Month: June 2020

There will be bloods!

Posted on by victorfraga

For the past decade, racial injustices in the US have boiled over into civil unrest and protests: from the killings of Treyvon Martin and Eric Garner in 2012 and 2013 to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police two weeks earlier. Combined with the nationalistic rhetoric of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump and a world in self-isolation in the wake of the continuing Covid-19 crisis, cities around the world have erupted in protests ending with peaceful resolution or tear gas and smashed storefront windows. For the millennials leading the charge of this current wave of civil rights activism, it’s hard not to think that these were the same issues that were fought out in the streets over half a century ago. Spike Lee plans to reignite the conversation with his Vietnam War epic, Da 5 Bloods, which will be released worldwide on Netflix on June 12th.

The film follows four African-American veterans returning to Vietnam 50 years later to recover their fellow squad member’s remains along with a treasure trove of gold stashed in the jungle. At the request of their fallen squad leader, played by Chadwick Boseman, they plan to take the bullion back to America and distribute the wealth with the black community. With a plot that echoes Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979; pictured below) and the Hughes Brothers’ Dead Presidents (1995), Da 5 Bloods is expected to add another layer to the history of the Vietnam War witnessed by African-American soldiers. It’s a portion of the counterculture that is rarely shown on film compared to the nationwide protests to end the Vietnam War (Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie’s Point and Stuart Hagmann’s The Strawberry Statement, both from 1970) or the Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers (Steven Spielberg’s The Post, 2017).

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A black-and-white war?

For African-American infantrymen in Vietnam, known as The Bloods, they made up 40% of the active servicemen in country from 1965 to 1971. Although they were thousands of miles from the racial unrest in America, they might as well have been back home. The Vietnam War was the first one with non-segregated American soldiers. That didn’t stop Southern white soldiers decorating their tanks and jeeps with Confederate flags; even Bob Hope posed in front of a Confederate flag after a Christmas USO show in 1965, the same year of both the Watts Riots in Los Angeles and the first wave of U.S. soldiers landed on the beaches of Da Nang. By 1968, Martin Luther King Jr and other prominent icons of the Civil Rights Movement had been assassinated, and the casualty count in Vietnam was getting higher by the day. For African-American soldiers, racial tensions and the disillusionment of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia manifested into the GI Resistance Movement.

The first notable acts of resistance started in July 1968 at the stockade at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where 238 black and white soldiers rioted in protest over the beating of a black inmate. On August 29th, 1968, the day after riots broke out between antiwar protesters, the police and the National Guard at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, inmates at Long Binh Jail outside of Saigon- known as LBJ (coincidentally, the initials of then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson) was torn down by inmates who were fed up with the prison being overcrowded along with the harsh treatment African-American soldiers received more than the white inmates; the riots resulted in the injuries of 63 soldiers and one fatality. In November of that same year, 67 servicemen at Fort Jackson, South Carolina signed an antiwar letter addressed to the newly elected President of the United States, Richard Nixon.

Cinema speaks up

Meanwhile in Hollywood, as the New Hollywood movement revved the dying studio system into second gear with films like Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) and Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969), the issues of Vietnam and civil rights were too hot to touch for the major studios. Save for the fact that Hollywood postponed the 1968 Academy Awards for almost a week after the death of Martin Luther King and the Best Picture award going to In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967), issues of race in cinema were still a rarity, unless you went to the Bleeker Street Cinema to see Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), Brian De Palma’s Hi, Mom! (1970) Or Robert Downey, Sr’s Putney Swope (1969). All directed by prominent white filmmakers, it would be a while for African-American directors to make their mark on the big screen despite revolutionising independent cinema with Cool Breeze (Barry Pollack, 1972), Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971), and Dolemite (D’Urville Martin, 1975). The latter became the subject of Craig Brewer’s 2019 Netflix hit, Dolemite is My Name (pictured below).

In terms of Vietnam being on the big screen, it wouldn’t be until the war ended with the fall of Saigon in May of 1975 that Hollywood would churn out films that became controversial interpretations of the Vietnam experience with films like The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1979), Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978), Apocalypse Now and Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986), just to name a few.

