Flores de un otro mundo

What a powerful movie! I found this film much more effective than Im Juli in communicating gender relations. Through Marirrosi and Milady, it communicates a celebration of feminism and sexual liberation, while through Patricia's story it reaffirms traditional patriarchal values. Milady and Juli are very similar characters: free spirits who love the road. In fact, Flores seemed to be a halted road movie. Instead of moving forward in their lives, they are stuck; everyone else moves around them. When Patricia's family drives off, a long two shot stays on Patricia and Milady, who remain stuck in this foreign world. I also found the way time moved to be of particular significance - episodic and cyclic. Indeed, the tensions of the relationships seem to be emphasized by the changing seasons. The bus arrives in summer, then the couples settle down in fall into an uneasy routine. In winter, all three relationships enter a period of frigid isolation and rupture. In spring, Patricia celebrates the baptism (and symbolic reconfirmation of patriarchal order) of her daughter. And then summer arrives and the bus comes again. Flowers grow and die. So do relationships. It's the circle of life.

I found the gaze of Janay to be very haunting. She was always there in the corner, just passively observing. Then she would run away. I thought very hard about why she needed to be in the film. But she too is a flower - soaking up the sun of another world. She too is part of the never ending cycle of life. She will enter this world, hopelessly fractured by differences - ethnicity, age, and gender. Children are not born with a recognition of these differences. They are forced upon them by society.

Although I found the representation of women fascinatingly complex, I found the representation of men disappointingly flat. Their sexual prowess defined them. They simply loved their corresponding women and didn't seem to add any value or insight to the relationship. Sex seemed the ultimate goal, and it never went any deeper than that (pun intended).

In Juli

In Juli, is a german, adventure, romantic comedy. After the naive trainee teacher Daniel buys a mayan sun ring that is supposed to bring him the woman of his dreams from Juli, the street vendor and aspiring artist who is in love with him, he is inspired to take a chance on life. Through the mysterious workings of fate and the need for a story worth being told as a movie, Juli and Daniel end up taking a trans-continental trip to Istanbul together. As one can guess, Daniel realizes at the end of his trip that true love was sitting next to him below a mop of dreads. Stylistically, the film is fantastical and experimental. Reality is forgone in the name of love. It is very post modern in its use of soundtrack as well. In Juli is enjoyable to say the least. It has the right amount of cheesy and the right amount of conflict. Rather than try to forward some bull-shit notion of love to the audience, it is simply concerned with telling a surreal, Dhali-esque, love story. However, in the process of seeing hippies fall in love, the ideas of space and movement are also explored. In Cache and Dirty Pretty Things western Europe is the destination. These films are concerned with those who moved east to west. In the process of doing so, they lost power and visibility. They became weaker and more exploitable. In Juli operates on an opposite spectrum. By taking a journey east, Daniel is “freed” from his middle class sensibilities. “Non Europeans” go west in search of professional opportunities. “Europeans” go east in search of spiritual opportunities. This is indicative of who can travel Europe freely and who cannot. For a very limited group of people, there is unlimited mobility. However, For “Europe’s propertied Nationals” the borders are abundant. Though In Juli is an innocent film, it is interesting how freely Daniel roams Europe and evades the proper law enforcement. At one point he is arrested and the jail door is literally left open for him to walk out of.

In July

While watching the film In July, I was struck by the portrayal of Germans traveling to Turkey as an escape from their normal lives. This image of Turkey as a final destination is interesting in that it is a reversal of the traditional flow of immigration. Turks have long been immigrating to Germany in large numbers. Germany has long been the desired final destination for Turks hoping for a better life. There were 1.5 million Turkish Citizens living in Germany in 2013 making them the largest ethnic minority. Conservative Germans have opposed the integration of Turks into German society and worked to prevent more Turks from immigrating. This provides an interesting contrast to the film where Daniel faces difficulty getting into Turkey as a German citizen. He faces roadblocks getting through less Western countries like Romania as well.  I have attached an article discussing the issues of immigration in Germany relating to Turks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130649146

In July

In July was definitely one of the films i enjoyed watching. It definitely was a lot different than the rest of the movies I have watched. In the middle of the scenes, they used crazy editorial effects that took me by surprise. It made the movie a little bit low-class with the over exaggerated Effects they insert into it. The concept i thought was interesting, funny, and sweet. A guy running after a girl who he instantly falls in love with and on his journey he finds his true love. The structure of the movie included a few flashback and flash forwards which made it a bit more interesting. in genera the plot of the story was bit cliche. A typical romantic comedy, Boy meets girl, fall in love. This movie is a lot different than Cache were we never find out what happens at the end and to the characters and their lives. The problem is never solved; but in In July, the story is clear, we have a beginning, a middle and an ending. We know that the guy gets the girl at the end and its a happy ending. But in Cache we Have problems that never get solved.

