dream sequence, the jealousy with the younger woman, and the freightened feeling becoming menopause fill most of the duration. The ending might be the funniest scene of all Cassavetes movie I’ve seen before. My second favorite Cassavetes, right behind Shadows.
Kitchen Toto (Harry Hook, ) - ***1/2
What a wonderful gem it is. Kitchen Toto is a movie that doesn’t feel like a movie. The characters act what they got to do. If they have to do something brutal it’s because they are brutal persons, nothing like when Dakota Fanning should be looked cute or being a smart-ass. Not many movies daring to show its main child character die stabbed by the gangster, and that makes it a wonderful movie, hehehehe.
Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahira, Japan, 1956) - ***
Beuatifully shot. Looks very Eisenstein-esque, because the editing is wonderfully done. But the ending feels too filmic. The story is about the competition between 2 brothers loving a same girl. The girl love the little brother but she likes the passion and kinkiness of the big brother, pretty dare for that era.
Ukigumo / Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1955) - **** A Masterpiece
Ukigumo is about the difference between a man and a woman when it comes to sex or love affair. Naruse puts it brilliantly, often sad and touching. Hideko Takamine as Yukiko, a woman who once had an affair with a gorgeous, don’t-carish, caddish yet self-aware man and sometimes heartless when they were in Indochina. The memory of love and sex is so deep for Yukiko so she had to come to Tomioka (Masayuki Mori who appear in many Kenji Mizoguchi’s movies). Sometimes they seem like a pair of lover but other time like enemy.
Naruse use many flashback scenes to deepen the characters especially from Yukiko’s point of view. The memories of their affair, the bitterness of the platonic love, the hurtful feeling knowing Tomioka is already married and aimless walks that further instill a somber, Yukiko’s irredeemably doomed love affair.
Maybe the right word to put is, sex for a guy is about need while for woman is a state of feeling. When Yukiko keeps telling about their sweet memories, Tomioka still couldn’t recognise the affair is that "big", until the ending comes and regret is the only act he can do. Truly a gem, very recommended for you who loves moving melodramtic movie like Douglas Sirk movies. Naruse surely is one of the greatest director from Japan besides Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi and am looking forward for the releasing of his movies on DVD.
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997, Iran) - ****/A Masterpiece
A Romanian-French philosopher named E.M Cioran once said "Without the possibility of suicide, I would have killed myself long ago". Taste of Cherry is about the possibility of living, and how we have the choice to live. Life isn’t forced on us. That’s the main theme of the movie same as what Cooran said before. Like other Kiarostami movies (definitely a big influence from the great Robert Bresson), he never gives us the exact reason or the motif of the characters. A movie is a stimulant for our imaginative brain, and he really likes to challenge us with a taboo issue even for a country that is not as tight as Iran. And I definitely think EBert is the one who is boring now.
Zangiku Monogatari / Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939, Japan) - ***1/2
Not my favorite Mizoguchi but a must watch for Japan movie afficionado. Kisah percintaan sederhana antara seorang pria pemain teater dengan wanita dari golongan pembantu rumah tangga. Sperti film Mizoguchi lainnya, pertentangan antar golongan atau kelas diangkat secara ekstrem digabung dengan gaya penyutradaraan yang bisa dibilang avant-garde untuk zamannya (who dares to use that kind of long takes in the 30’s?).
Life of Oharu / Saikaku Ichidai Onna (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952, Japan) - ****/ A Masterpiece
Stunning, moving, touching, sad, and magnificent. This might be my new number one favorite movie of all time, or in short this is the best 2 hours I’ve spent in entire my life. Life of Oharu is about a woman tale who still convinced life worth to endure for hope. Hope for seeing or at least hug his son who’s been "robbed" by the governor wife who can’t bear a boy.
Oharu’s love in her youth with a low-rank knight made her family doomed and exiled to the suburb. Her father becomes so mad at her, and when a governor looking for a beautiful woman to bear his inheritance, she get picked. Unluckily after giving birth for the gov’nor, the gov’nor’s wife kicked her out of the house, and that frustrate her father so Oharu has to be sold to a geisha house, and so on…so on, her life is full of greed, lust, pain, and sorrow.
