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Jeux interdits
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Johnny Belinda
Journal d’un curé de campagne
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Jar City 2006 Baltasar Kormakur (Iceland) 3.5 Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson as dyspeptic, but dogged police investigator with his own family problems; Björn Hlynur Haraldsson as Sigurdsson’s more mainstream assistant; Agusta Eva Erlendsdóttir as Sigurdsson’s rebellious druggy daughter; and a host of other actors with unspellable names. Fascinating and depressing murder mystery-police procedural set in contemporary Iceland. The environment is sometimes austerely, almost frighteningly beautiful – treeless frozen ground with bare smooth rock mountains rising behind, lots of fog and clouds, often with a car speeding down a straight road or a group of people standing in a semi-abandoned churchyard with rolling grassy hills in the background; the buildings are generally seedy, frost-stained, cheap-looking modern European – their rectangular outline contrasted with the mountains behind; often disgusting and revolting – the bodies that are exhumed are always intentionally horrible, the stenches of death cause violent revulsion in characters present; even the sheep’s head that Sigurdsson eats for his usual rushed meal is repellent, especially when he picks the eye out and pops it into his mouth. The film deals only with misshapen and unhappy-looking people from the bottom reaches of society and from the ranks of criminals – not one’s usual picture of Icelandic society. The plot is presented in a confusing way: the viewer is first shown the natural death of a little girl, the girl’s apparent father working in genetics research institute, and the scene is immediately followed by the discovery of the body of a murdered ne’er do well in the basement of a slum (and his apartment stinks so bad!); the job of the viewer is to relate the two things, with the help of Sigurdsson of course, who slogs many confusing miles to figure it out. The pay-off is very interesting: the murdered man turns out to be a common criminal part of a gang of thugs controlled by a corrupt police sergeant in the country, but he and his buddies were involved in the rape of a woman (30 years ago?), who had later given birth to a girl with the same inherited brain disease that had caused the death of the present-day girl. Her father is tortured by the inherited disease that he carries himself, and in a lurid graveyard scene at the end of the film, he commits suicide while reburying the body of the original girl (not his daughter) – thus the destructive genetic line is ended. The genetics angle is fascinating, especially in a country where there are only about 300,000 inhabitants and everyone is somehow interrelated, and it ties in well with the issues of life and death, cadavers, etc. The cynical Sigurdsson is the perfect protagonist, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, but not expecting the world, or his own family, to be any better because of it. The narrative structure of the film is too complex: a more careful use of flashbacks would have reduced some of the frustration felt by this viewer. Still, unusual, fascinating film.


Jarhead 2005 Sam Mendes 3.0 Jake Gyllenhaal as Anthony Swofford, somewhat reluctant Marine with a sad background – he alternates between raging macho dangerous and passive-aggressive rebellious; Scott McDonald as large-mouthed marine; Peter Sarsgaard as corporal Troy, Swofford’s partner who quotes Hemingway; Jamie Foxx as Marine-Corps-loving staff sergeant who trains the scout snipers -- a bit less brutal than the drill instructor and who knows how to deal with the press; Chris Cooper as gung-ho colonel; Lucas Black as soldier Kruger; Brian Geraghty as soldier O’Donnell. A realistic portrayal through the reminiscences of Swofford of what it was like to be a marine in the Gulf War. The film doesn’t really follow the Hollywood narrative curve: the men train, hang out in Saudi Arabia, see virtually no action, and return home, partially scarred and embittered. Much emphasis on Marine Corps culture: brutality, profanity; implied homosexual attraction; asserted gung-ho love of combat -- they watch the helicopter scenes from “Apocalypse Now” while cheering wildly; men’s pastimes are brutal, e.g., scorpion fights; frequent masturbation; worry about what girlfriends are doing while guys are gone; at one point the whole platoon watches a revenge videotape of a soldier’s wife fucking on tape; insult one another and get into pointless fights; some of the men are psychologically unstable; also a lot of horseplay. Much of the film focuses on the agony of inaction, of waiting to be sent into battle, of worrying about the impact of chemical weapons that Saddam was supposed to have. A few comic scenes, such as the one in which Foxx tells the men to play touch football for a reporter in their chemical warfare suits, but they eventually rebel and refuse while still in front of the cameras. One soldier reads ‘The Stranger’, which signifies the condition of the enlisted men: they are trained to do battle (and hopefully survive) but they have little understanding of the context or the reasons they are there; they are sleep-walking in an unintelligible world. When they finally see action, they meet Arabs on camels, are attacked by US aircraft, take possession of the incinerated bodies of dead Iraqis. In this version of warfare the snipers are more or less irrelevant since fast-moving air warfare has taken over: toward the end Gyllenhaal has a perfect shot on an Iraqi officer, but permission to shoot is denied for fear of giving away the impending air attack. Much of the end part of the film is a true vision of hell – oil wells burning in the background in infernal orange-yellow light, with all the marines covered with oil, incinerated carcasses all around, a lone horse wandering in the ghostly light. A kind of pessimistic existential film – instead of gung-ho heroism, we have inaction, boredom, masturbation, much discomfort, and meaninglessness.


