The Son Rises

The Son Rises

In Sangre de Me Sangre, a father discovers that a revisit to his ex-wife, involving sex that may have not been consensual, produced a son. Diego (Jesús Ochoa) washes dishes at a New York restaurant; his ex lives in Mexico. When a teenager (Armando Hernández) shows up at his door, carrying a letter from his ex and claiming to be his son Pedro, Diego is suspicious. But the boy persists, and soon Diego has accepted him as his son.

We know different. The boy is actually Juan, who robbed the real Pedro (Jorge Adrián Espindola) on the truck ride up from Mexico. Real Pedro has also reached New York but is having a rough time on the streets, sometimes aided, sometimes impeded by Magda (Paola Mendoza), a hustler/drug addict. They are trying to find Diego, who they believe runs a New York-area restaurant.

The A-story–the developing relationship between Diego and false Pedro–is the most rewarding, with Juan scheming to relieve Diego of the cash he has presumably hoarded, but starting to feel a bit of compassion toward his prospective victim. Diego, meanwhile, surprises his coworkers by switching from surly food service grunt to proud papa.

All in all, an entertaining story. Spoiler: The film finishes as open-ended and uncertain as, well, the ongoing life of an undocumented worker.

Sangre de Mi Sangre (reviews)
Directed and written by Christopher Zalla
Language: Spanish
Running time: 111 minutes
Awarded the U.S. Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic, at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
DVD release date: December 16, 2008

* * *
Li’l Quinquin was certainly loved by Cahiers du cinéma (their favorite film of 2014); perhaps this satire, punching down at rural villagers, appeals to critics of a particular intellectual stripe. In a town along the northern French coast, a chopped up woman has been found inside the body of a dead cow. A twitchy, incompetent police captain has been assigned to investigate, accompanied by a dog-like officer. The men of the town seem to be of limited intelligence or burdened with actual disabilities.

The title character is a sort of cross between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn–he leads a small group of kids around town, and one of his niftiest possessions is a dead mouse on a string. But he also delights in tossing firecrackers at tourists and throwing racial taunts at African immigrants. A future Le Pen voter, for sure.

Despite all this human ugliness, the film does offer some quirky amusement, as when Quinquin uses ceremonial bells to discombobulate a memorial service. I don’t really regret the 206 minutes I spent watching it (in France it was a 4-part mini-series), but I’m not ready to endorse it to others.

Native Son

Much has been written about the superb documentary O.J.: Made in America–how it takes its time getting to the double-murder and trial, showing Simpson’s early life and football career and detailing the history of the LAPD and its relationship with the black community; then depicting the trial; and finally laying out Simpson’s decline into seediness and tragedy, as the Establishment finally gets its revenge. I’ll just add two thoughts.

The gut-level loathing that many people had for Marcia Clark reminds me of the deep-seated hatred expressed toward Hillary Clinton in this century. Certainly there are reasons to dislike each woman: Prosecutors in general can come across as soulless devourers of their prey, and Clinton has had plenty of stumbles as a politician. Still, something in these women triggers an intense, irrational response, and I’m sorry and grateful that I can’t begin to understand it.

Much of the Simpson trial is a reverse-image of the recent documentary series, Making a Murderer. In both cases, there are disputes about blood evidence and suggestions of a police frame-up. Of course there are big differences in the cases, but perhaps the most critical is the disposition of the juries. In the context of the police’s historic misconduct, the Los Angeles jury was disinclined to give the prosecution an inch. But in Wisconsin, the jury ignored questionable behavior by police investigators in reaching its verdict.

O.J.: Made in America (reviews) (official site)
Directed by Ezra Edelman
Running time: 478 minutes
DVD release date: July 19, 2016

Freedom in Flames

Burning Bush, a three-part HBO Europe series, feels more relevant today than when it aired four years ago. It features Russian meddling in another land’s internal politics, bringing an oppressive regime to power. And a politician causes a major stink with an utterance based on fake news.

