3-Iron Director: Ki-doc-kim 2004 from the 3rdear at the cinemateque Jerusalem seen Tue 2nd Dec.
Extraordinary people, no matter how good they are or how gentle they are towards others, even towards plants and the environment, must live according to the laws that govern society, however harsh these may be, or face the consequences. The law can even mete out cruel punishments to the criminal. The only way a person can live contrary to the the laws of society is by becoming invisible, which is possible as this wonderful movie shows.
All of Me "Llévate mis amores" (original title) Arturo Gonzales Vilaseñor 2014
This documentary is about the poor helping the very poor. Poor women, practically starving themselves prepare plastic bags filled with rice, stand at the side of railway tracks, where freight trains rumble past with starving migrants hanging from their sides and balancing on their roofs, and hold out the bags so that the starving migrants can reach out and grab them as the train passes by.
1. Baran Director Majid Majidi 2001
This is a powerful movie that brings us into an atmosphere of suffering, like Dante’s inferno; the skeleton of a high level building with fires at each level. The laborers interminably push wheelbarrows and carry heavy bags of cement from one level to the other. At the same time they live in fear that labor inspectors will have them dismissed. The film, by showing modern buildings and cars in the far distance, make a point that not everybody in Iran lives like this, only the outsiders, like the refugees from Afghanistan. The impossible happens and a beautiful, young girl enters this hell and a young man, falls in love with her and this feeling of love lifts him up to feelings of happiness, and he performs acts of heroism for his beloved. It doesn’t matter that she can’t requite his love, because his life is sustained by his feelings of happiness and love.
Children of Heaven Majid Majidi 1997
This movie is full of interesting and exciting scenes; they are really unforgettable, such as the opening scene of the cobbler repairing a girl’s pink shoe, which is the crux of the matter. Later the picture of the little girl, sitting like a Buddha, dressed in vivid red and yellow velvet, with a kind of crown on her head, looks like a princess. Later she proves worthy of such a title; she is kind, patient and determined. This is especially evident in a scene when she eventually catches up with the girl who wears her shoes. Then the scene of her chasing her brother’s sneaker, carried away by a stream of water is exciting and brings us to a feeling of relief and happiness. Throughout the movie we are kept in alternating suspense and relief. It’s like an emotional roller coaster and is great entertainment.
Conrack. Director: Martin Ritt. 1974 from you tube. Seen: Thu 3rdNov 2015
Good teachers are rare breeds. Not only is it difficult to find people with the training and ability to be good teachers, there’s a more difficult problem to overcome in finding a good teacher and that is the resistance of communities to accept the change that good teachers bring about in society. They are scared of change because they see it as a threat to their livelihood, which in many communities depends on exploiting ignorant, uneducated people; they are forced by their uneducated situation to accept menial jobs and so aren’t a threat to their higher paid jobs. They are a threat to employers because the more educated they are the more they’d have to be paid. So teachers, who are trying to educate and so raise the poorer people to a higher level in society have a difficult job.
The Good Heart Director Dagur Kári 2009 From the Third Ear at the Cinemateque. Seen Mon 1st Dec 2016
Mostly it seems that people exploit the good actions of kind hearted people toward them and this turns the kind hearted person into being bitter and not willing to perform any more acts of kindness. Notwithstanding, however, this movie shows that it’s always worthwhile to perform an act of kindness when the opportunity presents itself because the ultimate result can be surprisingly good as this excellent. This is a most entertaining movie
The Gunman. Pierre Morel 2015
I’m amazed at how often I can feel tension and excitement looking at movies, showing the war between the forces of evil and the forces of justice. Even though I know that the forces of evil stand no chance of destroying the forces of good, represented by Shean Penn, especially considering that we get regular views of muscular physique, I’m still tense, because the forces of evil, this time are really powerful while the forces of good have the added burden of needing to protect a beautiful woman (that really proves that they are on the good side), our tension is also increased by the knowledge we receive from the doctor that our hero is suffering from a debilitating illness, so even while he’s on top we dread that the deadly illness will strike him down. Naturally this doesn’t happen, but this does cause us some concern. The pursuit takes us through Barcelona and Granada, with massive high power shooting, fast driving and amazing stunts, which end in the bullring of Granada, with a magnificent scene, worthy of the defeat of evil; the bull gores the evil leader. Shean Penn is amazing; he’s a regular one man army. This movie held my attention completely, but it might not for some viewers.
The Bedroom. Todd Field 2001
The mystery told in this excellent movie isn’t about who did it, which is expected and we know who it is, but the beauty of the movie lies in the eventual explanation about why things happened the way they did. This explanation may be obvious to some viewers right at the beginning of the movie but it came to me as a surprise and added immensely to my enjoyment ot the move, which also lay in the excellent acting.
