The Women Directors Hall of Fame

I am finished and my list is sent.

You're the second person to compare it to Forrest Gump...maybe the makers of Forrest Gump copied it, since this came first!

I still didn't get a chance to read the reviews but I'm not surprised. It hit me strongly.

I tried watching Europa Europa last night but no sub titles and was a poor video quality.

Does anybody have a link to good quality copy of it with English subs? Or at least a quality copy of it and I can add my own subs.

I'm not sure whether it's a moral objection. Or maybe it is, I don't know. Obviously he's a self-entitled wall street guy with a superiority complex who likes murdering people... I have a moral objection to him and I think most people would. I just thought the film would have a stronger moral objection to him, or perhaps I just thought the satire would be sharper. Maybe I'm wrong though and people enjoy the transgressive experience of rooting for such an *******.

Nothing Bad Can Happen


I have to confess first off that I watched this without English subs and my German is a little rusty so there may have been something lost in translation - or perhaps it is more just that some of the actions in the film have no explanation.

The title alone fills you with dread even when nothing particularly untoward happens for the first half hour of the movie. Then, when something first does happen (the kangaroo punch), it’s not entirely clear whether it was intentional at first. Then the bad things start happening with increasing regularity and severity until it is quite sickening.

It’s an uncomfortable watch. In some ways it reminded me of some of Lars Von Trier’s films, all naturalistic suffering, but I didn’t like it quite as much. There seemed to be less beauty to counterbalance the horror.

Tore has several opportunities to escape, but chooses not to, which is interesting but makes him less sympathetic. At first I thought he was staying to help Sanny but confronted with direct evidence that her father is abusing her he stays rather than getting any help for her. Him choosing to return (particularly leaving the hospital) seemed to embolden and encourage Benno to even more abuses, whether because he knows he can get away with it or because he becomes more determined to ‘break’ him, I’m not sure.

Even if we take it that he chooses suffering because of his religious belief (he does seem to embrace things he’s been told, like ‘turning the other cheek’ at the beginning single-mindedly), there are other actions of his that are strange, like when he leaves the pool to go trampolining. He seems almost child-like at times. It makes me wonder about his past - has he ever had a family?

The other characters aren’t much more logical - Benno is clearly on an abusive power trip but why the other people join in I have no idea. Sanny is the only really sympathetic character. I’m not quite sure what the message of this film was, if there was one, beyond people are awful. I think I read that it was based on a true story, I’d be interested to find out more about that.

I wasn’t blown away by the performances. Benno was good, there’s a sort of quiet menace even under his charm at the beginning and he gives these little looks over Tore’s head like you know he’s plotting something, but I didn’t like Tore’s performance quite so much and maybe that’s another reason I had trouble connecting to the character.

I didn’t love it, but it was an interesting watch which I would never have heard of otherwise.

Thanks for explaining Thursday.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the same lack of moral objections by other films to the wrongful actions of the protagonist causes the movie to be seen negatively. One good example is Starship Troopers. @seanc would you agree?

Once again not defending the film, it's not my type of movie, I'm just curious how my fellow MoFo's minds work
Yup I would agree with that.

As far as Tore goes, I think he's just a lost soul from a broken home, and yes he believes Jesus is testing him. He also wants to help save the girl.

I can't remember having any moral objection to Starship Troopers but I felt similarly about The Wolf of Wall Street - everybody knows he's an awful person, that's part of the point, but at times the film itself seemed to, if not glorify, at least revel in the awfulness to the point of being complicit in it. Maybe it's a point of view question, if the camera is lingering on certain depravity in a voyeuristic sort of way rather than just presenting it.

I did wonder if he was also autistic or have some other kind of neurological difference. But maybe it is just faith. (Maybe faith is a neurological difference...) I quite liked that the film doesn't really take any side on the religious question. Is Tore a deluded idiot or a martyr? Does it matter? Benno's an evil dick either way.

I thought he wanted to save her too... but perhaps his idea of saving her is more spiritual than practical.

This puzzled me too. That was one of the things that made me think I'd missed something, I just didn't really understand her. She was just so straight faced about everything. I can believe that Benno manipulated her up to a point but some of the stuff she does is downright weird. Does she know about Benno's abuse of her daughter?

Yeah, she confused the hell out of me. She came across nice at first (so did Benno of course but that always felt like a facade to me) but at the very first instance of abuse; the punch at the party, she had absolutely no reaction. The options for her are: she's just like Benno and always has been, she suffered a lot of abuse herself from him and would rather the abuse be directed towards Tore than her or her family or Benno has manipulated her. There's problems with them all, the problem with the last one is she is fine with his abuse of him from the start and that would suggest either something like this has happened before or Benno told her about it in advance, i dunno that's really weird. Although Benno must have planned this as he turned up to the jesus freaks thing for a reason. I really don't have a clue about her.

Unless i missed it it's never revealed whether she knows of her daughters abuse. We only see one instance of that and he does seem to do it because he's got the opportunity, we never see him doing anything towards her when her mother is around or is close by enough that she could possibly catch him. Man, i don't have a clue.

I think it's most likely she has been abused to the point of being brainwashed like many other poor women.

I think that's most likely it too especially with her blaming Tore at the end. She probably blamed herself for the abuse she received too until he came along and now she sees herself in him; a weak victim like she was.

As in she saw herself as a weak victim not calling her one myself.

The Ascent (1977)

I liked this! It was very focus on the human cost of the Soviet Union's struggle with Nazi Germany in WWII. What's great about this is, it's a very personal movie, it really makes you feel like you are there....and, you sure in the hell don't want to be there!

Damn the struggle the Soviet soldiers and partisan went through was horrific. The stark black and white photography made the film feel all the more cold and hopeless.

I liked the way we follow just the two soldiers around. There's no back story, none is needed. There's no love interest or secondary story lines, none is needed. There's just the cold brutality of war and the choices one has to make. This reminded me of an English language film about Soviet partisans in WWII, which was also powerful but unfortunately I can't remember what it was called.

This is my kind of nom and it will go towards the top of my list.

You too? That bugged me, it was like get over the credits all ready I want to watch the movie. BUT that won't effect my opinion of the film as it was done back in production, probably nothing the director could have done about it. I just thought it was funny that you mentioned the same thing. You know who else complained about credits over a powerful opening scene?

Yeah, over that beautiful long shot. I don't remember them being this intrusive though.

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Letterboxd

Yup agreed, I wonder if anyone else will comment on that?

I was beginning to think that might be it, actually, that she had seen it all before and knew what to expect.