Play (Ruben Östlund, 2011)

Anas Abdirahman and Sebastian Blyckert in Play

Cast: Anas Abdirahman, Sebastian Blyckert, Yannick Diakité, Sebastian Hegmar, Abdiaziz Hilowle, Nana Manu, John Ortiz, Kevin Vaz. Screenplay: Ruben Östlund, Erik Hemmendorff. Cinematography: Marius Dybwad Brandrud. Production design: Pia Aleborg. Film editing: Ruben Östlund, Jacob Secher Schulsinger. Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Juriaans. 

So much of contemporary life is touched on in Ruben Östlund's Play that it's difficult to isolate a single dominant theme. It's about racism, of course, but it's also about bullying and vigilantism, about cultural appropriation, immigration, and alienation, about adolescence and parenting and the sterility of the urban environment and law enforcement and bureaucracy. The film stirred controversy in Sweden perhaps because no one could agree that it's about any one of these things and that it was making a specific point about them. It begins with a group of Black kids in a shopping mall, trying to con some white kids out of a cell phone by claiming it was stolen, and develops from there, interrupted occasionally by seemingly unrelated scenes set on a train, where a baby's cradle has been left in a passageway, to the consternation of the conductors. Everything is viewed with detachment, the camera in a fixed position, so it's almost like looking through a window at what's happening. Play takes two hours to tell a story without a resolution, but because of its skillfully maintained distancing it ironically involves the viewer more than a more dramatic or didactic account of the same incident might have.  

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, 2008)

Ursula Strauss and Johannes Krisch in Revanche

Cast: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss, Johannes Thanheiser, Hanno Pöschl. Screenplay: Götz Spielmann. Cinematography: Martin Gschlacht. Production design: Maria Gruber. Film editing: Karina Ressler. 

Götz Spielmann's Revanche is a moral tale about getting even. On the face of it, Alex (Johannes Krisch) is an unredeemable man: An ex-con who works in a brothel, he tries to help one of the prostitutes, Tamara (Irina Potapenko), escape from it by robbing a bank. When she is shot and killed by a cop as they are trying to flee, he hides out with his grandfather (Johannes Thanheiser), an elderly widower who lives alone on his farm. When it turns out that Robert (Andreas Lust), the cop who killed Tamara, lives nearby, Alex plots to avenge her death. Several means of revenge immediately present themselves: He could kill Robert on his daily run, or he could take advantage of his grandfather's friendship with Robert's wife, Susanne (Ursula Strauss), who visits the old man and takes him to church on Sundays. Susanne is lonely and frustrated: She wants to have a child but has miscarried. She's easy prey for Alex, since Robert is frequently away from home on police duty in the city. Spielmann handles the development of these characters deftly, and keeps the viewer guessing on how they may interact. He also finely crafts the contrasting worlds of the film: the seamy side of the city of Vienna and the pastoral Austrian countryside. Revanche is not easily pigeonholed as a thriller, although it certainly has the lineaments of the genre, since it doesn't have the payoff you might expect from the situation it establishes. Instead, it ends in a kind of stalemate that points up the difficulty of getting even in an unbalanced world.

After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998)

Cast: Arata Iura, Erika Oda, Susumi Terajima, Takashi Naito, Kyoko Kagawa, Kei Tani, Takatoshi Naito, Toro Yuri, Yusuke Iseya, Sayaka Yoshino, Kazuko Shirakawa, Kotaro Shiga, Hisako Hara. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Masayoshi Sukita, Yutaka Yamazaki. Production design: Hideo Guni, Toshihiro Isomi. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Yasuhiro Kasamatsu.

