jpmccusa-1 Reviews

Smradi (2002)

Racial problems in Czech Republic

[9/10 · 7 March 2010]

After moving to the countryside to help with their youngest son's asthma, a young Czech family finds that the two older boys, adopted Romanys, suffer some racial prejudice in their new village. This stress puts pressure on the parents as well, and the whole family comes under the strain. This is possibly the best -- or rather, most realistic -- film I've ever seen concerning a household of three or more preteen youngsters. As the director has a few adopted Romany children of her own, it is clear that this is a true work from the heart.

The kids are not angels, as their mother quite rightly points out, nor is there any reason why they should be... but they are clearly beginning to thrive in their adopted family as they come to terms with what effects adoption -- and race -- can have on their family.

In addition to the plot and the downright brilliant characterizations by the older boys, the camera work and scenery is exceptional as well. A very early scene shows clearly what is going on here: we see a church steeple with clocks mounted on different sides of the steeple---showing very different times. Thus, we realize that the film shows both the effects (and remnants) of the past and glimpses of the future both of the family and of the modern Czech Republic.

Someone Like Hodder (2003)

Oh, what a lonely boy....

[7/10 · 17 April 2006]

One of the great real tragedies of the human condition is the regrettable fact that what children are used to, they regard as "normal".

This context is not just relevant in cases of physical or sexual abuse. In this fine family film "En Som Hodder", we share the sorrows of Hodder Emanuel Jacobsen: he barely remembers his late mother, and when she comes to him in his dreams, he doesn't even know her and thinks she is a fairy. All his classmates treat him with detached contempt, eventually trying to lure him into suicide. His father works night, and the man can scarcely relate to his son at all, try though he might.

I said that we share Hodder's sorrows, but that's not quite true: Hodder doesn't quite realize that he misses his mother terribly and that he is desperately, desperately lonely---though we can see this all too clearly.

Fortunately for him, his irrepressibly charming innocence enables some people with problems to see that Hodder can be a true friend, in a land and time where true friends are rare and valuable.

Parnikovyy effekt (2005)

A rewarding coming-of-age drama from Russia

[7/10 · 24 March 2006]

This quirky drama from Russia has a lot to offer, though its oddness makes it hard to determine exactly what its target audience might have been.

Rita is a naïve 18-year-old from the sticks who has come to Moscow to meet up with the man who impregnated her a few months earlier. Unfortunately, his name and address was written on a piece of paper in her luggage, which was promptly stolen upon her arrival in Moscow. Thus, she is a bit at loose ends, and going back home is clearly not an option.

She is befriended by street-kid Ernest ("Nemoy" in the credits), whose nickname of "Mute" comes from his way of making a living---wandering around the city wearing a cardboard placard proclaiming his (nonexistent) disability while looking for handouts. This irrepressible kid of 14 or so lives on his own in a greenhouse (hence the English title for the film: "The Greenhouse Effect"). He is saving up so that he and an older friend "Greek" can go live with the latter's grandparents in Greece.

Most of the film concerns the various adventures of Rita and Ernest as they fashion a day-to-day living on the margins of society. It isn't easy, but Ernest's good-hearted optimism makes every mundane event seem a minor adventure.

The camera work in the film is often distinctive, as we see many scenes of modern Moscow as the life of the city goes on around the pair, with no apparent trickle-down effect to give us hope that their lives might come to have some hope or meaning. As events play themselves out, not a lot changes for the better, though hope remains.

One is tempted to look for some sort of message in a film like this, and, to be fair, it's kind of hard to find one. The best I can come up with is that the film shows quite clearly that teenagers are probably somewhat more likely to progress into a rewarding and viable adulthood if they are under the care and influence of warm, responsible, and loving adults. Since there are almost none of these sorts of people to be found in the film, the point should be clear.

