Change Your Image
figueroafernando
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Përralle Nga e Kaluara (1987)
Too bad, it started well and they ruined it with the Disney ending
Let us know in advance that this will not end well, and it does not matter that being predictable - what is to come - can soften the tense thread that the stupidity of custom always fixes on the bow, the arrows, the consequences. Weren't they obvious? "I won't bathe in the river, I won't collect snails in autumn...? And when the wild pears ripen, I won't make bird traps anymore...? I don't want that manhood then" complains Gjino, the boy of about 11 years old for whom they have found a wife; The bride, the beautiful Marigo, about 10 years older, cannot stop hating the world either, as if someone is going to pay dearly for this monstrous slavery. When common sense is taken as a simple bluff, that is, the fact that the child is hardly interested in being told bedtime stories while the wife is of nubile age to deserve concupiscence, and on the other hand, the absurd is the logical thing that absorbs This social card game, the result will be superstition, magic, fanaticism,... whatever less reason will decide the fate of the newlyweds; especially when a magician or clairvoyant thinks she sees that Margo is pregnant because of her predictions.
Marigo has always wanted Trim but the only thing the parents of the "man" of the house, that is, the boy Gjio who is still more than five years away from coming of age, the only thing they were looking for, I say, was a daughter-in-law and sister-in-law as labor carrying and plowing the daughter-in-law and sister-in-law's land. Unfortunately, everything is ruined and it looks like a very light and easy comedy after Marigo's trick or lie regarding ingesting the rat poison, immediately crowned with the consequences of the priest Saint Thomas adding the false hanging, Too bad, the story unfolded good. That is to say, what we know cannot end well should not end well: it turns out that Marigo ends up receiving the man she did want and only by opposing it and without consequences, very Disney.
Krinitsy (1965)
Divine changes in the past
Exceptional example of the corruption of communism, even if it is in a remote place "by God's grace." What captivating cinematography, like a dream like an Eden in sepia while the fog takes over the tiny human beings in the little town of Krinsty, and whose hobby oscillates between the sweet laziness resulting from the hard work of the day on the collective farm and the jovial rivalry of some boys who by a pond, singing in choir "in the souls of illness, press the grass and look; late in the afternoon, stay still at night..", they question the beautiful Raya Snegir who in turn, a few minutes ago caressed with her melodious voice the sunset at the piano inside the house where Kirillovich Lemyashevich, the new director of the school, guest of honor and newcomer to the town, has a snack. Without meaning to, this new soul of the place will turn upside down the somewhat arbitrary customs of the District Committee of the Party that governs there, especially the sly and always duplicitous president Artyom Zakharovich who has not spared sending his henchman Zauch Viktor to force to sign a tenth grade student who works on Aleksey Kostyanok cultivation machines. Lemyashevich's integrity will be put to the test, so he soon confronted Artyom on one of his visits, letting him know that it is very wrong to try to turn young people who have not even finished their studies into heroes. Barely had Artyom left the place, in the distance we see a couple of women hurriedly carrying bags of hay and being chased and finally intercepted by another Party henchman;she literally strips them of their load to feed their animals after questioning who has authorized them or to take it and, at the moment when the comrade prepares to burn it in front of her, according to him as a just and genuine act of communist honesty so that it is not occupied by her or him, about to set fire to the dry hay, the new director arrives and steps on the flame. The comrade, very angry, shouted at Kirillovich Lemyashevich "ah, cultural power...what mentors." But can anyone blame him for not agreeing with the interests of the party if, immediately afterwards, he orders that the teacher Sukhova and her son be installed in Marina Ostapovna's apartment, against the will of the latter who aspired to follow her parents alone? Wide. Dorotea says in Don Quixote de la Mancha in chapter 36 "And the world will see that reason has more power with you than appetite"; This could be said of Kirillovich but it clashes again with the appetite and ambition of Artyom who denounces him and takes him to the board of directors and proposes that he be exiled to the collective farm in Lypnyaki, only that the others do not accept Artyom's authoritarianism. But the worst thing is the way in which, flagrantly before the local media, Artyom manages to elevate Aleksey Kostyanok, publishing in the tabloid that he harvested 16 hectares, being falsehoods to glorify, justifying the farm and the communist method.
Potseluy (1983)
true dream
It does not respect the story with integrity, adding grief, but the cinematography makes up for it. Yankovsky's (Ryabovich) pince-nez makes him look more intellectual but less charming when his arrogant companions discuss Dostoevsky and Pushkin at the table; the music of the dance in Von Rabbek's chambers sounds like the player pianos of a saloon in a Western; The most excellent and elderly general has not resisted succumbing to his atavistic habit of inviting the 4 soldiers to have tea and everything else, despite not exactly going through the best of economic splendors - as will be revealed by the discreet scoldings of his wife, eavesdropped by Lieutenant Ryabovich outside one of the rooms; The mansion is like a perfect madhouse explored by the shy lieutenant, most likely to dispel his ennui resulting from not knowing how to dance or play billiards; in a room the squeamishness of the old man in pain, receiving attention from his wife, in the corridors children of about 4 years old playing who knows what and in the background the player piano in a flurry of minutes with dust and gloom of the dark place.
