- 'Days'.The perfect return of Tsai Ming-Liang for a perfect Golden Bear
- 'The roads not taken' The magic of Javier Bardem does not save Potter, Sally
- 'Never rarely sometimes always' Elizabeth Hittman and Hong Sangsoo raise the Berlinale
- 'First cow'.The' western 'according to the master hand of Kelly Reichardt
- 'Pinocchio'. Great wonder with a murky, baroque, heterodox and brutal Pinocchio
"Death is effective," is heard in ' Irradiés ' ( Irradiated ), the documentary projected on three screens in which Rithy Panh turns over each of the obsessions that have haunted him throughout his life. And during each frame of his filmography.
The quotation marks match the most violently abstract of the nouns with the banality of the practical, the profitable, the convenient. Not in vain, carrying cash is a synonym of having cash, of having both immediate buying capacity and, hurrying, even right. Well, and as the Cambodian director strives to demonstrate, few activities so effective, in the sense of profitability, such as killing. It is not the prevalence of Tanatos over Eros as Marcuse maintained, it is much simpler; It is, as I would say, the economy ... stupid.
'There is no evil' , by Mohammad Rasoulof , moves in the same semantic field of action. The Iranian director held in his country and, therefore, absent in Berlin, composes four stories about the death penalty. And also here, what is being talked about is effectiveness, profitability, the appropriate and convenient way to match the most intimate feeling of moral repulsion with the most everyday of work activities. Kill to live in peace.
In this way, the Berlinale ended its competition section and, purely, it did so with a very low pulse. It is not only the chosen theme, but also its result. Neither one nor the other, neither Panh nor Rasoulof, manage to exceed the very worthy threshold of the best intentions. The first is entangled in a repetitive and affected monologue to end up losing itself in its own labyrinth of suggestions without focus. The second, much more concrete, less elliptical, also fails to find the key in a proposal as irregular as clumsily melodramatic in equal parts.
First he was the director of mythical tapes and mandatory reference as ' S21: The Red Kill Machine', 'Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell' and, above all, 'The lost image' . This time, the strategy chosen does not consist of stark interviews with the murderers to amaze with the vulgarity of evil or games with clay dolls to captivate with the vulgar modesty of mud. I did that in the movies cited. Now, it is the archival images of the war that parade in crude through a triptych of restlessness. Music and voice alternate in an eternal litany that only deepens the sensation and certainty of emptiness. The problem is the lack of both structure and rigor. Rithy Panh is confident that the images, rather than speaking for themselves, do so among themselves. The old idea of Walter Benjamin is summoned again that the units of meaning (or texts) collide with each other like tectonic plates so that the true meaning emerges from the cracks. Pure dialectic in negative. Pure irradiation, which Panh would say.
However, the goal is only half achieved. Despite the obvious and 'commercial' effectiveness of the approach, it is not enough to summon the adjective necessary so that, suddenly, the need appears. Neither the scattered poems nor the crudeness of the horrors multiplied by three (atomic bombs, concentration camps, napalm ...) finish braiding more than superficially. The additions with dancers of the Japanese Butoh dance (white body and infinitely stylized movements) barely serves to underline what has already been underlined. And, definitely, that artistic obsession with the ' installation ' overwhelms. When in the end flowers and greens arise, you can say no. Of course, the appearance by surprise of a fragment of 'Chronicle of a summer', by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin enthuses. Of course, nobody doubts that it will be in the winners list.
The death penalty in cold
The opposite is true with the four-episode film by Rasoulof. The Iranian director of the brutal and clairvoyant 'A Man of Integrity' now strives at all times not to raise his voice; in building a minimal story around the greatest of topics. The first chapter is direct, bright and unappealable. A man lives a quiet life in peace. Your job is to press a button. And who can be blamed for such a vulgar activity? Just press and the bodies yield. And it is there, it is that simple gesture and in that puerile activity where all the precipices open.
If 'There is no evil' had stayed here (in his first shout), everything would be different, everything would hurt more. But no, the movie follows every step it takes disintegrates. The other three stories speak of the rigor of the law, of the obligation to comply with it and of the doubt of refusing to do so when conscience squeezes. Is there democracy without law? Is there law without justice? And so. Always from the executioner's point of view, the director extends the proposal, but without adding anything to the first half hour irrefutable and violent. What's more, the only thing that seems like new is melodrama, the song 'Bella ciao' and a big-eyed fox. And all this with the sole purpose of confirming that in many cases (perhaps the only exception are chocolate desserts) more is less.
And indeed, the Berlinale is over. Death, it was said at the beginning, is effective. And so, there are at least three films worthy of a deserved Golden Bear. By order: 'Days', by Tsai Ming-Liang; 'Never rarely sometimes always', by Eliza Hittman, and 'First cow', by Kelly Reichardt.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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