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Faint black voices

Even with Vietnam being immortalised and/or exploited on celluloid in the late 1970 into the 1980s, the voices of African-American servicemen were far and few between. In Platoon, Tom Berenger’s psychopathic staff sergeant threatens to court-marshal a black soldier (a racial slur was used) for trying to put mosquito repellant on his feet to make it look like gangrene to avoid combat duty. In Casualties of War (Brian de Palma, 1989), after Michael J. Fox reveals to his commanding officer, played by Ving Rhames, about the atrocities he witnessed when his fellow soldiers kidnapped, raped, and murdered a Vietnamese peasant, Rhames recites a monologue about how his pregnant wife was refused admittance into a hospital due to the color of her skin, which is based word for word from Daniel Lang’s 1969 New Yorker article that became the basis for the movie, and how injustice is part of a system that cannot be stopped, only accepted and tolerated despite how immoral it might be.

The only recent film that gives equal and ample voice to the African-American experience in Vietnam was Ken Burns and Lynn Novack’s ten-part, 16.5 hour 2017 documentary, The Vietnam War. In Episode 8, The History of the World (April 1969-May 1970), Sgt. James Gillam of the US Army recalls a white soldier from Arkansas who refused to carry Gillam’s radio during a reconnaissance mission: “He said, ‘I will not follow you like Cheetah follows Tarzan. It’s not gonna happen, Sarge.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be a really long year.’” He follows up by saying: “The enemy’s bullets are colourblind. They would shoot anybody, not just me.” Wayne Smith, an Army Medic, broke the war down by saying “Vietnam was a microcosm. Everything that was happening in America was happening in Vietnam, really, in one way, shape, or form.” Smith’s interview is cut to audio footage of a black soldier wondering why the flags were flying saying, “I think there ought to be some goddamn law to fucking outlaw them goddamn flags, man. The fucking Confederacy is gone, man!”

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History repeating

The echoes from Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement have reverberated in the last week as plaques honouring students who served in the Confederacy during the Civil War were taken down at the University of Alabama while a tug-of-war fight is raging in Richmond, Virginia to remove the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Even overseas, the Black Lives Matter movement swelled to epic proportions when protesters in Bristol, England dismantled and threw the statue of the 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, into the Bristol Harbour. For Spike Lee, the filmmaker whose prophetic 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, is as vital as it was over 30 years ago, his latest film, Da 5 Bloods, is sure to be a vital conversation piece as the war on racism, like Vietnam, still looms over the social conscience for a new generation to act on.

Only the Animals (Seules les Bêtes)

Posted on by victorfraga

People deceit each other in search of love, sex, or some sort of affection. Some are so needy that they will resort to desperate, extreme measures. This multilayered blend of drama and murder thriller takes place between the snowy and idyllic mountains of Central France and the bustling and chaotic streets of Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast. It isn’t just the settings that offer a stark contrast. Our protagonists too are teeming with paradoxes.

The film is more or less broken into five episodes named after different characters (even if two of these characters happen to be the same person). The backbone of the narrative is the disappearance of Evelyne (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), an attractive forty-something involved in a whirlwind romance with the fiery young Marion (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) while still married to an elusive old man. One day her car is abandoned in the middle of the road, and there is no sign of the driver. The police embark on a mission to find her, where they come across a number of despondent characters with a very peculiar connection to each other.

Other prominent characters include the Michel (Denis Ménochet), a surly middle-aged man in a hapless marriage, who finds a venting outlet in an online dating site. Michel’s wife Alice (Laure Calamy) also has to find fulfilment outside the marriage, and so she begins a dalliance with Joseph Damien Bonnard. Joseph, on the other hand, has a very morbid secret, and unorthodox way of conveying affection. The newcomer Guy Roger N’Drin plays Armand, a young African man who impersonates young girls online in order to raise money and buy gifts for his own girlfriend.

Where necessary, love and spirituality are monetised in the name of a greater purpose. After all, human relations are just as problematic as the relation a coloniser and its former colony (in this case, France and the Ivory Coast). Those who were formerly oppressed have now forged a symbiotic connection with those who once oppressed them.

Only the Animals has as many twists and turns as the dramatic road where Evelyne’s car is found. This elastic film is dotted small clues that gradually gel together. It’s the perfect circle of tragedies and serendipities. No one is entirely evil, but their actions can costs lives and have irreversible consequences. Characters fall into a spinning spiral of intrigues, and viewers are dragged along. A very enjoyable experience.

