Review - Leap (2020)

August 7, 2026
 
Leap – China, 2020
 

Movie mentors have it made. Be they music teachers that throw their batons at students’ heads, ballroom dancing teachers substituting at an inner city high school, or – in the case of Peter Ho-Shun Chan’s Leap – a volleyball coach who pummels his players with hard-hit volleyballs until, sore, depleted of energy, and bleeding from the knees, they give them “30 good stops,” their methods, while unorthodox to say the least, will have been shown to have been just what a main character or team needs to go from good to great. And what words of wisdom they have. At just the moment when the players are at their lowest and facing imminent defeat, a few words from their wise guru is always enough to reignite the players’ passions and rather abruptly improve their skills. It’s a lie, of course (just look at the poor mentors trying in vain to inspire the other side), but it’s also downright cinematic.
 
Chan’s film is based on the real-life experiences of Lang Ping (played at different ages by Lydia Bai and legendary actress Gong Li), who as a young woman trained and played on the Chinese national team in the 1981 Volleyball World Cup before becoming a successful coach for both the U.S. and the Chinese Olympic volleyball teams. Also on this journey is an assistant coach named Chen Zhonghe (played by Yuchang Peng and Huang Bo), who begins the film a bit like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own and ending the film also like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own. Early in the film, Chen learns that Lang cannot practice with the team until she successfully lifts 200 kilograms, a challenge that she completes after Chen suggests she quit. This has a rather curious effect. At one point during a practice game against the men’s team, Chen becomes so impressed with Lang’s efforts and energy that he blurts out, “If you can beat us, I’ll train with you for life!” One guess how that game ends.
 
In a more formulaic film, that line would culminate in a partnership of sorts, perhaps even start a romance. Instead, Leap jumps ahead to the World Cup championship, in which Lang’s team competes against Japan. It is a move that, in most sports films, would signal the arrival of the climax. The genius of Chan’s film, however, is that the game and the fervent efforts of the young women who play in it, have an additional importance, one similar to that of the 1980 Olympic Hockey Finals between the United States and the Soviet Union. In other words, victory would have incredible significance. It would be a sign that the past does not define them, that they can rise from the ashes of political turmoil and meet the challenges needed to move forward. In one of the most surprising moments of any Chinese film I’ve ever seen, the team’s coach, the same one who is intent upon making his players the best in the world regardless of the stress and strain his methods put on them, recalls the pride he felt when he played for the national team in 1966 and his utter heartbreak at the ten years that went by before any athlete could compete again.  His words fire up his team, and this time, I completely believe that they would.
 
And then Leap leaps ahead, yet the economic development that takes place in the coming years has a curious effect. It enables Lang to pursue an education in the United States, while Chen remains in China, eventually achieving the coveted position of head coach of the women’s volleyball team. Progress, it seems, separates them, and it is nationalism, not love, that ultimately reconnects them.
 
Alas, too much screen time is devoted to games whose outcome are already known or predictable and not enough to the evolving relationship and personalities of its two lead characters. Also, Leap cannot escape many of the familiar tropes of other sports films. Almost every sports film has an undervalued player that proves pivotal to the team’s success later on, a player that tries to quit only to return and try even harder, a coach who has to learn to overcome erroneous preconceptions, and a much-needed heart-to-heart when seemingly down and out in a game’s final moments. There are also scenes that are eerily reminiscent of more impactful ones from Remember the Titans and Mr. Baseball. Interestingly, the film makes a point of flashing onto the screen the names and numbers of all of the members of the team, which, I suspect, plays better if one is already knowledgeable of the players and their exploits.
 
However, when the film focuses on the question of the importance of sports to a nation that is no longer recovering from adversity, it is a revelation. I thought back to 1980, to a time when two generations, parent and child, believed that nuclear war could erupt at any moment, to those games that took on extra significance between they were us versus them, and then my mind flashed to the present day. Would a game played today resonate in the same way? Twenty years later, would people remember where they were when the winning goal was scored. I doubt it. Trauma, and a country’s recover from it, makes it important to rally as a country, to look for clear evidence of strength and resilience, and to be able to wave one’s national flag unflinchingly. Remove that, and what do you have? A quest for television ratings? A medal count that will be forgotten the next day? Fantastic stories about individuals and the obstacles they overcame? The possibility of endorsement deals and financial security? The times have certainly changed. (on Blu-ray from Imprint)
 
3 stars
 
*Leap is in Mandarin and English.
*It goes without saying that both Gong Li and Huang Bo give impressive, heartfelt performances.

Review - The Big Trail

March 1, 2026
 
The Big Trail – U.S., 1930
 

Prior to making Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail, John Wayne had appeared in twenty-one films. That may sound impressive, yet in most of these he had been uncredited, playing characters with undistinguished monikers such as Lumberjack, Football Player, and Radioman on Surface. He had paid his dues, though, having started as a prop man and then earning an opportunity to appear in front of the camera. The Big Trail was supposed to be his big breakout. It isn’t hard to see why it wasn’t.
 
The Big Trail simply tries to do too much too quickly, and in doing so, it loses focus of its most interesting dramatic arc. On one level, it is a classic revenge tale. In the film, Wayne plays Breck Coleman, a young fur trader looking to avenge his former partner after he is murdered and their animal pelts stolen. On another, it is a romance. Early in the film Breck meets Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill), a young woman traveling with her two siblings, and while their introduction will never be mistaken for love-at-first-sight (he kisses her thinking she is someone else), we’ve seen enough movies to know that adversarial feelings can change, especially when perilous circumstances are involved. Finally, The Big Trail is a dramatic adventure film, following a caravan of settlers as they make the hazardous journey from the banks of Mississippi over rivers, deserts, and slopping mountains, all in pursuit of better lives in the undeveloped West.

 
With three storylines operating concurrently, it’s crucial for the film to find the right pace in order to enable the investigation and the romance to develop naturally as the caravan moves along. For example, different circumstances along the journey could bring Breck into contact with new individuals, one of which would eventually utter something that raises his suspicion. This could happen at the same time as Breck works to correct Ruth’s initial impression of him. The film’s screenwriters, Marie Boyle, Jack Peabody, and Florence Postal, working on a story by Hal G. Evarts, however, take a different approach. In the first ten minutes, before the caravan even begins its adventure, they have Breck come across a clue implicating Red Flack (Tyrone Power), the leader of the caravan, as the prime suspect. Now, in such a situation, should Breck bide his time, observe his surroundings, investigate further, or should be confront Red immediately and put him on notice that he is on to him? If you answered the former, you have much more impulse control than either Breck or the film’s screenwriters.
 
