A Time to Kill

“A Time to Kill” was not about the trial of a man who committed a murder, but was an exploration into the blinkered society we may live in. Of course the African American Carl Lee (Samuel L Jackson) killed the two rapists of his ten year old daughter, and naturally he was guilty of that, and you would think that as we are watching a courtroom film about whether he was guilty or not, that he would have no chance of being acquitted….but that’s just it, it’s not a film about whether he is guilty, and so people should stop judging it on basis that it ignores the facts. The best way to make a courtroom drama dramatic is to heap as much evidence up against the defendant that the viewer is rooting for, and that’s all they done here (to the maximum).

The vigilante murder by the grieving father was just a catalyst and the courtroom was just the setting. They were just tools used to drive the message of the film, which is pretty much summed up in lawyer Jake Brigance’s (Matthew McConaughey) final speech when he says, “now imagine the girl is white”. The film, like some reviewers seem to be saying, is not implying that the white jury are inherently racist against black people and that they’d be more horrified by a white girl being raped than a black girl. What it’s saying is that the jury would maybe sympathise or relate (and I use these terms loosely) to it happening to a white girl as they would be able to picture it more as if it were their own daughter who had been violated, rather than a poor black girl of a crazy (enter racial slur here___).

To support this, Carl’s little pre-judgement day talk to Brigance lies at the heart of this final speech when Carl tells Brigance in his prison cell that through no fault of anybodies, they have been divided as white and black, that they are from different neighbourhoods and that their kids won’t ever play together. In a sense this would have been true, especially if you take into account the time the film was supposed to be it set. The whole point was explicitly verbalised to the viewer when Carl asks Brigance to make the jury see through his eyes, or in a more literal sense befitting the film, through his heart and that’s what he did.

Don’t rip this film apart for being illogical to facts or irresponsible, because it is obviously not claiming to be. Having said that, we shouldn’t forget that in his final speech, Brigance did tell the jury that the psych doctor (who gave evidence in support of Carl) who was charged with statutory rape in his past, had actually been innocent as the girl was 17, on top of which he married her and had kids with her. This would make him not a felon and his statement that Carl was insane at the time he committed the murder entirely credible. So who knows, maybe the jury agreed Carl was insane and acquitted him based on that alone.

In any case, it is made clear that this is an emotional drama that seeks a truth that sometimes real logical justice does not provide. It deals with heavy subject matter such as racism because racism hurts people emotionally and so is a perfect way or pulling the audience in, and if it’s done its job then you should have shed a few tears (or more) at the conclusion of it

Taboo

Taboo is a film directed by Max Makowski and written by Chris Fisher (director of Donnie Darko sequel S.Darko) about six friends who weave themselves into a daring game of stab or be stabbed, lie or be lied to, cheat or be cheated….well, you get what I’m getting at. The synopsis on the back of the DVD case reads like something you may have seen in a sexual/dramatic/thriller film of the early nineties such as Blown Away (which just ended up descending into amateur porn) or the more notorious Basic Instinct. If I were to categorise Taboo I would say, think House on Haunted Hill meets Cruel Intentions.

The film begins in the midnight hour with the camera sweeping across the outside of a mansion estate, built with the usual long winding driveway and shrubbery, whilst a voice over of Piper (Amber Benson) defines the meaning of the word taboo. The shot then cuts to the interior of the dimly lit house where we see the “sophisticated” gang of friends making idle chit chat over decanters of whiskey and wine, until Elizabeth (January Jones) suggests they play a little game for some fun; this fun little game being the catalyst for the subsequent events and themes of betrayal, blackmail and murder.

The film does well initially in managing to setup a sense of mystery and suspense through the isolated location; the music which is kind of camp in its attempts at being spooky; the stormy weather which has the rain beating against the house; and the group of friends who are unknowingly about to be drawn into a game which will reveal their deviant sexual fantasises. The game begins by each friend receiving a piece of paper which has a taboo question written on it such as “would you have a threesome” or “would you sleep with a relative” etc. They each write down a response to the question they have been given of yes or no and the paper is then put onto the table and shuffled amongst the other pieces to preserve their anonymity. They each then pick a piece and read out the question and the answer. This entire scene has an air of decadence to it in the same way you might think of a secret fraternity/sorority society with its combination of indulgence and tests of character.

