Archive Review: Amores Perros (2000) - 4.5/5 Stars

"Amores Perros" is a three-vignette film that's not so much concerned about creating a harmonic epiphany among its three plot lines, but rather it aims for compelling stories with a brutally honest portrayal of life, love, sin and redemption. Getting a unified message out of the film is about as difficult as translating its title.

Literally translated the title doesn't make much sense, but "amores" translates to loved ones or while "perros" literally means dogs but is also an obvious pejorative for lowly people such as criminals. The title can also be broken into "Amor es Perros" which means "Love's a Bitch." All of these are fitting for the film and their multitude is appropriate considering the open- ended nature of the truths the film preaches.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga give us three stories from Mexico City that are biblical in nature, each named for the two focal characters of the given story. All the stories deal with violence in some way, crime, love and lastly, each has a vital connection to dogs. Each story is as complicated as human beings ought to be portrayed in film. The characters are people of great love and passion, but with great capacity for error and sin. The dogs in their lives serve as instigators of conflict, distractions, sources of comfort and more, taking the emotion of these difficult stories to the next level.

"Octavio y Susana" is about Susana, a young married woman with a baby who lives with her abusive criminal husband, Ramiro, and her brother-in-law Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal), who keeps asking her to run away with him. Octavio trains the family dog, Cofi, to fight and wins money that he uses to support her and convince her to leave Ramiro.

"Valeria y Daniel" is about a supermodel, Valeria, who is having an affair with Daniel, a businessman married with children. Daniel buys them an apartment announcing he's leaving his wife when a horrible car accident caused by the characters of the first story puts Valeria in a wheelchair. Both the incident and the disappearance of their dog, Ritchie, under the floorboards of the apartment tears at their relationship.

"El Chivo y Maru" is given to us in bits and pieces throughout the first two but eventually gets its own focus at the end. El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria) is the film's most complicated character. Seen in the beginning as a homeless man with a half dozen dogs who also doubles as an assassin, we learn that he left his wife and daughter to be a guerrilla fighter and landed in prison for 20 years, at which point he wanted his daughter to believe he was dead. After he was let out, the man who captured him gave him a place to stay and employed him as an assassin. During the story he tries to carry out a job while gathering the courage to see his daughter again.

The summaries might be long, but grasping the compelling circumstances, complication and depth of each story is essential to understanding what "Amores Perros" is trying to do. The stories are meant to show us the many facets of life and human nature. The film is not trying to find that one common denominator, but the several. We're supposed to experience internally somehow that connection that makes all of the film's difficult stories clear, not be lectured on it by the filmmakers.

"Amores Perros" is not a film for people looking for cathartic satisfaction from movies. There is no moment of feeling "at one" with the film or that pleasant feeling when you feel all the loose ends are tied up. It's also one that animal-lovers should be careful with. There's a lot of suggested animal violence -- dogs that appear to be bloody and or dying. It's a tragic and beautiful (in the literary sense) comparison to the brutality of human nature in the film, but it's not one that's easy to handle.

Most people, however, will appreciate the great storytelling and intensely interesting characters and events in this 2.5-hour film.

4.5/5 Stars

"Amores Perros" (2000)

Directed by: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Written by: Guillermo Arriaga

Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Emilio Echevarria, Goya Toledo

Archive Review: Wild Strawberries (1957) - 4/5 Stars

To compare "Wild Strawberries" to a story that's a bit more grounded (yet still part fantasy), what instantly comes to mind is "A Christmas Carol." Though that classic is much more exaggerated, it shares that reflective spirit, sense of personal regret and un-fulfillment and the desire to make amends. The difference is that in "Wild Strawberries" we need no ghosts - - only Ingmar Bergman as our guide.

Isak is a very old professor on his way to Lund, Sweden with his daughter-in-law to receive an honorary award, when in his aging state he's confronted by dreams of his childhood and consequent past regrets. On the trip, he also meets some vivacious young people and a bickering couple who continue to steer him toward a path of using his last days/months/years to bring meaning into his life.

Released at the same time as Bergman classic "The Seventh Seal," "Strawberries" is also incredibly contemplative and full or incredibly philosophical dialogue. Both films confront themes of mortality, but "Strawberries" is the more hopeful of the two. Although we pity Isak and the film's other characters who seem to have failed miserably to suck any joy or positive meaning from life, there's nothing imminently bad or unavoidable -- there is great capacity for betterment.

Bergman's excellence as a director resonates throughout the film through its opening scene with ticking clocks and first major dream sequence on the barren streets to the final zoom- ins and close-ups. His every shot is a portrait of an emotion or at the least of a man caught somewhere between the past and death. Like all great classic/black and white directors, Bergman understand the powerful moments of his story and reserves his best just for them.

Although Bergman creates more pity than empathy (though it could be my fault I've always struggled to really find personal epiphany in viewing his stories) and his language more intentionally mystical at times than intrinsically inspired, he manages to capture the uncertainty he's trying to address better than anyone else; His portrait of emotion brings us closer to life's toughest questions than any other director has ever dared.

It's the hopeful ending, however, that really makes "Wild Strawberries" a great film. Despite Bergman showing us a mirror that's very tough to look at for an extended period of time, he never suggests that we can't look into it and change whatever it is we don't like. It's that outlet that makes the thematic difficulty of the film all that much easier to bear.

4/5 Stars

"Wild Strawberries" (1957) ("Smultronstallet" - Sweden)

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

Written by: Ingmar Bergman

Starring: Victor Sjostrom, Ingrid Thulin

Archive Review: Waltz with Bashir (2008) - 4.5/5 Stars

There's very little gutsier film-making than creating an animated war documentary. Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's genre blend is exactly what makes "Waltz with Bashir" a stand-out film, one made with every intention of frightening producers in concept and spitting in Hollywood's face with its quality. The challenge of every war film is to illuminate a repetitive genre and "Bashir" does exactly that almost by approach alone.

The film is best described as a narrative documentary told in the first person. Folman, who served in the Israel army during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, interviews friends and others who shared his same experience in hopes to jog his memory, images from his experience that he's subconsciously erased from his mind. It begins by addressing the fine line between memories and dreams, fiction and reality and evolves into a story of war's horrors

The animation is a technique called animatics, where live action footage is shot in a studio to provide sound and an image for the artists to work with, then the artists animate these scenes and use computers to add in Flash techniques. It's a rough animation style but its infused with beauty from the computer, namely light and smoke techniques that go beyond traditional animation. "Bashir" has an allure all its own despite the tough story it tells.

So why this technique? Folman's answer might just have been to be different, but the reality is it forces you to observe with a different perspective. Animating tragic events jades us to the horrors, allows us to ignore them. Contrast that to the perspectives of the people telling their war stories and suddenly we can sympathize with their own fragile memories, the reason so many soldiers stood idly as Christian Phalangists brutally massacred Palestinians in their own refugee camps no less.

The use of Flash allows for some really interesting sequences in the film that depict these memories. Its supposed to be about the young soldier's perspective of war and so rock music and this '80s music video style at times contrasts other scenes showing what war was really like with the idealistic painting of 'cool' that some soldiers thought they were walking into. With every Israeli having to serve in the army, this is about coping regardless of one's opinion of war.

Other than its insights into the war-torn memory, "Bashir" is a pretty standard exposure of war. What makes it special is there's no glorifying of war -- not even a single character who believes it to be that way -- and its one-of-a-kind medium. It's important to blur the boundaries of films when its appropriate and this revisiting of war proved to be one such setting.

4.5/5 Stars

"Waltz with Bashir" (2008) - Israel

Directed by: Ari Folman

Written by: Ari Folman

Archive Review: Ran (1985) - 5/5 Stars

The height of Akira Kurosawa's career as a masterful Japanese filmmaker might have been in the '50s with "Roshomon" and the epic "Seven Samurai," but "Ran" represents a consummation of sorts in the director's career and lifetime. At age 75, Kurosawa puts his own style into Shakespeare's "King Lear," the descent of a once great king into utter senility, and the result is a deeply personal and tragic film of great beauty and wisdom.

His second Shakespeare samurai adaptation, (after "Throne of Blood" in 1957, which drew on "MacBeth") Kurosawa tells the story of Lord Hidetora Ichimonji a famous, revered and aging ruler in feudal Japan who after a bad dream is stirred into abdicating his throne to his sons, Taro, Jiro and Saburo. He gives full control to his eldest, Taro, though his youngest, Saburo, tells him it's a horrible idea and as a result gets banished. Sure enough, Hidetora is denied the respect of Taro when he takes power and wanders off in search of the son he exiled to seek redemption as the elder brothers shred apart his kingdom in attempt to have it all to themselves.

"Ran" is a beautiful film despite the Shakespearian tragedy. Filmed in Kurosawa's style of three simultaneously rolling stationary cameras, it rarely gets in close to the scene and appears to have the style of much older films, save the color. Kurosawa, who's known for painting his story boards, brings this contemporary abstract color to the film by using the three primary colors (yellow, red and blue) to represent the three sons (their respective armies all wear those colors.) The colors are bright and show the division between the brothers -- each distinct yet capable of mixing. Even the blood is bright red paint as opposed to anything more realistic, suggesting how unnecessary the bloodshed is.

The film borrows a lot of Japanese tradition in telling a Western story, which in the past always seems to work well. Borrowing on traditions of Noh theatre, allusions to animals like the treacherous fox and the make-up on Hidetora (frequent Kurosawa collaborator Tatsuya Nakadai) is suggestive of Noh techniques that resemble iconic masks that represent characters with certain qualities. Nakadai excellently uses the facial expressions so crucial to Japanese theatre in his incredible portrayal of Hidetora as he goes from confident and powerful to completely lost.

It's a meaningful story for Kurosawa to tell at this point in his career, having much of his films in the '60s and '70s pass by unnoticed and in that time attempt to take his own life. Kurosawa takes his bleak look at human nature with "Ran," using weather like always to show the coming storm of bloodshed and tragedy. "I am lost ..." Hidetora says as they wander about, and Kyoami the fool replies "such is the human condition." It's apparent where the story will go and Kurosawa delivers it as only a master can.

5/5 Stars

"Ran" (1985)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide

Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai