quinta-feira, 31 de outubro de 2013

Misfits

 
 
When witches go riding and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers it is Halloween.
 

quarta-feira, 30 de outubro de 2013

One single time

 
 
Sabes quantas vezes já me passaste pela ideia? Quantas vezes cruzas a minha memória? Quantas vezes me recordei já de ti? Quantas vezes me lembrei de nós?

Uma.

Uma única vez. Em acto contínuo. É uma lembrança constante. Que não se apaga, que não esmorece. Não é intermitente. Não vai ali esquecer e depois volta. ...


É uma única lembrança. Contínua. Desde o dia que cruzaste a minha mente, não mais te ausentaste. Aqui permaneces.

Uma única vez.

I must deliver

 
"I know your face
Better than my own hands."
 
 
W. B. Yeats, from The Shadowy Waters
 

It's a gentle caress that follows me everywhere

 
 
A impressão de pão com manteiga e brinquedos
De um grande sossego sem Jardins de Prosérpina,
De uma boa-vontade para com a vida encostada de testa à janela,
Num ver chover com som lá fora
E não as lágrimas mortas de custar a engolir.

Baste, sim baste! Sou eu mesmo, o trocado,
O emissário sem carta nem credenciais,
O palhaço sem riso, o bobo com o grande fato de outro,
A quem tinem as campainhas da cabeça
Como chocalhos pequenos de uma servidão em cima.

Sou eu mesmo, a charada sincopada
Que ninguém da roda decifra nos serões de província.

Sou eu mesmo, que remédio! ...



Álvaro de Campos, in "Poemas"

segunda-feira, 28 de outubro de 2013

Here my dear

 
 
Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife
To love, hold and cherish for the rest of your life?

I do, yes I do, I do darlin'
'Cause I love you.

 
P.S- Pretty little thing just about blew my mind; I knew right then and there this is where I wanted to be.

The most dangerous love story ever told

 
 
destino-te a tarefa de me sepultares
no segredo mineral da noite
com um lápis e uma máquina fotográfica

depois
fica atento ao correio
do secular laboratório nocturno enviar-te-ei
devidamente autografado
o retrato da solidão que te pertenceu

e numa encomenda à parte receberás
a revelação desta arte
onde a vida cinzelou o precário corpo
na luz afiada de um vestígio de tinta



al berto

Cine Me

 
 
Mud
 
 
 
 
There's a place where the river opens up into the whole wide world. When you reach it, the horizon expands to infinity, and everything ahead looks impossibly big and uncharted. Jeff Nichols' "Mud," a Mississippi River coming-of-age story, takes place on that threshold, down in the delta where innocence and experience, the past and the future, all run together like dirt and water.
 
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," "The Night of the Hunter," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Moby Dick," "Cool Hand Luke," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick ("Badlands," "Days of Heaven," "The Tree of Life"). But the picture never comes unmoored from reality or drifts off into lazy abstraction and cliché. Nichols' eye for particulars, his feel for the characters and landscapes (and waterscapes), is so vivid you feel you could get bit by a mosquito or a water moccasin if you're not careful.
 
Adam Stone's luminous widescreen photography and David Wingo's acoustic swamp music also have a lot to do with that, and so does the casting. McConaughey is on a roll, and this part, which Nichols wrote for him, is the strongest and most subtle lead performance of his career.(Could this be what becomes of Wooderson after he stops messing around with high school girls?) Even better, if that's possible, is young Sheridan (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain's youngest son in "The Tree of Life"), whose first kiss with a slightly older girl (two grades?) at a beach bonfire is so flawlessly rendered it already feels like it came from a classic movie.
American icon Sam Shepard, another Malick veteran, appears as a houseboat hermit sporting Billy Bob Thornton's haircut from "Sling Blade." Michael Shannon, the magnetic star of Nichols' previous pictures, effortlessly steals scenes as Neck's slacker-diver uncle. (A detail: When we meet Neck he's wearing a faded hand-me-down Fugazi T-shirt that suggests he must live with an older brother or male relative. The moment we see the inside of Uncle Galen's trailer, we have a pretty good idea of where it came from.)
And while Ellis looks like a cross between Atticus Finch's kids Scout and Jem (Mary Badham and Phillip Alford) in Robert Mulligan's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Neckbone is the perfect fusion of River Phoenix and Jerry O'Connell in "Stand by Me". The resonances are all around.