The credits then role and the film picks up on New Years Eve, one year after their game of taboo. The friends are reunited having dinner at the new mansion of Christian (Nick Stahl) but things are not as they were, as there is more hostility and bitterness between them because of changed lovers, failures and envy. If you are unfamiliar with slurs such as “bitch” or “slut” you won’t be by the end of this film. It is not long before the electricity suddenly cuts due to the reprisal of bad weather and there is a loud knock at the door. After going to investigate, Christian returns with a package which will set the previous year’s game of taboo back into motion. Paranoia ensues as the friends become suspicious of one another and direct the majority of their uncertainty toward Elizabeth due to her snobbish attitude (which isn’t as much snobbish as it is virtuous). She is the only sinless one (still being a virgin), or at least she appears to be, amongst a group of sinners. However what they perceive as condescension or judgement is really just the assertion of her own beliefs. I won’t go any further into events that occur so as not to ruin the surprise of what develops as there are a few twists and turns that you may or may not see coming.


To sum up each character in a nutshell I would describe Christian as the upright, gentlemanly host; Elizabeth as the frigid, morally superior lady; Adam (Eddie Kaye Thomas) as the insensible and blameworthy juvenile; Piper as the cute self-aware alcoholic; Benjamin (Derek Hamilton) as the easy-going, fun loving joker; and Katie (Lori Heuring) as the shameless, fowl mouthed nymphomaniac. Now if this collection of clashing personalities isn’t enough to cause a few murders I don’t know what is. Out of the gang the two characters that stood out for me were Piper and Adam. I loved Piper’s Zany, clueless direction, and the way in which she played the alcoholic made every scene she was in a pleasure to watch. Of course this is less down to the character and more down to Amber Benson’s talented ability at upstaging her fellow cast. On the other hand I would say the appeal of Adam’s character was primarily because of the lines he had and the amusing, dubbed over feel they had to them. Like Finch in American Pie, Eddie Kaye Thomas brought to this character a dry, sarcastic wit with a confident air of comic indulgence.

Taboo is by no means a great film; it’s not really even a good film, though it is entertaining and worth watching, if only for the performances of Benson and Thomas of which made the short 77 minutes runtime seem shorter still. The premise of the film is a good one and even the twists are reasonably clever, so why is it that the finished product doesn’t deliver as well as expected? For one the dialogue was pretty bad in that it didn’t flow but just seemed as though one person said something and then another person did, without the feel of an actual conversation taking place. Another thing that let the film down was there was no connection created between the viewer and the characters which meant that when something happened to them I was just left feeling like, oh well. Each character was also effectively defined by their own personal taboo, which consequently limited their ability to act differently and so left them as a jagged stereotype.

The film seems to deal with the idea of taking a stand for something; attempting to be moral whilst avoiding being a hypocrite. However as we learn, hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder, as anyone who is in the least bit an individual will know that sex, lies and murder do not necessarily make the sinner but are all judged by ones own standards and capacity to live. Some of the questions asked in the taboo game and the responses given will probably cause you to join in and ask the same questions to yourself. In fact, just go by your initial gut reaction to when they are read aloud and then you’ll see just how much of a good person you think you are heh heh. Unfortunately though the questions that are raised are never really addressed in much depth and so all I can say is that Taboo has much unfulfilled potential.

Scoop

Scoop is a media satire about a dippy magician who teams up with an aspiring reporter, who has been tipped off by the spirit of a recently deceased reporter, to investigate, or maybe I should say snoop around, a wealthy, British aristocrat of whom is supposedly the Tarot Card Killer, a dastardly homicidal criminal. Sounds like there’s much wacky fun to be had, right? Well yeah, I’d say so, despite its biting reception…
…It seems a tough life for an artist. They spend its entirety creating brilliant things; pouring themselves into their work, only to be slaughtered by critics who don’t think their new material is funny enough, or ridicule them for continuing to write parts for themselves. Well for the record, Woody Allen is a wonderful actor and I’ll never equate him with Victor Frankenstein; condemning him for creating some monster persona that can’t be destroyed.

