Matty

The Newburgh Sting provide a knowledgeable look into the case of four Muslims who were allegedly involved in the shooting down of two military aircraft and the bombing of synagogues in the Bronx in 2009. The documentary presents evidence indicating that the FBI had a hand in the event, targeting poor members of the Muslim community, whom they subsequently attempted to draw into a previously prepared plan for a terrorist attack. The capture of these artificial suspects then serves as justification for tightened security measures. The documentary filmmakers raise doubts about the published findings of the investigation and offer their own version of what really happened in Brooklyn in May 2009 and why it happened. The basis of the investigative documentary comprises footage from television news, secret FBI records and covertly taken photographs. The connective tissue that binds the wealth of material together is made up of talking heads including lawyers, relatives and acquaintances, as well as members of the Muslim community. The high informational value of the film makes up for its low aesthetic qualities – the film does not in any way excel formalistically. It’s a shame how one-sidedly this gripping subject is dealt with. Perhaps with the exception of one FBI employee, all of the speakers are convinced that the case involved a miscarriage of justice. The other side is not given enough space and, mainly, their views are not presented with the same emotional urgency. The obvious aim of the film is thus to convince the public that 25-year prison sentences were handed down to innocent men who could not have committed the crime. Despite that, however, it is a remarkable illustration of the lengths to which artificially created and exploited fear of terror can be taken. Among other things, the film exposes some of the “branding” tactics of American security forces and uses a specific case to illustrate a favourite strategy of many world governments – if there is no enemy, it is necessary to invent one.

In the tradition of the subdued Latin American narrative, this hypnotically slow documentary is based on sharp visual contrasts between evocative shots of a quiet landscape on the one hand and noisy mining and loud protests against it on the other hand. The perspective of the indigenous women is gradually supplemented with the view of a Dutch jeweller and the Bolivians who face the same fate as Nelida. The filmmaker does not try to make the stories of the social actors artificially more moving than they actually are. He uses the contrasting sounds of nature and machines in the soundtrack more often than music. Archival footage of violently suppressed demonstrations complements the present-day events, thus showing that the case has been dragging on for several years. The film also culminates in another clash with the police, when the two basic principles of the narrative (violence vs. non-violence, nature vs. civilisation, living in harmony with nature vs. exploiting it) collide. The documentary attempts to look into the conflict between long-term individual and short-term corporate interests not only from a personal perspective, but also from the broader perspective of industry, trade, ecology and ethics. Despite the appearance of objectivity, the people of the affected communities are given priority and unambiguously portrayed as victims.

This standard documentary portrait offers a chronological cross-section of RWF’s life. The words are mostly those of Fassbinder himself and, to a lesser extent, his two friends/colleagues, Irm Hermann and Harry Baer, who often talk more about themselves than about Fassbinder, and the maker of the documentary, who puts the facts into context with a brief commentary. Though Thomsen knew Fassbinder personally, the documentary maintains a rare matter-of-fact tone and does not even make an attempt at polemics (the film begins with the most explicit expression of opposition to Fassbinder’s work). Due to the uninventive alternation of talking heads and film clips, the documentary comes across as somewhat stiff and monotonous. It is not helped by its division into seven rather vaguely defined chapters. The most beneficial parts of the film are those in which Fassbinder talks about his childhood, which obviously had a great influence on the key themes of his work. The openness of his confessions may be particularly beneficial for those who want to view Fassbinder’s work from an auteur-psychoanalytical perspective. Overall, however, the film contains little information that wasn’t provided many years earlier in, for example, the documentary I Don’t Just Want You to Love Me, which better strikes a better balance between revealing Fassbinder’s personal life and the characteristic elements of his films. Experts in Fassbinder will not learn much that is new; for newcomers, on the other hand, the documentary fails to convey what makes the films of this cynical and, in most shots, apparently ill-tempered man special.

