Month: January 2014

By Joe Bendel. They would have been Germany’s best and brightest. Instead, a generation of future leaders was ground-up and consumed by the National Socialist war machine. It was not a war of their making, but they bought in nonetheless. Like the rest of their contemporaries, five friends expect it all to end quickly, so they vow to reunite in Berlin for Christmas. Of course, WWII will turn out to be much more protracted, painful, and futile than anyone bargains for in Philipp Kadelbach & Stefan Kolditz’s Generation War, a popular but controversial German television mini-series, which screened theatrically in its entirety, starting this past Wednesday at Film Forum.

Lt. Wilhelm Winter has already had a taste of war, returning home decorated. His disappointing brother Friedhelm is not cut from the same soldier cloth. Unfortunately, the younger Winter’s skepticism regarding the war will be vindicated in spades. Before they leave for the Eastern Front, both brothers will spend a final evening with their three closest friends.

Charlotte (or “Charlie”) will also soon leave for the east to serve as a Red Cross nurse, but she is ill prepared to face the grisliness of war, even during the optimistic early months. She not so secretly carries of torch for Wilhelm Winter, but has never found the right moment to confess her ardor. Lt. Winter shares her feelings, but refuses to act on them, believing it would be unfair to her should he fall in battle. In contrast, Gretta Müller and Viktor Goldstein are clearly an item, but they try to keep their affair secret outside their small band of friends. After all, Goldstein is Jewish and Mueller is an aspiring torch singer.

Obviously, all five friends are in serious denial regarding the National Socialist’s racial policies, especially Goldstein. Unfortunately, reality will become inescapable. For mercenary reasons, Müller, now known as Greta DelTorres, also takes up with Dorn, a senior SS officer who guides her career as a Reich-approved songstress. He also promises to arrange safe passage for Goldstein out of the country, but that is not how the SS dealt with romantic rivals. Instead, Goldstein heads east as well, under radically different circumstances.

Screened in two separate parts totaling 319 minutes, Generation is a five headed epic that encompasses roughly five years of tumultuous history. Yet, despite all its characters’ regret and longing, it is hardly a romance in the Doctor Zhivago tradition. First and foremost, it is a gritty war movie, emphasizing naturalistic misery over Saving Private Ryan-style spectacle. It certainly makes the Eastern Front look like the colossally bad idea it was. Tellingly, during the first half, each shift in location is identified by its distance from Moscow, while Berlin becomes the reference point for the second half.

Of course, from an American perspective, the Eastern Front is a convenient location, because none of the primary characters ever fires a shot at a Yankee GI. To their credit, director Kolditz and screenwriter Kadelbach (who also wrote the Dresden miniseries, which is worth revisiting in conjunction with Generation) deal forthrightly with National Socialist war crimes. They never take viewers all the way inside a concentration camp, but they spend time in the trains transporting prisoners there. When the Soviets appear, it is rarely flattering. However, the portrayal of the Polish Home Army is sometimes questionable, never showing the extent to which they were targeted by Stalin’s forces.

Regardless, Generation is significant for the extent it engages with the complicity of Germans of diverse social positions in the crimes of the Third Reich (far more so than Dresden). This is considerably closer to a 12 Years a Slave soul search than a whitewash. Terrible things happen during the course of the film for reasons of ideological intolerance and cruelty.

Still, it is also an engaging narrative that balances the circle of friends remarkably well. The five principles completely pull viewers in, convincing even the most resistant to invest in their characters. As Wilhelm Winter (who also serves as narrator), Volker Bruch is arguably the strongest of the ensemble due to the commanding presence and anguished conscience he projects. Tom Shilling nicely plays with and against him as the resentful younger Winter.

Initially, Katharina Schüttler and Miriam Stein seem comparatively light weight as Müller and Nurse Charlie, respectively, but they each have surprisingly powerful moments of disillusionment and emotional defeat throughout part two. Ludwig Trepte slow burns well enough as the naturally withdrawn Goldstein, but Aline Levshin is downright bracing as the Polish fugitive he forms an alliance with.

