A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

 

A Fish Called Wanda

I remember vividly watching “A Fish Called Wanda” the first time. I was in eighth grade, and my class was going to England to spend a week with British host families. In those days, the cheap way to go to the UK was an overnight ferry from Esbjerg to Harwich. We were a group who watched “A Fish Called Wanda” in the ship’s cinema. Midway through the movie there was a blackout. The ship lost power and lay still in the water for an hour before we could continue the movie. That sort of thing makes an impression on a 14-year-old.

“A Fish Called Wanda” is not so much a caper movie as about what happens after the heist. The gang has four members, the leader George (Tom Georgeson), his girlfriend Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), her lover and team gunman Otto (Kevin Kline) and right-hand man Ken (Michael Palin). Minutes after the heist, it becomes clear that nobody trusts anybody. George moves the loot (some very valuable diamonds), he entrusts their location to Ken, while  Wanda and Otto call the police to report George who is immediately arrested. Wanda is playing everybody, being lover of George, secret lover of Otto, friend with Ken and, when she learns he is the barrister of George, tries to become friendly with Archie Leach (John Cleese). Archie is, in his turn, living a fairly boring, if comfortable, life under the boot of his rich wife, Wendy (Maria Aitken). When he is approached by the vivacious Wanda, a whole new world opens up to the repressed, middle-aged barrister.

This is a comedy and it plays hard for comedy, though less so in the beginning. It is a fairly slow starter where the pieces need to be set up. It does not take long though to work out that Otto is an imbecile with an inflated ego. As an American with a very high opinion of himself he hates the British, though not as much as when people call him stupid or tries to cheat on him. He is the source of much, if not most, of the comedy here. There is a running joke with him being incredibly jealous of anybody getting close to Wanda and with Wanda using her female charms on practically everybody, this happens a lot. Wanda meets with Archie several times and whenever she does, Otto will appear, looking in through a window or suddenly be in the room. Those are my favourite scenes of the movie. When Wanda and Archie, in an embrace, are deriding Otto for his stupidity, Otto’s head suddenly appear next to the bed, saying: “Do not call me stupid!”. I almost fell off the sofa laughing.

Kevin Kline is funny here because he has been built op throughout the movie so his fumbling around and idiotic appearances becomes a trigger for comedy. Just seeing him, we know it will be crazy. It is a bit less so with the sensitive, animal-loving Ken with a stutter. He is tasked with getting rid of an elderly woman who were able to identify George during their getaway. His attempts at her life invariably fail as he ends up killing one of her dogs instead each time. Much to his own chagrin. As a 14-year-old this was incredibly funny. Less so now. It is when Ken has his encounters with Otto it becomes hilarious. Otto pretends to be gay and makes passes on Ken, and, towards the end tortures Ken to reveal the location of the loot by sticking up chips in his nostrils and eating his beloved fish.

“A Fish Called Wanda” is very much a John Cleese project. With Michael Palin on board there is a hint of the old Monty Python vibe, but this in not the anarchy of MP, not is it the zany world of Fawlty Towers. There is a grounding here in reality that at first seem to take the fun out of the movie, but eventually becomes the sounding board at which the crazy elements are thrown. Archie would not be half as fun without Wendy. Otto is hilarious because he operates in an otherwise sane world. Cleese’ Archie is a central character, but through much of the movie he is the stooge rather than a protagonist and it is often difficult to recognize the unhinged Basil Fawlty in the repressed lawyer. As a Cleese fan, this is a bit disappointing.

As for Jamie Lee Curtis, I always had a bit of a problem with her in this movie. She is a great actress, and I have watched lots of movies where I loved her and her stunts, but I simply cannot make her that femme fatale she is supposed to be here. Something does not ring entirely true.

A few anecdotes: Archie Leach is the actual name of Cary Grant, and he came from a location (or very close to) used in the movie. Coincidence? During a showing of the movie in Denmark, an elderly gentleman in the audience died from laughter. He laughed so hard he got himself a heart attack. The deadly joke of MP?

At the Academy awards “A Fish Called Wanda” was nominated for Best Director (Charles Crichton) and Best Original Screenplay (John Cleese) and, very deservedly, won Best Supporting Actor (Kevin Kline). Kline being the absolute reason this is a big recommendation from me.

