The Official Story

original title: La Historia Oficial
Directed by Luis Puenzo
Argentina, 1985

"The Official Story" was a winner of many awards, including the Oscar in foreign language category, being not only the first Argentinian film to win it (the second would be "The secret of their eyes" in 2010), but actually the first Latin American that has achieved it. Not that getting an Oscar really mean something... After all Oscars never had credibility for those who seriously took cinema as an art form. There has always been a very heavy political and commercial sense of purpose attached to these awards. Most probably this is why “The Official Story” has won it. It may not be a great movie from a strictly cinematic point of view and it represents quite conventional approach to narrative, but in terms of political and emotional intensity it's big. It was made shortly after the Falklands/ Malvinas War which brought the end of military regime that governed the country from 1976 to 1983, and the courage of everybody involved in the project was enormous.

"The Official Story" is almost textbook example of how to use a personal story to tell and illuminate much larger one. The plot is an intensely political. Through the story of a single family and one woman's realisation of unknowing complicity to the reign of terror, the film deals with the horror of Argentina's ‘dirty war’, when thousands of suspected enemies of the state were taken to clandestine prisons where they were tortured and murdered. It also raises questions concerning the fate of children who were taken from their prisoned parents and given to childless families living in good terms with military regime. While doing so, the director of the film opted for a quite interesting perspective and focused not on the mothers who lost their children, but on a woman who gained a child.

Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Hector Alterio) are happily married, affluent couple living comfortable life in Buenos Aires with their adopted daughter, the five year old Gaby (beautiful performance of Analia Castro). She's a high school history teacher, he's a prosperous businessman that has successfully climbed the socioeconomic ladder owing to his connections with the military leadership. Alicia's well ordered, easy and happy life begins to fall apart after an unsettling reunion with her long-time friend Ana (Chunchuna Villafane), that has just returned to Argentina after living several years in exile in Europe. During an evening together, she reveals in vivid detail that years ago she was taken from her home, held prisoner and tortured for more than a month by members of the former regime as they attempted to extort from her the whereabouts of her "subversive" partner. From Ana Alicia learns that many others had been held prisoner, tortured, murdered, and that infants had been taken from their mothers and handed over to families related to the military junta. Ana's story makes Alicia uncomfortable, as she starts to wonder about her adopted child's true origins. She has no idea where Gabi came from, it was Roberto who arranged the adoption. She questions her husband to unravel the mystery and clear her conscience about the situation, but he dismisses her, saying that she should not be concern with it. It's easy to see that her husband knows more about their adopted daughter’s origins than he is willing to acknowledge. Alicia finds herself asking more and more questions, and since Roberto is aggressively evasive and always reacts badly when Alicia enquires into Gaby's parentage, she slowly begins to suspect that the baby her successful husband brought home five years before is the daughter of a murdered political prisoner.

A further area of upset concerns Alicia's history classes. Her students start questioning her strict adherence to the history she presents solely from the government-approved books. Alicia always believed only what she read and during the course sticked to official textbooks and historical documents but her students are routinely disbelieving it and contesting that “history is written by assassins”. Some of her radicalised by political events of recent years students bring her photos of 'desaparecidos', the victims of the military government’s repression of real and imaginary leftist groups, people taken by the army and never returned. Tormented by the information that Ana revealed and those that her students share with her, Alicia gradually starts to doubt in the ‘official story’ and decides to investigate herself the circumstances of her adopted daughter’s birth.

In her increasingly frantic and desperate search, Alicia meets Sara (Chela Ruiz), member of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, woman whose daughter and son-in-law disappeared during 'dirty war'. Misunderstanding the situation and assuming that Alicia is also looking for her relatives, Sara helps her by showing numerous albums with the people who were abducted and tells the story of her own family. It seems almost certain that Gabi is her grandchild. Appearance of a Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a large group of women who demonstrate regularly demanding to know what has happened to their missing children and grandchildren, is a turning point in Alicia's life that leads to political awareness. The movie requires some knowledge of Argentina's history and society. While it is completely possible not to know about previous regime's practices on adoptions, it is still not easy to believe that an educated woman could be as oblivious as Alicia to the horrors being committed in her country. But in fact many members of the Argentinian middle class were only vaguely aware of the disappearance of people, tortures and other atrocities committed during this most sinister and dark episode in Argentina's history.

Alicia learns a lot, and comes to know her society as she had never imagined it. The discovery of the shady dealings of her husband who has prospered greatly in business with the Americans and generals during the military regime ruins her marriage. Roberto combines power and softness, tenderness toward Alicia and Gaby with ruthlessness toward those he considers troublemakers. His wife may be an innocent, but he knew reality behind the previous system very well. The viewer can only imagine what he has seen and done in his climb to success.

It is a movie that asks some very difficult questions, like: should the mothers of children adopted during military regime investigate their origins? Is their own love to them less true? What would be "best" for those children? It shows some positive changes in Argentina. The fact that Alicia’s friend Ana is able to return to the country after being tortured and exiled can be interpreted as a civil triumph. Similarly, the students’ rejection of the ‘official story.’ It also shows the church’s failure to react to political realities, Alicia's priest refuses to help or even listen to her. Now, many years later we know about church complicity to the regime.

“The Official Story” imposes no ideology or doctrine, the first-time director Luis Puenzo is simply committed to human rights. Rather than dramatising the crimes of the dictatorship, the director has used a middle class family to tell subtly the sufferings of Argentinian society during the the years of dirty war. Thousands of people really were murdered in Argentina and the country has still not got over the nightmare suffered under the dictatorship. Military officers involved in killings are even now brought to justice, the efforts to identify potential children of the ‘desaparecidos’ are still ongoing and the scars have not healed yet. I'm not sure if that kind of trauma can ever be healed...

Another Year

Directed by Mike Leigh

UK 2010

Mike Leigh’s customary blend of well observed, wonderfully acted human dramas are an acquired taste and "Another Year" is definitely not for Mike Leigh beginners. It's long, it's depressing, and has virtually no narrative. It would be difficult to imagine anyone calling it an enjoyable experience...

