Utamaro and His Five Women (d. Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1946) B
Mizoguchi's biography of the celebrated 18th-century woodblock artist Utamaro Kitagawa is more accurately a plaintive portrait of the numerous women who orbit around him. Numerous critics have drawn analogies between the Tokugawa Era in which the film is set – with its rigid class hierarchies and patriarchal sexual politics – and the immediate postwar period in Japan, during which American occupiers strictly censored the subject matter of Japanese films. This analogy is most powerfully suggested once Utamaro is literally handcuffed after using one of the shogunate's courtesans as a model; it's a potent symbol for artistic suppression. Utamaro and His Five Women (like most of Mizoguchi's films) epitomizes mono no aware, a term in Japanese culture for a wistful sadness at the transience of human lives; at times this film can seem too gentle in its melancholy (it's not as emotionally devastating as Osaka Elegy or Ugetsu), but it's still an ethereally beautiful depiction of the artist's perceptivity in observing the lives of those around him. Maybe most interesting is the claim (offered by the movie's screenwriter himself, Yoshikata Yoda) that Utamaro is a stand-in for Mizoguchi, particularly in his emphasis on subtle emotion exhibited by women in traumatic circumstances.
Life of Oharu (d. Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1952) A–
The tragic life of a beautiful samurai's daughter doomed to eternal subjugation: Oharu is a saintly martyr for the suffering of women in Mizoguchi's magisterial adaptation of Saikaku Ihara's 1686 novel Life of an Amorous Woman. In adapting the book, however, Mizoguchi retained Saikaku's criticism of a draconic society stifled by unjust customs and restrictive moral codes, while avoiding the novelist's depiction of Oharu as an "amorous woman" whose downfall was partially the result of her own sexual self-liberation. Life of Oharu may be Mizoguchi's most characteristic movie not only in its gorgeous, long-take "picture scroll" tracking shots, but also in its bleeding-heart sympathy for the lives of tormented women (a sympathy which stemmed, according to most accounts of the director, from his family's selling of his sister into geishadom when Mizoguchi was only a young boy). The film is unmistakably heavy going: Oharu's life truly is a marathon of cruelty and misery, as she's sent on a downward spiral due to her love for a lowly page; chosen to be the mother to a powerful shogunate's heir (then spitefully cast out by the lord's barren wife); sold by her father into a brothel, then again cast out due to her hatred for a money-obsessed client; mercifully taken in by a middle-class family, then sexually exploited and again cast out once they find out about her scandalous past; and on and on. (We become inured to this pattern quickly: even when episodes begin with hope and anticipation, we know another misery is right around the corner.) But what saves the movie from unbearable bleakness is its prominent sociocultural commentary – the film is about how obedience to cruel and arbitrary patriarchal customs can torment people within that society, not about the innate awfulness of human beings – and of course Mizoguchi's poetic visuals (thanks especially to cinematographers Yoshimi Hirano and Yoshimi Kono, who had to work in an abandoned warehouse with severely limited funds), which effortlessly infuses the tragedy with ghostly grace. Oharu's fleeting, distant reunion with her lordly son (with whom she can no longer have any contact) must count as one of Mizoguchi's most incredible directorial moments.
The Dark Knight Rises (d. Christopher Nolan, USA/UK, 2012) B–
It's too bad Christopher Nolan doesn't make silent movies: his films are striking, magisterial, at times awe-inspiring...at least until somebody starts talking. Thankfully, though, Nolan's propensity for having characters blatantly voice the themes of his movies (or for having them spout pithy one-liners in the midst of ostensibly serious-minded subjects) is less ruinous than in The Dark Knight or Inception. Love it or hate it, The Dark Knight Rises is some kind of achievement: an operatic blockbuster that attempts (with only half-successful results) to encapsulate our turbulent modern society, particularly its vitriolic class divisions. But, as this Film Quarterly article points out, the movie's politics are muddled at best: it obviously recognizes the class warfare endemic to modern capitalism and the tyrannical control that the 1% have over American society, yet that hegemony is never viewed through the eyes of the disenfranchised who are supposedly the subject of the movie's (and Bane's/Selina Kyle's/Bruce Wayne's) sympathies. A reformation of our current economic and political system is seen as solely cataclysmic and horrific in the movie, which takes recent Occupy protests and disfigures them into a shocking French Revolution-style Reign of Terror, complete with the Scarecrow acting as a modern-day Robespierre. The Dark Knight Rises' essentially conservative agenda is clinched with the ridiculous final image of the movie, which offers a happy ending in the form of several characters luxuriously drinking aperitifs on a Venetian plaza. (Apparently the movie couldn't care less about the hordes of impoverished Americans as long as Bruce Wayne can reclaim his fortune.) In any case, the fact that the movie can be construed as both politically subversive and simplistically reactionary suggests that the movie has no genuine politics whatsoever: it's just trying to cash in on fashionably hot-button issues. (At least The Dark Knight has a cohesive theme, even if it's conveyed too often through mundane dialogue.) Politics aside, the movie is visually awe-inspiring: Nolan's dexterity in juggling numerous simultaneous plotlines while maintaining clarity and impact is more impressive than ever.
