Review #930: 'Munich' (2005)

Steven Spielberg's Munich questions the value of compromising your own ideals in the name of retaliation, whether 'doing what your enemies do' is a necessary stance or the beginning of a downwards spiral towards violence and bloodshed of which there is no end, and ultimately, no point. There are ancient political and religious rivalries in Ireland, South Africa and, especially, Israel; countries that have been torn apart by civil unrest. There seems no reasonable solution apart from forgiving and forgetting, but this doesn't seem to be an option. In the wake of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munch Olympics, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) decides that lawful justice will not suffice for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and team members.

A crack team is put together to carry out a series of carefully planned assassinations of alleged members of the Black September group. The group's leader is Avner (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent and soon-to-be father who is briefed of his task by the shadowy go-between Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush). The rest of the team is Carl (Ciaran Hinds), a clean-up man, Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), an expert bomb-maker, Steve (Daniel Craig), a South African weapons handler, and Hans (Hanns Zischler), a professional document forger. Their first hit takes them to Rome, where they are sold information on the whereabouts of target Wael Zwaiter (Makram Khoury) by a Frenchman named Louis (Mathieu Amalric), who claims to work for an organisation unaffiliated with any government.

Highly controversial upon its release, some extreme views questioned director Spielberg's sympathies and ultimate goal. For most people not directly linked to the various religious groups and organisations seen in the film, it should be clear that Spielberg makes a point in showing both sides as equally sympathetic and morally ambiguous. Every attack and execution is a result of one action or another, bringing into question the whole idea of revenge (the movie is based on the book Vengeance by Yuval Aviv, who Bana's character is a fictional substitution for). Israel itself plays a key role. Although we spend little time there. Munich takes us to Italy, Greece, England, Spain, Lebanon and America, but Israel's disputed lands are never far from the characters minds.

Avner is an especially haunted soul, questioning the ethics of his operation and plagued by visions of the events at the Munich Olympics, the latter of which are portrayed with a chilling authenticity at various point throughout the film. He later meets Louis' 'Papa' (Michael Lonsdale), who argues that family, over any government or religious organisation, is the only unit worth fighting for, casting Avner's mind back to his recently-born child. The ensemble cast do a very good job at carrying the weighty tones of the film on their shoulders, but it is Spielberg himself who is the most deserving of acclaim here. It is the director at his most mature and unsentimental, and as the industry's most famous Jew he has taken a huge risk by tackling an extremely sensitive issue. It upset the people on both sides, but that is precisely the point. How can anyone come out of such a bloodied conflict, of which there is no clear end in sight, with a clear conscience?


Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Eric Bana, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Ayelet Zurer, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Amalric, Michael Lonsdale
Country: France/Canada/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #763: 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' (2014)

Those who turn their nose up at the thought of another fussily-filmed, wildly colourful journey into the world and mind of Wes Anderson, will no doubt detest his latest, and arguably most perfect work, The Grand Budapest Hotel. His work is criticised by his haters for being too meticulously structured, his camera limited to sideways and occasionally upwards movements, festooned with bold colours, always leading to that dreaded, overused word - 'quirky'. Yet this is a world a sly wit, of characters so ridiculous and charming that you could wish they would replace the monotonous bores that litter our reality, and one in which Bill Murray is omnipresent.

In the pink, mountainous haven of the picturesque, fictitious European country of Zubrowka, sits the Grand Budapest Hotel. In it's heyday, the hotel was meticulously managed by Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a charismatic, perfume-wearing horndog, who knew all about what his guests wanted before they even knew they wanted it. On the day that one of his elderly conquests, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), leaves the hotel, he meets new lobby boy Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), and immediately begins to groom him as his possible successor. When he hears of Madame D's death, Gustave and Zero travel to her mansion to hear the reading of her will.

She leaves Gustave a piece of priceless art, something heavily resented by Madame's two evil, leather-jacketed sons, Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and Jopling (Willem Dafoe), who don't wish to see this lecherous lothario receive a dime. Sensing trouble, Gustave and Zero steal the painting, replace it with some kind of grotesque lesbian erotica, and flee. This sets in motion a series of farcical events involving a prison escape, an apologetic police officer named Henckels (Edward Norton), a missing butler, and the rise of fascism. All of this is told by an ageing Zero (F. Murray Abraham) to a curious writer credited only as 'The Author' (Jude Law).

What it all about, you ask? Possibly nothing. This could all be just a splurge of the director's imagination, or a hark back to the grand eccentrics of the olden days. It could be about the state of Europe between the two World Wars, with the Grand Budapest Hotel a multi-national asylum for all of the continent's misfits. But the setting simply seems too fitting for it's comedic approach for it to be labelled with any kind of 'war' or 'period' label, with bursts of slapstick and comedy-of-manners worthy of Lubitsch, punctured by ridiculous exclamations from it's hyperactive concierge. When he hears about an enemy's dastardly plan, he responds "the fuckers!".

So, I don't quite know what it's all about. What I do know is that I loved every second of watching it's ludicrous story play out, anchored by an outstanding performance by Fiennes. He may seem an odd choice for an Anderson film, whose films are usually littered with the likes of Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Bill Murray (all of whom appear here), but his Gustave is Anderson's greatest creation, brought fearlessly and completely to life by Fiennes. He's certainly no spring chicken, but he's a strange delight to spend 100 minutes with. And that's really how I felt about the entire experience, it was certainly strange, but utterly delightful.


Directed by: Wes Anderson
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Jeff Goldblum, Mathieu Amalric, Harvey Keitel
Country: USA/Germany

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #493: 'Cosmopolis' (2012)

In the opening credits of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, the bottom half of the screen gets increasing doused with "action" art, the Jackson Pollack drippings of various coloured paints, an American artistic icon, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars at auction, are the symbols of opulence, and social status, to that one percent of the West's population who are inconceivably rich - those financial elite that the worlds ninety-nine percent aim their contemporary anger at. Whilst this topical subject matter could well have been wholly conceived after the 2008 economic crash, but it is in fact adapted (by Cronenberg himself) from the 2003 novel by Dom DeLillo. (But then, these suited elites have been targeted hate figures for some time, but with the crash came hard evidence of their financial greed - and crimes for that matter.)  In Cosmopolis, the protagonist is Eric (Robert Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager, whose cold, detachment from reality, his alienation a product of his corporate exclusivity, operates his working life (and extra-curricula) from the inside of his technologically advanced limousine.

To the outside world, Eric is extraneous, but his interior world, the back of the limo, with its screens, curves and luminous sheen, reflect that consumerist fetishisation of technology - reminiscent of those chrome engines, erotically cleaned and poured over in Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970). Eric occupies this space for much of the film, a hermetically sealed protector from the real world (customised so no sound can enter), where he lets in colleagues, friends, and a doctor for one-on-one conversation. It is this erotic space, where he communicates, fucks, and destroys lives, a space gleaming with technical-sexuality, is like a womb, the ultimate space of protection. In the few scenes exterior to the limo, - such as his encounters with his wife in eating establishments - the occupants are rarely heard, their insignificance obvious for the character.

But, like Joseph Conrad's Charles Marlow in 'Heart of Darkness', Eric is on an odyssey into the dark, and an apocalyptic journey into destruction and madness. But unlike Marlow, Eric's is a self inflicted destruction. This duality manifests itself symbolically, he is skewed, divided and unbalanced; his hair is only cut on one side, he shoots a hole in his left hand, and the visiting doctor advises Eric that his prostate is asymmetrical. The odyssey - his literal journey across Manhatten - is held up in traffic, a busy day that sees the President of the United States visiting the city, the funeral of a rap star, and an anti-capitalist "riot". Parallel to the increasing binary characteristics, Eric's detached wishes are often denied. In one scene he is informed of the death of his favourite rap star, but is disappointed that he died of natural causes, instead of a gun shot - a media-friendly representation. Juliette Binoche, Eric's art consultant, turns down a request (whilst copulating) to purchase an entire collection of Mark Rothko paintings, along with the space they occupy - an arrogance of ownership. Throughout the passage of Eric's car, he loses billions of dollars, his advisers philosophically, but dispassionately discussing these complex calculations and consequences.

In an early scene (and a quote from Zbigniew Herbert's poem 'Report from the Besieged City' at the start of the film), Eric proposes a fantasy future of finance where the rat becomes the worlds currency. In a restaurant, two anarchist protesters storm in holding rats by their tales, declaring "A spectre is haunting the world", before hurtling the rats at the patrons. That spectre is of course capitalism; the limo is grafittied by the protesters, Eric cocooned in perfect anonymity, but this is simply another pseudo-delight to the destructive dimensions of Eric. He knows he walks to danger, - he created it himself - a manifestation of possible psychosomatic invention? like American Psycho's (2000) Patrick Bateman, another satire on the financial elite, but one in which he is internally, mentally imploding, instead of externalising violence into a fantasy of psychotic whim. Here, Paul Giamatti's disgruntled forgotten work colleague, becomes a potential source of ultimate destruction, or he may simply be a manifestation of his deteriorating psyche.

However, unlike the sharp satirical whit of American Psycho, Cosmopolis is simply too cold, it's characters without depth. But then this could also be a purposeful emptiness. For Cronenberg, it is a return to that clinical aesthetic, and gaunt characterisation of Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), but is too surreal in terms of its non-narrative structure to fundamentally clarify the sardonic elements that could have been so much more interesting. It is a very well made film, as you would expect from Cronenberg, his compositions and its movements and segues are beautifully constructed, but this odyssey into quasi-madness simply didn't enlighten me, or excite me in the way its central idea could well have, and simply is not cohesive enough to produce any major dramatic tension. As with the vacuous, clinical aesthetic of the film, it left me a little cold.


Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche
Country: France/Canada/Portugal/Italy

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy