Revanche (2008)

Revanche is a film about biding time. The English translation is “revenge”, a rather abrasive title, but here is a film with a bank robbery, a murder and spying, where no one takes revenge. It is a story of intelligent people, not movie characters, and certainly not characters we’ve seen in typical genre pieces.

The inciting incident, that moment in storytelling that sets the plot in motion, takes place maybe 30 minutes into the film. This is the bank robbery and accidental death of the robber’s girlfriend. Before this, we’re introduced to five characters whose simple and jarring lives are fascinating as character studies, and who involve us immediately once the tragedy occurs. Alex is an ex-con working at a strip club. His Ukrainian girlfriend, Tamara, is a stripper and street hooker, and her boss has ambitions of using her to service high-class cliental in an exclusive apartment complex. This happens in Vienna, Austria, and outside in the country a quite police officer, Robert, and his loving wife mean no one any harm. Susanne and Robert suffered a miscarriage, and she frequently visits the house of Hausner, an elderly man looking after his farm. The film is guided by chance, and it is that Hausner is Alex’s grandfather. In an ordinary movie this would be contrived, but in Revanche, where time passes slowly and is filled with detail and the beauty of detail, this character that joins together two families that would otherwise never meet, is part of the meditation on the passing of time.

To save his love from a hellish life, Alex decides he will rob a bank. Tamara insists on staying in the car, even though she cannot drive and will have no part in the robbery. Also, Alex’s gun isn’t loaded. That’s important because Alex isn’t a bad guy. He was in prison for stealing, a crime no doubt but one that violates property and not human life. It is another robbery that leads to Tamara’s death: Alex’s easy getaway is interrupted by Robert, who is held at gunpoint until the cat gets away, and takes two shots at the tires. Tamara is accidentally killed.

The film is well made. That is an understatement. Director Götz Spielmann understands that his daring narrative depends on fleshing out the lives, the personalities, and the habits of his characters. When Alex takes refuge at his Grandfather’s farm, unaware that his too friendly neighbor is married to the man who killed his girlfriend, he chops wood for the old man. We all know either through experience or stories how wood is chopped. But through the course of Alex’s time in the country, hiding out and later planning on killing the cop once he discovers the connection, we examine through the action of the story how firewood is cut. First logs of wood are wheel-barrowed into the large farm with the giant saw. The saw is electrically powered; the logs are placed on a large cot connected to the side of the saw, and all Alex has to do is guide the cot up, and the saw slices the log. Two or three cuts get an entire log.

Then comes the manual labor. Alex chops the small logs into fours, into the firewood that will heat his Grandfather’s house in the winter.

Of course in a movie wood chopping isn’t in itself interesting. The act serves many functions: through Alex’s determination and exertion we know that he’s constantly thinking about Tamara. He watches every time Susanne comes to the farm looking for Grandfather Hausner. When Susanne happens upon Alex, their cold talk suggests a lot about their personalities. That director Spielmann uses the action of wood chopping not exactly as “business” but to express emotion, impotence, and as a visual representation of Alex’s methodical waiting is the mark of a fastidious filmmaker and an acute human observer.

Of course the characters surprise us in ways that are so rewarding. I don’t want to go into detail because the little revelations and nuances build to a rewarding experience and, as a viewer, not knowing how movie characters will react to their circumstances, being unable to predict things even after seeing hundreds of by-the-numbers thrillers, is very rare and so special. I’ll instead focus on the actors. There are great, natural performances from all five leads. Johannes Krisch as Alex and Ursula Strauss as Susanne are especially fascinating, or at least their characters’ relationship was very moving, unexpected, and kind of shitty, but in an understandable way. Krisch isn’t Brad Pitt or George Clooney, possible leads for an American version of this story; Krisch is handsome but ordinary. He has love handles and is losing his hair, and Strauss is attractive but not a debutant. These are real people who could pass unnoticed on the streets. As movie stars there’s nothing remarkable about them, but that is why they’re so effective. Johannes Thanheiser as the Grandfather is also brilliant, stubborn and old and unwilling to leave his farm for his own health. He plays his accordion, serenades a shrine to his dead wife, and goes to church every Sunday. This character is so moving in his tradition, and the film uses him as an anchor for its ideas and atmosphere. He waits, he observes, and so does the film.

The cop character, Robert, is also fascinating. He faces what might be considered a Kieslowskian dilemma: by chance, his being there after the robbery, aiming for a tire and shooting a woman, his remorse and psychological breakdown as a result of his actions, speak volumes about the mentality, fears, and humility of police officers. How do they feel when they shoot someone? Even if it’s a criminal, as human beings it must be ugly to kill a person. Most movie killers don’t care. Guns are fired and it’s as normal as stepping on chewing gum. I don’t want to constantly compare Revanche to other, lesser movies because it’s great on its own, but intelligent movies are so hard to come by these days.

The opening shot, indicative of disturbance—calm water shattered by something being thrown in—is mysterious and almost forgettable as a standard elliptical opening scene until it is answered late in the picture. What is thrown in is a gun, and the reason why is beautiful, so expressive of human understanding, relations, and forgiveness, and in a movie with no music, no shouting, no hysteria, it creates the perfect atmosphere for a film that leaves us with so much to think about.

Revanche (2008)

Director: Gotz Spielmann

Writer: Gotz Spielmann

Stars: Johannes Krisch, Ursula Strauss and Johannes Thanheiser

Austria

In German and Russian

Runtime: 121 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/

Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (2008)

A film about the great Andrei Tarkovsky faces many challenges.  The man’s work was so unique, so specific to the individual receiving it, that any interpretation of the man would be accused of discriminating against, say, my interpretation.  I don’t want to have to say this but in the context of the documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky I feel that I must: I am not religious.  I was raised Catholic but religion, superstition, science-fiction, and magic hold equal value for me.  All are man-made concepts.  With this perspective I have still loved Tarkovsky’s films.

I think it fair to claim that director Dmitry Trakovsky finds great spirituality in Tarkovsky’s work.  Many others have too, but in claiming that Tarkovsky was a spiritual filmmaker and by reason a deeply religious man does not compute with how I have viewed Tarkovsky’s films.  He was an artist in search of acceptance in an increasingly dispassionate world that persecutes its free thinkers.  Though his movies require one’s full attention and indeed surrender, his art is very simple.  I used to think he was a complex artist, but the longer I’ve been familiar with his work the more I’ve understood that Tarkovsky asked questions and required no answers.  Answers are subjective and lead not to interpretation.  Religion is subjective; it is specific to a point of view and is not available for scrutiny.  If my assumption of Trakovsky is correct, then fine—let him make his film as he wants, but he is doing a great disservice to Tarkovsky’s reputation in context to how many view religion today here in the United States.  It’s become an ugly thing.  People get away with inflicting a great deal of pain, often violence, against others by hiding behind religion.  These people exist on the fringes, we are told, and yet are never contradicted by religious leaders.  Tarkovsky created out of humanity.  His characters, some religious, others maybe unaware of the concept, are seeking beauty and truth in art and humanity.  Often they are blinded with anger or rage or self-pity, but truth exists in an abstract form.  Truth in Tarkovsky, seldom if ever specified, is always metaphysical, not tangible.  It is never in the form of a cross.  Now, I may be confusing religion with spirituality but for me they are the same.  I felt that this documentary was made for those who love Tarkovsky and who are religious.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

This was my overwhelming reaction to the documentary, and I think it’s a valid argument.  I, someone for whom religion is non-existent, have been moved to stillness by Tarkovsky.  Andrei Rublev is spellbinding, an epic about the role of the artist figure during inhuman times.  Stalker gave me something that I think is fair to compare to a religious experience since film is my religion.  I was entranced, and if Stalker had continued for the rest of my life I would have lived a great and full existence.  Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky never allows for an agnostic or atheistic rendering of the director, and though the film doesn’t assault with religion, an all-around more broadened view would give a greater sense of the importance of this great 20^th Century artist.

The concept of the documentary is intriguing.  Director Dmitry Trakovsky tries to make sense of a quote from an artist with whom he is a kindred spirit: “Death does not exist.”  Trakovsky’s narration is a bit too academic.  It always feels as if the director is keeping his true reactions and emotions hidden, buried beneath creative metaphors.  It is college essay writing, but he hits on something very interesting in his introduction.  Trakovsky shows a couple of pictures of himself and his family from when they left Russia and came to the US.  Trakovsky was a cute kid, by the way, and this idea of searching for an artist with so much meaning in the researcher’s life is very relatable.  I myself am fascinated by the cinema of Pasolini, who actually comes up in this documentary.  His lifestyle and his way of cinema, a cinema akin to poetry, albeit a gritty, often ugly poetry, and his politics—as an Italian-American never having been to the birthplace of my parents, the notion of Pasolini is for me very romantic and palpable.  The concept of the film would seem to say less about Tarkovsky and more about Trakovsky, or at least Russia in the wake of Tarkovsky’s death.  And that would be a great documentary.  Instead, interview after interview is presented, some priceless, few others bewildering, and some of these accounts really stop the film.

I can appreciate actress Domiziana Giordano, the Botticellian beauty from Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, even if her comments are vacuous and aimless.  She does recount something very interesting: he was a bit chauvinistic but being away from his family in Italy he adopted her as a daughter.  Better still is the interview with Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky, the director’s son.  I was amazed that Trakovsky could locate the heir to this great director.  I sometimes forget that Tarkovsky existed in our time.  His work is so powerful it feels as if it came from an age before cinema.  Anyhow, Andrei, the son, was not allowed to leave the USSR when his parents decided to remain abroad.  The son reveals here that he was used by his government as a kind of bait to get the fugitive Tarkovsky back home.  The son defiantly says he will not return to Russia, and he now lives in Italy and France.  Though these accounts are great, 2/3 through the movie, Trakovsky himself comes to the realization that he has only been collecting inanimate testimonies.

