City of God

 It has been more than a few weeks since I saw this film. The week I had seen it, I had wanted to write about it but when I had intended to, an image formed in my mind: it was the post appearing on my blog with the title "City of God". Somehow it bothered me to have a title with the word 'God' in it on my blog. I am not exactly sure why it bothered me. This film is definitely not a religious film either. In fact, I think there is lots of irony in that the name of the city being City of God because it looks like a place "god forgot". The amount of crime and the lack of moral is immense. There is no order or karma either. So, in the end, I got over having a post with the word 'god' in its title on my blog, and here we are. 

While watching this film, the emotions I felt the most were sorrow and worry. The 'world' depicted in the film resembles a dystopia, except it is not set in the future, it is set in the recent past (the film was made in 2002), and it doesn't take place in some other place in space, it is happening in a real country in the world we live in. The main character is pretty much a serial killer and as I mentioned above the city has a high rate of crime, but none of this is mainstream in this film. To illustrate this, let me briefly mention a couple of examples. 

There is a rape scene in the film but it is much worse than what you would expect because 1) they don't actually show it, 2) he makes the girl's boyfriend watch it happen. Sometimes the strength of certain scenes comes from "not showing" and this is one of those instances (another example is in Persona how they didn't show any scenes showing the orgy but had the woman character describe it with words only). And, in this film while they didn't explicitly show the rape completely, they showed the boyfriend who was made to watch it happen, and, this is a product of the main character being a sociopath. Like, you are already a rapist (which is bad enough), why did you need the boyfriend to watch?!?! This is the general air in the film, there is always something worse on top of something that's already bad enough. 

There is lots of killing in the film too but there isn't much meaning to it, and they kill children too. Killing, you can get in many films. Blood? Yeah there are lots like that. But in this film, it is a manifold of killing. The blood didn't bother me at all, I must add, so I think it was in appropriate amount within the context and properly coloured. The scene that struck me the most was when the main guy (with his gang) caught two little boys and asked each of them to choose between their hands and feet, which one would they like to be shot? It's already cruel enough to pose this question, but it doesn't end there. In the meantime, the little boys are so scared they pee themselves. Now, don't get me wrong---I don't even like children (no offence), but I did feel bad for these boys. Then, each boy chooses the hand, and the bad guy shoots their feet. What bothered me the most here is that he is not just being bad or evil, this is not simply killing/hurting, this is worse: he is creating an illusion of choice just so that there is more disappointment. Unfortunately, dear reader, it doesn't end there either. Next, the gang head gives the gun to his 'apprentice' who is also more or less a kid, then asks him to choose one of the little boys and kill. At that moment, I was already feeling very bad, and all I could think of was 'please kill the younger one' (the two boys weren't of the same age, maybe something like at the ages of 4 and 8). Why did I think that? Well, it is already painful to think of something like this of course, but in my head, I thought it's easier for the older one to survive through this trauma. But they killed the older little boy and so the younger one was scarred for life now, had to get shot with his friend and had to witness his friend being killed in front of his eyes. I don't think he can come out of that ever. I am not a heroic person but I'd prefer dying to watching a friend getting killed in front of my eyes. In fact, this is the opposite of being heroic, it is very selfish---I merely want that because I wouldn't want to live with that image in my mind for the rest of my life. 

There was only one potential good thing in the film, it was a boy who wanted to be a photographer. Since every single thing was going bad in the film, and it seemed that they didn't want to have any positivity, I was afraid that something was going to happen to him as well. In the end, the events in the ending of the film weren't as bad as I thought, so overall I was okay with it. 

One of the reasons why all the violent scenes struck me was that I had read previously that there was only one actor in the film. That is, the rest of the cast were actually just ordinary people who were selected to act in the film. Okay, they had a short training but they weren't professional actors. So it made, to my eyes,  every single scene more real than it could ever be in a film. The reason why they did such a thing was actually because there weren't enough number of black actors to hire for the film. 

After one recovers from watching the film, one can look back and think: what kind of "sick" mind one needs to be able to write/produce such a film? I do not know the writer of this film but this reminds me of the one and only filmmaker I have ever personally known. He has in fact been in my mind for the last few weeks as I think I miss him. I am not sure why I miss him but one might also say I never forgot him anyways. 

I became friends with him without knowing his productions or the stories he wrote. What I want to talk about here is a writer's "dark side" that they use to come up with malicious characters in their stories. When I became friends with this person, I wasn't exactly aware that he was kind of famous, and like I said, I didn't know all of his work (or perhaps any of it). So I only saw him as the person he was at the time I met him. The more time I spent with him, the more it became clear to me that he was a genius (that's a strong word but I think he really was). What's better is he wouldn't brag about it, he would just let you discover it and show humility. Later, when I watched a series he produced, I was shocked to see how he could write characters who are so deeply psychotic. He wasn't afraid to write outside of the mainstream, and I must add, of course the show hadn't last long because it was really too heavy to be aired on television. When I say 'heavy', I mean things that are perhaps too dirty or ugly to think about, just like the stuff in City of God, but actually worse. Now, either I like being around dangerous people (which might be true) or I admired him for having this dark side and being able to channel it correctly. Why was he a genius? Well, maybe you think one just needs to unleash their own dirty desires and just have some courage to write those things, but no, it was clear that he was smart because he also didn't show any of his dark side in daily life. In fact, I later learned that he--allegedly--used to be mafia. Did this stop me from being friends with him? No. Is it because I like danger? Not exactly. I mean, if you have a friend, who you learn is/was a mafia, should you really run away or keep your cool and go with the flow so that your friend doesn't get you killed? I wasn't afraid of him though, so that's not why I had stayed.

Perhaps you can guess that this ex-mafia friend is my "old friend" who had been to jail, that I mentioned in a previous post. Now why is he an "old" friend? Was he old? Yes, he wasn't a young person. But also, why do I keep using past tense? That is because he is dead now---don't worry, it wasn't me who killed him, it was a heart attack who killed him. Although, I found it hard to believe that it was a heart attack knowing that he had an "archenemy" filmmaker in real life and the heart attack happened just when they were about to finish the production of a film (I think that "archenemy" is still alive so I won't give any names here at all). After hearing the news (yes, it was on the news), I had so many dreams in which he faked his own death and he was alive in hiding somewhere (because I knew he was capable of planning such a thing as he was very good at writing murder stories). I still find it hard to believe he is dead, actually. I live like he's still alive (modulo not being able to talk to him). I didn't go to his funeral and I didn't go to visit his grave either, and I believe I never will. So, now, going back to my sentence above "...but one might also say I never forgot him", I do think that "those that we love never truly leave us" even if they die. I thought a post on the film City of God would be a nice place to commemorate him. I am sure he knew this film and he would have had an excellent comment on or insight to the film. Oh well. 

In the end, if you haven't seen this film yet, my only suggestions are the following. 1) Do not watch it if a kid is present in the room. Now, we must define "kid" here. Maybe this film is "+18" already but I think it should really be "+25" or something. 2) Do try to bear the pain until the end (as you might get sad while watching it), I think you might start feeling better at the end of the film. Personally, if the ending was different, I think I could have been traumatized by the film. The film was going extremely pessimistic and frustrating all hopes you might have about a single good thing happening, so I was really afraid of the ending, but then I was fine. 

Apparently, this film is one of the films one must watch before one dies, according to some list. I always find statements like that a bit too strong, but perhaps it does make sense in this case. The editing of the film is one of the best I have ever seen. Moreover, the storytelling of it is unconventional (but in fact more natural, in my opinion). I must say though it is a bit hard to follow sometimes because it is done in an unconventional way and perhaps to completely understand it, one has to watch it again. I think the obstacle for me was that I was already dealing with a lot of worry (like begging the scenario "please don't kill this guy too!"), that I might have had lost track of the storyline.

I give 8.5/10.

The Grinch

 I am here with yet another very personal post. Since it's almost Halloween, I thought it would be apt to write about a Christmas movie. Well, okay, maybe it's not exactly apt but who said I was a conformist? In my defence, it already snowed where I live and we already saw -19 degrees Celsius, so I already put my Christmas decorations up---there now you know one more thing about me: I like Christmas (mostly because of the decorations).

Not only I like Christmas, but also I like The Grinch. I mean, the character Grinch. I somehow empathized with him a lot in the movie---I am not sure if this is the experience of most audiences. I think that most people who like Grinch like him because most of the time we, humans, like seeing salvation. It reminds us that one day we could be saved too if we were to go down on a wrong path. Well, this is not exactly why I liked Grinch but in general I do like it when a bad character becomes a good one in the next season of a tv series.

Grinch is shown as an "evil" character but you see how and why he became such a person. It is a little bit like how Darth Vader was a villain but the little Anakin Skywalker was good and even cute. Grinch was isolated and lonely. He only decided to reject lovely situations because he wasn't getting any. When approached with love and kindness, the people of the town were able to win him back. This sounds too simple perhaps, and somehow this kind of thing happens only in movies. I think it should happen in real life too, and if you think "no, it does happen in real life too", I will say, at least, it should happen more often. Often, it is hard for us to forgive someone who did a bad thing to us because our arrogance may take over and it is especially difficult because, in our society, this is labelled as weakness. I think it really depends and it is not necessarily weakness. I had mentioned in a previous post something about people who served jail time (and I plan to mention him again in the future because he is actually a very cool person, or he was). There are lots of people who are extremely prejudiced towards those who have been to jail and in practice they think "once bad, always bad", but the same people, when they see a character turn good, they like it. Of course, the plot and the editing should be done well to keep the audience in the loop while this is happening and for it to be convincing. Of course, in quality films, there is always character development at some level, but when it is as drastic as turning from evil to good, more people in the audience are likely to notice this development.

The Grinch's story starts by stating that his heart is two-sizes too small and this is mostly what I will talk about in this post. A heart inside a body, two-sizes too small. Somehow this resonates with me, although it physically doesn't make sense. I don't know you, dear reader, but I do feel like when I feel hate my heart is getting smaller. When I feel love, it doesn't necessarily get larger, but this also depends on what kind of love and the degree of it. There are indeed different kinds of love. I won't list the obvious ones but I will try to make a distinction between some subtle ones. 

A number of years ago, I happened to meet someone at an event I participated. Later, we became friends (although, not close/best friends) and I had started to like him. Of course, since I am a very shy person, I didn't tell him anything. One day, he had an additional ring, it was on a ring finger, and of course, I wasn't exactly happy to see that. Of course (again), I was shy enough not to ask about it at first, but later I asked about it and found out that he got engaged. I had a couple of days with nausea for some reason after learning that and then nothing really changed, except I was a bit sad that he was in love with someone else, all the while he didn't know anything about my feelings. As a friend, of course, I had to hear about his plans about getting married, which wasn't quite nice to listen to but I did it anyways. One day, he went to get married (the wedding wasn't in town), and again, I wasn't exactly happy about that. I still remember the scene when I thought about this situation: I was sitting on the bus, next to the window, the bus didn't leave the stop yet, I was just watching outside. At that moment, I felt my heart getting larger. What does that even mean? Well, I can't explain it physically but that was exactly how it felt.