The film (in the U.S., the series was presented as a four-hour movie) begins in early 1969, six months after political liberalization in Czechoslovakia was put down by Warsaw Pact troops. In Prague, a startling act of protest threatens to galvanize the opposition to the harsh regime installed in the putsch. Both the regime and the opposition try to figure out who was involved in the protest and what further actions are planned. An apparatchik puts out a phony story about the protest and is sued for defamation.

This is wonderful drama, with well-drawn characters, in particular a police detective who investigates the protest; the mother of the protester; and the lawyer who brings the lawsuit. Everyone operates in a climate of paranoia; trusting the wrong person can ruin your life.

Burning Bush (reviews)
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Written by Stepan Hulik
Running time: 244 minutes
DVD release date: September 16, 2014

This Bomb for Hire

Carlos was the pseudonym of the most notorious international terrorist of the 1970s. In service to the cause of Palestinian liberation, he led a series of attacks across Europe, the most famous being the 1975 raid on OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna. After that operation, he became a freelance mercenary, sponsored by various governments in the Middle East and Soviet-bloc Europe. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, he was abandoned by his benefactors, one after another. Eventually, in 1994, he was captured in Sudan, brought to trial in France, convicted, and imprisoned.

Olivier Assayas’s brilliant three-part mini-series is a fictional account of Carlos’s career. It’s efficiently made; there’s no slack in its 5½-hour running time (although Assayas also managed to edit the mini-series down to a 3-hour theatrical film). Édgar Ramírez plays a charismatic, determined Carlos, a Marxist true believer whose career lasts long enough for him to develop a fondness for creature comforts. It’s a fascinating, suspenseful story, a chance to eavesdrop on terrorist cells and the security services (such as the East German Stasi) they collaborate with.

Carlos (reviews)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Written by Olivier Assayas, Dan Franck, and Daniel Leconte
Languages: English, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, Arabic, German, Russian, Dutch, and Japanese!
Running time: 339 minutes (mini-series)
DVD release date: September 27, 2011

Circuit of Life

Virtual reality–the merging of consciousness and computer parts–has been explored on film many times. A relatively early effort–before The Matrix, Lawnmower Man, or Tron–was World on a Wire, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder for German TV in 1973. The 2-part mini-series tells the story of Simulacron, a government-developed program in which the inhabitants (“units”) of a virtual world are used to forecast trends in consumer preferences. A shady steel company wants to use Simulacron to figure out which products it should focus on developing; a sneak peek into the future would give the company a big edge on its competitors. Meanwhile, a developer of the program goes mad from something he thinks he’s discovered; others on the project start disappearing. And a key “unit” in the simulation wants to become a real live person.

I haven’t given away the full story; there’s a major plot turn that comes at the end of Part 1 (though the twist isn’t too surprising). World on a Wire is both bizarre and philosophical. The world of the film is mostly mirrors and transparent surfaces; it’s easy to get the feeling that everyone is being watched. Throw in some design from the ’70s–cowhide chairs and bright orange telephones, for instance–and populate parties and dance clubs with glistening bodybuilders and barely-clad (or unclad) women. Go easy on the special effects, but throw in some characters ruminating on the trustworthiness of reality and the capriciousness of one’s creator. It’s a long, strange trip, but you could do worse than this provocative bit of sci-fi.

World on a Wire (reviews)
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Written by Fassbinder and Fritz Müller-Scherz, based on a novel by Daniel F. Galouye
Language: German
Running time: 213 minutes
DVD release date: February 21, 2012

Two War Epics

This entry first appeared in my Houston Chronicle personal blog on November 10, 2009.

You really need to see The Human Condition. Shop the Criterion catalog, or schedule it on your Netflix queue. This is one of the great ones.

In the mid-1950’s Junpei Gomikawa’s 6-volume novel, The Human Condition, was published in Japan. It depicted the Japanese experience in Manchuria during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of a young idealist. The public devoured the epic novel, and Masaki Kobayashi brought the story to the screen in three parts from 1959 to 1961. (Each part of the film covered two volumes of the novel.) For many years it was shown annually in Japan, but it is less well known in the rest of the world (although I am dubious of the claim that it was “unavailable in the United States” until last year). In September of this year it was released on DVD by Criterion.

