Paris, Texas (1984)

(film 147 minutes)

Directed by: Wim Wenders
Language: English

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
August 14, 2022

Travis has renounced the world and knows nothing but walking day and night in deserts. This is the verdict he has pronounced for himself after leaving his wife and child some 4 years ago. Accidentally his younger brother, Walt, who has now adopted Travis’s child, Hunter, finds him. This encounter reminds Travis gradually of his past. Walt explains that Jane, Travis’s wife, could no longer care for Hunter and that is why he was left to Walt and his wife. They start traveling back to Los Angeles where Walt leaves with his wife and Hunter. On the way Travis starts speaking with the first word being Paris, a place in Texas where he has bought a land. Their mother was from there and their father wanted to believe she was actually from Paris, France, the fantasy that has become true by Walt whose wife is from Paris with strong French accent although he is not remembering all these about their parents. 

But why Travis has left - or better say has lost - his wife and his boy and wandered for years. This is not answered before Travis wins Hunter’s trust and they embark in a trip to find Jane and where Travis and Jane explain themselves to one another. Put it simply Travis was jealous and in distress seeing his joyous marriage was destroyed by Jane’s change in behaviour after having child. But now he has a more important plan. Making sure Jane’s work is safe for Hunter he tells Jane that Hunter needs her and that he is now waiting to see her. He reunite them and himself leaves and loses them again. 

Paris, Texas is the story of Travis who cannot live in a world full of desire for buying/faking nobility and excessively more ambitions and therefore losses and limitations, where placards, accents, places and names are more important than being plain and enjoying the plain life. But despite these, he has once loved Jane and they have a child together who needs more than anything else his mother. So Travis who has once caused the separation of child and mother decides to reunite them, hoping that this will make Jane happy again and will make Hunter grow by his own biological mother. Although we cannot easily answer why Travis thinks this is a better decision for Hunter as he seemed happy with Walt and his wife we can contemplate; maybe Walt reminds Travis of their father and his fake advertisements about origins of their mother (at some point we can see Walt is pasting a large advertisement of some French product) and instead he prefers Jane who is although poor but pure (she does not go home with her customers for money.)

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 Take Care (1991)

(film 93 minutes)

Directed by: Yorgos Tsemberopoulos
Language: Greek

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
April 09, 2022

Marina is a mother in her early 40’s. She is married to a butcher who is trying to expand his business and bring in the younger boy of the family. But the boy does not like this plan and wants to go his own way. The older boy is living overseas and is expected to visit the family soon. The only daughter is a swimmer and is getting ready for a competition though her records does not seem promising. 

Marina is trying to convince her husband not to expand but he is convinced this is their future and most be done. Not having his sons beside, he needs an apprentice with some previous skills if not a partner to share the business with. Christos is a good looking and charming islander who have just finished his military service in the kitchen of the brigade. He briefly started a not-very-promising attempt to become a singer that coincided with break-up with his girlfriend Roula. She is working in a beauty salon and Christos thinks her plans for the future are not as great as his. Christos leaves the idea of becoming a singer and wants to engage in a new business. He happens to know the butcher’s search for a business partner and starts working as an apprentice there.

Starting his job in the butchery, both Marina and her daughter find him charming and soon the daughter starts dating him although not yet publicly. Happy about the business expansion and his new apprentice but worried about his younger son, father reads in the morning news that his son is arrested for drug trafficking. Disappointed by this news he carries a heavy piece of meat to the fridge and collapses. He dies shortly after.

Marina decides to continue the business and that means working with Christos. Getting ready for the opening of the magazine’s second shop in front of the older one, she invites Christos out. The same evening Alexis, the older son, arrives. Marina picks him up and then joins Christos for their big night. Later that night they kiss. Next morning Christos refuses her love and gives back the cross with letter M engraved on it that Marina gave him last evening. She previously found this cross in the stuff of his late husband. Christos is again not sure about the girl he is looking for and the love he is refusing. He decides to leave the work. Marina, devastated by his leave, finds out from Roula that Christos is actually in a relationship with her daughter. She decides to be realistic and leaves behind the butchery to the young lovers and go for a trip oversees with his son Alexis. Marina gives the key of the piano to Christos, the piano that she played long time ago perhaps when she was still happily living with her husband and children. In the final, Christos does not use the key and leaves it on the piano.

