Recommendations: Dimitris (jimbotender)

"He said he wants music."

Meres tou '36 (1972)

Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Country: Greece
Genre: Drama / Crime
Length: 105 minutes



Theodoros Angelopoulos acquired the context that would determine his filmic style in a rather quick period of time. Meres tou '36 is the first part of A Trilogy of History, which also includes the films O Thiasos (1975) and Oi Kynigoi (1977). Achieving a high level of political and technical maturity with Meres tou '36, Angelopoulos makes a direct social commentary against an utterly unstable political control that would be meant to unleash the authoritarian 4th of August Regime. However, the delicacy of Angelopoulos and the very present theatrical feeling of the film compensate the supposedly controversial audacity he decided to impose through each and every one of the frames that form a strong cinematic argument.

The film was shot during the second dictatorship that Greece went through the 20th Century, and it is set during the first dictatorship (1936-1941), a regime originated by General Ioannis Metaxas. When a Greek-Orthodox and former drug trafficker and police informer named Sofianos is arrested because of the assassination of a trade unionist, a conservative politician named Kriezis visits him in prison, allowing Sofianos to somehow manage to take him hostage, asking the authorities to be released. This extreme event puts the Greek government in a very compromising situation. Theodoros Angelopoulos won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival of 1973 under the "Forum of New Cinema" category. The film also won two Greek Competition Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Director at the Thessaloniki Film Festival of 1972, which is a shocking fact itself.

To demand cultural knowledge about Greece to the audience may be interpreted with several significations. It may mean that the political ideas portrayed with a slightly blasphemous and comical touch need no introduction at all. A regime with the ideas of Hellenic nationalism and the influences of German Nazism and Italian Fascism is the political background that a crime plot is masquerading. The true governmental hipocrisy is derived from the utter incapacity of the government to build a relevant sympathy with both the Democratic and the Conservative Parties, supporting forces that hold contrary requests regarding the release of Sofianos. This was perhaps the main aspect that demanded a minimalist perspective when the prison and closed spaces are shown, and a documentary perspective exhalted with a developing cinematography by Angelopoulos that caused Meres tou '36 to easily gain an ambitious style.

The pace requires a lot of patience, but a cathartic sensation regarding the slowness found in the decisions and falsely democratic procedures taken by a regime that pretend to help the members of a decaing society is unusually felt. Perhaps it was intended; it clearly was understood specifically by the Greek audience whereas a foreign audience is asked to perform a quick research beforehand. Naturally, the screenplay did not need to possess several layers or lyrical complexity; the images are allowed to offer an expressionistic context and sudden moments of awkwardness and intentional humor enlighten the genius of the auteur behind the camera.

The title of the film has a somewhat vague connotation, but it could be attibuted to the historical nostalgia derived from the consequences that an undesirable and menacing dictatorship brought with it. Yes, there are memorable scenes, the most famous being the one with the music in the prison being played under Sofianos' request and a resulting non-violent riot. The ending, which is provided with spoilers in the most accessible plot descriptions found in the Internet, has a certain degree of predictability, but the style does not. A strong opposition and contrast of visual beauty is witnessed in the scandal with which the film opens and the catastrophe with which it closes, suggesting to liberal and conservative audiences that ideals are relative and that they have no grandiose importance; it is the control and the personal taste that a state of union may build towards a totalitarian structure with a hidden anarchic nature the actor behind the curtains. The result, of course, is a compelling and early masterpiece by the most renowned Greek director, and a gem that invites to reflection and immediate action, even it if only involves an attitute modification.

88/100

"I came cross the sea, from Ionia. Where did you come from?"

O THIASOS (1975)

Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Country: Greece
Genre: Drama / War
Length: 230 minutes



Never before had cinema presented such an effective, original and cinematically influential perspective concerning the Second World War. Extensive Greek master Theodoros Angelopoulos achieves international attention thanks to his second and best chapter in A Trilogy of History, one of the most ambitious films in the entire history of moviemaking, and undeniably one of the best and most powerful war films of all time. The mysticism is overabundant, the technical perfection that was intentionally added to the film is masterly orchestrated through a wonderful cast and a perfectly poetical balance, and its noticeably audacity in the process of defying the regimes, the abuse of power and the definitive turning point in Greek history forms part of possibly the most ambitious direction ever committed to celluloid. Angelopoulos was a political genius and could be described as the expressionistic successor of Sergei M. Eisenstein (Bronenosets Potyomkin [1925], Oktyabr [1927]) with the exact opposite of what would be his filmmaking style. Sentimentalism is avoided and gritty realism is mercilessly displayed, yet the multi-talented layers of poetry, wisdom and directorial brilliance maximize the power and glory of such masterful work of art.

