...And This Factory Makes Angst

Film: Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Good directors tell stories. Great directors try to do a lot more. When Michelangelo Antonioni decided to film in color for the first time with Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert), he did so with more in mind than simply using color. The goal was to use color for specific purposes, not simply have it on camera just to have it.

Antonioni naturally went to Monica Vitti, his muse, as the centerpiece of this film. She plays Giuliana, a woman who has undergone a nearly complete mental breakdown and who has not yet completely returned from it. After an accident, she spent a great deal of time in the hospital, where she also tried to kill herself. She feels disconnected to everything around her—her husband, her son, and the rest of her world. Giuliana is in the middle of an existential crisis, and it’s not clear at all if she’s climbing out of it or spiraling deeper into it.

She doesn’t have a very nice location in which to attempt her recovery. She exists in the middle of a bleak, industrial landscape in which it appears that everything that should grow has died. The trees are withered and dead and the landscape is dominated by huge factories. The film has no musical soundtrack; instead, the “music” is the hum of electricity, the whir of giant machines, and the clank of the factories. It is a completely industrialized world, a world of human creation and destruction. The factories pump their waste products into the nearby rivers, killing the wildlife—people complain that their food tastes of petroleum.

Giuliana’s personal life fares no better than her external world. Her husband, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti) runs one of the factories and is emotionally distant. Giuliana also seems separated somehow from her son (Valerio Bartoleschi). Into this bundle of angst and existential drama walks Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris), a colleague of Ugo. He is immediately attracted to Giuliana, and there seems to be some reciprocation, but she is too emotionally shattered to handle much. Eventually, she confesses her fears and anxiety to Zeller, who takes advantage of this moment of weakness for his own pleasure.

Like many exceptional films, Il Deserto Rosso is not a story with an actual plot (although it is not plotless), but is instead a character study. Giuliana has been thrust into this landscape of human creation, but it is a landscape inhospitable to humans. It is completely unnatural and it disconnects her from her natural surroundings. In this environment, since there appears to be no escape from it, Giuliana must learn to adapt herself—and this is where the problem comes in. She is unable to adapt to this human-made and simultaneously inhuman world of the modern day, in which clean ocean water is replaced by industrial sludge and factory smokestacks stand in for trees.

What is most impressive here, even though the focus of the film is on Giuliana as a character and her own (lack of) progression through her own illness, is Antonioni’s skillful use of color both to add meaning to particular shots and especially to focus the eye of the audience precisely where he wants it to go. Initially, especially, many of the landscapes may have just as well been filmed in black-and-white. They are soot-covered and virtually all black with flecks of white, and really look like black-and-white photography. And yet, in many of these shots, there is a single point of color—a flame from the top of a large chimney, or Giulianna in a resplendent green coat walking past the factories. Why green? Because at least at that point, Giuliana still exists in a natural world, even though her world is not natural. Her son, who will grow up in this world, is typically dressed in brown and beige. Later in the film, Giuliana dresses in far more neutral colors, switching back to green only at the end, when we also see actual living plants for the first time.

I also love that there is no soundtrack through the film, that our music is instead played by industrial machinery and passing ships. It adds another layer of disconnection from what we are used to both in our everyday life and in our expectation from a film. In essence, it forces us out of our natural world and into one that is artificial by design.

Sadly, this artificiality doesn’t work for everything. Richard Harris is obviously dubbed into the Italian; watching him speak, it’s evident that he’s speaking in English, and this is very disconcerting throughout.

This is the third Antonioni film I have watched, and I find that I like him more and more as I continue to watch his films. L’Avventura, which was alleged to be a revelation, left me somewhat cold. I liked Blow-Up more. Il Deserto Rosso is better still, and it makes me wonder if perhaps I shouldn’t go back and give L’Avventura another shot. No matter. Antonioni’s work here is superlative, and this is a film I will return to and watch very carefully in the future.

