Quickfire Review #1 - Bill Douglas, Barbenheimer, Shape of Water

mylo pinto rizvi
Sep 10, 2023
7 min read

Updated: Sep 17, 2023

SPRING-SUMMER EDITION

Bill Douglas Trilogy: My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home (1972, 1973, 1978)

Directed by Bill Douglas

I ended up watching this out of order as I discovered it by randomly choosing the second film, My Ain Folk, on MUBI. I've never seen anything like this before. It has an amazing rawness to it, and it perfectly captures the sense of aimlessness that one feels in childhood. It also has a brutality to it as you watch Jamie go through cycles of distress, neglect, and self-resentment. For me, watching the Bill Douglas Trilogy was a more moving and harrowing experience than similar films of this nature, such as the 400 Blows and the Apu Trilogy, though I'm not sure if it is better than the two. Its main flaw is that it works best in the context of a trilogy and not as individual films.

Watched on MUBI

The Last Stage (1948)

Directed by Wanda Jakubowska

An impressive Polish picture that marked the first depiction of the Holocaust in cinema. Both brutal and sensitive The Last Stage proves to be a deeply moving film that treats its subject matter with the utmost respect. Directed by Wanda Jakubowska, the film also has themes of feminism and female solidarity. The film also shows how travellers and leftists were also victims of the Holocaust, which is a neglected fact in modern representations. One scene that stands out is when a group of prisoners are being taken to the gas chambers and they start to sing. Everything, from acting to cinematography, is impeccable. In my opinion, this film is probably a better film than Schidler's Lists.

Watched on MUBI

When the Day Breaks (1999)

Directed by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby

When the Day Breaks is an animated short film directed by NFB veterans Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby. While most animated films have an emphasis on the spectacle of motion, this film is instead more interested in the mundane and personal. It’s about the small things that make up life, from making breakfast to going shopping. It’s a film that, while depressing in plot, is uplifting in nature. It’s a celebration of life in all its sweet and sour moments. Its use of anthropomorphism gives a sense of poetry and adoration that perfectly sets the tone, echoing the comedic animated films of Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny and juxtaposing that with the harsh reality of city life. The film also has some of the best rotoscoped animation I've ever seen and doesn't have the common look of being traced. To conclude, When The Day Breaks is a masterpiece of animated cinema and a beautiful reflection on life and the human experience.

Watched on NFB

Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson

With superhero franchise fatigue at an all-time high, the genre is currently facing an existential crisis. What made the MCU successful was its emphasis on characters rather than lore, but since Avengers: Endgame, many of the character arcs have been finished. It's very easy to try and boil down a film's success in scientific, quantifiable terms, but audiences, as shown with the recent Barbenheimer, appreciate quality, not quantity.

On the surface, yet another exploration of the multiverse plot device might seem tired and cynical, but the film's predecessor, Into the Spider-verse, is the instigator of this craze and is one of the best films of the sub-genre. The Spider-Verse builds upon the success of the first film with a crazier plot and an increasingly anarchic spirit that is more comparable to the Lego movie than the first film. It does this while never undermining the characters, who all feel believable and authentic. It's never less flawed. With the success of the previous film, the sense of studio meddling feels more prominent. There are numerous points, mainly in the film's third chapter, where the film artificially inserts pointless fan service that was obviously designed to instigate social media reactions. This undermines the experience, as one scene can feel authentic and natural and the next can feel artificial and hollow. Never-the-less, it is a remarkable achievement that dwarfs its superhero cinematic counterparts in its brilliance.

Watched in Cinemas

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Oppenheimer

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a masterpiece despite its flaws. It's a return to a form of the big picture epic that has become rarer in recent years and that prioritises an individual artistic vision over box office profit. It's most comparable to films such as The Red Shoes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Abel Gance's Napoleon (not Hollywood). All of these films combine spectacle with cinematic experimentalism. When compared to other recent epics such as Avengers: Endgame and Avatar: The Way of Water the difference is clear. This is by no means an attempt to diminish these films, which are still quite remarkable in their own right. Its experimentalism is justified as it turns what could have been a mundane courtroom drama into an overwhelming, heightened, mellow drama. The main problem comes with the IMAX 3 hour limit, which means that everything is cut down and compressed to fit this limit. There is an efficiency to the film as it strives to keep padding to a minimum. Apart from the Florence Pugh scenes, there aren't any scenes that I think could have benefited from being cut or modified. I think the film could have benefited from being slightly longer, which it could use to further develop its secondary cast and perhaps have a scene showing the effects of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These aspects don't really affect the cinematic experience, but they do make the film a bit muddled.

Watched in Cinemas

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A Short Film About Killing

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

It would have been very easy to make a film about capital punishment as a tragedy. Where the innocent suffer and the guilty go free. What's interesting about A Short Film About Killing is that it creates an ideal scenario for supporters of capital punishment. It portrays society in a subversively conservative way. The murderer is portrayed as a delinquent, whereas the upper classes are portrayed as having nobility and respectability. But despite all this, it then proceeds to show the process of capital punishment in the most uncompromising and brutal way. It’s a film that intends to challenge the audience not only with its brutality but also with their own assumptions. It makes the audience complicit in the killing.

Watched on Blu-Ray

Land and Freedom

Directed by Ken Loach

Land and Freedom is the film in which you realise "Hey, this Ken Loach guy is a bit left wing".

Watched on MUBI

A Woman Under Influence

Directed by John Cassavetes

Before watching this, my knowledge of John Cassavetes was quite vague. I hadn't seen any of his films before, and the only one of his that I was aware of was Faces. Similarly, with My Ain' Folk, I randomly chose this, and so I was completely unprepared. This is perhaps the ideal circumstance for watching this film, as its emotional impact is all the more impactful. Its documentary-style direction is perhaps some of the best I've seen. Every moment feels real, raw, and unscripted. There is a real sense of anarchy. What really carries the film are the performances. I'd seen Peter Falk before in Columbo, and here he shows remarkable versatility, being both bumbling and menacing. Gena Rowlands is the star of the film, and her acting is amazing. I'd like to explore both of their filmographies first, but based on this film alone, I think Falk and Rowlands could become some of my favourite actors.

Watched on MUBI

Shape of Water

Directed by Guilmero Del Toro

While, of course, incorrect, the accusations of plagiarism are unsurprising. The concept is an obvious rehash of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale with a science fiction/horror twist. What makes it work so well is Guilmero Del Toro, who elevates it with his dark, twisted sensibility. It feels very much in line with his other works in terms of its philosophical outlook, particularly with his most recent film, Pinochio. Both explore the themes of embracing oneself and the experience. These themes feel particularly singular to Del Toro's being a Mexican immigrant and growing up as a creative. He has also said that he identified with the monsters in monster films that he watched when he was growing up. For him, watching Frankenstein was like a religious experience. The film also continues Del Toro's running theme of anti-establishmentarianism with the character of Strickland, a United States Colonel who is portrayed as exploitative and malevolent. The film portrays, in various ways, the struggle for freedom in the face of structuralism. Women are seen in subservient roles, homophobia is portrayed with the film taking place around the time of the lavender scare, and we see institutional racism in segregated America. These are all very much background features, and the film has an innocence to it. At its heart, the film is a mellow drama. This is reflected in its cinematography, with its camera, which moves freely. The film is an homage, and that is inescapable, but what makes it work is that it is more than that. The film's concerns are more grounded in real life than fantasy.

Watched on Disney+

Barbie

Directed by Greta Gerwig

One of the most interesting aspects of this summer's box office sensation, Barbenheimer, has been their flaws, which have resulted in heavy debate. Such discourse is warranted, but the criticisms have somewhat overshadowed the two films successes. For Barbie, there has been a lot of talk about whether it is truly a feminist film. I think the criticisms are fair, but there is the question of whether you can make a truly subversive film of this nature when you're being funded by a giant exploitative corporation with a vested interest in giving their infamously sexist toy a progressive face lift. Barbie may not be a good feminist film, but it is a good comedy with light feminist satire. Like Oppenheimer, it is a film that is very much about the cinematic experience. The film's main preoccupation is for the audience to have a good time. Its best moments are when logic goes out the window and the film embraces anarchy. Both Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are great. Gosling, for many, has been the standout, which I think can be attributed to Ken being a more comedic role than Barbie. On the production side of things, the film is remarkably well made. The production design and costumes are superb and perfectly capture the plastic toy aesthetic. I think that the cultural impact of Barbie will lead to positive change. The box office success will show studios that there is an appetite for female-driven stories. Despite the film's flaws, this is a good thing.