"La Bête Humaine" - Jean Renoir (1938)

In the late 1930s Jean Renoir was at the peak of his directorial career, turning out a string of film destined to be classics, including Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange, 1936), La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937), La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast, 1938), and La Règle du Jeu, (The Rules of the Game, 1939). La Bête Humaine, based on Émile Zola’s well-known 1890 novel, offered a mixture of styles that combined his characteristic humanism with a more fatalistic vision of people unable to overcome the dark forces controlling not only their destinies, but their very own actions, as well.

Zola’s La Bête Humaine was part of his Les Rougon-Macquart cycle of interlinked novels tracing the fortunes of several families over a number of generations. These “naturalistic” stories focused on the deleterious effects of overweening greed that he felt dominated the late 19th century industrial age. In addition he also seemed to have had questionable theories concerning the hereditary influence that ravenous appetites, such as indulgence in alcoholism and violence, had on the offspring of such greedy parents. Presumably out of respect for Zola’s original work, Renoir’s film does refer to this unsound theory when he has Lantier say that he felt he was “paying for all those grandfathers and fathers who drank – all those generations of drunkards who poisoned my blood”. But Renoir’s focus in his own version of La Bête Humaine was more personal and existential than Zola’s broader, and supposedly more “objective”, social commentary, and this was definitely a felicitous path to follow.

The story revolves around the activities of the following principal characters:

• Jacques Lantier (played by Jean Gabin), a railroad engineer on the Paris to Le Havre run.
• Pecqueux, Lantier’s close workmate and the stoker (French: “chauffeur”) on that train run.
• Monsieur Roubaud, the local station master at Le Havre.
• Séverine (played by Simone Simon), Roubaud’s wife

Renoir presented the story of Zola’s lengthy and involved novel of more than four hundred pages by organizing it into essentially four sections or “acts”.

1. Introduction of the Principal Characters (23 minutes).

The film opens, memorably, with a justly famous sequence of the steam engine speeding on the rails towards Le Havre. For about seven minutes the film shows the train from the perspective of the two operators, Lantier and Pecqueux, as they communicate by hand signals due to the noise of the roaring engine. This was an amazing feat of cinematography for the time, because it included some tracking shots inside the engine cab carried out while it was moving at speed. Renoir also had a cameraman sitting on the cowcatcher of the train in order to shoot head-on point-of-view shots as the train moved across railroad bridges and through tunnels, all a high speed. The impression one gets from this scene is that of the overwhelming power and speed of the train, and, by implication, the pace of “modern” life, which is beyond the means of the people who are trying to maintain it properly on its course.

When the train enters and stops in the Le Havre train station, Lantier discovers that the engine needs repairs, and he and Pecqueux are told to cool their heels in the area for two days. We are also introduced to Roubaud, the local station master, who dotes on his pretty and much younger wife, Séverine. After an argument with a wealthy and prickly passenger, Roubaud presses his wife to come with him to Paris and get Grandmorin, her godfather and a director of the railroad company, to protect his job.

Meanwhile with some time on his hands, Lantier goes to the nearby village of Breaute-Beuzeville to visit his aunt. Her daughter, his cousin Flore, he finds has grown up to be an attractive woman.  But while in the act of embracing her in a local field, he has a fit and almost strangles her, before a passing train snaps him out of his manic trance. Afterwards he confesses to her that this temporary madness is his permanent medical condition that he does not know how to overcome.

These opening scenes provide the basic character development of the principal roles. Roubaud is a proud individual, concerned with how others see him. His pretty wife, Séverine, is gentle, but a bit of a coquette. Lantier and Pecqueux are good, solid, working-class, individuals, but Lantier suffers from a mysterious temporary form of madness.

2. Roubaud and Séverine (31 minutes).

Roubaud and Séverine visit Paris, where Séverine visits Grandmorin and accomplishes her mission. However the emotionally insecure Roubaud becomes jealous about Grandmorin, and when he abusively questions his wife, he learns that she was once Grandmorin’s mistress. Furious, he forces Séverine to join him in a plot to kill Grandmorin on the train back to Le Havre. They accomplish the murder, but they are observed by Lantier, who was also on the train, returning from Breaute-Beuzeville.. When the police investigate the murder and interview all the passengers, however, Lantier withholds testifying against Roubaud and Séverine. The police magistrate falsely accuses someone else, the lower-class poacher Cabuche (played by Jean Renoir, himself). Nevertheless Séverine is suspicious that he might spill the beans, and she resolves to make friends with him. At the same time she informs her husband that the murder has made him repulsive to her and that she doesn’t want him to touch her any more.

3. The Affair with Séverine (22 minutes).

Lantier grows amorous towards Séverine, but she tells him that she only wants to be his friend, not his lover. Meanwhile, Roubaud, ignored by his wife, has become gloomy and aimless, and he spends more and more of his time gambling and losing money. One rainy night, while Roubaud is out gambling, Lantier arranges to see Séverine, and their mutual passion finally flares up and is unleashed. They make love in an empty rail-yard toolshed. Then they make plans to ambush Roubaud in the dark and kill him, but in the event at the critical moment, Lantier loses his nerve. At this point Roubaud, who had been a pole of focalization up to this point, pretty much vanishes from the story, and his murder of Grandmorin is never resolved by the police.

4. Meeting at the Dance Hall (25 minutes).

Now Séverine keeps her distance from Lantier. He makes another train run to Paris and back, and he sees her at a dance hall, now carousing with another man. When he confronts her, she tells him that it’s all over between them, because he cannot do what must be done to make her happy. He goes back to her place and promises that this time he will not lose his nerve and will carry out the murder of Roubaud for sure. She is finally convinced and agrees to run away with him if he does it. But when they mistakenly hear a noise that Roubaud might be approaching, Lantier has another one of his seizures and brutally kills Séverine, instead. In a stupor he returns to the railroad yard and gets on the train out of Le Havre. While the train is rolling at high speed, he blankly confesses to Pecqueux that he has just committed murder. Then he seems to have another seizure, attacks Pecqueux, and then jumps from the speeding train to his death.

With a plot structure like that, one can only marvel at how Renoir made an interesting film out of it. Many of the actions in the story, at least as presented on film, lack convincing motivation. Not only is Lantier’s violence mindless, but Roubaud’s jealous psyche is bizarre: he first obsessively murders Grandmorin and then later seems unaccountably indifferent to Séverine’s infidelity with Lantier. All three principal characters, Lantier, Séverine, and Roubaud, are driven by some unexplained inner compulsions to do things that can only make themselves and others around them miserable. Lantier, of course, is the most obvious case, since his fits of madness are directed at targets most precious to him: Flore, Séverine, and finally, his own life. Roubaud is also self-destructive, although on a smaller scale. And Séverine, who despite always seeming to have a smile on her face, actually sees herself as a miserable, tormented woman who must find a way to free herself. One might be tempted to view these three characters as simply odd, disturbed individuals – outliers who don’t deserve our sympathy. And yet Renoir manages to evoke out compassion for all three of them. Even Roubaud seems, for the most part, to be a pathetic individual. By humanizing them, there is an implicit suggestion that all of us have a “beast” lurking inside of ourselves, just as much as we may also have an inner “Buddha”, as well.

A word must be said in this respect about the acting of Jean Gabin, as Lantier, and Simone Simon as Séverine. At this time Gabin was at the height of his career and was the star of a string of movies by Marcel Carné, Julian Duvivier, and Renoir during these years. In all cases he embodied the ideal image that Frenchmen had of the common man – that of a sturdy, honest man of natural integrity. This was the French period of the National Front, with its liberal ideals of uniting all classes under a common banner. Gabin had the straightforward style that appealed to both women and men during this period. Simone Simon, who would later go to the United States and appear in Cat People (1942) and The Curse of the Cat People (1944), was not quite such a stellar figure at the box office, but she is absolutely magnetic here in La Bête Humaine. She manifests the innate qualities of a truly seductive femme fatale: she projects the innocence of a person that is so natural and compelling, probably even to herself, that one fails to see the underlying destructive selfishness.

Renoir captures the mood and feelings of the relationship between Lantier and Séverine, especially during their tryst on the rainy night, with artful studio lighting that emphasizes the almost secret emotional sanctuary that their relationship confers on them. Such scenes contrast with the raw, brute nature of the railroad trains that symbolize the uncontrollable forces that dominate their lives. Renoir bridges this contrast by his unique mise-en-scène, which shifts smoothly between intimate closeups and camera shots from a distance. Some critics site Renoir’s penchant for “framing” his shots through door and window frames, but I think this is more a matter of maintaining the camera at a certain distance, perforce physically locating it outside the room. This both distances the viewer somewhat from the scene and also situates the characters in the environment or landscape. Thus he often shows individuals in extreme long shot, dwarfed by their natural surroundings. The resulting effect is to ground the destinies of his players in the greater context that is largely outside their control.

The period of the late 1930s was one of growing pessimism in Europe, when Spain was falling apart and Nazi Germany’s bellicosity was increasingly ominous. An air of fatalism was starting to take hold on the European mind. The gloomy atmosphere in Europe has led social commentators to identify La Bête Humaine with Carné’s “Poetic Realism” films, Le Quai des Brumes (1938) and Le Jour se Léve (1939), although there are some stylistic differences between Renoir and Carné. Renoir’s focus covers a broader spectrum of characters who are grounded in a particular situation and circumstances. Carné, on the other hand, tends to focus more closely on a single characters, whose environmental situation is more distant and abstract.

Renoir and Carné have also both been identified with a narrative style that was later to be called film noir. To be sure, it is hard to find a more seductive femme fatale, a signal feature of film noir, than Séverine in La Bête Humaine. But since Lantier’s violent actions are so unmotivated and contradictory to his own desires, La Bête Humaine has a kind of philosophical despair to it that puts it on a different level from the romantic/existential despair of Le Jour se Léve. This is both a strength and a weakness. On the negative side, we have to admit that Lantier’s sporadic insanity has a distancing effect on the viewer, because his violence is so thoroughly unmotivated. On the positive side, though, this distancing supports Renoir’s stepping back and surrounding Lantier in the larger context and more uplifting milieu of working-class camaraderie and solidarity, embodied by the loyalty of his friend, Pecqueux (played to perfection by Julien Carette). At the end of the film, Renoir altered Zola’s catastrophic ending (in which an on-train fistfight between Lantier and Pecqueux led to them falling to their deaths, thereby dooming the train full of passengers) and closed with Pecqueux and the other train workers returning to work.
★★★½ 

"Shanghai Express" - Josef von Sternberg (1932)

Shanghai Express was the fourth, and one of the best, of the seven outstanding films that Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s. Unlike their preceding film, Dishonored (1931), which had more of a historical/adventure spin to it, Shanghai Express was a return to the moody and deeply romantic style that characterized Morocco (1930). The story follows the fate of a group of mostly European travellers who take the train from Peking (which had recently been renamed, “Beiping”) to Shanghai. This was the “Warlord Period” of 20th century Chinese history, and the Nationalist Government at that time only had tenuous control over various warlords and rebel groups that were operating about the country.

