"Son of Saul" Review

I was finally able to catch Son of Saul just two days after its win at the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. It is a very strong piece that takes a rather unique approach to the Holocaust drama. Rather than paint a picture of the setting through wide angles and helicopter shots as other directors might, Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes keeps the camera focused solely on Saul (Geza Rohrig), a prisoner working as a member of the Sonderkommando at one of Auschwitz's crematoriums. Forced to gas his own people, Saul's guilt catches up with him and prompts him to rescue a boy who survived the chamber. After the boy is killed by an attending Nazi physician, Saul spends his time in search of a rabbi willing to help him bury the child whom he's taken as a son in death. All the while, the prisoners plot a rebellion.

It's interesting how you get a vivid portrait of the setting even with such an intimate perspective. The grunge and the horror of the camp is seen through Saul's facial expressions and body language. All credit to Rohrig on a masterful lead performance. If he had been nominated for Best Actor last Sunday, he probably would have won.

Things get pretty tense in the film's last 20-30 minutes as the riots begin. Other than that, this is a very deliberately paced film that requires patience. It didn't provide me much to get invested in during the first hour. For that, I'd say fellow Foreign Language Film contenders Mustang and Embrace of the Serpent are more worthy of your time and praise let alone the Oscar. Maybe Son of Saul didn't deserve the award, but it's still a unique cinematic experience that breathes new life into the tired WWII/Holocaust drama.

B+

"Anomalisa" Review

Few storytellers tap into the complexities of human emotions with more honesty than Charlie Kaufman. With Anomalisa, he returns to the screen for the first time since 2008's Synecdoche, New York, now pulling double duty as writer/co-director with Duke Johnson.

From the poster above, it's easy to tell that Kaufman's new film is well-marketed with superlatives that make it sound like a life-changing masterwork of modern cinema. An Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature all but seals its status as the can't-miss puppet show of the season. While Anomalisa offers much more dramatic nuance and understated comedy than your typical Punch & Judy sketch, the film's stop-motion pleasures only take it so far.

By the time the credits rolled, I felt unmoved albeit mildly entertained.

The story follows Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer service guru who has just traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to speak at a conference. Despite having a successful, bestselling book and a loving family back in Los Angeles, Michael struggles with the mundanity of his existence. To him, everyone looks and sounds alike (all ancillary characters, male and female, are voiced by the same man - Tom Noonan). Everyone, that is, except Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a seemingly insignificant woman who turns out to be the one person able to give Michael a fresh perspective. She's an anomaly in his mundane life; "anoma-Lisa," as he agrees to call her.

Questions are left frustratingly unanswered in the end, and it appears as if the events of the film don't really change Michael as much as we're lead to believe the whole time. Maybe that's the message, that temporary solutions are rarely the real answer. Or perhaps the final lesson really is that "there is no lesson" - something that Michael himself alludes during the film. Either way, that's kind of a ballsy message to try and get across in a film, but either way it didn't quite work for me. It's really a far more depressing piece of work than I expected.

Cincinnati natives especially should chuckle at the way Kaufman pokes fun of the city, especially the chili and the zoo. Being from that area myself, the jokes about both are pretty spot-on. That's really where Anomalisa shines. Its humor comes from the relatable nuances of Michael's day. It takes him five tries to get the card key to work to his hotel room, regardless of what rush, or lack thereof, he's in. He takes a ride in a cab where the driver won't shut up about things to do and see in the city.

Kaufman has always had a talent for creating vivid, almost fantastical, worlds that either mirror our own or exist within them. Anomalisa's sense of humor serves the world-building quite well, as we've all come to expect from Kaufman.

The voice acting is also strong, as is the technical, stop-motion wizardry from Johnson. I think this story is actually quite effective with puppets - especially the aspects regarding the Fregoli syndrome and certain moments when Michael begins to question his own identity. That said, it's still a story we've seen many times before, even occasionally from Kaufman himself (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the movie Her from frequent Kaufman collaborator Spike Jonze).

While Kaufman and Johnson deserve some props for creating such a vivid world filled with nuance and sleight humor, there's nothing from narrative or emotional standpoints that makes me want to rush out and recommend Anomalisa to everyone. Even though this film is meant to be smart animation for adults, my money is on Pixar's Inside Out for the Oscar. It navigates the complexities of human emotions more accessibly and therefore more effectively.

C

Sundance 2016 - "Cemetery of Splendor" Review

Writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (let's just call him A.W.) burst onto the Sundance scene in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. After premiering at the Cannes Film Festival last may, he returns to Park City to share his latest feature, Cemetery of Splendor, with American audiences for the first time. After seeing this film, it is clear that A.W.'s subtle mastery of the cinematic language affords him the status of being one of the world's most exciting visual storytellers.

The story of Cemetery of Splendor involves a middle-aged housewife, and her wards, tasked with caring for a group of recovering soldiers. These men are nearly all in a coma-like slumber until one of them finally awakes, prompting our heroine on a journey through an Inception-like world where dreams and reality blur in a far more understated fashion.

The film's slow pace and Thai language may be off-putting for less discerning viewers, but rest assured that the deliberate nature with which A.W. approaches this story only reinforces the emotional impact of the images onscreen. This lends us more time to contemplate and accept this vivid "netherworld" which A.W. would have us believe exists within our own. For example, notice how the neon tubes seem to emerge from the ground near each soldier's bedside like glowing grave markers. These men aren't necessarily dead, but A.W. allows us to contemplate all sorts of alternatives without the use of dialogue in sections like this.

In fact, the film's most insightful, poignant moments come at times in which no words are spoken.

Cemetery of Splendor is a film rich with so much texture, both visually and emotionally, that it is impossible to fully digest after only one viewing. I expect it will have a long and healthy shelf life as it is studied, discussed and scrutinized as one of the 21st century's defining cinematic achievements.

A+

Sundance 2016 - "Embrace of the Serpent" Review

Embrace of the Serpent is Colombia's entry for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar. It is playing as part of the "Spotlight" program, which consists of films not submitted for consideration in competition. These are hand-picked by the programming staff to share with Sundance audiences. Other films in this category include Miles Ahead, Green Room, and The Lobster - all of which premiered at other festivals in the past year.

Embrace of the Serpent chronicles the 40-year story of Karamakate, an indigenous shaman who, on two separate occasions, encounters a white man in search of a sacred plant. The man Karamakate aids in his younger days is the sickly traveler Theo (Jan Bijvoet). Theo searches the plant for its healing powers. 40 years later, Karamakate meets Evan (Brionne Davis) who hopes to harvest the plant for its potential destructive capabilities. 

Throughout both journeys, the film explores themes of trust and spirituality (especially the warped kind). This is very much a Heart of Darkness story, and it's interesting to see it told through a lens in which the indigenes play actual characters with depth. The actors who handle the dual role of Karamakate are both incredible. 

The film dissects the nuances of native traditions while also occasionally indicting them, which lends depth not only to the characters or the story itself but to the setting as well. Storywise, everything works in perfect harmony. 

However, what works as a careful examination of humanity for one audience may come off as slow for another. The film unfolds at a very deliberate pace that some may find too slow for an adventure story. 

Additionally, there's one scene later in the film where the elder Karamakate and Evan encounter a religious cult and a leader so insane, he makes Col. Kurtz look like a teddy bear. What unfolds is certainly the most absurd sequence of the film. It feels like something that might be in King Kong or any one of the egregious "cannibalsploitation" films of the late '70s and early '80s. I was interested to learn in the Q&A session that this was the moment in the film that adhered the closest to what was written in the original travel logs on which the film is based. Turns out we were wrong for letting that scene remove us from the experience, however briefly. 

Lastly, I had trouble seeing past one visual hiccup in an otherwise gorgeous film. The black and white cinematography exposes different textures in ways that color can't often capture. There's a very fast helicopter tracking shot over the Amazonian canopy that was too much for my eyes to handle. All that texture moving at that speed nearly made me motion sick. 

In the end, Embrace of the Serpent far outdoes The Danish Girl as the most audacious cinematic challenge of the past year for this reviewer. Heck, Serpent may be one of the most challenging, yet emotionally rewarding, films I've ever seen. It deserves its place among the Oscar nominees. I've yet to see Son of Saul, but the three foreign-language nominees I've seen so far are among some of the very best movies I've seen in years. Give them a chance if films like Serpent, Mustang, Theeb or Son of Saul are playing in your area.

A-