The Films of Bong Joon-ho: Influenza (2004)

Influenza (2004)

Directed by: Joon-ho Bong.

Starring: Yoon Jae-moon (Cho Hyuk-rae), Koo Soo-hee (Female Accomplice).

 

In 2004, Bong Joon-ho took part in an omnibus film about filmmakers producing digital shorts. Bong’s contribution – the 27-minute Influenza – is an odd film, and plays like exactly what it was – a talented filmmaker experimenting with a digital format, placing limitations on his style. It’s not a great film – but it’s an interesting one.

 

The concept of the film is that is traces the descent of Cho (Yoon Jae-moon) from a struggling salesman to a career criminal – as captured by Seoul’s vast network of CCTV cameras around the city. Even within this limited framework, Bong finds ways to make each sequence feel unique and distinct. Some of the scenes play without sound, some you can hear what is being said, some are in black and white, some color and in the most striking sequence, set in a parking garage, the camera slowly pans back and forth taking in the entire garage. If the rest of the sequences must have been fairly easy to block and shoot, this one must have been incredibly complex to ensure the camera is capturing what Bong wants at every moment.

 

When we first see Cho, he is practicing his sales pitch – he is selling “miracle glue” that is clearly not much of a miracle. He glues a can to a belt, and tells his imaginary audience that the seal will never be broken – although we see that seal broken again and again throughout his demonstration – before he is eventually dragged out of the bathroom by security.

 

From there, we see as him fall into a life of crime – with an escalating series of robberies. He scams an old woman at an ATM machine for example. He eventually gets a female accomplice – who is there when the robbery in the parking garage gets violent. The ending is once again at another ATM – this time, ending badly in many ways – and shows a dry run for Bong in terms of mob mentality, that we will see in his other films.

 

Influenza isn’t a particularly deep film – whatever happens to Cho to make him fall down that far isn’t really seen – he goes from would be salesman to criminal, quickly. He isn’t a deep character – and no one else really registers at all, except his nagging female accomplice. What it seems to be is Bong experimenting with style – experimenting with what he can do with a CCTV camera to capture this descent, and how many variations he can use. It does fit into his other films – his sympathy for the poor, his portrait of mob mentality, and others. But it feels like Bong experimenting. It’s fun to watch him experiment though.

Movie Review: World of Tomorrow Episode II: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts

World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts *****/ *****

Directed by: Don Hertzfeldt 

Written by: Don Hertzfeldt 

Starring: Julia Pott, Winona Mae

 

There are only a few films I would describe as perfect – but Don Hertzfeldt’s 17 minute 2015 short, World of Tomorrow, is one of them. That film is arguably the best sci fi film of the century so far, and is more packed with ideas in just 17 minutes that any feature I can think of in the same genre. It combined primitive stick figures, with complex digital animation to come up with a funny, sad, insightful and truly profound work about our world, and our place in it – with little Emily, about three, off in her own little world, being visited by a future clone of hers from centuries in the future, to show us the sad world humans now live in. It didn’t need a sequel – it was perfect as it was.

 

And yet, Hertzfeldt decided to make a sequel anyway, and amazingly enough, he crafted something nearly as good. (Perhaps the film is as good as the first one – I’ll let you know when I’ve seen it as many times as I watched the first one – so, only about a hundred more viewings to go). While the first film looked outward, this film is very much inward looking. I’m not sure I’d call any of Hertzfeldt’s work hopeful – but this one is, at least a little.

 

This time, Emily Prime (a three year old, who has no concept of what is going on) is once again visited by one of her future clones. This clone – with a 6 stamped on her forehead – was supposed to be next in line to “become” Emily – but something has gone wrong, and she needs Emily Prime memories. The pair of them venture off into the mind of the clone, which can be a dark place. There is a Bog of Reality, which has essentially drown the glimmers of hope for this Emily – who cannot tell what are genuine memories, and what are other peoples. She thinks she can play the piano – only to find that must have been some other Emily. Meanwhile, Emily Prime does what little kids do – which is to live completely in the moment, with her drawings, and her side trips into the Land of Triangles, which can morph into the Land of Squares, at a moment’s notice.

 

There is essentially, I think, the basic point of this film – that we cannot live in the past, and we cannot fear the future. Children, like Emily Prime, have the right idea – which is to live in the here and now, because it’s the only moment we are guaranteed. We cannot be burdened by memories of the past.

