The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)

– Emma Keaveney

One cannot write about The Master without mentioning the level of expectation that has come to surround and inform Paul Thomas Anderson’s work. Here is a film which threw the Venice Film Festival jury into disarray – festival rules dictating that a film may win only one of the festival’s top prizes. Apparently, The Master was too good for the Golden Lion. Inordinate levels of anticipation and praise aside, it is quite clear that, in The Master, Hollywood’s wunderkind du jour has made an exceptional film, one which deserves to sit on any “best of year” list.

Like There Will Be Blood, Anderson’s other pulsating allegory of American discovery and interiority, The Master features a student/teacher, father/son dynamic at its heart. Lancaster Dodd, played with predictable aplomb by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is a quack cult leader with delusions of genius and cultural relevance. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is his wayward subject, an unpredictable presence who projects volatility and vulnerability in equal measure.

Conjectures surrounding the “meaning” of the film are many and varied. Comparisons with the true story of the cult of Scientology come most immediately to mind. Others have pointed out the duality at the centre of the film—that of the master and student—as a duality within all of us, our primal desires fighting with our societal duties. Freddie and Lancaster are the id and the ego given flesh and blood. Anderson delights in this duality with split screens and twinning, used most memorably when Lancaster and Freddie are locked in a jail cell after a brawl. Freddie thrashes with masochistic physicality while, in a neighbouring cell, Lancaster repeatedly intones: “Nobody likes you but me.”

Or perhaps The Master is really about a young man who longs to feel a connection with another human being, however transitory and ultimately painful that shared connection proves to be. The film is bookended by scenes of carefree happiness in which Freddie enjoys the intimacy and indulgence of skin on skin contact—or skin on (anthropomorphic) sand in the case of the opening sequence. In an alternate universe, The Master is a gross-out comedy entitled Freddie Quell Wants to Get Laid.

Criticised by many for its apparent lack of plot, The Master seems to be rather pointedly bucking against “story”, that grand old matriarch of Hollywood cinema. Narrative-as-such simply isn’t Anderson’s preoccupation here. The film suggests a hidden pre-history to America’s culture of self-help books, shopping malls and the brash falsity of individual freedom. But, I would argue that if it is “about” anything it is the mysterious twin forces of emotion and personality.

The usual cinematic reference points are useless here. Generic expectations (a biopic inspired by a newsworthy religious cult), perfect period detailing, and the Hollywood heavyweights of director and lead actors all combine to give the film the illusion of accessibility. Rather, The Master is nebulous and difficult, like a dream half-remembered in the daytime, and will be examined and dissected with an almost scientific curiosity for many years to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ1O1vb9AUU

Honourable mention:

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)

Breathing (Karl Markovicz)

Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)

– Alex Towers

Every day Bill Cunningham rides his Schwinn bicycle through the streets of Manhattan searching for a rare splash of style that will warrant a picture. He scurries down alleys, crowded streets and across traffic with a near religious devotion to capturing the subtle way someone might match a scarf with a dress or a hat with a coat so he can include them in his weekly New York Times column.

In a world where everyone seems to be documenting their own style through an endless stream of uploaded photos, Cunningham’s dedication might not seem extraordinary had he not been performing this routine since the 1950s. Today, he’s nearly eighty-four years old and his column still runs every week. Bill Cunningham New York is a documentary given limited release in Ireland this year, that chronicles this octogenarian with a devotion that matches its subject and in doing so creates an incredibly fascinating portrait of an artist.

However, unlike many of the inhabitants of Manhattan’s fashion world that frequently serve as Cunningham’s subjects (such as Patrick McDonald, Tom Wolfe & Anna Wintour, all of whom contribute to the film), Cunningham himself is devoid of all pretension and flamboyance. This irony isn’t lost on the filmmakers, who expertly detail his monk-like existence: his clothes are chosen for their cheapness and functionality, he eats fast food only to prevent starvation and lives alone in a minuscule apartment above Carnegie Hall, with filling cabinets of photos instead of furniture.

While the filmmakers also briefly explore his background (encompassing his lack of romantic history and lifelong Catholicism), where the documentary really excels in its unmitigated portrayal of total artistic devotion. We learn early in his career that when Women’s Wear Daily used his photos to ridicule ordinary people attempting to channel catwalk designs, he resigned immediately. Later we see him turn down any sort of substantial payment from the Times, as he feels not being paid means he can shoot what he wants.

