Review of Saraband (2003) by Ryan J — 15 Jan 2006

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=2]So tomorrow (actually later today, seeing as it's already in the a.m.) I'll be heading back to campus with my packed up belongings, completely unprepared for another semester of classes, lectures, papers, meetings, more papers, late nights, caffeine, papers, papers, procrastination, last minute deadlines, unforeseeable predicaments, papers, drama, papers, and papers. To say that I'm anxious about the upcoming rigors is an understatement, mainly because my biggest weak-point, foreign languages, will be put directly under the spotlight with Latin II. God bless you Shannon already for helping me with this upcoming debacle. But nonetheless, even through the most academically arduous times, I'm still a devote cinephile, even if it's not as much as usual.[/size][/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=2]In other news, while I will continue to use the provided "out of 10" scale so as to keep up a listed ranking of the movies I review on here, I'm also going to attach my own personal star rating, as I find it more aesthetically pleasing. Correlation between 4-star and 10-point ratings should be noticeable in its generalities, but don't crucify me if it isn't perfectly exact all the time. If anything, that further reflects the subtleties of film and film criticism - the latter of which is about the writing, not the attached number or symbol. Nonetheless, I'll indulge you for ease's sake. For now, sans [i]Munich [/i](I'm getting around to it, I swear - after the mandatory second viewing), here are the most recent movies I've seen and yet to review: one great, two near-masterpieces, and one turkey. Enjoy.[/size][/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Verdana][b][size=2][i]Match Point [/i](2005)[/size][/b][/font][/color].

[size=2][b][color=black][font=Verdana]***[/font][/color][/b][b][color=black][font=Verdana]½ out of ****[/font][/color][/b][/size].

[color=black][font=Verdana]If I were like any other reviewer on the planet, I'd spend the first paragraph here providing mandatory comments about how this is Woody Allen's best movie in over a decade, blah blah. Poppycock. That may be true, but let's focus on the work at hand and not the duds of the past to give it its due value. Lacking the cynically-lined humanistic hope of such classics as [i]Annie Hall [/i]and [i]Manhattan[/i], [i]Match Point [/i]finds Allen disposing of his romantically clad sparks of bitter idealism in exchange for straight-up misanthropy, and looking at the spectacle of clashing identities, motives and souls here, it's hard to disagree with him. Love and lust only serve to get in the way of greed and a content existence, something bitterly learned by the perpetually dislikable Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a newcomer in England who's shoe-in marriage to a wealthy businessman's daughter (Emily Mortimer) is put through a rocky road when his longing for sexy American Nola (Scarlett Johannson) forces him to choose between financial safety or a commitment to his demanding mistress. You'll find no sympathy for the characters here, or at least not for those in the foreground; Allen's typically prominent sarcasm is extinguished in this examination of human greed and sin that develops into a thriller that can justly be described as having Shakespearean qualities, both in the probing taken into it's characters' mental state of affairs as well as the wrenching jab the viewer is left with after the events that underscore humanities' darker side have unfolded. In the end, the weight of moral and social terror is ultimately offset by a sense of profound ironic, one that truly defines the gap between being great and being lucky.[/font][/color].

[i][b][color=black][font=Verdana]Scenes From a Marriage[/font][/color][/b][/i][b][color=black][font=Verdana] (1973)[/font][/color][/b].

[b][color=black][font=Verdana]**** out of ****[/font][/color][/b].

[color=black][font=Verdana]I admit it: until today, I'd never seen a single Ingmar Bergman movie in my life. Not one. Embarrassing my list of blind spots is, I know, but allow me to begin to make up for my cinematic sins. Now having a whole two features from this master director's catalog under my belt, I feel a bit more accepted into this community.[/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Verdana]Originally a six-part, five-hour television miniseries, [i]Scenes From a Marriage [/i]was edited (by the director) and slimmed down into a roughly three-hour theatrical cut, of which is the focus of this review. Berman's narrative approach to his character-and-relationship driven films is almost the opposite of that which most viewers are accustomed (ADD-ers need not apply): employing tight framing that emphasizes faces and emotional expression over setting and body language, Bergman invests a good deal in the ability of his performers. In the case of Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, such investments are well made, as the two embody their characters - a married couple who, over the course of ten years, undergo a divorce that forces them to re-evaluate their current lives and everything that came beforehand - with such conviction that ten minutes into the film you almost forget they're performers to begin with. The exquisite focus on the human face is silently disarming - you become so enraptured with the gentle intimacy that when the camera finally does pull back to reveal more than the very basics, the effect is startlingly profound; a simple shot that most directors would use without any greater intention is used here to communicate a world of separation between two married people in the same bed, or just across the room from one another. Unfolding mostly in extended passages of dialogue that highlight the inner workers of Marianne and Johan's beings, [i]Scenes [/i]communicates the complexity of feelings and sensations brought on by unstable relationships with astounding ease, chronicling the sheer irony that, as these two pull further and further apart as their marriage crumbles, they fall deeper in love with each other than ever before. Love has rarely been such a tangled beast of emotions than as depicted here.[/font][/color].

