Random Information & Opinions for the Masses…

Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, of Traffic fame, and loosely based on former CIA agent Robert Baer’s memoirs, See No Evil, Syriana is a multi-layered and intricate assessment of a universal multi-layered and intricate problem. The film’s title is derived from a Washington term for a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East, which would ultimately benefit the West. The film touches on many subjects mainly surrounding the subject of oil and its exploitation, including the political, commercial, environmental and security ramifications. The film is reminiscent of the politically charged films of the seventies, such as M.A.S.H. or Catch22. Writer-director Gaghan, creates a six-degrees-of-separation feel between the stories in the film, showing how the privileged regularly pick poverty’s pocket. The cast includes George Clooney as a CIA agent, Matt Damon as a stock broker quasi family man; and Jeffrey Wright as an ambitious Washington lawyer. This is not a holistic story, more a set of people within a jigsaw of explosive politics, money and power.

Underhanded deals, political point scoring and espionage are the most prevalent themes throughout the film, while also assessing the dire side of world issues. The manipulators maneuver precariously in high powered boardroom politics while their decisions lead to the loss of jobs for innocent bystanders. Syriana can be interpreted as a left wing film but it is startlingly a-political, it is not obviously anti-American, but it becomes clear further into the film that the West is to blame for putting oil ahead of all other priorities. It is not sympathetic to terror, but the most compelling plot line tells of how terrorists can be made out of the most banal boardroom decisions. It often feels like a documentary, immersing us deep into far-flung locations and confronting us with issues that could be reportage. The film’s emotive soundtrack guides us as we venture from high powered boardrooms to the uncertain world of young Pakistanis whose sudden unemployment pushes them into the warped obligation of martyrdom.

The film tackles current hot political issues varying from the megabuck-driven politics of oil in the West, and the Middle East, through Arab traditionalism versus modern economics, family conflicts and sibling rivalry on a scale that can affect world peace - and suicide bombing. The film illustrates beautifully how politics and big business will conspire to preserve the status quo at any cost, in turn protecting their power and profits; profiling clearly how all actions have consequences. The West’s undeniable need for oil drives the political and business policies which lead to us being hated. The Pakistani youth pushed into extremism by a fundamentalist is a highlight sub-plot of the film.

This is a complex film which asks the audience to think instead of just watch, trying to highlight the control of the Middle Eastern oil fields is a goal which is at the heart of much of the political process in both the Middle East and the West, while also being the catalyst of what can be perceived as terrorism. The film asks the audience to question their beliefs: is the world really as pretty as you thought? It is thought provoking and enlightening, showing a perspective worth learning, considering and understanding. Although the film takes the viewer on a disjointed rollercoaster ride of experience, it manages to tie the characters to the lives of the audience and anyone who has capitalistic motives. For those who worry about the actions of the West, how big business impacts us in our daily lives and if it will contribute to further terrorist attacks, this film certainly won’t mitigate their fears.
Syriana poses a very important question, why should we care about our dependence on oil? Quite simply because if we don’t kick our oil addiction, our corporations and politicians will hop into bed with, as the West perceive them, corrupt Arabs. Unfortunately the film also underlines the fact that the problem is too big for you to solve, anyway.

German director Oliver Hirschbiegel who shot to fame with his critically acclaimed film, The Experiment, brings us the story of the final days of the Third Reich in his chilling politically charged film, Downfall. The film is set in Berlin, in the last 48 hours of the Third Reich, mostly from the point of view of Hitler’s inner circle inside the Führerbunker, as the world collapses around them. Downfall is not the first movie to address this subject, but is definitely the most revelatory. In fact this seminal film could be described as a film about the decline of a single, insane man, holding onto his delusions until his final breathe, as much as it is about the collapse of an entire regime, ideology and way of life. For audiences interested in the politics of war, Downfall documents the inner circles of absolute power precisely, showing the consequences of decisions made by strong minded men behind closed doors.

Downfalls fascination with humanizing Hitler throughout the film is central to its reflection on fanaticism. What the Nazi saw was not a sycophant madman focused on ending the world, but rather a strong leader who promised them a new Germany, an Aryan utopia. The scenes throughout the film of young Nazi’s who won’t abide capitulation remind us of the deplorable nature of ideological zealotry; these characters throw away their lives as we, the audience, watch with sheer despair; how could they be so devoted to something that was so iniquitous?

The film received heavy criticism because it attempted to humanize the Nazi’s, but this is the films impetus; the Nazi’s were not monsters, they were human, just like you or I. This choice, of depicting Hitler and his henchmen as something human, instead of monsters, was commendable. The film does not attempt to force a point of view on its viewers; each viewer is entitled to form their own opinion. Too often World War Two films focus on the horrors inflicted by the Nazi regime, depicting them as monsters. In the real world perfectly normal human beings can be cruel and merciless if they are blinded. Hitler had the choice, and he chose to do what he did, he chose murder and destruction; a human being lost respect for the lives of other human beings and his decisions led a country to commit genocide on a scale unknown in modern history. Ultimately he loses respect for all life and starts sacrificing his own soldiers at random, this is the strongest point of Downfall, going against the grain and making a human Hitler a tangible idea.

