Past, Present, and Pretense

The American author F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: ‘Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy’. Rachel Brener (played by Neta Garty), the protagonist in Assaf Bernstein’s debut feature Ha-Hov (2007), a Mossad agent, became a hero—to the Israeli Secret Service, in particular; and the people of Israel in general—way back in 1964, the moment she and her two fellow agents Zvi (Itay Tiran) and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) emerged from an aircraft waving and smiling.  For the trio had brought to culmination a manhunt that had lasted fifteen long years by killing Maximilian Reiner (Edgar Selge) , alias ‘The Surgeon of Birkenau’, the biggest Nazi criminal apprehended by the state of Israel.

Thirty-three years later, the elderly Rachel (portrayed by veteran actress Gila Almagor, who played Eric Bana’s mother in Spielberg’s Munich [2005]), still very much a national hero, who has recently published her biography titled My Mission, receives the first minor jolt to her conscience when a member of a military troop to whom she is recounting her famous exploit asks her ‘How do you know you’re doing the right thing?’ 

This is because for over three decades now, Rachel has been harbouring a secret from the eyes of the world, much the same way she has been concealing a scar on her left cheek—a memento from the dreaded surgeon—with makeup. That deeply guarded secret now threatens to disrupt the veneer that she has so meticulously maintained since the moment she landed on Israeli soil alongside her two co-agents. Rachel suffers the second—more significant—jolt on the night of a party to celebrate the launch of her biography, when Zvi (Alex Peleg), now bound to a wheelchair, pays her a visit and hands her a newspaper clipping. The news report is about an octogenarian named Nikolai Bazorov, who is bedridden at a nursing home in a town not far from Kiev. Bazorov claims to be Maximilian Reiner.

It is quite apparent from the conversation between Rachel and Zvi that what is perceived by all and sundry to be their most famous accomplishment is nothing but a big, fat lie. To continue this charade, the truth about the claim made by Bazorov has to be found out. 

As the film effortlessly alternates between the 1960s and the 1990s, we find the younger versions of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud in Berlin, preparing to set in motion the plan that has been entrusted on them. We find the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ is now an obstetrician. The same individual who had conducted unspeakable atrocities in the name of science on countless Jews and had sent them to their death is ironically running a clinic with his wife, where he aids in awakening lives growing inside wombs. 

While most Hollywood directors would have found it difficult not to give in to the temptation of showcasing at least some spying techniques and gadgetry, Bernstein eschews such gimmicks (except in one instance, involving a hidden camera) and builds up the tension, instead, through interactions and conversations, especially between Rachel and the ‘doctor’. In scenes reminiscent of Lewis Gilbert’s Operation Daybreak (1975), we find Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud getting acquainted with the former Nazi’s daily routine in order to determine where, when, and how they could bring their plan to fruition.

Even though the kidnapping takes place smoothly, unforeseen hitches arise in deporting Reiner back to Israel; and the trio is assigned the job to feed, shave, and keep constant vigil on their bound and gagged captive. But, soon enough they find out that even though years have passed since he committed his last ‘experiment’ on hapless Jews, Reiner still possesses a seething disdain towards the race. Moreover, the skilled surgeon has an uncanny knack of finding the raw nerve in each of the three Mossad agents; and is equally adept at manipulative mind games as he is with a speculum. As days pass by, and reasons beyond the control of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud keep stalling Reiner’s deportation, their frustration begins to grow. Seizing this opportunity, the shrewd surgeon plays on his captors’ weaknesses, until the unthinkable happens.

Rachel has always held herself responsible for what happened on that fateful night. So, even though age is no longer by her side, she takes it upon herself to finish what she should have over three decades ago. But as she embarks on her journey to Ukraine, little does she know that life will yet again pull a surprise or two on her.

Winner of four Ophir Awards (the Israeli version of the Academy Awards), Ha-Hov’s basic storyline—that of a dreaded Nazi living amongst us—has already been touched upon by films like The Odessa File (1974), Marathon Man (1976), Tras el Cristal (1987), and Apt Pupil (1998), to name just a few. But Bernstein’s endeavour differentiates itself from these aforementioned films simply by offering a much broader perspective to the ‘identity’ factor. While other movies dealing with the same subject have focused primarily on unmasking a German war criminal, Bernstein has not only weaved in the dual identity element in each of his film’s primary characters, but has also depicted how horrific events during World War II continues to forge the identity of Israel as a nation. Being an Israeli himself adds that extra bit of authenticity in what he has depicted on celluloid. It also helps that none of his three chief characters exhibit even a semblance of ‘heroics’ that we are so accustomed to when watching a film involving ‘secret agents’. In fact, they are as human as they come—replete with all the usual frailties, faults, and failings.

Although the  history of cinema does present more than a few evidences to the contrary, it remains a fact that second-hand knowledge is often second-best to what has actually been experienced either at the personal level or as part of collective consciousness. And that is precisely why, the Hollywood remake of Ha-Hov, titled The Debt (2010) starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds might not only feel like an infructuous exercise, but one that will, in all probability, fail to touch a chord, because it runs the risk of also being labeled as ‘pretentious’.  

