Once in the mad, mad world of industrialization, self alienation was defined by Kafka when describing metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa. In “The Metamorphosis”, everything was narrated inside a room where Samsa was transformed to a giant insect.
In her thought provoking debut feature film, DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN (which deservedly won the best first feature film award in Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival), Isa Prahl focuses on the concept of self alienation in the mad, mad world of communication and social networks. In order to do this, the self alienated son of the family, Mike, who has locked himself in a room, is not portrayed as a proper character, but as a faceless figure covered in the clothes just in the beginning of the film; a figure who might be the unknown boy who surfs between all the people, locked in the closed areas, to protect themselves from the downpour; a figure who might find a way to go to the open air to surf fearlessly in the rain – since he is notified that the rain is beautiful when falling on his skin.
In DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN, unlike “The Metamorphosis”, there is no hint that what is happening inside the room with the unknown figure. Contrarily the film focuses on his family members living on the verge of nervous breakdown and fall of a house and a family, each searching for a new meaning for their lives outside the domestic circle and being prepared to cross the borders of regularities. Their unity, evident in the beginning of the film, when the father, the mother and the sister are singing “Happy Birthday to You!” at the door of the closed room, gradually turns to the crosscutting of the stories of three people, seeking their dreams out of their home – a home with a creature, deliberately locked in his room.
Unable to connect to the creature, each of them is involved a new story to prove the humane abilities. The father tries to look after an ill man, unable to connect to the others. He is ready to steal the device the man needs to communicate with the others. The mother meets one of the old friends of his son and tries to make him a replacement. She is ready to break in the gym with the young boy with the boy and unawarely tempt him. The sister does her best to convince her best friend that her new boyfriend is not worthy of her. She is ready to sleep with him and make a mess at last.
The crosscuts between the stories make the audience forget all about the creature, but the pretext for the creation of the creature seems somehow clichéd and outdated. It is the easiest way to talk about a horrible experience when confronting the wild nature in the desert and then an unbelievable reaction when taking refuge in one’s room and surfing the internet. But the creature’s messages to outside form an outstanding idea, solely dealing with the rain reports from different parts of the world.
In her debut feature film, Isa Prahl shows her masterful approach to creation of a critical situation and its relevant narratives. Her great work with the actors is sensational, leading two young girls, Miri and Ellie, to crazy moments of trust and friendship as well as jealousy and hostility. Meanwhile DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN showcases the bravura contribution of the cinematographer and the composer. Andreas Kohler finds the most precious opportunities for creating the dreams and the nightmares in his stylized shots and Volker Bertelmann gives more psychological depth to the unforgettable scenes through his experimental music.

K.

Not a conventional story, but a keen observation of human conditions and relations… Not a tragic, gloomy piece on disorderly world today, but a biting, playful requiem of living… For these reasons, Haneke’s new film, HAPPY END, does not connect to most of the people…

This time, once again, Haneke does not attempt to define the lack of the relations with an incomprehensible, indigestible interpretation of a word like LOVE, but delivers an apparently incoherent text to have more time to focus on his big tableau of contemporary life.

The film mentions that it follows up the characters from LOVE, but it does not help a little bit since HAPPY END is a completely different film – even in some parts witty and funny.

It portrays three generations in a family. The grandfather (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a remaining member of a generation who witnessed the big crimes and survived the big wars. Full of hatred towards living in the days of inability and oldness, he tries to convince everyone that the only deservedly act is to help him to get rid of this still life – as once he did it to help his wife.

The father (Mathieu Kassovitz) and the mother (Isabelle Huppert), the son and the daughter of the grandfather, are the adult generation who desperately and constantly try to show that they have control over everything. Coming from a generation lacking big experiences and referring to a few days of protesting on the streets in Paris as the second big revolution, they are incapable to have control even on the smallest things in their personal lives – more subtly in their troubled relations as single parents to their children and their meaningless search for a new love. Ignorant to the real side of living, the grandchildren, each, have found their own way of escaping the truth and choosing a response to their conditions – one with the pretentious humanistic activities with no sympathy and the other with altering anything to an object seen through a mobile.

Looking for an assisting hand for killing himself, after some witty conversations, at last he comes to terms with his granddaughter who finds it an interesting subject to be recorded on her mobile…

It seems that in a nightmarish black comedy, Haneke succeeds in painting his tableau with some still shots, composed simply and unsophisticatedly, and usually defined with minimal actions. Thus the actors are firstly some models for his paintings, and when one overacts (like Huppert), the visual subtleties are sacrificed. This way Haneke manages to indicate the lack of the relations of the individuals and the others through imagery. For instance, the granddaughter is solely characterized only through the imagery. When she beholds the world through the camera of her mobile in the opening, she is depicted as a witty passive, motionless observer of the repetitive details of everyday life, but among the others, she seems completely disconnected from everyone and everything. The film is undoubtedly enhanced by her encounters with her father and grandfather – despite the director’s direct criticism of a mobile-dependent generation trying to define itself in a virtual world without knowing anything about their world and obsessions.

K.

Following its central character in a nightmarish strange castle, Sergey Loznitsa’s A GENTLE WOMAN could be easily associated with Kafka’s works, but it is not Kafkesque at all. In his new film, Loznitsa steps into a new world. Portraying an alienated woman, stepping into this new world, he takes a semi-Bunuelian turn to focus on the nightmare wittily. So the film playfully and funnily portrays all the characters surrounding the gentle woman in the ongoing, horrible dream – a nightmare formed out of the dark world of the shadows and in the broad daylight.

At first, she is portrayed in full peace and harmony with the nature when there is no other human being around. But when she attempts once again to take a break and take a package to her husband in a far, faraway prison, she turns into a speechless alien in a pathetic circus. The clowns are the officers examining the objects inside the boxes both in the station and the prison, the convicted behind the bars and the people living all around the prison – however they would be able to turn into wild beasts whenever there is no one else around but the gentle woman. When she is not allowed to deliver the package to her husband, she tries anything decent to get this little chance. When there is no way, she is obliged to begin a silent protest. When she finds out she is living her own nightmares, she surrenders to the other peoples’ obsessions.

In “Exercice du Scénario” (by Jean-Claude Carrière and Pascal Bonitzer), only one rule is set for screenwriting: never show that everything happened is just the dream of a character. But then, Carrière remembers that he had done it in Bunuel’s LE CHARME DISCRET DE LA BOURGEOISIE and it had proved to work out well. In A GENTLE WOMAN, Loznitsa does the same thing to show how the heroine comes to know that she is destined to follow the others’ wills and obsessions. This way Loznitsa builds up a woman character living simply, entering a patriarchal world, attempting to observe her rights and meaning of freedom eventually and surrendering to misuse and abuse.

To proceed with this, Loznitsa sets out on a personal journey into the world of imagery. Portraying the woman in the nature with auteuristic flavor, in the station and prison with a satirical approach to bureaucracy, in the unknown town with its existential references and in the wild circus of the nightmare, Loznitsa succeeds to create a group portrait with the gentle lady whenever the other people are involved. After the opening in the way to the cottage, the film reflects her difference with the others as well as her inability to connect to the surroundings in non-action of the silent lady. In Lozanitsa’a visual feast, the words weaken the film – the words that make the film too long and the final nightmare too far.

K.