Jeux interdits 1952 René Clément (France) 4.0 Brigitte Fossey as Paulette, a little 5-year old girl (apparently Jewish since she doesn’t know Catholic prayers) orphaned by German bombing during the flight from Paris in May 1940, George Poujouly as Michel, about a 10-year-old boy in a peasant family that takes her in. Classic French film that depicts in deeply poetic way the psychological trauma of war as experienced by children. Fossey and Poujouly deal with the mystery of violent death by a morbid fascination with death rites – they bury everything they can find (moles, Fossey’s dog, smaller animals, cockroaches, etc.) in an improvised graveyard in an old abandoned mill, and they make or steal from the village churchyard a lot of crosses to place on the grave with signs indicating the kind of animal buried. The point is rather mysterious, but it seems to be that children when traumatized by something as extreme as war and the death of both parents, cannot deal directly with the experience, but indirectly play games with it, approaching it slowly from the sides. Both Fossey and Poujouly are beautiful as children united by childhood friendship in their search for the meaning of death. Fossey’s face in close-up is unforgettable – lit by the “Rembrandtesque” lighting of the cinematographer, placid, yet expressive, big tears running down her cheeks, big wide open eyes staring out at Georges, never quite dealing with grief (she shows that she does not understand that she will never again see her parents), her little body in the same short dress reminding the viewer of an adorable little angel. Meanwhile, the family that has taken Paulette in is locked in feuds with their neighbors in the most petty of ways – whose relative’s grave is the cleanest, whose son is the more patriotic, etc. Both families are presented as petty and competitive with no interest in the war or in doing anything for their country; they reach bottom when a fight between the two paterfamiliae in the churchyard has them fall into a grave and fight it out in there. However the Dollés are kind to Paulette, even though the father is a ruffian who knocks around his sons and insults his daughter. Even with their unrealistic games, the little ones are more honest about subjects like death than the adults, who don’t seem to mourn the passing of loved ones but use the event as a stick to beat their neighbors with. Several strong scenes: the first one with the family members running across the old (Roman?) bridge, when the parents are hit by the machine gun fire from the German plane, the dog twitches for several minutes before he dies, the mean peasant woman seizes the dog’s body clutched by Paulette and tosses it into the river. The final scene is unforgettable in its sadness: Paulette is in a train station tended by a nun taking her to an orphanage, when she hears the name ‘Michel’ pronounced; she of course cannot find him (the name was spoken to another Michel), and the camera cranes up recording her flight from the camera through the throng in the station shouting ‘Michel’, ‘Michel!’ Her loneliness will remain with her for a long time, and many viewers will not be able to forget the anguished little face calling out in the crowd of refugees. The movie is very unusual: it mixes sarcastic (?) comedy at the expense of the peasant families with the sad scenes of the children tending their little cemetery; Paulette’s emotional reaction to the death of her parents seems strange – you would expect her to express more feeling…. Very lyrical and moving; one of a kind.