Dinner, Drinks, and Dread

As moviegoers, each one of us has our own dipstick for chaffing out films that are great from those that grate on our nerves. In my case, it is a simple matter of whether I am thinking ‘How will this end?’ as a film nears its dénouement or ‘When will this end?’ In other words, what I am watching has to be engaging enough to keep me guessing till its climax and well into it. Speaking of which, there is another hallmark for a memorable film, in my opinion.  It either ends exactly where I thought it would (for example, Hitchcock’s Notorious [1946]) or it throws a curveball and floors me completely (for instance, Scream of Fear [1961]; The Ninth Configuration [1980]; Dead of Night [1945] among many others). What makes Nick Tomnay’s maiden feature film The Perfect Host (2010)—which he edited and wrote as well—based on his own short The Host (2001), tick is that it manages to tick all the right boxes.

The one-line descriptor for the film on IMDB: ‘A criminal on the run cons his way into the wrong dinner party where the host is anything but ordinary’, and the accompanying poster do both a service and a disservice to this unknown little gem. They give away the spine on which the story hinges. The trailer on YouTube is even worse. While viewing it, it will not take long for the discerning eye to spot a ‘twist’ in the tale.

Thankfully, The Perfect Host does not get affected by these inadvertent revelations primarily because it is not a one-trick pony. Like an offering from a gourmet chef, the film is multi-layered, with tantalising surprises galore.

The tone is set quite appetisingly, in one of the early sequences of the film, when John Taylor (Clayne Crawford), a career criminal on the run from the law after robbing a bank enters a departmental store to buy some medication for his heavily bleeding foot. At that precise moment, there occurs a stick up in the store by a revolver-wielding woman. In a darkly comic scene, when the thief asks the store owner to put all the cash in his register in a bag, the Chinese man asks ‘Paper or plastic?’ The woman settles for the latter—an obviously wrong choice, thereby auguring an incorrect decision that John will be making a few minutes later. Another important foreboding is weaved into the same sequence when John manages to outwit the robber, by pulling a gun on her, instead; followed by the store owner sticking a pistol at John’s face. Tables are turned, as they will continue to be, on quite a few occasions henceforth. 

Desperately seeking a safe haven, armed with a lie, John manages to get inside the impressive house of Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce, whose claim to fame is portraying Dr Niles Crane in the TV series Frasier). Warwick is an affable guy and a cleanliness freak with a curious gait, who is alone at home, busy preparing dinner for four of his old friends—Roman (Tyrees Allen), Rupert (Cooper Barnes), Chelsea (Annie Campbell), and Monica (Indira G Wilson)—when the doorbell rings.

Offering John an unlimited supply from his stock of red wine, while admitting ‘I’m a bit of a white man myself; red’s a bit heavy for my constitution’, Warwick ushers his guest in, in a manner in sync with the title of the film. But as times passes by, both John and we, the viewer, will learn that even though red wine is not to his taste, the colour red is something Warwick definitely fancies.

A film that effectively turns the ‘home invasion’ genre on its head—and is reminiscent of the Anurag Kashyap-penned, Ramgopal Varma-directed superlative Kaun (1999), sans Urmila Matondkar’s histrionics—The Perfect Host is one of those rare films that encourages us to listen carefully. For it peppers the dialogues—major chunk of the film is nothing but a tête-à-tête between Warwick and John—with clues. These clues pertain to both what is about to happen (‘Cleaning up your nasty mess’) as well as an insight into both their characters (‘You’re my guest and I’m glad you’re here, but you only got yourself to blame’). The essence of a dark comedy, laid down during the departmental store scene, is also kept intact with such classic lines (delivered to perfection by Pierce) as Warwick exclaiming ‘You can’t kill me, I’m having a dinner party’ while being threatened by John at knifepoint. 

While deftly handling the minimalist setting of his film, Tomnay displays that he is equally adept at visual metaphor. In one scene, to hide John from the eyes of a prying neighbour, Warwick puts a mask on his guest—a mask of the creature from Jack Arnold’s cult-classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). As the masked John tries in vain to communicate with the lady, while being restrained by Warwick, we realise how the concept and depiction of the ‘monster’ has changed in the past six-odd decades. At the same time, we also marvel at Tomnay’s mastery in portraying how the face our next door neighbour wears can be a mask in itself.

It will be thoroughly unfair to review The Perfect Host without showering accolades on David Hyde Pierce’s performance. It is indeed difficult to point out, after Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), another character on film who elicited so much dread while dancing.

At the same time, one does need to acknowledge that the film itself is not ‘perfect’. The barrage of twists that are infused into the last quarter of its 93-minute duration might appear to be an exercise in overkill for some. The prolonged flashback sequences, dealing with Taylor and his fiancée Simone (Megahn Perry) can also be labeled as mostly redundant. 

However, what makes this under-seen, under-appreciated effort that flew under the radar a laudable one is that it relies largely on an intelligent interplay between two characters. It is a venture that reminds us and restores our faith in the fact that—in this age of CGI and ‘Bayhem’—there was a reason movies were labeled ‘talkies’ long time ago.

And for serving that sole purpose, if for nothing else, this is one host one would like to raise a toast to.

