Watchtower (***1/2) [played at screening only]

This intriguing Turkish drama brings two self-exiled characters together. A quiet man in a quiet place (in a quiet movie), Nihat (Olgun Simsek) has taken a job manning a mountaintop guardhouse. Seher (Nilay Erdonmez), the other main character is a college student who has left school to take a job as an onboard “hostess” for a struggling bus company. Part of her story becomes apparent when she suddenly becomes sick during a trip, but the first half of the movie is largely a careful set-up for the inevitable part where their stories intertwine.

However, what could devolve into a predictable storyline, in which two lonely souls find each other, is instead handled with subtlety and complexity, though with ambiguity that may frustrate some. For most of the movie, these are not talkative characters; there is no music to telegraph what we are meant to feel. Further, writer-director Pelin Esmer, a former documentary filmmaker, favors long takes where we simply watch the characters behave. So the movie is apt to frustrate those who favor quicker pacing or clear resolutions. On the other hand, those who appreciate character-driven stories will find a thoughtful drama that sheds light on the changing roles of women in Turkish society (but in a conservative region).

IMDb link

viewed 9/18/13 7:30 pm at Gershman [PFS screening] and posted 9/18/13

How I Ended This Summer (***)

The title sounds like this should be a coming-of-age story, and in a way it is, even if the main character is a twentysomething intern at an arctic observation post. His only companion is an older man with a wife and child back home in Russia. For quite a while, writer-director Aleksei Popogrebsky mostly seems to be giving us a sense of place. No pun intended, but the pace is kind of glacial. Time passes slowly in this place, and presumably the viewer is meant to feel that way. Popogrebsky gives us long takes of characters moving across the bleak landscape. Filming at an actual polar station, he uses time-lapse photography to show the light change, but not fade, in the arctic summer. A home viewer may be tempted to fast-forward (or turn off) the movie, but in the last half there is suspense, despair, and irony. The plot involves a bit of deception by the younger man, and unintended consequences. Much of the photography is striking.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/18/10

Tokyo! (**1/2)

Three directors, three segments.

The first part, Michel Gondry’s “Interior Design,” is probably the best, and for most of its length the most conventional. The Tokyo Gondry (Be Kind Rewind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) portrays is cramped and expensive, like many large cities. (The segment was adapted from a graphic novel called Cecil and Jordan in New York.) The main characters are a filmmaker and his girlfriend, who’ve just moved to the city and are temporarily sharing a friend’s tiny flat. Just as the plot and characters have been developed, though, it takes a turn for the fantastic, with the ending ultimately too abrupt and unsatisfying.

On the other hand, Leos Carax’s (Pola X) “Merde” was unsatisfying throughout. Featuring one of the most irritating central characters since Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered, a crazy red-haired dude who comes up from the sewers and creates mayhem, it’s the only segment featuring non-Japanese characters. Possibly it is saying something about the country’s cultural homogeneity. Or not.

Finally, Japan native Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Memories of Murder) presents “Shaking Tokyo,” the shortest and simplest segment, about the paradoxical isolation big-city residents can experience. Its central character is a hikkomori, a hermit who survives on a parental stipend and delivered food. A chance event leads to his first human interaction in ten years.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/14/09

House of Sand (***3/4)

--> --> ? Having been led by her husband across the windy, barren landscape of Northeastern Brazil to a nearly unpopulated coastal area in 1910, a woman (Fernanda Torres) struggles to find a means to leave, or to accommodate. The only other inhabitants are her mother and a few ex-slaves and their descendents. Brazilian star (and 1999 Oscar nominee) Fernanda Montenegro, who is the mother of Torres, plays the same role in the movie. As time goes by, the roles of the mother and daughter shift.

+ This is an absolutely beautiful movie, both in the story it tells and the stunning way the landscape is filmed. I see a lot of movies where the characters’ lives look more fun than mine, but this isn’t one of one of them. Yet other people’s boredom can become compelling when distilled into a two-hour drama. In the way House of Sand observes its main character dealing with enforced isolation, it reminded me of Cast Away, which I loved. As with that movie, when it skips ahead in time I felt almost cheated by not seeing what happened in the meantime. I don’t want to overextend the comparison, because in other ways the movies are very different. There’s no Tom Hanks talking to a volleyball. There’s not much talking at all, which is something I liked in this case. And the time period covered is far longer. When news comes of the outbreak of the Great War, it’s already ended. In a short time, this movie transports you to a place and time when it was possible to be that isolated. The ending is simple and cathartic.

- I did wonder what the woman did all day when she wasn’t scheming to leave. However, I think these parts of the story are intentionally left for the viewer to fill in.

= ***3/4 Not quirky minimalist like the movies of Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers), but haunting minimalist, sort of like those of South Korea’s Ki-duk Kim (3-Iron, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring), this may not be a movie for everyone. It’s not as depressing as it may seem, but there’s no laughs either. Still, I found it a moving piece about the way that the choices we make, and the choices life makes for us, shape our lives.

IMDb link