O Thiasos follows the adventures and difficult tragedies of a group of travelling players peregrinating throughout the jeopardized country of Greece, performing the erotic drama "Golfo, the Shepherdess" by Spyridon Peresiades, and witnessing the several stages of history that Greece was going through. Covering a period of time that goes from 1939 to 1952, the film depicts the last days of the Metaxas dictatorship, the beginning of World War II and the opposition of the Italians, the Nazi occupation, the Liberation, the British and American interventionism in Greek politics, and the Civil War held between the Left and the right-wingers. Director Theodoros Angelopoulos won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 1975 under the category of Parallel Sections. He also won an Interfilm Award at the Berlin International Film Festival of 1975 under the category of Forum of New Cinema. Also, the film won 6 Greek Competition Awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Film and Best Director at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Demanding political and historical knowledge once more, Angelopoulos' primary source of originality and brilliance comes from the fact that he masterly referenced ancient Greek literature so we as an audience were capable of understanding and having a notion of the possible personalities of the depicted characters. The characters themselves are based on Aeschylus' Oresteia Trilogy ("Agamemnon", "The Libation Bearers" and "The Eumenides"), a fact that will help to obtain a foreshadowing of their respective natures. Consequently, it was decided not to identify the characters by their respective names, emphasizing the literary connotation of the film, with the exception of the revolutionary son Orestes. Each and every single frame, when put together, form a groundbreaking testament in which all of the elements that determine and represent a society that is forced to experience a chaotic existence because of a war that is out of the control of the country are contrasted with the aesthetic beauty of the highly prolonged shots. The aforementioned characteristics strengthen the statement that O Thiasos is one of the most moving and heartbreaking dramas in Greek history.

O Thiasos has the intrinsic ability of creating an epic story in which war is portrayed as a massive and international event of political, economical, social and psychological destruction without the necessity of resorting to racist and melodramatic elements. It also references the totalitarian control and the ambition of power that the Oresteia Trilogy possessed in its tales and transforms them, through a more modern cinematographic adaptation, into a direct social criticism towards an authoritarian nationalism and towards a State which greatly unstable condition forced it to seek for foreign interventionism. Naturally, the topic of the greed present in developed countries because of their political intervention in nations of lacking independence is treated. The British and American influence has a negative connotation, emphasizing the desperate situation of the Greece as a nation of decaying democracy and increasing anarchy, in case Fascism has not taken control over a territory yet.

The use of a group of travelling players may be a nostalgic reference towards the tragic events that necessarily had to take place in order to determine and literally change the course of history, but a literary (and even mythological) parallelism enhances their human faults and their respective hardships, causing an increasing weakness of the soul. The extremely elaborate screenplay is divided in three thought-provoking monologues and has a nonlinear structure, constantly constructing a timeline mixture of a cyclic chronology and going back and forth in time. The film begins at the end in order to close a cycle of events, being an allusion of the never-ending horrors of war and the vast variety of life epiphanies. The beloved and multiphacetic collective protagonist faces, in a particular sequence, joy, death and hunger, simulating the hardships of the Greek evolving society. O Thiasos is plagued with remarkable performances and the absence of a clichéd musical score is effectively applied, creating a very atmospheric realism in the process.

Extremely prolonged single shots and a gracious exaltation of patient stillness are thoroughly used, culminating in what may be several of the best filmed scenes ever. One of the scenes, which lasts more than 10 minutes and that is my personal favorite, shows Elektra walking into a nightclub where a sign advertising the celebration of January the 1st of 1946 is displayed. Walking across the nightclub and standing next to the orchestra, she witnesses a verbal fight between an all-male group of right-wing government supporters and another group consisting in couples that are supposed to represent the Left. Both groups take their respective turns to perform singings that belong to their particular ideologies, leading to an almost violent conclusion. There is a certain point in the film where the characters stop being active and are transformed into passive beings, silently witnessing the surrounding events rather than willingly participating in them. This is exactly the filmic style that would influence directors like Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker [1979], Nostalghia [1983]) and Béla Tarr (Sátántangó [1994], Werckmeister Harmóniák [2000]).

One of the most memorable, absolute and visual masterpieces has been born, and Angelopoulos is the master behind the lens. From storytelling brilliance to breathtaking technical perfection, O Thiasos dwells into the realm of the horrors of war and the inevitability of death, emphasizing the futility of political overpowerment and glorifying justice and the human condition. Just like Masaki Kobayashi accomplished to do with his epic war movie Ningen no Jôken (1959-1961), Angelopoulos was able of boarding the humanism train... making the collective protagonist to do it in a more literal way! Just like the trilogy forms part of a cycle, O Thiasos is the jam between the sandwich of liberal politics, instantly becoming the tastiest piece of this colossal meal. It has reached a superior category of cinema that few films have reached before, and imposing a complex narrative structure and increasing the attention to detail, the travelling players have found a place inside the people's hearts and the very spirit of quality cinema.

100/100

"The fact that he is here is a historical mistake."

OI KYNIGOI (1977)

Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Country: Greece / France
Genre: Drama
Length: 168 minutes



Greek cinema master Theodoros Angelopoulos abandons, permanently, the nostalgic genre of war and suffers a complete transformation of delicate expressionism. The third and final chapter of A Trilogy of History is titled Oi Kynigoi, an absolute masterpiece of a revolutionary cinema that closes a cycle of the events that were depicted in the past two films (Meres tou '36 [1972], O Thiasos [1975]) and also of the most relevant ideas implicit in the ideologies and politics that Greece went through the Second World War according to Angelopoulos. With this film, better known by its English title "The Hunters", the director is wholeheartedly offering a reconstruction of such events and alluding the patriotism that, supposedly, the modern citizens of Greece should have. This ambitious task is accomplished through a critical depiction of the guilt and the blasphemous snobbishness of the bourgeois class, a concept that could be described as a poetical marriage between Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu (1939) and Luis Buñuel's Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie (1972). With a breathtaking cinematography and a razor-sharp screenplay of patience, Oi Kynigoi is among the best films of the decade.

