Persona

Bergman's strange psychological headscratcher fits in well with the 60's European trend of loopy existential pictures of Roman Polanski, Antonioni and later David Lynch and even late career of Stanley Kubrick (who famously wrote a fan letter to Bergman in 1960 calling him the greatest filmmaker of the day).

Autumn Sonata

Anchored by the best performance ever by the Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman, and matched by an equally mesmerizing Liv Ullman, Ingmar Bergman presents to us a visceral unforgettable two–hander of a mother and daughter hashing out latent conflicts with devastating emotional power.

Summer With Monika

Perhaps the most influential film of Bergman’s early work, the one often cited as launching his international career, and certainly one of Woody Allen’s favourite films from the director he famously idolizes. The liberal and frank attitudes toward sex, nudity and its association with violence gained some notoriety in the day, but it's the enthralling dramatic arc of its rebellious lovers-on-the-run characters that resonates so strongly with today’s eyes.

Summer with Monika (1953) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Harriet Andersson, Lars Ekborg

By Alan Bacchus

Like Bergman’s previous Summer Interlude, we’re back in the Swedish archipelago summer vacation spot charting the course of a romantic adventure, which starts out as freewheeling love but devolves when reality crushes their naive dreams of romantic grandeur. While this is Swedish bleakness at its best, it's not the art house alienating kind like much of his mid- and late-career works.

Bergman begins with one of the quickest courtships in cinema history. Harry and Monika are underachieving teenagers, working dead-end jobs with no career prospects. They happen to sit near each other at a local café. It takes no longer than a minute of conversation before Monika asks Harry to run away with him. Monika is escaping her drunken father, who beats her at night, and the sexist ogling of her chauvinist male co-workers. As for Harry, he has a feeling of not fitting in, being ridiculed for dating the town 'slut' and an overall emasculation from his peers. This kind of teenager trauma bonds the two causing them to run away like Bonnie and Clyde.

It’s the start of a long emotional and adventurous journey, which takes them to the Swedish countryside, living an idealistic life off the grid and away from the evils of society. We see Monika and Harry frolicking in the nude, making love whenever they want and living a free life. Eventually, food runs out causing Monika to steal some at a rib roast – a wonderful scene not unlike Jean Valjean stealing his loaf of bread. Bergman has Monika stealing the meat from another vacationing family and running off into the woods eating it like a rabid starving animal. This scene dramatically begins the downfall of the couple. And when Monika gets pregnant they’re forced to move back to the city and assimilate back into the world they so greatly rebelled against.

There’s a strong influence on Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Days of Heaven in this film. They share the lovers-on-the-run theme for sure, but also the dreamy romantic idealistic view of life with a strong emphasis on nature, landscape and an untainted environment.

The flashes of nudity, tongue-kissing and frank references to sex are impossible to ignore. It helped make the film and Bergman a cause-celebre in the day. The film might also have some notoriety for having one of the worst fight scenes ever. It's the culmination of a territorial battle with a neighbouring camper. After catching his rival trashing Harry's boat, the two engage in a ridiculous slapping fight, which looks more like two dolphins flippering each other than violent fisticuffs.

Bergman take his characters to task in the third act by bringing them back to the city, which wonderfully bookends the opening act. New conflicts arise as they try to keep their new family together. Monika's dilemma is visualized with an amazing shot that breaks the fourth wall (a great Bergman moment). The scene involves Monika in a conversation with Harry in a cafe, at the end of which she turns toward the camera and stares right into it. It's not so much a gaze into the audience, but rather the effect of watching Monika looking into a mirror at herself as she contemplates her new life as a mother and adult. It's a shot nothing short of greatness and the mark of a new cinema master.

****

Summer With Monika is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Summer Interlude

Wow, just when I thought I knew Ingmar Bergman, the master of Swedish cinema known for often impenetrable art house elegies on life and death, the rediscovery of 'Summer Interlude', an early masterwork from 1951, shows us a youthful energy and remarkably taut pacing not present in his more formal and refined works. The story of a professional ballerina looking back on a romantic summer has the brooding rigorousness of 'Black Swan' and the melodramatic pulpy brilliance of 'Mildred Pierce'.

Summer Interlude (1951) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellin, Georg Funkquist

Tragic and beguiling, Summer Interlude is definitely Swedish and all Bergman. Yet his remarkably accessible storytelling methods could have easily been mistaken for a populist Hollywood production.

In the present, Maria (Maj-Britt Nilsson) is a famous ballerina rehearsing for Swan Lake, exhausted from the rigors of the play and the backbreaking demands of her director. When she receives a mysterious package containing on old diary, she's brought back to one of the few moments in her life when work didn't dominate, a brief 'interlude' of pure unbridled passion, a romantic free spirit broken by a sudden tragic ending.

Summer Interlude fits in with a number of Bergman films from the '50s, including Summer With Monika and Wild Strawberries, which use the Swedish summer vacation as their backdrop. It's not an arbitrary period either as, unlike North American society, summer vacation in Sweden means a two-month break during which citizens free themselves from the shackles of everyday life for the pastoral serenity of the country.

Maria's vacation takes place in a stunning rocky archipelago, and while frolicking in her bikini she meets her romantic partner, Henrik, an idealistic student entranced by Maria's gracefulness and beauty. Their time together is blissful until Maria's devotion to her dance interrupts their impenetrable bond. Bergman intercuts Maria's solemn recollections strolling through the people and places of her past with these dreamy flashbacks of romance. It's a devious narrative arc, taking us from the highs of summer passion to gradually disintegrating their relationship when they eventually come to terms with the fact that their careers will prevent them from going any further than a summer tryst to a tragic conclusion that continues to haunt Maria in the present.

These emotional layers are masterfully controlled by Bergman. If you ever had preconceptions of him as a solemn filmmaker with a methodical style just watch the energy of his mise-en-scene - his compositions and camera movement and the choreography of his actors within the frame. The present day sequences in the ballet are choreographed with remarkable energy. His camerawork is fresh and as lively as the Hollywood studio master of this style, Michael Curtiz (Casablanca). Of course, Bergman was famously influenced by his family's career in the theatre, and so his visualization of this world is strong and dynamic.