And it isn’t just Breck that has this problem. The screenplay gives few characters any subtly. For much of the film’s first thirty minutes, the conversations that characters engage in are entirely too expository. Characters explain their backgrounds, their intentions – both pure and self-serving, their roles on the upcoming journey, and their deceptions, and this robs the film of any potential suspense it might have otherwise been able to build. Fortunately, from the screenwriters’ perspectives at least, this leads ample time for the introduction of stock comic characters, such as Gus (El Brendel), an immigrant with a mother-in-law from hell; Zeke (Tully Marshall), the stock wise elderly character who speaks in at a slightly high-pitched voice and laughs at awkward moments, such as when Gus’s wagon rolls down a cliff; and Windy Bill (Russ Powell), who in numerous scenes hides behind wagon covers making cat calls. Zeke plays an important role later in the film, but neither of the other two adds anything to it, and removing them would have greatly improved the tone.
 
Nothing is allowed to simmer or develop in the film. In the same scene, Breck goes from questioning one of the people he suspects in his partner’s murder to immediately getting contradictory information from the other suspect, and then after Breck leaves, the two suspects have a conversation in which they admit to being worthy of Breck’s suspicion. In another scene, Breck learns that the Cameron family has been left behind because their wagon was immovable. Breck gets one his horse, rides to them, unhooks one wagon, and drives them back to the convoy. No difficulty, no drama. Even the film’s finale is anticlimactic, lasting mere seconds and building little in the way or tension or anticipation.
 
Part of what holds The Big Trail back is the performance of its lead, John Wayne. Wayne may have had a lot of experience in film by this stage in his career, but he seems to have reverted back to more amateurish techniques. He speaks far too quickly, and this prevents his characters thoughts from fully being expressed or for the audience to get the full impact of his words. For instance, in one scene, he describes a valley the he saw during his adventures, one that he thinks would be an ideal place for a settlement, yet he speaks so rapidly that the beauty and potential of what he is describing is lost. In another, he rallies the convoy with a speech in which he declares, “We’re building a nation!” yet the rapidity in which he utters his words do not allow his audience to express how stirred they are by them. And in his scenes with Ruth, when the moment calls for Breck to slow down and try to get his feelings across, Wayne rushes his words, and we can hardly fault Ruth for not being moved in the slightest. Wayne would eventually course correct, but it is hard not to feel that at this stage in his career, he was wrong for the very kind of role he would later excel at.
 
If there is one thing that works in The Big Trail, it is the narrative of the journey itself, the trek West in pursuit of something greater. There is real drama in the settlers’ battle against the elements, in their engagements with the Native Americans, which the film has varied success with, in the ever-present threat of death, in the daily maneuvering of the diverging landscapes, and ultimately in the realization that success, however costly, is upon them. At one point, the settlers, having survived an attack, bury their dead, and looking at the makeshift cemetery they erect and then abandon, I couldn’t help wondering how many such burial sites have existed over time. It is this aspect of the film that enables Walsh to demonstrate his directorial skills. The rest of the film is an ill-fated mix of speed and pauses, of rushed and unearned emotions, and of grand speeches that fail to land. In other words, The Big Trail is a big miss. (on DVD and Blu-ray)
 
2 stars

In Memoriam

February 12, 2026

In Memoriam – Michele Maria Cogley (April 22, 1947 - November 30, 2025)

Way back in the early nineties, I invited my mother to watch a movie that had received excellent reviews, which, in all fairness, was all I knew about it. My mother, always one to be drawn to creative works that excited others, readily accepted. For about two hours, there was complete silence, broken only by the occasional awkward sound of someone shuffling uncomnfortably in their seat. As the end credits rolled, I glanced over to her and asked her opinion. “Well, it was good,” she said, “but probably not the best thing to watch with your mother.” The film: Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant.
 
My mother passed away on November 30, 2025. She was 78. She experienced a world of constant change and chaos, and she adapted to it as best she could. By the time she was 25, she had seen the assassinations of both presidents and civil rights leaders, seen humans walk on the moon for the first time, and watched the horrors of war on live television in a way previous generations had not. She became a hippy, got married, had children, got divorced, and lived through years of financial and personal hardship. Throughout it all, she never lost hope that there was a brighter future ahead, and she worked hard to make that a reality.
 
In life, she remained her children’s biggest fan. Whenever one of us had a performance or competition, we could count on her being in the audience, whether that was an afterschool baseball game or an evening theatrical performance. In one of my earlier memories, I’m standing onstage holding up a cardboard cutout of a flower, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of her standing attentively in the right aisle. Over the years, she would collect numerous mementos of her children’s performances, from pictures to programs with our names in it. Some of these were from local productions that she also took part in.
 
And if you were her children’s or grandchildren’s friends, you were also hers. She took an interest in their lives and formed bonds with them. There are numerous pictures of her at parties thrown by friends of her children, and it was always at the invitation of the friend. If one of her children was in a relationship, she went out of her way to make that person feel welcomed and safe. That so many people from her children’s childhoods showed up at her memorial is a testament to those connections that she forged.
 
My mother loved movies. She and my stepfather saw every Woody Allen movie on the day of its release, and when VHS came out, she made sure we had a VCR and membership to local video stores. We were fortunate to have two local specialty movie theaters that showed films that the main movie theaters did not, and together we saw films like Hoosiers and Ran there, the latter of which inspired an interest in foreign films that remains with me today. She found joy in silly comedies like Troop Beverly Hills and was enthralled in the new worlds offered by Blade Runner and the Star Wars films. When Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, she went into the theater in between screenings and used paper plates to reserve the best seats in the house.
 
In her last few years, television was easier for her to engage in. She found intrigue in adaptations of novels she’d read in her youth, such as The Handmaid’s Tale, and she was drawn into fantasy worlds involving dragons, chivalrous heroes, and ancient gods, which naturally made Game of Thrones and American Gods weekly musts.
 
