asana Reviews

Banaras (2006)

Glossed-over Message

[5/10 · 19 August 2007]

Is it merely a cultural thing that did not allow me the illusion that this film seeks to portray? Having visited India I know that this movie displays a very tiny facade of what Indians think would be appealing about their fascinating country. The Bollywood film _Ek Dhun Banaras Kee_(qv) never leaves the realm of comely mass entertainment.

So in great wonderment I saw only the most beautiful facades of the oldest holy city on river Ganges, a sadly polluted river shown here as clean as a mountain stream. There is no reality street life in this movie, we are forced into the unreal world of a film as if ordered by the city's Tourist Development Agency.

'Ashmit Patel'(qv)'s pretty-boy face is directed like a south-American music video with all smiles and no substance. There was no acting demanded of him. He would do well selling deodorant in France.

The story wants to be spiritually deep and socially conscious by juxtaposing two stylized lovers from different castes. The potential conflict are undramatically produced, after we are given about twenty minutes of showing the couple at Banares' famous temples and river banks, looking at each other in unspontaneously staged settings that really irks everyone who want to be swept away by a movie's illusions instead of watching a long toothpaste or chewing gum commercial. This is a good travel promotion or a boring music video, and one can only wonder what audience it was made for. If it is shown to Indians, they must be proud of a movie of aesthetic beauty that shows their country without problems, except the unfortunate castes system. Shown to western audiences it become a romantic travel film, and as we have seen, accepted both quite favorably by IMDb users of Indian decent and Westerners alike.

Besides a cast of pretty people --even Babaji the spiritual teacher floats about with the neatest beard and most perfect robes in white and red-- the film wants to teach basic Hindi and Buddhistic values. It even forewarns its audiences at the beginning that it does not want to promote superstitions, but in almost every scene the accoutrement of superstitious beliefs are shown: ornaments, mystic sculptures, flower petals strewn about, chants and incense. Even the character played by the beautiful 'Urmila Matondkar'(qv) indulges in dreamy superstitious rituals. I respect all belief systems, but if a director forewarns of something he is supposedly not wanting to promote, and we see it all over his film, we have a choice to either believe that he does not notice ritualistic superstitions any longer due to his cultural blindness, or that he really beliefs that his message has transgressed superstition. And it is exactly this message that one would have liked not to see running into sturdy road blocks.

Namely the endeavor to transgress a banal and forbidden love story without careful exposition, and fall into the trap of cinematographically created ambiance that actually overpowers the actors. Pretty pictures are nice if you can not travel to the heart of the holy city, but in this case the story suffers and certainly takes away from the filmmakers ambitions.

And the story is the age-old apparent conflict between science and religion. Do we get enough information and exposition to learn something new, or even care to contemplate this important topic? No. Is Banares well photographed? Yes, the parts that are devoid of real street life and real people, who normally bring life to the temples. Is there a tension between the lovers? No. Are we happy for them falling in love because we feel their hearts? No. Is the parent-child, castes conflict melodrama powerful enough to move us? No. Are age-old chants well produced like a music video? Yes, excellently. Does the movie do justice to the promos and hype about the alleged conflict of religious beliefs and modern science, or its presentations of the philosophy of love or even as found in romantic love? Nothing deep there. Is the storytelling moving the film forward? No, it stops too often to dwell on its on pretty pretensions.

It's eye candy at best, and the two protagonists do not connect except as another daft acting job. The dying dad at the beginning gives much story away, but even he looked pretty healthy as if there was no make-up designer on duty that day. Melodrama, yes. Sizzling love and real drama over the lingering castes system and parental cultural fossilization, no.

Bordertown (2007)

Search the Internet for the Real Bordertown Story

[4/10 · 15 April 2007]

Researching the ill effects of "free trade," the gagging contracts US career lawyers and economists construe for the sole gain of US multi-national corporations in developing nations, who are promised a better material world, I had heard that Bordertown was in the making. At the Berlin film festival writer/producer/director Gregory Nava and his star Jennifer Lopez, as well as producer Barbara Martinez, were convincing in their mission to fashion a movie, loosely based on the facts of continued and brutal rapes with the killing and/or disappearance of many young woman victims that came to Juarez. (Juarez is located across the US-Mexican border bridge connecting El Paso, New Mexico.)

Most every feeling being with a conscience will support such an infocational flick, and therefore it hurts to say that the filmmakers failed in their stated, and otherwise laudable aim. The prescription for Hollywood is simply to demand thrilling action so that the adrenaline-seeking crowds will fill the box-office coffers, even though this movie has the looks, feel and production quality that indicate that not much money was spent on it. Besides an above-average amount of "goofs," the emphasis is made on imprecisely-executed chase-and-run scenes, while the development of characters is almost entirely absent due to a rather phlegmatic script.

