JohnWhisler

Most spiritually-themed movies present a show of beauty, a glorious vision of spirit, but Silence explores the dark night of the soul, the suffering of spiritual doubt, and the feelings of being forsaken. Martin Scorsese’s filmic spiritual journey is like his Akira Kurosawa film. It’s sensual, open-ended, reflective, and, like a good teacher, it makes you ask questions. The story, based on Shusaku Endo’s book of the same title, follows two priests, or padres, but focuses on one man, Padre Rodrigues, brilliantly played by Andrew Garfield. Rodrigues and his fellow padre, Garrpe (Adam Driver), head off to Japan to find their mentor, Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Japanese officials have been killing Christians to preserve the religion of their homeland. The Catholic priests set out on a dangerous quest to continue their mission. The two are confronted with the terrifying reality of their potential deaths by beheading and of the heavy responsibilities of bringing hope to the local faithful. One can’t help but think of the contemporary persecutions of many religions and how each has been on both the receiving and the giving end of violence over millennia. But a man’s religion is not the same as a man’s spirit. Spirit rests in a deeper place, free from worldly ways. Rodrigues is driven to open himself to the most profound level of that resting place. Great movies give you something to think about afterwards. In this regard, Silence runs deep. Many ideas, issues, and ethical questions arise in its running time and there is much to ponder, not least of which is -- what would I do? When faith or the renunciation of faith become literally a matter of life and death, would we stand firm and die, or lie? We, and Padre Rodrigues, also have to battle with our question, what would Jesus do? Other questions occur, such as, what is mercy? How can one forgive? What use is suffering? Just as we’re noticing that Andrew Garfield’s character is starting to look like Jesus, Rodrigues is directly accused of egotistically imitating Jesus. Thankfully, the film never preaches. The questions and the answers, as a good teacher is well aware, are best left to you. Silence, in an overview of Scorsese’s career, is a personal and integral work and will be regarded as essential. Silence, in Buddhism and Christianity and all great religions, is at the core of spiritual yearning. When our ideas and ambitions and questions come to a terminus, ever-present silence remains.

Reality is a feature-length film directed by Quentin Dupiex. Like perceived reality, Reality is alternately, and sometimes simultaneously, boring and fascinating. Like real reality, it simply is what it is, and it is unpredictable and most often incomprehensible. Reality is the name of a little girl, the daughter of a hunter, who sees something fall from the gutted boar her father dresses. What comes out of the guts of the butchered boar is a whole VHS video cassette. But what is on that blue video tape? This facet of the story is not quite a vignette, but one reflection in a hall of mirrors of narrative that takes place within a broader story of a cameraman (Alain Chabat) who would be director, if a producer would be willing to finance his idea for a horror film. The producer will produce only if our would-be director can record the greatest groan in cinematic history. Alain Chabat as Jason Tanta is charmingly bewildered and determined. The rest of the cast is excellent and the inclusion of Americans Jon Heder and Eric Wareheim in this French film suggest laughs, but it’s bewilderment that is the sustained note. Kyla Kenedy plays Reality perfectly, without a false moment. Reality is not necessarily symbolic, but it’s also not existential. Reality approaches the surreal, but at the edge, dives into society’s Dada pool where it struggles and thrashes, submerged in the nightmarish mundane. Reality is positioned near the top of the list of the strangest movies I have ever seen. Director Dupiex has ventured into this boundary-blurring terrain before. In his first film, called NonFilm (2002), which is described as comedy, an actor awakens mid-movie shoot in utter confusion. The crew is accidentally killed, but the actors continue on, shooting the rest of their film without camera or script. Curiously, after watching Reality, my wife and I browsed a local thrift shop and I found a used DVD of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, NY. Watching it the same day was a mystical experience and I wondered if I had fallen into Reality. Comparisons could be made with Synecdoche, NY, but Dupiex has used narrative and the self-referencing construction of film stories (within stories) in a deconstructive way that points more to the function of the viewer. Pointing to the process of comprehension (or non-comprehension) places the viewer in a more present role, and in Reality, thematic concerns have seemingly been replaced by story-telling techniques, giving it a post-modern sensibility. Reality is the kind of movie some people will not be able to watch all the way through. But it is a movie some will watch many times, puzzling over the ultimate question, “What is Reality?” Reality is a feature-length film directed by Quentin Dupiex…

