kathulu's activity

With a genuine excitement about a movie hailed as a striking and engrossing experience, not least in the LGBTQIA+ genre, I was ultimately let down by the filmmaking itself. Even if the idea might have been fine, the two halves of the movie were difficult to reconcile. I also found the sound design and mixing to be on the lower end - you could barely hear the dialogue, and most of the sound was pretty much just crickets chirping. Of course, this adds to the overall ambiance of the jungle depicted so heavily in the movie but I missed an even slightly more crisp experience.

However, the love story was refreshingly unproblematic and undramatic to me. Usually, we have to deal with quite a lot of intensity when watching an LGBTQIA+ work of art, but in this case, it went by mildly like a gentle spring breeze. You might say that the dramatic part of the story unfolds in the second, feverish part of the film, but it doesn't hit you over the head with a dark thematic.

It won the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival in 2004, but I doubt that this has withstood the test of time. The film doesn't require much from its audience, but it is choppy and uncomfortable at best.

Never had I heard about Tanztheater or Pina Bausch before, and from the first minute of this film, I was glued to the screen. Everything, from the emotion through movement to the truly excellent soundtrack, I was transported into a new world I won't soon forget. Writer/director Wim Wenders had been following Bausch's work for years, and was convinced post her death to finish this work by the dancers in her company.

With the haunting sounds of music like "Einmal ist keinmal" and the powerfully visceral, expressionist "Rite of Spring", and everything else woven into this avant-gardistic human tapestry, it's hard not to fall in love with Pina's movements brought to life by the dancers. Her art shown purely through freshly filmed choreography, with a smattering of archival footage to remind you that the origins are indeed of the past. This is dance as a series of short films, as I have never really seen before. The choice to keep the dancers mic'd works like the perfect bridge between film and reality, and the background settings and sets used deserve a special mention.

Although the motifs are often gendered, there are gender-bending elements throughout, and while a lot of women are portrayed as helplessly falling down, caught and supported by men, some men too support each other. Especially the André number is particularly touching.

As a true admirer of dance, however lacking in the practical skill myself, this was without a doubt an exciting experience for me, but I do believe that even if you have no clue about the art of dance, it will still be an evocative and gripping watch not to be missed.

"Aristocracy belongs to the past."

Out of all the lines, this one stood out to me the most with its glaring irony. History will forever repeat itself.

The eternally charismatic Rutger Hauer stars in this WWII epic by Paul Verhooven, playing his role as Erik Lanshof with youthful charm and vigour. And for me, that was one of the few true redeeming qualities about this film. Not to say that it's a bad film - more that it is just simply unremarkable. I wanted to get engrossed in it, but it was never able to pull me in fully.

The soundtrack was undoubtedly just lovely. The German crooners of the 1930s are a different breed of haunting nostalgia, and Rogier Van Otterloo's score is also quite impressive and lovely to the ear, even if a bit war-generic at times. In particular the track "Ester" is evoking the essense of what film scores are, bringing the movie back to what it's supposed to be, and "Englandvaarders Hebben Een Streepje Voor" is almost comically similar to the ever-famous "Jaws" theme, which would come out a year later - curious indeed!

Veerhoven's special effects for the horrors of war and torture are reminiscent of his other, later works, such as the ketchup-like horrific blood splatter and other more cerebral terrors for our imagination. Both explicit and implicit, the effects do not function completely as a suspension of disbelief but nevertheless, they do still turn your stomach and at their worst, hit you over the head with the violence.

The movie is undoubtedly important in the tapestry of cinema history, but will probably never be the first WWII adventurous tale that would jump to mind when the mood for a war movie strikes.