Mad Max: Fury Road

     Mad Max: Fury Road blew my mind. This is the standard that all big-budget films should be striving for: a seemingly inexhaustible supply of creativity, bursting from every single frame from start to finish; a fully-realized world where every element of the film links to the environment that has been created; and characterizations that rely on our knowledge of tropes but know how to move beyond them.

     If you didn’t know that Mad Max: Fury Road is based on an Australian trilogy (starring Mel Gibson at his handsomest) that started in the late 70s, your jaw will drop when you learn that the director George Miller was subsequently responsible for films such as the Babe films (the talking pig movies), and Happy Feet (the dancing penguins series). But there is a common thread: his singular talent for creating original worlds, each with their own internal logic, and his masterful control over them. One of the reasons why I can no longer watch Peter Jackson’s films is because he expects people to be taken with entire scenes made out of CGI. (All I see is strings of dollar signs, like the strings of numbers in The Matrix.) In Mad Max, you don’t know what is live action and what is CGI, but you believe all of it. Not to mention that literally every single action sequence is inventive, down to the set pieces, and all of it is integral to driving the plot forward.

     Those who watched the trailer may be put off by the level of testosterone and cruelty. But I assure you, this is one of the tiny handful of Hollywood action films where the female characters are not a backhanded compliment. I’m talking about the frankly disgusting number of films where they are pointlessly perfect (and can even kick the villain in the balls!) -- or are responsible for initiating the action in the story but are wholly sidelined as the men take over. The majority of female characters in the film may be breeders for an evil ruler’s harem, but when the action starts, they all contribute to the story, and perhaps crucially, their contributions are wholly plausible.

     A film like this is proof that mass entertainment doesn’t have to be limited to stories that write themselves, and have just enough bursts of inventiveness to give a cute little spin on well-worn genres. (I doubt the people who were raving about Bryan Singer twenty years ago could have imagined that his subsequent best would be the amazing-for-a-bar-set-low X-Men: Days of Future Past. Also, literally every single trailer for a superhero film I have seen in the past five years looks like a Hot Shots!-level parody.)

     I haven’t even bothered to write about the plot or the actors, but if the trailer provides even a glimmer of interest, go see it in the theater, no questions asked. I would watch the original trilogy, but I’m afraid after watching this film that the chase scenes will be like watching a golf cart drive over a sand dune.

Selma

   Thinking about Selma today, and all the choices director Ava DuVernay emphatically avoids making in her Martin Luther King biopic. The intelligence and nuance she brings to her film are undeniable.

   I find many biopics to be marred by a certain cheapness: the “greatest hits” style storytelling, where you cherry-pick the highest and lowest moments of the subject’s life, creating an easily digestible trajectory; living, breathing people reduced to mere heroes and villains, with little affordance of ambiguity; and supporting characters that inject occasional doses of humor into the film but often derail its tone.

    Nothing DuVernay does is ever on the nose. The film focuses only on one period of King’s life: the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which King and his fellow leaders organized in 1965 to bring attention to the overwhelming number of black people being denied the power to vote. Selma takes an established fact and implores us to see it as something beyond a success, taking us into the exact machinations of the political process, and the complicated tangles within the black community that led to it.

    My elementary school-level US education may not be much to go on, but I was only ever taught to see MLK as a saint. In Selma, while you never doubt the fundamental righteousness of his vision, King is never deified. You see his savviness about using the media, how he was prepared to sacrifice the lives of innocent people to achieve a larger goal, and how he depends on his wife for emotional support even while he is not entirely faithful to her.

    Equally important are the portrayals of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Alabama Governor George Wallace. Despite Johnson’s reluctance to push for federal legislation that would allow black people to register to vote, you see that it wasn’t motivated by ignorance but also a resignation about bureaucratic/political processes that dictated how much he could push through. Likewise, while Wallace may have allowed the police to brutalize 500 peaceful black protesters, when you see him refer to the town’s head sheriff as a “white trash cracker”, you realize he’s not a racist bigot -- he’s a bigot, period, and that’s what is clouding his vision.

     For lack of better phrasing, I also appreciated that Selma never forgets it is a work of cinema. The soundtrack choices are often pointed, such as the use of ethnographic recordings of workers in Selma singing. I especially loved the cinematography, which made frequent use of the actor’s profiles and often cloaked figures in shadow. (There is a stunning scene set behind bars where practically the only light you can see is the dim, fading light in MLK’s eyes.)

