rafasalin Reviews

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Reflection about the self inside us

[10/10 · 11 January 2009]

A child is born and that small one to be called Benjamin Button, is already with an aspect of an old-baby. A premature aging, Progenies, could happen but that would have occurred in the uterus, if we want to make that in the rational way. But this is cinema, and one can or not accept others fantasies. One can be riding on several illusions and delusions and select what ever premises are offer to us, the ones that explained to us the meaning of that particular movie. A short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was used as a guideline for the screenplay freely adopted by David Fincher ("Zodiac," "Fight Club").

I think that the perspective that best describes the attitude of Bajamin Button as a human being with such peculiar vital cycle(Interpreted by Brad Pitt, excellence elevated to the seventh power), is like a child attitude about everything. That is without prejudice, accepting, full of tolerance and at the same time enjoying more everything about him. Specially some human functions that he did not have before and then just happened, almost out of the blue, like his sexual initiation. He himself is not surprised of how he looks outside. He also could have a vision of life as an anthropologist, or even an alien, that explorer our human nature from the perspective of what I don't have, until I know that exist and then gained, that is why he accepted things like they are. The story itself is painful because it accentuates the ephemeral of romantic relationships, in this case between Daisy (Cate Blanchett. Even when that is lasted almost a lifetime, it is precisely because they are running in the opposite direction in its trajectory, and to avoid colliding with each other, then they allow to many things and persons before loose each other, because the ultimately goal is to remain like two lovers beside time. There are some events of a century, people crossed as shooting fireworks, and a daughter. For her there are letters ad postcards from abroad in which her mysterious Dad is full of love, and advices for her.

It is a film that requires us to accept the premise of the absurdity of life traveling in opposite direction. The same could be said of "Orlando" novel and film of Virginia Woolf and Sally Potters respectively. The premise is a human being who lived four centuries and alternating gender continues being herself or himself along the centuries, in Benjamin Button, the essence is the total lack of sense of ownership of the other, the love that seeks the happiness of being loved and not the cage, because although that could be made of gold after all it is a prison. The film is about how much we love the others, our friend relatives, lovers, that after all they continue living somewhere on the hard disk of our brains.

Gran Torino (2008)

WHAT IS TO BE AN American TODAY?

[10/10 · 4 January 2009]

Looked through the paper. Makes you want to cry. Nobody cares if the people Live or die. And the dealer wants you thinking That it's either black or white. Thank G-d it's not that simple In My Secret Life.

I bite my lip. I buy what I'm told: From the latest hit, To the wisdom of old. But I'm always alone. And my heart is like ice. And it's crowded and cold In My Secret Life.

In my Secret Life, Leonard Cohen

"Gran Torino" film main them are like part f Leonard Cohen's song "In my Secret Life". That secret is what hooks you up since the beginning and that is what you want to discover along the film. Why that Walt Kowalsky (Clint Eastwood) is is sitting with his dog, drinking beer and preventing that people enter into his lawn?

Like a lonely ranger surrounded by Asian families, what he called "gooks" and "chinks", that bitter and almost permanently angry men is in sorrow because his beloved wife just passed away. But according how his sons behave toward him, the behavior of this retired car assembled line men was like that long before his mother's dead. In fact the name of the movie is because he possesses a Gran Torino Ford, an American product that is in the core of that home standing as the Flag, and Wally.

So Wally is also a Korea's war veteran and in a lot of ways a self made man. So what this man in doing in that area full of non-WASP people? Well , that is the central metaphor of this elegant, well directed and superb acted film of Clint Eastwood. Who for me has become and equivalent of and Akira Kurosawa of Unites States of America. Telling us the American history from the western, hard core detectives, astronauts, boxing girls, and this lonely old ranger.

What is to be an American today? Are they became self contained all the time in order not to kill the Afro-Americans, Koreans, Mexicans or even Arabs which all of them have lived in this country probably along several generations or is to accept that there are other alternatives to the WASP definition?

The other issue showed in the film is related to father and son relationship and role models. Kowalsky own sons are completely into a different frame of values. They are in business, and of course having a Dad like Walt is not easy, especially because he doesn't want to move out of his house, that in that way could be sold by their sons. The "adoption" of Thao and his family is a kind of re-vindication and also a test of his parenthood abilities.

