Author: Bair-Malunov

Review of the film “Unforgiven”

It’s easy to believe when you watch Unforgiven, that the movie is the winner of four Oscars (moreover, Eastwood’s picture was the third Western film to be awarded for the best film of the year, the second was Dancing with the Wolves, and the first I will not mention).

 This is easy to believe because Eastwood plays a very brutal character in the films of both directors. Sergio glorified Eastwood as a cool lone wielder in the Wild West. Siegel transferred a tough man to a metropolis (Dirty Harry franchise).

 In Unforgiven, Eastwood also plays a person who is idolized. He is very cool, but retired, so to speak.

 Eastwood acquired the script of the Unforgiven from the author, David Webb Peeples, in the early 80s, and waited ten years for the moment when he could play a major role. This moment has come. Eastwood showed himself to be “old”, but showed that there is still “gunpowder in the flasks.” It was starting from Unforgiven that he began making films about retired cool dudes, often with himself in the title role, as a director. And at the same time, he began an unobtrusive reading of morals (recall, for example, Gran Torino).

 Unforgiven is a mid-stage film. Film’s hero has not yet escaped its past. Eastwood, in the classic Good, Bad, Evil Western, was relatively “good” in terms of morality, but shot perfectly. About the same thing we see in Unforgiven, a film with blurred morality, dedicated to the exciting competition of two pensioners, “who is cooler.”

 But it all starts with women. In a classic small town in the wild west, covered with dust, with two or three streets covered with the same dust plus dung, there is a brothel. Two clients cut a whore. The sheriff ruled: to pay a fine by horses. A few horses – him, a few horses – a cut whore. Whores were unhappy with such a decision. Secretly, they threw themselves together and started up the state to declare: “To the one who kills the people who have left the whore is a reward.”

 The elderly sheriff is played by Gene Hackman. This role, for which he received the Academy Award, as if even written for him: I immediately recall the detective Jimmy Doyle from the famous police thriller French Connected (1971), who introduced a new stream with his rigidity and realism to the genre.

 A stubborn sheriff cannot catch whores “by the hand.” Even the owner of the brothel cannot catch the hand of his workers. “No fees, no ads, we promised nothing to anyone.”

 In general, the sheriff intends to show who is the boss in the house and will brutally has sex with every suspect arriving in the city.

 And Eastwood plays a bandit who has long forgotten about his bloody adventures, yearning for his recently deceased young wife and raising pigs on a farm. The bandit decides to make money. Moreover, in old age, he became sentimental, and he was kind of sorry for killing a woman that he slept with.

Which of the two pensioners will win?

 The film could have been called some kind of “requiem for the genre” if Sam Pekinpa hadn’t filmed “The Wild Gang” in its time – a classic story about pensioners, heroes of the “last western”.Pekingpa’s film did not receive Oscar but “Unforgiven” received it. That’s all the difference.

 Unforgiven filmed extremely sophisticated. Eastwood holds the reins tightly in his hands. The wild plot. Actually looks convincing which the story captures. The film has wonderful dialogues. And all the actors play great.

 Three years later, greedy gangsters from Tri-Star will try to jump onto the bandwagon of an outgoing train called Western. I’m talking about the movie “Fast and Dead.” They will even invite Gene Hackman to duplicate the role he played in Unforgiven for his good grandmothers. Hackman, of course, will duplicate, one and a half million still do not lie on the road.

 But as they say, feel the difference! Sam Raimi and Clint Eastwood are not the same thing at all. Unforgiven is a real western, and Fast and Dead is a silly parody on a western theme.

Sources

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/movies/bestpictures/unforgiven-ar.html?scp=2&sq=rawhide&st=cse

Review of the film “A Space Odyssey”

Even works of art have an expiration date – often ten years are enough for the most advanced and technological examples to become hopelessly out of date. Visual decisions begin to seem like amateur performances, and the underlying message is an incredible banality, already repeatedly chewed by culture. Here we usually talk about cinema, but these words are by and large applicable to any work.

 But there are always exceptions. “ A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick this year turned 50 years old – an unthinkable period, especially when it comes to a science fiction film. Of course, some director’s tricks seem outdated: a leisurely 20-minute prologue about producers preparing to transform into Homo sapiens; long dances of space stations to classical music; not the most exciting (by today’s standards) visualization of an operation to rescue an astronaut who has strayed from a route. These are the simplest associations that will certainly come to the mind of any viewer who has seen all the relatively recent interstellar blockbusters – from numerous TV shows to the same Interstellar.

