Tag: asian film

Film by Dan Schneider
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A shot of Nuri Bilge Ceylan in a window (text: "Greatest Living Filmmaker"), the director of "Once Upon A Time in Anatolia," which is being analyzed and reviewed in-depth by film critic Dan Schneider for the automachination literary magazine.

MASTERPIECE: On Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” (2011)

A few years ago, while reviewing Turkish film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2006 great film, “Climates”, I wrote:

“Climates is a masterpiece, but it is more than that. It is also possibly an augur to even better things cinematically. It is not an overstatement to declare that Ceylan may be the best living filmmaker today. And, if one argues with that claim, then one might only add that he’s the best still at the height of his powers. Yes, Angelopolous’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow was great, but he’s been at a high level for decades now. Ceylan, on the other hand, is still in ascent. Watch Climates, and feel his pull.”

In short, I was right. The filmmaker was capable of even greater heights. Yet, this level was only reached after the slight hiccup and regression that was 2009’s Three Monkeys- a good but ultimately unsatisfactory formula film that, despite virtuosic moments, was uninvolving.

Ceylan’s latest film, 2011’s “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da), is involving yet existential, crafted yet natural, sublime yet base, based on a true story yet utterly mythic, and a few other polarities that I think readers of this essay will prefer to discover for themselves. That stated, let me tell you what this film is not, despite the gush of praise from critics who have praised it, mindlessly critically cribbing from each other, despite not even remotely understanding the very film they praise. Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is not a police procedural film, nor is it an homage nor riff on Sergio Leone’s cinema. As to the first charge, yes, there is police procedural work that provides the external scaffolding structure of the film, but to state that this film is a police procedural is akin to stating that Huckleberry Finn is a book about the perils of 19th Century river rafting. It utterly misses the point that the film merely uses the scaffolding of the police procedural to dig at the existential issues its characters are dealing with, or, in many instances, not dealing with, even as they tangentially dart in and across their lives… […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A dining room with a corpse and two relatives in Dwein Ruedas Baltazar's "Ode To Nothing" (Oda Sa Wala), as reviewed by critic and poet Ezekiel Yu.

Solitude’s Remains: Review of “Ode to Nothing” (2018)

Sonya is alone. Her father lives with her, but refuses to speak to her. Their landlord stops by whenever he wishes, threatening eviction if they do not pay off their mounting debt(s). The family-owned funeral parlor she runs gets too little business and much of her time is spent either cooking food that she does not eat or staring out of the window. This is the Philippines, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, cramming in 392 people per square kilometer; and yet, snug in the midst of its urban sprawl, Sonya’s world is quiet and empty, and she is alone.

Writer-director Dwein Ruedas Baltazar’s third feature film Ode to Nothing (Oda sa Wala) is not in black and white, but it might as well be, for all its muted colors, its drab greys, casting an almost necrotic light over these many degraded surfaces, which is appropriate considering that Sonya’s living is extracted from the dead. Baltazar’s chosen aspect ratio is 4:3, mimicking the style of early cinema; but more than flaunting its “artiness,” this choice just further hems in Sonya’s world, non-diegetically trapping her in its narrowed, coffin-like confines. We see her often in frames that double this shape: windows, doorways, gates. Often barred, grilled and/or shut.

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized shot from "Poetry" by Lee Chang-dong.

Flowers and Odd Things: Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry” (2010)

In the same way that Steve McQueen’s Shame uses sex addiction merely as one avenue into deeper issues, Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry takes a similar tactic with its protagonist’s malady (Alzheimer’s) in order to play upon its own – not just deeper, but insidiously so – concerns. For all the film’s talk about beauty, and its genuinely poignant moments of personal confession and aesthetic consideration, there is a sense of pervading cruelty which is under constant subversion, from the opening moments of a uniformed girl’s corpse floating face-down in a river – the title “Poetry” almost demurely phasing in beside its stillness – to Yang Mi-ja’s persistent self-deceit, which she both helplessly suffers and, in a way, actively (and selfishly) utilizes.

What do I mean by this, exactly? Of course, Yang Mi-ja (or just Mi-ja; played by the pitch-perfect Yun Jeong-hie) is not to blame for her sudden cognitive ailment – such is common enough for a sixty-six-year-old. And, at least outwardly, she is a kind, beautiful, somewhat genteel woman, with an almost precious comportment in her dealings with others. She has raised her divorced adult daughter’s son in her stead (the daughter, without a voice or body for most of the film, lives in Busan) and also works as a caregiver for a partly-paralyzed old man, Mr. Kang (Kim Hee-ra). All worth at least some admiration, surely. Lee Chang-dong introduces her in a doctor’s visit: Mi-ja’s complaints about arm pain quickly turn towards the more concerning issue of memory loss. She has begun to forget common words, which embarrasses her, but also becomes something she quickly learns to charmingly deflect from. When, in a phone call with her daughter right after, she neglects to mention this troubling issue, the viewer knows something is awry – indeed, this seems heralded by a grim scene outside the hospital: the floating corpse has been found (suicide, apparently), and the girl’s mother is in a mournful daze, creating a spectacle where several bystanders watch in mute fascination as the disheveled woman mutters and groans and collapses on the street. Nothing is explicitly stated – the event occurs matter-of-factly, with little dialogue. It’s a good scene, playing into the idea of a public’s inability to sufficiently deal with its darker elements, and will have deeper relevance for Mi-ja, later on, for this will not be the first time she encounters the dead girl’s mother. […]