Being only friends with someone who you secretly like and who doesn't like you back is nothing to worry about, in my opinion, because you don't even have anything to lose. Well, it probably is not desirable but it is really easy to get over the situation and you can just be friends with them. Secretly liking someone who is engaged (to someone else) but staying friends with them is not that much of a big deal either because "liking" is something only at the level of "being attracted to" and strictly different than "having fallen in love". However, seeing that person getting married (to someone else) might be a whole another level. It could be a big thing and you sort of have to decide how much you actually liked the person (or if it was love) to be able to understand your own perspective on this. So at that moment, when I was on the bus, sitting by the window, I was asking myself: am I really in love with this person, and if so, what should that even mean? In any case, I had decided on something else. What was that something else?

One day, years after those events, I asked a group of friends the following. If you are in love with someone but they are in love with someone else (or they just don't love you back), would you still be able to wish the best for them or would you be sad/jealous because they are not "yours"? Well, everyone said it should be the latter. Unfortunately, I disagreed, I think it can be both, if not the first, but it just takes effort and a bit of less selfishness. At the end, perhaps the question is "what is true love anyway?", it is completely subjective. So this is what I was trying to decide on, what kind of "love" I was feeling towards this person---did I feel love that was completely selfish, or did I "truly" love him to be able to wish happiness to him? To do the latter, you do have to let your ego go, I think, and try to be a truly very good person, at least that's how it felt, and so, sitting on the window seat, I felt my heart enlarge as my love extended and became void of any selfish desires. At that point, I had decided to love him as a person before anything else and I wasn't really sad anymore about "losing" him. Now, when I discuss this with friends, they say, "that only means you weren't truly in love with him because if you were you wouldn't be able to do that"---I guess these people define "real love" by craziness, I don't know. 

Well, I think they might probably be right, and that might have been why I was able to let him go, but that's not how it felt to me back then. I guess one might argue that love is an illusion anyways and you just have to come out of the simulation. In any case, the whole point of the story is to illustrate how one can feel their heart getting larger. If you truly value someone, you might prefer having them in your life (even if it may not be with the "title" you want) to not having them in your life at all. It might take a bit of mental effort but it is doable (it requires heart enlargement but after that all is good). I guess, now the question is, did the guy get married and/or did anything ever happened between him and me? Well, I am afraid that is classified information (although if anyone dares to ask me personally I might opt to answer as it is kind of interesting), but the rest of the story is not relevant to the point here, so I'll leave the ending of that story to the imagination of the reader---I can only say that it was a happy ending. A fun fact is his name is actually in this movie but of course I won't tell which character it is. Okay, I will tell you this much: It is not Cindy Lou.

I don't remember any of my other heart enlargements as vividly as this one, unfortunately. But they were mostly in similar situations to what I described above, and definitely not when I "loved" someone and they "loved" me back. Maybe my heart gets larger when I make new friends too (like Grinch) but I bet the enlargement is not that big so it is hard to notice it. How about my heart shrinking? Like I said at the beginning, it does temporarily happen when I feel hate, but I don't actively hate anyone as a philosophy in life (mostly because I don't think they are worth it), so the shrinking doesn't last more than 10 seconds. With this rate, I guess my heart will be huge until I get to old age. It is actually a disease to have an enlarged heart. Oh well.

Back to Grinch. The ways Grinch's heart got larger were much more different, of course. But even when he was evil and mean, he has style. It is hard not to like him with all those gadgets. Being alone made him self-dependent and actually guided him towards invention. You see on his schedule he has booked dinner with himself. This sounds way too familiar in the modern day, doesn't it? All those self-care/meditation guru posts say things like this nowadays. Well, one might say Grinch would pass all those modern era self-care checklists on social media. He also has a dog and so perhaps that's why he didn't lose his heart but only had a small one. I guess the story version says he was born with a small heart, but I think the main reason he became mean is his childhood experiences (and he was an orphan too). I remember that one day I was reading some articles in psychology and then suddenly thought "If Hitler wasn't bullied so much as a child, none of what happened would happen". Well, this is definitely a deep subject that's open to a lot of discussion and I am not saying my sentence necessarily holds true, but it is hard not to think of it. 

I am happy for Grinch at the end of the movie, but I must confess, I liked his mean version a lot too. I guess nobody would like a person like him in real life but I actually know such people. I am specifically thinking of someone I know with similar behaviour. He doesn't really talk to anyone and he is definitely grumpy. He can be pretty mean too. He doesn't exactly have a bad heart. One day, I noticed something he liked and tried to talk to him about that subject, and he was quite happy and nice. But normally, when you see such an old man, you probably want to stay away. Well, this person is a relative of mine and not a stranger, so it was okay to try to talk to him. Sometimes I deeply empathize with grumpy old men and strongly agree with them too, like Ove from A Man Called Ove (which is the film that's good enough to have made me come back to writing on my blog after almost 2 years of break). One might think there might be a grumpy-old-man part of me that's just asleep nowadays. I think I used to be more grumpy and actually straight mean in the past. Well, perhaps I am like a saved Grinch. In the end, I can say openly that I definitely envy the gadgets (for example the one for breakfast) Grinch has, as a person who also loved The Jetsons as a kid.

Speaking of kids, a good discussion point would be if this movie is good for kids or not. I don't really know, but I think it is a good movie for adults. Some parents dwell too much on what they show to their children, like I had briefly mentioned in my Peter Rabbit and Peter Rabbit 2 post. When we consider this movie, there is definitely a cheerful tone, even in the "mean" things, after all it is a Christmas movie so it is supposed to be jolly. I don't know if I would be okay with my kid watching it, but I think I wouldn't care about it too much so I'd show it anyways. When I think back and consider the films/tv shows (or even cartoons) that I watched as a kid, I don't really recall the storyline. For example, The Nanny. I know that I only looked at the clothes of the nanny and just thought how cute they were and I didn't get any of the sexual references in that show (I get them now when I watch as an adult). The point is at that age my brain wasn't developed enough to comprehend everything anyways so I don't think it was "bad" for me to watch it. Now, would a kid start doing mean things just because they watched The Grinch do mean things? I am not really sure, I guess it is definitely possible. But at the same time, there are good things your kid could learn from this movie too, and it is possible that your kid (if exists) will only be occupied with looking at the town and how magical the decorations and the lights are. So, as we are nearing(?) Christmas, perhaps you can (re-)watch this movie. I definitely will watch it (again) soon. 

I am not going to go into comparing the live action and the animated versions of this story. Since the title is not "How Grinch Stole Christmas", we can see that this post is about the animated version. I must add that I definitely liked Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as a voice actor in this movie. I am not a huge fan of him and I don't think he is necessarily handsome, but I do think he is talented. 

Lastly, I will close with one of my favourite videos (it's only 17 seconds). I have come across this video during the pandemic and at the time it described my mental state really well (I was just working too much which caused me feel that way). Here is the video.

I give 7/10.

All About My Mother

 This film was mentioned by someone (although I can't remember who) relatively recently and was on my (imaginary) list since then. When I saw that there was a screening of this film somewhere near me, I decided to go see it. Now, for some reason, I thought this movie is about a daughter/mother relationship where the film explores the many aspects of a mother's role in a woman's life considering all the traumas the mother might have caused and hence shaped the woman's life. Hence, I also thought this film was going to be quite intense---the poster somehow made me think the film was a psychological thriller. Well, I was wrong on all accounts. The plot was very much different than what I thought and the film was much more entertaining rather than being intense. I hadn't really read about the film before seeing it, hence the surprise on my end, but I am glad that my experience was the way it was---I had also thought this film was in English but it turns out that it's in Spanish. 

Given my history with Spanish (learning it on and off for about 3 years now, on Duolingo), seeing this film carried a special importance for me, that is, once I figured it was in Spanish. The main reason I am learning Spanish is that I find it very much fun. It is like each and every word has a positive connotation when I hear it. Throughout my journey of learning Spanish, there are also many moments where things make sense. I don't know how to state it better but somehow it comes very natural to me. I also think that I hadn't seen a Spanish film before (I had only watched a Spanish TV series called La Casa de Papel---Money Heist). So exposing myself to Spanish for about a 100 minutes felt nice. Of course, the film was screened with subtitles, but I couldn't stop myself from understanding some of the Spanish and I was glad that I was able to get at least some of the things that were being said by the characters in the film. 

I feel deeply that when one does not watch a (good quality) film in its original language, there is always things that one misses out on. Every language has its own structure and style, hence its own sayings that don't necessarily translate to every other language, especially to a language like English which I find quite simple and lacks emotion in the letters in its words. Now, what I said may not make sense but I won't dwell on it because we have a lot to go through about this film in hand. As it turns out, I am really good at listening to something while reading something else (even in another language). Of course, I knew this because when I was a student in university, I was, well, a little bit high-functioning in the classroom in the sense that I would read what's written (or being written) on the board while listening to the instructor (who was not necessarily saying exactly what they are writing) and make up my own sentences in the notes, that is, write a yet different thing, all at the same time. I find that students nowadays cannot do this at all, at least most of them can't, but then I believe in my time not everybody was able to do this---I am not despising anyone here as it can simply be because of their lack of motivation as well. So when I was watching this film and understanding (some of the Spanish) and reading the subtitles, I found it quite funny that when a nurse mentioned someone's weight in kilograms, the subtitles wrote it in pounds. They really craft these subtitles for true American audiences (who apparently cannot comprehend kg as if this number was important to the story at all(!)). So, okay, let's say this is understandable, why would you convert '15 days' to '2 weeks'? 2 weeks equals 14 days. The doctor says 15 days in Spanish, the subtitles said "2 weeks". One might argue here that "the art" of translation is not simply translating word by word, and I normally agree, but here this is literally distorting facts! Now, this number also does not play a very important role in the story, so I will move on. 

As I mentioned what can be lost in translation above, the filmmaker (director and screenwriter Almodóvar) mentioned this at the very beginning of the film. While the characters are watching All About Eve, the screenwriter made one of the characters (the teenage son) comment on the Spanish title for that show, that "Eva al desnudo" means "Eva naked" but that it should really be "Todo Sobre Eva" for it to mean "All about Eve". Now, this is a nice touch---I really like it when the filmmakers can have some transparency and can somehow make connections/references to the real world that the audience lives in. Moreover, the point that's made is so valid and also funny at the same time. I know many American movies whose titles drastically change when they are released in another country whose language is not English. Now, of course, sometimes it makes sense because something catchy in English may not look as catchy in another language, so according to the story/theme of the movie, they have to come up with a new name. It looks like Almodóvar made sure the title of his movie stayed true to its original meaning when it was translated to English. Well done. 

