Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati- 1958)

Produced and Directed by Jacques Tati
Written by Jacques Tati, Jacques Lagrange and Jean L'Hote
Cinematography Jean Bourgonin
Editing Suzanne Baron
Starring Jacques Tati, Jean Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantine, Alain Becourt

How do you study a film that is devoid of plot or detailed character analysis and yet is a classic?

Jacques Tati is perhaps the cinematic equivalent of Samuel Beckett, whose plays dispensed with the Aristotelian tradition of storytelling, which laid emphasis on plot and characterisation. Both Beckett and Tati dealt with the increasing isolation of the individual in the modern world.

As one of the major filmmakers during the post-war era, Tati, along with others like Antonioni, Bresson, Bergman and Godard, would be instrumental in changing the way films were read. His third feature film and his first in colour, Mon Oncle is essentially a tour-de-force of set pieces involving Mr. Hulot, Tati's trademark character, and his sister's son Gerard, who lives in an ultra-modern house and spends every evening after school with uncle Hulot. While Gerard and his mother are fond of Hulot, his father, an executive  at a factory, is disdainful of him, largely due to his simplistic ways.

Hulot's sister tries every trick possible to get her brother into respectable society, like getting him a job at her husband's plant and finding a girlfriend for him, but they all simply fall flat. Hulot simply does not fit in "society proper"

Several of the film's set pieces revolve around the ultra-modern house Gerard and his parents stay in. It goes without saying that one of the prime concerns of the film is its lampooning of modernity. But that is not all there is to it. Tati also takes several digs at a society that prides itself on status and wealth.

Mon Oncle earns its praise mainly due to the way Tati gets his points across to the viewer. His use of colour to pit the old-fashioned world of Hulot to the modern, sterile world of his sister and her family, is simply extraordinary for its time. The dull greys of the modern settings, with the occasional intrusion of strong colours, is strongly contrasted with the warmer colours of Hulot's old-fashioned world.

Tati's disregard for convention can also be seen in his mise-en-scene. Close-ups and editing within a given scene are generally eschewed, opting to let the scene play out in distant, uninterrupted takes. He compensates for this relative rigidity in camera style by making extensive use of choreography, which makes the images a delight to watch.

Even more demonstrative of Tati's flouting of convention is his use of sound, and the soundtrack of Mon Oncle, as that of all of Tati's work, is one of the most meticulously designed in all of cinema. While there is little dialogue in the film, what dialogue there is is largely reduced to being just another sound effect. And yet the soundtrack adds so much to the spirit of the film that a great deal of the film's humour is lost if you switch off the sound, despite the fact that there is little dialogue in it.

There are several analogies that rise when mention is made about the Hulot character, mostly to the Tramp character of Chaplin. They are similar in that we see the same character in successive films (Unlike Keaton, who had different names in each of his films, but shared the same traits). Both characters are non-conformists who do not give a damn about the world. But while the Tramp is a yearning romantic, Hulot is not and does not care to be. His cool detachment is more like the Keaton type.

Tati's brand of film comedy clearly draws from the work of the great silent comics, and he is perhaps the last film artist to have taken their legacy forward. Sure is a pity that this legacy has not been taken forward.

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi - 1953)

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Produced by Masaichi Nagata
Written by Yoshikata Yoda
Cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa
Music by Fumio Hayasaka
Edited by Mitsuzo Miyata
Country/Language- Japan/Japanese
Cast- Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Kinuyo Tanaka, Sakae Ozawa, Mitsuko Mito and Kikue Mori


Ugetsu or Ugetsu Monogotari, the original Japanese title, is perhaps the most widely seen of all of director Kenji Mizoguchi's films (Sansho the Bailiff is another one). It was an important film for Mizoguchi because it was the first film that brought him international renown.

Ugetsu made its appearance in international film circles closely on the heels of Rashomon, which was an international sensation and gave its director Akira Kurosawa the sort of reputation no Japanese director had enjoyed before. Mizoguchi, who started his career in the 1920s as a director of silent films, was a relative unknown outside his native country. The fact that a Japanese film could appeal to international audiences was proved by Kurosawa's film, which may have prompted Mizoguchi to try the same. 

Incidentally, both the films do share a few similarities. Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyo, who played the murdered samurai and his wife in Rashomon, also essayed important roles in Ugetsu, the cinematographer and the music composer for both the films were the same, and the plots for both the films were created by combining two short stories. And yes, both films won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

But the similarities end there. When it comes to plot, style, tone and performance, the paths of both the films tread entirely different paths. Ugetsu stays clear of any moralising we may hear in Rashomon, despite the theme being about human vanity. Where the tempo in Rashomon is raised to a feverish pitch, and the acting broad (What else could you expect from someone like Toshiro Mifune?), the tempo and acting in the latter film are restrained. 

Mizoguchi tells his story in a more serene way, in the manner of a Buddhist fable. Set in 16th century Japan, ravaged by civil war, the film is centred on two families, that of Genjuro (Masayuki Mori), a potter, who hopes to make the most of the war for his business, and his brother Tobei (Sakae Ozawa), who is driven by his desire to become a samurai. Their wives, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), and Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), are sceptical of their ambitions, since they are motivated by greed. Unmindful of their wives' advice and the eventual tragedy that befalls them, the two carry on. While Tobei becomes a samurai through fraud, Genjuro is enchanted by Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo), who vamps him.

What gives the film its uniqueness is its almost uncanny blend of the real and the ethereal, factors that are often indistinguishable in the film. One could argue that it holds true even in real life, where the illusory is often taken for being real. It is not the characters alone who are unable to differentiate the real from the unreal; we, the viewers, are also deceived in our perception of this seemingly two sides of the coin, and credit has to go to the impeccable artistry of Mizoguchi.

By now, it would have become obvious to you that the heart of the film has its roots in Buddhist thought, which abounds with themes of how man is led to suffering as a result of his own desires and vanity. But there is hardly any moralising in the film- Mizoguchi is content with simply presenting us with the story and does not want any character to stand in as a mouthpiece for his views.

The mood that the film evokes is one of mysticism, and this mood is evoked through Mizoguchi's mise-en-scene, his use of graceful long takes and complex camera movements. Kazuo Miyagawa delivers some of the most beautiful images through his magnificent use of the crane shot. The actors are, for the most part, framed in medium to long shot- even in scenes of dramatic intensity, Mizoguchi prefers to keep the camera distant. The only close-up I can recall is that of Miyagi towards the end of the film. The distanced view that pervades through the film embodies a spirit of detachment, which again has its roots in Buddhist thought.

The score by Fumio Hayasaka also deserves to be mentioned, since it is a vital contributor to the film's mood. While his score for Rashomon used a lot of Western themes (like Ravel's Bolero), the music here is largely Oriental (at least to my knowledge).

Though Ugetsu bought Mizoguchi the worldwide attention he so deserved, he was already nearing the end of his career. He would die of leukemia three years later, at the age of 58.

Siegfried Kracauer- Cinema, it's Basic Properties, Tendencies, and the Issue of Art

The German-born journalist, writer, sociologist and cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer is most renowned today for Theory of Film, his dissertation on the aesthetics of the cinema. Among his many elaborate chapters on the subject is his classification of its properties, tendencies and the ever longing debate about whether cinema could be considered "art" or not. 

Kracauer classified the properties of the motion picture into two- basic and technical.

Basic Properties

The basic property of film is very much the same as that of photography in that both the media attempt to record and reproduce physical reality, the only difference being that the former records the world as it evolves in time whereas the latter is frozen in time. It is this ability of the motion picture to capture movement that makes it suitable for recording events and preserving them. But it cannot be counted as making use of the creative potential of the medium.

Technical properties

Of all technical properties that can be attributed to the medium, Kracauer considers editing to be the most significant (It was, undoubtedly, one of the earliest properties that was discovered by filmmakers). Editing helps the filmmaker, through the arrangement of various shots, to communicate an idea. This is where cinema and photography diverge- although photo montage can come close, it does not offer such potential.

Moving from the properties of cinema, Kracauer lists some of the main tendencies of the medium and moves on to list two tendencies, realistic and formative.

Realistic tendency

When the motion picture camera was first invented, the earliest pioneers were content to use a stationary camera and record the movement that was presented before it (Kracauer called such movement external movement). It paid off initially, since audiences were enthralled by the very act of seeing photographed movement. Over time, the novelty wore off and filmmakers were constantly in search of newer ways of expressing themselves.

