The Official Story (La Historie Oficial) (1985)

 

La historia oficial

“The Official Story” (“La historia oficial”) is something as rare as an Argentinian movie. I believe this may be the first on the List and I do not know of any more coming up. The topic, a political drama, is less rare, but as usual of high relevance as it relates to real event reaching outside the local environment of the movie.

It is 1983, the last year of the military dictatorship in Argentina. Alicia Ibanez (Norma Aleandro) is a high school teacher and married to a government official, Roberto (Héctor Alterio). They belong to the upper middle class in Buenos Aires and through Roberto’s position, on the side of the junta. Together they have a 5-year-old adopted daughter, Gaby (Analía Castro).

Alicia’s world is rocked when her old friend Ana (Chunchuna Villafañe) returns from exile in Europe. Ana was arrested by the junta and tortured in prison for having had a relationship with a dissident. In prison she learned that mothers had their children stolen to be given away to members of the ruling class. This plants the worry in Alicia’s mind that her Gaby may be a stolen child. She starts to investigate and gets in contact with a world hitherto unknown to her of disappeared people and underhand dealings and learns that her husband is not innocent.

This is the story of Alicia and Roberto and how the trust between them is broken. A couple that changes from an intimate unit to separate beings who cannot or do not want to be honest with each other. It is poison to their relationship and turns their world upside down.

But this is also the story of Argentina during and to some extent after the military junta. How the compact of the nation is broken and violated to the point there is no trust and only suspicion and violence. This is presented on several levels as through the story of the disappeared and their mothers demonstrating in the street, in Alicia’s classroom, in Roberto’s family and represented by Alicia and Roberto themselves. Their positions are the positions of the Argentinian people.

Taking another step out, there is a universal story of polarization and mistrust that keeps on being relevant. When people lose the ability to talk about thing, to agree or at least agree to disagree, then violence, mistrust and the collapse of civilization and morals happen. When the opponent is no longer a human being, then nothing will restrain you in the name of your cause.

I think it is this universality which is the strength of the movie. While it works on a personal plan as a story about a relationship in crisis, it also speaks strongly to Argentinians as they can relate deeply to this, but even to us outsiders as we may have our own divisions to struggle with.

I am myself rather suspicious of political movies, because they want me to take a position that is not necessarily my own and on such a highly explosive topic as covered here, this could be extra problematic. While it is obvious the filmmakers are opposed to the junta, I think they exhibit a level of understanding for both sides that is commendable and are sufficiently able to apply that universality, without which such a movie would be divisive rather than healing.

As entertainment, this is a slow-moving movie and you have to be prepared for that. What it suffers in pacing, it wins in intensity. As the crisis comes to a head you feel you know the characters and understand their dilemma. Without this understanding it would be difficult to accept Alicia questioning her right to her child. What mother would do that? Her dilemma becomes believable only because of the slow build-up. In this same manner would Roberto’s blank refusal to discuss the matter be a vilification of him as simply being cruel if we did not understand what is at stake for him. If he were to admit the child was stolen, it would undermine everything he worked for and believed in.

“The Official Story” won the Academy Award for best foreign language movie and I understand why. It is a powerful movie.

 

Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan) (1986)

 

Do Ma Daan

When I think of Hong Kong movies, martial arts is what comes to my mind. Lots of wires, kung fu and sword fighting that looks more like dancing than mortal combat. What I do not think of is comedies. Maybe for good reason, comedy translates very poorly, but “Do Ma Daan” (“Peking Opera Blues”) is such an entry on the List. Whether it is successful I think depends on the viewer.

It is 1913 and China is politically a mess with warlords coming and going and revolution brewing under the surface. General Tsao (Kenneth Tsang) has just ousted General Tun and is into some hanky panky with foreign bankers. His daughter, Tsao Wan (Brigitte Lin), is secretly a revolutionary and want to steal the documents to help the revolution. In this endeavour she is helped by Pak Hoi (Mark Cheng), another revolutionary. Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung) is a courtesan of General Tuns whose quest for a treasure of jewellery leads her to (and past) Tung Man (Cheung Kwok Keung), a soldier and cross paths with Wan and Hoi. The local opera house is the eye of the storm and here the acrobatic daughter, Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), of the owner fall in with the other.

