Now to get introspective again.

Everybody needs - and hopefully has - friends and mentors in their lives. I know I sure do. And there are several people in mine who tick both those boxes. Here today, I want to talk, impartially and just for myself, about a quandary they (all inadvertently) have been giving me.

I look up to them all, because of both their conduct and their wisdom. This obviously makes them people I would consult for advice on what to do about a particular matter I didn't know how to deal with. They've also made me re-examine many of my values and views which I did need to change. But where does or should one draw the line between doing that and still thinking for oneself? That's what I've been recently grappling with amongst all this. Because I do still need, not always but often, to think for myself, as everybody else needs to (and deserves the right to).

I want it to be abundantly clear that none of them have ever sought to indoctrinate me; just to guide or reprimand me when necessary. Those are often parts of a friend's job, too. But I believe I still need to strike a mental balance between listening to and absorbing what others tell me (which has made me publicly experience cognitive dissonance, the concept of which one of these friends re-familiarised me with), and maintaining my own opinions; all my family and friends would themselves want me to do the latter regardless.

Writing this post has been tougher than I expected, because of my overthinking habit, but I felt if I didn't express this anywhere, it would all eventually come out at an inappropriate place and time. And this issue will take me awhile to resolve, but I feel better for having discussed it here now. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #231: Point Break (1991).

 

In California, a group of robbers have been targeting banks. They call themselves the Ex-Presidents because they disguise themselves under rubber masks of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson. Meanwhile, rookie FBI Agent and ex-footballer Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) aids seasoned agent Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey) in hunting them down. Upon learning the Ex-Presidents are surfers, Utah resolves to investigate the local surf scene and then go undercover as a surfer in order to find the group. Once he does, their charismatic leader Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) takes Johnny under his wing and nurtures him. Johnny soon finds his loyalty to his job tested, with Pappas and their domineering superior Ben Earp (John C. McGinley) breathing down his neck, until he's brought back into line to bring the Ex-Presidents to justice.

This 1991 effort by director Kathryn Bigelow and writer W. Peter Iliff suffered commercially because it was released the same week as that year's biggest blockbuster, Bigelow's then-husband James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, in fact, executive-produced Point Break), but it's deservedly enjoyed a rebirth since then with a considerable cult following. Now, I'm still trying to work out how the bank customers could take the robbers seriously in those truly ridiculous president masks but despite that, I had a lot of fun watching this caper. Bigelow paces and visualises each action scene with ferocious zest and confidence, and she and Iliff also keep an insistent eye on ensuring the narrative unfolds intelligently. Bigelow also draws decent turns from her almost entirely male cast (even Reeves), with McGinley stealing the show.

It's also fluidly edited, energetically filmed and with a pulsating score. Point Break probably won't make me into a surfer (I have nowhere near enough balance to be one anyway, and I get seasick), but it still slapped a smile on my dial for its full duration.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #230: A Separation (2012).

 

Simin (Leila Hatami), a teacher, is desperate to leave Iran with her husband Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the writer-director Asghar Farhadi's own daughter) in order for Termeh to have a better life abroad. Nader, however, is torn between participating in this desire, as he also wants more chances for his daughter, and remaining in Iran where he is looking after his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), who's battling Alzheimer's disease. This conflict of loyalties and wishes throws their marriage quickly on the rocks, which increases once Nader hires working-class wife and mother Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to be his dad's caregiver. Now, with Razieh's own unstable family life tossed into the mix and Nader accused of a crime, any chances of this being an amicable divorce are extinguished.

A Separation won the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Golden Globe and the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear, but I must say I don't understand why. Let me be clear and say I knew beforehand this was no fast-paced action movie, and for about the first 30 minutes it did have me engaged, but after that I found it increasingly monotonous and even predictable. It has one intimate argument scene after another (with one near the end I almost found unintentionally funny, it was so over-the-top) and I also felt Farhadi overlooked a chance here to specifically examine the confines marriage and legal systems place on women particularly in the Middle East. A little political commentary like that would've made the narrative more powerful and unorthodox, I think. Or maybe it was there, and I just missed it; in which case, it should've been more pointed.

A Separation is an intimate, personal film, and many of those are great. But for me, telling an intimate story doesn't mean you should make it constantly repetitive. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #229: A Month of Sundays (2015).

 

Frank Mollard (Anthony LaPaglia) is a Sydney real estate agent in a mid-life crisis. In his case, that means struggling to recover from his divorce from Wendy (Justine Clarke) and bond with their son Frank, Jr. (Indiana Crowther), and even during a property boom he can't sell a house to save his life. That last problem may also be why his boss Phillip Lang (John Clarke) constantly joins him at work. Then one night, to throw an added spanner in the works, Frank receives a call from an elderly woman who instantly reminds him of his recently deceased mother, so much so that he confuses her for his mum. Upon realising she's not his mother, he chooses to meet her in person anyway and she turns out to be Sarah (Julia Blake), a retired widower whose real son Stuart (Terence Crawford) is an army officer. Over several meetings with Sarah, Frank gradually learns how to manage and mend his relationships with his family, his past and his work.

