The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame III: Foreign Language Edition

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Oh man, just finished Le Jour se Leve and that was soooo good! Wow.
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Women will be your undoing, Pépé



The Tin Drum aka Die Blechtrommel (1979)

Oskar Metzertath: That day, thinking about the grown-up world and my own future, I decided to call a halt. To stop growing then and there and remain a three-year-old, a gnome, once and for all.

Very much like @seanc had written in his review, the precise metaphor to this "cinema" is just beyond my grasp, and yet I am thoroughly engrossed by the beauty and the ugliness that go hand in hand with Director Volker Schlöndorff's dark, fantastical tale with sexual overtones.

Delving into several decades, including how his grandparents met, and his mother was born, to Oskar's (David Bennet) very self-descriptive birth and his early decision at age 3, to no longer grow. Equipped with a tin drum(s) and a scream that can break glass, Oskar's sojourn within a Polish-German community that had instantly welcomed and embraced the dogma of Hitler's regime from before, during, and after the end of, World War II is fraught with an almost cruel whimsy.

It is a bit ponderous at nearly two and a half hours, yet I remained engrossed through it all. The more shocking moments, feeling not so much having been forewarned by reading @Thursday Next's review. Thereby my perception included the context of the character's age as opposed to the actor's while filming this.

I also found myself drifting to another fantastical/dark-themed film during WWII, Pan's Labyrinth. Not specifically in content but in how equally balanced the beauty and ugliness gell creating a definitively artistic endeavor with a prominently visceral construct.

A very excellent film that I would never have delved into if not for these HoFs.
THANK YOU to whoever nominated this for me.
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Fitzcarraldo

Another film that I've been meaning to watch for decades but not quite got round to.

I feel like this is one of those films where the 'making of' story is at least as interesting as the film. I fully intend to check out both Burden of Dreams and My Best Fiend following watching this. In a way, the making of this film parallels the story it is telling - a man with a grand but crazy vision ventures into the Amazon, tries to get a ship over a hill and exploits a few of the natives. It's another film where if you look closely into some of the film-making practices, you wonder whether it is morally justified. I know some people are against animal cruelty on screen, but what about ethically dubious methods off-screen? Or the deaths of crew members?

Fitzcarraldo felt a lot like Aguirre: The Wrath of God mark ii. It doesn't seem to be quite as widely respected as Aguirre, and I guess that has more to do with Aguirre being this dramatic descent into madness and hell, whereas this is slightly lighter fare, more about one man's folly. I enjoyed it more though. I liked the look of the film a lot and the way the opera was woven through it.

One thing that bothered me about watching this was the dubbing. It's one of those films that whatever language you watch it in, it's dubbed, a bit like The Leopard. It's just the way it was made and it makes sense that they chose to do it that way, it's just a little odd to get used to.

Good nomination, will probably feature fairly high on my list.



Fitzcarraldo

Another film that I've been meaning to watch for decades but not quite got round to.

I feel like this is one of those films where the 'making of' story is at least as interesting as the film. I fully intend to check out both Burden of Dreams and My Best Fiend following watching this. In a way, the making of this film parallels the story it is telling - a man with a grand but crazy vision ventures into the Amazon, tries to get a ship over a hill and exploits a few of the natives. It's another film where if you look closely into some of the film-making practices, you wonder whether it is morally justified. I know some people are against animal cruelty on screen, but what about ethically dubious methods off-screen? Or the deaths of crew members?

Fitzcarraldo felt a lot like Aguirre: The Wrath of God mark ii. It doesn't seem to be quite as widely respected as Aguirre, and I guess that has more to do with Aguirre being this dramatic descent into madness and hell, whereas this is slightly lighter fare, more about one man's folly. I enjoyed it more though. I liked the look of the film a lot and the way the opera was woven through it.

One thing that bothered me about watching this was the dubbing. It's one of those films that whatever language you watch it in, it's dubbed, a bit like The Leopard. It's just the way it was made and it makes sense that they chose to do it that way, it's just a little odd to get used to.

Good nomination, will probably feature fairly high on my list.
Woohoo! Glad you liked it (that was my rec) I pretty much agree with your write-up, especially in its similarities to Aguirre.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Shoplifters (2018)
This is in Koreeda's bottom half albeit still a good film. Shocked by your joyous reaction, neither is this a top Koreeda nor anything new in Japanese cinema. Similar topics were there pretty much since its conception or at the very least since the 30s. Dunno if you've seen more Koreeda and how well you know Japanese films, but usually, people who think Shoplifters is a masterpiece are too late to the Koreeda hype train and overhype the wrong film. Quite a similar thing with Parasite, which I actually loved, but getting sick of Facebook film group experts who only ever watched Parasite and some other random Korean film and now pretend to be experts in Korean film.