I will continue to praise Almodóvar in this paragraph. It looked like he sort of referred to himself in the lines of the teenage boy character a few times. Not explicitly but in a way that implied there were resemblances between him and the teenage boy, which was cleverly done and amused me. It is sad though he identified himself with a character who dies early in the film (this is not exactly a spoiler, this is really okay to know---the events of the film starts only after this point). Now, the boy dies in a car accident, and it is probably my favourite scene in this film. Not because someone dies, obviously, but because of how it was shot. I think it is the best car accident scene I have ever seen. I must add that this film was made in 1999 (which I will get back to in another paragraph). I really liked the decision on the camera angle in the shooting of the car accident scene. But then, when I thought about it more, I noticed that the decision carried a deeper meaning too---so it wasn't only for visually artistic reasons. After the boy dies, he 'stays' in the film as a narrator for a bit, and it is such a smooth transition because of the way his accident was shot. Once he is hit, we see it through his eyes, and in a sense he moves to outside of the film world as it is dying in it, and sort of joins our world because he becomes a narrator.

I will continue to rave about Almodóvar in this paragraph too. If you have been reading my blog, perhaps you know that I complain how Nolan cannot possibly write woman characters. You can see that he has no idea or insight. In fact, I was feeling quite a suffocation by the male dominated film industry situation. Now, this film was made in 1999, so it's not nowadays, so it doesn't really count, but I saw it nowadays so it helped me relieve my suffocation. (In fact, the fact that it was made in 1999 shows that the film was ahead of its time, but I will get back to this later). Now, Almodóvar's film is all about women (and about all women). I can testify that this male man can indeed write about women, so I was glad to see that. This is a film in which even the actors became women in playing the characters. The only men you see in the film are 1) an old father who has Alzheimer's and hence basically is back to his babyhood and needs care, 2) the men who go to prostitutes, 3) the son(s). Okay, I guess there were a few others that were assistants in the theatre play or something but they didn't really play an important role and the one who had the most lines among them were really saying things that manifested a man's fixated mind on cocks. The sons already represent motherhood, so that one ties back to women. So what we see is "the world is women's world" and this point of view makes sense to me because it is true that in some sense all is about mothers---the reason why humanity continues is because a woman becomes a mother. 

Now, the film being ahead of its time is also about its EDI statement. Nowadays, EDI statements are everywhere. This film included a transgender sex worker, a nun (who helps sex workers), and a lesbian actress. While having motherhood in its centre, it actually talks about the identity quests of several women in the film and the struggles any of these women have in their lives throughout their personal stories. The film is so well-written that it can make you laugh a second before you know what's going to be a death announcement scene. In a similar way, when some of the struggles transgender people have are presented, it is teased in a way that even the character herself is so transparent about these problems, and is able to laugh about it. This way the writer is definitely not mocking LGBT people but stands with them through the successful and considerate comedy in his film. I think that comedy is also an agent that brings people together. If the story of this film were the same but the comedy parts were taken out, being a serious one just like that, I don't think it would achieve its objectives and I don't think it would be very well-received by different types of audiences. At least, I know that some homophobic people cannot stand the existence of transgender people in serious/formal contexts but when there is comedy involved somehow they don't realize its reality and don't object to anything. It's quite funny (and simple brain), if you think about it.

The main character, Manuela, is played by Cecilia Roth in this film and I must say, I liked her performance a lot. I won't go through each actor/actress but I will mention that I looked up each of them and saw how they look like today. This film was made in 1999, so some of them are already dead, and some are much much older now. It is quite fascinating, the effect of timelessness a film can give to a person. Lastly about the film being a 1999 film: it was technically "the 90s" but maybe because it was the end of it, the hair or the fashion, nor the clothes bothered me. Maybe the 90s of Spain was not bad at all! Who knows? 

I also really liked the solidarity and interdependence themes imprinted in the women's stories. I guess helping others and/or being able to think about others' wellness (and not only your own) is part of motherhood, so it makes sense that it was there in the film. No matter what wrong thing you do/did, these women are able to accept you, love you and help you. Because, I believe, at the end of the day, they know that all they have is each other. Well, I don't know, but I think I am pretty good at accepting people too, allowing them to be who they are. I really think this is very important as a person, you may remember, whose "voice" was tried to be turned off for a long while, and hence, I felt very excluded/isolated for a long time. So I am all for inclusivity and that includes many contexts. For example, if I learned that a friend (or an acquaintance) of mine had been to jail in the past, well, that wouldn't really change my opinions about him at the moment I learned about it. (I wrote 'him' because this is actually a real story and it is a 'he'). Why didn't anything change? Because, technically, the person who he was before telling me that was already the person who went to jail, so he didn't change, he is still the same person I know (and trust, or not trust). I think the only thing that changed for me was that I respected him more (for having been through jail time) and thought that he was more interesting now (because he might have interesting stories from jail time). I didn't even ask him if he had really committed a crime (because it is a fact that sometimes people are sent to jail for the things they didn't do). Now, this person is dead, so I can never ask him, but it's okay. I can tell you that I never felt threatened near him.

While I took myself to my past and had a flashback (about my old friend) in the previous paragraph, it makes sense to continue with the flashback scene from the film. There is a scene where one of the characters remembers the car accident. Well, I forgot to mention but, the car accident happened under very heavy rain. So when the character started remembering, we first heard the heavy rain, and then the visual came. Definitely a nice trick and in general the sound (for its time) and the editing of the film was great. It looks like Almodóvar received the Best Director Award in Cannes (among others he received elsewhere). You may have noticed I don't generally agree with these juries who give these awards, but this time, I think I would definitely give Almodóvar the Best Director Award. 

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, I strongly believe that the English subtitles are seriously causing some loss of depth in the meaning (okay the kg/pound thing was a joke but seriously). So when I evaluate this film, I will evaluate it according to how much I would appreciate it if I watched it in Spanish and understood it all. 

I give 8.5/10

Note: Almodóvar sounds like a stage name for a magician, doesn't it?

Sound of Metal

 This is yet another film I have seen not by choice. If this movie was recommended to me by a friend (true friend), I would definitely put it on my list but who knows when I would get to watch it. So it is good that some films are chosen for me to watch and I just have to be present to watch it. So I saw this film as part of the film theory class that I completely unofficially am sitting in. One day, once this class is over, I will probably go back to my "old ways" and start writing about other films, but for now, since I only post once per week, there is not much room for writing about other films that I want to write about. Actually, I don't write about every film I see in that class either, so I might very soon already pick something else to write about. But I saw Sound of Metal and I felt I do want to write about it, so here we are. 

The main character in this film is played by Riz Ahmed. I knew that this was his name because I looked it up but the name did not seem familiar to me at all. But then, once I saw the character in the movie, the face seemed really familiar. Unfortunately, I am really bad with faces (I mentioned this in at least one of the previous posts). So I couldn't figure out who he is, that is, where I knew him from. Of course, it was quietly eating me inside, but I let it go. For about an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, I had convinced myself that he probably just looks like someone I know in real life (not a famous person but a distant relative or so) and that that's why I felt like the face was familiar because the name Riz Ahmed did not ring a bell for me. Then I couldn't resist it and looked it up. I was extremely surprised to see he was in Venom but it made a lot of sense. Apparently he was also in Jason Bourne and Rogue One. So I had seen him in at least three other movies and I still had no idea who he was when I saw him in this one. Now, dear reader, if you are one of my closest friends who also happened to have watched many many movies with me, I know that your reaction would be "that's so you!". If not, you're just going to have to believe me that that's just so me. Now that I buried myself under the ground by making a great confession about my face-recognition abilities, we can continue. (I do still think that he resembles to someone I know but I can't quite point it out)

The title of the film is Sound of Metal and the main character is in a metal music band, however, the word "metal" in the title is used in two different ways, which is a bit cool but a bit lame at the same time. I don't know if I liked the main character, or maybe I just didn't like the acting of Riz Ahmed. It was good but it wasn't spectacular. I really liked the performance of Paul Raci (supporting actor). 

When I was looking Riz Ahmed up, I saw that he is also a rapper. I am guessing that the tattoos we see on his character's body do actually belong to the actor, maybe at least some of them. From the way his character talks, I could guess this person has a past with rap. Then it occurred to me, up to some extent, how the fashion style of a rapper and a metalhead could be similar. This made me think of my high school years where I spent half of it as a metalhead and half of it by listening to underground rap music (and while doing that still listening to metal music). I just wore oversized clothes for both of them and it worked. 

The outfit and speaking style of Ruben (Riz Ahmed's character) was not the only thing that took me to my high school years during the movie. In fact, there were many things in the content of the film that resonated in my personal life. To put it in context, if you look at the poster, you see a man sitting in front of his drums. First thing that comes to mind is Whiplash (another film with a drummer in it). Now, Whiplash is an older movie than this one (and I must add it is a great one too if you haven't seen it before). I still remember (somehow) when and where I went to see Whiplash, so the poster had already taken me back in my timeline. This drummer, Ruben, loses his ability to hear at some point (early in the movie). I guess people can react to this (seeing a character go deaf) in various different ways. It made me remember the times when I wanted to go deaf. I don't feel that way anymore but to be continually confessional I did genuinely want that in the past. This was mostly in my teenage years which include my high school years. 

Why would anyone want to go deaf, especially at such a young age? Well, it wasn't that I didn't appreciate sound. I actually loved music and I still do, so even if I am not a musician, if I had lost my hearing, it would definitely dry out my soul because of not being able to hear music. When so many people talk around you, I don't know if it ever happened to you, but you may want to close your ears. Maybe because of loudness, maybe something else. So I was at a point where I was sick of hearing people's voices but it wasn't the sound the problem it was what they were saying. So here I refer to the second meaning of the word voice. No matter how much I tried to close my ears to their "voices", I just kept hearing them (because I know their opinions in general so it's almost always there in my mind). You can even imagine a character in a film who is hearing voices out of nowhere and then she is trying to get them out of her head and then starts closing her ears but then it's not enough so she tries to rip her ears or something. Now, this is what would happen in a movie, in real life, it didn't happen like that, that is, I wasn't going crazy---at least not necessarily. But the voices I "heard" in my mind were just originating from what people actually told me and I couldn't stop thinking what they would say to anything I do next---you can see this as a case of "caring too much what other people think about you". So I would often sit down and imagine how peaceful my life would be if I stopped hearing. Of course, I didn't do anything to achieve that, but to a mind like that, it seemed like a solution (although not exact), and to imagine it was a relief. 

So when I was watching a man go deaf and his struggles about it, I remembered a time when I wanted to go deaf voluntarily. Did this make me regret anything? No. There is really nothing to regret about as I didn't try to go deaf, I just had wanted it and thought about it. One might think that I should feel bad about myself but I really don't. I think one should take a moment and think how much a teenager must have been psychologically terrorized to have come to a conclusion like wanting a disability. Now, a spoiler, not about the film, but about this teenage girl's story. In the end, she solved the problem by not going deaf but by going away. Obviously, this sounds a bit superficial because I didn't tell the whole story but when I said "caring too much what other people think of you", 1) these people are not strangers, 2) you are a kid (so you don't have freedom and you have no way of avoiding these people; plus, they are the ones who give you shelter and food, so you are already conditioned to follow their rules but you almost never agree with their lifestyle). What bothered me the most in these people's voices was that they were telling me how to live and how to be, to the point where I had felt like I needed to ask for permission before breathing. Yes. breathing. So I had to shut them up and I did so at some point. In the end, I am glad I am not deaf. 