Hirokazu Koreeda's unique take on the afterlife is that each person's experience will be boiled down to one precious memory that they will ponder for eternity. In After Life the dead first arrive at a building where the staff interviews them to discover what single memory they more want to take with them forever. Then a movie is made of that moment, and after the screening of it, the dead person moves on to a place we don't get to see. Koreeda developed the film after witnessing his grandfather's dementia and memory loss, interviewing hundreds of people, and working with the cast and their own memories. The narrative of After Life doesn't just focus on the attempts of the dead to find that key memory, which is often linked to sex or romance, but also includes such ephemeral moments as the feel of a cool breeze on the face or the sight of cherry trees in flower. The staff of interviewers, it turns out, is composed of people who were unable or unwilling to choose a particular moment. Their eternity consists of examining other people's memories and re-creating them on film -- in short, becoming Koreeda. The poignant twist in the film comes when one of the interviewers realizes that he was personally involved in the moment chosen by a man he is interviewing. The realistic setting of After Life in a rather run-down building (someone using a hair dryer in it blows a fuse) makes its fantasy more credible and immediate. It's a film that can't help but stir the viewer's own memories, but it also suggests that we inevitably edit and distort our remembrances of things past.

Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, 2009)

Dylan Riley Snyder in Life During Wartime

Cast: Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Dylan Riley Snyder, Chris Marquette, Rich Pecci, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, Michael K. Williams, Renée Taylor, Gaby Hoffman. Screenplay: Todd Solondz. Cinematography: Edward Lachman. Production design: Roshelle Berliner. Film editing: Kevin Messman. 

Todd Solondz's itchy, dark Life During Wartime draws more winces than laughs from its look at middle-class American lives. Pedophilia and suicide are among the topics it deals with in its depiction of the veneer of civilized behavior maintained by its characters, whom Solondz has introduced in earlier films. It centers on the three Jordan sisters, Trish (Allison Janney), Joy (Shirley Henderson), and Helen (Ally Sheedy), whom Solondz introduced in Happiness (1998) and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), where they were played by other actresses. The film begins with Joy's breakup with her husband, Allen (Michael K. Williams), then moves to the Florida home that Trish shares with her children, the college-age Billy (Chris Marquette), 13-year-old Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder), and the younger Chloe (Emma Hinz). Trish has divorced her husband, Bill (Ciarán Hinds), who has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for molesting a child, and she is now dating Harvey (Michael Lerner). All of them are teetering on the brink. Trish self-medicates, Chloe is on Klonopin for panic attacks, and Timmy is being bullied at school because of his father's crimes. Joy sees the ghost of her former lover, Andy (Paul Reubens), who killed himself after their breakup. Bill leads a furtive life trying to re-enter society, picking up (or being picked up by) a woman (Charlotte Rampling) in a bar. In short, everyone's a mess. Solondz's straight-faced but twisty account of these lives on the edge depends on skillful performances that bring a measure of credibility to characters that are really just puppets in his hands. You may find yourself laughing when you feel you shouldn't. 

Bad Influence (Curtis Hanson, 1990)

Rob Lowe and James Spader in Bad Influence

Cast: James Spader, Rob Lowe, Lisa Zane, Christian Clemenson, Marcia Cross, Kathleen Wilhoite, Grand L. Bush, Tony Maggio, Perri Lister, John De Lancie, David Duchovny. Screenplay: David Koepp. Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Production design: Ron Foreman. Film editing: Bonnie Koehler. Music: Trevor Jones. 

Curtis Hanson's Bad Influence is a nasty little thriller that's sometimes compared to Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) but really owes more to the Faust legend. Rob Lowe plays Alex, a Mephistophelean psychopath who inserts himself into the life of Michael Boll (James Spader) when Michael is on the verge of being beaten to a pulp by a thug in a bar. Michael is trying to climb the corporate ladder where he works, but is a little too shy and self-effacing to outwit a slimier contender for the job he wants. He also has a girlfriend who's hot to get married, even though Michael isn't all that enthusiastic about the prospect. So when Alex rescues him from the thug, Michael is so impressed that he's an easy mark for the slick, handsome manipulator, who takes over his life with surprising ease, engineering Michael's business success, putting an end to his engagement, and taking him on a dangers spree of sex and drugs and criminal behavior. It's more than a little difficult to credit both Alex's motiveless malignancy and Michael's submission to it, but this is a morality fable rather than a psychologically realistic story. It works because both actors are good at what they do, but there's a formulaic quality to the project that keeps it from being a fully satisfactory movie.

Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu, 2012)

Cast: Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta, Dana Tapalaga, Catalina Harabagiu, Gina Tandura, Vica Agache, Nora Covali, Dionisie Vitcu, Ionut Ghinea, Liliana Mocanu, Doru Ana, Costache Babii. Screenplay: Cristian Mungiu, based on novels by Tatiana Niculescu-Bran. Cinematography: Oleg Mutu. Production design: Calin Papura, Mihaela Poenaru. Film editing: Mircea Olteanu. 

Faith and science both get a workout in Cristian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills, and both are found wanting. The setting is an Orthodox Christian retreat in rural Romania, where a young nun, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), is visited by Alina (Cristina Flutur), who was her close friend when they were both in an orphanage. Alina has come to persuade Voichita to leave the monastery and come with her to Germany, where Alina has been living. But Voichita has found peace and contentment in the ascetic world of the monastery, with a kind of family that includes her sister nuns under the strict guidance of a priest (Valeriu Andriuta) whom she calls "Papa." Alina and Voichita may have been more than just friends when they were in the orphanage, but when Alina suggests that the two women resume their relationship, Voichita rejects her. Alina's reaction is extreme: She threatens to drown herself in the monastery's well. After more extreme behavior, the nuns manage to get Alina to a clinic, but all the doctors can do is medicate her; they have no facilities for longer treatment. Alina is stable for a while, but eventually her destructive behavior returns and a calamitous decision is made to bind her and force her to undergo an exorcism. Mungiu's screenplay was inspired by the fictionalization of an actual case, but the remote monastic setting, in which the contemporary world is regarded as under the spell of the devil, gives the film the flavor of a fable from the middle ages. Stratan and Flutur jointly received the best actress award at Cannes, where Mungiu also won for best screenplay. The two-and-a-half-hour run time somewhat dilutes the intensity of the story, but this is immersive filmmaking of a high order. 

A Master Builder (Jonathan Demme, 2013)

Wallace Shawn and Lisa Joyce in A Master Builder

Cast: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Lisa Joyce, Larry Pine, Andre Gregory, Jeff Biehl, Emily Cass McDonnell. Screenplay: Wallace Shawn, based on a play by Henrik Ibsen. Cinematography: Declan Quinn. Production design: Eugene Lee. Film editing: Tim Squyres. 

The symbolic realism of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder gets a shrewd cinematic twist in the version scripted by Wallace Shawn and directed by Jonathan Demme called A Master Builder. I think the shift from the definite article in the title of the play to the indefinite one is probably a deliberately subtle one, indicating that the film is as much an interpretation of the play as it is a translation from one medium to another. Demme and Shawn don't "open up" the play in the usual manner of adapting play to movie, by shifting scenes from the confines of a set. Instead they use surprise cuts: We initially see Halvard Solness (Shawn), the title character, lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, but suddenly and without explanation, Solness is up and about, wearing a dressing gown, and the bed and monitors disappear. By the end of the film, Solness is bedridden again, and we are left to assume that much of what has taken place in the film has perhaps been only in Solness's imagination. It's still very much a play, however, and a talky one with lines that need the kind of emphatic delivery by the actors that's more appropriate on a stage than in a film. Shawn is not the first actor who comes to mind when you read Ibsen's play, but he's splendid in the role of Solness, managing to efface our memories of his performances as a comic character actor in movies like Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) and The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987), just as Julie Hagerty overcomes memories of the ditzy characters of Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980) and Lost in America (Albert Brooks, 1985) as the haunted Aline Solness. Lisa Joyce finds a solid center in the enigmatic and unhinged role of Hilde Wangel.   

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld in Phoenix

Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens, Imogen Kogge, Felix Römer. Screenplay: Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki, based on a novel by Hubert Monteilhet. Cinematography: Hans Fromm. Production design: Hans-Dieter Gruber. Film editing: Bettina Böhler. Music: Stefan Will. 