Monsterman is a fannish music documentary built on the contrast between Lordi’s monstrous appearance and public performances and his relatively normal family background. For example, photographs and drawings from his childhood add colour to the image of the wild metal musician. Together with the testimonies of Lordi’s parents, pictures from the family album form a historical narrative line, which recounts the course of Eurovision. We thus see footage of concerts and pre-show preparations, as well as interviews with loved ones. Paradoxically, the only important person who never appears on camera in all his glory is Lordi himself. Therefore, even in a documentary focused on him, the musician maintains his mystery and the legend lives on. The not very well rhythmised alternation of talking heads, veristic shots and concert footage makes the film subjectively rather long. In terms of content, the documentary is revealing, especially by showing that monsters are also only human. It would be interesting to see how such a humanising portrait of a man who performs as an inhuman being would be received by Lordi’s fans. The film is also a remarkable illustration of the infantilisation of society, or rather of the male part of the population, which is living longer and longer with their parents and escaping from reality into imaginary worlds. 55%

A Brony Tale is an unexpectedly perceptive, non-exploitative look into the inner workings of a subculture that would be very easy to laugh at. The film is surprising simply due to its subject matter (at least for those who were previously unaware of the existence of “bronies” before). In addition to basic information about one of today’s less common pop-culture phenomena, the film offers enough of a positive mood for a full-grown horse, which makes it different from a number of serious documentaries about the problems of today’s world (the subculture itself, with its ideological foundations, can be seen as a counter-reaction to the cynicism and irony of contemporary society). The effort to combine intimate portraits of “bronies” with an analytically unbiased documentary about them, however, causes a certain schizophrenia in the resulting account, which on the one hand avoids uncritical adoration, but on the other hand lacks greater distance from its subject. In any case, the film is a valuable contribution to the discussion on the crisis of masculinity, gender stereotypes and sexuality. 55%

The 2017 Academy Awards started out well enough with Timberlake, but wound up being a rather weaker edition of the annual ceremony. There were no major surprises (except for the final faux pas), memorable thank-you speeches or jokes that truly cut to the quick. Kimmel was able to respond swiftly to the ongoing events ("Fake tans we love, but fake news..." after the bronze Alicia Vikander exited the stage; “Linus, we're so sorry about what happened in Sweden last week” after thanking the Swedish cameraman), but he should have saved the obligatory trolling of Matt Damon for his talk show. Conversely, he could have done more to skewer Trump, against whom few of the award winners failed to define themselves. Since the leitmotif of the evening was anti-Trump-inspired breaking down of walls and uniting people of different races, genders and classes, that was also present in the thank-you speeches of the so-called social justice warriors, who wanted to show that they were on the right side. Most of the jokes were more or less successful variations on moments from previous editions (the food served to the attendees, interactions with seated celebrities), and the “unexpected” tourist excursion was nice, but it could have been shorter. As could the whole ceremony.

“They're here.” Poltergeist is a strangely disjointed horror movie that initially ridicules a model 1980s yuppie family and their lifestyle (rationality, pragmatism, disconnection from nature, which then strikes back in the form of intrusive mosquitoes and man-eating trees), but then, through that same family’s misfortune, defends the values on which Reagan’s America stood (the use of paranormal phenomena as the impetus to return the characters to a time when they still “believed in miracles”, as Diane says, is ambiguous). Similarly, the film is unclear as to whether viewers should fear or sympathise with the ghosts, because they are – according to the clairvoyant – so alone. Perhaps both, except that the transitions from family-friendly entertainment, keeping us under the illusion that nothing is really happening, to brutal horror, with characters peeling the skin off their faces (resembling a cut of meat that they were getting ready to consume, which I’m not sure was meant to be some sort of sophisticated critique of consumerism), manifested also in the changing style (urgent details vs. units with multiple plans of action), are not very subtle. The film is not balanced either rhythmically (its pace is slowed by long explanatory passages, the narrative continues in a “set time” after everything essential has been said) or in terms of tricks (some are still impressive, while others, like the digital tornado, are laughable). Though Poltergeist contains the best of both Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper’s work, it fails to combine the two approaches in a way that doesn’t seem irritating. 70%