Great documentaries document less and build impressions; it’s all the cinema can do.  Films give us a sense of life and cannot recreate it as the act of viewing a movie is a step removed from living.  Cinema is impressions; truth is aloof.  Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky fails in giving a real sense of who Tarkovsky was or what his contributions were to cinema or, in a greater context, to 20^th Century art and of his place in the great lineage of Russia’s artistic history and how the director has and will shape it.  Trakovsky interviewed too many subjects and presents too much of them.  This is why the film feels more like Trakovsky documenting.  Father Michael McCormick, an Orthodox monk living in California, is one subject too many.  His segment shuts down the film.  He mumbles about how Tarkovsky shaped his life in the church, but he comes off more as a film buff than a spiritual man.  I can understand the interest in a documentary about Tarkovsky to interview a monk but McCormick simply does not relate anything meaningful and, for that matter, cannot form a cohesive thought.

The film does open up in its final segments.  After traveling to Sweden to interview the great actor Erland Josephson, Trakovsky returns to his homeland, something Tarkovsky was never able to do.  Trakovsky speaks first with a Russian filmmaker who claims that filmmaking conditions haven’t changed much.  Many of those who worked with Tarkovsky are still active in the profession, another reminder that Tarkovsky lived not too long ago.  These scenes in Russia give a sense of what the director was after in his opening narration.  It brings full circle his idea but it’s a little too late.  The film feels like a work in progress.  I commend the director for focusing on a unique subject.  An American kid who closely identifies with Tarkovsky is a rarity given our popular culture, but the first hour really needs to be reworked.  It may have helped to see more of Tarkovsky’s images.  I am not familiar with documentary filmmaking but I am aware that claiming fair use isn’t as easy as it sounds, so maybe clips weren’t at the ready to really give a sense of the man’s cinema.  To be sure there are many excerpts, but in even these we don’t get a sense of Tarkovsky’s cinema.

The bottom line is this: will Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky entice unfamiliar viewers to Tarkovsky’s films?  I don’t think so.  It may be that the film is aiming for those who are already familiar, but because Tarkovsky is so powerful and oddly enough so accessible (I really do believe this—his movies aren’t as daunting as many have described) I think more could be done to showcase the director.  Dmitry Trakovsky has a worthy subject and some great material shot all over Europe and with a more intuitive, artful approach he may yet find a terrific film.  “Death does not exist” might refer to the fact that artists truly never die because their work exists for as long as it is appreciated.  Revolutions pass and time vanishes, but the art produced throughout the centuries is still with us.  Andrei Rublev is, in part, about this very topic, and if Trakovsky’s goal of the documentary was to also prove this point then he had succeeded, but the concept and execution seem too simple.  It’s obvious, and it might be why the film doesn’t linger in my mind they way Tarkovsky’s films do.  Still, Trakovsky should again be commended for what he set out to achieve.

Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (2008)

Director: Dmitry Trakovsky

Writer: Dmitry Trakovsky

Stars: Donatella Baglivo, Erland Josephson and Fabrizio Borin

USA

In English, Italian and Russian

Runtime: 89 minutes

Visit the film's official website to find theatrical showings all over the globe, as well as learn more about director Dmitry Trakovsky and his work, and purchase a copy of the DVD:

http://trakovskyfilm.com/

The film is also available on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Meeting-Andrei-Tarkovsky-Dmitry-Trakovsky/dp/B004FVLWQQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1303156572&sr=1-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1461246/

Country Teacher, The (2008, Venkovský ucitel)

The biggest problem with The Country Teacher is that it lives in the world of movies.  Not very intelligent movies.  It takes a very serious subject, sexual confusion and the sly abuse of power, and doesn’t follow through, preferring instead to tie up all loose ends and tack on a happy ending.  It’s hard to judge a movie like this as a movie because the situations and dialogue belonging to its characters is quite simply unbelievable.

A prep school Teacher from Prague comes to an idyllic community to find work.  His new employer is weary and gives him 6 months teaching natural science to middle schoolers.  The Teacher befriends a widowed Mother and her teenage son but what nobody knows is that the Teacher is gay.  He has chosen this community to hide out his sexuality, and all it takes for everything to change is a visit from his ex-boyfriend.  This man runs off with the son’s girlfriend, and the Teacher takes this opportunity to befriend the lonely, troubled teen.  In the process he falls in love.  At the same time the Mother falls in love with the Teacher, and one night after a party the Teacher molests the boy.

