The Dead Stay In Our Heads Because We Loved Them: Monsieur Lazhar (2011)

Simple cinema is seemingly a thing far gone from movie making, wherein a post-digital understanding of the world has resulted in what could aptly be describe as visceral overload.  While works like Fight Club and Inception have cemented themselves as deserved contemporary classics, even if a bit problematic in the narrative department, their reconsideration of the forms of filmmaking have become a thing to recreate, an endeavor which has more or less proven poorly executed.  Simple cinema when set up against the aforementioned films would lead one to assume that my relationship to the movie is one without any degree of profound consideration, simple suggesting mediocrity.  This is absolutely not the case, simplicity is perhaps the most audacious thing a person can aim for in a film and is equally the most difficult to execute with any assured success.  I think of works like Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar or the surprising restraint of something like Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner when discussing this idea.  The story is allowed to breath unfold and move to a space of deep introspection for all those who engage with its products, both of these films proving that when purity and perfection are pursued even the simple can become monumental.  I would argue that the same emerges in a work like Monsieur Lazhar, one of the foreign breakout films of 2011 and the wonderful production from the play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere and the direction of Philippe Falardeau.  Dealing with nothing short of one of the deepest, most troubling issues in human existence, the film exudes a certain poetic realism that affords any viewer a constant movement through the range of emotions whether they be unbridled joy or devastating sadness, but after all, this is the human reality and one often shunned by popcorn cinematic escapism.  I know that this film received an unprecedented amount of praise from critics and faired quite well in the indie/art house circuit, which is fine and well, but Monsieur Lazhar possesses such an earnest approach to what troubles both young persons and adults that it becomes required viewing for everyone willing to sit down and read a work involving subtitles.

Monsieur Lazhar is set in the oppressively cold space of Montreal, where a group of students begin their day at school anew and the young Simon (Émilien Néron) being tasked with preparing the milk for his classmates breakfast.  Upon retrieving the necessary amount he approaches the classroom only to discover that his teacher has hung herself leading to chaos emerging in the space of the school despite an attempt to quell the panic by the principal Mme Vaillancourt (Danielle Proulx).  In the midst of trying to find a new teacher one Bachir Lazhar (Mohammed Fellag) emerges, inquiring about the opening.  Though initially dismissive, Vaillancourt hires Lazhar in hopes that the instant presence will help the classroom return to some degree of sanity.  Lazhar immediately takes control of the class in a very professorial manner, establishing high academic expectations for the students, much to their chagrin, excluding one student Alice (Sophie Nélisse) that finds his teaching style engaging, made all the more so by his being from the farm warmer locale of Algeria.  Indeed, it is Lazhar's former life in Algeria that makes for an intriguing narrative twist for it was not him, but his late wife who spent her life as a teacher, become the victim of a terrorist attack after speaking out for the rights of women.   Burned in an apartment fire, along with her children, this death has led to Lazhar moving to Quebec in hopes of attaining refugees asylum.  Regardless of this issue, Lazhar becomes a point of admiration, even if begrudgingly, for the students and one of desire for a fellow teacher Claire (Brigitte Poupart), who repeatedly makes sexual advances towards him, despite his clear disinterest and awareness of her exoticization of all things foreign.   Considerign that the students are only receiving occasional guidance from a school appointed psychologist, the death of their former teach by suicide constantly threatens the camaraderie of the classroom and when confrontation finally does occur, after a few violent outbursts it proves to be a moment of catharsis for not only the students but Lazhar himself who had been suppressing his own loss.  Despite receiving refugee status, the knowledge by the bureaucracy of the school of his non-creditions, leads to Lazhar being forced to step down, but this is not before one final day in which he delivers to his students a fable in hopes of teaching them a final lesson, also learning himself in the process.

