Grand Illusion

Mr. K (2024) - Schwab The 90s and 2000s were wild times in art-house cinema. These little idiosyncratic and absurd European films that didn't make much sense plot-wise, but had elaborate set designs and filled with surrealist whimsy, were dime a dozen, and you were glad they existed and available through Netflix DVD services (R.I.P.) Two decades later, with plot driven superhero movies, taut policier thrillers, 3D animations dominate the cinemas. Then Mr. K comes along, starring the king of oddity, Crispin Glover, directed by Norwegian born, Dutch filmmaker Tallulah Schwab. The film, referencing Kafka with his protagonist Joseph K from The Trial, indeed showcases a Kafkaeque labyrinth, where our protagonist can't escape from. With a great production design (Maarten Piersma and Manolito Glas) and filled with eccentric characters, harkening back to good old days of art-house nonsense filmmaking, Mr. K is a breath of fresh air.

Traveling Magician, Mr. K (Glover), is first seen doing tricks in front of uninterested audiences. The trick, suspending the globes of the solar system in the air, doesn't get any responses. This beginning reminds me of the mysterious and whimsical way Bela Tarr's Werkmeister Harmonies starts, where the village idiot explains how a solar eclipse works to a bunch of drunkards, delving into philosophical comedy to set the tone. “Every being is a universe within themselves, floating about in eternal darkness.” K narrates, alluding to the dream logic conclusion of the film.

The self contained universe in this film is an opulent but aging hotel that K checks into. After dealing with a glass eyed grumpy matron, and witnessing a man under his bed and a cleaning woman in his closet, hurriedly scampering out of his room, K goes to uneasy sleep, expecting to check out the following day.

As K wakes and gets ready to go, he finds himself marooned in the decaying hotel. Endless corridors lead him in circles and K can't seem to locate the exit. Someone scribbled "LIBERATOR" on the wall of the corridor. Chased by a marching brass band that seemingly materialized from the walls, and his bag stolen by feral children, K ends up in the opulent stuffed room of two old sisters (Dearbhla Molloy and Fionnula Flanagan) who are kind but can't seem to direct him to the exit.

He is then pushed into the hotel's busy kitchen, taken in as one of the kitchen staff. He is on an egg sorting line. And he meets fellow egg sorting worker Anton (Jan Gunnar Røise), whose ambition is to be promoted as a whiskerer, and who doesn't seem to have ever been outside the hotel. "We have everything we need here." He tells K. For whatever reason, the head chef (Bjørn Sundquist), takes a shine to our protagonist, as if he is the chosen one sent by some higher power, like a man in some secret prophecy. Without trying, K is promoted to the whiskerer's line, much to the chagrin of Anton. The kitchen staff are party animals it turns out. So they party after hours and sleep on piles of other workers. But K has to make his meeting with a client and needs to get out of the hotel.

K is awakened by the noise from the peeling wall. And he finds the hotel is physically shrinking. And there are some sinewy roots growing inside the walls. He has to warn the residents of the hotel! Is K the liberator?

Thick and dark green interior wall papers, the endless corridors and secret compartments/doors and cramped interior are as much the characters as well as the hotel's eclectic inhabitants. It might annoy you that there's no coherent plot in Mr. K. You will need to surrender your logically wired mind to embrace the film full of absurd humor and surrealist whimsy. Glover, who cultivated a unique persona over the decades playing weirdos and outcasts, fits right in as Mr. K in the world with its own self-contained hierarchy and rules. Part Jeaunette & Caro (Delicatessen), part Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), part Gordon & Abel (Iceberg), and part Jens Lien (Bothersome Man), Mr. K harkens back to the wry humor and wild imagination that was signature element in art-house cinema of the 90s and early 2000s.

You might be disappointed with the unresolved ending, but Mr. K is undoubtedly a unique film among mountains of narrative driven cinemascape of today. If you want to take a mental break from complicated and intricate plotting, and want to give in to the absurdities of an European art flick, Mr. K will be a highly rewarding movie going experience.