    What is so painful about watching Selma is that it’s impossible to not think of recent headlines running parallel to the film. A scene of the Alabama girls being bombed in their church immediately links to the Charleston church shooting, and scenes of peaceful protesters being brutalized by policemen only brings to mind the horrific videos of policemen brazenly flouting protocol and killing or manhandling black civilians. I heard so many sniffles throughout the theatre during the film, but I only hope that people’s emotions didn’t stay in the theatre, and that the film started an actual conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRGscLLlfaw

Elem Klimov's Come and See

Watched Come and See (『炎628』), a 1985 Belarussian war film. No joke, it was as hard to watch as Resnais' Night and Fog (so much that I'd put off seeing it for about a decade.) The film opens with a young teenage boy from a small, war-impoverished village digging in sand for an abandoned rifle so he can join the army to fight against the Nazis. He (and the audience) has no way of preparing for all the horrors he will face, as he faces one atrocity after another without ever being able to make sense of it all.

If, like me, most of the war films you've seen are from Hollywood, everything about the film will stun your senses. None of the elements you cling to in an American war film are present here: the soundtrack is by Mozart but is jarringly overlaid with the persistent drone of a jet, or the buzzing of flies. The long takes don't show off the fluidity of the scenes or the action, but instead show how suddenly and uncomprehendingly cruelties are forced upon people. The protagonist goes on no honorable soldier's "journey"; he simply survives, moving from one demolished village to the next, abject horror etched permanently on his face. Characters are shot in close-up, but look straight into the camera, allowing not empathy but instead making you feel almost accused.

All of this makes the film almost impossible to watch. And yet, it made me think, what good is there in making a war film that is amenable to the audience? I'm sure Hollywood war films are considered educational, but what is the value of a war film that reduces ideologies to a good side and a bad side, creates action scenes that offer an adrenaline rush and makes us cheer on the annihilation of human beings? It's so easy to dismiss these films as entertainment, but it's interesting how certain morals are always upheld in American films while others get a slide.

American Sniper

Went to a screening of American Sniper last night, a biopic of US Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle directed by Clint Eastwood. As someone who views the US military with skepticism, and is also not religious, I couldn't fully appreciate Kyle's motivations for joining the Navy, or see the virtue in his continuing to fight even after so much death and carnage, both on the US side, and the Iraqi side (him being personally responsible for the deaths of over 160 people).

At the same time, I can see how audiences could cheer on Bradley Cooper as he picks off enemy after enemy with precision (literally killing it at his job), and admiring his character's unwavering stance on protecting his country and honoring God's will. (I'm sure this is what has led to explosive box office in the States.)

The story is told solely through Kyle's experience, and you see little evidence of him considering the larger repercussions of war. When Kyle returns to Iraq for a fourth tour of duty despite the protestations of his wife, his main motivation is to avenge the death of a comrade. Some may see this as honorable, but I saw it as a forced myopia that allows soldiers to keep doing their job. This is enforced by stray storylines of soldiers becoming despondent when they start questioning the aims of war, leaving the army, or even committing suicide.

These contrasting reactions are made possible by the opacity of Bradley Cooper's central performance. I'm trying to figure out how much of it was intentional; I feel like a more skillful actor could have been more emotionally transparent, even while playing a shellshocked, taciturn war vet. When the protagonist is a big, wooden hunk of a person, it rather takes away from the watchability of the film, but it also allows viewers to project their own ideas of war onto the film.

Despite these points of interest, I was disappointed by how pedestrian the film is overall. Many scenes are staged with a surprising lack of originality: the obligatory boot camp montage, where the recruits are called "ladies" and hosed down with ice-cold water; the way you know a soldier is going to die when he says, "I bought a ring for my girl". So few Hollywood films manage a fresh interpretation of the war movie.

So yeah, while I didn't particularly enjoy the film, it certainly has the ability to generate interesting discussions.

Koto Cinema Festival 2015

Koto Ward's annual film festival, showing primarily black and white and silent films, was held from January 10-12 this year. The showing I went to had a benshi (a performer who narrates the intertitles and does the voices of the characters) and a six-piece orchestra! I'd never considered the incredible stamina required to play throughout a feature film, not to mention the sense of timing.

The films I saw: a ten-minute newsreel that showed a dozen Tokyo landmarks, and the hour-long The Freshman, starring Harold Lloyd, one of the silent film greats. I always feel like Tokyo pales in comparison to the sense of history that is palpable when you visit a major city like London or Paris, but seeing how the dozen or so Tokyo landmarks look virtually the same as a hundred years ago, I saw the grandeur of this city.