Only the Animals is on VoD in June. On Netflix in December

Three movies that changed the history of cinema

Posted on by victorfraga

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Bengal language Indian director Satyajit Ray once stated “It is only in a drastic simplification of the style and content that hope for the Indian cinema resides. At present, it would appear that nearly all the prevailing practices go against such simplification”.

Pather Panchali (1955), would be the first instalment of the impromptu Apu Trilogy, perhaps the most celebrated of Indian cinema. Ray himself would become an internationally renowned auteur, the face of the Parallel Cinema, with legendary filmmakers Ritwik Ghatak (1960’s Meghe Dhaka Tara starring Supriya Devi, his films are meticulous depictions of feminism and partition) and Mrinal Sen (the great 1976 Mrigayaa starring the Bollywood star and former member of the Parliament, Rajya Sabha, Mithun Chakraborty) amongst his company. He’d gain the admiration of filmmakers Kurosawa, John Huston (who saw the rough cut and brought the film to the attention of the MoMa international film curation), and the filmmaker Ray would’ve identified himself the most with, Jean Renoir (who’d emphasise to Ray during their first ever encounter the importance of the ‘details’ captured in film).

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Cryptic narratives

Panchali was Ray’s first film, and it is also the first film most of the crew members had ever worked on (including cinematographer, Subrata Mitra). Production lasted several years, Ray pawned his wife’s jewelry, sold his insurance, and eventually the West Bengal government would pay for several expenses. What Panchali did as a film for the time it was released was spark a spotlight for India in terms of a marketable cinema and a country branding the face of a filmmaker who coined the birth of a singular movement, the Parallel cinema (his earlier films are similar to the films of the Neo-realists). Like a professor, Ray would carefully articulate to producers all three of his Apu films with storyboards as no one either understood or empathised with his notions on the narrative structure.

The Indian director believed conventional narratives formalised even by great films come to be dated at some given point because what creates the illusion of reality far greater are those irrelevant details Renoir advised him on. The details which fill those imperceptible gaps between those classical, more older Hindi-language pictures (examples being Franz Osten’s Prem Kahani and V. Shantaram’s Kunku, both from 1937) and the marketable stardom of Zubeida and Durgabai Kamat. He was more interested in taking the unhurried approach to his material which has been given the case with the prolonged muteness of subtlety and performance from professionals and non-professionals that distinguished his work, and pretty much seemed consistent throughout his career (his later films, beginning in 1970 with The Adversary, have a much more political tenor, which is more or so bluntly shown from his 1977 film The Chess Players).

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Bengali triptych

The trilogy, centred on the Ray family, as a whole, feels more temperamental than the films do as standalones. Pather Panchali is perhaps colder while Aparajito (1956)lingers on the weighing tragedy from its very beginning. As a sequel, it is more of a technical improvement, too. It is a more focused and tighter film, and Ray finds the right balance between the precise exploration of setting and mood while evolving the relationship of Apu, and his mother, Sarbojaya. Though not a story originally conceived by Ray (Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay wrote the first two original novels of the same title, Ray wrote the original screenplay for The World of Apu, 1959), the life of Apu and his family seems so evidently close to his personal memoir. He has often considered himself a dry filmmaker, and a very still observer of the happening and the human expression. Thematically, his earlier films hold a candle to Vittorio De Sica, while in artistry, his films feel inspired by Renoir and perhaps even encouraging for the New Wave filmmaker Jacques Rivette.

The trilogy features a score by the Bengali musician and Hindustani classical composer Ravi Shankar (Sitar Maestro), a score improvised during the makings of Panchali and intrinsically engrossed by the unfoldings of Apu’s subdued growth from boy to man. The collaborations Ray had with the finer elements of his trilogy should be studied by the newer generation of filmmakers; though, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn his methods and beliefs wouldn’t necessarily attract the modern filmmaker so prone to an impatience derived on achieving aesthetics and maundering vision.