Mr. K plays in New York and will open in theaters in Los Angeles, 10/21.

Burnt Offering

Silver Haze (2023) - Polak Dutch director Sacha Polak teams up again with Vicky Knight, a British actress and a star of her previous film Dirty God, in her new film Silver Haze, which premieres at this year's Berlinale's Panorama section. Knight, who sustained serious burn on one third of her body as a child, plays Franky, a young woman who is a victim of a fire and carries the stigma both flesh and mind. Her East End family home is a mess - mom, an alcoholic who never recovered from her husband leaving for another woman, a younger sister who has yet to find her identity and an older male relative who is not quite the role model. Even though Franky is sleeping with a local boy, everyone close to her knows that she has lesbian tendencies. While working as a nurse at a hospital, she befriends a suicidal patient Florence (Esme Creed-Miles) and starts seeing her after being discharged. Florence, a young woman from a wealthy family, has been staying with Jack, her autistic brother, in the home of family friend Alice (Angela Bruce), an old black woman dying of cancer, near the beach in the south of London. Forever moody and unpredictable, Florence warns Franky that she is a bad person. Yet, Flo is the first person who makes Franky smile in a long time. She is the person who encourages her to come out of a shell. For the first time since she got burned, Franky can go out to swim, exposing her scarred body to the world.

But Flo is also a bad influence on Franky. She's Franky's id personified. After arguing and breaking up and disappearing for days on end many times, Flo encourages Franky to firebomb her dad's new house where he lives with his new family. It is dad's new wife whom she believes is not only responsible for the breakup of her family but also for setting a fire in the pub where she got burned.

Franky finds a makeshift family in Alice's home, away from daily bullying, physical, verbal abuses, and self-doubt. It is Jack, who has no filters, tells like it is - that the fire where Franky got burned might not have been an arson, that it could have been caused by a lot of different things, exposing Franky's hate and anger, and her desire to put a blame on one person all her life might have been willfully misdirected and a self-denial. Like the cannabis strain that Franky grows with care, where the title comes from, the film is about the smoke screens as a defensive mechanism to cope with life's traumatic events. But somehow you will need to face the reality to move on.

In the tradition of British kitchen-sink realism of Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold and humanist makeshift family dramas of Kore-eda, Polak and Knight create an emotionally resonant film about forgiveness and finding peace via self-reflexive storytelling. Knight is a natural born actress and camera (captured by DP Tibor Dingelstad) adores her. Her brevity in using her life story and stigma she carries on screen is quite remarkable. Sensitively written and directed with clear eyes, Silver Haze is a great little gem and first great discovery of the 2023.

Devil's in the Details

Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil (2015) - van Huystee

To mark the 500th year of his death, Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil follows a team of Dutch Bosch scholars and experts, headed by art historian Matthijs Ilsink, as they try to shore up existing paintings by the Dutch master, known for his elaborate, detailed depiction of literal, biblical heaven and hell, in an exhibition at Noorsbrabants Museum in his hometown of Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.

There are only 25 paintings and 20 or so drawings known to be painted by Bosch or at least by his workshop, scattered throughout Europe. The film works as an enthralling art detective story and a fascinating history lesson. There is not one boring moment in its 89 minute running time.

With his surrealistic, imaginative paintings, Bosch is now considered by many as the father of the renaissance, with the reasoning that his paintings, filled with grotesque creatures and unspeakable torture and human suffering, mark the beginning of expressionism and the humanist movement. You find his The Garden of Earthly Delights appropriated in pop culture, from The Simpsons to a pair of Doc Martin boots. There might not have been Dali or Geiger if it weren't for Bosch.

Since I've seen his paintings only in art books, it's a real delight to see his work up-close and personal, blown up on the big screen. As Matthijs' team compares and investigates the authenticity of each piece -- Bosch never dated his works -- with cutting edge technology, be it The Haywain Triptych or Death and the Miser, we get to have a closely-examined guided tour of a wondrous, hidden world we never will get to see, not even by looking at a real Bosch painting (since his actual paintings are on rather small wooden panels0, in a crowded museum behind the ropes.

