The light in the darkness
ok, leon, a contract killer and a girl, but it seems like if you imagine leon being directed my kaurismäki, dark and laconic and some strange humour in it. Anyway - the team joined the screening at Black Nights in Tallinn and it felt quite true when they presented themsvs as the streetfighters of the filmbiz, I gue3ss with their low budget they wouldnt survive a minute in a Hollywood project and they pulled it off in fourteen days. I remember Willeford's Miami blues as one the few stories with death and darkness always on the agenda and we got all that great martial art stuff from Asia, just think of the blind swordsman! He needs to rely on his instincts he needs to FEEL the enemy's approach in his darkness - but he#s tired and here comes Momo, here the light comes into his old soul, a little girl, end of his innocence / beauty and the beast / you name it. She leads him to the sea, to the one place he is longing for, she pulls out that mean queen's icepick off his frozen heart - a fairytale indeed, pure and straight in neo-noir b/w. Gampl follows the path of Takeshi Kitano, Melville and Michael Mann's Collateral, taking us through the berlin night - not a place for fairytales? nonsense! And what speed we gain there rushing through the dirty streets- intentionally for sure because that speed makes me remember all those shocking moment of violence - while infact they never were in the movie! My imagination was ignited by this fine piece of art, by that velocity and that reduction to the bone of filmmaking: The light in the darkness! Why do I go the movies anyway - if not for that?
Da capo!