Why to watch Il Deserto Rosso: Antonioni…in color.
Why not to watch: The dub on Richard Harris looks really weird.

Silent, so You Can't Hear the Complaining

Film: La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I knew going into this project that some films made The List because they’re great films and others were added because of some other reason. I try to appreciate those other films for what they represent rather than specifically what they are, but this isn’t always easy. I expected Within Our Gates to be much harder than it was, for instance, and buoyed with that sort of optimism, I plunged into La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet) with high hopes.

And those hopes got dashed pretty quickly. What this film has going for it, really, is its short running time. It could have been Les Vampires all over again, and had it been, I’d have objected pretty harshly.

The reason this film makes the list is that its director, Germaine Dulac, was a woman and an ardent feminist. This makes La Souriante Madame Beudet one of the first (if not the actual first) examples of feminist expression in film.

The title must be considered sarcasm, because Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) does not smile a whole lot in this film. Most of the time, she frowns or looks wistful. The reason for her sorrow is simple: she is an intelligent, educated woman trapped in a horror of a marriage to a successful businessman (Alexandre Arquilliere) who also happens to be an uncultured oaf. While she plays the piano and reads, he stomps around and makes fun of her. When he gets too frustrated with her, he plays the same joke over and over. Essentially, he pulls a revolver out of his desk drawer, puts the barrel to his temple, and pulls the trigger. No big deal, because of course the gun isn’t loaded. When we see this trick for the first time, her reaction indicates that she’s seen it all before.

The two are a poor match for each other, and we’re intended to sympathize primarily with Madame Beudet, of course. That’s hard to do before he pulls the gun trick, though. He shows up from work and offers to take her to the theater. Okay, so at the theater is Faust and maybe Madame Beudet’s sensibilities won’t allow her to enjoy a German performance, but hey, he did bring home tickets for a show. I suppose on the one hand, that would be like me showing up with tickets to a horror movie and inviting my wife—she’d have no interest—but at least he considered her.

Madame Beudet is tired of her loveless, stifling marriage and wants out. And she hits on exactly the way to do it. When he is away, she’ll sneak real bullets into his revolver so that the next time he puts the gun to his head, it won’t be a click, but a bang. Not only will she escape the marriage, but she’ll be free to enjoy her own pursuits. Even better, the death will look like a suicide, because without the knowledge that the gun sat unloaded, it will look exactly like one. He’ll even pull the trigger himself. But, when he next pulls the revolver out of the drawer, M. Beudet makes a change to his little game: he points the gun at her instead.

I’ll freely admit that seeing this story from the perspective of the woman is an interesting one, but that’s all the film has going for it. It’s slow moving to a fault, and there were several times I had to skip back to earlier parts of the film because I’d completely drifted off or started doing something else. Yes, this film is so dull that I forgot I was watching a film.

In short, this is a “watch ‘cause you have to” not a “watch ‘cause it’s great” film. Thankfully, it’s short. It only feels like three hours.

Why to watch La Souriante Madame Beudet: The earliest taste of cinematic feminism.
Why not to watch: Because it really isn’t very good.

All That Wacky F***in'

Film: Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Ingmar Bergman? If you are like most people, the first thing you think of is a guy dressed in black playing chess against Death. The last thing you’d probably think of is a jaunty comedy featuring more than half a dozen sex-starved lovers swapping partners with each other. And yet this is what we discover in Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night). It’s not the usual Bergman, I’ll admit, and yet it is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Sommarnattens Leende is as much of a sex comedy as one could get away with in 1955 and still be seen in polite company. Our main character is Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Bjornstrand), a successful lawyer and something of a ladies’ man. Fredrik is married to the much younger and extremely nubile Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). The marriage, while two years old, has not yet been consummated because Anne isn’t ready. This is compounded by the presence of Henrik (Bjorn Bjelfvenstam), Fredrik’s son from his first marriage. Henrik is actually a little older than Anne and is a theology student.

