DIRECTED BY Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
STARRING Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck
Germany 2006 137 mins.
In German, with Greek subtitles.
OCEAN’S THIRTEEN **
DIRECTED BY Steven Soderbergh
STARRING George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Matt Damon
US 2007 122 mins.
What’s the fragile pot-pourri that results in cinematic success – and I don’t just mean financially but critically and, well, artistically? Ocean’s Eleven (2001) was a big success, a box-office smash, a film people admired. The not-too-dissimilar Ocean’s Twelve (2004) was not. The Lives of Others is a runaway success. It won Best Film at the European Film Awards last year. It won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, beating the hotly-fancied Volver among others. It played in Athens, so I’m told, for over three months at the same theatre. People who only watch two films a year at the cinema watched this one. Everyone agrees it’s ‘European cinema at its best’ – humane, serious-minded, deeply moving.
I’m not so sure. In fact, Lives of Others seems long-drawn-out and oddly simplistic. It’s actually a Quasimodo story – the tale of the monster who loves the damsel from afar, and secretly helps her without getting credit – given a political twist. The monster (played by Ulrich Muhe) isn’t unsightly, like Quasimodo himself; he’s not an outsider or a tramp, as when Chaplin played a riff on this plot in City Lights; no, he’s a monster because of his job – an agent with the Stasi, East Germany’s secret surveillance police, spying on ordinary citizens deemed ‘enemies of the State’ by his superiors. Those superiors are porcine and repellent, a fat sleazy Minister and a petty, careerist Director – which of course is as it should be, because we all know the Stasi was evil. In fact, Lives of Others works best when you start with the assumption that Muhe’s character works for the Stasi, therefore Muhe’s character must be evil; that way you can be surprised by his finer feeling, gripped by his increasing identification with his latest subjects – a theatre director and his girlfriend – and finally moved by his personal sacrifice.
Of course, there’s no reason why a government spy should be evil; we’ve all read enough John le Carr? to know they tend to operate rather from a complex conjunction of human flaws and insecurities. Nor, in fact, is it so surprising that a really good spy should be something of an artist – what is Art, if not an obsessive interest in other people? – making him identify when he has to spy on a fellow artist (especially when he also falls in love with that artist’s companion). The film spends a lot of needless energy trying to make him sympathetic; an assignation with a hooker reveals his loneliness, an encounter with a little boy in a lift shows an inchoate guilt for what he does. He’s shown reading Brecht. And meanwhile the landscape around him – filmed in chilly greys, browns and yellows – oozes oppression.
There are fine moments, in familiar Orwellian vein. The rules for interrogating suspects teem with irrational Catch-22s. If a suspect breaks down and cries, that means he must be guilty; if he insists they’ve got the wrong man, he can be arrested for doubting the government! Muhe’s face (he doesn’t talk much) is an eloquent palimpsest of professional chilliness over hidden yearnings. A scene involving a Honecker joke – a junior spy inadvertently insulting the Party Secretary in front of his superior – shows how fickle arbitrary power can be, and how terrifying.
Is that really so surprising, though? Is it even all that interesting? Totalitarian states are liable to repress; it’s what they do. Besides, can we really tut our self-righteous tut at the evil Stasi when our own democracies are stocking up on CCTV cameras (for “security” reasons, a reminder that the Stasi’s full name was the Ministry of State Security)? Is it more frightening that a Communist state in the 80s spied on dissident artists with long-distance microphones, or that a DNA database will eventually be established – sooner rather than later, I suspect – allowing the State to monitor all citizens at will? Don’t get me wrong; both those things are equally distasteful. But The Lives of Others is short on pathos and long on complacency, based on easy truisms and easy assumptions. In fact, I sometimes wonder if this long, portentous film – for all its runaway success – is really saying anything deeper than, e.g., Die Hard 4.0. Heresy!
Speaking of success brings us inevitably to Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, the latest being Ocean’s Thirteen – not just because the films are successful, but because they’re about success, the privileged class enjoying its privileges. Who are these people? A gang of thieves, certainly, but also (as Eleven made clear), a gang of movie stars. It’s no accident that the original O11, back in the 60s, was a vehicle for the Rat Pack, the cooler-than-thou clique headed by Frank Sinatra – or that the remake featured the world’s most glamorous actor (George Clooney) going after the world’s most glamorous actress (Julia Roberts) with the help of the world’s most glamorous sidekick (Brad Pitt).