I was fortunate to see this at a screening embracing French and francophone cinema here in Columbia, which included the presence of the very gracious and humble Danielle Proulx who advocated for the films message over any sort of pretense regarding her own experiences acting.  I find this a great way to consider this film, particularly since it is so loaded with notions that one's identity is predicated on a paradigm of constantly shifting frames of reference, including but not limited to gender, race, class, nation and age.  As I know I have mentioned on this blog before, intersectionality is the frame of theoretical thought that considers these layers of identity and the ways in which such schemas affect ones privilege or oppression in a society.  While there are far more inquisitive and experimental works considering this issue, I am unaware of one quite as minimalist and simply stated as what occurs in Monsieur Lazhar, again the notion of simplicity not implying a lack of depth or detail.  One only needs to consider the space of the school in the film to see how varied identities are colliding in unusual and often problematic ways.  The most obvious is, of course, the film's title character whose movement from Algeria to Quebec only affords him two points of previous privilege that of masculinity and French language, all other points of privilege are challenged when he must be constantly reminded of his difference, particularly in regards to cultural understandings, never mind the implications that come along with his own refugee status.  Lazhar, however, is not the only person with intersections of identity, take the students for example, reflecting a surprisingly diverse group contingent on gender, race and class, even making specific note of nationality in the student introductions, Lazhar must constantly shift his understanding of the world to appropriate it to each students needs, whether it be one whose single mother often overlooks after school teaching or another whose parents are overly protective and unwilling to allow her shades of rebellion. Furthermore, he must constantly realize that even when his mother tongue is comforting a continual speaking in such language could prove dire to at least one student.  Other issues such as women's employment, exoticization of the other, post-colonial history and global politics emerge in this film, all while also managing to attack the very perplexing issue of suicide.

Key Scene:  The closing fable will move you in a profound way, unless you somehow manage to ignore the entire movie up to that point.  However, even if that were the case the delivery by all the performers involved, paired with perfectly composed dialogue will still deeply resonate with even the most stone-hearted.

While this movie, undoubtedly, benefits from a group screening, it is available on Netflix Watch Instantly and is quite deserved of your time.

I Think That's Illegal, Even In Amsterdam: Hostel (2005)

I am going to begin this post with a bold assertion.  Eli Roth is the David Mamet of horror films.  This would require some heavy defense were it a statement to suggest that Roth's works have the rapid fire impossibly on point dialogue of Mamet's works, but instead, suffer from the same sickeningly "post-feminist" belief that to be a male of well-to-do status means that you are in some notable way suffering and that the entirety of society, or the forces of nature are systematically working against their diminishing privilege.  Think about the absurdity of something like The Edge, wherein Anthony Hopkin's character must fight off bears and severe weather all because he had a foolish notion that he could tame the wilderness, never mind the overarching suggestion that he feels quite guilty about the killing of Native populations (in that he does not).  I want to suggest here that while far less keen with its dialogue, and decidedly less gripping than say Glengarry Glenn Ross, Eli Roth's Hostel wants to make viewers suffer and relate to a group of individuals who for all intents and purposes have not point of suffering aside from placing themselves into rather foolish situations.  Indeed, they are incredibly exploitative and perfect images of unchecked consumerism.  In fact, I want to extend my frustrations with this film a step further and suggest that this is a quantifiable reason to be concerned with providing a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino unadulterated praise.  The producer of this film, Tarantino also suffers from his own problematic relationships with justifying white male privilege and, with the exception of Jackie Brown, his attempts to challenge this tradition often fall flat and become wildly ill-conceived.  It is only fitting that he would jump at an opportunity to produce this film, it is narratively in line with his own act of making the absurdly impossible suffering of the well-off seem palatable.  Hostel is not a good movie, it is not even really a decent movie.  It is not because of its choice of graphic material, it is actually surprisingly tame in this respect, but is purely frustrating because at no point does this violence or exploitative nature move into a realm of considerable social critique.  Hostel is a textbook example of everything that is wrong with contemporary horror films, precisely in the belief that a narrative deserves justification by existence alone.