My mother eventually began teaching elementary school in San Francisco, and she applied the same devotion and dedication to her students that she had to her children. What the school district didn’t provide, she did, whether it was notebooks, pencils, short readers, or art supplies, and over the years, she collected boxes and boxes of teaching material the she created herself. She even co-wrote a book on activities for afterschool programs. She also made an effort to keep up-to-date with what her students were interested in. This meant knowing who the current WWF champion was, what Brandon, Dylan, and the rest of the 90210 gang were up to, and who had won the previous night’s local sporting events.
 
The years brought further change. Some – grandchildren, vacations, retirement – were positive. Others – children moving away, health problems – not so much. She visited Taiwan once after the birth of my daughter, and I’ll always remember the smile on her face as she held her for the first time. Over the years, she made an effort to forge a relationship with her, but it was difficult and ultimately only partially successful.
 
In a movie, this would have been different. There would have been a last-minute phone call or text that conveyed a healing or forgiving message. One of her children would find in her final diary entry an expression of pride in who that child had become or what they had made of their lives. In other words, there would be closure. In reality, true closure is rare, yet death has a way of bringing back the good, not the bad. I remember our walks in Taipei, our early discussions about love when I was a confused teenager unsure if someone would like me, the happiness she showed at my graduations, the embraces she offered my wife’s family, the way her students looked at her when she taught, the quiet moments when she wrote in her diary, and the way she could enlighten you with her insights into time, books, and movies. In our last conversation, we talked about my daughter’s swimming skills, and she marveled at her performance in a school competition. She felt such pride in the accomplishments of others. I’m fortunate to have known her.

Review - No Time to Die

August 14, 2025
 
No Time to Die – UK/US, 2021
 

I don’t know about you, but when someone like James Bond is almost blown up, then pursued through a seaside mountainous terrain by armed henchmen, and forced to terminate a relationship that had meant so much to him just a few hours earlier, I expect to see him storm back to his old job, demand to be reinstated, and immediately set off on a quest for revenge. What I would not expect is for him simply to relocate to a Caribbean island and just lay low for five years. And yet that’s just where we find him after the rather surprisingly long intro of Cary Joji Fukunaga's No Time to Die. Just how Bond has managed to buy such a lavish and technically advanced resort home is a mystery, but perhaps the salary of a British superspy is higher than I thought. All we know for sure is that, unlike the last time he played dead (just two films back in Skyfall), he has found a lot of time to stay in shape.
 
And this turns out to be rather fortunate, for, despite later proclamations that Bond (Daniel Craig) had disappeared and was assumed dead, his American friend Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) shows up requesting his help apprehending a corrupt scientist linked to an attack on a biochemical facility by the forces of that ridiculous conglomerate Spectre. Luckily, before logic hits you and you wonder why Leiter didn’t recruit an American spy for the job, there Bond is, disembarking in Cuba, meeting an American contact, and entering a club whose customers seem to include mostly nefarious agents of Spectre, which Bond realizes seemingly because they are all well-dress gentlemen with earpieces on. A moment later, three such men stroll to the front of the dance floor holding an electronic eye, through which, from the comforts of his solitary cell in the U.K., Ernest Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is spouting something about how the occasion has finally brought him a chance to get revenge on Bond, who at that moment is conveniently standing in a spotlight in the middle of the dance floor. And yes, this is the second time in two films that Blofeld has delivered such a speech. Moments later, a light mist falls from the ceiling, maniacal laughter fills the room, and suddenly, all of Spectre’s agents begin dropping dead. The question now is: Has something gone wrong or right? Unfortunately, the answer is not nearly as interesting or credible as it should be.
 
Like the two most recent Mission Impossible films, No Time to Die has a villain problem – simply put, the antagonist is not credible enough. Dead Reckoning compensated this by including both the Entity, a kind of post-Singularity AI, and Gabriel for Hunt and his team to reckon with – one he can physical does battle with and the other he has to outsmart. No Time to Die, however, simply has Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) and his scheme to implant humanity with specially-designed nanobots that can enter the human body through the slightest physical contract and kill subjects with specific DNA. First, Lyutsifer looks entirely too young to the figurehead of an international terrorist organization. For example, he could be Madeline’s classmate, yet he supposedly met her when she was no more than a teenager. Second, for Lyutsifer’s DNA attacker to work, he has to be able to get a person’s DNA, design a toxin for that particular person’s genetic code, and ensure that the toxin will be affective even if the contact is only external. That its intended targets die within seconds of making minimal contact makes this plotline even more incredulous.
 
Then there are his motives. Early Bond villains had rather lofty goals, the biggest of which was world domination, and in the Cold War world of the 1950s and 60s, this seemed credible enough. However, since the end of that conflict with the Soviet Union, Bond villains have had to have more realistic vendettas or motivations, for example, wealth or domination in a particular aspect of the government sphere. Lyutsifer is a return to the Bond villain of old, for after he successfully avenges someone who was clearly wronged, his motivation goes from personal to global, and it is unclear just what he hopes to get out a world in which everyone is carrying a virus.
 
Like many of the Bond films starring Daniel Craig, No Time to Die references Bond films which are not actually part of the current Bond’s timeline. The first such reference is to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the film in which Bond eventually married the daughter of the head of a criminal organization. To make this absolutely clear, we learn that Madeleine’s father was one of Blofeld’s assassins. The film even references Louis Armstrong’s theme song from that film when Bond tells Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) that they “have all the time in the world,” a remark that foreshadows the death of at least one important character in the Bond universe. The film’s finale appears to have been shot on the same seaside road as that film as well.
 
The second connection is to You Only Live Twice, which climaxed with a battle on a Japanese island secluded enough for Spectre to have been able to build a massive headquarters replete with removable dome. In No Way to Die, the presence of a terrorist organization on the island is explained with a remark of there having been “activity” on the island recently and to its credit, there is much of the island that looks as it did thirty years ago. (Why it still works is anyone’s guess.) I suppose these connections, in particular the use of Spectre as Bond’s foe, are intended as homages to the past or at the very least, are meant as service to Bond’s generations of fans. However, if a song makes an audience member expect tragedy and then tragedy occurs, its use demonstrates a lack of creativity, rather than nostalgia; it’s the equivalent of hitting rinse and repeat instead of holding out for that elusive original concept.
 
And this an unfortunate pattern of Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond. Too often these Bond films lacked direction. Casino Royale started the series well, but Quantum of Solace was handicapped by having to tie up its predecessor’s loose ends. It also features the uneasy sight of Bond accepting fate and waiting to die. Skyfall felt entirely too familiar, relying on the well-worn storyline involving a villain’s scheme that requires everything to go just right to be successful – similar to Loki’s in The Avengers. Then came Spectre, a film that, for all its faults, at least ended happily for Bond. He had finally found love. In a way, it was the first half of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and there is the problem. When you end a movie with a happy ending, a sequel can only undo that, and in truth, there’s not a lot of warmth in undoing what had seemed like a perfect ending for a beloved character. Alas, No Time to Die only offers further proof of this. (on DVD and Blu-ray)    
 
2 stars

In Memoriam

In Memoriam

July 29, 2025
 

                                                 Malcolm-Jamal Warner

                                           August 18, 1970 - July 20, 2025

A lot can be said about Malcolm-Jamal Warner. He was a child star who avoided the pitfalls of fame, and he did so while continuing to work steadily in Hollywood for over three decades. He was also a successful musician and had a rather well-received podcast. Like many people of my generation, Thursday nights started with The Cosby Show, and some of my most enduring memories of the show involve Warner’s character, Theo. There was his heartfelt plea to be accepted as a regular person in the series premiere, his learning that he was dyslexic, the gambit of emotions he endured when one of his teachers came to dinner. We watched as Theo’s face lit up at the start of relationships and empathized with him when many of those ended in heartbreak. In Theo, many young boys saw themselves.
 
When a celebrity passes away, it is common for remembrances of them to focus on their careers, on the films they made and the roles they made famous. Some writers, those fortunate enough to have met or known him, have written about the quality of his character and his concern for humanity. I never knew Mr. Warner, but what tells me the most about him is his 1988 book Theo and Me.

 At a time in his life when his career was on the rise, when he could have been enjoying all of the fun and excitement that comes with fame, he elected to respond to the many letters he was receiving from fans who saw in him someone who knew what they were going through and whom they trusted with some of their most embarrassing questions. What they couldn’t bring themselves to ask their parents or teachers, they found the courage to ask a young man whom they felt was one of them, and Warner rose to the occasion, addressing complicated issues such as depression, suicide, and sex.
 
I bought this book as a teenager, and what I remember most about it is the seriousness with which Warner took each letter and the issues it brought up. Throughout the book, he recognized the seriousness of the topics and, when offering advice, acknowledged that he had consulted with experts and carefully considered his words. He genuinely seemed to want to help young people get through what he knew first hand were extremely trying times. I had not written him, but when I heard about the book, it piqued my curiosity. As I read the book, Warner came across as a supportive friend, someone who understood my discomforts and the issues that teenagers were going through, and I felt better. He will indeed be missed.

Miscellaneous Musings

July 15, 2025

On a Conversation That Missed the Point

On June 23, 2025, The New York Times published a list of the best films of the first twenty-five years of the 21^st century, and as usual, it set off a wave of discussions, one of which was held on the Off-Menu portion of CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip. Simply put, it was a missed opportunity.

The tone was set early when, after running down the top ten films on the list, Abby Phillip proclaimed, “Some of those movies I have not heard of.” Looking at the list, this seems possible for at least three of the films – Spirited Away, In the Mood for Love, and Mulholland Drive, all of which had limited theatrical releases. Of the other seven, Phillip commented on four of them, The Social Network (#10), Get Out (#8), Moonlight (#5), and Parasite (#1), and the other three, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (#7), No Country for Old Men (#6), and There Will Be Blood (#3), have appeared of numerous best-of lists or nominated for Academy Awards and therefore were heavily discussed on news shows after their nominations were announced. The problem was that Phillip’s comment was greeted with laughter by at least one panelist.

Phillip then moved the conversation forward by asking each of her four panelists to state their favorite film from the list, a logical choice given the inspiration for the segment, and for a moment the focus seemed to be in the right place. First to chime in was Scott Jennings, who touted Anchorman (#85), which he opined should have been ranked #1, and Moneyball (#45). Bakari Sellers then went off the list and praised Love & Basketball, a film recently released on physical media by the Criterion Collection, a company known for releasing quality films. After that, Kierna Mayo lauded Black Panther (#96), which in her view was both a movie and a movement.

Then the conversation went slightly off the rails. Sellers, after some additional conversation about the importance of Black Panther, sought to make a point by asking how the panel felt about Parasite. After a brief silence, he added, “And that is my point.” Exactly what point he was making remained unexplored because the conversation segued to the best superhero movie with Jennings touting Iron Man and looking slightly incredulous when it was mentioned that the film had not made the New York Times’ list. Sellers then seconded Jennings views on Iron Man and added that Black Panther’s $1.6 billion “speaks for itself,” interestingly implying that box office performance equates to quality, a curious claim when one considers some of the other members of the billion-dollar club. When the conversation returned to Parasite, Phillip remarked that she had seen it, but did not remember it.

The show finally returned to the panelists’ favorite film from the list. Christine Quinn talked up Ratatouille (#73) before remarking that she did not share the Times’s praise of The Social Network. She also brought up Brokeback Mountain (#17) and commended the way it turned the notion of a cowboy movie on its head. The final panelists, Pete Seat, then slightly dismissed the list when he declared that his favorite films tended to be comedies and entertainment that “never gets old.” His choice was, in his words, “a little artsy” – The Dark Knight. He supported this description of Nolan’s film by applauding Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker.

What followed continued the conversation’s general trend. Jennings lamented the absence from the list of Wedding Crashers and stated that he did not recognize most of the films on the list. Seat said he’d seen 20 of them, so, by that measure, 80 were films he did not consider deserving. There was both criticism and praise for Moonlight, Phillip stated her approval of the ranking given to Get Out, and eventually someone mentioned that this year’s Sinners should be #1. There was then a discussion of Hollywood’s lack of comedies and whether television shows such as Married with Children could be made today.

It was Kierna Mayo who finally offered a bit of introspection when she wondered what it meant that they did not know about so many of the films on the list, and she offered a solution. Maybe, she suggested, there needs to be a different marketing apparatus, suggesting that the reason the panel did not know about so many of these films was that the studios did not do their job properly. Phillip was quick to dismiss this idea, however, deriding the films as “artsy-fartsy” and saying that they were too inaccessible to average viewers. Jennings went even further by proclaiming that he “did not want to think so much” or “feel stupid” when he watches a movie. The segment ended with comments on the ethnicity of many of the directors on the list, one panelist showing disbelief over the exclusion of the John Wick films, and a look of incredulity that Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour has been omitted, despite the fact that the film had been released in 1998.