Take care is a drama happening in the streets of Athens in 90s when the search for new ways of life peaked and therefore families and norms started to disappear. The old norms start to give place to new ones as people ask for packed meat instead of open cuts of meat. No matter how much Marina tried to keep the family together despite the problems, escalated ambitions of people around her did not let it happen. No matter how much Marina tried to keep the family happy, even by sacrificing herself and removing her presence, Christos did not accept to fall in the same circle of family and work even if he could have a house, a business and a piano to enjoy the evenings with his girlfriend. 

The new generation wants more. Marina is trying to survive in this world and falls in love with Christos, an islander looking for options and opportunities but from the new generation, thus very slippery and short-term. Take care is a sad story of beautiful Marina, a modest wife and later lover, whose happiness lasts but for only a few days. She is first empty handed in a marriage breaking up by her husband’s ambitions for expanding the work and by children’s failures. Then she finds a dim of light when she starts managing the business and falls in love with Christos. But soon he rejects her love for greater ambitions with or without her daughter. For Marina also, Christos has failed when she finds out about his relationship with her daughter. Although she still tries to survive the family by leaving overseas, Christos wants even more adventures. 

Apart from a well developing story, Take Care has nice sound tracks that adds to the profound drama of the movie.

 

Mouchette (1967)

(film 81 minutes)

Directed by: Robert Bresson
Language: French

Rating: 8/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 13, 2021

Mouchette is a young girl from a poor family with a mom close to dying and an alcoholic father. She takes care of all the housework instead. At school she is being bullied and harassed because of her clothes and shoes and the fact that she is not as proper as she should be both in her appearance and her behaviour. In the village also she is being insulted, disrespected and even raped in one scene by an alcoholic epileptic poacher when she tries to leave his hut where she took shelter from the rainstorm. Mouchette starts to understand the determinism inherited to her by her situation and she realises that the walls surrounding her are too high. She commits suicide then.

Mouchette artistically depicts the problems that marginalised people, especially children face. The movie shows the dark life of Mouchette without any hesitation and sentimentalism on the curtain. However, as soon as the viewer perceives Mouchette as his protagonist and is keen to follow her destination, the movie surprises your hopes by reminding you that she is just a child (read human) who might, in an impulsive decision even in the middle of playing, break and fail to continue living and fighting.

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The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

(film 100 minutes)

Directed by: Kaouther Ben Hania
Language: Arabic, English, French

Rating: 4/10 | Yaser Tohidi

June 12, 2021

A Belgian artist Jeffrey and a Syrian refugee Sam come across each other in Lebanon and sign a controversial deal. Sam lets Jeffrey tattoo a Schengen visa on his back and agrees to be present in his exhibitions in Europe for a definite time as an object of art. Instead Jeffrey makes sure Sam receives a Schengen visa and comes to Europe where his girlfriend Abeer, now unhappily married to a staff of Syrian embassy, lives and works as a translator. Soon as he arrives Europe Sam finds the same play of powers there and although sometimes he tries to breach the laws of society, he realizes the clichés are stronger. Besides it seems getting back to Abeer is not as easy as he thought it would be. Jeffrey comes again with his brilliant ideas. He makes a fake story; Sam goes back to Syria, he is killed there by extremists as a coward and traitor who sells dignity for liberty, and his skin is sold in black market. This fake story is of course bought easily because media/public is used to hearing terrible news from Syria and it is not easy to ratify the truth considering the circumstances there. So Sam is believed dead and his skin should be recovered from black market and be kept in national museums. Jeffrey himself of course takes care of the skin replica. This is while the true story is that Sam and Abeer are living together no one knows where with their new identities.

The Man Who Sold His Skin shows not only the indifference towards the difficulties faced by the Syrian people but also it criticizes the western societies/politics for their hypocrisy on human rights and dignity of certain outsiders and for their obsessive devotion to pleasure and richness.

