Thoughts

1) First of all, congrats to everyone nominated for The Lammys! You guys rock :D


2) Cannes Film Festival got over this week. I was watching some show in which this Indian chick got to go and interview people like Wes Anderson and Edward Norton. Gah I hate her!! I want to talk to Ed Norton :( Anyways the Palme d'Or went to Michael Haneke's Amour. Haneke's previous film The White Ribbon was also a Palme d'Or winner. I didn't like that one much, but The Piano Teacher which one the Grand Prix back in 2001 has become a recent favourite of mine. I am very much looking forward to seeing Amour. This year the Grand Prix went to Reality. Mads Mikkelsen won Best Actor for his performance in Jagten (The Hunt) and Best Actress went to Cristina Flutur & Cosmina Stratan for their performances in Beyond the Hills. I must admit I haven't heard of many of the other films that won other prizes. The Caméra d'Or or Best First Feature Film did go to Beasts of the Southern Wild, which had also won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and which many of the critics are already calling one of the best films of the year so far. I am looking forward to seeing as many of these films as I can.


3) The Television BAFTAs took place this week as well. Benedict Cumberbatch lost again! I smell a Sherlock-hating rat with a pip-squeaky voice. What the hell people! Still, the best part of the show was when he, along with my soulmate and the current Doctor Who- Matt Smith, presented the Special Award to Steven Moffat, the headwriter for both their shows. The quirky sexy duo were just perfect. Also, Andrew Scott won the Best Supporting Actor for his chillingly brilliant performance of Jim Moriarty, which was awesome! Last year, this award was won by the fantastic Martin Freeman, who plays Doctor Watson and had been nominated again this year. So basically everyone has won except Cumberbatch. Curses! Also regarding season 3 of Sherlock, this is what Moffat had to say- "We’re trying to schedule everything around everything. Obviously, Sherlock Holmes is off battling Captain Kirk, and Dr Watson is helping Gandalf, and I’m in the TARDIS." Lovely bloke.


4) Oh Game of Thrones watchers- how bloody awesome was Blackwater?!! Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey are like my favourite TV actors at present. Also you must read this- A-Z of Game of Thrones. Go to J!!


5) Pictures- Bling Ring is on! Just from this one picture, it looks very different from what we have come to expect from Sofia Coppola. True she focuses on the bored privileged people a lot, but there is something very beautiful about that. This just looks, to borrow a word from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, very snooty. Also I am starting to get the feeling that Emma Watson may be the lead, though a huge part of me thinks otherwise. This poster for Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises hits the note in every single way. It's my favourite so far, and it is exactly what I would expect from Catwoman. I hope Anne Hathaway does justice to the role. Also, my most anticipated film of the year, Django Unchained, has released some new gorgeous shots and increased my anticipation even more. A teaser is coming out soon- YESSSS!!


6) Trailers- The aforementioned Amour's subtitled trailer is out. It has Isabelle Huppert in it, which is enough to make me want to watch the film. Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter has a third trailer out. Theoretically, I like the idea of this film. However, now having watched Dark Shadows and seeing how writer Seth Grahame-Smith adapts movie scripts, I'm a bit scared. Still, the comments below the video are pretty hilarious. There is apparently some Tom Felton movie coming out called The Apparition. It also has Twilight's Ashley Greene and Captain America's Sebastian Stan. Yeah I don't really care, but I am a Harry Potter loyalist so I am obliged to post about it, despite Felton's hairstyle in this movie. The biggest teaser of this week is of Tom Hooper's adaptation of the musical Les Misérables. It honestly does nothing for someone like me, who is ignorant of the source material and who isn't brought to tears by the idea of a period musical, except of course for the high profile cast and Anne Hathaway's lovely singing (just give her the Oscar already!). For me personally, Hugh Jackman singing would have been a bigger draw. Still, I will wait for the trailer and hope that it changes my mind. 


7) Finally, this week I decided to go for some someecards humour for us film nerds-

Genius.

Ciao.

"It's being aware of what it means to lose oneself, before being completely abandoned."

             When Black Swan came out a couple of years back, there were a number of films whose names were thrown about a lot as the inspiration behind it. One of which was Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. I had heard about how intense and crazy it was and after watching Funny Games, I was a bit hesitant to watch this. But it is a film that has completely won me over.