We get to see the underdrawings of the master, as well as his intentions and last minute changes of each piece, by scanning each one through the computer and x-rayed images. It is an artist's brush strokes and techniques embedded in these underdrawings that determines their authenticity.

We get to see the intense politics behind the scenes of the high echelons of museum and academia worlds, as Mattijs and his team beg and plead to borrow Bosch paintings from some of Europe's biggest museums. It's the Museo del Prado of Madrid, a powerhouse among great European museums, that owns most of the most famous Bosch paintings since the reign of Philip II. The paintings have not left Spain for the past 400 years.

A frenzy of political maneuvering here plays out like an espionage thriller, complete with villains and colorful characters. Their detective work takes the team to Madrid, Venice, New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, Antwerp and even Kansas. At the climax of the film, we are presented with the discovery of a “new” Bosch in a small Kansas City museum, which prompts Julian Zugazagoitia, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, to exclaim, "You love all your children. But it’s like one of your children just won the Nobel Prize”.

Long-time producer of the great Dutch documentarian Johan van the Keuken, Pieter van Huystee makes his great directing debut here. Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil is one of the most engrossing documentaries about art and an artist in recent years, along with Das große Museum (2014), about The Kunsterhistorisches Museum in Vienna. While never losing sight of the human element, the film is filled to the brim with great works of art full of intrigue and mystery. A great watch.

Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil has an exclusive two-week engagement at Film Forum in New York from July 27 through August 9.

Innocence Triumphs Over Thug Life

Prince (2014) - de Jong

A young Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong's debut film Prince has all of the stereotypical elements that make up a so-called gangsta movie - guns, drugs, babes, bling-blings and expensive sports mobiles. But underneath all its macho posturing, inner-city working class cliché and flashy aesthetics, you find an unexpected sweetness as the film unfolds.

Our teenage half-breed protagonist Ayoub (Ayoub Elasri) hangs out with his buddies and spending time blowing up mail boxes with firecrackers in their Amsterdam housing projects neighborhood. Ayoub dreams of hitting big and hooking up with Laura (Sigrid ten Napel), a blonde neighborhood girl who is currently seeing Ronnie, a head of the gang of older, lowly criminal boys who taunt and bully around Ayoub and his friends. "Our day will come," Ayoub ominously tells his buddies after one such bullying session.

At home, Ayoub has to contend with his lonely Dutch mother and his cute, half sister Demi (Olivia Lonsdale). His asserting the 'man of the family' role only meets disdain from them. He meets his homeless drug addict Moroccan father and slip in whatever money he can give him. His father is one of those fragile, effeminate 'little bird' - not meant for this world.

Ayoub finally gets attention from a creepy, sniveling local kingpin Kalpa and start running errands for him. Kalpa even lets him drive his iridescent Ferrari and gives him a crown as a souvenir, calling him Prince.

Hitting big time means distancing himself from his buddies. Ayoub's over-protectiveness of his sister comes between him and his best friend Franky (Jorik Scholten) who falls in love with her. Franky also happens to be Ronnie's little brother and after Ayoub explodes on him, Ronnie calls for blood. Kalpa sees Ayoub's beat up face and things get ugly. Kalpa wants him to get revenge on Ronnie at gunpoint.

Beneath all this macho posturing, there is a strong undercurrent of innocence and sweetness carried out by young actors. Their interactions are authentic and have an obvious air of kids playing adults.

It would be easy to group de Jong in Nicolas Winding Refn camp with his slick style and 80s style pumping electronic soundtrack (by Dutch musician Palmbomen). But Prince has more common with Truffaut's 400 Blows in spirit. The film easily could have gone more conventional - the eruption of violence and overflow of emotions. But it's filled with many quiet, sweet tender moments - like Ayoub brushing off his junkie dad's disheveled hair in the empty pool, or him awkwardly wooing Laura.