With the use of Swan Lake and the attention paid to the half-dozen dance sequences, the intensity of which contrasts with the serenity of Maria's summer interlude, I can't help but be reminded of Darren Aronofsky's use of the same material in Black Swan.

Other stylistic flourishes which draw attention to Bergman as director and auteur include the use of long dissolves moving us elegantly between time frames, but in a way that's more than functional, bringing us into the introspective regret of the lead character. There's even a headscratching animated sequence, hand drawn stick figures that come to life on a record listened to by Henrik and Maria.

The emotional journey and the pulpy and passionate treatment of this kind of tragic love story at best showcases Bergman's tremendous cinematic arsenal and power over the medium, even at a young age. He's a true cinema master who can beguile us with intellectual dissertations such as The Seventh Seal and Persona but also titillate us with romance and Hitchcockian mystery like Summer Interlude.

****

Summer Interlude is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2010) dir. Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, Lena Endre, Peter Haber

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Since the discussion of the first Tattoo movie in relationship to the new film comes up all the time for me, why not repost my original review of the Niels Arden Oplev version. For the Fincher version, click HERE.

The success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy books is widely known – a European phenomenon, which over this past year has finally broken in North America. All three films based on the three books, including The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, have already been shot, completed and released abroad to mega box office success. So, for once, North America has been left as the ‘last to know’ about these stories.

Not much has been made of the success of its North American theatrical release yet, but it’s an achievement. Considering the ‘in and out and get to the DVD release’ pattern of most films these days, its 13 weeks in release in a modest number of theatres is remarkable. Though it's only garnered a modest $7.3 million dollar take, the distributors and exhibiters seemed to have hit the sweet spot of its release – just enough theatres for it to maintain a solid word of mouth momentum and profitability, and a precedent for how smaller films can have lasting power in the cinema.

As for the movie, it’s just as remarkable. It’s a thrilling slice of Euro-pulp and a heavily plotted investigative, serial killer, feminist melodrama. Slick production value, salacious subject matter and an instantly iconic performance by Noomi Rapace make this the guilty pleasure of the year – a truly epic and inspired piece of airport trash.

Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a shamed investigative political journalist who has found himself sentenced to prison for apparently slandering a prominent politician publicly in his latest article. At his worst moment he receives a call from an even more prominent Swedish businessman, Henrik Vanger, who wants to hire Mikael to investigate the murder of his niece from 1966. With six months of freedom before having to serve his sentence and without a job, Mikael accepts the offer and soon becomes embroiled in a complex and sordid 40-year-old trail of family squabbles, neo-Nazism tendencies, gruesome sexual fetishes and grisly murder.

Meanwhile, a young 24-year-old tattooed and pierced goth chick, Lisbeth Salander (Noomie Rapace), the anti-social yet brilliant investigator who hacked into Blomkqvist’s computer on behalf of Vanger, is on her own path of adventure. Out of the blue she’s been told her guardianship (she's still being recognized as a youth) has been transferred to an especially slimy attorney. He turns out to be a masochist who subjects Lisbeth to humiliating sexual torture. That is, until she turns the tables and exacts some sweet revenge against him. After this escapade she joins up with Blomkvist to help solve the 40-year-old cold case.

This rather quick synopsis only scratches the surface of hair-raising peculiarities that make up this narrative. Particularly gruesome is the lengthy build-up to Lisbeth’s history. We don’t know much about her, but her physical appearance suggests a rebellious attitude and a hardened emotional exterior due to some trauma in the past. When the despicable court-appointed guardian enters her life her character is taken to the extreme. The actions of the guardian don’t make much sense logically, but it reinforces with severity Larsson’s pervasive theme of misogyny. The film successfully teases us with flashbacks to Lisbeth as a child and the death of her father via a lit match and some gasoline – a history we just might see fleshed out in The Girl Who Played With Fire.

As a serial killer genre film, director Oplev hits all the right buttons stylistically to entrap us in the complex web of evidence, back story, politics and the delightfully bad deeds of his killer. There’s a lot of procedural information thrown at us, but it’s expertly revealed like peeling the layers of an onion to provide maximum tension. If anything, the final reveals don’t quite elevate its shock value to anything higher than what we saw happen to Lisbeth at the beginning. And the rather sappy reunion that happens in the denouement is a tad too soft for this otherwise darkly cynical film.

Unfortunately, looking ahead to the other films, it appears the director Niels Arden Oplev directed only the first film and another director helmed the last two. In a few months we’ll see if the other two meet the expectations satisfied by Tattoo.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Alliance Films in Canada.

Fanny and Alexander

Fanny and Alexander (1982) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Börje Ahlstedt

****

By Alan Bacchus

Oh, me of little faith. About an hour into this film I embarrassingly posted a Facebook message sarcastically asking when this film was going to get ‘good’. I humbly apologized publicly having been completely blown away by this picture from the moment I posted that note until the end of the film.

It’s the celebrated ‘final’ film of Bergman’s, although he would write screenplays and direct some notable television mini-series afterwards. This was the intention of the great Swedish master of cinema, to create an opus maximus of a very personal nature, essentially the story of his youth, his life in a theatrical family and the deep penetrating effect of Catholicism on his outlook on life. It ended up as a five-hour film released in its full length on Swedish television but a mere three hours in theatres.

While Bergman’s films have been marked by methodical and arguably slow exercises in emotional rigor, which is often unfriendly to lay audiences, Fanny and Alexander is a wholly accessible, truly haunting journey for its two main characters, Fanny and Alexander.

We meet them both as young impressionable children of a stage family, the Ekdahls. The opening act, an hour-long Christmas party during which we see the hedonistic extremes of the more drunken and libidinous family members, establishes their whimsy, flighty lifestyle. If anything the scene reminds us of Coppola’s wedding scene in The Godfather, another story about family set up with a similar scene of domestic reverie. But this is the first hour, which had me squirming in my seat. Without any forward movement in the narrative, the carefree decadence of the family felt indulgent and superfluous. But it’s all part of Bergman’s grand plan, setting up the eventual trough of despair experienced by the kids and their eventual triumphant resurrection by the end.

