BABY REINDEER (2024) Episode 6.

Great review!

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Of all the legal thrillers I’ve seen, Anatomy of a Fall feels the most genuine and relatable. While there are big revelations about the people involved and technically, they come suddenly, this isn’t a story of accidental confessions, surprise witnesses, or even earth-shattering pieces of evidence. Something happened while there were no witnesses present. The court must decide whether a crime was committed or not based on the evidence. That's it. In the process, the film peels back layers to reveal the truth and half-truths that comprise relationships.

Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is woken from a nap by her son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner). Her husband (his father), Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), has fallen from their roof and died. She insists it must have been an accident - he was working on the roof when she went to sleep. The authorities are not convinced and she is indicted on charges of murder.

There’s a particular line in the film that summarizes what a nightmare this situation is. It's something like “What you hear, it’s just a small part of the whole”. As we're presented with testimonies from experts and people who knew Samuel, as more evidence is brought forth, we're given a version of Sandra and Samuel's relationship. In a way, it’s not even Sandra who’s on trial; it’s her marriage. If she and her husband fought a lot, if someone was unfaithful, if someone was planning on leaving, then it probably means Sandra killed him. It’s not even if the whole relationship was bad; it’s if it was bad recently. We're not talking about "a rough patch" or something they could've overcome. This fragment is now the whole.

In a way, the trial is a matter of life and death. The jury is deliberating whether Sandra killed her husband. It’s also about an intimate subject you could call mundane in the grand scheme of things: two people’s marriage. Drawing a conclusion from the snippets presented is an unfair way to judge their relationship but it’s also the best way to see what it was like because you get the “highlight reel”. By the time this film is over, you feel like you know these people so well that they're no longer characters in a film. Then, you remember that quote from earlier and you second-guess everything. Do you really know? That sentiment is amplified by the revelations that come up during the trial. They’re not the sort of bombshells you’re used to seeing in these legal dramas, but they’re just as earth-shattering and revelatory.

The film is as absorbing as it is because of the excellent script by Justine Triet (who also directs) and Arthur Harari and the performances. There are so many character moments in Anatomy of a Fall that I see it as the kind of film you would come back to in the future, despite so much of the suspense coming from the uncertainty of the final verdict. Even some of the minor characters I keep thinking back to, like the two forensic analysts who bring to the stand completely different interpretations of three drops of blood found outside. It makes you wonder if they - despite having no investment in this narrative whatsoever - somehow made up their minds about the case anyway and brought in their biases. Why else would they be so combative? Many characters are deliberately unlikable, but not in a way that makes them villains. Wait. Did I dislike them because of who they really are, or because of the way I perceived them based on the evidence presented? hmm.

Anatomy of a Fall is a film of complex emotions. There are so many details in the case, the way the characters behave or relate to each other that you forget everything else around you. The performances are excellent, as is the script. You've never been put on trial for murder before but you'll know what it must feel like once the end credits roll. (March 27, 2024)

I think one of the reasons this film resonated with many of us (or maybe it’s just me) is the fact that those of us who crave beauty in the most ordinary things want to spend our lives in a similar manner. In a time where hustling is a desired facet of one’s personality, the movie emphasizes a slow life. An enjoyable life. For those of us who want to stop and stare at the beautiful sunset/sunrise and feel content, we are trying to be part of the beauty too, in ways which we are familiar with. Capturing modest pictures that we find beautiful, treating this little life we were gifted so preciously, leaving little space for extravagance, and looking forward to a quiet life; making the most of those small moments we have for ourselves, contemplating the few books and films we’ve consumed in our lifetime, wishing we lived inside a Ghibli movie, treating life with respect.

We watched the repetitive moments earnestly because, like Hirayama, we too loved watching the leaves sway, light scattering through their gaps, and the dappled shadows, even if it was through a screen, a smile creeping onto our faces whenever Hirayama found a sight worth smiling for.

A lifetime spent searching for beautiful things is a beautiful matter in itself. Noticing the countless crevices on tree barks, recognizing the pattern of veins on a leaf when held up against the sun, feeling the warmth of a sunny day — the more you pay attention, the more these moments find you. We try to embrace love and be engulfed by it; sometimes we lose, and other times we win.

I first heard the word ‘Komorebi’ (木漏れ日) in a Radwimps song, and even without knowing its meaning, I found it very beautiful and would sing that word multiple times. Now that I know what it means, I realize that the real beauty is always there; it’s us who change in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

Watched/read

Feminine and feminist cinema.

