The Screengrab : liv ullmann

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

15. THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982)

This Italian film, directed by the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, is about the people who don't fight in war but who just do their best to keep their lives from being completely overrun when it comes to town. In this case, the people are Tuscan, and it's late in the summer of 1944, with World War II winding down and the local fascists preparing to blow up anything they can before the Americans arrive. The people of the village sneak out under dead of night and prepare to hit the road, hoping to stay alive until they encounter the Yanks; the movie is presented as the memories of a woman who was six years old then, and it's infused with a playful surrealism that colors the many incidents, making them seem touched by magic. Which, at this point, is entirely appropriate for a movie where the people can't wait to embrace the invading Americans.

14. PLATOON (1986)

Drawing on memories from his own experiences in combat, Oliver Stone won Best Director and Best Picture for his grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War, where (in the words of star Charlie Sheen, back when he was a serious actor rather than a smirky sitcom star), “We did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves.” Earlier films (notably Apocalypse Now) had, of course, tackled the Southeast Asian “police action,” but the topic was generally as unpopular on the big screen as Iraq films are today. Platoon, premiering four years after the dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., marked a cathartic cultural shift in America’s perception (and digestion) of the war: without Platoon’s critical and commercial success (and the flood of Vietnam movies, TV shows and video games that followed), a parody like 2008’s Tropic Thunder would have been unthinkable, not to mention sacrilegious. Yet, even though Vietnam era slang (being in “the shit”) and combat details (cigarette packs in helmet bands, etc.) are now war movie clichés, I’ll never forget seeing Platoon for the first time, when the wounds of America’s last great military misadventure were finally starting to heal, then watching shaken veterans around the theater hanging back after the lights came up, grouping together in pain and reminiscence.

13. SHAME (1968)

It’s probably no coincidence that most of Ingmar Bergman’s starkest films were made at the height of the Vietnam War, a time when the horrifying images of battle were being broadcast on television sets all over the world on a nightly basis. Bergman’s most explicit take on the horror and senselessness of war, Shame, begins in quintessential Bergman fashion, focusing on a pair of married musicians (played by Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, of course) who have retreated from their old lives onto a remote Swedish island. Their marriage could hardly be called happy, but it’s comfortable and secure, far removed from the rest of world, including a war that’s been raging in the distance. Suddenly and without warning, the war comes to their doorstep. But despite the handful of battle sequences, Shame has nothing to do with combat, and everything to do with the poisonous effect of war on everyone it touches. Ullmann, who is concerned only with the well-being of herself and her husband, finds herself accused of treason. Their home is destroyed. Ullmann sleeps with a local bureaucrat, perhaps out of self-preservation, but perhaps for other reasons. And Von Sydow reveals himself to be either a coward or a vindictive scumbag, depending on one’s perspective. Bergman refuses to pin the story to a single war -- it’s certainly not Vietnam, in spite of when he made it. Instead, Shame is a condemnation of the very idea of war and the effect it has on humanity -- not merely the literal death and destruction, but also the psychic fallout it leaves in its wake, which can linger long after any memory of why the war was fought in the first place.

12. HENRY V (1944) & (1988)

Shakespeare's play, which came in so handy for pundits looking for a point of comparison for George W. Bush's transformation into a great war leader after 9/11, was a propaganda piece celebrating the great victory of the outnumbered English by the overburdened French at the Battle of Agincourt. But because Shakespeare knew the value of ambiguity and multiple meanings, the work is open to various interpretations and can be staged in different ways to emphasize different possible themes. Laurence Olivier had a personal triumph as both director and star with the 1944 version, which, being made during World War II, not surprisingly treated the material as the occasion for a rousing, jingoistic hard sell for patriotic warfare. Forty-five years later, Kenneth Branagh, making his movie debut as a director and also starring in the title role, had no war to promote and so saw fit to stage the work as a big, baroque spectacle with ironic attitudes towards the expressions of patriotic fervor, film noir lighting, and what Pauline Kael called a "deranged Darth Vader entrance" for himself. As it is, both movies are huge, happy wallows in showy stagecraft and the best acting the British can always offer at the snap of a finger. (Branagh's, in particular, is the kind of movie where Paul Scofield has a walk-on.)

11. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein, master of the montage and one of the greatest pioneers of early cinema, made two classic war films, both very different from one another. His first, Battleship Potemkin, is often cited as one of the greatest movies of all time, and that’s not just hype: aside from the legendary Odessa Steps sequence, it contains some of the earliest uses of montage, and generally establishes itself as a movie using visual language light-years beyond what anyone else was doing at the time. But as a war film, it is unquestionably subversive: it was designed as a piece of pure propaganda in which the oppressed sailors of the battleship rise up in righteous anger against their cruel Czarist overlords. At no point do we have anything but sympathy for the heroic mutineers, and no less a personage than Josef Goebbels declared that anyone might become a Bolshevik after viewing the movie. Alexander Nevsky, on the other hand, is as much a celebration of patriotism and loyalty as Potemkin was of rebellion and revolution. It didn’t reach its peak of popularity until a few years after it was made, when Russia and Germany were at each other’s throats, but its ability to induce a patriotic fervor, as audiences cheered at the Russian peasant army driving out the Teutonic Knights, was unmistakable. And while it wasn’t the artistic success that Battleship Potemkin was, it did feature an unforgettable score and one scene that rivals the Odessa Steps sequence: the famous battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, which stands as one of the most thrilling battle sequences ever staged for film.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six & Part Seven

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Reviews By Request: Faithless (2000, Liv Ullmann)

Paul Clark — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Thanks to reader “borstalboy” for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run the afternoon of Thursday, July 3 due to the holiday) see the bottom of this post.

