Movie Review: The White Ribbon (2009)

When the wealthy, landowning baron (Ulrich Tukur) of the tiny German town Eichwald rises in church to announce to the congregation that an evil person lives secretly amidst them, the accusation is both alarming and relieving. A dastardly prank has left the town doctor (Rainer Bock) severely injured, and an unknown offender has recently kidnapped the baron's young son (Fion Mutert), violently thrashed him to the point of bleeding, and left him hanging upside down and naked in a mill. To know that a person would be capable of such ill will is a horror, but to hope that a careful investigation might discover and eradicate the culprit, restoring the town to peace, is a relieving prospect.

Michael Haneke, however, is a filmmaker who creates mysteries. He does not solve them. His films require the viewer to draw the proper conclusions, and they often force the viewer to think twice about whether the questions he's asking--the suspense he's caught up in--are even the relevant questions. Is something greater at stake? Is something else going on? Anyone expecting a startling twist and a detailed revelation at the end of Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Band) will be disappointed, but those familiar with Haneke's "cinema of insistent questions" will walk away with a horrifying glimpse of pervasive, cyclical violence.

Set in 1913 on the eve of the First World War, The White Band plays out in a context of societal violence. A war-stained empire was primed to proudly, patriotically enter what would be the bloodiest conflict in human history. Their children would grow to become the generation of Nazis. Antisemitism had already threaded itself through the Protestant Christian culture, and all of the country's misfortunes could easily be thrust upon a scapegoated minority. This historical setting has little to do with the specifics of the parochial drama that unfolds in the film, but considering that the movie is Haneke's first feature film to not take place in contemporary times, this historical context is important to note.

Specifically, however, The White Band is a depiction of individual sins and their ability to expand into community, national, and global evils. The baron describes one sinful criminal and the community believes him. I, too, found myself suspecting the unlikeliest of suspects, a polite young school teacher (Christian Friedel) who is seen fishing in the river after the doctor's horse trips over a "nearly invisible, thin, but very strong wire" tied between two trees and who is seen whipping a horse immediately after the baron's son is discovered to have been thrashed. I think, given Haneke's precise style, these clues are intentional red herrings, and suspecting the mild mannered teacher (who is also the narrator) also conforms to the mystery movie convention of the perpetrator being the most unlikely suspect. An additional reason to suspect him is the reason that the community would likely suspect him if the film had taken place twenty or thirty years later: with his dark, curly hair, his wire frame glasses, and his intellectual misfit manner, he is rather very Jewish. That he remains innocent in a town where almost no one is and that he ultimately leaves the town never to return again is a statement against the vilification of Jews, proof that goodness can survive in a hostile environment and that using irrational means to create and rout out enemies is no way to solve the real problem of evil.

The baron may be willing to scapegoat, but each of the townspeople, with few exceptions, possess their share of sin. With sparse, meticulous scenes divided amongst a large, impressive ensemble cast, Haneke illustrates a pervasive ill will, terrors and hypocrisies that lash out in every direction. The doctor appears to be a kindly old widower, yet he sexually abuses his fourteen year old daughter Anna (Roxane Duran), who each day looks more and more like her mother. He maintains an illicit affair with his hardworking, supportive neighbor (Haneke regular Susanne Lothar), but then rejects her with humiliating, cruel insults after having sex with her over the sink. Who would set a trap to kill him and his horse? Perhaps a local villain, but more likely his own daughter, who watches the accident from the doorway and, unlike her younger brother Gustav (Thibault Sérié), does not seem grieved by the mishap. The trap would be an indirect way to retaliate against a powerful, dominating oppressor, a way to end her years of incestuous rape. Given her maturity, her inheritance, and the dependability of her neighbor, she would also not have much to lose and plenty to gain. This is, of course, only my theory.

The film details many indirect responses to abuses of authority. In an unequal, undemocratic relationship, the submissive party when wronged has few safe recourses to retaliation. Revenge is therefore either carried out anonymously, is self-inflicted, or is redirected to a third, less powerful party. When the baron's neglectful supervision of the workplace conditions on his farm leads to the death of an older woman, the woman's son avenges the death and the baron's minimal response to it by destroying the baron's cabbage patch, a symbolic act which means, "If you don't pay up, I'll cut your cabbage (money) for you." His action speaks words without him needing to speak up. When the pastor's oldest daughter Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) is humiliated by her father in front of her classmates simply for having fun during recess, she silently slips into his office and impales his parakeet with a pair of scissors. "You take away my joy, I'll take away yours," the gesture symbolizes. Unprovable deeds of anonymous revenge are the most directly satisfying but also the most likely to be discovered.