The boy, Tye Sheridan, is mesmerizing. This is really the story of how a teenager, driven by compulsion, puts in time to discover the complex truths and myths about a woman's love.


Mud is a very fine film about innocence, father figures and love, a work that manages to be thrilling, unsentimental and emotionally rewarding. This is, sadly, an all too rare combination in so many films, particularly the other American ones that showed in this year's Cannes competition, making Mud all the more worth the wait.

Lou Reed

 
 
He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
he's going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, to the dirty boulevard

domingo, 27 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
Captain Phillips
 
 
 
Tom Hanks stars in a hijack sea thriller that gives a global context to forces driving pirates and terrorism.
 
This unbearably tense hijack thriller from Paul Greengrass is based on a true story from 2009 about a Somali pirate attack on an American container ship. Like his 9/11 nightmare United 93 (2006) and his Northern Ireland drama Bloody Sunday (2002), this film is about a catastrophe that is the surface symptom of bigger economic and political factors. Tom Hanks is merchant marine captain Richard Phillips, about to pilot an American container vessel on a hazardous 10-day journey around the Horn of Africa and into the new bandit country. Meanwhile, a Somali fisherman called Muse (Barkhad Abdi) is part of a community terrorised by a local warlord. They have no choice but to obey when this baron orders them out on a hijack expedition tooled up with semi-automatic assault rifles.
 
This is a quasi-war movie set in peacetime: in some ways, a post-9/11 film, perhaps specifically a salve to the memory of USS Cole in 2000. America fights back, but against a new enemy. Globalisation and poverty are incubating these attacks. All civilian shipping can do is wait for the next assault.
 
The entire performance is one of the greatest in Hanks’ prolific, varied career — a role that gives him a massive arc and the opportunity to show great range.
 
But because “Captain Phillips” is a big, American studio picture that aims to wow audiences as well as awards voters, Greengrass also has to portray good guys and bad guys, winners and losers, and hang those tags on people and struggles that can’t be categorized so easily in the real world. We want to be unnerved for a couple of hours (and “Captain Phillips” could have benefited from some trimming) but we also want to walk away feeling good about ourselves.

And oh yeah, that Tom Hanks — he can really act.

Cine Me

 
 
Romeo and Juliet
 
 
 
Some generations get a Romeo and Juliet that speaks to their times -- Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version played right into flower power and rebellious attitudes, while Baz Luhrmann's 1996 modernized, gangsterized take hit the right urban nerve for its moment. Today's teenagers will have to make do with this decorous but bland version, which with its straightforward presentation and significantly abridged text calls to mind the old Classics Illustrated comic books of classic literature. The older the actors here, the better they are, as pros like Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis have it all over low-voltage young leads Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld. Relativity will be lucky to milk anything more than a moderate take from this pretty but unexciting enactment.
 
For whatever reason, 'tis the season for the Montagues and Capulets, for along with this film come two contemporaneous New York stage versions, one starring Orlando Bloom and another featuring Elizabeth Olsen. There's even a lesbian stage adaptation, with a female Romeo, in Philadelphia. To be sure, Romeo and Juliet remains one of the Bard's hardiest perennials, a tragedy, which, done at least halfway right, can squeeze tears out of all but the most hardened souls. Even here, the final scenes are effective enough to send those seeing the work for the first time, especially teenage girls, into paroxysms of romantic grief.
 
After the reinvention of Baz Lurhmann's 1990s update, the star-crossed lovers go back to square one with this "more traditional, romantic vision of the play", replete with "sumptuous locations, costumes and production design", courtesy of glass-swan producers turned film-producers Swarovski. So, it's blingtastic rewritten cod-Shakespeare ahoy as we romp gaily through scenic Italian locales, guided by screenwriter Julian Fellowes who knows a thing or two about good-looking country houses.
 
Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet gets little chance to display the true grit that first marked her out as a talent to watch, while Douglas Booth makes for a peculiarly pouty Romeo – handsome of hair, yet uninvolving of character. Paul Giamatti skulks around chewing the scenery as Friar Laurence, Damian Lewis draws the short straw in the unflattering Shakespearean short-back-and-sides department and Stellan Skarsgård appears to be on the verge of bursting into laughter, even during the funerals.
Meanwhile, the score swirls endlessly round and around, trumpeting every emotion, tearing at every heartstring and generally boasting so much windmilling piano tinkling that I half expected Holly Hunter to turn up in a bonnet and throw herself speechlessly into the raging sea.
 
Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet—a lush, conventional bodice-ripper of an adaptation with a screenplay (by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes) that borrows heavily from Shakespeare without quite being Shakespeare—feels like a quaint throwback to an earlier era in which a little-known director could just up and film a Shakespeare play, without big stars or a modern interpretive concept. I’m not sure how appealing this movie will be to the teen and young adult audience at which it seems to be aimed: Kids brought up on the cosmic battles and forbidden passions of Twilight and Harry Potter may find the thwarted longings of the youth of medieval Verona too wanly special-effects-free to hold their interest even for its slim 118-minute running time.
 
I was asked by someone why I went to go watch the movie because we all know how it ends. It is exactly how it ends that makes this movie based off Shakespeare's play so great and we all know how it ends so there's no need to explain.

The acting was great and the movie offered a great visual escape for its entire running length. I agree with another poster that this movie does not move too fast but rather stays fairly true to the actual play. Fans of the play will definitely be pleased by balcony scene where Romeo is professing his love for Juliet as it is one of the better scenes in the movie. If you're a fan of Shakespeare you'll definitely enjoy this movie.
 
 Still, there are reasons to see this Romeo and Juliet—it’s just a shame that Romeo and Juliet are not chief among them.

Winter blues

 
It is so much safer not to feel,not to let the world touch me.
 
Sylvia Plath

quinta-feira, 24 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
Frances Ha
 
 
 
In Frances Ha, a splendidly modest black-and-white film directed by Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig (who is also the film’s co-writer) stars as Frances, 27, an idiosyncratic, free-spirited aspiring modern dancer living in Brooklyn. Her world turns upside down when her roommate and BFF, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), meets a fella and decides to move out. Sophie then moves into another Brooklyn pad with two young guys, Lev (Girls’ Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), as she tries to find some direction in her life.
 
 
The film is one of the best so far this year—a romantic meditation on life as a directionless millennial suffering for her art in New York City. Or, the plight of the hipster.
 
 
Some will find Mr. Baumbach's seventh film to be quirky bordering on precious, a Brooklyn hipster's version of Woody Allen's "Manhattan," or an upscale take on Andrew Bujalski's seminal, microbudgeted "Funny Ha Ha" (with which it bears too many similarities not to be an homage). Everyone has an opinion, of course; some people probably think the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is a little busy.
 
 
For others, the glorious "Frances Ha," co-written by Mr. Baumbach and his real-life paramour Greta Gerwig, will possess an irresistibly lovely, melancholic acknowledgment that love is impossible, and that the more candid a young woman is, the less eligible she becomes in the standard romantic sweepstakes. Shot in breathtaking black and white by Sam Levy, the film is also honest about New York City in a way Mr. Allen has never had to be: The city has become a theme park for trust-fund babies, in which la vie bohème is a pricey fashion statement. Someone like Frances, a dancer without investment portfolio, or even a real apartment, who lives footloose out of necessity—not, like most of her friends, amusement—is a truly endangered species.
 
 
En route to Frances' self-realization, there are moments in which the movie falters, forces a joke or leaves a line hanging in the air like old wash. But "Frances Ha" also marks the rare instance in which an actress has the perfect role at the perfect time. Ms. Gerwig's work here is fragile, delicate, subject to bruising; something that could wither under too much attention. Perhaps Ms. Gerwig is the greatest actress alive. And maybe "Frances Ha" is just the ghost orchid of independent cinema.
 
 
Glorious. Irresistibly lovely.

Never ever

 
 
Not only will your answers keep me sane
but I'll know never to make the same mistake again.


P.S- To find peace of mind, the happy mind I once owned, yeah !

quarta-feira, 23 de outubro de 2013

Speak low when you speak, love

 
 
 
Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go
That tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon...


Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief

We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, everything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon.
 
 
 
 

 


segunda-feira, 21 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
A Late Quartet
 
 
 
Grace notes abound in A Late Quartet, a small, shining gem of a movie that works its way into your heart with insinuating potency of music.
 