A stunning opening vignette features Imelda Staunton, as a coarse, unsmiling woman, tersely fencing off a medical counsellor who's been trying to get to the bottom of her insomnia. "On a scale of one to 10 how happy would you say you are?" the patient states briefly: "One." "If you could change one thing that would make your life better, what would it be?” "Different life" replies the grim-faced Staunton. This sets the mood for entire movie in which feeling of sadness is never really absent.

"Another Year" is an intimate drama about ordinary people: family-and-friends group portrait. Its central figures are Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a happily and longtime married upper middle-class London couple, who have entered late middle age content with their lives, fulfilled in their careers (he is a geologist, she a mental health counsellor), serene about the thought of imminent retirement and devoted to their allotment. Beyond some joking concern that their 30-year-old son Joe (Oliver Maltman) is still single, they live in complete happiness. They’re also social creatures. They like to grow things, then cook and serve them to friends and relatives with a nice glass of wine. It’s their interaction with others that Leigh focuses on, mostly in their home, over their kitchen table. Together they form an island of sanity, stability and calm amid an unsettled circle of their friends, whose lives have not gone so smoothly.

Tom and Gerri's home has become a a place of refuge for lost and damaged souls. No one depends more on these two than Mary (Lesley Manville), a secretary in the GP's office where Gerri works, who's been a family friend for years. She’s single and unhappy, with a traumatic love history, but tries to hide her insecurity through talking a great deal, wishful thinking, delusions about her age and most of all alcohol. Mary emerges as the film’s great tragedy, the embodiment of Gerri’s comment: ‘Life’s not always kind, is it?’ She has made mistakes in her life - a bad marriage in her twenties, a failed affair with a married man a decade later - she has lost the most valuable years, now becoming more and more desperate, panicked at being alone forever. Her presence turns ‘Another Year’ from a study of contentment into a portrait of loneliness and longing. Mary tests the patience of both her friends and viewers, bringing us to the limits of compassion when she developes a somewhat desperate and hopeless fantasy of having a relationship with the couple's thirty-year-old son Joe, which cause her temporarily exile from their welcoming house.

"Another Year" is structured into four sections, each named after a season, each having its own particular narrative line. Different seasons are portrayed convincingly, from the bright spring and summer colours to the cold winter greys accompanying the bleak mood. It's a typical character driven film with very little to speak of in terms of plot. Through Tom and Gerri, as the year passes, we meet other characters. Some, we encounter briefly, such as Gerri’s depressed patient from opening scene; others, we come to know better. There is no climax, just passing of different seasons and people. Leigh warmly observes a married couple and their relations with family and friends. Apart from profoundly lonely divorcee Mary there is Ken, Tom's lifelong friend, who visits them every now and then. Like Mary, he's lonely and relies too much on booze. Later on, we meet Ronnie, Tom’s older brother, a quiet, bereaved man, a world away in experience and aura from his sibling, trying to cope with his wife's death and the emotional assaults of his son. Ronnie's affliction is a chronic inability to connect with people, evidenced in the monosyllabic miserliness of his chat.

But it is Mary’s plight that takes centre stage. Her inclination to drink increases, her tics become more visible and her behaviour erratic and distressed. She's superficially cheerful, but parasitically dependent on her friends, and putting a tragically unconvincing brave face on the awful way her personal life is turning out. When Joe brings home and introduces everyone to his chatty and easygoing girlfriend Katie later in the year, it’s almost like a slap in the face. Leigh shows how Gerri and Tom's patience with Mary is running very low after she become antagonistic with Katie. It’s not that Mary actually thought she and Joe would someday wed, but the realization that even the flirtation is now over has taken one of the few remaining elements of joy from her life.

The scenes featuring Mary are subtle. There are no operatic explosions of fury and anger, just awkward and uncomfortable exchanges. It is not easy to watch her, as she embarrasses herself, reveals too much and drinks herself into a stupor. Even Tom and Gerri have a limits of niceness. But it's to Mary that Leigh keeps returning with sympathy and without inspiring scorn. While not technically the lead character, Mary’s depression and declining state become the main focus, emphasized by the film’s incredibly haunting final shot.

I found “Another Year” an intelligent, deeply compassionate drama. Leigh says something about life that nobody really wants to believe: there is such a thing as "too late." Leigh depicts characters at the point in life when all the bills for all their mistakes are coming due, and he shows how sometimes there's just nothing to be done. Some problems can't be solved. Some emotional pain can't be alleviated, only managed.

To say that the film has no real plot is to miss the point completely. The characters ARE the plot. “Another Year” is a film about regret, fear, loneliness and isolation. It's about depression, specifically late-middle-age depression, even though its two most central characters are, paradoxically, a long- and happily-married couple. Ultimately, Tom and Gerri, with their comfortable lives, serve only as the entry point to these much darker themes.

A little warning: the film does move at a very slow pace, taking time to develop characters. Some scenes tend to go on for too long. There are some light and funny moments, but this is by no means a comedy. It may not be everyone’s idea of a good time at the movies but sometimes powerful art is not necessarily comforting, entertaining, or relaxing to watch.

The Scent of the Green Papaya

Directed by Tran Anh Hung
France/Vietnam, 1993

Relying more on tone and feel rather than on plot, and focusing more on moments than characters, “The Scent of Green Papaya” shows a glimpse of life in Vietnam prior to the country being torn by war and revolution. It captures astonishingly the grace and beauty of a bygone era.

“The Scent of Green Papaya” is a simple tale of two periods in the life of a peasant Vietnamese girl named Mui (Lu Man San at the age of 10; Tran Nu Yen-Khe, the director's real-life fiancée at age of 20). The first section takes place in 1951 and shows Mui, a young, poor Vietnamese country girl as she leaves her family (whom we never see), and arrives at the troubled house of well- off merchant family in Saigon, where she will spend the next ten years of her life working as a servant. As Mui grows and the family's fortunes fade. In 1961, the 20-year-old Mui is still content working in same household, but due family's financial problems, they have to release her from the service, and she ends up working for Khuyen, bourgeois pianist and composer, long time family friend, whom she has secretly adored since childhood. She has known this man ever since they both were children. He was the playmate of her employer's son.
Now, sophisticated Francophile and Western-thinker, he and Mui find themselves engaged in a mutual seduction. With only the minimum of dialogue, this classic Cinderella-like story is a sensual, visually delicious film.