Others direct violence against themselves because it gives them a sense of control, feeling, and action that harms no one else in the process. When the pastor's son Martin (Leonard Proxauf) is beaten and humiliated by his father for staying out late, he walks along a high, precarious bridge banister, tempting God to kill him. If he dies, his religious conviction tells him that he deserves his punishment; if he survives, then he knows that God has forgiven him. The panicked school teacher intercedes and exacts a promise from the boy that he will no longer punish himself with such dangerous existential crises. Later, the husband of the dead farmer woman hangs himself, his only escape after having lost his job during the controversy following his wife's death. The night before, one of the baron's barns (possibly the one his wife died in, though I'm not certain) burned to the ground. Did the old man burn the barn down and then kill himself in remorse? Or is the murderous, kidnapping villain also an arsonist? That mystery is never solved.

The baron is the most obvious source of corrupt power in the film. The cruel, incestuous doctor receives the most intimate examination. But the most squeamishness-inducing monster in the film is the pastor (Burghart Klaußner), who rules over a silent wife and a brood of creepy children. The pastor never ceases to remind his young children that they are mortal sinners, that they have failed him, and that they are destined for hellfire unless they change their terrible ways. When the children return home late one evening after spending the day supporting Anna, whose father just nearly died, the pastor reminds them of how disappointing they are, sends the entire family to bed without dinner, makes plans to beat them with a switch, and attaches the titular white ribbons to them to remind them that they once were pure despite their straying. It is soon after the canings that the baron's young son is kidnapped and thrashed. Did the overly disciplined children direct their vengeance against the spoiled, happy child? Did their inability to stand up against their oppressive father cause them to gang up on a small child?

The pastor sees his teenage son's sullenness as proof of masturbation, and after detailing the horrid fate that awaits him if he continues to abuse himself, the father begins to tie the boy's hands to his bed frame at night. Trust, free will, decision making, and privacy play no role in an authoritarian dictatorship. The rulers make the decisions, and everyone else obeys.

The most horrifying act of violence is one that happens late in the film. After the doctor dismisses his lover, she threatens to do something that will make him feel sorry but then quickly admits that he probably wouldn't care anyway. Soon afterward, her young Down Syndrome child (Eddy Grahl) is found blinded and beaten in the woods with an attached note: "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation" (Num 14:18). A premonition from one of the pastor's daughters suggests that his kids may have something to do with this horrendous crime, yet it seems unlikely that the children would leave such a note. Assuming that no one would have any reason to punish the gentle child, one must assume from the note that the punishment is directed against his father. The father of the unmarried woman's child is never stated, but one can easily assume that the doctor, her long-term lover, is responsible. Is harming his son what she means by making him feel sorry? And is she right in assuming that he--who has a legitimate, healthy son and daughter--wouldn't care? Does she punish herself and her innocent son more than him in this misdirected path of revenge?

As town doctor, the man caresses and cares for the boy who may be his son as the tortured mother looks on. In a following scene she hastily commandeers a bicycle from the school teacher, claiming that she has discovered evidence of the perpetrator who has committed all of the crimes and she must rush to the police station immediately to tell what she knows. With her son evidently locked up inside, she disappears and is never seen again. When the townspeople gain access to her abandoned house, they find no trace of the boy. After harming him, has she put him out of his misery with a mercy killing? Did guilt over her horrible, senseless crime force her to flee the city and her old life?

The doctor and his family also disappear abruptly the same day. This is treated as a mystery of the highest order, and the narrator describes an unlikely story of the doctor and his lover fleeing together, having successfully pulled off all the capers. Why might the doctor have actually left with his daughter and son? Could it be that he had impregnated his own daughter and needed to escape discovery and shame? Did the neighbor kill them and bury them in the yard? Did he kill his daughter giving her an abortion? (A haunting midnight scene about "ear piercing" suggests the possibility of late night abortions.)