Von Sternberg was always a master of cinematography, but this film was perhaps his masterpiece in chiaroscuro and atmospheric lighting. Working in the studio, he again managed to evoke an exotic realm that fires our imagination, even if it may not have perfectly matched the physical reality. Like Wong Kar Wai who came much later, von Sternberg effectively used physical confinement and cramped quarters, often setting his characters behind partially obscuring architectural artifacts in the foreground, to create the crowded, but often lonely, atmosphere of modern urban society. This cinematic style, combined with his stories which featured characters more obsessed about their pasts than their futures, set the parameters that came to make up film noir. Adding to these effects is the fact that this film takes place almost entirely at night and in the middle of a confusing Chinese civil war in which it is difficult to determine who can be trusted.

In fact the question of trust and faith turns out to be the principal theme of the film. The story begins with passengers boarding the first-class compartments of the Shanghai Express in Beiping. We are quickly introduced to a diverse set of these passengers, as they begin to make each others’ acquaintances. Many of them turn out to be misrepresenting themselves to varying degrees. They are

• “Shanghai Lilly” (played by Marlene Dietrich), whose name is really Magdalen. She is a “coaster” – a courtesan who travels up and down the east coast of China “living by her wits”, as they say.
• Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook), a medical doctor serving in the British military.
• Henry Chang, an enigmatic half-Chinese traveller.
• Hui Fei, another young “coaster”, but of Chinese ethnicity.
• Sam Salt, a loud, no-nonsense American.
• Reverend Carmichael, a highly moralistic Christian pastor from England.
• Mrs. Haggerty, an elderly American lady who runs a boarding house in Shanghai
• Eric Baum, an elderly German businessman.
• Major Lenard (played by Emile Chautard, a long-time French writer, director, and actor) an elderly French military officer.

As the train sets out, Harvey recognizes fellow passenger Shanghai Lilly as his former lover, Magdalen, whom he has not seen since he jealously broke off their relationship five years earlier. It is clear that they still have strong, though suppressed, feelings for each other. The issue is Magdalen’s status. Five years earlier she had played the game of trying to make the clearly not-very-demonstrative Harvey jealous, but this ploy had backfired when he had angrily walked out. Disconsolate afterwards and without any purpose to her life, she had taken on many other lovers and had become a “fallen woman”. Now, though she admits her foolish mistake, Harvey doesn’t believe her. Reflecting on what she may have been doing during their time apart, he says, “I wish you could tell me there had been no other men.”, and she responds by saying, “I wish I could, Doc, but five years is a long time.” This is the abiding character of Marlene Dietrich in all her films: utter unashamed authenticity about who she is. You must take her on her terms.

Reverend Carmichael certainly doesn’t take her on any terms. He sternly warns the other passengers in the carriage about the “rotten souls” of the two prostitutes on the train. Harvey, the surgeon and man of science, scoffs at Carmichael’s absurd claims, scornfully questioning how Carmichael could ever have acquired the medical knowledge first to identify the location the soul in the human body and then to ascertain its state of rottenness.

The train is soon stopped by government soldiers, and all passengers are forced to leave their carriages and show their documents. One of the Chinese passengers is singled out and arrested. In the commotion Henry Chang goes to a nearby telegraph office and sends a coded message to someone indicating that (a) a top rebel agent has been arrested, (b) that the train must be stopped by rebel forces at an upcoming station, and, by his signed codeword, that (c) he, himself, is the “Number 1" in the rebel warlord organization.

In due course, the Shanghai Express is stopped by attacking rebel soldiers, as Chang had ordered, and after many Chinese government soldiers are killed, all the passengers are again ordered to disembark from the train. Chang now reveals himself as the rebel commander that he is, and he begins examining the passengers in order to identify a suitable hostage that he can use to swap with the government in exchange for his own highly valued assistant now in government custody. When he discovers that Harvey is travelling to Shanghai in order to perform critical brain surgery on the governor general there, Chang knows that he has found his man. Another telegram is sent, and the English persuade the Chinese government to agree to make the trade.

Meanwhile Magdalen, agitated with worry about what might happen to Harvey, urges Reverend Carmichael to do something. He tells her that the only thing she can do is to pray to God, and when she doubts that God would listen to such a sinner as herself, he assures her that God remains on speaking terms with everybody. So she sneaks off to a darkened train compartment and kneels down in fervent prayer.

Later during the waiting for the returned rebel agent, Chang, who has had his eye on both Shanghai Lilly (Magdalen) and Hui Fei, threateningly propositions Lilly, and Harvey intercedes forcefully by punching him. Furious about this loss of face, the ruthless Chang has Harvey bound to a chair and swears to Lilly that he will have Harvey’s eyes gouged out prior to returning him to the government. Distraught upon hearing this, Lilly resolutely decides to sacrifice herself for her love and offers to become Chang’s mistress if he will spare Harvey. Chang accepts the deal and releases Harvey, but Hui Fei, who had earlier been forced to submit to Chang’s sexual demands, stabs and kills the monster when he is not looking. Before the rebels can react, everybody scrambles to get back on to the train, and it pulls out of the station on the way to Shanghai.

Now Magdalen and Harvey are safe, but Harvey knows nothing of Magdalen’s willingness to sacrifice herself for his safety. In his eyes, Magdalen was simply willing to sell herself to another man. And Magdalen never tells him – she never tries to apologise for her past deeds. She offers her love unconditionally and demands the same in return. This is always von Sternberg’s characterisation of true love. Finally, at the Shanghai train station when they appear to be about to separate for the last time, Harvey breaks down and comes over to Magdalen. Confessing his total and unconditional love for her, they finally embrace.

