Im Lauf der Zeit

1976, West Germany, directed by Wim Wenders

For a film that is in many ways about alienation from modern life, especially modern German life, this is a strikingly warm and often humours piece, in which Wenders weaves big ideas about society and social relations into a portrait of two men on the road. The interaction between character and idea is far more natural here than in later work like Wings of Desire, which never quite worked for me -- it seemed to signal its own perceived importance, notwithstanding individually successful elements.

That's not to say that every scene here comes off: the sequence with the bereaved man and that in which Robert (Hanns Zischler) reunites with his father are both a little on the obvious side, though each has passages that are successful even if the overall execution lacks subtlety. But those scenes hardly set the overall tone, of constant, elegiac movement in which we're always aware of the end of the journey even as it might seem to unspool to infinity.

Wenders provides us with a very different look at Germany: there's little about postwar recovery and economic success, but instead small towns that have seen better days, and the abandoned countryside (in which both central characters are complicit). The film celebrates much that has been lost in Germany's recent history -- whether it's old vehicles or disappearing skills like cinema projection, printing, even rowing across the Rhine (Wenders and Robby Müller show that they've not forgotten much about how to create gorgeous black and white images, though).

The central characters might be expected to embrace the modern given their complicated relationships with their personal histories but they are instead driven to revisit the past in an attempt at understanding. That process of understanding also relates, of course, to understanding where they stand as Germans born after the war -- the the chill, never verbalized, that descends when the Third Reich is mentioned takes the smile off the face of even Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler), that most good-natured of characters.

Der Räuber

2009, Austria/Germany, directed by Benjamin Heisenberg (aka The Robber)

Even by the standards of the existential crime film, this is stripped down stuff, never touching on the central character's motivations except to suggest that his compulsions are somehow innate and not subject to any form of self-regulation. He does what he does because he has to, and he does what he does well, though without any obvious pleasure, whether the activity in question is marathon running or robbing banks. The apparent lack of depth, though, is deceptive: it's precisely by the absence of apparent motivations that the viewer is drawn to psychologize and provide explanations where none are offered. There's nuance, too, in the robber's halting relationship with an old friend, their awkward early interactions reinforced by Heisenberg's clever blocking -- much is transmitted just by the ways in which these two people negotiate the same space.

Quartet

2012, UK, directed by Dustin Hoffman

Julien Duvivier took a story about a retirement home for actors and produced La Fin du jour. Dustin Hoffman, armed with a tale about a retirement home for musicians, produces Quartet. Much as I'm loath to snidely dismiss any project that consumes months or even years of the participant's lives, there's no danger that La Fin du jour will be eclipsed as a work of art. Quartet is thin gruel indeed -- you'd have imagined an actor of Hoffman's standing would wish to give his remarkable cast rather more to do.

Django Unchained

2012, US, directed by Quentin Tarantino

A disappointment, and in many ways a mess -- not only is Tarantino's thinking on matters racial entirely muddled, to be charitable, but his film has little of the structural finesse of his earlier work, whether it's the interlocking stories and alternate versions of a Jackie Brown or the careful block-building of Inglourious Basterds. As Jim Emerson observed in his comments on the film, Tarantino constructs a terrific early set piece in a bar and never comes close to that level of skill and suspense in the remainder of the film (I did like the opening, too). Indeed, in retrospect, the entire first half of the film comes to seem motivated almost entirely by the need to acquire a bankroll for the subsequent search for Django's wife, and yet that search is absurdly attenuated that it undercuts almost everything that came before.

Side Effects

2013, US, directed by Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh is surely one of the most intelligent of current mainstream directors, wrestling with interesting conceptual problems -- not least how to tell certain kinds of stories -- while delivering satisfying narrative entertainments. There's a satisfaction in the neat, finely-honed outcome here that's complemented by a fascination with the intricate putting-together of the overall puzzle; you want to re-watch the film immediately to figure out what you could have known when, and just how the director signals certain ideas (through colour scheme or shot selection, for instance) or conceals little pieces of information from the viewer. And yet it's not just an exercise in careful narration, or for that matter in trickery. Soderbergh makes especially adept use of the interiors in which these characters live, work, and play. The spaces in which their lives unspool -- spaces of privilege, for the most part -- come to function as important adjuncts to the characters, and there are a couple of exhilarating shots where he takes us around Rooney Mara's apartment in quite deliberate fashion to give us a sense of the proximity of a number of key events. He also has a knack for working with fine casting directors -- the smallest parts are always worth looking it in a Soderbergh picture, with cops, janitors, co-workers all neatly sketched.

Clueless

1995, US, directed by Amy Heckerling

One of the great teen films, along with Heckerling's own Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Heckerling manages to retain our sympathy for her characters despite their uniformly privileged status. It certainly didn't hurt that the 1995 audience was fresh from a decade of Beverly Hills, 90210 melodrama, and indeed several of the gags make reference to that show. The film feels considerably less episodic than Fast Times: there's never a free moment here to indulge in a scene for its own sake, partly because the focus never strays from Cher (Alicia Silverstone).

Indeed, I can't recall many Hollywood films that have no scenes whatsoever that don't involve the protagonist, even if on a few occasions her presence is over the telephone. Cher comes across as a very canny young woman, eagerly manipulating her ditzy image but absolutely in control of her actions: in her own way, she's a surprising avatar for girl power, with no one, save a street punk with a gun, likely to put one over on her.

Pitch Perfect

2012, US, directed by Jason Moore

Entertaining, but quite honestly ten days later I can't recall the details well enough to post anything insightful, except to note that the film tries to include a couple too many supporting characters and then can't manage the logistics of giving them each something unique to do -- a point made rather flagrantly when they are dismissed as individuals in a scene where they are supposing to be opening up about their unique traumas.