The film takes place during the New Year's Eve of 1976 on a Greek island. A group of bourgeois hunters stumble across a dead man whose body has been miraculously preserved by a predominant, frosty landscape. The group of characters comes to the conclusion that the corpse must belong to one of the thousands of partisans killed during the Civil War held between the Left and the Right because of the uniform he is wearing. When the body is exhumed, blood begins to flow from his body and it is taken to a lodge where the bourgeois members keep it while questioning and admiring his current state. The film was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival of 1977, losing it against the Italian film Padre Padrone (1977).

Theodoros Angelopoulos has the remarkable and unusual talent of changing his style. Regardless of the plot and the particular genre to be treated, he always managed to change perspectives and to modify his scope. Not only the historical periods are different, but the image quality, the emphasis and the pace adopt a different atmosphere. In Oi Kynigoi, its mysteriousness is such a heavy element that a certain macabre intention can be perceived. It is a collective character study. We are invited to analyze the psychology of the members as a collective entity of lavishness and of the characters in their own, individual personalities. A timeline mixture is the means used, showing through flashbacks, perhaps some of them imagined, each of the crimes and sins committed by the party. Angelopoulos' intention remains partially clear if we base the effectiveness and the symbolisms of the images and sequences shown throughout on the fact that he clearly stated that "in Greece, the ruling class is afraid of history and, for this reason, hides it." This sentence immediately allows us to comprehend, at some extent, the shocking psychological guilt and subliminal horror shown at the ending sequence.

The film can be interpreted as an allegory of the political fear insultingly held by a post-war Right movement. We are not precisely invited to belong to a particular political ideology, but the genius of Angelopoulos transforms Oi Kynigoi into a nearly surrealistic experience, touching both the realms of symbolic mysticism and wonderfully shot stillness. Applying a very intelligent use of peace and desperate silence, the true horrors of the film start to slowly and unpredictably rise to the surface while the pieces that are meant to be put together are shown in perfectly calculated time lapses. Besides hiding "guilt", they party. They party and celebrate a war that has ended, ignoring that they should face an inner struggle caused by their own actions, especially considering the senselessness of their decision. More than a political film, it is an attack to the senses with a moralistic code of ethics as its main element. Extraordinary performances make of Oi Kynigoi a masterpiece rich in character.

The attention to detail is completely spellbinding. Considerably long, single shots are the main technical ingredient of this revolutionary recipe, surpassing the 10-minute mark. The camera work contains the same mastery and visionary experience we had already witnessed before. From places with implicit claustrophobic desperation to wonderful, prolonged scenes of ethereal suspense and vast, natural landscapes of watery beauty, Oi Kynigoi is a challenging ride. Despite its constant modification of character emphasis, it contains some sort of unrepeatable introspectiveness. We are compelled to see the gravest political faults of the Greek society through the most criticized and universally repulsed social class. It doesn't really matter if sympathy is not built towards them; it is not a requirement. If it is seen as a societal / governmental spoof, the film may work on several, different levels, thanks mainly to the slow pace and the exceptional screenplay by Angelopoulos and Stratis Karras.

Perhaps it is the sensationalism and the irony that Oi Kynigoi easily managed to contain. Angelopoulos started to show a very characteristic disillusionment towards his native nation. Just like O Thiasos (1975), the film covered a vast period of time, focusing on 1976, yet representing the catastrophic outcome of political movements that had been originated since 1949 and had their highest peak in 1952. Brief humorous moments of foreign interventionism are scattered throughout an unconventional storytelling, culminating in one of the most memorable and tense climax in movie history, a sequence that involves sexual parallelism with the false excitement that the bourgeoisie pretends to experience when belonging to a supposedly democratic, yet totalitarian government. In a particular scene of complete humor, the hunting party and a bourgeois member are shown having an argument in the middle of a corridor and returning to their apartments after shouting their points of view in front of the camera so the next character is able to speak. These sort of comical allusions are what cause Oi Kynigoi to have a very peculiar signature consisting in a mixed bag of talents that was rarely put together before. It may not be an influential film, but it is a complete piece of art epic in scope and unpretentious in its ambition. It is an experience out of this world.

100/100

LIMITE (1931)

Director: Mario Peixoto
Country: Brazil
Genre: Drama
Length: 120 minutes



"Three people sail aimlessly while remembering their past"... and so begins the most fascinating and breathtaking experimental film ever made by Brazil. Mario Peixoto must be one of the most mysterious filmmakers of all time, even more than F.W. Murnau, whose 10 films were completely destroyed. In the case of expressionist Peixoto, the film he directed in his career was Limite, and if this wasn't enough, a segment of Limite is already considered as totally lost. The length of the following review will be ultimately reduced because of its nature. It is a ride that must be left to the responsibility of the viewer. The point primarily consists in allowing the feature film itself to talk by its own. However, the philosophical beauty, the unparalleled mysticism, the subjectivity of the events and its predominant simplicity make of this absolute South American masterpiece the most breathtaking experimental achievement in the entire history of the motion picture, one of the most inventive and innovative silent films ever made, and one of the best directed dramas of all time.