There’s an insightful interview he has with George Stevens Jr (director of the American Film Institute from 1967 until 1980) in which he describes his changing relationship with music. He speaks upon his collaboration with Shankar, and his attempt at getting Shankar to create a musical piece in under three minutes. For Ray, it proved Shankar was not a professional film scorist because he could not apply to such a limitation he was never used to as a musician. Quite a viewpoint on film scores and music really, as Ray believed music only intervenes the greater meaning of the visual story, and no movie can truly compare to the singular distinction and intention of the song. He speaks gracefully on the trial and error of making films in Calcutta for instance, such as the power outage that would periodically occur three times a day. So he can be shooting the film, or he can be editing the film, or even worse, the labs could be in the middle of processing the film!

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Dirty experimentations

Perhaps the modern cinephile can appreciate the experiments behind Ray’s differing methods between performers and solidifying low budgetary productions. He and cinematographer Subrata Mitra technically originated the bounced lighting technique with cloth and nets (black clothed frames) to enhance the shadows and schemes of black and white film. His name is amongst the filmmakers Kurosawa, Rossellini, Fellini and Ozu. Ozu and Ray were contemporaries of similar merits and certainty given their pace, imagery, and empowering affect for the placidity.

A trilogy was never intended, though Panchali’s international success (it premiered with a Special Honours at Cannes) inspired the continuation of this saga with Aparajito. Following the Ray family, though without the elderly Indir Thakrun (Chunibala Devi), in the city of Varanasi, Apu shares a greater amount of perspective this time around. The presence of Varanasi is just one of the few broader changes for the Ray family, a village perhaps just more modernly fitted of its rurality in comparison to the Bengal village they originated from. There’s a particular visual emphasis for stairs, with Panchali, roads were a frequent emphasis for a significance defining every member of the family’s wonderment of place and a future, while for Apu, the roads played an obvious token for the unknown (the title Pather Panchali means ‘song of the little road’). The stairs are mostly seen whenever the focus is solely on Apu, such as the moments when he’s walking up the stairs on the bank of the Ganges, or the staircases from Apu’s college.

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Departure time

This visual transition from boy to young adult is practically the message, here, and the beautiful cinematography from Subrata Mitra is more precise and complex in conveying a blend of slight marvel and a melancholy lurking within the distance of Apu and his family. Harihar Ray (Kanu Bannerjee), the father and impoverished priest who left the village to search for work was the protagonist of the first film. He falls ill and dies within the first act of Aparajito and leaves both Sarbajaya (Karuna Bannerjee) and Apu (Pinaki Sengupta as child Apu) at a loss for security and the prospects for what’s to come. During most of the film we follow both Sarbajaya and Apu, either when they’re together or in their own isolation. For Sabajaya, she lives at home and is pretty much there through most of her life while emotionally distraught by the guilt for leaving her village, and slowly losing her son.

At one point, Sarbajaya is told that in order to achieve salvation, she must bathe in the Gange, though she never does. For Apu, he grows older (Smaran Ghosal, older Apu), coming to his own, and realising there is perhaps a chance for a more exciting life beyond Varanasi, which is practically the same sentiment Harihar had finally realised for himself when deciding to embark for something beyond the rural normality he and the generations behind him were so accustomed to. The dissension of Aparajito comes from Apu’s oblivious but meddlesome and ambitious understanding in relation to his mother. The differences between their thinking is practically a timely anecdote of an older generation restraining the present generation’s attempt at expanding the principles of an unprecedented way of life.

Despite the obvious cultural significance for viewers, Apu’s underlying thought and desire comes from the humanisation of the children forming onto their own, a part of our own civilisation that will forever be contended. He wishes to study in school instead of following his father’s footsteps to becoming a priest. Their views have been moulded differently through the conditions they’ve lived their entire lives. For Sabajaya, ambition only exists for those in the condition of chance and promise, in a given world in which the conversation and visualisation of ambition is openly interpreted by accessible instruments and necessities for moving forward. To put it simply, after the loss of Indir Thakrun and Harihar, there is nothing else for Sabajaya’s contentment, she has given what she believed was part of her duty as a wife, a mother, and a woman in the shallows of the unreachable. And for what, exactly?

The film is haunting during the phase of Apu studying away in Calcutta while Sabajaya deals with an emotional turmoil. She loses sleep and eventually loses a sense of even being. The performance from Karuna Bannerjee is incredibly nuanced, she is often quiet at the centre of Aparajito and the progression from her grace to being helplessly timorous is ghostly. It’s been said by viewers of the trilogy that Pather Panchali is the better film, though it is probably unfair to even compare any of the three.