House of Hummingbird: the main character, Eunhee, was in eighth grade in 1994, which is to say she – and Kim Bo-ra, the director – are nearly exactly my age. It’s a sensitive, Proustian evocation of a ‘90s South Korean female adolescence, parts of which I relate to (those pagers!), parts of which I knew nothing about (one date chyron I won’t spoiler, that drew gasps from the audience), and parts of which are evergreen (dysfunctional Asian families where the only love languages are verbal abuse and food, and emotional support is non-existent even for favoured first sons). The sporadic outbursts of domestic violence, in particular, are so true to life as to be triggering; it made me think of people IRL to whom I’d only recommend the film with a warning. The actors are all very good but the one I’ll think back to is Kim Sae-byuk, who plays Eunhee’s mysterious yet relatable Chinese tutor and imbues the supporting character with a vast sense of inner life. The camera watches her face and you feel what she’s feeling for this girl, from the other side of the unidirectional gulf that is the Tired Adult™ looking upon an eighth grader much like she once was.

21st Century Girl: a thematic omnibus of short films commissioned from emerging female Japanese filmmakers, each of which has to be about love, gender, or sexuality in some way. One does what one can with the running time: some oblique love stories, some LGBT themes, some in media res snippets of what might eventually end up as feature-lengths with a beginning and an end, lots and lots of photographic montage and manifestos in voiceover. I liked “Your Sheet,” a gender-fluid erotic story that was also the most successful bit of standalone short fiction, and the rom-com concept of “Sex-less Sex-friends.”

Dare to Stop Us: for once I would have liked a Q&A session with the director and writer, because I have questions. The film is a dramatization of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s imperial period of Wakamatsu Studios, the “pink film” (experimentally x-rated, but also raging leftist pink-o) outfit founded by Wakamatsu Koji, an enfant terrible of Japanese cinema who used to be yakuza and purportedly turned to film so he could kill off cops without getting arrested. The main character is Megumi, a hippie girl who joins the studio at the age of 21 and works her way up to first AD within the year, not least due to the other ADs quitting. Megumi comes off as a designated-naif entry-point POV, possibly – I thought – a composite of women who worked for Wakamatsu, and the arc of her story seemed to bend toward surviving (gender-neutral) workplace hazing and becoming a successful indie director in her own right, as Wakamatsu promises when he hires her. Spoilers: she is not a composite! She existed, and what happens to her is gut-wrenching! It’s a rug-pull, honestly, especially since the director Kazuya Shiraishi worked with Wakamatsu and the initial vibe is “feel-good biopic of characters and environment I have huge nostalgic affection for.” In retrospect, one has to conclude he was half making that movie, half interrogating how the guerrilla filmmaking milieu can chew up the people who love it most, and is particularly unforgiving to women even when their bosses and peers aren’t overtly sexist.

(I also have questions about the slickly urbane portrayal of Oshima Nagisa, sitting in a cafe with his sunglasses telling Wakamatsu not to push his pro-Palestinian documentary too hard because the film world is “run by Jews,” because hoo boy was that a Moment.)

Disco Elysium is pretty pessimistic, and I think that's why it works so well, but the conversation with the Phasmid felt so hopeful. Here is this impossible creature that's real. It speaks to you. You were born for the same purpose. It tells you your kind's existence coincides with what will end the world, and it doesn't hate you. It lets you touch it, ever so gently. Have you been able to be gentle before now? There's even an implication that you can fix things, after everything.

I will not blink. I will keep looking at you, you wonderful monstrosity of nature. This incredibly sensitive instrument exist to detect things that are beautiful. You are the promise I wrote on the wall, and I will be there again when something beautiful is going to happen.

Little Forest

Watched: 12.03.2023

Hit pause on the turning point.This movie is a gentle reminder that it’s okay to just take a moment to breathe and figure yourself out - be it a day, month or a year. There is no point in chasing after things that do not bring you peace and happiness. Yes, you still need to deal with your responsibilities, you need an income to support yourself financially, but that does not mean you need to desire and want what everyone else strives for. We are all different, with different motivations and needs. One person enjoys a fast paced environment, someone else needs more calmness in their surroundings. There are no right and wrong answers in how to live your life, as long as you are not hurting others.

And that’s basically what the movie is about - Hye Won putting her life on pause as she tries to figure out what she truly wants, and if the goal she was trying to reach so far is what she truly desires. She reconnects to her roots, reignites her old friendships and slowly learns about her mother’s decisions in the past - understanding things she was not able to understand when she was younger.

What Little Forest offers is comfort and warmth. Beautiful scenery and amazing short cooking scenes. A message that simple life is meaningful. That making amends with your past is the way to move forward, even if it means starting from the beginning.

Additionally, we get an amazing cast delivering perfect performances. Honestly speaking, the movie is Kim Tae Ri’s, and Kim Tae Ri’s only. She carries the whole film. She fits the rural slice of life genre so well, I would have no issue watching a full 16 episodes show based on Little Forest.

Overall, big recommendation for anyone who loves a calming slice of life content with few cooking scenes that will make you hungry.