The early scenes show Mui’s introduction to new place, as she learns to cook and perform her chores, and as the youngest son of her new employer's besets her. Mui’s character remains relatively mute as she observes the world around her. Through her eyes, we witness the day-to-day activities of the household and understand the way it works. Mui is teached to perform her duties by the old servant, who carefully shows her how to prepare the papaya (traditionally woman's work) and answers all the child's curious questions about the household. Her life are centered on the kitchen, and a vegetable garden.The child will serve the meals, clean the house, wash the clothes, and run errands. While Mui adapts effortlessly to her responsibilities, doing her chores in an unobtrusive manner, the merchant family doesn't do so well. Early on, she learns that her new masters have lost the only daughter named Tó, who would have been just about Mui's age, so over the time, the mother becomes especially fond of her, as Mui becomes like a daughter for her. The mother, perpetually bereaved, runs the family textile business and silently suffers abandonment. The father, a self-centered man of dubious integrity, has a history of womanizing and disappearing for long periods with all his family's savings. That provokes two youngest sons to act out their anger and behave unruly. Mourning grandmother never leaves her upstairs bedroom/prayer altar and blames the the women, her son wife, for his absences. Yet all this unhappiness and impoverishment is beneath the surface, hidden from direct view.

The film is about everyday spirituality from an Eastern perspective. Mui, as a young girl, has learned the art of stopping the world. For her, there is beauty in the smallest details. She savours the sunlight through the green leaves outside the window, the scent of green papaya, the drop of water trembling on a leaf and looks with wonder at ants carrying a heavy load. From a gentle, grandfatherly neighbour she learned the ability to love from a distance. Mui is a sweet girl with a radiant smile, someone who finds satisfaction in life, even working as a poor servant.

It's a stunning first feature, even though it moves very very slowly and the acting is uneven. The second part of the film pales in comparison to part one, and that is because the innocent and cute Mui as a child is the glue that holds the film together and make it so special. The older Mui isn't as impressive, she doesn't radiate the same warmth on the screen. Tran Nu Yen-Khe's body language seems odd and inappropriate to the circumstances. The use of sound effects is excellent, in a film with so little dialogue, music and sound effects become critical contributors. What “The Scent of Green Papaya” does so well is showing the lost Vietnam, peaceful and orderly place not yet touched by wartime and everyday life of a traditional culture that, has been bombed into history. Ironically, “The Scent of Green Papaya” was filmed entirely on a sound stage in Paris. Everything we see is a set. The director, Anh Hung Tran (born in Vietnam but relocated and educated in France) undoubtedly found it impossible to make a film of this type in today's Vietnam, which is hardly nostalgic for the colonial era. "The Scent of Green Papaya" is a quiet, sensuous, apolitical, slow-paced film which makes it a point to clearly detail the everyday existence in the Vietnam that no longer exists, if ever existed at all...

Baran

Directed by Majid Majidi
Iran 2001

Iranian screenwriter-director Majid Majidi is best known for his 1998 feature debut, “Children of Heaven”, that became the first Iranian film to be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. "Baran" is just as beautiful.

The movie deals with Afghani refugees in Iran. It's 2001 and large number of them is living on the outskirts of Tehran due to the war with Russia and then the oppressive Taliban's regime. Most of Afghan men are working illegally at the construction sites, obviously for far less wages than the Iranian workers. A building site is an unusual location for a love story but here it is - the story of Lateef and his silent romantic interests in an Afghan refugee.

Lateef (Hossein Abedini), the young Azeri Iranian, is having an easy time at the construction site with the job of serving tea and preparing food for other workers. The workers come from all parts of Iran, many of them are refugees from war torn Afghanistan. They have no identity card and are employed illegally as cheap labor. When the labour inspectors show up, the Afghan workers must hide. Day after Najaf, one of illegal Afghan workers falls from the building and is seriously injured, appears his adolescent son – Rahmat (Hossein Abedini). He was send to fill in, since his father is unable to work with a broken leg and he has many children to take care of. Rahmat is small and weak, unable to do heavy manual work at the construction site. He's constantly dropping the heavy loads of concrete, which never seem to end up anywhere. Eventually, the contractor, Memar switches the boys, putting Rahmat on kitchen duty and forcing the infuriated Lateef to take up the heavy lifting. Lateef is sore about losing his comfy job and continuously torments Rahmat. He does everything in his power to sabotage his rival until the day when, after one of his pranks, he learns by accident that Rahmat is actually a girl. Latif's heart softens, he's really sorry about his early acts and starts to be very protective gradually falls in love with Rahmat.. He's doing what he can to ease the hardships the girl suffers at work and is trying to save her from the inspectors. One day, however, during a surprise visit of the labour inspectors, they find themselves face to face with Rahmat. She panics and runs away as they chase her through the city streets. Lateef runs after them, struggles with the inspectors, allowing Rahmat to flee. After this accident the government inspectors force Memar to fire all Afghans from the site. Lateef takes a leave and spends some time tracking the girl down. Eventually he find out where she stays and spies her from afar while she's working in harsh conditions, pulling large rocks from and icy cold river. He becomes increasingly fascinated by the immigrant's life and history, also learning her real name – Baran (apparently “rain” in Persian).

Many would assume the principal subject of the film would be the female protagonist Baran. But the film turns out to be a tale about the man who falls in love with Baran rather than about Baran herself. It traces the gradual change in the male character Lateef before and after falling in love with the girl and his maturing into one that cares more for others less fortunate than himself. He gives away all his accumulated salaries and in the end he even sells his most valued possession, the ID-card, to give Rahamat's family enough money to go back to Afghanistan. Majidi does not tell his story through plot and dialogue as much as by simply observing the behaviour of his characters and through stark, yet beautiful images. Baran is almost a silent movie: woman lead actor does not speak a word throughout entire movie. It's so quite and understated, yet leaves such an impact.

