Taiwan)

In the US, the NC-17 rating is the modern equivalent of the X-rating, given by the MPAA to films it deems to be containing extreme scenes of graphic sexual or drug-related imagery. It is generally considered box-office poison: many film producers will rather issue a film unrated than risk an NC-17 rating, or will recut down to gain the lesser R rating. So it is perhaps a little surprising that Ang Lee, a relatviely mainstream director of both popular and critical repute, has chosen to release his new film Lust, Caution with an NC-17 rating. After all, the last (and indeed only other) film to gain a widespread release at this rating was Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 exploitation shocker Showgirls. Not exactly a fine pedigree.

The rating is due in this case to a series of rather graphic sex scenes, which have been subsequently edited out of the Chinese release; but they are important to the film’s integrity, and it is understandable why they have been left in the Western releases; we need them just as we need that initial raw, fleshy coming together of Ennis and Jack in Ang Lee’s last film, the great Brokeback Mountain (2005).

At the centre of the story is an extraordinary debut performance by Chinese actress Wei Tang as Wong Chia Chi, a young student in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation of northern China in the late 1930s. She becomes involved in a politically-conscious acting group performing nationalistic propagandist plays, where she develops an attraction to its leader, Kuang. Their involvement in the conflict becomes more proactive, and they plot to kill Yee, a member of the puppet government in the pocket of the Japanese occupiers, using Wong as the honey trap. As with most espionage thrillers, to reveal too much of the labyrinthine twists and turns of the plot would be to spoil the fun, but needless to say Wong and Kuang inevitably get hot and heavy eventually.

Ang Lee is one of that breed of film school directors like Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee, who have an awareness of cinema history, and a keenness to pay respectful homage. In Lust, Caution the key reference text would be Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 thriller Notorious, the espionage thriller where Ingrid Bergman must go undercover to spy on Nazis in South America; at one stage we even see a brief clip of Bergman in a scene at a cinema, as well as seeing another featuring that film’s other star, Cary Grant. In Notorious, Bergman’s character Alicia is an enigmatic one, we are never entirely sure what her motivations and true feelings are towards the task she has been forced into performing; there is the similar doubt in our minds about Wong in this film.

As previously stated, the central performance by Wei Tang is exceptional for a debut; she displays a fine array of different emotions, leaving enough ambiguity in the audience’s mind as to not allow us to second-guess what will happen next. It is even more impressive that she manages to hold her own against an acting heavyweight such as the legendary Tony Leung, playing against type here as a sleazy but jaded political chameleon.

What is also significant, in what is otherwise a fairly standard espionage thriller, is the cultural and historical themes touched upon in the film. The ladies in the film play a LOT of Mahjong, a culture which it is difficult to overstate the importance of to the western audience – it is an important social rite, like an Eastern form of poker night, where spreading and relaying gossip and rumour is much more important than the game itself. Similarly interesting is the rich variety of languages spoken in the film: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Shanghainese as well as plain old English all make an appearance somewhere along the way; I was reminded of the rich tapestry of dialects populating Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s wonderful A City of Sadness (1989), which also threw Taiwanese into the melting pot which, perhaps surprisingly, Taiwanese Ang Lee does not here.

The historical background is one which is significant, too; the Sino-Japanese wars lasted from approxiamately 1931 until the the Japanese surrender in 1945, and is still a subject of bitter resentment between the two empires. It is believed that there were as many as 35 million casualties on the Chinese side alone, with the creation of a further 95 million refugees. The film gives snapshots of the effect of the occupation in Shanghai: the daily shootings, shortages and rationing of food, even the hijacking of Western films with pro-Japanese propaganda in cinemas. But although this is a period piece, it does not try to give a large-scale idea of the political situation.

Lust, Caution won the Golden Lion at Venice last year, making Ang Lee only the second director ever to win it twice, the other being Louis Malle. By sheer coincidence, Hou’s A City of Sadness received the award, too, in 1989. But although it shares much in common with its Golden-Lion-winning big brother, Brokeback Mountain, it never feels as substantial or important a work. It has received only a lukewarm reception in the US, in contrast to the unanimous praise heaped on it in China, though this may be reflective of the popularity of the original Eileen Chang source story. That said, as a wartime espionage thriller, it is hard to find significant fault.