The first 10 minutes of the film give a cathartic foreshadowing of what the remaining 110 minutes have prepared for the audience. Mario Peixoto takes what may seem, at first glance, a merely existentialist concept and portrays it through the eyes of a poet. Beauty is relative, and the sources of happiness are endless. We are introduced to two women and a man recalling their respective pasts and the hardships they went through. Regardless of the events, misadventures and disappointments they had to experience, the first thing that is left clear is the fact that they desperately sought for nothingness. To be in the middle of nothingness, regardless of the means, is their psychological escapism of a mistreating society. The first image shown is the female protagonist starring at the camera with a dark background and showing her pair of handcuffed hands. A conclusion stating that their freedom has been chained to their pessimistic view towards life itself may be drawn. Interestingly enough, the opening sequence is so beautifully and unbelievably filmed, that heavy tears start to fall down. We haven't built empathy towards their personalities; we do not who they are, either. We do not know their origins and we are not even invited to even contemplate the possibility that the actions they had executed are evil. They are unbeknownst characters to us.

With this premise of sadness and solitude, the hypnotic flashbacks begin. However, it is a known fact that complexity comes from simplicity itself. Peixoto's brilliance in narrative and storytelling is originated from the non-chronological portrayal of the events. We get, sometimes, more than one revisiting to a particular past in order to subtract the emotional elements that govern their mentalities. A character is mistreated and escapes from jail while another character walks through a long road to nothingness surrounded by the humidity and the darkness of the trees. Footsteps are left in the beach only to be erased by the constant arrival of the waves to the shore. The characters cry. The characters escape. Their fates are destined to collide and share a final destiny of ultimate doom. The see will swallow them eventually, or perhaps it won't. Perhaps it will be something else. Hunger will conquer their stomachs, or a storm will consume them. Nothing matters now. Even if they reach a destination, the most probable thing is that they will sail back to the middle of the dangerous sea.

At what extent can rejection and denial are capable of physically driving a person to accept such fate and to surrender the previous one? The same question goes for three people, simultaneously. Mario Peixoto grabbed the notorious and still early influences of Russian and German silent filmmaking and composed an orchestra of his own. The vastness of the sea is highlighted by one of the most sentimentally depressing musical scores ever committed to celluloid. The existence of a legendary, avant-garde film like Limite owes credit, besides to the cast, to Mario Peixoto alone, who was the editor, the producer, the screenwriter, the director and, of course, a supporting character. The technique of putting the flashbacks on the screen resorted to an Eisensteinian cinematography with a less aggressive editing and a revolutionary camera work that patiently follows the tracks of the characters walking slowly. At one time, an extended contemplation of the beautiful natural scenery of Brazil is shown and, at the next moment, the camera is spinning vertiginously in full circles until colliding with the loss of hope of the characters once again. An omniscient perspective is offered, like if God were watching these abandoned souls all the time. Particular sequences of images are repeated several times, just like master Sergei M. Eisenstein used to do, in order to increase the dramatic quality, and the conclusion is, first and foremost, equally powerful.

Considering that we get to know the events that drove the characters to literal madness, we are just shown rather small portions. We are told the exact drop that overflowed the glass, but the explanation of the remaining water can be found in the realm of the unknown, of the dreams and a vivid imagination. The film structure shows three people in a small boat, memories, the people rowing senselessness, more memories, mysticism and gloominess, the people crying... it is a cycle. Limite reaches such a degree of experimental expression that it can also be subject to multiple interpretations, but the ideas behind the curtain have remained the same even nowadays. Death has its victory so assured, that God has given us the chance to live a life. It is an unforgettable journey where Heaven collides with Hell and perdition falls in love with visual beauty. A unique feast for the senses that would definitely influence directors from Andrei Tarkovsky (Zerkalo [1972], Stalker [1979]) to Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven [1978], The Thin Red Line [1998]), Limite is a seminar on cinematography and, easily, one of the best 20 films ever made. Grandiosity has found a language.

100/100

"- We are like blind men lost in the streets of a big city. The streets lead to a goal, but we often return to the same places to get to where we want to be. I can see a few little streets here which, as it is now, are going nowhere. New combinations have to be arranged, then the whole will be clear, because one man cannot invent something that another cannot solve.
- I no longer follow."

REKOPIS ZNALEZIONY W SARAGOSSIE (1965)

Director: Wojciech Has
Country: Poland
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
Length: 182 minutes



Luis Buñuel, a cinema master who seldom watched movies more than once, was so fascinated by Wojciech Has' masterpiece titled Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie, that he saw it three times. Surrealism is a highly versatile film subgenre, and in this case, the Polish director decides to deliciously construct the most inventive ride of lunacy! Besides being the most film by the director, a fact that clearly indicates that he obtained international recognition, Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie is a film that can be interpreted in several ways. No matter how seemingly retarded the interpretation is, that is the correct one. It was highly influenced by past satirical masterpieces of fantasy, but it also establishes a landmark in unconventional storytelling, unconditional comedy and the importance of artistic subjectivity. With an extremely confusing and attractive mixture of events, incredible incidents, a gorgeous sense of humor, highly implied eroticism and a rarely-seen audacity, this film is arguably the best and most creative Polish work of art, leaving room for philosophical discussion, but smartly adding direct questionings towards the current way of life.