Although the various talking heads occasionally stray into the sycophantic, they all testify not only to his consummate taste, but also to his role as the most obsessive chronicler of fashion. “We all get dressed for Bill”, Wintour admits, while Cunningham himself states his work is not photography but merely “observation”.

But what makes Cunningham (and by extension the film) so endearing is his intense shyness upon receiving even the most minimal of compliments. So when the French government award him the “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” we see him go to pieces, desperately hiding behind his camera for the ceremony before breaking down during his acceptance speech with the words “those who seek beauty will find it.”

However the most telling scene is when Cunningham, appearing ludicrously slight amongst a throng of burly journalists, is turned away from a catwalk show. It’s capturing heartbreakingly intimate moments like these that make this an incredible film but there’s also something else at work. As Cunningham patiently waits in the cold, a veteran staffer spots him and ushers him to the front row, frustratedly announcing “this is the most important man in the world.” Accordingly by capturing this man’s existence so purely, Bill Cunningham New York is one of the most important documentaries for years.

Honourable mention:

Imposter (Bart Layton)

Sightseers (Ben Wheatley)

Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard)

– Elaine Brennan-O’Dwyer

Cabin in the Woods has all the staple features of a classic horror flick: the character archetypes,  the set-up, the title — all of which suggests a typical slasher movie. A group of college friends get away for a weekend to a cabin so isolated and remote there is no telephone reception. It is totally “off the grid”. The script by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (collaborators on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) sets up a shamelessly referential plot, spilling with horror clichés, winks and nudges. Easing the audience into a sense of familiarity, the film begins with some light comedy and a generous exposition. You think you know how the story will play out, but you are wrong.

A parallel plot is simultaneously at play. The diegetic story is embedded within a bigger story, framed by a bigger narrative. A team of white-collar men and women are toiling away at a mysterious high-tech work-shop, housed underground, beneath the cabin. Led by Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), the unit monitors the movements of the young students, manipulating their actions and betting on the choices they will make. It is a workplace like any other: casual conversation, employee rivalry, joking over cups of coffee.

The five students arrive at their destination (a mirror image of the iconic cabin from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead) only after ignoring the warnings of a creepy-yet-comical gas-station attendant along the way. There is the “jock”, Curt (Chris Hemsworth), the “slut”, Jules (Anna Hutchison), the “nerd”, Holden (Jesse Williams), the “stoner”, Marty (Fran Kranz) and the “virgin”, Dana (Kristen Connolly). They all settle in with some dancing, drinking, and a game of Truth Or Dare, which leads the group to the cellar. Therein lies an old diary and, upon reading it, a family of “redneck torture zombies” is summoned. And so the horror commences. One by one, the characters are knocked off. But all the time we are wondering, what is going on beneath the cabin? Why are these people being watched?

Removed from the carnage, Sitterson, Hadley and the team look on the victims of their surveillance with a surreal immunity to empathy. One character says of the bloodshed, “You get used to it”, to which her colleague replies: “Should you?” It seems the film means to comment on *our* relationship to onscreen violence.

Cabin in the Woods works as a parody of generic conventions, insistent on disrupting our cinematic expectations. As more twists, turns and cameos are revealed, it is difficult to remember how the film started. Even the smuggest fanboy will be left chuckling and chin-stroking with this meta-horror-comedy-conspiracy-film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfc12BqFkc

Honourable mention:

Tabu (Miguel Gomes)

Samsara (Ron Fricke)

She Monkeys (Lisa Aschan)

– Cathal Wogan

It was with little fanfare that Lisa Aschan’s She Monkeys arrived at the IFI in May for a brief run. It had found moderate festival success and reserved praise from international critics since its release in her native Sweden almost 18 months previously. Such films tend to be forgotten as quickly as they appear in Ireland, but this is one that certainly warrants revisiting.

The intensity of Aschan’s debut feature film is irresistible. It is formally restrained and quietly deliberate in presentation. The pace is variously absorbing and uncomfortable, and unfolds with the energy of youth, the silent fury of innate human sexuality and the natural confrontation between the two.

Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) and Cassandra (Linda Molin) first bond through a horseback acrobatics class. Their relationship is then delicately established by Aschan, whose withdrawn visual storytelling allows her young leads to flourish. The subject of developing female (homo)sexuality is so often clumsily handled, but it is with care that She Monkeys endeavours to distance itself from cathartic, “cinematic” epiphany, focusing on something more recognisably ‘real’.

