Reviews

Jonathan has shown us that in order to make a holocaust movie you don't have to kill thousands of people on screen or burn them in those concentration camps or drop dead due to hunger and cold, but just instil fear and hatred in the viewers by simply showing us the mundane activities of a nazi commandant family by creating a combination of sounds from an immersive environment in the background. You're constantly reminded of what's going over the fence but because of the disconnect in the audio and the video, it creates an unsettling feeling in the viewer's mind which is truly horrific.

Without a doubt this is the work of a genius because right from the start the director made sure to create an unsettling feeling in the audiences minds, he created such a disturbing atmosphere with just his opening credits where it took a minute for the title to disappear and immediately a 2mins black screen with a bone chilling score and he does the same at around 45min mark for a min or two when the screen fades to red completely. We do not see any characters carrying out violence rather they spend most of their time in the garden growing vegetables, children playing around, celebrating the commandant's birthday and fishing etc., but still the entire Hoss family is pure evil because they choose to simply ignore of what's happening over the wall but worried more about their materialistic life and dreams. Again not everyone is able to ignore the horrors around them because when Hedwig's mother comes to stay with her, initially she's in awe around those highly sophisticated materialistic things but things start to slowly dawn on her, when she wakes up in the middle of the night not able to withstand the stench of the death and the sight of the flaming gas, she leaves in the middle of the night leaving a note for her daughter. And the director also made sure to visually display the fear on screen by having the workers walk around the Hoss residency, garden, cleaning the blood off of the boots etc., trying to complete their works on time and be perfect at the same time.

The scenes which captivated me most are the ones that were shot with military grade thermal camera. We see a girl leaving apples for the prisoners in the nights and during its first sequence I was unable to comprehend the meaning of it when Rudolf Hoss asks his daughter, who's sitting by the window as to what she's doing and I thought that the small girl was just looking out the window imagining herself helping the people fighting the war by leaving them apples. But during the later sequences I understood that, she's an altogether a different kid, whom the director just decided to show her acts of kindness during the war by simply not making the overall movie look too dark.

And the most ambiguous part of the movie is the final sequence where Rudolf Hoss starts to retch when he's walking down the stairs and out of the blue he stops and stares into the darkness across the corridor and the director suddenly fast forwards the time to the current day Auschwitz where we see some of the museum workers taking care of all those dead people relics and again takes us back to Rudolf where he again starts to retch after getting down another flight of stairs. I have read different versions of this like "Hoss saw the future of his atrocities", "Maybe a consequence of the pollutants at the camp", "That his body rejects his idea of killing all those 700k Hungarians but his mind doesn't and that's the reason for his retching", "Director was trying to show us that Hoss and his ideas doesn't matter and they're considered as inhuman and he's considered as evil who was tried for mass murder but the deaths of all those people and their sufferings will be remembered forever" etc.

This is a brilliant movie with an outstanding and terrifying score by Mica Levi which gets made once in a decade or so but at the same time you'll think twice to rewatch it because you're afraid of it. If you haven't seen this already I highly recommend you to watch this especially for the way how asynchronous the audio and video are.

Gene Hackman delivers one of his career best performances in this movie. The way he portrayed himself as a selfish, arrogant and egotistical racist cop was simply brilliant which eventually got him the 'Best actor in the leading role' Oscar in '71. But I can't believe that 'A clockwork orange' which is way better in terms of Story, Direction and Writing lost to this in all the 3 categories which makes me wonder what could have been done better in order to make it a better movie than 'The French Connection'!?(Again this is my perception and it need not appeal to all, just a bit curious that's all!)

And what's with the 70's and those 'Chase Sequences' absolutely THE BEST DECADE if one wants to witness some best car chase sequences that were ever filmed! Period! Right off the bat I can name 4 movies apart from 'The French Connection' which has got some brilliant car chase sequences 'The Driver', 'Vanishing Point', 'The Seven-Ups' and 'The Getaway'. The train chase sequence in this movie is so raw, gritty and realistic that it keeps your eyes glued to the screen until it ends.

Talk about the editing, it's so crisp and never breaks the flow of the movie. I saw all the deleted scenes and when I pictured them in the movie, I felt that they're out of the place and that they were acting like some show stoppers, may be it's because subconsciously my mind got adjusted to the original version and it was hard fitting those deleted scenes in between breaking the already existing flow of the images in my mind which my mind couldn't accept? And I would have accepted them if they were initially present in the movie without any cuts? I'm not so sure about my contradictory feelings if I deep dive into that but I watched the director's interview on his thoughts on editing and he quoted "You have to look at your film as it's moving, and whenever you feel that the forward motion is stopping, you've got to make it move faster" which made complete sense to me on why he did what he did after watching those deleted scenes as they do not add much weight to the plot and our main characters.