Hostel focuses on a group of young men who have taken it upon themselves to backpack across Europe for no other apparent reason than to smoke a lot of pot and have as much sex as possible.  Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is the unofficial leader of the group, using his suave nature to help them navigate spaces, where as Josh (Derek Richardson) seems more inclined to simply passively move through the various spaces, spending much of his time in Amsterdam bemoaning an ex-girlfriend and starring at the scenery.  The duo also gains the friendship of the Icelandic wild man Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) who helps them to gain access to spaces previously deemed inaccessible.  It is through Oli and the help of a Russian man named Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) that they are made aware of a hostel in Slovakia known for its libertine ways.  The three jump at the opportunity taking the very next train to the country.  On the way there they meet an unusually friendly gentleman with a penchant for eating with his hands, who also sings the praises of the town, before becoming a bit too intimate for Josh's liking.  Upon arrival the space is exactly as described, a veritable land of sex and drugs, wherein the trio immediately find women to hook up with in their very own room at the hostel.  However, after a night of drug use, Oli goes missing, leading to a quest to find him, one that reveals that the Slovakian town is a bit darker and less welcoming than initially believed.  Yet, it is not until Josh goes missing that Paxton truly becomes worried and when he is taken to an art show, by one of the women he had been sleeping with, he discovers a dark underbelly to the idyllic space, wherein individuals pay large sums of money for the ability to torture, then kill, living humans (Americans fetching a higher amount than other persons).  After being maimed via having a few fingers cut off, an accident on the part of the torturer affords Paxton a chance to escape, saving a fellow member of the Hostel in the process.  Using his masculine privilege he is able to escape the space and eventually make it to a train station, at which point the woman in tow realizes the damage done to her face, thus leading to her committing suicide on the tracks, incidentally not proving enough to stop the trains from running.  On this train, Paxton realizes a member of this torture group is present, leading to his killing the man before returning to the train for an assuredly long ride home.

One of the major elements of any survival horror film is the necessity of having a character for with which the viewer can empathize.  At times this can work on a very specified level, as is the case in the always problematic sub-genre of rape revenge horror films, such as I Spit On Your Grave or in cases the nature of the film affords many survivors of varied identities in the case of most zombie films.  In even rarer cases the nature of the filmmaking and the earnestness of the performance allow for a reliability to a hyper-specified identity as occurs with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.  I would argue that this really does not work for Hostel, because the characters created by Eli Roth are merely extensions of Eli Roth, or the very selective set of filmmakers who seem to have taken an unwelcome control over the horror genre over the past decade.  The male characters in the film, again are inhibiting their own demise by entering spaces riddled with drugs and crime and, assumedly, engaging in rampant and perhaps unsafe sex.  If the threat of their demise at the hands of maniac murderers is intended to be jarring to viewers, it is only in a sense that a person watching the film would not find all of their previous behavior absolutely disgusting.  Indeed, they move through the space of the film consuming and taking as they please at no point seeming even slightly apologetic, but that does not stop Roth from distinguishing his characters on some moral high ground, either making them vegetarians to denote their higher sentience, or giving Paxton the ability to be bilingual as to make him slightly "less American" when it proves absolutely beneficial.  Furthermore, to make the degree of empathy work, there really has to be a build of suffering and a moment of realization on the part of the protagonist that never comes at any point within Hostel.  Paxton is always a bit too aware of the situation and fortune really favors his every endeavor, never once getting caught in a truly threatening situation once he is able to free himself from without a challenge.  Mind you he breaks out of a chained chair, saves a half-blinded woman and dodges a ton of guards and torturers without even a semblance of trouble, only to use previously threatening village children to his advantage, never mind a lack of authority and explanation to the outcome of any events.  Roth seems aimed at shocking viewers into intrigue, but manages to forget that intrigue must be established at all points, before any sort of disgust or jarring work might emerge.

Key Scene:  The eye removal scene may well be the only well-executed thing in this entire film, in that it was completely grotesque.

AVOID THIS MOVIE, not because it is gross, but because it is bad.

