Cinematic Observation
Monday, 23 February 2015
Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio
Dario Argento's giallo genre (mystery, crime) established his reputation throughout his career and helped him to demonstrate an interest in horror films with psychoanalytic and sexual thematic structures. The nightmarish qualities of his films provide the audience with intellectual support and attitudes the audience arrives at on the screening. I think that Freud and Jung provided Argento with a belief system to draw on. Not only is the female protagonist in Four Flies on Grey Velvet schizophrenic and sexually abused character, but she represents the dark and mysterious sides of life. Her husband is more stable and sexually healthy. Argento's film narrative seems to suggest that psychoanalytic ideas give him intellectual credibility to create. The visual style of the film guarantees a psychoanalytical reading of the film. The lighting, the point-of-view shots, the murderous gazes, and the dream sequences all reveal the potentiality for the psychological deciphering of the film. In the film, the unconscious represents supernatural power and the monstrousness of the human mind.
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
Sunshine
Sunshine is a film with all its conventional
possibilities of a closed plot in which the scenes tend to give a sense of
completeness to the narrative. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the conventional
ending of the film is haunting but optimistic. The science fictional and
apocalyptic motifs of the film show us how every character achieves quieter
maturity towards the end of the narrative. The human sacrificial theme is
iterated periodically, and the confrontation of scientific and religious standpoints
reveals the triumph of the scientific endeavor that is impossible without human
interference. The symbolic scene of the ending that connects the
character's later nightmare to the beauty and the peacefulness of state of his
mind now intensifies the necessity of the Sun's existence for the survival of
humanity. The final moment of the character revelation coincides with his
message that is reviewed by his wife on Earth and is not with any sense of
ambiguity and bizarreness. Review By Morad Sadeghi
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
Les Deux Anglaises et Le Continent
One of Truffaut's aims in Two
English Girls is to underline the differences between English and
French cultures in terms of dealing with romantic and sexual subject matters.
The tone and the narrative strategy of the film shift when the characters move
from British land to French soil and vice versa. The sexual repression scenes
and the sexual liberation ones balance each other. Muriel’s' character (Stacey
Tendeter) reveals a certain capacity for traditionalism and morality while
Ann's character is more adventurous and a risk-taker. Ann may be less
innocent but more sage. Muriel's destiny is to suffer. She is the victim of the
social tradition that hovers over her romantic and sexual desires. Her loss of
virginity at the end of the film is poignant, frightening, and violent. If the
frame of reference for Muriel's love is 19th-century romanticism, Ann's love
represents a modern 20th-century passion for liberation and freedom. The
possibilities for the romantic encounters in the love triangle have
prompted Truffaut to consider his love affairs with Catherine
Deneuve & Françoise Dorléac as the self-reflexive source for the
narrative. Review By Morad Sadeghi
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Immigrant
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
1,000 Times Good Night
1,000 Times Good Night (2013, Erik Poppe)
Juliet Binoche’s
performance has the gift of being able to invent a style for the film that
draws the particular attention of the critics to its narrative. We can
sympathize with her and understand her commitments on both sides, her
profession and her family. The crisis point arrives when she must choose
between two different sides of her life. The impossibility of reconciliation
between these two brings the crisis to its peak. Rebecca tries to heighten her
daughter's understanding of political tensions in the world. But there is a
sign of optimism in the film when her daughter finally tries to understand her
mother in the class assignment by referring to her mom's photographs in Africa.
Rebecca's anxiety about the future of the survival of the next generations and
their political awareness is demonstrated in her role as an observer and
journalist at the end of the film. The question of realistic accuracy and
precision of photos taken in political turmoil could have been another
important aspect of the film that is not structured convincingly. Review By
Morad Sadeghi
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep)
In making Winter Sleep,
Ceylan developed his style further and his themes and motives go beyond all
things that have been implied by his best stylistic strategies. The long takes
and the shooting on the locations accompanied with the strong characterizations
and the well-written dialogues create an astounding and extraordinary cinematic
text. Ceylan now with the help of German and French production units succeeds
to open a window in front of us in which the class differences become key
element to portray the characters. Simultaneously, Aydin’s paranoia (Haluk
Bilginer) towards his wife and his sense of controlling her life with all of
his failures make a platform to launch the narrative. Visually and
thematically, he brings all his theatrical experiences into his private life.
His house looks like a stage with different rooms and corridors. The house as
it is mentioned in a dialogue is like a cave with its claustrophobic and
imprisoning structure that works like a shelter for the rich characters to
refuge from the harshness of the reality outside (cold and snowy weather). The
impossibility of breaking the gap between poor and rich people is intensified
with Nihal's failure (Melisa Sozen) to donate Aydin's money as a charity to the
poor family. It is so sad that she doesn't have any place to go back except
Aydin's house. Not surprisingly, the form and the shape of the location and the
narrative are circular with no place to flee. However, Ceylan never attempts to
resolve the moral structure of the narrative. His complete disbelief in
offering any solution at the end of the film makes his whole hypothesis about
the denial of social class reconciliation provoking and controversial. We
should not forget that there are many cinematic and literary references in the
film that are worth to be mentioned such as the hunting scene of the
rabbit that reminds us of the hunting scene in Renoir's film, Le Regle
du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939) with the similar thematic
pattern or Bergmanian and Chekhovian dialogues between the male and the female
protagonists. Review By Morad Sadeghi
Thursday, 22 January 2015
Don't Look Now
Having seen most of this feature I
wonder what its complex temporality and eroticism might do to the audiences'
power of realization. Perhaps the critics should go further and argue for the
editing in the film. What I find unforgettable about the film is its
multilayered and complicated narrative with supernatural and spiritual themes
and motives. By the same token, the title of the film refers to the power of
the look and the premonition of its consequences. At the same time, Roeg's
stylistic decisions to play with the themes of death and sexuality make the
temporal structure of the scenes enigmatic and mysterious. Does this mean that
Roeg is capable of charming us with all potential formalistic strategies to
change our mindset to the concept of time in his film? Review By Morad Sadeghi