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Following * Christopher Nolan * 1998

It has been a while since I saw this one, but recently it was shown on TV and why not write a review about this wonderfull film? “Following” is made my Christopher Nolan who also made the brilliant “Memento”. It made earlier and this is quite clear, since it is a bit more primitive and not as brilliant.

Anyway, “Following” is still a wonderfull film. It is about a guy (Jeremy Theobald) who starts to follow people out of boredom and to form characters for his writings. When he started to follow Cobb (Alex Haw) this last immediately saw him through and starts a conversation. Cobb turns out to be a burglar, mostly for fun. Going through people’s personal things and trying to make them feel uncomfortable. The two men are going to brake into places together, but “the young man” falls back into his old habbit of following people and eventually he gets involved with a woman who’s house they broke in.
That is as much of the story that I will tell, otherwise there is no use in seeing it anymore. Just as with “Memento” it is best to not know much about the story when you see it.

The film is shot in black and white and totally cut-up and the scenes reassembled all the way through eachother. Therefor you will have different scenes from every possible time in the story, slowly being able to understand/see what the story really it. Of course this is done a lot nowadays, but in 1998 it was still quite original. The way of filming, acting, stages, etc. are all quite minimal which adds to the atmosphere of the film.

“Following” sure isn’t a “Memento” yet, but a good step on the way.

Film 1 (Piranha Blues) * Willem Wallyn * 1999

A Belgian film in Dutch language (or Flemish if you like) that plays with on the background one of Belgians biggest political scandals of recent times, the Augusta-affair, a massive corruption scandal with military helicopters. The trial was in late 1998.

The father of the succesfull lawyer Willem Wallyn (Peter van den Begin) is one of the accused. The TV- journalist Johannes van Buren (Herbert Flack) wants to make a juice story and choses Wallyn as his victim to exploit. Just before the the first coverage in the main-newsbulletin, Wallyn and Van Buren run into eachother and get an argument. Shortly after Wallyn saw the news in his office with his colleagues, he picks up the plan to take the power of media and turn it around. With two friends he kidnaps Van Buren and starts to dig out his life in search for scandals. The rest of the film is mostly filled with discussions of the journalist who both wants to be a correct person/journalist, but also wants attention and fame and on the other side the succesfull lawyer who sees his name already affected by the trial against his father, but even further by Van Buren’s coverage. Wallyn more or less justifies his actions by the unjust against his father.

Indeed the director of this film is one of the main characters in the story. There are several people playing themselves in it as well. Seemingly Wallyn wants to show the power of the media with this film. The title “Film 1” refers to the fact that there are always two sides of the story, in this case, the side of Van Buren and the side of Wallyn. Nobody is interested in the first version, the not-juicy and not-all-giving version, but this is the version that we get here, the version of the journalist Van Buren. The irony in Wallyn’s approach is obvious, since he doesn’t give his own version of a story that is not told to be true or made up.
Stylistically this film is particularly special. It opens with a cut-up monologue of Willem Wallyn to the viewer and then a long opening with pictures of helicopters and fighters made by the Augusta company I asume. The soundtrack is totally incorporated in the film and pictures change with the music which is really well done. Especially in the beginning there is quite a lot of what they call “hip-hop assembly”, rapidly changing images with a heavy score. Some funny camera-effects and the suggestion that half the film is shot during the film with a handycam adds to the effect. The second half of the film is more focussed on ‘oral violence’ so to say.

A very nice debut for sure. I don’t know how you should get to see this film though, I personally saw it on the Belgian public television.

La Fille Sur Le Pont * Patrice Leconte * 1999

I remember that this film played in the local filmhouse, but I didn’t get to see it. Even when it was available for rent I didn’t see it and now it was already on television. A very nice drama like the French seem to be so able to make. Adele (Vanessa Paradis) is ‘the girl on the bridge’ from the title. However she is beautiful, Adele had nothing but bad luck. She comes to the point that she serieusly wants to end her life by jumping off a bridge. She is ‘found’ by the knifethrower (in a circus) Gabor (Daniel Auteuil, who we know from ‘Le Huitième Jour’) who often finds his targets on bridges and towers. He ‘teaches’ Adele luck, both in life and in the casino and the two have a prosporous time, first artistically and then in the casino. Because Adele is very labile she is drawn to every man that pays her attention and she and Gabor get separated a few times. Obviously separately they have nothing but bad luck, which draws them back together.
Nice film, not too dramatic, not to light, nicely shot in black and white with nice settings and a minimal story.

Fight Club * David Fincher * 1999

However I have known about this film I never watched it since action-movies are not realy my kind of film. In the end it turned out to be a bit more than an action film: a violent lesson in Zen!
What did I say there? Yes, read it again: a violent lesson in Zen.

Edward Norton plays Jack who is bored by his life as an insurance inspector who suffers from severe insomnia. Accidentally he runs into Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and the two become friends. After finding out about their mutual love for fighting and pain, they set up a fight club where strangers can beat the shit out of eachother and still become friends. Fight Club slowly evolves to become an anarchistic/terroristic organisation lead by Jack and Tyler.

Tyler has the strangest philosophy of life which gets pretty close to what you hear from the Buddhist corner of Zen at times. He wants Jack and later his other students to become unattached by the material world, fame, appearance, etc. Also he says that the destruction of life (your own or that of others) will result in higher appreciation of it, but death is something to definately not worry about. During the film Tyler says a lot of things which are in total contrast to his lifestyle and it seems that through violence he wants to reach harmony with himself and the world. Taking ascesitism and self-mutilation to extremes, I like the idea of Fincher and his story.