Finally there is the moral issue. Wally is not too much a believer although his wife was and she asked to her priest before passed away, to convince Wally to have a confession with him. Wally didn't confess right away because the Padre is too young to know about issues of life and dead. Because her last will's wife was to get his confession and absolution by that young priest, he became an obsession to the widow. But when confession is made, in Wally's eyes the real sins were more related to everyday life stuff and killing people in Korean war, for instances was completely out of his vision of transgression of "The Ten Commandments." But instead he did a lot of thing for to protect the "gook" family next door. So he doesn't believe that too much in to be good or bad as part of a God regulatory function but himself and in my opinion he did that extraordinarily well. A film that must be seen from a Director and Actor that would be named in other Countries: A Living Treasure.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

When excellent movies last what ever was needed.

[10/10 · 26 April 2008]

"BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ" (Fassbinder, Germany,1980).

"We are too miserable for be unhappy".

Charles Bukowsky

The first thing is that person, that comes out from about four years prison: He is Franz Biberkopf (A Superb!!! Günter Lamprecht). He has now to continue in the outside word jail, but now alone. He holds in the chest a guilty wound which seeks to cover with alcohol, prostitutes and disposable women from another main character Reinhold Hoffman (Gottfried John) a psychopath guy with a tin layer of lamb. Fassbinder was fascinated with this two characters, Franz and Reinhold, form Alfred Döbling's novel about the same name, manly because by their latent homosexuality, which was clearly the only explanation of a friendship highly unlikely in other circumstances. Franz Biberkopf murdered his woman, almost without notice, at least the first blow. She cried; face him, hoping that he could do something, in the positive side of a couple mood. But Franz is far away of the emotional side of the brain, and cannot continue shaving himself, with one of those blades that seemed swords of cavalry, and as in a reflex movement, he cut a pit what it cannot handle, like a dermal bump. That act of despicable impulsively, transforms him into a paralyzed being by the possibility of the evil within. Germany is just through an economical crisis after of the First World War. There is a great economic depression, and a lonely man is only under his skin. It is an animal sentimental, but at the same time explosives. In his life stop by different women, but remains, as an angel love, Eva (Hanna Schygulla), which appear like a friend that is in love with him, but is living with a wealthy man. The other woman the he is love with is Mieze (Emilie "Mieze" Karsunke, by a young Barbara Sukowa, that was directed to act like Gelsomina, a Giulieta Massina's character in "La Strada" – 1956. F. Fellini). After all, Franz Biberkof is without job, a pimp sometimes, because he loose one of his arms after to be betrayed by Reinhold, once. Subsequent to being released from jail, he strides, slips, falls from one stretch of his life to the next. He wants to be honest, but circumstances, "bar friends", enroll him again in merchandise robbery, and is betrayed by his companions, not one but several times. He is not allowed to have nothing not even love. Men like Biberkopf are everywhere, are the "Nowhere Man" of The Beatles song. They are just like floating corpses going in the current direction, the flood is their highway, doesn't matter were heading to. The editing and restoration of this film of 15 and a half hours, it was possible thanks to The Criterion Collection. The film was divided into six DVDs with 13 chapters, an epilogue to 2 hours and disk extras. The film, by extension, was shown on television, breaking record of viewers and inaugurated with much and inadvertently, the phenomenon of serial tale. That repeated after with Twin Picks of David Lynch, with decorum. Thanks Reine W. Fassbinder by "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and by all the other wonderful and master pieces that you created!!

No Country for Old Men (2007)

When the Killer of the Road, do not need a cause for to act as he use to.

[9/10 · 4 February 2008]

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Dir: Coen Bros, 2007)

When the Killer of the Road, do not need a cause for to act as he use to.

Rafael J. Salin-Pascual

The idea of evil, without a cause, is subversive, and hundred percent produces in a pretty good amount of people negative emotions. But in fact, it is more often to find that in serial killers. That is what psychologist, that are working in aggression have found out: They killed without any remorse and without a cause other than to feel-good.