The person in the film who goes deaf is a musician, so losing hearing ability means more to him than to a non-musician. I guess if he lost an arm or something, his music would again be affected but somehow hearing sounds more crucial for his line of work. I used to often think what would happen if I lost my left hand (that's what's crucial in my line of work). The answer is I would write with my right hand. Next, what if I lost that too? Then I thought I would get someone to write for me while I tell them what to write. Next is, what if I lost my ability to speak at the same time? Well, I am guessing that this is very low probability to happen---losing all three. I should also note that these questions are really questions, i.e. it is not like the deafness story---I definitely did not want to lose my hands or speech. Although, coincidentally, the years I thought about these questions are the same years I wanted to go deaf. 

Back to the film. You see this musician man losing his hearing and having great difficulty in accepting his situation. I think people who did not witness a person in a similar situation in real life might judge the film in a different way. I think the events of the film were pretty realistic. I have witnessed a man at the age of 45 suddenly lose ability to walk and speak. After spending so many years in life fully functioning, one day, you think, you want to open your mouth and say what you think, but your muscles don't listen to you. Perhaps if it is after an accident, it would make more sense, but what I am saying is just happening, say, when you were sitting. Imagine you are a successful middle-aged person who has at least one university degree and who is considered very smart and active, and who is the owner/founder and the director of a company such that at least 20 people work for you. Now, all of a sudden, you don't have a voice. I think this is more or less equivalent to what happened to Ruben. Well, maybe not, but my point is when I was watching the film, I was already watching as a person who witnessed what I described above happen to someone in real life. So I feel like I can decide if the film's events were realistic or not. I also want to point out that Ruben went deaf, but he still had his voice to complain about it.

Now, this is going to be repetitive but, "a musician losing the ability to hear". These filmmakers cannot be the first people in the history of cinema to have come up with this idea. I mean it is not that difficult. I didn't search it but I cannot believe it if there are no other films which had the same setting. Why did humanity had to wait until 2019 to make such a film? It really doesn't make sense to me. 

It looks like this film received several awards including a best editing award. I think the editing of the film is good but it really looks to me like they earned this award only because they were just better than the other ones' that year. 

In the end, I am glad this film was made and that I have seen it. It definitely was not a loss of time to watch it. 

I give 7.5/10.

Persona

 I had a very long journey with this film (even though it doesn't know about it) even before I saw it. At some point in time, I heard of this film and I wanted to look it up. I looked it up---I only found its trailer (the film wasn't available on any of the platforms I have subscription to). I was quite impressed by the trailer. So I decided: I want to watch this film. Everything seems normal until this point. This was the start of the journey I had with the film, but the adventurous(!) part is yet to begin. Since, as it turns out, I am a believer in borrowing where I can (rather than renting or purchasing digital copies), I tried to find Persona's DVD at the library of the university I work at (you may wonder "who uses DVDs anymore?"---you're right, I didn't either and I didn't even have anything to put the CD in, but more about that later). Now, since this film is a bit old (1966), it was in what's called a "High Density Library" part of the library. Okay, I understand. But the catch is that you can't just go and borrow stuff from the high density library. Okay, I understand---I will just be a good citizen and follow the rules, which is to fill out a form to request it. So I did. Then I received an email that said my request was rejected. After reading that email, you know, I was sad, and everything seemed grey and somber. It sounds like a joke but it really somehow was like that---my guess is that it just coincided with some cloudy-weather days. So the days went with my long lost hope. 

But then, one day, I received 5 (five) emails telling me that the Ingmar Bergman collection is ready for pick up. I was quite puzzled and actually ignored those emails for a while. Then, one day, which was before the last pick-up day, I decided to go to the library and ask if they actually had them ready for pick-up (because I found it hard to believe after the rejection). Now, some background info: when you search Persona on the library's website it only lists the collection as one item but the description tells you about which films are in the collection. So the receptionist at the library told me that I could indeed pick them up (this them has nothing to do with not assuming gender for the DVD). So I went to this pick-up vending machine (yes, it looks like a vending machine) only to find out that they gave me 5 out of 6 CDs in the collection, and, the one they didn't give me was Persona. Now, at this point, this is like a joke, an irony of fate---I had lost hope already, they gave me hope, and then they didn't give me Persona. So, there I was, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. More days passed by and, I don't even know from where I got the willpower, I decided to search it on the Public Library of the city I live in. So I went online, registered, and put a hold on the DVD which was listed as available. Then the website told me that I was the second on the waitlist. Yet another joke. Why would you show it as available if somebody else has a hold on the item? More awkwardly, what it the probability that another person wanted this 1966 black and white Swedish film right at the same time as I did? 

So I had nothing to do other than to wait. So I waited. One day, I received an email from the public library saying that it was ready for pick up. After receiving this email, the first time I was in downtown (that's where the central public library is) I had a suitcase, so I didn't want to walk to the library to pick it up. In the meantime, I had actually borrowed (from the university library) an external USB DVD drive so that I could play the film once I got it, but until I could get the DVD, of course the loan expired. Actually, I missed the deadline to return it by about 20 minutes but thankfully they didn't charge me. So I returned the drive and borrowed it back right away. A few days later, on a Saturday, I went to downtown, to a café. Then I thought well, before I go home I can go to the public library to pick this DVD up finally. Of course, it felt unreal that finally I was going to have it. Was the longing finally going to end? Then, I pulled up Google Maps to look for directions. Can you guess what happened? Apparently, the library is closed on Saturdays. So, there I was, let down by cosmic forces once again, thinking will I ever get my hands on this DVD? 

Now, dear reader, I had given up at that point, and started thinking is a DVD worth all of this effort and time? The money I had to spend to go to the public library twice for this already exceeded the amount I would pay for renting the film. Unfortunately, I am a person who really likes efficiency. So this was almost like offending myself still going after this DVD. So, there I was, once the one with a passion now surrendering---I decided I won't go to pick it up on another day either, I decided to leave the subject completely. Well, gentle reader, you might guess that the journey didn't end there because apparently I did watch this film since I am writing a post about it now. So a few days later, this time the university library emailed me and said the CD is ready. Of course, this was a move I didn't expect. But since I am a very nice person, I usually give out second chances. So I decided to give Persona another chance, which was not ignoring the email and deciding that I will indeed go to pick it up. The next day in the evening, there I was, who had been walking around with a guitar in a hard and heavy case for a total of about 25 minutes deciding to pass by the library on the way to finally pick this DVD up. So I went to the pick-up vending machine. Put down the guitar case. Scanned my card. Can you guess what happened? The DVD wasn't there! Why would anyone say it's ready for pick-up if it is not? So, there I was, looking around with my questioning eyes thinking are you kidding me? Since this was in the evening, I couldn't go ask at the front desk either. 

The next day, I wanted to go and ask, at least to complain. And, there it was, finally ready, waiting for me. At long last, I was able to touch it. After being committed to something for so long, I felt accomplished---finally getting done this task of "picking up the DVD from the library". After not being able to lay my hands on this DVD for so long, I finally could see our future together---I was going to put it in the USB drive and watch it. So just like a bride who was about to get married for the first time, I started preparing for the "wedding night" (I am joking, obviously). I put the film on and I didn't even start it right away---I waited for a bit listening to the music that plays on the main title screen as foreplay (as if we didn't have enough of it). 

The timing of when I acquired this DVD (and hence the seeing date) makes this film more special in my life than an ordinary film. If I was able to get this film the first time when I got the other 5 Ingmar Bergman DVDs, and watched it then, my perspective would have been a lot different and so my perception of the movie and my comments too. Well, I am a person who believes in Heraclitus' doctrine of flux anyways, so I claim that we are never the same person ever again, technically, but what I meant above is that the difference/change/flux was a bit greater than normal, I think. Not only I was a different person on the day I watched the film than the day I requested it from the library, but also this long wait had immensely increased my expectations about it. Now, with expectations that high, it would be very hard to satisfy me. Why am I saying all this? It is because the film succeeded in doing so, and by saying exactly this, now I may have increased your expectations---well, maybe now this is too much and your expectations might have crossed a hypothetical threshold so please do not blame me if you don't like this film, dear reader.

Now, dear reader, even if you made it this far in reading this post, it is possible you thought "why is this person talking so long about getting the DVD?" at some point. Well, I definitely wrote all that with a purpose and hopefully you won't be disappointed if you keep reading. I strongly believe that acquiring a film shouldn't have been that hard and what I experienced really was a story. A story I had which romanticized my relationship with this film through the little games of fate that I had to endure. What is the take away from this adventurous journey? I don't think I will ever try again to borrow a DVD so insistently and I definitely did not know I could be so persistent to pursue something like this for so long (maybe I was a more persistent person when I was younger but now my resilience is fading away). In my journey with the physical DVD, there was a duality---the two libraries, and it wasn't clear which copy of the DVD would be the one that I would finally be watching. In this film, Persona, there are two main characters and there is a duality there in the following sense. The two women (main characters) often will get mixed---not by the audience but---one of these two women will start confusing her own identity with the other. Moreover, there is this sexual tension between them---you can tell I romanticized my journey with the DVD through my storytelling and made sexual references through joking. There is indeed an eroticism in this film which received a lot of criticism---more about this later. 

Now, there are certain things I want to share about the film and I will try to do so without giving any important spoilers. One of the women is an actress and the other is her nurse. The actress' problem is that she stopped talking. Most of this information could be obtained by watching the trailer of the film, so all is good. The scene in the trailer happens quite early in the film and it is one of my favourite scenes. It made me admire Ingmar Bergman as a scenarist. The nurse says "I am interested in film and theatre but I don't go very often. I have a tremendous admiration for artists. I think that art is of enormous importance in people's lives, especially for those who have problems." I almost completely agree. Perhaps this is quite a simple thing to say but it felt like Ingmar Bergman put it in words really well. Art is of enormous importance indeed and I feel like this is not stated enough in general. Therefore, with the above line of the nurse, the film and/or Ingmar Bergman had already stolen my heart. 

In the film, we see a relationship, the relationship of the nurse with her patient. What was interesting about this was you witness two people getting to know each other (or becoming friends) but since one of them does not talk things are progressing quite one-sided. The actress who doesn't talk represents "the listener" in regular relationships---although she is definitely an exaggerated version of that. You observe how opening up to a person can get easier for the person who is talking/sharing if the other is a good listener. Listening only and not talking also brings nonjudgmentalism. Having someone who listens to you and who is not judging you could make you feel blessed---which is quite understandable. So at that point in the relationship of these two women things are going nice. Soon you see what could go wrong in such a one-sided relationship---having received no judgements at all she starts sharing a bit too much. 

