Cinema Talk

Yoji Yamada follows-up his samurai trilogy with a film more in line with his earlier dramatic set-ups. As one can expect, there are some sappy sentimental touches every now and then, but such problems are negated by the remarkable amount of attention and care that Yamada puts into each one of his characters. This is one of the warmest movies one could ever hope to see in fact, which bodes well for most of the humor, as well as most of the dramatic turns. If there is any one problem in Yamada’s characterization, it is that he is too gentle and nice, but that hardly sets the film back.

A university professor is arrested one night for “thought crimes.” His wife, Kabei, must take care of her two children, Teruyo and Hatsuko, while he is away. Yamazaki, one of the professor’s former students, checks on the family from time to time and plays somewhat of a father figure to the two young girls. As Kabei works on getting her husband out of prison, Japan’s conflict with China worsens. The second world war is on the horizon, and it begins approaching as soon as things seem to go right for the family.

Yamada should be given an enormous amount of credit for depicting the years leading up to the war, as well as the start of the war itself, from a much more realistic viewpoint. He shows us how certain characters are directly effected because of the nation’s struggle, but never does he operate on a vague, birds eye view of the world’s conflicts. Within the process of the war, he displays the drama (or anti-drama, even) of a family deprived of their patriarch. The content that follows is not the melodramatic tragedy that such a plot description would imply, but instead a very honest and moving portrait of a family trying to continue their way of living, in spite of an important figure’s absence.

This does all sound a tad bit mushy, I admit, and it certainly doesn’t help that Kabei, herself, tip-toes on the lines of being a realistic person and a tortured martyr. Thankfully, she ends up on the side of the former, mostly thanks to a wonderful performance from veteran actress Sayuri Yoshinaga, who has collaborated with Yamada since the earliest days of the “Tora-san” series. Mostly all of the other performances are wonderful too, which is essential for a film as actor-driven as this. Sometimes, the film is just a bit too cutesy and nice for me, but it is so in a mature and understated way.

Pretty much Tobacco Road‘s much more serious and sometimes sappy cousin. This would explain it’s strengths (still a poetic yet gritty social drama) as well as it’s single fault. Considering that the film now has a big reputation as being a masterpiece of early classic Hollywood cinema, it is pretty inevitable that some scenes are a bit over the top. There’s a few too many monologues for one, of course the most famous one being Henry Fonda’s “I’ll be there” one towards the end is actually a lot less heavy-handed than the rest. While, overall, the film is a bit too structured in the conventional sense to be as mindblowingly brilliant as Tobacco Road, it does at least take the best aspects from that film and produces something more mature.

Tom Joad returns from his five year stay in a state penitentiary to find a completely different world. His family has relocated from the farm that they’ve called home for a long time now, and people, in general, seem to have changed. During his stay in prison, the stock market crash, thus leading to the Great Depression. Tom find his family, now at his uncle’s house, and joins them as they migrate to California looking for work. They receive many warnings of untrustworthy characters, but they ignore them and eventually, find out how unfair life is all by themselves.

Henry Fonda carries a pretty big load here, delivering the only particularly fantastic performance. Everyone else, though decent enough, doesn’t seem to comprehend the social ramifications of the film’s source text. Thus, many of the aforementioned monologues become simple “boo-hoo people are no longer honest” bits that go nowhere. Fortunately for the rest of the cast, the film isn’t all too dependent on performances, but instead on Ford’s perfectly moody technique.

When Tom first returns home, the atmosphere is greatly exaggerated, almost to the point that the farm feels a haunted house. But then, there’s something completely bizarre happens that grounds the heightened reality: John Carradine attempts to jump over a fence, but trips. A seemingly irrelevant moment that perfectly sets up the rest of the film. Ford and Fonda were both conscious of the story’s possible influence, so they both put their best efforts into not over-dramatizing things. In fact, nothing really happens in this movie, but that’s pretty much why it is so great. It is built upon the most visceral element of cinema – the cinematography. There’s no point in mentioning just how great Gregg Toland is with the camera, since Citizen Kane‘s technical achievements have already been discussed to death. His poetic visuals compliment the plotless (in a good way, of course) narrative for one of the most contemplative experiences in Hollywood history.

Maybe it’s just the fact that I haven’t watched a “long static shots depicting alienation” type film in a long time, but this is seriously one of the greatest films to be filed under the faux-genre. It is not unlike Tsai Ming-Liang’s films with its surreal moments of transgressive activity, but the overall mood is even more somber and more “gritty.” In fact, it also can filed under a Dardennes-style social drama but with much more mature camerawork. It can be most accurately described as poignant, static, deadpan sort of film with a sense of glue-sniffing aesthetics. Not only a great movie, but one of the most technically breathtaking achievements in all of cinema.

Teenage mom Tina has no clue what to do with her newborn baby. She seems slightly suicidal, so the baby’s father (who remains unnamed) decides to take the baby and head for the streets of Lisbon. He uses the baby as a prop for panhandling, which is how he meets a Nurse by the name of Eduard. She takes him and the baby in, and begins attending to both. Her relationship with the father doesn’t exactly blossom as he tends to keep quiet, but the tension is there.