The film takes place during the Napoleonic wars. It opens with an officer entering an abandoned house and finding a book that relates the story of his grandfather Alfons van Worden, captain in the Walloon guard. On his way of seeking the shortest route through the Sierra Morena, he sups with two Islamic princesses at an inn named Venta Quemada. After being seduced and being called their lost cousin, he wakes up next to corpses in the middle of a gallows. The rest of the movie puts van Worden in unbelievable situations of real and imagined dementia, travelling to unusual places and hearing stories within stories within stories within stories within stories of hilarious anecdotes and unfaithful love. The film obtained a Special Award at the Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain, in the year of 1972 under the category of "Movies of special movie theatres".

Captain Alfons van Worden repeats that he belongs to the Walloon guard around five times. He is a man of pretentious honor, patriotism and courage, but perhaps it is the force and irony of destiny the one that drives him into a complex web of crazy sequences. Symbolisms abound and their particular meaning is subject to complete relativity. He is seduced by enchanting women who, according to them, have never met a man in their lives, which has led them to express their love to each other. He wakes up under corpses in gallows. He is told an extremely creepy story involving ghosts and violence by a Catholic priest and his supposedly possessed goatherd who stops being possessed under the religious commands of the priest. He wakes up under corpses in the same gallows. At this point, the film makes a clear statement. The mere purpose of the Saragossa Manuscript, considering its constant, unexplainable and senseless apparitions throughout, is to cause confusion and psychological craziness. It is not a mental journey that is supposed to be taken in its most literal form. We do not longer know the relevance of particular events portrayed until they are explained later on in the film and, moments after, the explanation that had been already given is proved wrong... The importance of early sudden and random appearances of characters is explained several segments later.

Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie definitely contains one of the best, smartest and most complicated screenplays in the entire history of moviemaking. Such creation laughs when pretending to be all over the place when it actually isn't. To understand the unsettled timeline and the deceiving chronology is not a difficult task. The real magic and complexity relies on the work of deciphering the meaning of the aforementioned structure. The film is explicitly divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the small process of surrealistic comedy that is slowly built inside the protagonist's mind, destroying all possible logical interpretation and making blasphemous references towards the modern culture, lesbianism, sexuality, carnality and the Catholic religion. In the second part, the now terrifying manuscript acquires a much stronger presence and a more significant philosophical meaning, and the "captain of the Walloon guard" hears an endless story-within-story narration of impossible experiences that end up making the respective personalities and experiences of the displayed personages to collide in a climax that, at the end, make more sense.

The possible intention of adapting a surrealist story to the late eighteenth century is unexplained, yet it is utterly irrelevant. It is the gorgeousness, the elegance, the insanity and the delicacy of the characters the ones that make of Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie a vehicle of senselessness. A visually outstanding art direction, a great vastness of character richness, a royal costume design worth of the royal halls of any location in Europe and a superbly written adaptation of Jan Potocki's original novel exalt the grandiosity of a Manuscript that seems to have been made in order to cause unstoppable existential dooms. The film is plagued with talented Polish stars offering very convincing performances and a highly artistic cinematography makes the film to derive the possibility of becoming a top-notch experience set in turbulent times. The futility of war, the implications of violence, the most common consequences of mindless sex and seduction, memorable dialogues, ghastly tales, disturbing imagery, a vaudevillian environment, a delightful use of the Spanish language and an omniscient God orchestrating a complex web of impossible sequences and an opening-credits sequence featuring the paintings of famous surrealists make of this masterpiece one of a kind.

The influence of Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie is an element that cannot be rejected. It is troubling, scandalous, daring... and also visionary! Surrealism had never been subject to such a multiphacetic and polished Polish brilliance. The multitalented aspects that govern this provocative piece of art from beginning to end seems to be the result of the conglomeration of every single signature of the most famous and visionary poets put into a single feature film of three hours. Time is erased, logic is raped, beauty is distorted, discretion is invited to a party of lavishness and snobbishness, and cinema adopts a new face of inventiveness and intelligence. Repetitive elements emphasize the ridiculousness of the plot and the huge audacity that Wojciech Has had to adopt. A theatrical feeling and a dramatist perspective is briefly shown, but just for the fun of it, like if William Shakespeare had written a play under the influence of a strong hallucinogenic. It is one of the greatest fantasy films ever made.

100/100

"Not that human life was so highly valued. Keeping order appears to be the business of the authorities, but in fact it's the business of all. Order. Freedom, however, has nothing human. It's something divine, something... our lives are too short for us to know properly. If you're looking for a link, think of Pericles, order and freedom are linked by passion. We have to believe in both, we suffer from both. Both from order and freedom. But human life is meaningful, rich, beautiful and filthy. It links everything. It mistreats freedom only... wasting it, as if it was junk. People don't like freedom, they are afraid of it. The strange thing is there is nothing to fear about freedom... order, on the other hand, can often be frightening."