When the nurse starts sharing too much you get to observe her other faces, the darkest parts in her soul, her hypocrisies and secrets. In the meantime, the actress doesn't exactly respond but she smiles at most things the nurse says to her and she does this even if the things that are said are bad (which probably makes her seem like a pretty understanding person and makes it even easier to talk to her). What I liked seeing was the following. The nurse said one night that she was faithful to her fiancé---this made me suspicious already because it's interesting someone would want to bring up the subject like that and feel the need to state being faithful, unless of course if they're talking about faithful functors (insider joke). Later, some other night the nurse told how she cheated on her fiancé---and she told her story with quite a lot of details. Her telling that story (she was describing an orgy) was what received a lot of criticism even though the film itself didn't have any of that story shown on screen. This is quite interesting---how powerful words can be. 

As I saw the nurse getting more mad everyday while living with this actress who did not talk, I realized, well, being a good listener might sound like a good thing but if you just listen you might indeed drive the other person crazy. Perhaps now is a good time to mention this Swedish term lagom which means "not too little, not too much, just right". So when you want to be a good listener, try to be a lagom good listener. I am actually not sure if I used the word grammatically correctly, but hopefully you get what I mean. 

This nurse is not only talking to someone all the time who doesn't talk back but also she doesn't seem to be talking to anyone else at all either. I believe it is expected one might go mad under these circumstances. At certain instances, while watching the film, I definitely questioned this actress (character)---what is she trying to achieve? It's still not completely clear to me but I don't think it matters so much.

What I liked the most about this film was, I think, the fact that the main focus was on women. Two main roles, both female. Lately, I have been complaining a lot about how the film industry is so male dominated these days. So it felt good to see such a film, although who made the film is still a man. The film really explores personal identity but every context is about women. I should also add that this film has an experimental style. For example, it has "random" images shown at the beginning and they do relate to the story as you go, which is something I like because I think there should be meaning to everything that's put in the film, whether it's a scene, or a word in a character's line, or just some object in the set up of a given scene. 

After watching this film, I learned that at some point while filming it Bergman decided to change the ending of the film. I think it was a good decision for the most part. I didn't like the inclusion of vampirism. 

As a closing remark, I want to mention again how much I liked Bergman's writing in this film. However, as I had the DVD, I watched a featurette---an interview with Bergman. Now, this person is Swedish, the film is in Swedish, and I watched it with English subtitles. Bergman spoke English in the interview and he said (and I quote) "I am conscious about myself and everything, and then suddenly or slowly, my conscious fades out, switches itself and it is not existing, and that is a marvellous feeling, that from existing, I may not existing and at that moment, nothing can happen to me". When he said "I may not existing", I thought that it is good that this man wrote the film in Swedish and not in English. It is also not clear to me what he was talking about here in the interview because it sounds to me like he is talking about a time he was getting high.

Now, before I finish, a fun fact. I mentioned already that at some point the nurse (Alma) would confuse her identity with the actress' (Elisabet). Now, the person who plays Alma actually has middle name Elisabet in real life. Perhaps this is not a fun fact for everyone but it is to me because she, as an actress, is kind of becoming "herself" (as Elisabet in real life) while playing someone else who is becoming Elisabet (the character), an actress in the film. 

The film has many good depictions of a lot of matters around what's personal identity. Overall, I found this film meaningful and I am happy with this film (and I am saying this even though my expectations were somewhat high already).

I give 8.5/10.

Note: I should also mention here that this film was the first art media (in film and television) with this title. What I did know of before hearing about this film though was a miniseries called Persona, which is actually a pretty good series whose story revolves around a man with Alzheimer's. Coincidentally, as I am writing about Persona (the 1966 film) today, they announced that Persona (the miniseries) which first aired in 2018 is having its second season soon---and that's great news.

Do The Right Thing

Did I do the right thing by watching Do The Right Thing? I don't recall ever hearing about this film until the day I watched it. You can tell I didn't watch this film exactly voluntarily, like the last one, but that's okay. Well, I don't have to have heard about every film, I guess. Sometimes it is good to watch things that weren't seemingly interesting to you at first. Same goes for books. If you leave me alone, I would read only the books I'm interested in, which sounds like a natural thing to do. However, being in a book club gives me an opportunity to give certain other books a chance and I do end up liking some of them even though they may not be the literary genre I prefer. All that is to say, I am glad I am seeing different types of films now---although that doesn't imply I necessarily will like them.  

The next question is, am I doing the right thing by writing this review post? Who knows? I guess we will never know. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to write about it but as the days went I realized I do have things to say about this film. So here we are. 

Before I start, let us record that this film was released in 1989. I do not know when, but at some point in the past, they switched from showing actor/director names at the beginning of the film to showing them at the end (although there may be exceptions). I believe they did the right thing. At the beginning of this film, there was a song (whose lines were practically slogans) playing and there was a girl dancing while the whole film crew's names were being written on the screen, one by one. Now, this song was about four and a half minutes, and the dance was not interesting to me either. I didn't care much about the names at that point because, well, I live in 2023 and I can look these things up after the movie anyways. So that was pretty boring, but don't let that discourage you. If you can survive the first 5 minutes of the movie, err film, you will see non-boring parts too. I guess the most interesting thing about the dancing girl, to me, was the clothing---I don't think I miss the fashion trends of late 1980s and/or early 1990s. If you wanted to have some nostalgia though, you can put this film on, I am sure it will help you. 

Normally, I try to evaluate the shows I watch according to the year they are made. This is sort of easier when the show is really really old, like 1940s or 1960s. But when it's somewhat closer to current time it is harder because, first of all, there are clear differences how the show (or film) would be shot in years like 1940s, and second, there are more clear differences in how things looked like in real life in very old days. For example, 24 is one of my favourite tv series. I have seen it when it was being aired. If you had tried to watch it in, say 2018 (I am not even saying 2023), you'd have to shush your inner critique about certain things if you really wanted to enjoy it. Same goes for Doctor Who. Not the first one from the 1960s, but the one that started in 2005. It's really hard for me to like the seasons from 2005-2006 when I watch them now, even though I had liked them in the first place. But if I go back and watch the episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, I don't even start to criticize things that are due to its year---they don't bother me. Now, 1989. This is really tricky, it's not 2000s and it's definitely not 60s. The film definitely depicts those last bits of the culture of the 80s. So I guess I just am not a fan of that culture, although interestingly enough, when it comes to rock music, I really like 70s and 80s---in fact, those are still what I listen to daily. Okay, nobody said I had to be consistent with myself, so I believe all is good.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I didn't know about this movie until I watched it, but I did have two pieces of information about it: that it involves Brooklyn streets and that the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. When I hear Brooklyn, the first thing that comes to my mind is Captain America. Well, he was an Iced Cap during the 80s, so he has nothing to do with this movie. The second thing that came to my mind was my own promenade in Brooklyn. It was just a walk but the neighbourhood was really nice. So it was nice to see those streets again, in the film, although they looked a bit different---when I visited Brooklyn it was not the 80s. If you know about the typical architectural style of Brooklyn homes (at least from tv shows), you know that there are usually a short flight of stairs to the entrance of the houses. When I visited Brooklyn, nobody was sitting on those, so it was nice to see in the film that they were used. I guess it is nice to hang out on the stairs and it is not a problem unless it's someone else's house. In fact, when I was younger, I would hang out on such stairs (not in Brooklyn---this type of entrance exists in other places on earth as well) but I never knew the owners of these buildings that I sat at the entrance of. So I was often shooed. In fact, one time someone---instead of saying something---emptied a bucket of (dirty) water on me. I can't say it was a pleasant experience. So yes, as the film rolled and events of the film started, these were what I was thinking of. 

The second piece of information I had: the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. They made it look like, in the film, it was one of the hottest summers in the history of NYC. I wondered if there was such a thing in the years immediately previous to the year the film was made, and strangely, there wasn't. Well, there is 1983 but it is not that close to 1989, although it could have still been an inspiration to Spike Lee (who is the person who made the film). Now, how was hot weather depicted? Everyone was covered in beads of sweat---this is not that hard nor is it creative. The characters mentioned it in their lines how hot it was, which is again not that special. There was an ice cube scene but one could do that without the hot weather too. In fact, the ice cube scene reminded of one of my memories and it was outdoors in the winter, although I must admit there was a hot tub involved, it was still technically cold outside, so this ice cube business did not even make me think of hot weather---too bad. So somehow I wasn't impressed by the several signals of hot temperatures during the movie (nor shortly after). Only a bit more later I realized that I was indeed affected by the characters' suffering that being in the hot brings. How being in hot weather for long periods of time would affect a person('s thinking, decision-making, and feelings) was carefully and successfully weaved into the scenario itself and that was also spectacularly performed by the actors/actresses. 

How was it in the scenario/story? I don't mean the obvious lines stating the weather. The physical fever brought up by the hot temperatures is transformed into a fever that was the nervous excitement of the people, and in return, contributed to the violent events at the end of the film. At least that's how I see it. I am not saying the whole fight started just because it was hot, but one cannot deny that having to bear very high temperatures all day (and on consecutive days) can make a person more impatient than usual and hence the person might have a heightened level of anger at rest.

Continuing with the temperature, they mention in the film that it is about 100 F. Well, that didn't really mean much to me, unfortunately. That's because they didn't write how many Celsius that is, but also I am sort of more tolerant to hot temperatures than others. I guess I am also used to seeing sweating and/or sweaty men (not saying I enjoy it but they exist and I see them), so it wasn't awkward to me at all during the film when they showed these sweaty/sweating men. Now, it was quite funny, though, that these men were still wearing a sleeveless tops underneath their (short sleeve) shirts and still wearing long pants, and socks! I mean, why? If it's that hot, why don't you try de-layering? So I found that funny. The picture I just described is from the scenes where there are a few men sitting in front of a bright red wall under a not-very-large umbrella, which was also a bit funny---they insistently spent time there instead of finding somewhere with an actual shade. 

Although I had been claiming the hot weather in the film didn't affect me as much, I did feel relief too when the characters had a relief from the hot by opening the fire hydrant. It is such a freeing experience to be washed down on the street, unless it is done to you by the police like here or by a police vehicle with water cannons. So the relief sensation I was thinking of was like the following. It's summer (and potentially 37 degrees C), you are watering your backyard with a hose (or cleaning the floors of the front yard), you make a salvo and before you turn off the water, you water your feet and that gives you a little nice break from the hot. This is probably one of my happiest memories from childhood---playing with water as a child was always fun. Of course, that required the parents let you play with water, although it is possible to do it secretly as well and feel the illusion of freedom.

