AMOUR (2012)

Life is naught but complicated choices but Love conquers all. This might be the tagline of Michael Haneke's AMOUR. Does this seem like the tagline of a happy film to you, one that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? I mean, just how hard-hitting can a film called LOVE be? Doesn't Love, in fact, conquer all? Aren't the lovers supposed to live their happily ever afters together? That's the thing, see, Anne and Georges Laurent have already lived their happily ever after together. This is the story of what happens later. Does it have the obligatory happy (or at least hopeful) ending of all films dealing with love? I am not sure. Maybe it does. I have seen it twice now. I am still not entirely sure what I saw.

Michael Haneke serves up a bruising stunner of a film in AMOUR, his 2012 Cannes Palme D’or winner about an octogenarian couple Anne and Georges Laurent (played by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignante), and how they deal with Anne’s deteriorating health after she suffers a stroke. This is a magnificent film from a director at the peak of his form, displaying not just technical prowess, but an abundance of restraint, empathy, a thorough insight of his material and a boundless courage to follow his story to its frightening logical conclusion. This is a film of unadulterated brutality, not inflicted by one person on another, but of circumstances on our protagonists. All love stories need an ending; the film’s unique ability is to make us care about the love that Georges and Anne have for each other, even though we only see the dying last throes of this great romance.

This could have been a soulless, disturbing film. The reason it is instead an involving tour de force of life, death and everything in between, is Haneke’s humanism. He makes unconventional choices throughout the film. In one scene, he shoots Isabelle Huppert (playing Eva, the rather estranged daughter of Anne and Georges) and Trintignante talking about Riva's stroke for the first time, and we cannot see Trintignante's face at all throughout his monologue. Perhaps this is right-- this is a film which looks unflinchingly at life, and demonstrates a stout refusal to burst into hysterics or melodrama. Would the scene have benefited if Trintignante's enormously expressive face was on screen for the whole time, so that we as viewers, have a compass to guide us as to how WE should feel? I don't think so. The emotions are powerful enough to be let loose on screen without amplification. The audience will feel what the director intended them to feel without any guidance or direction.

The film may appear long-winded and pretentious, especially in long scenes where nothing much happens and the camera stays static and at a distance from the proceedings. But this is Haneke's directorial vision--- of allowing us to be invisible voyeurs in the little details of the lives of these two people. Every scene in the film is to a certain end and is not arbitrarily thrown in at a whim. Take, for instance, the breakfast Anne and Georges are having together after Anne’s first stroke, and Georges tells her about a deeply emotional experience he had at the movies when he was younger. A short, simple scene, two people engaging in what would seem to be rather mundane conversation, considering that these are movie characters who are always expected to wow us with their grasp of repartee. But the fact that this is a couple still very much in love with each other, still mesmerized by each other, both according each other the respect they deserve, comes through magnificently in their dialogue.

Anne: - That's sweet. Why have you never told me this?

Georges: -There are still many stories I've never told you.

Anne: -Don't tell me you're going to ruin your image in your old age?

Georges: -You bet I won't. But what is my image?

Anne: -Sometimes you're a monster. But you're nice.

Georges: - (smiling) Can I get you another drink? (Anne bursts out laughing)

A lot of the credit for making the characters come alive goes to the two wonderful leads, Emmanuelle Riva (this year’s fore-runner for the Best Actress Oscar) and Jean-Louis Trintignante, two veterans of French cinema, bringing a lifetime of experience to draw out their characters in full-bodied glorious form. These are performances rich in detail, powerful in their concision and ringing with truth, accepting the terrible messiness of life and the even messier business of slow death. 

A near-flawless ode to love, a touching movie made with warmth and courage. 9/10 for me.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (2012)

This was a year of grand disappointments and unexpected triumphs. While major blockbusters failed to deliver on the promise of their predecessors, great films were made by people no one knew of, or expected anything of, or who had been written off. But when the odds are stacked high against you is often when true genius shines through. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is a force of nature, very much in that age-old tradition of cinema that has been followed from PATHER PANCHALI to WHALE RIDER—idealist debutante director, cast of unknowns and non-actors, guerrilla filmmaking, pure magic. So unaware of filmic conventions that breaking them is effortless.