As befitting a sweeping saga, there are plenty of coincidences and near misses in Generation, but they never feel forced. Throughout, Kadelbach and Kolditz maintain their focus on the war and its dire consequences for the five friends, as well as the wider society. It is a completely involving military drama that trots along briskly. However, Film Forum’s two-for-one admissions for parts one and two can conveniently be applied to different screening dates. Highly recommended, Generation War opens this Wednesday (1/15) in New York.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on January 18th, 2014 at 12:21pm.

By Joe Bendel. Dig that slinky crime jazz. Check out those five strangers sidling up to each other in a train station. Even viewers who are inexplicably resistant to subtitled foreign films will appreciate the post-war noir coolness of Shohei Imamura’s Endless Desire, which screens for free this Friday as the opening film of the Asia Society’s mini-retrospective, Vengeance is Shohei Imamura.

In the waning hours of the war, Major Hashimoto and three co-conspirators buried a barrel of morphine below a field hospital, vowing to reunite ten years later to claim their illicit goods. It was dark and circumstances were chaotic, so nobody really knows what their criminal collaborators look like. They just know to look for Hashimoto and two other men wearing discrete Imperial military pins. Things get tricky right from the start when Shima Hashimoto arrives in the place of her late brother, greeting four prospective accomplices rather than three.

Obviously, plenty of suspicion falls on all five sketchy characters, but nobody wants to walk away from their share of the morphine stash. Shima Hashimoto’s destabilizing sultriness further guarantees future violence. Yet, everybody temporarily buys into the plan to tunnel below the working class neighborhood butcher’s shop unknowingly built over the buried cache. To make matters worse, unforeseen circumstances impose an accelerated deadline on the desperate rogues.

While it is pretty clear this is all heading for a justly disastrous end, Imamura and Suzuki Toshiro’s adaptation of Shinji Fujiwara’s source novel still delivers several nifty twists and turns along the way. However, the subplot involving the rather incompetent assistant forced on the five by their temporary landlord (his disappointed father) mostly just muddies the waters with confusing comic relief. The extent and nature of his slow-wittedness almost seems to vary from scene to scene, but no matter. Shima Hashimoto is a killer femme fatale from start to finish, which is far more important.

Released in 1958, Desire oozes enough hostile sexual tension to still feel edgy by contemporary standards. Working with a cast of consummate professionals, Imamura crafts a massively sweaty hothouse atmosphere, perfectly accentuated by Shinsaku Himeda’s classically noir black-and-white cinematography. This is a nocturnal world, where there is always an eighty-five percent chance of rain.

There is no denying the sizzle Misako Watanabe adds, out vamping Mae West as Ms. Hashimoto. We can tell she will be trouble right from the first seemingly innocent shot (and she is still making great films, like Japan’s recent foreign language Oscar submission, The Great Passage). Likewise, Taiji Tonoyama serves as a perfect foil to everyone as the bristling, blustering , bull-headed Onuma, while Imamura regular Kô Nishimura provides a nice counterpoint as the more cerebral and calculating Nakada.

Endless Desire is dark, but it is great fun, especially for film noir lovers. It is an excellent way to start wading into the work of Imamura, which includes many serious documentaries and two Cannes Palme D’Or winners. Highly recommended, it screened Friday (1/17), kicking off the Vengeance is Shohei Imamura series at the Asia Society on Park Avenue.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on January 18th, 2014 at 12:16pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is hard to get more Zeitgeisty than a film about North Korean purges. You can ask Kim Jong-un’s uncle about it, if you have a Ouija board in your pocket. A teenager recruited out of Yodok prison becomes a pawn in Kim’s brutal succession plan in Park Hong-soo’s Commitment, which screens for free this coming Tuesday in New York, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service.

Ri Myung-hoon had always done his duty as a sleeper spy, so he expected to return home to his son and daughter, right on schedule. Unfortunately, the Communist regime does not give out gold watches. Instead, they betray Ri’s father and imprison his family. Since he is a real chip chiseled off the old block, a crafty old spymaster offers Ri a chance to save his sister Hye-in. Posing as a defector, he will hunt down the assassin from a rival North Korean spy faction killing members of his sleeper cell.

