28th Hall of Fame

Tools    







The Painted Bird is the story of Bluey a one winged blue bird that just wants to dance. Bluey gets his chance when the town announces a talent competition where the winner gets 10,000 bird dollars...seed money if you will. Unfortunately old man skunky the skunk wants to crush Bluey's dreams. Bluey is going to have to get all his little friends together to put the play on and crush Skunky's intention.

Nah I'm just kidding this was a horrific experience of the film. Similar to Come and See but with more animal cruelty, sexual and child abuse. It's a long film broken up into chapters though the lead is basically mute he's just experiencing these horrors of War.

The film is a nihilistic mixed bag...using intense and beautiful black and white cinematography but then inserting horrific experiences. The film also uses stunt casting grabbing Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) as a Russian sniper and the boy from Come and See as a rescuer. It's at that point of the film that the movie turns...it's the end of the war and the horrors that the child goes through have roughly finished.

Of-course the narrative is cluttered and clunky. Many plot points seem to come out of random story elements. Several times I had no idea what was going on with the characters. A number of scenes don't really translate they just sort of exist without any sense of context. You also have this weird sense that time is almost 100 years apart with some villages feeling like they are from completely different centuries. The process of modernization is jarring and then you get the kid thrown into an outhouse scene.



Well my film wasn't popular. I didn't expect it to be with the norm. I like darker films and I thought it was beautiful but horrific as well

No wonder Pahak and I are the only ppl I know who enjoyed it.



I forgot the opening line.
Well my film wasn't popular. I didn't expect it to be with the norm. I like darker films and I thought it was beautiful but horrific as well

No wonder Pahak and I are the only ppl I know who enjoyed it.
It sounds like my kind of movie, so you'll probably pick up a good review or two late.
__________________
Remember - everything has an ending except hope, and sausages - they have two.
We miss you Takoma

Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



I watched The Painted Bird (2019) for the first time. Directed by Václav Marhoul, this gruelling drama is about a young boy in Eastern Europe during World War II. After the death of his aunt, he is forced on a difficult journey where he meets terrible people and experiences and witnesses the evil and cruelty of humanity.

First, I will start with the positives. The cinematography is excellent. This is a beautifully filmed movie. I think the actors did a decent job with the material that they were given to work with.

However, there were several issues I had with the film. There isn't enough of a story here and there isn't much character development. We don't really get to know anyone. It feels like a bunch of bad stuff happening for the sake of bad stuff happening. The darkness, brutality and unpleasantness of the film weren't in service of the story or characters. It felt over the top and excessive and it didn't feel like a rewarding or worthwhile experience to me. The film is also much too long and drags on and on at times. It needed to be at least a half hour shorter. There was a lot that they could have (and should have) cut out. I can handle brutality and misery in films, but this felt like too much with no real point.



I forgot the opening line.


The Painted Bird - 2019

Directed by Václav Marhoul

Written by Václav Marhoul
Based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinski

Starring Petr Kotlár, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel
Julian Sands, Aleksei Kravchenko & Barry Pepper

Controversy has followed The Painted Bird around ever since it was written and published in 1965 - with author Jerzy Kosiński very foolishly and falsely claiming that it was autobiographical. It paints a very poor picture of rural Poland, with superstition, cruelty and sexual deviancy running riot. If that weren't bad enough, Kosiński's troubles were deepened by claims of plagiarism. Fortunately, with a film based on the novel, we can remove ourselves from questioning the source and integrity and simply judge the story itself for what it is, and what it's trying to say. It's not an easy film to watch, for it's central character, young Joska (Petr Kotlár) is forced to suffer in one way or another throughout it's entire running time.

Joska lives with his elderly aunt in a fictional Slavic country during the Second World War, but her death, and the subsequent destruction of their house, has him on the road looking for food and shelter. Joksa's compatriots treat him with suspicion and ignorant paranoia, and he's lucky to survive their hostility when sold to an old folk healer who announces that he's in fact a vampire. She saves him when he falls desperately ill, but he's forced to flee and take refuge with a cruel and violent miller, an ill-fated birdkeeper, Nazi-collaborating Cossacks who turn him in as a Jew, a priest who adopts him out to a sadistic townsperson, a mean and nasty nymphomaniac, Red Army officers fighting the Germans and a horrible orphanage. Throughout all of this he learns to become as nasty, cruel and uncompromising as his fellow countrymen, despite his youth.

