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Zorba the Greek is of course a decades old classic, but the former Lord Mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, who is extremely popular in Munich, finished his last term and the Munich Film Festival whose patron he always was (not just because it was his job as the Mayor; the current festival runner owes him her job, and he got the budget for the festival more than doubled) decided to throw in a special event for him, which was to show his favourite movie which he got to introduce. Since Zorba the Greek was a film classic I'd never managed to watch, I thought I might as well, especially since chances are I wouldn't have the chance to see it on the big screen again. What I knew, via pop cultural osmosis, going in: based on a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, the film makers invented Sirtaki for it which subsequently became everyone's favourite Greek dance (in an example of movie inventing reality which then does become reality), and Anthony Quinn's star making title role supposedly embodies Greek joie de vivre. That was it.
The first surprise was that it was in black-and-white; somehow I had assumed it was in colour. Mind you, stylistcally, I think black and white was a good choice (if it was a choice and not simply a question of money), because that way the beauty of the Greek landscape doesn't come across as postcard-idyllic, but as something that has harsh and unforgiving elements in it as well. While Anthony Quinn's role is indeed a thirst-for-life/larger-than-life type of character ("ein Urviech", said Christian Ude in his introduction, which is a German-Bavarian expression you can't translate), there is some incredibly dark stuff in this movie as well which given the other Kazantzakis novel I've seen brought to the screen was The Last Temptation of Christ isn't, in retrospect, surprising. A type of "feelgood" tourist advertisment about Greece the way, say, Mamma Mia is, this certainly is not: the two female characters in it suffer horrible fates. One, played by Irene Papas, gets slut-shamed, hounded, stoned - I mean literally, the old testament way - by the entire village and then gets her throat cut for good measure, and the other, a French woman, while dying of old age, basically, has her dying hours mixed with the (desperately poor) villagers starting to get into her house to rob it, two women even making it into her bedroom staring at her and wanting her to die already though Zorba manages to keep the rest out until she's drawn her dying breath, and then the house gets picked clean in no times flat (but otoh, Hortense not having been Greek Orthodox, the priest won't bury her). Pop cultural osmosis certainly didn't tell me about this! And they're among the most memorable sequences of the movie, too. Mind you: I think they keep the story from sentimentalizing poverty or rural "simplicity", and the archaic mercilessness with which Irene Papas' character (who is solely referred to as "the Widow" by dialogue, though Wiki tells me she has a name in the novel) is destroyed by everyone, with the movie's pov character, the writer Basil, being too cowardly to intervene (which comes with the uncomfortable awareness on the part of the audience that most of us probably would be, faced with a mob, but it doesn't make one like the guy more) has something of Euripides.
Speaking of the writer, in the movie he's half-English, half-Greek, raised in Britain, but I bet that's solely so they could cast Alan Barnes in the role and blame his repression on being English and that in the novel he's all Greek. The odd couple pairing of him and Zorba - shy restrained intellectual meets hedonist party animal - thus also gets to be an entry in the movies wherein repressed Brits need the encounter with Southern Europe to be liberated. Though I have to say that for a current day audience, it looks far more likely that Basil is a gay man in the closet with a crush on Zorba who tries a fling with the Widow as a desperate last attempt at heterosexuality (and one she pays for with her life) than that he's too shy to hit on women. The way Basil falls for Zorba upon first encounter and keeps indulging him financially and forgiving him things like a professed shopping trip for supplies turning into Zorba partying with prostitutes certainly makes more sense that way. Though Anthony Quinn certainly is extremely charming in the role. Also: when Basil tries to make the Widow's death about his manpain, Zorba (who as opposed to Basil fought to save her and would have succeeded if not for the throat cutting) cuts that short with a pithy single sentence. In conclusion: I can totally see where this movie got his reputation.
On to new movies.
