Wednesday 04:45

Directed by Alexis Alexiou

Greece, Germany, Israel (2015)

I got a chance to catch the film, Wednesday 04:45 at the 2015 TriBeCa Film Festival, the site of its world premiere, as well as a talk back session with director Alexis Alexiou and actor Stelios Mainas who plays the character, Stelios, in the movie. The film, a Eurimages-sponsored coproduction, was written in 2010 and inspired by the downhill movement due to the financial crisis in Greece & Europe. Alexiou says... "[The film] is sort of like an allegory to what happened. Everything went downhill... What happened in Greece really was a crash and you can see it in the film." Except the film doesn't take place in the banks or on a stock exchange, but rather in the Greek streets and suburbs where you borrow your money from the wrong people.

Stelios has a failing marriage and kids to take care of, but he is focused on his jazz club more so than anything else. Stelios is in much debt to a Romanian gangster and is told to pay back the money by Wednesday (and I bet you can guess the time). Stelios tries to bargain with the Romanian because so many other people are in debt to him. But the Romanian says that Stelios can't pay off his debt with other people's debt. Stelios gets mixed up in a series of favors and watches his life pass and death appear before his eyes due to his actions, but with every glimpse, there is the smallest ounce of hope that everything will be okay.

"[Even] if we have done everything and we fail, at least something better might happen afterwards. Maybe not now but for generations to come," says Alexiou, reflecting upon the hope found in the film and reflecting on the Greek political-financial situation. With the financial situation and conversation of the Grexit happening right now, a potential Greek exit from the currency-based Euro zone, you can see how this film reflects the social conscious. Germany, also one of the main financial supporters of the film, is also one of the strongest economies in the Euro zone, showing the special relationship that this movie has compared to the greater European, and global, scale.

Besides the historical and political context, this movie is full of great cinematography and one of the scenes looks like it belongs in a less stylized version of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Instead of drawing out the timeline, this movie crunches it together, showing the evolution of Stelios' character and if he can gather his debts. For an insightful, independent movie filled with some criminal action and dealings, this is a great movie to check out.

For Your Consideration... Ida

Last month, the Polish co-production (also produced by Denmark, France, and the UK, with support from the Council of Europe film fund, Eurimages) Ida, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, took home the 2015 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87^th Academy Awards. Ida beat out one of the favorites, Russia’s Levithian, as well as Mali’s first and only Oscar nominee to date, Timbuktu.

Ida is a very artistic film, reminiscent of the style of many European films from the 1960s (as the movie is set in the same time period). Instead of showing a scene in a straight-forward frame, this movie uses extremely daring camera angles…many scenes are crooked, characters are not centered and their faces and bodies are awkwardly cut off in many frames, and settings, such as staircases, take the camera’s focus away from what is actually happening. If you are looking for very artsy direction, this is probably the film for you. It’s also in black & white, adding an extra ounce of avant garde in case you needed more. However, I will say that the black & white helps set the mood for the
                                                             drab and depressing tone of post-WWII Poland.

 

Apart from the visual aspect, Ida tells the story of Ida, a young woman who is preparing to become a nun. Before she takes her final vows, she is told that she should learn about her roots first. Ida and her only surviving relative, her aunt, a communist judge, go on a journey to rediscover a haunting past and what unknowingly led Ida to become part of the Catholic Church in the first place.

One of the artistic liberties Ida takes with a staircase.

Ida touches on many post-war European values and experiences, most of the reason why I believe this film got so much acclaim. Living in the Polish People’s Republic, a satellite to the Soviet Union, not even twenty years after the end of World War II, Ida loses her past, as she never had the opportunity to learn about it, amidst all the violence and displacement. As a viewer, you can feel the sorrow that exists in these characters’ worlds and you get to experience what they are learning about themselves for the first time. Ida meets people from with complicated pasts and blurry futures as she is discovering her own past and trying to reconcile her future.

If You Like "The Crucible", You Will Love...

The Hunt – Denmark & Sweden (2012)

The Hunt represented Denmark at both the 2014 Academy Awards & 2014 Golden Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Lucas, played by Mads Mikkelsen (seen in Casino Royale), is a kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town. While waiting to be picked up after school one day, one of the children says some very damning things about Lucas. In a small town, news travels fast, and before Lucas knows it, all those close to him shun him. Lucas is faced with day-to-day ridicule in a situation that he seems to be stuck in permanently.


Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, this film does an amazing job at exposing Lucas' inner turmoil on screen. As the Star Tribune puts it, "It’s a contemporary horror story about a respected man’s descent into a Kafkaesque nightmare of denunciations, dread and danger." The Hunt also features some great cinematography in the Danish film tradition and is something that shouldn't be missed. 

Joyeux Noël

Directed by Christian Carion

France, Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium & Romania (2005)

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Joyeux Noël was nominated for rewards at several major film industry competitions, such as the Academy Awards & Golden Globes of the United States, the British BAFTA Awards, and the French César Awards. The film is a European co-production based upon the true story of the Christmas truce that took place during World War I. 

From 1914 to 1918, the Great War was raging on in Europe, which saw many casualties and a change in how war was fought. In the early 1900s, nations were eager to go to war with their new technologies and assumed that battles would be battles between machinery.  Being the first modern war to use technologies such as army tanks, trenches, and mustard gas, over 16 million people, both soldiers and civilians, lost their lives. As a result, many soldiers returned home with scaring experiences to a public who didn't fully understand how the way war was fought changed. 

Lewis, Brühl, and Boon
in their roles as Scottish,
German, and French leaders

On the Western front during December 1914, the three forces who were fighting against each other, France, Germany, & Great Britain, agreed upon a ceasefire to celebrate Christmas Eve. This ceasefire brought together the officers and soldiers of opposing armies and allowed them to celebrate with football games, singing of Christmas carols, and to exchange stories and food items from their homelands. The story of the Christmas truce illustrates the very human side of war and how these competing nations could put aside their differences for celebration. Joyeux Noël tells this story with the talents of Diane Kruger, Guillame Canet, Benno Fürmann, Dany Boon, Gary Lewis, and Daniel Brühl, who can all be seen in many other great films.

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If You Like "Weekend at Bernie's", You Will Love...

Waking Ned Devine – United Kingdom/France (1998)

Waking Ned Devine is a hilarious movie that takes place in the Irish countryside. A lotto winner is announced in the town of Tully More, a town with just over 50 residents. It should be pretty easy to find out who won that lotto and then be extra nice to them so that they will give you some of the winnings, right? Think again.

As parties are thrown and schemes are created to figure out who the lotto winner could be, two friends and one of their wives successfully figure out who the winner is... It's Ned Devine! But the problem is that Ned is dead. And smart enough to write his name on the back of the winning ticket. So now how can anyone else claim the prize money? Simple: by pretending to be Ned Devine. And then getting the entire town to support your impersonation.  

Shot on the Isle of Man, this under-the-radar co-production is filled with many great moments and jokes, especially if you're a fan of British comedy. And if you're searching for it outside of North America, you'll find it under the title, Waking Ned.

Chungking Express

Directed by Kar Wai Wong

Hong Kong (1994)

Chungking Express takes place in the streets of Hong Kong in the 1990s. It tells the tales of two different love stories; in the first, a cop known as He Qiwu, deals with a breakup and falls for a mysterious drug dealer, and in the second, another cop known only as Cop 663, deals his breakup with a flight attendant while trying to win the affections of Faye, a counter girl at the Chungking Express. The two storylines don't necessarily intersect in a big reveal at the end of the movie, but they show how closely separated people actually are and how people's paths can just miss intersecting with each other.

One of my favorite things about the film is the dialogue. It is filled with many memorable lines that make you laugh or think but are not too painstakingly witty. For example, the mysterious woman that He Qiwi falls in love with (yes, she is so mysterious that she doesn't even have a name), always walks around wearing sunglasses and a raincoat, two very opposite pieces of clothing. She says, "I don't know when I started being so cautious. If I put on a raincoat, I wear sunglasses too. You never know if there's going to be rain or shine."
 

Several film reviewers & critics have compared this film to the French New Wave cinema era. Quentin Tarantino even liked the film so much that he was able to get Miramax to distribute it in the United States. Visually, the film is beautifully done, filled with lots of colors, filters, and visual effects, and all these features are not shown in an over-the-top, "I'm trying to be artsy" fashion. The storylines are not anything too unrealistic either, but show a day-in-the-life portrait without all the frills of a blockbuster movie.

Chungking Express is a very well-done portrait of Hong Kong in the 90s. And as a bonus feature, there is a great cover of The Cranberries' hit song, Dreams, once you make it all the way to the end.