What they don't tell you is, you'll feel it. You'll feel your brain brim, top off--for me, it happens around the sixth movie--and then it wants out. It scrabbles against the dog door of your mouth, and you start voiding all kinds of idiotic opinions and half-applicable references: Oh, it's von Trierian this and Bergmanian that, everyone yammering the accumulated knowledge of their Netflix queue all the way down Bloor street. Yes, it's pretentious, yes, it's a little desperate, and yes, it's loads of fun, especially when people fight with you, especially when they win--that's when you actually stand to learn something.
But holy moly--it's all getting played out online now! Instead of just barfing our hare-brained instapinions on each other, we're now spattering them across blogosphere. Geez, what are we? The Washington press corps? Has entertainment journalism really fallen that far?
Yes. And with that in mind, I barf anew: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Fantastic. You don't need me to tell you that--since Cannes, it's been canonical. (Cannes-onized?) But I can tell you, it's the best-crafted Coen Bros. caper since... well, I won't say The Big Lebowski, since everyone dismisses it as a lark, so let's just swing for the fences and say Fargo. Ah, but Fargo, in pitting order against chaos, gave us a wholesome out: Pregnant trooper Mahgie did eventually vanquish evil, darn tootin'. But NO COUNTRY offers no quarter: Just a moral desert, pocked with rational cowboys riding at full gallop towards the limits reason and ambition.
A lot of us seem to be in a post-ideological mood these days. (Can't imagine why!) That's certainly the case with Ang Lee, who came into town to promote LUST, CAUTION, his near-Greek tale of a hard, hate-laced love in an even harder, more hateful place: Japanese-occupied China. Lovely, daddy-neglected Wong joins a theater troop of college communists, only to find herself playing the role of her life: Mistress to Yee, a powerful collaborator with the occupation. The students play at the idea of an assassination, only to find themselves coopted by the real revolutionaries. Meanwhile, at the hands of kinky, sadistic Yee, Wong finds herself used and abused... and, in ways she can barely admit to herself, liking it.
Be warned: this film is both lusty and cautious. Too cautious, some say. I've detected a bit of a backlash, ever since it won Venice: Many find LUST's narrative patience a symptom of storytelling dysfunction; others think it's too specifically Chinese for Western audiences to fully appreciate. No one's bothered by the NC-17-grade sex, the scene of forced sodomy--but honestly, these were the only places I felt the movie drag a bit. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good sex scene. I love a bad one, too. But I felt the emphasis on sexual subjugation--where consent is the greatest transgression--sometimes nearly obscured the film's more interesting theme: The ugly adolescence of a proud nation destined, like all proud nations, to turn collaborator with one devil or another.
Ah, but what if you're Iceland, a dimly lit, proudly depressed nation with precious few potential collabo-rapists banging at the door? You breed your devils in-house, that's what. To call JAR CITY culturally specific doesn't cover it: It's practically inbred--which is the whole point, it turns out. The investigation into a seemingly senseless murder becomes a quest into the not-so-deep depths of the Icelandic gene pool. (No offense intended--it's a tiny island, and genetic disease is rampant.) Xenophobia and claustrophobia make for a heady mix: Poor Det. Erlendur (the superb Ivar Sigurdsson), trying to investigate a crime in a nation so small, every thug and scumbag knows his family problems. Poor Det. Erlendur: His only consolation the occasional sheep's-head-for-dinner. Yes, we watch him eat a sheep's head. As he investigates a case involving congenital, hereditary brain disease. Pungent stuff--I highly recommend it.
I also had a great time at THE SUBSTITUTE (aka VIKAREN), which is almost but not quite this year's THE HOST: a spin on an American genre, in this case, Spielbergian kiddie horror (think Goonies, with an umlaut). Set in Copenhagen, it centers on Carl, a recently motherless elementary-schooler who discovers his vicious, neo-Nietzchean subsitute teacher (Paprika Steen) is, in fact, a space alien here to collect specimens. Seems she's interested in human empathy; her race doesn't have any. There's a funny sort of "No Child Left Behind" paranoia that animates and elevates Substitute. It comes in a for a bit of a graceless landing, but the ride is worth it.