Downfall is best described as an attempt by Germany to analyse its torturous history. Even now, it is hard for Germany to contemplate what occurred during the reign of the Third Reich. Generations have tried to understand such an infamous history. Downfall’s attempt to tackle the suffering which Germany had to bear through the Third Reich, somewhat reduces its value as a tool for understanding the past. This is unfortunate, as the film has much to offer. It is a powerful portrayer of the extremist mind, not as we would envision it today, but still relevant for the study of today’s religious fundamentalism. Ultimately though, the film’s mistaken attempt to cast Germany as a casualty reminds us of the struggle Germans face in coming to terms with their history.

While Downfall can be disturbing, and at times, extremely difficult to watch, it is an enormous achievement that should not be missed. A powerful look at the innards of a totalitarian regime at the brink of destruction, while also showing the effect this has on the people in power. As an examination of historical events and a human drama, Downfall delivers well. The film also distresses the viewer greatly, this is required, it has to pose its questions about human nature and the nature of politics otherwise it would be an empty and forgettable gesture. The film’s searing portrayal of an utterly ruthless fanaticism is its most enduring effect. While heavily distressing, this is a film which must be seen.

Jonathan Demme of “The Silence of the Lambs” fame, whose last film, “The Truth About Charlie”, was an ill-begotten update of Stanley’s Donen’s “Charade”, has crafted an exhilarating, if politically wishy-washy, modern-day reimagining of Frankenheimer’s gem. I was somewhat dubious going into this film as I had seen the flawless original and wasn’t convinced a remake needed to be done, especially in today’s political climate. To my surprise the film was enjoyable, and much of the credit goes to the political spin and the three main players, Denzel Washington as the paranoid veteran, Liev Schreiber as the titular character and Meryl Streep as the power-hungry, oedipally motivated Senator Eleanor Shaw.

While John Frankenheimer’s film was the apotheosis of the Cold War thriller and a mocking reflection of McCarthyism, Jonathan Demme’s remake is less underhanded in its approach, but takes cutting stabs at current politics, the corruptibility of world leaders and paranoia cloaked as partisanship in a post 9/11 United States. But, like the original, it effectively targets the political anxieties of liberal America. A problem with this remake is how does one recast the great evil moving behind the scenes? In 1962 it was the Communists who meant to put a sleeper agent in the White House; here it is a multinational corporation, Manchurian Global, which means to put their man in power. At first glance this might seem a more subtle, insidious and, if you believe Michael Moore, authentic threat. Who were the real winners of the Cold War, after all? The naive interpretation would be that democracy prevailed. The paranoid interpretation would be that some monstrous parody of democratic capitalism, a ruthless corporate oligarchy, was in fact the victor.

It’s interesting to note that the puppet candidate is a Democrat. Though he’s not specifically defined as such, we can derive this from some of the strategy chatter that goes on around him. It’s a gallant nod toward political impartiality by Demme, but, since the effort seems disingenuousness (Demme’s film is, even by loose standards, anti-Bush), the director comes across as somewhat politically timorous.

So while it’s probable that Demme saw the re-make as a chance to comment on the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the White House, with Dick Cheney in the role of his controller, his Candidate is a relatively subtle one compared with Frankenheimer’s. Sadly, like most conspiracy theories, the political analysis offered by The Manchurian Candidate is too neat to be credible, and consequently does more to obscure than illuminate contemporary American politics.

The film contains an obvious cynical tendency. As much as it’s evidently a condemnation of big business’ control of politics, it also denounces the leaders’ desire to keep the public on edge with terror alerts and the like, as Senator Shaw points out, “The assassin always dies. It’s necessary for the national healing.” But after maintaining its cynicism for most of the film, it falls apart entirely at the conclusion. Demme and his writers cop out with a pointless and inexplicable denouement in relation to previous plot developments. It’s almost as if they gave in to appease some mindless preview audience or dimwitted studio hack. Or, maybe they envisioned it just like this.

Perhaps it was necessary to reach back 42 years to find a work of power and substance to remind us of just how dangerous it is to allow modern technology to fall into the hands of the power-hungry and the ruthless. Indeed, what this gripping tale of an attempted coup against the United States government manages to do is to remind us that, even in this age of international terrorism, the greatest threat may actually come from within.

I have not been too motivated recently, but i figured i should post some new content….I’m not sure how regularly i will be updating my blog, but i will continue to update it, hopefully it’s all about quality and not just quantity.

