Saints and Soldiers: The Void (2014)

Director: Ryan Little

Writer: Ryan Little

Stars: Adam Gregory, Timothy S. Shoemaker, Michael Todd Behrens

Production company: Go Films, Koan(co-producer)

94 min, USA

One the one hand, racism and comradeship are good sources of story. However on the other hand, they can be also regarded as cliche. Consequently I guess what makes a film great is how to deal with its theme.

The U.S. army guys encounter a German ambush. They try to take down their enemy without additional help but fail. While the German ambush is still on the road, an U.S. general approaches there. This is a thrilling situation. I think time matters in this kind of plot but that is not how it works in this film.

Instead of focusing on the crisis(of course it is not downplayed), the director concentrates on depicting confrontation between Sergeant Owens, a black truck driver, and Corporal Simms, a white radio man. I do not want to blame this choice was bad, but what made me less interested was use of flashbacks. To say simply, flashback in this film try too much to explain everything. They could be abbreviated and replaced with some lines. A long flashback in the MIDDLE of battle scene? It was so naive and more importantly, it was too predictable. 

And the tanks, they were all brand-new vehicles. Surprisingly, even the Nazis got new tanks(No.3? 4? Not sure). Oh, even the Panzerfaust was intact. I think the prop team could have done better than that...

I have no idea if this film series(there are two more "Saints and Soldiers" films) stems from a TV series. If it does, I can understand its commonplace way of storytelling. But if it doesn't, well, it is hard for me to find a good reason to watch the other two "Saints and Soldiers" movies.

The Assassin (2015)

Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Writers: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, et al.

Production Co.: Central Motion Pictures, et al.

Starring: Shu Qi, Chang Chen

   Unlike its lucid title and spectacular trailer, The Assasin is far from ordinary Chinese Martial Arts or Historical genre. In every aspects, director Hou Hsiao-Hsien strives to avoid convention.

   The most significant escape from convention is its mingling between widescreen and standard aspect ratio. I tried to figure out a regularity from the transitions but failed. Even staff of Lincoln Center Theater didn't spread the black curtain mistakenly until the first widescreen shot appeared. More importantly, although we usually believe widescreen is for enhancing landscape view, the director framed landscapes in standard ratio. On the other hand, I think, he subverted formulaic assumption of aspect ratio by using widescreen ratio for individual or interior shots.

   Use of long take is also noteworthy. Instead of amplifying tempo by cutting actions minutely, Hou sets a number of actions in static shots so that I could contemplate on multiple elements of mise-en-scene. Moreover, Hou emphasizes sound when he needed to move back and forth from (relatively boring) long take shots: swinging of swords, subtle fractional sounds from fabrics.

   In terms of narrative, Hou stays far from complete story. To put it figuratively, there are "rules of the game". At first, Hou never presents blood throughout the film. Both Yinning (the heroine)'s first duel with another assassin with golden mask and the second one with her princess are bloodless. What defines who's defeated is whether their clothes were cut by their counterpart. And they comply. Even outside of the assassins' covert world, there are other rules. Every conflict among characters is not fatally resolved at all. However, there are certain limits of action that confines the characters. Either satisfied or not, their conflict temporarily ends there. I assume that this open ending represents openness of life.

   I refer this film to using female and matter of choice in life. Although the heroine's omnipotent capacity was less compelling, it was a nice film to enjoy contemplation.

**Add: Chang Chen's performance was not bad. But I am afraid if his image of Sun Quan in John Woo's Red Cliff is being recycled.

** Add 2: The most significant scene in this film is undoubtedly the duel between Yinning and the assassin with golden mask. Through soft focus, mere forest becomes abstract background and isolates the two assassins from reality. Without any computer graphics!

Mia Madre (2015)

Director: Nanni Moretti

Writers: Nanni Moretti, et al.

Production Co.: Sacher Film, Fandango, LePacte

Starring: Margherita Buy, John Turturro

   About 2 weeks ago, I booked this movie because of John Turturro because I just wanted to watch as many film as possible. Only during the first 10 minutes, I realized this was Nanni Moretti's film. More surprisingly, I didn't expect to see Nanni Moretti and John Turturro at the theater! Therefore this experience was so delightful for me.

   Although Moretti announced that Mia Madre is a film about (his) mother, it is obviously more complicated than he mentioned. The main character is a female director and she stars an Italian-American actor, Barry Huggins(John Turturro) in her film(maybe like Alec Guinness in Star Wars?). Throughout the entire film, she persists reality but her actors and crews disappoints her, and especially Barry, who I guess the heroine spent a huge amount of effort to cast, shows the clumsiest performance during shooting.

   However, this is not merely her co-workers' problem. Paradoxically, she is the core of all problem. Comically, she consistently orders her actors to fulfill two things at the same time: to be the character, and to be next to the character. No one understands her trope, and even it is revealed that she herself wasn't understanding what she said. Her manipulation of reality to convey realism ironically fails her. At the crest of conflict, Barry throws away props and says "I am gonna go back. Back to reality!" 

   This film-in-the-film is important because Moretti's narrative discourse is, unlike the heroine's storytelling, incidental and less pipelined. The most significant example for this is the sequence before and after Barry's birthday scene. In a scene, the heroine and her brother(Nanni Moretti) discuss their mother's death. Right after the scene, her film crew celebrate Barry's birthday. Moretti shows this birthday scene for quite a long time. It seems Moretti wants to tell us our life and emotion don't have a linear, one-way structure.

<Content of Q&A Session>
* Moretti came up with this film's idea at the end of We Have Pope, cuz his mother passed away right after We Have Pope's production.

* Moretti permitted John Turturro to improvise in many scenes, especially the dance scene. When Moretti asked him if he needed a choreographer, Turturro said "No, thank you."

* Moretti said he wanted to avoid a film which explains too much via dialogue. So the backdrops of the heroine's ex-wife and brother is not explicit.

* Moretti said he would not like to theorize his own movie. Instead, he would let other to do so.