Adding a Scene to "An Education"

     Lone Scherfig's "An Education" follows a young High School student named Jenny, who is frustrated with the limitations of living in 1961 North London.  Even though she is planning to attend Oxford, she is already aware of her limited vocational options when she graduates.  Even with a degree from a prestigious University, the gender inequality in England during this time strongly inhibits its female population.  The best moments in the film are those with Jenny arguing for her need of a new life, such as when she confronts her teacher, Miss Stubbs, about the necessity of going to college when she is just going to end up "bored" for the rest of her life.  Jenny understands her future could look very similar to Miss Stubbs' life, a well educated woman teaching High School English, reading essays about a student's pony.  The prospect of this does not satisfy Jenny, who prefers the exciting atmosphere of Paris, with the films of the French New Wave, sitting in cafe's listening to Jazz, seeing great artwork in the city's many museums and galleries, this is the life she desires.   When she meets David, a man in his mid-thirties who shares her interest in this new Parisian culture, he takes her to Paris, fulfilling what was once seen as an unachievable dream.
     One would believe an important moment like Jenny finally visiting Paris would garner a lot of attention from the filmmakers.  However, all we get is a montage of Jenny and David spending a romantic evening by the Seine, and a scene where she stands on the hotel balcony smoking a cigarette after she and David had just had sex.  The Paris material is only a few minutes in length, and then we're back in London, with Jenny fawning over the great films she had seen, Jazz she had listened to.  Since we didn't actually see her having these experiences, we have to take her word for it.  What is so disappointing about the limited scenes in Paris and the lack of specific references is how the film is otherwise filled with detailed scenes, such as the conversations between Jenny, Miss Stubbs, and her parents.  The film takes a lot of care in building not only the characters but the society they live in.  I'm not arguing for long takes discussing the meaning of Francois Truffaut's films, but at least one scene to provide a context for why Jenny loves Paris so much.
     A suggestion for a scene that could have worked, have Jenny and David in a movie theater watching Jean-Luc Godard's "Vivre Sa Vie."  Godard's film is similar to "An Education" in its depiction of a young woman restricted by society.  However, the main character, Nana, is forced into prostitution, which is a tad different from Jenny's situation.  Getting back to the hypothetical scene, there is a moment in "Vivre Sa Vie" when Nana herself is in a movie theater, watching the 1928 silent film "The Passion of Joan of Arc."  Godard cuts from a profile shot of Joan of Arc to a profile shot of Nana, watching the film in tears.  Scherfig could have taken this one step further, cutting from Joan of Arc to Nana, then to Jenny watching this scene, a cinematic dialogue between the three films.  While "An Education" is a very good film, referencing a specific French film would have added greatly to the already detailed world created by Scherfig.  There is the slight problem of "Vivre Sa Vie" being released in 1962 and "An Education" taking place in 1961, but that's just a technicality.

I almost missed "The Decalogue"

     In 1989, Polish Director Krzysztof Kieślowski released a ten part series titled "The Decalogue."  At an hour long each, the episodes are a modern interpretation of the "Ten Commandments."  The third episode is based on the Commandment, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." We are introduced to a taxi driver named Janusz, who plans to spend Christmas Eve with his wife and two children.  While the family attends Christmas Eve mass, he runs into Ewa, his ex-lover whom he had an affair with three years prior.  Later that night, Ewa asks Janusz to help look for her missing husband.  They drive all over the city, with no luck.  As the film goes on, it becomes excruciatingly evident her husband is not missing, and she must be trying to seduce Janusz to rekindle their past relationship and convince him to leave his family.  Her intentions, or at least what we assume them to be, are extremely frustrating.  She is portrayed as a selfish, unsympathetic character who doesn't want to let her ex-lover go.
     However, this perception of Ewa quickly changes when she reveals the real reason she has called upon Janusz that evening.  She admits her husband is not missing, in fact, he divorced her shortly after he discovered her affair with Janusz.  He is now re-married, and while he and her ex-lover now enjoy life with their new families, she has not been so fortunate.  Three years later, she is still alone, and she couldn't bare to spend Christmas Eve by herself, which is why she lied to Janusz, not to start up their affair again, but to simply have someone to spend the holiday with.  She is now a completely sympathetic character, one who has had to watch others move on with their lives while she is still struggling to find happiness of her own.  Just before this revelation, I was so frustrated with her character that I seriously considered turning off the film.  Thankfully, I stuck with it, leaving me incredibly empathetic for Ewa and her desire to be rid of her loneliness.  Of the ten installments of "The Decalogue," this is the one that had the greatest impact because of how drastically my opinion was changed over the course of the film.  Now, whenever I think of giving up on a film, I think of the third episode of "The Decalogue," and what I could be missing.