Haneke leaves many unanswered questions at the end of The White Ribbon, but the likeliest scenario points not to one evil influence but a sphere of conflicting, misdirected evils. The school teacher announces his belief that the pastor's children are likely responsible for the crimes only to be denounced by the pastor, who--despite constantly berating and punishing his children for their ungodly behavior--thinks it impossible that pure children could be responsible for monstrosities. The children are likely responsible for some of the crimes, but the town has no small share of monsters. Even minor characters in small, tangential scenes reveal seething threads of jealousy, sexual infidelity, abuse, and contempt.

The baroness (Ursina Lardi) moves to Italy with her son after the boy is injured a second time by jealous peers. She explains to her husband that she can no longer live in a society ruled by hypocrisy, hatred, and oppression. Would she really find solace in Italy, or are these vices a worldwide epidemic? The film does not answer this question.

The movie does, however, provide brief glimpses of hope. The schoolteacher and his nursemaid girlfriend Eva (Leonie Benesch)--both outsiders to the town--provide a pure, progressive, compassionate love story to contrast the ugliness surrounding them, though innocents such as them were likely the first to be victimized in the Holocaust or crushed under fascism. The doctor's wide-eyed son, who has just discovered death, remains innocent, though age will likely corrupt him one day, and one of the pastor's young sons, who raises a wounded bird and then gives the bird to his father in sympathy when his parakeet is murdered by Klara, is capable of selfless acts. One of Haneke's most admirable skills is in rounding out even the most despicable of his villains: the pastor's face as he receives the gift from his son is one of heartfelt redemption and sadness. The pastor may be a cruel and manipulative autocrat, but even he mourns the death of a joyful bird.

Stunningly captured in deeply saturated black and white, The White Band's cinematography by Christian Berger evokes the tiny postcard paintings of forests, carriages, and snow-frosted church steeples found on the wallpapered walls of old people's parlors. The photography paints a horrifying tale with beautiful, stark images. Attention to detail is superb; the film authentically feels a century old. The nuanced acting, buried in ambiguities in secret passions, is superb throughout; even the many young child actors possess genuineness. The White Ribbon is one of Michael Haneke's greatest films, a mystery that reveals itself to be a horror film once one realizes that the mystery is not much of a mystery at all. Evil is not carried out by elusive masterminds. Evil is everywhere, breeding like a virus and burning like a fever.

The White Ribbon
d/w: Michael Haneke
(Burghart Klaußner, Rainer Bock, Christian Friedel)
9/10

Movie Review: Metropolis (1927)

To appreciate Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction masterpiece Metropolis, one must try to not read too deeply into its plot. Though the film speaks in the language, imagery, and music of political allegory, one must approach the film as merely an apolitical fantasy, for any attempt to apply its naive symbolism to the real world will be at best baffling and contradictory and at worst downright offensive. The film's simplified politics scarcely mirror any normal symbolic representation of society as seen from any standard philosophical perspective, neither contemporary society nor, as in 1984, a projection of where society is doomed to be headed.

Co-written by Lang, an anti-fascist of Jewish extraction who was inspired by Soviet literature, and his temporary wife Thea von Harbou, an aristocrat and future member of the Nazi Party, the film's story is an awkward fusing of two magnetically opposed philosophies. Hence, the story depicts the "heads," the thinking elite known as the "upper ten thousand" who live lives of leisure and mindless luxury in magnificent skyscrapers stretching to the heavens, and their "hands," the dirty, shoeless workers who live beneath the earth and keep the machines--and the city above them--running. The beautiful Maria, an odd prophet of the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism, advocates that the workers keep their noses to the grindstone, earnestly hoping that a "mediator," a "heart," will redeem them. Joh Fredersen, the oligarch in charge of Metropolis, combines forces with Rotwang, a crazed, ugly, dark-featured intellectual who controls the scenes from behind to his own benefit, to build an evil robot version of Maria that incites the workers into a violent, destructive revolution while simultaneously encouraging the upper ten thousand to abandon their virtues to wanton decadence. Society and progress come screeching to a halt, all the children almost die--including Fredersen's own son Freder--and everybody on both sides, after killing the evil Rotwang, realizes that they are all brothers and sisters of one race. They must work together according to their abilities--the animalistic, brutish hands running the machines, the cold but sensible heads controlling the hands--in order to build humanity on a continual, godlike path of progress closer to the stars. On the steps of a cathedral, the hands and the heads are united by Freder--the mediating "heart"--a symbol of compassion and religious faith.