The Queen of Versailles is an important historical document because it’s a microcosm of the financial collapse of 2008 and its aftermath. Director Lauren Greenfield began her feature-length documentary with the goal of chronicling the audacious construction of a new residence, the largest in the United States, based on and named after Louis the 14th’s old digs, Versailles. What began as being potentially focused on this dream of the “King of Timeshares,” David Siegel, it was his queen that won over the director and subsequently the viewer. We’re introduced to the King and Queen in their home as they pose for professional photographs. Between shots they divulge bits of history. Our queen of the would-be kingdom is Jackie Siegel. She grew up in modest means, though beautiful and smart. Rather than remain a secretary, she became an engineer. She eventually saw the writing on the wall as an older co-worker counted down his days to retirement. After winning a beauty contest, and one marriage and divorce later, she met mega-wealthy David Siegel. She was ready to settle down and make a family. David Siegel, a single-minded workaholic, launched and expanded his timeshare kingdom to epic proportions and it thrived in a culture of living on credit. One particular quote would seem to be his personal philosophy as well as his business model: “Everyone wants to be rich; if they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich, and if they don’t want to feel rich, they’re probably dead.” His employees high-pressure sell vacation timeshares to “…anyone who is breathing.” The fact that these buyers may not be able to make their payments doesn’t seem to be a concern. His hubris wasn’t limited to business dealings, but ran into politics. “I got George W elected president – personally, got him elected president,” Siegel says at one point in an interview. “Now, had I not stuck my big nose into it, there probably wouldn’t have been an Iraqi War (chuckling to himself), and maybe we might have been better off. I don’t know.” When asked how he was personally responsible for getting George W. Bush into office, Siegel replied “I, I would rather not say, because it may not necessarily have been legal.” Another question that doesn’t seem to cross his mind is asking himself what gives him the right to influence an election. After the economic freefall, Siegel explained the challenges his business faced, “My business depends heavily on easy access to cheap money. We sell our product for 10% down and we take back a 90% mortgage. What we used to do was take those mortgages to the banks, and they would give us an advance. Well, unless we can turn that mortgage into cash, I can’t very well pay my employees with mortgages every week. But the banks are frozen, as far as my business is concerned.” Banks were no longer giving out loans and the life of living on credit was getting precarious, not just for regular citizens but for the one percent as well. Like a latter stage Charles Foster Kane, Siegel stews in his mansion wondering how he will go about “…finding the money.” At one jaw-dropping point, Siegel laments, “I haven’t put anything aside [for college].” Meanwhile, five million dollars’ worth of Italian marble sits on pallets at a construction site at his would-be Versailles. Siegel’s first son shares in his father’s misery, but more as an employee than a caring relative. “My father and I aren’t close on a personal level because it’s always been a business relationship.” The son hasn’t fallen far from the fatherly tree, referring to their clients as “moochers” who happen to accept the free tickets to Las Vegas shows they’ve been offered once they’ve endured an aggressive timeshare sales pitch. The glimmer of hope, of love, in this sad mess comes from Jackie and their nannies. Jackie’s support of her husband and family during this time is commendable and is apparently the best she can do. While her husband wrestles with his ego and his desire to keep and continue construction on Versailles, Jackie has started a community thrift shop that sells hand-me-downs to struggling families. The nannies give the love to the Siegel children that they cannot give to their own children, thousands of miles away in the Philippines. One is left only with the hope that love will prevail in this misguided, materialistic family, and in this similarly troubled world.

A crazy quilt of interwoven stories, dreams, asides, and bizarre segues, The Forbidden Room is a visual and narrative homage to lost films and strange, psychic searchings. Immediately, The Forbidden Room is beautiful – a genuine work of art. A good portion of this aesthetic appeal is due to Guy Maddin’s co-director and former student, Evan Johnson. The degree of post-production work that went into this digital feature must have been daunting to take on and is just as daunting for the viewer to take in. The apparent film bubbles and morphs in an astonishing kaleidoscope of imagery that appears to be literally degrading while being projected. Various film stocks are imitated and a veritable film history flickers before our wondering eyes as the stark black and white compositions of the German Expressionist style give way to a heavily saturated color palate that recalls the 1970s, and so on. Likewise, the fervent sound design moves us viscerally through our mesmeric journey. If an audience member walked into the theater unaware of what was to come, the disorienting trip they embark upon might not be a much different experience than that of the viewer who knows going in that they are to witness a collection of re-imagined stories that were culled from a list of lost films. And what a wild re-imagination! After the initial introduction on How To Take A Bath (originally produced by exploitation pioneer Dwain Esper!), we go down the drain into a submarine hell of psychological space, submerged, and suffocating. Indeed, the crew aboard the submarine are running out of air and, breathless, they count down their time and **** oxygen from the air bubbles inside their flapjacks. But where is their Captain in all of this? Should they disturb him? Should they look for him? A woodsman named Cesare (after the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?) is discovered to have somehow found his way on board and proceeds to tell his story of a search of his own, for Margot, who has been captured by a wolf cult. On we meander through stories interrupted by dreams, tangents, and on and on, deeper and deeper we go, occasionally resurfacing a bit for a breath of air. In this way we travel the surreal and silly world of Guy Maddin. But Maddin’s world is not without its psychological gravitas. His stock archetypes reprise their roles: the amnesiac and the dead father. Genuinely bewildered, the amnesiac asks, “Who am I?” This is the central question of the mystic, and of the mythic, and is a fitting theme here. In the case of lost films one can only wonder what was, what might have been, and what form they may have taken. It’s in the imagining that life is given. In another scene a young woman is manipulated by a train psychiatrist. She bares her soul to reveal her inner child. Her reaction to being confronted with her inner child is one of the more shocking moments in cinema. The dead father returns via the dream of a moustache. His young son struggles with his lonely role, and ersatz moustache, for the sake of his mother. As we work back and forth through the stories, we work our way through the rooms of the submarine until we come to the Forbidden Room. We find the Captain in a stuporous state, suds on his face, soaking in a tub. Who is he? We’re nearly back where we started, with our search climaxing, breathing, coming up for air, re-emerging from Maddin’s inky deep.