Overall this is a really good police procedural thriller drama, one like Akira Kurosawa's 'High and Low' and if you love those genres you'll definitely find this movie to be a great and interesting watch.

Just give me a movie with the name 'Andrzej Zulawski' attached to it and I can bet my money that the movie is going to be a once in a life time experience for you! I can't believe that his very first full length feature film deals with subjects like 'Surrealism', 'Existentialism', 'Dopplegangers', 'Borderline Psychedelic', 'Allegories' etc., Without a doubt Zulawski is one of the greatest filmmaker's that ever walked the earth and I'm so honoured and glad that I get to see his works and admire them.

Like my in depth analysis on his movie 'Possession' I'm going to do the same with this and let you know my take on 'The Third Part of the Night'.

Plot: The movie starts with Helena (played by Malgorzata Braunek) reading from the book of Revelations to her husband Michal (played by Leszek Teleszynski), who's slowly gaining consciousness from being ill for the past six weeks and later upon the request of his wife goes out on a walk with his son Lukasz and his father, who's waiting outside the house refusing to meet his wife. While taking a walk and discussing with his father on his wife's behaviour on why she did what she did, his son, Lukasz strays away from him and runs towards his mother who's awaiting the impending apocalypse at the house. When Michal hears the gun shots, he runs towards his family but by that time it's already too late and his entire family gets slaughtered. Feeling devastated and guilty he decides to join the resistance with the help of one of his friends but at his first meeting the gestapo kills his go between man and starts chasing him. During his escape he hides at an apartment where coincidentally he see another man wearing the same trench coat and the police catches him thinking him to be the person that they were chasing. Michal stays silent during the period but the other person's wife(Marta) who's pregnant, not knowing what happened, tries to explain the gestapo but they just arrest him and take him away for questioning. Seeing this she gets into a panic attack and goes into labour and asks Michal who's standing at the sidelines while watching the whole incident, to help her with the delivery. Michal to his surprise notices that Marta is a doppelgänger of his dead wife Helena and starts to atone for his sins and his guilt for his dead family by helping Marta and her new born baby. In the process Michal succumbs to his own reality, reliving his past which is surreal, horrifying and borderline psychedelic. Let's delve into the mind of Michal and try to understand in detail why he sees what he sees and what exactly Zulawski is trying to convey us.

Doppelgängers: My understanding is that in reality there are no Doppelgängers in this movie. It's just Michal's mind playing tricks on him because of the horrifying event that happened at the start with his family. He sees his wife in Marta because of the guilt that he couldn't save his family and that he survived and he thinks that he got a second chance (to be precise, a 'miracle' in his own words) to take care of his family by employing himself in the development of vaccine for typhus by letting the lice feed on him.

Now the question arises why only Marta but why not in other women can Michal see his wife Helena? Like for example in 'Sister Kalra' or 'The Lice Breeder' etc., ?: To answer this, its because of the events that transcribed around Marta which duplicates his wife Helena's from the past. Zulawski has shown us those events in a non chronological order by showing us his past right after he encounters a similar event in his present. For example when he meets Marta for the first time and delivers her baby, he immediately recalls how he met Helena and the talk surrounding the birth of Lukasz, where Michal says he's not ready to be a father but only this time he wants the course of events to be changed by being ready when he claims the baby to be Marta's, her husband's and his. Similar events like how he became the 'lice-feeder' in his past upon Helena's request and how he turned out to be one in the present on his own will, how he replaced Helena's first husband and felt guilty about it and how he replaced Marta's in the present without any guilt, how Marta and her new born baby end up at the same attic where Michal had lived with Helena and Lukasz in the past while trying to hide from the gestapo, how Helena's first husband surrenders himself to the Germans and how his sister Klara does the same in the present etc., all these events tells us that Michal is reliving his past but only this time he's the one in the driver's seat trying to change the course of history, which he couldn't do in the end by succumbing to his own reality.

Metaphors surrounding Lice and other elements:

1. Concept of Lice: During my research I came to know that Zulawski's father, Miroslaw Zulawski used to work as lice feeder in the Typhus research institute during the World War II, so in a way he portrayed the sufferings of his own family during the World War II with the concept of Lice feeders and breeders. So people would take extreme measures to avoid getting into the van and going to concentration camps by getting themselves a permit as lice feeders though they dislike doing it and consider it to be a life degrading. Michal who is one of the feeders tries to create a vaccine by donating his infected blood which in a way he's trying to be human to his oppressors when they brought down chaos upon him. He suffers physically and psychologically the same way Helena's first husband did.

2. A Blind resistance by literally a blind leader.

3. Conversation with his father when he asks him what is more important ? "The things people sacrifice for each other or the things they share and want to save?" to which his father responds to by saying "To save? Nothing can be saved" and Michal trying to do both by sacrificing himself and saving Marta's husband in the end.