In other words, the status quo is confirmed at the end of the film. The workers should not try to revolt because otherwise they will become homeless and their children will die. Joh Fredersen should remain in power because every society needs a leader with complete authority, and because he has a son that he (sort of) loves, the workers should love him and sympathize with him because they know that he is a human just like them. Rotwang--the sinister intellectual with the crazy dark hair (perhaps he's Jewish?)--is the only villain. And all that the status quo needed to be a perfect society capable of transcending human limitations was a demagogue clothed in religious imagery who just so happens to be the dynastic successor of the current governing elitist. Whatever specific compassion this mediating "heart" will offer is never mentioned (better wages maybe? nine hours of constant, backbreaking work instead of ten?), but his role is likely just propagandistic.

In 1932, Thea von Harbou joined the Nazi Party, and in 1933, the same year that Hitler came to power, the two divorced. In 1934, Lang's film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was banned in Germany by Joseph Goebbels, who feared that it would undercut the country's faith in ideologues; however, Goebbels, a fan of Metropolis, offered Lang a loaded position as head of a film studio. Fearing that he was being forced to become a fascist propagandist, Lang fled that night to Paris. Two years later he moved to Hollywood, where he lived until his death.

At its center, Metropolis is a fascist film, but Fritz Lang's anti-fascist sentiments are evident in the film's heartfelt depiction of the workers as oppressed individuals, in its ridiculing of the elites as non-consequential fuddy duddies in short pants and combed hairdos, and in its depiction (throughout much of the film, at least) of Joh Fredersen as a heartless, calculating tyrant in love with his own unquestionable power. The film contradicts all this at one point or another, which makes for a perplexing message, but Lang's heart is evident somewhere amongst the soupy mess. Years later in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Lang explained

"The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale — definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture — thought it was silly and stupid — then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures— should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?"

And that's a key point in the enjoyment of this film. If one can dismiss the plot as merely a fantasy, then one is free to enjoy the visual and technical splendor of the film and all its inspired imagination. The most expensive film ever made at its time, Metropolis features over 38,000 actors and extras, who are used to emphasize the dehumanized role of machine-like workers in a technological future, to illustrate the exhaustion and robotic motions of the oppressed classes, to highlight the anonymity of even the upper classes in a vast and wealthy urban culture, and to add sweeping chaos to climactic scenes of destruction. The disaster scenes of the film's final "furioso" moments, which combine miniature models with actual grand sets, are exhilarating even today. The film, with its starkly black on white nods to German Expressionism, utilizes a variety of meaningful and alluring architectures--the Art Deco skyscrapers and their flashing advertisements; the brutal modernism of the machine district and the workers' underground city; the organic, earthy darkness of the ancient catacombs with their twisting staircases and hidden passages; the intricately detailed Raygun Gothic style of Rotwang's futuristic laboratory; and the larger-than-life, surreal Biblical structures seen in the Tower of Babel and the shrine to Moloch.

Lang's visual compositions are breathtaking, with constant motion in every direction--elevators, trains, airplanes, hoards, falling buildings. Even the camera, in one panicked moment, moves forward to zero in on an important discovery. Some of the special effects will be obvious to today's viewers, but Lang's vision is timeless. Metropolis achieves the utmost levels of movie magic in that its never quite clear what was really filmed and what was mere camera trickery. Given that, it's easy to give up guessing and succumb to the film's imaginative world.

While the acting, particularly that of Gustav Fröhlich as Freder and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Rotwang, often succumbs to silly silent overacting, Brigitte Helm is notable as both the saintly Maria and the evil robot. With a devilish smile, one constantly winking eyelid, a pivoting head, and gyrating arms, Helm as the Machine Man conveys the terrible possibilities of progress and the dehumanizing nature of rampant technology. She's one of the first notable screen villains, in addition to Fritz Rasp as The Thin Man, a tall, ghastly thug with chiseled features, pointed ears, and strong, slender fingers concealed in black leather gloves. He wears a black outfit resembling both that of an assassin and a monsignor, and his leering face reveals a desperate desire to unleash his destructive power.