The Dictator (d. Larry Charles, USA, 2012) F
Lowest-common denominator comedy that assumes the more shocking and hate-filled its humor is, the more "radical" it will seem. Whatever was amusing about Borat or genuinely daring about Brüno has completely vanished from Sacha Baron Cohen's General Aladeen, a dictator from the fictional country of Wadiya who discovers a plot to instill democracy in his native country and attempts to stymie it at all costs. Of course the democratic coup is just a ploy to make the country's oil reserves available to American corporate interests, which suggests an all-inclusive attack on what's wrong with modern diplomacy. In fact, The Dictator's humor is shockingly xenophobic and hate-mongering: the only glimmer of American self-criticism arrives in a climactic speech during which Aladeen lauds the merits of dictatorship, telling Americans they'll finally know what it means to have 1% of the populace control society, to have media outlets that seem unbiased but promote a particular agenda, to have leaders who are clearly in the pockets of large corporations, to have a military that can serve despots' misguided interests, and so on. Aside from these 90 seconds of half-assed political commentary, the movie's comedy would seem embarrassing in the fifth American Pie movie, much less in a supposedly "intelligent" political comedy. Middle Eastern people rape young boys, prefer sex with goats, throw female newborns in the garbage, and torture for amusement – these are the noxious stereotypes the movie thinks are fair game to perpetuate. (Yes, genocidal dictators are prime targets for ridicule, but only if that satire makes any attempt at all to direct its animosity at real-world atrocities.) The Dictator's allusions to the Israel-Palestine conflict are even more pathetic: apologists claim that Cohen's usage of Hebrew to stand in for Arabic means something significant, but doesn't it just mean that Cohen (who speaks Hebrew anyway) assumes that we're too stupid or presumptuous to care which language is actually being spoken? (Either way, we're meant to laugh at the guttural syllables Aladeen coughs up whenever he's enraged or agitated.) The only other inclusion of the devastating conflict in the Middle East has a Wadiyan imbecile accidentally spilling his own urine on an Israeli diplomat, an idiocy which is emblematic of both the movie's juvenile sense of humor and its one-sided analogies to real-world conflicts. (This movie would have us believe that Israel is completely ethical and blameless in the ongoing violence waged between itself and surrounding nations.) There are also jokes involving shit missiles rained down upon Manhattan streets, the severed head of a black activist used as a ventriloquist dummy, and two characters digging around in a pregnant woman's womb for a lost cell phone – if this is your idea of good comedy, enjoy. The fact that The Dictator has been distributed throughout the world as representing American humor offers a convincing explanation as to why we're so universally reviled. (If you're unfortunate enough to sit through this movie, I suggest rewatching Team America: World Police as soon as possible afterwards to see how this sort of thing should actually be done.)
