Frantz

Last night I saw the absolutely beautiful film Frantz at the Broadway.  It is one of the best films about the aftermath of war that I've ever seen.  After World War I, a young German woman named Anna (Paula Beer) is mourning the loss of her fiancee Frantz (played by Anton Von Lucke in flashbacks).  She frequently visits his grave and one day she notices that flowers have been left by a stranger who turns out to be Adrien (Pierre Niney), a Frenchman who claims to have known Frantz before the war.  He and Anna form a close bond as he tells her about their friendship and, while his presence is initially met with resistance by Frantz's family, he eventually brings them comfort.  When Adrien leaves Germany, after a startling revelation, Anna cannot get him out of her mind and travels to France in the hopes of reestablishing their connection (where she faces the same hostility that Adrien experienced in Germany).  After another revelation, Anna must learn to let go of the past and live a different life from the one she had imagined.  Based on the 1932 Ernst Lubitsch film Broken Lullaby, it explores the lingering pain and loss after a war, the antagonism remaining in peacetime between two countries who were once enemies, and the need for forgiveness for deeds committed in wartime.  It is quite atmospheric and very moving.  Most of the film is in black and white, with brief interludes of color during scenes before the war and during moments of happiness, which is highly effective in conveying a mood, and both Beer and Niney give absolutely haunting performances.  I loved this film and I highly recommend it.

Note:  Frantz was the second independent foreign film with subtitles that I saw this week (third if you count this film because I saw again with English subtitles, which I much preferred to the dubbed version).  I am nothing if not pretentious!

Land of Mine

Last night I went to see the film Land of Mine at the Broadway, my favorite art house theater.  Doesn't everyone spend their Friday nights watching independent foreign films with subtitles?  In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Roland Moller) is given command of a group of German POWs who are tasked with removing hundreds of thousands of land mines on the western coast of Denmark.  We are not given Rasmussen's backstory but he has clearly been shattered by the events of the war and torments the POWs, most of whom are young boys conscripted at the end of the war, as a way of exacting revenge against Germany.  Their living conditions are deplorable and their job of locating and then defusing the bombs is dangerous, to say the least.  As we get to know and care about these boys, we are never allowed to forget the ever-present possibility that they could be killed by an explosion at any moment.  As a result, many of the scenes of them on the beach are fraught with tension, and occasionally horror.  At the crux of the story is Rasmussen's journey from hatred to compassion as he gets to know them as individuals rather than as the enemy and this is incredibly powerful.  There is a touching scene where one of the boys clears a path to rescue a Danish girl who has wandered on to the beach and I also loved the scene where Rasmussen plays soccer with the boys on part of the beach that has been cleared.  The cinematography is exceptional with widescreen shots of the endless beach which serve to show how daunting the task of removing all of the mines truly is.  I found this film to be both beautiful and terrible (the explosions are unbelievably difficult to watch) and I thought it was an interesting deviation from the standard war movie where heroes and villains are clearly defined.  I highly recommend it.

Note:  After watching this film, I spontaneously decided to see Personal Shopper again.  I simply cannot stop thinking about it.

Tashena Likes to Throw Things

I finally got to go to one of my niece's track meets yesterday!  I think watching Tashena throwing (and occasionally jumping) is a much better way to spend an afternoon than grading papers!  Wouldn't you agree?  However, I didn't actually get to see her do any throwing or jumping because she competed in all of her events (discus, shot put, javelin, and long jump) before the meet started because it was held at Bountiful (her home school) and she had to help run the discus.  Hey, at least I had an excuse to leave school at a decent hour!  Her best throw in discus was 115' for first place, her best throw in shot put was 31'6" for second place, her best throw in javelin was 89'2" for first place, and her best distance in long jump was 15'1" for first place.  That's not too shabby!  She told me that this meet didn't matter because it wasn't a qualifying meet and told me to come to the meet next week!  I'll be there!

Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along

Since we had so much fun at the Moana Sing-Along, Marilyn and I decided to take our Mom to see the Beauty and the Beast version (because she loves this movie so much).  While Moana definitely had better songs (Lin-Manuel Miranda!), this was just as much fun.  In fact, I think I liked the movie even more!  I definitely liked the new songs a lot more than I did the first time around.  The sing-along version is the original full-length feature but the lyrics of the songs appear at the bottom of the screen with a bouncing icon to tell you when to sing each word.  I loved that each song had a different icon.  "Gaston" featured a beer stein, "Beauty and the Beast" had a rose, and "Kill the Beast" had a flame to name just a few.  It was a lot of fun!   I really enjoyed singing along with "Belle," "Gaston," and "Be Our Guest" because those were the songs I knew the best.  My Mom was belting out the words to every single song and she even included dramatic gestures in "Evermore."  It was worth the price of admission just to see my Mom's reaction to every scene!  She giggled out loud every time LeFou was on the screen and she sighed when Belle was revealed in her yellow dress (she has seen it three times and she is still so enchanted).  As we walked out of the theater she wished that she could see it every day.  I'm so glad that I was able to see this with her and my sister.  I moved closer to my family to be able to participate in spontaneous activities with them but lately I have been so busy at school.  No more!  Last night was just too much fun!  This movie is not without flaws but I recommend it for its sheer entertainment value, especially the sing-along version which can be found in select theaters.

Your Name

I know next to nothing about Japanese anime so I didn't really know what to expect when I went to see Your Name yesterday.  What happened is that I absolutely loved it!  In fact, it is one of the best films I have ever seen!  Mitsuha is a young girl living in a rural and traditional village in the mountains.  She is very dissatisfied with her life and longs for the day when she can graduate and move to the big city.  One day she wakes up in the body of Taki, a high school boy in Tokyo and he wakes up in her body (it is very amusing for them to discover that they are a different sex).  This keeps happening intermittently and it takes them a while to assimilate into each other's world.  When they both realize what is happening they begin leaving each other notes for when they return to their own bodies.  They also begin affecting each other's lives in positive ways, especially when Mitsuha makes a date for Taki with the girl he likes.  Eventually, they stop switching with each other and Taki starts to miss Mitsuha.  He tries to contact her and when that fails he decides to look for her.  Then there is an incredible twist to the story which I didn't expect but found to be very emotionally satisfying.  I cared about these characters so much and it is such a beautiful story about fate and the connections we have with people including people that we haven't even met yet.  I laughed out loud many times and I cried during several scenes.  The animation is beautiful, especially scenes that take place during the golden hour.  It is a lovely film and I can't say enough about it.  I definitely recommend it, particularly to people who have never seen an anime film before.

Note:  I saw this film dubbed in English but I already have plans to see it in Japanese with English subtitles.