The Borderline Film Festival continues:
Alone in Berlin. Middle-aged couple distribute anti-Nazi messages in Berlin during war. Despite predictable ending their dogged courage is uplifting. (See pic; yes, that's Emma Thompson!).
Graduation. Slippery moral slope for doctor and family struggling to live in corrupt modern Romania.
The Unknown Girl. Idealistic Belgian doctor, racked by guilt at single minor act of negligence, investigates death of young woman immigrant.
The Salesman. Won Best Foreign Film Oscar this year. Yet another masterpiece from Iran (How do they do it?): assault on woman is explained by couple appearing in production of Miller's Death Of A Salesman. Detailed and persuasive.
La-La Land. Doesn't live up to hype. Musical with feeble tunes, modest dancing by principals and vestigial show-bizz plot lapses into inanition. Jazz sub-plot looks like five minutes spent on Google.
The Headless Woman. Mis-titled, over-ambitious and opaque story from Argentine about woman whose personality is affected by car accident. Repetitive, uncommunicative and somewhat irritating.
Ah ... is the Berlin flick based on Fallada's work? Jeder stirbt für sich allein? I had a copy in my hands at one point and lost track of it.
ReplyDeleteRW (ZS): Indeed, it is based on that novel. Three other movie versions were made before this one. You'd expect it to be depressing but - by magic - it contrives not to be. The husband is a foreman working at a small company that manufactures coffins.
ReplyDeleteHeard that Hereford is in the running for British City of Culture next year, surely the presence of family Robinson there must only enhance its chances?
ReplyDeleteSo glad to hear what you say about La La Land, being tired of hearing about it.
Bonne continuation..
Lucy: I've always loved that felicitation, somehow reminiscent of:
ReplyDeleteTime like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away,
They fly forgotten as a dream,
Dies at the op'ning day.
A hymn to mixed metaphors, you might say.
The Salesman is one I'd like to watch. As for La-La Land, I haven't watched it because I suspected it's as you describe it.
ReplyDelete