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There Is No Evil (2020)

(film 150 minutes)

Directed by: Mohammad Rasoulof
Language: Persian

Rating: 3/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 25, 2020

The movie relates four stories in four episodes about people executing the death penalty and the moral responsibility they feel for that. First is Heshmat, a middle-aged man whose day-to-day job is to execute. He does not see the people he executes but he just presses a button for doing that. He has a wife and a daughter. He takes a good care of them and, help his aged mother. He seems silent and introvert, perhaps due to his job. He sometimes just stares at red/green lights in street as these remind him of the lights in his room at work that show him when to press the button. Then we see Kaveh. He is doing his compulsory military service at a prison and he wants to go abroad after his military service. But unfortunately, his service is to execute. He cannot convince himself to do this. So, with the help of his fellow and his girlfriend, he leaves the prison just before executing a man. The third story is about Javad. He is coming back from his military service to prepare his marriage, but he finds that his girlfriend’s family are mourning for the death of their close relative, a teacher and a dissenter, who was executed. Javad remembers that in fact he, himself, has executed the teacher during his military service when he sees his photo. This has a devastating effect on Javad and his relationship with his girlfriend. The final story is about Bahram and his daughter. She is coming from Germany to visit him. Javad is a middle-aged man living in a sort of hide-out and we understand that his life is so because he has refused to execute a death penalty. He tries to explain his daughter that the circumstances of his life is due to an important moral decision he has taken in the past. 

There Is No Evil assumes responsibility for the action even if it is a duty. The movie shows the happiness of choosing the right decision (not to execute) and the terrible consequences of following the orders blind (to execute). The movie chooses execution as an order just because following this order means taking someone’s life and something significant is at stake. So, There Is No Evil is not about whether execution is moral or not. Rather the movie advises to question the orders and law and to measure them with truth/wisdom. If not done so, it leads to emptiness of soul, like Heshmat, or to break down of lives, like Javad and his girlfriend. 

For its advice, There Is No Evil shows two happy endings by not following the orders blind and two sad ones by following them. The movie does not question the order itself and where it comes from. The moral characters do not try to change the orders. Instead they just do not obey. So, even if the two episodes are depicting two protagonists, they remain local/personal and they do not become general protagonists and the movie cannot address your expectation for creating a positive world. The world is as it is from beginning till the end and in this world, you can find some characters obeying the orders blind and the others who do not. Viewer expects conflict between these two groups and later resolution but nothing of that you find in There Is No Evil. 

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Jean de Florette (1986)
(film 120 minutes)
Manon des Sources (1986)
(film 113 minutes)

Directed by: Claude Berrie
Language: French

Rating: 7/10 | Yaser Tohidi
April 05, 2020

A drama is filmed in two parts. The story in the first part is developed around a water resource, a spring, and the relation of two neighbors together and in relation to that spring, one rich and experienced who wants the spring and its land even by committing crime and the other new and poor but full of ambition and theoretical knowledge who just want to have a good relation with his neighbor and nature around and a good life for his family. The new neighbor is Jean de Florette, a hunchback, and his wife and daughter. The old neighbor is Cesar Soubeyran and his nephew Ugolin. Cesar and Ugolin conceal the spring and hide its location from Florette family and this makes them suffer a lot to supply water to their land. Jean finally dies as a consequence of his efforts to find the spring and Soubeyran family buys their field and they immediately start to open the spring.
In the second part, the story is extended to the whole village. Manon, the daughter of the hunchback, realizes all the truth and more than that, she realizes that many in the village knew the existence of the spring but they also hide this fact because they didn’t want a hunchback, a bad fate, to be in their village. She accidentally finds the water source of the whole village. She cuts off the source. This is a disaster for the village. This makes the village agitated to find the reason and they find no shelter but in the church. Priest points to the existence of a criminal and Manon presents actually two criminals, Cesar and Ugolin. Ugolin commits a suicide as he finds out his love to Manon is one-sided and leaves his farm to Manon, the farm that they bought from her father Jean, the hunchback. Manon opens the water source. Meanwhile, Cesar realizes that Jean was his own son from his short but deep relation with Florette before he joins the French army in Africa. Also, Cesar leaves all of his property for Manon, his one and only granddaughter. 
The Movie creates a drama spanning between generations connected by water and land. The love to land and family bring immoralities and crime. However, the justice will prevail even though after many years. The movie, from the beginning, creates characters of Soubeyran and Florette families and in the second part, extends to the whole village and villagers. This extension of the story makes the second part much more entertaining to watch. Thanks to the plans taken in the village and farm lands and nature around, and the story behind, the village becomes familiar to the viewers’ eyes and remains into memories. Several villagers becomes a character; the mayor, the farmer who wants his water for which he paid, the village’s spokesman, etc. 

