After the downfall in the last 2 years, when I missed as many winners as in all the rest together since I'm doing predictions, I seriously thought to give up with the traditional February = the Oscar entries month. It's clear I don't have enough time any more to analyze what's the Academy thinking. But in the end this never was the main point since 2008 when I started doing this. First of all it's still the opportunity to discover something new + as I said it every time, to keep a constant focus of one month on a series of movies which are at least a bit better than average if not much better. So, let's try again ... one more time. But if I'm messing it up again this year, I guess I'll really call for a break in the next :) ..... So, for now, the nominees are here. We'll see next week what's the starting section...
War movie? That's what the poster says. I'd say that looks deceive... At least figuratively speaking. Or, well, we could say "Hacksaw Ridge" is a war movie, if you can fight war with peace... And probably you, because the story's real.
I guess it's quite clear for who read a synopsis or saw the trailer what's the subject here. An US recruit, detached in Okinawa at the end of WW2, refuses to carry a weapon and enters the battle as medic. And in a night somehow makes a miracle happening saving more than 70 wounded from the enemy lines. What you can't see so clearly in the trailer are the details. Especially the background story. The soldier, Desmond Doss, enlists voluntarily in the army, during the war, being a "conscientious objector". More precisely the guy has an "allergy" to rifles. Not only that he's anti-killing, he effectively doesn't want to touch a weapon. Not even in training, not even to carry a pistol for self-defense. Nothing. Now, remember the time... We're in the US army, the '40s, infantry division. Guess what happens? Well, pretty much everything. Pressure, beatings, psychiatric exam, up to the martial court. Nothing to shatter the man's belief that he can go to war without a gun. And in the end he gets there...
Mel is back. And I don't care about politically correctness regarding the man's personal life and opinions, from my point of view (at least since Ridley Scott started to be too commercially appealing) Gibson is the best director in activity. You can see the long break since "Apocalypto", but can also see that he still knows what he's doing there. The movie is not perfect. There are maybe some exaggerated war scenes. There are some cliches, but not as many as I was expecting. But above all, he delivers a metaphor that I referred in the beginning, maybe not as intended and obvious, but it's there. Is the story of somebody nuts enough, to see with all the risk beyond the noise surrounding that there's a place for calm. Or smart enough to feel that in an action, maybe justified, but destructive by nature, fate must somehow give some winning chance to a complete opposite replica, which doesn't care who's friend or foe, but only about good without evil ... just for the sake of balance.
1. I hate musicals. 2. Romances are depression triggers. 3. What the hell I'm doing at this movie? ... I was asking myself around a week ago when I was ready to jump from my seat and head to the nearest exit of the cinema hall where "La La Land" was running contrary to a strong habit of finishing a movie once I started watching. And while I was trying for one more time to justify to myself that I'm there for blogging interests in respect to an almost certain Oscar contender, that initially seemed tolerable and to be in the same line with "Whiplash" = where music is the movie subject, not the way of expression (didn't watch the trailer, big mistake), well ... the change arrived ...
So, to be clear, "La La Land" is a classic musical = we have the specific singing and dancing intermezzo scenes. Maybe not so frequently, but definitely hits you from start with a scene of a traffic jam in a sunny Californian winter where people have nothing better to do than get off the wheel and develop a group choreography in the middle of the highway. After that the focus moves at last on the main characters, she - an aspiring actress in Hollywood with no success, he - an aspiring jazz pianist in Hollywood with no success. A couple (with no success) gets formed quickly and up to the middle of the movie the story advances in a painfully jolly, optimistic and ... well, musical way (I'm a grumpy grizzly, but even so, trust me... there are limits...). From halfway onward we have a gradual change towards the cruel reality, which I don't know how harsh and/or credible might be, but anyway it gains a lot from the contrast with the first part, so much that I thought I'm watching a different movie. Which ended in an emotional climax with an "what if?..." scene featuring an alternative reality flash that has all it needs to hit you hard if you have some unsolved question marks for turning points in your life. This and the camera work, which I have to admit it's really good, save this movie. Even so, I hate musicals (maybe less now, but still...)