 Most importantly, Kubrick told one of the main stories about our entire species as a whole – as from a simple social organization in a minimum (by planetary standards) time, we reached heaven. As close to us there was always the invisible influence of something unknowable – and it doesn’t matter how to interpret it, in a religious-spiritual format or in a research format. In addition to intraspecific competition and other conditional defects associated with biological survival, we have a fundamental metaprogram of curiosity and craving for the highest – and when a certain stage of our development is reached, evolution abruptly includes the following transmission. And beyond this step, what seems to us irrational and impossible so far – just like several hundred thousand years ago, modern technologies and culture simply could not fit into the life of primates.

 And perhaps you should not take too seriously the words above about some obsolescence of the production: the eternal philosophical concepts are wrapped in such an elegant appearance that special efforts of the will to ignore minor technical flaws are not required. “A Space Odyssey” almost immediately draws into its meditative narrative, evenly increasing the degree of psychedelic, exploding consciousness with the meaningful symbolism of insanity in the finale.

 And finally, after half a century, it’s just interesting to look at Kubrick’s futurological forecasts, partly fulfilled. Analogs of modern Skype and iPad, which do not lose significance, questions about the essence of artificial intelligence and tastefully demonstrated the features of the life of astronauts – neither the Martian, nor Interstellar, nor most other much later tapes showed anything fundamentally new compared to the latter.

Sources

https://www.history.com/news/making-2001-a-space-odyssey

Review of the film “Silence of the Lambs”

 Written about the film “Silence of the Lambs” a huge number of reviews and reviews, which are very ambiguous. Who is very sensitive, I would not recommend watching this picture. But for people striving to get a thrill, to think about the deep nature of the relationship between representatives of completely opposite layers of society, this film will bring a lot of emotions and feelings.

 Filming finished in 1990. The film company Orion Pictures has delayed the screening of the film so as not to create competition for its other film, Dancing with the Wolves. Therefore, “Silence of the Lambs” was released only in January 1991.

 I watched the film after reading the best-selling book of Thomas Haris “Silence of the Lambs.” Before, my opinion was that the book is always better than the film. I was convinced of this more than once. But not this time. To say that the movie was shocked to the core is to say nothing.

Preamble to the film

Haris wrote the book Silence of the Lambs in a surprisingly short time. He was impressed by the high-profile case of the maniac killer Eddie Gain, who killed dozens of people in a few years. From a harmless and friendly person he turned into a monster digging up fresh graves, stripping the skin from the dead. The freak sewed suitcases and furniture covers from this skin. After the sentence, he was hidden in a madhouse, where he read a lot, but the medical staff frightened him with long, unblinking looks.

 The image of Buffalo Bill turned out to be collective by the author of the book. In addition to Eddie Gain, he combined the identities of three more maniacs:

– Ted Bundy, who lured women into his net just like Buffalo Bill;

– Geri M. Heidnik, who hid the victims in a deep pit;

– Edmund Kemper, whose grandfather and grandmother were his first victims, like Buffalo Bill.

 The plot and directorial decisions

Silence of the Lambs is not a classic horror movie, as many say. This is a powerful psychological thriller. The power of the impact on the audience cannot be compared with any other movie. The incredible cruelty and realism of showing some scenes, however, classifies it as a “horror”. Not a single person in front of the screen remains calm, in fear grabs the armrests of chairs.

 The plot revolves around Clarissa Starling, a graduate of the FBI school, and the brilliant cannibal maniac, a sadist with the penchant for music lover and artist, Hannibal Lector. By the will of fate, she has to turn to him for help in search of “keys” for catching another buffalo Bill maniac.

 A former practicing psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecturer enjoys almost sexual pleasure from talking with young heroine Jodie Foster. Blackmail forced him to talk about his difficult life in exchange for some information about Buffalo Bill, he enjoys listening to the story of the death of the heroine’s father.

 Particular tension comes from the screen when narrating about how young Clarissa tried to save at least one lamb doomed to slaughter on the farm of her uncle, and how she did not succeed. Since then, at night she has been tormented by nightmares with the cries of little lambs, whom she cannot help. He understands from the fly and tells her that as soon as the maniac is caught, “the lambs will shut up.”

