diand_

Almodóvar's movie worlds have always been interesting to inhabit and his first English language feature is no exception to that in that all parts of the art world are beautifully present and presented: Literature is read (Joyce) , books are never far away anyhow, architecture, furniture, paintings, decoration, all refer to an intellectually challenging world where every sophisticated being in this world would eagerly like to be part of.

However, despite this constant referencing to works of art, the movie feels empty and hollow, intellectually and emotionally not that engaging. The music by Iglesias is beautiful, opening credits are quintessential Almodóvar and Moore and Swinton are two of the greatest actresses alive, but the script is too simple to take this beyond a merely simply staged play. For example, Swinton is a former war correspondent but this never adds an interesting touch to the movie. The same for Moore who is a writer, but almost nothing is done with that element here. Another interesting part of the story is where Swinton seems to manipulate Moore in her guilt and goodheartedness, but it is also too underdeveloped.

Almodóvar's direction of both Moore and Swinton is overall too absent, so it is difficult to see what he wants from them. (See how Fincher in Swinton's small role in last year's The Killer makes her perfecly fitting the movie, with great attention to body movement and diction). Here characters and stories from the past pop up and go, yes just like in real life, but that doesn't make compelling viewing. Turturro (Almodóvar?) is especially helpless in this movie with not only uninteresting lines but a character with a simplistic political message and world view.

This is a movie where the parts all do their work relatively nice, but the sum of it all is disappointing, and the director is unfortunately to blame for that. In Dolor and gloria he bravely put his own pain to the forefront, but like Woody Allen his big inspiration seems to be over and his movies are mere copies and abstractions of previous ideas. The movie references Bergman's Persona, but is a shadow of this work of art. (Also the 1 minute trailer contains the whole movie.)

A last note: That this won the Golden Lion in Venice this year is not only an indication of how weak the 2024 edition of the festival was, but as usual also a sum of the composition of the jury this time presided by Huppert: first prize to a movie about a woman who wants to be euthanized, second prize about a woman torn apart by war, love and her community, and the third price about a woman fighting for abortion. Maybe it is an idea to let filmmakers be presidents of the jury instead of actors and actresses so the best film would have won the biggest prize (The Brutalist).

1917 is in itself a pretty decent action movie: tension building is well done, long tracking shots through the trenches, and even a few outstanding scenes reminiscent of the better work of Bresson, like the bridge crossing scene. However it also has several flaws, ranging from minor to more irritating. It seems the script was not well researched, and this is not Kubrick first reading several years into the subject matter, and then coming up with something perfect.

First, the hierarchy as portrayed in the movie is incorrect: WWI meant strict hierarchy, it seems very unlikely orders from higher up would be ignored or reflected upon. In WWI the battle field was a reflection of society at that time, from upper to lower class. In Paths of Glory, by now the benchmark for WWI movies, we see the arrogance of the upper levels slaughtering thousands of soldiers for nothing. As Scorsese noted about Paths of Glory: "It was so honest, that it was shocking, and what made it even more shocking, was the nature of the way it was shot, the use of the tracking camera and the trenches".

Then, the portrayal of the Germans is more WWII-like than WWI: Soldiers from Europe went to the battlefield in WWI seeing this as an honor to defend their homeland, almost like a football match. They were waved out like heroes, most were very nationalistic at that time. If you have seen the excellent Peter Jackson-documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, you noticed little hate between Germans and British. So, the stereotypical Hollywood bad German is driving the action once again in this movie. To the scriptwriters I would advice them to read a history book about the matter.

Another inaccuracy is that individual ethnic soldiers are written into the script, maybe to reflect and conform with current society's ethnically mixed makeup. And although groups of colonial soldiers fought in WWI, they mostly did so in their own regiments, just as society was organized then. Few of them fought as individuals in the main ethnic British group.

The story contains some odd situations: Wouldn't it be better for the Germans to catch Schofield alive for interrogation, he also goes through an unlikely amount of luck, and after the river scene he ends up just in the right place. The village looks by the way too much like a film set, and some other sets do not look very realistic either.

