Andrei_Ciprian

This was my first Kaurismaki movie. It surely won't be the last. The plot is simple and classic. A man is traveling by train. When he reaches his destination he stops in a park to rest. He falls asleep. He gets robbed and severely beaten by hoodlums. When sent to hospital the doctors think he's dead and send him to the morgue, but he makes a miraculous recovery and runs away. A generous family treat and feed him. He's amnesic and has no papers. He tries to make a living but employment officers send him away as his story doesn't seem trustworthy. He lives off other people's mercy and finally he's helped by a Christian organization. He cooks and plants potatoes. Finally he finds out that he knows how to solder. He inoculates the passion for rock'n'roll to the Christian song playing organization band and welds liaisons in his new outcast community. He makes friends. He falls in love and the woman loves him back. Due to a bank robbery in which he's accidentally involved the police find out his identity. He discovers he is a metallurgist, has a wife and goes back home. Yet she divorced him in the meantime. Quarrels ended up their marriage before the hero's amnesia. When all the constraints of his former existence dissolve he returns to his beloved. Well, you might say why didn't he go to the police in the first place? Perhaps subconsciously he realized he needed a fresh start. If ever in need of calm, peace and warmth watch Kaurismaki's movie! You'll feel like you have started from scratch back again, transformed yourself. Moreover, if placid you may become as proactive as the character. And do enjoy many "bon mots" along the byway!

Apart from the deep-throat approach that totally violates your senses, porn movies can be challenging, glossy and fragrant. One can make an art movie from a porn movie, and Blake demonstrates it. He uses luxurious sets and garments, silk, lace; outfits are innovative and provocative. Everything is high class and decadent starting with the women, the camera movement, the props and ending with the music, downbeat and jazzy. Slow motion scenes add to the soft touch of the movie making it a unique visual experience. Female appearances are absolutely ravishing, with the exotic Dahlia Grey in the foreground. Even if Blake movies usually follow a similar pattern I consider this his best work, together with Aria.

Actually the Romanian title of the movie would be "Balance" or "Scales" or "Steel Yard", pick the word most appropriate to your liking for the weight measuring gadget. The international titles (The Oak, la Chene) are linked to the last scene of the movie that metaphorically wraps up significations. The main characters have found the long sought, yet not traceable balance, equilibrium.

Why did I say that it depicts humiliation of intelligence and culture? In communist Romania people that graduated university or college were repartitioned to a job matching their studies. Only the luckiest got a repartition in a large city. Others were summoned for life in hamlets, as you could not promote or change your repartition unless joining the Party. That's the case with the leading character (Maia Morgenstern) that graduated Psichology in Paris, and was repartitioned in Copsa Mica, the most polluted city in Romania.

The caravan of insults starts with the train journey to her new work place. She is forced to switch trains in the night, take her clothes off in the presence of strangers, and ride 400 km standing in an overcrowded train. As she reaches Copsa Mica some people try to rape her, police torture and threaten her, and so on.

To certify the adage that special people congregate the Psichology graduate meets a funky doctor, that manages to elude the system by being some kind of a joker. Then the rejoicing begins as these 2 people get to know each other.

When they decide under the oak tree to give birth to a child she says: "I pray he won't be normal" and he responds "If he'll be normal I'll kill him with my own hands." For these two people being "normal" meant the supreme course. Everybody around was dull, normal and communist. Enjoy!

"Comedy" as garbage of this sort is called these days never ceases to appall me. I find productions like Scary Movie and American Pie the leaders in the human race insult top.

Every character is a cynic, with frail axiology (only linked to sex life, looks and entourage), jokes are grotesque and redneck. These movies inhale and exhale sex through all pores. And only its' dirty aspects actually. How come vast masses of people enjoy this type of subhuman products? How come this type of execration is allowed on the screens? How come this outrage manages to be a bestseller, blockbuster? Call me a "puritan" but this shows how rotten the occidental way of life really is and how much we are still decaying at the moment. And I am growing sadder to see producers and directors getting rich through the repellent and ridiculous.

This movie was a must for me, not for cinematographic reasons but for the piece of music history it contains. I had heard Ibrahim Ferrer was coming to Romania with Buenos Hermanos Tour. So I tried to find out all about the Buena Vista history. I have found Cuba a far away, resolute place, nevertheless glamorous and melancholic. Popular Cuban music is an absolute jewel that had to be forgotten even in its' own country and then brought back into the limelight by the likes of Cooder and Wenders. Cooder is a scavenger that wanders the exotic musical destinations for the next big hit. The film is centered too much on Cooder, and I find the time allotted to Ibrahim, Omara, Compay, Barbarito, Cachaito and the others (the real musical giants) unsatisfactory. You only get a glimpse and then have to run away for the next character... Yet, Wenders manages to catch the sweetness in the Cuban relaxed lifestyle, beautiful Rembrandt-like sunshine coming through leaves and a touch of history and relaxed musicians in the act of recollecting.