              Erika Kohut is a piano teacher in her late thirties or early forties who still lives with her overbearing mother. They even sleep on the same bed. So constrained in life, Erika seeks out pleasure in quite unconventional and eyebrow-raising ways, especially for a woman. Her sexual repression seemingly finds an outlet when a handsome young student, Walter Klemmer, starts fancying her. But her desperate desires are too much for anyone to handle, including herself, and soon things get ugly.

            The Black Swan connection for this film is that of a professional artist who lives life under immense control only to find herself being driven mad by it. While Black Swan shows this in melodramatic and surreal ways, The Piano Teacher is real and quite despondent. As intense a film as it was, and though there were some scenes in it which made me very uncomfortable, at the end of it all I could feel was extreme sympathy for this miserable woman.

              The biggest reason of course why I felt so much for her was the incredible performance by Isabelle Huppert. The whole film is practically driven by just her face. There are entire scenes only focusing on her expressions- they don't seem to change, still they tell everything. It is fascinating. The restraint, the madness, the aloofness, the despair are all apparent on her face, though I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were singular shots. For example the scene where Walter tries out for her piano class and plays one of her favourite composers Schubert, the camera is pointed only at her and we can feel how the controlled indifference turns into plain agony for her, as she is so swept away by it. Yet to someone who would have casually glanced at her, they would not have noticed a thing. But on the flipside of it, there are many scenes showing the deviated things she does and in them she is completely emotionless, which scares us and also makes us think what could have possibly impelled someone to do such things.

            The other two primary cast members are Benoît Magimel, who plays Walter and Annie Girardot, who plays Erika's mother. Walter at first seems like just another cocky kid who thinks it will be cool to date an older female, but the change in his character due to Erika's ludicrous demands is shocking and makes him unique. Magimel does an excellent job of showing both the lightness and the darkness of his character. Girardot as the Mother has gone on to join my list of mothers-from-hell alongside the likes of Margaret White. Erika has some unspeakable history with her. Her mother constantly rebukes her and both of them keep hurting each other, physically and mentally, but still they stay together, though it's not love that is keeping them together; one cannot help but think it is something sinister instead. Girardot too is very good. 

            Apart from the cast, the other reason why this film amazed me the way it did was because it felt so authentic. Not in a way that everyone is sexually perverted and has kinky wishes, but that there is a true possibility of someone sitting next to me, who I think is normal, may very well be into questionable stuff. It almost doesn't feel like a film, but a true insight into a very desperate and sick person's life. What made me realise this was one little thing- when Erika starts keeping her hair open after her first tryst with Walter. I mean yes she has a plethora of very serious problems, but it is the most basic of things any woman would do when she wants to be admired. I thought a touch of something like that was truly incredulous. Then there is the way Walter first follows her, trying to be charming, and it made me think that it could have been an absolutely conventional relationship between the two. The truth obviously only comes out behind closed doors, just as it does in people's lives. 

            The way it is made also helps in this. All the music is actual music being performed in the film. There are no coincidental meetings or circumstances like how they happen in fiction; everything that happens was inevitable as Erika foreshadowed early on, the appearance of Walter just proved to be a catalyst. It is a frightening thought and ultimately what made me feel sorry for, instead of being repulsed by, the truly unfortunate Erika. 

             Coming to writing and directing, after watching a film as self-conscious as Funny Games, I did not expect something like The Piano Teacher from Haneke. It is based on a novel of the same name by Elfriede Jelinek. As I wrote above, I thought it was really honest, almost brutally so. He is known to be a daring director, and this was a really undaunted effort. I liked the fact that it doesn't try to shock us, but instead tries to make us feel the intensity of things that Erika goes through. Also he added another layer to it, a student of Erika's whose life practically mirrors her own, and it makes one think about the actions that Erika takes against her are actually for whose harm or benefit. The film made me reflect a lot about what all can the lack of control drive people into doing. Even educated and sophisticated women like Erika can do things one will find savage and immoral. Conversely the power of control in the hands of people like the Mother or Walter towards the end of the film, can also be very reprehensible. It is a fantastic film and the fact that it won Grand Prix at the Cannes along with best actress and actor prizes for Huppert and Magimel is not at all surprising.


             This is definitely not a review I could blabber on and on in. It is a difficult and divisive film, one that I admired a lot though I don't know how many people will feel the same way about it. Also it is not for everyone, but if you can look past certain things, it is a sad story about what happens when one is oppressed beyond a limit, and how the repercussions can often be horrific.