Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 10:27 pm. 0 comments
El Orfanato. Juan Antonio Bayona. 2007.
Rating: 
Situated somewhere between The Others and The Sixth Sense and drawing on producer Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth this is a well crafted little film. The art direction was suitably gothic, and there was some excellent unnerving cinematography, lighting and sound editing. However, for me, as with many horror films that purport to explore the paranormal, this is less supernatural and more a melodrama about pyschosis: in this case the powerful grief for a lost child, a madness that engulfs Laura (Belén Rueda) on the disappearnace of her son.
Laura, her son Simon and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo), returned to the orphanage she grew up in to establish a home for disabled children. Unfortunately for the family tragedy lurks within. The film explores the theme of the overlaying of time on place, as in her desperation for answers about the whereabouts of her son Laura, rips open the hidden histories that have built up within the orphanage like a second skin, and she finds that her nightmare is counterpointed by one in the past. The torment of grief, and the echoes of history are the themes unravelled by the narrative and exposed by the suspense
We only see from Laura’s point of view and this leaves the film deliberately ambiguous and subjective, although the ending does attempt to tie things up. It also requires excellent performances from Rueda, to convincingly blur the lane between her logic and insanity, and also from Cayo who has to convey Carlos’ acceptance of the orbit he has in his wife’s world.
My only criticsm, was that for whatever reason I found it a little distant, it was possible to understand the characters but I didn’t really empathise with them too much. Perhaps the torment was depicted a little too much as a puzzle… Still, this is an intriguing little film, open to interpretation and it is satisfying to watch a film that makes you think, and lingers in the memory.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 10:31 am. 0 comments
Australia, Baz Luhrmann. (Bazmark Films, 2008). Cinema
Rating:
This is clearly a Baz Luhrmann film. This much is obvious from the beginning when the titles conclude with “a Life Lived in Fear is a Live Half Lived” unfurling at the bottom: the motto and raison d’etre of Luhrman’s film’s from the beginning of his directorial career with Strictly Ballroom. Many of his trademarks remain:
- the collection of an eclectic core of bohemian, anti-establishment underdogs against corrupt competitors and against disapproving authority figures (“just because that’s the way it is, doesn’t mean it’s how it should be”).
- wonder cinematography with those clever shots that take you from one scene to another with a maganificant sweep of the camera over land or place before dropping you dizzyingly in another context
- wonderfully lush art direction that draws wonderfully on classic epics like the referenced Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind
- carefully use of music, although this is probably least obvious here, than in any of his Red Curtain Trilogy.
- narrative arcs of development and fulfillment for characters
- the recycling and reinventing of retro tropes
This is certainly an enjoyable story full of thrills, romance, tears and comedy set in a drama of epic sweep. Luhrmann’s films often have something of the pantomime about them; their message of universal values worth fighting for (truth, love, freedom, family) is usually encased in a garish, camp, burlesque confection where characters a drawn to caricature extremes and we cheer and boo and hiss along with our noble heroes, stooges and grotesque baddies. You wouldn’t come to a Luhrmann film expecting reality: he plays fast and loose with his genres to create a unique vision. As a way to spend my Saturday night, tucked up in the dark with a cinema full of other giggling, crying entranced people it was fine.
However, I do have some reservations about the quality of this as a Luhrmann film. I don’t think it is up there with the Red Curtain Trilogy or the Princess Bride, the Rob Reiner classic that sits well with Luhrmann’s films in theme and style. In the case of Australia, Luhrmann has bit off something far greater and it is a bit more than can be handled by one film. Not only is Luhrmann peddling his universal message, this is obviously a very Australian film and it therefore attempts to mythologise something of Australia’s history. The problem is it tries to cram in too much and descends into an overly naive and sentimental depiction.
The story begins with Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), travelling to Australia to discover what is keeping her husband out there. She suspects a woman, but instead discovers he was captivated by the country, as represented by Nullah (Brandon Walters), a boy of mixed white and Aboriginal origin, and The Drover (Hugh Jackman) an experienced outback stocksman. Lord Ashley was also embroiled in a classic Luhrmann struggle against the bug boys: represented by King Carney’s (Bryan Brown) cattle company and his nefarious associate Neil Fletcher (David Whenham). When Lady Ashley decided to stay and take up this cause following the death of her husband the scene is set for a classic Luhrmann narrative arc of those fighting oppression and finding love, truth and freedom in the process of a thrilling race against time to gain the upper hand. This segment is filled with the arch camp comedy of Strictly Ballroom, the violence of Romeo + Juliet and the collective spirit of Moulin Rouge! and is as subversive and vivid as all three. It is moving, enthralling, extremely funny and well executed. Not only that, it has more cameos from veterans of previous Luhrmann films, and other notable Australian actors that my Australian housemate was elbowing me every two minutes. As it reaches it’s conclusion and The Drover makes an entrance that moves the pulse as with Scott and Fran’s pasadoble in Strictly, the climax of the film seems to have been reached… and yet it goes on.
There is a brief, settled interlude in the middle of the film before the integrity of the family group is threatened again. Fletcher rears his ugly head again, but his continued presence as a baddie is a distraction from this point. The story now is about Australia, and more to the point about the Australian ‘family’. It is almost as though Luhramnn felt he hadn’t quite got enough of what he wanted to stay specifically about Australia in the first half, so replicated the story in the second half replacing the specific struggle and generalised themes with a more nationalist struggle, the war against Japan, mythology, the central trinity of an English colonial lady, an all male outback hero and a mixed race aboriginal boy attempting to fuse the three strands of Austrlia’s complex culture and history and celebrating the whole and the nuclear family. Many of the supporting case disappear, killed off by numbers or evacuated as war comes closer and so the story shrinks, and in doing so the essence of Luhrmann’s style, that works so well when talking in a vaguely bohemian way about love and freedom, distills into something less palatable.
To me this didn’t quite work, and I woud have been happier as Luhrmann stuck to the first half and stuck to his voice with Australia providing the backdrop. I found it a bit flabby and was disappointed to see the usually quirky Luhrmann, who infuses his stories with enough dark humour to prevent the sentimentality becoming too sweet, fail to keep his distinctive voice when the subject came closer to home. The film turns unexpectly into the same wooden, overly serious, cgi infused, earnest attempt to rewrite the second world war as national parable, as with Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour. The narrative of the central trio as bohemian family, turns into a lecture on the need for white civility to accept the wildness of the outback and the culture of the Aborignals and exonerate and entire history of white colonial influence on the country. This isn’t Luhrmann at his subversive best – this was almost propaganda. These themes are perhaps too complex to fit into Luhramnn’s technicolor, broad sweep, burlesque style, which is perhaps why he abandons this to some extent as the film goes on…unfortunately in my opinion.
My housemate told me I couldn’t understand this film because I wasn’t Australian. Perhaps she is right, but I think I can see why Luhrmann’s mythology wouldn’t necessarily help me understand either.