 

That, too, though makes the film sound too simple than it is. Once again, Hertzfeldt has crafted a funny, sad film chocked full of ideas, and brilliant animation – combined childlike drawings, with jaw dropping digital animation, to come up with something wholly unique to him. The shock isn’t there that there was the first time, but Hertzfeldt more than clears the bar. This is one of the greatest sequels ever made – and if Hertzfeldt decides to keep exploring the World of Tomorrow, I’ll be first in line to see it.

Classic Movie Review: Wasp (2003)

Wasp (2003)
Directed by: Andrea Arnold.
Written by: Andrea Arnold.
Starring: Natalie Press (Zoë), Danny Dyer (Dave), Jodie Mitchell (Kelly), Molly Griffiths (Sinead), Kaitlyn Raynor (Leanne), Danny Daley (Kai).

Considering that many filmmakers start by making shorts, the history of directors winning an Oscar for a Live Action, Short and going on to find success in features isn’t actually very good. In recent years, only two stand out – 2003’s winner Martin McDonagh, who went from winning for Six Shooter to making In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths and 2004’s winner, Andrea Arnold, who won for the brilliant short Wasp – before making features such as the creepy Red Road (2006), the brilliant Fish Tank (2009) and the rather daring Wuthering Heights (2011). She has become a director to look forward to – as she has an interesting eye, and an unique outlook at class, gender, and in Wuthering Heights, race.

Wasp is a masterful short – perfect at its length (25 minutes) as it presents the viewer with a complete portrait of a young, irresponsible mother and her children. Zoe (Natalie Press – a year before her minor breakout in My Summer of Love), is a young mother with four children – three girls the oldest being about 9, the youngest being about 3, and a baby son in a stroller. She loves her kids – but has no real idea how to raise them, no money, and seemingly no support – either from the father of the kids or her own family. She is basically alone, poor, with four kids – and more than a little bit of a temper, as we see in an early scene where she and another mother get in a rather profane argument about her kids.

Things take a turn in Wasp when she runs into Dave (Danny Dyer), a man she used to know. The two talk and flirt – and Zoe lies to him, saying she’s only babysitting the kids. Dave invites her to come down to the pub that night – and she agrees. She cannot find a babysitter, so she brings the kids along – but not wanting Dave to know they are hers, leaves them in the alleyway outside, with nothing but a pop and some chips to tide them over. Later in the movie, a brief exchange with another woman in the pub, will explain why she didn’t just leave them at home – she’s down that before, and gotten into trouble.

Tragedy threatens to strike throughout Wasp, as we see the kids race around outside the pub, pushing the stroller too fast, while at the same time growing increasingly hungry. The film gets its title from a wasp that shows up in the final few minutes – flying into the baby’s mouth. The scenes of the children are intercut with the scenes of Zoe inside the pub, playing pool, drinking, and flirting with Dave.

It would be easy to condemn Zoe for her behavior – which is abhorrent, of course – but Arnold shows her in if not a sympathetic light, than at least a human one. You don’t approve of her actions, but you at the very least understand them, and Zoe becomes more human as the movie progresses. The same goes for Dave, who at first strikes you as a kind of grown up frat boy – but in the end does something at least kind. Whether it will last or not, I don’t know, but he isn’t quite the shallow asshole we first expect when Zoe walks into the bar and he calls a “one of them modern birds, so you can buy the first round”. He’s simply oblivious to her situation.

In many ways, Wasp is a forerunner to Arnold’s brilliant film Fish Tank – which was about a teenage girl (Katie Jarvis, who delivered such a great performance, and yet I haven’t seen her since) and her sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend (Michael Fassbender). Both films are about class, and how the main characters – young women, trapped in a cycle of poverty – see themselves. Fish Tank may be the more hopeful of the films – the main character there at least recognizes she needs to get out, and has the opportunity to do so – but despite the kind way Wasp ends, it offers little hope. Zoe still has four kids, and little if any support. She’s trapped, her kids are trapped, and none of them deserve it – but there it is.

What Wasp shows about Arnold is a few things – one is her ability to show the people trapped in these lives without moralizing, judging or talking down to them, or provoking liberal guilt in the audience. There are stretches in all or Arnold’s work with little to no dialogue – her visuals (aided greatly by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who made his first collaboration with Arnold here, and has shot all her films since. Arnold doesn’t underline the falsely juice up the suspense here – she doesn’t manipulate the audience with the children in peril situation as much as she could.

