The Lobster

It's tough to watch a tough film, without being tough enough to laugh, cry, think and love at the same time. That cannot be done. To feel all these at the same time, I mean. But watching "The Lobster" gets you as far as you can go with that. It's that kind of picture that lets you experience a raw and surreal emotional rollercoaster, which, at the end of the day, takes you one step further into understanding yourself a bit better than you already do.

The film is an experiment in a dystopian future. Take yourself to a place that you have to love someone in 45 days and if you fail, then be the animal of your choice, just because you cannot do otherwise. Alternative choice? Be a loner. Go into the woods, be a wildling, prevent yourself from being with someone, just because you cannot do otherwise, either. Alternative of the alternative? Love someone you are not supposed to love and accept the consequences. Or not. Challenge accepted.

You don't have to be smart to understand this movie. On the contrary, it's back to basics. Yorgos Lanthimos is not a filmmaker that tries to be cocky in order to make art. This is actually a pretty simple project, almost childish. With a different approach, it really should be a Pixar film for children, in order to teach them that you can love and accept everyone if only at first you do that for yourself and be a free person.

The surreal thing exists here, just because you cannot support a film with real actors, exquisite ones, without being symbolic. Colin Farrell, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly and Rachel Weisz take their performances one step further by being simple, sarcastic and non dramatic, while at the same time they do and say things which are supposed to sound weird in a film, but they are actually not weird in real life. And you do them, too. And you tell them every day, without being an actor. And that's the weirdness of it all - this is cinema, while it's not. It's life.

In real life, you can be jealous of your girlfriend if she speaks to another guy who has something in common with you, because you project yourself in it. You are in danger. But when the girl or the boy is in danger, aren't you supposed to walk in their shoes to understand them? Yes, it's about empathy and nothing more. You can be single or a couple, that's your choice. But it's your ethical obligation to have empathy in order to be happy. And, let's face it, you don't walk in other people's shoes.

They say that, with "The Lobster", the circle of the Greek Weird Wave of cinema is complete. I cannot describe "The Lobster" as weird though. It's not fair. The script by Efthimis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos is weird itself. The performances are pretty weird and North European. It's like an Ingmar Bergman or a Michael Haneke movie. It also ends in uncertainty, which is weird, too. But it's not a weird film. Too much weirdness in 2 hours just ends up being too fucking normal compared to real life. "The Lobster" is exhilarating. That's the only valid word.

AnArtCalled... 9/10

Nightcrawler

When it comes to the awards season, you always try to watch as many films as you can, thus deciding for yourself which one is your favorite, which script has blown your mind or which performances are actually worthy of the awards. 

I have seen many of the projects Jake Gyllenhaal has participated in and it's not difficult to notice that he is good. He was raw and determined in the recent "Prisoners", he was sentimental and fragile in "Brokeback Mountain", so it would be disappointing of him not to invest the best of his talents on such a smart script. Only this time, he goes beyond all these.

Half of the movie's potential depends totally on his performance. Gyllenhaal's transformation is one of the most persuasive and risky ones this year has to offer in the Hollywood industry. He is filthy and dark, making you want to punch him in the face as he is staring at you with his huge, creepy eyes. But at the same time, Dan Gilroy has approached him in a way that makes you walk in his shoes and sympathize with him, even when his actions go beyond your ethical code. His character reminds me of some classic ones, like Hannibal Lecter or even the "Taxi driver". He is an outcast and a hustler you are curious to meet, but you could never possibly want him for a friend of yours or even a neighbor.

Accompanied by James Newton Howard's adventurous score, "Nightcrawler" is a thriller, without a doubt. But even with the same smart script, it would be extremely easy for it to become a b-movie or just a "nice" one, if it weren't for the right moves in direction. Gilroy proves that he is a master of suspense, providing claustrophobic night scenes that any other director of the same aesthetics could kill for (David Fincher, I guess you now have competition). 

