After the Wedding

Efter Brylluppet
Susanne Bier, 2006, 119 minutes

After the Wedding (or Efter Brylluppet) starts and ends in India, the place Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) thinks of as home. Short on money for his orphanage, Jacob travels to his native Denmark to meet with a rich businessman named Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård). The film presents a vivid contrast between Jacob's life running an Indian orphanage and Jørgen's life running a European business. As the two discuss whether Jacob's orphanage will receive a grant, Jørgen invites Jacob to Jørgen's daughter's wedding.

At the wedding, the first of many revelations take place, that Jørgen is not the biological father of his daughter Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen). After the wedding, the revelations keep piling up to create an original story about modern, transcontinental, multi-cultural family life. Without giving away the story, let's just say that Jacob ends up more involved with Jørgen's family than he could have imagined, and in ways that he has trouble understanding.

As Bier reveals new relationships between the film's characters, a funny thing happens. For instance, when Jacob enters the chapel late for Anna's wedding, Jørgen's wife Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) catches Jacob's eye. Outside the chapel, we see Jacob and Helene interacting in a way that makes us realize they must have met with some romantic interest before. Jørgen spots them apparently flirting, and then formally introduces his wife to Jacob. Jørgen acts like the jealous husband. Later, though, after we learn more about these three characters, this scene outside the chapel reads completely differently. Jacob and Helene are not flirting, and Jørgen is not jealous.

This happens over and again. Bier will present a scene in a way that we think we understand the meaning and the characters' motivations, but then she yanks out the rug by telling us a little more about the characters, and she forces us to re-evaluate that scene. In a broader multicultural sense, Bier makes us aware that we bring our own blinders to every scene, that we can't really understand the characters in our lives until we get to know them.

After the Wedding has a smart cinematic language. The camera whirls around the characters in a way that lets us see they are three-dimensional, fully faceted. The motion tells us that we can't understand these characters without seeing the whole being. Here and there, Bier also throws in close-ups of both the eyes of the film's characters and eyes of wild animals. At first disconcerting, Bier suggests many things with her ocular counterpoint. The film's characters have some animal in them; the characters are hunting and hunted as are the stuffed animals; the characters ultimately live in natural world of breeds and packs.

Jacob returns to India, to his multicultural family of orphans, a transformed man. He meets with Pramod (Neeral Mulchandani), whom Jacob has raised like a son, to ask Pramod to move to Denmark. When Pramod decides to stay in India rather than move to Denmark, Jacob sees that cultural comfort can trump the comfort extended family. We are all wolves and we know our packs.

The Lives of Others

Das Leben Der Anderen
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, 139 minutes
Buy The Lives of Others from Amazon

Das Leben Der Anderen, or The Lives of Others, tells the story of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, an East German Stasi officer. At the film's opening, we see Wiesler interrogating an East German, and then using tapes of this interrogation to teach Stasi students interrogation techniques. When a student asks Wiesler whether sleep deprivation is inhumane, Wiesler scratches a denigrating mark next to the student's name while he explains that an interviewee who repeats his story over and over must be lying. Only with proper technique can the interviewer extract the true story.

Over the course of the film, though, Wiesler transforms from a man who extracts what he wants to hear from his subjects to a man who hears what his subjects have to say. Invited by his boss, Anton Grubitz, to see a play, Wiesler is introduced to the playwright Georg Dreyman and his mistress, the beautiful lead actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Because State Minister Bruno Hempf, Grubitz' boss, wants to have an affair with Sieland, Grubitz initiates a Stasi observation of Dreyman. With Dreyman arrested, the thinking goes, Sieland then would be available exclusively to the Minister. Wiesler, the master of extracting "the truth" is the natural choice for Operation "Laszlo", since Grubnitz needs someone dependable to deliver the incriminating goods and win a plum promotion.

Two problems problems with Grubitz' plan. First, Wiesler begins to see Grubitz' hypocrisy in Stasi's pledge "to protect the state." Grubitz could not be more plain that Operation Laszlo is intended to implicate Dreyman solely for the purpose of winning Grubitz a promotion after the Minister claims the lovely Sieland as his exclusive love interest. Wiesler also observes Grubitz' hypocrisy over lunch at the Stasi cafeteria. Grubitz relishes his table in the managers' section until Wiesler suggests they sit in the proletariat section with the other workers. Then Grubtiz feigns distaste of a joke about the Party Leader, only to follow that joke with another Party Leader joke of his own.

The second problem with Grubitz' plan is that Wiesler's subjects happen to be artists, the kinds of artists who have the horrible habit of telling a truth not necessarily in sync with the State's version of truth. As Wiesler listens to Dreyman and Sieland, he starts to understand their love of each other and passion for their art. He contrasts Dreyman and Seiland's love making with his half-hour with a prostitute, their house full of art and decoration with his stark apartment, their exploration of issues with his determinism.