Metropolis is full of such captivating details as this holyman assassin. Even the numerals on the film's many bizarre clocks are strange and interesting. Metropolis is a testament to a total style of science fiction filmmaking in which the creation of a good, convincing film requires the creation of an entire new universe full of countless believable yet unreal details. (2001 and Children of Men are further examples of this.) Though the story is baffling and childish, Fritz Lang's complete investment of imagination has guaranteed that the film will always remain a must-see masterpiece.

Metropolis (1927)
d: Fritz Lang w: Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou
(Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel)
TSPDT?: #69
8/10

Movie Review: Suspiria (1977)

Italian director Dario Argento purportedly wrote the classic horror film Suspiria with his girlfriend, actress Daria Nicolodi, based upon a combination of a dream that she had once had and a scary story that her grandmother once told her. The screenplay was originally to star a cast of twelve-year-olds, but when producers balked at the idea of exposing children to graphic violence, the screenplay was changed to accommodate a cast of young adults without changing a single word of their immature dialogue or a single act of their childlike behavior. The result is one of the worst screenplays ever filmed.

The convoluted, plot hole-riddled story tells of a German school founded in the late-nineteenth century by a Greek immigrant, Helena Markos, who was actually a powerful mistress of the dark arts, Mater Suspiriana ("Our Lady of Sighs"). The school she founded was a combination school of dark arts and witchcraft-slash-classical ballet studio, but following public outrage and the death of Markos, the witchcraft department was removed from the curriculum, leaving only the dance school. Or so we think! New student Suzy Banton (Jessica Harper), with the help of Scooby Doo-style clues, physically impossible revelations, an idiotic and easily spooked friend who insists upon solving a mystery that doesn't even seem to be a mystery, and a chance encounter with a professor of occult studies who has literally written the book on Markos, connects the complicated and ridiculous dots and realizes that Markos is still alive, in some way planning something that's probably dark and possibly even powerful. So Suzy kills her by, of course, thrusting a glass feather into her shadow, which causes the entire school and all the evildoers within it to explode.

Most critics these days don't spend much time discussing the obviously absurd and inane plot of Suspiria, insisting that its set pieces offer chilling horror despite a lack of overall plot structure. I don't buy that. Supposedly, original audiences of The Great Train Robbery in 1903 would scream and hide under their seats when the villain pointed and fired his gun at the camera. A century later, such a gimmick doesn't scare a single spectator because most of us need more than visuals and camera trickery to feel a visceral, emotional response to the film reel. We--some of us more than others--need something that allows us to transcend the knowledge that we are merely watching a film. We need a heartfelt theme, a believable character, a raw conflict--something that tricks at least a tiny part of our brains into believing even if only for a few minutes that we are perceiving a meaningful reality and not simply twenty-four frames a second of contrived filmmaking. This is what the "suspension of disbelief" is. It's not just believing that pigs can talk or vampires fly at night; it's believing that anything at all in the film is something real. It's that tiny bit of movie magic that sells us the deception that we are no longer on a couch or in a theater staring at a flickering screen.

Argento never achieved that with me in Suspiria. I often speak of being "taken out of a movie." By that, I mean taken out of total immersion in the film's world and thrust back into my seat, abruptly jolted into the reality that I'm just a guy consuming a movie. A good movie is a sustained act of hypnotism; a bad movie consistently reminds you that you're being hypnotized. Though Suspiria starts strong with a storm-soaked, dreamlike establishing scene, it quickly devolves into confusion. The idiotic setting of Suspiria (the "coven-slash-ballet academy"), the atrocious characterization (fully grown young women who speak and act like bratty children), the ludicrous plot structure (a key revelation revolves around Suzy being able to count the distance and direction of footsteps throughout a massive building), the lack of motivation (what exactly are these witches trying to accomplish? what are they even capable of accomplishing? what have they accomplished aside from killing a few people they don't like?), the over-the-top, unrealistic effects of the grisly murder scenes (you can plainly see that the barbed wire in one memorable death doesn't have any barbs), the disoriented editing (cut to: a scene in which a bit character, a blind man, is killed far from home for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the plot), the hammy exposition (Suzy meets a professor at a pivotal moment who just happens to be able to answer all of her questions), the bad accents: all of these elements and many more constantly prevented me from feeling that Suspiria was anything more than a horribly made horror film.