The Freshman was quite an inconsequential film, though fun and pleasant. I found the Charlie Chaplin-like, repetitive pratfall-oriented gags rather annoying; I prefer the visual inventiveness of Buster Keaton. Much is made of how silent film actors often played young characters far into their thirties. But looking at the 16mm film, I saw how it was possible: the contrast is so high that wrinkles are basically blasted off the screen!

All in all, a very worthy experience.

Esther Williams in "Million Dollar Mermaid", Part Two: The Swimming Numbers

As I mentioned, Million Dollar Mermaid, which was one of champion swimmer/diver/star Esther William's MGM vehicles, is a real clunker. But the swimming numbers, which were directed by famed choreographer Busby Berkeley, are in a league of their own. It's almost astonishing how much the film suffers in quality without his touch.

All of the swimming sequences are set at the New York Hippodrome, a large scale theater that existed from 1905 to 1939 in the Midtown area. One of the first chuckles of the 1952 film comes from its treatment of the early 1900s as an almost nostalgic era -- rightfully so, but in a few decades the 1950s would also be depicted as a bygone era.

The first number, where she wore an almost painfully skintight suit that had 50,000 gold sequins. The golden crown was made of actual metal, and when she wore it to make her 50-foot dive, she broke her back. Stories like that make you see how much Hollywood regulations have improved, but they also make it clear why a movie such as this could never be made today.

Williams dives off a huge fountain.

In the second, she does an underwater ballet routine to The Nutcracker. Perhaps I am uncultured, but this reminded me more of a stripper move than anything else.

The third swimming sequence is the extravaganza we have been waiting for. All the hallmarks of a Busby Berkeley-directed number are there: dizzying formations, eye-popping athleticism, high camp, and surrealism.

I like the slight whiff of indecency in his work.

The video quality was so low, the images practically looked like paintings.

With Busby Berkeley, more is more, and the highs keep building to the point where you're practically delirious. Imagine seeing this on the big screen!

Berkeley served in the army during World War I, and he conducted parade drills with over 1,000 men and also trained as an aerial observer. The influence on his work is more than obvious, and perhaps even explains the relentless cheer and workmanlike movements of the swimmers. (Williams smile is plastered on in these scenes, but her eyes look frightened.)

It ends with sparklers that light up as they come up out of the water. 

The number can be seen here:

Esther Williams in "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952), Part One

 

Esther Williams, who passed away this past June at the age of 91, was a dancing, diving, choreographed-swimming star in Hollywood's Golden Age. You'd think she would be a once-in-a-lifetime figure, but she wasn't. Esther Williams may have called herself the Million Dollar Mermaid in her autobiography, but the film Million Dollar Mermaid, which she starred in, was actually a biopic based on another dancing, diving, champion-swimming star -- the Australian Annette Kellerman, who was a generation older than her.

 

As biopics go, Million Dollar Mermaid is incredibly clunky, often to unintentionally hilarious effect.

The film starts near Sydney, Australia in 1900, "the home of the bush and the boomerang." You'd never be able to tell Annette was Australian, based on the resolute American accents of the actors.

Some signs of the times: a boxing kangaroo is part of a running gag...

 ...and a Caucasian actor paints his face dark for some Native American-face. (Though to be fair, was that not this summer's The Lone Ranger?)

Similar to her earlier On an Island with You, Williams' love interest is played by an actor (Victor Mature this time) who is more creepy than attractive.

Annette swims down the Thames as part of a stunt promotion, which is occasion not only for some piss-poor backdrops of the Palace of Westminster, but also what looks like fake-swimming by Williams.

As Annette grows fatigued, obvious gray makeup is slapped onto Williams' cheeks. She does quite a terrible job spouting out lines while swimming, but then who else could have pulled it off?

Appropriate swimwear for ladies in 1900s New York.

Annette is put on trial for public indecency.

And yet, this is also the film that brought us some glorious swimming numbers such as this...

 ...and this, which was choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

More images of the swimming numbers will be featured in the following post.

Miyazaki Hayao's 「風立ちぬ」 (The Wind Rises)

I was a child in the early 90s, and as far as Japan was concerned, animator Miyazaki Hayao was already an institution unto himself. When his films began to receive international acclaim starting 2001's Spirited Away, we proudly anointed him a national treasure. Therefore, when news of his retirement broke in early September, it seemed practically a patriotic duty to go see his latest (and last) film, Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises).
 