"Your magic is growing stronger. You need to learn control. But when we grow stronger the world grows more dangerous."... is an advice given in "Kubo and the Two Strings". An animation which seems initially to be addressed mostly to a younger target range. I don't know if it's hard or I'm really too lazy to unfold every piece of tale we have here, but one thing is certain: This is not a children's movie. Looks deceive. It's an allegory from start to end, which requires a lot and sometimes in-depth analysis to understand...
Kubo is a boy missing one eye living in a Japanese village, without a father and whose mother struggles somewhere between dementia and Alzheimer as days go by... One day, Kubo forgets to obey the rule of coming home before the night sets. So the fantastic threats saying that his relatives on the mother's side = 2 aunts and The Moon King - an evil grandpa from another world will come to take his last eye left become real. With a final appearance his mother saves him sending Kubo on his father's path, a great samurai, to search for a legendary armor made out of three pieces, which will solve the problem. The search or the armor?... That's one of the many questions left after the ending. Where you probably should become aware that everything you've seen it's probably a symbolic dream of the main character, and the effective reality in the movie is in a very tiny amount. Well, if you're in the mood for a bit of analysis :)...
Starting with the title, where it's relatively easy to infer that "the two strings" are the parents, and that the third string of the Kubo's shamisen is actually Kubo, the first line in the movie - "If you must blink, do it now." that initially might look like a bad cliche, but when it gets repeated seems to catch a meaning, and up to the ending with a short break on a black screen finished with a "The End" said before a really nice cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by Beatles, this whole movie is cryptic... So cryptic that at some point you get lost. I guess that not even the screenwriters could give a cohesive interpretation of everything it's there, some parts having maybe a different meaning independent of others. I could say that the result is quite close to Miyazaki's animes, where behind the childish facade lie often meanings that are much more mature.
As I said in the beginning, it's hard, both subjectively and objectively, to give an interpretation of what I've seen in "Kubo". I actually think there's a bit of room for a personal meaning to be found by everybody, the common element being: family. Maybe just a warning, and that's if you have issues in this area... think again before watching this, or expect some tears...
I've tried in the latest days to close the year, as usual, with an entry that's really worth watching - that's why the frequent posting :). I think I finally found it, so I'll allow myself to wish a Happy New Year! for a hopefully better 2017 & Happy Holidays! for what's left of this season ;)
Rating: 4 out of 5
P.S.: I don't know if somebody really went that far to think this on purpose, but there's a third verse in the final cover which says something like "I look at the world and I notice it's turning / While my guitar gently weeps / With every mistake we must surely be learning / Still my guitar gently weeps". Well, the same verse, in an older, demo version, sounds a bit different ... "I look from the wings at the play you are staging, / While my guitar gently weeps. / As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but ageing, / Still, my guitar gently weeps.". Now, figure out, which and where fits in this story ;) ...
In 1665 Johannes Vermeer painted "Girl with a Pearl Earring", a portrait of an unknown subject (or a so called "tronie" = face/expression, to describe it more precisely). In 1999 Tracy Chevalier wrote a novel with the same name offering a story for the mystery behind the face with a pearl. And in 2003 the movie came out. Which I, looking for a more serene movie subject, I've decided to watch today.
The girl in the painting is identified in the novel as a maid hired by the painter's family. From here onwards we have a drama mingled with romance, which to be fair I was a bit afraid of, but my assumption that an artificial subject integrated in real history can't get too far fortunately confirmed. Or more precisely it stopped on time so I didn't get overly subjective on this. Therefore, the movie is indeed "calm", maybe even a bit dry in its story development. But I didn't decide to write this entry for the tale of a mistery as big as the painted pearl...
The main reason for which I would recommend "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is the way the movie is shot and backed up by the score. Eduardo Serra got an Oscar nod for his camera work in this back in 2003 and (since we're getting closer to the season) I think it's one of the situations when the Academy snubbed the right winner sending the statue at the time to "Master & Commander".. This doesn't matter that much. The result stays, where the light in the movie is used such that we have an entire series of frames that look basically like painted photo stills. Alexandre Desplat was not yet very known at the time among the composers in Hollywood, but you can clearly see here why he got to be. The conclusion is that if you want to watch a movie technically worked as less and less unfortunately are, no matter what you think of the subject, you should probably watch this...
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