"Seven Samurai" and Me

     At the age of nine or ten years old, when my family and I were visiting my Grandmother at a local retirement home, my sister and I were watching television in her bedroom, my sister on our Grandmother's bed and I laying on the floor with a pillow supporting my head.  As I was flipping through the channels, I randomly landed on PBS (maybe), just as the station announced that Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" was about to begin.  At that moment, our Dad appeared in the doorway, saying something to the effect of, "Wow, this is a classic."  So we decided to watch, and for some reason my Dad was assigned the task of reading the subtitles out loud.  I quickly became fascinated with the film, the villagers desperately seeking protection, the search for each Samurai, and especially Toshiro Mifune's character, Kikuchiyo, the most entertaining and interesting member of the group. 
     However, a problem soon emerged with this viewing experience.  The station was airing the film in its entirety, with no commercial breaks.  Since "Seven Samurai" is three and a half hours long, this meant my Dad would be reading subtitles for quite a long time.  Much to my dismay, after about two and a half hours, my Dad had had enough, and left.  I tried to finish the movie by reading the subtitles on my own, but I couldn't keep up.  Deeply frustrated, I gave up and turned off the television.  Years later, when I finally finished the entire film, the climactic battle scene at the end left me exhilarated at first, but my excitement soon turned to bitterness as I recalled my Dad's abandonment of the film years earlier.  There are many ways to attribute greatness to a film, but it's hard to think of a better conformation of a movie's lasting quality than when it holds the attention of a young boy and leaves him distraught when his Father quits reading the subtitles for him.
(P.S.  Love you Dad) 
           

"The Edge of Heaven:" What Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu could learn

     In the films of director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, particularly "Amores Perros" and "Babel," there is a recurring theme told through multiple storylines of how the lives of different people intersect, leading to coincidences that can dramatically alter these people's lives.  The problem with Inarritu's use of coincidence is not the amount of damage it causes to his characters, or how it leaves the audience acutely aware of the "freak accident" element of the events, but that there is no satisfying resolution to these events.  We are not left wondering how the characters can work through these tragic circumstances, but how they didn't have to happen in the first place, and what is the point of subjecting us to such depressing material.
     Fatih Akin's film, "The Edge of Heaven," provides a counter argument to Inarritu's method.  Like Inarritu's films, "The Edge of Heaven" has a multi-narrative plot involving characters in Germany and Turkey.  In one the main storylines, a young German woman named Lotte befriends a young Turkish woman named Ayten, a political activist who has just fled Turkey for Germany.  Lotte's mother, Susanne, does not approve of her daughter's friendship with Ayten, who she believes is too dangerous.  When Ayten is arrested and sent back to Istanbul, Lotte follows with the hope of freeing her.  After Lotte retrieves a handgun requested by Ayten, Lotte's bag, with the gun inside, is stolen by group of young boys.  When Lotte catches up with the boys as they are looking at the gun, she is shot and killed when one of the boys points the gun at her.
     Susanne travels to Istanbul to claim Lotte's body, and there is a scene where she in a room, crying hysterically over the loss of her child.  After reading Lotte's diary, Susanne realizes how much her daughter cared for Ayten.  When she visits Ayten in prison, Ayten is sobbing over her friends death, how Lotte would not have been in that situation if it wasn't for her.  Susanne then consoles Ayten, reassuring her it was not her fault.  Yes, it was a tragedy what happened to Lotte, but Susanne knows how much she loved Ayten, and it was Lotte's decision to be there.  Susanne doesn't blame Ayten for her daughter's death, and she won't let anger take the place of her grief.  Unlike Inarritu, Akin's characters accept tragic coincidences for what they are, focusing instead on how they can move forward with their lives.              
          

