Don't Look Now

Based on a Daphne du Maurier short story and made in 1973 , it's one of the most haunting, enigmatic and , in the final moments bloodily shocking films ever made.  After the tragic death of their daughter ,  Laura and John Baxter  take a trip to Venice in an attempt to save their marriage. There, John uses his work -restoring an old church- as an outlet for his grief while Laura relies on pills . One day, they encounter a  strange pair of elderly spinster sisters , Heather and Wendy . Heather, who is blind, claims to be able to communicate with the spirit world. She convinces Laura she has seen Christine.  While John dismisses this as meaningless "mumbo-jumbo," Laura goes along with it - even participating in a séance.  At first ,  John is delighted at the positive change in wife but he soon becomes concerned that she is falling under a harmful influence. To make matters worse,   he is beginning to experience strange visions.  Heather  warns Christine that unless John leaves Venice, he will be in great danger.   Christine's mother and father are played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and their relationship is one of  the most authentic portraits of a marriage that i have seen in  any film.  Watching the film,  it is easy to believe that the actors are in fact married, and Roeg's portrait of Venice, with its intelligent, non-tourist locations, is a real vision of a real, working city .  The  film  is drenched with sex and displaced sexual longing,  given a dark eroticism by the shadow of death.  In Venice, Baxter will get glimpses of a little figure in red running away from him or hiding from him, and may wonder if this is the ghost of his daughter. We will see the red figure more often than he does, glimpsing it on a distant bridge, or as a boat passes behind two arches.   Venice, that haunted city, has never been more melancholy than in “Don’t Look Now.”  It is like a vast necropolis, its stones damp and crumbling, its canals alive with rats .  This  film remains one of the great horror masterpieces, working not with fright, which is easy, but with dread, grief and apprehension. Few films so successfully put us inside the mind of a man who is trying to reason his way free from mounting terror.

Another Year

It follows a year in the life of a sixtysomething couple , Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). He is a commercial geologist and she is a counsellor : a member of "the caring professions". They live together in a home on a quiet street somewhere in suburbia that reflects their settled, earthy personalities. They are social creatures and it's their interaction with friends and family that Leigh focuses on , mostly in their home ,over lunch,dinner or a drink at their table. Tom and Gerri are happy couple. The same can't be said for almost anyone around them. Tom's pal Ken ((Peter Wight) is an overweight,chain-smoking alcoholic. Gerri's secretary Mary (Lesley Manville) drinks far too much wine ,she babbles on nervously about insignificant things ,  and she is obviously painfully lonely. She wants to connect with someone, but she also wants that person to be something special. Out of a script developed over months with his cast, Leigh creates a universe we can all find a place in. All the actors are sublime . But Manville shines brightest. 

 Strength of the lead couple's bond ,the warm ease of it, is absolutely necessary as a counter balance to Mary.  Another Year" is just that — time passing through lives, relationships shifting, some spirits flailing while others rest happily within one another.



                 

Hidden Agenda (1990)

Hidden Agenda is a 1990 political thriller directed by Ken Loach . It is based on allegedly brutal methods of British police in Northern Ireland. The film starts with a quote from Margaret Thatcher maintaining that Northern Ireland is part of Britain. Here the British government is shown to be the villain early on.
Peter Kerrigan ( Brian Cox) is brought to Belfast to investigate the killing of an American lawyer Paul Sullivan (Brad Dourif).  Kerrigan joins with Sullivan's girlfriend Ingrid Jessner (Frances Mcdormand). He discovers that Sullivan was shot without any warning and that there is a secret tape recording involved in the killing. 
 Brian cox is absolutely convincing as an investigator.  Cox's greatest power is his ability to make calmness exciting. Frances Mcdormand does a commendable job here too. The film's agenda is not hidden though.  It addresses to the situation in Northern Ireland and to British abuses of civil rights. Ken Loach never glorifies the Republican movement even though he takes the side of them.  This is an underrated political thriller by Loach.
  
   

Blow-up (1966)

Blow Up was the first English language film of director Michelangelo Antonioni . It was immensely successful at box-office in that period. It was chosen as the  best film of 1967 by the National Society of Film Critics.

The main character of the film is a glamourous fashion photographer (David Hemmings) .   It looks at the day of a life of the main protagonist.  He roams around London taking photographs.  He is very much cruel  to models and women in his life.  One day,wandering at a park, he takes picture of a couple.  Later he discovers that he may have photographed a murder while taking the pics.

Blow up is not a thriller though some people might want to put it  in that category. Finding meaning in Blow up is difficult because nothing much really happens there . Still it raises many questions.  It may be a film which shows how skewed our perception of reality can be.  We see through the photographer's eyes.  Did that murder really happen or not?  The photographs started out as really nice pictures of the scene in the park.   But when he blew them up more, they revealed less. So we are not certain if he really noticed murder there or it is his perception. Photographer also tries to tell his friends about his discovery but he understands  that he is unable to communicate with anyone.  He suffers from isolation .  Nobody understands his experience and he is left alone. 

 One of the main aspect of the film is-camera takes on an active narrative role at certain key points. We notice, the camera becomes the story-teller in part of the blow-ups sequence. The camera also narrates at the end.  This is a great work by Michelangelo Antonioni .  Like many great works of art, the meaning of the film lies in the symbols and metaphors.

Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession

Bad Timing is a 1980 British film directed by Nicolas Roeg .  His film rates high in production value . Nicolas Roeg here takes an innovative approach to tell an old story.

An American woman is taken into a hospital after overdosing on pills. A curious detective (Harvey Keitel ) suspects that there is more into this matter. Through several flashbacks,we come to know about the real incident.  Alex (Art Garfunkel) is an  American psychoanalyst who meets with Milena (Theresa Russell ). They meet with each other at a party and develop a relationship.  Milena was a carefree American girl . She suffers from depression and is married to an old man .  Alex finds it difficult to cope with her complicated lifestyle.  He tries to control her and it results in more damage.

 Nicolas Roeg used an interesting method in this film.  Flashbacks are essential to the film's formation.  He doesn't use the flashbacks in normal way.  It comes in many forms : as flashbacks within flashbacks and  even flash forwards within flashbacks.

 Art Garfunkel gives a good performance as a controlling, possessive person.  Theresa Russell is great as Milena, a woman who doesn't want to be "owned". She really gives a passionate performance and shows an incredible range here. The best performance of the film comes from the charismatic Harvey Keitel . Harvey , as the detective who investigates the truth so hard that at one point he seems to hallucinate the facts.  He plays the role of a  bizarre police inspector to perfection. 

The film mainly details the doomed affair between two persons.   It  focuses on a time in our lives when   we   understand  that our relationship is finished. On the flip side, the film's narrative structure makes it  difficult to  follow .  There are times when we just want to stop watching it because  the narration disturbs us.