Grubitz tells Wiesler near the opening that men never change, but Wiesler does. He begans to tell fictional stories in his reports in order to protect the artists whose stories he really has begun to hear. Later in the film, after Wiesler has endured a few too many Stasi put downs from Dreyman via the Stasi spy equipment, Wiesler enters Grubitz' office ready to turn in Dreyman. In a pivotal moment, Grubitz launches into a speech about a wonderful new report that instructs Stasi on how to categorize artists, and then how to treat each category of artist so that he or she will never write or act again. While Grubitz goes on about how he's discovered a formula to change people, Wiesler completes his character change. He crumples the incriminating report on Dreyman he had planned to deliver, and tells Grubitz instead that Operation Laszlo must be scaled back.

The film draws many fine contrasts between the artists and the East German state. Wiesler swipes a bright yellow book by Brecht that Dreyman received on his birthday, and we spy on Wiesler reading a fantastic passage about the Sun and beauty. This contrasts with the lunch scene mentioned above in which the Sun is the center of one of the dark jokes about the Party Leader. In Dreyman's apartment we find Champagne ("the real thing, not that stuff from Russia"), while in the Stasi cafeteria we're treated to gruel and apple juice, only a notch up from the boiled potatoes and ketchup Wiesler serves himself for dinner. Early in the film, we see Dreyman's play set in an East German factory with cartoon-like workers of the authoritarian state. Near the end of the film, we see the same play, but staged after the fall of the Berlin Wall in an elegant presentation with very striking abstract lighting and set.

The lovers' story comes to a screeching halt when Sieland's increasing drug dependence gets the better of her. In the end, she doesn't give in to the Minister's sexual demands, but rather to the drug of the state. Drugs are the way for Sieland to cope with the insanity of authoritarian control, but the price for her drug is complete cooperation with the regime. The drug is the numbing deal society strikes with an authoritarian government: mindless comfort for mindless control.

In East Germany, the films tells us, 200,000 Stasi officers and informants spied on 100,000 citizens. Das Leben Der Anderen speaks to the importance of culture and its role in revealing truth, even in the face of overwhelming authoritarianism. In times of Mission Accomplished and Hugo Chavez, it would be hard to tell a better story about the transformative role of artists in changing society.

Fargo
Joel Coen, 1996, 98 mins.
Buy Fargo from Amazon


In Fargo, the snow falls and covers the ground in beige banality. Eveyone is infected with mind numbing common sense. Even the prostitutes are boring. So, when Marge Gunderson goes to investigate three homocides in Brainerd, examines one of the dead bodies shot execution style, pieces together the previous night's deadly sequence of events perfectly, and leans over to vomit, it seems like maybe something finally got under someone's skin.

But, relax, Marge isn't upset. It's just her morning sickness. "I'd be very surprised if our suspect was from Brainerd," Marge remarks with characteristic common sense.

This is the point at which Marge's life collides with Jerry Lundegaard's life. Jerry Lundegaard is a loser spiralling down into Greater Loserdom. Owing a great deal more money than he can make selling cars, Jerry cooks up a scheme to have his wife kidnapped, have his wealthy father-in-law pay a huge ransom, and then split the ransom with his co-conspirators. This scheme goes about as well as everything else in Jerry's life.

First it looks like Jerry's father-in-law new found interest in an investment Jerry has been pitching will save Jerry from financial ruin, but Jerry can't contact his co-conspirators to abort the kidnapping. After the kidnapping takes place, Jerry's bull-headed father-in-law can't follow the rules that Jerry says the kidnappers have imposed and botches the return of Jerry's wife. Finally, the inept criminals Jerry has engaged to kidnap his wife leave clues strewn all over Minnesota, including the three bodies in Brainerd.

As the triple homicide investigation proceeds, Marge decides to drive from Brainerd to the Twin Cities. Officially, Marge travels south to check up on some phone calls from the kidnappers to a mechanic who works with Jerry at the car dealership, the mechanic who introduced Jerry to his kidnappers. Off the record, Marge decides to meet with an old high school flame, Mike, who phones Marge after seeing her on a television news story about the murders.

In a strange lapse of common sense, Marge arranges to meet Mike at the Radisson for lunch. But Marge ends up rebuffing Mike's pathetic seduction. Later, talking to a mutual friend, Marge finds out that Mike lied to her and has had psychiatric problems. In Marge's world, this is as close as we will get to infidelity. Cheating could lead to an exciting but dangerous entanglement with a manipulative, psychotic man -- so why bother? In some ways, this also is Marge's glimpse of Jerry Lundegaard's world. Mike's demons are not all that different than Jerry's. All of a sudden, the beige predictability of Brainerd looks pretty good compared to the blood red craziness of the Twin Cities.