The shoe drops hard when Fanny’s and Alexander’s father dies during a performance. The anguish of the loss is depicted by Bergman in one magnificently shot scene from Alexander's eyes through the crack of a door. The scene shows his mother and grandmother grieving inconsolably – a point of view that typifies the filter on life and family in which Bergman frames his story. It also showcases his remarkable eye for composition, which remains as precise and controlled throughout all three hours of the film.

It doesn’t take long for the mother, Emilie, to move on when she announces her intention to remarry the local bishop, a hasty decision that doesn’t sit well with the family, but a decision to which she is completely devoted. Once in the care of the clergy, the kids find a most barbarous and cruel household, one in which they are commanded to leave all possessions behind in order to start anew and fresh like newly birthed infants. Things turn from bad to worse when Alexander stubbornly resists the Bishop’s authority thus infuriating the authority figure and creating an even deeper power struggle. Heinous acts of corporal punishment, such as caning and prison-like isolation, drive the kids and Emilie mad until the Ekdahls execute a glorious set-up and escape plan.

Knowing Bergman’s previous work, we have to expect the worse for these children, a brainwashing of sorts in the most cynical manner. Yet the finale, including the Bishop’s comeuppance, is so genuinely heartwarming and triumphant it could have been written in Hollywood.

Bergman’s infusion of fantastical elements, such as the Shakespearean-worthy ghostly haunting of Alexander and the ambiguous magical touches of the theatre troupe, set us in the world of magic realism. It also allows Bergman to craft a few moments of truly terrifying suspense. The most affecting comes at the end, in one of the most haunting shots in the history of cinema (yes!). After fully escaping the clutches of the maniacal Bishop, presumably safe and sound in the company of the theatre, Alexander's life would appear to be back to normal. But the return of the Bishop’s ghost, who pushes him to the ground announcing his ominous return, is truly haunting. This moment had me gasping with earth-shattering shock, an effect rare for me these days and a moment that reminded me of my reaction to, say, the rising corpse in the bathtub at the end of Diabolique. It’s that affecting.

Bergman’s masterful control of tone and imagery is evident, as are his artful cinematic tools, which in this picture come together arguably more cohesively than any of his previous films.

Fanny and Alexander is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

My Life as a Dog

My Life as a Dog (1988) dir. Lasse Halstrom
Starring: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Kicki Rundgren

***½

By Alan Bacchus

This tender coming of age film represents the highwater mark for stories about children but made for adults. It also served to introduced Hollywood to Lasse Hallstrom and for good and bad give birth to a career of mature yet schmaltzy youth-oriented melodramas (Cider House Rules, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). If you describe a movie as Lasse Hallstrom-like we all know what that means.

But aside from an early career directing ABBA videos, his feature career began in Sweden with this picture. Ingmaer is a typical 12 year old living in working class Swedish family doing everything he can to get in trouble. But with his mother slowly dying from TB, he’s sent to his Uncle’s house in the country to live for the summer. Naturally it’s devastating, not only leaving his mother, brother and his friends, but the countryside, a seemingly dull uneventful place devoid of excitement.

Once there Ingmar is ingratiated with a number of eccentric small town characters. The most endearing relationship is formed with the local bully Saga, but who eventually reveals to be a girl pretending to be a boy so she can box with other boys for sport.

Rather than a narrative of cause and effect scenes, the events in Ingmar life occurs like fractured memories of someone looking back on history with nostalgic reflection. This is the strength of the film, the ability of Hallstrom to truly convey the complexities of youth with the filter of adulthood. Hallstrom delicately moves us through broad silliness to strong emotional drama without ever making us feel manipulated or jerked around.

Connecting Ingmaer's outlook on these events is his dreamy voiceover which relates his trauma with that of the poor dog Laika who who sent into space by the Russians in 1957. The metaphor of Laika leaving home against his will is sharp. Ingmar compares the cruelty of allowing Laika to literally starve to death over course of her journey in space to his own banishment. The extremity of this comparison is comical but relatable from a child’s point of view.

The warm earth-tones of Jörgen Persson’s cinematography and Lasse Westfelt’s production design rounds out the wistful and poignant reflections of youth. My Life as a Dog rightfully sits next to comparable masterpieces as The 400 Blows and Mon Oncle Antoine.

My Life as a Dog is available on Blu-Ray from The Criterion Collection

Smiles of a Summer Night

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Eva Dahlbeck, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ulla Jacobson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Harriet Andersson, Margit Cariqvist

****

By Greg Klymkiw

“A romantic comedy by Ingmar Bergman”

So proclaim the opening titles announcing the great artist’s authorship of the magnificent movie, Smiles of a Summer Night. For those who know the Master for his trilogy of despair and agnosticism (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) or his wrenching portrayal of cancer amidst the most harrowing of sibling rivalries in screen history (Cries and Whispers) or the strange autobiography-dolloped, borderline Grand Guignol Grimm-like fairytale and Strindbergian domestic drama Fanny and Alexander, et al, the notion of a romantic comedy by Ingmar Bergman might well strike some as an oxymoron.

It makes perfect sense, though. Bergman’s picture might not seem like the bauble usually associated with the genre of romantic comedy, but it blends all the requisite tropes of the form and does so with a haunting melancholy that places it squarely at the top of the heap. While an early work from Bergman, it displays the assuredness, skill, artistry, sensitivity and poetry of a Master. It is a true delight that is as funny, frothy and entertaining as it is deeply and profoundly moving. In fact, my recent screenings of the picture on the delicious new Criterion Collection Blu-ray release might force my hand to elevate the movie to my personal Bergman favourite.

First and foremost, it presents Bergman’s unflagging talent for creating complex and compelling characters of the female persuasion. His touch for this rivalled, if not exceeded that of such distinguished fellows as Carl Dreyer (Passion of Joan of Arc) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story). Against the backdrop of early 20th century Sweden, a man’s world – as it were – we see a delightful tale unfold in which the women have the clear upper hand in their brilliant manipulations of all the dull-witted gentlemen, especially in matters of the heart (and, if truth be told, mind).

Bergman serves up a delicious stew of characters – all involved in various infidelities, yet looking for the one true love to infuse their lives with exclusive devotion. Fredrik Egerman (a shockingly funny Gunnar Bjornstrand) is a dull, middle aged, meticulously manicured lawyer who is married to the pert, nineteen-year-old sex kitten Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). He seems to have it all – except his new near-child bride who is still a virgin. The marriage has not been consummated due to Anne requiring some easing-in time. Fredrik waits ever-so patiently to dip his needy Nordic wick into his comely wifelet's burgeoning fleur de volets humide de la viande.

Complicating matters is the presence of his dour son Henrik (Bjorn Bjelvenstam), fresh from the seminary and on the verge of taking his oath of chastity. Henrik is constantly the target of the household’s sexy maid Petra (Harriet Andersson) who seeks to corrupt his aching appendage. At the same time, the son who clings to his virtue is madly in love with his Dad’s young bride. Henrik is torn between carnal lust, true love and devotion to God. Dad, of course, can see the attraction between his son and wife and knows he must act fast to make Anne all his before Sonny Jim manages to slide in his Swedish schwance and burst the hymen he longs to perforate.

Fredrik enlists the services of his former lover, the staggeringly gorgeous and popular stage actress Desiree Armfelt (the uber-radiant Eva Dahlbeck) to assist him with deflowering his bride. Desiree has always had a soft spot for Fredrik and agrees to take the mission, but is armed with a secret plan to get back her beloved Fredrik.

To further complicate matters, Desiree is having an ongoing dalliance with the married military man Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Jari Kulle). Malcolm’s wife Charlotte (Margit Carlqvist) is aware of her hubby’s infidelities – even engaging in open discussions with him about them. She wants her incorrigible hubby exclusively to herself and teams up with Desiree to make this a reality. Two scorned women are a veritable army of love.

The rest of the comedy takes place on the estate of Desiree’s mother Mrs. Armfeldt (Naima Wilfstrand) who agrees to set the stage for a magnificent coup de l’amour. Fredrik, his wife and son, Carl-Magnus and Charlotte and even the Egerman housemistress Petra are all invited for a weekend frolic on the grounds of the majestic sun-dappled Armfeldt manor in the country.

Here, the magic of love must, during a summer night, work overtime to bring the right combinations together. According to the Armfeldt groom Frid (Ake Fridell), the summer night is endowed with three smiles. The first is when young lovers open their hearts and loins – this, is when true love occurs. The second smile is reserved for jesters and fools – when love strikes those unable to truly experience love – where the mask of seeming mirth and/or ignorance provides a solace that is fleeting, ephemeral and ultimately intangible. As the dawn begins to peek from the out of the horizon, the final smile of night is reserved for the rest – the sad and dejected, the sleepless, the lost souls, the frightened and the lonely.

This is the love that the majority of humanity must settle for.

And this is the Bergman we’ve come to know and love – a man who investigates humanity with an eye of unwavering truth, melancholy and raw emotion.

Smiles of a Summer Night is an astonishingly universal work and has as much relevance to the present, and no doubt the future, as it did upon first release. It wasn’t the first romantic comedy Bergman made – he’d dabbled in it a few times prior to 1955, but those works, while modestly entertaining, are slight in terms of their ambition and I suspect work less successfully because of their contemporary settings.

The turn of the 19th to 20th century seems an ideal context to present a tale for all times. I will always recall Norman Jewison discussing his use of the diaphanous, near Ancient-Roman costuming of the female characters in Rollerball in order to present his sci-fi future in a futuristic world that would not seem dated. And Damn, Uncle Norman succeeded in spite of the male characters’ 70s sideburns – because of this introduction of elements of the past. The past makes all that is old new again.

There, I’ve finally done it. I’ve mentioned Rollerball in a review of an Ingmar Bergman movie. But bear with me – it makes sense. I’ve often found that rooting about in the past (or elements of it) allowed for an excellent looking glass into our own time and, by extension, the future. With Smiles of a Summer Night, Bergman’s use of an earlier age is what contributes to his ability to oddly contemporize, if not outright universalize this comic tale of love, infidelity and the power of female sexuality.

It is, of course, the wits and wiles of Woman that Bergman places his faith and trust. It is Desiree who notes that men “never know what’s best for them” and how women must “set them on the right track”. What, however, is the right track? Since pure, unbridled love – according to Bergman – can only be celebrated by the very few, then it stands to reason that the rest are the deluded, the pawns of the summer night and the smiles of Heaven, or, if you will, fate. This is what has the final word over all who populate the Earth – that power which can never truly be wrested away from the force of nature itself.

Bergman is, however, a formidable force of nature, of art, of the magic of cinema. His deft handling of this gorgeous, moving and funny romantic comedy is exquisite. Often, Bergman will settle his camera on a lovely eye-level medium composition – one that rivals and ultimately bests Howard Hawks, the master of 20th century romantic comedy himself.

A sequence that is perhaps the single greatest example of the genre in terms of writing and staging involves Fredrik, Desiree and Carl-Magnus – wherein our unlikely romantic hero, the dullard man of law declares, “A gentleman doesn’t face his rival deprived of his trousers.” Here, Bergman presents a long series of magnificent frames with very few cuts and where the actors deliver rapid-fire verbal exchanges within a fixed point of perspective. Upon the unexpected arrival of Carl-Magnus who has a mere 20-hour leave from military duty (6 hours for travel to and from, 9 hours with his mistress and 5 hours with his wife), a terrified Fredrik opines to Desiree: “Perhaps I could hide.” Her response: “We are not on a stage, dearest Fredrik.” In reality, it is not a stage of the theatre, but it is certainly a stage of life wrought by the Master that is Ingmar Bergman.

Fredrik sums it all up: “But this is still a damned farce”.

And so it is – a farce a la Bergman.

The sequence features several lengthy two-handers and three-handers – often lasting a full two minutes or longer where there are no cuts. In spite of this, the screen is awash in action and movement – pure cinematic expression.