Scoop is the second film of Allen’s to be filmed in England and was produced in association with the BBC; something which is evident through the choice of locations (city pubs and country mansions), set design (the afterlife, boating sequences are meagre and amateur; nothing like that of Love and Death) and all the British extras; plus a little cameo by a certain London, Nescafe whoring, supernatural-librarian watcher.


Even though Scoop should not really be compared to Allen’s earlier films, as they belong to different eras of his career, it is hard to ignore that Scoop is a glossy film, and does seem to be tainted with that refined, British, Brigitte Jones’ Diary style makeover, disposing of the concrete jungle of cluttered myriad New York streets, smoky bars, motley but sincere characters and chiaroscuro cinematography for generic, wealthy, urbanites; pastured mansions and glass house architecture, something to do with art deco and postmodernism…I haven’t a clue. It is also hard to dismiss the fact that Scoop seems to almost be a pastiche of some of Allen’s more recent works (by recent I mean those from the early nineties onwards), most notably Small Time Crooks, Manhattan Murder Mystery, with flashes of Crimes and Misdemeanours.

Scarlett Johansson plays a bespectacled, highly-strung, peppy, geeky, ambitious reporter named Sondra Pransky; a woman who also has a randy vixen streak which she isn’t afraid to indulge in should her duty as a reporter require it of her. After all, a reporter can’t just dig through the dirt but must roll around in it to, using their sexuality as a weapon as vital as the pen and the pad. It is a departure for Johansson who has been known to play cooler, mocking, more composed roles i.e. Ghost World as the apathetic miscreant Rebecca or the wry, contemplative Charlotte in Lost in Translation. It is certainly nice to see her making full use of her vocal chords, moving away from the whole monotone voice thing to something with a little more spark; at least to save her from the same fate as Keanu Reaves and his mono-expressional reputation.

Woody Allen plays a second-rate magician called Sid Waterman or ‘Mr Splendini’ (his stage persona). This could be Allen paying homage to himself as he was once known to be quite the entertainer when he was a child; performing magic tricks in his neighbourhood. His character of Waterman in Scoop seems to be an imitation of another of his creations, Danny Rose from Broadway Danny Rose, where Allen played a struggling talent agent; as they both speak in the same New York, Brooklyn accent; both use the same artificial ‘showbiz’ expressions (i.e. “you’re an incredible audience and I mean that from the bottom of my heart” and “God bless ya’ sweetheart”); and both share an endearing pathos. Strangely enough Waterman, as though in a parallel universe to Rose, could easily have been one of Rose’s acts that he would have hired for Broadway.

Waterman’s blundering, clueless ability to fit into the culture of high society, when he and Pransky go to Peter Lyman’s (Hugh Jackman) garden party, matches that of his character Ray in Small Time Crooks. The scenario is painfully similar (well not as painful as it was in STC), as both stand out with their brash accents, and almost like ‘Del boy’ attempting to sell a hooky toaster to some Lord who has never even heard of toast, you are sitting on the edge of your seat, as you see them showcase their uncouth, streetwise personalities, waiting for them to get ‘escorted’ off the premises by a bodyguard named Jones. Another scene in which they resemble one another is that of Sid’s attempt to enter Lyman’s coded music room whilst at the party, and that of Ray’s attempts at stealing a valuable necklace whilst at a high class party in SMT.

You must also keep your ears de-waxed, as there is a bit at Lyman’s ‘doo’ that we get a snippet of the classic Woody, denominational neuroses, which will be refreshing for fans of his older more self-obsessed films. Whilst talking with some of the guests he says, “I was born into the Hebrew persuasion but when I got older I converted to narcissism”, probably the best line in the film.

Scoop also seems to resemble Manhattan Murder Mystery in many ways though MMM is far superior in both acting (difficult to even compare the revered Allen – Keaton dynamic with the latest Allen – Johansson one) and plot of which combines intelligence, suspense and comedy, and is delightfully woven into Larry and Carol Lipton’s relationship, producing Larry’s reluctance (like Sid’s initial reluctance) to enter anything to dangerous and Carol’s desperate curiosity to play the sleuth.