Ending: During the final sequence when Michal tries to save Marta's husband, he gets scared when he sees Helena's first husband in his place and tries to escape from the hospital only to find himself at a corner with a sheet covering the body on a stretcher and when he removes the sheet he finds the body to be himself and suddenly his reality starts to crumble taking us to his house in the country where the four horsemen awaits to unleash the apocalypse outside the house while Marta braids her hair similar to what Helena did at the beginning of the movie awaiting her death. I guess what Zulawski tried to explain us is that regardless of Michal's second attempt to save the family by changing the course of history he found himself at the same place where he did at the beginning of the movie, no matter what he did.

This is not your typical world war holocaust movie where we see soldiers killing hundreds of people and planes dropping bombs on cities etc., this is a movie where we see how a human mind descends into madness amongst the chaos surrounding him and Zulawski has picked one character named Michal, dissected his mind and showed his thoughts, now just multiply it with a million and look at the thoughts of each individual on how they've faced the surrealistic nature of the world around them amidst this chaos, the image itself is really a horrifying one!!

There can be n number of thoughts on the interpretation of different aspects of this movie especially the ending sequence because I'm not sure whether Michal's dead or not and if he is whether he's dead at his house in the country? Or at the hospital? And the director just portrayed us with his after thoughts while he slowly descents into limbo regardless of where is ?

Dustin Hoffman, once again gave a performance of his life time and Meryl, like always, just in her 8th outing gave an outstanding performance even though her screen presence is just for like 20-30mins. It's a drama on how the kids get affected by a divorce. We cannot pin point and say that it's the mistake of that person and the reason for their divorce. No! Both are at fault here and neither of them can be blamed for their faults, they were all unintentional but made without any efforts into their thinking.

Also I love the other character, Margaret, who's a really good friend and neighbour of the Kramers. I love the way how they designed this character, the friendship bond between Margaret and Ted is so awesome that at times we root for them to get together even Ted's kid ask him at one point that are they both getting married. Both Ted and Marge have a lot in common, they both are single parents, recently divorced, have younger kids and bank on each other when it comes to raising their children. But somehow I'm glad that they haven't developed feelings for each other given the dynamics between them and remained as best friends which gave me a kind of satisfaction that even though they're not together, they are and they will be together forever.

When it comes to Meryl, the entire courtroom sequence and the sequences following them later showed how great an actress she is. She just spoke with her eyes in some of those scenes, I mean you can understand just by her look in the eyes what she felt, was she having second thoughts about the battle for custody?, how she realised about her mistake, understanding ted well and realising that he's no more the same person as before, I mean every scene is pure gold with both Meryl and Ted showing how good they are at their given roles.

The movie is bit sad and it breaks your heart at times and in the end you'll have tears rolling from your eyes but the only difference is those tears are going to be a "Happy Tears". A heart touching film with themes emphasising on parenthood, personal growth, ignorance on one's work, family, gender and life etc., No wonder they both won the Oscars for their roles and the best picture, director and writing for this movie. I'd highly recommend to watch this classic for some beautiful performances by the leads and the story and I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

Ordet - A war between the minds with 'Faith', 'Rational Thinking' and 'Scientific thinking' on which is the best way(or rather a simple way) of interpreting life.

Undoubtedly this is one of the best films ever made and the best film made on the concept of 'Faith'. I have just watched one movie of Dreyer's (The Passion of the Joan of Arc and I absolutely fell in love with that movie) and some of his shorts prior to this. So I knew before hand what are the themes that Dreyer mainly focuses on and how his cinematography, story telling and the set up is going to be and when I watched this movie it exceeded my expectations and I'm glad that I had the privilege to watch this.

Coming to the storytelling in the picture, in many ways, it was a break with the traditional way. An eternal war between Christianity and the Home Mission which had no meaning, no point in life but rather what you convince yourself. It's almost as though it's a little unnatural that they don't dare be themselves and try to find some form of truth. If one worked towards the truth that is in life and that we were created as people and live here on earth that would be the main thing. It is much simpler if one tries spending time analyzing it to discover what one is made of, because I think it's fundamental, it is precisely the same thing that we are made of.

Coming to cinematography, the light setting to bring out what I think is special about the person can be strengthened or enhanced more or less precisely with the help of the light setting. A face is a beautiful landscape, you can't use it for anything, it's just an experience you have but in connection with something beautiful. Because it becomes beautiful when people get the chance to observe someone, what they feel or express themselves has nothing to do with the film, just as beautiful as a landscape, a created form, an enormous satisfaction just to observe. Just like how the painters enhances certain features in a person, cinematographers also enhances certain features or depths of expressions to state what we think is right in the situation. At one of the Home Mission's meetings, Dreyer had found some wonderfully photogenic faces for the purpose which fit the situation perfectly because they are very varied, differentiated faces that we were shown. The scene when Peter says to Mikkel that they're about to have a witness from Mette-Maren, with just the composition of 3 people that dominates the entire image and makes each expression interesting.

