Category: film-notes

Deeyah Khan | Documentaries

Deeyah Khan is one of the filmmakers who has had the greatest impact on me lately. I didn’t know her name until the algorithm showed me a clip from one of the documentaries she made. The full documentary was uploaded to YouTube from Khan’s account one day ago. So it was maybe an advertisement, or just a pure algorithm hit.

There are also many interviews she gave in all sorts of platforms, from daily TV shows to popular podcasts. For me, Khan has a unique view of other people in society, and she also finds unique ways to communicate with them. The punctum of her documentaries is the scene in which the supposedly masculine, ruthless male interviewee begins crying in apology while reflecting on his past actions.

The documentaries I watched until now:

Behind the Rage: America’s Domestic Violence (2022)

White Right: Meeting the Enemy (2017) [from ITV Exposure, s07e02]

Jihad: A Story of the Others (2015)

Banaz: A Love Story (2012)

White Right: Meeting the Enemy is currently publicly available on YouTube:

Menu (2022) | Notes

“All except Margot have been carefully chosen, and all are about to become players in Slowik’s elaborate opera of humiliation, self-loathing and revenge.” (The NYT)

Directed by Mark Mylod —the lead director of Succession with 13 episodes. It’s a film about nerds and cults. The focus is food; the whole eating experience. Its genre, horror/thriller/comedy, is something that I don’t know much about. I watched this film thanks to the joy of watching Glass Onion and joking about it together with a friend. Glass Onion was an action/thriller/comedy as I understand. I thought of watching another thriller in a closed space. I saw Mark Kermode also drew a parallel between the two films.

The service class resentment is nice to see in a popular movie but it wasn’t as intricately described in the film compared to how it depicts the niche interest in food, for the super-rich. The temple, Hawthorn; and the executor, Chef Slowik. I saw a YouTube video-essayist reading the cult as an allegory of the influencer culture, pretty contemporary.

The characters are varied in terms of their relationship with this unique dinner and food. There are top-tier restaurant critics, tech bros who really like to have a bread, a food-nerd and an apostle of Slowik, his coincidental date, an uninterested movie star, and another wealthy couple who just attends the dinner as if it’s regular fine dine. The exquisite dinner is presented as an activity for the ultra-rich and it costs $1250 per person. Considering the crew, the organization, the number of the customers (12)… Not sure whether the “$1250 per person” is a high profit margin business or not, considering the accommodation costs of the whole crew, especially if they are also well-paid cooks.

What went well: the whole orchestration of the kitchen crew and their commitment to Slowik, the suicide of the sous-chef, initial introduction of the island, the daily life of the crew, inter-titles about the dishes, oh my dayum! cheeseburger scene, “more than you deserve, less than your desire” punchline…

I think the cynical people who also like Jiro: Dreams of Sushi would enjoy it. The producers probably knew and planned it from the beginning.

Some Letterboxd favourites:

“never thought i would leave a film being surprised that cannibalism wasn’t involved”, sophie

“even service workers get their own midsommar”, The Jay of Water

“She beat the menu monster by saying can I haz cheeseburger”, Megan Bitchell

“The Menu is the only film bold enough to ask the question: what if Ratatouille was directed by Ari Aster but with a half-baked execution and was neither as fun nor sharp as it thought it was?”, Hungkat

“he seemed a lot happier running that hotel, maybe should have stuck with that”, Benjamin Rosser

Berlin Chamissoplatz (1980) | Notes

Berlin Chamissoplatz, with an overt word-play reference to Döblin’s novel, was made interestingly in the same year Fassbinder adopted the novel to the TV series. 1980, a cinematic year for Berlin’s famous squares… It was the first film I saw from Rudolf Thome. Der Philosoph (1989) and Tagebuch (1975) are mentioned first on his director page on IMDb. He has a pretty low profile on the website where many of his films have less than 100 votes, which makes it more interesting.

The opening shot might be the best one in the film. Starting on a high distance shot of the roofs, the camera pans continuously making a couple of turns while descending slowly and gives an overview of the neighbourhood. Once the camera focuses on the street, there’s a live music performance next to a gathering against the urban transformation. It’s mostly the children who are watching the performance. The protagonist, Anna, who’s recording the event, appears in the audience, and then starts doing an interview with the architect, Martin, who’s working on the transformation project. Anna is one of the residents who is trying to struggle against the transformation and renovation of the old buildings, gentrification of the area. After the interview, she goes to Martin’s office to learn more about the status of the project and the state of affairs about her own flat. Then they fall in love. The urban transformation story starts to become a backdrop or a minor political tension in the film as it focuses more into their relationship.

Some trivia:

  • “Bleibt nicht einsam, motzt gemeinsam”
  • Music credits mention Ohpsst, but I couldn’t find their songs online. I only saw an album called Ohpsst from 1977 by Klaus Henrichs, Ludolf Kuchenbuch, and Mikro Rilling.
  • The punk piece played on the street in the opening is Mein Typ, by Evi + die Evidrins, from 1980.
  • During the first scene shot in her flat, Anna opens the window next to her desk. Her window looks directly to a wall, just after 3-4 meters, same as my old flat. It’s really convenient to open the window any time in this kind of flats, despite the claustrophobic feeling in general. When she opens the second one, a music is heard from the street, the Eurovision piece of Ajda Pekkan, Aman Petrol, from 1980.
  • To build up the relationship between Anna and Martin, both characters are portrayed with their lovers in dull situations. Both of them lack passion, but the scenes are a bit boring.
  • “Did you see that film with Cary Grant yesterday,” Anna is having a chat with a flatmate while the annoying neighbour is playing with the TV transmitter, what was his purpose in the film?
  • Chamissoplatz 8 and 3, Arndtstraße 15.
  • Godot’s, right down the road in the Willibald-Alexis-Straße (more addresses)
  • Wannsee trip: wow they really preserved that beach for more than 40 years
  • Dinner at Fidicinstraße, and then cinema. They watch Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris (1974) and the selected scene is “Oh, the sun!”, another thing that hasn’t been changed at all in the city.