Jezebel 1938 William Wyler (WB) 3.5 Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Fay Bainter. Prelude to ‘Gone with the Wind’ by Warner Brothers, consolation to Davis for losing the big role, and opportunity to Wyler to direct his beloved. Quintessential Hollywood studio product, everything carried out to perfection by perfectionist Wyler. Set in New Orleans about 1850, everyone speaking with Southern drawl, upper classes dressed to the ‘t’, the women in big flounced dresses, the Blacks loyal, happy, picturesque, mispronouncing words, and loving to sing, Fonda (Pres) playing a forward-looking banker, who recognizes that the mercantile and manufacturing accomplishments of the North are superior, Brent (Buck) representing charming defender of the old ways, and ready to challenge to a duel anyone who annoys him or doubts the superiority of the South (he is killed in a duel toward the end of the film). Fonda is rather glum, stubborn, and practical; Brent charming, but prideful and relentless in his pursuit of honor. Davis of course carries the day. Julie is beautiful and energetic, but outspoken, domineering, spoiled, willful, insensitive to the feelings of others, loves to defy society; she plays her cards too far, and in famous ballroom scene (where she wears a red dress instead of white – why didn’t they do they film in color?) she alienates New Orleans and more importantly Pres, who leaves and marries another woman. Julie goes through a change, and apologizes to Pres and proclaims her devoted (and submissive?) love in famous scene, where she curtsies and bows deeply in the white dress that she should have worn to the ball – but she hasn’t understood that Pres is married! She – rather unrealistically – metamorphoses into self-sacrificing lover, who sneaks through the bayous into New Orleans to nurse sick Pres during the terrible cholera epidemic (parallel to ‘GWTW” Civil War), and then in tearful finale persuades his wife to allow her to accompany him to the Lazarit to almost certain death for them both. Lurid finale in New Orleans, with confusion in the streets, fires burning in barrels with lots of smoke, artillery cannons going off, and wagons carrying the sick (and nuns!) to quarantine site. More enjoyable that ‘GWTW,’ although I may be influenced by the latter’s inordinate length.


Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work 2010 Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg 3.0 Interesting, extremely well-made documentary that follows Joan Rivers through one year of her career (2008) and includes piquant television clips from her early years – mostly 1960s. The documentary has no narrator except for the voice-over from Rivers, who often recounts what is happening in the video (we are going to Wisconsin because I needed money so desperately) and expresses her feelings and her interpretations of what she is doing. Entertaining to see the clips of Johnny Carson, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles (a good friend), Kathy Griffin, etc. (but why no Sarah Silverman?). Most of the film is set in New York, but also includes trips to Edinburg, London, Los Angeles, a city in Wisconsin, etc. Rivers comes across as brash, motor-mouth, outspoken, foul-mouthed, but also very honest about herself; the viewer always feels that he is getting her view straight from the heart, that she is not hiding anything, that she is completely open about herself, warts and all. Perhaps too honest, since she and her daughter Melissa (who has some uncomplimentary things to say about her mother) made a film about the death of Rivers’ husband just a few years after he died. The film begins with shots of part of Rivers’ naked face and continues with the application of the extensive make-up she wears; you never see her again without her make-up and perfect hair. Rivers cares a great deal about making enough money to support her lavish lifestyle (limos, drivers, an apartment that looks like Marie Antoinette’s over-decorated boudoir) and the numerous people who work for her; she is willing to take virtually any gig so long as it pays her enough money, even the one in Wisconsin where she offends a member of the audience, and the roast of her where all the participants talk about her incessant plastic surgery and her age. She is a confirmed workaholic at the age of 75 and is determined to beat the age records of classics like George Burns and Phyllis Diller, who worked into their 90s; as she shows us her appointment book, she shares that her greatest nightmare is having dates (the little squares) with no appointment booked. Rivers sometimes shows what appears to be honest emotion: the death of her husband; particularly her resentment that critics will never take her seriously as an actress even though she has written and starred in comedies (they consider her just a stand-up comic); and for that reason she refused to take her successful London play to New York. Fun and informative documentary even if you don’t particularly care for Joan Rivers.