Aparajito is a clearer distinction for how families drift apart. It comments on that relatable tethering thought many children end up having heading into their adulthood, the thought of staying home and being around your parents in a perpetual state of mind and presence is a burden. And while it strikes such a transparent sentiment for the sons and daughters of the world, Ray counters this with a powerful contention for the mothers of the world. The film never speaks of it, except as the viewer, we wonder through almost the entire film what exactly is the point of living a structured life? Obviously this is dependent on a culture, or the means of expectation given the conditions of which one chooses to bear a child.

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Redemption in death

Apu, for himself, decided there was more to take from life than just simply accept. The core of the film is within Sabajaya’s unwillingness to accept this transition as she could not identify with it, ultimately leading to her emotive death. Her death is more of relief than it is a tragedy, however. It is a relief for Apu to continue forth without having to look back. For it to be a tragedy, it would have to diminish whatever plan Apu has given himself for a future. There are some beautiful moments in the sprawl of this life and death. Particularly one of the final moments of the film in which Apu purposely misses his train to Calcutta in order to spend one extra night with Sabajaya. He simply lies beside her with his eyes closed as she watches over him with a muted excitement. The ending of Aparajito is a necessary one, Apu’s journey from a studious young adult to a man must continue forth (as the final frame suggests with an open road). Harihar and Sabajaya’s stories were the central part of both Panchali and Aparajito, guiding Apu along the way as not presenters of what’s to be expected in life, but as individuals who sought an inevitable desire for something greater that would translate to the son who’d achieve it.

Stream Aparajito right here.

All the stills on this article are from Aparajito.

Guest of Honour

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

With Guest of Honour, filmmaker Atom Egoyan reaffirms his penchant for the investigative drama. His last film, Remember, spun a mad yarn about a senile Holocaust survivor crossing the US to wreak vengeance against his former oppressors, in what critic Richard Roeper described as ‘a mash-up of The Terminator, Marathon Man and Memento’. It was an outrageous premise that only got sillier as the conspiratorial plot unraveled, but its excesses were bound by the strength of Christopher Plummer’s endearing performance. This is repeated in Guest of Honour, whose questionable dramatic content is anchored by the presence of its lead, David Thewlis.

Thewlis assumes the role of Jim, a cantankerous food safety inspector who scrutinises without mercy, looking down his nose at local restaurateurs as he crabbily explains their noncompliance. After a long day of dorky hectoring, he returns to an empty home where the only company is a big white rabbit and a glass of red. This is because his wife is dead and his daughter imprisoned.

His daughter is Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a young music teacher jailed for ‘abusing her power’ after pulling a salacious prank with her students. The conviction is unjust and unfair, but she accepts and even encourages her fate owing to what she considers an original sin concerning Jim’s adulterous relationship with her piano teacher.

This mystery and its non-linear delivery pique your interest somewhat, but by halfway it all becomes overwrought and unconvincing; especially a central plot point in which Jim’s occupation allows him to coerce one of the boys involved in the case. The matter isn’t helped by the unlikability of Veronica, either. She has this insouciant, po-faced smugness about her and is always ready with some smart-alec response when Jim tries to understand her.

Thewlis, however, proves to be the film’s buoy when it risks tanking, revitalising Egoyan’s turgid script with real pathos and empathy. This is especially true when Jim becomes the titular guest of honour, going far beyond his customary glass of red and pouring his heart out to a bewildered restaurant audience. It’s a fine piece of inebriated acting, showing all the cracks and vulnerabilities in Jim’s psyche with perceptive nuance. Alas, much of this is undone in the film’s closing moments, which target the heartstrings but miss entirely, in what is ultimately a second-grade melodrama from Atom Egoyan.

Guest of Honour is available now on Curzon Home Cinema.

Inheritance

Posted on by victorfraga

Bereft of her father, Lauren (Lily Collins) is left in the unenviable position of smiling to a lawyer who siphons the family fortune to her brother. What her father has left her is an envelope, sealed with the promise that she can discuss the contents with no one else. Instructed by a video to search for her treasure, Lauren comes face to face with Morgan (Simon Pegg), a garrulous, gaunt prisoner trapped by her father’s hands.

This is Pegg’s creative acme as an actor. Past projects with Edgar Wright, namely Shaun of The Dead (2004) and The World’s End (2013), showcased a passion for horror, but this is a different beast still. Pegg, best known for his chirpily buoyant performances, is relishing the chance to play foe over friend. He’s almost unrecognisable in appearance, masked by a troubled, tousled hair-lines. Marking his prey with contemptible gaze, Morgan looks at Lauren, not with Hannibal Lecter’s arch adulation, but guttural, unkempt hatred. We’ve become accustomed to comedy actors switching to darker genres, but this is a bloodied, even shocking, transformation from Pegg.

More than that, he’s the ghoul that shakes Lauren’s family to their rancid core. Shackled to his chains, Morgan spits out the many times her father acted with the economy of murder over the economy of finance. Lauren’s mother (Connie Nielsen), remembers the prisoner as one who nearly brought ruin to her marriage, before a revelation, too shocking to include in print, brings Lauren to question her supposed heritage.

Beneath these trappings, Lauren finds herself growing more powerful in the wake of great evil. It probably wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test – any conversations between female characters concerns Lauren’s father or prisoner – but Collins provides a steely, even vital, performance from the proceedings. Marrying conversations to chess pieces, the film moves like a board game, though the rampant, rigid killings might upset certain audience members. Some of the violence levelled at Lauren is uncalled for, even in a horror movie.

Instead, the film calls to attention Pegg’s acting. Take, for instance, the scene in which he finds himself, for the first time in three decades, a free man. Dressed in silver, sartorial evening wear, Morgan breathes in the chilly, cracked evening sky. In it’s own artful way, the scene symbolises Pegg’s performance: it’s a breath of fresh air.

Inheritance is on DVD and Digital on Monday, July 6th.

The hands and sounds of horror!

Posted on by victorfraga

Filmmaker Tilman Singer’s debut feature Luz (2020) centres on a young cab driver, the titular character of the plot played by Luana Velis, who enters a police station and is followed in by a dark entity. The word drama is most apt to describe the film because it’s far removed from cinema as a narrative form. Coupled with an unbridled concern over bastardising religious prayer, Luz possesses a bolshie attitude that will lead to a divisive response – angering some, frustrating others, while also delighting.

In conversation with DMovies, Singer and the composer of the film’s terrifying score Simon Waskow, spoke about a lack of control and an effortless approach to ideas, understanding the reason for the music in a film, and combining classical and art cinema.

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Paul Risker – What compelled you to believe in this film and to tell this story at this particular point in time?

Tilman Singer – I thought about this for a long time, and quite extensively. Studying in art school you weren’t completely free, but you did have to do three self organised projects, and one of those was your final project. For this thesis project you want to do the thing that will have the most impact, which grew into our film Luz.

Those projects are the milestones of your studies, and you think about what is going to be the next big thing for you to explore? It’s stressful to constantly be occupied with the thought that it has to be the best thing possible, that it has to be a masterpiece. Every student thinks that and then at some point you get so frustrated, that you just let go and think, “Okay, just be happy with whatever comes to mind. If it’s an intriguing thought, just go with it and explore.” So it’s much more like a scientist that has no choice but to explore. It’s less, “I’m going to make or invent this thing”, and more that there is an idea you follow, to see what it brings.

In moviemaking there’s a long starvation period from finishing your script to then producing it. Although you have an on off relationship where you shelve it for a little while, during that time you have to believe in it and you have to be enthusiastic about it. Through all of this you have to file it under, “I think it’s a good enough idea.” I train myself to do that, to not think too much about whether it’s the next masterpiece, but just trust myself that the enthusiasm I felt when I came up with it means it’s okay, and to just go with the flow.

Simon Waskow – Right now I’m moving towards finishing my PhD in philosophy, and one thing your question reminded me of was something I recently read about the great German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who was insanely productive. He mentioned that he would write or publish 500 pages a year. After he had already published 10 books and a 100 papers, he said that was the first actual valid idea he’d put out, and the rest of it before was just producing. This is a little of what Tilman said about downplaying having to come up with a great idea.

If you want to look at it from another angle, then this is actually a technique to reduce writers block – before you even start writing to qualify it as just the act of writing, and not planning it for publishing. This is important, and I also find the music most of the time when I want to go for something, things don’t happen because I’m fixated on some idea that I want to achieve. But then when things actually happen, a lot of the time it’s when you’re not going for anything in particular, you’re just doing.

TS – I agree that it never works out if you force yourself – it’s almost that you’re not really in control. There are a lot of decisions you can make along the way, but you’re not in control. When I’ve concrete ideas of what a piece of music should be, that is when we had the most problems producing it. You’ll have this semi-realistic idea of something that needs to be, which might not be coming organically from you as a composer, and so it’s more difficult to work it out.

PR – Music is an integral part of any film, and it would be neglectful to not ask about the dynamic of your collaborative relationship.

SW – We’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve also made music together. The first time that we met was writing a song in my parents’ attic. If you’ve known someone for a long time, you’ll have worked out things that the other person will get, and so we have a vocabulary, but then also a technical one that’s probably not universal, and not every director will be well versed in the details of music production. When Tilman and I talk about music, it’s not like he says, “I want something that’s moving.” It’ll be more, “Turn the cue up there…” – it’s very specific.

We started exchanging a lot of very rough ideas early on and so I didn’t lose the centrepiece of the score – this long track with the drums. It’s one centre of the score, and at the start it was just me banging my index fingers on the table. It took about half an hour to create that and when I sent it to Tilman we went from there, and we both knew that we had something.

I spent a lot of time in the sound mix, putting everything together and fine tuning the different layers of the whole sound mix. This is very important because I find it a little sad when some movies have a good score, but the score doesn’t seem to have access to the movie. There’ll be a point in the movie when someone felt they needed something a little more emotional, so they add a source track and it becomes incoherent. The composer doesn’t always have entire control over what the music does in the film, and so it’s important that you have trust from both ends, and that you work together – not just in writing interesting music, but also knowing what it actually does.

TS – I agree, and I want to add that sometimes you use music like demos, and before we shoot there’ll sometimes be music. I like to edit, or I used to, but I’m not going to anymore because it takes too much time. I like to edit with Simon’s demo tracks and sometimes there were scenes that were perfect, and he didn’t have to do much more, or there were times when his demo tracks became temp tracks, and so it was a nice back and forth.

PR – Is the plot a means of setting the stage for the Luz’s aesthetic that leans towards film as art, as opposed to a narrative form?

TS – First of all I agree, and lets call it the motivation to make a film. The two can mix and a film can be both – one direction or the other is valid. What you have to take into account is, and this sounds a little neoliberal, but what audience are you talking to? I always think about that and even in art school I did because it’s a valid point. You think about where the piece will be and who will get access to it. And with Luz, the narrative was not as important to me because back then I felt that this had to be practical.

I wasn’t thinking, ‘This has to be a masterpiece’ anymore because I was happy with whatever happened. But I thought, “Okay, how can we even make a long story like this that is roughly feature film length?” I wanted to tell a longer story and then it becomes economical decisions: “This has to be a chamber play, with everything in one space because we don’t have the budget for logistics between a couple of sets.”

I don’t know if it’s engineering or reverse engineering from thereon, or both, but you just engineer the story. With Luz we went inwards instead of telling a more narrative or classical approach of characters changing and interacting. And it’s all a farce what’s actually happening in the film.

PR – Is this an approach to filmmaking that you plan to continue?

TS – The next movie we’re working on is more of a straight story. There’s character development and I’m trying to implement the virtues we learned from Luz on how to tell a story with all the cinematic tools that you have, yet still tell this very approachable classical story that I hope a lot of people can hook onto. What I’m basically trying to do is to make a mix of what you call a piece of art and a narrative piece because quite frankly, I want this movie to sell; I want a lot of eyes on this movie.

I find it interesting when filmmakers, often later in their careers approach very different narrative forms. I like it when you’re watching a film and suddenly there’s a cut and it’s a different movie, and as an audience you just have to watch that movie. When I read a book and that happens, I think, ‘Why does that never happen in movies?’ But of course, movies are so much of a fixed product: What sells in the cinema, what you can do a trailer for, and what you can write an article on? It’s this very fixed form that I still think you can play around with, but it’s just that very few people do that and make it truly engaging.