For instance, we find out about the background of the main character, the journalist Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez) during black-and-white flashbacks that can not possible make sense to the most avid moviegoer, until she actually dialogs its meaning during a scene towards the end of the movie. (IMDB lists the character name as Lauren Fredericks.) Her prior relationship with Juarez-based "El Sol" journalist Diaz (Antonio Banderas) is cleverly revealed during dialogs, and it becomes obvious that Lauren had dumped him in the past, that he now had a family he cared for, and that he still loved Lauren enough to keep her out of danger.

On the other hand, we learn nothing about the police, who want to avoid any publicity of the brutal murders, and who are shown to be only superficially interested in solving the murders that the movie claims are as many as 4.000, while even Amnesty International describes over 400. Of course, if it was one, it would be objectionable, but why the hype? Is that another sign that the movie wants to built on the sure-fire success of sensationalism, while it can not offer the real goods of a well-developed story with two- and three-dimensional characters, who want a better world, while materialistic psycho- and sociopaths seem to have the upper hand in killing teenage women, who come to work in the free-trade-created factories for about 5 bucks a day.

Or that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is written so that US companies can exploit lacking worker safety, virtually non-existent environmental laws, cheap labor and low taxes. To this very day, these companies have not instituted safe transportation for their vulnerable and poverty-stricken women employees during the changing shifts, as these factories never close.

All this is not meant to recommend that you don't go and watch the movie, or better to rent it as a DVD. It has at least entertainment value and the acting is acceptable and probably could not be any better, because the script does not give the actors much creative width and depth to re-enact. Indeed the movie has the feel as if it was made under time stress. There are reported stories that the film crew was threatened, and that many scenes were filmed in other Mexican towns that were more hospitable. It has this lets-get-it-over feeling that is also reflected in jumpy, often confusing, editing, and a music score that seems to be a one-take offering.

This topic is just too important as to trivialize it in an ill-conceived action flick. But a few scenes are as authentic as they can get. The living conditions of the workers, as the heartless and shrewd consequences of companies like DuPont, General Electric and Alcoa, who must live in slums that are literally created out of cardboard, stolen pallets, old tires and held into place by nails driven through bottle caps. And the scene, were an illegal electric hook-up ends into a fire disaster, has in reality occurred many times. Hollywood will then stage a scene were many loose their "homes" in a fast-moving fire and the most evil killer will just show up during such a disaster as the backdrop and try to kill our beloved journalist.

For the real story, enter the string "Juarez murder* women nafta" in your search engine, without the quotes, and get a hold of the real story, which includes drug lords buying into sweat shops (called maquiladoras) and using the "free-zone" infrastructure to transport truckloads of drugs across the bridge and with the railroad into the States along with television sets and monitors, and all the other sweatshop items produced by mostly young women. Our movie will not tell you that and many other aspects, as it busybodies itself with Hollywood-type, often senseless, and carelessly executed action. The topic definitely deserved a masterpiece film to get the message of this exceptionally cruel social and economic disaster across. What a real shame that it missed so badly.

The Holiday (2006)

Career Women and Love Exlored Well

[8/10 · 18 March 2007]

With "The Holiday 2006" I got several movies in one. The studio bosses during the 40s would have had the power to bring in a re-writer, but present-day writer/director Nancy Meyers, who has literally grossed billions world-wide, seems to have total control over her script. This comment should not imply that I found fault with the story-telling.

I found this story of tremendously successful media professionals, who's live choices and actions had deprived them of true love, not only worthwhile to watch, but it gave me an additional inside of how women think and how they react. I's wonderful to have a woman's perspective of men to tell a story of their desires, love and commitment. This kind of movie is as needed as a woman presidents. You must have discerned by now that I believe that men and women are two different sub-species and that it has been for too long only men's privilege to describe and formate the world in which we all live together.

"The Holiday," although it's very name is geared towards revenues, and there are a number of name-sake movies—sometimes two in one year—made for the Christmas business, it is one of the better romantic comedy dramas and is a pleasure to watch on the big screen as well as on the little ones in airplanes and as "home entertainment." It has inter-personal and emotional dimensions that sets it far above the average fair, such as, let's say, "You, Me and Dupree."