Quissa: directed by Anup Singh, an Indian-German-French co production starring Irrfan Khan and Tillotoma Shoma which is two thirds great and then, for me, has a last ten minutes I utterly disagree with even though they have been prepared by the beginning and I can see what they're trying to say. The movie starts with the India/Pakistan partition of 1947 when Umber Singh, a Sikh (played by Irrfan Khan) has to flee with his family. His third daughter has just been born, and the way he greets this news immediately establishes how desperate he's for a son. But the key event happens a few years later, when his wife Mehar is pregnant for the fourth time. Umber Singh insists it will be a boy now. The child is born, and as Mehar expected, it is a girl. But Umber Singh says it's a boy and calls "him" Kanwar.
( Extremely spoilery discussion from this point on )
In conclusion: two thirds of a movie I loved, beautifully filmed and acted, and ten minutes of DO NOT WANT at the end, alas.
Die Auserwählten: directed by Christoph Röhl (son of historian John Röhl and raised bilingually between Britain and Germany), this is a made for tv movie which had its premiere last night and will be broadcast on tv in a few months. It deals with one of the biggest sexual abuse scandals come to light in recent German history, at the Odenwaldschule - German's most famous socially progressive, anti-authoritarian boarding school until the public at large found out systematic sexual abuse had been going on for decades, with the former headmaster (to give you an idea of his level of reputation and public image: when Astrid Lindgren got the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, he was the one holding the laudatory speech) as the chief but by no means only perpetrator. Christoph Röhl already made a documentary film about the Odenwaldschule, but this movie is a fictionalized version, featuring two of our most famous current actors, Ulrich Tukur (as the headmaster) and Julia Jentsch (as the sole teacher trying to protest; you may remember her as Sophie Scholl, and btw, another former Sophie Scholl, Lena Stolze, is also one of the adult actors). It's not without flaws - the opening sequence, where at the school's hundreth anniversary celebration some of the abused former students as adults interrupt and demand to be heard, feels staged (it may have happened, but it still feels artificial), for example -, but as soon as we flash back to the 1970s, the staginess disappears and the story is told in an affecting and powerful way. Julia Jentsch's character comes to the school as a new teacher and at first is thrilled by the seeming openess and encouragement of the children, and then starts to realize more and more something is incredibly wrong. Hers is only one of the two povs in the film, though; the other is that of Frank Hoffmann, one of the boys abused. (The school was and is coeducational, and the movie also includes one of the teachers having an affair with one of the older - but still teenage - girls, but the headmaster and the music teacher who were the main abusers were both solely interested in boys - of every age - so the victims were mainly male.) Röhl as a director doesn't put his young actors through sex scenes, thankfully, he makes clear what's going on via hands on shoulders, shoes of a man and a boy in front of the shower, in a particularly shudder worthy instance a finger on a leg, nothing more explicit than that. The horror is mainly achieved through showing the children and teenagers before and after, the wilful ignorance of the parents and the in various degrees sycophancy to complicity to active participation by the other teachers. Casting Tukur - whom international audiences may remember as Ulrich Mühe's boss in The Lives of Others - was also important, because he sells the aura of jovial bonhommie, charming people instead of twirling his metaphorical moustache for all to see, which makes the creepiness behind the facade all the more revolting. The various methods in which he maintains his power are all too familiar: there's the tried and true "distressed children are liars" and "do you really believe something like this about me?", but also the very 1970s "children have a right to explore their sexuality, do you want us to fall back into sexual repression?" and "you're blaming me because you're too afraid to face your own desires". With the adults, that is. With the children, the tactics go from "I'm your friend and know best, this is only natural" to "no one will believe you anyway".
The end of the film brings us back into present day and the public hearing where more and more former students speak out, and this time I didn't feel it staged anymore, maybe because I don't think a scroll text alone about how the abuse came to light etc. would have done it; at this point at the audience you want at least some justice, want at least the victims to be believed and listened to instead of continuing to be dismissed and silenced, and you want to see it.
