Stealers Wheel

One of the most buzz-worthy performances of this past Awards season, Isabelle Huppert’s multi-dimensional turn as rape victim Michèle Leblanc in the French film Elle, directed by PaulVerhoeven, led to a wide array of nominations and wins, with her taking home the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Performance but ultimately losing the Oscar to Emma Stone. The film also took home Best Foreign Language Film at the Globes. Beginning with the intense, jarring end of the horrific rape (the only witness, her less than helpful cat), Michèle (Huppert) doesn’t hysterically scream or phone the cops after her masked assailant has departed, but quietly cleans the mess left by the attack (and then herself) – simply returning to the normalcy of her life after doing the tasks.

I often wish the studio system would turn back time (in a sense) and begin to focus on developing short films again. A wonderful way to cultivate and produce young talents (think Charlie Chaplin or The Three Stooges), it also provides the audience with fun, brief excursions into fantastic worlds before even delving into the main feature. Comedy, drama, horror and even action work nicely in shortened versions, which is why I like to highlight certain pint-sized motion pictures from time to time – today, we will look at Buster Keaton’s 1920 comedy The Scarecrow. A premier example of ingenuity and the genius of motion, the nineteen minute tale follows two farmhands (diminutive Keaton and the much larger Joe Roberts – another example of the ever-comical combo of fatty and skinny) as they vie for the hand of the youthful and pretty farmer’s daughter (Sybil Seely). The two room together in a house of contraptions – the record player seconds as a stove, bed as a solid wooden piece of furniture/piano, bathtub as a settee and so on. Perhaps even more impressive is their dinner table design – ropes hang from the rafters on pulleys, meaning that everything from salt and pepper to food and beverages are attainable from anywhere at the table (Keaton had originally developed a similar mechanism at their family’s summer home when he was just a child). When done, they have a speedy way to do the dishes as well – afterwhich the ropes disappear and a light fixture descends from the ceiling. It is a spy’s house without the spy.

Director Chan-wook Park, a visual mastermind who concocted the intoxicating Stoker in 2013 (a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s superb Shadow of a Doubt), his first, and to date, only English language film, follows it by putting his talents into making another striking, intricately plotted psychological mystery/thriller in The Handmaiden. Loosely based upon Sarah Waters’ novel "Fingersmith", the filmmaker moves the tale from Victorian era England to 1930s Korea – which is under Japanese colonial rule. Divided into three parts, he utilizes the technique to great effect, providing us with only part of the story each time. In many ways it’s like being given a puzzle with only the edges to start with, so we think we understand what is going on, as we have been given the outline, but only truly gain a stronger appreciation of its complexity and beauty when provided with the pieces that fill in the whole picture. Park’s unique style slowly divulges the true essence of this film by providing alternate angles, different perspectives, flashbacks and flash forwards (those essential remaining puzzle pieces).

A trenchant piece of social commentary, I, Daniel Blake could have been a one dimensional film filled with gloomy despair, but in the capable hands of director Ken Loach and first time actor and long time comedian Dave Johns, it is laced with deft, dry, sarcastic humour throughout – making it a relevant, multi-faceted dramedy. Written by Paul Laverty (a regular collaborator with Loach), the modern day tale, which is set in Newcastle, England, follows a fifty-nine year old carpenter named Daniel Blake (Johns), who, as the film begins, is frustratingly dealing with a government employee over the phone. They have denied his claim for ‘employment and support allowance’ – despite the fact that he has had a debilitating heart attack and his doctors vehemently state that he is in no shape to return to work. A wonderful piece of sardonic humour, this opening scene finds the man having to put up with a plethora of unrelated questions that have nothing to do with his particular condition. Highlighting the lack of common sense or logic found in the modern day governmental system, it is somewhat akin to a man continuously banging his head around the rim of a toilet seat (it hurts, is irritating and, in the end, gets you absolutely nowhere).

World War 2 films have long been an important staple of Hollywood movie making. Even from the early days of the conflict, filmmakers delved into the intense, worldwide happening, seeing the importance and relevance of showcasing such a heart wrenching, profound war that had astronomical consequences. Just think of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator or Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca as two premium examples. If there is one thing though that I have found frustrating, it is the cookie cutter way in which the Germans have been depicted – either as maniacal villains or as ludicrous buffoons. Though there are a few films, especially in the recent past, that have changed this trend, it has been a rarity to find a more nuanced perspective on the Second World War in relation to this aspect. Interestingly, in 1959 Austrian director Bernhard Wicki released a German feature titled The Bridge (in German, Die Brücke), the first anti-war film to come out of the country that lost the war. Revolving around a small group of teenagers, namely Hans (Folker Bohnet), Albert (Fritz Wepper), Walter (Michael Hinz), Jurgen (Frank Glaubrecht), Karl (Karl Michael Balzer), Klaus (Volker Lechtenbrink) and Sigi (Günther Hoffmann), they are a class full of schoolboys who are dealing with the universal aspects of being of that age – sometimes making things more than complicated. They struggle with their respective families, friends and girls, but also find camaraderie in their tightknit group. Living their lives as the intensifying war swirls just around their little city, and despite the horrendous happenings, we get the feeling that ‘boys will be boys’. When a bomb lands on the outskirts of town near a nice stone bridge, they unanimously decide that they are going to the edge of the river to investigate.