Cure - The Life of another Director: Andrea Staka 2014 Cinemateque Jerusalem Wed 25th Nov 2015
Some societies have customs which perpetuate the memory of a loved one, making as if he or she is still alive, like the custom of showing pictures of the deceased or the custom, shown in this movie, of dressing up in clothes that the departed would enjoy, as the widow of a man killed in the war does. She dresses up in a beautiful white wedding dress that the deceased husband loved.
The idea of not accepting the fact of death, is quite foreign in Jewish society. Jews actually have customs that reinforce the idea that death is final; it is a Jewish custom for each mourner to place spadesful of earth on the coffin, all pictures of the deceased are hidden from view during the 7 days of morning, it is a custom that on seeing a grave one must put stones on it. All of these customs tend to reinforce the certainty of death.
This is why Jews might not easily understand why the family is so eager to transfer the identity of their daughter to her friend, who killed her during an argument and accidentally pushes her over the edge of a cliff over the raging sea. The friend is a foreign migrant to Croatia and is searching for a way to be accepted by the people in her new homeland. She readily adopts the identity of her dead friend that the family attach to her, without even being aware, for a while, that she is doing this.
London River a movie Directed By Rachid Bouchareb 2012 Cinemateque Jerusalem 24th Nov 2015 19:00
My friend Shaul sent me a link to a humorous page where John Cleese talks about how different countries classify terrorist alerts. Unfortunately I've lost my sense of humor about these things, especially after seeing a movie last night "London River".
As if we didn't know, this movie demonstrates, or I should say that the events depicted in this movie (because they are true), show that the modern world is, more than ever, guided by religious aphorisms, which in my opinion screw up our sense of moral values.
The movie is directed by Rachid Bouchareb. His biography only tells us that he was born in Algeria, but, judging from message in the movie, I presume he's a Moslem.It begins, naturally, as would befit the message, with Matthew (5:44) "love thine enemy". It seems terrorists, even though they may be Moslems, like this Christian doctrine, because it ensures their acceptance in a Christian world.
It's about two people, coming together (that is very beautiful, like the lion lying down with the wolf) after their children were killed in a terrorist attack in London (that is very bad, like the apocalypse). The one is a Moslem, the father of the boy, a black moslem from somewhere in Africa, looking as if he had just jumped out of a tree, who lives in France and the other is an English lady from the isle of Guernsey. All the people who feature in the movie are Moslem, including the police, excepting the mother of the girl.
The actual terrorist attack is pushed into the background, but cannot be pushed out of our minds.
In my humble opinion. I think that my emotions are jerked into shock, disgust and anger by the juxtapositioning or a ghastly terror attack on the one hand and the pure, idealistic harmony of two human beings from different cultures coming together, on the other. Suggesting that there is good in the bad.
The movie is telling us that something good comes from something bad. As if it was the will of Allah that caused the terror attack and the will of Allah to bring two good people together. The movie suggests that the boy was the suicide bomber, but that information is pushed aside.
The Long Hot Summer. Director: Martin Ritt 1958 from the Third Ear at the Cinemateque Nov 2016
A good man will always come out on top and will eventually confound preconceived opinions, which lead to dangerous hot headedness. The movie proves to be a sharp criticism of the tendency of many ignorant people of jumping to conclusions about somebody’s character. A man’s character doesn’t necessarily match his reputation and we should be careful about pre-judging people on hearsay evidence. That only makes life very hot and uncomfortable as this excellent movie shows.
Meek’s Cut off Kelly Reichardt 2010A
family of high Biblical morals trekking through the desert on their way to their promised land, is wary of immorality, which they think is all around them in this barren wilderness and suspect their rough looking scout of misleading them into a trap. Hesitantly they put their trust in an Indian, who the scout wants to kill because he is convinced that he is the one who will lead them into a trap to kill and rob them.Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Poetry Chang Dong Lee 2010 available at the Third Ear Cinemateque Jerusalem Nov 2015
After seeing this movie I conclude that only a person who has deep feelings about his/her life experiences can write a good poem. The feeling can be about something simple like seeing an apple or a tree or a leaf or it can be about a terrible tragedy, such as a young girl commits suicide, because of suffering caused by our son and the grandmother commits an immoral act to get money to compensate the girl’s parents.
Poetry is the expression of deep feeling, brought on by events and experiences that happen to us, through no fault of ours. Everybody has deep feelings about these experiences, some people hide them while there are some (very few) who record them as poetry for all the world to share.
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