Filyor (1988)
Fascinating nostalgie
Everywhere he will carry on his face the guilt of the informers and the suspicion of the Tsar's enemies. You'll hear more than once in the film that everything will be okay, but nothing will be okay. You will not find in miles of Soviet film from the 80s a more subtly depressive expression regarding the tribulations of a former teacher like Piotr Vasilievich, half sick, half aphasic, completely unemployed more than a year ago after resigning in protest at the arrest of two fellow teachers. His own and, immediately arrested unjustly, according to him, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a demonstration against the tsarist regime at the beginning of the last century. At home lies his wife and son who needs sea air, probably due to asthma or some ailment not revealed in the plot; The former professor does not know that the State knows all this because the honorable gendarmerie created by Count Benckendorff was designed, say the senior military, to protect its citizens and to do so "it is necessary to know everything about them." Now I remember Giovanni Papini in "Gog", specifically in the interview with Lenin. Confront the question to Lenin regarding how he managed to create the network of surveillance and panopticism of his comrades and subjects to which Lenin responds with a smile "but everything was already done before we came to power. Foreigners and imbeciles are those who do not understand that we Bolsheviks have only adopted. You cannot govern 100 million brutes without the cane, the spies, the gallows, the secret police..." Being ignored, rejected from any job, borrowing from his friends as a beggar and anyway turning out to be like an outcast , Piotr Vasilievich will continue his painful journey of the cross. That scene where Vanya -Vanyushka- sings lazily outdoors in the snowy morning without clothes except for a towel covering her hands is unforgettable. Private parts while the guitarists percude and loosen the soul, almost begging that he needs at least 2 thousand rubles. From here to there, he will run into a childhood friend who will plant a kiss on him and now, almost desperate, about to hit him. When the government forgives him, because thanks to him a bandit is arrested, they grant him the money. 2 thousand rubles that he would have needed to take his daughter and wife to the sea. Only he never undertakes said plan.
Kashtanka (1976)
tender and amazing
Balayan again masterfully takes advantage of Chekkhov's "technique of indirect action", resisting the docile suspense of the dog's fate without revealing, like the original, the room of the trainer or circus artist where fate wanted him to take refuge, after the fall in the ditch of its alcoholic owner, Luká Alexndrich. To translate almost into the ear of the plot the joy that Kashtanka obviously will not be able to confess by barking, unfortunately it was necessary - perhaps only at the end of this work, at the closing of the story when he leaves the circus tent and runs to Fediushka - a voice-over or omniscient narrator; Apart from that detail, this transcription respects Chekjov is almost ideal and no one who has read the story can deny that Balayan has not taken pains to recreate an evocative physical environment with the well-known psychological climate of the circus artist or clown; Through the insinuations of the Kashtanka, so beautiful and expressive, we can understand as a mirror the changes in the mood of the trainer or trainer whose hovel is the new place where the dog lives for a short time; The viewer laughs at the pirouettes of the cat Fyodor Timofech, laughs at seeing the goose Ivan Ivanitch play dead at the master's request, and... cries when Ivan Ivanich dies, touching the most human fibers with the simplest but unexpected everyday situations. I recommend it, it is a delight that someone revives Master Chekjov and hopefully we have a glimmer of sentiment that the author of Uncle Vania may have harbored for himself and his readers.
Dom naprotiv (1958)
lyrical reflection
Bittersweet story seasoned superbly with Rachmaninov's conspicuous hands on the piano. Vasya Nezhin is the living portrait of the human weakness that underlies the unfortunate events that have left him bedridden - without hope for tomorrow, without emotion - after being badly injured while saving someone during a fire; He keeps his silence and his hopes, suspicious of not even being able to get out of his bed while his colleagues come and go, one beyond his place snores scandalously, another is about to discharge and even his wife is the one who accompanies him from the door in his last day; But one fine morning, when he was on the balcony or roof of the hospital, in the distance, a lady seemed to greet him. And casei we can feel the energy of light within a cavernous and mute spirit; Every day we can almost feel this dose pounding through his blood and no one could even swear that it is him whom it greets - seen frankly from the distance of the building under construction opposite. The almost expressionless but professional nurse Alevtina Valeriavnova, who has already noticed how patient Vasya's temperature has been rising, arranges for the strange girl to visit him and her name is Tastya. He informs him that he will no longer be on the building site under construction but promises to visit him every day and talk about poetry, a book that Vasya reads. No one knows the best medicine that could one day come into our lives.
Marat, Lika i Leonidik (1971)
Wonderful and awesome
In a certain way, what is gained in dramaturgical avant-garde in the Nouvelle Vague style by adapting a landmark work such as Arbuzov's "Home Poor Marat", is at times lost in an aspect of artificiality of history. Dancing a waltz without knowing the Wouldn't everything while the missiles hum or the bombardment from the siege be heard lead to a feverishness that the narrative is devoid of? Instead, when Lika asks about Marat, rival Leonidik reluctantly replies "you see, the bombing has continued all night, maybe he stayed with someone else." It is no wonder, just as in the limitations of theater, the feature film makes ellipses in some way respecting what has not been seen in dramaturgy, such as the scene of Marat capturing a German paratrooper that we do not see; It then lacks the environmental aspects that - due to the bloody siege of Leningrad and the warlike climate - transmit uncertainty outside the bedroom or apartment. The soulless emotionality of the characters is atrocious, their deathly sighs, their lost gazes and the hoarse indifference of a legitimate nihilism is what is highlighted here ("I exchanged my fur hat for 300 grams of millet" laments Lika) and exactly what which, in my opinion, makes the nerve-wracking little drama triangle worth the trip. If it is true that it is a fairy tale as mentioned at the beginning of the plot, the outcome justifies the clear line that would distinguish fantasy from children's stories with the existential but also loving condition of the characters. We can feel anger towards Leonidik (the persistent one, according to Marat) for not hiding his indifference when listening to Lika, feel extreme despair towards Marat for keeping his jealousy to himself "a receptive girl is a credit", although it is Leonidik who tells her "I envy you. "Vestegneykin." The war continues and Marat, deeply affected by the triangle under the same roof, leaves and leaves the letter informing about the event of the paratrooper and Major Artyomov. Four years pass and Leonidik returns from the front to the same apartment where Lika already lives. We must appreciate Leonidik's reception of the hero of the Soviet Union Marat for having survived; They almost kiss as a couple, holding their faces in their hands. But can they be together? Marat announces that he is going to Saratov because he has a friend there. And here you don't have one? Lika refutes him. "Someone of the 3 has to go," he finally says. As the years go by, even though Lika is older, Marat returns and repeats: "In some kingdom, in some state, an old man lived with his old woman.