Not only is Smiles of a Summer Night a perfect example of Bergman’s mastery of cinematic language from the perspective of camera but also his screenplay is complete and utter perfection as he juggles and finally fits together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is love. A great sequence involves our near-child bride Anne as she restlessly moves from room to room in Fredrik’s home – desperately searching for something to do and meeting both resistance and failure to make something, anything out of her daily existence until finally, sadly and with profound humanity, she settles in a room with her beloved budgies – beautiful, delicate, twittering creatures that, under her gaze, continue to live and breathe inside a cage. What might have been heavy handed symbolism in the hands of virtually every screenwriter or director is rendered fresh and moving in the hands, pen and eyes of Bergman.

Smiles of a Summer Night might well be the greatest of all romantic comedies – a pinnacle ascended at the half-century mark of cinema’s history and one that has never and will likely never be reached again.

At the halfway point of this truly majestic work, Desiree’s mother, invalided in her bed, but replete with all the experience that life has offered and that she has taken willingly, openly and greedily, looks to her daughter from a heartbreakingly, breathtakingly gorgeous long shot and says – to both her daughter’s POV and, by extension to us and the world:

“I am tired of people, but it doesn’t stop me from loving them.”

Bergman has delivered perfection.

He has delivered love the way only the medium of cinema can.

He loves his characters, he loves humanity and he loves us.

This is what greatness is.

This is art.

Smiles of a Summer Night is available on Blu-ray via the Criterion Collection in a gorgeous high definition transfer with a fine selection of extra features.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010) dir. Daniel Alfredson
Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace and Lena Endre

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Instead of ramping up for a thrilling intense finale to the now-revered Millenium Trilogy the series fizzles out with barely a whimper. Daniel Alfredsson is back as director, a considerable step down in vision from Niels Arden Oplev’s stylishly cool The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Like the second film Alfredsson’s direction so annoyingly pedestrian it feels more like a television miniseries than a feature film.

But who knows, perhaps Dragon Tattoo went over budget and the producer’s felt they needed to keep the production at a minimum. After all, by then the American remake rights had been sold, they knew a far superior version would be made, with considerable higher budget and prestige. So what’s the point in spending an arm a leg on these second. With the fan base firmly established from the books and the first film, why not just coast on these successes crank out two more movies at minimal cost, rake in the money and wait for the royalties on the Fincher versions. In interviews Orplev has said the schedule constraints of the second and third movies was the deciding factor not to continue with the series, so between the lines this theory might have some truth.

Well for what it’s worth, Hornet’s Nest is better than The Girl Who Played With Fire.FThis story starts immediately after Fire and continues the story like one film split into two. With Lisbeth Salander in custody after attempting to kill her father, Michael Blomquist and the gang at Millenium Magazine scramble to gather evidence to help in the prosecution against her. We become privy to the secret government agency which brought her father Zalachenko over from Russia and arranged Salander’s incarceration in the mental hospital in her youth. All the details of Salander’s past come to light in adequate though uninspired fashion both in the trial and in the investigation leading up to it.

It’s mostly undramatic as there’s very little to reveal than we already knew or deduced. The only scene to take home is Blomquist’s fight with the Serbian assassins sent to kill him in the restaurant. If anything I couldn’t help imagine what Fincher will do with this scene. Same with the offish Ronald Niedermann, the half brother of Salander who is invisible to any pain. His final confrontation with Salander is a Ridley Scott -stytle cat and mouse chase in an abandoned factory, an action scene which could have been embellished with verve by a director with even a hint of panache.

So with the Swedish version complete, it’s time for the Americans to do it better. It’s a shame the Swedes gave up trying after such a valiant and successful first attempt.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Alliance Films in Canada.

TIFF 2010 - Easy Money

Easy Money (2010) dir. Daniel Espinoza
Starring:Joel Kinnaman, Matias Padin Varela, Dragomir Mrsic

***

By Alan Bacchus

Three well developed and sympathetic characters anchor Daniel Espinosa’s grand crime melodrama, Easy Money. Already a hit film film in Sweden, it arrives at TIFF, already with the Weinstein Company repping it in the US and Alliance Films in Canada.

Jorge is a Spanish-speaking immigrant recently escaped from prison and reunited with his pal and partner in crime. In conflict with Jorge is Mrado part of an Eastern European mob whom he has a beef with in the competitive underground cocaine syndicate. The only Swede of the bunch is JW, a ladder-climbing university student secretly working as a cabbie in order to afford the expensive suits and the other high class accoutrements it takes to get in with the rich kids he idolizes. When presented with an opportunity to make some really big money, JW finds himself caught in the cocaine drug war between Jorge and Mrado.

Espinoza’s treatment of crime is in the world of Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, or Animal Kingdom version of cinema, a world treated with realism and characters painted with various shades of grey. Heroes and villains aren’t so easy to define. Espinoza’s clever to subvert our expectations and shift around his heroes and villains, double back on his characters and reveal realistic motivations for everyone involved.

The common denominator of the three is the desperate need for survival and desire for security and success. For JW, its his need to escape the life of poverty from childhood, for Mrado, it’s his young daughter he find himself protecting, and Jorge, his sister and newborn niece which prompts him to re-evaluate his priorities.

Each of the fine actors playing the roles brings freshness and deep commitment and inhabitation of their characters. Dragomir Mrsic as Mrado gives the best performance, and his best scene is a touching car ride confession after he has just taken custody of his daughter where he reveals his abuse by his father which caused him to become the hardened criminal he is today.

The social realism visual effect is laid on thick, too thick perhaps. The handheld camerawork is a given in these types of stories now, but Espinoza shoots his character so tight, all the time, the film is essentially a series of close ups. As a result the director loses the power of this cinematic tool.

With everything a close up, the world too closed in for us visually, barely allowing us time to breathe. As a result Espinoza’s realism dies out towards the end, replaced by heightened melodrama. The double-crosses, betrayals, and bloody sacrifices of brotherhood of the third act take us into a less satisfactory sensationalized crime genre. Espinoza does leave us with one last fantastic scene before he cuts to black, a terrific bookend to the opening scene which completes JW’s dramatic arc in grand fashion.

TIFF 2010 - Behind Blue Skies

Behind Blue Skies (2010) dir. Hannes Holm
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Peter Dalle and Josefin Ljungman

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

What the world needs now, more than ever, are coming-of-age pictures wherein the mentor-figure is a drug dealer, thief and pimp. In this respect, Behind Blue Skies delivers in spades. This surprisingly sweet and thoroughly engaging item from Sweden, is a bit like a teenage My Life As A Dog, with dollops of American Pie and Goodfellas tossed into the mix for good measure.

