The titular character is played by Kyoko Kagawa, best known for her collaborations with Kurosawa (Mifune’s wife in High and Low) and Mizoguchi (Anju in Sansho the Bailiff) but her relationship with Naruse is just as impressive. Seeing as how this film is a starting point in a “refresher” course for me, I don’t feel comfortable saying this is her biggest role in a Naruse film, but it definitely ranks up there. She plays the daughter of a famous writer, who ends up marrying Ryokichi, an inspiring writer who (at first) secretly loathes her father. Ryokichi is played by Isao Kimura, who is also best known for her collaborations with Kurosawa. As his character becomes more and more unsavory, his performance shifts towards exaggeration. At the film’s end, no one can question that Ryokichi is indeed, a very pathetic character.

In my initial review, I never really got over the fact that such a couple would stay together. As Ryokichi shifts from one temporary job to another, his alcoholism worsens and his hatred for his father-in-law, Heishiro, deepens. Before, I mostly focused on the relationship between the struggling couple but on this particular viewing, it seems less and less important. Although the film is named after her, Anzukko’s actions tends to be just that of a middle man between her husband and her father. There’s something tragic in the fact that a housewife provides all the income for a family and ultimately gets no say in how it is used, but it seemed less of a “deal” this time around.

Perhaps it’s best to not view this movie with Naruse-tinted glasses because if one does, the film is just another relentlessly upsetting story about a woman staying with a man she’s better than. The best drama comes from Ryokichi and Heishiro, though, as the former weighs his own pride over charity, even when he is doing absolutely nothing to help his family from a financial standpoint. Ryokichi might be the least likable character to ever get this type of screen time in a Naruse film. He’s self-destructive, cruel, and unreasonable. His logic of a rivalry between him and his father-in-law stems exclusively during intense sessions of alcoholism. In a way, Naruse has made one of the earliest examples of an “addiction film” and the result is every bit as bleak and unsettling as any modern or “edgy” depiction. Sure, it’s just alcohol but the self-destructive nature of Ryokichi rivals any  character involved with hard drugs.

There is still something to be studied about the character of Anzukko. During this viewing, her commitment to her family doesn’t seem as much of a disgusting display of family politics as much as it seems like a complexity. She doesn’t want to lean on the help of her father. He does buy her groceries, but they’re a necessity. One can hardly blame her when she makes all the money and does so without having an actual career. Never is there any love felt between Ryokichi and Anzukko, not even a sense of friendship of respect. It was a marriage of convenience, it seems, but the irony is that it has become a total hassle for Anzukko. The film ends with quiet acceptance, hardly a surprise considering that Naruse seldom went for dramatic shifts in a narrative. It is anything but satisfactory for a character that has put up with so much but receives so little. Where it was frustrating to me on initial viewing, it is now fascinating. Relationships are difficult is nothing new, but the layers of odditity in this particular case make it a subject well worth studying and revisiting.

One could argue that the Dardenne’s way of filming has had a negative impact on film making as a whole. The constantly probing handheld camera has been repeated and translated into the vocabulary of lazier filmmakers in need of capturing a sense of spontaneity in their films. It’s a dumb argument to make, but I mention it because the less talented imitators all share a need to reinforce a sense of reality. Here, though, the reality is probably too frustrating for the audience. There’s no poetic or even “cinematic” interludes that help balance the unflinching wandering eye of the camera’s lens. I’m not naive enough to think that anyone who actually watches this movie is going to be shocked by what unfolds (it’s pretty typical fare for the Dardennes, honestly) but the frustration I am trying to describe is an extension of making a “realist” film. John Cassavetes, who I love, photographed his films similarly but the difference is that his films constantly threw the characters into uncomfortable and dramatic sequences. In other words, there was a reason for the camera’s presence. The difference with the Dardennes is that this is not always true. There’s moments of “dead air” so to speak, perhaps a spark for the countless Bresson comparisons that the brothers still receive.

A perfect example of this “dead air” is the completely empty relationship between the child protagonist, Cyril and the local drug dealer. Cyril sees this as an opportunity for male companionship, a category in which he is sorely lacking. His need overwhelms any type of common sense, something that happens frequently in children. He seems to not question the influence of the drug dealer, and quickly finds himself comfortable in his house. The conversations Cyril has with the drug dealer are useless, not even “cute” or clever. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and not in the way that other filmmakers (namely anyone who has ever made a movie about a romantic relationship) capture in a more charming manner. Cyril’s friendships seem to end as quickly as they begin, probably because he is (literally) always on the move.

