Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is much as one would expect: the director, Chris Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception, previously PPCCed The Prestige), directs movies like a late Romantic/Gothic period conductor, full of sound and fury, (often, alas!) signifying nothing. Like, look at these pictures of Glenn Branca, the experimental/art rock guy, conducting his electric guitar orchestra: this and this and this. That's how we at the PPCC imagine Christopher Nolan directing his movies. DARKER. DARKER! FURY AND THUNDER. SOUND THE KLAXONS! And so forth.

Which is to say: it's a lot of fun.

But, as with Inception, it was a bit hollow. Like Inception, Interstellar looks and smells and feels like a Big Concept Movie, and a very handsome one at that, but it doesn't really have a convincing big concept at its core. The movie's built to blow your mind, and - aesthetically - it certainly does, attaining rapturous levels of sublimity (the ocean planet OCEAN PLANETTT). But it doesn't really, really blow your mind. Not the way a good sci fi movie should: you know, the way 2001 blows one's mind with the whole alien/evolution stuff, or the way moments of Battlestar Galactica blow your mind by gesturing towards a gigantic (Mormon?) Divinity that hates robots and loves violent conflict. Or the way Dune blows your mind because it's, well, Dune and WTF is happening to these people!?

Interstellar doesn't really blow any minds. But that's OK. Moments come close. Sometimes very close, such as when freaky real-world physics things (like wormholes warping space-time, and time dilation, and relentless, awe-inspiring Nature - yo, this shit is real) are explored a bit. It's nothing you couldn't find in a Michio Kaku book or a thoughtful episode of Star Trek, but here, on Nolan's BIG CANVAS, these concepts are given the grandeur they rightfully deserve. Seriously, because - wormholes? Respect. Shit that is not to be trifled with. Worship it!

We should probably get to the plot: essentially, the movie boils down to a very classic (almost retro) Golden Age-style sci fi story. Earth is crappy eco-disaster (thanks, Monsanto). Heroic (white male) Hero (here, Matthew McConnaughey) is tasked with sitting on rocket in order to Save Everyone. Rocket blasts off! Choral music!!! Space is amazing. Also dangerous. Einstein stuff. Tragedy of time dilation.

It's actually been a while since sci fi has had such stories (it feels like we've been mostly preoccupied with monsters and cyberspace lately), and so it's oddly refreshing, even nostalgic. J.J. Abrams gestured to a similar nostalgia of Glorious Golden Age Space via the 2009 Star Trek. You know: shots of the chiseled blue-eyed hero shading his eyes in the flare of rockets. It makes you want to give money to NASA, and re-watch Apollo 13, and re-read Red Mars.

Which brings us to two things: (1) the strange, exciting way that Interstellar gets all mystical, even philosophical, and (2) the way it's a big sci fi palimpsest.

On the first point: one of the big spoilers of the film (which we will unfortunately spoil right now) is Hans Zimmer's music. Using repetitive, grandiose motifs, bashed out on a gigantic pipe organ, it feels Biblical and powerful and kind of like a Terrence Mallick film. People apparently complained about the movie's sound, since the blasting pipe organ often drowns out the dialogue. To this we say: philistines! This is like those people that got into a fight during a Steve Reich concert in 1973 (okay, that story is pretty awesome). Don't you get it?! Apparently not. We, instead, loved this. Especially the way the music was so over-the-top, and we couldn't hear the dialogue. Admittedly, we also love Philip Glass and repetitive classical music (especially in films). But we thought Zimmer's music was one of the best parts of the film, a stroke of genius.

On the second point: so, a palimpsest is a story written on top of another story. A document where the faint traces of the previous writing are evident. Interstellar has inevitably been compared to 2001, which is an obvious connection, but we actually found the vibes - especially the moments when characters realized their cosmic insignificance - to be very similar to a different 1970s sci fi film, Solyaris. Like Interstellar, Solyaris is very Romantic, in reverence of nature and our place in it, and infused with the sense of cosmic mysteriousness. The two movies feel so similar in places that we even wondered if Nolan intended this as a semi/sort of update. Nolan is too pop to go really slow, though he does try to keep the pace austere and stately. Solyaris is an unapologetic three-hour grind that is, for those who make it through, deeply rewarding: it features many of the same themes (but zero action, sorry) about unforgiving space and humanity's need to wonder/understand. The story centers around a cosmonaut visiting a lonely science station by a lonely water world, and being - in turn - visited by a ghost/apparition/unknowable copy of his dead wife. Oh my Lord, it's so good. It also features organ music (yay).