Synovya ukhodyat v boy (1971)
Cruel beauty
Once again in the flesh and newness of a group of partisans, mostly young, Turov brings his enveloping and emotional style to the trivialization of the waste of atrocities that the war causes in the rebels interned in the mountains, and thus infallibly, the The cadence of the Belarusian tinges - and I very much doubt it is intentional - with daring ignorance in the boys in the face of war horrors, which - I fear - look less disturbing than they really are, because they are elevated to the category of simple subtleties or experiences such as if they were boy scouts, like Tolya, about 16, who discovers and kills a spy among his classmates and celebrates the murder with the enthusiasm of someone who had achieved the best score in pole vault or relay race. Maybe it's that, the comrades do not understand what is happening and that is why the son of Anna Mikhailovna, the mistress of the home where even commissars like Sergeyi Sergievich meet and come, is happy that they have given him his trench rifle and not a rifle. To stay alive, alas, but when the Germans ambush their camp, Sankas takes the tapes and Seryozha and Kolka and Nikita Pinchuk's entire platoon leave in terror although Ksenia's brother is murdered, with Tonya barely escaping by crossing the swamp.
The night scene in which Pinchuk's troops, including the demolitionists, advance on the hill and towards the bridge consecrates Turov's art, the natural way of brushing the suspense with sequence shots, these shorter than in other of his works and even thus, masterful. You have to watch more than once to enjoy the scene of the bright missiles flying through the night and the collapse of the bridge and the railway tracks. And we hear the soundtrack "The earth does not sing, it is silent forever. No, it sounds very deaf, For all its wounds and strangulation", when we see the guerrillas walking through the recently bombed scorched fields. The trick of disguising himself as a Nazi and waiting for the enemy was a well-done sequence and in fact, I almost rated it with only 6/10 but the sequence shot of Pinchuk defending himself against the Germans, taking cover among the trees is enhanced by the song of the soubdtrack and Turov's solution is great; but the craziest thing, or ironic above all, is that Anna Mikhailovna burst into screams against Nikita for allowing her son Tolya to participate with everyone else in the platoon in the shooting of the Germans captured in the ambush, ordering that her son be immediately transferred to the plane that returns the wounded to the capital. But as the lyrics of the final song eloquently state, who knows when it is their own end? Resting in the camp at the highest part of the viewpoint, both Tolya and Lena with the dress given by Ksenia, unexpectedly receive two Germans who step on the mines in the camps and fly along with Tolya's body and the end.
Ceux qui rougissent (2024)
Tedious and zero originality
Tedious and unnecessary. First, it is not a TV series but rather the filming - with amateur quality - of a school theater class in the form of a backstage or reality show; Secondly, it is not a theater class - they don't even read the Bard with rhythm - but rather oral and physical expression, the drama will come from the hormones of confronting the handful of adolescents still in puberty; The first is evident from the moment the substitute teacher arrives and snatches the character of Hermia from the girl to provoke the most passive Nicolás to vent with the pretext of looking into the eyes and culminating in screams; The second is evident in the 2nd and third episode when he asks them to feign madness and return to shouting but in the following opposition exercise they almost bring themselves to tears due to the same game of beta endorphins and the tension of proving themselves better than the partner opposite. What I can tell is that it is an experiment without the greatest interest except perhaps for the parents or relatives of the children acting for the mini series, that is, an unoriginal series, or what is the same, with the same originality that anyone would have if they recorded the discussions and misunderstandings in their theater rehearsals or other activities because suddenly they are asked to no longer be the character assigned to them but another, or in sports they are no longer forwards but defenders. Lost time.
Balada o trobenti in oblaku (1961)
Disturbing surreal
It is an atmospheric drama between the sinister and the surreal, without a doubt; Are the souls of the 12 partisans the ones that cry out for someone to arrive, when they died long ago? Tense and mysterious environment from the beginning and slowly becomes overwhelming. First Father Temnikar listens to the trumpets and anyone will think, what is he talking about? "Ipak sam covjek" (I am human after all) But this goes beyond the age of the priest. Why doesn't this man enjoy opening nuts with his family? His premonition is justified when the White Guard soldiers come to the mountain hut to drink "rakiji" and force Temnikar to think about Robe, where the Father has not gone in 5 years - according to him -, and to think about the 12 partisans sheltered in the Carvej well. But the last straw will be when later 3 other soldiers arrive and sing the variety of Christmas carols from that area, (it's Christmas or something like that) but with assault rifles instead of shepherds' attire and with berets with skulls and with a disastrous cynicism. And cheeky. Father Temnikar will do everything to justify reaching the 12 partisans and alerting them of the executioners who are targeting them. Anyone with two centimeters of reason would first ask themselves, where are those partisans that we still don't see? And, second, how is an old man going to arrive before younger and more trained soldiers who took the road? Temnikar says that with a shortcut through the cliffs, and he says that he will arrive half an hour before them, but alas, on the snowy and lonely road like another planet, what the crestfallen man will come across will be the young Justina, his daughter. Within a very surreal scene because she is supposed to be in the house she abandoned hours ago; In the gloomy, somewhat cursed daydream, she is dressed as a bride and is courted in the high chasm and hugged and repeats that she is happy and highlights "Bijeli oblak" the white cloud in the chasm. It will be one of the first hallucinations of many, for example the following one thinks of Marijana, his wife whom he also left, imagining her despising his son for going over to the side of the Germans: "don't call me mother again, did they promote you to executioner?" " .But waking up from that nightmare while ascending, Temnikar says that that is not true and the viewer wonders for the umpteenth time: what the hell is true, and what is not? "The truth is that tonight there will be 12 dead in the Charjeva jama and they burned my house" says the father. But the plot finally ends up being revealed almost at the end, when the military carolers make an appearance again and ask the old man "And you completely deceived the wounded? What will happen to the wounded? I think you have already realized. Sjetili ste se? Ko jos zna gdje su ranjenici "do you already remember? "Who else knows where the wounded are?" But the last minute is the best because it is the least clear: after falling off a cliff with a ghost that the old man has imagined, "murmurs are heard among the caves of the snowy mountain." who say: "Did you hear? Someone shot. You're dreaming. There's only stillness here. They'll come for us!"