I was concerned about committing 9½ hours of my time to an obscure film, but by the end of Part 1 (of the novel) I knew I was in sure hands. The film begins at the sardonically chosen South Gate of Peace in a Manchurian city. Our young idealist, the student Kaji (portrayed by Tatsuya Nakadai), talks with his fiancée, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) about the chance that he will be drafted. They converse in front of a statue of two entwined lovers kissing. As it turns out, Kaji’s mentor is able to get him a position as labor supervisor at a mine. We see Kaji and Michiko in the back of a truck on the way to the mine. Their embrace imitates the marble kiss. One senses, rightly, that this idealized bliss cannot last.

At the mine, Kaji tries to use his humanitarian ideals to alleviate the brutal treatment of the miners. Meanwhile, the military have offered (in a way that cannot be refused) to supply the mining company with 600 Chinese prisoners to work the mines. In the first of several breathtaking set pieces in the film trilogy, Kaji and a handful of mine company workers receive the Chinese prisoners, murderously packed into boxcars by the military. The scramble of the exhausted Chinese toward a few sacks of rice is utterly gripping.

Of course Kaji is ultimately unable to protect the mine laborers, and for his humanitarian impulses he is pressed into the army. There are further adventures in training, on the battlefield, and in a Soviet POW camp. He grows into a man of great leadership abilities, but he is a sort of doomed shepherd; every sheep that joins his flock is ultimately devoured by wolves.

Critics have linked The Human Condition to Grand Illusion, but I was quickly put in mind of Les Misérables. The Kobayashi film is quite physical (in the filming of one scene, Nakadai’s face really did swell up from the beating he took from a group of extras playing veteran soldiers), and I thought of the opening of the Bernard film, where Jean Valjean exerts great effort to hold a huge piece of masonry in place. There are other thematic connections: Valjean was sent to prison for stealing bread, while an early tragedy in The Human Condition is triggered by the theft of a sack of flour. (This is echoed late in the epic when Kaji resorts to stealing a dumpling.) And while Valjean is pursued by the relentless Javert, Kaji must deal with the implacable dark side of human nature nipping at his heels.

At one point, Kaji is trying to protect a group of green recruits from brutal hazing by some war veterans. They are preparing to go to the battlefield against the Soviets, but Kaji advises the greenhorns to remember the real enemy – not the oppressive veterans, but … the army! The menace of bureaucracies is a recurring theme of David Simon, creator of “The Wire” and more recently “Generation Kill”, a 7-part miniseries presented on HBO in 2008. The latter is a reasonably faithful presentation of Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright’s account of the 2003 Iraq invasion. He was embedded with the 1st Recon Marines, and the story is told from their viewpoint. Even though the invasion was a brilliant military success, there were moments when the officers’ careerism and incompetence could have been disastrous for the Marines (and was tragic for many Iraqi civilians). Time and again a Marine on the field of battle suggests the proper, humane, and legal course of action, only to be overruled by a higher-up. (Late in the miniseries we get an explanation for some of these rulings; from a broader perspective, they may be justified.) The characters are well portrayed, mostly by professional actors (but the wonderful, sui generis Marine Sergeant Rudy Reyes plays himself). Overall, I felt proud that these men were serving our country, and thankful that David Simon and Evan Wright brought their story to me.

The Human Condition: Part I, No Greater Love; Part II, The Road to Eternity; Part III, A Soldier’s Prayer (reviews)
The 2008 showing reviewed in The New York Times
A Slate article about the DVD release
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Zenzo Matsuyama, Koichi Inagaki (Part III only), and Masaki Kobayashi, based on novels by Junpei Gomikawa
Language: Japanese
Running time: 573 minutes
DVD release date: September 8, 2009

“Generation Kill” (reviews) (official site)
Directed by Susanna White (4 episodes) and Simon Cellan Jones (3 episodes)
Written by Ed Burns, David Simon, and Evan Wright
Running time: 470 minutes
DVD release date: December 16, 2008