It tells the story of a 6 year-old firecracker called Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) and her dad Wink (Dwight Henry), who live in a southern Louisiana bayou community called The Bathtub, which is isolated and somewhat self-sufficient, cut off from the rest of the world by a levee. The residents of The Bathtub look at the steel towers and factory turrets of the “rest of the world” gleaming out beyond the levee, and thank their stars that they live on the saner, more beautiful side of that wall. Like Hushpuppy says, “Daddy always saying that up in the dry world, they got none of what we got. They only got holidays once a year. They got their fish stuck in plastic wrappers. They got their babies stuck in carriages. And chicken on sticks and all that kind of stuff.” The Bathtub people are perfectly happy where they are. They might as well stay there forever.

Of course, not everything is rosy down there. Wink knows that sooner or later, things are going to get tough. Out at the mercy of nature and a conformist society that constantly tries to “rehabilitate” them, he knows that his daughter needs to toughen up. She can’t be a pussy. The Bathtub doesn’t tolerate pussies. The Bathtub people don’t cry at funerals, they drink at them. When a flood ravages their little town, they blast down the levee to let the water drain out. When they eat a crab, they don’t cut it open with a knife. They “beast it”. And Hushpuppy is one tough little nut. When she wakes up sometimes to find her daddy gone, she just sets about cooking her own food, catching fish on her own and when her sick father returns, she brings him medicine from the town healer. This is one of the most charming parent-child stories I have ever seen, a story that keeps its ears and nose close to the earth, taking in all the flavours and rhythms of the land, fusing the film with an euphoria that few can match. Nothing’s too sad over here, ‘cause “the scientists of the future are gonna find it all”.

This is Benh Zeitlin’s first film and I pray he gets the chance to have a long career. This is a name to watch out for. Finally the Americans have a new director to rival the furious vitality, quicksilver gaze and sheer visual dynamism of Fernando Meirelles  and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guy Ritchie. His camera flits around, capturing not just images, but a certain perception, a certain half-fantasy, half-survival story that’s perfectly in sync with the POV of the film, that of a 6 year-old motherless girl. 

The star of this film, the little dynamo Quvenzhane Wallis, is an absolute revelation. With a mane like a lion and a poise that would make grown actresses cry, she powers the film with steely eyes, set mouth and a scream that threatens to shred you apart. Dwight Henry, the baker-cum-debutante-actor playing her father, also puts in a powerful performance, drawing from his own experiences as a victim of Hurricane Katrina. They have a magnificent scene near the end, where Hushpuppy feeds Wink, that will have you reaching for a tissue.

The film has a wonderful background score, the very best I’ve heard this year and the lack of an Oscar nomination in this field is a gross oversight. The music pummels and whooshes along, a raw raucous earthy sound full of trombones and mandolins and violins. The technique doesn’t matter, neither do the notes—what matters is energy and heart.

An euphoric, powerful movie of the human spirit, starring a future queen of the silver screen, this year’s little movie that could. 9/10 for me.

LINCOLN (2012)

Steven Spielberg is one director who, on first notice, doesn't seem to have a personal thematic obsession to explore in his films like, for example, a Scorsese or a Bergman. Beyond a general larger-than-life celebration of the human spirit and occassional forays into Jewish identity and the Holocaust (themes so common, no director can claim to be their champion), what do his films have in common? What does a robotic Pinochhio and a dinosaur theme park have in common? But underneath the surface of many of his films lies a fascination-- how underhanded, and even sometimes criminal, actions can often be used for the common good. Oskar Schindler bribed and cheated and lied his ass off to accomplish a stunning feat of human heroism at the height of the Holocaust. The Israeli death squad in MUNICH are more often than not, content in the knowledge that their bloody vengeance is a righteous one. So too with EMPIRE OF THE SUN, MINORITY REPORT and many others.