Right from the start we get a taste of what we're in for with this film, when a fleeing Joska has his beloved pet ferret forcibly taken from him and burned alive as he's beaten up. The film has already got me a little wary of what's to come, and kind of semi-traumatized right away. When you see how well the animals in this production were treated it's a load off my mind, but I hate to see that kind of cruelty depicted in film - and although there's nothing quite like that for it's remainder we do get to see a horse with a broken leg, chickens beheaded offscreen, a cow on fire and a goat's death serving as vengeance. There's a special place for human suffering in this though, and we'll get to see people burn, get shot, hang themselves, get their eyes gouged out, eaten alive by rats you name it - humiliation, torture and death are always just around the corner.

So, obviously this is a film about suffering and being ostracized from your own people - the lack of solidarity and cohesiveness that comes with a people under the strain of war and extermination. Everywhere this kid goes, he's met with hostility, cruelty and exploitation. I can see why the people of Poland were angry with the novel, which was set in their nation (director Václav Marhoul, who adapted the novel, decided to remove it from any specific place.) There's a frustrating amount of superstition, and mind-boggling propensity to violence in almost every character we happen to come across. When we do meet a kind character, the story wastes no time bumping them off by having them die from natural causes, such as happens to Joska's Aunt, and Harvey Keitel's kindly priest - who, although well-meaning, sets the poor kid up with a sadist and paedophile.

For a foreign language film, there are a surprising number of big stars from around the globe. Keitel is joined by Julian Sands, Barry Pepper, Stellan Skarsgård and Udo Kier, which makes the film a lot more watchable. Also appearing is Come and See's Aleksey Kravchenko as a Russian officer who takes Joska under his wing. I'd only ever seen him as the lead in that notorious Russian war film, so I was really fascinated by seeing him play such a different role as a middle-aged actor now. Although the tone of the two films are poles apart, there's an obvious connection between the two, with the level of violence and the fact that both films feature boys having to fend for themselves in the East during the Second World War. Marhoul had no problem attracting actors of stature to this project, despite it's controversial source.

The cinematography is good, and the film has a sharp, black and white look. The aesthetic was decided upon while the director and cinematographer Vladimír Smutný were perusing old black and white photos relating to the war years , and they captured something of that look - much of the time I concur with black and white being used, but for some reason there's something inside of me that yearned to see this film in colour. We don't even get to fully notice the coloured ribbons which are used to ward off evil spirits in some parts of this region. One of the advantages they had, however, was that the filmmakers had control of how the sky appeared, using coloured filters, and this influenced the mood of the film at any particular time. The film has no score, so we depend on the contrast, lighting and framing to determine that subtle, subconscious mood of the moment.

It's important to note that along with having no score, the film is almost humorless. I can't think of one single light moment in the film, or many warm ones, so it's 169 minutes can be quite numbing and that can even go as far as to separate us a little from any human element in it. When Joska plays with a wind-up toy just as he's gone to bed at the start of the film, it's really the most pleasant moment he's going to have moving forward. The Painted Bird is relentless in that regard - the title referring to how a bird is attacked and killed when it seems different, as happens when one is literally painted. We get to see this play out when the birdkeeper paints one and releases it, only to see that bird assaulted by the others until it falls from the sky, lifeless. It doesn't take much to realise the connection this has with Joska.

There are many scenes in The Painted Bird that I think are really excellent, powerful and memorable - I really appreciate a lot of them, but sewn together they don't quite make a whole that's really satisfying. The relentless horror can't stir anything but a sense of anger, sadness and discontent within me, and there just wasn't much hope to cling on to. Nevertheless, that weakness of the film as a whole shouldn't detract from the acting and cinematography that rises to the occasion so often. It was a stupendous undertaking, adapting the novel and creating the film we get - working through tough conditions in Ukraine and the Czech Republic. I admire it, and I wish I could have walked away with the impression that I'd seen a great movie. To get this movie right you'd need to be a brilliant screenwriter and director, and Václav Marhoul - in conjunction with editor Ludek Hudec, couldn't quite get there, but they created something that deserves praise all the same.