I am loving my holidays currently, a very relaxed state of affairs…but i have reached the point where i am ready to get back to University… anyway….just a quick update, i hope you enjoy my new article below.

Ciao!

ps. Wooo we beat Qatar (i totally saw it coming though!)

This paper will speak about the validity of the accounts portrayed in the books, Stasiland by Anna Funder and The File: a Personal History by Timothy Garton Ash. Anna Funder is an Australian writer who grew up in Melbourne. She studied creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, also later studying at the Free University of Berlin. Living and working in Berlin inspired her to write her first book, Stasiland, which explores the machinations of the secret police known as the Stasi in the former German Democratic Republic. Timothy Garton Ash is a British author of eight books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last quarter-century. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

These two books are arguably two of the most revealing texts about the true realities of life within the German Democratic Republic (GDR); they both focus on the horrifying system of observation in the former East Germany in the 1980’s. These books are some of the most recognised for showing the dark past of the GDR, while also looking upon the GDR without nostalgia or ironic humour. This has not been done often enough in literature about the GDR and even in this instance where they are considered some of the most realistic portrayal’s of life in the GDR, they have received criticism for being too dramatic and not realistic enough. Unfortunately, to this day there have not been that many definitive articles about life within the GDR, so checking the validity of the information in these two books has been a challenge, although Garton-Ash makes his position clear:
“One of Germany’s most singular achievements is to have associated itself so intimately in the world’s imagination with the darkest evils of the two worst political systems of the most murderous century in human history. The words “Nazi,” “SS,” and “Auschwitz” are already global synonyms for the deepest inhumanity of fascism. Now the word “Stasi” is becoming a default global synonym for the secret police terrors of communism.”

“Nazi, Stasi: Germany’s festering half-rhyme.”

If those are not the words of a man who passionately wants the world to know the truth, I don’t know what to believe anymore.

The East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the ‘Stasi’, permeated every aspect of life for the hapless residents of the communist state for over four decades until reunification in 1990. Those who survived the days when a casual remark could result in arrest, torture and a long prison term could be forgiven for wanting to wipe those grim times from their memory. However, there is now a growing recognition that it is vital that the world should be shown the realities of what life was like within the GDR for the devastating years leading up to reunification. With the lack of literature surrounding the subject, these two major books come to mind as the most realistic and important in relation to the GDR and the Stasi. The quintessential question being, are these books romanticized versions of what life was really like in the German Democratic Republic, or are they more realistic than what is believed?

The Stasi came into existence in 1950 after being established by the government of the GDR in an effort to curb the legitimacy crisis and the growing amount of discontent within the general populace within East Germany. Originally it was a small organisation but after the protests held by disgruntled workers on June 16th, 17th and 18th which spread across the GDR like wildfire and ended in some 50 deaths and the arrests of over 10,000 people, the GDR pushed for a rapid expansion of the Stasi in order to be able to maintain control of the public, whose grievances were growing rapidly. From this point onwards the Stasi grew rapidly and at its peak it managed to keep an astonishing 6 million people under surveillance and had infiltrated all areas of East German society. Many people point to the similarities between the Stasi and the Nazi Gestapo of World War Two.

The Stasi probed every aspect of life. Full time officers were posted to all major industrial plants. Without exception, one tenant in every apartment building was designated as a watchdog, reporting to an area representative of the Volkspolizei (Vopo), the people’s police. In turn, the police officer was the Stasi’s man. If a relative or friend came to stay overnight, it was reported. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, writers, actors, and sports figures were co-opted by the Stasi, as were waiters and hotel personnel. Along with the amount of surveillance which was occurring within East Germany, the Stasi were known for there presence in West Germany as well. Taping about one hundred thousand telephone lines in West Germany and West Berlin around the clock was the job of 2,000 officers.

The evidence suggests the accounts of the two authors and absolutely true. Even if it is found that certain parts of there accounts are romanticised, they are clearly some of the key text’s available today which show a realistic look into life in the GDR and under the Stasi. The scary thing is that some people still believe that these books do not show the true brutality which was used by the East Germany secret police. Of course there are sceptics, there will always be sceptics, but to put it into perspective, some people still argue that the Holocaust did not happen.