 Enjoying the emotional experiences of Clarissa, a crazy psychiatrist, willingly or unwillingly, helps her catch another sadistic maniac. This assistance is much more effective than the assistance of the surrounding male police officers. After analyzing the motives with which the FBI agent Clarissa Starling acts, he refuses to pursue her, even breaking free from prison.

Watching a duet (Lecturer-Starling), you suddenly find yourself thinking that a crazy genius acts as a father-teacher, no matter how wild such an assumption may seem. And the “daughter”, although panicky afraid, nevertheless, hears every word, trying to understand the intricacies of hints and puzzles emanating from a terrible mentor.

 The third most important character in the thriller was Buffalo Bill, a maniac kidnapping girls. He locks them in a pit and starves. When the skin on women sags, kills, cuts out layers of skin. After that, she sews clothes from this “material”. Buffalo Bill is a person lost between a man and a woman. Having been born a boy, he dreams of becoming a woman all his life. A terrible episode, when a pathologist takes out a dead head larva from a victim’s throat, tells of a maniac’s dream of rebirth.

Sources

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-silence-of-the-lambs-1991

Review of the film “Gold Rush”

 Movie critics say that the idea of ​​the film visited the bright head of Charles Chaplin in Pickfair, the home of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Among other pictures from the Klondike Valley, the Yukon tributary, his wife, as well as long-standing friends and business partners, he showed him an eloquent photograph capturing one of the gold miners, which served as the starting point for the plan. By the way, the artistic and commercial triumph of the third full-length Chaplin production mysteriously anticipated the next, also the third wave of “fever”, which broke out seven years later as a result of the discovery of several new gold-bearing veins in Alaska. This gives the work, long and fairly classified as an indisputable classic, periodically mentioned among the highest achievements in the history of cinema, also features of a come true prophecy!

Although the true merit of an outstanding artist, of course, is different. In the comedy, considered a masterpiece and himself, Charles made serious adjustments at the height of the war, in 1942, releasing a version with the imposition of sounds and music (ironically, the picture in both categories was nominated for an Oscar) and, in addition, with lengthy author’s text, which I read personally. Perhaps someone happened to see the Soviet rental version, expressively voiced by Zinovy ​​Gerdt. A rather rare example of how this kind of modernization did not destroy the charm and did not destroy the inner rhythm of the silent film, at the same time bringing it closer to the modern viewer. The “Gold Rush” remains perhaps the brightest and most cheerful creation of Chaplin, imbued with an optimistic and even slightly naive faith in man. A comparison, for example, with the real tragedy of the domestic director Lev Kuleshov “According to the Law” (1926), also solved on American material, only confirms the correctness of this conclusion. The process of wild people turns out to be not so terrible as the thoughtless, mechanical imposition of the principles of civilisation, which are still not applicable in a situation of complete isolation from the social environment. And the exhausting struggle with the elements, and the inevitable brutality of Big Jim, almost ending with a dull mind and a hilarious attempt to cook a dinner from a tramp, which seems like a giant chicken, ultimately contribute to the tempering of spirit and character. So much so that a meeting with a bear awakened from hibernation, powerless to oppose anything to the two starving masters of nature will turn into a joyful event. But such primordial human qualities as meanness and envy will not be able to be overcome right away, and Black Larsen, an inveterate criminal and murderer, the owner of a truly black soul, brings much more troubles and troubles than harsh natural conditions.

 The wanderer manages not only to survive, but, most importantly, to remain an adherent of humanistic ideals, who have preserved the worldview of a hopeless romantic and independent artist, to whom a decent society from a neighbouring village is deeply indifferent (if not hostile). The lyrical line, which upholds the idea of ​​the all-conquering power of love, is permeated by inexplicable poetry and, despite the abundance of curious situations, despite the irony, sensitivity to the smallest, most subtle manifestations of feelings. Of high feelings, with utmost fullness expressed in the inimitable “dance of buns” demonstrated in a dream of Georgia with friends who promised to come on a visit on New Year’s Eve; the fragment did not accidentally receive an independent existence, as it were – and, by the way, rightfully serves as an example of total, absolute cinema that does not need words. At the same time, with all the life-affirming pathos and the happy conclusion of the misadventures of companions involuntarily, rewarded with a generous fate a hundredfold, “Gold Rush” is directly connected with the subsequent, more acute and sad films of the master, exposing the socio-political evil. Having survived and gained the upper hand in the confrontation with external circumstances, the man was defeated by his own kind and himself.