SÁTÁNTANGÓ (1994)

Director: Béla Tarr
Country: Hungary / Germany / Switzerland
Genre: Drama
Length: 450 minutes



Before starting to construct a modest, fully developed essay about Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, let's make a nostalgic resume about some of the most wonderful experiences cinema has offered throughout its history. German Expressionism represented the pinnacle of Berlin's technical vision and resulted in the most visually captivating and thought-provoking classic masterpiece up to a hair-rising degree. After the Second World War, the emotional, physical and financial devastation and crisis the world was facing had a cinematic reaction in Europe and, latterly, in Mexico. The Italian neorealism is born as a form of expression that was meant to be so strong, so modest and so pitiful in nature that its resulting effect created a cathartic effect. It was a movement that, for some audiences, was released at the most inappropriate, hurtful time, but it had an everlasting effect nonetheless. New branches of filmmaking, including mere experimentation, are inevitably born and establish a trademark that would either result in a landmark way of making films or become successful failures, especially concerning films that would miserably fail because of predominant pretentiousness, dullness or missed marks. Finally, cinema became in an almost completely referential art, making homages to the beautiful stillness of the Soviet Union thanks to Andrei Tarkovsky, the black-and-white art that the film-noir genre would offer principally through the United States and the United Kingdom, and the melodramatic and clichéd touch that was completely accepted by audiences that belonged to the Golden Age of cinema, a characteristic that helped a lot to the success of the most famous American classics. Combine all of those elements in a single feature film and add approximately seven-and-a-half spoonfuls of French surrealism, mix the cinematic bowl, let it rest for four years and disseminate it through the audiences around the world before the new millennium begins. 1994 was the year that cinema itself witnessed the finest forms of cinematographic and artistic expressions combined in a single film that slowly passes as life itself. What are the main characteristics of the film? It is from Hungary, it was directed by Béla Tarr, it contains one of the longest average shot lengths in any motion picture (approximately 2.43 minutes), it has the longest shot ever filmed, which lasts around 620 seconds (excluding the films that are composed by one single take such as Timecode [2000] Russkiy Kovcheg [2002], PVC-1 [2007] and Nokta [2008]), it is one of the longest films ever made without being separated into episodes, reaching the length of 450 glorious minutes, and it is the best film ever made, a movie consisting of nearly 185 shots throughout its length. There is no director, cinema fan or critic that can wholeheartedly affirm that such masterful mammoth was released at the right time. No one can fully assure that Sátántangó rescued cinema. Bad films are still being made and Sátántangó did not precisely become an extraordinary landmark event for the arts. Does the film have the ultimate ability to achieve such massive task on Earth? Yes, it does. However, on my humble and literally insignificant opinion, not all human eyes are ready yet to digest 27,000 seconds of symbolisms and dozens of life lessons in a single sitting. The purposes and motivations within Béla Tarr's mind are the least clear things that remain. However, he is entitled to avoid giving away any explanation whatsoever. The remaining thing is this magnum opus that is as big, perplexing, captivating, gorgeous, spellbinding, orgasmic, exciting, haunting, hypnotizing, masterful, extraordinary, unparalleled, visionary, skeptic, delicate, gigantic, grandiose, wonderful, tear-inducing, breathtaking and marvelous as life itself.

Seemingly, the film takes place in a remote village of 1980's Hungary. All of the residents are eagerly expecting to receive a considerable cash payment and to embark on a personal, independent life journey with such material support as their life-jumping mattress. Greed is naturally an obvious characteristic of man's ego, so some of them even plan to receive larger amounts of money earlier. An odyssey of self-reflection as enormous as the size of the Universe is about to begin when gossipy concerning Irimiás' return to town, a man everybody thought dead, is propagated. His brilliant manipulation and calm voice and attitude are the main personality characteristics that alarm all of the residents since the suspicion of him getting away with all the money through a giant scheme becomes an idea that start to haunt both their heads and their consciousness. The main purpose of Irimiás may even go beyond controlling the community with a supposedly convenient, financial plan. The only award this miscomprehended giant won is a Caligari Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Sometime in the future, perhaps some decades from now, it will finally receive the recognition it deserves. Genius directors are never properly recognized until its effect is proved to have remained through the decades. Nowadays, we have one genius on our hands going severely unnoticed. His name is Béla Tarr, and he is a poet.

Sátántangó provides the ultimate, definitive cinema experience. There is almost no other experience that can surpass the epic magnitude and colossal amazement Sátántangó does without being pretentious, slow, and tedious and without Béla Tarr fancying himself. He may not even fully recognize the brilliance and striking poetry that govern his mind just like Jodorowsky had no idea if his films were particularly good or not. He is an expressionist and arguably the most faithful portrayal of the time relativity of life and of the human condition. Tarr congregates the thoughts and the emotions that some people, those people who are capable of processing and creating thoughts during every single second of consciousness regardless of the specific action they are performing at the moment, own while personally thinking that nobody can see the world nor understand their mentality. That mental attitude is completely truthful. Federico Fellini understood it. He urged the world to see life like he did. Consequently, considering the aforementioned aspects, what is the most accessible and complete art that could fully express their vision? The language of cinema is the means they resorted to, including other outstanding, timeless directors, and tried to translate it through images. Tarr used images, Fellini combined images with dialogue, Tarkovsky mixed stillness with poetry and philosophy, Buñuel mostly offered surrealism for symbolisms to be interpreted and contrasted with real life. Moreover, Tarr achieved to make the audience look at life itself without even reportedly confirming such aim.

