Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (2007) -

(The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

A celebration of life and a reflection on mortality, this movie is a powerful testament to the story-telling potential of film. Although I’m sure the book would be an equally - if not more - powerful statement of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s will to live, the movie puts you in a place and state of mind that is hard to achieve in any other way. The soundtrack is subtle but powerful. The camera work is disruptive and disorienting but it sweeps you along and helps to put you in the place of the protagonist, played by Mathieu Amalric [IMDb].

Whether he is a masterful actor, or whether the scenario and the voice-over are just sublime, I’m not sure. But he manages to get a strong character across that belies the fact that we only get a few minutes of this man on his feet and about. Most of the movie you see the main character paralyzed, unable to move more than his eyelid and yet you feel for him and with him.

It’s a true work of art and it needs nothing more and nothing needs to be taken away. That’s not to say everyone will like it, but I doubt there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of anything this movie could be. It takes you on an emotional roller coaster and left me unsure about how I would deal with a situation like his. It’s a true story, so calling it unrealistic is unfair. But it’s hard to imagine taking such incredibly bad odds so well. And yet the film manages to get across how this might be possible. Wonderful.

With Basquiat and Berlin already on his list of completed work, I can’t wait to see what Julian Schnabel’s [IMDb] next movie Miral [Vimeo] will turn out to be, apart from highly current - as it deals with the Israel / Palestine situation.

Das Weisse Band (2009) -

(- Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte; - A German children’s tale)

Interesting movie about the effect of following a specific (very strict) set of rules, particularly those of early 20th century German protestants in a small village. Under the patriarchical rule of a nobleman, a reverend and a schoolteacher and through the compliance of many other men in the village, the youths seem to fill a niche and form a shady movement that causes all sorts of social disturbance and excutes mob justice.

It’s a slow moving story, where detail matters but it’s engaging and time flew by as I watched it. It keeps you on your toes, not in the last place because Michael Haneke has a style of story-telling in which he leaves a lot unsaid. Das Weisse Band is more explicit in its story-telling than his recent Caché for example, but the viewer is still left the task of deciding what actually happened. Even the movie itself is not necessarily a truthful account, as it’s the story of the voice-over telling of events that he didn’t even witness himself in many cases.

Whether the story in anyway explains the rise of national socialism, the start of the first and second world war or any other events that follow is something left up to the viewer too. Personally, I feel it only - very clearly - shows a complex social mechanism play out, as it may have in many villages in early 20th century Germany. Some of it is very recognizable, more so if you’ve ever lived in a small village for a long period (I grew up in one).

This is certainly one of the more engaging movies I’ve seen in 2009, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Also, I feel it could have done without a few threads in the story, so I arrive at a respectable 4/5.