Adieu Godard, Adieu Cinema

Scénarios + Exposé du Film annonce du film "Scénario" (2024) - Godard Jean Luc Godard's last, 17 minute film, Sénarios, which was completed just a day before his 2022 assisted suicide death, is paired with the 36 minute 'making of' documentary for this year's New York Film Festival. For the fans of the late master it is an emotional one. Because it's the last material to see and hear him on screen in his very last days. Originally planned as a feature, this long gestating project had been constantly worked on, even during Covid lockdown. With his failing health, Godard truncated the four part project into two chapters - DNA: Fundamental Elements and MRI: Odyssey. The message is also simplified and more direct. "The final warning," uttered on several occasions to whatever Godard saw as impending for us.

You can tell that the end was on his mind. Images of death, the violent ones at that are displayed - Pina (Anna Magnani)'s Death in Rosselini's Rome, Open City, car wreck that ends Contempt and the infamous car pile up in Week End (both from his own filmography). So are the images of war. Like the DNA itself- the base, the beginning element for all living creatures, Godard here equates the old film clips as what cinema is based upon. The distinctive sound MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging - a modern medical technology of scanning your body for grave illness) machine makes- the beeping, the loud thuds, are incorporated into the latter part of the film. Not new to the procedure at that point in life, Godard signals the end. Beginning and end, of life and cinema, at least his own, ending as well.

Sénarios exhibits primary colors boldly painted on stock papers over the images and words - the technique he used in his later periods with Image Book and the last year's posthumous release, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars. The colors,shapes, texture painted over collages, Godard was in full late period Mattise mode. At the end, we are shown his exposed old man's hairy torso, as he puffs away his cigar with wild white hair, reading Sartre's aphorism "Using a horse to illustrate that a horse is not a horse is less efficient than using a non-horse to illustrate that a horse is not a horse." I keep wondering what he would make of the current state of the world - The war in Ukraine and Gaza, the rise of misinformation, the world in chaos.

The making of documentary that follows Scénarios, confirms my assumption about the Mattise comparison. Mattise, wheelchair bound and with physical limitations in his final years, turned to a new type of medium, with the help of his assistants, he began creating paper cut collages (decoupage). Godard, filmed by his long time collaborator Fabrice Argano in 2021, gives detailed instructions on, then, a planned 4 part feature on stock paper cards, what to include, what to cut and what to modify in terms of images, music, colors and what sequences. With a lighter in his hand, we get the rare glimpse of his working method in his last years. It's an invaluable and emotional viewing for the fans of cinema at large.

Shift

Nickel Boys (2024) - Ross Adapting Colson Whitehead (Underground Railroads)'s Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name, RaMell Ross -- known for Hale County This Morning, This Evening, his lyrical tapestry of rural Alabamians -- applies the same lyricism to his narrative film debut with Nickel Boys.

Based on a real life case of Dozier School for the Boys, a Florida reform school, where allegations of murder and physical and sexual abuse surfaced dacades later. Ross's treatment of the heavy subject is a mismatch here, and therefore the emotional impact of the tragic and transcending story of perseverance does not quite resonate emotionally.

Strictly seen from first person POV, Ross takes a gamble with Nickel Boys in its presentation of identity swap and audience identification that plays out in the latter part of the film. The unseen protagonist in the first 20 minutes of the film is Elwood, an African American college-bound student in Jim Crow-era Florida, in the care of his loving grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor).

We only get a glimpse of Elwood (Ethan Cole Sharp) reflected on the glass windows and on an iron press. The sequences of Black lives in the 60s are captured in Malick-ian bliss: the colors, softness, consumer goods, and the Christmas lights, all accompanied by Ellis-Taylor's smile. Ross interjects these images with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches as the Civil Rights Movement was heating up, to give this time period some context.

Things take a drastic turn when Elwood accepts a ride to the college from a stranger who happens to drive a stolen car. They are pulled over by police. Just because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, he is sent to the Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys (segregated).

Spencer (Hamish Linklater), who is in charge of the school, and is practically the warden of a jail, tells the incoming juvenile delinquents that if they are good, they will 'graduate' and can rejoin society. If not, they will be punished.

There, Elwood meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), who has a much more cynical outlook of the academy. "You can't rely on anybody. You will have to look out for yourself," he tells Elwood. Our POV changes from Elwood to Turner and we see grown up Elwood (Ethan Herisse) for the first time.

From then on, we switch back and forth from these two characters' point of view. So these two characters are linked. But what does this mean? They endure bullying, and corporal punishment in Nickel Academy. Elwood's prospect of getting out of the place is getting more and more unlikely with his hopes and dreams getting dim.

Ross interjects these scenes with those of a grown-up man with dreads, only seen from the back of his head, in the present day. He owns a moving company and has a girlfriend. He is shown doing research on the now defunct Nickel Academy on his laptop, including the news of mass graves being discovered on the lot of the reform school grounds.