This is the perfect contrast (perhaps too perfect, if we’re going to nitpick) to Cyril’s maternal figure, Samantha, who adopts him following Cyril’s escape from school and subsequent quest to find his dad. He is resistant to Samantha, and denies her basic human compassion, at least at first. She cares for him way too much and he doesn’t care, perhaps because she’s a woman or perhaps because he’s scared, but probably because of both. The film’s conclusion does not fit into the simplistic mold of someone being the perfect mother figure. It is modeled after the belief that Samantha and Cyril can sustain a more normal life, but it’s at the cost of a child knowing that his father willfully neglected him and unofficially disowned him.

The movie concludes with Cyril sustaining a concussion, getting up, and walking away from the camera. The action is a relief, at first, as we realize he is not dead but it’s a red herring. Cyril is still living with Samantha and he’s still going to be a brat to her, even if there is a hint at the “turning a new leaf” theme. More importantly, the admiration, nay attention of his father is something Cyril will never be able to achieve. In other words, it’s a movie that is hopeless but not draining. There’s a life for Cyril and Samantha still, but it’s not ideal, and their family dynamic is built around the collapse of a real family dynamic.

The setup  itself works, despite the fact that it’s dragged down by the fact that it just chooses specific elements that were popular “noir” motifs at the time. Some nobody guy gets mixed up with legitimate thugs through a completely bizarre one in a lifetime situation. He’s in over his head because these professionals are after him. Additionally, the police are after. Everyone is against him, except for a girl, of course! My cynicism towards this type of story isn’t a condemnation of the film’s narrative itself, but rather a reflection on the limitations that someone unique as Tourneur was trapped inside.

There’s at least two or three instances in which I had to stop the movie to make sure I hadn’t seen it before, which I guess isn’t too much of a surprise. The argument is generally that these type of films are exercises in style and aren’t meant to be complicated narratives. In that regard, I see eye to eye with this film, but it doesn’t have anything interesting to chew on outside of Aldo Ray’s hoarse voice making him seem more interesting.His character is likable enough, but the problem comes in these movies when they really try to force the martyr element down one’s throat. He’s wrongly accused, he’s in a pickle, he just got back from the war. In a world where something shady is supposedly always going on, why does a film like this restrict its protagonist from doing anything bad? He has a “bad past” is the extent of his backstory and while I don’t mind when writers leave their character’s background open-ended, it seems more like lazy writing as opposed to attempt at being opaque.

Tourneur does bring out some genuine suspense in his picture and it really does look nice. It seems that his style benefits greatly from the widerscreen, since I always thought something in which the shots were manufactured so deliberately should be seen without the limiting academy ratio. Aldo Ray is actually decent enough, and he’s fun to watch with Anne Bancroft, though their romantic connection seems to have been missing about three or four scenes. I don’t mind the direct and “short” nature of Tourneur’s work (it’s actually one of his best attributes) but to believe these two fall so hopelessly in love so quickly is bizarre, especially since Ray is ultimately kidnapping Bancroft. I guess this is where some would give the film points for being transgressive or even surreal, but when such an element in rolled within the confines of traditional storytelling, it really isn’t that groundbreaking. Instead, it’s another instance of lazy writing. It’s not nearly as lazy as the film’s insistence on using a voiceover that literally describes everything that is happening in the voiceover, but it really isn’t much better.

In the end, it’s actually easy enough to overlook the film’s faults, though there are many and although I seem to be focusing almost exclusively on them. It’s a solid genre film, which clocks in under 90 minutes as it should, not  unlike the way a good pop song should (generally) clock in under 3 minutes. Unfortunately, it never really decides if it wants to be open-ended and fractured (which would have been great) or tightly and completely constructed. Not a masterpiece, but not a full on face-plant, either. I’d argue Tourneur wasn’t capable of the latter.

I don’t want to get too far into singing this movie’s praises without mentioning that for all intents and purposes, this movie ultimately doesn’t succeed in being a nostalgic recollection of vignettes, but really just a nice slice of life story that is beautifully photographed and has elements of memory kind of tacked on after the fact. The detachment German shows for the film’s narrator (and presumably, the protagonist on some level) makes his words out to be more of a frame story than a poetic meditation. As is the case, the narration tends to interrupt the flow of the images. Although it is not the type of flow that is so crucial in the aforementioned works of Tarr and Tarkovsky, the film’s wandering steadicam does seem to create a rhythm, a form of breathing almost, all on its own.

As evident as Tarkovsky’s influence is, it does not dominate the film in any manner. The shots are long and composed with the type of bizarre beauty that evokes Stalker in addition to Zerkalo, but German is working under different circumstances. The shots seem to be compiled almost at will – like through an innate desire on the part of the filmmaker to capture every moment in the closest possible way. At least this is the case when there’s a lot of walking to be done and truthfully, there really is a lot of walking here. Perhaps that’s the most overt connection to Tarr, the amount of walking, which seems trivial if not comical at first, but there’s something to be said for filmmakers who capture the single activity that is most frequently edited out of movies.

It is not my intent to downplay German’s unique cinematic vision by throwing comparisons on top of comparisons, but the small town “community/family” motif of Ozu’s work is echoed in both content and visuals. There are several (fairly) static shots down long corridors that lead to a collection of men proceeding to get intoxicated. It’s perhaps a bit too easy of a way to build comradery, but there is an inherent connection I get from seeing people photographed intoxicated, especially the way it is done here. The overall message of the film is debatable and probably lost on someone who is a little iffy on the politics, but personally, it seems to embody the importance of family – be it natural or forced.

The story here is not entirely important, because there is very little of one. A family is trying to marry off their daughter. It’s pretty textbook Ozu, but it’s not really a problem. It’s not a criticism of him in any fashion, but I can see how it may become somewhat tiresome when his films overlap so much. This might have contributed to my reasons for rewatching and rewriting a review as well. As great as Ozu is, it’s not entirely difficult to confuse moments from one of his films with a different movie. It’s worth mentioning, though, that this film in particular its own signature moments. For example, the bratty child (sound familiar Ozu fans?) kicking a loaf of bread around in anger, the conversation Noriko and Aya have with their married peers, as well as the conversation they have entirely in a farmer’s dialect.

For someone whose films are suppose to be about what is being built up to, Ozu has always managed to capture truly impressive and distinct, yet fleeting moments of humor. For some, it might be too good-nature and “nice” but his films are ones that always avoid the trapping of trying to do too much emotionally. Yet it might come as a surprise that his films tend to be more moving than Big Important Art Films™ with “deep” messages.

I didn’t intend for this review to be a case study in Ozu’s superiority over other art filmmakers as that would be both unreadable and useless. Instead, it’s just the experience of revisiting him that has struck me, and rather bluntly I might add. It’s the sort of thing that I think has gotten lost in the past few years of my film-viewing as I’ve tried to make my interest more academic, with the hope of a chance at making a career out of writing. I don’t want to get too introspective, but it’s seeing a movie like this one that kind of puts me back in my place and makes me realize that films, ney all art will never truly be academic, at least not in a certain sense. The experience of Ozu is something that, when putting into words, seems like a backwards exercise. It would take longer to explain his brilliance than it would to just experience it. I’ve been trying for at least five years to find a way to describe these experiences and I feel none the wiser.

Okay, that’s a lot of rhetoric to digest and honestly, it even irks me just looking at it but it is the realization I came to when watching Early Summer for a third time. There is a beautiful depth to Ozu’s work that makes it not only ask for repeated viewings, but instead thrives off of them. The more you watch one of his films, the more there is to discover. Proclaiming Ozu as “subtle” and “nuanced” is an old-hat and probably downplays his other virtues, such as the cinematography, which always astonishes me and the music, which should be hokey, but somehow works as a wistful undercurrent to the pillow-shots. On the other hand, there really is so much to chew on here that it can’t be tackled in one viewing. Before I get anymore mushy about Ozu I’ll leave it at this: the film’s final shot is one of the finest of all-time and a perfect conclusion to this funny-sad masterpiece.

The film’s English title, Identification Marks: None comes from a dialogue that occurs fairly early in the movies. The film’s protagonist, Andrzej Leszczyc (played by the filmmaker himself) is under going a physical examination via the conscription board. He now longer goes to school and he longer provides financial support for his wife. In other words, he is useless and perfect material to become a marine. His inability to make sort of contribution to society is encapsulated by the way he wanders around town without any intentions of ever picking himself, and/or turning things around. He has accepted his destiny as becoming a property of the government.

Andrzej seems less concerned with alleviating the situation and more interested in making the most of what little time he has left. He has a seemingly endless amount of poetic chance encounters with former classmates, all of whom resemble potential romances. It’s kind of heartbreaking since it’s as though he is saying goodbye to individuals to which he only really knew in passing. Should he not spend more time taking care of his now even more doomed canine friend? Maybe with his wife and/or mistress? The past is hinted at, but in a very progressive turn on the character’s part, he manages to live in the present.

Rysopis is a beautifully staged film, with an opening in which the tracking camera seems to be equal parts Bela Tarr and Touch of Evil. The editing is sketchy, but the intentions are good. Trying to be elliptical is often more than enough, as it’s difficult to attempt at making a “disjointed” movie and somehow fail. That’s not meant to marginalize the accomplishment of this movie. It’s an excellent first feature, but on its own, it is mostly a curiosity for those (like myself) interested in Skolimowski’s entire career. Still, I like what I saw here a lot. Hopefully, the film stock is clearer from here on out.

I don’t want this review to ultimately dissolve into a comparison of Brick because one, I quite frankly don’t care about that movie and two, it seems like it would be a disservice to Katz. Still, look at the way Cold Weather opens. A very subdued family dinner, nothing really “dramatic” or “intense.” In fact, the film never really gets into that territory. Brick immediately thrusts the viewer into a world that is modern but filled with people talking like characters in a Howard Hawks movie. In truth, I’d think Katz’s vision is probably closer to the mold of someone like Hawks or Ford even though he’s not studying and replicating their footprints like Rian Johnson. The fact of the matter is, Katz is able to ground his film by having a (seemingly) close-knit cast and the photogenic gloominess of Portland, Oregon as his backdrop.

One of the many strengths in Katz’s previous film, Quiet City was the way it obviously alluded towards Katz’s artier influences but still kept something that was distinctively apart of the “young adult” experience in modern day America. This might just be an elaborate workaround for using “hipster” on my part, but the point still remains, Katz draws from an influences as well as he manages to create some completely organic and new. The “pillow shots” of his previous film were a nod to Ozu, but here they seem to have progressed into something that belongs to Katz himself, not just a tribute. Again, it helps that what is being photographed is something that is just so intrinsically American. The images feel fresh and new, even while being guided through Katz’s already well established aesthetic.

It probably says something of Katz’s intentions that the mystery is essentially “solved” with still somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes left in the film. This seems weird, especially since we’re never given any closure in that time. Instead, the film’s final stretch makes it seem more like being a movie about a brother-sister relationship, which seems to be one of the relationships that has been given the least amount of serious attention in cinema. It’s easy for me to gravitate towards this because one, my sister and I are extremely close and two, Trieste Kelly Dunn is insanely beautiful in this movie. It’s actually sort of disconcerting since it is suppose to be a brother-sister complex and I couldn’t accept that she (nor any other character in the film) was going to be the object of romantic longings.

This is all a good thing, though. It’s a movie by a young American about young people and there’s no point in which stock feelings come into play. In other words, it feels authentic and that is more important than one would think in a genre film. While Katz hasn’t  done quite enough to put him up with say, Nicholas Ray, but he has made one of the most artistic and enjoyable genre films in a long time. Considering his monetary restrictions, it would be an understatement to call this an accomplishment.

Like all of these British social realist films, Kes is downbeat, if not miserable. Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank was an excellent reprisal of this sort of movie, albeit one with a lot more poetic flourishes than Loach or even Mike Leigh. The situations are so dire that they almost force you to connect to the protagonist. In this particular case, it’s pretty hard not to relate with a bullied teenage boy anyway so there’s less of a sense of martyrdom, as would be the case with any of Mizoguchi’s otherwise great tragedies. The film feels pragmatic even when the viewer is forced to sit through sequences that do nothing but further cement Casper’s standing as something of a geek. It would get tiresome if his way of dealing with the situations wasn’t so fascinating. He manages to be both remarkably mature and extremely childish.

I very often discredit movies of this nature for being too downbeat and trying too hard to be real. The remedy to this, at least from a textbook standpoint, is “comic relief” which often carries a negative connotation with it. I don’t think it should especially when the film is as bleak as this one. Thankfully, Loach interjects an extremely amusing bit in which the PE teacher attempts to live out his dream of football glory with his students. Loach even throws in a scoreboard text, further affirming the pathetic nature of the teacher’s delusions. Casper himself has some antics that do call to a mind something like Gummo or George Washington, albeit done under a much more somber tone. This is kind of off-topic, but the amount of running and jumping Casper does is enough to make someone think he’d make a half-decent hurdler.

While Casper himself exhausts himself physically, the film begins to exhaust itself with depictions of his misfortunes. The brightest, perhaps happiest moment in the film occurs toward the end when Casper’s English teacher takes an interest in him and Kes and even  lets the boy explain himself. It’s a touching couple of minutes, because it hints that the character could be finding something of a father figure but that’s too optimistic. In reality, people don’t suddenly become a huge part of your life through some conversations. It would be schmaltzy for such a thing to happen, but the fact that the relationship never comes to fruition is still heartbreaking.

The film’s finale essentially adds insult to the previously mentioned injury, but the way it ends somehow doesn’t make things completely hopeless. Sure, there’s nothing really positive at all, but the simple fade to black suggests that things could be worse. Casper has basically lost his first great passion in life, and he may never be able to revive it. While this is personally frustrating and heartbreaking, he is still young. His conditions are impossibly harsh but his existence continues. On the other hand, it might become an issue of whether or not he wants to exist anymore or not. Kes is the right amount of sadness for my liking, it is brutal but the tragedy is never escalated as anything more, just observed.

When tasked of putting Malick’s cinematic style into words, it is extremely challenging since his vision is experienced more like a song, a language with its own rhythm and nuances. If one were to see this film before anything else by him, it might seem a little odd. The negligence of conventional storytelling, yes even by the standards of your usual arthouse-going crowd is, is definitely not going to earn Malick any new fans, but for the individuals who love his work (particularly his post-exile films) this is a brilliant movie. At the very least, it’s a continuation of his aesthetic. One could call it a maturation or mastering of his vision, but he already felt pretty in control with The Thin Red Line.

The selling point for many film geeks here is that it is more of Malick. His third film in over ten years doesn’t exactly sound prolific, but for a director that didn’t make so much as a sound for over twenty years, it can be read as something of a personal accomplishment. It’s difficult to see Malick actually topping himself after this since this particular movie seems like his most personal and deepest statement. Unfortunately, that’s where it gets kind of tough. I was turned off at first by the extended sequence of cell division and other avant-garde visuals, which seem just a little too long, but their not nearly as problematic as the symbolic mess the film becomes in the final twenty minutes.

While Malick’s previous two films were also on the longer side of things, they were also edited perfectly, at least by my standards, where as some editing could have helped out here. Sean Penn doesn’t really do anything wrong here, per se, but his presence is perplexing if not completely useless. It’s fine if Malick needed some more star power to sell the film (he seems to do this from time to time, John Travolta in The Thin Red Line?) but ultimately, Penn’s appearance in the end just seems really off-kilter. There’s something personal and endearing about the sequence, but they really drag on. After a certain point, enough is enough and it seems like the symbolism has been hammered home hard enough. I suppose Malick deserves credit for still making these scenes look remarkable, but the seemingly endless walk through the desert (which is suppose to be the afterlife, I suppose) really puts a damper on the experience and perhaps spoils what could have been a really emotional conclusion.

One can’t blame Malick too much for being ambitious, he always has been. Is it really any surprise that his film in which the entire life experience and the event of creation is explored that it doesn’t feel a little dry and pretentious at times? Even as a defender of the man and his films, I’d say it isn’t really. His films always balance on a very thin line (no pun intended) of being genuinely deep and moving and being overly-spiritual. This is certainly the issue here. It’s not Malick’s best movie, but it is certainly Malick’s most Malick movie. In that sense, it the best and worst place to start with his films.

Petzold has essentially transplanted James Cain’s 1934 novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice to rural Germany and updated it to be a quieter piece. If anyone deserves credit for making the actual story work on any emotional level at all, it’s Nina Hoss who continues to be Petzold’s muse. The two men in the film, meanwhile, seem to be filled to the core with unsavory elements. I don’t mean to sound hokey, and obviously I don’t characters in movies to be completely without fault, but when a movie wants you to invest in the individuals more so than anything else, they better be at least interesting to watch. The men here are simplistic and dull, their greatest strengths lie in progressing the story and heightening the tension. In other words, they’re stand-ins for drama.

I’m not going to write off Petzold’s brief with genre as a complete failure. If anything, he seems to have become a much more confident filmmaker. Where as some of his earlier movies seem like they are forced to be minimalistic, this one pulled it off quite naturally. Even with all the lying, cheating, and attempted assassinations, there is an odd, almost serene like quality in watching this film unfold. The film’s finale, in particular, is closer to Antonioni’s Eros trilogy than something more melodramatic.

I specifically say melodramatic because that’s ultimately the level on which the film operates. This isn’t to say it’s ridiculous or poorly acted or seems stilted. It just seems to be a heightened, exaggerated drama that is successful because Petzold gives more than just a nice hook of a story. He gives us a earthly flow that almost seems displaced in a drama where the emotions are suppose to be so jarring. Sure, it’s not really a humanistic piece or even a halfway decent character study, but it is a good movie, at least from a strictly cinematic standpoint. A major step forward from the woeful Yella.