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5 x 2 (Cinq fois Deux) (15) (France 2004) dir.François Ozon 91m. Subtitles. “5 x 2 is not only François Ozon’s most adult
film to date but a masterpiece by any standards. As the title suggests,
the film gives us five glimpses of two people – married couple
Marion and Gilles, first seen uneasily sitting down for divorce
proceedings. We see the couple's story backwards – from its
unhappy ending, through an uneasy dinner party, childbirth and
their wedding, to the moment the couple meet. Rather than being
playful or perplexing, the reverse structure works to subtly devastating
effect, unfolding the couple's dissatisfactions and tensions, then
taking us back to discover their sources in rifts or in seemingly
innocent moments that seed the eventual separation. A film guaranteed
to leave couples thinking 'There but for the grace of God.' – 5
x 2 is not to be missed.” |
DOWNFALL (Der Untergang) (15) (Ger/It 2004) dir.Oliver Hirschbiegel 150m. Subtitles. “Hugely controversial in subject matter, utterly compelling
to watch unfold and remarkably affecting in accumulative power,
the first German film in 50 years to focus on Adolf Hitler will
become a timeless masterpiece. Much has been argued over this massive
European success because it dares portray the human side of the
dictator as much as the bellowing megalomaniac. That's the brilliance
of THE EXPERIMENT director Olivier Hirschbiegel's rivetting study
in mass fanaticism. By concentrating on the final twelve days of
Hitler (Bruno Ganz) holed up in his Berlin bunker as the Russians
advanced on the city in April, 1945, everything you ever wanted
to know about his twelve years in power is reflected in his petulant,
often spiteful, actions and the way his followers desperately believed
in his absolute authority until the bitter end. Told from the point
of view of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara)
– the screenplay is based in part on her memoirs along with Joachim
Fest's book Inside Hitler's Bunker – this claustrophobic insight
into the darkest corners of German history is a sobering epic with
an extraordinary emotional depth. Yes, Bruno Ganz is sensationally
fantastic as Hitler, but it's Corinna Harfouch's glacial resolve
you'll equally remember with a shudder too in this monumental achievement
that does the impossible – it makes you look at the Second
World War with a fresh perspective and understanding.” |
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BULLET BOY (15) (Br 2004) dir.Saul Dibb 89m. “Documentary filmmaker Dibb brings a lively authenticity
to this cautionary tale of inner city life that makes it thoroughly
engaging and powerfully moving. As an examination of British gun
culture, it's devastating stuff. But it's an even more compelling
personal drama. Ricky (Ashley Walters), age 20, is just out of
prison and determined to straighten up. But back home his old pal
Wisdom (Leon Black) is still in the community's violent subculture,
sparking an escalating feud over a broken wing mirror. Meanwhile,
Ricky is trying to revive his relationship with his girlfriend
(Sharea Mounira Samuels), convince his mother (Claire Perkins)
that he's putting violence behind him, and help his 12-year-old
brother Curtis (Luke Fraser) stay straight. Perkins is the standout,
while So Solid Crew's Walters is excellent in the central role.
That everyone is playing with fire actually adds to our connection
with the central characters, most strikingly Ricky and Curtis.
We become so attached to them, that their emotional scenes carry
real weight, while sequences in which they're at extreme risk are
almost unbearably tense. Dibb clearly understands that all of life
isn't so anguished, and the film is full of humour and lively camaraderie.
It's a remarkably affecting portrayal of life on the brink – entertaining,
skillful and extremely important.” |
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THE EDUKATORS (Die fetten Jahren sind vorbei) (15) (Ger/Austria 2004) dir.Hans Weingartner 127m. “The last time the German actor Daniel Brühl reached
a mainstream, English-speaking audience he played a young, idealistic,
Berlin-based anti-capitalist in a sharp but funny social satire,
2003's GOODBYE LENIN! Now Brühl is back, in Hans Weingartner's
THE EDUKATORS, a sharp but funny social satire in which he plays
a young, idealistic, Berlin-based anti-capitalist. He's made for
the part. Under the cover of darkness, Jan (Brühl) and Peter
(Stipe Erceg), the self-styled Edukators, break into the homes
of the wealthy to indulge in a spot of amateur feng shui. Rather
than stealing any of the luxury items, they simply rearrange furniture
and deposit a note warning of the evils of materialism. It is gentle
enough until Peter goes away for a weekend and Jan is coerced into
taking his collaborator's girlfriend Jule (Julia Jentsch) on a
mission with a more personal motive. After circumstances predictably
pull them away from the routine, they end up with something more
than just a guilty secret. THE EDUKATORS combines political discourse,
a love-triangle and a hostage plot without sacrificing its graceful
humour.” |
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TARNATION (15) (US 2003) dir.Jonathan Caouette 88m. Documentary. “Jonathan Caouette claims a ridiculous three-figure budget,
a metaphor perhaps for having ripped the movie out of his gut.