The fire hydrant scene definitely made me think of the notion of freedom. Freedom, or more precisely, the United States being a country of freedom (or not), was mentioned in the movie at least a couple of times. It was a nice touch and aligns well with the film's statement. I always like it if someone questions the status of the US being the land of freedom---because that's what the US would like to advertise itself as (to the rest of the world) but to me it's just a grand charade. There is a lot I can say about this but I will stick to the film's review. I think the film depicts freedom (being an illusion) in a quite well manner. It is true, though, one has more freedom in the US compared to Canada in at least one context: drinking on the streets. As I live in Canada, during the scenes where they were drinking on the street, I truly envied them and asked myself: could the United States of America be really the country of freedom?

Although the name of the film is Do The Right Thing, for the most part of the film, people just kept not doing the right thing. Especially toward the end of it, first Radio Raheem doesn't do the right thing, then the Italian-American Sal doesn't do the right thing, then the police doesn't do the right thing, and it goes on like that. At the very end though, I think the main character did the right thing by staying friends with Sal. The main character was called Mookie. I guess the biggest catch for me about this film was that I had no idea Mookie was Spike Lee. Well, he was very young in the film and I am already bad with faces, what can I say? 

Spike Lee is the director, producer and the writer of this film. Now, I think that as a director Spike Lee is not so different than Nolan when it comes to the representation of women. Overall, the women were not represented well in this film. It is just happening in the men's world, and the women were there either just to be pretty or to be an object of sex. In fact, the woman who played in the nude scene apparently was crying while filming that (the scenes actually doesn't show her face so you can't tell she was crying). That's horrible, I don't know why they kept filming while she was crying. I don't think they did the right thing.

The thing I liked the most about this film was Samuel L. Jackson. As it turns out, he had not yet had his breakthrough in his career when this film was made. I do believe that Spike Lee did the right thing by casting Samuel L. Jackson. At about the 50-min mark of the film (that's almost halfway through), he (Samuel Jackson's character) started yelling "Time out!". He said it multiple times and very loud. If I were in control, I would have probably paused the film for a time-out following his command. I don't know if you know, gentle reader, some cinemas have an intermission at about a halfway mark of the films they show. Now, if this film was shown in such a place, and the intermission started right after Samuel Jackson yelled "Time out! Time out!", that would have been really funny. Oh well. 

I give 7/10.

Fun fact: it turns out that the director was so obsessed with showing the heat that he put a heat bar in front of the camera to make it look more real. So those beads of sweat were actually real sweat in at least some of the scenes.

Parasite

 I had heard about this movie when it was very popular at the time because, well, everybody was talking about it. However, I don't really like watching shows or movies at their peak times---I guess when something is too common it gives me the feeling that it is mundane and I'd like to do things that are not mundane. Now, I did see Oppenheimer when it was too popular, but I guess there can be exceptions. Parasite won lots of awards, which sounds like a good thing, but this kind of thing is usually not necessarily enough for me to go and watch a movie. So, how did I end up watching this movie? As it turns out, due to a coincidence and some luck, I am entering a new phase in my relationship with movies as I started sitting in an introduction to film studies class at the university I work. So I watched this movie, not exactly by choice, but because it was put on screen in front of me. But I did choose to stay there---I thought it was a good time to watch this movie, so I did. If it wasn't put in front of me, I think I wouldn't put it on myself to watch it in a foreseeable future.

I don't usually watch Korean cinema. Not that I am against it, but I just happen to not prefer it. This might sound a bit racist---I don't think it is---but I seem to like languages which use the Latin alphabet more than the other languages. It is similar to finding blond guys more attractive than brunets (not that I am attracted to blond men---it is just an example) or liking scuba-diving more than paragliding (not that I scuba-dived ever in my life---it is just an example). Well, I guess these are not exactly very good examples but my point is it is about what one likes. Now, although one can watch a film with subtitles, the language is still a barrier, in my opinion. When you have absolutely no idea about the language, it still builds a barrier. Of course, it is still somewhat possible to perceive emotions even if you don't know the language. However, I still think one cannot capture everything wholly even with the subtitles. I feel that I have some understanding of many languages whose alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet even if I don't entirely speak that language. I must add here that I do (more or less) speak 4 languages and have at least studied additional 2 for some time, all are based on the Latin alphabet. You can see that it was my liking toward these languages that made me study them. So, languages like Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Chinese simply don't interest me as much (no offence to anyone) and as a result I am exposed to them less than I am to languages like Spanish, French, German or Norwegian. Being not exposed to a certain language, I naturally have less ideas about it. Okay, what do I mean by "having ideas about a language"? Even if you don't know the words, you can still know small things like how an agreement "nod" would be like in a language, or how a disagreement "tsk" can manifest itself---believe it or not, these things change from language to language. Additionally, Korean words sometimes sound like gibberish in my native language (again, no offence, it is just how the sounds are, nothing can be done). So, all of this pushes me away from Korean cinema. I did see an episode or two of some Korean drama(s) (that are tv series) due to a friend. So I am guessing that if I keep watching, I will get used to hearing the language. 

Continuing with the subtitles, although I watched Parasite with subtitles, there were scenes in which there was a product with a label, and there was no subtitles for those labels. For example, I wondered what was written on the pizza box. Perhaps it was not important to the story, but still it was in the mise-en-scene so I would have liked to know. More important than the pizza boxes, there were alcohol bottles and I was really curious about what they were---were they white wine bottles, rice wine or soju? Again, maybe they are not so important to the storyline but they were there, in the scene! I wanted to know. I guess because I don't know much about Korean culture, I really cared about learning about it through one single film---which is a bit too greedy. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the English CC subtitles would have these details. Perhaps I should have watched the movie with CC and not regular English subtitles, although they don't seem to have that subtitle option for this film on Netflix. I guess the English CC option exists only if the movie is already in English.

Before continuing on, I want to go over the pizza boxes again. There was a scene where pest control was applying extermination on the street while they were folding pizza boxes at home. They kept the windows open to get free service---well, I understand that and it is so sad and funny at the same time, a good touch there to how a poor person's mind might work, all good. But, all I could think of was those boxes were also exposed to the gas and still were sent to the pizza company for use. I mean, this is insane. Honestly, when the pizza worker showed up at their door the next day, I expected the issue to be about this but it was about some not well-folded batch. So, that was a disappointment for me. One might argue it is safe, but when I had to get a treatment in my apartment, they always asked me to clear counters and stuff. So I am pretty sure this chemical shouldn't go into our food. Maybe the point is that these people are poor enough not to care about this. 

Some things in the story were quite unclear to me. It is possible that they are unclear because I missed something, but I think I didn't. Not that I am blaming the story-telling quality of the film, but for example, I didn't get from where this college guy was a friend of the son (Kevin). Apparently, the son didn't go to college. They seemed to have referred to the friend as the college friend. Were they just friends in the neighbourhood and one guy got into college? I suppose I will just assume that and perhaps this unclarity is a product of the language barrier. In any case, not getting everything usually happens to me---I guess I just can't say "understood" if I didn't really understand something 100%.

One of the first things I noticed in this film (yes, I guess I am going to start saying 'film' now, instead of 'movie', since I am now sitting in a film studies class, and I should be classy), is the suspension. The suspension they (the film makers, not sure which one exactly) use to try to build tension. I am guessing that this is pretty tricky. If you wait too long, you might lose the audience. What is the correct amount of seconds? I guess this is where the director's talent lies. I think that the very first scene was a bit long that it made me think "should I fear the next scene?". I guess it went a bit long because they were writing the names (of the actors?) too but knowing a few things about the movie, I didn't know where the horror would begin, so I started suspecting perhaps a bit early. I also think that the very first scene (the window view from the family's semi-basement flat) being shown for quite a bit of time at the beginning was intentional. It signifies that this picture has an importance to the story. Indeed, the director goes back to the same picture at the end. More about this later. Back to suspension. There were many scenes in which the audience was left in a suspense (by not showing the next scene). This sometimes created intensity for me but also sometimes made me a bit more curious. Now, do I like the suspense? Maybe I like it when it is done well. This reminds me of the movie Drive where there is SO MUCH suspense (in my opinion) but I didn't get bored or distracted, so I think it was done quite well. Hopefully I will write about Drive one day---at least I intend to. 

Poorness. The poor point of view was often an agent of comedy in this movie. Sorry, film. I am not sure if I like this (even though I might have laughed). The comedy was good but the fact that they are poor, by itself, is not so good. Well, I guess one can call this dark humour and then we are all good. Then, at some point, the perspective of poor people and what being poor made them do is not an instrument of comedy anymore but of horror, which was quite unsettling. I should add that the personality treats of rich people are quite well-portrayed in the film---or at least the treats that we, the middle-class, think the rich people have. I know that the global reception of this film was huge---it grossed millions and millions. But I wonder how the real poor people perceived it---I presume they probably didn't have the money to go see it. Of course, it is still possible to be transparent and laugh at one's own embarrassments. It is not necessarily a bad thing. But perhaps not so many people are so transparent, or maybe they don't quite get it as them being made fun of, so they laugh. I remember quite vividly, for example, a time when I was desperate for free Wi-Fi. I wasn't necessarily poor but I was a student in France and there was a problem with the bank, so I didn't have any money and so I couldn't buy a plan. Anyways, so this free Wi-Fi quest was not so funny to me, I only empathized with them. Actually, a lot of "poor people life" elements were familiar to me, now that I think about it. I guess I know more poor people than I realize (or I am poorer than I realize). I definitely know more number of poor people than the rich ones. Oh well. 

If the poorness jokes weren't so funny for me, then what was? Perhaps I am more attracted to the "jokes" that are not told, but perhaps shown. This is extremely personal and I am not claiming that "this is the way". I found the elevated toilet funny. I have no idea if it is a common thing in Korean homes, or Korean basement homes. It is not clear to me why the toilet had to be on an elevated surface in the bathroom. It looked cool, though. I also liked they labelled the cell phone which had "The Care" number's SIM card in it. It was also nice when the daughter scolded her mother just as a part of an act (but it was really only the kid there so it was probably quite unnecessary, which is probably why I found it funny). Some of these funny moments come from the scenario and maybe the art director. In any case, kudos to the film crew. 

I will continue with the director. He clearly did a very good job---he won an Academy award for Best Director for it. So who am I to judge. Not judging, but I will just comment on some stuff. I have already covered "the suspense" and mentioned "the beginning and the end". I will elaborate on the latter. Having the same picture (basement window view) at the start of the film and again at the end gives me the message "we are back where we started". This is actually exactly what happened. All that adventure, thrill, planning, carnage, and then, they are back at where they were (and still poor). From what I read online, it looks like this was what the director intended as well. That they are still living at the basement flat (and the son probably is not going to end up buying that house). In fact, I was so surprised when they started showing scenes where the son was buying the house---in these scenes they had brought their own furniture from the basement flat to the new house which doesn't make sense. Next, I want to tackle a particular shot. I guess it is safe to say that the conversations of the driver with his boss in the car were crucial to the story. Not always, but perhaps in a car scene in the second half of the movie, the director elected to show the driver from exactly where the boss would be sitting. I really wonder what the purpose of this was. My guess is that it might be because now that the turn of the events were about to change very soon and we might have all been empathizing with the poor family too much, the director wanted to separate us from them and tried to put us in a position or perspective of the home owners without us realizing it. 