Sources

http://mentalfloss.com/article/83049/13-fascinating-facts-about-charlie-chaplins-gold-rush

Run, Forrest, run!

Review of the film “Forrest Gump”

For many, many years, or rather 23 years, the film “Forrest Gump” excites the minds and hearts of lovers and admirers of good cinema

 The film of Robert Zemeckis was released in 1994. This is a film adaptation of the Winston Groom novel of the same name. The picture immediately became popular. What to say? The film won first place at the box office in 1994. But Forrest Gump is not at all outdated over the years. Until now, old fans and the new generation of movie fans who have grown over 20 years are watching and revising it. And it still pleases. Craving for the beautiful but does not weaken at all. No technological revolution and political game can drown out people’s faith in justice, kindness and humanity.

 In 1995, the picture was appreciated not only by the audience, but also by professionals. Around the world, 38 different awards have been received! She was immediately nominated for 13 Oscars and in fact received 6 gold figurines! Moreover, in such prestigious nominations: “Best Film”, “Best Special Effects”, “Best Adapted Script”. In addition, Zemeckis himself received an Oscar as “Best Director,” and starring incomparable Tom Hanks took home a statuette for “Best Actor”. I would be very surprised if this did not happen! There is still justice under the sun and moon. It’s a pity that it doesn’t always work well but that is not the case here.

 Retelling the plot, I think, is completely useless. Most of the readers are probably watched this miracle of world cinema, and many read the actual novel. By the way, the film has many differences with the novel. But no one, I hope, will blame the scriptwriters for this, or maybe there are those who are dissatisfied. After all, you have to keep in mind that you will not please everyone! But for beginners, I will dwell a little on the history of Forrest Gump. Literally in a nutshell. Only in order to become interested (I hope), they must have watched the film. Believe me, you will not regret it!

 The film begins romantically – an adult Gump sits at a bus stop, a feather falls from his eyes from the sky where a smooth story begins. Moreover, people on the bench are changing, and Forrest still tells the story of his life, as if he had not noticed it. He was always a little strange, to say the least, mentally different. They didn’t even want to take him to a regular school, but his mother, whom the boy loved very much, nevertheless achieved a standard  education for him. Mom is generally something special for Gump – a bright image full of love and worldly wisdom. He even quoted it all his life, and with it the audience for many years, as proverbs, repeat: “Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what kind of filling you come across.” Or “Fool is a fool of strife” (in some translations of “He who is a fool knows himself”). Many more phrases from the movie “gone to the people” and are still cited. The words yelled by Jenny Carren (Forrest’s best friend and lover) “Run, Forrest, run!” Are heard several times in other films.

 It is interesting that in the unpretentious story of Forrest, a kind and simple guy, before the eyes of an amazed viewer, there passes a huge layer of the U.S. history, almost 30 years old, refracted through the prism of consciousness of the protagonist. And he, voluntarily or involuntarily, affects these events. We see historical characters (Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Richard Nixon). Moreover, it is known that Tom Hanks himself insisted on this. He wanted the story to look as authentic as possible. And it worked.

 Forrest speaks and speaks. And before our eyes, exciting events rush through – years of study, love, friendship, playing sports, military service, and with it, the war in Vietnam, the death of friends, then life in peacetime. Everything is so simple and so true that we cry and laugh, not doubting that Forrest is telling the truth. He is just a good person and even a hero. But he doesn’t even think about it. He just livesю. At the end of the story, the feather flies up. Between two moments of flight of a light pen – a whole life, a whole era.

 This touching story was told to us by a team of real professionals. Starting with the director, scriptwriter, cameramen, artists, and etc. One cannot fail to note the work of the composer. The music of Alan Silvestri is the decoration of the film. In addition, the picture sounded a lot (almost 50!) of compositions of the 50s – 80s, which helped to plunge into the atmosphere of previous years.

 The lead actor is the beloved by millions – Tom Hanks. He is so accustomed to the image that you cannot even imagine another Forrest Gump. But John Travolta, Bill Murray and Chevy Chase auditioned for this role. With all due respect to them, I am very glad that Tom was approved. He did the impossible – made him love his hero wholeheartedly. And empathise with him. Bravo, Tom! You are deservedly on the Best of the Best team.

Sources

https://www.paramount.com/movies/forrest-gump