Hmm, another very close relative would be Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Should you see Interstellar? Duh, yes, do you even like movies?! But is the science in Interstellar sound? Mostly - Kip Thorne (of Caltech) consulted and even wrote a companion pop science book. It's about as sound as Contact, which - oh, yikes - we recommend, especially if you're excited by science and space travel. And what a surprisingly good trailer (yo, the 1990s had teeerrible trailers). Anyway, yes, watch Interstellar. Worship wormholes.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Shakespeare in Love is a grand celebration of the creative drive and the pleasure of fiction. It's also what we consider a Perfect Film - much like Rashomon or Ladri di biciclette.

Fictions layer over each other in Shakespeare in Love - and the way we approach this fundamental deceit is explored. Are we like the enraged, indignant preacher, waving his hat at the fact that "vice is in the show!"? Or are we like the passionate theater-goer Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), who admits that her love affair with William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) "is not life - it is a stolen season", or, even better, is a "flattering dream - too sweet to be substantial", but revels in it nonetheless?

Because fiction abounds - fiction as the transformative, cathartic, passionate release for our transcendental drive. The fiction of Viola as "Thomas Kent", an actor for the down-on-his-luck Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and his struggling theater company. The fiction that Shakespeare is writing Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter - no, Romeo and Rosalind - no, whatever - and that this play is for Henslowe… no, his competitor, Burbage (Martin Clunes). The fiction of Viola and Will's love for each other - she, already bound to the blunt, unimaginative Lord Wessex (Colin Firth); and he, exiled from his wife and children in Stratford. The fiction of the final play - Romeo and Juliet - and how it interweaves with the stolen romance Viola and Will enjoy.

You could call it lies or deceit, but everyone is definitely living in a fantasy in this film - deception, masks, costumes and dissembling abounds. Yet - just like in the Neopolitan underworld and its circus-like, surreal atmosphere in Mi manda Picone - this essential non-reality is accepted by everyone. It's like structured play. Everyone agrees that this isn't real, and everyone still operates within these bounds of non-reality.

The result is priceless: whimsical, funny, heartfelt and, ironically, very true. Early in the film, Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) accepts to judge a wager between the hard realist Wessex and the dreamer Shakespeare that true love could never be captured in a play. In the end, even though everything on which that love was built was a lie, we see that the love indeed was true. It's a cunning meta turn. And, just like Will and Viola or the audience of the play, the audience of the film - i.e. the PPCC - suffers a big letdown when we leave Narnia and return to reality. The dreamscape was so much… realer. At least, it felt so! (Ironically?)

Of course, the strength and intelligence of this film relies almost entirely on the strength and intelligence of the script by Tom Stoppard. The actors are all uniformly strong; it's a veritable tour of RADA talent. The music and direction support and give accent to what is essentially an emotional story (much as dreams have their own emotional logic!) and, of course, it's great as just a celebration of Shakespeare (expect lots of puns and references). It also does something which is rare, but delightful, to behold: it shows us the creative process at its most fluid and prolific. Like Amadeus, this film captures the verve and alive-ness of producing something creative, especially when that something just pours out of you. As if you were a conduit to something greater. The best part of being human? We'd wager Wessex his fifty pounds on it.

Highly recommended.

A Month in the Country (1987)

If there is one movie that is terribly, tragically underrated and unknown, it is A Month in the Country.

It's ironic because J.L. Carr's novel of the same name, on which the 1980s movie is based, is also terribly, tragically unknown. It just missed a Booker back in 1980, and instead won the Guardian Fiction Prize - a lesser trophy and, it seems, a punishment to anonymity. The movie, in the meantime, stars everyone's favorite English actors, Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh, as young World War I veterans struggling to cope with their traumatic experiences in the first, Elysian summer after peace is declared. It's great. Really beautiful. And there's no DVD for it!?!!


Colin Firth as Tom Birkin and Kenneth Branagh as Moon, both so young!

It's terrible, tragic and ironic, but it also makes sense - in a weird, double-agent-ironic way - that this small, understated story of remembering and loss should be on the verge of falling into the vacuum. The story is, after all, an extended meditation on nostalgia, grieving and renewal. It's about preserving yourself against the abyss; carving a space of light in a world where all seems dark. When Tom Birkin (Colin Firth) arrives in the tiny Yorkshire hamlet of Oxgodsby, he suffers from a stammer, a facial tic and terrible nightmares. He's also freshly divorced and still pining for his ex-wife, Vinnie (never shown on screen). He arrives in Oxgodsby in rainy twilight and makes his way to a gloomy church. His job for the coming summer months is to restore a decrepit, hidden 14th-century fresco from the church's ancient walls.