There are three men in this excellent film of Coen Bros., Anton, the killer, the sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) and the poor chaser that ended being a prey, Llewlyn Moss (Josh Brolin).The excellence of this film are the solid way in which each one of the three people are developed. One may say that they represent three visions of deal with life. Anton is the predator, the primitive way of deal with the others: "With me or against me" without mercy, selfish. Llewelyn, is the practical man, taking whatever opportunity is available, risk as part of the challenges the life offer us, sometimes you may win or you may die. The third character, happens to be a collection of roles,. The Sheriff is the representative personage of the law, he enforced, but also is a wise guy. He knows when should be calm and when you need to move. He is also the one that detected, since the beginning of the film, there are evil people, that kill without a reason. His voice in off give us several points of their philosophy of life. He describes a teenage killer he once sent to the chair. The boy had killed his 14-year-old girlfriend. The papers described it as a crime of passion, "but he told me there weren't nothing passionate about it. Said he'd been fixing to kill someone for as long as he could remember. Said if I let him out of there, he'd kill somebody again. Said he was going to hell.

The fascination that ordinary people have with such roles like Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem); "Mr Brooks"(2007) (Kevin Costner); or "Death Proof" from Tarantino, with the main character Stunt Mike (Kurt Rusell) a real killer of the road, are in some way to understand that they have the capability for to control the animal instincts. Some of those killers, that was mentioned above, are similar with Michael Myers, in Carpenter's Halloween who returns to his home town on Halloween night to stalk and kill a group of babysitters. They never defeated, and never died.

Obviously there is no reason for Anton to kill so many people, but in fact there is at least one: "They saw him". That is what he asked to same people that escape of this dark angel. Anton has his own rules, and he used, besides guns a cylinder with air at high-pressure, he used that for to kill people like cattle. Anton main goal in the film is chasing to one man, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who happens to be in the right place at the right time and by that "recover" some money from a massacre place I a fatal delivery of drugs, by doing that, Llewelyn accept, to enter this mortal game running away from a real predator.

The Sheriff, Tommy Lee Jones, and deputies, are amazing about the lack of emotional resonance of Barden. The killers without any cause, has became attractive business for the movie industry, but also and easy explanation of our deep and amoral instincts, that culture has try to deal with them. So we can see that even civilize and "normal people" like Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in "Match Point" (2005, Woody Allen) could become a killer, with and clear cause. It is clear know, that there are some circuits inside the killers' brain or sociopaths, that are no working properly, so what ever the education, economical level, or any other factors, there is no reason other than the lack of a kind of break that stop "the killing machine", that we all carry inside our brain.

What is the explanation for to say that old man do not belong, in some way, to the kind of country, like the one in which killer without cause live in. In my opinion, the moral values. I am not describing that from moralistic point of view; also I am not trying to say that old people are on a higher position, from moral values than new generations, The differences are, exactly that some people do not need reason for to kill somebody. Old people use to create a confabulation theory, a justification for their criminal acts, Iraq's war, is a good example of that way of thinking. "We were looking for weapons of massive destruction". That war it is full of those explanation. That difference, between to create an explanation, that result in a confabulation for criminal actions or not to need at least one, that is the Country that result beyond of old people moral values. Socrates, an old man, once say: "Bad men do, what good men dream." And movies are like dreams, or dreams are the cinema of the mind.

Michael Clayton (2007)

Intelligent people could also do things the right way.

[9/10 · 3 February 2008]

MICHAEL CLAYTON (Dir: Tony Gilroy-2007):

Rafael J. Salin-Pascual

Michael Clayton (George Cloony), knows that doing the right way, but ahead of clients, and people around, should be better than only to act through the wild zone, which is the stereotype and little bit more inside lawyers that are defending such companies. Clayton works directly with Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), the head of the law firm (As in Eyes wide shut, the last movie of Stanley Kubrick, Pollack is the typical guy who knows a lot, but had a secrecy as part of to know how deal with partners, employers and clients as well).