What’s in a haircut, Javier?

Much of the buzz surrounding awards season seems to be about the new Coens film No Country For Old Men, which seems to have taken an age to hit these shores (it finally opens here on Friday). But for all of the critical acclaim, one factor seems to be getting more coverage than most: the strange creation atop Javier Bardem’s head. Bardem, always a striking presence on the big screen, seems to have cultivated a monstrosity something akin to what a grumpy teenager might grow in rebellion against the world (and his parents). This hirsute issue now seems to be raised in almost every interview the 38-year old actor gives about the film, leading me to wonder if the Oscars might in future consider presenting an award for best performance by a barnet. It certainly seems to deserve some sort of seperate accreditation.

What if this award were backdated and posthumously awarded for services to the hairdressing industry? Naturally Carrie Fisher‘s ‘danish pastry’ look would be a shoe-in (or should that be hat-in??) for best/worst female ‘do’ in 1977’s Star Wars, and a few other Lucas creations may have hegemony in other years.

More recently, the offensive object adorning Tom Hanks’ crown in The Da Vinci Code (below) would prove a toughie to beat. So how about it, Academy? Lets finally give these coiffures the recognition they surely deserve. And the award for worst haircut goes to….

Stellet Licht (Carlos Reygadas, 2007, Mexico / France / Netherlands / Germany)

A starry sky turns into a stunning seven minute time-lapse shot of sunrise over a Mexican landscape, announcing the beginning of Silent Light, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes last year. Its overarching themes may suggest, partially truthfully, a Bergman-esque exploration of the soul; indeed, the title appears a conflagration of two of Bergman’s “Faith Trilogy”, namely Winter Light and The Silence. But although the film owes much to the late Swede, there is also the quiet sadness of Ozu at play here, as well as the austere natural beauty of the best of Terence Malick, and a series of superbly understated performances from its non-professional cast make Silent Light a beautiful, delicately balanced human drama.

The most important introduction to the film is to explain its setting; the location is rural northern Mexico, but the story focuses on a small Mennonite community, God-fearing folk who speak Plautdietsch – a kind of cross between Dutch and German. Early on we see middle-aged farmer Johan and his family around the dinner table, locked into a long, silent grace-giving before eating, dressed in their customary Ahmish-like garb, the only sound the repetitious ticking of the wall-clock. There is a visible tension between Johan and his wife Esther. After dinner, Johan is left alone at the table and starts to cry uncontrollably. We soon discover why; Johan has been having an affair with a neighbour, Marianne, whom he believes to be his true love, not Esther. But he is torn between this newly-found love and his religious and domestic ties to his wife. He discusses as much with his father, who tells him it is the work of the devil; Johan himself counters that it is God’s will.

The setup appears to be a straightforward melodrama, but director Reygadas does not play it this way; instead of heated arguments, stormings out and moments of blind rage, what we get instead is a melancholy inner torment on Johan’s part, perhaps repressed by the environment and religion that he is situated within. Similarly with the two women – neither Esther and Marianne rant or rave, but seem to be quietly haunted, and saddened by the situation.

Reygadas manages to coax some wonderful performances from his cast, who are all assembled from real-life Mennonite communities, all natural Plautdietsch speakers, giving their roles an added level of authenticity. If some of the peripheral characters are perhaps not entirely comfortable in front of the camera, the same cannot be said about the leads, who undergo close scrutiny from the camera during the film’s two hours. Canadian novelist Miriam Toews perhaps has least to do as the stilted, quiet Esther, until one moment of pure emotion in the poruing rain – her outpouring of grief all the more powerful for the fact that up to that point she had been so distant. Maria Pankratz is a sensual but cautious Marianne, while Cornelio Wall is fantastic as the emotionally torn Johan.

What follows in the story should not to be revealed to those who have yet to see it, but it is surprising. Some may baulk at what happens in the final ten or so minutes, but I feel that the film earns the right to do what it gives us; others may not. This is decidedly arthouse fare – long, lingering shots, some scenes stretched out for much longer than really necessary, and the occasional lapse into Lars Von Trier-dom will be enough to put off a significant portion of a mainstream audience. But stick with it, and it provides rich rewards.