Baran is a love story but for me it runs in the background. It's better to forget about obvious love tale and concentrate on details, perfectly crafted, that tell another, perhaps more interesting story, helping to understand world history better - Soviet Union's attack on Afghanistan and the life of Afghans after the invasion was over. It also shows the ethnic differences within the Iranian population and Teheran itself as the mosaic of ethnicity. The construction site brings the different ethnicities together. The Persian Iranians play the Inspectors, the Azeris bond together and take care of each other, the Kurds and the Lurs are easily provoked to fight the Azeris, while the poor Afghans, without identity papers, toil away for a fraction of what the others earn always fearing deportation if spotted by the Persian Iranian inspectors. The official website of Baran explains the details.

Baran is indeed a powerful story of unselfish love. Lateef took a desperate measures to get money, only to learn that thanks to this, Najaf and his family will returning to Afghanistan and most probably he will never see Baran again. Although Majidi made "Baran" before the terrible events of autumn 2001, the movie is uncannily well-timed. This is also why the end is so incredibly disturbing. In a way it's a positive thing that Baran and her family can return to their homeland, especially that in Iran they were always a second class citizens, hardly allowed to leave the refugee's camps. On the other hand something about seeing the girl as she's about to leave Iran, fully covering herself with burkha (a tent-like garment that covers the women from head-to-foot), instead of usual scarf she was wearing before, made me deeply sad and wondering what is worst... Staying in a country where as a foreigner you don't have any rights or staying in your own country (still under Taliban's rule) where as a women you don't have them anyway?

(500) Days of Summer

Directed by Marc Webb
USA 2009

I must admit - I am not very familiar with US cinematography. Not that I have something against it, I simply find movies form other countries more exiting. But every now and then I stumble upon something that truly amaze me. My way to find interesting films is a little information that certain movie was screened at Sundance Film Festival. Most of the times it works perfectly and this is how I found this gem.


We are warn straight from the beginning that “This is Not A Love Story”, even thought everything seems like it is going to be one. But despite the forewarning we are given, “(500) Days of Summer” is a love story. It may not be the typical one or follow the conventional “predictable romantic comedy” plot devices, but it is still a movie about love. The difference is that is actually quite smart. In the way the plot is pretty much the cliché: boy meets a girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl breaks up with boy, boy has his heart broken, boy gets over girl, boy starts new life. Simple, and one very true to life formula but I really love the new angle this issues are portrayed. This indie movie really took the simple fact of life to a new level by the narration and the cinematography. The arrangement of the plot was superb! It's a refreshingly different take on relationship, and apart from ridiculously melodramatic quitting scene, not at all predictable. This obligatory-happy ending is the only weak point of the movie, apart from it “(500) Days of Summer” is a pure joy!

In a style reminiscent of Annie Hall, “(500) Days of Summer” tells the story of Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a failed architect who makes a living by writing greetings cards, as he reflects back on his relationship with the quirky, independent and allergic to commitment Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Tom is totally in love and fully believes that she is The One. She is attractive. She likes the same music as he does. Summer, on the other hand, is the product of divorced parents that doesn’t believe in love or fate and keeps relationships casual. As the title indicates, this fresh and creative script jumps us back and forth in time through the 500 days of their relationship. That number defines the beginning, middle and end of Tom and Summer - as the film so boldly tells us right up front that that she will break his heart. In non-linearly way, from day 42 to day 1 to day 387 and so on, we are observing changes that happen over the course of a relationship, as Tom is reliving every moment to try and figure out where it all went wrong. We see them break up, then we see them meet, then we see them falling apart, then we see them falling in love. It’s a genuinely interesting take on the narration. I particularly love the idea that Tom works as a copywriter for a greeting card company, so you can imagine how the words on the cards vary according to which stage of the relationship he’s in. I also love the part where the "expectation" and the "reality" scenes were placed next to each other for comparison. Director Marc Webb uses some amusing techniques (a split-screen technique to tell us about their lives in parallel, animation, musical dance number and a hilarious tribute to European cinema) not only to give the film its “indie-ness” but also to show how Tom is experiencing things. Surrealistic visual touches, the awesome soundtrack and incredibly charming characters make this movie as close to perfect as a movie gets.

The movie isn’t flawless though. I've already mentioned the ending, that seems a bit too contrived in contrast to the very real feelings portrayed throughout the rest of the movie. Tom's anti-sentiment rant during an work meeting, when he attacks his colleagues for peddling lies and then resigns out of moral indignation, is a bit too bombast. Also Tom's little sister Rachel (Chloe Moretz), an exceptionally insightful child with social wisdom that couldn’t be explained by her time on this earth, from whom he receives counsel, is charming but sometimes her wisdom is a little bit too much:)

The film is about admitting that sometimes people just aren’t meant to be together in the end. It's as truthful a documentation of love and heartbreak you’ll find on celluloid, an anti-fairytale that plays with the idea of a single soulmate and eternal happiness. It doesn't say anything new about boy meets girl problems, instead, it wins over its audience with a style.

“(500) Days of Summer” is not “Annie Hall” but even if it's not A Great Movie, it's still a thoughtful, bittersweet, subtle, charming and irresistible little film, which you will surely want to see again.

Memories of Underdevelopment

Memories of Underdevelopment

Memorias del Subdesarrollo

Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Cuba 1968

As the revolution itself, the creation of the Instituto Cubano de la Industria Cinematográfica (ICAIC— Cuban Film Institute) on March 24, 1959, changed everything on Cuba. Since then (only two months and three weeks after the beginning of the revolution) all matters involving film were concentrated in ICAIC. The words “Film is an art,” written in the original declaration that established ICAIC as a revolutionary institution, set the stage for the high standards demanded of Cuban filmmaking. Cuban cinematography, especially during the mythic years of the first decade of the triumphant revolution, has been characterized by high artistic level and loyalty to the revolution, while at the same time reflecting the contradictions and problems of the national reality.

