The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)- Review

Watched. 

My rating: 9.2/10

 

 I don't know where to begin. Perhaps how I got to watch this film would be an appropriate beginning to this lonesome review.

 The Grand Budapest Hotel has been in my watch-list for years; I had seen screenshots of it and heard great things about it. Not a day went by when I didn't wanted to watch this film because of it's enticing aesthetics. But, as it happens, I either forgot to watch it because of some other flick or I was just too afraid that it would disappoint me. My snowball of expectation grew bigger and heavier as it rolled down the slope of time. Entertainment emanated from the anticipation itself. To break this self perpetuating cycle of excitement was a scary prospect. "What if I didn't like it?" was the question of the hour. And then I pressed play...

 And boy do I not regret having pressed it! Every shot- from the first shot- is meticulously framed with vibrant colours, akin to pastries in a bakery, fill the frame with such dominance that no matter how dull a creature you are, it'll without a doubt, successfully manage to stimulate your brain for it to release heavy amounts of dopamine. The pinks, the blues, the reds and the yellows, all leap out of the screen and sing their hymns of beauty. Looking at The Grand Budapest Hotel is tasting life on your eyes with all it's shades.

 The sound design is masterful as well, paying attention to not only obvious sound effects such as the wind and footsteps, but to also little dings and chimes which add to the immersive experience.  The background score couldn't have been any better because it easily elevates the scene rather than competing with it.

 The film has two story lines: the present and the past. Most of the film runs in flashbacks from the past, as narrated by Mustafa, the current concierge and former lobby boy of the hotel. The flashbacks are framed in a boxy aspect ratio which makes the relentless speed of the film feel even faster. The present- filmed in widescreen- has a relatively slower pace which gives the audience the much needed moments to breathe.

 Wes Anderson surreptitiously pulls out many tricks from under his sleeve; some subtle and some not so much. Every scene is blocked as if it were from a theatrical stage. Its a well oiled machine, is what it is. Every frame tells and there isn't a frame too many; like an ancient painting, it just unfolds and bestows upon us it's great revelations. The visuals are a direct translation of what it feels like to visualize a witty, suspenseful novel whilst reading it. The world of imagination where even drinking from a cup can be a grand gesture of much importance. It owes all that to it's brilliant script! It is eloquent and razor-sharp with it's dialogues with short bursts of vulgarity whilst maintaining intrigue for the characters and the plot.

 The performances in this are like gears in a clock. The cast of this film surprises and keeps on surprising. Everyone is in this! Even Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray!

 The Grand Budapest Hotel is a pure 21st century cinematic experience.

A Woman Under the Influence (1972) - Review

Watched. 

My rating: 9.4/10. 

 

 Oh this was heavy! This was heavy. So raw. So heartbreaking. Oh this was heavy...

 Gena Rowlands plays a mentally challenged woman with 3 kids. Half an hour into the film and I was thinking to myself if she was like that in real life. Holy smokes rising from the bloody hell can this woman act! She is a beast in this; she makes Joaquin's Phoenix's Joker look like a one note character. She is at times tender and at times manic; at times mean yet at all times innocent. She gives a perfect performance here and I believe to ask more from a thespian would be sheer ignorance. This is one of my favorite performances I've seen so far this year.

 Peter Falk is also incredible in this, playing the frustrated husband. You can empathize with him but its difficult to be on his side at times. Very convincing.

 The direction and the writing make it feel at times as if you were watching a documentary. Akin to Richard Linklater films, the characters quarrel like real people. In most movies, tension between characters is constantly building, just waiting for it's apex, the climax, and then flooding the audience with the sensory overload of reaction shots.

 But in real life, a fight is not like that because you're constantly trying to calm things down. People don't like to make things worse. And because of that in real life, a quarrel will have these phases of rage and calm. Alternating emotions, like a balancing act in a fight. Eventually, one will tip over to one side and considering which side it is, it'll either be calm or a continued state of rage. Before Midnight (2013) did it, Tape (2000) did it, and A Woman Under the Influence did it in spades.

 A Woman Under the Influence is a raw, honest and unflinching look at the bleakness of life and the little moments of happiness within.

The Office Season 9- Review

 Watched. My rating: 9.2/10. 

 

 Every episode in this season is so good! Let me just say this: watching Pam cry is the worst thing in the world. Creed got his moment to shine. Every character is so fleshed out. I don't wanna write, I'm too teary right now.

Solaris (1972)- Review

Watched. My rating: 10/10. 

 

 My second Andrei Tarkovsky film, first being Stalker (1979). Man... his films really are a handful!
 

 Tarkovsky's direction style reminds me a lot of Stanley Kubrick and this film is like a reverse 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); if 2001 and The Shining (1980) congressed, this would be the result. As it turns out, Andrei was not a big fan of 2001, referring to it as "cold and sterile", even though Kubrick loved Solaris. I'd say Andrei just missed the point with 2001, but who am I to say that?
 
 Hence, Solaris was meant as a Russian response to 2001, which makes it that much more interesting and amusing for me. It is a much more warm and human drama, whereas 2001's most developed character was H.A.L 9000, an artificial intelligence fueled sentient computer. These two films really act like each others' Yin and Yang; one depicts a future where our fascination with technology dwindles us of emotions and deprives us of intimate human connections (2001) and in the other, technology is merely a background, a presence which seldom makes itself feel, and when it does, it just acts to accentuate our emotions, making them as high as they can be. Love, grief, sorrow, misery, disgust, fear... every knob turns to 11 once you're in Solaris, surrounded by technology. Some might even say that Solaris is a much more cynical than 2001.
 

