anywhere out of the world: December 2019

9.12.19

Sometimes dead is better. My "PET SEMATARY" by stephen king

I was around 20

when I first read that novel,

probably the first year when foreign contemporary books began to arrive in Romania.

Ever since, not a single year without reading a book by Stephen King.

And each time I am troubled by his humor,

by the bankruptcy of gender relations

and by the fury he employs

in closing down all the doors of his intrigues,

killing out in 10 pages

the delicious anxiety he had nourished during 500.

But to this day I continue to exalt these scenes of recess,

where nothing much happens,

scenes that build up his spell.

An ice-cold beer in the shade of a porch,

the landscapes of Maine,

a rocking chair,

a Chesterfield that dissipates in the evening breeze...

King perfectly combines these familiar flavors, midway between Edward Hopper

and Norman Rockwell.
Everything is at first glance reassuring.

But already pregnant

with a kind of metaphysical double bottom,

where a shadow blows into our ears

the same compulsory teaching: 

the world does not wish us well.

And this autumn, once again,

I have travelled to Castle Rock or to Derry.

Sufficiently as to find again this peculiar climate

that will forever remain

the one of my 20ies.

By Giulia Dobre
(as aired on Radio Romania)

2.12.19

Laughing like crazy. My Joker 2019

JOKER

Directed by Todd Philips

Crowned rather unexpectedly with the Golden Lion @ Venezia 2019, "JOKER" is less a film about the Batman’s devoted enemy, but a fable on the contemporary culture of humiliation.

Here's an idea that had nothing appealing on paper.

It could have been an n-ish adaptation of that generous source, the comic books. One that lately transformed Hollywood in a kindergarten for old boys still clinging on their toys.

Yet Todd Philips, who had already done his ranges with a few regressive comedies (“Road Trip", “Back to College", "Very bad Trip") promised to achieve here an adult and uncompromising piece of work.

A film d'auteur, though, dubbed by comments on our troubled times.

And yes, with an actor, Joaquin Phoenix, certainly admirable.

But one a little too naturally built for the part of a super villain that raised from the cradle of a martyred child.

Todd Philips’ intention is here transparent.

He turns the Joker, aka Arthur Flock, into the evil genius of a ruthless society. One that eats up the weak, and engenders monsters, out of the mold of social humiliation.

But JOKER's achievement does not reside so much in this kind of empathy (which is the least we could ask from a film on monsters).

Nor in the merciless mechanics that will lead the brave Arthur to its criminal madness: bullying, death of his mother, antipsychotic treatment gone wrong, a heavy destiny and screenplay.

The film is rather successful by its very slow paced decoction of this itinerary towards future crimes, which had been just postponed.

Even though not a remake of "Taxi Driver", as intended, the main lesson of Scorsese's film is here.

JOKER is situated in the same New York of the "70ies, a gigantic trash, as onctuous as Jokers' hair.

In both cases, the characters hide under their psychosis a much more common madness.

Both Arthur and Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver" only demand to be looked at. And seen.

As they are both ordinary candidates to the Warholian 15 minutes, the only remnant of the American dream.

"Taxi Driver" was not ending by a mass murder, but by its character's relief, even though by death.

JOKER plunges yet again into those years, just to explain they were the premises of a nightmare that engulfs us now up to our neck. A nightmare where the thirst of celebrity must be paid with consented humiliation. And for which Arthur's mad laughter is a righteous background.

With Arthur Fleck, who dreams to be a stand up star, other landmarks of the end of the 70ies come to our mind. Those have been times when Christine Chubbuck, for example, a TV journalist, has performed a live suicide while she was presenting the News.

Sidney Lumet got there his inspiration for "Network", just a year after "Taxi Driver".

Those were also times for such as Andy Kauffman, a stand up genius, who interrogated as never before the public's hysteria with the thrills of live events.

All of JOKER is built on this unhealthy vertigo of acting out, the actual logics of live transmissions. And of TV.

'Why so serious?” was asking the previous version of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger under Christopher Nolan's direction.

"Why so much laughter?" is Joaquin Phoenix' JOKER asking to a world that projects on its skylight a waltz of puppets.

Ah, and behind this laughter, as fair as tyrannizing, Phoenix is, of course, a genius.

How could we ever doubt?

By Giulia Ghica Dobre

2.12.2019

Cause Germans do it better: LONELY TOGETHER, my favorite 2019 German Film @Munich Intl.Film Festival

Lonely together (ZU ZWEIT ALLEIN)

Directed by Sabine Koder

germany, 2019.

"The heart has it reasons which reason knows nothing of."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

You will either enjoy the laid-back atmosphere and chatty characters in “Lonely Together”,

a fresh film out of the Munchen HFF oven,

or find it all incredibly boring.

It is though so rare to find movies that don't want to be sensationalistic and violent,

but would rather present universal questions

and then investigate them throughout the course of the movie.

Director Sabine Koder traces in "Lonely Together" the portrait of a couple of two undecided.

But, as the director is an obvious follower of Kant,

she made her characters two volunteers of indecision:

The two chose not to be chosen.

The two do not stop passing from one bank of the river to another,

as much as they do not stop passing from one state of mind to another.

Yet they never interrupt their analysis and their "no choice".

The characters talk and talk, often such deeply personal matters that I had trouble keeping up.

But the talk is interesting and intriguing.

This is a story that has to do first with the protagonists self-perception.

Jean-Thom Lass, who plays Karl, brings a veracious mix of smug confidence and little guy vulnerability to the part.

All this is spiked with a clear case of self-delusion that illuminates his character.

Nina, played with coquettish innocence by Eva Bay,

is also clever and deliciously sophisticated,

vulnerable and honest.

And she is certainly a bout de souffle,

a woman on the verge of a breakdown.

Karl engages in much philosophizing about choice,

but he is never choosing.

He operates out of how he "should" or "should not" act, rather than out of his experience of what works out.

When life does not fit his pictures, he deceives himself with endless rationalizations.

Through his experience with Nina, through their very ludic relationship, more of a camaraderie than of an inflammable love story,

and especially when she takes time off it,

he is shook out of his need for complete self-control.

And then he finally has the epiphany of grace.

The young german director presented here a very strict construction, softened by a balance of tones,

by the grace of the performers

and the fluidity of the staging.

"LONELY TOGETHER", intimately linked to the german urban landscape, follows the fluctuations of the feelings of characters who do not cease to hesitate

on their sentimental destiny.

This is a "philosophical tale", in which the questions of identity and otherness are asked.

But the film works also as a "moral narrative" that questions the nature of the relationship between the sexes.