Nancy Meyers certainly created characters that I "understand" where they are coming from, because I have experienced and acted quite similarly in my life, and although I believe I have no love issues right now, my tear ducts got a workout. Interestingly, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) had been unable to cry since she was a teenager when her parents broke up, and she could not commit to the man she unexpectedly or subconsciously attracted until she actually cried during her "holiday" while wanting to use a getaway from the emotional shards of a marriage with a philandering husband. The script tells us that she was married to her work and that sex with her husband was not important to her–until now.

Another story within this continent-hopping impulse is that of a wedding reporter with her unlikely own office at London's "Daily Telegraph." Iris (Kate Winslet) who had falling in love with a fellow reporter three years ago and allowed that he did not reciprocate and use her for his ego, but not for true love.

Both ladies were shown as needy to get away from their heartbreaks and somehow got the idea to search the Internet for a house-swapping site at the same time and found the ideal partner. Iris changed her cute and quaint lonely Surrey (about 40 min. south-west of London) country cottage a la Beatrix Potter; with a Bentwood, California, mansion with maid, gardener, Olympic-size pool, and whose set alone is said to have cost a million dollars. The cultural clichés could have been endlessly explored, but Nancy Meyers centering in a few plausible ones to move her character development along.

Yet another movie within this holiday story is that of a screen writer Arthur of successful 40s movies played by the great character actor Eli Wallach, now 91 years. Obviously, Mrs. Meyers shares the love of inspiring and well-written movie scripts, and which Iris is turned on to by Arthur to be view on Amanda's wide and flat-screen home movie center. This alone is a worthy movie within the movie, the kind of material that actually would make a great feature film.

While Iris and Amanda are now in totally different environments and coping with cultural differences, new men appear, and their carefulness, fears, self-consciousness and damaged pasts are wonderfully described and interwoven with nearly flawless storytelling. Both, the charming Cameron Diaz and makeup-less Kate Winslet create their characters with great care and detail. Graham (Jude Law), Iris' brother who stumbles into Amanda's life, is simply WYSIWYG-natural and endearing. Personally, I have always had a non-response to actor Jack Black (who is staged here to become Iris' new love interest), because he seems to have not found himself to give his characters individuality. No matter what Mr. Black does, it looks the same to me. And it is not a question of range, it might just be his face and physique, or the amount of brainless roles that he has played. In other words, he was miscast as far as I am concerned.

Unlike some voices I have heard, I find both women's relative openness to holiday-quick, new affairs very plausible, even necessary, and the movie is deep enough to share some of the reasons for this. There is much character-revealing dialog offered, particularly Cameron and Jude are offered ample opportunities to make their audience understand where they are coming from, why they are acting the way they are, and where they can go... together.

If you want to lighten up your personal emotional baggage, set your life in perspective, here is movie that might just do that for you. Give it a try. I was enchanted by characters, acting and setting alike.

CircleSpeak: A Journey Into the Heart of Crop Circle Country (2005 Video)

An interesting and compelling view on the Crop Circle phenomenon

[8/10 · 8 June 2006]

There are phenomenons on our world that can not be readily explained. This balanced documentary of just those crop circles, which appear each year in Great Britain, goes to great length to do a subject justice that so highly polarizes people. The pro and the con camps will argue every singe point endlessly. The producers filmed 140 hours of interviews and spent four years to complete this most extensive documentary on the history of crop circles thus far.

It's balanced perspective was to me, who is convinced that most circles are not made by fellow humans, quite unsettling at times, as the hoaxers are given ample opportunities to make their deceptive points of "art". Most every leading expert, who has studied this phenomenon is interviewed and many have acclaimed CircleSpeak for its intelligent presentation and unbiased perspective.

Independently-produced by Kirk Kirkland and Laurence Newnam, this feature-length documentary follows the phenomenon from ca. 1978 through the 2004 crop circle season. Present-day interview with experts, researchers, documenters and writers are interspersed with rare historical video footage. Virtually all the original researchers are allowed to speak.

But CircleSpeak also gives us a cultural perspective in that it introduces us to the people who live in the area; the effected farmers, who loose parts of their crops and are inundates by curiosity seekers brought on by the media; the police, who are called in to catch the hoaxers; or the hoaxers themselves, who claim their own fame.

I understand that the producers had to center in on the British crop circles, and I would have given this well-executed documentary a perfect 10 had they made clear that crop circles do not merely appear in Britain, but are occurring in many places on our world, albeit that they are not as well researched in less developed countries.

A truly excellent film, which when attentively viewed with an open mind and an open heart will reveal its truth contents. It left me with one more evidence that this small backward planet is not alone in our infinite universe.