The theme of love and faith overcoming all obstacles has rarely been so exquisitely evoked as in Shanghai Express. Von Sternberg has created in the film a dark, Expressionistic journey down into the depths of Hell and back, with love the only saving grace. Everyone you meet may have some secrets, and sometimes you must simply have blind faith in them. In fact several of the passengers on the train turn out to be not what they seem. Chang, of course, turns out not to be a businessman, but a rebel warlord. Major Lenard turns out not really to be a major; he was discharged from the military, but wishes to conceal that fact from his family. Eric Baum turns out not to be a respectable businessman, but a dealer in illegal opium. Hui Fei appears to be submissive, but she is capable of murdering her assailant. Even kindly Mrs. Haggerty tries to sneak her pet dog past the authorities and into her compartment on the train. And Reverend Carmichael finally recognizes and confesses that the women with the supposedly “rotten soul” is actually worth much more than all the others.

The acting in the film is generally good, but Eugene Palette’s performance as the American Sam Salt is a bit overbearing. Warner Oland, who convincingly played the loathsome Henry Chang, was actually of Swedish descent, but he made a career out of playing Chinese – he was famous for his role as Charlie Chan during the 1930s. The role of Hui Fei was played by Anna May Wong, who was the first Chinese star in American movies. Gustav von Seyffertitz, who had a major role in Dishonored, here played the role of Eric Baum in his usual emphatic fashion. Clive Brooks, though, is excessively wooden and stiff as Captain Harvey. The British stiff upper-lip tradition is taken to such lengths in his case that one wonders if there is any capacity at all for romantic passion beneath that uniform. Von Sternberg had a much more effective British actor in his next film, Blonde Venus, with Herbert Marshall, who had the right combination of reserve and emotion.

Marlene Dietrich, though, makes up for any shortcomings on the parts of the other performances. Dietrich characteristically had the magical persona, as projected by Josef von Sternberg, of always being both direct and demure. She suggests delicacy, but is nevertheless capable of forcefulness. She is authentic, yet she is invariably ironic: she is always composed and resigned to her fate – and there is always a suggestion that there is more to the story than she cares to tell. There are affinities between Dietrich and Chinese actress Gong Li (as directed by Zhang Yimou). Both are physically robust, yet graceful and sensitive. And with both of them, there is the suggestion of strong passion that lurks just below the surface.

What makes the film an outstanding experience, though, is not so much the ironies of the characterizations, but the masterful visual expression of the story. It is a characteristic of von Sternberg’s films to portray the action events in elaborately shot, but brief and fast-paced impressionistic sequences, while the “relationship” scenes are lingering, more fully rounded explorations of human interaction. Von Sternberg switches back and forth in this fashion between (a) the exotic and ominous details of the journey, (b) the colorful and distracting prattle of the expatriate wayfarers, and (c) the anguish felt by the former lovers. This is all punctuated by the visual and aural motif of the steam-driven train relentlessly chugging towards the dark destiny that awaits them all (an effect that Von Sternberg similarly achieved in Morocco, with the legionnaires’ drumbeat incessantly signalling the dark forces pulling Legionnaire Brown away from Amy Jolly). In Shanghai Express it all comes together – a dark, romantic, expressionistic dream.
★★★★

“The Kite Runner” - Marc Forster (2007)

The Kite Runner (2007), directed by Marc Foster, is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of an Afghan boy, Amir, who escapes the violent destruction of his homeland after the fall of the monarchy and comes to live with his father in the United States. But years later he must return to Afghanistan to come to terms with the ghosts that haunt his past. Although Forster is a German-Swiss director working mostly in the United States, the film has an international cast, with mostly Afghan and Iranian performers, and the dialogue is in Dari, the dialect of Persian that is the principal language of Afghanistan.

The story takes place over three separate time periods in 1978, 1988, and 2000, with the two earlier periods presented as extended flashbacks. At the beginning of the film, Amir is a young, just-published novelist, living in California who receives a phone call from an old family friend, Rahim Khan. Rahim urges him to come to see him in Pakistan, telling him “there is a way to be good again”, and as the story progresses, those words will resonate with the major theme of the story.

Then the film shifts to an extended flashback of Amir, as a 13-year-old boy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1978. He is the son of a wealthy and well-educated financier, “Baba” (i.e. "Father"), who lost his wife in Amir’s childbirth. In those days, Afghanistan, like Iran, had a lively and relatively open society (traditionally, the two societies were similar), with women far more free to dress (hijab was not enforced), socialize, and live, than exists today in either society. Baba is an outspoken, leonine character who is disdainful of his gentle and nonconfrontational son. Amir is best friends with Hassan, the illiterate son of the family servant, and the two of them love to engage in kite-flying competitions, the goal of which is to use one’s own kite’s glass-powder-treated string to cut the string of a competitor kite so that it falls to the ground. A kite-flying team has two members, one of whom guides kite by pulling the string, while the other holds the spool and is also the “kite runner” – the person who runs after a captured kite and fetches it for the winner. Hassan almost worships the sensitive and bookish Amir and loyally stands up for and protects him whenever his friend is threatened by other boys. When they are flying kites, Hassan is the kite runner.

Although both Amir and Hassan are native Afghanis, Amir belongs to the majority Pashtun ethnic community, while Hassan belongs to the minority Hazara, which for complex reasons is subject to racist prejudice. On one occasion after Amir and Hassan have spectacularly won a citywide kite-flying competition, some older Pashtun bullies corner the kite-runner, Hassan, in an alley and rape him. Amir arrives to witness the brutality, but shamefully hides in the background, too fearful to interfere with the attack. This is the seminal event in the film, and it marks both boys. Afterwards Amir is unable to face his own cowardice, and he turns against Hassan, even falsely accusing him of stealing, which in a Moslem society is a very serious misdeed. His ultimate self-humiliation occurs when he succumbs to social custom at a party and silently shakes hands with Assef, the older boy who had raped Hassan. To resist the gesture would have been to acknowledge that he was privy to what had happened to Hassan and had merely watched.