Naked (d. Mike Leigh, UK, 1993) B–
A volcanic eruption of rage, hopelessness, desperation, and abuse, Naked is bearable almost entirely because of its incredible performances, especially that of David Thewlis as Johnny, a charismatic yet misogynistic, hate-filled drifter whose various interactions in Thatcher-era London simply degrade his view of humanity even further. Yet the entire cast is incredible: Katrin Cartlidge, as drug-and-alcohol fueled, desperately lonely Sophie, makes a torrent of horrible decisions heartbreaking rather than infuriating; Lesley Sharp, as maybe the most intelligent and compassionate character in the movie (Johnny's ex, Louise), provides a glimmer of much-needed decency; Peter Wight, as a security guard with too much time on his hands, enacts a virtuoso dialogue with Johnny about the impending apocalypse and the entirety of the evolution of life on this planet; and so on. As this description might suggest the movie is incredibly smart and never less than fascinating, yet its view of humanity is ultimately aphoristic: we're nothing more than toys for God to laugh at, a despicable culmination of biological life that will ultimately cause our own downfall. (Evolution is mentioned repeatedly in the movie, almost always in an ironic way.) The movie has been accused often of misogyny, but misanthropy is more like it: Johnny (and, maybe by extension, writer/director Mike Leigh) abhors men and women with equal vitriol. This may be too harsh – Leigh is a great, subtle, multi-faceted director (especially in movies such as Secrets and Lies and Topsy-Turvy) – but judging by the evidence in Naked, we can only detect an all-encompassing hopelessness. (Some reviews link the movie's bleak view of human relationships with the turbulent climate of Margaret Thatcher's England, but there's absolutely nothing in the movie to suggest this sociopolitical analogy.) The character of Jeremy, an upper-class rapist and sadist who allows us to see that at least Johnny is not as awful as he could be, offers a key to unlocking the movie's philosophy, yet also reveals what keeps it from greatness: with no emotional shading or psychological sensitivity, he (and the movie) come off as simplistically, stubbornly outraged.
Cosmopolis (d. David Cronenberg, France/Canada/Portugal/Italy, 2012) B+
A natural companion piece to Cronenberg's Crash (1996), Cosmopolis is also about a radical alienation from the modern world: if, in Crash, characters have become so inured to rampant mediation that they require extreme violence to feel genuine human and sexual emotions, the main character in Cosmopolis – Eric Packer, a 28-year-old billionaire on a cross-Manhattan quest to get a haircut – has built a buffer between himself and the world with money. He's even lost the ability to have a genuine conversation with anybody, which suggests why the dialogue in the film (like the dialogue from the Don DeLillo novel on which it's based) is so wildly artificial. The Brechtian motivation of both Crash and Cosmopolis is to distance the audience radically from the story and the characters, allowing us to observe them with clinical exactitude. Yet at times this works better in theory than in practice: both films are easier to admire than they are to actually become involved with. That said, the episodic, rambling nature of Cosmopolis provides plenty of meat to dissect (particularly fascinating are Eric's dense conversation with a political theorist while an Occupy-style protest rages outside of his limo, and a lengthy climax in which Eric is possibly killed by a disgruntled former employee), and the actors do an admirable job giving bizarrely detached life to Cronenberg's and DeLillo's philosophical ruminations. Love it or hate it, you have to respect Cronenberg's brazen originality and his obedience to his own overarching themes, even at the risk of sacrificing his audience's engagement. I can't remember ever seeing a more potent depiction of how exorbitant wealth allows the rich to build up a hermetic shield around themselves.
Fuller's square-jawed actioner, set and shot entirely in Japan (Tokyo and Yokohama particularly), mixes pulp and sociopolitical commentary with typical aplomb. Army detective Eddie Spanier (Robert Stack) storms through the movie's exotic locales with American bullishness: he interrupts ceremonies and rituals to demand answers (in terse English, of course) from uncomprehending Japanese folks; his typical entrance has him shoving hoodlums through sliding screen doors, with absolutely no regard for the foreign world he's demolishing. Spanier is investigating a gang of American thieves, most of them ex-soldiers, led by the merciless Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), who runs his network with the exactitude of a wartime general. The notion of a postwar action noir set in Japan is often as thrilling as it sounds, thanks to Fuller's and cinematographer Joe MacDonald's vivid colors and emphatic widescreen compositions; the story also offers plenty of allusions to the American occupation of Japan (an infiltration continued, at least metaphorically, long after U.S. troops officially left the country) and the moral corruption of individuals who served in World War II. That said, the movie's sexual politics are unfortunate (Spanier relies upon the meek devotion of a Japanese woman, Mariko, who exists only to provide him with information, home-cooked meals, and undying love) and its stoic tough-guy characterizations don't date well. (As Spanier, Robert Stack is almost a self-parody – the sort of B-movie archetype that would practically be outdated by the 1960s.) If you don't mind a dose of ridiculousness with your action, House of Bamboo is an occasionally thought-provoking blast, with an incredible climax that cannily symbolizes the topsy-turvy nature of modern global relations.
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