After Hours.
Following a long, boring day at work showing a new employee the ropes of word processing, Paul meets Marcy in a coffee shop where they bond over the book he’s reading. Marcy informs Paul that her roommate Kiki sells sculpted plaster-of-Paris paperweights, and gives him her number so he can buy one; after Paul arrives home he calls Kiki intending to purchase a paperweight, but instead is invited over, by Marcy. Paul loses a $20 bill, the only money he has, during a terrifying cab ride and arrives at Marcy’s apartment where only the barely-dressed Kiki is there to meet him. Marcy invites Paul into her room having returned to a sleeping Kiki, massaged so by Paul, where she intends only to talk to him. As a result of Marcy’s peculiar, nigh on unsettling, behaviour and talking not being his primary motive, Paul slips out of the apartment; this, however, is just the start of the longest, and worst, night of his life as he attempts to escape a labyrinth of unfortunate events, where each turn provides a fresh hell and no apparent end in sight. Martin Scorsese’s tragically underrated, stressful, darkly humorous, surreal thriller, After Hours is sure to keep you guessing as to what horrific circumstance will befall our protagonist next. An inescapable paranoid nightmare.
Blood Simple.
Ray and Abby drive a rain-beaten Texan highway discussing the latter’s unhappy marriage, before stopping at a motel for the night. Abby’s husband and Ray’s employer, bar owner Marty, receives photographic evidence of their affair from a private investigator, while Ray and Abby, fearful of what action he will take, stay away from the bar and lie low at Ray’s house. After a failed attempt to avenge his broken marriage, Marty hires the same PI to kill his wife and her lover; though a relatively simple plan, it doesn’t unfold exactly as intended, instead unravelling in a spiral of lies, suspicion and, of course, murder. The Coen brothers hit the ground running in this their feature debut, which also introduced a baby-faced Frances McDormand to the world of acting and cinematographer-turned-director Barry Sonnenfeld to that of filmmaking. A tense, atmospheric crime-thriller-noir-horror, Blood Simple is a complex film made to look anything but, through pure, strenuous attention to detail. Deafening silences, a tense piano/ambient sound score, harrowing cinematography, an airtight plot and terrific performances by the entire cast. A perfect independent film.
Brazil.
Somewhere in the 20th century, a television screen displays politicians making light of frequent terrorist bombings to a public that have become desensitised to the violence around them. It’s Christmas Eve and a case of mistaken identity leads to an innocent man, cobbler Archibald Buttle, being violently arrested by a squad of secret police, instead of vigilante and suspected terrorist, Archibald Tuttle. In this dystopian society ruled by bureaucracy, government employees live in constant fear of being blamed for mistakes; when a refund cheque for Buttle’s arrest arrives at the desk of Sam Lowry, an unambitious worker who’s well-connected mother pulls strings to secure him a promotion he scornfully rejects, he voluntarily delivers it to Buttle’s now-grieving family, gladly denying responsibility for the cock-up. There Sam discovers the woman of his dreams, literally; Buttle’s neighbour, Jill, a truck driver wanted by the state for her attempts to expose the Buttle fiasco, bares a striking resemblance to a damsel in distress Sam envisions in his sleep. In pursuing Jill, Sam risks his career and his life, but will his feelings be reciprocated, and, more importantly, would the system allow it? A surreal, dark comedy, Brazil is Terry Gilliam’s bold, nightmarish vision of a bleak future/alternative present, in the vein of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, that savagely satirises corporate capitalism, bureaucracy and consumerist culture. A stellar supporting cast of Robert De Niro, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin and Jim Broadbent, are lead by Jonathan Pryce in his breakthrough film role as Winston Sm-, sorry, Sam Lowry. A visually breathtaking piece let down a little in the middle by the lack of direction in the characters, but ultimately redeemed in the final third. The truth shall make you free.
Amadeus.
Two servants storm their aged master’s room to discover he has slit his throat in a suicide attempt amid confessions pertaining to the killing of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He is taken to a psychiatric hospital where a young priest, Father Vogler, visits him and awaits a confession for the apparent murder. The old man reveals he is composer Antonio Salieri, who, as a boy, was jealous of Mozart, the child prodigy. Recounting his life to the priest, Salieri claims that in his youth God killed his father, who refused his son’s pleas to learn music, in return for a promised life of piety. Some years later while serving as court composer to Emperor Joseph II, Salieri meets Mozart for the first time and is shocked to discover he is “a giggling, dirty minded creature”; lamenting Mozart’s wasted talent, Salieri vows to destroy his contemporary’s career as a form of revenge against a God who mocks his mediocrity. All of Salieri’s schemes and contempt for Mozart ultimately lead him to his current position, tormented by the ever increasing popularity of his rival’s music, while he languishes in obscurity. A spectacular celebration of music, Amadeus is a wonderful fictionalised account of the life of Mozart, adapted by Peter Shaffer from his own 1979 stage play, and is a triumph for director Miloš Forman, Schaffer, dual leads F Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, as well as the set and costume departments who made the film such a joy to watch. No mediocrity to be absolved here.
No End.
Antek is dead. He suffered a heart attack four days ago; he now watches over his wife, Ulla, and son, Jacek. In life Antek was a lawyer; he was defending factory worker Darek in his final, unfinished, case, for organising a strike in martial law imposed Poland circa 1982. Veteran lawyer Labrador is approached by Darek’s wife, Joanna, to take over, though he hasn’t worked a political case in decades, he accepts the job as the last case of his career, a final swan-song. After experiencing supernatural events, Ulla concludes that Antek is attempting to communicate and wants Labrador removed from the case, since he (Labrador) wishes Darek to cooperate and avoid disturbing the system, while idealistic Antek believes Darek’s situation can be used to improve the conditions for the working class in Poland. Meanwhile Ulla suffers torturously from guilt and regret, paradoxically attempting to forget her husband while unwilling to let him go; only after his death does she realise how much he meant to her and how much she loved him. No End is a heart-wrenching visualisation of a woman’s grief, set against the Polish political landscape of the 1980s, a common theme in director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s pre-France films. Grazyna Szapolowska’s performance of the bereaved is beautifully harrowing, while Kieslowski seems incapable of making anything less than incredible.
Back to the Culture 