The pace is slow, matching the drift of motes in sunlight. Birkin meets another young vet, Moon (Kenneth Branagh), who has been paid to dig up the lost grave of a rich townie's ancestor. Moon is, like Birkin, still damaged from the war, though the quality of his suffering becomes an unexpected parallel with the mysterious artist's life. Birkin, when not drinking tea with Moon or brushing turpentine onto plaster, falls into quiet, intense love with the vicar's wife, Alice Keach (Natasha Richardson).


Love with the vicar's wife (Natasha Richardson)! The bit when she explains her apple savantness is so good.

Colin Firth recently waxed nostalgic about director Pat O'Connor's confidence in making this film: the story was allowed to breathe, actors were allowed to be silent. Indeed, the whole point of the film is the profound, emotional intensity that underscores this pleasant facade, and the uselessness of words. The trauma of World War I still lingers like a ghost in the landscape: and O'Connor does a brilliant job of never gazing directly at the war, but rather coming at it sideways. The most explicit war scene we see is the opening shot of Birkin struggling through the mud and barbed wire: the camera is zoomed tightly on him, we have little sense of context, and there's a sense of claustrophobia and horror. The haunting church hymns underscore the usual aphorism: war is hell (in the religious and literal senses). Similarly, Birkin and Moon's PTSD is a smothered suffering that we see only through the cracks of Birkin's twitch or Moon's nighttime howling.

But this story isn't about dwelling in the horribleness of World War I - rather, it's a realist, poignant look at slow healing. Oxgodsby's warm fuzziness is the perfect restorative for the broken vets, even if that healing is fragile and tentative. And the narrative is a looking back, so nostalgia is thick. The greatness of this story is the way it captures ephemeral beauty, a feeling that is vibrant and impermanent. Quite spiritual. And, like all art that does what it's supposed to, it captures and transmits an emotional quality.


We should probably mention that this film is, actually, in color.

The film is also a marvelous companion to the book - they both really enrich each other. And experiencing either is like breathing in purified rural gold. People, get thee to this film - or rather, get thee to preserving this rich work! We can't let gems like these disappear. Ahh, Angleterre. Where's good ol' William Blake when ya need him?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

(the book!)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell blasts onto the screen with haunting, Melanesian-esque choral music, post-human spinal tubing and lots and lots of arching breasts. We were kind of terrified in the first few minutes, but eventually settled down to really enjoy this innovative, brilliant, bizarre cyberpunk anime.

They say there are no new stories to tell, but surely all that 1980s early Internet sci-fi and Singularity stuff was new! Designing our own evolution for a transhuman future, etc. Because while Ghost in the Shell is talking about ancient Descartesian problems of defining consciousness in a world of epistemological doubt, it's also approaching those 17th-century questions with very 21st-century post-human answers. In particular, in a world of networked computers and biological augmentations, the division between meatspace and cyberspace is blurred. And this redefines everything - as Battlestar Galactica's philosophizing Cylon, Caprica Six, put it: "Are you alive? Prove it." Because, for all you know, you're a machine brain living in a virtual reality. Everyone thinks they're human.

Major Motoko Kusanagi (voiced by Atsuko Tanaka), she of the arching breasts which we will be seeing a lot of throughout the film, is a fully cyborg, detective-type badass killing machine (literally). She works for the Japanese government's Section 9, a sort of cyberpunk police squad. Their current target is the criminal hacker, the Puppet Master, who hacks into people's "ghosts" - that is, their consciousnesses, which these days are often embedded in brains permanently connected to the Internet. The Puppet Master's motives are nebulous, and some havoc is wreaked on the garrish, dilapidated, rainy downtown streets. That is, until a rogue cyborg claiming to be housing its own ghost appears. And then everything - especially the definition of life - is thrown into question.

But not before we squeeze in some evocative, meditative sequences. Even in moments of crisis, such as during a high-tech/high-speed car chase across nighttime Tokyo, director Mamoru Oshii slows the emotional pace down with somber, spacey music and lingering shots on the details of this very strange, brave new world. Though there are some grisly moments of violence (is this rated R? it should be!), the tone of the film is more cerebral than action-oriented. Characters often spend their time expositing the themes and ideas. This is excusable as they are running an investigation, and so explaining things to each other makes sense. It's also excusable because those ideas - do you grant human rights to a thinking machine? how did that ghost appear? - are so clever.

We really enjoyed it. We liked that, while there is the token human male character (sporting some very 1980s hair and shoulder pads indeed!), the film is brave enough to keep our focus on the non-human female protagonist, Motoko. Motoko's existential angst is resonant. It feels real (point of the movie, maybe?). When she talks about how being some biomachine superlady with access to infinite bits of data only makes her realize her limitations, we were moved. Oh, Pinocchio! Or as Rudyard Kipling once said, in a quote which has already been pilfered by sci-fi people for post-human themes, "Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears."

Is this THE cyberpunk movie of all time? Can it be topped?! We don't think so. It's more cyberpunky and smart than the oft-cited Father of the genre, Blade Runner! Highly recommended.

Evita (1996)

One of the most curious things about the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita is that nearly all the scenes featuring Political Power, such as the famous "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" moment, are filmed off-balance.


The Old Guard, off-balance.


The rise of the Peróns; the tilt worsens.


Vertiginous heights!

It's a clever visual reminder of both the delirious heights Eva and Juan Perón find themselves in by the halfway mark of this movie, as well as the unsteady base they've founded their power on. It's a castle built on quicksand, and - amid the eerie, minor-chord chanting of "Perón! Perón!"/"Eviiiita!" - the spotlight reels drunkenly and the framing is permanently off-kilter. This famous sequence is then gloriously bookended by "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)", which is a montage of the Perón government hemhorraging funds - into hospitals, into infrastructure, into bread and circuses and their own pockets.

A confession: we watch Evita with the same regularity that some people go on holiday. We kinda like it. (Kinda big time.)


Our favorite "oligarch". We look out for him in all the snobby, rich people numbers!


Though when the chorus sings as a big crowd, or line of military drones, it's scary.

For economists, Argentina is a strange beast. One hundred years ago, it was poised to be one of the next great powers, growing fast and making money. By the 2010s, it had fallen far below that potential. And in between? The Peróns. (Okay, and a lot of other stuff - like the crisis in 1999 - but saying "The Peróns." sounds a lot more dramatic and exciting.)

Yet this musical acknowledges the magnetic charisma of Juan and Eva. Following Eva Duarte (Madonna), who later became known by the loving diminutive "Evita", as an ambitious social climber, we begin in the poor town of Los Toldos, quickly move to the heady nights of Buenos Aires as Eva sleeps her way onwards and upwards, eventually landing in the bed of Juan Perón (Jonathan Pryce, in a big fake... nose). Perón, an influential military man, is slowly making his way up the ladder as well. They agree - in the jazzy number "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" - to team up, and, well, Jonathan Pryce and Madonna are an unlikely and unexpectedly hot duo.


Love!

Or so think the screaming crowds (and the PPCC), who - as governments topple, riots break out and buildings burn down - catapult the Peróns and their new, labor-friendly rhetoric into the Casa Rosada.

This film is all about glory, legends, cynical politics, big promises that kind of ambiguously follow through, and, of course, crowd control. So it's a lot like Webber's other PPCC favorite, Jesus Christ Superstar. As in JCS, the mob - amorphous, impatient, demanding and, above all, LOUD - is more than spectator. It is the important third character, getting in the way between the Father and Son, between Juan and Eva. If we were Žižek, we'd say it was the id to Juan's/God's superego and Eva's/Jesus' ego - the mob is unmanageable, impulsive, dangerous and hypnotic. It is the ugly, scary, Dionysian part of being human.


Juan and Eva as the superego and ego, respectively, trying to manage...


Their fickle id.


(Note: these two moments are separated by practically the entire film. Such is the genius of the editing.)

In Evita, that crowd is also represented by none other than Ché (Antonio Banderas, not a cat here), ultra-popular populist icon. Ché is forever pushing and shoving his way between people, getting beaten up by policemen, standing in factory lines, gazing cynically at the lather everyone is frothing around in. Literally, he stays grounded. And so often voices Jiminy Cricket-like asides, meets Eva in dreamscapes where they discuss what the hell she thinks she's doing, and sometimes - for the help of those ignorant of Argentine (Argentinian?) history - summarizes things.