This is a tale of suffering and Dreyer managed to get out of the actors the means, simplicity that is in the build-up with the main emphasis on the Portrait Lighting of the actors. Scenes like the small girl when she knows where things are heading with her mother and she tries to see a means in appealing to Johannes because she's worried about it the most and hope that he can bring her back to life again, Henning Bendsten did a great job by varying the light on these two characters by keeping Johannes head lighting at half strength, where the young girl if fully lit, expressing Johannes' state of mind very well -before, in the story, he soon becomes completely normal again. But the final sequence which is one of the greatest sequences of all time and which has some very powerful scenes to experience because of the intimacy that arose in the relatively small room and with the setups like emphasising only Johannes's face and keep Mikkel in the shadow, Inger's reawakening with all the beauty and femininity that's she projects in her expression with some powerful close-up shots deciding what people will focus on and then finding the right balance where the use of the close-up will be. It is a very strong expression to work with an artistic form.

What makes this movie so special is that the story that each of us has to personally interpret Inger's reawakening from the dead. I'm very interested to find out in many of the thoughts that Kaj Munk must have had when he wrote the story, it's exceptional in its artistic expression on Kaj Munk's part. The way the characters are drawn is also very clearly and precisely built up. A great and one of a kind personal experience. I highly recommend you to watch this.

Without a doubt, I'd say that the friendship bond between 'Ratso' and 'Joe' is one of the greatest out there! And the song "Everybody's talking to me" still echoes on my mind long after the movie has ended, it brings a kind of pleasantness to the mind. No doubt it won the Oscar for the best picture.

Talking about the characters Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight gave some stellar performances, especially Dustin with that limp while he walks, I read somewhere that he spent a considerable amount of time in the New York City slums observing tramps and street people and studying their physical movements and behaviour and even kept pebbles in his shoes to achieve that consistent limp all through out the film!

While watching the movie your brain registers all kinds of feelings like 'being happy with what we have', 'sad', 'some good laughs', 'helping others when they're down' etc., and three quarters into the movie you'll sense a depression feeling and you'll get an idea on where this is going but even though you're depressed it's a 'good' kind of depression and you feel satisfied with having it. One of the greatest classics out there, a bit dark but definitely a must watch!

A mix of 70's slasher, Hitchcockian detective style thriller infused with surrealism and intense sexualization. De Palma carefully crafted this movie with all the imagery around hinting the audience right from the beginning, be it either the Angie's museum sequence or the way she looses her things during the process of the seduction (even her own life!) or the initial and the final dream sequences, everything and every character was crafted intelligently with some stunning visuals and top notch Camera work. There were few scenes with dumb logical explanations and I guess that's the reason why I gave it a 8/10 but overall it's an enjoyable film. One of the De Palma's best without a doubt!

Most of the Cronenberg's movies deals with the themes of Sex, Death and Technology and Videodrome is not an exception. The best part about this movie is the theme on how the television technology and pornography takes over the human will and how they alter our thought processes once we become addicted to them. Cronenberg is always fascinated by our human minds and most of his themes deals with the subject matter of how our present actions impact our future and I'm literally blown away that he saw the concept of Videodrome 40 years back! Interested to see a biographical film on himself directed by himself to understand what drives him to such surreal, nihilistic, existentialism and skeptical ideas! Nevertheless a timeless classic and a must watch! Truly a masterpiece!

Peter! You beauty! I'm glad that somehow Sal Mineo decided that Peter would be interested in making this film and gave him the book 'The Last Picture Show' and boy! What a great movie it turned out to be!

The interesting part is that they decided to make the picture in a kind of classic Hollywood tradition and yet it's subject matter and the scenes that they were making are anything but classic Hollywood. It's basically an infusion of classical filmmaking style with modern point of view. Also shooting the entire film on a location coupled with the guerrilla warfare of filmmaking made this look so realistic.

There are many beautiful scenes between the characters and some wonderful imagery of the landscapes which gets stuck with you for a long time! It's a sweet and wonderful journey of the people from a place called Anarene, Texas during the 50's period from one football season to the next on how they are prone to all the changes happening around them. A must watch film which definitely will have an impact in your life at point or the other.

I personally like the films from the 70s and Alex Payne brought that nostalgia back with 'The Holdovers'. Not just the style of the film making but the substance is great too! Such a heart warming film and never a dull moment, gave the vibes of 'The Breakfast Club' at the beginning but No! This is all together a different story about a teacher, a student and a cook at a school during the Christmas holidays. This is one of the best Christmas movies that I've watched over the recent years and I deeply regret not watching it at the big cinemas to experience that 70s period. This time I'm gonna rewatch it with my mum and give her back the memories from her time and talk through those while we watch!