After the Russians invade in late 1979, Amir and his father escape from Afghanistan and go to live in California. The scene shifts to another flashback period, this time in 1988, at which time Amir's father is now making a meager living by working at a gas station. Amir has just been graduated from a community college, and he meets an Afghani expatriate girl and falls in love. This part covers their courtship, which though it takes place in the new world, is still guided by very traditional Afghan customs. It may be interesting to compare these events with the courtship of another Asian immigrant young couple in The Namesake.

Finally, after more than an hour of these two flashbacks, the action returns to the “present”, in the year 2000. At this time Afghanistan is still in turmoil and in even worse circumstances, with the Taliban’s cruel and oppressive stranglehold fully established. Amir decides to accede to family-friend Rahim Khan’s request and come and see him in Pakistan. Upon arrival, Amir learns from Rahim two shocking pieces of news about his childhood friend, Hassan. First Hassan was actually his half-brother, and second Hassan and his wife have been killed by the Taliban. Hassan’s young son, Sohrab, has been removed to an orphanage. The last and only thing that Amir can do for his old friend now is to return to Afghanistan and rescue Sohrab from that oppressive society and take him back to America. Amir sets out on the journey, wearing a fake beard when he arrives in order to conform to the Taliban’s suffocating restrictions. This last part of the film is more of an action thriller, with Amir trying to dodge the Taliban thuggery and bring Sohrab out to safety. During the course of events, he witnesses another disturbingly brutal scene: the stoning of a young woman who has been accused of adultery. He even runs into Assef again, who is now a figure of some standing within the Taliban group. In the end he improbably manages to find Sohrab (who proves to have inherited his father’s mettle) and escape back to the US. In the final scenes he is shown with his new adopted, but still shell-shocked, son, Sohrab, teaching him about kite-flying. This time he is the loyal kite runner, trying to live up to the high standards set by Hassan.

The film is a good production, with a succession of high-impact, emotional scenes and fine acting throughout. The child actors are excellent, particularly Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, as Hassan, whose stubborn fidelity and good humor leave a lasting impression. Also praiseworthy are Zekeria Ebrahimi (Amir), Homayoun Ershadi (Baba), and Ali Danish Bakhtyari, in the small but important role of Sohrab. Because of the rape scene, however, the filmmakers have been criticized for underpaying the young Afghani actors and leaving them exposed to potentially violent recriminations in Afghanistan. Indeed, some of them have had to be removed from Afghanistan, after receiving threats, and Zekeria Ebrahimi has said that he now regrets ever having appeared in the film.

One of the difficulties with the narrative, which is not entirely overcome by the filmmakers upon bringing it to the screen, is the many themes that must be covered. The film has (at least) the following story themes to it:

• Buddy story (Amir and Hassan)
• Romance (Hassan and Soraya)
• Political thriller
• Father-son (Baba/Amir and Amir/Sohrab)
• Rescue and escape thriller
• Coming-of-age (Amir)
• Guilt and Redemption (Amir/Hassan)

It is difficult to do justice to all of these in a two-hour film. It is the last of them, concerning guilt and redemption on the part of Amir, which is the most important. But this thread is dropped for awhile midway through the film, when the story covers Amir’s romance and marriage, and the momentum lags over this period. When it is resumed upon Amir’s return to Afghanistan, it is difficult to get a sense of Amir’s real feelings about those earlier times.

Another difficulty is the artificiality of some of the narrative events. When you see Baba start to wince slightly, you just know that he is going to die of an illness soon. Some of the side characters are just a little bit too predictable. And Assef’s reappearance is particularly artificial.

The cinematography is very skillfully done, but its Hollywood-style dynamics are ostentatious and melodramatic. The same criticism could be leveled at Slumdog Millionaire, but it seems even more evident in this case. It is not helped by an overly intrusive score, which rather than employing purely Afghani-oriented instrumentation, wrong-headedly uses traditional Western orchestration. The kite-flying scenes, which mostly employ computer graphics, seem amazing when you watch them. But I think it is no fault of the filmmakers that it is probably just too difficult to convey the real feeling of flying a kite. As it is, we just see someone pulling a string, and then cut to two kites swirling near each other up in the sky. To me, it doesn’t work.

On the whole, I recommend the film. It is that first section with the two young boys back in old Afghanistan, though, that rings truest. Hassan’s doggedly loyal friendship is irredeemable and unforgettable.
★★★

“Raise the Red Lantern” - Zhang Yimou (1991)

Raise the Red Lantern (Dà Hóng Dēnglóng Gāogāo Guà, 1991) was director Zhang Yimou’s fourth feature film, coming right after his outstanding breakthrough feature, Ju Dou (1990) and again starring Gong Li. The story of the film, which depicts the travails of a concubine who has just joined the household of a rich family in northern China during the 1920s, is based on the 1990 novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong. Naturally, much of the critical comment about the film has concerned the status of women in traditional Chinese society and the degree to which the circumstances shown in the film reflect larger social and political issues. But what makes the film peculiarly attractive, almost hypnotically so, seems to lie elsewhere – not on the social plane, but on another, deeper, level.

This additional dimension arises from Zhang Yimou’s uniquely expressionistic visual style, which of course emphasizes color, but actually makes use of all aspects of the cinematic medium. In this connection the filmmaker I would most closely compare to Zhang Yimou is Michelangelo Antonioni. Both Zhang and Antonioni emphasize the emotive influence that the physical (i.e. visually observable) environment has on the characters and the story, and they are both known first to choose the physical settings for their films and then build their stories around them. Although Antonioni characteristically employed more camera movement than Zhang does to accentuate this effect, they both achieve an existential mood that permeates the events on display. As a result, although the films of both of them may touch on the social sphere somewhat, they ultimately reach a more profound level that suggests the universal struggles of the individual soul in a heartless and uncaring cosmos.

