FOUR LIONS recalls the fearlessness of Ernst Lubitsch’s TO BE OR NOT TO BE, which made light of the Nazis before the tide of World War II had turned in favor of the Allies. But while Lubitsch’s film was castigated for being way too soon at the time (it hit theaters a scant three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and, coincidentally, two months after the tragic death of its star, Carol Lombard), Morris’s ingeniously scabrous satire feels long overdue.
This extraordinarily courageous and funny film opens Friday in select theaters, at which point I’ll be reposting my review of it.
By Joe Bendel. The personal should not have to be political, but it always was in the former DDR, often with tragic consequences. As a still attractive woman of advanced years, Elizabeth Bosch ought to be able to pursue a September romance with a handsome visitor to her provincial town in relative peace and privacy. Yet, since he is West German (a Hamburger), their affair attracts the wrong sort of attention in Heiner Carow’s The Mistake, the best and final film of the Anthology Film Archives’ Wende Flicks retrospective, which concludes at the landmark East Village theater this coming Wednesday.
Elizabeth Bosch has always cleaned up after other people, yet she does not even have hot running water in her modest pre-Wende East German home. That means she and her visiting grandchildren must take their baths in the yard, which catches the eye of the wandering Jacob Alain. Though he starts off on the wrong foot, he quickly wins over Bosch. It is not as if he has much competition, aside from Bosch’s boss Reimelt, a small man unfortunately blessed with a measure of power. The town’s slovenly mayor, he blusters about the hard work of building socialism unaware that it sounds like a punch-line to the weary Bosch.
While Bosch and Alain might ordinarily prefer to take things slowly, they simply do not have the time. For a while they make do with letters and all-too brief rendezvouses in East Berlin, but the situation is clearly not sustainable. When Bosch’s older Party loyalist son announces his promotion, it further complicates matters. Now family contacts with the West will come under increasing scrutiny.
Mistake is a sad but wise love story that also serves as a pointed reminder of what life was like under Communism. Bosch does not even have hot water, yet the Stasi still takes an active interest in her romantic affairs. The film also pays tribute to those who stood up to injustice in the DDR – bringing together Alain, Bosch, and her younger son Holger at a candlelight Christmas prayer service for East German dissidents. It all has remarkable emotional heft thanks to the finely nuanced work of its leads.
Angelica Domröse and Gottfried John look like an attractive, warts-and-all couple who we would like to see together. Yet we know the system is stacked against them. Domröse is especially compelling, finely balancing strength and vulnerability as Bosch. It is one of the great unsung performances of world cinema.
One of the best cinematic depictions of mature romance, Mistake is an outstanding film. It is also a heartrending and infuriating document of life under the oppressive Communist system, yet its inescapable political implications never eclipse the human drama. Highly recommended, it screens this Wednesday (11/3) in New York as the concluding film of the Anthology Film Archives’ Wende Flicks retrospective of the East German DEFA film studio’s final productions.
By Jason Apuzzo. For the past several months here at Libertas we’ve been covering the massive new wave of politically-charged ‘alien invasion’ projects that are about to be unleashed on moviegoers over the next two years or so. The origins of this intriguing new wave of films probably go back to 2008, when J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves released Cloverfield, a sci-fi cult hit that played out as a kind of faux-documentary riff on the 9/11 attacks. [Abrams would also incorporate a 9/11-style attack on the planet Vulcan in 2009’s Star Trek.] Also in 2008 came Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s affectionate riff on 1950s sci-fi invasion films, in which Dr. Jones confronts not only aliens (of a somewhat benign variety) but the Soviet communist menace, as well. Of course, the ‘alien invasion’ genre then got supercharged in late 2009 by James Cameron’s Avatar, which not only revived 3D but ‘politicized’ sci-fi to a degree unseen since the early 1950s.
One of the things that makes this new wave of films so interesting – and redolent of similar waves from the 1950s – is that it extends from the mega-big budget (e.g., the $200 million Battleship from Universal, starring Liam Neeson) to the low-budget (such as next month’s Skyline, made for under $10 million). And on a thematic level, although not all the plotlines are known for these films, many of them seem to be channeling political anxieties associated with terrorism, foreign threats, nuclear fears, as well as paranoia about the increasingly radical tone of American politics. [See my exchange with the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein on this subject here.]