 

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

 

Off-List: My Neighbor Totoro

1988 is one of those years where there is so much good and interesting stuff to add to the List, yet when I noticed “My Neighbor Totoro” was a 1988 movie, I was not in doubt I had to add this one. There are a few Ghibli movies on the list, but, surprisingly, not this one and that despite when you look for Ghibli merchandize, the Totoro figures are the most iconic ones. Did I mention my son is an avid fan of everything Ghibli?

“My Neighbor Totoro” takes place in rural Japan, sometime in the fifties. A university teacher, Kusakabe, and his two children, pre-teen Satsuki and four-year-old Mei, are moving into an old, deserted house. The mother is in the hospital during the entire movie, suffering from some illness that keeps her there and is a constant worry for the family.

The story is very much seen from the eye-height of the two children. They are very energetic, everything they do seem to happen at a frenetic pace, and they have a lively imagination. When they believe they see something, the father is not rejecting it, but plays along. The girls see soot-mites escaping into crevices when they open doors to deserted rooms and rather than being afraid, they take delight in it. They are also spotting (Mei first, then later Satsuki as well) strange creatures dropping acorns in the house and the garden. Mei, following the creatures into a thicket surrounding a giant tree, ends up with a gigantic, furry creature who seems benign and says just one word, “Totoro”. Later, while waiting for a bus to meet her father, Satsuki also meets Totoro. He is simply standing next to her in the iconic image at the bus stop. She lends him an umbrella, and he gets on a gigantic cat bus before her father arrives.

A few days later there is a telegram to contact the hospital immediately. The girls worry something has happened to their mother. Satsuki tries to get hold on their father while Mei simply wanders off towards the hospital. Satsuki is upset Mei is lost but gets help from Totoro and the catbus to find Mei and then get to the hospital. The girls do not enter, but the parents find an ear of corn with a message from the girls on the windowsill.

Miyazaki combines a number of his classic elements in this movie. First of all, there is the world as viewed from the eye height of a child which both involves what is important to a child but also the magic that the child sees in the world. Another element is nostalgia for a time past. Miyazaki is taking us back to his own childhood where he moved from the city to rural Japan and the world he met there. Something he would reference a lot in “The Boy and the Heron”. Finally, the animistic spiritual world of nature plays a large part in “My Neighbor Totoro”. The world the girls see is not just their imagination, but a spiritual grey-zone where they are in touch with forces in nature that are very much part of traditional Shinto beliefs. Not that Totoro himself is a Shinto deity, but Shinto allows for nature spirits that you need to respect. Both “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away” go down that road in a big way.

The girls seem to be allowed access to this world because the possibilities are never denied them. Where other parents may be keen remove such fanciful thoughts from the children, the father and the local old woman known as Granny never deny the girls’ claims and even encourage it. If the girls had been very sad about moving to the countryside, the magic world could be an escape, but that is not the case at all. Instead, the magic is part of the excitement of moving to the countryside and for the girls simply an extra dimension to be in. This world does offer help when they need it, but as an ability, not as an escape. In this way the nature-spiritual world is not a crutch but a bonus and an altogether much more positive thing.

As all Ghibli movies, “My Neighbor Totoro” is on the surface a children’s movie, but one with messages to adults as well. It seems to lack a plot, but that is because it is so much more focused on a state of things. This is less about overcoming a story-arch crisis as about achieving a communion with a spiritual reality.

Finally, not to forget, “My Neighbor Totoro” is a beautifully drawn movie. As in all Miyazaki’s movies the backgrounds are hand drawn to exquisite perfection. Totoro is now an iconic Ghibli creature, and I think many children all over the world are very familiar with it.

“My Neighbor Totoro” is a necessary watch in the Studio Ghibli universe and I highly recommend it.