Ever since reading about Pablo Escobar building hospitals in the marvelous Cocaine: A Definitive History by Dominic Streatfield, we've been interested in the politics and economics of Latin America. However, since we spend most of our spare time these days updating this blog, it keeps getting pushed down the list of General Things To Do. Can anyone suggest a good primer on, er, modern Latin American history?


This guy getting torn down in Parliament reminded us of Italian parliament, circa 2008!

About the impact of the film. Well: as we said above, we watch it a lot. It's one of our favorite things (apart from packages wrapped in brown paper tied up with string). When Madonna tells us not to cry for her, we do - oh, how we do. It's a spectacle. When Jonathan Pryce's vibrato voice bellows into the microphone - "Arrrrgentinos! Arrrrgentinos!" - we get goosebumps. "Descamisados! Mis companeros!" Webber's music is as easy and Puccini-fied as it's always been. Transferring the musical from Broadway to film naturally lost some of the excellent original cast - Patti LuPone as Eva and poor, beautiful Mandy Pantinkin (!) as Che - in favor of bigger names. Madonna is fine, as is Jonathan Pryce - duh, they're professional singers. Antonio Banderas strains a bit, but he makes up for it by playing an obese cat 14 years later (so funny! so cute! oh, fat cats lolz!). We try to dress up our long-simmering, low-fi crush on Jonathan Pryce by saying that we like him because of Brazil, Terry Gilliam's 1980s dystopian classic. We reckon that sounds cooler than admitting that we just think he's sexy in an arched eyebrow, vibrato, Welsh way. In a big fake nose way.

Now someone Christian Dior me! Lauren Bacall me! Machiavell-me!

A Single Man (2009)

Talk about a misleading poster! This is a gay film, people. GAY. Accept it. Julianne Moore's in it for 10 minutes!

The elegant A Single Man is a classy, funereal film about grief, love, living and death. Based on a book by Christopher Isherwood, it follows a day in the life of the titular single man, George Falconer (Colin Firth), as he flutters in a desaturated netherworld between life and death.

Eight months ago, Falconer's lover, Jim (Matthew Goode), died in a car accident. Since then, Falconer has led a withered half-life. While everything is perfectly in order, the tidiness of his home and job is shallow, just a skin-deep surface to a crushing sense of loneliness and loss. Falconer, a professor of English, goes through the motions during the day - all the while organizing his living space for a final goodbye. The sparks of attraction from a beautiful, otherworldly student (About A Boy's Nicholas Hoult, all grown up!) or the loving attentions of an old friend (an exquisite Julianne Moore) do little to rouse him from his elegiac march.


"Looking in the mirror staring back at me isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament."

Or so it seems. The film does not lack its notes of humor and humanity, and - despite its morose subject - its ultimate message is one of vitality. In particular, life as a reaction against and complement to death. When, in one moving sequence, Falconer takes an impulsive late-night swim in the Pacific, he is baptized back into the vibrancy of living. This is a touching parallel to his recurring nightmares of drowning and death.


Eyes are used throughout the film, very Blade Runner.


A prison of fossilized memories.

With the haunting violin music of In the Mood for Love's Shigeru Umebayashi and the fussy 1960s aesthetics of... well, In the Mood for Love, A Single Man could be read as a direct response, or even companion, to the Hong Kong piece. Like Wong Kar Wai's film, A Single Man examines grief driven by love and finds a profound beauty there. As Falconer drifts closer and closer to death, his flirtations with life - which literally flush the screen with color - are exuberant punctuation notes: leave life to the living! Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die! Or, as one character says, "The future is death."


Marat-ish?


A flush of color.

Sexuality is, of course, an integral part of this film, as Falconer's moments of lust pierce the monochromatic scale into full, brilliant color. There are also the obligatory references to 1960s homophobia, though the story seems little concerned with taboo and oppression. Falconer's grief, loneliness, and his drive to life and lust are universal. Julianne Moore's character, a permanently tipsy divorcee and fellow English expat, provides an interesting complement in that regard.


Yeah.


Everything, everything...

The filmmaking, by director Tom Ford (apparently a designer?), is impeccable and enchanting. He mixes up very long, dragging slow-motion shots with snappy, plucking cuts. There are even notes of humorous surrealism, such as when Falconer imagines a colleague standing in a bomb shelter/barn with his family and a cow during said colleague's rant about Soviet nuclear annhiliation. The human body is filmed in loving detail, calling to mind the tenebroso works of Caravaggio or the detailed musculature of da Vinci. And the use and release of saturation, while essentially a gimmick, is sometimes very resonant. Colin Firth has used inscrutability often in his acting career, and the silent shifts in palette (or the tremors of Umebayashi's violins) give wonderful expression to the turmoil roiling around beneath that Sphinx-like mask.