The first thing to note is that the Mother is very forgiving of the man who touched her son.  I’ll buy that.  They were friends and she is attracted to him, depressed because for some unknown reason he won’t reciprocate her advances.  It’s also an unexpected story twist.  We’d expect the Mother to fight for her son, but she takes the tact of, maybe not trying to understand, but of living with the situation and forgiving it.  But the film does not allow her to consider her son’s rape.  She’s angry when she’s told and cries alone, but in her very next scene she tries to save the life of the Teacher who has attempted suicide.  Henceforth she is nurturing towards this man.  Doesn’t she realize that this man touched her son’s penis while he slept peacefully at his home?  I find this hard to swallow, but if the film had shown her struggle or even painted a portrait of her as a careless mother then it would make more sense.  She’d simply prefer the friendship of any man to that of her son, but not only do we see that she loves her son, she is a stable person… except for the scene where she is an alcoholic.  But she bounces out of that quickly.

The finale is equally insipid.  When the son returns home with a broken leg, having left because his Mother was still so caring of the Teacher, she begs her son to forgive his attacker, and in the highly symbolic ending of bringing new life into the world the three come together as an odd kind of family.  I’m thinking as I’m watching, ‘Isn’t anyone going to ever remember the incident?  If ever the Teacher pats the son’s shoulder, isn’t the kid going to remember the feel of the Teacher’s hand over his penis?’  Doesn’t anyone realize how creepy this is?  It’s a ridiculous situation and one that really is made light of with a carefree ending.

One thing the film does in its favor is treat the Teacher as a human being.  At first we don’t know he’s gay.  He’s a loner, uncomfortable among his new-found friends during a night of drinking.  His ex comes because he misses him, and it is here we learn the truth.  What at first seems like someone afraid of what his sexuality will do to his quaint happiness in this isolated, traditional community becomes something more sinister.  The Teacher, we learn, is trying to denounce sexual practice by ignoring desire.  To most rational people this seems foolish, but the film is about a confused, helpless man, and The Country Teacher never takes a negative stance against him.  Even after he assaults the boy, the film plays fair, asking us indirectly to consider the secrecy and uncertainty that has led this man to do something immoral.  As he teaches and befriends the boy, he sees an opportunity for happiness.  Not a lasting happiness, but he sees someone who he loves who needs a man in his life to love him back.  The problem is the Teacher can’t distinguish between love, the relationship between two friends, and love, the attraction between two likeminded people.  The actions the Mother character takes makes this stuff ridiculous.  If the material were less idealistic this could have been a terrific film.  Most filmmakers wouldn’t dare tackle this subject matter.  But to let the Teacher off the hook and have everyone so open-minded and unselfish is simply not plausible.

I should give the film more credit.  It’s actually well made, but the problem the movie has in the psychology of its character is just too big to ignore.  Visually this is quite beautiful.  Director Bohdan Sláma doesn’t know how to make an uninteresting shot.  In the first 20 minutes where nothing overly exciting happens the director’s camera keeps things lively.  He knows when to hold shots and when and how to move through his characters’ spaces.  The lead performance by Pavel Liska as the Teacher is very restrained.  He longs for everything at a distance, never being direct or sometimes even suppressing his wants and needs, even in matters practical and social.  The other performers are just fine, including Tereza Vorísková as the son’s girlfriend.  Though only a brief supporting role she is stunningly beautiful and a terrific young actress.  Hopefully she can become an international star because I want to see more of her.  What we have with The Country Teacher is a well made, mediocre film with some real talent on display.

Another fault in storytelling: when the Mother forgives him and he decides to return to teaching, the Teacher returns to his colleagues and needs to ask, “Is it a problem that I am homosexual?” leading to momentary awkward glances among the other teachers.  That is until they realize homosexuality is the norm and welcome him.  It’s kind of embarrassing to see a scene like this.  Only in the movies would situations like these work themselves out without any help from living beings.  Again it just undermines the seriousness of manipulation and adolescent abuse.  The scary part is that there are probably thousands of situations like this the world over so the film does a great disservice to its audience.

But forget about that.  Defiant against his old ways, the Teacher is now determined to make his life right.  He will no longer run, and as long as he is open and accepting of himself the world will be too.  Good luck.

Country Teacher, The (2008)

(a.k.a. Venkovský ucitel)

Director: Bohdan Sláma

Writer: Bohdan Sláma

Stars: Pavel Liska, Zuzana Bydzovska and Ladislav Sedivy

Czech Republic

In Czech

Runtime: 115 minutes

To purchase The Country Teacher on DVD from Film Movement, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Country-Teacher-Pavel-Liska/dp/B001TLZ2ZW/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1301271209&sr=1-1

To subscribe to Film Movement's DVD-of-the-month club, check out their official site:

http://www.filmmovement.com

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284526/