Director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, the most renowned director of Castro-era Cuba (famous for making Cuba’s first gay-themed movie, 1993’s Strawberry and Chocolate), was a middle-class university-educated Cuban but still a devoted supporter of the revolution and somebody who did his work in the pay of the state. He went along with revolution despite some of the doubts about emerging bureaucratism. His Memories of Underdevelopment stands as one of the best examples of Cuban artists' independence and efforts to create whole new forms for political art. Of all the dozens of films produced in Cuba in first decade of revolution, through Castro's insistence on the importance of the cinema, this film is the most sophisticated. So much so, in fact, that those opposed to the revolution called it a magnificent and unrepeatable fluke, that seems to look on actually successful revolution with dejection and frustration. Those in favour cherished it as a landmark that avoided almost all of the radical cliches. Since he supported revolution we can presume that Alea wanted us to see the fate that befalls someone who does not directly endorse revolutionary activities, but he was far more than a mere propagandist and to most of the viewers the film has mixed messages.

Memories of Underdevelopment, hailed as one of the finest films ever to come out of Cuba, details the relation between the personal and the political, and intellectual's alienation within a changing, proletarian society. Historically, the time is very specific; its 1961 and the film is placed between the exodus after the disastrous US-led Bays of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis of the following year. Alea based his work on the novel of Edmundo Desnoes (published in English as INCONSOLABLE MEMORIES), the diary of a bourgeois intellectual that has literally stayed behind the revolution, a story about an isolated man in an isolated country.

The main character of the movie Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) is not a typical face for Cuban Revolution, which was praising simple hard-working people, poor farmers from remote areas, neglected under the previous system people of colour. The contrast between him and Cuban masses is underlined in the shots of the Cuban people on the street and particularly at the dance at the beginning of the film. That moment establishes a sense of race in the movie, we can see that Sergio, a tall, middle-aged, fair man who looks like a gringo and is deliberately shown as very white against his background - something that is easily noticeable for Latin American audience, as skin colour is often an index of class there. It seems that Alea deliberately used such a fair protagonist to emphasize in visual terms this middle class and intellectual's alienation from the people. Sergio simply doesn't belong to “pueblo”, he's a wealthy man who thinks of himself as Europeanized. For reasons that he cannot quite explain ("to see how it all turns out"), he chooses to remain in post–revolution Cuba even as his mother, father, wife and most of the friends flee to Miami. But he stays in the new Cuba drifting along without meaning and purpose. Unable to write the novel he wants, he spends his days smoking in bed, looking out of a telescope through his window, taking walks, chases women. Alea shows him living untroubled and alone in luxury, in an apartment that could have housed a family or two. We learn that his income comes from monthly state payments for a building of his which had been confiscated, payments he will receive for several years more. The film focuses on Sergio's thoughts and experiences as he is confronted by the new reality and uncertain mood of Havana just after the revolution. He is fundamentally an alienated, indifferent towards politics, an observer rather than a participant. He is, in fact, the sort of man with whom we can easily identify from our experience of European films and literature. The difference is that he is placed in exceptional circumstances and finds it difficult to understand them. Memories is one of the best films ever made about the sceptical individual's place in the march of history.

Sergio prides himself on his urbanity (significantly, Memories of Underdevelopment is thoroughly urban - set in Havana, in Sergio's opinion once "the Paris of the Caribbean", now the "Tegucigulpa") and is obsessed with Cuba's underdevelopment. But to see and criticize Sergio as bourgeois is too easy. Sergio is not one who flees to the United States. He has an acute intellect and sees much that is true about Cuba and especially is very aware about himself. He's scornful of his bourgeois family and friends, he rejects most of the Cubans of his class, his wife Laura and his friend Pablo especially, as superficial, greedy, and self-deceiving. But he also rejects the naivety of those who believe that everything can suddenly be changed and he doesn't commit himself to revolution. A key prop in the film is a telescope installed on the porch of his apartment. Early in the film Sergio looks through it at a couple making love. At the end of the film he looks down on the mobilization for the missile crisis, in which the whole of Havana is unified in the face of impending destruction. Even this moment reveals Sergio's paralysis. His tragedy is that he can only dimly understand what part he plays in the situation he finds himself in and he remains a passive player, unable to act in history.

The film moves back and forth through time, since Sergio turns frequently to his memories to try to understand what is happening to him. Because of the documentary footage, the revolution is always in the background. The difficulty and allure of “Memories of underdevelopment” lies in its stylistic eclecticism and formal experimentalism. This film unites various narrative strategies, blending fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage. Those documentary sequences interspersed throughout the film have no apparent connection to the narrative but show that no one living in revolutionary Cuba is able to escape the presence of history. The revolution is omnipresent.

Women are another obsession of Sergio. He thinks of Cuban women as intellectually and culturally underdeveloped and feels the urge to dominate and manipulate them. He has an affair with a young woman, Elena, whom he picks up on the street and whom he tries to educate by taking to bookstores, modern art galleries and museums in order to expose her to culture and model her to fit his ideal of the bourgeois Cuban woman. But at one point he reflects, "I discovered Elena didn't think as much as I did. I try to live as a European and she makes me feel the underdevelopment at every step." He regards her as a primitive: "She doesn't relate to things," he tells himself. Like other Cuban women has an "inability to accumulate experience, to develop.” Sergio's constantly devaluates Cuban women. But Alea doesn's show Elena and her family up as idealized examples of the Cuban people, dignified or even right. Whereas Sergio is wrong to think of Elena as underdeveloped in the way he does, taking her to museums to improve her mind, Elena, representative of “pueblo” doesn't have revolutionary goals either. Indeed the whole wit of the sequences with Elena's family comes from the inappropriateness of their actions in a presumably revolutionary society. As they blackmail Sergio, they acting out what would have been their best defence in that situation under previous system, but they are doing so in a post-revolutionary time. The film show this family's treating a female child as property. Elena is depicted as victimized both by Sergio and by her family, to which victimization she acquiesces.