CACHE Review

As a thriller I think Cache immediately induces the audience with the visual appeal of a whodunnit. For me there was also a immediate similarity in technique to the French New Wave of the late 1950s and 1960s. The exterior video tapping in the opening gave it a documentary feel at first but we were quickly draw into the mystery of the tapes as a cinematic radical experiment that instigated intrigue to a visual style narrative that breaks away from contemporary Hollywood thrillers. Even the example of the scenes setting in drab blue colors, natural lighting and long takes rolled simultaneously against the discontinued, fragmented editing of the tapes gave tribute to the origin of the movment's theoretical influences. Videocassettes accompanied by the shroud disturbing crayon drawings created an absurdity of George's human existence as the haunted memories of the past made his celebrity life superficial.      

The subjective or objective realism using a child's story as a theme then leaving a questionable ending to the film left me perplexed in this state of stylistic art cinema but I came back to the reality recognizing the control basis of the film was the anonymous source of the video tapes. At the end we see Pierrot the son of George talking to Majid's son at the school while being video tape. Whether or not Cache reveals the hidden figure behind the film seems irrelevant to the fact that it tricks our inner emotion to see what is more menacing?  The symbolic blood of the rooster to France, the failures of our past, or cinematic memories used as device to manipulate and frustrate our future perspective.   

Cache

Cache was One of the most psychotic movies i have ever watched.
I went into this movie not knowing what is going on and came out of it still confused staring at the screen desperately looking for a clue. The director, Michael Haneke introduced this movie to us with the point of view of this french couple watching a tape recording of the exterior space of their house. this movie started off with several questions and it ended with more questions. This french family received several tape recordings of different places and they were tying to see how these recordings connect to each other. The Cache image behind this movie had a historical aspect to it. It took the main character, Georges, to his past and childhood. Even though at the end of the movie we still do not know, or I should say, do not have an evidence who had been the one sending the tapes, i have a guess. With the facts that we are given in the movie, we want to blame Majid, this poor child who was taken in by Georges parents when he was very young and abundant by his real parents. With the facts that Georges gives us, we expect Majid to be the one sending these tapes; but when we meet him in the second half of the movie, the hatred he has toward Georges, as we were told, is very hidden and not visible at all to a point where I take him as very innocent poor man just hap[y to see an old friend. This movie is more complex than we think. Its simplicity makes it complex. This family lives a very simple and normal life, while the past has brought a twist and complexity among them. The recoded tapes are of such simple scenes but yet have a great twist from the past that makes them very important. I personally did not like this movie very much. I like the aspect of not knowing everything about the story that is being told and try and solve the mystery myself; But this movie took it to the extend and gave us a very hard problem to solve without any good hints or facts to help us make some sense out of the story.

Cache (From Eunsun)

After watching Cache, I was bewildered for the whole week every time I thought about that movie. After reading everyone else's posts, I did some research on my own especially about the article on “revelation towards an articulation of historical guilt” that Ilya has posted. 

According my searches, Majid was an Algerian man.

Algeria was a French colony for 132 years and since 1954 they began their independence movement. On 1961, Paris massacre of 1961 happened where more than 30,000 Algerians protested in Paris and more than 200 Algerians were killed or had gone missing by the French. 

This is where Majid's parents were at, and that's how Majid came to live with Georges' parents. But because of Georges, Majid is soon sent to an orphanage.

This becomes the beginning of everything; guilt eventually destroys Georges. He goes from being an intellectual to a coward who just wants to avoid his dirty past.

Despite the wound that he has given to Majid, Georges himself had almost forgotten about what he has done for almost 40 years. 

But through continuous threats of videotapes and pictures, he comes to realize what dirty and ugly thing he has done. 

The idea of 'guilt' is prevalent throughout the whole film, and Haneke seems to go deeper into this idea through the usage of video tapes. He links the historical fault of France to Georges by reminding Georges of his fault, leaving him to feel anxious and vulnerable.

Anyways, this movie was one of the most outrageous movies that I have ever seen, in terms of both cinematography and plot; how did you guys like it?

For me, I don't know- I am still too bewildered to even know whether I liked it or not. Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks tomorrow!