It was truly a sad affair. Of the 100 films on the list, 21 are foreign films, 3 are documentaries, and 4 are animated films. That leaves 72 films, and the majority of them are fairly mainstream. They include Superbad, Gravity, Minority Report, Gladiator, Interstellar, the third Lord of the Rings film, Black Swan, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ocean’s 11, Oppenheimer, Little Miss Sunshine, Kill Bill Volume 1, Whiplash, Punch-Drunk Love, Inception, Borat, Mad Max: Fury Road, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Bridesmaids, The Departed, Arrival, Her, and The Wolf of Wall Street. These are hardly art films, yet if you had just watched the panel’s discussion, you’d be forgiven for getting the impression that the Times had selected only independent and foreign films that had opened in few theaters and completely eluded the public’s attention.

Admittedly, not all of the films on the list worked for me, and some of my favorites were not included. However, no list is definitive. The same week that the New York Times released their list, Rolling Stone published theirs. In fact, a quick Google inquiry reveals similar lists from IMDB, the BBC, Rotten Tomatoes, the Hollywood Reporter, and Cinema Sugar. These lists are essentially recommendations, pleas for a group’s favorites not to be forgotten in these times of streaming services and series dumps. Those that compile these lists are simply asking readers to give them a chance.

It’s fair to ask whether the panel on CNN had actually read the entire New York Times’s list. When I first tried to access it, only the top ten was available to non-subscribers; now, thankfully, the rest can be viewed online. Below each film, readers can click “I’ve seen it” or “I want to watch it” and at the bottom of the screen is a tally of the number of films you've seen. I was surprised to learn that I had seen 94 films on the list. My six blind spots are Lady Bird, Toni Erdmann, Tar, Aftersun, Fish Tank, and Memories of Murder. Guess which option I clicked for these films.

In Memoriam - Gene Hackman

 February 28, 2025
 
In Memoriam
 

Gene Hackman 

January 30, 1930 - February 26, 2025

 
We were told it would be a big star, and it was. When I first saw Gene Hackman, adorned in jeans, a white t-shirt, and an open button-down long-sleeve shirt, he was flanked by two equally casually-dressed adult men, one of either side. It created the dual picture of a man slightly wary of the public, but open enough to walk around campus in full view of potentially screaming invasive fans. He was in town filming Loose Cannons, a buddy picture with Dan Akroyd about a tough-as-nails police officer working with a partner with multiple personalities. It would not be one of his most successful films. As a working actor, he made a number of questionable films, but his presence elevated even the poorest of them, single-handedly elevating them from atrocious to strangely watchable. (See The Replacements for an example of this.) It’s an impressive feat that only a handful of actors can achieve.
 
Later, at a school-wide assembly, he would answer numerous questions from students on such topics as his views on acting to his role in Superman, and he regaled us with stories about his decision to become an actor and his college roommates, Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman. He had the room in the palm of his hand, yet his demeanor remained informal, that of a regular guy who just happened to be a member of an extraordinary profession. At the end of the period, he walked off to thunderous applause from a thoroughly star-struck audience.
 
If that had been it, it would have been understandable. It was after all his fiftieth birthday. And yet, after lunch, there he was, sitting in my acting class and offering aspiring actors tips on their monologues and two-person scenes. One of these interactions in particular has stayed with me all these years. My classmate Maggie had been working on a monologue in which a woman describes her experience at an unsuccessful job interview. The monologue is clever, and every time I’d seen it performed, it had been greeted with laughter and performed as if the speaker were doing stand-up. Mr. Hackman had a different view. After Maggie completed her performance, Mr. Hackman asked her a series of questions, the most intriguing of which was If this happened to you, would you think it was funny? Maggie had to admit she wouldn’t. Only someone without a care in the world would joke about not getting a job, and Maggie’s character was not such a character. Maggie was then asked to perform the monologue again, this time reflecting the fact that the woman’s disappointment in both her actions and their aftermath. The change was astonishing. The message was clear. Be real.
 
Herb Cain, the legendary columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, would later write that while it had been Gene Hackman’s birthday, it was really the students that had received the gift. When news of Mr. Hackman’s death broke, it was this event that I remembered first. I imagine that is true for all of us fortunate enough to be in the classroom that day. He will indeed be missed.
 
A Good Place to Start:
 
The French Connection (1971)
The Conversation (1974)
Hoosiers (1986)
Unforgiven (1992)
Crimson Tide (1994)
Get Shorty (1995)
 

Review - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

 February 6, 2025
 
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse – Germany, 1933
 

There is an eleven-year gap between Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler and its sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and one can only hope that a director has a powerful – and creative - incentive for returning to a story after such a long gap in time. Students of film history know this is hardly the case, however, partly because few sequels are actually necessary. They neither complete a story or explain something pivotal to our understanding of the original film. After all, national emergencies are over, criminal threats have been thwarted, and the main antagonists are either dead or incapacitated. Thus, most sequels elect to move on to a new threat, a new romance, and often a new set of wacky or imposing supporting characters.
 
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is such a sequel. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler ended, as so many supervillain storylines before and after it have done, with Dr. Mabuse going mad and being sent to an insane asylum. It picks up the story years later, and we find Mabuse (again played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge) still living out his days in a mental hospital. Well, living may not exactly be the right word. In a speech given by the head of that hospital, we learn that Mabuse’s state has in fact been improving. No longer does he sit upright all day simply staring into space. Now he sits upright frantically filling page after page with intricate instructions for criminal activity, such as disrupting financial markets and flooding city streets with illegal drugs. This, it seems, is an improvement of sorts seeing as how his etchings have gone from incomprehensible scribbles to repetitious words to fully-visualized homicidal ramblings – clearly an accomplishment for the mental health profession.
 