Describing Ossos probably makes it sound a lot less interesting than it is. The plot bears some similarities to L’Enfant but only on paper. Most of the film focuses on very unassuming moments in the lives of these characters and occasionally, presents them doing some befuddling. Like Tsai, Costa seems to capture his best moments from observing superficially mundane activities. His approach will not appeal to everyone, obviously, but those who it does appeal to, know exactly who they are. In the case of Costa’s accessibility, it certainly helps that he has one of the most beautiful and captivating actresses ever in Mariya Lipkina, to perform the “mundane” activities.

That isn’t to say this is just another long static shots / alienation film, because Costa has plenty of quirks to separate his film from others. I went into this issue a bit in my review for Maria Speth’s The Days Between, which is a film that has everything right in place, but doesn’t have anything special, so to speak, to separate it from its like-minded peers. Costa, on the other hand, has plenty of things to be more than just a Tsai clone, which is fine too, by the way! If anything, he is the more innovative and experimental of the two. He has the same saturated visual look, but uses it in a much more subtle (and perhaps, more effective) manner. The lower-class setting, filled with plenty of distinct sights and sounds brings to mind the texture of Hector Babenco’s Pixote if it were as attentive as an Ulrich Kohler film. All these names may seem to downplay Costa’s unique style, but they are just desperate “starting points” for a stunned viewer.

Another great western from Anthony Mann, though this is actually only the first one I’ve seen with James Stewart, who I’m not particularly fond of. Still, under Mann’s control, he does deliver one of his better performances. It probably helps that, like many of Mann’s heroes, Stewart doesn’t really have much to say. This bodes well for the film for two reasons, one because the audience doesn’t have to deal with Stewart’s far too familiar voice that often and two, it reinforces the “contemplative” nature of Mann’s cinema as well as the notion that he is pretty much the best genre film director ever.

Bounty hunter Howard Kemp captures long time rival and outlaw, Ben Vandergroat and plans to turn him in for the $5,000 reward. However, he needed the help of Roy Anderson and Jesse Tate to do so. The men reluctantly decide that they must split the money three ways. Greed begins to get the best of everyone and to make things worse, the trip is taking much longer than expected. In addition, Howard begins to fall for Ben’s girlfriend, Lina Patch, which only deepens the complications of the scenario.

Of the “psychological westerns” (as critics have penned them) that Mann made in the mid to late 50s, this is probably the least subtle. The back story of Howard Kemp and his wife’s betrayal is a nice touch, but Mann’s hints at it are pretty obvious. There’s one particularly embarrassing sequence in which a dazed Kemp starts speaking to Lina as though she was his ex-fiancé. I would have greatly preferred for such exposition to end at the little mention that Robert Ryan makes at the very beginning. Other than that, though, this is standard Mann, which is to say it is pretty much amazing. I missed the widescreen compositions present in The Tin Star and God’s Little Acre but the addition of technicolor provides for some of the most lush visuals moments in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. Then again, I expect nothing less from Mann.

Without question, the best John Ford film I’ve seen so far. While it understandably seems silly and juvenille on the surface, it is also by far the most mature and complex of Ford’s work. Yes, this is a film about rednecks and yes, a lot of them are fit into clichés but their world is still one of disappointment and regret. There is an in comparable sense of sadness underlying every scene, and that includes the bits that are outright slapstick. It’s probably also worth acknowledging that not one particular character in the film is sympathetic nor is anyone the voice of reason, with the exception of Captain Tim, who only makes two short appearances anyway. Instead, Ford paints a subtly devastating and heartbreaking portrait of people. Most people will see the Lester family as pathetic, but that doesn’t make their story any less tragic.

Jeeter Lester and his wife, Ada Lester have kept their family together through dozens of children. Every since they were first married, they have lived in a small log cabin. Now, they only have two children living with them, Dude and Ellie May. Jeeter’s sister, Bessie Rice (though not his real sister?) comes into town and falls for his son, Dude. His intelligence (or lack there of) does not make difference, and before the day is over, the two decide to get married. Jeeter approves of the spontaneous decision because he anticipates that Bessie can help the family out with money. Before the week ends, Jeeter has to scrap up $100, or else the family will be relocated.

I do this a bit too often, but I can’t help but draw a parallel between Ford’s film and (yes, you guessed – or didn’t!) Harmony Korine’s Gummo. If there is anyone likely to be the “Ford of our generation” it is Korine, as his vision of Midwest is as startling yet oddly poetic as Ford’s. The poetry of Korine’s film is a bit more apparent, due to its formal experimentation, but considering the time, Ford does attempt many unorthodox things in the technical department. Nothing physically different I suppose, but his whole visual style here seems far more rich than anything else that came out at the time. Of course, such rich visuals present some superficially “disgusting” images, which is exactly what Gummo would do so many years later.

Underscoring all the moments of redneckism and craziness, is an uncomfortable sense of tragedy. Not of a Greek mythological kind, but a sense that is far more subtle. A tragedy that comes from memories, not from physical misfortunes. Nothing specifically bad even happens in the film. As one can expect, the family doesn’t get the money together to pay off their debt, but it is the gradual process that Ford takes us on, that is bursting with poignant moments. Even with all this, none of the intended comedy turn out bad. In fact, it goes completely as planned, and creates the perfect balance between the moodier sequences. This is what cinema is all about, people.