However, he’s also in his early 20s, and is painfully attracted to Anne. Worse, the feeling is mutual. Anne sublimates these feelings into treating her husband like a father while Henrik starts doing the boom-boom with Petra (Harriet Andersson), the family maid. Petra is a flirt and a tease (she does things like unbuttoning her uniform in front of Henrik) and would certainly satisfy the libido of any man, but Henrik doesn’t really want her. Oh, he’s not turning down the sex too often, but he’d rather be with Anne.

Fredrik goes to consult with Desiree Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck), an actress and former mistress of his. They squabble a bit, and when Fredrik steps into a gigantic puddle, she takes him in and puts him in nightclothes while his own clothing dries. Enter her current beau, Count Carl Magnus Malcolm (Jarl Kulle), a military man who is famously jealous as well as completely open about his affairs. He threatens Fredrik and, once Fredrik leaves, splits with Desiree. In retaliation for what he assumes is Desiree’s infidelity with him, he tells his wife what has happened—yes, his wife knows all about his affairs. As it turns out, Charlotte Malcolm (Margit Carlqvist) is an old friend of Anne Egerman. Charlotte also desperately loves her husband and wants him back.

And so, to sort out all these threads, Desiree convinces her mother (Naima Wifstrand) to host a party. They invite the Egermans and the Malcolms, and of course Petra comes, too. Now we have four lusty women (Anne, Desiree, Petra, and Charlotte) and three guys (Fredrik, Carl Magnus, and Henrik). Add a fourth guy and the math all works out and everyone goes away with the right person and finally gratified. Of course, there will be plenty of misunderstandings, bed hopping, and all the rest before we get the happy-happy. And you know we will here. It may be Bergman, but it’s also a Shakespearean comedy of errors, and is less a love triangle than a love octagon. It simply has to work out eventually.

Bergman, of course, was Swedish. So too were the members of ABBA. The music of ABBA was used as the basis for the film Mama Mia!, which was all about a woman trying to figure out which of three guys is the father of her child. My 12-year-old daughter watched it with my wife and said it should have been called Who My Baby Daddy? When I heard what the plot was, I started calling it All That Wacky Fuckin’. Sommarnattens Leende is the black-and-white equivalent.

Of course, the women are in charge the entire time here, which is exactly as it should be. In general, men are idiots when it comes to romance, and the men here are no different. Carl Magnus is a posturing buffon, Fredrik is too clever for his own good, and Henrik is a stick in the mud (he’s also the closest thing to what one thinks of as a Bergman character). Meanwhile, the women all know what they want and move to get it.

There’s a lot of implied sexuality going on here. Anne tends to burn with a lot of unbidden passion whenever Henrik is around, and Desiree can’t go thirty seconds without flirting, even when the only other person in the room is her mother. Charlotte is almost disturbingly exotic. And Petra…oh, Petra, you saucy wench.

For all of this, my favorite character in the film is Desiree’s mother. She’s a complete riot throughout. She’s funny, blunt, and matter-of-fact, and her age gives her the license to say the things that many of us would like to say. In conversation with her daughter, for instance, she comments that she doesn’t bother really listening to anyone anymore because she generally doesn’t like people that much and caring is bad for her health. She’s an absolute treasure, sort of the Bergman version of 80% of Betty White’s characters.

Such a funny little movie, a charming little film. It certainly hints at future Bergman themes (what with Henrik threatening suicide), but for all its theme of marital infidelity, betrayal, and playing fast and loose with a couple of the deadly sins, it’s fun. There are times when it looks like it won’t be, but everything here is ultimately played for comedy.

Why to watch Sommarnattens Leende: Bergman doing comedy and doing it well.
Why not to watch: There’s a time for gratuitous nudity, and this film was it...but it didn’t deliver.