We go into a horror movie prepared to be scared. In doing so we build up our defenses against being scared. A good horror movie tricks us into feeling fright anyway; Suspiria never does. At its best, it gets two things right: lavish, otherworldly sets painted in gorgeous, nightmarish Technicolor strokes of mutant green and blood red and a theme song by Goblin that--while much overused--is effectively unnerving. These elements save Suspiria from the vast, swampy dregs of the worst horror movies, but they're not enough to make it scary or a classic film. Why have Entertainment Weekly, Bravo, and Total Film named it one of the scariest movies of all time? Why has the Village Voice called it one of the hundred best films of the twentieth century? Why does the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? list of the greatest movies of all time list it at #484?

I have no idea.

Suspiria (1977)
d: Dario Argento w: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi
(Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, Udo Kier)
TSPDT?: #484
4/10

Movie Review: The Grand Illusion (1937)

It's humbling to write about a movie as intelligent, revered, and successful as Jean Renoir's 1937 war masterpiece La grande illusion, or to even publish my hastily compiled first impressions after one late night viewing amongst the probable thousands of things that have been written and said by scholars, critics, and fans in the past seventy years, whose acclaim have pushed the movie to #24 on the TSPDT? list. The Grand Illusion is a thought-provoking, touching, and funny accomplishment, and it deserves rank amongst the greatest that cinema has ever offered.

"The Grand Illusion" is, of course, war, and the First World War--the Great War--is chosen as the stage whereon the old world of chivalry, esprit de corps, nationalism, and aristocracy, all those notions that helped to propel Europe into the war, extinguishes pitifully to make way for a hopeful, modern society of sacrifice, democracy, trust, and respect. There's no fighting in The Grand Illusion, and very little blood is shed. The causes of war, the faults and consequences, the specifics of who is winning and by how much: no time is wasted on any of these absurdities. The tug-of-war capture, surrender, and recapture of an offscreen French fort by German battalions is the only direct reference to tactical maneuvers, and its frequent change of possession causes one cynical observer to remark, "There mustn't be much left by now."

The war depicted could be any war. Some people on one side die. Some people on the other side die. In the end, some politics happens and the world resumes with different borders and laws and other such inventions and a few million less human lives. Renoir's film is allegorical. Characters represent different aspects of a diverse society, yet they are rich, unique and convincing. What's important here is which characters live and which ones die. As a crippled German officer explains in an odd moment of camaraderie with his French prisoner of war, either the French or the Germans may win, but the old world they represent will certainly die.

Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) wears white gloves, a stiff uniform, and a neck brace, all to cover a body destroyed by war burns. He'd rather be fighting--would rather die fighting--but his diminished physical capacity means he must not police a prisoner of war camp, doing his duty in an eleventh century cathedral and tending to his lonely geraniums while the world around him violently trudges forward. His name is important--he is a von Rauffenstein, an aristocrat--and when his men capture a Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), a French nobleman whose count brother--also fighting the war somewhere--he once knew in Paris, he sees a kindred spirit. Boeldieu's captured comrades--a Rosenthal, a Marechal--are honorable men Boeldieu honors and trusts, but von Rauffenstein sees them as mere prisoners. A Jew and an urban workingman, Rosenthal and Marechal are subjected to the same examinations, confiscations, and interrogations as any suspect prisoner. With de Boeldieu, however, an honorable word and a promise suffice.

The French aristocrat prods, half amused, half confused. He is, after all, no less dishonest than his peers. They are all plotting to escape. Why should he be treated with respect and naive trust when the others are justifiably searched. To the German aristocrat, the answer is quite obvious. A Jew? A lower class workman of no distinguished name? Why even bother explaining?

It sounds racist and simplistic, and it certainly hints at the antisemitism that would follow the war, spawning its sequel (The Grand Illusion was made as the Nazis were building steam in Europe), but the characters--both of them wearing monocles (I found myself constantly thinking how impractical such an obsolete instrument must have been), both of them excessively yet naturally prim and polite--are so precise and natural in their assumptions that the scene never seems outrageous. We feel only sympathy for von Rauffenstein, helplessly stuck in an outdated perspective that forces him to trust the one man he should be most suspicious of, the man who has in fact hidden the ropes that will later be used to flee. It's like if your farsighted grandmother in the heat of competition asked you to help her read her poker cards.

Von Rauffenstein, like Germany with its nationalism and antisemitism and other preposterous, excessive notions of the first half of the twentieth century, sets up his own demise. The sadness, rejection, and acceptance that cross his face when he realizes that de Boeldieu has betrayed him are heartbreaking.