To maintain his cover, he will also spend some time in high school, where he meets Lee Hye-in. Besides her name, something about her reminds him of his sister. As a disciplined undercover operative, he valiantly resists the urge to lay a beat down on the bullies that torment her, but it is obviously just a matter of time. Likewise, the plots in Pyongyang will soon embroil Ri and nearly every other sleeper.

It is easy to see why Commitment’s blend of action and tragic teen angst would be popular with Korean audiences, but it is also a rather astute reflection of the current geopolitical climate. Although Park served as assistant director on Jang Hun’s wishful thinking unification thriller Secret Reunion, Commitment is more closely akin to Ryoo Seung-wan’s neo-Cold War spy drama Berlin File. It clearly implies Kim Jong-un is a ruthless Machiavellian and forthrightly addresses the plight of political prisoners. On the ROK side, the most sympathetic figure is Cha Jung-min, an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, whereas his “keep the lines of communication open” superiors are portrayed as craven opportunists.

Korean rapper T.O.P. (a.k.a. Choi Seung-hyun) is surprisingly credible in his considerable action scenes. When it comes to high school drama, he certainly broods well enough. As Lee Hye-in, Han Ye-ri also projects a somewhat reserved screen presence, so they feel right together, even if they do not burn up the set. Amongst a strong supporting cast, Yoon Je-moon’s Cha hits the right note of rumpled exasperation, while Kim You-jung is arrestingly fragile as sister Hye-in.

Despite several nifty fight scenes, American audiences would probably prefer a higher action to teenage angst ratio. Still, it is probably the best spy film since maybe Berlin File. Often smart and tense, Commitment is a fascinating example of the ever shifting manner the two Koreas are depicted in the cinema of the ROK. Recommended rather highly (especially for free), Commitment screens Tuesday (1/14) at the Tribeca Cinemas, thanks to the Korean Cultural Service in New York.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on January 11th, 2014 at 12:31am.

By Joe Bendel. There is nothing like partially destroying the world to cause an existential crisis. Shinji Ikari was always a moody kid, but he is in for the mother of all guilt trips. The franchise that rejuvenated mecha anime returns with the third installment of Hideaki Anno’s feature anime “rebuild” series, Evangelion 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, which screens this Friday in New York.

If you saw 2.0, you might be somewhat surprised to learn that the climactic battle did not turn out so well, but not as surprised as Ikari. He will have quite a rude awakening from fourteen years of suspended animation. His former protector, Misato Katsuragi, is now the leader of WILLE, an outfit explicitly opposed to his father’s NERV—and she apparently hates his guts. A lot of people do, including his former hotshot comrade-in-arms, Asuka Shikinami. Nobody will spell it out for him, but they are all adamant he should never step inside an EVA battle bot again.

As a result, he is more than willing to desert WILLE for NERV when offered the chance, particularly since the getaway EVA is piloted by Rei, whom Ikari thought he had saved at the end of 2.0. She has changed though, whereas his father is the same old cold Machiavellian. At least Ikari makes a new friend in Kaworu Nagisa, with whom he plays four-handed piano and learns the full devastating extent of the Third Impact he inadvertently hastened.

Given the fourteen year time jump, 3.0 ought to be a convenient entry point to the series, but it actually feels denser than the previous two outings. It is definitely a middle film, ending more with a lull in the action than any sense of closure. While he was never a barrel of laughs, Ikari’s mopiness becomes almost insufferable. On the plus side, Shikinami really comes into her own as an anime action role model for girls. Listening to her tear into Ikari is good, sort of clean, cathartic anime fun.

As usual, the art of 3.0 remains several cuts above the industry standard. This time out, writer-chief director Anno cranks up the apocalyptic elements something fierce, but somehow the religious overtones do not feel as pronounced. The complete lack resolution will frustrate casual viewers, but fans will dig the metal-on-cosmic metal action (they should also stay for the teaser-stinger). Recommended for anime connoisseurs who appreciate the intricate series mythology and Shikinami’s attitude, Evangelion 3.0 screens this Friday (1/10) at the Big Cinema Manhattan, Saturday (1/11) at the Yonkers Drafthouse, and Saturday (1/11) and next Tuesday (1/14) at the Village East, as well as other select theaters throughout the country.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on January 8th, 2014 at 11:41am.