After being punished for attempting to reveal the secrets of the academy (it's unclear what exactly or how he got caught), Elwood and Turner attempt an escape. It is revealed that Turner survives the escape, and takes Elwood's identity to live his friend's aspirations and dreams.

Limiting the POV to two people, and us identifying with those two only, negates all the others who perished in the real reform school it was based on. Not showing or mentioning the nature of the abuse that was going on in there, lessens the emotional impact of the whole ordeal.

Pretty pictures to conjure up the emerging African American middle class and embodiment of unconditional love of the family, captured beautifully by Ellis-Taylor, are all commendable. But for a subject this weighty, the aesthetics in Nickel Boys don't work.

Reach Out and Touch Faith

Distance (2001) - Kore-eda Hirokazu Kore-eda paints a complex picture in the aftermath of unspeakable acts of terrorism and contemplates on the collective responsibility in Distance, inspired by Aum Shinrikyo Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subways in 1995. But in true Kore-eda fashion, the film is not about the carnage or condemnation of the soulless society, but a plea for us to reach out and take care of each other, even though understanding one another can be hard.

It's been three years since the Ark of Truth cult sabotaged Tokyo's water supply system that killed hundreds and injured thousands, we are informed by the TV broadcast. After the act, the members of the cult committed suicide, and their bodies burned and the ashes scattered. Four family members of the cultists, still grappling with the fact that their loved ones committed such a heinous act, get together and pay a visit to the lake in the countryside where the ashes are supposedly scattered. It is revealed that they've been doing this annually, making the trips together to pay respects to the dead.

On the way to the lake, they encounter a surviving cult member Sakata (Tadanobu Asano), who abandoned the group at the last minute, there as well. He keeps his distance. After the visit to the lake and paying respects in various forms, (laying flowers in the water, praying and just saying a few words) they turn back, only to find their car stolen. It's getting late and the rain storm is brewing in the distance, they have no choice but follow Sakata into a cabin which was home for cult members.

Talking to each other and asking Sakata as they spend the night together, they find out the insights and thinking behind their estranged family members. In the beginning, Kore-eda unhurriedly shows the four living their lives, doing their jobs - a swimming instructor, a teacher, a salaryman and a florist. In a series of flashbacks, we get to witness their interactions with their family members who became cult members. Something is missing in their lives, they want to start over, they want to heal their souls...

Just like his previous films - Maborosi and Afterlife, Kore-eda plays the pivotal memories of each character- their final goodbyes, losing them forever to the cult - things get violent for some, not understanding their family, some uneventful and more contemplative. However, that was the last interaction they have had with their loved ones.

Like all his other films, Kore-eda concentrates on the concept of a family in Distance. That it is our duty to shorten the distance between us before it becomes too far and unreachable. With the poetic visuals and contemplative nature, Distance is closer to his earlier films than family dramas of his later films. Unlike the Japanese cinema of disaffected in the late 90s and 2000s by filmmakers like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others, Kore-eda wants to give us a glimpse of hope in human interactions and advocate reaching out and understanding each other with Distance.

Floating

El auge del humano 3/The Human Surge (2023) - Williams Seven years have passed since Argentine experimental filmmaker, Eduardo Williams's Human Surge made a splash in the international film scene. The elusive threads of young people's lives in the global south, shot in various media that incorporate video games and internet, challenged and refuted the rigid old notion of cinema and its first world colonialist hegemony without being seen as overtly political or preachy. Globalization, in Williams's presentation, at least for young people, is both fantasy and real, and among them, connection is easily made crossing national boundaries over abundant technology and is no big deal, in their impoverished daily lives.

Williams comes up with The Human Surge 3. Never mind its title. It's been a while, things have been happening in the world. It's appropriate that he jumps to the third one to keep up with the times. (The prolific filmmaker has been constantly making shorts) In Surge 3, using a 360 VR camera, he charts the non-binary young people's lives in Peru, Taiwan and Sri Lanka. As always, their daily lives in exotic surroundings and daily conversations can be a little discombobulating to the viewers at first. But as it plays out and we settle with some recognizable faces over time, we get settled in and notice that their thoughts intermingle. Certain conversations are repeated in different languages: their animosity toward millionaires, polution and environmental destruction. Then they appear in each other's surroundings and communicate with each other, either in English or in their own language without missing a beat. Someone mentions, "I saw you in my dream, eating a mango on a raft in the water," matching with the image in the Peru section.

In Williams's hand, globalization in the internet age opens up limitless possibilities for the young people to connect - they literally float in the air. For the viewers, he presents an immersive visual/aural journey while also reminding the limitations of technology (for now) by leaving in the distortions of wide angle VR camera imagery in the film.

There are some great established filmmakers who take great chances with experimenting with narratives and the medium to further their artistry in telling human experiences within historical and cultural contexts: Lisandro Alonso and Miguel Gomes- Harmony Korine to a lesser extent, come to mind. Eduardo Williams, with his minimalist/maximalist free-flowing aesthetics, with acute observations of the world here and now, with a great deal of sense of humor and compassion & tenderness toward its subjects, emerges as one of the most daring, important filmmakers working today.