Despite the great pictures during the two episodes, the movie, however, suffers from poor mise en scène in some sequences for example the explosion and hunchback’s death due to that and Cesar’s death which are hard to believe. Just compare these two deaths with Ugolin’s which is perfectly convincing.

Click here for wikipedia page
Click here for wikipedia page

The Farewell (2019)
(film  100 minutes)

Directed by: Lulu Wang
Language: Mandarin, English

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 29, 2020

A Chinese-American girl Billi who moved to the US with her family when she was six year old is in the middle of crisis over missing a fellowship. Her grandmother Nai Nai is terminally ill in China. This is kept a secret from her. A wedding for Billi’s cousin is planned just as an excuse for the family to see her one last time. Billi’s uncle and his family who live in Japan bring the Japanese girlfriend of Billi’s cousin as the bride. Billi is banned from joining the family because she is unable to hide her emotions. But she travels anyways and joins the rest of the family and perfectly hides the illness though it is very hard for her to understand why her family does not tell the truth to Nai Nai and how fair that is to keep such a fact from someone. 
Even though Nai Nai coughs from time to time, she is cheerful and lively and advices everybody else to have a healthy life. She insists on organizing a big bouquet for the wedding which was not of course part of the plan. She leads the tasks and arranges for a big wedding. Wedding takes place and everybody hides the illness. 
The Farewell brings a fine comedy out of cultural differences between east and west. And through that, it frames a bright drama out of the dark tragedy of not letting someone know her illness and the time left for her. 
The movie portrays not only the gap between different generations of immigrants but also the adaptations an immigrant do, adaptations which make her everyday more far from its origins. These are all significant sources of alienation. These are Billi’s life. During the trip, she realizes how much she missed China although she is more American now. She finds strong relations with people and space around herself in China although she left there long time ago. However, she becomes the hero of rejoining these differences and proposing a way out. This is pronounced symbolically in her run to the hospital to keep the medical result secret and in the beautiful final of the movie where Billi grunts in the streets of New York the same way Nai Nai was grunting outside her house to get rid of bad toxins when she was doing some meditation/sport.  
On the down side, Billi’s aim to become an independent girl is not dramatized and thus seem a bit out of context each time it’s brought up. The Farewell also lacks creating supporting actors. Mother, father, uncle, aunt and the cousin are not built. The movie is just able to create Billi and Nai Nai. So, the feelings of others cannot be communicated with the viewer and the related scenes seem extra and useless. The Farewell’s rhythm sometimes feels lost especially in the middle where the wedding is organized.

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Seven Samurai (1954)
(207 minutes with intermission)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese

Rating: 10/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 15, 2020

To defend their village against an imminent attack by bandits, villagers decide to hire samurai. A group of seniors go to the city and luckily find a talented samurai who not only accepts the mission despite the low pay-off but also arranges further search for more samurai. A group of seven forms and enters the village. They plan the defense using also the villagers. Finally, the attack starts and the bandits are faced with strong defense by the village. Samurai and the villagers succeed to kill all the bandits although they loss some lives including four of the samurai. 
This is the simple story based upon which Seven Samurai is written. But the movie goes much deeper into the relations and life of villagers and samurai. The movie starts by showing the vulnerability of farmers to the attacks from bandits. They have bad memories of brutalities also from samurai. They have no protection against these. But there might still be some noble samurai, and this forms their only hope for living. In the search for samurai and after having little success initially, they come across a strange scene; a senior samurai, Kambei, dresses up as a monk and shaves his head to save a child from the hands of a kidnapper. He shows a great talent by saving the child with bare hands but above that he proves that noble samurai still exist. Kambei might accept this difficult mission for only a handful of rice every day. Villagers go after him to talk about their problem. There are also two junior samurai amused by Kambei’s talent, one is very descent, Katsushiro, and the other, Kikuchyo, is not. Kambei accepts the mission. He is a wise leader. He starts immediately finding more samurai together with Katsushiro. Kikuchiyo shows interest in following Kambei but he has no idea what for. Therefore, he leaves. Finding one by one talented and noble samurai and looking for the last one, they face gain Kikuchiyo. He is also a good fighter but with no discipline. Even though he is not selected, he follows them. He should have another motivation. Later we find out that he is not born a samurai but in a farmer family and he lost them in an attack by bandits. This makes him enthusiastic for this mission. Because of his background, he builds a good relationship with villagers. During the attack, he shows great bravery although his careless acts sometimes add to the cost of the mission. He dies at the end but not before he kills the head of the bandits. A deeper bond between samurai and villagers, or better to say, another significant rebellion against social traditions and cast definitions happen by love of Katsushiro and the young girl of a villager. She is dressed up as a boy by his father in the fear of samurai. Katsushiro is enjoying the nature around the village when he faces her. He first thinks he is a boy and questions her why she is not practicing with other boys. This first encounter fires a forbidden love between a farmer girl and a samurai that remains till the end and even if they try to keep it hidden, it becomes known to everybody.
Seven Samurai is full of details in setting the interior and exterior locations which camera brings into the picture and the mise en scène utilizes for deepening the story and creating a great movie. Seven Samurai is a drama about teamwork and rejoining of different casts in society when it comes to protecting a good cause. 