An interesting comparison is to compare these two books with the film “The Lives Of Others”. While being one of the most realistic film’s to cover the GDR, both Ash and Funder question it’s authenticity. This can only cement the belief that both authors are determined to show the world the truth about the GDR. They argue that the film is an inaccurate portrayal and I feel this strengthens the credentials of the authors, and thus, the books. I questioned whether the film was a historically accurate representation of life within the GDR from the outset. I feel it soft-pedals the oppressiveness of the GDR. Anna Funder, the author of Stasiland, wrote in a review of the movie that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden so much information from his superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and operated in teams, seldom if ever working alone. She noted that in the “Director’s statement”, Donnersmarck, Director of “the Lives of Others”, wrote, “More than anything else, The Lives of Others is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.” To which Funder has replied: “This is an uplifting thought. But what is more likely to save us from going down the wrong path again is recognising how human beings can be trained and forced into faceless systems of oppression, in which conscience is extinguished.” I feel that this emphasises the fact that the film, albeit an amazing achievement, cannot be looked upon as a historically accurate account of the Stasi in East Germany. It is the most realistic film so far to demonstrate the horrors of the Stasi, but what is truly frightening is the fact that people who lived through this time of oppression do not feel that the true terror of which the Stasi were capable has been accurately portrayed. For example, Timothy Garten Ash pointed out in his review of the film:

“Watching the film for the first time I was powerfully affected. Yet I was also moved to object, from my own experience: ‘No! It was not really like that. This is all too highly coloured, romantic, even melodramatic; in reality, it was all much grayer, more tawdry and banal.”

The strong stance that the two authors take against the lack of realism in the film proves that they are both passionate about the subject, while throwing up more questions surrounding what life was really like in the GDR. While both authors seem desperate to bring the true story of the oppression of the GDR into the public eye, they still face scrutiny. The fact that they spoke out so loudly against the film is a very significant indicator of how much passion they put into producing books which were historically accurate.

The Stasi kept files on an estimated 6 million people. Stasi agents regularly used phone taps, bugging devices, and video cameras to spy on their fellow citizens and even on the Stasi itself. A huge number of informers passed on information and rumours about their neighbors, fellow workers, and relatives. Even church ministers sometimes informed on members of their congregations. A climate of fear chilled the daily lives of the people.

Stasi minister Erich Mielke once said at a memorial rally for victims of fascism, “The DDR is a state that guarantees its citizens freedom, democracy, and basic human rights.” Had he been honest, he would have added that these noble ideals were valid only so long as citizens did not question or oppose the will of the party. However, hundreds of thousands of citizens did test the states guarantees, and they paid dearly for it - many with their lives.

Mielke’s unique brand of “love” transformed East Germany into probably the most spied-upon country in history. Funder reminds us that “in its 40 years, ‘the Firm’ generated the equivalent of all records in German history since the Middle Ages”. It is worth repeating the statistics: 180 kilometres of files, 360,000 photographs, 99,600 audio cassettes, one in every 6.5 of the population an informer. Among the informers were 12 of the 19 committee members of the Writers’ Association. They included the novelist Christa Wolf, who suppressed all knowledge of her contact with the Stasi until a file prompted her memories. “I never told them anything that could not be heard anyway at any public gathering.” Another informer was Knud Wollen, who reported on his wife, Vera, under the name Donald. “I was reporting on myself as much as anyone.”

We must be grateful that Funder followed her instincts in Stasiland. She spiritedly plunges herself into “this land gone wrong” and attempts to understand a regime like the German Democratic Republic through the stories of ordinary men and women, “not just the activists or the famous writers”. The result is a terrific act of life-giving to a people - 17 million of them - who have hitherto lacked not just a voice but an audience. It does for East Germany what another Australian writer, Peter Robb, achieved for victims of the Mafia in Midnight in Sicily (1998). Funder is obviously deeply affected by the tales of lives whose futures have been cut off and redirected by the secret state organisation simply because they dared to not support the State with an unquestioning attitude. The stories are told usually in the first person, as in a novel, but these are true accounts, some of which moved me like a good piece of fiction should. Funder explores what it is like for people of the former GDR to have a nation one minute and not the next. A nation with all its faults and even some of its advantages and a nation with more skeletons than anyone wishes these days to admit. What it is like for those who rebelled, for those who conspired and for those who ruled to now have to learn to live in a new order, but still with all the memories of a dream/nightmare that went on for most of their lives.

The effort which has been undertaken by Funder to search for answers about one of the most despicable political states in history has also been undertaken by author Timothy Garton Ash, in his book, The File, it is an extraordinary book, a gripping, alarming, thought-provoking, often moving exploration of a period of history and a time of life. It tells us a great deal about Garton-Ash, much about Honecker’s GDR and more than we want to know about human frailty and cowardice. Unlike many Germans, Garton-Ash’s life was not endangered or ruined by Stasi surveillance. But he was staggered by the duplicity of the people he thought he knew: his faith in human nature - and indeed in himself - took quite a battering. “These files”, he observes, “Change lives”.

It’s the old story, in other words: ordinary people mouthing the usual rationalizations - duty, patriotism, obeying orders; a feeling of having no choice but to collaborate with the regime; the need to choose between competing evils. Very few declined the Stasi schilling. A few - a very few - confided in the object of their surveillance and jointly concocted a story which would satisfy the authorities while leaving the target undamaged. But most just co-operated, shrugging their shoulders at the devastation such snooping could inflict. Garton-Ash the journalist experienced the usual difficulty of seeing the wood from the trees; but what Garton-Ash the historian has found in the undergrowth is Immanuel Kant’s “crooked timber of humanity”.