The film is set against the backdrop of WWII, and our protagonist is Jiro, a university student who aspires to be an aeroplane engineer -- something the impending war will only need too much of. I fear a too-simple summary of the film will only serve to put international audiences off the film. Yet war is not depicted in the way they may expect; we see how it was an unavoidable part of their life that they had no way of influencing. That, combined with the love story that anchors the film, may unfortunately lead some to see it as a cop out. Yet, it is a remarkably honest view of a situation that was not blessed with hindsight. Although we do not know whether any of the major characters were for or against the war, in the end, Miyazaki subtly indicates his stance through -- what else? -- the animation. One shot in particular struck me: a sky full of war planes viewed from far away, white and bird-like and calling to mind a thousand paper cranes.

Considering that this may be his last film, it makes me think of what I appreciate most about Miyazaki's works. I like that in Japan, kids can go see the latest Miyazaki film and encounter a world where good and evil are often ambiguous, the images can be surreal, and the endings are not always happy. They may not like it; it may go over their heads, it may frighten them (this was my experience) but that they are exposed to those worlds and left to make up their own minds is essential. I grew up just when Miyazaki was hitting his stride, and his films exist parallel to Disney animation, which are hopelessly conformist in comparison. Miyazaki’s films are so free of what “should” be depicted, particularly in the world of children’s animation, and we’re all the better for it.

Kore-eda Hirokazu’s 「そして父になる」(Like Father, Like Son)

I generally only watch 2-3 Japanese films per year (something I’m not particularly proud of), but Kore-eda is one of the handful of Japanese directors whose works are so consistently acclaimed overseas, I wanted to see how someone who is part of the culture would respond to it. 

The story, where a family learns that their 6-year-old son was switched with another family’s son at birth, sounds like it could be a schmaltzy, made-for-TV mess, but director/writer/editor Kore-eda uses it as a backdrop to explore notions of family, fatherhood vs motherhood, social class, and city life vs suburban life in Japan. It is an astoundingly rich portrait thanks to the incredibly naturalistic filmmaking. Every detail and piece of dialogue has been carefully considered, yet the result seems unforced and natural. The performances, led by singer/actor Fukuyama Masaharu, are also impeccable – each character is perfectly realized, down to their speech, comportment, and clothing. (Also, I see now why Kore-eda is so lauded for getting great performances out of children.) I recognized 100% the Japan depicted in the movie; it is an extremely precise encapsulation of the way we live now.

The relatively linear flow of the first half gives way to more fragmented scenes in the second half as the story takes a devastating turn. This film will make you cry, so my advice is to pace yourself. I couldn’t tell where the story was heading so I ended up absolutely bawling from the first third onwards. 

The film opens throughout Japan today, after three days of advance screenings to build word of mouth. It opens with a newsreel of the film's success at this year's Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize.


P.S. To all of the non Japanese-speaking critics who will describe Ono Machiko's character (wife to the protagonist) as "passive": I wish there was a way to translate the amazing work that Ono is doing with her voice. When she speaks to her husband, there is a slightly mocking, performative element to her tone that suggests that she is speaking in a way that a loving wife should. But beneath the pretty petulance, there is a hint of snideness. She may be restricting herself when it comes to her actions, but she is not entirely the gently suffering wife either.

Fashion Cues in Last Night (2010)

In writer-director Missy Tadjedin's 2010 film Last Night, Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington play a married couple whose relationship is tested when, on a night apart, they are each tempted to stray by a former lover (Guillaume Canet) and new colleague (Eva Mendes), respectively. Despite the solid quartet of actors, the film performed horribly on limited release, relegating it to the "forgotten films" pile.

Part of the reason for the film's lack of success could be the low-key manner in which the story unfolds. Despite the heat promised by the actors and the premise, this is no pot-boiling thriller or suspenseful drama; Tandejin is more interested in mining the characters' romantic backstories and presenting a level-headed portrait of all the motivations that people have to cheat. Upon its release, the film was criticized for presenting gorgeous people living in affluent Manhattan in spacious apartments and asking the viewer to feel something was at stake. (It's called escapism, no?) However, from the beautifully-shot scenes (the majority of scenes are set at night, cloaking the actors in velvety darkness) to said apartments, the beauty on display serves as a visual reminder of all the temptations abound in the characters' lives.