Handcuff King (2002)

Engaging Comedy-Drama from Finnish border town

[9/10 · 19 March 2006]

This film is a top-quality coming-of-age comedy-drama from Finland. It is set in 1976 in the northern Finnish town of Tornio, on the Swedish border, and it is the story of 12-year-old Esko. He and his friends get into trouble following a run-in with some Swedish lads from across the river. When Esko refuses to accept his share of the responsibility, he is ostracized by the other Finnish boys. Desperate for companionship, he bonds with Patrick, a Swedish boy his own age who is also ostracized by his compatriots (for very different reasons). The two boys form a great admiration for Harry Houdini, and escapology becomes part of their play.

What is fascinating about the film is the contrast and tensions between the two cultures (who nevertheless live a short stroll apart). There is ritualized violence between the teens of the two adjoining communities, and this prejudice continues into the adults, as Patrick's father forbids the lads to see each other (even though his runaway wife was Finnish). It is clear from the film that the Swedish town is the far more prosperous, so there are class distinctions involved as well. We also see a daily coping with the problems of two languages and cultures in a way that suggests it is a well-known routine to the local townsfolk: when one lad appears to be threatening suicide while masked, virtually the first question asked is whether he speaks Finnish or Swedish. Other similar details abound: Esko is once late for dinner because he forgot Sweden is in a different time zone; another time, the two boys are running down the street and shout "Nothing to declare" as they go by the customs post without breaking stride. One slight surprise in the film was the information that, apparently, schools in Finland play baseball...I never would have guessed that!

Aside from language, this would be a fine film for family viewing, and it was released for 7+ in Finland (it would rate an American "R" for the language in the subtitles).

Valo (2005)

Children of Courage in Tsarist Finland

[8/10 · 10 March 2006]

This interesting film is based on a true story and the diaries of Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo, the title character. It is set in a place and period I know very little about, Finland when it was part of the Russian Empire prior to World War I.

Valo, roughly 8, and his father are sent to a remote village as a form of internal exile, following a massacre of some demonstrators against the Tsar. Valo immediately meets Ville, a boy his own age who makes his living moving luggage at the train station and picking pockets. He is the son of the local constable, a very abusive drunk.

Soon Valo starts going to school. There is a new teacher this year, and she soon gets up the noses of powerful locals by reading her charges "David Copperfield" (in Finnish). It isn't long before the school is branded as subversive and shut down for good.

By now, Valo has seen considerable disregard for children, not to mention downright brutality and some fairly widespread physical abuse. The closing of the school is the last straw for him---he decides to set up an underground "playschool" run by himself. Attracted by the notion of learning to read (among other things), many children join him, including some who couldn't attend the former school, such as Ville.

Further repression follows.

I had a few problems with the film. One might just be a subtitle difficulty: when Valo asks Ville who the guy is in a sinister black uniform, standing on the top of a huge tower with a pair of binoculars and scrutinizing everything in site---"Him? Oh, he's a secret policeman." O...K... The kids were generally pretty good in the lead roles, but some of the younger peripheral characters may have been a bit over their heads on camera. Also, there seemed to be no children older than about 8 in the village at all, which was a bit strange. Where were all the hulking bullies making life more miserable for everyone? UNICEF appears to have been involved in the production in some fashion.

We see Valo begin his career as a diarist, and in reality he apparently kept it up through a fairly long life (1900-1997). One can only imagine how many fascinating and tragic events this man must have reported over the years...!

Carnets d'ado: Petit homme (2002) Season 1, Episode 7

"Thanks for the Memories..."

[7/10 · 10 March 2006]

Tom is a troubled teen with a single mother. He gets into trouble on a routine basis, and this is impacting her career as an Air France flight attendant. He blames her for not knowing who his father is, and it is clear that he needs a strong paternal influence.

One day starts normally for them, driving to work while bickering endlessly. Unfortunately, Mom Valerie wrecks the car and injures them both. Tom soon recovers, but Valerie has amnesia and recalls nothing prior to waking up in the hospital.

Tom is now faced with a dilemma: he can take this opportunity to start fresh, with a more responsible relationship with his mother, or he can delve into his family history and bring back the bad times in the hope of jogging his mother's memory back into gear.