Another method/trick the director pulled was with the montage of the collapse of the two poor families. I must add here that the introduction of a new poor family was unexpected so it felt almost like a plot twist to see another insane poor family in the story. After they fought each other and then seized for the night, both families were in defeat in their own ways. Showing a bit of this and a bit of that and trying to have a simultaneous defeat scene by scene looked good, although one cannot say it was a very creative cut. I must also add before proceeding that the night these two families had a fight, it was clear/expected that the boss was going to come home early, so no surprises there, and it felt like a cliché (because it practically was one). I guess a film is allowed to have a cliché or two and still win Palme d'Or as long as there are other interesting elements in it. After the flood, there was a scene, shot completely from a bird's eye view, in which the main poor family had put some of their stuff on a door (or a mattress?) which was floating in the water as they were going to the shelter. This scene immediately reminded me of Titanic's door scene and I thought "Wow, look at how many things they fit in there and Rose couldn't fit one Jack". 

I haven't really touched on the acting. It is partially because I do not know these actors and actresses at all and partially because of the language barrier that I feel. One thing that I liked was in the father (Mr. Kim)'s acting. I do not know if it was in the script or if the director told him to do that or if he decided on it on his own. There were a couple of scenes where the father covered his eyes with one arm. I took it as a manifestation of embarrassment or shame through body language but, of course, I am not sure. I still think that it was a big gesture to include and I liked it.

It is also worth to mention a significant motif in the film, the smell of the poor. I don't even like saying this, it sounds quite offensive. However, in the film, they had decided to make this a theme. Every now and then, they mentioned something about the smell of the main poor family (I say "main" because there is a side one as well, introduced later in the film). Now,  I have a very sensitive nose and I cannot possibly endure bad smells. I actually can't stand some good smells either---I have allergies. Having a sensitive nose could serve well if I had lived a few thousand years ago, I reckon. But nowadays, it is only a problem. If you read my Dune review, maybe you know that I get a bit too carried away sometimes when watching a film (mirror neurons problem)---I hold my breath if the air in the scene is not breathable. However, I was mostly okay during this film about the bad smell scenes. I guess those scenes weren't so focused on smelling itself, so I was fine. The smell of the poor (or the basement smell) theme was cleverly paved throughout the story and at the end it was what cracked the father---he couldn't take the insult anymore and he stabbed his boss (I guess that was a spoiler there). Well, what can I say, I really like it when the scenario serves its purpose (in this case, the smell not being mentioned for nothing). Although there was one thing I didn't like: the little boy of the rich house read the message in Morse code sent by the non-main poor family's man and he did absolutely nothing about it. What was the purpose of showing that scene, then? 

Dogs. I cannot pass without talking about the dogs. From the first moment I saw a dog in this film, I started wondering "what will this dog add to the story?" and it did indeed come up a couple of times but I think the story would have managed without it too. There is also the fact that a stereotypical rich family like that would have dogs (and maybe that's why the family has three and not only one) and maybe that's why they were there. Now, it is possible that these dogs represented something even deeper which I couldn't see, but oh well. They were cute anyways so it was nice to see them. 

I think the sounds of this film were pretty good, overall. The film won very many awards but as far as I know it didn't win the best soundtrack award. The one piece with piano was cleverly composed. It conveyed cheerful and scary feelings simultaneously---at least that's how it felt to me. This is adequately apt since it conforms the genre of the film being both dark comedy and horror. I can say that this is a great film but I am not sure if I would give this film a Palme d'Or, so it is probably a good thing I am not on a jury at Cannes Film Festival. I believe the Film Festival folks really care about if the film touches on any social problems, or what one can identify as the "real" problems in life. (Not that I don't care about social problems, it is just not necessarily something I look for in the films I see. Okay, maybe I do look for them too, but not as much.) Besides, I am not sure it is safe to regard the Cannes Film Festival, or its juries, politically unbiased completely. 

The title of the movie: Parasite. I believe they must have shown on the screen the title when the film started rolling, but somehow I don't remember seeing it. During the movie, the word itself doesn't really come up explicitly either---it's not like Oppenheimer where even whenever the guy was addressed the title had happened to come up. So, towards the end of the film, I just remembered: this film is called Parasite. Immediately after it made sense, of course. It's an interesting choice to call it Parasite. I guess this is one of the points this film makes a difference at---one does not usually use the word "parasite" in such a context.

Before I end this post, I will revisit my last post. In my last post, which was on Oppenheimer, I had complained about the stubbornness of Nolan about (not) using CGI and how unfair that was (due to environmental reasons). Now, in Parasite, the second floor of the rich family's house is completely CGI. Have we noticed? No. Did it matter? No. Apparently, a movie can use CGI and still be great. How extraordinary(!).

Now I am about to give this movie a score out of 10. Considering the fact that it won so many awards increases my expectations and interferes my decision-making process. If I didn't know about the awards, I would probably be giving another number. 

I give 8/10.

Fun fact(s): It looks like what they called ram-don in the film actually did not exist in real life. After the film's debut, people started posting videos on how to make ram-dons, and then, there was actually a company which started producing and selling ram-dons due to its popularity. This reminds me the Hogwarts Express announcement in London at 11 o'clock of every September 1st. Similarly, due to the influence of the Lord of the Ring film series, Auckland airport in NZ has a LOTR themed décor. Moreover, Air New Zealand made a special feature safety video in 2014 to celebrate The Hobbit series. The fun facts end here (for now).

Oppenheimer

 I don't qualify as a movie critique but I do identify as a (sort of) huge movie fan. I am not a movie nerd but it is not questionable that watching movies is a serious hobby of mine. Yes, it is pretty stereotypical, but it's true. My hobbies are really those classic ones: reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music. Before I proceed, I will clarify that I do not (yet?) have a book blog. However, I am a member of a book club. 

Speaking of books, I don't know if you know, but this movie is based on the 2005 book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer". Unfortunately, I did not read this book. I am not sure if I plan to, either. I don't think this is one of those movies where the comments would be about if the movie was better than the book or the other way around. However, the book has a significance because apparently Christopher Nolan said (somewhere) that he wouldn't have taken on the project without the book. Since Oppenheimer is a real person, technically, one does not need the book to make such a movie. In fact, there are already other (media) projects about the same person/topic. There is a tv series and a documentary about Oppenheimer, both released in 1980. There were two movies about him in 1989. There is a 2015 play called Oppenheimer, too. Okay, now that we have established this is not the first movie about Oppenheimer, we can proceed.

Perhaps it is worth to note that this is also not the first nor the only movie about atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. I don't know which is more sorrowful: a nuclear accident or actually setting off a nuclear bomb on purpose. I believe at least one of the following words would be familiar to any reader: Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima. There is a very successful 2019 mini TV series called Chernobyl. Unfortunately, I didn't watch it because I didn't feel like I could take it. Now, why did I watch Oppenheimer, then? Well, I guess I have a soft spot for Christopher Nolan and technically it is shorter than the whole of the mini series (which is about 5h30m). Why am I mentioning Chernobyl or the fact that there are other movies/shows about nuclear bombs? Well, if I had watched any other, perhaps it would equip me with the ability of making certain comparisons. I won't be able to add such comments. If you have some, please feel free to add. I am sure that movie critiques are able to make such comparisons and perhaps Nolan's explosion scenes would be rated as the best among those because he used real bombs and not CGI. Among all visual media projects about Oppenheimer (the man) or nuclear weapons in general, I am sure Nolan's will be the one that's the most spoken about of all time.

Now, where did I first hear about this movie or when did I see its trailer for the first time? Interestingly, I do not remember how I came to know about this movie. If you are a loyal reader to my blog (I am not saying you should be), you are probably familiar with the openings of my posts where I start by describing how I came to know about the existence of that movie. My guess is that however means I encountered this movie's mention or trailer, I got too excited and completely forgot about that first moment itself. Okay, maybe that doesn't really make sense but it's not important.

There is a period of time between the point I learned this movie will be released and the point I went to see this movie. During that period of time, I looked things up about the movie because I was curious. What I found although I was not looking for it is how the movie was shot. Apparently, because Christopher Nolan is Christopher Nolan, he had to do things differently and so he used techniques that hadn't been used before. Upon coming across a reels on Instagram, I learned that they filmed in two different aspect ratios (1.9:1 which is the full aspect ratio and native IMAX 65mm aspect ratio of 1.43:1) for magnitude and nostalgia reasons. Apparently, if you go see it at a theatre which doesn't support the full imax experience then you actually see less of what was shot---the image gets cropped. So they actually released a list of theatres which support the true viewing of the movie. Of course, I went to see it in one of those theatres which offers the full imax experience. I was lucky that such theatre exists in the city I currently live. Otherwise, I don't think I would have traveled for it.

Perhaps the best part about this movie was the fact that there were no ads before the movie started. I am not sure if this would be everyone's experience. My guess is that because I saw it in a "special" salon and they didn't have ads given to them compatible with that screen, they had no advertisements to show. This is a good thing. The movie was at 2:00 pm and it started at 2:01 pm. Unfortunately, there were lots and lots, and I mean, lots of people who came in late. This was probably because everybody thought the movie will probably start around 2:20 pm but that's not enough for me to forgive these people. They really interrupted the movie. Moreover, this salon was full, so whoever came late had real difficulty getting to their seats. 

There is a lot to go through about this movie. Let's start with the scenes. If you saw the movie (or its trailer), you should be aware that some scenes are black&white whereas some scenes are coloured. Some say the coloured scenes' scenario was written in first person (Oppenheimer's) and the black&white scenes were written in the third person in the scenario, and that the take away from this is the the coloured parts are subjective (through the eyes of the celebrated guy) and the other parts showed the events through an objective lens. I can see the subjectivity part but I can't quite sharply see the objectivity part. I should also add that Matt Damon mentioned in an interview that the scenario (as a whole) was in first person but I think he might just be referring to the coloured shot parts (or only the parts he was in)---I don't know. Now, how I see is that it's not an objective/subjective differentiation, it has a different nuance. Basically, the star of the movie is Oppenheimer. Nolan even insisted on not having "American Prometheus" as the movie's name, he really wanted to make it personal, about Oppenheimer. What does this mean? Well, first of all, which name reached us through the years? It's Oppenheimer. I didn't even know about Lewis until the movie. What happened is Oppenheimer's name is engraved whereas Strauss has long been forgotten. Oppenheimer still speaks to us, influences us in the present day, whereas Strauss is stuck in the past, hence the black&whiteness. So I don't quite buy that subjective vs. objective perspective idea. When I think of it the way I do though, I think having Strauss' scenes black and white adds a nice nuance to the movie.