The premise of Christian Petzold's Phoenix is sheer melodrama: A woman, disfigured in the war that separated her from her husband, undergoes plastic surgery that slightly alters her face. She seeks out the husband, but doesn't immediately identify herself as his missing wife. Recognizing the resemblance, the husband decides to have her pretend to be what she really is, his lost wife, in a plan to get hold of her inheritance. In Phoenix the wife, Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss), was sent to a concentration camp during World War II, possibly having been betrayed as Jewish by her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld). Hoss makes Nelly's decision not to reveal her identity to Johnny and to go along with his scheme plausible, even though she has an alternative: Her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) has arranged for them to emigrate to Palestine. The subtlety and intensity of Hoss's performance and the setting among the ruins of Berlin in the aftermath of the war give the film a historical and psychological substance that outweighs the contrivances of the story. Petzold skillfully builds tension toward the film's remarkable conclusion. Phoenix is a reminder that superb acting, good writing, and solid direction can transform even the most formulaic of plots.  

The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1966)

Millie Perkins in The Shooting

Cast: Warren Oates, Will Hutchins, Millie Perkins, Jack Nicholson, Charles Eastman, Guy El Tsosie, Brandon Carroll, B.J. Merholz. Screenplay: Carole Eastman. Cinematography: Gregory Sandor. Art direction: Wally K. Burns. Film editing: Monte Hellman. Music: Richard Markowitz. 

Part of the very odd effect that Monte Hellman's The Shooting makes on the viewer is caused by Hellman's distaste for exposition. He reportedly tossed the first ten pages of Carole Eastman's screenplay and began filming with only elliptical references to the events that set up the film's trek through the Utah desert. Two gold miners, Coley (Will Hutchins) and Willett Gashade (Warren Oates), are approached by a woman (Millie Perkins) who shows up at their camp and hires them to guide her to a place called Kingsley. Along the way, they are joined by a gunslinger called Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson), who has a prior relationship with the woman. Nothing ends well for anybody, including members of the audience, who are left to piece together the backstory after an enigmatic ending. The Shooting is such an unconventional movie that theatrical distributors wouldn't touch it until after it was well received in France (of course), and even then it was released to television before it was ever shown in U.S. theaters. It has been called an "acid Western," meaning it's a harder trip than "stoner Westerns" like McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973). The performances are solid, though Nicholson, a few years before his breakthrough into stardom, hasn't yet developed full presence on screen. Gregory Sandor's camera makes the most of the desert setting, and Richard Markowitz's score is appropriately unsettling. 

The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki, 2017)

Sherwan Haji, Nuppu Koivu, Janne Hyytiäinen, Sakari Kuosmanen, and Ilkka Koivula in The Other Side of Hope

Cast: Sherwan Haji, Sakari Kuosmanen, Ilkka Koivula, Nuppu Koivu, Janne Hyytiäinen, Kaija Pakarinen, Niroz Haji, Simon Hussein Al-Bazoon. Screenplay: Aki Kaurismäki. Cinematography: Timo Salminen. Art direction: Markku Pätilä. Film editing: Samu Heikkilä. 

Maybe only Aki Kaurismäki could take a story about a serious problem like the refugee crisis with occasional moments of violence and turn it into a droll, heart-warming comedy like The Other Side of Hope. Khaled (Sherwan Haji) has escaped from the civil war in Syria and found his way across Europe to Finland, where after his application for asylum is denied, he takes to the streets of Helsinki. He is found hiding behind the garbage cans of the restaurant owned by Waldemar Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) and taken in, given a job and a fake ID. Then all that's left for Khaled to do is find his sister, Miriam (Niroz Haji), from whom he was separated during their escape from Syria. The straight-faced performances of the cast, including Waldemar's three employees, give this perhaps improbable, melodramatic, even sentimental (there's also a cute dog) tale its special piquant charm. It's probably best to be familiar already with Kaurismäki's other movies about deadpan Finns in challenging situations to appreciate this one's unique character. But who else could give you a movie in which a Finnish restaurant decides to serve sushi, and when it runs out of the right fish substitutes salted herring? (They figure if they use enough wasabi no one will notice.)