 The conscience of the crew of Solaris gets personified with the in the shape of the memories of people the crew knew/know. The more one of these mysterious beings interact with the person from whom they originated, the more real and human-like they become, making it possible for them to interact with other crew mates even when the being's main person is dead. I believe these "beings" might be art personified. For e.g, take a writer writing a book. The more time and labor a writer (crew mate) spends on this book (being), the more it'll be comprehensible to other people and the more they'll be able to relate to the book. The book will encompass the writer's human experiences of emotions and intellect.
 
 If the book is refined enough, it'll become a classic, being interacted by people long after the author is dead; like the little girl seen by Kris when he first arrives at Solaris. Replace the book with a film or a painting or a song and the analogy still works.
 
 The little girl follows Kris in the beginning, but once Hari (the female lead) finds him, the little girl disappears from the film. The girl might stand for humanity's lost innocence, following us, always in the past. Kris tries to follow her but soon gives up when he finds a dead body. Once the film progresses, she is so far off in the past that she is out of sight and out of mind. As if she is of no concern to humanity. 

 
 Hari might be our infatuation with... the lost desires? I don't know where this thread might lead, need to think about it. But her character's relation with Kris strangely resembles with relationship in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo (1958). The similarities are: 'resurrections' of the loved one, or the multiple disguises of Kim Novak's character, the male lead is unable to protect the female and it becomes inevitable to repeat past mistakes.

  Repeating past mistakes is a big thing here. Even the building in which they live and operate is in a circular design where characters keep running in circles like a hamster on a wheel (2001). We're all reliving the same basic experiences which just differ in circumstance. As if the love story remains the same, it's only the time and details which change. Like Hari, who comes back again and again, differing just a little each time; this theme is akin to the themes of 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where the two main characters keep engaging in a doomed relationship each time their memory is wiped. We're all trapped in our own little islands of memories, living the same life over and over again.
 

 Solaris should be a mandatory double feature with 2001; hell! make it a triple feature and add Vertigo in the mix!

 

The Office Season 8- Review

 Watched. My rating: 6.8/10. 

 

 Because The Office had achieved rock hardness in the seventh season, it was sad to watch it become flacid because of the newly introduced, unlikable characters in season eight. To give Michael Scott's arc to Andy was a mistake. Rainn Wilson as Dwight carries this season. That's it, I guess. I don't what to talk about. I'm pretty indifferent about this season.

Desert Flower (Fleur du Désert) 2009- Film Review

 

Ritvij’s review published on Letterboxd:

Watched. My rating: 8/10. 

  Its a rags to riches story but an unconventional one; in any traditional one, once the protagonist reaches a western country, they start with a clean slate, working slowly to their way to the top. Isn't that the famous, or infamous, depending on whom you may ask, "American Dream!"? But in Desert Flower, the protagonist carries her problems from the old country and lives her each day with it. I guess genital mutilation is not a problem you can just shrug off, now can you?

Yes sir, yes madam, thirty minutes in and it gets to the point, shocking the audience if they hadn't already knew what the story was about (I knew it 'cause the movie was recommended to me by a human being). Getting back to the subject, stuff like this continues to baffle me. Keep in mind that when I talk about mutilation, I'm talking for both the genders. Its clearly designed to repress sexual pleasure, it is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship and can be in that moment life threatening in itself. There are hundreds and hundreds of records of babies who've died or have had life threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice.

Its an utterly idiotic and ghastly wicked social construct accepted by people in the past who couldn't tell the difference between piss and rain. But its not like they hate their kids. They might even say that the reason they do this is that they love them. But that doesn't excuse the horrid ritual being inflicted upon them. In the past, rituals like these are how boys were trained to become soldiers and girls were groomed to like repression. 

Childhood indoctrination is a fascinating thing. Teach a child that the burqa is a good thing and (negative) reinforce it with religion, in a few years you'll get a woman who loves the wretched garment.
There are a couple of scenes involving child actresses which needed not to be filmed in the way they were filmed. Its not the best shot film, its not the best scripted film, and its not the best edited and sounding film, but it has its place and deserves recognition. 

An uncut and hidden gem.

 

 

Fight Club (1999)- Review

Watched. 

 

 My rating: 8.7/10. 

 

 let's break the first 2 rules of Fight Club and talk about it. 

 I believe that Fight Club is a love story between young men and the projection of masculinity as projected by the media and society. Its obvious that The Narrator and Tyler Durden are the same guy; why is it treated like its a big reveal? 

  The film is all about dichotomy, as represented by the Yin-Yang table lying among the rubble of The Narrator's burning apartment. But the problem with the protagonist is that he assumes that the Yang to his Yin is Tyler Durden (aka, toxic masculinity). In truth, the real Yang is Marla (femininity), but, of course, as a testosterone fueled, angry with his life, young man, he takes Marla as a threat when he first time sees her in her life (in his personality). 

  But he still uses her for pleasure while distancing himself from her mentally, i.e deluding himself that some part of him is not feminine. Isn't that what young men without a sense of self are prone to do? To try and fit that image of pure masculinity, hurting themselves in the process? Consuming products which they'll either never need and in the process of consuming, the products become a part of them as a person. Maybe they think of themselves as a product of last generation's fuckups and maybe that's why they feel entitled to anger.

 

  But that's just a surface level reading. Its a solid script and its masterfully directed. The cinematography really captures The Protagonist's state of mind. Every shot almost smells of gasoline. Dreariness of the colour pallet is contrasted with the fast cutting action swirled with exciting needle-drops. 

 Its a bit overrated, but, as most overrated films, it has some merit.