John Rabe 2009 Florian Gallenberger (Germany) 3.0 Ulrich Tukur controlled, no-nonsense, fearless humanitarian as John Rabe, the head of the Siemens branch in China; Steve Buscemi “ugly” as always, a dedicated American doctor in charge of the local hospital – sometimes on automatic pilot as a cynical anti-Nazi; Dagmar Manzel sensitive and attractive as Rabe’s devoted wife in first half of film; Anne Consigny plays as concerned head of the girls school who almost falls in love with Rabe (!); Daniel Brühl as well-intentioned young German diplomat who tries to help – it turns out he is a Jew; Fang Yu as very pretty Chinese student interested in photography. Traditional historical epic about the successful efforts of a well-placed German businessman to create a safety zone for civilians in Nanking – it saved the lives of about 200,000. Film emphasizes with graphic detail the overweening arrogance, viciousness, and cruelty of the Japanese: the beheading contests; dumping rotting bodies in front of the safety zone and forbidding them to be buried; the staff of the girls’ school cuts the hair of all the girls to make them less attractive to the soldiers; only one attempted rape is shown. The dramatized color shots are expertly edited with black and white historic footage. The film’s drama focuses on Rabe’s development. He is completely dedicated to his mission of saving as many Chinese as possible. He is politically naïve and even writes to Hitler asking for help in the midst of the Japanese terror, but he soon turns against the Nazis – Rabe and Buscemi get drunk and sing a scandalous song about Hitler’s and Goering’s balls. The film emphasizes Rabe’s love for his wife (it is a heart-warming moment when he finds out that she is alive) and by the danger of Rabe’s dying from diabetes. Dramatic centerpiece of the film – two Japanese soldiers try to rape Fang Yu and her little brother shoots them with a pistol that the officer left on a shelf; the soldiers chase the girl into the school dormitory where the girls have to strip and be have their bodies inspected by an officer to prove they are not soldiers. The film is quite sentimental – the viewer feels that with the aid of the soulful cellos it is pulling at your heart strings; Rabe plays beautiful romantic, touching music on the piano; Brühl and Yu fall in sweet love after she takes pictures of him in the street; in a melodramatic scene close to the end Rabe turns away the Japanese army from the security zone with an elaborate bluff. The film then ends with a terminally melodramatic scene of Chinese people cheering Rabe under a mourning cello as he is deported and he runs for a tearful reunion with his wife. Interesting, effective, but a bit too sentimental.


Johnny Belinda 1948 Jean Negulesco (AA) 3.5 Jane Wyman in AA role as deaf mute who learns to live; Lew Ayres as a local doctor who takes an interest in Wyman and leads her to realize her humanity; Charles Bickford affecting as Belinda’s hard-working dirt farmer father; Agnes Moorehead as Wyman’s aunt, who begins film as forbidding but also shows her humanity when she rallies to her niece; Jan Sterling as Wyman’s rival, who plays a major role in the melodramatic conclusion; Stephen McNally dark and evil as the only truly bad character in the film. Well made, heartwarming, soap opera/drama set in Nova Scotia about a deaf mute girl who is taught to live by the kindly, Christ-like Ayres; she is raped by McNally, but the resulting child completes her humanity; she is finally rescued from the intolerant townspeople by the saintly doctor, who realizes that Wyman and Ayres love one another. The film is so well made that the soap opera subject matter is transmuted into real drama. All the characters are real and the performances are excellent with minor exceptions. All the main characters are good people whose initial ambiguity is transmuted by Wyman and Ayres: the father is gruff because of his poverty, but once Ayres shows Belinda’s potential, he soon shows his love for his daughter; Moorehead is equally gruff, but when she is told that Belinda is pregnant, her heart softens and she takes responsibility for the girl and her baby; Sterling is originally jealous and vindictive toward Belinda, but even she cannot resist her charm when she is recruited to help take Belinda’s baby from her; Ayres is convincing as the Christ-like figure who is unwavering in his determination to bring salvation to Belinda. Film is very critical of the narrow and intolerant morality of small-town America (the film does not seem to be about Canada), which it contrasts – perhaps with some contradiction – with the goodness of the individual characters. The film has a very melodramatic ending – Belinda kills McNally when he comes to take her baby, and the ensuing courtroom drama is resolved when Sterling dramatically reveals to the court – Perry Mason style – that McNally is the father of the baby and not Ayres. Hollywood soap at its best – lovely detailed and expressive cinematography, excellent performances, convincing characters, interesting issues. Marred slightly by a couple of sanctimonious scenes.


