![]() The road ahead is lined with bodies, blood, jealousy, paranoia-and it’s a long way to the bottom from the throne. The tragedy that unfolds is indeed as poignant as any great Shakespeare work. Greed poisons the Ichimonji’s bloodline, pervasive and all-consuming. Father and sons scheme against one another, leading to violent plots for control over the kingdom. The Ichimonji clan, however, will not settle for less than everything. Ichimonji divides his conquered land between his three sons, Taro, Jiro, Saburo. Each shot is labored and precise, as sublime landscapes overwhelm the screen, dwarfing the armies of men fighting below.Īt the center of the ensuing wars is Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord. Recognized as a master of epics, including his 七人の侍 (Seven Samurai, 1954), Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear set in medieval Japan. Unshakably haunting and undeniably poignant, this is a movie that will live under your skin.Īn attempt to articulate just how vast and magnificent the scope of Akira Kurosawa’s 乱 (Ran) is will inevitably fall short. What’s more, the movie’s intentionally ambiguous framing suffuses the plot with an otherworldly sense of mystery, a quality that gradually intensifies as Georg (Franz Rogowski) desperately searches for a one-way ticket out of hellish bureaucratic limbo before he finds himself waylaid by that most mysterious emotion of all: love. The uncanny historical echo effect works as intended, because the parallels Transit subtly draws between the past and today are horribly clear. Director Christian Petzold isn’t trying to confuse us: by blurring the backdrop, he’s making the terror and the desperation of the story more immediate - removing the distance that might have prevented us from really feeling what happens. While the characters talk of German fascists occupying France, anachronistic details (like modern technology and clothing) suggest we haven’t gone back in time at all. Transit is based on a WWII novel - though you wouldn’t be able to tell from first glance. A poetic, sexy, and gorgeous movie without a wasted moment. ![]() ![]() It is a statement on how far artists go for their art, especially when they become constrained not only by dictatorship but also love. Cold War follows their impossible love for fourteen years and across many European countries on each side of the Iron Curtain. The plot is essentially about the obsessive attraction between musician Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and the young singer Zula (Joanna Kulig), who is recruited as the newest member of the former’s state-sponsored folk music band. Winner of a slew of prestigious awards, this is a film made for the silver screen, so we recommend leaving your iPhone on the table and getting your hands on the biggest screen you can muster for watching this. Whether we are feasting our eyes on the decaying post-war landscape of Poland, the patinated streets of East Berlin, or the delicate magic of a historic Paris, Cold War offers its viewers meticulously staged black-and-white beauty, conceived by Polish wunderkind director Paweł Pawlikowski and his trusted cinematographer Łukasz Ża. While barely 90 minutes long, Cold War is epic in scope and a modern testament to what cinema can be. ![]()
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