Cannes at Home: Day 8
Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 7:16PM What an exciting day to be at Cannes this must have been. Asghar Farhadi unveiled a new picture to critical acclaim, with some even stating that A Hero is his greatest work since A Separation. In the main competition, Julia Ducournau also presented her sophomore feature, Titane. After Raw, the new film seems like it will continue the director's exploration on the limits of body horror. As for some sidebar prospects, Miguel Gomes opened his latest work in the Director's Fortnight. The Tsugua Diaries was co-directed with Maureen Fazendeiro and represents Gomes' first feature since Arabian Nights. Unfortunately, another project called Savagery remains incomplete since the pandemic forced the production to halt. In any case, for our homebound Cannes alternative, let's explore the past and best works from these filmmakers…
A SEPARATION (2011)
Can we ever be truly sure that our perception of reality is correct? In narrative cinema, we trust textual clarity and audiovisual idioms to build meaning out of nothing, to establish what's true within the on-screen universe. Yet, throughout the years, Asghar Farhadi has made a career out of upending such values. Everlasting doubt is the principal tenet of his cinema, a moral unknowability that challenges the viewer and makes them question the right to judge other people—even those persons who only exist on the silver screen. No picture better exemplifies this than A Separation. Right from its first scene, we're put in the shoes of a judge and unwittingly forced to decide who's right and who's wrong in a marital dispute. What's more, the film's narrative gamble is only getting started. After the startling introduction, things only get more complicated.
Much of the film is about what we can't see, what the editing and repetitive framing conceal or chose to exhibit. Furthermore, it's a showcase for one of the best ensemble casts of the last decade, each and every actor working within a register of mysterious ambivalence. That's not to say Farhadi's work is psychologically fuzzy. Far from it, A Separation unfurls a complex social thesis where each choice is refracted through a prism of juxtaposed conflict. The result is enigmatic, forcing us to reassess fundamental truths about each character, each action, scene by scene. While the construction suggests opposition to thriller convention, A Separation is almost Hitchcockian in its mastery of suspense. As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, the film is a modern classic that only grows richer with each re-watch.
Available to rent on many services, including Amazon Prime and Youtube.
RAW (2016)
Growing pains and self-discovery are real-life horror stories all on their own. No wonder that artists keep returning to them when imagining new nightmares to sic upon unsuspecting audiences. Julia Ducournau's feature debut takes as its starting point a young woman's first days in college. Hazing rituals and wild parties make for an earthly hell of overstimulation, carnal impulses out of bounds, bristling against one's limits until they break free. But then, something beyond nature occurs. The taste of flesh unravels deep-seated pangs of hunger inside our freshman protagonist. Soon, she's ravenous, dominated by a need she doesn't understand and refuses to consider, something heinous that only grows beastlier through repression.
A sibling relationship accelerates the fall, but it also contextualizes what's happening. From shocking suddenness, the story settles into fated tragedy. As it turns out, you can only run so far away from the bonds of familial blood before they catch up. Growing up only accelerates the change, prompting old mistakes to be repeated forever more, generation after generation. At its best, when focused on its anti-heroine's introspective panic, Raw is a film of visceral sights, upsetting things that pull the vomit up our throats and birth nightmares. Nevertheless, the movie finds space for some breezy black-hearted humor, even ambiguity. The tonal gambit that pays off and, if anything, only augments the shocks. Like a Brazilian wax gone wrong, Ducornau's movie is not for the faint of heart.
Streaming on IndieFlix. You can also rent it from many services.
ARABIAN NIGHTS (2015)
If I were to make a list of the most outstanding cinematic achievements of the 2010s, Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights would land right on top. Watching this three-volume many-chaptered odyssey in cinemas was an unforgettable experience, as the filmmakers were somehow able to sustain a sense of surprise and wonderment for over six hours. Each new shot brings with it some winsome playfulness, each twisted news story or national iconography barging through with reinvigorated political candor. For as much of an art film as this big-screen monument is, it's also remarkably accessible, fun too if one's willing to tune themselves to the picture's wavelength.
Hearing from friends and family how much they loved it was a lovely feeling, a confirmation that the most daring of audiovisual experiments can also be popular hits. And yet, I must pause in this rhapsody of praise to acknowledge some truths. Arabian Nights works so much within a milieu recent and ancient Portuguese history that it probably feels insular to those not in the known. It's certainly difficult to imagine an outsider getting all the references, how political it is, how each image is a thread that, if adequately pulled, unweaves a long tapestry that goes from 2010's social schisms back to Portugal's origins as a country. Should cinema try to cater to universal audiences?
One often finds that the best art is the most specific. Arabian Nights, as ambitious and sprawling as it is, fits the bill of specificity. The constantly reinventing pageant is thus grounded in reality, the particulars of individual existences, while floating by like a dream. The intersection of journalism and mythmaking, documentary and experimental fiction, commentary and hallucination, that Gomes explores in these miraculous Arabian Nights was and still is a revelation. Whenever my love for the seventh art vacillates, whenever my devotion wavers, I just need to remind myself that this exists and I'm full of happiness again. Full of gratitude that I was alive at the right time to see and love this marvel of cinema.
Streaming on Kanopy, MUBI, and Fandor. You can also rent it on various services.
What film would be at the top of your own "Best of the 2010s" list?
Reader Comments (7)
A Separation and Raw are phenomenal films. I love them both as they would be in my best films of the 2010s.
Not all of Gomes' ARABIAN NIGHTS works for me, but on a scale of pure formal and narrative audacity it's an A+. I like the third volume the best.
Someone needs to guide us non-Portuguese viewers through ARABIAN NIGHTS. Why don't you pitch it as a BFI CLASSICS volume, Cláudio? You're probably the best person in the English speaking world to do the job. I'd buy it.
I wish i could see what others see in Arabian Nights though I always suspected i needed to take a course in Portugueuse politics and history to do so. I only saw Volume 2 -- the Oscar submission as well as the one that won the Palme Dog ;) -- but though i thought some of its images and ideas were intoxicating it felt wildly uneven (as pictures with multiple vignettes often can) and so slow paced that I had trouble imagining sitting through another four hours of it. But most people i trust love it so perhaps i should get it a shot.
A Separation is of course a masterpiece and I'm glad to have given it my gold medal in its year
My top films (or my all time favorites) of the 2010's are:
1. Holy Motors
2. Maquinaria Panamericana
3. It's Such a Beautiful Day (that I discovered in this page)
4. Birdman
Front-runners: Parasite, El Viaje de Keta, Huahua, A Separation and Pequeñas Voces.
I'm a stage in life, 33 years old, having spent most of my time IN life up to this point reveling in cinema, of just about every kind, and I'm exceedingly okay with just never bothering with certain directors or films. Arabian Nights is one of those.
I've literally almost never heard anything but praise for it, and yet, it says absolutely nothing to me, and for visual flair, and style, I have so many other comfort foods I can go to.
Maybe I overdid it and watched too many films, haha, but I don't even think that's possible.
Also, am I alone with the "I don't get why everyone loves Carax" vibe I always get from the Internet? Holy Motors was interminable, and save for that out-of-nowhere and glorious Minogue cameo, I was completely indifferent to it and him as a director.
But eh, that's what le cinema is for. We can always go to another screening room. :)
A Separation is a phenomenal movie, incredible performances and an emotionally riveting story.