WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

Post by MikeBSG »

Today I watched "Hamsun" (1996) directed by Jan Troell.

This film looks at the WWII career of Knut Hamsun, a Nobel Prize winning author, who collaborated with the Nazis. He was in his 80s when this took place. Max von Sydow gives a fine performance as this crusty old man, and the film itself is very thought-provoking and ranks up there with "Mephisto" and "Taking Sides" (both directed by Istvan Szabo) as films that examine the dilemma of an artist in a totalitarian society. While the movie was long, I thought it needed its length to establish the character of Hamsun, his wife, and their children, as well as fill in the historical context.

A very strong movie. I think I saw an earlier film by Troell, about a doomed Arctic expedition, years and years ago.
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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It's an amazing film KR, absolutely unexpected at every turn. The kind to watch in differing moods, because it captures so much LIFE. Varda is brilliant, such flowing technique without ever being intrusive or showy. She gets to the heart of things so easily it seems, a born filmmaker. This is a movie I will watch over and over.

I think Corinne Marchand has that indefinable something, that je ne sais quoi makes you want to watch her endlessly. I don't know if she's underrated en France, but there is literally no information about her here.... I looked her up and there's NOTHING. A spectacular performance, so open, full of longing, ennui, frailty, and in the end strength, spirit that can't really be quenched by adversity.
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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Today I watched "Babette's Feast" (1987) directed by Gabriel Axel.

I skipped this film when it first came out, but over the years I have heard it praised a lot, so I gave it a chance.

It started slow, and it had a lot of voice over narration at the beginning, which nearly put me off the movie. But, about 20 minutes in or so, the narrator seemed to go away, and I began getting caught up in the story. By the time Babette had started putting her feast together, I was really into this movie, and I could see why the people who had praised the film liked it so much.

The movie succeeds in making the assembling and serving of a meal cinematic. Not just cinematic but extremely interesting. (This is something that "Age of Innocence" never did for me. To me, that movie was just fetishist about china and hats.) "Babette's Feast" conveyed the relationships behind the meal and it also made me think about choices made, regretted, and the people we owe things to and how we should make the best use of the life we have left. I came away very impressed with this movie. I think it is far more than a mere "heritage film."
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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Today I watched "The Organizer" (1960) directed by Mario Monicelli.

I had heard good things about this movie, but it managed to exceed my expectations.

In some ways, this is like Monicelli's "The Great War." It is a historical film about a serious subject but with a number of comic elements. Here, it is the struggle for workers' rights in the late 1800s. In some ways, this is even a more serious film than "The Great War." While the ending of that film was dark, it was ironic. The ending of "The Organizer" is just depressing.

Yet there are wonderful funny moments here, and Marcello Mastroianni is terrific as the title character. (Although as I understand, the Italian title translates directly into English as "Comrades," which makes more sense to me, because while the organizer is important, the movie is about more than his efforts.) The movie also allows some ambiguity about the organizer. Does he really make life better for the workers, or does he cause catastrophe?

I found "The Organizer" moving, funny and thought-provoking. It is, perhaps, one of the great underrated European films.
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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Today I watched "As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me" (2001) directed by Hardy Martins.

It is a German film about a German POW who escaped from a Soviet prison camp in Siberia in 1949 and in 1952 crossed the border into Iran.

The opening of the film was rather rushed. The film is adapted from a book, and I had the feeling that the film was compressing a lot of stuff very quickly here. Finally, when things settled down the movie became very compelling.

The interesting thing about this movie to me is that it really gets across how diverse the USSR was. There is the bitter Arctic landscape near the prison camp. Then there is the Yakutsk culture, which seems to exist as if the USSR itself doesn't exist. Eventually the film gets to Soviet Central Asia and has something of a Middle East flavor.

It's not a great movie, but it held my interest and I wouldn't mind seeing it again some day.
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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Today I watched "Incident at Blood Pass" (1970) directed by Hiroshi Inagaki.

This was a very enjoyable samurai film about a group of travelers at a remote mountain in who are taken captive by bandits. Toshiro Mifune is a ronin who gets caught up in the situation. (And yes, I did think of "Key Largo" and "The Tall T" and "Hombre" a lot.)

The movie is in color and takes place in the winter, which sets this apart from the typical samurai film.

I loved seeing Mifune in action, as he silently weighed the pros and cons of each situation. His face is one of the treasures of cinema.

And it was a delight to watch a samurai film again, and see real people hitting each other with real weapons, knowing that it wasn't CGI and all fake. The movie begins slowly, but the climax is very powerful. (I cheered at points.)
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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Today I watched "Hannah Arendt" (2012) directed by Margarethe von Trotta.

I was impressed by this film. It looks at the controversy touched off by Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and its impact on her life.

In some ways, making a movie about an intellectual who writes a book and enduring the reception of the book is almost uncinematic. However, I found this movie worked. It did a great job of recreating the look of the early Sixties. It made Arendt a compelling character, showing that she did have caring relationships with people and was hurt by the way some people responded to her book. It also showed the deep anger and sense of betrayal that some people felt about her book. (Some of Arendt's critics did come across as self-satisfied jerks, but the more important ones were significant characters in the film.) And it didn't give us an easy resolution but showed how Arendt had to wrestle with some of these issues for the rest of her life.

Very good performance by Barbara Sukowa as Arendt. A fine job by von Trotta. (I didn't like her Rosa Luxemburg film much, but this one is very strong.)
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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MikeBSG wrote:Today I watched "Hannah Arendt" (2012) directed by Margarethe von Trotta.

I was impressed by this film. It looks at the controversy touched off by Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and its impact on her life.

In some ways, making a movie about an intellectual who writes a book and enduring the reception of the book is almost uncinematic.
You made me want to see this movie, Mike. Having seen Arendt interviewed in the '60s, it does seem that such a vivid personality could be sufficiently cinematic and make interpreting the world philosophically an interesting topic for a movie. Maybe even the people today who are unwittingly influenced by her ideas could learn about her through this movie. For a sample of her dynamic way of making intellectual ideas compelling, this German interview (with subtitles) might be of interest:
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Bronxgirl48
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

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kingrat and Jackie, I was absolutely fascinated by CLEO FROM 5 to 7! I had never seen any Agnes Varda before, but now I think this may become one of my favorite foreign films. I found all the symbolism involving Cleo's condition and "voyage" of discovery quite haunting and moody, with strands of a beautiful melancholy weaving through all the teeming street life. I also want to see it over and over!
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

Post by JackFavell »

Bronxie, I am so happy you saw and liked Cleo From 5 to 7. Brilliant!

Had I known anything about it when I watched it, I might have passed it up, but luckily I didn't know what it was about. It's so stylish, and yet quite unpretentious. In just the same way, the mise en scene has incredible vocabulary, and yet the camera is not nintrusive. I think that melancholy spirit you talk about is what will keep me coming back to the film. In the end though, it is far from a sad film. It's just got so much going for it, so many opposing forces in perfect balance, plus it's pot that crystal clear narrative. I cannot figure out how Varda did it, got this whimsical? if that's the right word? tone. It's completely unforced. A truly fascinating film.
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