Dakota’s Blog

The Return was a very visually stunning film. I really appreciated the color tones and the general feeling of serenity the movie had, especially since it contrasted so much with the tension between the characters. O, and even more especially after learning the director had very little technical training. Go, director!I thought the plot was good, not great. The characters were well developed and again, the tension was very meticulously crafted. But there are a lot of movies about dysfunctional fathers. It’s a motif that I am kind of getting tired of. And I don’t just mean the dysfunctional father motif in the Russian movies we’ve seen in this class, but just in modern cinema. It’s pretty clear from the start that they will start off all hating each other, and bond in some magnificent way, even if one of the characters has to die for it to be so.   

The most interesting  part of this movie was the ending. When I watched it, I definitely interpreted it as Rita actually going deaf. The next day in class when we discussed it, we learned that some people interpret it as Rita merely pretending to go deaf. While this was not my initial interpretation, I can understand why that would make sense. I think after that whole scene, and Rita’s experiences with the mob guys and making all her deaf friends, it’d be reasonable for her to become sick of the hearing-people world, and want to retreat into her own “land of the deaf”. We also talked about whether or not this movie had a happy ending or not. I interpreted it as happy, not only because of the bubbly music that begins to play as the camera zooms out on Rita and Yaya as the credits roll, but because of the fact that Rita and Yaya walked off together. When they walked away from all the dead mobsters, it seemed like they were metaphorically leaving that whole thing behind. 

This movie was pretty good. Although it did kind of get progressively silly. I don’t think all three of them would continue talking if they knew that the other two could not understand. It wasn’t so much the fact that they kept talking, but the fact that they were continually frustrated that the others didn’t understand. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t sink in the first time.I thought it was an interesting choice on the part of the writer/director that the woman, whose name I’ve forgotten, never learned the truth about how the other two died. In the end, when she was telling her two [phenomenally creepy-looking] children the story of their fathers, she said something about how they were killed by an evil guy in war. I thought this was interesting, because it removed the blame from the Russian, who was the actual killer. And rightfully so. I think from this final story, we were supposed to draw that the Russian and the Finn could not be blamed for their actions. It wasn’t their fault that they were caught up in the war. It’s pretty poetic that the woman never learned the truth, but it really doesn’t matter. Because her understanding of the story is just as true.

This movie seemed to polarize a lot of people in the class discussion. The general consensus seemed to be that it was either awesome, or a cheesy attempt at an American gangster movie. I must admit my visceral reaction to the movie was positive. I thought it was pretty badass. But the more I thought about it the more I realized it was a little ridiculous. I’m getting pretty tired of that flawless anti-hero badass character that is the protagonist of like every gangster movie there is. Brother two is pretty inexorably absurd. Even before Ian showed us that silly clip where Vanya casually walks into to that American guy’s office, shots that guy and then sits and downs a glass of vodka, I could tell it was the movie was bad news, just from the cover. Did anyone else notice that it had the same cover as The Goodfellas? Yeah. It did.

I feel kind of like I’m cheating by blogging about this one seeing as how I wrote my paper on it. But I shall blog about my initial reaction to it. I had a really hard time deciding whether or not I liked this movie. I thought the whole concept of dark vs light and vampires and stuff was pretty cheesy and cliche. I’m not an expert on vampire movies, but I’d venture to guess that’s it’s difficult to write a truly original vampire story seeing as how the idea of vampires is already pretty existent. Day Watch invoked more of the same reaction. I mean, come on – the chalk of fate? That’s kind of ridiculous.  However, there were some pretty cool artistic moments. Like the doll that turned into a spider, and the part where everything froze when the day watchers were trying to get the witch. I really liked the bit at the beginning, where the chalk of fate was introduced and it kept zooming in and turning into different scenes. I can understand why Quentin Tarantino called these movies “magnificent” but I had a kind of difficult time reconciling the absurd plot with the occasionally awesome visuals. 

I really enjoyed Alive, but it took me a while to figure out what was going on. Although this is probably owing at least partially to the fact that I wasn’t paying attention. When I figured it out, it was cool.In class on Thursday we talked about whether or not this is an anti-war movie. I think this is a little beside the point. Just because a movie is set in wartime doesn’t mean it is making a huge statement about war. Wars lends themselves well to good stories and situations. If I had to argue one way, I guess I’d say it’s anti-war. It’s hard to argue that a movie with an ending as depressing as Alive is pro-war. But I can’t really think of any movies that I’d say are pointedly pro-war. Except for like, propaganda movies. But obviously.I thought it was pretty interesting that the priest and the main guy were brothers in real life. At first I actually thought it was the same guy. It took me like, 15 or so minutes to accept that the priest was not just the same actor in a beard and glasses.  This is obviously significant, but I think the reason is a little hazy. I was talking to Eliza about this and I don’t want to steal her theory, but we were talking about how the scene where they were in the car talking about their reasons for going into their respective professions seemed pretty pivotal. They both seemed to have similar reasons for going down seemingly opposite paths. And I guess that’s why the director chose to cast actors that looked nearly identical. To illustrate that they had started out in the same situation, and used the same logic to get where they are.Yeah that’s it. 

So I’m updating this an hour before the class after it was originally due, but I have only recently (read: very recently) decided on a potential topic for my first paper (I have been too distracted thinking about potential topics for the big paper). At this point, it can hardly be called “potential” since I’ll be writing it tonight, but hey. Anyway: I definitely want to write about Prisoner of the Mountains. I am still turning this movie over in my head, not so much because of its “themes” or whatever, but because I was so blown away by how amazing it was, given its tiny budget. Directors who make such colossally awesome films under such colossally menial conditions undoubtably deserve more cred than directors who do the same with seemingly infinite budgets, even if their end results aren’t as good. Yay, Sergei Bodrov! So for my paper I want to talk about the sons motif, which was pretty pervasive, and pretty intentionally instilled as it wasn’t there in the original Tolstoy story (or at least not there as much). First there’s Sasha who has no parents (right?), and then there’s Vanya, whose mother is trying to save him; then you have Adbul, who’s trying to get his son; and then you have that other guy whose sons all died except that one, and then that guy kills him, thus causing Abdul’s son to bite it. Surely there’s something profound to be found in all that. I also want to write about Sasha, just cause he was such a great character. I’ll find a way to tie him in. O yeah and then the actor playing Vanya is the director’s son in real life! Horay.Okay I have to go to class soon, so bye. 

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