I’m sure you watch movies sometimes with the most basic storylines, fun character arcs, and it’s characters changing for the better, and it’s still a fantastic and effective, beautiful and artful movie. Right now I don’t know where I land on this, and it’s just so early in our so-called career that I’m excited to do everything.

Singer and Waskow are pictured at the top of this article, snapped by Miriam Gossing; the other images in this interview are stills from ‘Luz’

Luz

Posted on by victorfraga

The drama of Tilman Singer’s Luz centres on a young cab driver, the titular character of the plot played by Luana Velis, who enters a police station and is followed in by a dark entity. The word drama is most apt to describe the film because it’s far removed from cinema as a narrative form. Coupled with an unbridled concern over bastardising religious prayer, Luz possesses a bolshie attitude that will lead to a divisive response – angering some, frustrating others, while also delighting.

As the American-Polish novelist Jerzy Kosiński said, “The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke”, and Luz is a work that in part honours this sentiment. Drawing attention to cinema as not an exclusively narrative form is not new – Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch to varying degrees explored film as narrative versus film as art. This has been a recurring exploration that contributes to the discourse of a film versus a movie, and the characteristics of art versus commercial cinema. Singer now adds his voice to this discourse, and by focusing on aesthetic over the portrayal of a tightly woven narrative, he evokes the struggle of film to recreate a dream.

This may have not been Singer’s intention, but the film is seemingly in a nightmare – the characters not grounded within a physical space, but a hallucinogenic one. The space can morph from one into another, from a shared space in which characters all exist into the imagination or mind of Luz. The hyper and surreal images the mind conjures up in the semi-conscious state, their fluidity, albeit abstract and without logic is seemingly in moments what a film such as Luz is bordering on replicating. The difficulty in creating this is the same challenge Lynch has mastered, crafting films that shed narrative to become confusing puzzles through dream and nightmare. Luz however is less successful in its surreal and dreamlike moments. It lacks the strange spontaneity that makes dreams and nightmares unique, and missing a more coherent or structured narrative through-line, a strength of the film early on, is regrettable.

Singer and his cinematographer Paul Faltz, co-editor Fabian Podeszwa, foley mixer and sound designer Steffen Pfauth, and composer Simon Waskow orchestrate a strong opening that uses spatial distance and sound effectively. The film opens with an interminable wide shot inside the police station. By distancing us from the scene as Luz enters the building, we’re forced to look closer as we watch her buy a drink from the vending machine, before she asks the on-duty receptionist existential questions that sound more impactful. The distance is warped in other nuanced ways, the sound levels raised to create a disorienting sound scape, that contributes to a later question of whose mind we are in, of what’s real versus imagined? Meanwhile Waskow’s score cleverly contributes apprehension or expectation, rather than tension or suspense.

The cut to a pulsing title is then followed by close-ups of a man’s hands as he reaches a pager from his pocket. Then cut to a wide shot of him sat at the bar, followed by a close-up of the eyes of an unknown woman. Then cut to a wide shot of the man she’s looking at, back to the eyes and a pan down to her red lips, and a question asked without her lips moving, before cutting back to the him sat at the bar. In contrast to Luz’s entrance, Singer and Podeszwa juxtapose distance with an intimate closeness, displaying a playfulness with the camera and the edit. It effectively sets the stage for a film that is unstable in terms of the spatial, and what’s real versus dream or imagination.

Luz is a not a film without flaws, yet a raw energy courses through it that draws to mind a couple of comparisons. Firstly, to the production limitations that influenced the tight framed shots of Mark Jenkin’s Bait (2019), contributing a distinct aesthetic that makes the film only more beguiling. Similarly, the mime and performance theatre used by Singer grant it a playfulness that makes it all the more beguiling, effectively masking the budget restrictions that forced an economy of shooting locations. Then there is David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), and the structured suspense of the first part of the film with Bill Pullman versus the descent into chaotic dream or nightmare with Balthazar Getty. Singer mirrors this to a point, and just as with Lynch’s film, there is a friction between the two parts that requires the audience to transition their mindset. while an appreciation may lead to frustration, and while flawed and imperfect, it’ll be one of the singularly creative films of this calendar year.

Luz is out on VoD on June 1st.