And now in LINCOLN, we see one of the gray-est characters of all, Abraham Lincoln, and the final four months of his life, near the fag-end of the American Civil War, where Honest Abe pushes for the abolition of slavery with every politician’s tool at his hands. This is a powerful film, focussing on a statesman the likes of which the world has rarely seen, bringing out his character in all its flawed, blemished, heroic glory. This is the way to do a great biopic, where the emphasis is not on the events or the timeline of the subject’s life, but on the emotional turmoil, the inner decision-making process, what director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu called “the mental life of the character”. It is easier to empathise with a person once we understand what makes them tick.

The movie paints Abraham Lincoln as a fundamentally good man, a man far, far ahead of his times, pragmatic, insightful and having the ability to capture and hold the attention of crowds at will. He is adored by the people and well-liked and respected by members of his own government, but he faces difficult challenges on the road to ratifying the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which aims to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude in the country. In an atmosphere where racism is not only prevalent, but accepted in society and the higher halls of government, he realizes idealism is not the way forward. Diplomacy is. The urgency of the film owes to the fact that the events of the film and the process of debate and voting on the 13^th Amendment in the House of Representatives, is portrayed as a race against time before the war ends. When the war ends, the Southern states join the Union and any advantage Lincoln may have in numbers in Congress, would be destroyed and the Bill would never pass.

The screenplay is brilliant in its detailed exposition of the inner workings of the highest political bodies in the USA during the time of Lincoln. You don’t need to know much about politics or the political structure at the time, the film more or less explains it all, in a fluid unforced manner. The movie is grandiose and eloquent to a fault, and yet there are no cringe-worthy moments. When Lincoln talks about the importance of this Bill and how it would not only influence thousands then in bondage, but also unborn millions to come, a shudder of recognition ran through me. You can see a long line extending from Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens and Harriet Beecher Stowe, through Oliver Brown and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr and James L. Farmer, a long line of people who believed in a certain abstract ideal of equality of all mankind, an ideal they believed in enough to die for it, a line which culminated in the euphoric 2008 U.S. Presidential elections which brought Barack Obama into the very seat of power where Abe Lincoln had sat nearly a century and a half ago. 

I have dithered long enough in this review without mentioning Daniel Day Lewis, and it is with a reason. I did not see Daniel Day Lewis in this movie. I saw only Abe Lincoln. DDL does not portray his character, he becomes him. The accent, the sly twinkle in his eyes, the shoulders hunched under the pressure of spilt blood on both sides of the war and of doing the right thing, the thinly veiled anger when people just often couldn’t understand the ideals he was striving towards. Watch him as he rails against political pettiness and partisanship, draws himself up to his full height and thunders at his Cabinet, “I am the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, clothed in immense power and you WILL procure me these votes!” His performance nearly overwhelms Sally Field’s fiery turn as Mary-Todd Lincoln or Tommy Lee Jones’ sarcastic, idealistic Thaddeus Stevens, but these two legends deserve their share of plaudits for shining bright in a film chock-full of great performances.

The White House in this film is hardly the sparkling gleaming hub of idealism as we have so often seen it depicted in pop culture, but a dusty place full of shadows and the machinations of political wheelers-and-dealers. Janusz Kaminski has few wide exteriors to work with, but he manages miracles in small enclosed spaces, playing beautifully with streaming light and shadows. John Williams is his usual fluent self, giving the film heft and weight with his grand score.

It is very difficult to keep an audience enthralled by the exposition of an idea and following the idea to its logical conclusions. Ideas are difficult to understand. Money, power, greed – these are tangible, they have a physical reality that is easy to comprehend. But what is equality? Just a word, isn’t it? And equality would remain a word were it not for people like Lincoln who make us realize somewhere deep in our hearts, that the word signifies a yearning, a fundamental need within ourselves for fairness, an innate “moral compass that should guide the soul towards justice”. A concept is what makes us human, is what makes good different from bad and sometimes, a concept is worth breaking a few laws for.

 A masterpiece of humanist cinema, a flawless political drama, anchored by a sublime performance which has few equals. 9/10.