I haven’t seen Arnold’s other shorts – Milk and Dog – but I’m going to look for them now. And I’m happy that she’s apparently making another feature this year – 4 years after Wuthering Heights. We need more directors like Andrea Arnold – and Wasp is a good place to start if you haven’t yet discovered her.

Classic Movie Review: The Heart of the World (2000)

The Heart of the World (2000)
Directed by: Guy Maddin.
Written by: Guy Maddin.
Starring: Leslie Bais (Anna), Caelum Vatnsdal (Osip), Shaun Balbar (Nikolai), Greg Klymkiw (Akmatov).

If you are one of those poor, unfortunate souls who has not yet discovered the films of mad, Canadian genius Guy Maddin, than his 2000 short The Heart of the World may just be the place to start. It’s one of his best films to be sure – and typical of its work, it takes its inspiration from silent films (this one from Soviet films in particular), but does so in a way that wholly unique, wholly Guy Maddin. If you hate the film – and some will – its only 6 minutes long, so you won’t suffer for long. If you love it – and many will – you may have just discovered one of your new favorite filmmakers.

The film was commissioned by TIFF for the festival in 2000. Maddin, along with other Canadian filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema and Michael Snow (among others) were approached to make a 4 minute film to play in front of certain features. Apparently when Maddin heard that many filmmakers were planning on doing shorts with relatively few shots and simple stories, Maddin decided, of course, to do just the opposite. He expanded the film to 6 minutes after TIFF, and the film averages 2 shots per second for the entire runtime, and packs in a features worth of story into its runtime. In many ways, it plays like a silent film on fast forward.

The film is about two brothers who are both in love with the same woman, Anna (Leslie Bais), a State Scientist. Osip (Caelum Vatnsdal) is a mortician, who works with speed on an assembly line of corpses coming to him. Nikolai (Shaun Balbar) is an actor, who latest role is as Christ in a Passion Play, and he tries to impress Anna with his suffering. But Anna instead falls in love with Akmatov (Greg Klymkiw), an evil, fat, wealthy industrialist. But Anna discovers that the world itself is in danger of a heart attack – which would kill it – so she slides into the center of the earth to become its new heart – cinema.

The Heart of the World is a treasure trove for silent films fans. Yes, the movie references Soviet films more than anything else – the wealthy industrialist looks a lot like some of Eisenstein (in, say Strike), but there’s a lot of references here. Because the shots fly by so quickly, watching the first – or even second or third time through – isn’t enough to capture everything. It’s a short that not only rewards, but demands repeat viewings. I wasn’t at TIFF in 2000 – but I’ve been there many years, and I can tell you, the shorts and ads that play before the movie – even the best of them – get old, fast. I cannot imagine not perking up though had this played at the front of each movie one year I was there.

The Heart of the World is brilliantly constructed, witty, funny, moving and out and out fun. It is Guy Maddin at the height of his powers – which is why what could have been a throwaway film for many directors, ended up being one of the most acclaimed in Maddin’s career (he won quite a few awards for it). It is a short masterpiece – and the perfect place to start if you don’t already know Maddin.

Classic Movie Review: Ryan (2004)

Ryan (2004) 
Directed by: Chris Landreth.
Fearturing: Ryan Larkin, Chris Landreth.

Chris Landreth’s Ryan won an Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2004, and it deserved it. This animated documentary is a special, one of a kind film that is brilliantly animated, and emotionally devastating. It tells the story of Ryan Larkin – once an Oscar nominated animator himself, who made a hand full of shorts in the 1960s that were popular and influential to generations of future animators. And then he, quite simply, disappeared from public view – falling down a rabbit hole of mental illness and substance abuse. 

Most of the movie is made up of Landreth and Larkin simply talking to each other at a long table in the cafeteria of the homeless shelter where Ryan now resides. The talk between the two of them is sad – if Landreth has had some issues himself, they are nothing compared to Larkin’s – who has destroyed his life in ways that still make him angry. The film flashes back to show some of the people in his life, and how they affected him.

Landreth’s greatest idea in the movie is to try and represent the emotional scars that both men carry as physical one. So Landreth has some dents and dings – some unnatural lines on his face from everything he has experienced. Larkin’s head, however, is barely there. He is little more than a shock of hair, glasses, one eye, a nose and a mouth. The message of the film is therefore conveyed in a powerful way – Larkin has literally destroyed himself – making him half of a man.