Marge returns to Brainerd and solves the homocides. Not before all the wheels have come off of Jerry Lundegaard's life. But just in time to settle in bed with her normal husband and talk about the unimportant life events that make life so important in Fargo.





TV Guide Review
NY Times Review

Rear Window

Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, 112 minutes
Buy Rear Window from Amazon


L.B. Jeffries, a successful action photographer, is stuck in his apartment as he recuperates from a broken leg. Jeffries is entertained by his nurse, Stella, his picture perfect girl friend, Lisa Carol Fremont, and, when they're not around, the neighbors' windows he sees from his perch. Rear Window is a film full of the story-within-a-story conceit, with each neighbor's window framing some kind of romantic story. In one window, Miss Lonely Hearts, in another Mr. Lonely Hearts, and in still another Miss Bomb Shell. Then there are the Newly-Weds, the Nesters, and the Quarrelers. In today's terms, Jeffries' view is a veritable cineplex of romance films where Jeffries can sneak from one film to the next just by turning his head.

The real story in Rear Window is whether Mr. Jeffries and Miss Fremont can make their own romance work. Hitchcock reveals Jeffries' rational conerns about marrying Fremont in Jeffries' dialogue with the maternal and practical nurse Stella. Hitchcock reveals Jeffries' emotional concerns about marrying Fremont with all those romance stories playing in the adjoining windows. When the Newly Weds spend days with the shades pulled, we know Jeffries can't wait for a roll in the hay with Fremont. When the Quarrelers have it out, we know Jeffries doesn't want to stay married past the honeymoon. When Miss Lonely Hearts drinks away her misery, we know Jeffries doesn't want to end up without a relationship.

Rear Window works on an entirely different level, as well. As a viewer of all these lives, Jeffries begins to interpret what he sees. When he sees, for instance, the lonely piano player with another man in the room (this is where Hitchcock makes his appearance in Rear Window, coincidentally), is it just a couple of guys listening to show tunes or is it the piano player's secret romance?

On a dark and stormy night, when Jeffries sees strange activities at the Quarrlers' apartment followed by the absence of Mrs. Quarreler, he presumes the worst. The drama that drives Jeffries and Fremont closer together is the discovery of what really happened at the Quarrelers' apartment. But along the way to that discovery, Jeffries asks whether looking into his neighbors' windows is moral, not because of what he's seen, but because of the conclusions he's drawn from what he's seen. It's the photographer's dilemma: does the picture show anything more than what is in the picture?

What turns out to be more important to Jeffries than understanding what he saw that dark and stormy night is how Fremont reacts. At first she hesitates to believe Jeffries' sinister conclusion, but then she grows to become his most ardent supporter. Jeffries realizes that, as foreign as Fremont's Park Avenue grace is to his rough-and-tumble correspondent's demeanor, she can sleuth just as well as he. What Jeffries and Fremont discover about that dark and stormy night turns out to be their love for each other.





Roger Ebert's Review.
N.Y. Times' Review.

Lacombe, Lucien

Lacombe, Lucien
Luis Malle, 1974, 137 minutes
Buy Lacombe Lucien at Amazon

Set at the end of WWII in France, Lacombe Lucien follows the coming of age of Lucien Lacombe. Lacombe is tired of his cleaning work at a hospital. On a trip home, he finds his father a captive in a war prison and his mother's new lover pushing him out. Lacombe wants somewhere other than the hospital to call home. First, he attempts to enlist in the French resistance. Rebuffed because he is too young, Lacombe then heads back to work and accidentally falls in with the Nazis.

Lacombe comes of age as a Nazi who befriends the Horns, a Jewish family hiding in the small town where Lacombe works, with an alarming naivite about the struggle between the Nazis and the Jews. The film follows his transformation from a brazen, boorish thug to a young man falling in love and tragically learning the calamitous error of his ways.

In the end, as the Allies close in, Lacombe tries to escape with the Horn daughter, France Horn. They end up in a kind of Garden of Eden where they live in nature and avoid society's conflicts. While Lacombe's hunting at the beginning of the film seems boyishly sadistic and he uses his prey inappropriately to curry favor, by the end of the film he seems more in sync with nature when he kills his prey to provide for his new family. At last, Lacombe has found the home where he fits in.

Lacombe Lucien is slow paced, but Luis Malle creates many memorably uncomfortable moments to keep it captivating. When Lacombe brings a case of champagne to the Horn's house as a gift, he doesn't just give the gift, but forces everyone to join him in drinking the entire case as he embarrassingly tries to charm France. Later, when his mother shows up at the Horn house to warn Lacombe that he is a marked man, Mr. Horn and Mrs. Lacombe have an extremely awkward and laconic parental conversation about Lacombe.

On a sad note, Pierre Blaise, who gives a wide ranging performance as Lacombe, died the year after the film was released.








BBC Notes
NY Times Notes