I feel quite strangely about A Month of Sundays. Writer-director Matthew Saville tries here to tell a deceptively straightforward but ultimately rather convoluted and juxtaposing story and that's always an approach I'm intrigued to see unfold, but this time not all the plot lines fully mesh. They all make sense and connect, but they just don't all exactly reflect or mirror the others as much as maybe they should. However, thematically it did still get through to me, and it offers a fairly refined and realistic portrait of contemporary Aussie suburbia.

LaPaglia is fine in the lead, although it's a role I've seen him play several times before, and I could actually say as much about both Clarkes, funnily enough. The best performance is easily Blake's; this Australian screen (and stage) veteran effortlessly projects a grandmotherly warmth and sophistication, with a subtle determination and a slightly troubled secretiveness just under the boilerplate. She's flawless in the role.

So in summary, A Month of Sundays treads narrative territory I've seen explored more boldly and freshly, but it does offer some thematic depth and truth to mull over.

Making news and history for all the wrong reasons: the Donald Trump Story!

I'm certain you've all heard by now of the chaos that's befallen Washington, D.C. this fortnight. President Trump's supporters sieged the city to try to consolidate his position and invalidate his election loss. His reluctance to condemn that violence, or comment on it in general, inevitably and quickly alerted suspicion. What subsequently emerged were allegations that he secretly incited that siege, and a phone call he made on 2 January to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pressured Raffensperger to change that state's vote totals from the election.

Joe Biden, who, although I wanted him to win, I am not always in sync with, was correct in saying Trump was tarnishing his legacy by encouraging all these guerrilla tactics against the Capitol and the democracy it usually represents. Additionally, by resorting to them, all the participants were making him, themselves and, since this storming has made global news headlines, indeed the US itself look bad. Now, as a would-be Democrat (since I'm Australian), you may be wondering why I even care about their violent actions; I obviously don't. I simply do care about democracy, and the sentiment behind the adage "the pen is mightier than the sword."

But I digress. All this has added up to Trump now being the first US president ever to have been impeached twice, and he's managed that fitting fate in just one term. Come to think of it, if he really did encourage his supporters who've waged their siege to do that, it means he was even prepared to disregard the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed more Americans than it has any other nationality. Which in turn means he doesn't even care about his supporters' medical safety, never mind that of his opponents.

Now, I think thankfully, efforts are being made to block him from ever being able to run for political office in the US again. And this week even George W. Bush issued a statement condemning Trump's actions in the Oval Office and his fanbase's outside it. Unless some miracle occurs, his life will end no differently to how his political career has: with him as a cautionary tale for history. Having gone from a popular and respected real estate mogul, to a disgraced tyrant who formed and led a literally violently devoted cult and crippled the world's biggest superpower. And after repeatedly insisting he would make it great again. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #228: The White Balloon (1995).

 

It's the eve of the Iranian New Year in Tehran. Seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) and her mother are shopping in a market when Razieh sees a goldfish for sale in a bowl and is immediately captivated with it. She then, of course, nags her very reluctant mother about it until Mum's patience is finally worn thin and she gives Razieh a banknote to go and buy the goldfish herself. While doing so, Razieh loses the money twice, first in an encounter with a snake charmer and then when she accidentally drops the note through a grate at the entrance of a closed shop. Still undeterred, Razieh now enlists her older brother Ali (Mohsen Kalifi), who she bribes with a reward of a balloon, and a young Afghan balloon-selling street vendor, to help her retrieve the cash and thus pay for her coveted goldfish.

This was my first film of 2021 and what a gem it is to start the year with. The White Balloon won the Camera d'Or award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival for debut director Jafar Panami, and I think deservedly so. It's a slow but charming and ultimately very touching little movie and I was the exact same age when it was made as the two main children in it, so despite being a Westerner maybe that's why I connected with it as much as I did. Panami and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami, who was already a celebrated Iranian filmmaker, also manage to make this seemingly wholesome and innocent fable into a sharp allegorical statement about globalisation and cultural imperialism. They also wisely inject it with a very populated, vibrant vibe, with numerous other characters who come and go (most notably a mournful Iranian soldier).

Panami, who edited the movie as well, also nurtures natural, realistic performances from his mostly non-professional cast, and Farzad Jadat's understated photography fits the location, occasion and narrative mood like a glove. The White Balloon is one I really doubt you'll want to pop.