 The Fugue, a New York-based chamber quartet, is facing a crisis. At the start of their 26th season together, cellist Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken) breaks the news that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Proper sympathy is offered by his colleagues: First violinist Daniel Lerner (Mark Ivanir) thinks Peter should continue to play as long as he can. But second violinist Robert Gelbart (Philip Seymour Hoffman) lets slip his desire to play first chair, an ambition that appalls his violinist wife, Juliette Gelbart (Catherine Keener), who sees Peter as her mentor. When Juliette learns that Robert has cheated on her and that Daniel is screwing her and Robert's student daughter, Alexandra (Imogen Poots), tensions within the group begin to pound.
 
OK, it sounds like the plot of a daytime soap, and sometimes it is. But director Yaron Zilberman and co-writer Seth Grossman have tuned their film with the skill of the quartet at the heart of their story. Chamber music, which features few if any solos, requires a close partnership among its players. As the Fugue rehearses Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor – the Opus 131, which the composer insisted must be played without a pause – we watch a dysfunctional family of artists begin to implode. We also hear music, mostly performed by the Brentano String Quartet, that seems to be heaven sent.
 
It's paradise to watch this quartet of actors, who learned to play short phrases on their instruments, make their own kind of music. Hoffman and Keener, who costarred in Capote, play off each other with artful intensity and pure feeling. Ivanir is the spark that ignites their conflict. And Walken shines in a subtle, nuanced display of banked fires. Approaching the cello with hands trembling, he's like a lover who's lost his assurance. The performance is heartbreaking, and a master class in the craft of acting.
 
Insightful and incandescent, this is a film for both music lovers and movie lovers.
 

quinta-feira, 17 de outubro de 2013

I'm yours

 
 
- Serei tua na pousada de Thorgste. Peço-te, entretanto, que não me toques. É melhor que seja assim.
Para um homem solteiro entrado em anos, o oferecimento do amor é uma dádiva que já não se espera. O milagre tem o direito de impor condições. Pensei nas minhas garotadas de Popayán e numa rapariga do Texas, clara e esbelta como Ulrica, que me negara o seu amor.
Não incorri no erro de lhe perguntar se me amava. Compreendi que não era o primeiro e que não seria o último. Essa aventura, talvez a extrema para mim, seria uma entre muitas para essa resplandecente e resoluta discípula de Ibsen.
De mãos dadas prosseguimos.
- Tudo isto é como um sonho - disse - e eu nunca sonho.


                          Jorge Luis Borges

I dreamed of fire

 
She loved mysteries so much she became one.

Never ever

 
 
 
A few questions that I need to know
how you could ever hurt me so
I need to know what I've done wrong
and how long it's been going on
Was it that I never paid enough attention?
Or did I not give enough affection?
Not only will your answers keep me sane
but I'll know never to make the same mistake again
You can tell me to my face or even on the phone
You can write it in a letter, either way, I have to know
Did I never treat you right?
Did I always start the fight?
Either way, I'm going out of my mind
all the answers to my questions
I have to find

My head's spinning
Boy, I'm in a daze
I feel isolated
Don't wanna communicate

I'll take a shower, I will scour
I will rub
To find peace of mind
The happy mind I once owned, yeah

Flexing vocabulary runs right through me
The alphabet runs right from A to Zed
Conversations, hesitations in my mind
You got my conscience asking questions that I can't find

I'm not crazy
I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong, no
I'm just waiting
'Cause I heard that this feeling
won't last that long

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When you gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've Never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

I'll keep searching
Deep within my soul
For all the answers
Don't wanna hurt no more

I need peace, got to feel at ease
Need to be.
Free from pain - going insane
My heart aches, yeah

Sometimes vocabulary runs through my head
The alphabet runs right from A to Zed
Conversations, hesitations in my mind
You got my conscience asking questions that I can't find

I'm not crazy,
I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong
I'm just waiting
'Cause I heard that this feeling won't last that long

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When ya gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've Never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right x4

You can tell me to my face,
You can tell me on the phone,
Uh, You can write it in a letter, babe
'Cause I really need to know

You can write it in a letter, babe
You can write it in a letter, babe
 

domingo, 13 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
Don Jon
 
 
 
Great fun. A romantic comedy, with a serious lesson. Fine performances all around. Slick to watch. Moves fast. No immaturity in the script. Bravo to Gordon-Levitt.
 
"Don Jon" feels compelled to tell you why Jon is hooked on pornography, and this is where the ship begins to sink into a sea of sexism. Rather than just leaving it at dialogue that states that addicts enjoy the fantasy over reality, Jon has to tell us that all real women primarily want is the missionary position. Considering his success ratio, it's impossible to believe that not one of those hot women he picked up was willing to do anything remotely freaky. "I can't lose myself in them like I do in porn," he tells us.
 