In this search for newer possibilities of the medium ,filmmakers were quick to realise the potential hidden in subjective movement like a panning, tilting or travelling camera to reveal objects that would otherwise have been left unnoticed. Equally significant was the ability to communicate ideas through by arranging different strips of film in the appropriate manner.

When it comes to presenting an incident on film, staging becomes an important factor. In cinematic staging, it is very often not only the action that demands staging; the surroundings in which the action is staged also deserves attention. Owing to the nature of the medium, it is obligatory that the surroundings in which a scene is staged needs to be as faithful a reproduction as possible as the real world so that the viewer is deceived into believing that the world presented on celluloid is a real one.

Staging an event for the camera can sometimes make an event look more convincing than it would have been were it shot on real locations. An example for this would be Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Barring the first scene, the rest of the film was shot entirely in a studio, and it looks quite convincing. Chaplin could never have made the film the way he wanted to if he had shot it entirely on location in the stormy mountains of Alaska. But there are situations where the opposite is also true. A famous example for this would be Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, which could never have been shot in a studio.

Formative Tendency

Right from the inception of motion pictures, filmmakers have constantly strived to go beyond merely recording and reproducing physical reality. George Melies can be considered to be the first person in the history of the medium to have explored this tendency of the medium, wherein a non-realistic world is created entirely using photographic means. Since then, many filmmakers have constantly tried to create films that are anything but realistic. The experimental or avant-garde film is one such genre which explores such possibilities of the medium.

As many films have demonstrated over the past century, it is possible to bring both the tendencies together in one film. As a result, you have realistic films that include dream sequences and those where the hero suddenly bursts into a song. Not that they always make an effective combination- there are several examples of films where the two tendencies have been used in woefully mismatched ways –but they can be brought together in several ways that are aesthetically valid.

When is cinema “cinematic”?

Kracauer believes that a film can claim aesthetic legibility if they build from their basic properties, that of recording and revealing physical reality. But there have been reactions against this property, chiefly from the German Expressionist cinema, which revelled in highly stylized, almost dreamlike imagery. But over a period of time, such films have come to be considered less “cinematic” than the ones that draw on physical reality, the reason being that films of the latter type provide a certain degree of insight and enjoyment that the former cannot. Yet there have been films produced time and again that do away with realism and still become popular among the audience.

It is exactly for these reasons that it is good not to be single-minded about the potential of the film medium. In short, there is no standard definition for what can be considered “cinematic”. The essence of cinema lies in how efficiently a filmmaker uses his creative faculties to make the best use of the medium’s potential.

The issue of art

The very concept of cinema as an art form misleads many people into placing it on a par with the traditional art forms. This is untrue since most art forms are free from reality whereas the very nature of film is its function of recording and revealing physical reality. This very function of the medium provides the raw material out of which the filmmaker can make his composition. While it is true that cinema can draw a lot from the other arts like painting, music, literature and theatre, merely transferring them to the camera is a neglect of the medium’s intrinsic potential. If that were so, the world would never have seen films like Battleship Potemkin and Nanook of the North, which would not have existed if there never was a movie camera.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk- 2003)

Written & Directed by Kim-Ki-Duk

Starring Su Oh-yeong, Kim Young-min, Seo Jae-kyung, Kim Jong-ho, Ha Yeo-jin and Kim Ki-Duk

Spring, Summer, Fall Winter and Spring is one of the most hauntingly beautiful films I have encountered in recent years. I haven't seen any of Ki-Duk's other films, but I do feel that this is his most popular film outside his country. At least in India, he seems to have some sort of a cult following among cinephiles. From what I have read about him, this film seems to be a drastic change in style from the director's previous works.

The film is set in a Buddhist monastery floating atop a lake, separated from the 'world of men' as the senior monk calls it, and has to do with his relationship with his disciple through various stages of the young monk's life. The film is neatly divided into five chapters, each of them titled after each season, as the film's title indicates. In each of these chapters, the young monk has a hard lesson to learn.

The first chapter (Spring) shows  a boy monk who finds delight in tying animals to a stone, affecting their mobility. The senior monk sees this and plays a small trick to make the boy aware of his sadistic tendencies. In the second chapter (Summer), we jump forward in time, where the boy monk has grown into an adolescent and when a woman brings her your daughter to the senior monk to revive her from her state of depression, the adolescent monk is fascinated with her. The following series of events leads to the young monk leaving the monastery.