Queerness, Gentrification and Cultural Genocide in the film La Mission

This is an essay I wrote as part of my pursuit of an Ethnic Studies degree at Cal State East Bay during the Fall Quarter 2017. This will be part of a series of essay posts from my classes at the end of my school quarters. This and all of my essays were written under my legal name, Dennis Camargo.

In the film La Mission, the audience is introduced to Che, a former prisoner and alcoholic, and his son Jes, a student just about to graduate high school. The plot of the film focuses on the tumultuous relationship between Che and Jes after Jes was inadvertently outed as a gay man by his father stumbling across photos of Jes in a gay club. In the film there is an underlying tone of Che interpreting male homosexuality as a force of consumerism and gentrification in La Mission, the area of San Francisco where the film takes place. Che is unable to reconcile his son’s queerness, therefore branding his son as a race trader and being complicit in the cultural genocide of a historically Mexican district of San Francisco.

Very early in the film, the audience is met with Che’s fears of La Mission falling victim to gentrification like many other parts of San Francisco. Che confronts his neighbor Lena, who has filed a complaint against Che with their landlord for blocking the sidewalk with his lowrider. The audience sees Che’s defensiveness against this complaint as encroachment of seemingly God-given right as a Mexican man to exert his dominance and symbols of masculinity in his Azatlan, the mythical homeland of Aztecs and by extension Mexican culture. He states “…after all you hipster types are tired of slummin’ it, I’m still going to be here,” to Lena, a black woman who personifies a typical hipster/gentrifier complete with fixed gear bicycle and an interest in New Age beliefs (00:10:15). Despite her race, her hipster interests are typified as white behavior and therefore is an extension of the cultural genocide of La Mission district. While her lifestyle is not necessarily queer, it is accepting of queerness which opens the door for more white culture to smother the hypermasculine, hyper heterosexual Chicano culture of La Mission.

Che has a very complex interpretation of his son’s queerness because of his history as a convict, his addiction to alcohol and the association of gay culture with alcohol, whiteness and consumerism. Che’s few associations with gayness are exemplified with the line “Is that why he’s manhandling you like you’re some Mexican bitch?,” (00:27:05) when he confronts Jes with the photographic evidence of is encounter with his white boyfriend. Another instance is an ad for here!, a gay-oriented on demand television channel being advertised on the busses he drives (00:40:26). These two instances can be interpreted as colonial, capitalist gentrifiers of his Azatlan, making Jes la Malinche, a historical figure vilified by Mexican people for selling out the Native Mexicans to the Spanish (Garsd). On a very tangential note, his association with queerness and clubbing, therefore alcohol use, can be seen as a white drug adulterating a perfect Aztec life, as there tremendous pride in Aztec identity among those who pride themselves as Chicano. This adulteration can be tied to the trope of Native Americans struggling with alcohol abuse.  

Conclusively, while Che’s interpretation of queerness and white hipsterdom gentrifying traditional black and brown neighborhoods is not necessarily incorrect, he fails to see the nuances of being queer. Queers of color can be equally weary of gentrification and cultural genocide of historically black and brown areas and are willing to protect la raza from falling victim to capitalism. Understanding of the intersectionality of being brown and queer will help in the effort against gentrification. 

Citations

La Mission, www.amazon.com/Mission-Benjamin-Bratt/dp/B003ZZ4H6K/ ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1509596248&sr=8-1&keywords=la%2Bmission&dpID=513tWYMpb7L&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch.

Garsd, Jasmine. “Despite Similarities, Pocahontas Gets Love, Malinche Gets Hate. Why?” NPR, NPR, 25 Nov. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/11/25/457256340/despite-similarities-pocahontas-gets-love-malinche-gets-hate-why.

the absolute funniest plot of nbc hannibal is the fact that the fbi is looking for a serial killer that is highly skilled in evading the police and has been killing for decades in multiple countries, and then they hired a guy who showed up to work like this every day to catch him.

“Beef” is about so many fucking things, but ultimately it’s about the hardship of being human, the ultimate disappointment and disillusionment that you go through year after year when things don’t go your way and you’re miserable or when everything goes your way and you’re still miserable. When you think you’re living life right but you’re still so fucking unhappy and NOTHING fills the void that spasms inside of you and and and because of this feeling, that life isn’t what you thought it was going to be, the rage pot boils and it boils over and it spills onto everything.

And fuck fuck fuck, it’s about two people who are so disconnected from everyone else in their life because of this feeling that the only person they connect to toxically is each other, because this rage is known, this misery is shared, and even though it’s so fucking destructive, at least it’s not lonely anymore.

*a male and female character have a nice close platonic relationship that doesn't indicate any romance at all*

Me: Oh I am HERE for this!

*whoops, they fell in love*

Me: I'll be on my way.