Cops, Crime, and Clairvoyance

The annals of world cinema are replete with examples of teaming ups between an actor and a director. From F W Murnau and Emile Jannings, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Ingmar Bergman and Max von Sydow, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, John Ford and John Wayne, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney; to our very own Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee, Manmohan Desai/Prakash Mehra and Amitabh Bachchan, and Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan—the list is always a work in progress. Equally rare are instances of director duos, who are not siblings. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai from Hong Kong belong to that sparsely populated elite club of collaborating directors, who are filmically, and not fraternally, connected to one another.

Another interesting aspect of the To-Wai collaboration—as many as eleven out of the seventeen films that Wai has directed till date have To as co-director—is that more often than not, the films have had a supernatural element woven into the plot. Cases in point are: My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002), in which a young woman develops the ability to see ghosts after a car accident and Running on Karma (2003), where a monk-turned-bodybuilder finds he has the power to look into people’s lives.

As the opening credits of San Taam (2007) a.k.a Mad Detective—their latest outing together—start rolling, with all the letters appearing in an angular manner, we get the first impression that what is about to follow will be anything but straightforward. That feeling is fortified when we are introduced to the titular character, an inspector of West Kowloon’s District Crime Division, Chan Kwai Bun (portrayed by Lau Ching-Wan—a favourite of Johnnie To, who has featured in several of the director’s films, including A Hero Never Dies [1998]; Where a Good Man Goes [1999]; and Running out of Time [1999]).

Many films have a character who acts as a proxy or surrogate for the audience (Ariadne in Nolan’s Inception, for instance). In San Taam, inspector Ho Ka-On (played by Andy On), a new joinee in Bun's department, acts as the audience’s eyes and ears. It is via him that we are introduced to the oddball Bun, who, we are told is in the middle of an investigation that involves cracking the case of a student’s body being found inside a suitcase. To the utter dismay of both us and Ho, Bun climbs into a suitcase and requests the greenhorn detective to zip it and push it down the stairs. As soon as the suitcase reaches the end of the staircase, out emerges Bun, screaming ‘The ice-cream shop owner is the killer’, as if struck by an epiphany!

Flashes of newspaper headlines make it amply clear to us that irrespective of how zany and unorthodox his methods are Bun has an excellent record in solving criminal cases. But unlike other times, when his colleagues actually requested him to put his uncanny knack for the unconventional to use, the department decided he had gone too far the day he offered a farewell present to the retiring chief that—for want of a better term—can only be called ‘Van Gogh-ish’.

Five years pass by. Banished from the force, one day, the loon from Kowloon finds a visitor at his doorstep. It is none other than Ho. Initially reluctant to even speak with Ho, Bun’s interest gets piqued when Ho tells him that even though he had worked with him for only two days, he considers Bun to be his idol. In fact, when Ho’s gun developed a defect, he was given a new one—Bun’s. And it is a gun that forms an integral part of a case that Ho is now in charge of—a case in which he wants Bun’s help.

The extent to which Bun’s nickname suits him becomes apparent once he revisits the department that he was once the pride of. During the briefing session on the case for which his assistance has been sought, both Ho and us get to learn that Bun has a special ability—that of seeing the inner demons of a person.

It is here that To and Wai have displayed their finesse as filmmakers. What Bun sees in a person is different aspects of the same self, but as separate individuals—can even be of different sex—each with distinct nature and objectives. While this preposterous plot point is taken with more than a pinch of salt by both Ho and us, gradually, as the film progresses, we warm up both to this suited-booted-sans-socks oddity and his frequent ‘visions’.

And just when we find ourselves at ease with Bun’s philosophy (‘Apply emotions to investigate, not logic’) and the methods behind his madness (which includes using his index finger as a pistol as he recreates each crime scene, a request to be buried alive, and ordering the same dishes again and again at a restaurant), like master storytellers, To and Wai plant a seed of doubt in our minds. We are left to wonder if Ho’s quirkiness is nothing but evidence of a mind in complete disarray.

While some of us might point out ‘The more complicated the story, the better for us’—a line spoken by a character in San Taam as a description of the film itself; especially in the context of the convoluted climax that is equal parts The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Enter the Dragon (1973), the film is a success in the sense that it makes us question where exactly sanity ends and insanity begins—a point brought to the fore by the translation of the film’s title. The literal English translation of San Taam is ‘godly detective’, while the international title is ‘mad detective’ proving once again that there is indeed a very thin line between being a seer and being sneered at.

Perception, Pretension, and Prevarication

 Filmmakers’ predilection towards exotic ailments has quite a long history. From Alfred Hitchcock (the eponymous Vertigo, 1958), Christopher Nolan (short-term memory loss in Memento, 2000) to our very own R Balki (progeria in Paa, 2009) various directors have portrayed mysterious maladies in movies with varying results. At first glance, Eugenio Mira’s second full-length feature, the Spanish film Agnosia (2010)—a similar bizarre medical condition in which an individual’s brain loses the ability to process visual, aural, and olfactory stimuli—seems to be a mere addition to this fascination of filmmakers. But curiously enough, drawing that conclusion would be a perceptual error on the part of the viewer. Because Agnosia treats the travail and trauma of a character suffering from the titular affliction merely as a plot point to drive the story forward. As a film it is a period piece, costume drama, triangular romance, and an espionage thriller rolled into one.

