Four movies and, well, nothing else

[morgan_dhu]

I’ve been watching movies on DVD lately, because I am on vacation and have the time. A few of the one’s I’ve watched have been, I think, worth commenting on.


Stranger than Fiction: This was not only funny – which I expected – but highly thought-provoking (which I had thought it might be but wasn’t too sure, given the state of much North American cinema today). It’s an exploration of the relationship between art and life, the creator and the created. Of power and responsibility. Of ethics and aesthetics, and the long debate over which should take precedence. Of predestination and free will. It’s narrative and metanarrative and discussion of the relationship between the two all at once. It’s also a touching love story with some truly side-splitting comedic moments that ends up delivering a profound and serious message.


Twilight Samurai: A beautiful film set in the period of transition between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji restoration – the end of feudal Japan and consequently the end of the traditional samurai. The main protagonist is Seibei, a very junior retainer to the head of his clan, a widower trying to support his dying mother and two young daughters on the minimal income of a samurai at the bottom of his social class. There is little fighting (though what there is, is wonderfully choreographed) but much examination of the winding down of a way of life. Seibei is called the Twilight samurai by his associates, because he always goes home in the evenings to take care of his family rather than going out drinking with them, but he is also living in the twilight of the samurai way of life, trying to uphold traditional ideas of honour in a time where the codes of social conduct he has learned to revere are unravelling. The focus of the film is his developing relationship with Tomoe – a childhood playmate who has fled an abusive relationship with a powerful samurai of his clan – and his struggle to be true to his sense of what is right as the world he knows crumbles around him.


Keeping Mum: This is a delightfully dark British comedy about family values gone very wrong, with deadly hilarious results. It’s hard to review without giving away the crucial plot twists, but the plot centres on the family of a sincere but oblivious country vicar (Rowan Atkinson in an uncharacteristically underplayed role) who pays more attentions to his sermons than his family. His wife is lonely, bored and spending way too much time with her obnoxious American golf pro, his daughter is rebellious and determined to find a partner who is everything her father is not, his son is being harassed by the school bullies, and his new housekeeper (the brilliant Maggie Smith) has some very unconventional approaches to taking care of problems. And that’s just the set-up.


The Curse of the Golden Flower: Some reviewers have dismissed this film as visually stunning but ultimately “hollow spectacle.” I must disagree. It is true, I think, that the film is not the gorgeous action genre film that viewers of House of the Flying Daggers might have been expecting. To be sure, there are some delightful fight sequences, but this is not an action film. Rather, it has to me a similar feel and power to that of the great familial/dynastic tragedies of Sophocles – with themes and conceits that are Confucian (given my limited understanding of Confucianism) rather than Hellenic.

It is set during the end of the Tang dynasty, during the rule of a fictional emperor. The turmoil, corruption and reversals of the proper relationships between husband and wife, father and son, mother and child, brother and sister are a microcosm of the confusion, corruption and rebellion consonant with the disintegration of a great dynasty. The chorus of palace officials sounding out the hours counts down the destruction of a royal family as surely as the passing of months and years leads toward the fall of an empire. At its heart, the movie seems a profoundly moral tale – the relationships and rituals that would otherwise lead humans to harmonious living, with all members of the family/society in their proper places and giving to each other the proper respect and duty, have been corrupted, and all is disharmony, leading to destruction.

Comments

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed "Stranger than Fiction". The trailers made it look like a typical Will Ferrell comedy but it was a lot more thoughtful than that. And I found the ending really satisfying.
Thanks for the recommendation re: "Curse". I had been going back and forth on whether to put it in my queue. Seeing as how both you & my aunt think it's worth it ... and hey, I'm always game for such eye candy!