Ryan is an example of a filmmaking finding the perfect way to tell his story. By itself, the story of Ryan Larkin is tragic and heartbreaking – right up to the final scene where he’s on the street begging for change, which is not where you would expect an Oscar nominated animator to be. By pairing it with animation – which visualizes the Larkin’s scars, and visually represents the forces from within him that constrained his work, it simply ups the ante on the film itself. By itself, the animation is brilliant – but when paired with this story it becomes even better.

Landreth clearly takes his time with his animated shorts. He made his debut short back in 1995 – and including Ryan, has made five shorts over the 20 years. His other shorts are all good – not as good as Ryan, but still. The End (1995) is both a send up of pretentious student films, and kind of one itself, Bingo (1998) is a surreal nightmare of a film where a man is harassed by circus performers who convince him he’s a clown. The Spine (2009) is a surreal love story that has a premise I don’t buy, but looks amazing. His most recent is Subconscious Password (2013) is a journey through the main characters mind as he tries to remember the name of a casual acquaintance.

While those films are good – Ryan is great. Here he found the perfect blend of subject matter and style – and he made one of the great animated shorts in recent years.

Classic Movie Review: David Cronenberg Shorts

Three Shorts By David Cronenberg
Camera (2000)
Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Written by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: Leslie Carlson, Marc Donato, Harrison Kane, Stephanie Sams, Kyle Kass, Katie Lai, Natasha La Force, Daniel Magder, Chloe Randle-Reis, Camille Shniffer.

Chacun Son Cinema: At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World (2007)

Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: David Cronenberg.

The Nest (2014)

Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: Evelyne Brochu, David Cronenberg.

Most major directors have a host of directing credits that people have never heard of. Often times, these are early shorts or TV work made when the director was trying to break into the business, or at film school, etc. – and often they are hard to find, unless the director is proud of them. David Cronenberg for example made four films while at film school – and released two of them – Crimes of the Future and Stereo on the DVD of Fast Company (1979) – and they are quite good. I assume the reason he didn’t release the others is because they are not. Cronenberg also has 11 directing credits for TV – TV movies, shorts or episodes – between 1970 and 1975 – when his debut film, Shivers aka They Came From Within – came out (and one credit right after, in 1976). Since then, however, it’s mainly been his features – one 1988 of the Fridays Curse (the Friday the 13^th TV series) and two early 1990s episodes of something called Scales of Justice aside (I am very curious about this later credit – why did the director of The Fly and Dead Ringers do two episodes of Canadian TV?).

Since the year 2000 however, Cronenberg has made three interesting short films (see the note at the bottom of the page) – and those are the ones I am having a look at here. The first of these is Camera, from 2000, that was commissioned by TIFF to play in front of some movies at that year’s festival (another of those films, Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World, is one of the greatest shorts ever made in Canada, and has previously been reviewed). In the film, an aging actor, Leslie Carlson, talks directly to the camera about aging and dying – as well as that “old Panavision” camera the “children” have brought into the house. Carlson thinks the camera does nothing but destroy – that its sucking away our humanity. He gives a bitter, somewhat paranoid rant, directly to the camera for most of the runtime. It’s only in the last moments, when the children turn their Panavision camera on him, that Carlson lightens up and talks about how wonderful the camera is – and what it can do. He is telling the truth when the camera isn’t on him, and lying when it is.

By having an elderly actor play the role – one who had worked with Cronenberg before (in Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly), it’s hard not to see the films cynical view of the future and death as Cronenberg’s cynical view of the future of cinema – and film – itself. The digital revolution was just starting in 2000, but telling, the kids bring in a film camera, not a digital one.

This leads into the second short – At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World – made as part of the Chacun Son Cinema project, which brought together directors from around the world to make shorts of only a couple minutes long to talk about the future of film. Some directors, like the Coen brothers wickedly funny segment World Cinema, have an optimistic view. Not so for Cronenberg, who cast himself as the Last Jew in the World, who spends the movie with a gun in his mouth, as a news reporter gives live updates on whether or not he’s killed himself yet. It’s an odd, depressing little film – one that doesn’t leave much hope for movies or movie going (or Jews for that matter) in the future, having everything replaced by cable “news” where if it bleeds it leads. It isn’t a particularly original idea, but when you only have three minutes to express your feelings on the future of film, what do you expect?