As Des'ree sang in one of her tunes "you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser...". That's the case with RTW too. I have been surprised by people seeing this as a comedy, as it seems to me totally the opposite. Indeed human frailty, stupidity and weakness may seem ridiculous, hilarious. It has a Balzac touch this movie, "la comedy humaine". Typical start of the 2oth century atmosphere. People are fascinated and abide all kinds of theories even if proposed by insane or charlatan doctors. There are also vegetarians, health nuts, hedonists, entrepreneurs, and animal rights defenders. Health is a thing of great regard, and tons of nonetheless respectable gents immerse into doubtful treatment practices. This movie covers a surprisingly vast amount of character types: the businessman looking to succeed by all means, the young dreamer, the abused, love-lacking child, the concerned housewife, the leader(Kellogg), the woman complexed with her looks, the man with a sex appetite and a whole range of very influential and easily manipulable persons. The conclusions are bitter: better a businessman without scruple than a silly leader, better suffer from a middle age crisis than from abiding stupid theories, better think with your own head as incapable it may be than borrow opinions from others... Have you seen Hopkins' face with those mouse-like teeth? My rating 7/10

Truly disappointing really. After having watched "Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie" and knowing Bunuel's surrealist backgrounds, this is a major let-back. Is this film truly by Bunuel or just some unimaginative director made a movie and used Bunuel's name? Just a book-based American-ish epic for the masses with the flavor of 60's news and storyteller. The movie follows the book cutting details and stages in the development of the character. Crusoe's torment and pain are unconvincingly depicted as the film fails to get psychological or philosophical. It's like a tale for lazy children that don't want to open Defoe's book. Bunuel doesn't even throw a hint to the good savage myth and the metamorphosis of the ex-slave trader.Maybe he was too overwhelmed by alcohol's vapors at that time. 5/10

There is a set of movies that leaves me absolutely speechless, actually to be more precise, unable to find superlatives to describe their true genius. It's the case of Wong Kar Wai's Fa Yeung Nin Wa or Ron Fricke's Baraka or Theo Angelopoulos' Eternity and a Day. Those films have absolutely nothing in common as related to topic, genre or style yet they represent lonely peaks in a desert of movies that can not raise up to their stature. It's one of those movies that keeps you breathlessly clinged up to the end, and I am not talking about suspense. When it is over, you will exclaim: "I've never seen anything like it". Even viewed for the tenth time, "the marathon family" will produce a breeze of freshness, exquisite humour(that western people usually don't appreciate...) and astonishment. The metaphor reveals itself towards the end, in an accelerated rhythm - war between brothers and the fall of a nation, also lamented by Kusturica in Underground in a similar humourish yet bitter fashion. I give it a definite ten (10). Chapeau Bas!!!

Les Triplettes des Belleville is heroic poetry. Poetry because of its' sensibility (sentiment), idea and technique. Why heroic? In fact it consists of a sad story(dreams that never come true) - an orphan kid living together with his grandma in the suburbs, in a house that bends like the tower of Pisa,seemingly falling apart. Cripple Grandma knows she is too old to be of real help in her nephew's education, yet she does all her best in encouraging his natural talents and hobbies.Then it all turns out into the kid's relishable dream of winning the Tour de France, and the epopee begins: transatlantic trip, new york, musical, mafia, grotesque. A wonderful story of astonishing imagination and black humour. A proof that even in the harshest conditions there is hope. The certainty that love and devotion come back to you with a boomerang effect. Moreover,Chomet has the brilliant idea of melting drawing and music together - the natural language, the most powerful way of expression . Words lose their mystical and mysterious halo through common utterance. Get ready for a feast of colour and song!

First Version It is such a pitty that misfits like this come to such an appreciation these days. No sign of philosophy whatsoever, just a sort of foggy net of actions pretending to be intelligent that loom the idea of an universal manipulation and a whole load of special effects, very much to the liking of unsensitive freaks.

Second Version Yet, all that could be true, and all of us just little wheels of an evil mechanism. The manipulation consists of making a mockery of serious things and esoterical truths. Once a movie like this appears, the watchful eye is distracted.