"Don Jon" is a sex comedy that just lays there and expects you to do all the work. Gordon-Levitt's direction is repetitive and dry, and his screenplay is a collage of badly cut out pieces from other movies. Its desire to be liked damns it, and the entire porn plot feels tacked on as a desperate way to distinguish "Don Jon" from its major influence, "Saturday Night Fever." At least that film had a sense of pathos and characters that weren't paper thin.
 

domingo, 6 de outubro de 2013

This

 
 
"É isso o amor. Manter a ternura pelo mesmo homem, embora se deseje outros a momentos diferentes"


Pepetela in: Mayombe


Cine Me

 
 
Hannah Arendt
 
 
 
 
An intense look at the trouble life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt , who reported for The New Yorker on the war crimes trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
 
The picture is based on real events about Hanna Arendt life ; Arendt's first major book was entitled, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which traced the roots of Stalinist Communism and Nazism in both anti-Semitism and imperialism . In her reporting of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, which evolved into Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), she coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe Eichmann. She raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.Arendt was sharply critical of the way the trial was conducted in Israel. She also was critical of the way that some Jewish leaders, notably M. C. Rumkowski, acted during the Holocaust. This caused a considerable controversy and even animosity toward Arendt in the Jewish community. Her friend Gershom Scholem, a major scholar of Jewish mysticism, broke off relations with her. Arendt was criticized by many Jewish public figures, who charged her with coldness and lack of sympathy for the victims of the Shoah/Holocaust. Due to this lingering criticism, her book has only recently been translated into Hebrew.
 
This is an interesting film about ideas, and how explosive they can be.
 
Hannah Arendt was one of 20th century's greatest thinkers, and her books "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and, in particular, "The Origins of Totalitarianism," remain fascinating. Von Trotta's film, however, is not so much interested in Arendt's political theories, preferring to view her as the embodiment of the strength and wisdom of the Jewish survivor. It's perhaps a safer way in which to deal with Arendt's legacy, as a fictional account could never do it justice. Still, the film remains true to Arendt's stubborn vision, as it portrays her inner, personal conflicts with a nuanced touch.
 
"Hannah Arendt" is not a particularly subtle picture, nor is it that original. However, Von Trotta's direction is assured and the film has an incredibly strong performance at its core, and it asks a number of important questions, even though it doesn't dare to answer them.
 
The result was her celebrated coinage "the banality of evil": her epiphany in realising that Eichmann was not a scary monster but a pathetic little pen-pusher. For Arendt, it was in this shabby and insidious mediocrity – emblematic of a nation of administrators obediently carrying out the Holocaust – that true evil resided. But for many in Jewish circles, this was too sophisticated by half: her remarks on perceived Jewish collaboration in the Warsaw ghetto were resented and her association with the philosopher and Nazi associate Martin Heidegger was not forgotten. (Perhaps the nearest dispute in our day was Gitta Sereny's apparent leniency on the subject of Albert Speer.)
 
This is a formal and pedagogic production, but worthwhile nonetheless.

sexta-feira, 4 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
 
Diana
 
 
 
The film is an adaptation of Diana: Her Last Love, Kate Snell’s account of the two years between the late Princess of Wales’ divorce from Prince Charles and her death in 1997. It focuses on the relationship between Diana and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, and suggests that Diana and Mr Khan were involved romantically for two years, and she nicknamed him “Mr Wonderful”.
 
The drama is about Diana's post-Charles affair with the handsome Pakistani heart-surgeon, Dr Hasnat Khan, a dismally written role with which the actor Naveen Andrews can do little or nothing. Diana is forced to see Hasnat in disguise, wearing a black wig that makes her look weirdly like Liz Hurley. Dr Khan is a proud and passionate man who loves Diana, but his family is unsure about it all and he can't reconcile his feelings with the prospect of his work being disrupted and achieving global celebrity as mere arm-candy.
And Dodi? Dodi was no one. He is presented here as a mere rebound fling – a ruse Diana co-created with long-lens photographers, which was intended to make Hasnat jealous.

Well, maybe. But this seems a highly simplistic view of events.
 