Chavs, Slags, and Pikeys

Film: Fish Tank
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

A couple of days ago, I made a comment about subtitled films, and I’m going to start attempting to watch more of them in April, a real concerted effort toward reducing the number of such films remaining to me on the list. With that said, Fish Tank might well seem like an odd film to choose, because it’s English. But the accent through much of this movie is so thick that at times, I wish I could have turned on subtitles—one of the drawbacks of a lot of streaming films is that subtitles aren’t always an option, and they’d have been useful here.

We start with Mia (Katie Jarvis), whose life is a complete trainwreck. At 15, she’s already realized that her future is a bleak one. She lives in a rundown neighborhood, gets into fights with other girls her age, and is saddled with a foul little sister (Rebecca Griffiths) and an abusive, alcoholic mother (Kierston Wareing). The only thing that’s good in her life is hip-hop dancing. While raw, Mia appears to have some talent. But, ultimately, Mia is something of a chav, but by birth and environment, not by choice.

[chav--noun. Informal and derogatory. A young, working-class person whose tastes, although sometimes expensive, are considered vulgar. An anti-social youth.]

This is the environment that Mia lives in, and there’s little she can do about it. Within the first few moments of the film, Mia observes another chav group dancing sluttily in front of a group of shirtless boys who would belong in a cast photo of Jersey Shore. When she comments on their dancing, a fight almost breaks out; it doesn’t because Mia head-butts one of the girls and runs off. Things aren’t better at home. Sister Tyler is a chav in training—despite being 8 or 9 by appearance, she drinks, smokes, and might possibly be sexually active. Mother Joanne is a slag, and has recently brought home a new guy.

[slag--noun. Informal and derogatory. A fallen, promiscuous woman.]

This new guy is Connor (Michael Fassbender), younger than Joanne, attractive, and employed. Mia is immediately and uncomfortably attracted to him, and isn’t sure how to deal with him. Sometimes, she is willing to trust him, and is almost in awe of him. Other times, she can’t stand to be around him. Similarly, at times he takes a fatherly interest in Mia, and at other times his interest appears to be less than parental and more…something else.

All of this is complicated by the horse that Mia sees in a field. The horse is tied up and held captive by a group of pikeys, and when Mia attempts to free the horse, the results are disastrous. She eventually befriends Billy (Harry Treadaway), one of the pikeys, who tells her that it’s not what she thinks—the horse is actually quite old and ill, and keeping it tethered allows him to take better care of it before it dies.

[pikey--noun. Derogatory. An Irish traveler or gypsy, or a low-class individual. If you’ve seen Snatch, think of Brad Pitt’s character.]

Mia’s hope is to get out of the situation she is in, but her only chance appears to be a club that is looking to hire dancers. She submits an application (after some encouragement from Connor), but this is the only real hope she has. Her sister is verbally abusive, and is the mother’s favorite. Why? Because Tyler is more like Joanne herself. While Mia wants to get away from the hell of her mother’s existence, Tyler has adapted by trying to be as much like Joanne as possible. Joanne is more than verbally abusive—she is also emotionally and physically abusive to her daughter. To complete the abuse buffet, we can throw in the sexual abuse courtesy of Connor, since he commits statutory rape with Mia, having that porn movie fantasy of sex with the mother and the daughter, albeit at different times.

The “fish tank” of the title is, of course, Mia’s life, and it’s an unusual use of the metaphor. Rather than her being on display for all the world to see, here the tank of the title draws attention to how completely she is trapped. Mia wants nothing more than to get away from the life her mother lives and sister will live, but there is no obvious way out. Every way out that shows up appears to just be a tunnel that leads back to the same prison. But, like a fish, she can’t survive outside of that environment. Only the fish in Finding Nemo have managed to escape an aquarium, and Mia is not a cartoon.

Of course, the horse is also a metaphor for Mia, chained and forlorn as it is. Dealing with the horse, though, as well as a few other plot points requires a warning.