What I don’t like too much is the end which is very Matrix/Existenz-like. Also the length is a bit overdone (135 min). But overall “Fight Club” is better than I expected and it reveals some strange abnormalities in peoples (spiritual) lifes to extremes.

Fatherland * Christopher Menaul * 1994

Don’t confuse this TV-film with films with similar or even the same titles, I noticed there are a couple of them.

Fatherland is a political thriller that plays in Nazi-Germany, that is to say, an imaginary Nazi-Germany. The Nazis won WWII and Hitler now rules the biggest part of Europe as an empire that he called Gemania or “Das Neue Deutsche Reich”. He is close to turning 75 and not only big celebrations are prepared, but also the coming of the new American president Kennedy to Germania to revive the bonds between the two countries brings exiting times. The Germans are still fighting Russia in the East and Hitler needs America to make sure he will be able to keep and expand his empire. Most of the empire is peacefull and prosperous. The SS has become the police-force and the Gestappo is something similar to the FBI or CIA.
However the civilians are heavily indoctrinated and the Germanian government tells them what to think and to believe, decades of Nazi-government has made some people quite cynical and critical. Because of the coming of JFK for the first time since the beginning of WWII journalists are allowed in the Reich being carefully lead around in a tight program. One of them, Charlie Maguire (Miranda Richardson) is led to a trail that would mean the end of the Reich. A big secret that has costed many lifes and recently the lifes of a few high officers that know about it. One thing that is kept secret from the people is that hundreds of thousands of soldiers have already died in the war against Russia, but the biggest secret of them all, that almost nobody knows about is that six to seven million Jews have not been relocated to the East, but gassed and burned. Before JFK visits Germania, Hitler wanted to get rid off everybody who knows about this, but of course Maguire finds everything out just in time and shows photos to her president who leaves and the Reich falls to pieces. Maguire is helped by the SS-police-officer Xavier March (Rutger Hauer).

The idea is kind of nice. It is strange though that all Germanians speak English, or better said, American English. However newspapers, TV-reports are in German suggesting that the English language is only for the film, the Americans and Germans have no problems whatsoever to understand eachother.
Overall “Fatherland” is an entertaining film. A political thriller after American model placed in Nazi-Germany and with a not too far-fetched story.

Fallen * Gregory Hoblit * 1998

Not bad, for a Hollywood ‘supernatural horror’! John Hobbes (Denzel Washington) and ‘Jonesey’ (John Goodman) are two cops that have been partners for “12+ years”. Hobbes caught the gruesome serial killer Edgar Reese (Elias Koteas) who is fried in the electric chair. Then an amusing film developes in which you fairly quickly learn that an evil spirit wants to make the life of Hobbes miserable. However the story is slightly thin and some things are a bit too obvious, the end is still a bit of a surprise. The atmosphere is alright and the actors are doing fine, they even make the story fairly credible.

Das Experiment * Oliver Hirschbiegel * 2001

In a time that the “Big Brother” hype was at its highest and in England there was a similar experiment with prisoners and guards, the director of the German tv-crime-series “Kommissar Rex” and “Tatort” made this film with exactly the same idea as the Brittisch scientists. 20 Volunteers participate in a psychological experiment. At random 12 men are appointed prisoner, 8 as guards. The men are told to take their roles seriously. The prisoners are really prisoners and the guards have a job which allows them to go home at night. All the people will get paid afterwards, which for most is the reason to participate. Of course the experiment runs seriously out of hand.

The good part about this film is that I really got into it. It is filmed the way it would be in reality. In the beginning the prisoners make fun, the guards have to get into their roles and the two groups have to try out what they can, can’t, must or must not do. As in the real British experiment the guards’ power rises to their heads and the atmosphere gets pretty grim. For both parties the reactions are understandable, but Hirschbiegel looked up the extremes a bit TOO much. All in all a satisfactory film though.

Event Horizon * Paul W.S. Anderson * 1997

How many times a friend of mine told me to watch this film with me replying “well, it is scifi, and I don’t like that”, so after asking if I have seen it a few dozens of times, he put a tape in my hands… Ah well then.
So, “Event Horizon” proved to be everything I feared: a Holywood scifi. Based on a thin story about worm-holes (as if creating these will be experimental in 2045, they have been working out theories about that for years) and the things that the spaceship picked up from ‘another place’ (“fear” of course), the people of the “Event Horizon” didn’t live to tell about their experiences and when the maker and a few other go visit the ship after it returned our very universe, things turn a bit in the way of a horror which is not too well done (very cheap computer animations), credible or enjoyable.
Better filmtips in this section for sure!

Europa * Lars von Trier * 1991

Maybe not the best Von Trier film, but still this is the better kind of film. “Europa” tells the story of the American Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) who goes to the post-WWII Germany to be conductor in a sleeptrain. Germany is in ruins, a terrorist organisation practically rules the country and everybody tries to make life as livable as possible. The film is almost entirely in black and white with here and there some colour to bring things under attention. Further you don’t get to see the light of day, which makes the film extra grim and depressive. Also it is very slow and not much happens. Actually it is mostly an atmosphere-picture.

If you like the more independent/alternative kinds of films, this is one that you should see some time. <3>