Ruben Östlund in Criterion’s Closet

Uploaded to YouTube on Jan 23, 2015, by criterioncollection.

I want to start thinking about Östlund’s latest movie Triangle of Sadness, with his videos and video recommendations. He has a couple of funny YouTube videos and interviews. The one where they watch the Academy Awards foreign film shortlist announcements is tragically funny. Triangle of Sadness felt a lot like a Buñuel film, and this recording has some clues. The video is from Criterion Collection’s series, where they invite film people to visit their collection where they can get some free films. The guests are mostly filmmakers, but there are also actors, screenwriters, etc. The common denominator is probably the love for film. I’ve been a follower of this series for some time since it gives me a great moment in every video where the cinephile experiences the encounter with tens of classical films, and each person reacts differently. My favourites are Leigh, Huppert, Varda, Jenkins and Martel. Some of them show anxiety, while most of them are fascinated. Some glance through the shelves and pick the first film that interests them. The others, mainly the older filmmakers, prepare the films before the shooting and give a presentation on the pre-prepared personal selection. In the last instance, every Criterion closet video shows a different cinephile physically encountering a good selection of the film history.

In this mythical room of world cinema, Östlund starts the conversation with: “When it comes to my influence, I have looked a lot on YouTube”. He mentions how he checks the references on YouTube for the films he made, gives the famous example from Force Majeure, the crying scene of Tomas. The first absurdity for me is to praise YouTube videos in a room of classical films. It even feels like Östlund, with his satiric/cynical style, challenges the collection with a counter-argument. So what does he have to say?

  • He first suggests the helper video for Force Majeure, with his prompt “worst man cry ever”, and the first video I found is Best Cry Ever? Worst Cry Ever? –Intervention with 1.3M views, uploaded on April 23, 2010. There are also longer versions.
  • The second one is “idiot spanish bus driver almost kills students” which leads to the video Idiot Spanish busdriver almost kills students. One of the early YouTube videos that was uploaded around two years after the platform was built, on December 10, 2006, has 3.5M views now. He doesn’t mention, but he’s probably inspired by this video during the fantastic finale of Force Majeure.
  • Next, “battle at kruger” leading to a documentary footage of Battle at Kruger, again a pre-history YouTube flick. Uploaded on May 3, 2007, has 88M views now. It’s an eight-minute drama of a “battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa’s Kruger National Park while on safari.” (as the video description portrays). I see this battle almost everyday in my life.
  • I sadly couldn’t understand the last one. I googled a bit, tried to listen to him at 0.25x but couldn’t get the last word. It’s something like “taxi driver int…” but, no relevant results.

We’re just at the end of the first minute of his video of 06:46 minutes long. But this may be enough as an introduction. Right after the YouTube recommendations, he mentions his anxiety about being in this room, supported by his background which was not in film but in ski movies. Just like the other cinephiles in the Criterion closet, he releases this tension with a personal confession and starts talking about the films in the closet. And that’s the end.

p.s. DAILY LIFE ONBOARD A NORTH POLE CRUISE vlog for the fans of Triangle of Sadness.

We Might As Well Be Dead (2022)

Wir könnten genauso gut tot sein (We Might As Well Be Dead)
Directed by Natalia Sinelnikova
2022, 1h 33m

“A high-rise building near the forest is famous for its carefully curated community. When a dog disappears and her daughter refuses to leave the bathroom, security officer ANNA faces an absurd battle against an irrational fear, that slowly spreads amongst the residents and rattles this utopia with a view.” — Rotten Tomatoes

It starts with an intriguing opening where a nuclear family with a 10-year-old son walks in the forest with axes in their hands. There’s a single tall futuristic building on the horizon where they go towards. Their quest unfolds in a minute or two: they are here for a flat interview. While the security, Anna, is showing them the flat, they seem desperate to move in. The father kneels down, begs, and puts his son’s head above the parapet. At this moment, it’s not clear why this family is out on a limb. But the protocol Anna adapts hints at the idea that this flat or the building is a privileged place. On the one hand, this ceremonial interview, the hyperbolic shots and mise-en-scène is a precursor of some allegorical storytelling; on the other hand, I couldn’t keep myself from thinking that it’s just a random flat interview in Berlin where dozens of people struggle and engulfed while not showing any physically noticeable reactions.

As the story develops, the ‘high-rise’ building is introduced as a perfect place to live with full security, distant but respectful neighbors, and soothing leisure activities. A pornographically enhanced gated community. But as anyone might expect, the spell is broken at some point.

Initial associations: Ben Wheatley’s J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise (2015), completely superficially Yuriy Bykov’s Durak (2014), and Yeşim Ustaoğlu’s Pandora’s Box (2008).

to be continued…

p.s. I. TODO: Find the choir OST that plays in the opening and the ending. The Internet didn’t help me at this point.

p.s. II. A Letterboxd user HolyMotor whom I love their reviews left this comment with a 1/5 star, and I auto-translated:

“Passive-aggressive-obscure Lanthimos fascism/dystopia lumberjack/slow-motion bingo with pretty poster.