These thoughts, ways of thinking and spiritual, even soulless sensations are the ones that compose the premise of Sátántangó. It is, obviously, a very possible consequence to be amazingly hypnotized by its visual style rather than to be convinced to pay attention to the plot. The director, voluntarily or not, homages the styles that cinema had given birth to for a hundred years, considering it was filmed in a period of four years (1990-1994). Each hour of the film coverts us to one more resident, a resident that is offered the opportunity to live the rural lives held by the habitants and to witness it from different points of view. That nostalgic and typically felt sensation of wanting to be in several places at the same time is one of the divine opportunities that Béla Tarr has the mercy of offering to the viewer. It is not precisely treated as stories that intertwine, but that there is a superior force that acts with the sole, predestined intention to gather either self-centered or confused souls and make them live the exact same situation. The psychological background suddenly disappears with its importance dimming slowly. It is the aftermath that matters. It is how, each one of the characters, intentionally trying to mirror the persons that form the base of the cinematic audience, to feel empathetic, thus causing a devastating and even frightening cathartic feeling. Alcoholism, solitude, atheism, greed and arrogance bring devastating results to the perspective characters that suit one of these human defects. It is inevitable: life is life.

The attention to detail is not exaggerated. The cinematography by Gábor Medvigy may be one of the most spellbinding in the entire history of cinema!!! The technique of following a character for several big lengths is a technique that was directly influenced by Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos and Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. However, Tarkovsky emphasized the stillness of a well-balanced take, and Angelopoulos was more mobile. Either partially (Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, Kenneth Brannagh and dozens others) or totally (Gus Van Sant), Sátántangó is an influential piece of filmmaking from wherever it may be seen. It diminishes the physical size of the human race and ennobles the spiritual qualities that distinguish it from above any other animal species. Have you ever wondered or even wanted to know what if feels like to stand still in the middle of the rain and looking towards the sky without the concern of being sick? Have you ever wished to know what it feels like to be the last one to leave a party that ends until the latest hours of the night? Have you ever been awed by the skill and delicacy implied in the work of a spider? The spider seems to be floating in the air, suspended by an invisible force. Yet, it is a thread so thing that it sometimes can't be seen, but it is strong enough to support its weight. Have you ever loved the visible and graphical chain reactions caused by a series of events? Have you ever stared at an amazing spectacle of nature, such as a waterfall, a flower waking up in the morning, a snake eating a rat, a seagull hunting a fish, or a mystical display of fog landing on the earth? Have you ever experienced a déjà-vu, or being internally struck by an epiphany of dramatic proportions? Those tiny little details of life, seen through the right, trained, experienced, artistic and harmonious eyes are depicted in the exact same way. A master's lens is converted into a replica of reality despite the black-and-white use, a fact that strictly convinces the viewer that the film is a colossal homage to classic films. However, these small, tiny details that praise the five senses God gave to us in his infinite wisdom are not the only ones that are glorified. Vast landscapes, the beauty of walking a straight road surrounded by fields in a balanced way with a complete view of the sky, the art that a symmetrical construction seen from the right angles involves, among other aspects that form part of the roads we daily drive through and walk on are present. The second chapter of the film titled "Raising from the Dead" has one of the most spellbinding, harmonious and beautifully realistic, suburban shots ever put to the big screen. Even so, several sequences throughout seven-and-a-half-hours are easily included into a list of the most staggering and creative, not to mention poignant sequences in the history of the motion picture.

The human condition and empowerment ultimately destroy the characters. The lack of control and independence over other people or beings is symbolized in a sequence where a charming little girl tortures a cat in physical and psychological forms. The final destiny the cat faces is the same one the girl decides to face. However, she takes the necessary bravery from witnessing the act and suffering that it would probably involved through making an "inferior being" to suffer the exact same fate before she does. The psychological reasons behind her motivations may me originated from destroyed illusions, lack of attention and constant deceptions. It may be a clear outcome because of how degraded the town already is. Usually, kids are symbolisms of the original innocence the human race originally possesses before being perverted by the surrounding society, perhaps the most important element that drove to the conclusion of another future Béla Tarr film, Werckmeister Harmóniák (2000). Every single character has an epiphany, including Irimiás, and the sequence showing the aforementioned girl is the key hour of the film that suggests the doom of the village. The final sequence of the Doctor having a religious epiphany is the most memorable, surreal and discussed scene of the entire film for the majority of the audience that witnessed the spectacle of Sátántangó. The title of the film is clearly illustrated in a long, extraordinarily built and shot sequence where the villagers are desperately expecting for the unexpected arrival of Irimiás while everybody dance in a considerably drunk state. They are in the "nipples of Satan". To what extent can a remote Hungarian village become a modern Sodom? They require the aid of God, the One and Only. The wisdom and physical resemblance of Irimiás with Jesus Christ is an element that we may be able to throw into the analysis of the film. Even the chronological order of the events is relative. Subjectivity of all arts is present in the film, establishing itself as another art form.