"A Prophet" and "The Long Good Friday"

     On the surface, Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" looks like a standard prison/mafia film of a young man who works his way up the ranks to ultimately achieve power.  However, Audiard has crafted a film that serves as an allegory for the current population shift taking place not only in France, but across Western Europe.  This change is the growing Muslim population, and "A Prophet" introduces its main character, Malik, a young Franco-Arab who has been recently sentenced to a French Prison.  He quickly learns of the power structure among the inmates, which belongs to the incarcerated members of the Corsican Mafia.  The leader of the group, Cesar, allows Malik to join them after he has killed an inmate upon Cesar's request.  As Malik assimilates with the Corsicans, gaining their trust, it becomes evident how small the group the Corsicans are, that they are outnumbered by the other ethnic groups in the prison, including the Muslim inmates.  Malik then uses this to his advantage, gaining the trust and respect of his fellow Muslim prisoners.  By the end of the film, when all the power within the prison has officially changed, Cesar is left with nothing, and when he tries to confront Malik in the prison yard, he is shoved to the ground by the members of Malik's group.
     Another film which has a story of social change told through organized crime is John Mackenzie's 1980 release, "The Long Good Friday," whose plot is told from the point of view of a character similar to Cesar's in "A Prophet," an established mob boss who is blindsided by the changing times.  That character is Harold Shand, the leader of the London mob.  In the middle of finalizing a deal with American investors, when a member of his group is killed, he believes it is a rival mob trying to usurp his power.  When Harold is lead to the Afro-Caribbean neighborhood of Brixton to search for answers, we are given the first indication that he is not familiar or comfortable with the changing population of certain parts of London.  When it is revealed that the group attacking Harold's organization is the IRA, he believes he can take care of the situation like he normally would, killing one of their leaders to send a message.  Unaware of the political motivations of the IRA, Harold is captured, and as the camera focuses on him in the backseat of the car, his face shows a look not just of anger, but also bewilderment.  Throughout the film, he is very nostalgic about "old London."  But in the end, like Cesar in "A Prophet," Harold does not understand the new world he lives in, and is soon left behind.         

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn) 2011

     As I was walking out of the theater after watching Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive," I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.  While there were many good scenes, such as the getaway scene at the beginning, the film as a whole felt very thin, as if I missed something.  However, as I was driving on Brea Blvd. later that night, a U2 song called "Sometimes you can't make it on your own" came on the radio, which included a chorus with Bono and the Edge singing in falsetto.  At that moment, heading south on Brea Blvd., listening to this dopey song, it felt like a scene from "Drive."  I was instantly reminded of the numerous shots of the film's star, Ryan Gosling, driving along the streets of Los Angeles at night, the way the street lamps were lit and how the dashboard lights reflected off Gosling, all while cheesy synthpop played on the film's soundtrack.
     Now I understood what the movie was trying to do.  The director had created an atmosphere, a sense of locale that gives the audience a more sensory enjoyment of the film, such as when in a similar location, you are reminded of that specific film.  Consider the opening scene of Woody Allen's "Manhattan," with the borough's skyline filmed in black and white with Gershwin on the soundtrack.  There are probably many people who have Gershwin playing in their heads while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan. 
     Another way to describe this sensation is how one can reminisce about a song.  There are some songs I associate with a specific time and place, such as sitting in my apartment listening to Tom Waits' "Cold, Cold Ground" while attending Humboldt State University, looking out my window on a rainy night, surrounded by redwoods.  Whenever I here that song, I think of that place, the smell of the damp, cold air, and whenever I find myself in similar surroundings, Waits' song will be playing in my head.  That's the kind of impact "Drive" had on me as I drove away from the theater.  I had such an assured sense of the environment created by the film, I could go beyond the specific location and music, free to add my own associations.  Will this same feeling happen every time I drive around at night?  Probably not.  Did I wish I had that U2 song on my ipod so I could put in on repeat and continue driving that night down Harbor to the 91 west, on my way to the 110 north toward downtown LA?  Yes.  So whenever I here "Sometimes you can't make it on your own," I will think of "Drive" and going down Brea Blvd. (and Ryan Gosling's jeans).