By the time this new wave of films peaks – probably about two years from now – Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (opening in select theaters today) is unlikely to be remembered as a high-water point of the genre, even for low-budget fare. Edwards’ film is too languorous, too derivative of other (and better) films to really linger in the memory. What Monsters does accomplish, however, is suggest how easily science fiction can be adapted to comment on contemporary political concerns.
America conducts urban warfare in Mexico in "Monsters."
The set-up for Monsters is relatively straight-forward. In the near future, America has sent space probes out into our solar system searching for microbial evidence of life. These probes have crashed back to Earth in the vicinity of the U.S.-Mexico border, where alien life forms brought back from space have swiftly grown into massive creatures – ‘monsters,’ that more or less look like grilled scampi – that have ravaged the countryside, and even major cities. The U.S. and Mexican militaries have thus conducted a massive (but largely futile) operation to both contain and destroy the creatures, resulting in urban warfare and endless bombing runs that have reduced many urban centers in Mexico to rubble. What’s more, we’re led to believe that the American bombing runs over Mexican cities have been far more devastating and lethal than the creatures themselves. Continue reading The First Wave of ‘Political’ Sci-Fi: LFM Reviews Monsters
By Joe Bendel. Filmmakers working behind the Iron Curtain had a natural affinity for the absurd and the surreal. Given their experiences under Communism, they could easily relate to such Kafkaesque cinemascapes. It also behooved them to keep their social critiques obscured by layers of allegory and symbolism. A passion project only made possible by the fall of the Berlin Wall (or the epochal “Wende”), Ulrich Weiß’s Miraculi represents the culmination of such cinematic strategies. Finally produced in 1991, Miraculi screens next week as part of Wende Flicks: Last Films from East Germany, a retrospective of the East German DEFA studio’s final years (1990-1994), presented at Anthology Film Archives in conjunction with the Goethe-Institut New York.
In the Czech Republic, one of the few annoying holdovers from the Communist era are the plain clothes transit inspectors looking to fine riders who cannot produce their appropriately punched tickets. Evidently East Germany had these transit narcs as well. Through a series of chance circumstances, Sebastian Mueller, a mild mannered juvenile delinquent, joins the ranks of the volunteer transit inspectors. In truth, he is not very good at his duties, but he takes them very seriously, alienating his father, who labels him a traitor to the workers.
Episodic and trippy, Mueller’s story defies pat description. In a strange way, Weiß invests Mueller’s reviled voluntarism with strange and cosmic dimensions. Yet, one can easily glean the power dynamics at work. As one character explains, stiffing the tram is truly the only safe method of rebellion available to her, so who cares if she is caught.
Miraculi’s dense layers of meaning are probably only fully grasped by those who experienced the oppressive drabness of the GDR. That being said, there are plenty of signifiers astute westerners should be able to catch. Indeed, the significance of an abnormal psychology lecture delivered to Mueller and his fellow inspectors is hard to miss, if viewers have any familiarity with the Soviet bloc’s record of institutionalized psychiatric abuse.
Undeniably both subversive and demanding, there is no possible way Miraculi could have been produced under the Soviet-dominated GDR regime. It is a world away from Soviet Realism, even though it scrupulously captures the depressed grunginess of industrialized East Germany. It is a rich, challenging work, recommended to viewers who do not have to “get” everything they see to appreciate a film. It screens this coming Monday (11/1) at Anthology Film Archives as part of the remarkable WendeFlicks series. Truly a cinematic event, many of the Wende selections have never been subtitled or shown outside of Germany, until now. Yet films like Miraculi are both historically important and fascinating in their own right. The Wende Flicks series runs in New York from November 1st through the 3rd.
By Jennifer Baldwin. I’ve never been to Disneyland’s Tomorrowland theme park. In fact, one of my biggest regrets was not visiting Disneyland while I lived in L.A. The very name itself – “Tomorrowland” – seems to encapsulate the streamlined optimism and chrome-shiny futurism of the mid-1960s. TOMORROWLAND! It’s the kind of name that promises all the greatness of tomorrow, none of the dreariness of today.