Because this was the premiere, the director, producer, scriptwriters, camera people, casting people and some of the actors were all there, so instead of a Q& A we got them making their bows, which was a good thing, too, because I don't think the audience, emotionally wrung as it was, would have been ready for a traditional Q & A. Also present: several of the now adult abuse victims, one of whom came in front of the screen to say that it was difficult to watch - the film was made on location, so the memories triggered were immediate -, but that he's really glad it got made and thinks it represents what they went through in a way that does them justice.
The first surprise was that it was in black-and-white; somehow I had assumed it was in colour. Mind you, stylistcally, I think black and white was a good choice (if it was a choice and not simply a question of money), because that way the beauty of the Greek landscape doesn't come across as postcard-idyllic, but as something that has harsh and unforgiving elements in it as well. While Anthony Quinn's role is indeed a thirst-for-life/larger-than-life type of character ("ein Urviech", said Christian Ude in his introduction, which is a German-Bavarian expression you can't translate), there is some incredibly dark stuff in this movie as well which given the other Kazantzakis novel I've seen brought to the screen was The Last Temptation of Christ isn't, in retrospect, surprising. A type of "feelgood" tourist advertisment about Greece the way, say, Mamma Mia is, this certainly is not: the two female characters in it suffer horrible fates. One, played by Irene Papas, gets slut-shamed, hounded, stoned - I mean literally, the old testament way - by the entire village and then gets her throat cut for good measure, and the other, a French woman, while dying of old age, basically, has her dying hours mixed with the (desperately poor) villagers starting to get into her house to rob it, two women even making it into her bedroom staring at her and wanting her to die already though Zorba manages to keep the rest out until she's drawn her dying breath, and then the house gets picked clean in no times flat (but otoh, Hortense not having been Greek Orthodox, the priest won't bury her). Pop cultural osmosis certainly didn't tell me about this! And they're among the most memorable sequences of the movie, too. Mind you: I think they keep the story from sentimentalizing poverty or rural "simplicity", and the archaic mercilessness with which Irene Papas' character (who is solely referred to as "the Widow" by dialogue, though Wiki tells me she has a name in the novel) is destroyed by everyone, with the movie's pov character, the writer Basil, being too cowardly to intervene (which comes with the uncomfortable awareness on the part of the audience that most of us probably would be, faced with a mob, but it doesn't make one like the guy more) has something of Euripides.
Speaking of the writer, in the movie he's half-English, half-Greek, raised in Britain, but I bet that's solely so they could cast Alan Barnes in the role and blame his repression on being English and that in the novel he's all Greek. The odd couple pairing of him and Zorba - shy restrained intellectual meets hedonist party animal - thus also gets to be an entry in the movies wherein repressed Brits need the encounter with Southern Europe to be liberated. Though I have to say that for a current day audience, it looks far more likely that Basil is a gay man in the closet with a crush on Zorba who tries a fling with the Widow as a desperate last attempt at heterosexuality (and one she pays for with her life) than that he's too shy to hit on women. The way Basil falls for Zorba upon first encounter and keeps indulging him financially and forgiving him things like a professed shopping trip for supplies turning into Zorba partying with prostitutes certainly makes more sense that way. Though Anthony Quinn certainly is extremely charming in the role. Also: when Basil tries to make the Widow's death about his manpain, Zorba (who as opposed to Basil fought to save her and would have succeeded if not for the throat cutting) cuts that short with a pithy single sentence. In conclusion: I can totally see where this movie got his reputation.
On to new movies.
Quissa: directed by Anup Singh, an Indian-German-French co production starring Irrfan Khan and Tillotoma Shoma which is two thirds great and then, for me, has a last ten minutes I utterly disagree with even though they have been prepared by the beginning and I can see what they're trying to say. The movie starts with the India/Pakistan partition of 1947 when Umber Singh, a Sikh (played by Irrfan Khan) has to flee with his family. His third daughter has just been born, and the way he greets this news immediately establishes how desperate he's for a son. But the key event happens a few years later, when his wife Mehar is pregnant for the fourth time. Umber Singh insists it will be a boy now. The child is born, and as Mehar expected, it is a girl. But Umber Singh says it's a boy and calls "him" Kanwar.
