Michael Haneke, Das Schloss (1997)

Werner Herzog, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Links:
Kaspar Hauser @wikipedia
Werner Herzog @wikipedia
Werner Herzog @imdb

Peter Greenaway, The Pillow Book (1996)

Links:
The Pillow Book @wikipedia

Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man (1995)

“Expect poison from standing water”
William Blake (1757-1827)

Dead Man is a classic in the genre of Jim Jarmusch movies. This metaphoric biography of the English poet, painter, artist William Blake, one of the true great poets of the English language, has come so close to the Platonic ideal of Blake the man and his life, that it is an eerie description of an interpretation. The guide of Blake is the native American Nobody, who leads Blake from the greenhorn accountant to the feared outlaw, from the neurotic ratio to the intuitive heart. Blake is shot close to the heart right at the beginning of the movie and throughout his fugitive travels through the wilderness of desert and dark forests his bleeding does not stop.

On the surface Dead Man is a parody on the American western, a poetic anti-Western, with comic scenes like cult-hero Iggy Pop in the role of Sally, the transvestite trapper, who cooks beans for Big George (Billy Bob Thornton) and Tench (Jared Harris). But beyond the surface lies an artistic depth that few American movies are able to achieve. It is one of those rare movies, which allows you to discover symbolism with no end, leaving you to think and connect the scenes, words with their methporic meaning for hours or days after having seen it. (more…)

Vincent Gallo is not a movie director pur sang, not because he is not a real movie director, but because he is really a lot of other things, an ex-painter too good and too spitefull to paint, a model (but there’s no real merit in that), an unrecognized musician, and actor, among other things. He is also a typical product of American culture, that is, an inferior, deranged, obnoxious attention-seeker with a brilliant eye for appearances. A lack of recognition combined with an endless over-estimation of one’s own superiority is a perfect as imperfect combination for genius. That Gallo has a spark of genius to display is proven in Buffalo ‘66 (1998).

The story line of Buffalo ‘66 in the beginning is completly absurd and unrealistic, but realistic enough to keep you doubtful about Gallo’s intentions. He weaves the red threat of the movie between symbolic and realistic images, where the action mainly represents the emotional state of the semi-autobiographical antagonist. This movie is in essence a coming of age thriller, about Gallo’s emotional complexities, complexities that he probably will never solve, if there’s a desire to solve them to start with. The American heartland is full of desolate youth without a way to release their anger and fulfill their sense of forsakenness. No matter how rich and diverse American culture is, there is a certain incompletion of the American psyche, which is beautifully expressed in Buffalo ‘66. (more…)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

Links:
Das Leben der Anderen @imdb
The Lives of Others @wikipedia
The Lives of Others @Sony Pictures

Guy Ritchie, Snatch (2000)

Having seen Troy (2004) and Seven Years in Tibet (1997) starring Brad Pitt, convinced me that Brad Pitt must be the worst actor currently alive in Hollywood. Ever since, I have periodically been in heated debates with Hollywood movie fans, who swear that I am wrong about Brad Pitt. So I throw the dogs a bone and admit that I thought Pitt delivered an excellent performance in Fight Club (1999). But at the same time, I have sealed a pact with myself, that I would no longer watch movies that feature Brad Pitt.

I recently was pointed out the existence of Pikeys or Irish Travellers and the same person recommended to me to watch Snatch, in which Bradd Pitt plays the Pikey Mickey O’Neil. Irish Travellers are a fascinating ethnicity that can be traced back to the Medieval era as a separate people and speak their own language. Although Guy Ritchie is a mediocre director and a simply horrific script writer whose humoristic punchlines never rise above the level of predictability, in Snatch he has gathered a few actors that are able to uplift a bad movie to an entertaining movie. Snatch is not a very good movie, and although Pitt plays a similar character in Fight Club, the latter stands in a different category. Pitt’s acting in Snatch is also not particularly outstanding, but he does impress by his effort to remain true to the authentic Irish Traveller’s language, which he apparently studied intensively. If you’re interested in Irish Travellers, Brad Pitt’s acting in Snatch makes it worth watching the movie, but that’s the only reason.

Rudolph Maté, The 300 Spartans (1962)

Having read Frank Miller’s comic book based on this movie earlier, it is fabulous to see the source of inspiration for it. The 1962 movie cannot be seen solely as a re-enactment of a classic epic, but has to been viewed with the Cold War in mind, just as we will have to view the 2007 movie with the Iraq War in mind. Nevertheless, the movie rises above its time in place and history, and is a fabulous work following the Greek epic, which in its time surely no less was a piece of political propaganda. So concluding, if we were to ask ourselves can art be made under the banner of political proganda, we will have to admit that it has been done, and thus it is possible.

See also:
Frank Miller, 300

Ron Howard, The Da Vinci Code (2006)

The Da Vinci Code is not a classic movie, and like the original book never reaches the literary level of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum or In the Name of the Rose, so also does the movie never achieves the closeness of perfection like the filming of In the Name of the Rose. But like the book, the movie, is worth while watching for the literary structure and its genial play with the theme. Of course, as a phenomenon that grasped the fascination of the popular and religious audiences for some years in the beginning of the 21st century, it is perhaps a must to inform oneself about Dan Brown’s book, and with this obligation watching the movie is simply entertaining, although you should seriously doubt the casting of Tom Hanks for the role of Dr. Robert Langdon. Tom Hanks was born to play the role of average, white-bread all-American, not that of a highly distinguished academic with an edge.

Davis Guggenheim, An Inconvenient Truth (2006)