In the season four finale, Don’s ready for Tomorrowland. It might be a little fake, a little false, just maybe a little too happy and sunny with optimism, but it’s The Future, it’s Tomorrow. Megan is Don’s Tomorrowland.
She’s everything Betty is not: patient, warm, caring, easy-going, independent. She gets along with Don’s kids; she doesn’t freak out when the milkshake gets spilled. She even seems to bring out the Dick Whitman in Don (though I wonder if it’s really Megan who brings it out or if it’s really the freedom of that California world, which always seems to unleash the inner Dick Whitman).
What I find interesting is that Megan doesn’t “know” all about Don’s Dick Whitman past and yet he seems to feel that she does know the “real” him. This is in contrast to the way Don acted with Faye. She knew his secret and yet he continued to put on a mask and play a part with her, the part of suave and damaged creative genius. I should have known Don and Dr. Faye would never work out.
Don & Megan.
With Megan – whether their relationship will last or not – Don does seem to be more boyish, more smiley and at ease (in other words, more like Dick Whitman). But as always with Don, I’m left wondering if this too isn’t an act, Don “playing” the part of Dick Whitman in order to fool himself. The last shot of Don, in bed with Megan in his apartment, looking out the darkened window suggests that Faye’s words to him hold some truth: Don only likes the beginnings of things.
But isn’t that true of all of us? Aren’t the beginnings always the best? When Tomorrowland first opened in Disneyland, it was new and exciting, a thrilling glimpse into a Disney-styled future. Over the years, Disney has tried to keep the park new and futuristic, with the underlying fear that if they’re not careful, Tomorrowland will become “Yesterdayland,” and who wants yesterday?
We all want something new, something fresh. That’s one of the first essentials of advertising, after all, as Don rightly pointed out in the first season finale. “New. It creates an itch.” We all have that itch, we all long for the thing that will satisfy our longings, the thing that will let us start over again, the thing that will take us into tomorrowland and a happy future. And isn’t that new thing just over the horizon? Isn’t it some new person who comes along, a new job, a new city, a new relationship, a new life we’ve always been looking for?
Unfortunately for us – and for Don – Tomorrowland will eventually turn into Todayland, and then Yesterdayland, but we keep itching for the New.
Joan & Peggy.
I’m as skeptical as Joan and Peggy about Don’s marriage to Megan. It smacks of the “boss marries his secretary” cliché that weaker men like Roger succumb to. This isn’t quite fair to Megan, of course, because she seems much more genuine, gentler, and deeper than vapid Jane. But she’s still a bit of a wild card in that she’s so new to Don, so new to us the audience, that who knows what will happen after the marriage and beyond. Will the shiny newness of Megan wear off and turn into the hard emptiness of Betty?
I imagine Betty was once that new and shiny thing in Don’s eyes as well, but now she’s a cold, bitter, emotionally stunted woman. I’ve gone from loving Betty as a character to hating her, but her final scene in this final episode of the season has made me kind of love her again. Here’s a woman who is so desperately messed up, it’s hard not to sympathize with her a little as she touches up her make-up in anticipation for her “accidental” run-in with Don. Poor Betty! She went for the “new” in Henry Francis, only to find that this “newness” gets old pretty fast. You can see it all on her face in that final scene with Don: “What if Don and I could be together again? What if things had been different? What if I made a mistake in marrying Henry? What if Don is still The One?”
Betty & Don.
I knew she still had feelings for him, but those final moments between the two of them (especially on her side) were filled with so much wistful regret, so much melancholy, I almost couldn’t watch. Beautiful acting by January Jones and Jon Hamm. I know it’s impossible at this point, but in my fairy tale head-version of the show, Don and Betty get back together after many long years of soul searching and maturing. They meet again when they are middle aged and reconnect – older and wiser now, they are ready to be together. It’s a fantasy, of course, and one the show is unlikely to fulfill. But isn’t that what we humans do? We wish for a fantasy that can never come true? In the future, just over the horizon, in Tomorrowland, things can start anew, we can find happiness.
But Tomorrowland is a façade. It’s not the future, it’s not a new beginning. It’s just pretend. It’s a theme park attraction masquerading as a real tomorrow. We’ll have to wait and see if Don’s new life with Megan will be a real future, a real tomorrow, or if it’s all just Tomorrowland.