Although directed by a Cuban who supported the revolution and remained in Cuba until his death, the film has a European sensibility, interlacing fiction and documentary footage and using poetic images, literary narration, flashbacks, and newsreel footage reminiscent of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour. Memories is a complex and probing film about the dilemma faced by intellectuals in Cuba following the revolution. What should intellectuals do if they are sympathetic to socialism? How do they "join" the working class? According to some reviewers, that the film does not answer this question is one of its main strengths, saving the film from dogmatism. The self and society, private life and historical situation—this is the core of the film and it portray this relationship powerfully. Memories of Underdevelopment remains quite difficult and enigmatic but tremendous work.

Z

Directed by Costa-Gavras

France 1969

Winner of two Oscars in 1970 (for best foreign picture, best editing) and awards at Cannes in 1969 Z is the film that took the world by storm. Even today, is still highly regarded as one of the strongest films about political intrigue yet constructed. Z is a stunningly filmed political thriller with a complex criminal investigation at the heart but with unique political commitment that would define its director career.

There is an unusual "disclaimer" at the beginning of Z that says, "Any similarity to actual events or persons living or dead is not coincidental. It is intentional." And although location of the action is never specified (the film itself was made in Algeria), there are hints that it is Greece in the early 1960s. The film is based on the novel by Vassili Vassilikos and parallels the real life assassination in 1963 of Gregorios Lambrakis, a popular public figure known for his left-wing views. Not that this really matters since the right wing extremists, political assassinations and governmental cover-ups can universally apply to many countries and situations. Costa-Gavras eloquently captured the chaotic and violent nature of the political unrest prevalent in the 1960s.

Z begins with a right wing political meeting, we hear officials talking about preventing the "a mildew of the mind" of its youth following the "beatniks and pacifists"; and all sorts of "-isms"—socialism, anarchism, imperialism, and communism, that are infecting the country. They declare that they must "preserve the healthy parts of society" and inoculate their youth with proper thinking.They do however have a strong opposition with a popular leader, the Deputy (Yves Montand), a pacifist former Olympic champion, who is a practicing doctor and University professor, and an honest politician. He is favoured to win the coming election, and has caught the attention of the press, represented by the photojournalist (Jacques Perrin). As the Deputy arrives to an unnamed town to give a speech advocating nuclear disarmament, its organizers are fighting a battle against the government officials, who have conspired to close off the largest available speaking hall and instead offered a much smaller one. As logistical problems are appearing out of nowhere it is obvious that there have been attempts to prevent the speech's delivery. The tension mounts and angry crowd surrounds the meeting hall, together with local thugs hired to cause trouble among Deputy's followers. To maintain the peace are a large police force, but they mysteriously stand at attention and prevent nothing, not even when the Deputy is attacked as he enters the hall. "Why do the ideas we hold provoke such violence," he asks. "Why is peace so intolerable to them?" After giving his speech Deputy is attacked again. As he crosses the street from the hall, a delivery truck speeds past him and a man strikes him down with a club. The injury eventually proves fatal.

This is when Z becomes most interesting. It is already clear to the viewer that the police forced the conclusion that the victim was simply run over by a drunk driver. But Costa-Gavras organizes the material brilliantly to maintain interest, gradually revealing new layers of intrigue. The government's attempts to cover up the assassination are investigated by a sharp-eyed journalist and a magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintigant) determined to uncover the truth. Slowly and heroically they gather sufficient evidence to prove widespread government complicity and indict not only the two right-wing militants who committed the murder, but also four high-ranking military police officers. Along the way are some especially humorous moments that show the idiocy of the radical right wing.

But then comes the most traumatic finale. Instead of the expected positive outcome, the prosecutor is mysteriously removed from the case, key witnesses die under suspicious circumstances, the assassins, though convicted of murder, receive (relatively) short sentences, the officers receive only administrative reprimands, the Deputy's close associates die or are deported, and the photojournalist is sent to prison for disclosing official documents. The strength of the military dictatorship is stronger and the fear of the unknown prevails. As the closing credits roll, there's a list the things banned by the junta. This is when, at the very end, the viewer learns the significance of the film's title, and it is memorable.

Blame it on Fidel!

The original title "La Faute à Fidel"

Directed by Julie Gavras

France 2006

There is something amazing in showing political upheavals through the eyes of a child. This approach helps to avoid dangerous cliches, didactics, stereotypes or predictability. The trick was used wonderfully in Chilean “Machuca” and Brazilian “The Year my parents went on Vacation”, both dealing with military dictatorships in Latin America in 1970s. Now “Blame it on Fidel” perfectly recreates the excitement of the same time, a period both turbulent and exciting, but clasps few different threads and experiences of different countries all together. There is Cuban revolution, election and assassination of Chilean president Salvador Allende, wave of French feminist movement with an aim to legalize abortion and political refugees from Franco's Spain. This sounds like serious stuff but although in my opinion it is one of the best films about politics in recent years and for anyone who cares about such matters it's a must-see, "Blame it On Fidel" is also a comedy about a little girl who just wants things to be as they were before and a portrait of loving relatives on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Julie Gavras, the daughter of political cinema icon, leftwing director Costa-Gavras, makes it clear where her sympathies lie but doesn't have a political agenda and stays away from judgements or comments. Instead of following her father's radical storytelling methods, she opts for a more delicate coming-of-age tale and chooses to cast a watchful gaze over the mood of the time.

This exceptionally intelligent feature film debut of Julie Gavras (following a string of documentaries) is a story of a wealthy, but increasingly politicized family with a conservative daughter. Nine year-old Anna de la Mesa (spectacular Nina Kervel-Bey), a Catholic schoolgirl in in the early 1970s' France, who loves catechism classes and her family's comfortable bourgeois lifestyle, is outraged by her parents' newly acquired political activism. As her daily life is drastically revised she resists change with the ferocious determination. Anna’s father Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), a lawyer from an upper-class Spanish family, feeling guilty for living with the knowledge of his family’s close relationship with the Franco regime and inspired by his sister's opposition to it, devotes his professional skills to a group of left-wing Chilean exiles as they campaign for the election of Salvador Allende as Chile’s president. Anna's mother Marie (Julie Depardieu, daughter of Gérard), a French glam magazine journalist-turned-writer becomes devout feminist and demonstrates for abortion rights.