Even though the genre-mashing characteristic of Agnosia will become evident to the viewer when s/he is well into its 106-minute running time, the opening sequence makes it amply clear in an instant that what is about to unfold on screen is a sumptuous treat for the eyes. As the story comes to life, Unax Mendía’s (who was also the cinematographer for Mira’s debut feature The Birthday in 2004) camera opens on a valley enveloped within the Great Pyrenees mountains. The year, we are informed, is 1892. The setting, replete with a stage with curtains drawn, a ramp, and vacant chairs arranged in rows gives the impression of a performance about to commence—auguring an important element of the tale.

As the guests, all military officers, arrive in horse-drawn carriages, we find that they have been invited to witness the working of a new invention by an engineer, Artur Prats (Sergi Mateu), employed with the Holbien industries, which has been manufacturing ‘the best weapons’ for many years. The item on display is a catadioptric lens (a mirror lens known for its focusing capabilities) that can be used as a sniper scope. Helping Prats is his little daughter, Joana, who has been entrusted with the responsibility of releasing a bunch of black balloons, which the military officials shoot as targets while looking through the sniper scope.

A visibly distressed Joana becomes even more distraught at the cracks of the rifle, her anguish amplified by the neighing of a horse, which bolts at the sound of the gunshots. When one of the officials shifts his focus and shoots down the animal instead, Joana faints, hitting her head as she falls. As Prats’ assistant Carles Lardin (Eduardo Noriega, nicknamed the ‘Spanish Brad Pitt’, who has acted in films by Alejandro Amenábar, Brad Anderson, and Guillermo del Toro) comes to her rescue, to his utter dismay, he finds that Joana is having trouble distinguishing him from her father. This, coupled with the stage-drama like setting, are nothing but a foretelling of the tale that is about to unfold. If the bursting of the black balloons portended to the dark world Joana will be plunged into, the breaking of the glass of the sniper scope symbolised the shattering of Artur’s dream—both as a parent and a professional.

Seven years pass by. In the meantime, Artur has parted ways with his employer, Lucille Prevert (the prolific German actress Martina Gedeck, whose filmography includes The Good Shepherd and the Academy Award winner The Lives of Others—both in 2006; and The Baader Meinhof Complex in 2008) and has set up his own company, Joana Lenses, with Carles.

Artur treats Carles more as a son than a business partner, and has even promised Joana’s hand to him in marriage. When we first meet the adult Joana (Bárbara Goenaga), we hear her saying she is not comfortable wearing her mother’s clothes. It seems discomfiture has become a way of her life since that tragic incident at the valley. Fate has played a cruel game on Artur as well. A man who manufactures lenses for a living has been left behind with a daughter who cannot even perceive the faces of her close ones, even when they are at an arm’s length. The guilt-ridden Artur, disregarding the fact that his business is going through a rough patch, has employed a doctor, Meissner (Jack Taylor) to cure Joana, on whose methods Carles has very little faith.

The two ways in which we, humans, react to a disorder as strange as the one Joana is suffering from are expressed by two different sets of individuals in Joana’s household. While Carles, though outwardly devoted to Joana, is inwardly aloof; the servants, especially one individual named Mariano—begrudged by the fact that they have to wear different-coloured rosettes, because colour is one of the few stimuli Joana still reacts to—make fun of her.

But, Carles, Artur, and Joana are all unaware that a nefarious ploy is afoot, that will very soon engulf all three lives. It is a plan set in motion by Artur’s former employer, the ruthless Prevert, to extract the formula of the sniper scope—a secret, she believes, is in Joana’s possession. To attain her objective, Prevert plants a spy, Vicent (Félix Gómez), in the guise of a man servant in Artur’s residence. But when Vicent gets inadvertently fired from his job, he is sent back on his mission. Only this time, the plan is to exploit Joana’s malady in a manner reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980).

Three days are all that Vicent has at his disposal to coax the formula out of Joana—the period during which Joana will be completely isolated from all stimuli, while being cocooned inside a dark, sound-proofed room, as part of Dr Meissner’s last-ditch attempt to heal her.

But just like the darkest hour is always before dawn, a ray of light will invigorate Joana during those three days. She will, for the first time in a long time, feel as if those distant stars in the sky—the only thing in the world she could see in the same manner as any other individual—have landed inside that dark room, while being ignorant of the fact that she is, in reality, becoming a pawn in a game of deception.

Even though the perpetrators of this reprehensible charade take every precaution, they find themselves completely unprepared by the opposition they come face-to-face with. The adversary in this case is nothing but love—passion that arises from completely unexpected quarters and threatens to jeopardise their elaborate sham. 

In an interview, Mira had stated that the reason he chose nineteenth-century Spain as the setting for his film is because modern technology has nullified many of the problems that Joana faces in the film as a result of her ailment. But it is quite apparent that there are certain aspects of human nature that is not bound by any era, period or millennium. Each one of us harbours a secret; our love for another individual is not holistic and all-encompassing, but pigeon-holed to a specific aspect of him or her; and that in the end true love is all about sacrifice—putting the other’s happiness before that of our own. 

Interrogation, Investigation, and Impressions

In one of his many interviews, Alfred Hitchcock had famously stated, ‘I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.’ The maestro would have loved the tune composed by the Australian film director Craig Monahan in his debut feature, The Interview (1998).

