Sauna

I had wanted to see Sauna a while back and since it is Finnish it took a little for it to show up on DVD. To be completely honest. I didnt get it. I really dont know what happened in this movie but I wish I did. As a photographer, the cinematography is awesome in every way, the colors and vividness of it all reminds me of "Defiance" and "The Village".Sauna takes place in 1595 at the end of the Russian/Swedish war, two Swedish brothers are traveling and plotting the new country borders on a map. The oldest brother has endured this 25 year war and its brutality, the youngest has not and is studying to be a geography professor when he returns. At some point they lock away a young girl and leave her to die, as they get further away from her and happen upon a small undocumented town, the youngest brother is haunted by this girl. In the town they find a big concrete "Sauna", where it is said one can "Wash Your Sins". According to the official site (www.washyoursins.com) the movie is about "sins and repentance".

It is marketed as a horror movie, and some scenes are a bit scary/startling as well as tension filled. Unfortunately there is a lot lost in translation between the Finnish and English subtitles I believe, because when things start getting underway in the film things just stop making sense to me all together. Overall, the movie was beautifully shot and the scary things look awesome and are creepy but there might as well have been no subtitles because I cant even figure out the last half of the movie. Would have made a great photo exhibit of still images though.

"My favorite color is fluorescent beige"

I used to think that the screenwriters for "Million Dollar Baby" sat down and decided "lets make the most depressing movie ever about a single person." Precious easily cancelled out whatever meeting those people had. Anything that could happen to this girl in 1980's Harlem happened on the most grand of scales.

Precious is a 16 year old repeat middle school-er who is overweight and pregnant with her second child by her own father, the first born suffers from down syndrome and has been banished from their home by Precious's mother. Precious lives at home in a small apartment in Harlem with her mother (Mo'nique) where they consume massive amounts of soul food for what seems like every single meal. Her mother is unemployed and scamming the welfare system (by claiming Precious and Precious's first born daughter) to sustain herself while she watches tv all day alone. Precious attends school during the day where she is tormented by students for her size and then goes home to be verbally, physically and sexually abused by her mother and a father that has left the household but is seen briefly in graphic abuse scenes. Her life takes a turn for the "better" when she is sent to an alternative school and begins to learn to read and write. For once in her life she meets a teacher and peers who are her true friends and love her, all of which is nice and heartwarming but as a viewer we are quickly jolted out of that and thrown back into her home where in one scene she is almost decapitated practically by her mother wielding a frying pan. To say that this is not the feel good movie of the year is an understatement. There is never a point during this film that I felt I could breath a sigh of relief for Precious, because in the back of your mind you know this girl is totally screwed. Granted, there are some funny moments caught in Precious's classmates especially Joanna who I quoted for the title of this post. Hilarious.

The performance by newcomer Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe was great, I saw her in interviews a few weeks ago and to see the transformation between her and her character is pretty amazing. Mo'nique is seen as we have never seen her before, she has always been a graphic loud mouthed comedian, in this case she is loud, angry, disgruntled, and abusive in every way possible. She was terrifying to be honest. I would not be surprised if both or at least one of them is nominated for this years Oscar's, seeing how Mo'nique will react to that will be interesting considering her bad attitude and demands for money could be jeopardizing such prestigious nominations. According to her she was only in this movie for money and didnt care about "no Oscars". She has also opted out of all promotional duties for the film because Lionsgate and the films producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey will not go along with her $100,000 appearance fees.

The film is more graphic than I originally anticipated, I went into the movie knowing what was contained in the book but a New York Times article led me to believe that the sexual abuse scenes would not be shown in their entirety. They werent but more was seen than expected.

*SPOILERS* We learn that Precious is pregnant by her absent father for a second time, the first child has down syndrome and is forced to live with a relative away from Precious and her mother. We never learn the girls real name, only that they refer to her as an animal or "Mongol" short for mongoloid. On top of being raped by her father and having spawned two children from incest, she is also forced to perform sexual acts on her mother. I was not prepared to see this as I had thought I read earlier that this aspect was not in the film. With all of this on her plate, she eventually comes to find out that her father has AIDS and that she now does as well, luckily her baby does not.

Overall the performances are great from two new and unsuspecting actresses, but proceed with caution, this will no doubt bring anyone's mood down.

Das Weiße Band (The White Ribbon)

Michael Haneke has been directing films and causing audiences to squirm for years. His most famous works being Cache, The Piano Teacher and Funny Games (the original and the remake).

*Note: If you could handle Funny Games, checkout his other earlier film Bennys Video

His movies are not for the faint and are often slow moving and hard to watch, but if you can stick with them you have the opportunity to see boundaries pushed and human nature displayed in ways unseen before. His newest film, "The White Ribbon" recently won the 2009 Palm D'Or at Cannes and is also an official entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2010 Academy Awards. I have been waiting to see it for quite some time so I am glad to see that it will finally be arriving to select theaters December 30th.

10 years in the making, The White Ribbon is shot entirely in black and white, reminiscent of "Schindlers List" in some ways and the look of the characters reminds me of other holocaust films as well. Set in a small Protestant village in Germany right on the heels of WWI in 1913-1914. The story is narrated and follows children apart of the church choir that is ran by the local schoolteacher, Pastor and their families. "Strange" occurrences start to happen and startle the village, the question is who is behind it all. From what I have read the last few months, the film seems to be about repression mostly, if you raise children and people of a town to be strict and obedient, there is bound to be consequences of such strict upbringing. The film clearly serves as foreshadowing to the breakout of WWI and eventually the rise of the Third Reich and WWII.

"In a climate of everyday repression and parental brutality, passed from generation to generation, any political evil is possible," writes Richard Corliss for Time. "Nazism can bloom in Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the slaughtering armies in Rwanda and Sudan. Is man's humanity to man inherent? Or does it just have to be carefully taught? That is the central question of this fascinating film, which demands much of viewers and offers ample rewards for their involvement.... Haneke is not a perpetrator of cruelty but a prosecutor of it; and 'The White Ribbon,' constructed step by meticulous step, scene by forbidding, foreboding scene, is his grandest indictment of intolerance."