A tragedy brings resolution and brings the group together in unexpected ways. de Jong is smart enough not to get caught up in his aesthetics and doesn't forget the meat of the story and characters. Prince is a great feature debut and a showcase for a promising young director who has style and more importantly, a sensitive soul which is a rare commodity in today's cinema landscape.

Prince will be released in theaters & on VOD platforms August 14th.

Beauty Matters

The Girl and Death (2012) - Stelling

Recently I came across an article at salon.com titled David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture by Matt Ashby and Brendan Caroll. In it, they talk about our popular culture so completely immersed in irony and lazy cynicism that it has become a hindrance to move forward in art. It's a theme I've been thinking about a lot. I have to admit that I am just as guilty of contributing to creating this environment though. My articles, over the years, have been inundated with sarcasm and dismissive one-liners. I have lost my way to see beauty as it is when it presents itself. Sentimentality has become my enemy and I incessantly mocked whoever embraced it.

The Girl and Death, winner of 2012 Golden Calf Award (The Netherland's Academy Arward) for Best Picture, written and directed by Jos Stelling (co-written by Bert Rijkelijkhuizen), is one of those rare beauties that makes me less cynical. At first, the film might seem ridiculously musky and full of unblemished sentimentality that any trigger-happy reviewer wouldn't hesitate to use the eye-roll emoticon after every other sentence. It plays out like overly melodramatic Chekov. By the end of it though, I was genuinely moved by its unabashed, old fashioned tragic love story full of yearning and nostalgia.

An old Russian doctor (Sergey Markovetsky) travels to Germany to visit an old mansion/brothel he was once familiar with. The mansion is shuttered up and abandoned long time ago. From there on, we are walking down the memory lane some 50 years back.

A young, sensitive Russian student Nicolai (Leonid Bichevin) with a book of Pushkin poems sticking out from his tattered tweet jacket pocket, is on his way to Paris to study medicine. But he falls helplessly in love when he sees the vision of loveliness (as old Pushkin puts it), Elise (Sylvia Hoeks) at the grand mansion.

With the help of Mme. Nina (Renata Litvinova), he tries to woo Elise despite many warnings from everyone that she, along with everything else, belongs to the brutish Count (Dieter Hallervorden) who uses the mansion as a whorehouse and a gambling den for his old friends.

Nicolai delays his departure again and again ceremoniously, to get a chance to get a glimpse of Elise and talk with her. He makes an impression with bouquet of white roses and a Pushkin poem. He is forced out by the count and his henchmen. But he comes back after two years. This time, the Count's henchman beats him to a pulp. Elise breaks the Count's grip and runs to the young student, and brings him back to health. Free but penniless and in mounting debt without the Count's help, Elise is trapped and can't leave the mansion with Nicolai. Oh dear.

One can easily see the attraction here: Elise (embodied by Sylvia Hoeks) is a porcelain doll beauty. She's the kind of woman you don't dare to touch because you are afraid to break her.

Three years pass. Nicolai, now successful and almost comically moustachioed, comes back with vengeance in mind. He wins all the money at the card table while doing all the fancy tricks and whatnot. He throws all the money he wins at the count's face. Then he says "a whore will always be a whore!" in poor Elise's face and leaves. The count has a heart attack and dies.

Elise has tuberculosis and is dying but she still waits for Nicolai to come back. Time passes, everyone leaves the mansion. Elise hides and remains in the empty building for years.

But by the end of all this nonsense, I stopped rolling my eyes. However improbable and moth eaten the story is, one can't deny its beauty. It made me put my guard down and won me over. It's even quite refreshing to see something this old fashioned in this day and age.

It's the first time in a long time that a film put me in a position where I have to reassess my attitude toward looking at the world. It doesn't mean I'll be digging into Douglas Sirk melodramas any time soon. But with The Girl and Death, beauty transcends a corny storyline and cheap sentimentality. Stelling shows that beauty still matters.
The Girl and Death opens April 25th in New York at Cinema Village and May 23rd in Los Angeles at Laemmie Hall via Shadow Distribution.