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Dekalog (1989)
(series 10 episodes 60 minutes)

Directed by: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Language: Polish

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
January 29, 2020

Ten independent one hour films depicting profound universal moral and ethical challenges faced by ordinary people in ordinary situations. Although you might say not so ordinary because of the cement large buildings and gloomy atmosphere of the inside and outside locations, you immediately accept the conditions as yours and ordinary following the beautiful and engaging stories depicted with slow rhythm and eye-catching angels of the camera. The ten episodes are not only collected under the name Dekalog but also the stories happen in the same housing project in which the viewer, from time to time, finds some characters of previous episodes. Also, a mysterious character appears in most of the episodes who seem to only observe the stories. These simple connections, although not directly connects the stories, brings a wholeness to the series that can be summarized as human condition. The stories are dramatized more through pictures and conditions than dialogues. The moral dilemmas are dealt with under the context and between the silences and barely you hear the characters talk directly about them. 
Of course, some episodes are more engaging than the others, e.g. Dekalog V: A Short Film About Killing. This episode puts in picture the absurdity of the capital punishment. A young boy who feels responsible for his sister’s death and does not have desire to live anymore is planning a crime as though touching the limits of brutality. The junior lawyer defending him cannot do anything, and finally we see a detailed setting and step-by-step procedure of an execution though, through slow rhythm of the film, we can have enough time between each step for reflection. Another beautiful episode of the series is Dekalog VI: A Short Film About Love where a lonely teenage boy spies on a lonely woman and her sex life. He loves the woman and tells this to her. But the woman who does not believe in love invites him to her apartment to humiliate his sexual inexperience. After that, the boy suicides and the woman feels not only guilty about that but also feels the love given to her from this lonely boy.

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25th Hour (2002)
(film 135 minutes)

Directed by: Spike Lee
Language: English

Rating: 7/10 | Yaser Tohidi
November 25, 2019

Monty is a drug dealer recently caught and is about to go to prison to serve his sentence – seven years. The movie is about Monty’s last day of freedom that he wants to pass by his childhood friends Frank – a trader - and Jacob – a high school teacher - and his girlfriend Naturelle. Through the flash backs and dialogues/monologue, we get familiar with his personal life. Despite his job, he is a good person with good friends, and he has a relationship full of love. He helps his father. He is emotional. He finds his dog lying beside the road full of blood and he helps the dog to survive. 
Monty, in his last day of freedom, is very angry of having not given up drug dealing before being caught. He thinks Naturelle betrayed him but later that night he finds out that it was his drug dealer buddy Kostya who did betray. Returning to their apartment he apologizes Naturelle for mistrusting her. Monty asks Frank to beat him up and make him ugly because he is afraid of being raped in prison. Reaching the final minutes of his freedom, Monty drives to prison together with his father. His father gives him a very beautiful vision of escaping and starting a new life under a new name. At final, we see Monty sitting in the car with his father going towards the prison. 
25th Hour is depicting a humane picture of a drug dealer who has dignity and knows the meaning of friendship, love, family. He is perfectly aware that nobody is to be blamed for his mistakes but himself and this makes him bitter and anxious. 25th Hour dramatically shows how a beautiful life is destroyed in one night if it is based wrongly. Monty lives the life in its full and this is highlighted in contrast with his friends Frank and Jacob; Frank is a pessimist who despite having money and pleasure, does not enjoy life and misses hope, and Jacob who looks positive and moral but misses joy and pleasure in his life. Monty has a combination of both. He just selected the wrong job, or in other words, he fell into that job. 25th Hour plays around determinism and how we are caught up inside its labyrinth and different possibilities, just because of having different starting points. It may be possible to escape the labyrinth, but the cost is great. You must erase all your past if you want to start a new life and this is not an easy thing to do. 25th Hour has a poetic tune about the crazy New York, all its stereotypes, its contradictions, the crimes, problems but despite all this, offering many at least a hypothetical vision of an ideal life. 

