Reviews

This is a remarkable file in many respect. Most importantly perhaps, it is the first major motion picture (TMK) which captures realistically and artfully the atmosphere of the child-sex abuse hysteria that gripped the Western world in the last twenty years of the 20th century. Perhaps all English-speaking countries had some harrowing example of this cultural phenom, with the McMartin preschool and the Bronx 5 cases in the U.S., Martensville in Canada, ChristChurch Civic Creche in New Zealand and the Cleveland child abuse sandal in England being the best known exemplars. "Presumé coupable" (Guilty) offers a rare insight into the sorry spectacle of a justice system being uprooted by popular, media-orchestrated, amplified hysterias and unscrupulous operators posing as defenders of public virtue. The francophone setting of this familiar drama, based on an actual, well known judicial fiasco in Nothern France - Belgium at the break of the millennium, makes it all the more fascinating.

The acting is superb. Phillipe Torreton as the falsely accused Alain Marécaux struggling to get a grip on a world gone mad, delivers a stunning performance, which I simply cannot believe was not acknowledged by the Academy in the US. This is a classic of gut-wrenching drama delivered by a true virtuoso. Wladimir Yordanoff as the defence counsel has also delivered a masterful performance of a converted "believer" in Alain's innocence. Finally, Raphael Ferret's insight into a fanatic posing as a professionally detached examining judge helps to create an absolutely convincing air of authenticity for the drama.

Last but not the least, the directing of Vincent Garenq matches the talent of his actors. The direction has a single point of focus- Marécaux - which might have easily been a recipe for boring, overdrawn melodrama. With Torreton, though, it works to perfection. I warmly recommend this film as a real artistic feat and a much needed social commentary.

I have sympathy for the view that this dark, dark comedy from Balabanov is much too culturally pointed to impress a westerner beyond the more obvious clues and intents of the writer and director. Balabanov's movie articulates the classically Russian 'tragic view of life' (articulated by Antonina: 'the sooner we die, the better for us') and it is through this prism that it views the moral and material decay of the Soviet system. Captain Zhurov's depravity and necrophilia is not psychological. The filmmaker does not even pretend to study Zhurov's motives: it is the bare fact that the police chief has authority and uses it to his own sociopath's ends that matters (Balabanov cleverly keeps the audience from discovering Zhurov's professional identity until after he is outed as an insane murderer).

What makes 'Gruz 200' Balabanov's best film and a true classic is the sort-of passerby attitude of the narration, and his insistence that he is not as serious as he appears to be. He delivers the most shocking and revolting scene with a healthy dose of the absurd kind of humour(says insane mama to the visiting lady with a shotgun in her suitcase: 'too many flies this summer'), and in this he resembles Tarantino's killing-is-comedy trademark. But the Russian director actually is committed to a point of view, and acknowledgement that humans have soul, something that would fall beyond Tarantino's understanding, or at any rate, his artistic grasp.

'Sunka', the Vietnamese migrant worker is the torch of humanity in the movie. Balabanov, here and elsewhere, pokes into the renowned Russian chauvinism and racism, in choosing for his saintly innocent an Asiatic who speaks broken Russian. (Dersu Uzala, anyone ?) It appears that the 'conversion' of the atheist professor Gromov, is linked to the death of Sunka, and to his boss Aleksey's convincing argument against atheism - i.e. his refusal to believe that human 'conscience' is a material effect of Darwinian evolution. Balabanov cleverly underplays Gromov's visit to the church by making the priest absent. (This saves the movie from turning preachy). The director also makes excellent use of the industrial wasteland (so much reminiscent of Tarkovsky's "Zone" in the "Stalker") and the dilapidating housing standards in the late Soviet era, as the background for his farce.

Like all great works of art, Takva is a simple story: a man corrupted in an incorruptible world of a religious order of Sufi ecstatics. And like all great works of art, the story is at once utterly banal and profound beyond measure. A humble, self-effacing Muharrem, a devoted member of an Istanbul dargah is brought into a seemingly irresolvable inner conflict by the humility of his spiritual leader Cemal who acts on a dream that came to him from God, and appoints Muharrem the order's property administrator. The man's simple world and relationship with God is destroyed by an incomprehensible chasm that develops between his understanding of his faith and the leaders' whom he deeply respects and depends on. The story told by lesser masters than Cakar and Kiziltan, would probably end up a silly remake of a Forty-year old Virgin in Istanbul. But in their hands, Takva, God's omnipresence in the lives of the protagonists, is not just a believable story, but a masterful narration of a self-assured purpose, told at once with a great deal of human care for, and at the same time with a stoic detachment from, the predicament of a simple man's soul. The end effect is a brilliantly balanced irony. On the level of the plot – there is the unconditional respect for God's will in the two order's leaders which forces them to appoint and keep Muharrem against their better judgment observing his fear of God is that of an eunuch, and there is the unconditional respect for God's will by Muharrem based on his straightforward demand for purity and compassion. On the micro level, the writing has dashes of clever insight into human interiors: a sigh from master Ali, Muharrem's employer: "now I am the idiot's secretary" , and the order's counsel Rauf's revelation in "take this watch, brother; it keeps time precisely; it is made by the heathen". The ecstatic chants and movements of the dervishes' dhikr as a background make the movie an extraordinary experience.