The problem is that Mabuse is now a senile broken old man who could hardly run a global terrorist organization. Fortunately, as his doctor reminds us, he has a number of talents, one of which is the power of suggestion, and it is soon clear that someone has been following his plans. But who? I imagine most of you can answer this question already, but a co-worker of the culprit cannot, so he blurts out that he’s going to the police and, in one of the film’s most ingenious sequences, is murdered at a busy intersection. Meanwhile, a disgraced former law officer named Hofmeister (Karl Meixner) contacts Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) claiming to have traced the source of counterfeit money that is flooding the market. However, before he can reveal the source, the lights go out, and screams ring out. When he is next heard, he is singing in a high-pitched voice about a woman named Gloria. We also meet a henchman named Tom Kent (Gustav Diesel) who is in love with a young woman named Lilli (Wera Liessem) who a year earlier took pity on him when he was down on his luck. In one scene, we learn that Tom just happens to abhor murder, a position that puts him at odds with the criminal organization that he has found employment in. But can someone in love who dislikes killing really be all that bad?
 
One of my complaints about the first Mabuse film was that far too much screen time was devoted to showing Mabuse’s many exploits when it had already established his criminal tendencies, making the movie longer than necessary. For the most part, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse avoids this problem. Scenes of henchmen talking about their nefarious activities are interspersed with segments devoted to Lohmann’s expanding investigation, as well as Tom’s growing conscience.
 
And yet something is missing. For the film to work, the film’s big revelation needs to hit audiences with a bang. It needs one of those a-ha moments that brings all of the film’s many pieces together and explains the ascendency of a new crime boss, his peculiar means of communicating to the men carrying out his dirty work, and his ability to open doors despite being in sprit form. (Yes, that happens.) Instead, we get an explanation that makes it seem as if the antagonist and Mabuse sat down and thought about all of the possible things that his henchmen might say to him just so there would be a pre-determined answer, and since Mabuse is mostly immobile, the antagonist has to be present every time the henchmen get their instructions in order for the device that plays the answers to be activated. The longer you think about it, the more laughable the idea becomes.
 
Part of what has gives The Testament of Dr. Mabuse such prominence among film buffs is Lang’s use of Nazi slogans, which are whispered by Mabuse frequently in the film. This put Lang directly in the crossfire of the Nazi party and resulted in his having to leave Germany for the warmer shores of the United States. It also resulted in the film being banned in Germany until 1961. There is certainly an eeriness to the scenes in which these sickening sentiments fill the screen, yet they do not add much to our views of Mabuse himself. We already know he is evil, that he enjoys manipulating both the economy and society at large, and that he seeks to create misery for the citizens of Germany. In other words, they do not necessarily make Mabuse more monstrous than he already is.
 
And yet, I can imagine those words were the reason that Lang made the film in the first place. As Chaplin did with The Great Dictator, Lang may have been trying to warn the people of Germany of the dangers of their government’s present course. If so, he did so indirectly in a film in which the law and love win out in the end. In other words, the threat is over. Seen years later, it is hard to say that their presence is enough to overcome the film’s predictability and lack of logic. (on DVD from Criterion Collection)
 
2 and a half stars
 
*The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is in German with English subtitles.

Review - Dr. Mabuse The Gambler (1922)

January 11, 2025
 
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler – Germany, 1922
 

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler started out as a one of those twelve-part serials that were shown before the main attraction in years gone by. However, knowing Lang’s habit of making episodic films that often stretched to the 180-minute mark and given that the film is presented in two parts, The Great Gambler: A Picture of the Time and Inferno: A Game for the People of Our Age, I’m inclined to believe that the film as it currently stands is the way Lang always intended it to be, which is both a blessing and a curse. More on that later. Also evident is the influence of Louis Feuilade, many of whose own works, such as Le Vampires and Fantomas, dealt with criminal masterminds and the law’s attempts to apprehend them.
 
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler takes place in Berlin in the aftermath of World War I. Perhaps there is no other place or time for the film to take place, for 1920s Berlin was the ideal setting for a man like Dr. Mabuse to ascend. It was a time when great poverty coincided with great wealth, when, in the ruins and despair of the post-war period, powerful men could manipulate conditions to their great benefit and many people could be lulled into following a charlatan. In Dr. Mabuse, we have an amalgamation of all the great gothic German, cinematic villains of the time: the man of many disguises, the head of the criminal enterprise, the mysterious Rasputin-like hypnotist, and the madman becoming less sane by the minute. That Dr. Mabuse inspires cult-like worship from his followers only adds to his mystic.
 
Early on in the film, Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) arranges for the murder of an ambassador to Sweden and the theft of some important trade documents he is carrying. In doing so, Mabuse helps spark a rumor of imminent retaliation, which leads to panic selling on the stock market. In a brilliant moment, we watch as Mabuse surveys his destruction while standing expressionless over the frantic sellers, their mouths agape as their once valued stock tumbles off a cliff. And then just as coolly, Mabuse proclaims himself a buyer, swooping up all of the stock before word of the documents’ recovery can reach the floor of the stock market. The stock ascends as rapidly as it fell, at which point Mabuse declares himself a seller.
 
With such a set-up, one would expect for Mabuse’s ultimate aim to be wealth, yet this does not seem to be the case, for Mabuse, in addition to all of his other pursuits, is in the business of printing counterfeit money. In fact, he has a secret room where five aging blind men sit for hours flipping through stacks of freshly-printed bills. (Just what they eat and how they relieve themselves in anyone’s guess, but I digress.) No, Mabuse, like Bane 90 years later, seems intent on watching the forest burn, on treating the wealthy as if they were his personal pawns to be shifted or removed at will. He’s a man who wants to be the kingmaker and perhaps to even wear the crown himself.
 
Of course, all super-villains need a protagonist, and Mabuse’s comes in the form of a prosecutor named Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke), who is tasked with discovering just who is behind a series of mysterious gambling incidents. Assisting him is a well-to-do young man named Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) who is also one of the victims of Mabuse’s schemes and dating Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen), one of Mabuse’s henchman. We also meet a wealthy countess with the odd last name Told. The countess is unusual, for as much as she seems fascinated by gambling, she never partakes in it. She and the prosecutor strike up a platonic relationship which may have become more if Lang had ever made a direct sequel.
 
Much of the fun of the film comes in observing their game of cat-and-mouse, with Mabuse always a few steps ahead. Of course, we know who the mysterious gambler is, but that knowledge does not diminish the intrigue. Part of this is due to the fact that we know so little about Mabuse and each scene seems to draw us closer to achieving a complete picture of him. And if getting that knowledge means accepting Wenk’s ludicrous jack-of-all-trades persona, then so be it. After all, who’s to say that a prosecutor wouldn’t have the power to call in the military at a moment’s notice? I also found myself playing a variation of Where’s Waldo every time new characters were introduced, for he could easily be the bad doctor in disguise.
 