Cache is a psychological thriller about a Paris family that is haunted by an anonymous stalker that know’s something about the father’s past.  The subsequent stalking and sending of video tapes to the house in turn strains the relationships in the house. The Husband becomes suspicious of his wife, the wife begins to believe that her husband is hiding a terrible secret, and the son in turn begins to believe that his mother is having an affair with a family friend. The arrival of the tapes brings other secrets boiling to the surface. The effects that the video tapes have on this Parisian family beg the question, “Are they the problem? Or are they illuminating problems that are already there but have been repressed”. While the film centers around this family, there are social undertones. The husband begins suspecting his childhood friend Majod, a Moroccan “farmhand” that lived with him until his parents sent him to live in an orphanage. Not only is this a reference to France’s colonial past, but it speaks to an on going classicism and racism that is present within the society. In the article Cache And The Secret Image, Kartik Nair says that the film pursues “revelation towards an articulation of historical guilt”. I would say while this is true, the film can be more directly related to the idea of privacy or sacred spaces in a world where surveillance has become increasingly prevalent.

Caché vs. Dirty Pretty Things

In response to Ryan's post, I too felt cheated from Haneke's film! It was very shocking to go form something as "Hollywood" and mainstream as Dirty Pretty Things to something as indie and realistic as Caché. Haneke works on multiple different levels for an intellectually engaged audience, while Dirty was much more direct in its approach. After a lot of thought, I finally figured that the tapes were actually being sent by the director to the protagonist. Isn't that META?! Yes! Haneke seems to have intertwined a fascinating criticism of his art form WITHIN his art form. He draws attention to the fact we are watching a film by showing the actors watching themselves. It's an omnipresent power hierarchy. Whoever controls the gaze has the power. In this way, Haneke seems to cast himself in the film. 

I feel they do very similar things by directing the audience's gaze to multicultural barriers and exploring the socioeconomic relations between minorities and the elite. However, it's interesting to note how stylistically distinct they are. Dirty Pretty Things seemed to tie everything neatly in a bow at the end while Caché deprived the audience of this satisfaction. In fact, Caché never truly ended. The credits just suddenly rolled! 

Which film was more effective for you? I think Dirty was much more enticing and emotionally captivating, but its seemed to detract from a critical eye. It's hard to step back and criticize the film when Okwe and Sanay were portrayed as idealistic heros. But George is easy to demonize in comparison. This allows for a much more balanced analysis. Caché was much more effective in highlighting the flaws of a traditional Hollywood film in contributing to a valuable academic debate. The both appeal on opposing levels to the audience. While I appreciate Caché's attempt to remove the emotional context, the deprivation left me unattached and disinterested. Although the style was much more realistic, I did not sympathize with the internal strife of the characters. Perhaps this is because I have become so accustomed to the classic Hollywood syntax that I couldn't construct an articulate intellectual perspective on Caché. The conditioning in Dirty was much more manipulative but much effective in moving the audience.

However, this is my personal opinion. I really respected what Hanecke did in Caché but I certainly wouldn't be able to employ this emotional detachment in my personal filmmaking. What do you guys think? What style of filmmaking is more effective for you? Do you think Haneke was the one sending the tapes?

Caché (Hidden)

Hey yall,

Thought I'd finally post here.

So how many of you guys are still mind blown from tonight's film?

I felt so cheated that the director, Michael Haneke, never revealed who was sending the tapes at the end, but now I'm starting to really appreciate it after reading this theory of who can be behind the whole thing (I had to look up what people thought right when I got home).

https://mubi.com/topics/unhidden-camera-the-real-sender-of-the-tapes

I really thought this theory was quite convincing. It seems a little bit insane, but I think this is a formal strategy that Haneke would go for.

I haven't watched Cache before tonight, but I did see The White Ribbon and Amour, which I highly recommend (they aren't as demented as Cache i think).

Or maybe they kinda are?

I hope you guys will get some sleep tonight after this crazy movie.

- Ryan

I hope this counts as one post.

Zentropa (from Isaac)

I think the name Wehrwolf being used in the film stuck out to me because of the historical context of the word werewolf. Whether it is intended by the filmmaker or not, it is an interesting name to use for the underground killers in the film because of the historical significance. The term werewolf, while popularized in contemporary media as a beast that comes out at full moon, thanks to films such as The Wolf Man, actually had origins in medieval times. Werewolves were people’s way of coping with the concept of serial killers and such monstrous human beings. People could not come to terms that a human would do such animal like things such as mass murder and so they explained it away with stories like that of werewolves which when seen in medieval depictions, appear decidedly more human. This concept of the werewolf being an unimaginable killer fits well with the film Zentropa’s use of the werewolves being Nazi sympathizers. The werewolves in the film are almost a mythical and unseen force of evil, working by night or darkness.

I also found it interesting how the main character of the film Otto, was given very little agency. He is shown to be a puppet in the schemes of near everyone he encounters. He is seduced by Katharina, ordered around by bosses on the train, and dragged into a bomb plot over which he has little control. This puppet-like state, which he adapts, fits well with the use of a hypnotic narrator. It is almost as though Otto is being led through the story in a hypnotic trance with little control over his own actions.

I attached the woodcut of a werewolf attack, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1512