This is an exhilarating comedy about getting old and wanting to relive a great romance. The setting is simple, and a lot of the prancing and romancing comes tongue in cheek in the fine tradition of Czech bitter-sweet, self-deprecating humour. In this, Zdenek Sverak is the great master, he is the perfect fit to render the cynically aloof, yet secretly wistful, character of the Empties. Of course, since he wrote the screen play he shows he knows himself well and is quite comfortable with what he knows. So, it's a feel-good movie and well worth seeing for everyone.

Naturally, there are scenes and comments in the movie which may escape viewers who rely on subtitles. I see for example on the DVD blurb that Tkaloun (Sverak's character) refuses to accept that old age is empty...among other things... of 'value to society'. But the plot of the movie says exactly the opposite. Tkaloun does not not give a rat's ass about what he does for a living or (poetically), where he goes. He wants "little love", and for that he would go "to the ends of the world, head uncovered and feet bare, in the dead of winter". The movie opens with Tkaloun reading these verses of Vrchlicky, a great Czech poet of 19th century, to a class of kids who don't care. Tkaloun then quits teaching, after being scolded by the school-mistress for assaulting the head honcho of his eight-graders who insulted his beloved poet. He gets a job as a bicycle courier - fantasizing about getting into shape. When he breaks his leg, he finds another job, handling the returns of empty bottles in a super-market. His wife - also a teacher, scoffs at such an undignified job for an educated man, and forswears she'd never set foot in the place where he works to see him humiliated. But, Tkaloun plugs in the place and likes his newly found freedom doing silly chores because he can fantasize about having sex with younger women during working hours. That's 'the value to society' that Zdenek Sverak has in mind for Tkaloun.

Great. Hilarious. Kind of saccharine ending but I take it.

Violette Noziere will probably never receive the critical acclaim it deserves as it is just too subtle. As a psychological drama, the movie is simply without peer. It is based on a true-crime shocker of an eighteen-year old in 1930's who poisoned her parents evidently to get her hands on their money and then claimed her father (who dies in her attack) raped her. Condemned to die, she was subsequently pardoned and the verdict against her was eventually annulled. In the hands of a lesser artist than Chabrol, a script for Violette Noziere film would be almost guaranteed to end up as a banal thesis of one sort or another, either condemning or exculpating the heroine.

But Chabrol found two brilliant interpreters of the "cold woman syndrome" in Stephane Audran and the débutante Isabelle Huppert. With a masterful hand he drafts a black comedy of their mother-daughter rivalry in a bizarre, oppressively minuscule apartment, ending up in the death of the gentle, submissive, innocent "dad" (Jean Carmet). Isabelle's grasp of Violette's teenage psychosis leading up to the killing and after, is an acting masterpiece rarely seen. Best Chabrol ever, in my book !

**** may contain spoilers ******

I am not surprised nor offended that some reviewers find the Ninth Day a Catholic propaganda and Ullrich Matthes' silences a witness to his lack of Thespian credentials. Quite the contrary, such comments confirm that the movie, and the basis of morality which it examines, is not intellectually available or esthetically pleasing to simple-minded people. That in itself marks its quality.

There are some absolutely gripping moments in the Schloendorff's masterpiece: the mocking of the Polish priest before he is hoisted on the cross (he was not "crucified" - that just would not capture the horrific sadism in the act - the movie makes a point in altering the method of using the cross by a Dachau commandant), the reading by Gebhardt of Kremer's human weakness and sense of inferiority (the offering of the chocolates after Kremer contemptuously refuses a cigarette was a devilish coup - Kremer tries to justify his defeat by offering the sweet to an unknown little girl), Gebhardt's theory of "Judas" as the most pious Christian, his cool reception of Kremer's volcanic "noli venire inter Domine et me", Gebhardt's contempt for the cowardice of Kremer's brother ("you were right, the eggs are excellent")...no, this is no Catholic propaganda, on the contrary, the body of Christ failed Kremer by signing the Concordat with the Antichrist, in his search for the vindication of his faith he is alone, ...this has all the markings of a great classic: ingenious, complex, haunting, obsessional, true.