Brazil (1985)

United Kingdom
directed by: Terry Gilliam
written by: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown
starring: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin
seen: 17th March, 2009 - comment: 27th September, 2017

Oh my, this is difficult. I've been trying for over a week now to come up with a description for feelings left in me by Brazil. Seven years ago I wrote that it's probably the best Gilliam, that I want pipes in my apartment to breathe and whine and that it's one of my "heart" movies. None of those things are valid today. I'd say that the best Gilliam piece is "Twelve Monkeys", I like silence in my apartment since there's nothing romantic about lunacy, and for those reasons and more my heart likes other things now.

But since it got me thinking about "Monkeys", lets compare those two films. Their are both about a bleak future forced upon people by other people, they both connect hopes for deliverance with an idealized femme fatale and both of them in the end deny a mere possibility of redemption. And they are both more or less accurate and more or less selfconfessed adaptations of other artworks, both of which are perfect idols in their respective genres (1984 in case of Brazil and The Pier/La Jetée in case of Twelve Monkeys).

They both deviate from the source and come up with new and own ideas, shifting the meaning in process. But while "Monkeys" keep inspiring me with each new viewing and are therefore timeless, Brazil stays the same and therefore a distance emerges between my inner life and the film's message. For example, nowadays I notice how suppresed and ingenuine the character of Jill is. The scene where she is reduced to long hair and a showing nipple is completely ridiculous. But a whole other bunch of details is great, so I'm not spitting real sulphur here. And I certainly find interesting how the film is visually beautiful and rich in imagination and still perfectly captures the shabbiness and mediocrity of the world that Gilliam mocks so mercilessly.

Into The Wild (2007)

USA
written and directed by: Sean Penn
based on the book by: Jon Krakauer
starring: Emile Hirsch, Jena Malone, Hal Holbrook
seen on 6th March, 2009, commented on 19th March, 2019

It's amazing how Sean Penn makes a film about forests, nature and solitude, or all the things I love, and apparently manages to not understand any single one of these things. Also it seems as if he goes the extra mile to make the protagonist look like the most naive/arrogant nitwit imaginable. Casting Emile Hirsch does not exactly help either, because he comes off as a villain at least a little bit every time I see him in a film. And "Into the Wild" is no exception. He's got that sort of maniacal look in his eyes that's maybe suitable for this particular character, but is also preventing me from feeling any sympathy towards him or identifying with him on his journey. And I don't care how many shots of nature does mr. director try to shove into his creation if they all look like cheesy motivational postcards and not as the almighty wilderness it should be. (And we know that nature can be a distinct character of its own in a film, as a whole lot of different creators shows us: Debra Granik in "Leave No Trace", Iñárritu in "The Revenant", the Coens in "No Country For Old Men", Sheridan in "Wind River" and so on and so on.) In conclusion, me complaing about this film is basically me stating my suspicion that Sean Penn has no imagination and that Eric Gautier's camera work has no substance.

But I also tried to come up with something commendable about this film, and I've arrived to the conclusion that it was a good choice to make the narrator (if he absolutely needs the narration) be the protagonist's sister and not himself, because if it were him, the downpour of "wisdom and truths of life" would become absolutely unbearable. At least this way there is some distance and moderation in play, even if the character is still strongly emotionally invested in the story. But I don't know if this choice was made by Penn himself or if he adopted this device from Krakauer who colaborated with the actual sister extensively when writing his book.

(And damn, I cannot resist to make some remarks about the music after all. Because a well chosen soundtrack can lift a film I find subpar in other ways considerably in my eyes. And, hm, the music of "Into the Wild" does not do that. It sounds extremely monotonous to me and it does not seem to be organically connected to the story. If you scrambled the songs at random, nothing significant would change, because the music does not really translate the specific emotional nature of those specific scenes it accompanies. The climax of the film is very disturbing, divisive nad overall emotionally charged as hell, and the final song simply fails to convey that.)

P.S.: Hal Holbrook rules.