There is something fractal about Woody Allen’s style as each new film seems to be derivative of an older one and also seems to be affected by it in some way. As though if Annie Hall had killed that lobster that got stuck behind the fridge, then that may have somehow caused Carol Lipton to be murdered by the Manhattan killer, which in turn would have caused Sondra Pronsky to forget how to swim. I’m sure that even Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) - the deceased reporter who we see at the beginning of the film trying to bribe the Grim Reaper with money to let him escape - is taking action that is suggestive of an action Allen, due to his preoccupation with death, has probably imagined taking many times when his death cargo sails in to port Woody to carry him away.

Scoop may not be as thought provoking, intricate or damned hilarious as some of Allen’s other works but it is certainly entertaining and shows that an ageing man possessing a filmography rich with some of the darkest emotions, can still see life with humour as he did when he made his gut-busting debut, Take the Money and Run.

Sweet and Lowdown

Sweet and Lowdown has a film style like that of other Woody Allen period pieces set in the 1930s such as Radio Days and Bullets over Broadway. All three films share the same gangster suits, intimate restaurant-clubs and nostalgic Jazz music in the score as well as showing Allen’s passion for Jazz music, for he is a dedicated player of the clarinet and a long time member of a New Orleans Jazz band. He originally wrote the film in the late sixties under the name of The Jazz Baby but the executives at the time wanted more of a comedy from Allen and so he put it on the back-burner and wrote Bananas instead. Thirty years later he rewrote that script and called it Sweet and Lowdown.

In Sweet and Lowdown Allen writes and directs a film following the highs and lows of a fictional Jazz musician called Emmet Ray. Ray played by Sean Penn, is a virtuoso genius on the guitar with an equally impressive tolerance for booze. The film begins talking heads style in that several esteemed aficionados of Ray (including Woody Allen playing himself) are interviewed and retell stories about this Jazzman which then segue into the past and to a roadside bar where we get to see these stories played out firsthand.

Ray is introduced to us not as a legendary Jazzman but as a pool hustler and as a pimp, who being a feebly paid musician, despite his talents needs to make a little dough on the side. He is an egomaniac, never shy of tooting his own horn and so cocky you’d think he’d found some inconspicuous way of concealing his comb, beak and wattle; though this confidence would soon disappear if his idol and only musical superior Django Reinhardt were in the vicinity; for whenever he is so all blood and oxygen are soon drained from Ray’s brain leaving him as an unconscious heap of awe. Throughout the film Reinhardt seems to be sort of an elusive spectre that Ray is trying to both capture and outrun, for not only is he Ray’s hero but he is conversely someone who reminds Ray of his weaknesses.

Due to Ray’s irresponsible and careless nature he is a liability to the clubs he plays at but if you could play the guitar like he does then you’d probably give in to the temptation of taking liberties when you could. He knows that he is the main attraction and that when he plays it is as though all his former disgraces have been forgiven as he manages to hold his audience in the moment. Seeing him play reminded me of the mannerisms of Charlie Chaplin as he sports a dim-witted but charming grin and kicks his legs out with a similar frivolity and slapstick joy. Oddly enough Sweet and Lowdown plays out in the fashion of a Chaplin film as Ray’s second love interest in the film is a sweet, bashful mute who with a societal dysfunction like that of ‘A Blind Girl’ in City Lights seems to be grateful for the attention and that she is being considered at all. Unfortunately for Hattie (the mute played by Samantha Morton) her benefactor is not a lovable, caring, gentile fellow like ‘The Tramp’ but a self-obsessed, emotional infantile musician who has a strange passion for watching trains and shooting rats at the dump; activities he enthusiastically does with reluctant dates. In his first ‘relationship’ of the film he tells the girl “I let my feelings come out in my music,” to which she replies, “Well maybe if you let your feelings out in real life, then your music would be even better.” This fact we eventually discover is the one thing that keeps Ray as an inferior player to Reinhardt of which he is told by his third love interest Blanche played by Uma Thurman. Blanche is a writer who is constantly asking Ray questions, evaluating him and trying to understand how his insides work.