As a female viewer watching a film written and directed by a woman, though, I found myself reacting most to the fashion -- specifically the way the clothes worn by Knightley and Mendes so precisely signaled the psychology of their characters. Obviously, this is the exact role that costuming plays in cinema. But in the same way that it takes a female director such as Andrea Arnold to depict a fresh take on female sensuality, the visual cues provided through clothing in Last Night felt specifically guided by the vision of a female director (and costume designer Ann Roth).

Take, for example, one of the first scenes in the film, where Joanna (Knightley) and Michael (Worthington) head to one of Michael's work parties. She's running late and also couldn't care less, so she dresses in simple black pants and a black sweater with no bra to boot. Even in a crowd that is dressed mostly in dark colors, she still stands out for the casualness of her outfit.

Later, on the verge of making up after a fight with Michael, her willingness to reconcile is indicated by the hoodie she wears, which is too obviously large to be her own.

In contrast, when she agrees to meet former lover and fellow writer Alex (Canet) for dinner on the night her husband is away on business, she makes a specific point of dressing up.

The beautiful black dress that she opts to wear is a wrap dress, the implication being that it is easy to take on and off.

Meanwhile, Michael and Laura (Mendes) are on a business trip in Philadelphia. In this parallel storyline, it is Laura who wears the wrap dress, which also happens to be a staple of work wear for women. In the end, one dress will come off, and the other will not.

It's fitting that at the end of the film, the future of Joanna and Michael is also signaled by fashion. In one of the last shots, the camera rests for a beat on Joanna's shoes: a beautiful satin pair obviously only worn on important occasions, begging the question: what were you up to the night before?

The Runaways (2010)

 (Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett in The Runaways.)

In an early scene in The Runaways, a stuffy, balding guitar teacher tells a teenage Joan Jett, “Girls can't play guitars." It's a line that’s begging to be refuted, and The Runaways proceeds to do so in irreverent fashion. Charting the formation of the band, their career highs, and their dissolution, writer and director Flora Sigismondi's defiant film seems to answer the unspoken comment, "A woman can't direct a (rock and roll) film". But who else but a woman could tell the sordid story of The Runaways, the first all-girl teenage rock band, and do it justice?

(Michael Shannon as their shady producer Kim Fowley.)

From the first shot in the film, in which we see a drop of blood drop on pavement, Sigismondi, in her film directing debut, shows grit and perceptiveness in equal measure. This is no simpleminded ode to girl power, or a celebration of hedonistic excesses. The film never forgets that despite the attention and the success The Runaways had, it was never their world to claim. From their opportunistic manager (Michael Shannon, whose ill-suited glam-rock gear only serves to heighten how shady he is), the derisive male bands they encounter on the road, and the media, who can't help salivating over the five teenage girls, they were forever being cut down to size. The girls didn't respond by bonding together and bucking the odds. Instead, they imploded in a haze of sex, drugs, and jealousy. 

(Dakota Fanning in an Alice in Wonderland-like shot.)

Fanning is essentially miscast as 16-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie, the supposedly inimitable Cherry Bomb. I wasn’t around when The Runaways were big, but one look at their live Cherry Bomb video and you see the unavoidable truth: Fanning can never be that girl. The real Cherie Currie looks mean, hard, and tough. While no great singer, she commands the stage as she bellows out her lines, forcing you to pay attention. Fanning is too pretty, too slight, too obviously loved to provide the scrappy authority that Currie had. 15 years old when the film was shot, she was technically the right age for the role, but then again Currie looks like she skipped being a teenager altogether. With the nymph-like Fanning at the center, the band in the film looks more palatable, more easily salable than the real Runaways.

(Kristen Stewart, perfectly cast as Joan Jett.)

As ill a choice as is Fanning for Currie, Kristen Stewart on the other hand is a perfect fit as Joan Jett. It's a rare role in which her tomboy, too-cool-for-school tics mesh naturally with the character. Androgynous and insouciant, she swaggers through the film with authority. Though the film is based on Currie's autobiography, Jett is portrayed positively as the one who is in it for the music. (Her flings with other teenage girls are treated nonchalantly.) When the shit hits the fan and the band threatens to fall apart, Jett keeps her head down and continues to play her guitar. We end up cheering on Jett (authentic musician) as Currie (manufactured star) fades into obscurity. 

(LA as a wasteland: Cherie walks through a supermarket parking lot overgrown with weeds.)

The Runaways has a certain looseness, eschewing the standard "track all your highs and lows" biopic format. We get the overall picture through stray scenes: Joan Jett dumping all her change onto a counter to buy a man's leather jacket, the band being pelted with debris by neighborhood boys as they practice in their trailer, Cherie talking to her twin sister Marie (Riley Keough) as her father takes a drink in the background. Late 70s southern California, rendered through garish primary colors, looks like a grimy wasteland, betraying the vulnerable environment the girls were in. 