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The Wild Pear Tree (2018)
(film 188 minutes)

Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Language: Turkish

Rating: 4/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 25, 2019

A young graduate, Sinan, comes back home hoping to fund his book through public or private authorities of his hometown. He is also looking for job as a teacher but finding a job is not easy. Sinan is a pessimist and criticizes everybody. He finds negative response for his book just because it is not something authorities can use to strengthen their position in power. Anyways, Sinan steals an old book from his grandfather’s house and also, he sells his father’s favorite dog to fund publishing his book. Apart from this, what makes Sinan sadder is that he finds no interest for his book among people; alienated people who try to survive their difficult economic situations in different ways. His mother watches series, his friend marries a rich guy, some people find shelter in faith, and his father finds shelter in their farm after retiring from teaching. Father is showing happiness despite his difficult economic situation and criticisms he receives from his family because of his insisting passivity in facing problems. He finally abandons the well he was trying to dig to reach water and brings some kettle to the farm instead. When Sinan comes back from his military service and visits his father in the farm, he finds out that his father is the only one who read his book. Sinan restarts the well digging in the final of the movie symbolizing the same loneliness and passivity that generation after generation has fallen into him, his father and his grandfather although there is a dim hope that he might finally break through, reach water and make their farm green.
The Wild Pear Tree is a social drama happening in a city, small town and a village with eye catching camera shots. Sinan, the protagonist, is a critic of the common sense but he fails. He is going his own way of life paying the cost of becoming a stranger. However, after failing in his path of becoming a writer, he fails and restarts the well job, something they have done generation after generation. He accepts his destination of being lonely like his father and his grandfather. He finds out that his destination is the same passivity and finally, he accepts it. The Wild Pear Tree is getting a poetic tune in some plans highlighted by music and slow camera moves. This slow rhythm contrasts with the back and forth dialogues between Sinan and different people. The dialogues which are most of the time extra and distracting. These make the movie longer than necessary. In The Wild Pear Tree story does not develop. The movie shows only the situation. The only move in the story is the final where the protagonist fails and hides himself from everybody in a well and performs the most useless job, maybe just to give away his anger and survive passing his life. Sinan, the protagonist, fails and because of this, Wild Pear Tree does not give you a good feeling after watching. Sinan is locked in his situation and he cannot break free. The antagonist is the situation and it finally wins.

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High and Low (1963)
(film 143 minutes)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 13, 2019

As the title suggests the movie is perhaps about inequality, but no, it’s not! A wealthy executive of a shoe company, Gondo, opposes to adapt to a short-term profitable plan and therefore is being threatened to be kicked out of the company. But he is prepared. He has bought some shares of the company by mortgaging all he has, and he is about to buy more. Embarking to realize his plan, phone rings and he hears his son is kidnapped and he should pay a large amount of money for ransom. As he is thinking what to do, his son enters and he finds out that the kidnapper took his son’s friend, son of Gondo’s chauffeur. The kidnapper finds out his mistake but still asks for the ransom. Gondo is faced by an ethical dilemma; should he pay the ransom anyways or this matter is not his anymore? He decides to turn his head away from the matter, but his wife opposes. In another twist, his top assistant, who saw Gondo was leaning to pay the ransom, leaves him and joins his rivals in the company and ruins his plan for domination in the company. He claims when you consider ruining your life by paying the ransom why you wouldn’t do that to me. Gondo now decides to pay the ransom anyways. 
Ransom is paid and the boy is safe. Gondo is received national acclaim for his sacrifice. The second half of the movie is about finding the kidnapper. In the second half, the movie goes out of rhythm. After Gondo’s success in deciding ethically, the first challenge of the movie, Gondo’s challenge, is finished and now police with the help of media wants to do their job and respond to Gondo’s heroism. This makes High and Low a movie divided in two parts infected with disunity. Opposite to the first half that the story happens inside Gondo’s mansion on the top hill, the second half happens mostly outside in different parts of the city, and together with this change in locations, the tune changes from an ethical dilemma to a police and kidnapper hide and seek.
Finally, the kidnapper is arrested and is sentenced to death. The ransom is recovered but too late to save Gondo's property from auction. High and Low is based on inequality but this is largely left behind for the sake of developing an entertaining kidnapping police drama. Only it’s at the end that this comes back again when Gondo is faced with the kidnapper and his motives. High and Low is finally a police drama rather than a drama over ethical dilemmas or inequality. 