In chapter three (Fall), several years have gone by again, and the young monk, who left the monastery when he was an adolescent, has now returned as a 30-year old man, disillusioned by the ways of the world and convicted for a grievous crime. It is not long before the police arrive at the monastery in his trail. But before they can take him away, the convict has to finish a task assigned to him by the senior monk. Once the task is finished and the police leave with the monk, the senior monk, realising his time has come to leave the world, burns himself in a suicide ritual.

In Chapter Four (Winter), the monk, who was last seen deported by the police, is back at the now desolate monastery, which now stands on top of a layer of ice. He revives the monastery, which has been desolate for several years and engages himself in spiritual practices. One day a woman visits him with a child in her arms. She abandons the child at the monastery and while leaving, the ice cracks and she drowns in the ice-cold water. Chapter five begins with Spring, where the monk is seen tutoring the abandoned boy. The cycle has begun all over again.

The film makes sparse use of dialogue, the visuals telling us much of the story. Coming to visuals, the camerawork in the film is quite austere, very much in keeping with the contemplative spirit of the story. Ki-Duk is able to convey the story through minimal camera movement; the film gains much of its power from its seamless transition from shot-to-shot. The music in the film is for the most part Western, which a New York Times reviewer wrote was better suited to the sinking of the Titanic than to this fable. But since it is used with restraint, it is not that off-putting as it might have been.

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi- 2011)

Written, Produced and Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Cinematography- Mahmoud Kalari
Editing- Hayedeh Safyari
Music- Sattar Oraki
Cast- Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi
Country/Language- Iran/Persian

A Separation opens with a married couple, Nader (Peyman Mooadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), at court, applying for divorce. Simin wants to go abroad to make a better living, but Nader is unwilling since he has to tend to his father, who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s, hence Simin wants a divorce. The judge finds Simin's grounds baseless and refuses to grant them a divorce. They have, however, decided to live separately and their 11 year old daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), will stay with her father.

So that his father will be taken care of while he is out to work, Nader arranges for a home nurse, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). But two days after she has been hired, Nader arrives home one evening to find his father tied to a bed and the nurse missing. Her arrival five minutes later sparks off an argument and Nader spurns her out. The next day he hears that she has had a miscarriage. More troublesome than anything else, even a potential prison term, for Nader, is handling Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) the nurse’s ill-tempered husband. As it turns out, A Separation is about a lot more than the divorce of the estranged couple.

As one can expect, there is enough potential for dramatic suspense in the plot. But Farhadi takes it a step further. The film falls in line with most Iranian masterpieces by staying clear of a protagonist or antagonist. Like Jean Renoir as Octave in his masterpiece The Rules of the Game says “Everyone has his reasons”, every character in the film, right from Termeh, to Hodjat, have reasons for being the way they are.

The very first scene, where Nader and Simin sit facing the camera and voice their concerns to the offscreen judge prefigures the fact that the film leaves a lot to the judgement of the audience. When I use the word "suspense" to describe this film, I don’t mean suspense as what is normally seen in the cheap thrillers churned out by Hollywood. As with most Iranian movies, dramatic suspense in A Separation has to do with the psychological tensions prevailing in its characters. Farhadi also goes a step forward, weaving in issues that are taboo in Iranian society.

One of them is the class divide, which is portrayed overtly when Nader and Hodjat face each other. The other somewhat subtle but more controversial issue is the way religious dogma interferes with basic humanity (Razieh, for instance, wants to help the ailing father remove his trousers that he has just wet, but is worried she may commit a sin if she does so).

A Separation contains some of the cleverest bits of editing I have seen recently. Elaborating on it is impossible, since it contains spoilers. The cleverness of the cut lies in the fact that the audience is made aware of its abruptness in such a way, it can be recalled even towards the end of the film.

The camerawork in the film is very documentary-like, in its use of handheld camera movements, naturalistic lighting and real locations. This naturalism extends to the acting, so much that you forget you are watching a film. While the camerawork is typical of Iranian movies, the acting is in contrast to that in other films, where the performances are rather subdued.

If Simin’s rather baseless grounds for applying for a divorce lead you into considering her as the antagonist, the focus is bound to change once Nader finds his ailing father tied to the bed. And if Razieh's hot-headed and continually abusive husband makes a strong case for the antagonist, one realises that he too is a victim of his own circumstances. In the end, there are no heroes or villains, only flawed human beings trapped in absurd twists of fate.