Throughout the film it becomes clear that Ray has trouble dealing with his emotions and rather than sort them out he tries to replace them with the drive to succeed. If he cannot confront and control them he is just as determined not to let them control him and his abilities, but sadly the revelations about what is important to Ray come a little too late leaving him not with just a broken guitar but also a broken heart.

I didn’t think the film played out like you’d expect a story to as it seemed more like fragments of a man’s career both on and off the stage, put together quickly to sum him up. I think it may have been to do with the nature of the film, as like Walk the Line or any other autobiographical film (fictional or not), when you are trying to retell and capture specific moments of a celebrities career it’s going to be difficult to lets say make one event run smoothly into another when editing is needed and so the many relationships the star has with those around them can seem hasty. Although in Sweet and Lowdown it may have been the case that Ray’s romantic relationships were just a tool for understanding Ray better and the kind of man he was rather than the actual details of how they got on or what they did. All in all this is another enjoyable film from Woody Allen and Sean Penn gives a very convincing and amusing performance as an unpredictable, well dressed vagabond.

The Crossing Guard

The Crossing Guard follows the story of a man named Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) who is finding it very hard to come to terms with the death of his daughter who was hit by a car six years earlier. John Booth (David Morse), the man who was responsible is now to be let out of prison, and after an initial failed attempt by Freddy to kill him, he threatens that he will be back in three days time to get his revenge.

The film is written and directed by Sean Penn who I think has created a film that is reflective and personal, which shows the symptoms of grief as being arbitrary; that a person should not be expected to behave in any particular way after the death of a loved one. The film doesn’t just show the pain from Mary, the mother (Angelica Houston) and father’s point of view, but also that of the offender who as the film shows is not a hardened criminal but a man who made a mistake, albeit the worst kind you can make caused by careless drink driving.

Freddy is introduced to us as someone who is not enjoying life despite the fact that he frequents strip-clubs and drinks heavily on a daily basis. His face is stern and unforgiving and slow motion shots, which are used quite liberally, create sensations of a man trapped within time, unable to move on and deal with his grief, who is instead forced to go through the motions one agonising second at a time. He wakes up in the morning to find yet another stripper in his bed but it is clear that any pleasure that was had was purely enjoyed by the lady.

Shortly after, a man is released from prison to be greeted by his parents (Piper Laurie and Richard Bradford). At first this feels like Penn is trying to antagonise the viewer because (if you are aware of the synopsis of the film) we can infer that this is the man that has killed the girl. To see a sensitive remorseful man, who is leaving prison to return to the comfort and loving environment of his parents’ throws you off guard when you are expecting some callous or wicked man of whom is unsympathetic to the harm he has caused. From this moment on it is clear that this isn’t going to be a clear black and white revenge film where the bad criminal is to be justifiably killed by a loving, grieving father. No far from it, in fact, it is often Booth who seems to feel the pain of the girl’s death more than Freddy and at times the viewer maybe be confused as to where their sympathies lay. Freddy chose a path of destruction as we will see, showing no consideration to his now ex-wife and their two existing children, not visiting his daughter’s grave for closure and instead living like an animal letting his own heart become weaker and colder. It is Booth who after leaving prison immediately gets a job, begins a genuine relationship with a woman named Jojo (Robin Wright Penn) and even goes to his victim's grave with flowers. This conflict is the driving force of events and it is Freddy who must come to the conclusion that what happened was an accident, and that his desire for revenge is a way of satiating his own pride more than anything else.

Another thing that is made apparent in this film is how men and women deal with their grief in polar opposite ways. Mary has chosen to move on and remarry but this is no slight against her ability to care about her deceased daughter. At the beginning of the film, parallels are created using cross-cutting to show Mary at a group counseling session for those who have lost loved ones, and Freddy at the strip-club with his buddies. Later we see Mary at her daughter’s graveside, sat peacefully as though she has slowly come to terms with what has happened but has put the effort in to do so. Like I said before, neither of the parents’ way of coping is illegitimate it’s just that, without generalising, it is just natural for men to dwell in the negative and tempestuous side of things, hitting the bottle and feeling sorry for themselves whilst women may be more fearful of letting that pain turn to hate. There is a point in the film where Freddy tells Mary that she’d be lying if she didn’t feel “pride and relief” in hearing that John Booth had been killed. Freddy thinks he is being honest about his vendetta and hatred and that Mary is just in denial or to afraid to admit it and on a surface level that might be the case, however the moving ending of the film teaches Freddy and the viewer that he was the one who was to afraid to face his true feelings, trying to convince himself that killing Booth was the only way he could move on.