There is a further key aspect associated with Zhang Yimou’s style of this period, almost an essential aspect of it, that must be mentioned – the magnetic performances of his lead actress, Gong Li. I will discuss her connection with Zhang Yimou’s style, and the degree to which her presence is crucial, further on in this review. In the matter of Zhang’s cinematic style, Raise the Red Lantern is particularly interesting, because its purely visual stylistic virtues manage to overcome its weaknesses in other areas.

At the beginning of the story, the father of 19-year-old Songlian (Gong Li) has just died, and the loss of his income has left the family in such financial straits that her stepmother insists that she drop out of college and accept an arranged marriage. Presumably it must have been a considerable achievement for a woman from a non-wealthy family to have been studying at a college, and Songlian is obviously disconsolate at being forced to abandon everything for an arranged marriage. Expressing passive resignation to her materialistic stepmother’s wishes, she says a rich man might as well be selected. When she is warned that a wealthy husband would come at the price of her being only a concubine, she sighs, “isn’t that a woman’s fate?” And so her fate is sealed, and she is married into the wealthy Chen family.

The rest of the film takes place entirely inside the vast compound of the Chen family, where Songlian arrives to serve as the fourth mistress of the “Master”. All of Songlian’s material needs are met in this household; she lives in her own quarters and she has her own personal servant assigned to her. But she is essentially just a prisoner, a colorful bird in a gilded birdcage. The Chen household lives according to strictly enforced family rules and traditions which everyone must follow, servants and mistresses alike. Each mistress lives in her own little courtyard, and every evening the master has red lanterns raised round the courtyard of the mistress with whom he has chosen to spend the night. In preparation for the evening’s enjoyment, the chosen concubine is then given a luxurious foot massage by the senior servant. Being the youngest and freshest mistress, Songlian is immediately the master’s favorite, and the red lanterns are raised around her courtyard. But she soon learns that she will have to deal with an array of enemies within the household:

• Meishan, the pretty third mistress, is a former Peking opera singer and jealous of just having been supplanted as the master’s favorite. She is a spoiled, self-centered schemer who engages in all sorts of stratagems to both annoy Songlian and lure the master back to spending the nights with her.
• Yan’er, Songlian’s teenage servant, is also jealous of the new fourth mistress. Master Chen had earlier had sexual relations with her, and consequently she had hopeful delusions of being named the fourth mistress, herself. Now she proceeds to take out her resentment on the new fourth mistress. When she is not off in her dreamworld imagining the red lanterns being raised just for her own fanciful nights with the master, she acts spitefully and hurtfully towards Songlian in every way that she can.
• Zhuoyun, the second mistress, is warm and unassuming. She offers her friendship to Songlian and expresses her sympathies in connection with the scheming Meishan. But when Meishan later makes a peace with Songlian, she warns Songlian that Zhuoyun is deceptive and frankly even worse than she, herself, is: “she has a Buddha’s face, but a scorpion’s heart.” And indeed Songlian comes to discover the painful truth in Meishan’s warning.
• Yuru, the first wife, is much older and has a grown-up son. Although she has some ritual authority, she has long since been forgotten by the master, and it has been a long time since the red lanterns have been raised for her.

In this artificial and cloistered world Songlian finds herself playing the only game available: competing for the master’s selection. There is no love on the part of any of the parties, only the gratification that comes from winning the game. And there’s more to it than just winning that master’s attentions. It becomes clear to Songlian quickly enough that the servants only show real respect to the master’s current favorite mistress, the one for whom the red lanterns are being raised every night. The lower-ranking mistresses are essentially ignored. as a consequence In this microcosm, Master Chen is not only the law, but also the source of all values. Everything revolves around his whims. Songlian even hears that if a mistress ever proves to be unfaithful to the master, she is secretly hanged in a garret on the roof. And that horrifying prospect turns out to be more than just a rumor, as later events transpire to demonstrate.

Despite the master’s central importance to the governance and operation of the Chen household, though, he is rarely seen in the film, and when he appears, it is only in the background or in the distance. But the shadow he casts is perhaps more forceful than the real figure’s presence. Zhang Yimou’s claustrophobic visual focus is entirely on the machinations involving the women: the mistresses and the servants, and how they behave towards each other.

As the story progresses and the fourth-mistress Songlian struggles to hold her ground with respect to the other mistresses, she becomes increasingly frustrated – not only with how she is treated, but with the pointlessness of the whole enterprise. Her only options, it seems, are to serve as nothing more than either a utilized or a discarded garment for the master. Eventually the inevitable tragedies ensue. Songlian turns out to be unwittingly the cause of successive catastrophes which shatter others and ultimately take the ultimate toll on her own mind. She ends not only totally without hope, but deranged, as well.

Overall, the narrative of Raise the Red Lantern presents a relentlessly grim destruction of the human soul. From a cinematic and narrative perspective, the focalization is almost entirely with Songlian, but not exclusively so. Many of the shot perspectives are not strictly from the point of view of Songlia, but from the point of view of an some unseen, nosey viewer who is a privileged witness to her destruction. But in spite of the continuing grim picture presented in the film, it is nevertheless also continuously fascinating, as the viewer follows the superficially courteous, but insidious, ways in which the various women treat each other. In this respect it’s interesting to compare and contrast the attention to the women's circle in this film with Antonioni’s similarly women-focused story, Le Amiche. Both films concern a circle of upperclass women and the ways they use and abuse each other in seemingly civilized fashion. But the women are cast in vastly different circumstances -- Antonioni’s women in Le Amiche are situated in greatly different circumstances than are Zhang Yimou’s in Raise the Red Lantern. For instance Le Amiche is set in postwar Italy, where new opportunities were appearing, and the women were almost reveling in, and at the same time struggling to come to terms with, the new freedoms available to them. In Raise the Red Lantern, on the other hand, the lives of the women are completely circumscribed by oppressive, time-worn rules and Confucian traditions. Instead of exploring new freedoms, these women are struggling to find space for even the smallest bits of autonomy that is available to them.