Starozhil (1962)
Charming drama even if it is simple
Wonderful gem about the adventures of Andreiy Krutikov, the first citizen to be born in a small repopulated town which, at the time of starting this film that will be narrated in retrospect, already has a main street named after him. Only subtly does the plot play with the irony that the 12-year-old boy is the oldest in the town because the others were not born there and because the boys at his school are younger in age. Krutikov is a full-time scoundrel of small stature, following the elephants he will be late for school many times and other times he will run into a circus bear near the stable; but of course his school grades will be bad and for that the girl Sinitsyn, a classmate, will scold him, but she will help him - mainly in arithmetic Tanya, his other classmate... - welcome be the order of communism thanks to the support of the comrades of the community; In any case, Krutikov will learn to calculate how much oats a horse eats, not thanks to Anna Vasilievna's classes but by asking the sharecropper about the Kalandina filly: the answer is, she eats 5 kilos of oats three times a day. Tireless, bullying almost everyone, his world changes with the arrival of the new boy in class, Borya. After throwing his school supplies into a puddle and insulting Borya, he follows him after school and discovers that the new kid in town works at the circus. That changes everything. Seeing the enemy fail in their trials and, even so, perform pirouettes with the horse in motion without complaining and repeating. First Borya will help him with math problems, then they will try a failed circus performance at Andreiy's house, at least before his mother arrives it was fun as jugglers with china plates and other jokes. The girls at school obviously sensed that the new boy was receiving a bad influence from the little thug Krutikov, but anyway they stayed together until the circus had to leave and at their farewell, Borka gave him his algebra book, repeating the eternal mantra: imple to the complex friend. The omniscient narrator says that one day Yuri Gagarin's street crossed Krutikov's street but that's how things are, even though he hasn't done anything heroic, much less reached the Moon or space like Yuri.
La récréation (1961)
A shinny Nouvelle Vague sigh
Quiet gem of the Nouvelle Vague. How could Kate have seen the early morning crash - whether it occurred or not - as a "run over" in the hallucinatory and surreal and full of solipsistic stimuli that she is accustomed to every day? Can't see the forest for the trees, says that wise apothegm. I have not seen an actress more comfortable than Seberg with a character, nor a character like Kate Hoover more comfortable with each little leaf of mystery that she insisted on weaving in the tree of her daily life between the boarding school balcony, the binoculars and the garden in the middle distance with "long legs" sculpting. The secret in the story of this film - and if you don't believe me, look at his natural appearance when he draws and shows his roommate the "Mexican on a bicycle seen from a plane" - is that Seberg's role doesn't look one bit overacted. In her intellectual but fleeting, intense but fickle female character that made her the epitome of the modern woman with Belmondo a year earlier in À bout de souffle. So, apart from the physical attraction for Phillipe the sculptor of yore, who was in such a hurry to escape from that bizarre party that he ends up running over the young stranger just as Kate was wandering the sidewalk and witnesses everything, it will be days before the American student begins to be remotely aware of what he saw, even asking his partner, mutatis mutandis, what you would do if you saw the accident."Renounce of course" she answers smiling. In the meantime, he sneaks into Phillipe's workshop at night and if it weren't for his jealous wife, the complicity of spying on each other between balconies and sharing the intoxication of insomnia would have reached an epic level. But Kate's sneaker, forgotten in her nocturnal gentle raid, started the disaster. Or perhaps the beginning of the end was the letter that Kate sent to Philippe but his wife read and through which he announced that she would go to Geneva for a few days to test the fidelity of the selfish sculptor. Proud of his importance or brazen as a macho, the sculptor invites the viewer to take a taxi on an unforgettable ride, also for the viewer, to a house with a swimming pool where they will stay for less time than during the round trip to Paris. In the pool there was time to mature the Nouvelle Vague seal in the script. The most irreproachable thing about the film is that it has not succumbed to the temptation of the easy ending with which the plot perhaps flirted: that they died in an accident in the sports car. She, swimming, asks him "Savez-vous quoi, les poissons? Les poissons meuent tous d'amour. Qu'est-ce que tu dis? Tu sais pourquoi? Ils ne savent pas touver les mots qu'ils font." "Do you know anything about fish? All fish move with love. What did you say? Do you know why? They don't know how to find all the words they say."
