Film Review: Anton Corbijn - The American (America, 2010)

Anton Corbijn – The American (2010)

Having spent a week of the past autumn in Florence and Siena, seeing Tuscany with all its heavy clouds that seem like vast shrouds stretched all the way from the ground to cover the gods high above, is an immediate relief and a joy for me. Much more so since Corbijn, as a photographer, has a keen visual sense and while his Italy is kept significantly cooler than it would be through my own modest lens, it is simply a joy to watch. Good visuals make one relaxed, enable one to take whatever unfolds in reflectively, without the hectic emotional investment that most modern films demand. In that The American reminded me a little of Jim Jarmusch’s wonderful and utterly cool and unflappable The Limits of Control.

The story follows Jack or Eduardo or Signor Farfalle, as he is called in turn by both a prostitute and a female assassin. Jack is an assassin and weapon’s expert. The opening shows him enjoying a beautiful day in a hut in the Northern European woods together with a beautiful woman, who reclines on his shoulder, naked. They get dressed and cross the frozen lake to go into a nearby village when they are attacked by a gunman. He is obviously out for Jack. Jack shoots him, skillfully, and then – after a moment's thought and to the viewer's shock – he shoots the woman in the back of her head.

The film has no obvious explanations, but watching and listening to what is going on, it is not hard to fashion the story. Details are unnecessary and background details are limited and sparse in what turns out to be a highly stylized version of European spy thrillers from the 1970s. The setting is, as already mentioned, Tuscany, where the assassin is sent by his boss to hide out and complete a final mission. Ronin, by John Frankenheimer, is an obvious parallel, but Ronin is fleshy and demonstrative, while The American remains aloof and bordering on a parable.
The nature of his profession makes Jack a loner and supremely paranoid, something which is marvelously played with in a tense picnic scene between Jack and Clara, a prostitute who falls for him. The characters are sketches, but skillful sketches, and it is not hard to project oneself into any of them. Besides Jack and Clara there are a not entirely pure priest who attempts to befriend Jack and a read-headed, steel-eyed female assassin who orders a custom-made gun from Jack. The most effective scenes are scenes that bring the underlying tension close to the surface, although it never breaks it entirely, not even during the few faster moments. The film is slowly paced, rarely demonstrative and never abandons its cool and atmosphere. Everything is hinted at in masterful images, whether it is Jack haunted by the murder of the woman or the laconic and moving climax.

There is not much to say about the film, but it is one of those beautiful things that can be enjoyed in complete silence. I am sure that many people will consider the ending predictable, but that is beside the point. There is enough room for the viewer to arrange all the feelings and all the consequences so that they have the full impact and that alone is a rarity in modern American cinema. Of course this is not an American production - race and cultural context don't play a big role. The American could well be the Outsider and as such he might be a self-portrait of director Corbijn (he pretends to be a photographer), who has spoken about the loneliness of his job and of many travels in interviews.

Read more...

Film Review: Andrzej Munk - Bad Luck (Poland, 1960)

Andrzej Munk – Bad Luck (Zezowate szczescie, 1960)



At the beginning of the film an old man begs an official not to throw him out. He doesn’t want to start again and this place where he is now is the only place where his bad luck has not followed him. He begins to tell his life story, to illustrate just what fate has had in store for him.

So begins the story of Jan Piszczyk, the son of a tailor in Warszaw. We follow his childhood years, his luckless university days and how he meets his first love when he is hired to give her private tuition. We see him as a soldier, a prisoner of war, a lawyer in post-war Krakow and a party official. He streaks through life like a shooting star of misfortune. Whenever something good appears in Piszczyk’s life it is simply the gloss and veneer of some underlying and inevitable bad luck.

Walking through a field towards the military post that has just recruited him, Piszczyk is bombed by German planes, running in slapstick fashion between heads of coleslaw while the bombs explode around him. Heavily delayed he finally arrives in Zegrze, the military school – but it is deserted, raided and empty. He clambers through the rooms, finally finding what he was looking for: a gleaming gala uniform. After he had seen the laughingstock of his school escorting two ladies to a ball, he knew that to count for something he would have to find a uniform (either a priest’s or an officer’s). He is so enchanted by the image of himself in a uniform that he remains completely oblivious to a jeep of German soldiers who enter Zegrze, looking for Polish officers. When they enter the room behind him, he is still lost in a Narcissus gaze at his own image and is promptly captured. What can he tell them? That he just put the uniform on? What, furthermore, can he tell his fellow POWs? He makes up stories that make him out to be a war hero, almost implicating himself in a truly dangerous escape attempt, from which he is only “saved” when another graduate from Zegrze arrives in the prison camp and unmasks him…

Between a rock and a hard place would be a deeply comfortable position for Jan Piszczyk, as he continues tumbling and scratching out a place for himself, always waiting for the inevitable stroke of bad luck. The only time when nothing happens is when he is helping out at his father’s farm since, in his own words, fate probably considered cutting my ears off with a scythe a cheap trick.

A deep sadness is at the core of the upside down world that is presented in Bad Luck – in fact, things are so sad that all you can do is laugh. Cowardice leads to being hailed as a hero while no good deed, as the proverb says, goes unpunished. Piszczyk is cresting the waves of turbulence and as one upset leads him to another, we can get a glimpse at the upturned world of post-war Poland where opportunity goes hand in hand with paranoia and only robust fatalistic humour can get you through. It comes as a small but still very poignant surprise when we learn at the end of the film that the place Piszczyk is so loathe to leave is the state prison.

Andrzej Munk is not a very resonant name today - in 1961 the director from Krakow died aged thirty-nine in a car accident, leaving behind a small but impressive resumé. However, some of Munk's themes, like the cruel jokes that fate plays, turn up mixed into the more metaphysical and gothic films of one of Poland's most famous filmmakers, Roman Polanski, who was an assistant director on Bad Luck.

Read more...