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Reviews
Anatomie d'une chute (2023)
Blurring the lines between fiction and reality
Palme d'or meant high expectations while I was in the theater to see "Anatomy of a Fall", and it didn't disappoint.
The first part of the movie has the tone of a typical crime-piece. We as an audience are shocked by the Samuel's sudden (although expected) death in the first few minutes. Now we have a mystery to solve: how did Samuel die? Was he killed? If yes by whom? And how?
So we start following the attorneys and the investigators in the construction of a murder case against Samuel's wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller), and like them we try to solve this puzzle as we get spoon-fed its pieces: drops of blood, vague fragments of memories, recordings, past tragedies.. Each new piece of information presented to us before and during the trial shifts our opinion about the nature of Samuel's death, each new evidence is inconsistent with the previous one and adds up to a pile of confusion. We have enough to suspect, that's all.
Then start the stories. Defense and general attorneys, experts, psychologists.. Everyone writes their own narrative about Samuel's death. And much like Kurosawa's "Rashômon" (1952), each storyteller bends the facts to fit their personal envies and objectives: Sandra wants to stay with his son, Vincent (Swann Arlaud) wants Sandra to love him back, the psychologist needs to keep his 100% record of patients that didn't kill themselves. Even the press has its goals in it: "a writer killing her husband if much more interesting than a professor killing himself". At that point, we understand that it doesn't even matter if Sandra killed Samuel or not, or as Vincent said "we don't care about reality". We all want the story that makes sense.
So does Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). He discovers that he isn't only blind physically, but also blind about his family's past and his parents' relationship. Like the audience, he is shocked by each revelation and asks himself questions, investigates, and gets lost. His law-enforcer/baby-sitter Marge finally gets the key to him: "if you don't know what is real, then decide it yourself". Daniel tells his story, that turns out to be the best one. No way to know if the story is true. Maybe he just preferred the "suicidal father, innocent mother" to "killed father, killer mom". But one thing is sure, with his testimony, Daniel has reached the goal that her writer mother wanted to achieve in her books: blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Top notch acting by Milo Machado Graner, Sandra Hüller, Antoine Reinhartz, Swann Arlaud, and of course Snoop; I hope he isn't thirsty anymore.
9/10.
The Menu (2022)
The spectacular death of the artist's passion
When i went to the theater to see « The Menu » I was expecting a movie very much like Östlund's recent « Triangle of Sadness » (2022): a claustrophobic dark comedy where the rich and the corrupt get punished for their sins. The first part of the movie went accordingly to that expectation; we are amused by the laughable vanity of the twelve guests and wait for their imminent comeuppance, which they eventually get.
But in my view, the main theme of « The Menu » is not about the revenge of the oppressed against the oppressing; but of the passionate against the passionless. When Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) mentions the dichotomy between those who give and those who taker, he's doesn't necessarily refer to a class warfare as in Bong Joon Ho's « Parasite » (2019). The Hawthorn crew doesn't condemn the twelve for putting them in material misery, it condemns them for killing their passion.
Passion is the fuel of the artist, of the creator, of the giver. His creation is part of him, and the artist's soul is satisfied when his work is understood therefore appreciated. His emotional state dominated by that powerful feeling, he is willing to make sacrifices in order to reach that goal.
Sadly, today more than ever we tend to evaluate art by its monetary value more than its actual content: none of the twelve guests of Hawthorn island but Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) is there for the actual food. The Tech bros came to « buy an experience », the movie star (John Leguizamo) to impress his assistant/date; Tyler to take pictures and to boast about his pseudo-gastronomical knowledge... These people are only here because chef Slowik has « allowed his work to reach the price point where only the class of people in this room can access it ». To them, Hawthorn's creation means social distinction.
Thus stripped away from any kind of emotional satisfaction that their work can provide, the now meaningless self sacrifice of the Hawthorn crew leads first to frustration, then to hatred. Hatred of those who take, hatred of the culture, hatred of their own. Pure pressure without pleasure has corrupted their persona: Slowik abuses his sous-chef sexually (He can do that, he is the star), and condemns an actor to die because he ruined his day-off with a terrible movie (and because the movie star is like himself, « an artist who has lost his purpose »). The givers deserve punishment, just as much as the takers. As far as they are concerned, they have betrayed both their art and themselves.
In the end of the movie, the frustration that has consumed the Hawthorn island crew for years grows into a literal bonfire that burns both the once-passionate and the passionless. Just before that finale, a glimmer of happiness appears though when Margot reminds Slowik the pleasure he once took from his creation, and thus earns her salvation. I could go on an on about every scene and every quote of « The Menu ». In my view, this movie (among other subjects) mirrors above all the pitiful state of today's art milieu through an absurd comedy about cuisine. On one hand artists (like chefs, but also painters, writers, architects..) are under immense and growing pressure from critics, consumers, investors; losing so their true passion of creation and trying to replace it with wealth and fame. On the other hand we as a society forgot how to take pleasure out of a work of art: we eat it and swallow it before tasting it.
The absurdness of this equation gives us « The Menu ».
8/10.