Vrenje (1986)
Disappointing
With few or almost no contrasts, no longer of action but not even of romance or at least drama inherent in a historical and natural way to the turbulent decade of the 30s in Germany with the fall of Weimar or in the Balkans after the founding of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, this work is extremely monotonous because it is immersed in the victimhood of its leitmotif, which is (a) clandestineness (for example, to which the party resorts by sending Rodoljub Colavic to Vienna with a false parliamentary identity) to hatch political and social ideas later. Of (b) being imprisoned for years like Rade Vujovic who not only will not be recognized by his son and will also be arrested immediately after leaving Maribor for remaining in Zagreb. Colavic initiates contact with Mileva and later, pretending to be Rozenko, contacts Mujko and he, who was also in prison, warns him "I myself am more of a prisoner than you are in my skin." And so factions of Ljevic continue to conspire while the Reichtag fire and the voice of a genocide, Hitler, is heard on the radio. Later, when Colavic contacts Kosta thanks to Vujovic, it is the same, victimhood and impotence of minority or secrecy so as not to end in something different, that is, without friction or clashes in the plot.
Daleko je sunce (1953)
Awesome realistic cinematography
Indiscipline due to fear, or the natural biological sense of overvaluing life, country or orders will be the crux of this vibrant rare work. Film where the lighting at the beginning is not the best and let's not even talk about the subject, it is very carried on and brought on; In its defense, there is an unparalleled realism in almost the entire film as if it had been shot in Jastrebac with what we know today as a home video camera and, nevertheless, they have a horrifying impact; For example, the scene in which the villagers complain and cry out for the god of Slovenia, and the lieutenant even sends Nikola for firewood and devices to help him with the firewood until a German lightning attack massacres the villagers in less than a minute; the sequence in which the partisans lie crouched and silent in the trenches, waiting for the Germans and their Yugoslavian dog rushes forward against at least 3 enemy German shepherds; They are also worthy of peculiarity - although implausible - moments in which in the middle of the fray, Uca slips the hand of his partner Bojana. Surrounded by the Germans and amid snow storms, the partisan detachment plans to divide, especially after the massacre of residents;Pavle and Uca are of the opinion of creating sub-divisions and leaving the mountain, but the peasant Gvozden raises his voice and confronts his companions, haranguing them to disobey because he will lead them to hell, he says. He is then tried by a court. WHEN night falls and they approach the nearest town, horror will invade them because the Germans and Bulgarians have beaten them to the punch, burning and setting fire to the village. In fact, they had not yet overcome their perplexity when the Germans ambushed them from or far away and Uca shouted to the youngest member of his company why they retreated. On the contrary, the photography and light at the end, especially after the Pomoravlje stretch and when responsibility is placed on Pavlo and during the night Uca is wounded and carried by his companions against the light with the gloom of the distant mountain. I repeat, the film is peculiar perhaps because it has not been restored, but also of course because of the type of framing and cameras used in the execution.
The Man Inside (2012)
A nice trip to the absent memory
Of course it is an express chronicle of a pending account with the reconstructed memory of an absent father, and of course in this type of evocation there will always be an aura of filial morbidity - not finishing listening to his voice on the tape so as not to violate the silence of 30 years - or opening the suitcase with other people's letters, that is, addressed to his two sisters is part of that metaphysics of memory that one does not have. It is incredible what one imagines and even more so what would never have crossed one's head; Don't you speak Arabic? Even I say I am amazed that I had not imagined it and I also do not think that there is a need to learn it just to have a connection with someone who can no longer speak that language.
Pastukh i tsar (1935)
Gorgeeus expresionism russian
Spoken portrait of the most eloquent Russian expressionism whose plot begins at the end of 1904 with the voice-over, in the first person of the young Vanka; Recently arrived in Saint Petersburg, as can be seen from the first 3 minutes of the film, said peasant is perplexed by the enormous tsarist city, he walks along the Griboyedova canal, Catherine II Canal just before the worker and peasant protests for better wages that They caused Bloody Sunday at the Winter Palace: a massacre ordered by Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, uncle of Tsar Nicholas II who was away on vacation. After wandering without work, Ivan travels to Moscow and observes His Eminence Metropolitan Tikhon as well as other curiosities of history. They also highlight the evil details of the Russians blinded by fanaticism to the Tsar who assault Jewish buildings and neighborhoods because since 1881 the repudiation and discrimination against Jews for their alleged participation in the death of the ruler has increased. Then there is a chronological jump to 1912 and immediately the devastating images of the First Great War begin.
A war veteran on crutches asking for help in a restaurant and the intertitle reporting the 450 thousand men that the Russian Army had already lost in 1915; or, the intertitle "Every hour of war costs power 20 million gold rubles." And while the propaganda songs continue to say "peace to the soldier, I will not disappoint the Russian land", in the next intertitle we read: "1916, the Army lost 1 million 500 thousand Russians." The choirs are interrupted and the screen reads "There is no flour! There is no bread." Simultaneously, the peasants and workers shout and gather around with anguished faces. Freedom, Svoboda! Sequences of the ruins left by the war, the photo of Comrade Lenin, the image of Admiral Kolyakov. The director dedicates an intertitle to the first political statements of the young Stalin "To defend the republic, we must create a disciplined worker-peasant army or it will be wasted. 8th Congress of the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks.