The film begins with a Kafkaesque nightmarish situation, with Eddie Rodney Fleming (Hugo Weaving, who played Keanu Reeves’ nemesis, Agent Smith, in the path breaking The Matrix, a year later), an out-on-the-dole individual, who has lost both his job and family, is rudely awakened from his slumber at five in the morning, when two armed policemen barge through the door of his unkempt, one-room apartment. Disoriented, dumbfounded, and distraught, Fleming’s repeated pleas of innocence fall into deaf ears as the cops ransack his apartment, physically and verbally humiliate him, and then at gunpoint, against his will, take him to the station for the eponymous interview (the Australian equivalent of a police interrogation, where questions are asked in order to find out the truth about an incident).

One of the cops who forcibly take Fleming into custody is Detective Sergeant John Steele (Tony Martin), who has been called in ‘to get results’. He is an official with a penchant for throwing away the rulebook—a habit, which has led to his having several run-ins with the Ethics Standard Department (the Australian equivalent of the US’ Internal Affairs) over the past few years. His younger aide is Detective Senior Constable Wayne Prior (Aaron Jeffrey, who portrayed the character of Thomas Logan in 2009’s damp squib X-Men Origins: Wolverine), who has a tendency to burst into unprovoked violence.

The clueless Fleming is shoved inside a dank, dingy room filled only with a couple of chairs and a table with a tape recorder on it—a fishbowl scenario portended by the very first shot of the film. As the interview commences, to his utter amazement, he finds he has been charged with stealing a car and forging documents. With Steele frequently interrupting the interview, making the fidgety Fleming sweat even more, the situation looks grimmer with every passing minute. Knowing fully well that the police department are within their rights to detain him for a ‘reasonable time’, which can extend to five to six hours, the famished Fleming pleads, prods, and tries to pursue the two nattily dressed policemen in vain about his lack of knowledge and role in the events he is being accused of.

As the interview proceeds, the allegations start piling up and Fleming finds himself facing questions on crimes much more serious than merely a stolen vehicle. While the two cops fish for answers, playing the ‘good cop bad cop’ routine, a reporter is on the prowl inside the station, brought in by ‘the hierarchy’, supposedly to gather material for a story on crime squads. But Steele is too world-weary to know the real reason behind this presence. As pressure mounts on him to conclude the interview, we, the viewer, find ourselves right in the centre of a cat-and-mouse game, with enough twists, turns, spirals, and snares to make us realise that nothing is quite as it seems.

Of late, the term ‘Hitchcockian’ has been used so copiously that the essence of the term is at the risk of getting diluted. Rarely does a film come along that does justice to the term. This little-known, rarely-seen, hardly talked about film from Australia falls into that miniscule category that goes by the name ‘The best films Hitchcock never made’.

The opening sequence of The Interview, when the police break into Fleming’s apartment, clearly plays on our innate disdain for men in uniform and harks back to the ‘wrong man’ trope, which Hitchcock borrowed from the Scottish author John Buchan, while filming his thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935). Theoretically speaking, the theme of a man accused of a crime he did not commit was present even in one of Hitchcock’s earliest films, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), and prominently featured in many of his subsequent films like Saboteur (1942), I Confess (1953), The Wrong Man (1956), and North by Northwest (1959).

A solitary incident during Hitchcock’s childhood, when he had to spend a night in jail, had led to a life-long aversion towards the police—an aspect that we find him revisiting time and again by portraying law enforcement officials as incompetent individuals (Young and Innocent, 1937). In The Interview, too, we find that in their eagerness to elicit a confession from Fleming, Steele and Prior made at least one crucial mistake that could jeopardise their entire investigation.

Possibly, one of the foremost examples of audience manipulation (‘playing them like a piano’) occurs during a pivotal scene in Psycho (1960), the film Hitchcock is most famous for. There, during a conversation over dinner, we find our sympathies gradually swaying from Marion Crane towards the bumbling, stuttering Norman Bates. Similarly, in The Interview, when after repeated requests Fleming is granted a meal, Monahan deftly fiddles with our feelings to an extent that we start questioning on whose side we should be on.

One of the biggest gambles Hitchcock took professionally was when he released Rope (1948). An experiment in single-setting, single-shot moviemaking, initially it did not go down well with either the critics or the audience. He did venture into a single-setting endeavour on a previous occasion (Lifeboat, 1944) and would revisit it in Rear Window (1954). What makes Monahan’s efforts—of structuring his film almost completely within the confines of a police station, and, in turn, within the four walls of a room—laudable is the fact that unlike Hitchcock, who had almost two decades of filmmaking experience under his belt before he embarked on this experiment, The Interview was the Aussie’s first feature!

Besides these obvious references, The Interview is also replete with other nods to the ace director. Monahan refers to Hitchcock’s fascination with staircases, which frequently symbolises impending danger (Psycho, 1960) in the opening sequence of his film, when he focuses on the feet of two men climbing up a flight of stairs, guns in hand. In Stage Fright (1950) Hitchcock had taken the element of the unreliable narrator a step further by presenting a flashback as a lie—a decision he later regretted. Here also, we find us facing a narrator whose reliability can be questioned; and a flashback, whose authenticity is in doubt. The leit motif of a platinum blonde, too, makes an appearance in The Interview, in the form of Fleming’s solicitor.