Man Is Foolishly Oblivious To Danger: Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell (1968)

I have seen a lot of Japanese films in my day.  Indeed, before I decided to focus primarily on South Korean cinema I considered throwing my hat into the ring of Japanese film scholarship, which has come quite a long way since the labor intensive work of Donald Richie and the many off shoots that followed.  While I certainly still incorporate Japanese cinema into my research when possible, it has now become more a labor of love to engage with the country's cinema in all its glorious forms whether samurai or kaiju related, even stepping into the lush and evocative world of Kurosawa on occasion.  I say all this with reference to one of my particularly adored genres within Japanese cinema, the shoe string budget horror films that were released throughout the sixties and well into the late seventies, including the wonderfully wacky House and the schlock heavy, but well-regarded Matango.  Indeed, I am, as such, always on the look out for a new film in this bizarre cannon to consume, realizing that in the space of these non-traditional, low-budget films exist some of the most pointed and scathing critiques of the many facets of Japanese society and the manner with which it relates to a larger global context.  The delightfully eerie Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is certainly a case of this, right down to its use of a white European (perhaps American?) character and her lost Vietnam soldier as an extension of larger post-colonial woes in a country that was then still finding its footing on a global scale.  At times some of the special effects in the film could give the worst of the b-movie nonsense a run for its money, but given the clear admiration and care for the filmic out come of his product, director Hajime Sato manages to make a shoe-string budget into something spectacular, through heavy use of red tones, a healthy does of fake blood and enough hand drawn animation to make even the most stern of film viewers smile in disbelief.  Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell will never exist in a world of perfect cinematic output, but it is also far from being incurably bad, in fact, it is precisely in its willingness to not take itself seriously that the very critiques and condemnations it spouts become almost prophetic, even if only in a satirical sense.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell begins with a group of individuals flying on an airplane from Tokyo to  Osaka, wherein the flight stewardess Kuzumi Asakura (Tomomi Sato) attempts to layout a general flight plan only to be repeatedly interrupted by birds killing themselves by flying directly into the plane. Paired with a disturbingly red sky the other members of the crew and the passengers begin to grow anxious of their safety on the plane.  When information suggests that their might be a man on board with a bomb, the captains order an immediate search of all the persons present, including the somewhat befuddled Neal (Kathy Horan) an American widow, as well as a prestigious senator named Mano (Eizo Kitamura).  When a sudden light floats above the ship, the captains lose control of the plane's computers and the aircraft spirals downward, landing damaged on a desert like area, assumedly between the two cities.  It is at this point that the crew becomes suspicious of a particular man on the ship known only as The Hijacker (Hideo Ko), whose possession of a rifle makes him a prime suspect for a political assassination that happened prior to the flight.  Noting the inherent survival nature of the situation, a psychiatrist in the group named Momotake (Kazuo Kato) suggests that the group be incredibly aware of each action they commit as the wrong phrase or move could send the entire group into a frenzy, a warning that proves futile when it is revealed that not only is The Hijacker dangerous on purely an assassin level, but that he is indeed a creature that consists entirely in blob form, using the human body as a vessel to transport itself and destroy the other members on the plane in a manner quite similar to a vampire.  Nonetheless, figures like Mano in a foolish quest to quench their thirst drink large amounts of whisky, only worsening his suffering, while Neal, already reeling from the trauma of her loss, begins to act in bouts of hysteria bemoaning the war in Vietnam and the general downfall of humanity.  Matters come to their worst point when it is revealed that the aliens, who refer to themselves as Gokemidoro, show that they are capable of transferring between bodies at a quick rate, consuming the life force of all those they encounter.  The closing shots depict two remaining survivors traveling about the streets of Japan in a quest for survivors, only to be told by the spectral voice of a Gokemidoro that no human will be spared, as the camera then pans out to show the true destruction wrought not only on Japan, but the entire world.