Naito heddo (1995)
i was hoping lot more
I expected more from this cult film version adapted from the TV series by manga and anime writer Iida Joji; I am not an expert, I have only rescued a couple of chapters from the 90s series, but this film maintains the dialectic of the strong brother Naoto Kirihara taking care of the fragile younger brother Naoya; Both have the power of the mind to absorb in their own person the affective or jovial feeling of people and have resented school bullying and isolation since their childhood; harassment or bullying that has a common denominator with others that appear in this film, such as Tsujiki on the train, representing fickle images with a pretty girl who physically consoles him and suddenly scenes perhaps from his childhood appear, where his mother complains that he has abandoned her, and so on until having a crisis. Both siblings feel the power of the girl Sakie Tengan who suffers from the same type of harassment but in her case, violent bullying because her classmates force her to sit in a chair with sharp edges or pins that pierce her school skirt. The Kiriharas discover Sakie just when she causes the death of her harassing companions with her mind, who drown in a gloomy scene. However, the poor scene in my opinion, although it must be considered that it is the special effects of the 90s, is the sequence when Naoto perceives the monsters or zobie inside the vehicle before entering and repels them in the parking lot before meeting Gengo Mikumo. He is literally interested in the power of Sakie, the power to infect others with intense emotions until they lead to death or uncontrollable suffocation of their being. Immediately after the meeting of both rival sides and Gengo demonstrating that he can control his power better than the Kirihara brothers, we will see in her house, in the electric chair, the elderly Akiko Okuhara speaking metacognitively to Sakie lying down replenishing her energy. It explains in the most complex and abstract way why the world self-destructs by the same humans who - mutatis mutandis - do not know how to control the energy coming from outside the earth and that unites past and present and gives it meaning with us. The first clash evidently Naoto is defeated, for fear of taking hatred to the extreme, his power does not allow him to see that his enemy Gengo in all the people in a mall or public square where he accidentally executes everyone in a scene that is surreal. To expressionism. But the end, since Naoto prostrates himself in front of the van and forces his rivals to get off, without fear and only to defend his brother, concludes with the premise of the old woman Okuhara, including pulling Sakie and her younger sister to her side. .
Jäljed (1963)
Bored but sad story
Heino Raagen returns home after 4 years at the front in Moscow, but who can really be a true friend and who can be a true enemy? The narrator asks himself and in doing so, he anticipates the friction with which the protagonist faces - very soon - the same question; The question is simple, can someone who has been undercover with the enemy now be undercover for him? When Elmar Reyn (Järvet) asks him to continue considering him a school brother; Heino replies "what can we expect from someone like you who served the German base? How dare you look at people?" And the test will come when an undercover Oskar tries to pull out a grenade at the Annual Collective Farm Day. A squad is organized to go look for the fugitive and then Heino discovers that in his own house, or rather, in the house of his father Julius Raagen, a false relative had been hiding as an accomplice of the bandits. "I have paid dearly for your teaching of love, father," he reproaches his father. This is a slow plot and, I'm sorry, but I'm very tired of the mistrust that falls on the protagonist after believing that his companions (there were 4) would continue to be what they were after the war and with the vicissitudes of time. The most regrettable thing is the ending, although it is expected, it must be added. The promoter of peace, harmony and forgiveness, Heino's father, Julius dies at the hands of a crazed Robert who shoots him in an absurd way when the old man was with the children doing what he always did, being a pedagogue. Robert immediately collapsed on the rock.
Arena (1967)
great performance and sad plot
The pathetic grace that the Nazis found in the humiliation of the enemy seems camouflaged by Samsonov as a terrifying documentary by the trick of narrating it in Russian and listening to the Germans mock and order atrocities in this degrading circus show; a show, in effect, that must continue without causing the slightest amusement; a clown named Red, Polish, in half anguish, another White, no less unhappy, also without his doll; some Belgian trapeze artists depleted little more than the starving horses they chase, a Serbian fire thrower but one day, Masha, the occasional trapeze artist and person in charge of cleaning the animals, hears their Russian language in the crowd. Not content with subjugating the cultural mosaic of prisoners under the tent, the Germans take their cruelty on the horses, mistreating them and whipping them until Masha intervenes to prevent further whippings, risking her life; says the narrator: (When a slave begs the foreman to punish another slave). Sometimes, the narrator says, they forgot that it was a prison and they were prisoners. But is there time for a brief illusory escape? I don't know, the mime shows steps and gestures to Masha in the stables and what is heard in the background is the piano that emerges from the darkness. At the first warning that people want to intervene, the Nazi Commander barely returns the hat and attacks the animal tamer. How could the showman or tamer of the circus have hidden his shame, if he were the Commander's compatriot, but what can two Germans talk about? One from Bavaria, another from Munich. It was difficult for him to bleed bitterly because the Germans do not know how to contain the hatred that they themselves inflict on others. And so he broke his head with the butt of his gun. And of course, the German spectator should not be bored, so a number of their slaves throw a doll at them for their depraved amusement in the makeshift box. If there is a belief that redheads don't die, Masha puts on the clown mask. The clown says goodbye to the other clown. The commander starts the shooting and everything freezes, the narrating voice says "let these people continue living their triumph, happy as they were at the hour of their triumph, when they thought they were free and happy enjoying their art.