Like all of Lang’s films, Dr. Mabuse is a visual masterpiece, from its varying interiors to its grungy, shadowy exteriors. At one point, Lang shows one character playing cards with multiple transparent versions of himself; in another, a caravan of nomads walks off a screen and into the real world only to disappear with the snap of Mabuse’s fingers. Toward the end of the film, we watch as the objects hanging on the walls of an almost barren room suddenly become living, breathing creatures intent on toying with Mabuse’s already fragile mind. It’s impressive stuff. Lang also gets an amazing performance out of Kleine-Rogge, who adopts altogether different personas for each of his many incarnations.
 
My problem with the film – and it is not a minor one - is its interminable length, for its 270 minutes are hard to justify. Lang, who wrote the screen play with his writing partner, Thea von Harbou, includes multiple instances of Mabuse’s hypnotic skills at the card table when only two of them could really be deemed vital to the plot. Perhaps an even bigger problem is that the film does not use its length effectively. The movie seems so set on convincing viewers of Mabuse’s skills that it neglects to flesh out many of the other characters. There are no scenes in which we see what would make Cara so devoted to Mabuse, and so little time is devoted to building Wenk’s relationship with Countess Told that their sudden closeness never feels justified. Also, in giving Mabuse so many masks, the character begins to test even the most accepting viewer’s credulity. It’s one thing to accept him as a corrupt doctor and a thief, but then viewers are asked to accept that he’s a master at hypnotism and that his secret weapon, at times at least, is an unusual pair of glasses. We’re then asked to believe that a man who could hypnotize a massive audience simply by looking in their direction has no other way to ward off the police than guns blazing.
 
Much of this criticism applies to the first half of the film, for Lang indeed picks up the pace in the second. However, it does make you wonder how much more compact the story would be if the first half ran sixty minutes instead of one-hundred and fifty or if there had been any follow up to Mabuse powerful line, “Now the world will know who I am!” In truth, they never really do, for just as it seems he’s about to wreak even more havoc on the world, he announces that he’s grown tired of Berlin and intends to pack his things and leave, providing of course that the woman he’s kidnapped and proclaims as his goes with him. Once guess how that turns out. (on DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Classics)
 
3 stars
 
*Dr. Mabuse The Gambler is a silent film.

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Release Date: February 11, 2025

Review - The Whales of August

 August 8, 2024
 
Whales of August, The – 1987, US
 

It’s almost a cliché to say of a movie that they don’t make them like that anymore, but in the case of The Whales of August, the saying seems perfectly appropriate, for rarely does Hollywood make serious films about people in what is likely the last stage of their lives. Far more likely is the film about elderly people having one last blast in the land of sin, for who can resist seeing Hollywood’s elderly statesmen getting drunk, taking drugs, and engaging in sex with much younger women? (If you look at the box office results of movies that match that description, the answer is apparently a lot of people, but I digress.)
 
The Whales of August brought together four living legends: Bette Davis, Lilian Gish, Vincent Price, and Ann Sothern. While Davis would make one other film before her death in 1989, The Whales of August would be the cinematic finale for both Gish and Sothern. Price would continue working until 1993, the year when both he and Gish passed away. Rounding out the cast is Harey Carey Jr., who, like Gish, has been appearing in movies since the Silent Era. Put together, those five individuals have just under 700 screen credits, a number I doubt we’ll ever see again in a single cast, especially in an age when A-Listers make far fewer movies than they used to.
 
The Whales of August, based on David Barry’s 1984 play of the same name, is about two sisters, Elizabeth “Libby” Strong (Davis) and Sarah Webber (Gish) who live in their childhood home on Cliff Island in Maine. In the film’s opening scene, we see them as young women running to the edge of a cliff to watch the annual arrival of the whales. There is joy in their expressions, and each one is anxious for her turn looking through the binoculars. The scene is short, but it perfectly exemplifies the innocence of youth and the excitement with which the young greet experiences that they will likely later regard as ordinary. There is a third lady with them. Later, she is revealed to be Tisha Doughty, a lifelong friend of Sarah’s, who later walks with a cane and many of whose actions may have an ulterior motive.
 
When we next see the two sisters, we observe that life has taken quite a toll on them. Libby is now blind, controlling, and bitter, while Sarah is sweet, yet unappreciated. She seems to be constantly at Libby’s beck and call, and her patient expressions are undercut by flashes of frustration. We learn they are both widows, Sarah’s husband having died in the Second World War, Libby’s much later. Sarah wears her emotions on her sleeve, and we feel the regret that she had so little time with her late husband. Watching her, I felt certain that she and her late husband had still been in the honeymoon stage of their relationship when he passed away. On the anniversary of their wedding, she turns a section of her house into a scene from a cinematic love story, even going so far as to fill a vase with a white rose for truth and a red rose for passion – two qualities that her husband had stressed were important in a relationship.
 
Into this domestic powder keg steps Baron Maranov (Price), a Russian emigrant with family ties to the deposed czar. Mr. Maranov is old school, chivalrous, and polite, and at several points in the film, he is referred to as the last living gentlemen. In other words, he is the kind of character who could come between two friends, especially given the loneliness we see in Sarah. He could easily be the villain of the piece, yet Barry wisely elects to make him a sympathetic character, an older man just looking for security and companionship. Consider what life has in store for him if he fails.
 
As I watched the film, I could understand the rationale for each of the characters in a way that I may not have been able to had I seen it in my twenties. I have learned over the years that there are choices we make to stave off loneliness and destitution – we may stay in unsatisfying relationships, remain at jobs we hate, reside in cities we have grown tired of, or put up with the kind of treatment that we may have walked away from in our earlier years. When we’re young, it is easier to start anew, for we’re filled with confidence and vigor. Later, there are other matters to consider, in particular, financial considerations.
 
Director Lindsay Anderson shows great patience as a director. He uses longer takes to give the cast time to flesh out their characters, and he edits conversations in a way that creates the illusion that we are watching a single take. Another important decision that both Anderson and Barry made was not to add flashbacks. We hear of marriages, deaths, and years apart, but we don’t see them. Anderson trusts that the audience will care enough about the characters to pick up the clues for themselves, and it is the right decision. All we need are close-ups of Gish, Davis, and Price to understand what has been lost and what they need to go on.
 