While a well-argued case for this not really being a horror movie, but more so a science fiction thriller could be made, I would like to instead say that the survival aspects of the work are precisely what make it fall within the framework of a horror movie, as deemed so by Criterion who released it as part of their stellar and repeatedly rewarding Eclipse box set When Horror Came to Shochiku.  In fact, the psychiatrists speech during the film notes that in times of survival one can see humanity turn to its most inhumane, tapping into base animal instincts and maliciously seeking their own survival over that of others.  The narrative in Goke certainly evokes this sort of sensibility, but manages to take it even a step further, using this moment of survival to allow characters to challenge deeply entrenched notions of oppression, privilege and accessibility.  This is absolutely the case when Tokiyasue (Nobuo Koneko) exploits the well-being of Mano by offering him the initial drink of whisky, thus affording his increasing suffering and drunkenness as a point to show the horrors and injustices he has condoned while in office.  Similarly, there are multiple through lines between the figure of Neal's dead husband and his oppressive behavior both in regards to how he navigates as a continued colonial identity in Japan, while also proving quite hazardous to Neal who appears to be at a complete lack without the privilege attached to a white male in society.  Of course, the horror does not extend at these oppression, one can certainly look closer and note the manners with which Japanese women become a doubly othered figure in the narrative, neither possessing the whiteness or the maleness to be taken completely seriously, despite, at times being the most rational in a situation.  As such, Goke, in its low-budget ways becomes a wonderful look at the spectrum of intersectionality and the ways this oppression occurs even in the face of a near fatal accident, suggesting that as long as oppressors exist in the framework of a society, hegemony will exist and perhaps that is where a real horror lies, if not in this realization the purposeful juxtaposition of the Gokemidoro with the violence occurring in reality (Vietnam, political assassinations and riots) certainly drives the point deeply in a viewers psyche.

Key Scene:  The airplane crash!

This particular film is part of an Eclipse series that is full of great Japanese horror films, in which this piece of brilliance is not even its best offering.

Vanity. Vanity. All Is Vanity: Babette's Feast (1987)

The period piece is a genre that I always approach with a considerable amount of hesitance, which is a surprise considering that I absolutely adore everything about Downton Abbey and would probably come around on most any other Masterpiece theater production I undertook.  I am rather certain that a lot of my uncertainty is grounded within the very theatrical, costumed and rigid nature of the style.  My review of Anna Karenina made careful note of the manner in which the narrative styling and cinematic set-up counters the tradition of the period piece.  The Scandinavian classic Babette’s Feast is, undoubtedly, entrenched within the tradition of the period piece and is heavily influenced by a commentary on the nature of religion, making it quite similar to one of my favorite directors Carl Theodor Dreyer.  I will admit that I would never have undertaken a viewing of this movie, were it not for my research surrounding food in film, but I am more than glad to have engaged with this work, because not only is it beautifully composed, poetically written and simply cinematic, but it has opened me up to the world of period pieces done correctly and I cannot wait to engage with the genre full scale in the upcoming months.  Babette’s Feast is both an incredibly intense consideration of the role selfishness and vanity play into an individuals existence, as well as a reminder that even in the most distinct of philosophies and national barriers things like good music and beautiful music can help to unify any group.  It is also noteworthy that the film deeply considers the nature of femininity as it relates to a variety of oppressions and the rather creative manner in which many women navigated such issues and obstacles.  Yet, one of the major elements that seems to create a visually striking and unconventional film with Gabriele Axel's particular period piece, is that it is so dismissive of temporal and spatial constraints as to almost be experimental in its grandiosity, matching beautifully with its questions of religion and self-identity in a way truly and unequivocally transcendent.  Suffice to say, Babette's Feast is a cinematic revelation and yet again a remind that not all films from the 80's find themselves shrouded by the showiness of the era.