Megan & Don.
Some final thoughts:
• It turns out I was wrong and my cousin was right: Joan DIDN’T have an abortion. She kept the baby and Greg thinks it’s his. I have to admit, I was not expecting that. Well done, all of you who guessed it!
• Poor Doctor Faye! I went from instantly disliking her to really loving her character, but it looks like Faye just wasn’t in the cards for Don. Oh well. I think she and Don could have been great together, but Don’s still looking for home and family (something he never had as a child), and Faye just wasn’t it. Once again, Faye has all the right insights. She said Don would be married by the end of the year, and so he is (just not to her).
• Is Bert Cooper gone for good? I hope not, since Robert Morse is a legend and a delightful presence on the show. Come back, Bert!
• Finally, I loved the call back to the first episode of the season – “Who is Don Draper?” – in Sally’s line to her dad, “Who is Dick?” when she saw the name painted on Anna’s wall. Don’s answer was interesting. He doesn’t really lie; instead, he admits that he is Dick, though he doesn’t tell his daughter the complete truth. But in finally admitting a small part of his Dick Whitman identity to Sally, I’m hopeful that Don will continue to integrate his Dick and Don sides, and eventually become a whole, complete person. I’m sure this development is way down the line (if we ever get there at all), but it was a nice way to bookend the season.
Who is Don Draper? He was a man who seemed lost and out of control for part of the season, a man adrift and despairing. He was also a man who began putting his life back together, who tried to find a new identity after his marriage. He tried to improve himself, began dating again, found some measure of happiness in a relationship with Faye (and now Megan). And in his California trip, even with Anna gone, Don seemed to become more like Dick Whitman, even if it was only for a week’s vacation. As for whether this change, this integration of his two sides will continue next season, we’ll just have to stay tuned.
By Joe Bendel. That bright light must be significant. Near death researchers argue that since so many accounts agree on the particulars, there must be something to them. Some even hint at a conspiracy of silence in Clint Eastwood’s latest film, but the jazz-supporting actor-director thankfully never veers too far into such X-Filish territory in Hereafter, which expands nationally this Friday following its limited New York opening.
Frankie McLaren in "Hereafter."
Conversing with the dead made psychic George Lonegan nearly unfit for life among the living. Much to the dismay of his slick operator brother, he chucked it all in, despite the serious money to be made, preferring a quiet blue collar life. Yet, just like Pacino’s Michael Corleone, he keeps getting pulled back into his former life. French television talking head Marie Lelay got a glimpse of what haunts Lonegan. Caught up in a Southeast Asian tsunami, she briefly crossed over and back. Slightly preoccupied with the experience, her career and romantic relationship suffer as a result – while in a third story arc, young Marcus, an identical twin grieving his brother Jason, is desperately searching for a legitimate medium like Lonegan amidst all the charlatans of London’s New Age scene.
Eventually, these three twains will meet, but it takes an awfully long time to get there. Despite the supernatural themes, Eastwood strives for an elegiac tone throughout Hereafter, eschewing cheap chills. (However, it is truly horrifying when the action culminates at a publishing trade show.) Though a bit snoozy, the director’s string-heavy score sets the right mood. Indeed, Hereafter has a very Euro-art film sense of time and ambiance.
Arguably, Hereafter is one of those films of which the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The opening tsunami sequences are reasonably tense and realistic. However, subsequent scenes of Lelay moping around taking bad career advice are paint-by-numbers stuff. Lonegan’s relationship with his brother is also rather standard issue, but his aborted flirtation with a fellow student in his adult ed. cooking class is sharply written and finely turned, by Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard, respectively. However, the most reliable strand involves the two twins, quite impressively played by Frankie and George McLaren. Completely natural in every scene, they are remarkably assured young actors.
Sensitively lensed by cinematographer Tom Stern, Hereafter is certainly a classy package. The discrete payoff might also grow on mature viewers upon later reflection. However, the overall presentation is a bit too long and much too self-serious. A respectable film but nowhere nearly as engaging as Gran Torino, Hereafter seems unlikely to be a major player come awards season. Earning a modest recommendation, Hereafter opens wide today.