A beautiful, heartbreaking film which we liked a lot. Highly recommended.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Like prosciutto and cantaloupe, pairing the hyper-geometrical, droll, hipster aesthetics of Wes Anderson with the bizarre vision of Roald Dahl was an unexpected, but genius, combination. Very tasty!

Using stop motion animation at a jerky 12 fps, Fantastic Mr. Fox has a steampunkish look - a faux antiquated Britishness, complete with rolling Cotswoldy hills, hard cider and tweed. Its palette matches that of a real fox: an orange sky over tawny hills, bursts of white and black. And its soul is all Wes Anderson. Dahl may have written the original, but the story has now been properly Andersonified: we have the charmingly repulsive braggart father figure, Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney, and reminiscent of Royal Tenenbaum or Bernard Berkman), he is the moving force at the center of the story. We have the nobly patient mother, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), and the angsting son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), small and resentful next to his athletic, ethereal cousin, Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson). And you gotta have Bill Murray!


A yawning, tawny earth.


The lighting in the film is fantastic throughout.

There are two stories at play in Fantastic Mr. Fox: on one level, it is a crime caper/war film wherein Mr. Fox's kleptomania puts the entire animal community in jeopardy after he incurs the wrath of three grumpy farmers (Robin Hurlstone, Hugo Guinness and the always divine Michael Gambon). On another level, it is The Royal Tenenbaums again: a tale of the imperfections, cruelties and funny humanity of a petite bourgeois family.


We have your tail.

Wes Andersonness can wear thin in some films - The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, for example - but, here, his vision produces a film of startling wit and unique beauty. It's an authentic tribute to Roald Dahl, who similarly trafficked in the weird and wonderful. Some sequences, such as the Fox family's panicked flight into the ground, were a shock and a delight.


Lighting!


And textures! Tasty visuals.

The only vague similarities are with Pixar or Wallace and Gromit, but the mood is different - it is a third way. It's not like other children's fare, but it's much like the mood of Roald Dahl stories: adult, edgy, whimsical and otherworldly. That is, if you let your kids read The Witches, then they're well-equipped to handle this strange, joyful film.

Solyaris (1972)

Like the Bach piece that drifts throughout its titular space station, Solyaris is an austere and beautiful film. Long and slow, we never expected such intensity of feeling, and such narrative clarity, in something so quiet and so thinkerly. An adaptation of the similarly thoughtful novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem, it manages to capture both the philosophical undertones of man's modest place in the universe, as well as portraying with great sensitivity humanity's microcosmic curse of life, death and love. Like a lot of other Russian stuff (Chekhov, Burnt by the Sun, Shostakovich), this film is greatly in tune with the exquisiteness of suffering, the romance and mysterious beauty of being alive.


Notice the noose.


Noose = loving our children? (Incidentally, this cap taken from a hypnotic, extended ride over Tokyo's flyovers and tunnels. Very Futurism with a capital F.)

In a nondescript future, psychologist and Solaristics researcher, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), is preparing for his departure to the Solaris space station. This station orbits around the mysterious Solaris planet - a planet which has befuddled scientists for generations and riddled Solaristics with a crappy reputation. No one quite understands the planet; neither its enormous, foggy ocean which seems strangely conscious, nor the fact that everyone who visits the space station becomes a near-suicidal hermit. Kelvin's job is to visit the station, meet the remaining three scientists who live there, and assess whether the entire project should be shut down. Before his departure, he is intercepted by a former pilot, Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), with tales of strange pseudo-hallucinations coming from the planet-wide oceans: plastic gardens, giant babies, the like. Burton begs the skeptical Kelvin to keep the research alive. Kelvin just thinks he's sad and crazy.


Coming in to land.

When Kelvin arrives at the station, he finds it ill-maintained and eerily empty. One of the three remaining scientists, Dr. Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), has killed himself and left Kelvin a cryptic video begging him to understand that he did it for the best. The other two scientists, Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn), are likewise disheveled, frazzled and evasive. They get very uncomfortable when Kelvin attempts to enter their quarters, and, just as Snaut is reminding Kelvin to remember that there are only three people on the ship now (you hear me? three! three!), something unseen rustles in Snaut's hammock and a child's ear is glimpsed. And whatever you do, Snaut warns Kelvin, keep your head about you!