A.C. Dupin zasahuje: Vrazda v ulici morgue (1970)
The origin from detective
Sobria pero inteligente historia que rescata la esencia de Allan Poe con economía temporal; 100 años antes que Maigret y 50 antes que Sherlock, el conspicuo Dupin hace su estreno de forma accidental en un crimen de la Calle Morgue justo cuando el prefecto encargado de las pesquisas había ya desechado continuar buscando al asesino de la vieja Lepenajová, reputiendo desde que jugaba baraja con su amigo Dupin que quizá solo se trató del asesinato de un loco que escapó del asilo y después del creimen regresó. El asesinato ocurrió en un tercer piso que hace imposible saltar por las ventanas y cuyo pararrayos está demasiado lejos, agreguemos que nadie pudo salir por la puerta porque ante los gritos de auxilio los vecinos se arremolinaron y lo habrían visto escapar. De no ser por Dupin quien lee diarios y no solo la sección de ineterés policiaco, jamás se habrían conectado los pelos que la difunta tenía en sus manos al inspeccionar el cadaver, con el reporte del extravío de un orangután. Los interrogatorios solo demostraron una vez más los prejuicios humanos ya que la criada que lava no vio nada, el Sr. Moro tampoco, pero Sr. Oppenheimer aseguró escuchar voces discutiendo en lenguaje italiano; otro testigo esuchó alemán y otro más en inglés además del "Mon dieu" en que coincidían todos en francés, incluyendo al empleado bancario que ciertamente tenía motivo porque sabía que la mujer asesinada tenía dinero tras haberle entregado 4 mil. El orangután que escapó tomó la navaja de rasurar y desgraciadamente mató a la anciana y todas las voces en idiomas disntintos solo fueron los chillidos del animal y la imaginación prejuiciosa de los testigos.
Kým kohút nezaspieva (1972)
Nice intrigue
Excellent exercise in self-destructive suspense. In "Animals are rational" Plutarch reflects that between one horse and another, between a dog and others, there is not as much difference as between one human and another. The fears and recriminations inherent to particularly selfish human nature are put to the test in this small group that shapes society on a small scale. The occupation may not be the best time for a plethora of fearful people detained by the Gestapo to fraternize and betray each other among the different social classes of Czechoslovakia crammed there in a basement; The arrival of Mr. Fischl, full of duplicity if ever there was one, communicates Von Dukas's intentions and confirms the suspicion to the 10 detainees, the retaliation that awaits them for the death of the guard in the German commander's house. The murderer must appear before dawn or the capital punishment will be carried out. In the feverish unrest they tried to claim - firing off gratuitous reasonings - that it was the work of the partisans, but why would they kill a soldier? The work then is a tiny laboratory so that, on this occasion, we can separate the usual executioners from "evility", that is, the Germans, and focus on the tender "victims" who accuse and stigmatize themselves with strange resentment; not in vain Ondrej horrified cais at the end will say "Ja som nevedel, ze sú lúdia takí podlí" (I didn't know people were so bad);Some of the captives, let's see, like Ondrej himself and his girl suspect Terezcák, others like the devious Mr. Uhrik who is recognized by the gallant woman who saw the corpse and the Nazi soldiers in front of Mr. Fischl's house, before being arrested, others like Master Tomko are optimistic and think that the real murderer will be caught. The truth is that they attack each other, use the ad hominen fallacy and offend each other without evidence and without need; Uhrik finds it suspicious that the despicable Bolshevik, whom no one knows, who also prays, what nonsense to pray when you are a Bolshevik, perhaps the women think?, that stranger pulls out a knife to eat, and the German died with a stab wound to the shoulder blade. . Truly, intrigue is less disdainful than the fierce treachery of one against another; the one Babika Babjakova had an alibi for attending a birth, must confess to an abortion and be reprimanded by the gentlemen who are not even a little better than her when she explains her moral scruples for what she did; The inconsiderate Fischl, bearer of the bad news from the Nazis, appears sorry, even showing a dull mortification to Terezcák for the time his son allowed him to hide in his garden, and then decides to start sharing cigarettes for which Uhrík, not For no reason he shouted at him, "Do you want to give me cigarettes when they are going to kill me at dawn?" However, Fischl added, "his son - referring to Terezcák - gave a false statement or misunderstanding. His son played a dangerous game." In the end, 9 Judas will have to betray one, there is no solution because in fact the hours pass and the new day approaches. The executioner's intermediary, Mr. Fischl, has promised to return at 3am for the person who will be sacrificed. "Well, maybe it's better that we say goodbye now. Even the mountain has already fallen. It's already a wound," says Terezcák, however. With a few minutes left until 3, Uhrík loses his temper and with a murderous dagger in front of everyone he kills the perfect stranger, the one who a few minutes before harangued them to fight violence and evil with the only weapon: nobility and peace, with his face. Of the human that preserves the human being. Snatching the key to lock them all in, Uhrík is shrapneled in the back. Good ending for someone who only deserved a despicable ending.
Zlatá reneta (1965)
psicologic kundera-like little storm
Anyone who has read Milan Kundera will immediately understand me when I begin by saying that this film has the same rugged and difficult narrative terrain as his work; in this plot it conflagrates - in the same channel - a possible but indistinguishable current of the author's experiences and memories. Of Frantisek Hrubin's poetry, rarified with the complex circumstances of the librarian Janova, "little man" as he likes to see himself and who is already entering years. It is not unusual, and even less so in Czechoslovak cinema, and even less so in Czechoslovak poets, not even in Czechoslovak novelists, although some have written in German, that in its framework it is superimposed on the historical consciousness of the individual who narrates - full of grace seeking to escape move forward and hold on to the positive of the present - the misfortune through the regrets and resentments of the - sometimes not so immediate - recent past. Jan's poetic confessions since his arrival to the land immediately bring to mind the definition of nostalgia in "L'ignorance", whose root refers to Kundera whom I remember: "In Greek, "return" is said nostos. Algos means " "Nostalgia is, therefore, the suffering caused by the unfulfilled desire to return." Nostalgia is "stesk" in Czech. And so, the poetic evocation of the beginning: "I'm finally here, but it's not like that. I never left here. River, my river. I have to let the water run behind me.", slowly fades with the flow of the story, and the hermeticism of the newcomer, gradually emerge, I am not sure, as I already said, whether memories with unfulfilled desires, or rather traumas with insurmountable experiences, especially when Toník begins to add alcohol to his coffee, and another and another little more and what has already happened in the person happens in the mind.