This is a tremendously entertaining, funny, sexy, sly and even profoundly moving picture that stays with you well beyond its closing credits. There are a number of extremely good reasons for this.

First and foremost, helmer Hannes Holmes's screenplay is a real treat. Each time a plot turn felt like it was going into traditional territory, the proceedings took ever-so slight deviations - like delicious bon-bons tossed playfully into one's mouth just as it was opening to emit a yawn.

Secondly, Holmes's assured directorial hand provided a lot in the way of sumptuous visual treats in terms of the northern and southern juxtapositions of Sweden's topography in summertime - from the dull, grey beauty of endless cloudy skies in the protagonist's hometown to the brilliant blue of the heavens in what becomes his potential vacation paradise. This, of course, expertly provided perfectly appropriate backdrops to the character's life and state of mind within the context of the narrative.

Holmes's proficiency in terms of covering the action of his main story is also a definite bonus. His camera is seldom where it shouldn't be and yet, never feels by-the-numbers, nor by the same token, overtly showy. As well, his deft handling of the fine cast is equally winning.

Thirdly, the cast is magnificent! From the the delightful trio of leading players, through all the supporting character roles and finally, even to bit players and background extras, one seldom discovers a false note.

Set in the glorious 70s, the picture tells the tale of teenager Martin (the mind-numbingly gorgeous and engaging Bill Skarsgård) who lives amidst the chaos of an extremely lower middle class family. His father is severely afflicted with alcoholism. When rarely sober, he is loving and sweet, when under the influence, he's mean, bitter, irrational and abusive. Martin's mother is run ragged trying to keep the family together financially as she maintains a home care service in their cramped quarters.

When Martin is offered the opportunity to join a rich friend at a vacation resort where he'll be offered a terrific summer job, he jumps at the chance (with his mother's blessing) to get out of his stifling situation, but also earn money to help his family.

Once ensconced at the vacation hideaway, things aren't quite as idyllic as his rich friend suggests they will be. His pal abandons him for his affluent friends, he finds he's not staying in richie-rich's palatial family digs, but in the resort's squalid staff quarters (where he's forced to room with a head-banger drunk) and just when things look up (he actually enjoys his job and meets a beautiful young girl, deftly played by Josefin Ljungman, who likes him as much as he likes her), he commits an error in judgement and gets fired.

As luck would have it, his error in judgement as well as his willingness to own up to it, catch's the eye of the person who fires him, the resort's alternately jovial and cruel manager Gösta (a madly inspired naughty, moustachioed cherub in the form of Peter Dalle), who takes the lad under his wing and slowly introduces him to his secret world of criminal activity.

Money, adventure, danger and romance soon follow, but not without paying a price.

What I loved most about Holmes's film is the careful manner in which he compares and contrasts the lives of the "haves" and "have-nots" - especially in terms of what they both need to do in order to maintain a living. The "have-nots" do all the dirty work, but the "haves" are even dirtier - they just hide it a whole lot better.

This is something that will certainly strike a chord with movie-goers and I, for one, will be shocked if this film isn't eventually remade by Hollywood for the English-speaking marketplace.

Even if it is, I trust it will hardly be better than what Hannes Holmes has rendered - a fun and original entertainment!

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2010) dir. Daniel Alfredson
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Michalis Koutsogiannakis

**

By Alan Bacchus

The sad realization that the film version of The Girl Who Played With Fire was going to suck set in early. The previous and highly successful Dragon Tattoo film was a marvellously trashy serial killer thriller featuring a dense but understandable narrative, complete in its own right but with enough backstory to tease us that another entry in the story could be just as good.

But, for some reason the producer hired another director to shoot Fire, and even the final episode, The Girl Who Kicked in the Hornet’s Nest. As the opening scene trotted along it was clear there was a different directorial hand at work. Under the eyes and ears of Niels Arden Oplev, the first film had style to burn, a cold and emotionally detached formalism which kept the audience on edge. In Fire under the artistic hand of Daniel Alfredson, it’s a dull uninspired ‘television look, some handheld photography marred by inconsistent look opposite to Oplev’s streamlined visuals.

As for the story, we’re back in the shoes of goth hacker Lisbeth Salander, whose hair is longer and more businesslike. She’s still blackmailing that sicko pederast parole officer who raped her in the previous movie. But when he turns up dead, suddenly she’s framed for murder and on the run from the police. Poor Lisbeth also gets framed for the murder of a couple of young journalists doing a story on sex trafficking, to be published by none other than Millenium Magazine. Enter Dragon Tattoo’s hero Mykael Blomkvyst who endeavours to track Lisbeth down and help her clear her name.

The link-ups to the previous film and the expansion of the Salander backstory are welcome, but we don’t sufficiently learn anything new about Lisbeth the character that we didn’t infer from the first film. We knew she had daddy issues, as seen by the grisly flashbacks to her burning her father with some gasoline and a match.

There’s a bunch of news characters, the most peculiar of which is this film’s heavy, a robotic henchmen characterized as an indestructible robotic beast not all that dissimilar from Jaws from the Bond franchise. A number of fight scenes with this oaf go on way too long, in particular a lengthy hand to hand combat with a muy thai boxer, the most inexplicably long fight scene since Roddy Piper and Keith David wrestled over a pair of sunglasses in They Live.

Other than the staid direction, Fire suffers mostly from the staleness of the material. Salander, Blomkvist and the three decades long serial killer was exciting. In Fire, the sex trafficking linkup with Salander’s backstory finds Salander is not as fresh.

Knowing that this Alfredson guy directed the last episode, my hype factor of Hornet’s Nest is very very low.

Persona

Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand

****

By Alan Bacchus

I admit to not having seen many of Ingmar Bergman’s best works. I liked Seventh Seal, but didn’t care much for Cries and Whispers. Persona, on the other hand is a thrilling mind fuck of a film, comparable to works loopy works of David Lynch and Roman Polanski and certainly better than the overrated Antonioni films of the 60’s.