Le jour se lève 1939 Marcel Carné (France) 3.5 Jean Gabin as decent working class hero living alone in sixth-floor walk-up apartment; Jacqueline Laurent as cute little flower girl (!) with whom Gabin falls in love, but she is attached to…; Jules Berry as playboy dog trainer who (inexplicably?) has a certain power over Laurent; Arletty very familiar as worldly wise ex-mistress of Berry – she is Gabin’s down-to-earth lover as he decides what to do about Laurent. Tightly constructed renowned example of French poetic realism and the doomed romanticism of Renoir and Carné. Gabin kills Berry in the first scene, and a crowd gathers outside the building as the police mass for an assault on Gabin’s apartment; through a series of flashbacks Gabin then reflects on the events that brought him – a decent ordinary working class guy working as a sand blaster – to murder; he is in love with Laurent, who however has a difficult time breaking with Berry; perhaps also Gabin feels guilty about his fling with Arletty; in any case, when Berry taunts Gabin in his apartment with his power over his beloved, Gabin grabs Berry’s pistol and shoots him; back to the present, Gabin then commits suicide rather than be taken by the police. The mood of the film is bleak with little humor or satire. The motive-reason for Gabin’s crime is difficult to uncover – Gabin’s deep love for the girl, her exploitation by the slime ball Berry, and his aggressive taunting of Gabin; since somehow it all seems insufficient, one realizes that for no fault of his own Gabin’s love for Laurent is doomed – no matter what he does, there will be a tragic ending. All of the performances are strong, with perhaps the exception of Laurent whose naïve and passive personality does not give much opening for fireworks; Gabin’s histrionic shouting at the crowd from his window toward the end of the film is a bit overwrought. Mise-en-scène and editing are classic and graceful; the art direction is real and poetic at the same time – a little dreamy and yet completely French decors. The doomed trajectory of events of course reminds one of the trapped feeling of French intellectuals at the end of the 30s and of the rather passive response of the French nation to the German attack in 1940. This type of film should also be seen as a precursor and influence on American film noir: the shadowy cinematography, the prevalence of fate in the conduct of the narrative, the destruction of the main character at the end, and the use of the flashback structure. The film suffers perhaps a little from slow movement and a couple of flat scenes.


Journal d’un curé de campagne 1950 Robert Bresson (France) 3.0 Claude Laydu as the priest assigned to a small village parish in the Nord; he tries to establish himself, but is ignored and contemned by the parish and ends up dying of stomach cancer. A film about spiritual anguish. It doesn’t seem to be about Catholicism, but about whether an intensely spiritual person who wants to do good in the world and to be fulfilled can succeed. Laydu, memorable with his soulful eyes and his hair sticking up and his ragged “pelerine” cape, is memorable as the new curé who for reasons we never understand is ignored and maligned by his parishioners (particularly the 12-year-old girl who mocks him for his “beaux yeux” and the count who is having an affair with his daughter’s governess). Laydu the priest is intensely alone – aside from a senior curé from a neighboring parish, he does not seem to have any friends, relations, family, and not a person from the village is close to him; when he says mass, there is usually no one in the congregation. When we look at him (often through a window from the outside), he is alone in his dilapidated rectory doing something very domestic that would normally be performed by a wife and thus reminding us that he lives without wife and children. The daughter of the chatelaine, who is a rebel and doubter about Catholic doctrine, talks to him the most often, but she seems full of suspicion and resentment when she is with him. He makes a sort of a friend with a free-thinking doctor in the village, but he commits suicide, apparently out of despair for being alone without God in the world. He gets advice from an older priest in a nearby parish, but he mainly tells him to be more assertive and the parishioners will come to him. Laydu’s main accomplishment is to persuade the wife of the chatelain to forgive herself and the rest of the world for the tragic death of her son when he was a little boy, but the (moving) spiritual experience between her and the curé so upsets her that she dies that night from heart failure – an occurrence the village holds against the priest. In the end, Laydu find out that he has stomach cancer; after visiting a seminary friend, who appears to be a drug addict, he dies seemingly as alone as he was in life. The film is eloquent on the spiritual malaise of the 20th century, and presumably on the deep alienation of people who do not have an abiding faith in God, and on the inexplicable cruelty of some human beings toward others. God acts in mysterious ways; it is impossible to understand why some people appear to be treated so cruelly by Him, even those who struggle valiantly to find Him. A great deal of voice-over as the cure quotes from his diary; the film suffers from longueurs and is often difficult to follow.