De Boeldieu, with the knowledge that the life he is accustomed to is long gone and the hopeful new life of his comrades is just beginning, uses his position of trust to lure the Germans in a Pied Piper distraction while Rosenthal and Marechal escape by rope over the fortress wall. He wants to die. He knows von Rauffenstein wants to die, too. For most people, death in war is a tragedy. For aristocrats--the knights of bygone ages--it's the only way out.

Meanwhile, Rosenthal and Marechal begin their two hundred mile trek to neutral Switzerland through the freezing landscape of northern Germany. They run out of their scarce food, Rosenthal sprains his ankle, the map begins to tatter, and soon they're at each other's necks, irritable, desperate, and fatigued. Rosenthal's a filthy Jew. Marechal's a common dog. Rosenthal's dragging him down like dead weight. Marechal was always a waste of space. They separate; good riddance. Then the anger subsides and they hobble on together. Their virtues and dependence on each other triumph. Contrary to being a "stingy Jew," the nouveau riche Rosenthal, son to a wealthy banking family, always gladly shared his abundant prison parcels so that all the prisoners could eat like royalty. Despite being a common dog, Marechal has shown courage and resiliency in rallying the prisoners against humiliation and defeat. Goodness prevails, regardless of race and class, and despite the evidence of the eighty years since this movie was released, it still can.

Hiding in a barn in the German wilderness, they are captured by a peasant woman named Elsa (Dita Parlo), who never considers rousting them out or alerting the authorities, despite their French ethnicity. To her, having lost her husband and all her brothers to a war she could care less about, they are fundamentally cold, tired, and hungry people, despite their language. She invites them in, feeds them, and explains the loneliness of her life, the sorrow of a dinner table far too large for just her and her young daughter. Pointing to a photograph of military men, she rattles off the battles her brothers died in--all of them conclusive triumphs for Germany but major defeats for herself. Enclosed in a warm, bright, humble abode far from the fighting and the capital cities, with Christmas approaching, they form a loving, bilingual family with plans to reunite when the war ends.

In a final scene, they finally make it to snowy Switzerland. How can you tell, Marechal asks. It all looks the same. To which Rosenthal responds, borders are an invention of man. Nature doesn't give a damn.

They cross the final steps to arbitrary freedom. A German border patrolman spots them, ponders opening fire, but--his mind governed by the fictions that control borders, politics, and war--realizes that they are in another country and must let them escape.

For the minorities, women, and working men, war is hell. Something to be suffered and escaped from. Limbs and lives can be lost, but those who put stock in the divisive inventions of noble blood, political frontiers, superior ethnicities, and heroic bloodshed should have the most to lose: a lifestyle that seeks to separate rather than unite, that seeks to justify chaos and disunity for the sake of tradition rather than promote understanding, trust, and respect for the sake of progress.

I've seen one other Renoir film--The Rules of the Game, considered his masterpiece (and #2 on the list)--but I think I prefer this one with its more hopeful tone, its dose of humor, its rigorous but clear pacing, and its characters, who despite being obvious stand-ins for allegorical statements never seem anything short of real and well-rounded. An excellently acted and finely crafted film, it still maintains the freshness and meaning that it held eight decades ago, the allure that propelled it to being the first foreign film nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. It's inspired movies from The Shawshank Redemption to Woody Allen's Manhattan to Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, and it will hopefully inspire anyone who sees it to strive toward a dignified approach to all mankind. (The Nazis, by the way, despised this film, and Goebbels labeled Renoir Public Enemy Number One.)

Like I said at the beginning, I'm only scraping the surface of all the rich layers this film has to offer. I've only seen it once. I suggest you see it as many times as possible.