What is written about the GDR could also be written about the Third Reich. Most Germans then were not constantly seeking to avoid being arrested by the Gestapo. Most of them had not voted for the Nazis yet they continued to enjoy the cinema, football, dancing, theatre, concerts, radio, family occasions; and their children even enjoyed Hitler youth camps. This is not to conclude that the GDR was just a ‘Red’ Third Reich. For one thing, the Stasi had far more informers than the Gestapo but, to be fair, Stasi-boss Mielke left behind only millions of files rather than millions of corpses.

Finally it seems to be clear where the motives of Funder and Garton-Ash lay while they were producing these two books. While there may be sceptics, the raw passion and effort which went into the creation of these texts cannot be denied. These two authors wanted to show the GDR for what it truly is, show the cracks in a totalitarian society where free speech and the simplest of human rights were forcibly removed. The Stasi are master craftsmen: they know just how to wire up an apartment and where to place bugs. They use odour samples from their suspects, have dogs specially trained to sniff out fear, and have their own pseudo-scientific means of classification. The books are also alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life in the GDR, where there are so many spies that there is almost no one left to be spied on. With these books we gain a glimpse of how it must have been for citizens of the GDR, to live with constant oppression of their free will and opinion. Unfortunately due to the lack of literature which has been produced about the period, from a social aspect from living underneath the government, comparing what has been written in these books to other sources has been a challenge. People today typically know very little about the GDR regime. Many people are unaware of who Erich Mielke was. Even “GDR” and “SED” don’t mean much too many people.

The level of knowledge about the communist dictatorship in East Germany is eroding at a fast rate, and it is very alarming. It is hard to make up for these deficits with such a small amount of realistic literature about the era. But these texts can perhaps tap into some of the reader’s emotions, which will perhaps motivate people to learn more about the GDR. These texts are two of only a few which describe what life was really like under the rule of Mielke, and to question the authenticity and passion of the writers who produced them belittles the suffering of the East German people. Perhaps it underlines the fact that the world isn’t ready for the truth about one of the most horrifying modern political states to come into existence.

Recently after viewing the film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ i was wondering which catagory the film fit into, a genre film, an auteur film or art cinema? I got a bit carried away and i think this article shows it haha, enjoy

I will speak about the varying amount of relation the film has to the methodologies of the auteur theory, art cinema and genre studies, with a concise study of the films most obvious relation, art cinema. The choice of this film was simple, it is an absolute masterpiece and it has strong relations to all three methodologies, throughout the paper I will highlight the information each methodology brings into consideration while assessing what is discovered. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, originally named in Spanish, ‘El Laberinto del Fauno’; which literally translates to ‘The Labyrinth of the Faun’, is an Academy Award-winning Spanish-language fantasy film made in 2006, which is written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo Del Toro, of ‘Hellboy’ and ‘The Devils Backbone’ fame. Though the original title referred only to the mythological faun, the English title refers to the faun-like Greek god Pan. Del Toro has stated, however, that the faun featured in the film is not actually Pan. The film is set in post-Civil War Spain, and tells the allegorical story of a girl named Ofelia, played brilliantly by Ivana Baquero, who is given three tasks by a mysterious faun. Meanwhile, her stepfather, Captain Vidal, played by Sergi López, who is a fanatical Falangist, viciously hunts for rebels in the region, and her pregnant mother grows ill. Heavily influenced by fairy tales and considered a spiritual sequel to ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ , the film employed make-up, puppetry, and CGI effects to create its marvellously immersive fantasy world, which is truly stunning. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is the kind of great cinema that creeps up on you slowly. Although it was not engrossing immediately, the plot and characters began to make it clear that this film was Del Toro’s first masterpiece, and was even though it doesn’t blown you away from the opening shot. Del Toro was looking to make a film without compromising his vision and had decided to take his time getting things, like place and character, established. The result is spectacular. Everything: the story, the acting and the editing are seamless. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is a fully realized, adult fairy tale.

Throughout this paper the methodologies behind the Auteur Theory, Genre Studies and the role of Art Cinema will be mentioned often, these theories are very much separate but at the same time when it comes to the study of film, they work in correlation with each other. The 1950s-era Auteur theory is prominent in film criticism. It holds that a director’s films reflect that director’s personal creative vision, as if he or she were the primary “auteur” (the French word for ‘author’). In some cases, film producers are considered to have a similar “auteur” role for films that they have produced. In law the auteur is the creator of a film as a work of art, and is the original copyright holder. Under European Union law the film director shall always be considered the author or one of the authors of a film. The Auteur theory has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated by film director and film critic François Truffaut in 1954. “Auteurism” is the method of analysing films based on this theory or, alternately, the characteristics of a director’s work that makes her or him an auteur. Both the auteur theory and the auteurism method of film analysis are frequently associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical ‘Cahiers du cinéma’. In film theory, genre usually refers to the primary method of film categorization but there are also many other methods of dividing films into groups besides genre, for example the auteur theory mentioned earlier which group films according to their directors. A “genre” generally refers to films that share similarities in the narrative elements from which they are constructed. Three main types are often used to categorize film genres; setting, mood, and format. The film’s location is defined as the setting. The emotional charge carried throughout the film is known as its mood. The film may also have been shot using particular equipment or is presented in a specific manner, or format.