Somehow a lot of things seem to happen, getting the documents, avoid being taken by the secret police, getting in and out of the opera house and getting entangled in the various armies. Beside the quest for the documents, there is Hung’s quest for the jewellery, Niu’s ambition to act in the all-male opera troupe and some romantic combinations.

It should be mentioned here that Peking opera is quite different from western opera. Like in very different.

It was very difficult to find this movie. The version I eventually dug up had English dubbing, complete with English names for the characters but acted on a budget. The dubbing was so bad that a large share of the comedy was the involuntary sort coming from these terrible voices. A movie like “Kung-Pow” is having a lot of fun with this sort of dubbing, but the real thing is... quite an experience.

Another large share of the comedy comes from the martial arts. No Hong Kong movie without martial art and in an action comedy like this one we get plenty. Much, if not most, is so exaggerated that it is funny. It is hard to tell if it is intentionally comedic or just becomes that way in a movie that does not really care if things make sense. The parts that definitely play for comedy work poorly though and that is not very surprising. A lot gets lost in the cultural translation.

It is rather incredible how much plot, action and characters “Peking Opera Blues” manages to squeeze into its 105 minutes running time. It is a very fast movie, quickly moving into the next scene. Look away for a moment and you are lost.

This is an odd mix of helpless amateurism (in large part due to the ridiculous dubbing) and very skilled physical acting and pacing. I am caught between ridiculing and admiring the movie and it ends up in this strange zone where I cannot tell if this was a good movie or not. I did enjoy watching it, but often for the wrong reasons and so I believe it is very much up to the individual viewer.

The Book is gushing about “Peking Opera Blues” and I am happy I only read the entry after watching the movie. What I actually watched was not bad, but very different from what the entry would have lead me to expect.

 

Caravaggio (1986)

 

Caravaggio

A historic drama from the seventeenth century about real people I did not know sounds like my jam. Unfortunately, this was an all-round disappointment.

Michelangelo Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) was an actual Italian painter during the Baroque period (early seventeenth century). This is supposedly A version of his story, stressing the “a”, told in episodic form. This means non-linearity long before Christopher Nolan made it a Hollywood standard. One storyline finds Caravaggio on his deathbed, suffering from lead poisoning. Another follows him in his youth where he enters the household of Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough), partly to paint, partly for sex. Later in life, he meets Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and Lena (Tilda Swinton), both as models but also for sex. He also takes on a mute boy, Jerusaleme (Spencer Leigh) as an assistant.

There is a lot of painting (marginally interesting) with people striking poses (not interesting) and screwing around, everybody with everybody (dirty, ugly and creepy). Eventually Lena is murdered for getting pregnant with a rich patron.

That is essentially what I got out of it.

I suppose my main problem is that I went into this movie on the wrong premise, thinking I was to watch a historic drama, but instead this was a surreal fable with an obscure point. When electronic pocket calculators, cigarettes, motor bicycles and electric lights started to appear, I was completely thrown. Obviously, this is not a historic account. Causality is thrown out the window and nothing is supposed to make logical sense. Director Derk Jarman clearly wanted to make an allegory in the style of “El Topo” or “Satyricon”, both themselves from a period in film history where the movies seemed to be on LSD.

This basically means that the apparent plot is indifferent and the real story must be found in symbols and metaphors. Because of the former, I gradually lost interest in the story. Nothing made any sense to me and even worse, I stopped to care. It is always a bad sign when you start checking the timer and here it felt like a countdown to relief. For the latter, I never got around to decode the actual story. There are hints that Caravaggio is a Christ figure, at least the last pose is of him dead with the wounds of Christ, but otherwise the whole thing felt like an excuse to showcase sex. Not the sex of love, but as a depravity. Now, depravity is in the eye of the beholder, but Jarman goes a long way to present the sex in this context as ugly, filthy and guilt-ridden. Sex between older men and boys, Sex between men and women and especially men and men. Religious people indulging in sex and so on.