On the surface, Faithless tells a story that’s been told thousands of times before. It’s a story of infidelity, with the fortyish Marianne (Lena Endre) falling in love with family friend David (Krister Henriksson), and leaving her husband Markus (Thomas Hanzon) to be with him. It’s an age-old story, familiar from plenty of novels, plays and films. There are numerous ways the story could play, perhaps as a thriller or a domestic melodrama. But in the end Faithless is neither of these, due in large part to a character I haven’t yet mentioned- the key character in the story. He’s a director played by Erland Josephson, who’s aging, thoughtful, solitary. A man not unlike Ingmar Bergman.

Faithless, directed by Liv Ullmann from a screenplay by Bergman, is not so much the story of a love affair as it is the story of the memory of that affair and the deep and painful scars it left on the lives of all it touched. The film begins and ends with the director, who sits at his desk to write down the story, and much of the story is structured as a dialogue between the director and his characters. Most of the time, we see him talking to Marianne- or more precisely listening to her- as she tells him her story. Yet whose story is it? In the film’s opening scene, we see the director conjure Marianne as if from thin air, emerging from the shadows as his conception of her comes into focus. But where did this conception come from?

More than most films, Faithless practically demands a level of familiarity with both the personal and professional lives of its makers. Bergman was, of course, one of the world’s greatest and most celebrated filmmakers, and Ullmann his frequent leading lady and muse. Offscreen, she was also his lover- hardly his first and certainly not his last- and his treasured friend as well. In many ways, Marianne feels like a surrogate of Ullmann, and Bergman can be seen not only in the director (Josephson was his closest friend) but also in the distant, severe David.

So what did Bergman and Ullmann hope to accomplish in making Faithless? Perhaps, to its makers, the film represented a shared act of empathy. It’s significant that the director imagines Marianne- not David or even Markus- as his story’s central player. By seeing the unfortunate series of events through her eyes, the director (and, one presumes, Bergman) finally comes to understand the emotional toll this had on her, albeit many years after the fact. But the understanding goes both ways, as Ullmann frequently makes use of Josephson’s face in reaction shots. At various points, we even see him reacting in pain or horror even before Marianne tells him what happened, in anticipation of what she’s about to say. It’s as though there’s a dialogue going on right before our eyes between writer and director, with Bergman apologizing for all the pain he’s caused and Ullmann reminding him of how deeply it hurt, even as she forgives him his sins.

Given his status as a master filmmaker, it’s tempting to watch Faithless solely as en film av Ingmar Bergman. But Ullmann’s own contributions to the film should not be underestimated. Visually, the film has a lushness and warmth that isn’t characteristic of Bergman films, which makes it more effective when Ullmann employs Bergman’s more clinical style in the scenes between Josephson and Endre, as well as key moments involving the character of David. But where the difference between the two filmmakers is most apparent comes in the characterizations. Bergman’s characters usually come off as archetypes, personifications of the psychological traumas or anxieties inherent to the stories they inhabited, and this suited his filmmaking perfectly. But the characters in Faithless have broader emotional palettes than the residents of Bergman’s world. Seen in their flashback scenes, they’re capable of joy and sorrow and passion, and of becoming caught up in the moment. Look at the scene where Markus discovers Marianne and David in bed together. As Markus tries to sort out his feelings, David keeps chuckling to himself, not out of cruelty but because he’s embarrassed at not wearing any pants. In turn, Marianne can’t help but chuckle as well, even as she wrestles with her own emotions. I can’t imagine Bergman directing this scene in this way, but it works perfectly.

Looking back at my review, I can’t help but notice that I’ve barely touched upon the acting in the film, although every performance is ideal, especially Lena Endre as Marianne. And I have devoted very little space to the film’s infidelity storyline which occupies the great majority of the film’s 2 ½ hour running time. But you can find great acting and stories of infidelity in any number of movies. What makes Faithless truly special is the way it presents two great cinematic artists- friends, collaborators, ex-lovers- trying to make peace with each other. In her final act of graciousness, Ullmann lets the camera rest on the director, alone once again, as he tries to piece together his memories so that he can write them down. After all, at this point in his life, what else can he do?

Previously on Reviews by Request:

The New Kids (1985, Sean S. Cunningham)

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972, Kenji Misumi)

Zulu (1964, Cy Endfield)

Baxter (2000, Jérôme Boivin)

So, what movie would you like me to review for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Let me know in the comments section below. To refresh your memory, here are the rules for requesting a movie to be reviewed: (1) it has to be a movie I haven’t seen, (2) it has to be available through Netflix, and (3) please only request one film. Other than that, anything is fair game. First to suggest a movie that qualifies gets their requested review. See you a week from Thursday!