Properly shaken, it's not long before Kelvin starts seeing his own apparitions - tinkling bells, a girl's leg - until one day everything solidifies into the form of his deceased wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), sitting bewildered on his couch.


Helping your dead wife out of the dress that she died in? Maybe number 1 on the horrifying scale.

High-quality horror doesn't rely on surprising you or dressing things up in creeping shadows, and, indeed, everything in Solaris is simply and plainly presented. Yet the terrible mystery of these living ghosts, who persistently reappear in the bedroom even after Kelvin shoots Hari into orbit, is truly awful. You spend much of the film like Kelvin: sweating like mad, too terrified to say anything. It is harrying and harrowing, and it's also darkly comic when the three scientists - Kelvin, Snaut, Sartorius - meet up to lament and try to understand their own private hells. Why? How? and WTF? seem to be the major questions. It's clear that the giant planet-ocean is physically manifesting their thoughts, but why? The purpose, while not apparently sinister, is nonetheless frightening just for being so incomprehensible. It is here that the film makes many a powerful comment on the inappropriateness and laughably arrogant ignorance of man's desire to see and understand the cosmos. Understand the cosmos? We can just hear the murky water laughing at you. *bells tinkle*

Unexpectedly (and in a departure from Lem's cerebral novel), a new feeling then creeps into the film, and it becomes an intensely intimate and expressive love story between the guilt-ridden Kelvin and the increasingly self-aware Hari. Tormented astronaut revisited by dead love interest seems a bit hokey and maudlin - if dead wives are going to come back to astronauts, we think the eyeless hellraiser type is much more fun - but it's handled with a beautiful, brooding passion. The credit for this goes as much to director Andrei Tarkovsky as to the actors Donatas Banionis and Natalya Bondarchuk. Banionis seems like the love child between Oliver Reed's intensity and Stellan Skarsgard's slouching sexiness, his look of perpetual torment is perfect for this role - if ever someone looked world-weary on an interstellar scale...! Natalya Bondarchuk likewise has a poignant innocence, and the initially vacant creepiness gives way, after self-awareness, to a sad sort of dignity. Kelvin may be the nominal hero, but Hari is the heroic one.


Kelvin and Hari, OTP.

This was an intelligent, often gut-wrenching film. Give yourself a quiet evening at home to watch it, as the pace is unhurried and its full force is best felt when you're matching its leisurely wavelengths. Subtle, powerful, gorgeous. Highly recommended.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Where has the PPCC been this week? We'll tell you. We've been:

1. In the bathroom. We are trying (and failing) to drink the suggested three liters of water per day. I tell you, it's impossible! It cannot be done!
2. Developing a radical new theory of metaphysics based on an Obi-Wan Kenobi quote. (Seriously!)

In working on (2), when not busy with (1), we decided to revisit the classic sci-fi adventure, and the primary god of our idolatry, the Star Wars universe. Being completist types, we decided to begin at the beginning: the widely-considered low point of the series, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.


"Noooooo!" we hear the PPCC readership cry.

Now, first of all, we think all the hate and ridicule Phantom Menace has accumulated since its 1999 release is somewhat unmerited. Yes, it's bad. No, we don't know what a "phantom menace" means (a threat that doesn't actually exist?). But must it be so uncharitably vilified? In particular, we came to a surprising conclusion: Jar-Jar Binks is oddly funny once you give up on the film. Just give up. Let go. Then the humor will come. We-sa serious!!

Okay, so we-sa lying a little bit too (oh, doo-doo). We actually lost interest about forty minutes into the film, skipped forward to watch the magnificent lightsaber duel during the finale (wherein we pepped up quite a bit... go, John Williams!), and then quickly skipped even more forward to the lightsaber duel in the finale of Episode II - Attack of the Clones. Verdict: Episode I's lightsaber duel is more deliciously, magnificently glorious.


Obi-Wan: tragic Greek non-hero? Or tragic philosophical innovator? Essay coming soon to a PPCC near you!

Phantom Menace begins during a time of confusing political unrest in the galaxy. The gorgeous planet Naboo, a land of waterfalls, Renaissance Italian architecture, fantasy-novel throwback fashions and the dreaded Jar-Jar, is under a trade embargo (or something) by evil "Trade Federation" aliens carrying unfortunate "Asian stereotype" accents. George loses early points for Jar-Jar and the accents.