In this context (of women and their relationships) we come back to the subject of Gong Li and the significant role she plays in all this. To me she is something of an enigma. While many Western viewers regard her as very beautiful, I find it interesting that none of my Chinese friends and acquaintances have ever identified her as alluring or good-looking. She is, at best, "OK" to them, but not particularly special. Of course what is beautiful is a matter of individual tastes, but the contrast along ethnocultural lines is striking. It seems that her appearance and manner resonate with some groups and not at all with others. First of all we might observe that she is not at all delicate like a flower, and she is not pretty like a picture. Instead, her face and demeanor suggest action, along with latent passions. And that, I suppose is the secret behind the magnetism that she brings to the screen for some people. It is this smoldering passion, seemingly ready to erupt at any time (though it never really does), that energizes Zhang Yimou’s visual spectacles. Her talent, then, is not simply a matter of playing a role and making it believable. In fact, when I revisit her films, I am not even confidant that her general acting is particularly skilled or convincing. Her displays of petulance in Raise the Red Lantern seem forced and artificial, and her reactions to Zhuoyun and Yan’er do not seem as spontaneous as they should be. When I compare her with Zhang Yimou’s more recent leading lady, Zhang Ziyi, it is the latter actress who may have more subtlety of expression and feeling. But somehow the hypnotic charm of Gong Li’s emotive glances overcomes any other limitations and permeates the scene. In this sense she reminds me of Claudia Cardinale. Her face and gestures are enough on their own to connote some mysterious longings for something unspoken, an emotion that frequently lies below the surface in Zhang Yimou’s films.

In Raise the Red Lantern that very expressive yearning for something more in life, something beyond the present circumstances, is what dominates the visual expression. The plot is not exceptional, and even the acting is somewhat uneven. But the entire cinematic experience is a visceral representation and demonstration of the metaphor of the "fly in the fly bottle". And the final images of the film display that fly trapped inside a red lantern. For whatever weaknesses it may have, Raise the Red Lantern, graced by Gong Li’s vivacious presence, is everlastingly memorable for making us linger on and wonder at that metaphorical image.
★★★★

"The Ghost Ship" - Val Lewton (directed by Mark Robson, 1943)

The Ghost Ship was the fifth successive low-budget “horror” film produced by Val Lewton in a short space of time, following The Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Seventh Victim (1943). This was 29-year-old Mark Robson’s second directorial outing, coming immediately after his inaugural effort, The Seventh Victim. Like all of Lewton’s films, the horror element does not arise from any explicitly established supernatural element, but comes from the dark, unfathomable recesses of the human mind. And because of this, even though The Ghost Ship, like most of Lewton’s productions, has an exotic setting well beyond the shadows of the big-city streets, I would still classify it with the others as a film noir.

The story is set on a merchant ship, Altair, on which young marine officer Tom Merriam has just been given his first assignment as third officer to Captain Will Stone. Though Merriam is cheerful and optimistic, the prospects look ominous from the outset. Before boarding, Merriam hears a blind street singer comment that the ship is cursed, and then he meets a spooky-looking mute shipmate, Finn, whose voice-over comments predict that there will be deaths on the upcoming voyage. And like all of Lewton’s films, the low-key lighting, even in bright daylight, creates shadows and darkness that persistently permeate the mood.

Merriam is warmly welcomed by the friendly, civilized Captain Stone, who says he chose Merriam as third-mate, because he thinks they share a common background and can become close companions. Merriam is suitably impressed, but he soon discovers that the mild-mannered captain is in fact a rigid authoritarian. There is also some other disquieting news. When Merriam first enters the third mate’s cabin, he learns that his predecessor had only recently died from violent convulsions. Then another crew member is found dead. Maybe the ship really is cursed.

When another crew member complains that the ship should dock at the next port to fill out the crew, Captain Stone becomes angry at the insubordination and secretly causes the poor fellow to die in an accident. But Merriam discovers what happened, accuses the captain of murder, and files a formal protest at the ship’s next port of call, San Sebastian (a name of a fictitious Carribean port also used in I Walked With a Zombie). A hearing is held, but the crew, mindful of their lowly status and fearful of the captain’s malice, refuse to back up Merriam, and the case is dropped.

Assuming that he has been fired, Merriam disembarks from the ship, but he gets accidentally knocked out in a brawl and brought back on board the Altair as it sets out to sea. Now trapped with a vengeful, deranged captain, and a fearful crew that refuses even to talk to him, Merriam knows that he is a clay pigeon awaiting a fatal attack. His fears are multiplied when he discovers that the locks have been removed from his sleeping quarters cabin door and window.

When the ship’s radio operator, Sparks, is ordered to respond falsely to a query from the San Sebastian office about whether Merriam is on board, he finally sees Captain Stone’s perfidy and goes to show Merriam the untruthful response message. But Sparks was observed by Stone emerging from that meeting, and shortly thereafter he, too, is reported dead of an “accident”. Upon hearing this, Merriam assaults Stone, but he is restrained by the crew and ordered to be bound and gagged in his bunk and then sedated. Things are looking pretty grim for Merriam at this point.

However, the untruthful radio message is discovered by Finn and is passed to others. Meanwhile Captain Stone grabs a knife and goes to finish off Merriam, who is still bound and gagged in his bunk and powerless to defend himself. But Stone is caught in the act by Finn, and they engage in a ferocious fight, before Finn finally stabs Stone with his own knife.