The Crossing Guard is a satisfying film to watch because it is one that will leave you hypnotised even if just for a few moments during the rolling of the end credits, with Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Missing’ providing a complimentary haunting sensation as it blends in with the final scene of the film. The performances are good ones all around; Houston looks great and even though her and Nicholson’s on screen time together isn’t huge, they have a good chemistry, both communicating passionately whether in a volatile or sensitive manner. Nicholson is great as always, probably drawing from his own personal experiences in his ability to live on the edge as he does in this. He has also been given an opportunity in this film to expand on his usual repertoire of the slick, sharp, relaxed man of the world, as this is the first time I have seen him so despondent as to break down into tears. David Morse does well in playing with strength, intensity and solicitude, showing signs of Russell Crowe and Michael Madsen in his performance. I think that The Crossing Guard is definitely an achievement Sean Penn should feel proud of, similar in theme and tone to Mystic River, a film in which Penn was the one to play the grieving father and may have even influenced.

Through a Glass, Darkly

“I sat in the wreck, holding Karin, when reality cracked… reality…cracked, and I fell out. It’s like in dreams, anything can happen. Anything!”

Through as Glass Darkly is the first in a supposed Faith Trilogy (which also include Winter Light and The Silence), written and directed by Ingmar Bergman about God making contact. On an island called Faro a schizophrenic woman called Karin (Harriet Andersson) lives with her husband Martin (Max Von Sydow) and brother Minus (Lars Passgard). The father David (Gunnar Bjornstrand) is a novelist who visits his family on the island for the first time in a long while (possibly because of Karin’s recent release from an asylum), and it is his detachment from his children (Karin and Minus) that anchors the film’s emotional tension.

The core of the film revolves around Karin and the voices that speak to her, which one night lure her to an attic room in their chateaux, and to a door in the wall which Karin comes to believe is a gateway to heaven. She begins the film as a joyful, comforted girl who draws on the genuine love from her family to keep sane. However as things progress and her guilt for the burden she is to her husband becomes sharper, her mental state degenerates until she finally has an encounter with the God that she has been looking forward too. Unfortunately the God that greets her is an arachnid with a cold stone face.

Karin’s psychotic illness has not only afforded her the ability to subjectively tap into God’s line, but also to become more discerning and thus more sensitive to the repressed difficulties that exist in her family. Her fits/outbursts are like explosions of these difficulties that are trying to assimilate both the spiritual connection she believes she has and the anger towards her father’s abandonment. Throughout the film she is referred to as a child which suggests that like a child is said to be able to perceive preternatural things because of their open mind/gullibility (you choose), so can Karin because of her mental degeneration sense God around her, having the knowledge of his supposed existence to decode the messages He/She is sending her.

The two men of the film Martin and David speak of the weather conditions in such a familiar way, that they sort of personify them as though they were people who had a very important bearing on their lives. As though these conditions were parts of the character’s souls. The cinematography, as per usual in a Bergman film, is of high quality and enhances these conditions of the cold and the wind through grand shots of the ocean, sky and beach of pebbles as well as the crumbling chateaux and its annexed statues and pillars of rocks that all add to the usual feelings of isolation and clarity and create a remarkable sensation of rapture and vulnerability. The darkly grey clouds, thunderstorms and tumultuous waves circulate this. The sound of a passing ship’s foghorn becomes Karin’s “spidey-sense” as it intermittently pipes out with the squawking of seagulls; sounds that pierce the deadly quiet and take Karin away from the warmth of her shared bed with Martin and to a confused state where it is the wallpaper’s whispers and not love that promises her peace of mind. All these natural constructions are like traffic signals that aid in the characters’ movements and nature of conversation, whether it be the temperature or God.