Great Films: Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987, West Germany / France)

Cinema as a medium is able to inspire a wide variety of emotional responses in the viewer, whether it be making us laugh or cry, to make us reflect on our own lives or to consider the lives of others, to meditate on the nature of the world or to whisk us away to a world other than ours. Wings of Desire is a uniquely moving film which somehow seems to encapsulate all of these, a sublimely beautiful, sometimes sad, but ultimately uplifting meditation on the human, and super-human, condition.

Much of the screenplay was written in collaboration with the German playwright Peter Handke, and the film opens with a short piece of his poetry, which describes the state of childhood – full of fun, play, innocence, the child having no knowledge of being “a child”. We then have an aerial shot of central Berlin, followed by a brief image of the protagonist Damiel stood atop a tall building with superimposed angel wings atop his back. Only children appear to be able to notice him. Then a few more shots of some other people, including one played by Peter Falk as a passenger in an aircraft, all the time the soundtrack of the relentless chatter of what we assume are their thoughts.

From this early sequence onwards, the internal logic of the film is quickly established; Damiel, and later his friend Cassiel, are angels in late 1980s West Berlin, able to travel wherever they like and eavesdrop on the mundane, everyday thoughts of the population. They are invisible to all but children, who seem to greet their presence with an amused curiousity. Their presence seems to be able to have an effect on the people they encounter – those that are worrying about something appear to be in some way comforted by the presence of the angels, temporarily soothing their fears. The central library seems to be the place where most of the angels congregate, listening in to the discoveries and learnings of those reading – there is no small irony in the film illustrating that the loudest place for peoples thoughts is the library.

The fact we can hear people’s internal thoughts is a neat device, almost a subversive to the cinema medium; actors go to great lengths to attempt to convey us such information physically or facially, yet here we are presented with a pure distillation of their thoughts, fears and anxieties, without the need for ‘acting’ it out. Yet most of the information we receive is mundane – everyday musings, personal worries which have no relevance to the film’s narrative. But this gives the film its universality; all of us have our own personal worries that are not part of some big picture, but they are nonetheless important to us. The film treats everyone as being just as important as the characters we are focusing on here.

When we first encounter Cassiel, a fellow angel, he and Damiel are comparing notes about what they have witnessed on that day – simple acts, some tragic, some hopeful, others seemingly meaningless. It seems that the angels’ purpose is to observe and record everyday happenings, in a sense to preserve ‘reality’ for the divine. Damiel here confides that he wishes that he were a mortal, to live in terms of ‘now’ as opposed to the ‘eternity’ or ‘forever’ of the angelic existence, as well as to experience simple things like having his fingers blackened by the newspaper. When he chances upon a circus troupe, he falls in love with a beautiful but lonely trapeze artist, Marion, dressed when we first see her in an angel-like costume. She is mortal, but attempts to albeit temporarily transcend this state through her ‘flying’ act, of course in polar opposition to Damiel who aspires to the opposite.

Damiel is played by Bruno Ganz, the Swiss who is generally regarded as the greatest German-speaking actor of his generation, possibly most famous for his recent portrayal of Hitler in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s excellent Downfall (2004). He has one of the most warm, inviting faces in all of cinema, providing us with an inquisitive, endearing protagonist, but also a melancholy one, yearning to be able to experience life, warts and all. The chemistry between he and fellow angel Cassiel, played by Ganz’s real-life friend Otto Sander, is wonderfully jovial, giving the impression that they really had known each other for eternity.

The film is mostly shot in monochrome, not exactly black-and-white but more of a sepia tone, by legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan, who had previously worked with such luminaries as Jean Cocteau and René Clément, and his visual style in the film is one of the keys to its power; in particular, some of the interior shots are technical marvels – an early sequence starts with a view from out of a window, dollying back quickly to reveal the interior of the room and its inhabitants, a pan to a medium close-up of a woman is handled with such mastery that it seems almost balletically graceful. By way of contrast, the scenes from human perspective are shot in full colour, at times an overly-hued colour, reminiscent of the use of Technicolour famously employed by Michael Powell, whose A Matter of Life and Death is a key touchstone here. Alekan’s camera glides smoothly, effortlessly as it it were flying. There is also the matter of the extraordinary score, most of the time resembling a choir of angels – sometimes barely audible, sometimes deafening, but an almost constant presence.

