Change Your Image
peoniblaur
Reviews
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Great Film
This film has resonances of The Manchurian Candidate, Total Recall, The Naked Lunch, Videodrome and of course Waking Life. It's set "seven years from now" though it's not clear if that means 2013 or seven years from the time represented by the book (some decades ago) or some combination of the two. The cars and technology seem to be 2006, insofar as they can be discerned behind the trippy camera work. I read the book a long time ago and I'm fairly sure the film is more accessible than the book. In fact that's not saying a lot as the book is fairly impenetrable, certainly by the standards of most of Dick's writing. There is a closure in the film that viewers may or may not find satisfying, depending on their level of filmic sophistication, or pretension. There are also a couple of biblical and spiritual references which resonate with Dick's later outlook and serve to counterbalance a sprinkling of, let us say, secular expressions elsewhere in the film.
This film contains a lot of dialog, which at times seems to believe itself cleverer than it actually is. Certainly the humor (based on stoner paranoia) wears a bit thin at times, though when it does work it's quite funny.
The characters inhabit a drug-hazed, sixties (or perhaps seventies) California world, updated to the present (or the future). The time that Dick was writing was one when the drug scene had a more experimental, elitist, middle-class and even--weirdly--innocent ambiance than it has now. Today, under the pressure of ongoing prohibition, the drug scene has become a greatly-expanded, hard-drug-based, gangster-controlled norm. When everyone does something it just isn't that interesting any more. (If you want to be a non-conformist these days, just say no--it's better for your brain and you'll have all that extra money.)
The film is a kind of vacation in a never-never land or alternative past-present-future reality where today's youth may glimpse the kind of world their parents lived through, if the latter were into those kinds of things. By mutual agreement the two generations tend not to discuss with one another the naughty things the one may have done and the other may be doing, so now is the chance to find out what Mom and Dad were up to all those years ago.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Good film, bad politics
It's a good film in the Left-wing realist tradition with a nod to Costa-Gavras (and even Brecht). The politics are simplistic, didactic republican socialist. (Someone should explain to Mr. Loach that socialism is the opposite of capitalism--it works in theory but not in practice.) The film should beef up Sinn Fein's vote in the next Irish election, which is about the worst thing that can be said about it. I don't think any Irish director would have made such a black-and-white film: it takes an outsider to have such a stereotyped vision.
As far as I recall you never saw any sky--the camera was always pointing at the ground. Given the director's politics, I doubt if this was an attempt to show how inward-looking and insular Irish republican politics actually are. One can concede that the explicit Fianna Failism of the film counteracts the tendentious Fine Gaelism of Neal Jordan's *Michael Collins.* But whatever ideals Fianna Fail once had have largely disappeared with power and establishment--which will no doubt also be the case with Sinn Fein, if it ever displaces them as the dominant nationalist party. The truest line in the film is probably the one where the British landlord describes Ireland as a priest-ridden backwater, which indeed it was to remain for many years.
I'm no friend of British imperialism (my grandfather fought against them in Dublin in 1916) but I can see how the Brits might have been a bit peeved at a perceived stab in the back, and them stuck in the mud in Flanders fighting for the freedom of small nations, or something like that.
Also the leading actor doesn't have an Irish facial expression and consequently doesn't look Irish. The accents are very good, although maybe a few sub-titles might have been in order.
Good film, bad politics.
Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (2005)
Wonderful Movie--Best German Film Since Der Untergang/Downfall
The acting is superb and the mental duel between Sophie and the interrogator is profound. The atmosphere of the People's Court is well-conveyed, and the depicted bravery of the accused in the face of judicial intimidation is inspiring. The film raises interesting issues as to how a religious person should behave in a totalitarian society, the morality of lying to save oneself and/or others, the conflict between loyalty to an ideal and the desire to protect one's family, etc. It shows the political police, prison officials etc. as human beings with good and bad sides, and thus laudably avoids the usual Hollywood stereotypical depictions. Having said that, the film is unequivocal that there is a struggle going on here between good and evil, and it unusually, uncynically and refreshingly endorses Sophie's spiritual perspective (evangelical Christian) against the godlessness of National Socialism represented by the Gestapo interrogator. Having said that, there is somewhat too much reference to religion in the film and at times this comes across as a bit heavy-handed. (The less said about the Pontius Pilate-style hand-washing towards the end by Sophie's interrogator the better...) But in general the film is a wonderful meditation on the role of conscience vis a vis totalitarianism, and may operate as an example for those in our time contemplating their own resistance to subtle or overt forms of tyranny.