A true disciple of Hitchcock, Monahan knew a tribute to the master would be incomplete without a Mcguffin (an element that drives the plot). In this case, the alleged crime for which Fleming is brought in is the Mcguffin, created with the sole intention of pointing out our propensity towards attaining closure or as Fleming so eloquently states: ‘Just goes to show how the mind works.’

For a film that depends solely on a question-answer format to propel it forward, Monahan’s masterstroke comes in the form of a freeze-frame shot—where via a single gesture, he speaks volumes and initiates conversations and dialogues among viewers that would last long after the lights have dimmed in the theatre.

An ending that reminds us of that of The Birds (1963) but impressive in its ingenuity—Hitchcock would have smiled.

Injustice, Imprisonment, and Intent

Way back in the 1940s, inspired by the American film noir, the French developed a genre of crime thrillers of their own. They called it films policier. Just like the central character of noir is a morally ambiguous, skeptical, and disillusioned male; films policier, more often than not, revolves around a similar cynical male’s struggle against a stronger opponent. With time, like every other genre, films policier, too, has evolved and has even branched out into several sub-genres such as the daintily named polar (policier with a dash of mystery), neo-polar, and post-noir.

Recent French filmmakers, like Fred Cavayé, in his debut feature film Pour Elle (2008), a.k.a. Anything for Her, have added to the broad policier template by intermixing the thriller elements with an in-depth character study—that of a man on a mission against an act of injustice. The relentless ‘no-time-to-lose’ element that characterises a thriller is set in motion immediately with Pour Elle beginning to unfold even before the opening credits start flashing on the screen.

Divided into the classic three-act structure, the first of which is ‘The last three years’, the film introduces us to Julien Auclert (played by Vincent Lindon), a high-school French teacher, and his small family comprising his diabetic wife Lisa (Diane Kruger) and their toddler son Oscar (Lancelot Roch). Theirs is an idyllic life, which is turned on its head in an instant one morning when the police barge into their apartment and take Lisa into custody, on charges of murder—an accusation that astounds Lisa as much as it baffles Julien. Even though a detective is assigned to the case, and Julien believes wholeheartedly in Lisa’s innocence, as days pass by chances of Lisa’s acquittal become as distant as the mental gulf broadens between her and Oscar.

Then, the day of reckoning arrives. With not enough new evidence that could prove Lisa’s innocence, accompanied by the considerable amount of old evidence that was stacked against her, the lawyer informs the dumbfounded Julien that Lisa has been sentenced to twenty years in prison. With that pronouncement, the unassuming French teacher finds the flicker of hope that he had harboured for three long years get smothered.

Like any other common man, initially, Julien sees no other option but to accept the court’s verdict. But when news reaches that Lisa had attempted to commit suicide, he decides to take matters in his own hands and attempt the apparently impossible— snatch his wife from the clutches of law.

At this juncture, one would expect the evolution of an individual into a hero, armed with an outrageous plan and an arsenal at his disposal to boot. But Cavayé’s (he co-wrote the screenplay) protagonist is anything but an action hero. He is the quintessential ‘average man’, who, when facing extraordinary odds does not perform a volte-face character-wise, but reacts the way any other man-on-the-street would. And in this he is helped by Henri Pasquet (portrayed by Olivier Marchal, director of the superlative films policier of 2004, 36 Quai des Orfèvres)—an ex-convict who had escaped from prison as many as seven times, and is now the author of a bestselling book My Life on the Run.

While laying down the ground rules of engineering an escape from prison, Pasquet underlines the basic tenet: ‘Escaping is easy. The hard part is staying free’. He also warns Julien that those who do succeed in the attempt are born criminals. Since there is no chance of improvisation, others, like Julien himself, are advised not to walk that path simply because they will end up getting ‘burned bad’.

In the second act of the film, titled ‘The last three months’, we find that Julien has already progressed so far down the path Pasquet had warned him about that there is no turning back for him. Always distant from his father, he has now grown even more detached not only from him, but also from the other members of his family, including his brother Pascal (Thierry Godard) and even Oscar. His life now has only one focal point—that of trying to devise a plan of his own to get Lisa out of prison. Knowing fully well that he will not be able to share his secret with his pragmatic wife, Julien carries the burden quietly, not succumbing even when Lisa misinterprets his growing aloofness. Meanwhile, little Oscar tries in his own way to reach out to his Dad, by imitating his father’s actions, which mainly involves converting his apartment into an operations room, replete with maps, photos, newspaper clippings, graphs, schedules, and numerous notes. 

‘The last three days’ is the dénouement of Pour Elle when an unforeseen event threatens to jeopardise the plan that Julien had so meticulously drawn up over the past few months. Not only that, a violent act committed by him puts the police hot on his trail, which leads to an edge-of-the-seat climax.

Prison film itself is one of the most clichéd of all film genres. Within its sub-genres, wrongful imprisonment and planning an escape rank quite high. Pour Elle could easily have just been one more entry into this seemingly endless churning of old wine in an old bottle, but for one important difference. It emphasises more on the planner than the ingenuity of the plan itself.