The film doesn't purport to tell the whole story -- Jackie Fox, The Runaways' bassist, refused to be portrayed, resulting in an indistinct character played by Alia Shawkat. (Stella Maeve plays the drummer Sandy West, Scout-Taylor Compton plays lead guitarist Lita Ford. Both leave a strong impression despite their lack of screen time.) Meanwhile, the real-life members were the focus of Edgeplay, a 2004 documentary, sans Jett, who refused to participate. The Runaways didn't necessarily make me want to discover their music, but it did make me want to learn about what these fearless women went on to do in their lives. 

All Good Things (2010)

 
A light is shed on a missing persons story in All Good Things. 

In All Good Things, the 1% literally get away with murder. Based on the true story of Robert Durst, the son of a New York real estate tycoon whose wife went missing, the film alleges that she was actually murdered -- perhaps by him. This is director Andrew Jarecki’s first attempt at a feature film (his previous work was the documentary Capturing the Friedmans, which focused on an even more uncomfortable topic). While it would seem somewhat facile to attribute the shortcomings of this film to his background as a documentary filmmaker, how else can we explain his interest in biographical detail and his refusal to tell the audience what to think? 

The film begins in a courtroom, where David Marks (Ryan Gosling) is on trial for a murder perhaps connected to his wife Katie’s disappearance 20 years ago. (The film avoids using the true names of the people they are based on.) We then flash back to New York City, 1971, when Katie (Kirsten Dunst) and David first meet.  He is running around town doing business in seedy buildings on orders from his dad (Frank Langella, as unpleasant as you would expect); she is an aspiring med student from a working-class family who has just moved into one of said buildings. Interspersed with the courtroom interrogation, we track their quickie wedding, their stint in Vermont as owners of a health-food store, and David’s summon back to New York, where he reluctantly joins the family business. 

Dad (Frank Langella) is unhappy with their marriage. This is one of the few instances in the film where the two are in the same shot together.

Jarecki takes you step by step through the demise of David and Katie, but holds viewers at bay when it comes to presenting a clear point of view on her disappearance. We see how David’s background shaped her fate: haunted by his mother’s suicide, which he witnessed as a child, on rocky terms with his powerful, controlling dad (who is naturally opposed to their marriage), and with a history of mental illness. However, when it comes to Katie's disappearance, Jarecki drops hints and suggestions about her murder while leaving the full details somewhat vague. Instead of coalescing all the information he's presented so far into a clear explanation, he instead turns tentative, leaving the film feeling like a working theory rather than a dramatization.

Who are you kidding? David tries to pass himself off as a woman.

This causes problems for the actors, in particular Ryan Gosling. As the troubled David, Gosling is so remote that you can hardly believe that he is the central character. Dull and sluggish, David doesn't seem charming enough to be able to ensnare Katie in their first encounter, and we don't see how he would be invested in whether she divorced him or not, whether she lived or not. By the time David shows up in the last third of the film and living in Texas as a woman, you've understood so little about him that it's difficult to even be fazed. 

A hard-eyed and disillusioned Katie.

Dunst fares better as the long-suffering Katie. Playing an average girl who marries up, way up, she goes for broke, subverting her initial blonde sunniness to gradually shift into a dead-eyed hollow of a girl. (No vain actress would let herself appear so haggard for so much of her screen time.) Forced to have an abortion, physically abused, and unable to escape from her marriage, it's the most uncompromisingly dark role she's had in her career so far, and she is compelling throughout the film. (Melancholia does not come out in Japan until February.) As the only penetrable character, her disappearance two-thirds into the film leaves you mourning.

A shot from the "happy times" montage, shot through the requisite golden glow.

The film’s last third is a limp to the end as it catches up to the present-day courtroom scene. It's then we see for certain that all the pieces Jarecki has been assembling so far aren't going to come together; the flashbacks merely build towards a whimper of a revelation. It fits with Jarecki's neutral stance: he isn't out to punish David, or provide him with a catharsis. This refusal to draw conclusions for the audience would have been a smart tactic if he didn't leave so much in the dark, leaving viewers at a loss as to how they should feel, or care. In the postscript, we learn the outcome of the trial, along with the information that David is now working as a real estate investor in Florida. You get chills, almost in spite of the film.