*** OI! SPOILER! ***

Mia goes to the audition only to discover that those holding auditions don’t want hip-hop dancers, but strippers. Embarassed and ashamed, Mia retreats and discovers the horse dead. Just like her dreams? Yeah, maybe.

Also, it turns out that Connor is a bigger bastard than just being a pederast. Turns out he’s got a family, as in a wife and kids. When Mia discovers this, she absconds with his daughter and runs off, but eventually returns with the girl, which makes this part of the tale turn out about as well as it can. Still, as a parent, I found this quite disturbing, particularly because it ends with Mia callously tossing the child into the ocean (although she does save her). Equally disturbing is that her discovery of Connor’s marital status is preceded by a breaking and entering of Connor’s house and is followed by a titanic urination on his carpet in retaliation. Evidently, she doesn’t stray far from those chav roots.

*** OI! PISS OFF! ***

Is this a good film? A lot of people seem to think it is. I’m less certain. I’d have liked to see something else happen besides the sex scene, which to my mind feels gratuitous to the plot. Maybe gratuitous is the wrong word—expected is better. It feels like a guaranteed part of the script. Coming of age stories for girls almost always involve a sexual awakening, as if there can be no other way to come of age for young women. For boys, coming of age seems to involve someone (or something...like a dog) dying. I’d have liked to see something different here, because all the sex scene did for me was elicit a sigh of regret, not a gasp of shock.

Why to watch Fish Tank: Real, gritty, wrong-side of the tracks life in the place where people drive on the wrong side of the road.
Why not to watch: Hard to understand...and more formulaic than I expected.

What Ho, Jeeves...

Film: The Servant
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

When I was an undergraduate, I majored in English literature. For those of you who didn’t major in literature, allow me to burst the bubble on a few notions. Yes, I’ve read a lot of the classics. No, I haven’t read them all. So, while I’ve read quite a lot of Shakespeare and Milton, I’ve read almost no Chaucer or Spenser. I’m good on Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, shaky on John Donne, solid on Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Blake and woefully unable to carry on a conversation about Jane Austen or Wilkie Collins.

To the point, I’m almost completely unfamiliar with Harold Pinter, the author of The Servant, but I’ve read (mostly on my own, for enjoyment) a shit-ton of P.G. Wodehouse, particularly the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories. I like Bertie and Jeeves. They have an interesting relationship. For the uninitiated, I will give you the quick overview. Bertie is a relatively self-indulgent rich guy with a circle of equally layabout, wealthy friends. What sets Bertie apart is his valet, Jeeves. Jeeves is the ultimate gentleman’s gentleman—Jeeves is always right about everything. Most of the stories involve Bertie doing something of which Jeeves disapproves; often it’s something like wearing purple socks or spats resplendent in his school colors. Bertie gets into a terrible fix, usually involving someone trying to get him married. Eventually, Jeeves pulls him through and Bertie gives up the thing that annoyed Jeeves in the first place. These stories are fun and goofy, and entertaining as all hell.

Pinter’s The Servant, here starring Dirk Bogarde in the title role, is a sort of Bertie and Jeeves story as written by the Marquis de Sade or perhaps J.G. Ballard (or, evidently, Bertie and Jeeves as written by Harold Pinter). Much of the same basic premise is there, but it’s taken to some very dark and ugly places.

Tony (James Fox) is a guy a little too wealthy for his own good. His wealth gives him a comfortable upper-crust existence, which makes him a little less ambitious than he should be. He’s just hired a large, empty house and requires a manservant to look after him while he works on his current project: planning the creation of a trio of cities in the Brazilian rainforest. He employs Barrett (Bogarde) to look after his day-to-day affairs, cook, dress him, and decorate the house.

Once hired, Barrett begins to insinuate himself into every aspect of Tony’s life. This starts slowly, with paint colors in the hallway and simple decorating advice. Whether because of this or simply because she finds him somehow despicable, Tony’s fiancée Susan (Wendy Craig) takes an immediate dislike to Barrett, a dislike that is evidently mutual. Regardless of this dislike, the romance between these two young, wealthy people continues apace, as does Tony’s career.