Matters are complicated when he is put into a group home. Here, he comes under the tough-love influence of counselor Malik, a man who has clearly seen everything and would much rather that he hadn't. Tom learns some discipline and responsibility---the hard way---and comes to face the responsibility involved with his mother for the future of his family.

Het mes (1961)

Oedipal Drama from the Netherlands

[9/10 · 8 March 2006]

When I first heard about this film, I more-or-less expected it to be a Dutch take on "The 400 Blows", but now that I've seen it, I can say that it stands up well as an original contribution to the coming-of-age genre. I have no idea why I hadn't heard of it years earlier! The protagonist is 13-year old Thomas, a very well-to-do Dutch boy. A lot of people seem to know him locally, and they treat him with a benign condescension that he continually misinterprets as respect; on the other hand, when he crosses paths with adults who don't know him, no such misinterpretation is available.

Thomas tries to impress a girl by stealing a rare sacrificial knife from an exhibition of primitive Eastern artifacts. This starts a series of events wherein he gets into continually more difficulty. His widowed mother is conducting a rather abusive affair with her late husband's best friend, and he and Thomas don't get along well at all. All in all, this film is very Oedipal in its approach.

"Het Mes" was nominated for the Best Picture award at Cannes in 1961, which is not surprising; what is surprising is that this film was the only screen appearance of Reitze van der Linden, who played Thomas with such flair and compassion.

Director Rademakers here created a character-driven film of considerable strength. That being said, it must be mentioned that he did some very creative filming with the use of mirrors, and how he pulled off some of the shots he did still remains a mystery to me!

All in all, I regard this as a very rewarding film, perhaps unjustly neglected in the world of film at large.

Hello, Brother (2005)

No punches pulled in this film about children with cancer!

[10/10 · 28 February 2006]

At nine years of age, Jang Hani {spellings from the film's subtitles} is everybody's ideal of a bratty little brother: selfish, jealous, and of little use to anyone. Even when his 12-year-old brother Jang Han Byeol feels ill at school and goes home early with Hani, he simply treats it like an excuse to play more video games.

But it soon becomes clear that Han Byeol's illness is more serious than might have been hoped: it is an aggressive form of brain cancer, though it takes Hani a while to cop on to this. At the situation clarifies, Hani has a lot of trouble changing roles away from being everybody's cute little terror. When his brother begins to bond with another very seriously ill boy in hospital; when his parents rush Han Byeol to the ER when an infection overwhelms his exhausted immune system and leave Hani alone in the family's flat over night without a word; when his antics can't bring a hint of a smile to his haggard mother's face---Hani feels that he has been pushed beyond the fringes of everybody's attention---and he despairs.

But he's not a quitter! As he sees mounting pain and indeed terror in his family, he decides to do something about it. He becomes thoughtfully creative in how he can bring moments of joy to those he finally realizes he loves. When Han Byeol actually recognizes Hani's efforts, Hani couldn't be any happier than circumstances allow. In one of the more remarkable child performances I have ever seen, we watch in awe as the character Hani matures before our eyes under the severe pressure of events.

That is not to say that this is a happily-ever-after flick by any stretch of the imagination. The depiction of the ravages of cancer and the stresses on families it entails has probably not be so faithfully portrayed since the fine Australian film "A Woman's Tale". We see poor Han Byeol degrade from a slightly wobbly pre-teen into a heavily scarred, brutalized victim of a fate that no one deserves, let alone a twelve year old child. There will be no complete recovery here, and he knows it. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes shows him screaming in terror as his father takes the lead and wheels him into the operating theatre for his second brain operation---one that the man knows full well will result in his son's permanent blindness as a side effect of yet another life-saving operation.

Sad to say, the close of the film makes it clear that this film was based on fact. Actually, it was doubtless toned down for the screen, given that the poor boy the character Han Byeol is based on had four operations by the age of 15, and further treatment seems to have been mandated in the case.