The jagged cutting and supersaturated colours have the assaultive
effect of a '60s light show. The recurring multiple images seem
designed to induce attention deficit disorder. The structure of
this lush, frenzied assemblage suggests shock therapy, which is
precisely what the filmmaker's mother, a onetime child model, received
after she fell off the roof of her Texas home and suffered hysterical
paralysis. Raised by his grandparents, Caouette grew up as a one-boy
subculture with a penchant for hysteria. There's an auto-portrait
of him at 11 doing a precocious drag act; two years later he was
producing Super-8 slasher films with the neighbourhood kids; his
high school project was a musical version of BLUE VELVET. Caouette
arrived in New York in his twenties, finding a place for his manic
energy and even his tormented mother. TARNATION is its own resolution.
Adrift in a selectively arranged saga of breakdowns, foster homes,
abuse, attempted suicide, and brain damage, the artist clutches
his camera as though it were a life raft, and apparently he survives.
Caouette recalls thinking as a teenager that his story was a potential
rock opera. Only time will tell, but TARNATION surely recounts
an American life – grandiose fantasies amid pop detritus,
success and celebrity distilled from a miasma of pain.” |
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MACHUCA (15) (Chile 2004) dir.Andrés Wood 121m. Subtitles. “It's taken the incarceration of the president for Chile
to finally make its own movie about the US-sponsored 1973 coup
that plunged the country in to 30 years of horrific injustice.
And Andrés Wood is clearly the right guy for the job, telling
his eloquent story from a child's non-judgmental point of view.
Gonzalo is an 11-year-old at a posh Catholic school in Santiago,
where the American priest is determined to counteract centuries
of European prejudice by allowing indigenous boys from a nearby
shantytown to attend for free. Gonzalo befriends one of them, Pedro
Machuca, and together they embark on several pre-adolescent adventures,
including kissing their first girl. Meanwhile, the country's political
situation is coming to a boil. This is incendiary subject matter,
and Wood inventively tells the story from the boys' neutral perspective – they're
literally from opposite sides of the tracks, with no idea what
that means. But as the film progresses they begin to understand
the awful truth of the world they live in. The result is one of
the most startlingly effective political films in memory – gripping,
entertaining, devastating. The film is impeccably shot, with a
beautifully dusty 1970s style that captures much more than the
surface textures of the period. This is complex, compelling, engaging
and extremely artful filmmaking. It's also so timely that it's
terrifying. As one character cries out: "When will we dare
to do things differently?" |
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PALINDROMES (15) (US 2004) dir.Todd Solondz 100m. “Todd Solondz continues to engage us with real characters
who do hideously real things to each other. And he also continues
to venture into more surreal, twisted territory with his intelligent
but often baffling approach to storytelling. Aviva (played by eight
actresses of various age, size and race) is a 12-year-old struggling
with the concepts of birth and death. Her parents continually brush
such topics under the carpet, even pushing Aviva toward a hush-hush
abortion. But she runs away from home and takes a warped fairy-tale
trip through a variation on her mother's emotional blackmail scenario.
Solondz's main question is whether people really change, or do
we stay the same inside. He addresses this from a bewildering array
of angles in the film's nine chapters, examining fundamentalism
and moral relativism through such issues as disability, abortion,
terrorism and paedophilia. And with his blackly hilarious approach,
he also gets us laughing at the most taboo things imaginable. Having
eight actresses play the protagonist is extremely gimmicky, but
Solondz inventively uses this to add resonance to the character.
The film is surprisingly moving, and it'll certainly spark a lively
post-film deconstruction.” |
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NOTRE MUSIQUE (12A) (France/Switzerland 2004) dir.Jean-Luc Godard 79m. Subtitles. “An equally authoritative follow-up to his Eloge de l'Amour,
Godard's latest essay-fiction is a characteristically encyclopedic
disquisition on words, images and war. Godard's own Divine Comedy
is divided into three sections, Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Hell,
an arresting prelude, is an assemblage of images of conflict, while
Heaven is a lyrical but bitterly ironic coda. The extended centrepiece
Purgatory is a sort of cinema-symposium, set at a literary conference
in Sarajevo, where Godard himself holds a masterclass on language
and image, with reference to Racine, Howard Hawks and the vision
of Bernadette. Other participants include Spain's Juan Goytisolo,
Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish – whose trenchant provocations
somewhat steal the show – and an Israeli woman hoping to
interview the French ambassador for (echoing a famous Godard formula)
'not a just conversation, just a conversation.' The film, however
savage, expresses a faith in the enduring strength of language – apparently
the 'music' of the title. Hardcore Godardians will want to bring
a notepad, but everyone will relish a provocative, complex film
proving that Godard, in his sixth decade of film-making, has lost
none of his pugnacious invention nor his formidable intellectual
curiosity about the state of the world.” |
• Friday 1 April for 1 week
107
Kingsland High Street E8
(corner John Campbell Road)
Tel 020 7241 9410
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