Dionysos

Rohmer embarked on the revival of the medieval book with everything it encompasses - besides the text, he also reincarnated to a large extent everything else that belongs to the medieval codex, namely illuminations. This is truly one of the most faithful film adaptations of literary source material...(to which is added typical period storytelling, as was prevalent during the banquets of that time, where these stories were reproduced.) The immense merit of this film lies in its faithfulness to the source material; however, perhaps paradoxically, my main criticism of the film also emerges therefrom: the intellectual depth of the plot is simply at the level of 12th-century epics, and it is simply a "just" a story about a knight, at times as flat as pre-Renaissance paintings without perspective. In this, the film differs from another film based on the motifs of Chrétien de Troyes, which was made just four years earlier and directed by another French giant, namely Bresson's Lancelot of the Lake (1974).

A film about the decline of chivalry, symbolized by the downfall of some of its greatest legends: Arthur, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. In the opening passage, the true nature of the heroic deeds of these medieval heroes is revealed to us without hesitation – their battles are only futile bloodshed, and their noble goals (the Holy Grail) are merely false (because they do not exist) alibis for these atrocities. The film is about the demise of the chivalrous sense of nobility and duty, as the life of a true knight should be a generous service to his lord and duties. Lancelot fulfills his duty towards his lord at every moment, but the problem lies in the fact that he has multiple lords – his king, his virtuous lady, and his god. Lancelot, as a true knight, tries to fulfill his duty towards his lord at every moment, but he leaves it up to his decision, that is, his feelings, to determine which lord it will actually be. Instead of noble service to duty, there arises a tragic inner conflict between his passions and the sense of honor and commitment. Everything leads to the self-destruction of the knightly order, as best demonstrated by the death of Lancelot's best friend, Gawain. Symbolically, the final battle scene is a place of triumph for the infantry and archers...

In many ways, the "backward" country with its traditional mode of existence - the self-propelled absurdity - refers not only to itself but to the entire "modern" situation. This is not just a film about the USSR/Russia, but ultimately about the USSR/Russia in every other country today. In Russia, only at the turn of the 80s and 90s did the aforementioned historical principle reach one of its world-historical culminating moments. The film exudes the classic artistic motif of pessimism from modern times, and the film form ironically solidifies this painful motif: the first part, the fictional story, despite its gloominess, offers both an explanation for the all-encompassing absurdity (the protagonist's suffering over the loss of her husband leads to her rejection of false social games) and a sort of resolution or hope in the fact that, like the widowed protagonist, we too will see the meaninglessness of the established way of life. This is followed by a brilliant transition from fiction to "reality" (which is only a different plane of fiction), in which there is no longer room for either explanation or hope, only for the desperate and futile attempts of the teacher Nikolai to escape through a fake death (a hard sleep). Black-and-white fiction with hope against color reality without resolution.

A cult perestroika film uniquely combining a testimony of its time period with underground music, a love story with crime, all intertwined with a multitude of postmodern games not only in film form (the intertitles explaining slang expressions, the psychedelic experimental dream sequences of the main character, the contrast between the main storyline and the story of the murdered Tsar Paul I taken from a real book by N. Ejdelman, being read by one of the characters). A true monument of its time, not only because its plot takes place in 1980 and particularly captures the paradoxical era, but in addition to Brezhnevism, it also bears witness to the era of Gorbachev – we must realize that it was written in 1987 and the most positive character is a good-for-nothing musician of an underground band. The ending belongs to the song "Перемен!" (We are waiting for changes). Assa is also a true memento of a destroyed world - perhaps only in the former so-called Eastern bloc there was a belief that the only thing standing in the way of true life, art, etc. is the evil repressive state, and that once we get rid of it, we will be able to live a sweet unrestricted life like in the West, finally devoting ourselves freely to our creativity and through it surely improving the world. The totalitarian state was washed away by a flood, but that free world of creative self-expression in a dehumanizing impersonal world somehow did not materialize.

Another film from the collection of unjustly forgotten, but otherwise excellent artistic achievements. Doctor Carlo arrives with his young and beautiful new wife Carla at a hotel to spend their honeymoon. Instead of enjoying the most beautiful moments of their marriage, the couple's mutual strangeness becomes evident at first sight, and Carla becomes increasingly repulsive to Carlo. Why is that? The film answers that question in such a way that it earned censorship interventions from the Catholic Church (which is why the film is also so short) - it is not about the specific problem of one marriage, but about a much broader issue, encompassing the position of women and the bond between a man and a woman in European (Christian) culture as a whole. A woman, according to the Bible, is the object created from man, for man and for his pleasure, while also being a necessary partner for the pleasure of both body and spirit, the opposite in a necessary union. The source of frustration for the protagonist is the fact that man created woman in order to take her away again, to prohibit her as an object of (physical) pleasure, and to keep her only as an object of a necessary family bond (in which mainly spiritual values should be cultivated and physical contact should only happen when it is necessary, for the purpose of procreation). The instrument and ideological originator of this violation of human nature is of course, as so many times before, the church, which has accompanied Carla since childhood (like all Italians ...). It is a classic "art" affair in which the best aspect is the attention-forcing deliberately surprising and "illogical" sequencing of shots (the alternating main storyline, the flashbacks, and the imaginations). Each cut is thus a surprise.