Del Toro is slowly becoming more synonymous with the word Auteur, in a few films time he may be considered one, but at this point in time he is not. Although the films he has directed throughout his career have many aspects which can be considered similar, it can be argued the Del Toro has not become prolific enough yet to be considered an Auteur. If you were to put his films under the same umbrellas as the recent crop of fine Mexican directors, Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), you can almost say they as a group could be considered within the realms of the Auteur theory, as they are obviously benefiting from their rare friendship and system of critique and response to each others’ film projects. Needless to say these filmmakers are making some of the most interesting cinema today and their collaboration seems to serve as a method of refining and polishing their respective cinematic gems. Pan’s Labyrinth may be the best film the group has yet produced and most certainly deserves accolades for its style, substance and incredible poignancy. Unfortunately it is too early in Del Toro’s career to specify whether he can be considered an Auteur or not.

The Mexican filmmaker has pointed out the importance of genre in his filmography, from his feature directorial debut, Cronos (1992), a revision of the meaning of vampirism, to Pan’s Labyrinth, a hybrid from a generic point of view:

‘I’ve always preferred genres to be mixed. Like combining horror with an historical narrative, for example. For me, Pan’s Labyrinth is therefore a drama rooted in a context of war, with fairytale and mythological elements grafted on’.

In Pan’s Labyrinth, as in his previous films, Guillermo Del Toro pays an extraordinary amount of attention to the production design. The result is a film full of richness in its visual style. Guillermo Del Toro includes a wide range of sources of inspiration. The references in Pan’s Labyrinth come not only from films, but also from literature and painting. This film evokes Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, among other fairy tales. Del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who is also a frequent collaborator with director Robert Rodríguez, has captured the imagery of the best Victorian children’s book illustrations, with the creations of Arthur Rackham as a main model:

‘I tried to reconnect with the perversity and very sexual content of his work. In fairy tales, all stories are either about the return to the womb (heaven, home) or wandering out into the world and facing your own dragon. We are all children wandering through our own fable’.

Del Toro has pointed to the paintings of Goya, in particular the ‘black-paintings’, as a referent for the tone (‘grotesque’) and atmosphere (‘chiaroscuros’) of Pan’s Labyrinth; in particular the painting Saturno devorando a su hijo (Saturno Devouring His Son) is quoted in the scene of The Pale Man eating the fairies, a metaphor for cannibalism and anguish. Finally, apart from the references to comics - Mike Mignola, for example - Del Toro has manifested his admiration for the symbolist painters, mainly Carlos Schwabe, but also Arnold Bocklin and Feliciens Rops.

Pan’s Labyrinth has relations to all three methodologies as an auteur study, art cinema study or a genre study, but I feel the most obvious is art cinema, as the film has gained its critical acclaim as an art house fairytale. Art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, which mean they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, and huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, which typically uses lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors) and modest sets to make films which focus on reflective dialogue sequences. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics’ reviews, discussion of their film by arts columnists, commentators, bloggers, and “word-of-mouth” promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to a small portion of the mainstream viewing audiences to become financially viable . Del Toro has done an extraordinary job of turning a small art-house script into an absolute masterpiece with a small budget and yet not once sacrificing his vision to give in to the pressures of popular cinema.

I feel that the most impressive aspect of Pan’s Labyrinth was the lack of clichéd revelatory CGI (Computer Generated Image) moments. Most epic films of late have featured some kind of wide shot, for example Spiderman swinging through the buildings of New York while fighting the terrible Sandman in ‘Spider-Man 3′ all the while a remastered version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 boom’s in the background. Pan’s Labyrinth, although regularly employing interesting digital effects, does not attempt to send us to Narnia or Skull Island, and the closest thing to a superhero is a little girl who wants to save her mom and unborn baby brother. This use of effects as support for, rather than the focus of, the story make this world seem very real and intense and, as in the scene with a creature called “The Pale Man,” very frightening.

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is the epitome of the art-house film, while not being cliché it manages to approach a fantasy and horror theme with a totally different perspective, turning this film into the ultimate fairy tale for adults. Grappling with both the necessity and absurdity of narrative, Guillermo Del Toro’s film lures you in with its fantasy underpinnings, setting up a contrast with the war-time reality of the other characters in the film. Del Toro carefully constructs each frame of this film with care, marrying sound and image together to form a beautiful world of magical realism. His images allow the spectator fully into the childlike perspective of Ofelia, positioning you to hope that each imaginative adventure serves as a sufficient escape from the brutality of her step father, the captain, who constructs his own reality based on his fascist ideology. Del Toro commands the narrative with the stylistic devices he employs to execute it, which is necessary given the film’s focus on the function of narrative in the interpretation of our perceptions of the world. Imagination is absurd in many ways, but it is wholly essential to grappling with the experience. A stunning sequence near the beginning involving Ofelia talking to her unborn brother in her mother’s womb incorporates images so sublime in such a free-flowing yet succinct manner. The images coupled with Javier Navarrete’s ethereal, lullabye-esque music represent one of the film’s key scenes.

Allegorical parallels abound, but the film is restrained in its presentation of details, capturing both magic and horror in equal amounts while balancing the narrative between a character based war drama and a fairy tale. Where most stories would take this setting at face value, Del Toro makes it a more prominent element of the story than the imaginative world into which Ofelia flees. He is very sparing in how he incorporates the fantastical aspects, and he is also much darker with them than your typical Alice in Wonderland story. The fantasy world in this film is not happy-go-lucky by any stretch; it is a strong reflection of how Ofelia views and participates in the reality of her own life. As the narrative progresses and we become more exposed to the brutal reality of violence and fascism and losing faith in Ofelia’s world, which allows the viewer to understand her imaginative impulses as more of an inconsequential distraction from the goings on of the war plot. But Del Toro knows full well what he’s doing and allows the proceedings to culminate in a climax so poignantly hopeful and bittersweet. It isn’t until the film is over that you can really put together the pieces of what Del Toro is after in this film, and the meanings are open to interpretation.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a moving and spectacular achievement by one of the finest directors working today. Pan’s Labyrinth is simply not for kids. This is a movie very much designed for adults. The only common ground between Pan’s Labyrinth and, say, The Chronicles of Narnia are a pair of goat hooves and some cute little pixies. However, in Pan’s Labyrinth you watch in horror, as the pixies become the bloody lunch of some demonic monstrosity. The similarities and contrasts between the two worlds serve as an inquiry into not just national and personal ideology, but the reality of experience. Our experience with the world outside is ultimately nothing more than perception and interpretation according to individual and social experience. Del Toro achieves this by building a brilliant narrative within these two worlds, never quite allowing the spectator to entirely be inside one without the other. That simple contrast reveals itself to be much more complex than we might initially anticipate, and Del Toro’s understanding of this is so essential to the film’s themes. No amount of praising metaphors or adjectives can contain just how beautifully simple yet dizzyingly complex Pan’s Labyrinth is. It is a masterpiece. Throughout the film the methodologies of an Auteur, a Genre Study and Art Cinema can be found, but the use of the word Auteur to describe this budding director is premature, he is very much an amazing talent and it can be argued that ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is the successor to ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ but it is just too early to be able to categorise his films. In contrast it is extremely apparent that Del Toro can be considered one of the heavyweights of new age art-house cinema, his films, and especially ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ ooze’s realism and authorial expressivity. His films deviate from the mainstream, “classical” norms of filmmaking in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a loosening of the chain of cause and effect.

TWG EXCLUSIVELY revealed that Dutchman Pim Verbeek will be confirmed as the Socceroos coach at 3.30 this afternoon, ending a drawn out saga for Football Federation Australia.

FFA CEO Ben Buckley contacted Philippe Troussier’s Australian-based representatives at 2pm AEDT today to inform the Frenchman - who is currently in Sydney - that his application for the job was unsuccessful.

Buckley and FFA Chairman Frank Lowy are understood to have made the decision to appoint Verbeek after discussions with the former Korea Republic coach in Singapore Wednesday.

Finally! haha im so glad :D

Today seems like it has been quite a good day so far, but i am only half way through it! This morning while i was reading my news feeds with my coffee just after i got up i came across a few interesting articles which caught my eye. Because i am a total football nut i always read the ‘’sports pages” first, and according to theworldgame.com.au and to my intense interest it seems that a few candidates for the head coaching position of Australia are beginning to shape up, which i am extremely excited about. Troussier or Verbeek…an interesting choice, but at this point i would be happy with either, as both have Asian experience and are within our budget. Both are extremely talented, although i have been campaigning for the Verbeek camp ever since that scumbag bailed on us. So i guess i would prefer Verbeek, but i am equally impressed with Troussier’s resume…I’m just glad the FFA are finally getting off the arse and doing something!

Also this morning while reading my news feeds, i came across this. An extremely interesting read on climate change albeit extremely depressing. Am i the only one that is starting to feel that were fucked no matter what?? It’s just so depressing!