Things change when Barrett suggests that Tony hire a maid, and he has the perfect maid for him. This is Vera (Sarah Miles), who is introduced as Barrett’s sister, although it soon becomes evident that if she really is his sister, their relationship is a very disturbing one. Vera is a hard character to nail down. She presents herself as shy, almost painfully so when it comes to Tony, but she is actually a steaming cauldron of hormones who manages to seduce Tony while making it appear that he has seduced her. Except that Vera is actually Barrett’s love interest as well, and it’s evident that she has been encouraged to be more forward with Tony by Barrett himself. All of this comes to a head when Tony finds his servants together in his own bed, and his own infidelity with Vera is revealed to Susan.

From this point forward, Tony slowly spirals into depression and dissolution. Barrett reveals that Vera has played him false as well and convinces Tony to rehire him. However, Tony’s job appears to have faded away as well as his will to do anything but feel sorry for himself, and the roles of master and servant begin to flip, with Barrett beginning to order Tony around the house.

From what I’ve heard, having this as my introduction to Pinter works in my favor—it’s one of his better and most widely read and performed plays. It’s dark and severe and filled with the kind of existential anguish that marks a lot of works of its era. There’s a decadence here that is, honestly, sort of like watching trashy reality television. It’s ugly and painful and often disgusting, but it’s also completely compelling because it is so trashy. There is, for lack of a better word, a desire to see how close to bottoming out these two characters will get before the end of the film.

Dirk Bogarde was never a big name in Hollywood and did most of his acting in British films. Early on, he evidently did a lot of light comedy, which got him compared to Rock Hudson (his later-revealed homosexuality brings another point of comparison between the two. In truth, one of the reasons he flopped in Hollywood was his rejection of a sham marriage to keep him appearing straight). The Servant marked a turn in his career to more serious and dramatic roles. While I’m curious to see what those early comedies might have been like, a part of me thinks that Bogarde should have moved to serious drama earlier, because he’s devastating in this film. Everything turns on what he does, and he is magnetic on the screen. There is a sense of malice around him that is difficult to describe but unmistakable when seen. Everything he does is tinged with both contempt and smugness. The same is true of Sarah Miles, who is wide-eyed and dim when around Tony, but sly and wicked around Barrett.

There is a sense of fascination in watching someone else go to smash, and it is in full evidence here. A large part of that is the physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation of Tony through the course of the film. Most of it, though, is the fact that it is one of the most solidly acted films I have seen in a long time.

Why to watch The Servant: British drawing room drama as good as it gets.
Why not to watch: The painful descent into alcoholism and physical dissolution.

April Fools? Not so Much...

Film: Da Hong Deng Long Gao Gao Gua (Raise the Red Lantern)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.


When I look at the 700+ movies I still need to watch to complete this list, I sometimes get frustrated by the number of subtitled movies still to get through. My brother Tom is slowly making his way through this list (I’ve evidently inspired him), and he made the comment the other day that he can’t work when he’s watching a foreign movie—they simply require too much concentration. He’s right. The reason I still have so many to get through is that I can’t really do anything else while I watch them. It’s difficult even to fold laundry or iron when I have to be ready for the next subtitle.

But it’s difficult to be upset with so many foreign movies in other-than-English languages when I come across those that are so very much worth watching. A case in point is Da Hong Deng Long Gao Gao Gua (Raise the Red Lantern), Zhang Yimou’s epic film of family politics. The film focuses on the life of Songlian (Li Gong). With her father dead at 19, Songlian is forced by her step-mother into a marriage to a wealthy man named Chen Zuoqian (Jingwu Ma). Marrying a wealthy man naturally comes with the privileges of wealth, but also with a very high price: Songlian will be the fourth wife in his household and at the bottom of the family hierarchy.