[i][b][color=black][font=Verdana]Saraband[/font][/color][/b][/i][b][color=black][font=Verdana] (2003)[/font][/color][/b].

[b][color=black][font=Verdana]***[/font][/color][/b][size=2][b][color=black][font=Verdana]½[/font][/color][/b][/size][b][color=black][font=Verdana] out of ****[/font][/color][/b].

[color=black][font=Verdana]A semi-sequel to the previous [i]Scenes[/i], with some liberties taken with characters ages so as to make way for the newfound examinations of the human experience present here, [i]Saraband [/i](the title referring to a musical composition performed by two, the film's dialogues structured as similarly verbal exchanges) captures all the pain and feeling of tormented relationships (parental, marital) as experienced over the coarse of a lifetime. Again finding the poetry of time hidden between the lines in his performers' faces, Bergman draws out the tensions between former husband and wife, father and son, grandfather and granddaughter with a near-transcendent quality of clarity, even as said tensions reveal some of the most bitter qualities to be found within and between human beings. Divorced for decades and out of contact for years, Marianne (Ullman) decides to visit Johan (Erland Josephson), both now in their old age and looking back on their lives and the many mistakes they both made. Meanwhile, the tarnished relationship between Johan and his son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) is brought out into the light by the uneasy status of his daughter, Johan's granddaughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Her mother Anna, deceased for two years after succumbing to cancer, left an emotional void in her father's life that she has barely been able to satiate. The failed parents of the story stand in largely for a representation of the many failings that must be accepted as part of life, although to say so suggests otherwise that they mean much, much more. Confessional to the point of being blisteringly painful in its honest, the autobiographical [i]Saraband [/i]plays like an ode to even the most imperfect life - one of the final scenes finds such simple beauty in its human forms, weathered and worn from life's challenges. Sometimes, accepting flaw and failure is necessary to revel in life's better qualities: for these characters, it's a necessity that they seem to finally come to terms with.[/font][/color].

[i][b][color=black][font=Verdana]Pride & Prejudice[/font][/color][/b][/i][b][color=black][font=Verdana] (2005)[/font][/color][/b].

[b][color=black][font=Verdana]** out of ****[/font][/color][/b].

[color=black][font=Verdana]I'd been looking forward to the latest critically acclaimed Jane Austen novel for weeks at the local art house, and what do I get? The funniest non-comedy since [i]The Chronicles of Riddick[/i]. Despite being often considered a "comedy," this adaptation of the beloved novel aims more directly for a thick layer of romantically dramatic drivel instead, bolstering the production up with so much cheery music, pretty scenery and dizzying camerawork without a moment's insight into why the plotline deserves such importance to begin with that the effect is ultimately one of stupefyingly pretentious camp. Elizabeth Bennet (Kiera Knightley) is one of five daughters to a wealthy eighteenth century English family, a time in which marriage was a necessary event for many females to secure financial stability for themselves and their families, certainly more than finding one's true love. Thus, however, the social and gender-laden issues of Austen's novel have been thrown aside in favor of a slimmed-down interpretation that sets up its characters for a lowest-common-denominator plotline where Elizabeth can only end up with her beloved come the film's end, superficially rendered obstacles to true love notwithstanding. While Knightley's Elizabeth is certainly serviceable and perhaps even the highlight of the movie, such extraordinary critical acclaim for her otherwise generic performance can only have two substantial justifications: elderly male critics were drawn to her figure for the majority of the running time and were thus dually impressed, or the overall resorting to caricature by the rest of the cast (take your pick: overly histrionic female shrieking or Keanu Reeves stoneface impersonation) left Miss Knightley looking all the better by comparison. Like a limp Shakespeare adaptation, this [i]Pride & Prejudice [/i]mistakes plot for thematic importance, and reduces an otherwise complex tale into squandering romantic trifle, akin to a slab of bourgeoisie culture wrapped nicely, tied in a bow and unceremoniously shoved down the viewer's throat.[/font][/color].