BEST FILMS OF 2011 - NUMBER 8

RED CHAPEL

You will probably never find a movie, especially a documentary, where it is so much fun to describe the incredibly complicated premise.

This selection I saw at the Wisconsin Film Festival of 2011 is a very rare look into North Korea. In order to get permission to film this country as candidly as possible, the Danish filmmaker proposed a cultural exchange program. Two Danes of Korean descent offer to perform as a comedy duo for a select North Korean audience. The reasons why the North Koreans accept are a little hard to fathom, but it boils down to using these visitors for propaganda purposes. Through their record performance they can both show their openness to their Westernized Korean brothers and to show how ridiculous the non-Communist world is through the absurd and ridiculous antics of this comedy duo's performance.

BUT WAIT, there's more, and it adds an even more dark and weird turn to this film. One of the Korean-Danes actually is a spastic (his words that he uses for himself, which I hope isn't offensive). He has a speech impediment and uses a wheelchair. His presence serves two purposes for both the propogandists and the sneaky Dane filmmaker. He is used as a propaganda tool because of the suspicion by many human rights activists that North Korea has actually executed many disabled people over the years. This is a way for them to counter some of those suspicions. From a more immediate standpoint, the disabled Dane's speech impediment makes it very hard for the North Korean "handlers", already challenged by the Korean-to-Danish translation, to decide whether what is being filmed and what is being said will undermine the regime if the footage is allowed to leave the country. So you get a few incredible moments where this guy says how ridiculous everyone in North Korea is to their faces, and this footage actually makes it out of the country intact for our American eyes to see!

What a premise! And it's honestly a hard one to sustain, especially through interesting but unfocused sidetracks where the disabled Korean begins to feel sympathy for their North Korean tour guides and resists chances to humiliate them. Even the filmmaker himself questions whether he is abusing his authority and exploiting these two Danish-Koreans for less-than-noble purposes. All this introspection takes a little away from the satire the film tries to accomplish but it does offer another level to the documentary.

It's hard to believe there isn't any other way to get this kind of access to North Korean society, but despite the films flaws, whatever this filmmaker did to find this window into an incredibly disturbing world was worth it. The whole convoluted setup to get this kind of openness from an oppressive regime actually makes it a fitting portrayal of a crude and iconoclastic country so dedicated to using lies, delusion, and overinflated egos to ignore reality.

WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGOO?

WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGOO? (1966)

via Hulu Plus

2/3 Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein

Eclipse is a special edition of Criterion Collection Films that are in the form of box sets of one director's work or sometime a cinematic theme. Most of the Eclipse collections are now on Hulu Plus and it's another way to sample a substantial palette of a certain director's style and to feel like a completist by watching a complete set of available films.

Quite a while ago, I decided to get started trying out the Eclipse set with Mr. Freedom (1969), directed by William Klein, who was a famous 50s and 60s fashion photographer who mostly made documentaries and was an American expatriate in France. Mr. Freedom was fairly narratively incoherent, but contained a lot of unique editing and bizarre imagery to sustain a viewing. It was also referred to as the most anti-American movie ever made by one critic, but it was so crazy it was hard to pick up the social commentary.

The earlier film in the collection (and I have one more film to complete this Eclipse set after this) provides pretty much the same kind of visual punch, although having it take place in the world of Paris fashion makes it a little more grounded. The ending is weird and definitely in inconclusive in the style of many art house films... but it definitely isn't boring and provides a very exciting visual snapshot of the sixties and revolutionary-style filmmaking.

BEST FILMS OF 2011 - NUMBER 9

ANOTHER YEAR

I have talked in length on multiple occasions about the amazing talent of Mike Leigh and the actors that work with him. Just a reminder... in all of his movies, he doesn't create scripts in the strict sense. Rather, he creates characters with a select group of trusted actors and then sets them loose in situations and encounters he develops that the actors haven't specifically rehearsed for. It's dramatic improvisation perfected. I can't understand the mystery of that kind of process, but the excitement that everything you see in his movies is being made up on the spot, that the actors are reacting as people AND as their characters, is incredible to behold. The fact that it stays so coherent and engaging is a credit to the direction and the performances.

Mike Leigh's last film, Happy-Go-Lucky (a top 10 favorite of mine for that year), had its momentum on the unrelenting optimism of the main character, a kindergarden teacher who remained young at heart and reacted with smiles and cheerfulness to all adversity. It was an inspiring performance which I at least hoped at the time would actually impact how I view the world. Yeah, it moved me a little bit.

Another Year gives us a calming and content middle-aged couple (Jim Broadbent, of Moulin Rougue fame, and Ruth Deen) that are less boisterous than the young lady in Happy-Go-Lucky but no less infectious in their warmth. What they have to contend with are some lonely and desperate people in their circle of family and friends. The style of the film makes it inherently slow and patient, but the realistic character moments make it very rewarding. The couple serves as the steady anchor of the movie, and I could find very little flaws in them other than the human quirks that are easily countered by the compromise and happiness that a successful marriage symbolizes.

The characters that rotate around them create such a sharp contrast, and they are definitely the dynamic force that drives the movie's tension, especially in the excellent performance of Lesley Manville as an aging flirtatious assistant in the Manville character's social worker office.

You can see the amazing power of people that find their soul mate early and have figured a major part of their lives out, and with that stability comes an amazing ability to be good friends to other people. But eventually as the film goes into a darker direction, the tolerant nature of the happy characters gives in to just a hint of annoyance at the people that cling to them expecting help in figuring out the major disappointments in their own lives. There's a limit to what even the kindest people can do for others, and you feel for the others that are going to have to eat some humble pie and find a different kind of peace than what this central couple has.

This is the kind of movie that I think impacts people in different ways. For anyone with someone special in their lives, it will for sure make them appreciate what they have. For others that don't, it provides a subtle suggestion that perpetual loneliness is mostly a state of mind, and you can always question your evolving standards of companionship without considering it "settling".

But I honestly have troubling nailing down a universal theme for Another Year which is why it is a little bit low on this list. It really is just another amazing unique movie by Mike Leigh.