Wednesday, August 18, 2010

once . raise the red lantern . koolhaas houselife . sleeper . the trial . the house of usher. The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne. velu . baraka .

a new age musical love story, where easygoing laidback likeable characters trying to make a living in contemporary dublin meet- and almost fall in love. he sings songs with a guitar on the street and she sells flowers. very sweet and with some generic singer-songwriter music. it is just unusual to hear this kind of music on screen. its like they belong to two different worlds.

the house in 'raise the red lantern' stands outside time. a prison/labyrinth of roofs and courtyards and cleanliness; there are domains and rituals marking every space. three wives compete for the attention of the man of the house. red lanterns are lit every night in the house which he favours. the roof seems like the only space for accidental encounters outside ritual.

we follow the housekeeper through the day as she tries to make sense of and clean rem koolhaas' much loved and analysed recent (relatively) 'masterpiece' - the house in bordeaux . the odd openings, the strange juxtapositions of spaces, the too clever by half discourse so far removed from the space of domesticity seems to be the theme- and there is a 'mon oncle' reference in there too; but the critique does not seem to be that vicious. the house makes for some unusual beauty and the film maker seems to love it too.

in the 1973 woody allen futuristic 'sleeper' a man wakes up 200 years after he checked into a hospital for a small operation. the architecture of the future it would seem is all high modern blankness for the office/factory which seems like an i m pei building and the 'safe house' is retro-futuristic streamlined curves from the 1970's- which is in reality a house by charles deaton. meanwhile in the forest a revolution is rising.

almost the whole of orson welles version of kafka's 'the trial' was shot inside an abandoned railway station in paris. and as a set it works incredible well. enormous floor plates as far as the eye can see where men sit in repetitive cubicles; or the new classical grandeur of large vaulted spaces and dark shadows- the building is a labyrinth of doors and darkness. outside this madness is the housing colony where he lives- modernist slabs relentlessly marching on in a desolate blankness. anthony perkins plays josef k. incredibly well made- but a difficult book to make into a film.

i wasn't much taken by 'the fall of the house of usher' an early silent based on a poe story. here there are strange goings on at the house of usher- a mansion far away in the woods. the husband is painting a portrait of his wife and as the portrait gets more precise it steals life away from the real woman until she dies. anyway, i am not one for horror films, but in this one the special effects and the story were dated and plain silly.

robert bresson's early film The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne is nowhere as brilliant as some of the later films- but is still very watchable. a jilted high society lady hatches a plan to take revenge on her ex-lover by making him fall head over heels in love with an innocent poor girl who was once a prostitute.

'baraka' reminded me of koyaanisqatsi- another film of images that makes sublime nature and civilization. beginning with the himalayas and religion to industry and dereliction it returns to religion and death in varanasi. not much to recommend in terms of any serious philosophising- in fact it makes all the ridiculous orientalist clichés in the way it treats other cultures. its amazing how dated the gaze seems ot be. some jaw dropping locations in long slow exposures though.

if 'velu' is any indication tamil films seem to be in a time warp for us who have gotten used to the new avatar of bollywood. while here the audience seems to be a world of airheaded fashion conscious yuppies or nri's the tamil films continues to address what it sees as core issues of a rural hinterland. and the film seems uncannily dated t the 1980s. twins seperated at birth- one a policeman (of sorts- he actually works in a detective agency) and the other a goon in a village being held to ransom by an evil landlord. it might have all been quite passé if it wasn't for surya who is the centre of all action- as velu and as vasu. extremely good looking in a macho kind of way, it is difficult to take your eyes off him. he is a real star. forget the effete dandies of bombay/mumbai- all their six packs are merely lipstick and nail-polish- this is manhood in an old fashioned- pre-metrosexual, misogynistic way, that no longer exists when aamir khan wants to save the world single handedly and shah rukh flirts and peddles his sophistication everywhere; lets not even talk about ranir kapoor and imran khan. thank god for salman khan.

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