   

Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Hotel Terminus: Klaus Barbie sa Vie et Son Temps) (1988)

 

Hotel Terminus: The life and Times of Klaus Barbie

For a while I thought this would be the first time I had to give up finding a movie on the List and in a way it turned out so. Extensive search turned up blank unless I have an American library card, which I do not, or have access to a region 1 DVD player, which again, I do not have. I finally succeeded in finding part 2 of “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie” on YouTube and that is what I had to settle with. Missing the first half of the movie, I feel unable to give a proper review of it and this will just be my impressions from the second half.

Klaus Barbie was known as “The Butcher of Lyon” for his actions during the second world war. What exactly he did is a bit unclear because it is covered by the first half of the movie, but as an SS officer with that nickname, it cannot have been good. As the war ended Barbie avoided prosecution for his crimes by being spirited away. This is where the second half starts in the middle of the story of how that was possible. Something about that it was an American intelligence agency who got him out using some underground network that involved the Catholic church in Italy. I apologize for being obscure here, but this part was very confusing to me.

Barbie worked in South America for various military regimes. To begin with to fight communists, but eventually to become a power factor in his own right, leading an organization that supplied the regimes with arms through sale of drugs. He was particularly active in Bolivia under the name Altman. In the seventies, his name started to surface, and a number of individuals began to chase him down. Only in 1983 he was finally caught and sent to France where he was, three years later, given a life sentence.

“Hotel Terminus...” is a project by French filmmaker Marcel Ophuls. He previously made the documentary movie “The Sorrow and the Pity” and “Hotel Terminus...” follows in the same path. Here his mission is not to find Klaus Barbie, but try to uncover what happened with him. Not just how he was found, but the entire environment around him. At least in the second half I watched, we see very little of him. A few pictures and short clips from the trial, but no interviews to speak of. Instead, Ophuls interviews the people around Barbie. Often in small snips and cross-clipped with another interview contradicting the first. There is no voice-over or explanatory text beyond the name and title of the interviewed (at least that!), so as a viewer I must infer the connection and context from the dialogue. I have a feeling that even with the first part, this would still have left me somewhat confused.

Some of the characters being interviewed are downright dodgy. They agreed to give interviews for a fee, but their answers are at best useless. Others look very qualified, such as the head of the German Chamber of Commerce to Peru, but held up against other interviews, they appear to by lying through their noses. What is truth and what is fiction? It gives the impression of a conspiracy working just outside our perception with threads not just to juntas in South America but across the globe.

The final part about the trial itself focuses particularly on two subjects: the dodgy defence lawyer who not only has an ambiguous relationship with reality but also appears to be connected to some very unsavoury organizations with a common goal to disrupt the western world (making this quite relevant today), and secondly how much of the testimony against Barbie was rejected, either because of the long time elapsed since the war or because essential witnesses were discredited. For a while I thought this would lead up to that Barbie went free, but alas, he did get a life sentence.

I would like to watch the first half if it ever became available to me. Not because I am eager to watch the crimes of Klaus Barbie, but because I feel I lack the context for the second half and the means to fully understand it. For the same reason I do not want to offer a recommendation for this. I simply cannot judge it fairly.

Cinema Paradiso (Nuevo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)

 

Mine aftener i paradis

I remember when “Cinema Paradiso” (“Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”) came out. On Danish TV, the movie reviewer (Ole Michelsen) was gushing over the movie, but I did not much care for it, being in the wrong age bracket at the time (15 years of age). 10-15 years later I finally watched it and was surprised to learn that I liked it. That is already a long time ago now and I never went back to it until now. Revisiting “Cinema Paradiso felt like coming back to an old friend. Everything looks the same but completely different at the same. Pretty much the topic of the movie.

In present day Italy, an old woman (Pupella Maggio) is trying to reach her son, Salvatore (Jacques Perrin). Salvatore lives in Rome, is a famous movie director and has not been home for thirty years. The mother finally gets through to his girlfriend who in turn tells Salvatore that a man called Alfredo has died. This makes Salvatore reminiscence about old days, which then becomes the bulk of the movie.

We are now back in a small Sicilian town, Giancaldo, shorty after the Second World War. Salvatore, now known as Toto (Salvatore Cascio), is a naughty little boy (8 years?) who works as an altar boy and spends most of the time in the projector room at the church, turned cinema at night, with the projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret). His life at home is miserable with a lonely mother (Antonella Attili) whose husband never returned from the war, but with Alfredo, Toto experiences magic. The priest requires Alfredo to cut away all the naughty parts and Toto revels in these cutaways.

There is a fire in the projection room and Alfredo, although saved by Toto, loses his sight. When a local lottery winner opens a new cinema, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Toto, as the only skilled projectionist available, is hired with blind Alfredo to guide him.

Fast forward to the mid-fifties, Toto has become a young man (Marco Leonardi) in high school who still runs the projector. When a new girl, Elena (Agnese Nano) arrive in town, Toto falls in love. Unfortunately, her wealthy family does not approve so when Toto returns after military service and years out of contact with Elena, he leaves for Rome with Alfredo telling him never to come back.

Now, 30 years later, having remembered all this, Salvatore returns to Giancaldo for Alfredo’s funeral. The town both look the same and very different. His life as it was now only lives on in his memory.

This is a movie that relies heavily on nostalgia. It is a remembrance of times past in the Proustian form where the reality we are presented is not necessarily an objective reality but a remembered reality. The things that made an impression, of joy and passion, misery and misfortune and people looking and acting precisely as you want them to be remembered. Salvatore sees all his old friends when he returns, but they are like strangers to him because 30 years of nostalgia removes them from objective reality and, truthfully, who stays the same after 30 years?

While the life remembered is uniquely Salvatore’s, we all share that experience of remembering the past and so we can all relate to the process if not the actual content. We remember what made an impression on us in our childhood, and we remember our father and mother figures or our first love. True, Salvatore’s memories may be a tad more exotic and interesting than the rest of us, a film of my memories would be both sad and boring to anybody else, but they are also made more interesting by the patina of nostalgia, of the longing for a paradise lost. The name of the cinema is not coincidental and the Danish title given to the movie, literally “My evenings in paradise”, is a reference to the personal paradise lost of Salvatore.

It is an incredible movie to watch, especially because it succeeds in dragging you in. Time flies by and by the time it ended I was surprised to see how late it was. Finishing the movie is like waking from a dream that took you somewhere else. I often have a problem with Italians and their very... expressionist... way of acting, but I got past this super fast. Even young Toto’s shrill cry of “Alfredo Alfredo” becomes less annoying after a while and with Ennio Morricone’s awesome and dreamlike scoring, the dream is now our dream.

If there is any complaint it is that Salvatore never returned to his family for 30 years. That kind of makes him a dick.

“Cinema Paradiso” won a ton of prices, not least the Grand Jury prize in Cannes and the Best Foreign Language award at the Academy Awards. That the Academy did not deign to nominate it for anything else, does not speak to the credit of the Academy.

“Cinema Paradiso” remains a great movie and it has aged incredibly well. It is possibly even better today than I remember it, and I can only give it my highest recommendations.

 

Ved Vejen (1988)

 

Off-List: Ved vejen

It has been quiet here on my blog in July, but now I am back from my summer vacation and the first movie is a Danish off-List movie called “Ved Vejen”. I believe the English title is “Katinka”.

“Ved Vejen” is based on a story by Herman Bang and is, as far as I can tell, the only movie ever directed by the great Max von Sydow. It takes place in a small provincial community in Denmark around the turn of the century (that is, around 1900) and is particularly concerned with a woman called Katinka (Tammi Øst). In the opening scenes, Katinka is lying on her deathbed and is soon after getting her funeral, so we know that whatever is going to happen, will end poorly for Katinka.

Katinka is a quiet and thoughtful woman who is married to the stationmaster, Mr. Bai (Ole Ernst), at the little train station. Bai is a loud and big man, very jovial but also a bit insensitive. A new manager, Mr. Huus (Kurt Ravn) arrives to run one of the big farms in the area, and he causes some disturbance in the little community. The women see him as a very handsome man and surprisingly he is unengaged. As he seems uninterested in the eligible girls, he is written off as a bit odd, though very capable. Secretly though, he is falling in love with Katinka and she in him. Both are intensive but quiet types, and both know that this love is impossible for the simple fact that Katinka is married. They are so discreet even that it takes them most of the movie to realize that their feelings are shared. Both Bai and his wife have taken Huus into their home and Bai sees Huus as his friend, completely (and blissfully) unaware of the unspoken love between his wife and his friend. Huus is in obvious pain every time Bai makes a show of his love for his wife, but has enough politeness to be quiet. This dance takes up about an hour of the movie, until near the end, the walls are falling and Huus and Katinka admit their love for each other with the clear admission that this means they must part. Hence Katinka’s wasting and death.

This is the basic story. Everything else is framing. There are many characters introduced and many small side plots, but they all served to frame this basic triangle of impossible love.

It is a very classic plot, timeless even, and their situation would be difficult in any age. By placing the story in the time and environment used here, it is not just difficult, it is virtually impossible. In this time and place, divorce is unheard of and the reason that applies here, love to another man, is considered adultery. That it is the woman in the marriage who loves another man, just makes it so much more socially unacceptable. In this way, “Ved vejen” is related to such Victorian movies as “Room with a View” where social constraints build solid walls around people. Yet even without the social mores, Huus and Katinka’s relationship is doomed. Both are too conscious of the damage they would do. Bai may appear like an insensitive bully, but he sincerely loves his wife, and she does care for him a lot. He does not deserve to be dumped even if he is not worthy of her. I actually like Bai, I could see him as a friend and in those scenes on Katinka’s death bed, we see him completely reduced and broken to lose his wife.

I went into this movie not knowing what sort of movie I would be watching. The Danish output in 1988 was not impressive and this was one I had never watched before. The topic, though, is one I have a very hard time dealing with, so I spent a large part of the movie focussing on everything else in the movie. This was quite rewarding. They went all in to create a believable set for the movie. Often these period pieces look like a dress-up party, but here every detail was strictly period, from simple things like the lamps and trains to intricate things like the dialogue and the sentiments of the characters. This felt like going 130 years back in time. We see the holidays, the town fair, the parties and the daily work and there are so many details. It also helps that there are all these small side stories to latch onto. Most of them has to do with the importance to find somebody to marry, as if going around unmarried is a half death sentence, which of cause underlines the importance of the institution in this environment, but there are also some levity among the stories that helps this from being a complete misery feast.

This does not change that this is a movie to make you feel miserable, unless of course you enjoy impossible love stories. I know a large portion of the human population do love exactly that, but I am not among those and for that reason, I doubt this is a movie I am going to watch again.

So, how did Max von Sydow perform as a director? The direction is flawless. I can only regret he did not direct more movies.

     

Akira (1988)

 

Akira

Ever since my son learned “Akira” is on the List, he has impatiently been asking me when it is coming up. He has watched it several times and tells me this is one of the best and most important anime out there. Finally watching it with me was a big thing.

The story takes place in 2019, 31 years after a disaster destroyed much of Tokyo. Life in Neo-Tokyo is on the brink of chaos with a tenuous balance between a rumbling populace and an increasingly fascistic government. It is a nihilistic world where youth gangs are rampaging and the future looks bleak. Taneka belongs to such a biker gang, driving an awesome, red monstrosity of a bike. When his friend and fellow gang member Tetsuo gets involved in an accident, something strange happens.

Tetsuo is taken away by the military, and we learn they hold a number of oddly gifted children in a research facility. They possess a curious telepathic power and are part of a defence against a mystic entity called Akira, who, we learn, was the cause of the 1988 disaster. Tetsuo, it turns out, also have these powers, except he cannot control them at all.

Kaneda joins a rebellious group, mostly because of a girl, who wants to penetrate the military research facility to challenge the government, but it develops into a struggle to contain Tetsuo before he as well will destroy the city.

It is a wild story like all manga and anime and, frankly, I had some problems following it. In fairness though, I have trouble following most of the anime my son is showing me and this is not the worst. What they all have in common is the intensity. All emotions are 100%, dialogue is either screaming or sinister serious, there is no middle ground. The stakes are as high as possible, the end of the world or unbearable personal humiliation. “Akira” is all of that and for two hours straight, this is an exhausting affair.

Fortunately, there is also something glorious in all this extreme. It is dark and big, machines and technology are massive, explosions are world shattering and everything happens so fast, although there is always time for the characters to cry their heart out or predict the end of the world. This makes it a visual rollercoaster ride through some extraordinary animations and details in drawing. My son dabbles in drawing himself and he tells me that the level of detail in the scenes in “Akira” is among the best ever. It is truly detailed and what impresses me the most is the amount of world building that has gone into this. Sure, it is largely based on Japanese culture, but there is an extrapolation here that resembles “Bladerunner” and with a strong internal logic.

Two years ago, my family spent our summer vacation in Japan and experienced first hand how big manga and anime is there. This is not just a marginal entertainment genre, but something that seems to penetrate everything. I do not remember if we saw anything particularly referring to “Akira”, but given this movie’s celebrated status, it is difficult not to think it had a major influence on how this scene has developed since.

Although there is a conception that anime is mainly for children, “Akira” is not an easy movie to watch. The themes are adult or at least adolescent and the complexity of what is happening on the screen requires both attention and some maturity from the audience. But then again, my old brain may have atrophied, and a younger head is needed. I had to get the ending explained by my son. In the riot of colours and sound I lost track of what happened there in the conclusion.

“Akira” is an impressive movie, but probably not an obvious starter movie in the anime genre. It is adrenaline and high octane, but also surprisingly complex. And, as I am told, an early high point in the genre. That makes it a recommendation.

There are two more anime coming up for 1988.

 

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

 

The Thin Blue Line

Watching “The Thin Blue line” I get the impression that this is a milestone in true crime as a television or cinematic genre. I tried to look up what true crime was before this and the results were a bit vague, but the true crime shows on television since then look pretty much like “The Thin Blue Line”.

Documentarist Errol Morris stumbled on the story of Randall Adams while investigating a different story. Randall Adams was on a life sentence for killing a policeman in Texas, only something was not adding up, and his case is presented here through interviews and reenactments.

The outline of the story is that a car was pulled over one evening in 1976 by the police and as one of the officers went up to the car, he was shot point blank. Earlier that day Adams, who was passing through town had run out of fuel and was picked up by a guy called David Harris. They spend the day together and it was this car that was pulled over and Adams was arrested for the murder.

What Morris finds out is two things. That Harris, a hardened criminal, albeit only 16 years old, had bragged to his friends about killing the policeman and that the authorities seemed very keen on pinning this on an outsider rather than a local boy. There are interviews with both Adams and Harris, both of which makes it quite clear that Harris was the actual murderer and not Adams. The interviews with the police and the prosecutors gave the impression that they were dead certain while the defending side had been stonewalled and largely ignored. It was even mentioned that Adams was a better suspect because he was old enough to be eligible for death penalty.

We do not get far in “The Thin Blue Line” before we see this picture. It is not as if Morris has some twists for us. Instead, the picture just gets clearer and clearer. Yet, all the reenactments keep using Adams as the villain to the end, likely to demonstrate how unwilling the prosecution was to let go of this idea.

Morris has been criticised for being unreliable and biased and that there are also inconsistencies on the defendant’s side that are not explained here, yet it is hard to argue with the last scene, a tape recording of David Harris admitting to the murder, which, of course, makes Adams wrongly accused.

I had some trouble following the story. My copy had no subtitles, and the Texan drawl was very heavy on some of the characters, forcing me to guess at what they were talking about. Secondly, Morris never present the names and titles of his interviewees. I had to infer that from the connection. Some I can guess, simply because we got back to them so many times, but there are also those I still do not know who was in the story. That may be a point from Morris side, but not very helpful.

There are not that many documentaries on the List, and I sometimes wonder if those that are included, are there because they function as a movie feature in an artistic sense rather than just for information. If that is the reason “The Thin Blue Line” is included due to the style used to present the story. Is this the birth of the modern true crime show? Or is it a case of Morris messing with our heads and that is the artistic value? I like to think and indeed I hope it is the former and that Adams was released because of this. Morris drives a strong case, and I would hate to learn that it was all bull.

The unveiling of injustice is an interesting subject matter and as such this is an interesting view. As true crime though, all it takes is to open Netflix. We are swamped by those shows and I am frankly a bit tired of them.