But one of Bach's top partners has just gone berserk, stripping naked in Milwaukee during a deposition hearing and running through a parking lot in the snow. This is Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), who opens the film with a desperate voice-over justifying himself to Michael. Cloony is superb, as almost always, the final scene in the taxicab with the credit on, and expresses sadness, proud, and holding a lot more feelings inside,he is for me an expert demonstration of acting. Similar to the solos in jazz or rock bands. For me he must be the winner this year of The Oscar (I've seen all he nominees and the closes opponent is Tommy Lee Jones,although for me was better in: "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005))

One of the several reflections of this good movie, is to show us that cleaver people are not immune to big problems. Clayton has a serious debt of $ 75,000, that may cost him to be murdered, some of that may be explained by the already closed restaurant, but also from playing cards. He is divorced, and has a son intelligent as well, with a sciences fiction test for books. So, early in he film, the boy was talking with his Dad, about a book in which there are people that live in the woods, and nobody can trust between them . That sound like a warning about what happens in Clayton's life. The "bad woman" of this movie, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), is acting almost excellent, in the balance (there is a long-lasting dialog, by her,about balance as a goal). But in fact, bas and good characters have both moral states. Karen is having breakdowns, of anxiety and crying. But and the end, ofher way of being, the utilitarian moral defeat whatever trace of goodnessshe may have.

Although in fact Arthur Eden is having a hippo-manic phase (He is bipolar disorder patient). He use his psychiatic disorder as a tool for cover himself (kind of "costume"), but letter on, he lunched his offensive against the polluted company. That remains me the character of Domenico ( Erland Josephson) in Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Nostalghia"(1983). In that film Domenico lives apart from the rest of the small-town in Italy. But the interaction between the Russian poet Yankovsky and Dominico is far apart from madness. Michael Clayton is one of the finest movies of the second half of the 2007.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)

A very good film about a very special kind of persons

[9/10 · 9 January 2007]

Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Dir: Marc Rothemund 2005).

Rafael J. Salin-Pascual

One of the films that I admire most is " Procès de Jeanne d'Arc" (Rober Bresson -1962). The memory about that film was all the time in my mind when I was watching Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) being interrogated by Robert Mohr (Gerald Alexander Held) from the Gestapo. Jeanne was 19 year old and for several weeks without lawyer she was facing the "Holly Inquisition", and ask them everything, without the minimum of mercy, catholic monk torture her, and finally condemn her to be burn.

Two girls facing the two repressive systems that has given the human being's imbecility (Holly inquisition and GESTAPO). In "Die letzten Tage" is a 21 year-old young woman, against GESTAPO, the equivalent Fascist of the "Santa inquisition." Women like Jeanne, and Sophie Scholl, has the characteristic of be capable of manage their fear and to use it as motor that accelerates the flow of the ideas. Their strength is in the handling of its weakness and in that knows to detect the cowardice of its inquisitors. Its dramatic for instance, how the main fiscal scream all the time, because in that way he only can hear his own voice, just with Sophie he made some hearing, but that's all. The film most important contribution is to show us the two type of human being, the majority who survive on their knees, and those real humans that even in such limit situations have a slight smile in their faces (that is very notorious in the two brothers Sophie and Hans).

Indeed the vast majority of Germans, at tat time, survive with a mix of cowardice and fear (the same could be say of all humans more or less in the same condition, which mean that Germans they are not different from rest of our "Homo sapiens" kind). Hans Sholl mentioned that the invasion of the Allies, it can change the war, it is just a matter of arithmetic. But they persist in think that they will win the war (that remains me when one of the head commander form the Irak army was in front of TV cameras and was telling to the audiences that they were wining the war, and behind him you can see American troops already). It is certain that the there was some opponent inside Germany, as "The white rose" a group of students. But the majority of the citizens in Germany and Austria they were turning their heads into the opposite direction, because they were afraid but also because there was the promise of better life, no matter is you knew that something barbaric what happened with your former friends Jews (Some Germans from that time they were OK with the information that Jews were re-located and working in factories, isn't that a silly explanation?)