Babette's Feast, does indeed have a character named Babette (Stephane Audran) and while she certainly plays considerably into the plot, especially in its back half, she is rather irrelevant to the front portion of the narrative.  The film focuses primarily on two sisters, Martine (Birgitte Fiederspiel) and Phillippa (Bodil Kjer) whohave lived into old age within the same provincial village in Denmark.  Viewers are led to believe that they have spent much of their life locked on the island as a direct result of their father possessing them as his own, mostly as a result of his religious believes, but seemingly out of a sense of protection, especially since it appears as though their mother has long been forgotten.  The  knowledge that the father refuses to allow either to marry does not go unacknowledged, in fact, many townsfolk attempt to ignore this provocation and ask, always with failed results.  Two figures attempts factor in prominently, firstly in the haphazard and a bit goofy soldier General Lowenhielm (Jarl Kulle) who makes an offer for one of the daughters, only to be rejected leading him to spill his life into his work in the military, using his learned "piety" from the time with the daughters and their father to his advantage, even securing and economically viable, as much as it is political marriage.  The second suitor Achille Papin (Jean-Phillip LaFont) stumbles upon the family after hearing Phillipa sing at church, instantly becoming infatuated with the diva like quality of her voice.  He asks for permission of her father to train her in singing, something she initially agrees to although, when he realizes the sexual implications of such requests, he demands that Papin remove his services and return to Paris.  The narrative then flashes forward considerably and the much older Phillipa and Martine receive Babette at their doorstep, with a note explaining that she is Papin's daughter and wishes nothing more than to serve as a cook to the elderly women.  Although the women explain that they can offer no money, Babette agrees to work for free, eventually bringing the old ladies more money than before, which is, ultimately, topped off by her winning the lottery.  Babette as a gift, wishes nothing more than to cook a dinner for the parish in celebration of their late father, begging to cook a great French meal.  The sisters are hesitant, but agree to let Babette have this one wish, and she blows all of her winnings on the lavish meal, even inviting General Lowenhielm to return.  The dinner complete with rich food and drink serves as a unifier and a breaking of enforced conformity over decades of silence.  The silence is broken though, not through words, but through subtle expressions and actions.  Babette reveals that she was once a cook at a lavish French restaurant and that the sister's allowing her to enjoy her artistic past was greater than any gift imaginable and all those involved seem quick to agree.

Babette's Feast won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film the year it was entered and deservedly so, considering that if an American based society is to identify a singular film to represent the entirety of foreign cinema, Babette's Feast is certainly a deserved candidate in its transnational nature.  In fact, Babette's Feast, while very much a film about the beauty of a singular shared experience, via a feast, is also a consideration of border crossing.  This, of course, happens in very literal terms with the heavy amount of traveling done throughout the film, but can also find itself manifesting in a variety of different manners.  For example, the notion of a spiritual being crossing even invisible borders is a though professed by the sisters' father and a theme that seems prescient throughout the film.  While the characters seem to share distinctly different views of the world, they, nonetheless, seem similarly affected by a large entity, we can call it God in the context of this film, but its essence in some instances moves the villagers to sublime internal remembrance, while in other cases it causes characters to consider their entire existence, as Lowenhielm existentially considers his own vain life, perhaps serving as the main factor in his decision to return for the dinner.  Borders are also crossed in a gendered sense, although not in the performative element of somebody like Judith Butler.  Instead, gender identities are a very fixed thing, however, the roles they can perform in society seem less strict.  For example, both the sisters manage to take the place of their father as spiritual advisors for their community, and while they do not don the dress of a religious figure their status is, nonetheless, tantamount to such associations.  In a similar context, Babette's role as a cook may seem heavily domesticated and, exists in such a state up until the final feast, but with her willingness to throw caution to the wind in the French oriented menu and the revelation that she has been in charge of a restaurant certainly makes a viewer reconceptualize each gendered performance in the film, even by male figures like Papin and Lowenhielm, which become far less "masculine" in a sense.

Key Scene:  Sure the feast takes up a better third of the movie, but it is both grand and simple and serves as an extended and poetic scene and one of the best uses of food as metaphor I have seen to date.

This is a Hulu offering via the folks at Criterion.  I can only hope for a future bluray release, but until then this should work perfectly.