In fact, in hindsight, irrespective of the time and effort that Julien spends on hatching a way to get Lisa out, his plot has nothing innovative in it. And this is exactly where those of us expecting an action-packed ‘rescue mission’ will be sorely disappointed. In all probability, this lack of action, except in the last quarter of an hour of the film, must have been the reason Hollywood decided to remake Pour Elle into The Next Three Days (2010), starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in the lead, and directed by the Academy Award winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis.

However, if one is not averse to shift focus in a film belonging to a done-to-death genre and ponder more on the psyche of an average-Joe, who wants to right the wrong done to someone he cares for not by transforming himself into a one-man army or masterminding a complex plot; or if one is open to a film where emotions are underplayed, reactions to adversity are subtle and not of the chest-thumping variety, and the protagonist is most of the time clueless of his next move than being a know-it-all—then Pour Elle is pour vous. 

Bullets, Brotherhood, and Bonhomie

 On the eve of the Chinese government's taking over the reins of the former Portuguese colony of Macau, the island’s residents are going through a tumultuous time. Those who are rich and powerful are leaving Macau at the first occasion that arises; while those who are staying back are suspicious and antagonistic towards people from Hong Kong, who are labeled as ‘outsiders’. And with the onset of the new regime imminent, the triad (the myriad Chinese criminal organisations) takes this opportunity to settle some old scores once and for all.

It is to extract revenge that in the Hong Kong-based director Johnnie To’s Exiled (2006), mob boss Fay (Simon Yam of 2008’s Ip Man and 2010’s Ip Man 2 fame) sends two of his henchmen, Blaze (played by Anthony Wong, who shot to fame with the Infernal Affairs trilogy, on which Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winner The Departed was based) and Fat (Suet Lam) to take out a renegade gangster Wo (portrayed by Nick Cheung, who also acted in To’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2005 film Election and its sequel Triad Election that was released a year later).

The reason behind Boss Fay’s wrath was a foiled assassination attempt on him that was masterminded by Wo three years ago. Since then, Wo has been on the run, and has only recently returned after turning over a new leaf—forsaking the path of violence and opting for the family way instead. The news of Wo’s return has also reached Tai (Francis Ng, from Infernal Affairs II), who also arrives at his former gang mate’s doorstep alongside Cat (Roy Cheung). Since the botched assassination attempt on Boss Fay was as much Wo’s idea as it was Tai’s—but Wo ‘took the rap’ for it—Tai now considers it his duty to protect Wo, his wife Jin (Josie Ho) and their one-month old son. Very subtly, To tells the viewer that the two groups are at loggerheads with each other—Tai knocks with his left hand, while Blaze uses his right.

This opening sequence of Exiled, when the two duo—Blaze and Fat, and Tai and Cat—knock on Wo’s door asking for him, bears an uncanny resemblance to the bravura opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s magnum opus Once upon a time in the West (1968). There, too, a gang (of three) lay in wait at a decrepit railway station for someone they were sent to kill. However, the stylised, choreographed, and visually sumptuous Mexican stand off that follows, once Wo returns to his apartment in a van carrying furniture, is pure ‘noodle’ rather than ‘spaghetti’.

A former gang member mending his ways is hardly a novel concept in mob-based crime dramas. Nor is fate’s intervention preventing him from doing just that. However, by ushering in a divide among the same gang on the question of eliminating an exiled member, To gives a new spin to an old yarn. After all, not many films can boast of scenes where after a shootout, those who pulled the trigger are seen replacing shattered mirrors, mending broken doors, and helping their ‘target’ in moving furniture, before settling down to have dinner together. It is then, with the help of a faded out photograph we get to know that Wo, Tai, Fat, Blaze, and Cat had not only been in Boss Fay’s gang together, but had also grown up together. As events unfold, Wo’s future becomes inextricably linked with whether or not the five friends succeed in pulling off a heist involving an armoured car carrying a ton of gold.

Knowing fully well that friends who have spent a major portion of their lives together say as much with their silence as with their speech, To does not make the characters speak about themselves, nor does he delve into a back story for any of the five characters. Instead, living up to his reputation of being a director who sifts through genres in his movies in a ‘chameleonic’ manner, To laces Exiled with a generous dose of darkly comic sequences. So, we have street-smart gangsters arguing among themselves regarding how many kilos make a ton; haggling with a surgeon in an underground clinic over the fees for an operation when one of the gang members gets shot; four fully-grown gangsters turning tail in an instant when a woman points a gun at them; giving up the idea of ganging up on a gold-carrying vehicle simply because a flipped coin landed on the wrong side; Boss Fay and the five ‘traitors’ arriving at the same location for medical treatment; spitting up a bullet that got lodged inside a vessel, while drinking from it; asking for driving directions from compatriots who are equally clueless; a guard getting help from unexpected quarters during a raid on his vehicle—the instances are many.

Hong Kong’s official submission in the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the 80^th Annual Academy Awards, Exiled as a Johnnie To vehicle might not be as satisfying as some of his earlier films like Running out of Time (1999), PTU (2003) and the aforementioned Election and Triad Election; or the offerings that he followed up with such as Mad Detective (2007) and Vengeance (2009), but it still is a spectacularly shot film with a rich palette and a memorable score. Even though the film will, possibly, never make it to the top five list drawn up by any To aficionado, but the very fact that a trick with a soft-drink can in the introductory sequence of the Ajith starrer Billa (2007) was ‘inspired’ by the last sequence of Exiled, just goes to show that certain aspects of even not-so-good films by this prolific director are good enough for members of his ilk residing in another part of the globe. 