As a result Anna's luxury life and her established routines are over. To her horror, all of the things she has considered to be good and right are suddenly swept away by her parents' new leftist view. Everything is turned upside down: she must drop her religious classes, adjust to refugee nannies, international cuisine and a cramped apartment full of noisy revolutionaries, constantly talking about redistribution of wealth and solidarity. It is a tumultuous time too: Charles de Gaulle, the hero of Anna’s grandparents, dies, Allende is elected Chile’s president, and 300 prominent Frenchwomen risk prosecution by signing a petition declaring that they have had abortions.

Anna is confused by these political and cultural crosscurrents. Her beloved nanny, Filomena, a Cuban exile who lost everything in Castro’s revolution, regales Anna with her hatred of communists. After Filomena is dismissed, Anna’s new Greek nanny and then another nanny, from Vietnam, bombard her with theirs cultures' creation myths that clash with Anna's strict Roman Catholic education. She must construct from this ideological maze her own set of beliefs. Slowly she begins to understand the realities behind such vague concepts as "communist", "abortion" and "solidarity". The youngster is smart, though and easily engages in political discussions.

When a Chilean exile peels an orange and patiently explains to Anna that some people want the fruit all to themselves, while others believe in sharing it, and then hands her a section, she starts to appreciate her parents change of attitude. She is still evolving when the film ends as, finally pulled by her parents from her Catholic school, she ventures onto the playground at public school for the first time. But to be convincing and reject allegations of potentially false idealism, just before it “Blame It on Fidel” also offers domestic battle in which Marie’s feminism clashes with her husband’s unwitting male supremacism, and everything the couple believe is called into question.

Brilliant movie! I have enjoyed it very much.

My Asian Heart

My Asian Heart
Directed by David Bradbury

I saw this movie last month during Jogja's Festival Film Dokumenter but its worth reminding. Its director David Bradbury was one of the festival's special guests and also led 'master class' titled “Keep the camera rolling no matter what”, statement that actually provoked in me a little disagreement.

Bradbury is one of Australia's best known and most successful documentary filmmakers. He has won many international film festival prizes among which probably most prestigious and high profile are two Academy Award nominations: one for “Frontline”, which profiled war cameraman and journalist Neil Davis, who covered Vietnam war and unlike most western newsman preferred to go with Asian soldiers; and second for “Chile: Hasta cuando?”, about brutal military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Bradbury is generally renowned for documentaries about repression and revolution, he made his films in Nicaragua, Argentina, Cuba, Poland among others, he also follows nuclear debate and over years made four films on that issue.

In “My Asian Heart” this uncompromising Australian chronicler of war and struggle tells the story of another one who is trying to bring injustices to light by using his camera. Philip Blenkinsop is known in the business as a “concerned photographer” (photographer who understands his work as being socially engaged), going to extremes to expose human rights abuses and Asia’s lesser-known conflicts. It all began in 1989 when he quit his job as staff photographer in “The Australian” newspaper, sold his sport car, bought two Leica cameras and a one way ticket to Bangkok. In Asia he soon began to document life and death in all its forms. His level of commitment makes him one of the world's top war and conflict photographers, he's regularly commissioned by magazines such as New York Times, he also holds his own exhibitions and travels the world speaking at conferences on behalf of people fighting in forgotten wars and conflicts in remote parts of Asia, completely ignored by much of the world. Many of Blenkinsop’s images are stark and brutal. But it is Philip’s point that this is the real world we live in.


Philip Blenkinsop uses simple, old-fashioned techniques and technology: he uses only a black-and-white stills camera, insists on using film rather than digital, and no zoom lenses. He criticises the modern approach to conflict photography, which relies on long lenses and distance from the action. Without getting close it's hard to show what people are really experiencing, all the emotions in tense and dangerous situations.

“My Asian Heart” portrays some disturbing moments in recent Asian history, like the democracy riots in Nepal or the fate of the hunted community of Hmong people in Laos, for whom Vietnam War has never ended; yet it is much more a character study than a political film. This documentary uses minimal narration, it accompanies Blenkinsop into extreme situations and then lets him speak for himself. In Nepal he stops shooting bloody protests in order to help one of terribly wounded child protesters (the boy actually dies) and then berate the officer in charge, saying:

“Do you have children? Because how would you like your children beaten, their heads split open? How can you beat your own people – aren't you embarrassed? What are your children going to ask you? 'Father, what did you do? What did you do in this year 2006?' And you can say 'I managed to beat and kill a lot of children'. I hope you're proud.” This extraordinary moment when the riot policeman actually starts to cry is captured by Bradbury.



In “My Asian heart” Blenkinsop also shares his disdain for a daily news circle (“The news industry in general has a lot to answer for”) He believes that people are intelligent and have capacity of understanding things but media treat them like idiots.

Blenkinsop knows that giving people a voice by taking their photos is a huge responsibility. This responsibility extends to fighting for those he documents, not only photographing them. After risking his life to become the first Western photographer to record the misery of Hmong minority, abandoned by their American allies after the Vietnam war and hunted by the Laotian military (he won Amnesty International's Award for Best Photographer of the Year for those photos), he travelled to Washington to gather support for their plight. The politicians turned a deaf ear to his call for help, and he's still bitter that he got nowhere. He asks “What the point of having any news at all if people aren't actually going to listen to it? We left them (Hmong people) with such a hope. Maybe that was the cruelest thing to do”


This question: what is the point of reporting suffering when it doesn’t change anything, stuck in my mind. Much of the news industry has been reduced to pop culture and delivery speed. It's easy to feel frustration and disillusion of people like Blenkinsop, who look for the emotion of the events unfolding in the world around us. It must be hard when so much of the media seeks to dumb down the story, not wanting to challenge people out of their comfort zones. On the other hand today technology is everywhere and amount of images that we see everyday is sometimes overwhelming. With so much graphic footage one can find everywhere there is also a big risk of people being numbed to injustice and brutality. We read the story, see the photos get emotional for a moment and then turn the page to read something else. It seems like it is much harder today to really move people with something and guys like Philip can only hope to inform us about the world we live in and what we do with that knowledge is totally up to us.