Continuing with the scenes, next is of course the bomb scene. I completely find it unnecessary to use real bombs for a "real" effect. I strongly believe that Nolan had no right to be harming the environment like this for a movie. I mean, what did it really add? Do we really care if they were real explosions? You can't even achieve as big an effect as an atomic bomb just by using multiple non-atomic, regular-but-big bombs. I mean, what's the carbon footprint of this movie? If there was a ranking (wrt carbon footprint) among all the movies that have been made until today, I believe this movie would be ranked as the 1st. This is not nice at all. I am saying all this, and I am not even a big environmentalist. Interestingly, I haven't heard of any environmentalist bodies boycott this movie. Maybe there are some and maybe they made it to the news, but the PR and marketing of this movie was immense and hence covering the media so much, so that might be why I haven't heard of any protests. In fact, the immense amount of marketing content of this movie has increased my expectations a lot and I ended up not liking the movie as much, so it backfired on me. 

When I say "I didn't like the movie as much", don't get me wrong. I think it is a great movie, but it is not the best movie by C. Nolan, in my opinion. Cillian Murphy says in an interview that this is Nolan's "Magnum Opus". I disagree. I have seen a lot of interview clips done with the people in the main roles, and I think they were all just too excited and since they are in the work, they saw it better than it is (or, they are simply obliged to say good and great things about it).

I don't want to get side-tracked here. So, back to the scenes. Continuing with the bomb scene, what I liked the most was the sound coming SO LATE. It only makes sense that it arrives so late. The suspension was very long, when the audience waited for the "boom" sound. In fact---I heard this from others too---this long wait was probably the most respectfully performed one in the sense that nobody made any noise while waiting. I also liked that they showed everybody one by one while we were waiting for the boom. It was also hilarious when Teller put on sunscreen (and even better, I paid attention later and he still got burned). Okay, so that's all good, but I still think he should have used CGI, it could even be better (and bigger) explosion with CGI. I don't see what's wrong with using CGI a little. CGI nowadays is very good to the point you can't even tell the difference if you hired a good company/person to do the CGI of your movie. 

Continuing with another scene: the sex scene, Florence Pugh and the claim that Oppenheimer is a womanizer. First of all, I think the sex scenes were completely unnecessary. They didn't really add anything important to the story. Up to this movie, I liked Florence Pugh's acting in general. Her character was underrepresented in this movie. I will in fact go on to say that Nolan is incapable of writing female characters. Both women's characters in this film were extremely shallow. The only point of Florence Pugh's character was almost the only small tie Oppenheimer had to the communists and it was exploited too much. I mean, if they didn't have this character in the movie they could still go with the same story. I don't think what the movie portrays is really enough to call this movie's Oppenheimer as a womanizer. I don't know about the real-life Oppenheimer, maybe there were rumours, or maybe it was certain, and so that's why Nolan wanted to include this "detail". Just because he cheated on her wife doesn't imply he is a womanizer. I mean, a lot of people do this kind of stuff. It was also only a little bit implied that he had some kind of a relationship with another woman, but okay, let's say he had relationships with three women in total in his life, not exactly all of them happening regularly and at the same time either. What's womanizer about this? When I think of a womanizer, I think of a man who tries to meet as many women as possible and who seduces every single woman he meets and somehow will have sex with each of them. So, for example, a womanizer wouldn't stop at his brother's wife, he would try to seduce her too, and even older women. We saw other women in a party Oppenheimer went in the film, and he didn't necessarily try to hit on every single one of them, nor tried to impress them. This is also a good paragraph to mention the following. I can see from this movie that Nolan has no good knowledge at all about romantic relationships. After this movie, I noticed that his previous movies were also white male dominated. Now, you may say, it was 1940s, that's why women are like that in the movie. Well, that's not a good excuse at all. Okay, let's say both Jean and Kitty are hysterical women (why did they have to be portrayed this way?), why is there no background on this? They just come as weird characters in the movie. What's behind Jean's behaviours, or Kitty's drinking while her baby is crying? Even a small hint, some small scene could suffice to fill these gaps---instead of having some other unnecessary scenes. Overall, very bad character development on the women characters of the movie. 

Why did Nolan have the sex scenes or the hysterical-women-acting-out scenes? I should add here the scene where Cillian Murphy was naked during the "interrogation". Nakedness, I understand, but it's too cliché. Yeah, yeah, because it was such an intimate/private issue to him, he felt naked while saying those things and that's why the camera went behind the neck of the other guy to reveal R.O. naked. Next, Jean appearing, and that was completely unnecessary. I don't think that Jean appeared like that in the eyes of R.O., it was from the perspective of his wife, but that wasn't made clear. It is mixing Robert's emotions and how he sees himself at the moment with what his wife is seeing in her own mind. With this, and having the women act out out of nowhere (like Jean going "don't buy me flowers"), I guess Nolan is trying to achieve what some artistic movies would contain compared to blockbuster ones. It seems to me like Nolan is stuck between wanting to make an art movie and a blockbuster movie. Anyways, all this is horrible. I don't like it. In fact, I think I liked Nolan more before seeing this movie. In fact, this movie made me realize that the only thing I liked in his movies was the mind-bending aspect of the stories. I didn't care much about how some things were shot. What interest me are story and meaning. 

When I ask myself: what difference did it make that the movie was shot in that huge aspect ratio? I don't think it made any difference. At least, not on the positive side. It actually made me resent because if it was just shot like a normal IMAX, then I would see the movie, and criticize about more or less the same things but I'd be overall happy with the movie. Knowing they tried to make it look somehow "special" which added nothing substantial to the movie (in my opinion) is a big minus.

I try to understand why Nolan did such things. The first answer is because he is Nolan. But also, I guess when you are telling a historical event, the only ways you can make the movie interesting is by doing something interesting with the shooting and including sex scenes. Since when is this person so stereotypical? Wasn't the whole point of him being different? It seems to me that he is, at this point, doing things only for being spoken about. I don't like this.

Movie makers claimed that people wouldn't be able to recover from it after seeing this movie. I did not feel that way at all. I was totally fine after I left the salon. 

The only part/scene of the movie that struck me was when people were cheering in a room while R.O. gave a speech. This was wild because so many people were just killed. And they were so ignorantly cheering. In their perspective, they celebrated their success but they killed innocent people. Perhaps it is the most barbaric thing. I don't even talk about the part R.O. stepped into a burned corpse. I am talking about people only cheering and clapping and laughing. 

Done with the scenes I want to touch, I will move on to acting and the actors/actresses. First of all, I did not notice the president was Gary Oldman---my bad. I did like his line, though, about relieving R.O. saying that he is the one who killed, not R.O.---he has a good point. It was also unbelievable the president calling R.O. a cry baby, which is apparently a real thing that happened. I won't go into Florence Pugh again too much---her role was pretty small (short screen time), it looks like movie makers now see her as an object (to use for sex scenes), and somehow she is one of the main cast (along with Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and RDJ). The five always posed together at the premiers. I really think it should have been only the 4 of them. If there was really going to be a fifth person, it should have been someone else. Emily Blunt's acting was really good but her character wasn't written well. RDJ is RDJ, I have nothing to say---it was great. Apparently, some people thought he couldn't act (because he had been Iron Man for a long time) but I never thought that, so nothing new for me. Casting Matt Damon was probably one of the best things the movie makers did. I didn't watch Peaky Blinders and I know Cillian Murphy only from other Nolan movies. I thought he was very good at being Scarecrow. I think he has a really interesting face which makes it easy for him to portray a psychopath, if needed. I think his acting was good, but the script wasn't written well. Let's go into this in the next paragraph.

Apparently, this movie had a physicist consultant for the science stuff and this consultant is a Nobel Prize winner. This is somehow hard to believe. Or, maybe he advised them right but they didn't listen to him 100%. I have a Bachelor's degree in Physics myself, and worse, a BSC + a master's + a PhD in Mathematics. So I have a really good grasp of how this kind of people act in their private and/or academic lives. Some mathematicians/physicist can really be egotistical and rude. Somehow they try to show Oppenheimer as such a person but only sometimes. This doesn't make sense. I know that for the scenes with Lewis Strauss it was kind of Strauss' perspective, but the words R.O. said were facts, so they were indeed pretentious acts. Moreover, R.O. acted like a smug when Matt Damon's character came to offer him the job as well. Anyways, I don't think this movie did a good job representing scientists in an accurate way. When it comes to science itself, again, not good enough for me. They did better in equations than what most other movies include as equations. But still, I can see that science is somehow romanticized in the eyes of movie makers. Why? First of all, things are never that simple in physics or mathematics. I heard that they purposefully didn't go into the physics part of it much, which is okay, but you can't just degrade it either. 

Overall, what's the take away of this movie? I don't know. Did I need to see the real Oppenheimer's indecisiveness or whatever they are trying to portray? Did this movie teach me anything interesting or important? I don't think so. I think if this movie wasn't made, I wouldn't feel its absence at all. I mean, what happened? We saw the "struggles" of this physicist about "his" invention? Well, it was mostly other people who did real physics work on the project after they opened that site. He was the manager. So I am not sure if it's really accurate to call it his invention. He did accept the offer to conduct this project. Does it make him "the father"? It could be someone else. One might say, "oh he was the only person who could do this". I don't think so. If something is bound to happen, someone will emerge to make it happen. From what the movie portrayed, it seems to me that he was just taken away by the idea of bringing together his job and his favourite place (that's close to his brother). Then, he really like being the head/manager of something. Then, he really liked the fame. If the whole point of this movie was to show his struggles about feeling guilty etc, I am not satisfied. Throughout the whole project, he never hesitated to continue the project. He did try to have a say in the usage of the bomb, but he didn't really do that much to claim it, and he had already agreed to work for the military so he should have known that. I am not blaming the guy here, it's already in the past---this is a historical event, I am talking about the portrayals in the movie. 

The centre of the story was not the making of the bomb, the story was told around the "interrogations" R.O. had. At the end, to see that all that was only because of someone's low self-esteem, was not so much of a satisfying ending either (you might claim here that that wasn't the ending, but that's where the story wrapped up, that's my point---the end was "oh I think we might have indeed started that chain reaction", ye ye too cliché because what he means is the repercussions of the bombing event and the soon coming ever-lasting hostility between US and Russia, etc, which might include the speeding up of global warming too). It wasn't even clear to me for the whole movie why Lewis was in a hearing but I guess it was because he had wanted to be appointed to a new position. His hearing couldn't be related to R.O.'s security clearance thing, because they didn't even know it was Lewis who started it at that time. I could go on with so many other unclear things but I will stop here. Maybe I will watch this movie again at home when the time comes, but I doubt that I will write about it again.

Anyways, perhaps if they really had a John Krasinski cameo, I could have given the movie a bit of a higher score. 

I give 7/10.

P.S. I don't know if anybody noticed this but there were literally flies who landed on the cameras when they were shooting, they would come land stay a bit and then fly away. They didn't even care about this even though they cared about the visual quality of the scenes "so much".

Fun fact: Apparently, this movie's actual film length is about 11 miles and the movie is about 3 hours. So you could, if you want, go on a treadmill, and walk about 11 miles while watching the movie on your phone/ipad, because on average it takes about 3 hours to walk 11 miles.