Persona feels very much a product of the 60’s, on a technical level Bergman crafts number of experimental sequences which, with today’s eyes feels more like a parody of obtuse art house experimentation. It’s a stretch to make sense out of the two psychedelic montages – the first which opens the film and the second at the midpoint –but it’s sheer audacity and ambitiousness is thrilling. The opening scene is 3-4mins cooky sequence featuring a cacophony of imagery and sound – at one point we even see an erect penis cut in there - which at first seems completely random but foreshadows the psychological state of the film's protagonist, Alma.

Then the film settles into a traditional narrative. Bibi Andersson plays Alma, a nurse assigned to provide care to an actress Elisabeth (Liv Ullman) who has suffered a mysterious ailment which has rendered her mute. After some therapy in a hospital Alma takes Elisabeth into the country for a peaceful retreat which might just help induce her out of her psychological funk.

Slowly the roles of patient and therapist reverse themselves. As Alma attempts to unlock Elisabeth’s soul she finds herself reveals intimate details of her own personal traumas. In one miraculous scene reminiscent of Nicole Kidman’s startling revelation to Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Alma confesses to Elisabeth an orgy which caused her to be pregnant and then have an abortion. As the ‘therapy’ progresses, Alma’s inability to crack Elisabeth’s drives her to madness.

Other than the Eyes Wide Shut comparison, there’s a lot of ‘late career’ Kubrick in Persona. Lars Johan Werle’s brooding atmospheric music creates a spooky tone like that of Kubrick’s The Shining. And even Bergman’s use of long tracking shot brings to mind Stanley's panache with the camera.

Persona is indeed a technical marvel. DOP Sven Nyvkist’s compositions are instantly recognizable as Bergman’s. As in Cries and Whispers his close-ups are framed and his actors blocked with formal and often peculiarly unnatural arrangements in the frame. Bergman loves his profile shots and even within this limited range with precise framing he finds some arresting and stimulating visual compositions.

And the obtuse psychological themes are not that hard to penetrate either. Though it’s a two-hander Alma’s journey is inward, with the presence of Elisabeth serving only as a Rosetta stone for Alma to understand her own emotional problems.

In reading other reviews and analyses of the film, there’s seems to be some confusion about the notion of the title. Some people see a merging or switching of personalities between Alma and Elisabeth – that is, Alma assuming the ‘persona’ of Elizabeth. I don’t particularly see it this way. By the end of the film Alma has assumed the place of patient, after her psychological breakdown, but not in place of Elizabeth. The question of whether Elizabeth ever existed, or if she was a fabrication of Alma’s mind I can’t fully answer, but it’s a mind fuck nonetheless and the work of a master filmmaker.

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries (1957) dir. by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin

**

By Blair Stewart

One of Ingmar Bergman's early triumphs and near-universally praised, "Wild Strawberries" is a character study of an ailing Swedish doctor coming to terms with his spent life while cryptic imagery and memento mori assail him. Victor Sjostrom, the 'grandfather' of Swedish cinema, plays Dr. Isak Borg, accused by his daughter-in-law Marianne (the stunning, and I really do stress that folks, stunning Ingrid Thulin) of being a cold-hearted bastard and fathering one too while they drive to his Alma matter for an accolade.

As they travel a countryside littered with the flotsam of his past Isak is overwhelmed by regrets after stopping at the summer house of his youth a la Mr. Watanabe from "Ikiru" or Ebenezer Scrooge from "A Chritsmas Charol". Here we see the origin of the Doctor's withered soul as his beloved cousin Sara (who's future doppelganger he meets on the road as she stirs up painful embers, both played by Andersson) chooses his johnny-on-the-spot brother for companionship.

Later on the Hindenberg of Isak's own marriage is reflected in a bickering, scenery-chewing couple stuck in an infinite loop of shrillness and in his son's own personal failures. Two boys; one an atheist, the other god-fearing vie for the present-day Sara's affection as Bergman dawdles around with surrealist landscapes and sour flashbacks that Leonard Cohen would have sighed about.

A vital work for art-house cinema and Swedish film history, and yet one that never engaged me. The performances by Sjostrom, Andersson and Thulin are lovely but I found myself distracted by some truly broad acting in minor roles in the same way De Palma's one-off background line readers ruined it for the Pacino's in the foreground, carefully watch "Carlito's Way" for my grudge. This acting fault lies at the feet of the unassailable St. Bergman.

The first flashback at the summer house with the bitchy twins and the saccharine lovers and the dinner table jousting was so camp I was hoping for John Waters to spring up from under the table with a dirty punchline. In later moments the symbolism of missing hands on a wristwatch and other jottings from Freud's doodlebook made me admire Bunuel's better talent for powerfully rendered dreams on film-"Los Olvidados" has one in particular that might blow your mind as it did mine.

Covering territory that borders Tarkovsky's "The Mirror", the Russian stream-of-conscience childhood memoirs dug much, much deeper for me in its imagery and tone.

"Wild Strawberries" is a competent meditation on mortality and forgiveness, one that certainly had a great effect on future generations of filmmakers artistically, but one that I will have to again view for a better take 40 years from now when I might be more moved. I think sore bones and bad eyesight will help my reappraisal.

Everlasting Moments

Everlasting Moments (2008) dir. Jan Troell
Starring: Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt, Jesper Christensen, Callin Öhrvall

**

The title of this Swedish festival pic now landing for its limited theatrical release I assume refers to the idea of a photograph capturing a moment forever in time. “Everlasting Moments” is not a Kodak Moment film, instead a frustrating dramatization of prolonged spousal abuse, resulting in admirable art house filmmaking, but unsatisfactory cinematic entertainment.

Its 1909 Sweden, young Maja Larsson narrates the story of her mother Maria (Maria Heiskanen) and her strained relationship with her husband and Maja's father, Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt). We’re told the day they met, Maja serendipitously won a camera in a lottery. The story of this marriage is told parallel to the story of this camera. The opening moments of romantic bliss (about 2mins of screentime) quickly make way for the tempestuous quarrelling which come to plague the family.

Sigge, a dock worker with a leaning toward union socialism, is a complete shit – a drunk, who despite joining the temperance society consistently falls of the wagon, he also cheats on Maria over and over again, beats her and threatens to kill her, once with a hot iron and once with a straight razor. Despite this she gives birth to five of his children and stays with him through everything, even after he goes to jail. Maja’s respite is her camera which becomes her symbol of individualism and strength. Her pictures are brilliant and she becomes a sought-after artist in town.

As I was watching this film I was trying to remind myself that this film is supposed to be ‘entertaining’. Though the performance were strong and the environment dramatized by Troell was genuine, there was little entertainment in this film. Entertainment comes in all shapes and size, and depressing movies have its place cinema, as entertainment, but only if it pushes core emotional buttons.

The film is narrated from the point of view of Maria’s young daughter Maja and takes place over 20 years or so. With this kind of lengthy episodic storytelling we expect to see to the ups and downs of Maria’s life. Unfortunately it’s a continual beat down of her character. We also expect some comeuppance for Sigge, and time and again Maria leaves Sigge off the hook for his heinous behaviour. We're meant to believe Maria stays with Sigge because of her father's dying beside commandment to never break the bond of marriage. And so, the only buttons this film pushes is frustration.

Maria isn’t completely subjugated of course, she has her camera and other more defiant methods of vengeance against Sigge. During the two most intense moments of violence against her, Maria stands her ground like any strong mother would for her family – not backing down from the base expression of anger from Sigge. These are two great and powerful scenes for Maria and Ms. Heiskanen who plays her. And so when we see Maria pick up Sigge after years in prison, it’s painful for the audience to see this man get, not a second, but a THIRD chance.

Perhaps the film is entirely about the dramatic irony established in the opening scene. The camera, which was once the symbol of Sigge and Maria’s discovery of love which  becomes the symbol of what keeps them apart – or from Maria’s point of view, what give her the strength and superiority over Sigge.

This film appears to be universally showered with praise by the likes of Roger Ebert, Todd McCarthy, Kenneth Turan. Was I watching a different movie? The film was directed by revered filmmaker Jan Troell ('The Emigrants'). So nope, it definitelty was a Swedish art house film by an aging 78-year old master auteur. To each his own, but buyer beware.

TOGETHER

Together (2000) dir. Lucas Moodysson
Starring Lisa Lindgren, Michael Nyqvist, Emma Samuelsson

****

Guest review by Blair Stewart

Human nature has a way of gumming up utopias. In 1970's Stockholm, Elizabeth is an abused housewife who grabs her two kids and heads for the hills to crash at 'Together', the hippie/Marxist/anarchist commune of her brother Goran. Although the household's intentions are good, the intrusion pokes the communers out as being baffled hypocritical twits inside their walls, much like everyone else outside them. While Goran is the head of the house he lacks a backbone as his childish girlfriend Lena takes the 'open relationship' thread and runs off with it.

Down the hall Anna is going through a 'lesbian phase' and her ex-husband and present roommate Lasse is going through a 'bitter phase'. Also thrown into this melting pot is an insufferable politico and an aggressive gay guy with a bowl haircut that's unlikely to get him laid.

Below their worldview Elizabeth's children Eva and Stefan are suffering from a lack of meat, personal space and toys, except for Anna and Lasse’s boy Tet and his lousy homemade wooden Legos (and if Tet strikes you as an odd name for a child, I suggest you brush up on your Vietnam war history).

As the sparks fly inside the house we move outside to several subplots, including the conservative neighbour's kid making nice with Eva, and her hopeless father Rolf quitting the sauce and getting his life together, with the exception of an hilarious meltdown at a restaurant. The result of all this is unexpected for most art-house films and wonderfully optimistic at that.

"Together" gently skewers both hippies and the straight-laced, taking a handful of well-chosen comedic fools and letting them bounce off of each other. Moodysson has long been an international festival darling for his variety, including "Together”, a comedy, "Lilya 4 EVA”, a gutkick human drama, and "F**king Amal", likely a porno? His direction and visual technique is playful, a spry documentary profile, crash-zooms by cameraman Ulf Brantas, traditional dissolves, and a soundtrack which cranks-up the ABBA.

Moodysson’s script is both extremely quotable and attentive to enough characters that any of four kids, or Anna and Lasse’s relationship could justify their own film. I share the same fondness for “Together” as I do with Wayne Wang's "Smoke" and the Coen Bros’ "The Big Lebowski", films linked by their loose-knit communal themes. If anything I'm disappointed that "Together" is only a stand-alone film and not episodic TV series, which can continues the stories of Goran’s grow-op or Elizabeth’s journey into existentialism. Enjoy.

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR

Songs from the Second Floor(2000) dir. Roy Andersson
Starring Stefan Larson

****

Review by Blair Stewart

It is the end of the world and the salarymen are selling their stocks in Jesus. Traffic jams stretch into the horizon and board meetings are interrupted by the rude intrusion of tumbling buildings. Corporations have fallen back on pagan rituals in order to boost their portfolios. We're all going to die, what do we do?

Laugh?

Rare is a film in which you can take every moment, every frame, snip it, enlarge it, nail it to your wall and then marvel at the eye that captured it, a singular work of art. Kubrick had that quality, much of Antonioni, Fellini too. And after a quarter-century hiatus following a commercial failure in the 1970’s director Roy Andersson emerged from the wilderness of Scandinavian advertisements to join them with this unique work.

It is a challenge to tell you what this film is about, or even what it is. And the best way that I could best describe it is 'The Capitalist Apocalypse in Sweden interpreted by Gary Larson's "The Far Side.” That is my description, but I fail to do this movie justice in its sadness and dark humor and bitter social commentary. Andersson captures his deadpan Rapture with astonishing deep-focus framing and forced perspective, the camera never moves, leaving your eyes to wander a surreal canvas as a baffled civilization copes with the death of materialism. You could be mistaken for thinking that to view this would be a depressing experience, but if you have an affinity for wry poker-faced satire, if you find joy in an artist coming out of nowhere and showing his full potential, if you ever wanted to experience a film that you could previously only comprehend viewing in your dreams, here you are.

One last thing, you'll never, ever, ever forget the subway scene.



Available on DVD: Songs From the Second Floor