I used to have a rule I always worked by, whereupon if a movie had Udo Kier in it, then it automatically got an extra point. That works fine for me here, because I just can't find it within myself to rate such an visually impressive and substantial film very lowly. I would gladly watch scenes from it over again, but it's not the kind of film I could sit and watch again from start to finish, where the mood is usually one of horror, which occasionally rises to neutral - and we stick to that for nearly 3 hours. If the protagonist had of been an adult instead of a child, then maybe I wouldn't have been as affected, but as it is I constantly feel pained by this poor boy set adrift in a land of monsters, losing a little of his soul after each and every encounter.




I can't pick out a clear and obvious winner in this Hall of Fame, so I'm really interested in seeing what wins, what comes second, and by how much.
Same. There is no clear frontrunner at this point.



Yeah, that's something cool about having only obscure nominations in a Hall. It makes it more ambiguous over which film will win.
__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd



I agree with the last three post...I haven't even really thought about the order of my ballot yet.

Oh BTW
, if someone finishes before me, hold off on sending your ballot to me until I'm done. Not that it would influence me but I like to have my ballot done and finalized before the ballots come in. I should be done hopefully in just a few days.




The Painted Bird (2019)

There's lots of great countryside location shooting in this film...The war scenes were well done too, but I liked best the rural settings with their poverty and primitive mystic-spiritual beliefs, which are pretty weird! I like the artistry of camera work like in the above screenshot, with it's use of a wide angle lens shoved right up to the foreground subject which makes the midground subject and the background look remotely away...giving a feeling of isolation and hopelessness. The entire film has amazing shots like that. I especially liked the rural village scenes, they almost seem like they were back in the middle ages.

BUT I hated this as it's shock-thrills...with the film's claim to fame being a whole bunch of nasty stuff going on for the sake of it. Animals on fire are an immediate negative for me, even if it's CG it still seems real. Most of these shock-for-thrills films are poorly made but the sad thing here is The Painted Bird really looks good and sets us in a desperately poor world during WWII. I just wish it was 45 minutes shorter and nix the extreme stuff, then it could've be great.





The Painted Bird (2019)

There's lots of great countryside location shooting in this film...The war scenes were well done too, but I liked best the rural settings with their poverty and primitive mystic-spiritual beliefs, which are pretty weird! I like the artistry of camera work like in the above screenshot, with it's use of a wide angle lens shoved right up to the foreground subject which makes the midground subject and the background look remotely away...giving a feeling of isolation and hopelessness. The entire film has amazing shots like that. I especially liked the rural village scenes, they almost seem like they were back in the middle ages.

BUT I hated this as it's shock-thrills...with the film's claim to fame being a whole bunch of nasty stuff going on for the sake of it. Animals on fire are an immediate negative for me, even if it's CG it still seems real. Most of these shock-for-thrills films are poorly made but the sad thing here is The Painted Bird really looks good and sets us in a desperately poor world during WWII. I just wish it was 45 minutes shorter and nix the extreme stuff, then it could've be great.

I kind of knew it wasn't your type of film. You said it sounded interesting when I asked about it. If I join another HOF, I promise it will be a different type that you would enjoy.



I kind of knew it wasn't your type of film. You said it sounded interesting when I asked about it. If I join another HOF, I promise it will be a different type that you would enjoy.
No worries. You should pick what you like, don't worry about me I do think it was amazing looking but lost me with the violence especially towards animals.



No worries. You should pick what you like, don't worry about me I do think it was amazing looking but lost me with the violence especially towards animals.
I just hope you enjoy my next one as much as I do.



My Favorite Year (1982) -


I don't have a whole lot to say about this one as it didn't leave that great of an impression on me (I'm also not the best at reviewing comedy films, tbh). Granted though, I'd probably rank it slightly above the average comedy film since the character arcs in it (Alan's arc, especially) don't have predictable outcomes (which is a common flaw I've noticed with some other comedy films). However, since I felt that a couple sub-plots (Benjy's relationship with K.C. and Alan's conflict with his daughter) weren't as memorable or impressive as they could've been, I can only give so much praise to the characters. On the plus side, Peter O'Toole was really good and a few other supporting cast members did a fine job as well. Also, the jokes were fine, I suppose. Nothing stuck out to me as especially clever and I didn't laugh much while watching the film, but none of them missed the mark, so there's a positive I guess. Overall though, I was left kind of just lukewarm to most of the film. Definitely not something I can see myself revisiting in the future.