Although the film would appear to have a religious theme, this is not a Christian film, and does not seek to either promote or criticize belief. So what, ultimately, is the central theme of Wings of Desire? In the early scene with Damiel and Cassiel sitting in a car, one of the things Damiel wishes he were able to do would be ‘at last to guess, instead of always knowing’. Coming from a position of all-knowing, the one thing the angel wants to be able to do is not to know, to have the possibility of being wrong. Humans may be fallible and unable to know everything, but the mystery of not knowing, and trying to find out what you can, is what makes life worth living. Men may wish to be an immortal angels, but the angels wish equally to be men.

Great Films: Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002, USA)

The trouble with remakes and/or ‘updates’ of classic and not-so-classic films is that many of the subtleties and complexities of the original are lost somewhere along the line, presumably to pander to modern Hollywood’s desire for box-office-friendly fodder. Imagine, if you will, how a grand, ambiguous film such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey would be different if it had to have been produced today: presumably feedback from test-screenings would demand more narrative coherence, or indeed any. One only needs to watch Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (2001), a rather confused remake of Alejandro Amenabar’s superior Abre Los Ojos (1997) for a more recent example. And let’s not even think about The Vanishing, though strangely the remake was ruined by the same director as the original, George Sluizer.

One of the wonderful things about Steven Soderbergh’s reimagining of Solaris, then, is the fact it could be made at all. Here is a film which does not patronise the patient viewer, instead allowing the complex and mysterious ideas of the Stanislaw Lem source novel to swirl around the audience’s consciousness. Soderbergh is able to do this because of his immense commercial clout; nobody will say no to a director who pulls in the big bucks, and with the success of his Ocean’s Eleven franchise, Soderbergh is one such big-hitter. He is renowned for being extremely cost-efficient, delivering wildly successful films on-time and on-budget, an executive producer’s dream. This gives him a great degree of artistic freedom to pursue more personal, lower budget projects, most recently his adaptation of Joseph Kanon’s The Good German (2006). Solaris is clearly another such project: an existential meditation on the nature of memory and feeling is box-office poison, and so it proved, grossing little over $6 million in its first weekend on a budget of nearly $50 million, despite the superstar draw of la Clooney.

There was, of course, a previous attempt to adapt Lem’s novel to the big screen: Andrei Tarkovsky’s overlong 1972 Solyaris divides opinion between those who think it is a slowly delicate, melancholy masterpiece and those who feel the urge to fall asleep roughly 5 minutes in. I certainly think it is a masterpiece of mood and style, though at 165 minutes it does get snore-worthy. Brevity is so often a cinematic virtue, and thankfully Soderbergh restricts his adaptation to a trim 99 minutes, befitting of a novel of little over 200 pages (in the English translation). Tarkovsky fans would probably baulk at this relatively short running time, but I feel that the film still manages to cover the important ideas in the Lem novel; the Soviet’s version is too ponderous at times, and adds external elements not in the novel, such as the scenes in the datcha which bookend the main events on the space station.

Credit too should go to George Clooney, who in recent years has quite nobly attempted to branch out into varied material, mostly with positive results. His film collaborations with Soderbergh now number six in total, and to an extent he seems to be the director’s current muse. In Solaris, Clooney pitches it just right – never too respectful of Donatas Banionis’ original performance as psychologist Kris Kelvin. What is similarly impressive is the casting of the striking Natascha McElhone in the pivotal role of Rheya, whose ghostlike-beauty is a suitable tribute to Natalya Bondarchuk’s original Hari. A hard act to follow, but tastefully done.

Soderbergh did such a great job with Solaris that when I first saw it I was completely taken aback at what a grand piece of work it was. So taken aback, in fact, that I nearly forgot that this was remake of a classic, and that I was planning to be indignant that the director had the audacity to tinker with what seemed an untouchably great film. On balance, and given time to reflect on both versions, I think Tarkovsky’s original was a landmark piece of cinema, but that this reimagining of the great novel does its ideas more justice, and is one of the rare occasions that a remake actually ‘dumbs-up’ on the original. And full marks to Soderbergh both for doing so, as well as simply being able to do so.