The general impression is one of nausea. I felt literally filthy watching the movie. If there is something else in the movie, I can live with that, I am not that much of a prude. The problem here is that there is nothing else. The story line has no relevance, the actual plot is too obscure for me, and I felt nothing for the characters, in large part because the director is so busy using them for symbolic effect that he neglected fleshing them out. Even the main character, Caravaggio we end up knowing very little about, and what we do get to know is implicitly false because causality has been lost.

I suppose the highlight is that we get to see a young Sean Bean and equally young Tilda Swinton here, but I doubt these are the roles they will be remembered for.

I do understand why “Caravaggio” would be celebrated by critics, especially in art circles. There is so much critics-bait here, but it is also typical for why that class of movies has such a poor reputation in the general public. I think David Lynch is cool, the weirder the better and I dig Jim Jarmusch, but this stuff here is not my jam. Not at all.

 

Platoon (1986)

 

Platoon

There was a period where Oliver Stone could do nothing wrong. “Platoon” was one of the highlights of that period. It was highly acclaimed by both critics and the public, but I have not watched it since those days in the eighties. To say that I have been trying to avoid it is probably too strong a wording, but I have just not been inclined to revisit this depressing bloodbath.

It is 1967 (we are not told, I think, but Wikipedia says so) and Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is arriving in Vietnam as an inexperienced rookie. Taylor is a volunteer who dropped out of college to join the infantry. New arrivals tend to die fast, so Taylor must learn the hard way to stay alive. It is brutal, dirty and distressing to say the least. Death is everywhere and if not that then rain, snakes, leeches and disease.

It is clear early on that the lieutenant (Mark Moses) is in charge of jack while the true platoon commanders are the sergeants Barnes (Tom Berenger and Elias (Willem Dafoe). Both are highly skilled and professional, the difference being that Barnes has succumbed to the brutality of the war while Elias has retained his humanity. This difference comes to a head when searching a village suspected of supporting the Vietcong. When they do find hidden weapons, parts of the platoon, led by Barnes, treat the villagers, women, children, all, as combatants and go on a killing rampage, while Elias tries to stop it. This splits the platoon in two halves, following either Barnes or Elias with Taylor clearly on Elias side. Since what Barnes and his group did was clearly illegal, murder between the two groups is in the air.

So, while the unit fights an almost invisible, but terrifying, enemy for reasons that are never discussed, the real war appears to be between the two fractions in the platoon. Humanity versus inhumanity.

That is also what I found was the larger message with the movie. It was never a war movie about conquering or even defend against an evil enemy. It is a movie about what a brutal war like the Vietnam war does to regular people. In this sense it leans up against “Apocalypse Now”, but avoid the Odyssean (or Orphean) references. The journey into hell is the human transformation, the loss of what makes us human. In this respect, Elias becomes a Christ figure, sacrificed to save the souls of his followers.

It follows from his analysis that the reasons for going to war in the end means little to those on the ground. The only higher purposes left is to stay alive and/or preserve their humanity, with the later being the first to go. This is not unique for the Vietnam war. It is my understanding this is relevant for any war with substantial fighting, whether it be WWI or Ukraine.

If you miss out on the above, the plot of the movie may feel thin. Shooting, marching, smoking, more shooting... Post-watching, it is difficult to discern the steps the movie follows, except this gradual decent into the hell of inhumanity. That does not mean it is uninteresting to watch. Stone never falls into the trap of sacrificing the movie to the underlying message. It is riveting to follow, not least because of the constant danger and tension, but also because it is technically an excellent movie on all accounts, from script and acting to cinematography and editing. Even the soundtrack is spot on. Classical music is not what you would associate the Vietnam War with, but the transcendental function of the music to lead us into hell is used to perfection.

Willem Dafoe is for some obscure reason a big thing for Gen Z according to my son, despite him being a very different generation. It was curious to see that even in 86 he looked old and worn. Tom Berenger always looks tough, but I think he takes the price in “Platoon”. That man is a demon.

“Platoon” is not a movie I enjoy watching, and I would be suspicious of anybody who do, but it is a high-quality movie that brings something important to the table and that makes it a must-see, even if it is just that one time. For me, I can wait another few decades watching this again.