In come our dashing Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, he of the interesting bone structure), and his "Padawan" learner, a young and clean-shaven Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, he of the hot). The Jedi, nominally peacekeepers, look more like militaristic interventionists who choose to side with Naboo's Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman sometimes, Keira Knightley other times) because of some vague notions about sensing the "Dark Side of the Force" in the Trade Federation. It all sounds a bit Crusader-ish to us, but then we've never understood Jedi morality (more on that later).


The Jedi and their munchkin.

So: After a lot of indecipherable political stuff - in which one important player, Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), deftly maneuvers himself into power - and after a protracted detour on the sandy planet of Tatooine - wherein the (potential) "Chosen One" is identified in a cherub-like little slave boy, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), much to Obi-Wan Kenobi's chagrin - we return to Naboo to settle the score between the Trade Federation and the Jedi-backed local government. The mysterious Darth Sidious (err... Ian McDiarmid, hello), semi-secret puppermaster behind the Trade Federation, sends his most badass Sith warrior, Darth Maul (Ray Park), to kick some Jedi butt. Which he does, with gusto! The film ends with the perfect set-up for the next five films:

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi is Anakin Skywalker's reluctant master. Fail forseen.
2. Anakin Skywalker worships the beautiful Queen Amidala. Double trouble!
3. No one knows who the powerful, evil Darth Sidious could possibly be, even though his main disguise is a hooded robe.

As a wee proto-PPCC, we never thought about Star Wars in any deep way. We just liked it, plain and simple. But now, with the keen, penetrating intellect of adulthood, we can shrewdly ask two important questions. These can be divided according to each trilogy:

1. Original trilogy (1977-1983): Why is the Empire considered so evil?
2. Prequel trilogy (1999-2005): Why are the Jedi considered so good?

There seems to be a stark moral dichotomy at work here, without any evidence to back things up. We just don't buy it, George!

Look: Both the Empire and the Jedi are powerful, violent and interventionist. Both of them use other planets in their galaxy-wide martial chess game. A lot of interesting talk has gone into how George Lucas added a strong touch of Zen to the Jedi - Yoda's teachings in Empire Strikes Back, for example. But what monastic order has its own characteristic weapon? Indeed, the Jedi seem to be much more samurai than Zen monks (Obi-Wan Kenobi was inspired by archetypal samurai actor Toshiro Mifune's character in The Hidden Fortress, and Mifune was apparently briefly considered for the role before it went to Alec Guinness). And the samurai were a class of politically-aligned warriors: not a moral order! So why all this moral indignation on the part of the Jedi? Are they a religion? They keep insinuating that an ultimate "good" is on their side... but their actions are just as morally ambiguous and politically motivated as any other group!

So there.


Apart from dressing in black and growling, what does this man do which is so evil? What does he do which the Jedi don't do? We just don't get it, man.

If there's one great thing that came out of Phantom Menace, apart from Ewan McGregor's spot-on interpretation of a soon-to-be-Alec-Guinness Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor seems to be the only one in the prequel trilogy who "gets" it, or are we distracted by his hotliness?) AND apart from the glorious sound effects during the Tatooine pod race (ka-chunk-chunk-chunk, whizzzz!), it was John Williams' bombastic, energizing score - in particular, the glorious track Duel of the Fates. And guess what! They're singing in Sanskrit! Yes, really. A Sanskrit translation of an ancient Welsh poem! How about that, eh? We can also say that Duel of the Fates is great for pumping iron in the gym: as a friend of ours once said, it "makes you want to punch someone" (he was actually talking about Simba's return to Pride Rock in Lion King, but the feeling is similar - get pumped!).


Even just a single picture, such as this one, gets the PPCC positively pumped. Daaaa-daaaaa! Daaaa-DAAAAAA! DA-DAAAAAAAA!

Completely unrelated, but worth a mention: We're reading Roberto Saviano's disturbing book about the Neopolitan mafia, Gomorrah, and we came across this passage:

A well-calibrated nickname, such as Francesco Schiavone's famous, ferocious Sandokan, can make or break the media fortune of a boss. He earned it for his resemblance to Kabir Bedi, the [Indian!] star of the Italian television series Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, based on Emilio Salgari's novel.

First we discover that Roshan Seth once starred in an Italian mini-series about Aldo Moro, and now this! Cultural cross-fertilization, indeed.