Sátántangó surpasses itself. Is that possible? Can a film surpass itself? That is a direct contradiction! This last statement I made may leave you as perplex as the overall experience of the film. Béla Tarr has reached a pinnacle within the most recent and financially successful art. It can reach such indescribable levels of grandiosity and epic measures that the human eye will even feel destroyed. It is one of those films that are mentioned when coming to a general, impossible discussion of what the best movie ever made may be. This is the best film ever made. You can finally stop the search now; the day has come. In fact, it came two decades ago, but the world wasn't ready to understand it and witness it. It surpasses all expectations, it surpasses the best masterpieces of the greatest directors that could ever have grabbed a camera, and it beats the saintliness of films by Dreyer, Bresson and Tarkovsky, the poetry by Antonioni and Resnais, the human testaments of Bergman, Fellini and Rossellini, the artistic beauty of Kobayashi and Mizoguchi, the literary talent of Truffaut, Godard and Kurosawa. Tarr is a god of cinema and Irimiás is his Jesus who everybody thought was dead, but has come back for our redemption and even having the mercy for letting us have a new beginning. If we deny Him, the eerie music plays its role, ending in the same way the ending scene closes: with darkness... eternal darkness... We should stop creating and imagining the sound of bells, because God is the owner of all. Perdition and an eternal wait for something that will never come are not the best way. They will never become the answers to the prayers we never did.

100/100

"I made up my mind. There is no God. I do not believe in a God, all right? All these rules, everything... they're made up by man, you know?"

Deliver Us From Evil (2006)

Director: Amy Berg
Country: United States of America
Genre: Documentary / Crime
Length: 101 minutes



Deliver Us From Evil is a documentary that portrays the story of a Catholic priest named Oliver O'Grady who was relocated to several parishes by the Catholic Church in an attempt to cover up his rape of dozens of children in the United States during the 70's. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, Features, unfairly losing against An Inconvenient Truth (2006). However, justice will be served someday...

It's a literally impossible task to watch and subsequently review a documentary without letting one's personal feelings to be either totally or partially involved. This documentary does not provide mere entertaining. It essentially looks for a reaction from the audience, regardless of their religion or their atheistic beliefs. However, Amy Berg's approach to both the attrocities committed by O'Grady through the blasphemous actions of the Catholic Church leaves several things clear, facts that I will list through the following paragraphs.

First of all, Berg's treatment of the subject matter does not support the scandalous acts of Father O'Grady nor tries to relate it to the Catholic religion. I, as a very strong Catholic and believer of God and what He represents, am repulsed by the human organization the Catholic religion has been subject to. This is a very brief and modest glimpse of the reality behind the Catholic Church. Ultimately, a very obvious consequence is to blame God and Catholicism for the actions of men. After all, knowing whom to put the blame is rather easy; besides, that's not the primary point. What really matters are the motives and the promotors behind the events. Call them excuses, call them reasons, call them "inevitable precursors", but Deliver Us From Evil congregates audiences for recognizing one single moral and overall perspective: this man is a disguised demon, and the Church is its monstrous mother.

Another endless topic irremediably arises: if God exists, couldn't he prevent this from happening? Explaining the reasons of why God exists and why he could actually prevented this from happening to an atheist is like asking a snail to run. There's an interesting, yet pointless discussion board on IMDB regarding the same question. The first thing the user stated is "and don't tell me he gave us free will". To say such an idiotic thing is to hear what you want to hear and to be afraid of the fact that a person does NOT control his/her own life, but God does. To lack such control leads to the person's psychology to be utterly frustrated and lost in perdition. The truth is we are not the judge of the world and we do not have the capacity to decide what things should happen and what events should be prevented. There are bigger reasons seen by God in this matter that we, as humans, cannot see. Consequently, everything carries a pattern of chain reaction. Are you asking for one proof? This documentary proves it and has been nearly successfully distributed to the masses, and people are reviewing it, myself included.

Another fact is that the courage of the people is a remarkable thing to enlighten. An unstoppable consequence is the human's easily corruptible religion, in this case, the Faith in God. However, it makes you wonder why the relatives of the victims agreed to dictate their testimony and why the church refused to give an interview. It's almost insulting the noticeable way the people featured in the archive footage of this documentary is not even expert at lying! If you feel like laughing at those sequences, do NOT feel ashamed. It is the human hipocrisy and their lame attempts to cover the truth what is so ashaming... so ashaming it makes you laugh.

The final result is an eye-opener documentary masterpiece. To bring to the big screen such controversial thematic material is a rather difficult job, not to mention audacious. If this is not available in your country, try abroad. It is a story that needs to be told and disseminated. Do not let totalitarian control influence what you see, cancel censorship, accept the fact that the world is the most insane and insecure place to live in. Man has rotten it. Twisted f#cks walk freely through the streets like if nothing had happened. Share this documentary; it's a filmmaking piece worth of some hours of analysis and discussion.

94/100

In Bruges had a drastically different atmosphere overall and even the fans of the genre could not perceive it. Those who could are complaining about the whole film except for Farrell's exceptional performance and the climax. The city of Belgium is used as an environmentally gothic background for unleashing a sensational brief dose of dark humor, a not-so-common screenplay and a powerful punch in the stomach right in the moment when we least expect it. It is different and somewhat audacious; the pace was perfect and the movie itself makes a spoof about the gangster honor code!

74/100