( Extremely spoilery discussion from this point on )
In conclusion: two thirds of a movie I loved, beautifully filmed and acted, and ten minutes of DO NOT WANT at the end, alas.
Die Auserwählten: directed by Christoph Röhl (son of historian John Röhl and raised bilingually between Britain and Germany), this is a made for tv movie which had its premiere last night and will be broadcast on tv in a few months. It deals with one of the biggest sexual abuse scandals come to light in recent German history, at the Odenwaldschule - German's most famous socially progressive, anti-authoritarian boarding school until the public at large found out systematic sexual abuse had been going on for decades, with the former headmaster (to give you an idea of his level of reputation and public image: when Astrid Lindgren got the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, he was the one holding the laudatory speech) as the chief but by no means only perpetrator. Christoph Röhl already made a documentary film about the Odenwaldschule, but this movie is a fictionalized version, featuring two of our most famous current actors, Ulrich Tukur (as the headmaster) and Julia Jentsch (as the sole teacher trying to protest; you may remember her as Sophie Scholl, and btw, another former Sophie Scholl, Lena Stolze, is also one of the adult actors). It's not without flaws - the opening sequence, where at the school's hundreth anniversary celebration some of the abused former students as adults interrupt and demand to be heard, feels staged (it may have happened, but it still feels artificial), for example -, but as soon as we flash back to the 1970s, the staginess disappears and the story is told in an affecting and powerful way. Julia Jentsch's character comes to the school as a new teacher and at first is thrilled by the seeming openess and encouragement of the children, and then starts to realize more and more something is incredibly wrong. Hers is only one of the two povs in the film, though; the other is that of Frank Hoffmann, one of the boys abused. (The school was and is coeducational, and the movie also includes one of the teachers having an affair with one of the older - but still teenage - girls, but the headmaster and the music teacher who were the main abusers were both solely interested in boys - of every age - so the victims were mainly male.) Röhl as a director doesn't put his young actors through sex scenes, thankfully, he makes clear what's going on via hands on shoulders, shoes of a man and a boy in front of the shower, in a particularly shudder worthy instance a finger on a leg, nothing more explicit than that. The horror is mainly achieved through showing the children and teenagers before and after, the wilful ignorance of the parents and the in various degrees sycophancy to complicity to active participation by the other teachers. Casting Tukur - whom international audiences may remember as Ulrich Mühe's boss in The Lives of Others - was also important, because he sells the aura of jovial bonhommie, charming people instead of twirling his metaphorical moustache for all to see, which makes the creepiness behind the facade all the more revolting. The various methods in which he maintains his power are all too familiar: there's the tried and true "distressed children are liars" and "do you really believe something like this about me?", but also the very 1970s "children have a right to explore their sexuality, do you want us to fall back into sexual repression?" and "you're blaming me because you're too afraid to face your own desires". With the adults, that is. With the children, the tactics go from "I'm your friend and know best, this is only natural" to "no one will believe you anyway".
The end of the film brings us back into present day and the public hearing where more and more former students speak out, and this time I didn't feel it staged anymore, maybe because I don't think a scroll text alone about how the abuse came to light etc. would have done it; at this point at the audience you want at least some justice, want at least the victims to be believed and listened to instead of continuing to be dismissed and silenced, and you want to see it.
Because this was the premiere, the director, producer, scriptwriters, camera people, casting people and some of the actors were all there, so instead of a Q& A we got them making their bows, which was a good thing, too, because I don't think the audience, emotionally wrung as it was, would have been ready for a traditional Q & A. Also present: several of the now adult abuse victims, one of whom came in front of the screen to say that it was difficult to watch - the film was made on location, so the memories triggered were immediate -, but that he's really glad it got made and thinks it represents what they went through in a way that does them justice.
