A Hidden Life (dir. Terrence Malick)
Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life comes on the heels of the filmmaker's trilogy (comprised of To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song) of twirling, soulsick, laconic figures adrift in a heavily digitized and superficial contemporary world. The artistic merits of these films have been debated among Malick's supporters and detractors alike (I'm a Malick fan, but somewhere in the middle on all three), with some being moved by his recent output and others feeling the director has lost his touch. A Hidden Life, the story of Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) who refuses to pledge loyalty to Adolf Hitler during WWII, is something of a shift away from the process that has defined his recent films like Knight of Cups or Song to Song. The extensive use of improvisation, the iPhone camera app B-roll, the soundtracks featuring modern dubstep artists are completely stripped from Malick's arsenal, with only the heavens of the Austrian mountainside, cathedrals, and wheat fields to mark his authorial vision. That being said, the Malick-of-Old narrative being pushed since the film's announcement ended up being less at the forefront of my own reaction than I expected, with fresh angles on Malick's ethereal point-of-view presenting themselves in surprising ways.
Indeed, for those who have grown weary of Malick's recent fascination with washed-out modernity, this is much closer to the director in Days of Heaven and New World form. As someone who loves both of those movies but still has time for Malick's approach to contemporary malaise, I view this return-to-form as neither a relief or a retreat, but an extension of the ideas he's explored throughout his filmography. How does one retain their grace when enveloped by an insidious force of evil? Malick has attempted to answer a version of this question in his three previous narrative features, particularly Knight of Cups, where the moral bankruptcy and emptiness of the modern world have made the central characters jaded. Those movies, laudable as they are, suffer by having a less specific vision of the world's cancerous state than A Hidden Life evokes, despite taking place in a supposedly unrelated time period.
In some ways, this is more of the same from Malick (hushed voiceovers, beautiful shots of nature, etc.), but in others, the film turns out to be one of the more ruminative and quietly political works from his oeuvre. Eschewing the sprawling, rapturous nature of The Tree of Life and the dense layers of The Thin Red Line, the audience is given a very intimate tack into Franz's tale, with much of the film's dramatic and emotional thrust stemming from the captivity of the film's protagonist. The audience becomes a close witness to the cruelty and brutality endured by Franz, thus giving us a deeper insight into his headspace. While this may sound like a similar setup to a lot of POW-centered dramas of late, Malick wisely puts his own indelible stamp on it by sidestepping the patriarchal, nationalistic themes of its genre and crafting a movie that meditates on the ways in which this man's individual moral principles reflect a clarity of spirit in a divided and oppressive environment. Even when I've gotten the sense that he's out of his depth, there have only been a handful of occasions where Malick's films have failed to connect with me on an emotional or spiritual level. And in A Hidden Life, his touch doesn't fail to cast the same spell, even in the face of a daunting subject and POV.
Grade: B+
To attempt to describe the plot of Mati Diop's fearless and searingly confident debut feature is a tricky task on two levels. On the one hand, the film favors tone, ideas, and visual storytelling over scenario. On the other hand, the enigmas of the film are rewarded so fully by going in blind, so I'm going to try to avoid as much about where it goes as possible. A vague-enough description of the movie might be the result of what would happen if you cross the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyenas, and the social-realist textures of the Dardenne brothers, but even that fails to do justice to Diop's idiosyncratic voice and manifestation of her singular directorial identity.
The only thing you really need to know is Ada, soon to be married to her wealthy fiancee, is seeing another man, Souleiman, who has been working at a construction site near Ada's home. Souleiman and the rest of his colleagues have been at this for three months without pay. From here, the movie shapeshifts in rich, insinuating ways, complicating our initial conceptions of character, region, and theme. Diop's adept balance of the film's vertiginous array of formal and narrative elements enables it to be read from a wide variety of perspectives. Whether you view the film as a sly commentary on stifling gender structures, a howl for the victims of capitalistic exploitation, or as a mood piece about the tragedy of our own systemic circumstances, each reading of the film complements and is intertwined with one another.
Everything that works and is completely harmonious about Atlantics is entirely the result of Diop's direction. From scene to scene, Diop equips the tactile power of her images, the hypnotic sound design, and the bizarre nature of the film's story to guide the audience to her wavelength. I was so thankful to have the opportunity to see this in a theater, where the immersion of a big screen serves this type of filmmaking more so than viewing it on a streaming platform might. However, the film's Netflix debut does mean that it will have a broader audience that have the ability to watch it at their fingertips, so for those willing to try something different, Atlantics is a great option when it premieres in November. Do not miss this one.
Grade: A/A-
Clemency (dir. Chinonye Chukwu)
The winner of this year's Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Chinonye Chukwu's Clemency has a forceful, immediate power that belies the film's structural and visual limitations. Which is to say, I was engaged and affected by several of the film's central components, but was taken aback by certain choices and emphases that were significant enough to draw away from my overall enthusiasm. As a character piece about Alfre Woodard's Bernadine, a prison warden in a perpetual state of contradiction, constriction, and subsidence over the integral part she plays in the execution of her death row inmates, the film is rounded and psychologically astute. As an indictment of capital punishment, it's also very impactful and diligent about the systemic complexities that play a major hand in deciding who lives and dies as a result of this process, but is slightly hampered by the film's biggest shortcomings.
Though Woodard's character work is by far the film's biggest asset, the amount of agency that's granted to Bernadine over Anthony (Aldis Hodge), a death row inmate whose execution is imminent, was a bit limiting in terms of how we as the audience are meant to respond to his fate. I appreciated the movie for being detailed and specific about Woodard's Bernadine, especially since movies that examine complex female character's interior lives are so rare. And while Hodge is excellent in the role, his screen time becomes significantly smaller as the film progresses, and scenes that do involve him are less varied than those with Woodard. This makes Anthony's circumstances more closely connected to Bernadine's guilt rather than the tragedy of the character's trajectory. That and the lack of sharper visual and formal ideas make Clemency feel more under-conceived than its strongest scenes would suggest.
But to the movie's strength, the acting is top-notch across the board. Clemency wouldn't work nearly as well without the anchoring of Woodard's intelligent, cyclonic navigation of her character's emotional unraveling. The amount of characterization she's able to convey through silent close-ups is an incredible feat to witness and shows why she's easily one of our greatest actresses working today. Also great is her ability to reveal different shades of Bernadine based on her interactions with the film's supporting characters, particularly with her deputy warden, Thomas, and her husband, Jonathan. While we're on the subject, the movie has a durable arsenal of supporting players, even down to one-scene roles like Danielle Brooks, Alex Castillo, and Alma Martinez. For fans of great screen acting, Clemency is definitely worth checking out, even if there are some drawbacks.
Grade: B/B-
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