What follows is a tale of family and sexual politics. In Chen’s home, the wife who is chosen for a given night is given special privilege in the house that evening and the following day. At night she receives a foot massage and has red lanterns lighted at her house in the estate (hence the title of the film). The next day, the chosen wife selects the menu for the main meal. Thus there is real competition between at least three of the wives (the first wife is really too old to be much competition for the other three) to be chosen for the night.

As the newest member of the family, Songlian does not yet (and in fact does not for quite some time) understand the depths of the politics that are played. Much of it is petty, damaging each other for small and superficial gains, or damaging oneself to cause greater harm to another wife. This happens in virtually every aspect of the lives of these women, something that Songlian is slow to learn. More than anything, the house runs on an economy of spite and wickedness.

As the lowest on the totem pole, Songlian takes out her aggressions on her personal servant, Yan’er (Lin Kong), who herself believe that she was destined to become the Master’s fourth wife. The battles between these two is just as vicious and angry, just as spite filled as the battle between the wives, and in almost every case, Songlian comes out on the bottom.

Initially, she battles with the third mistress, Meishan (Saifei He), a former opera singer. Meishan has been spoiled as the youngest, prettiest, and most talented of the women for several years, and is not prepared to give up that special status for this new girl from the country. She and Songlian battle things out subtlely—Meishan forces Songlian to play Mahjong, causing the Master to spend a night with the second wife, Zhuoyan (Cuifen Cao). It is during this game that Songlian discovers some very important information: Meishan is having an affair with Gao (Zhihgang Cui), the family doctor.

However, it’s not long after this that Songlian discovers that Zhuoyan is really her main rival despite her pretenses of friendship and gift giving. Zhuoyan pulls the strings of everyone else in the house despite the fact that she did not give the Master a son, but only a “worthless” daughter (their words, not mine). Zhuoyan knows all she can about Songlian through Yan’er, who has essentially been bought and paid for. And so it seems that Songlian has no one she can trust and no one who is truly on her side in anything.

Much of the value of this film is in what it depicts and how it depicts it. Essentially, it is a very small story with only a handful of characters who have anything like a vested interest in the outcome: the three wives (leaving out the first one), the Master, and Yan’er. For this reason, there is an intimacy to this film that makes it a careful portrait of these characters. On the other hand, the theme is near universal. Everyone has been on the receiving end of a political screw job somewhere—family, school, work—and so the basic theme here is universal. While very different from Dangerous Liaisons, there is a real similarity to the two films in how sex is used not merely as a weapon, but as an offensive weapon on the attack.

Beyond this sort of universality of theme, there is a real beauty to this film. Many of the shots are lingering distance shots of the lighted lanterns while conversation goes on somewhere at the extreme end of the frame. These shots, many of them monochromatic, only add to the feeling of isolation and emotional distance that permeates this grand estate, and so they work perfectly as a symbol as well as being stunningly gorgeous. I also like the fact that the Master of the house is never really shown. He’s always in shadow or veiled, and the audience never sees his face. In many ways, although the women exist to serve and please him, his identity is unimportant. What’s more important is the idea of him.

I knew not what to expect here, and came out pleasantly surprised. This is not a happy movie, but it is beautiful and moving.

Why to watch Da Hong Deng Long Gao Gao Gua : Human nature, politics, infighting, pain, tragedy, and beauty.
Why not to watch: Sometimes evil has a pretty face.

Month 15 Status Report

Another month done, and another month of movies watched. March contains within it a finals week where I teach, which is the reason I went about eight days with only a single update. Happens every three months. It's also why I went a week without a silent film.

But, the end of the month got me close to back on track. Sadly, I probably won't finish today's movie before midnight, which will make it tomorrow's movie. It's a good enough way to kick off a month in which I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to get through more and more subtitled films and films that lean heavily on the difficulty meter. Plus a silent or two every week. And some hopes for some longer films in April, too.

Ambition? Sure--it's good to have a goal to shoot for.