Whether Karin’s connection to God is real or only in her imagination is left ambiguous as the viewer sees and hears what Karin does but Martin, David and Minus do not. Karin is caught between two worlds, reality and dream and because of her schizophrenic condition; her experiences are not taken seriously by her family. It is possible that Bergman is commenting on the hypocrisy of faith whereby Karin is diagnosed as insane because she has an actual connection with God when most believers follow blindly with no evidence. There seems to be a catch 22 situation when having faith, as nobody is actually seen as worthy enough to bask in God’s glow and so those that say they have are ridiculed or persecuted. Karin’s increasingly manic preoccupation with the wallpaper God is also the cause of the pressure that is being exerted on her relationship with Martin. This is not the first time that Bergman has linked faith to the failure of human relationships; neglecting the goodness or “Godness” in people for something that is unattainable.

A great scene is a trademark Bergman one, where two characters analyse one another’s virtues or lack there of. In this example we have Martin reproaching David for being a selfish and inconsiderate father who is a disgusting human being for wanting to exploit his daughter’s illness for novel material. It is these kinds of scenes that push the viewer to be self-reflective, although it is very hard to feel shame when you’re enjoying the sharp, assassinating dialogue that reveals Bergman’s misanthropism.

Max von Sydow gives a confident and reassuring performance as Karin’s stalwart husband who sticks by her side no matter how crazy or paranoid he believes she is becoming. Lars Passgard plays Minus well, showing his desperate need for affection and efforts in understanding the nature of mature relations, trying to make the transition from being a young man into an adult. Gunnar Bjornstrand is brilliant as David, a man who is self-assured but aware of his major character flaws, but who nevertheless dearly loves his children and has a long awaited but conclusive talk with his son in the final scene. Harriet Andersson is sweet, charming and in the depths of despair, playing Karin with a great affinity for her situation.

Through a Glass Darkly is about God communicating, albeit to a singular person, and how that person uses this contact in her relationships to people. Whilst this aspect is not really explored in an optimistic light (it never is with Bergman), this message is understood by David and Minus who come to realise that God is love and if Karin is in fact surrounded by God, it is because of their enveloping love for her. Karin’s disappointing and frightening encounter with the stony Spider-God of faith seems to symbolise the necessity to reject this type of faith as all it has done in this case is disturb an already disturbed young woman.

Fun Facts

Bergman originally planned to film on the Orkney Islands because of their stony landscapes but the film studio wanted to shoot somewhere closer to home and thankfully someone suggested Faro, which Bergman would also make his real-life home.

The title Through a Glass Darkly alludes to the biblical quotation, “for now we see through a glass darkly”. In an interview Bergman and Bjornstrand shed some more light on the title’s meaning when they said it referred to the fact that in Roman times, people didn’t have glass mirrors and so they used ones made of bronze metal which cast only a very dim/vague reflection.

Won an oscar for best foreign film.

Bande a Part

"I'm just talking, I'm fed up, it's impossible to get anywhere", says Arthur, the delinquent leader of the trio of misfits known as the band of outsiders. This sentiment is what resonates throughout a film which suggests that to be truly liberated, one must give in to life; prizing the free spirit over any expectations of success. Jean-Luc Godard is known for his free-spirited and subversive style of filmmaking, as a pioneer in fresh aesthetic techniques that translate to the screen as attempts at trying to wake the audience from a zombified resignation that comes when the expected is delivered.

You may be thinking that Bande a Part is not the kind of film that is going to entertain you on a boring, rainy afternoon because it's just another one of those odd foreign films that makes life more complicated than it needs to be. Well I'll tell you this is not so. For if you want a film experience that is going to make you say things like,"I can't believe that just happened", or "this is brilliant I've never seen anything so absurd", then this is the film for you. Without giving away to much, the smallest gestures from the movement of an arm, to the puff of a cigarette and even the wiggle of a bottom bring a heart-warming sensitivity to the viewer as this is a film that is all about the small things in life; the things we take for granted that cause our restlessness.