Click here for wikipedia page

The Great Beauty (2013)
(film 142 minutes)

Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino
Language: Italian

Rating: 3/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 9, 2019

A writer in his mid-sixties, Jep Gambardella, is attracted by faint beautiful scenes around him and reflects on his life and others’. He stopped writing decades ago after his masterpiece and is now working as a journalist. He is, as he puts it, the king of high societies. It has been long like this and now that he is older, he wants to change it. He starts seeing the absurdity of the people around him though he still goes on appreciating the smallest sources of inspiration. But he is not satisfied and looks for the great beauty while every flashes of beauty hides under circumstances. He and his life are full of contradictions.
The Great Beauty depicts a touristic view of Rome. It tries to give it a higher artistic tune by showing surrealist pictures like when the writer is faced with a giraffe or when the flamingos appear in his balcony. But these scenes don’t play a role in scenario because the main story line is not strong and is not followed. There are many sequences which have no relevance to the previous one.
The Great Beauty is experiencing new editing and shooting techniques. The insist on these experiences and taking good shots, music video type of photography though, affects the story of the movie and the movie goes out of rhythm many times. As an example, when Jep hears that his first love is dead while she always loved him, he is touched, and this incident is given more effect with the nice sequence in which a lost girl calls him “nobody”. But the next sequence is irrelevant to this incident and later this incidence is forgotten. This comes back when he recounts his first love to Ramona, the stripper who is not looking for beauty in life. Ramona reminds him of his first love because she was also a pessimist. We find this when she shows her breast instead of kissing him for the first time. But again, this is ignored in coming sequences. And that is why The Great Beauty lacks a story line. It’s a 2 hours video clip of a retired writer seeing the beauties offered in Rome. The ending when he decides to write again seems extra. What is he writing about? We don’t know. Maybe about his first love. But that doesn’t matter because his first love is insubstantial in the scenario anyways. The Great Beauty depicts the life of high society in art in Rome. Nothing more! 

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Through the Olive Trees (1994)
(film 103 minutes)

Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami

Language: Persian

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi

August 18, 2019

A movie crew wants to make a movie in a location hit by earthquake one year ago. During the production, we find out that Hossein, the actor selected for the movie, has asked for marriage just before the earthquake with the actress, Tahereh, who lost her parents in the earthquake, and now that they play in this movie, it’s another opportunity for Hossein to ask for her marriage again. Last time, his proposal was rejected because he didn’t have house but now that nobody has house, he might have a chance. Their affair is interfering with the movie making as the movie making in their affair, and this is building the story line.
Through the Olive Trees depicts intimate and beautiful scenes from villagers and their surrounding despite the destruction caused by earthquake. Their life is calm and slow and closer to the rhythm of the nature and this not only attracts the movie crew in a way that they become part of their life but also the viewer. You might think at the beginning what a basic and primitive life they have but step by step you get closer to their life and you see how full and rich it is. We see that the life continues one year after the earthquake with all its beauties. Villagers don’t care about the production of the movie and it’s difficulties. They even don’t care about earthquake and death. They are just occupied with life and all its burdens and beauties. Among all these, we see also a love story. Hossein’s love to Tahereh and his persistence to marry her are convincing. We wish them to marry. Hossein's love and the pictures of this movie will stay in your mind.