Emma and Cassandra’s homosexuality remains latent, and as careful as the form that they occupy, or which occupies them. Their interactions are distant, pained and confused; the camera remaining as curious as its subjects. Like them, it resists its natural inclinations to explore, though powered by an intentional rejection of impulse rather than, as is the case with the girls, an intangible and silent apprehension of similar seductions.

Images linger. Sparse realism presents intimate set-pieces and allows the viewer dwell on stalled moments, only then to take them away. Emma, naturally the dominant personality of the two lead characters, is told by the instructor of the horseback acrobatics class that she must relinquish some of her strength and control. Presence is grace and, while grace is powerful, power is not graceful. That balance consumes the narrative and it is over this that the film obsesses.

As Emma and Cassandra’s relationship becomes increasingly frustrated, the tension grows to be almost excruciating. They are jealous of each other in their hetero-social experiences and zealous in their resulting cruelty. Aschan’s refusal to indulge becomes more evident as Emma’s younger sister Sara (Isabella Lindqvist) begins to acknowledge her own sexuality in the increasing absence of her sibling, who does not do the same. Sara, only eight years old, becomes infatuated with her cousin. Her reaction to sexual impulse is juxtaposed with Emma’s, as both are hinted (the younger more than the elder) to have been abused by their father.

It is important that the film takes away with one hand what it reveals with the other, in sexual terms. Little happens. It does not give in to the titillation that could be derived from its constituent action and errs on the side of grace rather than power. It serves to create a unique mood, violent and unrelenting, that is sincere but brutal in its execution and delivery.

The impression that She Monkeys leaves is largely due to its atmosphere: natural but uncomfortable, sensual but stoically frigid. Six months after a first viewing, it stands out after brilliant and different films from major European directors such as Yorgos Lanthimos, Michael Haneke and Peter Strickland. An auspicious debut; one hopes that She Monkeys is the start of a long career in cinema for Aschan.

Honourable mention:

Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Amour (Michael Haneke)

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán)

– Oisín Murphy-Hall (Film Editor)

In a year which saw the death of Chris Marker, film’s greatest essayist, it was a privilege to witness a documentary from his friend and erstwhile collaborator, Patricio Guzmán, a filmmaker whose career has been devoted to the exploration of his native Chile’s past and present. Much of Nostalgia for the Light takes place in Chile’s Atacama desert, the extremely arid climate of which provides a fertile, nearly cloudless environment for astronomy, as well as immaculately preserving the remains of those murdered and dumped unceremoniously therein by Pinochet’s army, following the U.S.-backed, anti-Allende coup of 1973. In that decade, the desert became both a hub for astronomy and the site of the concentration camps set up by Pinochet’s regime, in which political prisoners were interned and executed without trial.

Guzmán’s interviews with Chilean astronomers hinge on a scientific fascination with the high-altitude, zero-humidity climate of the Atacama and their unerring examination of ancient light in a bid to better understand the mysteries of our universe, while the families of those lost under Pinochet’s rule still search for answers, for closure, in the vast, shifting sands beneath. The wives and sisters of the disappeared spend each waking hour of daylight, thirty to forty years on, with shovels and brushes, hoping to uncover a trace of the men and boys undocumented by Chile’s official history. The act of observation, of searching, is one with profound but profoundly disparate significance in modern Chile.

While Nostalgia‘s central dichotomy is intellectually satisfying, the human content of its footage, and Guzmán’s interactions with people, is profoundly affecting, and devastating in the horror it uncovers. “I wish the telescopes didn’t just look into the sky, but could also see through the earth, so that we could find them,” says one of the Atacama’s widows, tenacious in the face of such cosmic despair. Guzmán interviews a man working as an astronomer who discovered his trade and passion while imprisoned under Pinochet, who credits his sanity to his studying of the cosmos while interned. Another woman journeys to work as an astronomer at an Atacama observatory every day, while the remains of her parents may still lie in the surrounding desert. Understanding the vastness of space, she says, helps her to keep her personal grief in perspective.

Guzmán’s psychogeographic exploration of the Atacama forms one single part of a career spent documenting contemporary Chile in all its tumult, from The Battle of Chile trilogy to 2004’s Allende, but its conceptual beauty and poignant, resolute humanity set it apart from almost any other documentary yet produced. Nostalgia for the Light bears witness to the human casualties of fascism, imperialism and revisionism, the failure of the Chilean state to take account of, and answer for, its past, while maintaining a hope that rests in the simple act, denied so many, of bearing witness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7f4MLL-Hk

Honourable Mention:

Silence (Pat Collins)

Dark Horse (Todd Solondz)