Laid-back style is the series’ watchword, the key to its charm. It can get away with massive plot holes, because only a peasant would complain that the heists are implausible; and when it finds heart – as with the lovely ‘Clair de Lune’ scene in Eleven – it’s all the more affecting because the shield of cool is momentarily pierced.
In short, it needs to be breezy – but Ocean’s Twelve was too breezy, people complained that it felt self-indulgent and lazy, so Thirteen makes up for it with lots and lots of plot. The new film is convoluted, busy, and not even especially implausible. The problem? It’s exactly the opposite of what an Ocean’s movie should be.
Actually, Thirteen is very amusing. It looks great, right from an early shot of Pitt in an elegant white suit framed against the eye-popping blue of a Vegas dawn. It finds an equivalent for the ‘Clair de Lune’ sequence in a late bit of Sinatra-and-fireworks. And it’s certainly never boring, if only because it takes so much energy to keep up with the heist – a “revenge job”, undertaken against slimy casino owner Al Pacino. Why are two of the gang in Mexico? Oh of course, they have to fix the dice which are going to be rolled in the craps game. What’s all this about a power-drill? Oh right, that’s going to be used in their “exit strategy”.
Two things get lost in this overworked narrative. The first is a moment of climax for the heist; we need to see Pacino battered and broken – maybe he could even do a silent scream, like in Godfather Part III – but the film seems so relieved when its many strands finally coalesce that it just peters out. The second (and more important) is the sense of nonchalant poise typified by Clooney and Pitt. They get a few decent moments, even get a chance to tweak their public image; when George advises Brad to settle down and “have lots of kids” it sounds like a rib-nudging dig at Angelina’s manic broodiness. Mostly, however, they seem irrelevant, caught in a narrative machine that dwarfs their sangfroid with its huffing and puffing. Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t a bad film, just misguided. Why are Danny and Rusty rushing around so frantically? Why do they even need such a fiendishly elaborate “revenge job”? Don’t they know success is the best revenge?
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few weeks. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) a
re among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
CLIMATES: Arthouse hit by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan in excellent DVD edition, including interviews, a documentary and 25 stunning location photos shot by Ceylan (who made his name as a stills photographer). [UK]
INTO GREAT SILENCE: 3-hour documentary on monastery life (with Trappist monks who’ve taken a vow of silence) obviously isn’t for everyone – but fans say it achieves transcendence. Worth pestering your local DVD shop for, at the very least. [UK]
OLD FILMS
KATHARINE HEPBURN 100th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION: Six films honouring Kate the Great, including two of her best – ‘Morning Glory’ (1933), for which she won her first Oscar, and the brilliantly strange ‘Sylvia Scarlett’ (1936) where she’s dressed as a boy for most of the movie! Others include ‘Dragon Seed’ (1944) and ‘The Corn is Green’ (1978). Extras include shorts and cartoons, though unfortunately the films aren’t available individually. [US]
SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954): Deluxe treatment by the Criterion Collection for this classic drama from director Kenji Mizoguchi (his ‘Ugetsu’ showed at the Alternative Cinema Festival recently). Extras include interviews with three people who knew Mizoguchi personally, plus scholarly commentary and a booklet on the movie. [US]
SCARFACE (1932): Already available on Region 2, but we’ll take any chance to plug this seminal gangster film (later remade, of course, with Al Pacino), now released on Region 1 as part of the Universal Cinema Classics series, also including ‘So Proudly We Hail!’ (1943) and ‘Unconquered’ (1947). Minor extras include Alternate Ending. [US]
PORKY’S (1981): Teen sex farce, a smash-hit in its day, with commentary by its (recently deceased) director Bob Clark. Also out in ‘Ultimate Edition’ also including ‘Porky’s II’ and “Porky’s: The Revenge’! [US]
COUSIN, COUSINE (1975): Mildly naughty French farce, another big hit in its day. [UK]
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY? (1981): Talky but powerful drama on euthanasia, with fine Richard Dreyfuss performance. Extras include director commentary. [US]
THE ANDREI TARKOVSKY COMPANION: Not a film by Tarkovsky but three films about Tarkovsky – including ‘Moscow Elegy’ by fellow Russian master Aleksandr Sokurov and ‘A Day in the Life of Andrey Arsenevitch’ by Chris Marker. One for completists. [UK]