The Whales of August is an insightful film that I expect to remain relevant in the years to come because at some point we will all be one or all of these characters. Sadly, time spares no one. What Anderson has shown us though is that there is dignity in perseverance and that people deserve empathy on this journey. It is telling then that the film ends with Libby and Sarah looking out at the sea for the whales that have not been absent for years. There is still hope, and they will find a way to persevere. (on DVD and Blu-ray)
 
4 stars

Miscellaneous Musings

July 20, 2024
 
On a Missed Opportunity in a “Classic”
 

From 1973 to 1974, the divorce rate in Sweden rose from 2% to 3.3%, a bump many people have attributed to Scenes from a Marriage, Ingrid Bergman’s searing portrait of a failing couple. This is unsurprising. After all, throughout history, movies have cause a rise in the adoption of certain breeds of dogs, the purchase of clownfish, trips to the farthest regions of the globe, and increased sales of previously underselling candy and drinks. It seems logical then that movies would have the power to make viewers reflect on their own lives and question both their place in it and the views they have long held, one of which was that marriage was literally till death do us part.
 
So, what was it that so stirred and disturbed viewers about it? First, a little history. Scenes from a Marriage started out as a six-part miniseries for Swedish television, with each part representing a stage in the re-evaluation of a marriage. When writing it, Bergman is said to have drawn from his own marriages, as well as that of his parents, whom he said he witnessed violently clashing on at least one occasion. The series weekly ran from April 11, 1973 to May 1, 1973, and its audience was said to be mainly woman. The series was then condensed into a film that runs just under three hours, and it is that version that received overwhelming international acclaim in 1974.
 
The first part of both the film and the series begins with a celebration of the type of marriage that it was assumed both men and women wanted. A local reporter is interviewing Marianne and Johan, who have been married for ten years, about…well, it’s not actually clear why they’re being interviewed. Sure, they’re successful and attractive, but they do not seem particularly important to society. Marianne is a divorce lawyer, but so little of the film focuses on that aspect of her life that you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s just another nine-to-five job. The interview focuses on their apparent marital bliss, yet if you watch closely, there are signs of a façade. The body language is tense – when the camera stops clicking, the hand-holding ceases immediately, and while Marianne struggles to express herself, Johan seems more interested in talking about himself than the family. Their children appear briefly for photos, but disappear the moment they have finished playing their roles. Curiously, in the miniseries, after the interview, the interviewer peeks into another room and sees clothes and toys strewn everywhere, a symbolic lifting of the veil.
 
After a long scene involving a dinner with some married friends for whom the term on the rocks seems an understatement, the film begins to explicitly reveal the tension that exists in Marianne and Johan’s relationship and how the marriage has survived partially by sweeping disagreements under the carpet and pretending that doing so makes them go away for good. This segment of the film, the second, exposes universal truths about the impact of childbirth on intimacy and the difficulty of rising in your career after family obligations multiply. In the third part, the affair hinted at in the first two parts is revealed, and we see just how devastating the revelation is to Marianne. We also understand for the first time just how eager Johan is to get out of the marriage.
 
Scenes from a Marriage has been called one of the greatest films of all time by a number of critics. It is a sentiment I do not share, and the reasons for this all have to do with the second half of the film/series. In the fourth part, Johan returns after a year’s absence. At dinner at his old home, he flirts with Marianne while also talking about the problems with his present girlfriend – an age-old, only partially successful seduction technique. For her part, Marianne (in a relationship in the miniseries, but not in the movie) flirts back, but more importantly brings up the issue of divorce. In the end, they sleep together, but neglect to advance the divorce. In other words, he gets what he wants, and she is once again abandoned.
 
The problem with the fourth section is that it begins to make the couple less relatable. Neither of them appears to have any qualms about cheating on someone, and there is little to explain why their bond is as strong as it is after a full year of growth, self-evaluation, and separation. At least it ends as it should, with the re-exposure of Johan as the lying cheat he is, and as Johan drives away, I imagine viewers will find themselves thinking that Marianne has finally learned her lesson. Sadly, this does not turn out to be the case, for in the fifth section of the film, Marianne makes decisions that are not just completely out of character, but that continue the film’s drive to strip her of her likeability. Think about this: Marianne apparently goes to Johan’s office with two things in mind: signing their divorce papers and sleeping with him again to prove to herself that she is over him. And once again, she is in a relationship with someone else when she does this. He goes along with it of course, and afterwards Marianne returns to the issue at hand, divorce. Thus begins the darkest part of the film, a sequence in which Johan’s sudden hesitance leads to violence. The escalation shocks them both, and at the end of the segment, the documents are signed, and every flicker of love has been extinguished.
 
This is where the film should end. The marriage is over. We have seen how ignoring a partner’s needs, not being truthful about marital problems, and not doing what is necessary to keep connections strong can lead to estrangement, loneliness, and even brutality. We have seen how hate can build and aggressiveness can become more likely. And we have seen the final moments of their marriage. Here is where Bergman could have had the movie fade to black and the credits roll.
 
Only that’s not what happens. Instead, we get the final segment. Years have passed, and each member of the former couple has remarried. But here’s the kicker. At some point, they bumped into each other in a movie theater and began what we learn is a rather imperfect and not-entirely satisfying affair. Now imagine that you were watching this on television back in 1973. You would have had a week to digest the jarring conclusion of the fifth part, and you would have been more likely to accept the image of Marianne running behind a tree to steal a kiss with the man who had roughed her up the previous week. In the theatrical version, the viewer is given just seconds – seconds to go from thank goodness that’s over to what? I hope they work it out this time?
 
By continuing the story, the film becomes less about the dissolution of a marriage than an expose on weak individuals whom fate seems intent to keep bringing together in an effort to deprive them of happiness. When the film ended, I did not feel relieved they were together again. Instead, I was filled with disappointment, not just for the characters who seem to have something against joy, but for the weakening of a film whose message had been so strong. It is simply true that some marriage falls apart and cannot be reconciled, but by continuing Marianne and Johan’s story, the divorce loses its power. It does not set anyone free, and any new love or discovery in an inconvenience, a mistake that can be rectified easily with infidelity. It also sends an odd message about domestic violence, seemingly suggesting that time can change a brute into a romantic if you’re just willing to give him a second chance. It’s a terrible message, and it severely weakens an otherwise powerful film. It did enable Bergman to make a sequel, though, so there’s that I guess.