Photos and info: www.frontlinefilms.com.au and Yogyakarta's Festival Film Dokumenter materials

The Battle of Algiers

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

Italy/Algeria 1965

Now that is some serious movie for the beginning of New Year. Classic film of urban terrorist insurgency, very graphic, straightforward and realistic reenactment of the events that led to the birth of a free Algeria in 1962. This is one of the most unique and influential films in the history of political cinema. While it’s is not a documentary it feels like one: realistic settings and a day by day, moment by moment chronological telling of the story. People in 1965 had to be told that there is "not one foot" of documentary or newsreel footage in this two hours of film. The announcement was necessary as everything about the look and feel of the film is just so real.

“The Battle of Algiers” chronicles the harrowing events of 1957, a key year in Algeria's struggle for independence from France. Provocations, assassinations and violence escalate on both sides, the French start to torture prisoners for information and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest for independence, children shoot soldiers, Algerian women, disguised as chic Europeans, deposit bombs at cafes. “The Battle of Algiers” is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest political films because it covers the widespread use of torture in order to crush the revolt. It begins in a torture chamber, where an FLN (National Liberation Front) captive has been coerced through repeated doses of electricity to reveal the hideout of Ali La Pointe, the last rebel still free in the city. Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag, who plays him, was a peasant Pontecorvo discovered in the Algiers market) is the pivotal figure in the movie. When we first meet him, in 1954, he's a petty thief and street hustler from the Casbah, the Muslim section of Algiers. During some time in prison he meets members of the the FLN and becomes radicalized by the executions he witnesses. After being released, we follow him on his daily rounds while he finds himself engaged in a guerilla campaign, and soon becomes one of the four leaders of the movement.

The film focuses on the the resort to torture, justified by the colonizers as a necessary evil. French military view of it is articulated by the main French character, Col. Mathieu (based upon the real-life leader of the counter-rebellion, Général Jacques Massu) in the course of a series of exchanges with French journalists. At one point Mathieu challenges the hostile French reporters with a question of his own: "Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer 'yes,' you must accept all the necessary consequences." We understand the French, and we see why they do the things the do, but we are never invited to agree with them. Unlike Tunisia or Morocco or even Indochina from which France had just been ejected, Algeria was viewed as a territorial extension. But the political costs to the French far outweighed the gains of staying there and as France grew isolated internationally, it found itself forced to deal with the FLN on its own terms. They won the battle in 1957, but ultimately lose the war as FLN defeat turned up to be only temporary.

French in the movie appear remote - pale, anemic, insipid and featureless in their army and police uniforms. Apart from Colonel Mathieu, they’re denied the least spark of personality and systematically refused close-ups. The Algerians, by contrast, are given flesh, sensuality, bodies and, above all, faces. And the faces are so compelling you can't take your eyes off them. No doubt we unconsciously sympathize more with this embodiment of suffering and rage. The acid test of this comes in the unforgettable sequence, perhaps the key sequence in the entire film, where three Algerian women plant bombs at various crowded hangouts in the French quarter. We follow the women as they remove their headscarves, silently cut and dye their long, dark hair; put on lipstick, blouses and skirts and, finally, pick up their handbags so that disguised as chic Europeans, they can sneak through the checkpoints outside the Algerian ghetto and reach their contact in the European Quarter who provides them with the bombs. Those bombs will explode in 28 minutes, whether they're in place (two cafés and an Air France ticket office) or not. Once they arrive to their destinations, they attempt to blend in to their surroundings, so that they can casually leave their bags without being noticed. We look through their eyes at the innocents about to be slaughtered. They even have some friendly conversations with the people they're about the blow-up. In that moment, for once, the French settlers are particularized: in vivid snapshots of teenagers dancing, men sipping drinks and idly chattering, a toddler licking an ice cream. The women take no pleasure in their mission, they are aware that these French persons all have lives and personalities and aspirations. When the explosions come, Pontecorvo makes sure to shoot the carnage using much the same language that he did earlier in the film, when the bodies of dead Algerians were pulled from the ruins of a bomb left by French.

The confrontation between the French and the FLN involves real and composite characters played nearly entirely by nonprofessionals. The only major character played by an established actor Jean Martin, and not an amateur, is Col. Mathieu. Gillo Pontecorvo once explained his preference for nonprofessionals. When he has a face in mind for a certain character, he will not rest until he finds the person who has just the right appearance. In the most stunning casting decision made by Pontecorvo, the real leader of the Algerian revolutionaries Saadi Yacef plays a thinly disguised representation of himself. His experiences were used for the plot. The movie began as a sketchy screenplay written clandestinely by Yacef while he was in French prison. Later he interviewed several European filmmakers before settling on Italians Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas and keeping for himself the role of film’s producer. The path that it took to get from the concept to “The Battle of Algiers” as we know it was a twisted one (at one point, it was going to be an epic melodrama starring Paul Newman!), but it ended at the right place.

The strength of the film comes from passion and concern with both sides. There is no caricature and no glamorisation of either of them - just a feeling of palpable horror. Pontecorvo sees the colonialists as victims of their own system, and the rebels as taking on some of the excesses used against them. French colonel seems to respect his opponents but believes that ruthless methods are necessary. Pontecorvo is very cautious as there is always a danger that you can end up in one way or another justifying the man with the bomb or the man with a gun. It's actually very tricky, one person can be terrorist or liberator, depending the perspective.

Who ultimately won the Battle of Algiers? No one... The French won the battle, but in 1962 they lost the war. French soldiers, most of whom hated the idea of torture, were tainted by the association. Algerians got rid of the French but in their place got an authoritarian regime that, before it fell, was itself guilty of torture. There's also a little irony that Gillo Pontecorvo's critically acclaimed and undeniably powerful 1965 film was screened at the Pentagon in the early days of the war on Iraq. In the end it quite clearly spells out the occupiers' inevitable failure in a situation where they're against civilians who do not wish to be occupied.