That being said, the above is just an anecdotal observation mixed with my subjective opinion. I do not mean to be spiteful or rude, and I'm actually glad you had such a strong reaction to the film. From what I gather topics like this are supposed to make people discover new things, and it's great you did. Shouldn't come as a surprise that I suggest you watch other Koreeda films, especially Maborosi and Still Walking. It wouldn't hurt to track the history of the 'what is family' topic in Japanese cinema. Starting from Naruse's No Blood Relation is a good idea.
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Le Ceremonie (1995)


Tells the story of a rural maid who is taken in by a wealthy family and is then corrupted by a mail clerk. This is one of those films that is sort of all over the place when it comes to tone/pacing/performances. At times I felt like I was watching a dark comedy, other times a drama. My biggest issue is that the first 2 acts just felt so padded. While I enjoyed the central metaphor, and the climax to a point, I didn't care for the film as a whole.


At no point during the film was I able to connect with any of the characters. It wasn't so much that I didn't like them rather they never felt human. The lead is basically a cypher Catherine has very little descernable personality. When she comes across with Jeanne I seriously wonder what age they are because they are behaving like teenagers when they are grown women...it was weird.


I enjoyed the aesthetic of the film, the house was nice and the community felt real and lived in. Though I did have trouble really concentrating on the plot or feeling like the film will have any sort of impact on me.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
This is in Koreeda's bottom half albeit still a good film. Shocked by your joyous reaction, neither is this a top Koreeda nor anything new in Japanese cinema. Similar topics were there pretty much since its conception or at the very least since the 30s. Dunno if you've seen more Koreeda and how well you know Japanese films, but usually, people who think Shoplifters is a masterpiece are too late to the Koreeda hype train and overhype the wrong film. Quite a similar thing with Parasite, which I actually loved, but getting sick of Facebook film group experts who only ever watched Parasite and some other random Korean film and now pretend to be experts in Korean film.

That being said, the above is just an anecdotal observation mixed with my subjective opinion. I do not mean to be spiteful or rude, and I'm actually glad you had such a strong reaction to the film. From what I gather topics like this are supposed to make people discover new things, and it's great you did. Shouldn't come as a surprise that I suggest you watch other Koreeda films, especially Maborosi and Still Walking. It wouldn't hurt to track the history of the 'what is family' topic in Japanese cinema. Starting from Naruse's No Blood Relation is a good idea.
This is actually my second Koreeda film, the first was The Third Murder and enjoyed his work and yes, I was very "joyous" regarding this second film by him. So getting recs for Maborosi and Still Walking by you definitely sets them on my watchlist. And i'll have to look into No Blood Relation as well.

And no worries, Minio, I didn't see it as spiteful nor rude, and again, pretty d@mn, well, joyous to get a few recommendations from you about a director I'm just beginning to discover and wish to continue to.
So, seriously, THANK YOU



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Not at all. I recommended a Naruse film with a similar theme because, in spite of everybody claiming Koreeda was inspired by Ozu, I feel stronger Naruse vibes than Ozu vibes from his movies. Like Father, Like Son isn't a favorite of mine but I liked it more than Shoplifters and it's probably the closest to Shoplifters in terms of the plot even though it's less intricate. I also recommend Our Little Sister. It's nothing like Shoplifters but a great film on its own and one of my favorites from Koreeda. I remember seeing it at the cinema and I was the only person watching it. Haha. Good memories. As a matter of fact, every Koreeda film is worth seeing, so you can just as well watch his entire filmography chronologically.

But yeah, I recommend watching some classics from Ozu, Naruse, Mizoguchi, Shimizu, Shimazu, Yamada, et al. WARNING: these films might temporarily make you feel like all contemporary films suck, so be warned! It's always good to know the past to properly interpret the present. It's not really about seeing a given theme recycled and liking a new film less because of that, though. Ultimately, it's about how they handle the theme and you don't really have to be original to be great. It's good to be learned about something you find inspiring. When I watched Werckmeister Harmonies back in 2011 I decided to seek and watch more films that will make me feel the same thing I felt when watching Harmonies, and this kind of enthusiasm made me a cinephile. You gotta follow your enthusiasm started by Shoplifters and deep-dive into Japanese cinema as hard as you can, and do it now that you feel it because once it's gone you might not want to do that anymore.

As far as new films go, I was destroyed by Rebirth (2011). To some extent, it's similar to Shoplifters plot-wise, but then again it's completely different. The ending made me very emotional.







Come and See (1985)


Sigh...talk about a mixed bag. Come and See is considered one of the greatest films of all-time and I certainly understand why this is a true war epic shot beautifully with a sense of surrealism. You have constant state of the feeling of a nightmare when watching this and to be honest I would have been done watching it after an hour.


But the film is far from perfect a cow is basically tortured halfway through the film, the children give emotionally raw performances that made me feel frankly icky. Communist don't really handle subtle very well and at almost three hours you just want to take a break every 20 minutes or so. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Deklog in the sense that each chapter has a series of harsh messages about war and life.


The flip side to all of this is you had several scenes that were incredibly well done. The director showed some restraint by not showing any of the rapes for the majority of the film and waited until the end to just show the result of them. It was a very powerful scene and it's clearly left an impact one me. And that is the good and bad part of this film, it's a collection of scenes that doesn't really tie together naratively but the scenes are incredibly well made.



I still have two more films to finish for this one so I'm not sure if this is at the top or in the middle but it's a good nom.