The movie has that synthetic power of evidencing that in fact there is something like "Fear to the Freedom", as Eric Fromm mentioned in his book of the same name (Fear but also passivity, and in some cases commodity). Scholl and other German, Austrian and Italian citizens that opposed to their Fascist régimes, were not beings of another planet. They made a practical sense, objective, and at the same time innocent approach to the situation that they were living, without any doctrine or even facing the possibly of a defeat as later happened. The history of the last days of Sophie, narrated in the movie is overwhelming, well directed, sober and the performances are excellent, I believe that this it is a movie that should be in the humanity's memory, because like we have seen in the second part of the XX century and so far in the XXI one, the history tend to repeats over and over, over and over… (I.e., Camboya; Yugoslavia, Argentina, Mexico, Irack, Iran, China, USSR, etc.).

Babel (I) (2006)

Is that Babel? The meaninglessness of four stories with a loose connections.

[5/10 · 7 January 2007]

Is that Babel? The meaninglessness of four stories with a loose connections.

Rafael J. Salin-Pascual

Babel (Dir. Alejandro Gonzales Iñarritu, 2006).

Short stories, novels and scripts should be perfect lies, that is more or less what Mario Vargas Llosa said once. The public must have some rules or premises that should support how strong the story is.

So the four dramas that puzzle "Babel" are so bad supported, but without cause. The rifle is in Guiilermo Arriaga and Alejandro Iñurriti minds, the natural connection of the four stories. But is so week the way that this link is made that soundly all the magic or a good craftsman (As Iñarritu has shown to be) is evaporated. Some examples of how light are the stories are presented.

Some very bad equipped morocco policemen found the bullet cases, close to the area in which a bullet strikes an American tourist Susan (Blanchett). So in last than some hours or almost immediately, they new who was the owner of the rifle, that this rifle was a present of a japans hunter and almost all about that rifle?

The peasant is localized and with brutality is apprehended by theirs own policeman (Isn't that another contradiction of the message that the director and screen written want to show? Arabs or people in the world are nice except police)

The rifle is also the connection with a japans family of a father and a daughter who live in Tokyo, her name is Chieko (She is deaf ad mute), also suffering from a depression after her mother committed suicide, but at the same time is horny all the time and by all means she try to attracted boys (for instance removing her panties in a public restaurant) and later the police young man attention, and within a few hours she summons Mitsu (played by Yuko Murata), a police officer with whom she intends to have sex. Soon after he arrives at her apartment, she strips, hoping for sex. It very improbable that a person in grief reaction present this manifestation, but even if that happen is more difficult that in a medicals society as Tokyo the relatives of this girl did not notice the bizarre behavior and put her under medical supervision.

Related to "the accident" of two peasant boy shooting vehicles, that would be believed if these two kids were mental retarded, or with some kind of behavioral disorders, there are not premise that support that this two guys just shoot vehicles just for scientific purposes (to demonstrate if the bullets travel 3 kilometers). If the idea of those story was to demonstrate that Arabs are nice and gentle people but stupid, or because they are stupid they must be nice, was aberrant. Four hours from the nearest hospital, the coach takes a detour to a remote village where a local man offers shelter while the other tourists argue over whether to stay or leave. The way that the character are presented are so light that if the film is watched twice, now without the impact of some of the scenes, you will be laughing of the coarse arguments.

The same happens with Amelia's personality, which is presented first as very assertive, but later on as foolish that is not capable to react with the border patrol, or to leave the small kids in the desert. The run away of Gael García from the Border Patrol is one of the must naive scenes. How can a automobile could be lost when is followed by helicopters and vans equipped with radar, infrared vision equipment and so on. That only could happen if Harry Potter was a friend of one of the kids that are with Amelia.

So at the end all the connections are like a gigantic delusion in Iñurritu's mind. The main problem with this movie is that his director wants to remark the movie as the example of human incommunicado (As Biblical Babel). But it is full with double messages. The Arabs are good people but silly; the Mexicans cheerful but choleric and always try to runaway, but also foolish; Japanese have a form of bereavement reaction with sex in an insistent way and the Americans "Gringos", they are the bad guys of the story, because they deport Amelia that could be the heroine of the movie, or that they don't know how to keep the calm when an ambulance doesn't arrive to a village of Morocco. This is the formula that many directors believe that it works as synonym of protest cinema, to hit to the Empire. Will this be the reason for which the French gave it the prize in Cannes? The movie at the end is a lot of noise and few nuts.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

How can it be possible that such a lovely girls kill themselves?