As is customary with Lewton’s films, the acting in The Ghost Ship is emphatic and almost stereotyped. While this would be a drawback in a more conventional drama, it plays satisfactorily in the present fast-paced and film noir circumstances. One welcome contributor is Sir Lancelot, the famous calypso singer, who plays a ship’s crew member and who had also appeared effectively in I Walked With a Zombie.

On the surface, the story and film seem pretty routine, but there are some interesting elements that make it more memorable than one might have expected. Of particular significance are the five atmospheric scenes, almost set-pieces, that serve as anchoring points for the narrative and help establish lasting mental images in the viewer’s mind.

1. Early on, there is a scene of a very heavy hoist hook on the ship that swings about dangerously, because it has not been tethered. The camera work and editing are excellent here, and the rough, dynamic conditions on board the ship are well presented by this single scene. The outcome of this scene is that it emphasizes the disconnect between Captain Stone’s neatnik fussiness and the realities of responsible ship management.
2. Later, Captain Stone is called upon to perform an emergency appendectomy that is to be guided by remote medical advice provided over the ship’s radio. Stone freezes at the critical moment, and Merriam has to take over. The tension is built up in the scene by excellent shifting between various close-ups. Similar to a scene in which Captain Queeg panics inThe Caine Mutiny, this scene calls into question Stone’s professional equanimity and mental stability.
3. The scene in which the crew member is buried and crushed by the heavy anchor chain is dynamic and brutal, with fast cuts between the panicking crew member and the oblivious sailors on deck feeding more chain into the chain portal. Stone’s calm when he locks the chain cabin door, thereby dooming the crew member, establishes Stone as a cold-blooded murderer.
4. Still later, after Merriam had been unwittingly brought back to the departing ship following his failed complaint about Stone at the San Sebastian office, he is depicted in his cabin fearfully concerned that Stone might attack him in the night. Lewton’s films often have scenes like this in which the protagonist is alone and fearful of danger from the darkness. The tension is built up such that any stray noise can elicit a panicked alarm. In this case claustrophobia is added to the mix, as Merriam tries ineffectually to find a way of booby-trapping the cabin entrance. This eerie scene emphasizes Merriam’s precarious circumstances and helplessness.
5. The final life-and-death struggle in Merriam’s cabin between the mute, Finn, and Stone is violent and climactic. Since it takes place in near darkness, the viewer struggles to make out who has the upper hand. Merriam, bound and gagged to his bunk, can only look on helplessly at what seems to be a mismatch favouring Stone. Again, like the other four scenes above, the violence and dynamic editing ensure that the tension is at the highest level.

Another aspect of the film that sticks in the memory concerns the seemingly simplistic theme of authority. The issue here, of course, is not just authority, but absolute authority. On first consideration, the theme appears to be trivial and overdone in the film, but I am reminded of remarks made to me by a well-known academic about authority in another context. He was speaking of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and my friend commented that such absolute power can only drive a person to madness. We tend to think of ruthless autocrats, such as Stalin, as always having been essentially psychopathic. But my friend argued that the possession of absolute authority actually drives a person mad, even if he didn’t start that way. On reflection, I wonder if there may be some truth to his comments. It would seem that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini was not such a murderous and ruthless dictator in his earlier days, but he became so towards the end, ordering undocumented mass executions of civilians. And now Khamanei shows similar wilful disregard for human values as the current Iranian Supreme Leader. Lord Acton’s dictum that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” should perhaps be amended to read, “... and absolute power drives you insane”.

In The Ghost Ship Captain Stone may have similarly been driven over the edge by awareness of his absolute authority of life and death over his crew. On a ship, a captain had, by rights, absolute authority and could exercise it without restraint. When the Altair stops in the port of San Sebastian and Stone meets his longtime friend, Charles, and his longtime lover, Ellen, it is evident that he is considered to be a civilized and even lovable human being. But at that time he confessed to Ellen his feelings that something was hounding his peace of mind and that he needed to work out his psychological problems. In this case a civilized, but not entirely stable, mind was not able to deal with the issues of boundless authority.

Absolute authority, of course, can have devastating consequences when applied to larger political scales. In fact over much of Chinese history, at least since the Song dynasty, it could be said that the Chinese emperor did have such absolute autocratic authority, and this came to accepted in Chinese society. At times the only allowable “expressions” of restraint were the natural occurrences of earthquakes and floods, which were interpreted to represent a withdrawal of “Heaven’s Mandate”. Only God was allowed to comment. At the time of the making of The Ghost Ship, the US was engaged in a world war with a Nazi regime whose leader also espoused such absolute authority. At the same time there were questions at home about how much extra authority the US government could reasonably assume in wartime in order to defeat the enemy. Was the seizure of absolute authority necessary to defeat such a tyrant? The argument made in this film seems to be that, even in military situations, the exercise of absolute authority should be restrained. It will inevitably lead to deranged decision-making.

Another theme of interest to some critics is the suggestion of homoerotic elements to the film. Stone seems unable to consummate his “love” for Ellen, and he seems to have expressed more warmth for Merriam early on than he later did for Ellen. And in fact Ellen does warn Merriam in a motherly fashion at one point not to live exclusively among men and to seek the company of women (which he does at the film’s end). However, I think the psychoanalytic analyses and interests in this area are exaggerated and should not be overly stressed.

The Ghost Ship ends rather abruptly, without the usual moralizing that would wrap up many melodramas. In the closing shots we simply see Merriam disembarking back at San Pedro and meeting a young lady who had been recommended to him by Ellen. He has been returned to civilization.
★★★