Loss, Longing, and Loneliness

 El Hierro, the smallest and south-westernmost of the seven Canary Islands of Spain, is also known as Isla del Meridiano, or the Meridian Island, because since time immemorial, its location has been serving as the pointer to cartographers to mark the Prime Meridian. In Gabe Ibáñez’s debut feature film, Hierro (2009), the island drives a wedge into the life of single mother María (portrayed by Elena Anaya, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Julia Ormond, and will next be seen in the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s much-anticipated The Skin I Live In) much the same way the Prime Meridian slices the globe into two halves.

María and her five-year-old son Diego (Kaiet Rodríguez) board a night ferry to El Hierro. While Diego is busy playing, María drifts off to sleep and wakes up to a living nightmare. To her utter dismay, she finds no trace of her child. A thorough search is organised both on the ferry and into the inlands, but to no avail. It appears as if the island, which is known to assist us in pinpointing our own location is, for once, at a complete loss when it comes to locating this particular five-year old.

Six months pass by. Like the island itself, María finds herself more and more cut off from those around her—be it her work or her sister Laura (Bea Segura), who has recently given birth to a baby boy. Ironically, she also realises that ever since the incident on the ferry, she has developed a phobia towards water, even though her job involves dealing with various aquatic species. With every passing day, she feels more and more like those fishes in her workplace, swimming inside huge water tanks made of glass. Her grief makes it difficult for her to reach out to others, and starts manifesting itself in frightening drug-induced hallucinations. No matter how much she tries, María just cannot come to terms with her loss and seems equally unable to forgive herself for not living up to a promise she had made to Diego. Many a time she had assured him that in a game of hide-and-seek if she fails to find her son at first, she will keep on looking for him.

Then, one day, comes a phone call telling her that a body of a young boy has been found in the waters surrounding El Hierro. The age and the approximate date of death match those of Diego. There, at the morgue, once she sees the body, María is as relieved as the coroner is surprised. It appears that the officials were, for some odd reason, convinced that it was indeed Diego’s body, but María proved them wrong. To be absolutely certain, they request a DNA testing to be done. Since that would require the presence of a judge, and the judge is currently off the island, María is requested to stay behind for three more days—a request she begrudgingly acquiesces to.

With nothing to do to pass the time, María and Laura, who had accompanied her, hire a car to tour the island. On an isolated beach, while taking the first step towards overcoming her phobia of swimming, María thinks she spots Diego playing near a travel trailer. Hoping against hope, she begins investigating on her own. Soon, she finds out that her is not the only child to have gone missing in El Hierro. But what are her chances of getting to the root of this mystery when the people on the island are a closely-knit community and it is quite apparent that there are times when she cannot trust her own eyes?

A child gone missing is a common trope in thrillers. The various facets of this particular sub-genre have more or less all been covered in some memorable outings like Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), The Wicker Man (1973), Without a Trace (1983), The Orphanage (2007), and Changeling (2008); as well as in some not-so-memorable ones like The Forgotten (2004), Flightplan (2005),  and Vinyan (2008). Hierro falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

While the premise itself is as worn out as the traditional usage of El Hierro’s location, the film is not an abject failure for more than a couple of reasons. An animator by profession before he made a foray into feature filmmaking, where Ibáñez has stumbled as a storyteller, he has more or less made up the lost ground when it comes to the visual elements. Aided admirably by his cinematographer Alejandro Martínez, Ibáñez’s vision comes alive in a sumptuous treat for the eyes. Ibáñez also uses his experience in working with miniatures to bring about a sense of stark contrast. This is apparent from the very first sequence of the film itself, when a toy car tumbles down beside an upturned vehicle. This big-small comparison is threaded throughout the film. We see a tiny Diego seated in front of water tanks containing huge fishes; tiny insects that lie trapped in the water of a swimming pool; a single individual on a sprawling beach…the instance are many. It is as if to depict that the magnitude of any incident is relative to the point of view—a fact that comes to light when María overhears her sister over the telephone and realises that the mishap that changed her life in an instant like a chameleon changing its colours is not that significant to her own sibling.

Another refrain that runs through the film is the leit motif of water, as exemplified by fishes inside tanks and in the ocean; Diego being asked by his mother about ‘What lives in the sea’; water spilling out from an upturned glass and bursting out of a tap; water seeping from under a corpse; a painting of waves; María’s fear and eventual victory over fear of swimming; and so on. In a sense, water, too, acts as a contrasting element that brings out how desiccated and barren María’s life had become the moment she lost her only child.

Water just as well might have another implication here. In Spanish, ‘hierro’ means ‘iron’. As the film progresses, we find how armed with only an iron will, a dejected, depressed, and disconsolate mother embarks on a journey to uncover the truth in a terrain as desolate as her own existence. However, like the effect of water on iron, as time passes, she finds her willpower gradually losing the battle against forces that are way beyond her control.