With the brilliantly performed supporting roles by Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton, the film itself goes beyond its potential and becomes all the way a major contender in the awards season. As far as Gyllenhaal is concerned, well, you can count on his second Academy Award nomination.

AnArtCalled... 8,5/10

Interstellar

We have watched many sci-fi horror films or sci-fi dramas or sci-fi action films or sci-fi movies in general the last decades. From "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Solaris" to "Apollo 13" and "Gravity", the ways the film-makers approach their scripts are so distinctive that you can identify their unique techniques every single time and the certain messages each and everyone is trying to pass along. But "Interstellar" goes beyond your expectations as far as only one thing is concerned - the unexpected sentimentalism of its creator.

Christopher Nolan is one of the most significant film-makers of our time. He might, in fact, be the new Steven Spielberg or something. And that's true, more or less. But it's also true that he has not been as sensitive with his characters in his movies as we would like him to be or as Spielberg, for example, has been in the past. This time, he outdoes himself and, more importantly, he outdoes the mediocre writing of the script (not the script itself) and creates a visual treasure that many directors can be jealous of (especially James Cameron, don't ask why, just because).

Let's talk about the script. It's smarter than everything you could possibly imagine. It's setting existential questions about life and beyond. But it's also vague a couple of times, while at other times it's being trapped by its own wittiness. You love it when it all comes down to a straight forward and clever storytelling, but you are confused and tired with all the scientific explanations, the countless times you hear the word "gravity" (irony), the way the hand watch is sending the Morse code (still a mystery) or the way the actors, especially Hathaway, are pronouncing "love" like William Shakespeare's heroes. The vagueness is in there, lost in space, but you overcome it, because it still is a great story and because Nolan's directing keeps being a piece of art, attributing some kind of poetic justice to the characters and their burdens.

The visual "Interstellar" is science fiction at its best. If Alfonso Cuaron won the Oscar for Best Direction, I can imagine Nolan already preparing his Academy Award acceptance speech. His images give great aesthetic pleasure but with a sense of wisdom in them, thus letting you think hard about all the questions he wants to put out there along with his brother, Jonathan. At this point, the writing process is a success. I wrote it before - the script itself is great, the writing (or maybe the editing) is not.

"Interstellar" is jaw-dropping in many aspects. The cast is brilliant, especially McConaughey and Chastain. Hans Zimmer's score will probably give him his tenth Oscar nomination and maybe a second award, twenty years after "The Lion King" (!). Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is extraordinary and the visual effects are actually close to something you can call reality. At the end of the day, it's a must-watch movie for the avid cinephiles, a piece of art for the aesthetes and an audiovisual masterpiece for the blockbuster suckers.

AnArtCalled... 9/10

El Buho - The First Heartbeat (Single)

El Buho (a musician and scriptwriter based in Athens) has listened to a lot of pop music as well as film scores in the past. So it's almost obvious that he is trying to combine his two favorite music genres into an ethereal piece of music - his single "The First Heartbeat". That could seem and sound weird as far as the continuity of the production is concerned, but on the other hand it feels like he knows what he is doing.

Many songwriters, producers and arrangers in the past have combined different styles of music in their work, from Air and Daft Punk to Craig Armstrong and Trent Reznor. Electronic pads and drums, concrete music, strings and orchestra ensembles, vocals and guitars - the tools can be countless. El Buho has wisely used here his mentors' flexibility in music creation and has produced an ambient track that showcases his ability to flirt with a good melody and his age of innocence, thus creating a landscape full of childhood memories in a shiny day. Well, that's my visual utopia listening to "The first heartbeat" and that's the actual thing here - listening to it, you can create your own images.

Minus: Too much reverb, which he actually likes and always uses. So, maybe, it is somekind of signature.

AnArtCalled... 8,5/10

Links:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/elbuho
http://open.spotify.com/track/3xjK31GMrnmlTYQhmDJKkD
https://itunes.apple.com/gr/album/the-first-heartbeat-single/id926016164
https://soundcloud.com/buhomusic