"That they left you there for so long in that library?" "Why do you ask such nonsense? You've had a lot of carnage here, now you're going to frame me." It is as if the mind was tied with harnesses and padlocks but progressively the return to the site loosens the representations and the hesitant Janova voluntarily or involuntarily recovers a reality that he believed buried, since his love affair with comrade Marta who flatters Stalin and is filled with serials. Until the peaceful afternoons with Lenka who confesses that her favorite apple is the Reneta that gives the film its title. Jan left the place and they seem not to forgive him with his absurd questions about his role before. He cannot tell them or does not dare, that he has only returned to spend a single night and contrast everything. But in his reminiscences there is a movement in which he suddenly sees a pavilion or what he imagines to be an asylum and Lenka in the corridor. The final scene is painful but true, does the Lenka who remembered and who has aged like him, and has become a religious Mother, remember him? When he catches her in the parking lot, she doesn't even recognize him. It's a shame I brought him the Reneta apples that he likes.
Po putyovke Lenina (1958)
stark communism
Ironic that that regime that fiercely opposed English and American imperialism is the one that exercises - in a certain way - Soviet imperialism on Asian peoples and cultures - in this case Turkestan - whose religion and cultural patterns distanced them socially (from which some years after these events it would be called USSR) even more than the gap that already existed geographically; When Lenin ventured to found the University in Tashkent, and sent the innocent professor Stepan Ivanovich Matusovsky to that remote land that in theory belonged to the State of the Bolsheviks, the very astute man - appealing to the patriots of culture - knew perfectly well that he was sending to a literal suicide to his delegation because the film dates back to 1919 and the conflict in that reactionary area to the Russian empire began in 1916. First of all, as we see in the feature film, they were attacked from the train by the Basmachí of Fergana, from Matusovsky almost died in the fray if it weren't for the soldier Gafur who was wounded by a gunshot in his maneuver to protect the professor; Later, in situ, that is, in Tashkent, the Muslim community of the most extreme strain mocked his "Bolshevik university" and then, without much grace, violently attacked Lenin's emissaries and anyone who aspired to register for study; They were especially ruthless towards women, like the beautiful Saodat Tashmatova. Lenin did not get "hungry steppes" wrong but he should have added steppes reluctant to change. Saodat first had to overcome religious stolidity and then masculine stolidity; Later, once enrolled and taking classes, she defended herself as best she could against the teachers' bullying until she managed to support herself. Later we will learn about Lenin's ruthless meanness, ordering that the rector Matusovsky be fired because his daughter was in Paris and that was considered treason against communism. The end, when Gafur and Saodad get married, the evil Kory wanted to kill him as a wedding ruler for all the advances of socialism promoted to the detriment of Islam and the privileges of his caste, but the young Hamid whom he sent to kill him refused - dead of fear - to murder anyone and that cost him his life. The old man then sent another henchman, Nadyr Khan, but instead of killing Gafur, he buried the dagger in his wife Saodad.
Erti tsis kvesh (1961)
Sentimental women in free falling
It is a real shame that these three vignettes have not been restored, where the woman's possible love affair leads to a fateful love destiny for each one, first with the haughty but beautiful Countess Maia who, stubborn about her ancestry, believed she was sentimentally dissuading Bondo while he diligently addresses to the sea; But it is there in the sea, where he will end up first presenting his ring and other jewelry as an offering. The night shots in the store with her beautiful face barely illuminated are of a delicate and sublime care at the same time; while the second story, that of the mysteriously beautiful Nana, played by the beautiful Kira Andronikashvili, wife of the writer Pilniak, has the musical backdrop of the chorus of Shostakovich's 7th Leningrad Symphony, and in this plot, the man who Not appropriate is Levani, more concerned with spending time on the roof admiring the city and enjoying the pigeons than with courting or fully responding to the questions on the subject of falling in love. Until Levani goes to war, supposedly to become a hero. The dive shots on the ceiling between the boy Zuriko and Nana are fantastic. THE curious fact comes from, once again, the actress Andronikashvili dying very young, in fact less than a year before the publication of this work by Ghoghoberidze. THE third and last story, which jumps 20 years, from 40 to 60, is the one that proposes the least in terms of avant-garde but the most emotional in my opinion. Zaza's wasted talent finds a counterweight in the attraction that Rusudani feels for him and secondarily for his work. Once again the play of contrasts and the framing of Zaza's paintings with the woman's constrained face is the best.
Serenada (1970)
Beautiful
Jocular and sweet metaphor of the challenge to the invincible enemy; Like David without hope against Goliath, Kusha is the skinny guy in love with the beautiful co-worker whose pride serves as a shield to persist for the umpteenth time against the filth in a jacket and tie who has already shown his predilection for the same pretty girl from the rubble, gravel and material company such as W. C. toilets where they work. Neither slaps, nor trying to knock him out like a boxer or dropping heavy objects from a second floor or level could bring down the fat foreman or owner of the place with whom he competed for his girl, since he almost broke his hand in a false shake to meet him. . The boy's obese opponent almost suffers a heart attack from fear when he finally sees Kusha threatening him from the top of a moving train car and shouts at the boy "be careful, a bridge is coming, a bridge...". The shock of almost losing his intimate enemy was the last thing that should have happened for them to hug each other and leave behind - at least for the moment - the taste or competition for the pretty girl with pretty eyes.