The film had its premiere during perestroika, but it was actually shot at the end of the 70s as Sokurov's final thesis at the Moscow VGIK. Therefore, it is his first feature film. The liberating simplicity of the story about the birth and suffering of young love between war veteran Nikita and young student Ljuba, who try to start a life together after the civil war, is set in a country that has experienced so much and whose suffering is carried by all those who survived into their future lives. The hard-to-describe melancholic and depressive film images evoked by long-forgotten photographs from a time before the war or faded postcards from the belle époque make this film an unforgettable experience. The contemplation of the Russian soul in its crystalline form - and it's no wonder, as the film is dedicated to A. Tarkovsky. Happiness and love can only overcome obstacles in a country where people, like in an eternal cycle of history, are forced to work hard and suffer for their own bare lives.

This is mainly a self-ironic mosaic capturing the state of the Italian far left after the death of its longtime leader Palmiro Togliatti, composed of fragments of four more or less separate storylines, with no connection between them, but each individually related to the funeral of the deserving party leader. As with most films with such a structure, some are more closely related to the theme, and some less so... Watching a short excerpt from the lives of the characters, each of whom can proudly say to the other, "I am a communist, more of a communist than you!", shows that the title of the film is indeed sarcastic. These "subversives" no longer subvert the order even with words because they simply don't have time - each of them is engulfed in their own problems and personal uncertainties, so where can they find the time to think about the revolutionary future when they can't even organize their own future? However, with great difficulty, they may still find time for the funeral. Not surprisingly, it is the true, final tribute to the Italian leader, a "ciao" from the Venezuelan communist... In terms of content, the film will be appreciated more by viewers who are familiar with the period atmosphere, even though the story is completely fictional. However, surely everyone will appreciate its often very imaginative and fresh form.

Who else is better suited to capture the minutiae of American middle-class life than an American director who impressively utilizes zoom and details? It is only through the camera that we can see up close that the faces of the protagonists are just character masks, from which despair, futility, and bitterness shine through in sneaky glimpses. Laughter, which is just a sneer, is only a means to convince others and, above all, ourselves of something. Similarly, searching for salvation and forgetfulness in entertainment is futile for people who no longer know how to have fun, and therefore their parties end in the hangover of falsity. In that moment of realization that we ourselves did not believe in our own pose, that everything is really screwed up, that instead of being in a luxuriously equipped row house, I find myself at rock bottom, that moment when the non-diegetic music stops (and Cassavetes can do without it just fine), Cassavetes knows how to direct it like no one else.

Many things could be written given the authors' excellent work with one feast and a few flashbacks: about the paradox that allowed the first socialist country (the most progressive of the era) to revive ancient Byzantine patrimonial practices in only 20 years of existence, practices in which the ruler is the sun – illuminating all with their greatness and to whom all the nation's views and hopes return. Or about how a Georgian terrorist became the ruler of Russia, etc… As a filmmaker and artistic paradox (but let’s be thankful for it), it personally seems to me that, given the mastery of the film's authors and the book source material, the character of Stalin transcends a simple Manichean division of absolute good and evil, day and night. The cruelty remains, but the ambiguity of his gestures, as well as the almost moving (fictionalized, of course) confession and testimony of Stalin's power, make this cruelty believable because it is human. That is because a human is always more of an enigma than an embodiment of a principle (be it evil or something else). The authors managed to create a very grateful paradox for the audience – they faithfully showed Stalin's worst sides but made him into a human being. The exact opposite is achieved in movies like The Fall of Berlin, and so on.

Another film proving that stereotypes can be completely ridiculous. We get to see: Italy, the 70s, and a comedy. And subconsciously, we expect Villaggio, Sordi, or Spencer/Hill. Furthermore, we get to read in advance that the film is "erotic," and immediately remember that in Italy, soft-porn films gained popularity in the 70s and 80s, capitalizing on the loosening of morals after the sexual revolution, fueling low instincts and audience expectations, thereby hiding their own lack of substance. Then we watch Malicious and we do get a clever and, in some places, disturbing film, still a comedy, but completely different from what the stereotypes might suggest. The story of a chambermaid is also the story of a woman (as a gender), who is exploited by her bourgeois masters in two ways. As a sexual object, she serves the pubescent son to establish his "adult" control over the female body and will. As an attractive, submissive, and clean servant, she is suitable for the down-to-earth comfortable and lustful father. The double affirmation of a woman as an object of male desire and power. But even the chambermaid is not without guilt - when she acts freely in the film (after all, she can quit, start screaming, etc.), it is revealed that she is heading towards her own fate (marrying an old man for money and status?). The camera work by V. Storaro is also exceptional for an "Italian comedy from the 70s."