[8/10 · 20 July 2006]

The Virgen Suicides (Sofia Copola, 1999). Rafael J. Salin-Pascual MD

The beautiful girls that look very normal to everyone had a teenager disease, and some of them already kill themselves, without to be depressed. The question that hooks most of the people first, when reading the novel (By Jeffey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, 1993), and later to watch the film with suspense is: How can it be possible that such a lovely girls kill themselves?

The cascade of hormones that circulate in their bodies can be hold for any longer, but cultural, moral, an religious all are plotting against that girls, and as always happens in any family, one member became the amplifier of all the members conflicts, and even without knowing what happens open one door to death an keep it open.

Sofia Coppola, as a young woman, was the right filmmaker to look into the feminine way in which ex-girls live their lives. Emotions, nostalgia, mixed with deep thoughts, those girls looks very matures, but at the same time naives, savants specially in the perceptions of other people feelings.

That is way Lux Lisbon (Kisten Dunst), was able to deal with Paul Baldino (Robert Schwartzman), the heartbreak boy in the high school. The reminiscence to other filmmakers as David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" and Peter Weirs's Picnic in the Hanging Rock (Australia, 1975), are very noticeable along several scenes (Watering gardens in a nice looking suburbs or the fragrance and innocence of the five Lisbone's girls).

Of course the other parts of this story are the boys of around, that became in love in a platonic way with the Lisbone girls, and at the same time, they became the only contact with the external world. This is a very touching part for the audience, because lunch a target into everybody memories of the girl next door that you never talk with her, and only for that she became an icon. Because these girls that were brutally kidnapped for their own mother. Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner), is the intolerant element, selfish, and with a black and white vision of the world, that remember me about one some them of Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983), where Domenico the mad man of the Italian town also kept all his family secluded and the Mexican film of Arturo Ripstein "El Castillo de la pureza" (1973), story that by the way was true.

Mrs. Lisbone, she is the one who had that estrange reaction, when one of the girls (Lux) just arrive very late, the next day after a party. The mother seclude all the other girls at home, while Mr Lisbone (James Wood), extreme his state of dissociation, talking with plants and mumble. He is a guy that always has a great capability for denial, of course he can't face his wife, an there is a shocking scene in which the priest arrive ate his home after the first suicide and he is keeping watching the baseball and drinking a bear, without paying to much attention about the counseling that the priest is proposing.

Because the title of the film some element of intrigue and suspense are involved, as spectator, people are waiting that something very heavy was about to show up, but Sofia Coppola made a wise choice, this is not a horror film, is a movie about the inexplicable aspects of human soul, and specially about teenagers that have to confront with life almost bare hands, and with a body full of love.

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Fidelity (2000)

Feeling affect everything beyond reason

[9/10 · 4 June 2006]

La Fidelité (2000)

Andrzej Zulawski has an obsession : Passion for understand love and how feeling could affect everything beyond reason. Clélia (Sophie Marceau), is a very attractive photographer that start a new job in a sensationalistic newspaper. This is the gate in which she is going to know three men : Cléve ( Pascal Geggory) a middle age books editor, that will become her husband ; Nemo (Gillaume Canet) also a photographer with a very intriguing life; and the owner of the broadcasting and tabloid company, Rupert McRoi ( Michel Subor), that by the way could be her real Dad. But Fidelity isn't a soap opera, and thing are more complicated in Zulawski's movies. . The Fidelity, is about different things: principles and fidelity, beyond passion, and how a bisexual husband do not believe the sincerity of his wife. Is also about the paparazzi's underworld, and how our life is directed by our feelings.

This subject was the them of Possession (1981), in which other lovely woman, Isabelle Adjani, is trapped between the tentacles of a "Thing", that could be the irrationality of passions. La Fidelité is full of different characters, that are interconnected with the invisible net of feeling and passion. The young girl enters in a few time in a chaotic experiences as well as the hypocrisy of some of the people that surround her and the photography became a tool for to understand, by the way, the film is also full of gorgeous photos and a blink to Andy Warhol, which picture is showed somewhere in the film.