Recently i have been doing lots of gardening and garden related duties around the house, specifically helping to ‘renovate’ our front garden, as it was in dire shape, and as is expected when i first began i found it mind numbingly boring and ridiculous….but more recently as the garden has been slowly developing from a dry dirt pit into something which could actually pass as i garden i have started to become somewhat attached to it, and i have started to really enjoy the sunny afternoons spent rolling around in the dirt……perhaps i should quit smoking so much marijuana or perhaps gardening is actually enjoyable! Who would have thought…

For those of you who are unaware, “The Lives Of Others” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/) is a film which was made by Florian Henchel von Donnersmarck in 2006. It focuses on the horrifying system of observation in the former East Germany in the 1980’s. It is about a successful dramatist, Georg Dreyman, and his partner, Christa-Maria Sieland, who is an upcoming stage actress. A powerful minister, played by Thomas Thieme, becomes interested in Christa and asks that the young couple be followed by the Stasi.

For a brief background, the “Stasi” was the East German secret police; it came into existence in 1950 after being established by the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in an effort to curb the legitimacy crisis and the growing amount of discontent within the general populace in East Germany. Originally it was a small organisation but after the protests held by disgruntled workers on June 16th, 17^th and 18^th which spread across the GDR like wildfire and ended in some 50 deaths and the arrests of over 10,000 people, the GDR pushed for a rapid expansion of the Stasi in order to be able to maintain control of the public, whose grievances were growing rapidly. From this point onwards the Stasi grew rapidly and in its peak, it managed to keep an astonishing 6 million people under surveillance and had infiltrated all areas of East German society. Many people point to the similarities between the Stasi and the Nazi Gestapo of world war two.

The Lives of Others is the first film of it’s kind in the sense that it shows the dark past of the GDR and also looks upon the GDR without nostalgia or ironic humour, this has never been done before in a film and even in this instance where it is the most realistic portrayal of life in the GDR. It has received criticism for being too dramatic and not realistic enough.

The Stasi agent which the film focuses on, who is played brilliantly by actor Ulrich Mühe, provides us with a chilling look into the arts of the Secret Police. He is not portrayed as an individual, but as a symbol for the whole system, where people did everything they were told to do. The most frightening aspect of the film is the banality of it all, the offices are bleak and people speak about secret operations and the bugging of peoples homes with insistent causality. The men approach their jobs with such normality that it makes the film ever more chilling. Von Donnersmarck has gilded history in his bid to create an uplifting narrative in which an old-fashioned notion of decency eventually prevails. Nonetheless, his portrayal of Stasi-era East Germany is chilling in its detail. He shows just how the state police set about breaking a suspect: question him relentlessly and deny him sleep; a formula that has clearly been exhaustively tested. An innocent prisoner will shout and rage, but a guilty one will calmly repeat his pre-prepared lies. Threaten to imprison his wife and put his kids into state care - then he’ll talk. The Stasi are portrayed as master craftsmen: they know just how to wire up an apartment and where to place bugs. They use odour samples from their suspects, have dogs specially trained to sniff out fear, and have their own pseudo-scientific means of classification. The film is also alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life in the GDR, where there are so many spies that there is almost no one left to be spied on. The director relishes showing the tension and intimidation that contaminate society. With this film we gain a glimpse of how it must have been for citizens of the GDR, to live with constant oppression of their free will and opinion.

This brings me to the question of whether it can be looked upon as a historically accurate representation of life within the GDR. I feel it soft-pedals the oppressiveness of the German Democratic Republic, Anna Funder, the author of Stasiland, wrote in a review of the movie that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden so much information from his superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and operated in teams, seldom if ever working alone. She noted that in the “Director’s statement”, Donnersmarck wrote, “More than anything else, The Lives of Others is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.” To which Funder has replied: “This is an uplifting thought. But what is more likely to save us from going down the wrong path again is recognising how human beings can be trained and forced into faceless systems of oppression, in which conscience is extinguished.” I feel that this emphasises the fact that the film, albeit an amazing achievement, cannot be looked upon as a historically accurate account of the Stasi in East Germany. It is the most realistic film so far to demonstrate the horrors of the Stasi, but what is truly frightening is the fact that people who lived through this time of oppression do not feel that the true terror of which the Stasi were capable has been accurately portrayed.

I feel the film does deserve its public and critical acclaim, it is a superb piece of film, an astonishing achievement, but its narrative is fantasy, it could not have taken place, and according to Anna Funder, never did take place under the GDR dictatorship. These objections are somewhat beside the point, the point being that this is a film, and it uses the syntax and conventions of Hollywood to convey to the widest possible audience some part of the truth about life under the Stasi, and the larger truths that experience revealed about human nature. It mixes some historical fact with the ingredients of a fast paced thriller and love story.

yes yes..let the goodness begin, unfortunately i don’t really have much to say currently…hmmm, a film review perhaps?