The most interesting of the three films to me is the most recent one – The Nest. The film stars Evelyne Brochu who sits topless on an exam table in some sort of would-be drab but futuristic operating room (actually Cronenberg’s garage), as she talks to her doctor (Cronenberg himself, as only a voice, and at one point a gloved hand). She thinks the doctor is a shrink, who is trying to talk her out of having the surgery – but he assures her he is not. She wants to have her left breast removed, because she is convinced that there is a nest of insects – perhaps wasps – living inside it (the right one is a “real tit”) she explains. The doctor is skeptical, and they go around in circles talking about the surgery – perhaps he can just remove the nipple, and create a hole for the insects to escape from, she wonders. Ah, but what if they don’t want to come out, he counters.

The film is disturbing in the extreme, precisely because of the coldness with which Cronenberg shoots it. The entire film is one shot, all from the doctors POV, as the two dispassionately discuss cutting off the woman’s breast. Normally, you would assume that the woman is just crazy – but given some of things that have come out of the bodies of Cronenberg characters over the years, I’m not so sure. For those who have wanted Cronenberg to return to “body horror”- The Nest is about as close as you’re likely to get.

The three films don’t really add much to the Cronenberg filmography – at least not by themselves. They are not overly original. But they are all interesting, disturbing and memorable. If you’re a fan of Cronenberg, you really should check them out.

NOTE: If you look at the IMDB you’ll actually see 5 different credits – one for Camera in 2000 and one for Short6 in 2001 – although the short included in Short6 is in fact Camera. You see his credit for his Chacun Son Cinema segment, and then you see two in 2014 – one for The Nest and one for Consumed. Consumed is actually just a shorter, two minute version of The Nest. Cronenberg made it to act as a trailer for his debut novel, Consumed.

Movie Review: World of Tomorrow

World of Tomorrow
Directed by: Don Hertzfeldt.
Written by: Don Hertzfeldt.
Starring: Winona Mae (Emily Prime), Julia Pott (Emily).

I’ve seen Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow about five times now – and I’ll probably watch it quite a few more times until my Vimeo rental is up in a few weeks. The film is only 17 minutes long – which is what allows it to be endlessly rewatched – but it’s so densely packed that most features cannot claim to anywhere near as complex as this film is. It’s a funny, sad, tragic, intelligent, poignant animated sci-fi short, which mixes together primitive stick figures drawings, with some rather complex digital animation. The film looks great from start to finish, and Hertzfeldt doesn’t waste a second of his time. Hertztfeldt has been doing his short animated films since the 1990s – often to great acclaim (including an Oscar nomination) – and to a loyal, but small audience. I only “discovered” him myself with his first, and only, feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day (which is actually three previous shorts, edited together, to get to the hour mark and qualify as a feature). That film was unique, haunting, funny, sad and wonderful. World of Tomorrow is even better. In short, it’s an animated masterwork.

I don’t think I could spoil World of Tomorrow if I tried – it’s such a heady movie, that takes surprising turns, and only reveals itself gradually, that even knowing its secrets in no way diminishes the film (in fact, it enhances them – as multiple viewings make clear). The film is basically about a young girl named Emily, in our time, who is visited by a clone of herself from the future. The two talk, the child basically not understanding anything her future clone is telling her, and their conversation is at times funny, and at times unbearably sad – as we gradually get to see the horrifying new reality that humans live under in the future – and how even that is slowly coming to an end, as the clones have glitches, and the world is on the brink of disaster. The clone from the future has no real concept of what our reality was like – and that makes her a tragic figure – someone who thinks they are living life to the fullest, when in reality they have a pale imitation. The child has no clue, and is just trying really hard to be happy and play.

World of Tomorrow is in some ways an absurd film. The film takes several bizarre turns, especially when detailing some of clone Emily’s companions over the years, and the child Emily is constantly threatening to derail the conversation with her non-sequiturs, that make no sense, unless of course you have a child, and you realize that yes – this is precisely how they talk. They live in their own little world.

I realize now that I probably haven’t really done World of Tomorrow justice. It’s almost impossible to. It’s such a bizarre, visually stunning and unique movie that in reality, all you have to do is watch it and see for yourself. It’s available on Vimeo right now (in Canada, $4.99 gets you a rental for a month – and although that is the price of renting a feature most places, trust me it’s worth every penny – and you’ll probably spend more time watching it over the next month than you would a feature. I know I will). This is one of the best short films in recent memory – a true masterwork, and one of the most unique films of the year.