 
 

This is La Vie en Rose

 
 
looooooooooove
is all i got to make you want me
and now there's no one else that my heart can see
looks like a cupid when it shotme with that
 
hold me close and hold me fast
the magic spell you cast

quinta-feira, 3 de outubro de 2013

Cine Me

 
 
 
A drama telling the story of a young Japanese woman who finances her studies through prostitution.
 
Like Someone in Love (2012) is a Japanese movie written and directed by the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. Kiarostami brings his quiet, thoughtful style to a culture that is surely very alien to him. Japanese viewers may note cultural errors in the movie. My thought is that Kiarostami can look beyond cultural differences to universal themes.
 
It’s a simple story with deep implications, starting with the ones contained in the very title of the film (that of a classic Hollywood song by Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Burke). Throughout his career, Kiarostami has intertwined appearance and being, has filmed performance and impersonation as the very essence of character; in this film, even more than ever, he links the look of a person, a thing, a city, to the very heart of existence. It’s a thing of beauty with a heart of darkness; the surfaces have never been so alluring, so enticing, so literally lovely. Yet the world he depicts is one of surveillance and fear, coercion and rejection, pain and renunciation, danger and violence.
 
As in many of Kiarostami’s films, much of the action takes place in cars. Two rides in particular stand out as sequences of an astonishing beauty and depth. In the first, Akiko, packed off in a taxi by her john, has been avoiding her grandmother’s telephone calls; the old woman is in Tokyo just for the day. In the taxi, Akiko listens to all the messages and hears that her grandmother will be waiting outdoors beside a statue outside the train station. Akiko asks the cab driver to pass by the station. As the statue comes into view, a van pulls up and blocks the way. Akiko asks to be driven around it once more. The entire trajectory—showing Akiko and the driver, the face of the city from her perspective, and views of her from through the window—is a bravura eleven-minute sequence that seems to embrace the whole city and to capture a grand swirl of passion in a single, flickering, intimate experience. The entire tumult, busy yet delicate, power-riddled yet serene, cold and turbulent yet painterly-delightful, comes alive in a simply filmed and majestically conceived sequence.
 
The one that follows—the morning after, when Takashi drives Akiko to school—is much shorter, even simpler, yet even more virtuosic. It’s one of the most quietly delirious scenes in recent cinema, showing the sky and the clouds and the sinuously curving forms of the bland suburban overpasses reflected in his car’s windshield. The effect is one of Shakespearean grandeur, of a world out of joint, seeming literally to be spinning off its axis as this uneasy pair, who are far from a couple, find themselves thrown together, making their way together, in ways that neither of them can yet suspect. It’s hard to recall any scene, ever, in which such vast, cosmic emotions arise from a scene of little action and virtually no drama.
 
Miraculously, things turn out just as they appear to be—every suspicion is justified, every lead bears fruit, every worry leads to calamity—and this litany of anguish leads to the movie’s rapturous emotional center: namely, Kiarostami’s hard, grand idea of what it is to be like someone in love. It’s to bear up, to do whatever is necessary to keep a connection, to endure what must be borne, and, at any price, to maintain it. Along with Kiarostami’s images, his wisdom—his experience—will endure, burned into memory; he offers not just images of characters or of action but of life, of life as such. His immediate and instant fusion of philosophical thought, intimate detail, and the very act of cinematic vision makes this film one of his very greatest, certainly among the singular and crucial movies of recent years. (I’d rank it even higher than his 2010 film “Certified Copy.”)

Abbas Kiarostami can sometimes create challenging endings. The sign-off to his masterpiece A Taste of Cherry is still something to be pondered. But his latest movie, set in Tokyo, really is bafflingly and even exasperatingly truncated. There are some interesting ideas and sympathetic performances in a superbly shot and fascinatingly controlled exercise. There is potential. But the curtain comes down with an arbitrary crash just as the drama was becoming interesting.
 
But this is all taken away from us. The movie is cut off so sharply, I almost wondered if, like Tarantino's Kill Bill, there is some second part still to come. The enigma of its sudden stop doesn't seem, on the face of it, to be a particularly rewarding one. It is just opaque. When Akiko arrives in his apartment, Takashi is playing Ella Fitzgerald's recording of the song Like Someone in Love, by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. But is he in love? Is she? These ideas are not explored. It is a beautifully shot, and very nicely acted beginning to something: but finally frustrating.
 
I enjoyed this intelligent, thought-provoking movie.
 
(The film is so masterfully controlled, we feel like we’ve eavesdropped on something like life.)




terça-feira, 1 de outubro de 2013