“Where is the love?” Scenes from relationship life for the 21st century. Nichols does not in any way try to disguise the film’s theatrical origins; on the contrary, the chosen structure (several long conversational segments), perfectly timed dialogue and classical music accentuate them. It is only after the encounter at the exhibition that he begins to cut between the individual couples’ dialogue scenes, thus giving the impression that their stories are more closely intertwined and influence each other to the point that they cannot be together because of the others (the flashback to the signing of divorce papers, which is interspersed with Dan and Anna’s conversation in the theatre, serves the same purpose). I consider the big jumps in time, which we are usually informed about ex post and as if in passing through dialogue (we’ve been dating for four months, we got together a year ago, he left me three months ago...) to be a courageous decision, as they bring the film closer to a time-lapse documentary that captures only the turning points of relationships. Unlike Bergman, however, Closer is not a carefully nuanced psychological drama, but a contrived melodrama full of walking (arche)types, “chance” encounters and bookish-sounding lines, and throughout its runtime, I wasn't sure to what extent it was aware of its own exaggeration and unnaturalness or the extent to which it was convinced that it was revealing the unvarnished truth about love and relationships, or something along those lines. Many scenes, such as the bitter conclusion, graphically illustrating the fact that we often truly get to know even the most beloved person after they have left us (i.e. when it is too late), suggest that the simplistic characterisation of the characters was a way to convey a universal, almost allegorical story in which everyone who has ever experienced the ambivalent feeling of not knowing whether to kill or fuck the one you love (as in the last dialogue scene of Dan and Larry) can see themselves. So, there is some sort of life lesson to be learned from that. Personally, however, I prefer films that don’t pretend to have depth where there is none. 70%

Following A War, this is another Danish drama about conflict continuing off the battlefield. However, don’t expect Land of Mine to have the same ability to examine a complex situation from multiple perspectives and the disturbing moral ambivalence as found in Lindholm’s film. The Germans’ point of view is given priority. From the start, we get to know the young German soldiers as anxious boys who want to survive and return home to their mothers. The film portrays them as innocent victims who must face the brutality of Allied officers, at least one of whom manages – for the sake of balancing forces – to find some humanity despite being characterised as (initially) hating Germans (though he loves his dog). No conflict between the film’s sub-worlds and micro-worlds (Germans against the sergeant, Germans among each other, the sergeant against his superiors) is omitted, and most of the motifs that you would expect after being briefly familiarised with the subject matter (inhumane treatment, the bond of brotherhood, the father figure, a child in peril) are present. What’s worse is their interconnectedness. The narrative piles up emotionally powerful moments that do not allow us to get to know the characters “at ease”, outside of extreme situations in which either life or nerves are at stake. The element of surprise in an otherwise predictable film is provided by the fact that a deadly explosion is a matter of a single wrong move, which Zandvliet puts to good use, though even that becomes somewhat predictable by the end of the film. Even without excessive sentimentality and exaggeration, Land of Mine tries too hard to be a moving humanistic drama that will appeal to an international audience and reinforce the belief that war is evil and should be banned in all cases. Unlike A War, this film does not ask the very difficult questions for which there are no clear answers. 70%

Though Farhadi manages to avoid theatricality through most of The Salesman without needlessly emphasising the parallels with Miller's Death of a Salesman, the wheels come off in the final act and the film descends into a tired domestic drama dragged down by literalness, stagnation, the effort to exhaustively say everything and the snippy behaviour of the previously level-headed characters. With the exception of the mishandled ending, A Salesman is a powerful, (almost horrifically) tense and multi-layered portrait of a restrictive society in which tradition clashes with modernity, everyone feels vulnerable and guilty (either for what they have done or for what they have not had the courage to do), and they wear masks at all times, not just on stage. Though the film bears some of the hallmarks of a thriller and unfolds in the manner of a detective movie, the revelation of the man’s identity is not the goal of the narrative and as such does not provide any catharsis. For Farhadi, the essential thing is how the individual actors change after the loss of the certainties that they had previously had. As in his previous films, he leaves it up to the viewer to pass judgement. He doesn’t make the situation any easier with new revelations, which generally lead us to sympathise with a different character. He cleverly uses the setting, on which we depend but cannot trust, as a metaphor for the human mind. Especially when judging others, we like to remain loyal to our own ideas of what is right and appropriate, and we are unable to see the given situation through the eyes of others. 70%