A world of cruelty and of crumbling beauty

The yearly and much-anticipated Eiga Sai will start to have its regular run this week. But before that, let's check out first a couple of films being shown this week as well, the one at regular cinemas, while the other as part of an ongoing film festival. 

• "The Rover" (Australia) by David Michôd

David Michôd made a strong impression with his debut feature film "Animal Kingdom", a simmering family crime drama. Now, after four years, he's back with "The Rover", which premiered at Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard last May. Once again, the Australian director displays his strong skills behind the camera in this post-apocalyptic tale set in the outbacks about, as the opening inter-title says, "ten years after the collapse". The film opens with the shot of an open dusty vista viewed from inside a vehicle, burnt by the sun and seemingly bereft of life. Then after about a minute or two, the camera cuts to a close-up shot of the man inside the vehicle (portrayed by Guy Pearce, working for the second time with Michôd), seemingly battered and weary and just looking intently into the landscape. Then after about a minute or two, the man goes out of his car and into a drab bar, probably to while away his already wasted time. Up until this point, we can already have an uneasy sense that everything is not alright in this forsaken world. Until the man's car (the titular object), probably the only material possession that he has, gets stolen without qualms by three men who appear to be on the lam. And his dangerous journey begins. 

Without the context of a post-apocalyptic world (we're not just exactly sure what year it is;could be 2024, or much later), wherein everyone appears to be looking at others with hostlity and to have been left to the dogs and wherein basic human kindness seems to have completely vanished now that scarcity, hunger, cruelty and violence have become the norms, the man's steely determination to get his rover back at all costs could have taken on a less grave dimension. Especially that he is all-too-willing to make others pay with blood for that purpose. Regardless of the fact that it is all worn-out, just what it is that makes the car special, as asked pointedly by one of the characters confronted by  Pearce - with a gun! And this is the question that plays in the viewers' minds as Pearce (whose down-and-dirty character here harks back to Christopher Nolan's "Memento") goes on a search, aided by a handicapped and wounded young man named Rey (portrayed by a similarly dirty, bruised and excellent post-"Twilight" Robert Pattinson), a brother of one of the thieves and whom Pearce encounters by chance after his brother leaves him for dead on the crime scene. But before reaching the destination, the real treat here is the journey itself - how we get the feel of a world (all through the side-roads, outbacks and ranges) wherein the thin glass of civility has already cracked under the weight of barbarity and how we get to witness a fragile and uneasy, even if temporal, bond (sort of father and son, or old brother and young brother) form between the two damaged men. The journey may feel slow-moving and inert at times, but one can't mistake the sinister air and sense of hopelessness that envelop it (bolstered by the film's jarring musical score). I'm really strongly attracted to films that touch upon the humanscape of end-of-the-world or dystopian scenarios, especially if they offer no clear-cut conclusions, as arbitrary as life itself (Haneke's "Time of the Wolf", Hillcoat's "The Road", Litman's "Testament"). It may be a minor "misstep" of the screenplay to reveal at the end the thing that makes the car "special" (viewers were simply bamboozled when they found out), especially when we consider all the lives that have been lost along the way. But thinking again of the film's context - and of an earlier scene wherein Pearce stumbles upon a room full of caged and abandoned dogs - the conclusion isn't really head-scratching at all. In "The Rover"'s  world, it's just the norm. 

• "Home" (Turkey) by Muzaffer Özdemir

There's a rather peculiar section in the ongoing World Premieres Film Festival and it's called Cine Verde. It's a section that features films dealing with nature and environmental issues. I was able to see one film from this section - "Home". This is the first film on the director's chair by Muzaffer Özdemir, an actor in a number of films by acclaimed filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan - "The Town", "Clouds of May" and Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winner "Distant", where he also won the Cannes Best Actor prize (sharing it with his late co-star). Being a disciple of Ceylan, Özdemir has certainly inherited his mentor's cinematic sensibilities. It deals with estrangement and alienation amid the backdrop of an awe-inspiring naturescape, whose main character (an architect named Dogan), while longing for a return to nature in a manner of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Enlightened Man, is often in a state of languor, as a result of his illness. He takes a break from work and visits after a long time his childhood town, hoping to find there comfort and solicitude. But his anxiety and depression are all the more exacerbated when he finds out that even his beloved town, with its lush greens, soothing streams and imposing mountains, is not free from modern industrialization. It may be ironic to think that considering that he's a man of science and design, every modernization in the town is rather met by him with dismay and aghast. Just like in a Ceylan film, "Home" is defined by a tranquil and meditative mood, yet unlike a Ceylan film, it is less somber and complex. In fact, despite the dourness of the main character, one can still feel a certain ebullient rhythm within the natural environs. Dogan, as he himself says, may only be "projecting the darkness inside him onto the landscape" but, whether for good or bad, the depression doesn't completely overwhelm the viewers. 

Still, even at a running time of barely 80 minutes, the film is slow-moving enough to make one probably irascible or be lulled into sleep. There is in fact no revelatory eureka or disturbing denouement here and the characters are mostly defined by lethargy and passivity, that calm torpor. For most of the time, it's a meditative angst against the impending violation of nature's beauty and wonders by those "savages" hiding under the guise of civilized humans. Özdemir (who's also in the film in a bit role) seems to posit the question:In this age of rapid-fire industrialization and urbanization, is there still something or somewhere that we can truly call "home"? 

(David Michôd's "The Rover":A world where cruelty and violence are the norms.)