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A Separation (2011) 
(film 123 minutes)

Directed by: Asghar Farhadi

Language: Persian

Rating: 3/10 | Yaser Tohidi

August 15, 2019

A middle class family is at the verge of breaking up, why? Wife wants to immigrate because, among others, she wants to raise her daughter in a better place but the husband feels strong attachments to his home-country especially because of his ill father. They find the only way is divorce but the judge finds the couple's problems insufficient to warrant divorce. So the wife leaves the house although their daughter decides to stay with her dad. The husband hires a person to manage the house and to take care of his old father who suffers Alzheimer. This is the beginning of a chain of incidents which put the husband in a difficult situation. Everybody is lying or at least hiding the reality at some point during these incidents except the wife who tries to resolve the problems by offering money, forgetting that the money cannot solve everything when moralities come into place. Moralities from persons who lied before! Finally, the parents file another divorce application -although the grandfather is dead this time and the man's excuse is irrelevant!- and this time it’s accepted and the judge leaves their daughter to choose with whom she would like to live.

A Separation is forming a social drama but is unable to stick to its original question: should the daughter leave her home-country or not? Majority of the time spent on the incidents and small details. All the characters are gray and there is no protagonist. They are locked in their situation and cannot select between putting moralities on top or going after an easy life. Nothing new, as we are facing with these situations in our life and probably it has been always like this in human societies. Analogously, the scenario line is not clear and therefore it reduces to a melodrama between two families from two different levels of society and the hates that they have towards each other, although sometimes they love each other! As you see, whatever you start saying about this movie is not true! This is coming from a scenario with no clear direction in mind. 

The movie throws questions about morality but leaves them unanswered and makes the viewers busy with chain of incidents till the next question. There is no effort to answer those questions. Therefore, there is no aim or message for the ending. At the end we are faced with more questions than answers.

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A Man of Integrity (2017)
(film 120 minutes)

Directed by: Mohammad Rasoulof
Language: Persian

Rating: 4/10 | Yaser Tohidi
August 13, 2019

A previously student activist who tries to enjoy a quiet life with his wife - a high-school dean - and his son by fish farming is faced with (beside financial problems) one problem: a company operating in the area where they live is interested in their house. The company is powerful in the region where corruption prevails. The movie continues to show how the company makes problems for the man, our yet protagonist, the moralist, and how corruption blocks him from resolving these problems. He cannot accept to pay bribe although his life is in critical situation. His wife, who supports his moralities at the beginning, cannot bare the problems anymore and encourages him to resolve the problems by any means even paying bribes, but he refuses. 
A man of Integrity is a social drama about corruption augmentation. The man is our protagonist in the beginning when he fights the situation while putting moralities on top. But at the end, he fails and changes to a monster. So the story does not conclude to any promising ending. Positive social function - catharsis if you like - is a prerequisite for a good plot for a social drama. A social drama results to a positive/good feeling when there is some hope in the plot. This is lacking in A man of Integrity. 
Apart from this, the movie includes some extra side stories, such as the minority family whose daughter commits suicide, which are not related to the main line of the story and make the movie go out of rhythm. 

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Chernobyl (2019)
(miniseries 5 episodes 60–72 minutes)

Directed by: Johan Renck
Language: English

Rating: 2/10 | Yaser Tohidi
August 12, 2019

Chernobyl is a historical drama trying to dramatizes the story of the April 1986 nuclear plant disaster which occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Soviet Union), however it fails to do so because it fails, to the large extent, in following a dramatic story. 
The main story line is the denial by the Soviet Union officials about the extent of the disaster. But this story line is referred to only in few dialogues and scenes and there is not enough dramatic evidence. On the other hand, in some cases we see full support for addressing the incident from highest officials. Then, this story line gives way to a new one: what was the main cause of the incident and how to reveal that in spite of KGB monitoring? Again here, without much drama, the story line is concluded and the main cause is revealed in the court. Apart from these two main story lines, sometimes you want to follow the story of the people involved in the disaster but it does not happen and instead, the miniseries depicts some of the lesser known stories of the disaster as if it's goal is just to inform you about them and does not want you to be involved with the stories of the people. This is in contrast with the form of the miniseries, i.e. the mise en scène implies dramatic stories but they are not followed. Mise en scène does not imply a fact-by-fact documentary for an incident.
Anyhow, Chernobyl depicts eye-catching pictures of the incident, logistics, hospitals and official buildings of Soviet Union. 
If you want to know a bit more about the Chernobyl disaster - and you don't care about the legitimacy of the story being told or you will follow it up later -  this miniseries is for you. But if you want to watch a series in which people's stories keep you engaged for some time, Chernobyl is not for you.


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