The Grand Illusion
d: Jean Renoir w: Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak
(Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Marcel Dalio)
10/10
TSPDT? #24

Movie Review: The Engima of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Werner Herzog's commitment to historical accuracy in The Engima of Kaspar Hauser, the true story of a half-wild foundling who in May 26, 1828, was discovered on the streets of Nuremberg carrying an unusual origin story, only illustrates how far-fetched Kaspar's claims were, elucidating the theories that he was a professional swindler and method actor. Kaspar, raised in a tiny, hay-strewn room for seventeen years, having never seen another human nor anything beyond his cellar walls before being dumped in Nuremberg by his mysterious caretaker, acquires language and culture with extraordinary rapidity, is more civil and intelligent than many of the citizens he eventually meets (making this film quite similar to Lynch's The Elephant Man), and behaves calmly, patiently, and insightfully, whereas almost every other documented case of actual feral children has resulted in severe mental trauma, extreme retardation, behavioral and emotional issues, and early death. Having passed the window of opportunity for enculturation, most feral children never gain basic human social skills. Kaspar, however, writes a journal, plays piano, and enlightens those around him before mysteriously being murdered.

To see Herzog treat Kaspar's story as an actual instance of long-term seclusion and not an elaborate hoax is a bit difficult to swallow at first, but the story eventually allows for scenes of meaningful commentary on society, culture, logic, and independence--scenes which justify the film's spot at #524 on the TSPDT? list.

Played by the odd-looking Bruno S., who was 41 at the time, Kaspar Hauser is the image of loneliness, confusion, and non-conformity. He has spent all his life passing minute after minute with no stimulation other than his--we assume--thoughts. Prior to leaving his cellar, he doesn't even have dreams (what images and situations would the dreams consist of? we can't imagine anything completely outside our own realm of experience... his dreams would be inseparable from the reality of sitting in the room). One would expect the world of wonders that greets him upon his release to be either frightening or exciting. Women and flowers and sunsets and architecture. Any Hollywood movie would show a chaotic blend of emotional ups-and-downs accompanying these discoveries (remember the awful At First Sight with Val Kilmer?); instead, Kaspar is disillusioned without even knowing it. The bigger his world becomes, the smaller it seems. Observing a tower, he remarks that it must be smaller than the room to which he was confined, which could be seen above him, below him, and all around him whereas he need only turn around to stop seeing the tower. A friend and mentor attempts to explain the flaws in his reasoning, but his disappointment is persistent. People are howling wolves to him, flowers are pointless, and the only happiness he has is the discovery of his own imagination. Inspired by reading, he can soon picture worlds beyond his own, worlds infinitely more peaceful and beautiful, worlds able to be controlled and subdued because they exist only in his dreams. His only comfort, he says, is in sleep.

Added to his disillusionment is the general disappointing value of human society: simpering nobility, cruel strangers, boring families, kowtowing bureaucrats, and pretentious intellectuals. A professor tests his development by guiding him through a logic experiment involving an encounter with a stranger at the crossroads between the Town of Liars and the Town of Truthtellers. Asking only one question, how could you know what town the stranger comes from? "I would ask him if he is a tree frog," Kaspar explains, eliciting the outrage of the tester, who dismisses the answer as being devoid of logic and completely unacceptable, instead offering a correct answer involving double negatives that makes no literal sense whatsoever.

There are plenty of similar scenes, including two in which Kaspar is showcased at both a circus sideshow and an elitist's fete (both of them very much the same), all of them adding up to a general desire for the viewer to retreat like Kaspar to a quiet room and never have to talk to another person again. The culmination comes after his mysterious murder, when the scientists and politicians who have pondered him for two years finally get to perform an autopsy. The protagonist's wet, gray brain is brought before the camera and cut in half, and the learned men discuss the size of his cerebellum and the swelling of his liver as if the cursory examination of his dead body could say far more about the unusual man than his insightful, iconoclastic words ever could.

But before that, on his death bed, he retreats to his imagination, telling those gathered around him the beginning of a story the end of which he cannot recall. Grainy footage shows us Berbers in the Sahara Desert, lost for miles, wandering in circles, consulting their compasses and scientific instruments to no avail. Finally they see an oasis in the distance that their science confirms, but the oldest and wisest among them bends to the sand, tastes the earth, and tells them they're full of shit. Their eyes have deceived them; their goal is in another direction. And it is. It's a beautiful story placing individual intuition and earthly awareness above science and collective corroboration. Which is exactly what Kaspar Hauser realizes in his two years among the humans: it's a hard and loud and stupid world, and sometimes you just need to retreat with your personal beliefs and insanities into a blessed isolation. Come to think of it--judging from Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn--that might just be what all of Herzog's movies are about.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
d/w: Werner Herzog
(Bruno S.)
7/10
TSPDT? #524

I have a feeling this isn't written very well. Blame it on my tiredness.