Then the much discussed tracking shots. See again Paths of Glory: The tracking shots there have more tension, more dynamism, and more speed. Here they are dull. I was somewhat disappointed overall in the work of Roger Deakins here, take Sicario as an example of what this man is capable of.

Mendes started his career with an almost perfect script, that was also well executed (American Beauty). Since then he thinks he is a great visual film maker, the problem however is that a guy like Nolan surpasses him in both writing and visual execution.

In philosophy both Parmenides and Heraclitus saw lightness as the positive side of the lightness-weight dichotomy. Later, the writer Italo Calvino took the same position. But it was Milan Kundera who stated it as a dilemma framed in Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return: a heavy burden can crush us, but the heavier the burden, the more real and truthful our lives become. Malick clearly takes on the latter position in this movie, which was originally more aptly titled Weightless. This theme is also connected to Heidegger's Man being called back in self-awareness and fulfillment by answering introspective questions about his existence.

Song to song is an exploration of love and ambition set against the Austin music scene. Especially around the theme of love the movie makes interesting observations: That true love is only possible by isolating yourself from the fake world (of music and money here), that walls are built around you inhibiting you from finding real love. Another observation is that early in life you love everyone, but ultimately your awareness, society, and religion lets you end up with one true love, unable to love others any more.

The notion Malick makes about love is the romantic character of love itself, romantic not in the sense we nowadays attach to it, but the original meaning as an unattainable ideal, combined with adoration of nature and emphasis on the individual and its intense emotions, the latter creating beauty and experience. Romanticism was mainly a reaction to industrialization and urban sprawl: All Malick movies have shots of urban landscapes and nature scenes; they look for beauty in that nature and have a preference for searching for intuition instead of filming fixed storyboards.

The story however develops in a non-romantic direction: Where in the quintessential novel of the romantic (or more precisely Sturm und Drang) movement the main male character shoots himself after being rejected by the woman he loves (Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), Malick replaces that hopelessness with a man who commits adultery, has regrets and is punished and tested by the woman he loves who commits far more and extremer adulterous acts.

Malick uses again a naturalistic style of filming, adding unscripted moments that occur during the movie shoot. Some footage is shot at the Austin City Limits festival and short interviews with John Lydon and Iggy Pop are included. The state of Texas features prominently: a key scene is before a Texaco gas station for example, but overall it is the unusual, non-clichéd beauty of both nature and the built-up Texan landscape that is well captured by Lubezki's camera, making effective use of wide camera angles. It also feels less slow and has more snappy cuts than Knight of Cups, which will be a relief for many I guess. The editing by a team of 8 (!) editors is however inconsistent and one of the weaknesses of the movie.

Two actresses in the movie have in my opinion the capability to give this an extra level, to give it real character depth acting on multiple levels in order to convey the emotions Malick's movies are oddly enough often lacking despite aiming for them: Portman and Blanchett. They are so underused and reduced to cardboard characters that it can almost be called a shame.

What struck me also about this movie is how conservative and deeply religious Malick's world view is: He clearly roots for Patti Smith's love story she tells in the movie for example, and sees the other musicians and portrays them as lost souls. In Song to song the woman repents, but the man only regrets. I see a parallel here with Tarkovsky's movies, which show the same religious, conservative world view. It brings up an odd observation: These two movie geniuses shatter the notion that true art can nowadays only be made by free souls, their art more in line with church-supported art like it used to be (Note: See The Tree of Life explanation by Bishop Barron).

Von Trier once remarked that he in effect makes the same movie over and over again, and Malick has come to that same point now. He has perfected his storytelling skills, hides the movie in the images and by editing, uses time and space shifting, sees salvation in nature (the element of water is effectively used here), adds autobiographical elements (music, adultery, suicide, father-son relation, ambition), so Radegund can hopefully be the creative destruction many now hope for.