Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #274: 1982 (2019).

 

The 1982 Lebanon War has just broken out. Schoolteacher Yesmenee (Nadine Labaki) is in charge of a class that includes Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), who's fallen in love with his classmate Joanna (Gia Madi) and doesn't know how to tell her. As he sets about trying to do that, Yesmenee and all her colleagues have to do everything to hide the reality and closeness of the war, and their own concerns about it, from their young charges.

1982, from writer-director and co-producer Oualid Mouaness, was Lebanon's submission for the 2019 Best International Feature Film Oscar and although it wasn't nominated for that, it still makes quite an impression; at least; it did with me. Working a story of childhood innocence around warfare is a risky and challenging prospect as it can lead to either emotional overkill or war and its consequences being trivialised, but here I thought Mouaness, who presumably himself grew up during this conflict, got the balance of sweetness and dramatic heft just right. If you're expecting actual war scenes here, don't. Instead, there's a cute and restrained exploration of puppy love and the resultant anxiety and hesitancy with the Lebanon War more as a backdrop to that, the conflict being more directly explored in Yesmenee's arc. It all culminates in what I found to be an initially confounding but ultimately quite wise and strikingly realised animated climax.

Mouaness applies a very suitably patient approach to his directing and pacing, and his screenplay lets both the child and adult characters talk and behave realistically regarding both their ages and their shared situation. Dalli and Madi make engaging young protagonists, but Labaki proves her versatility (she also directed the brilliant 2018 Lebanese film Capernaum) and gives the best performance here, bringing Yesmenee to life with admirable control and grace. There is no score but I suspect that creative choice was made for restraint, and the cinematography and editing also smartly reflect that. I don't think 1982 is quite in the same league as Grave of the Fireflies or Au Revoir, Les Enfants to name but a few, but for movies about childhood and war it's easily a cut above most others. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #273: Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night (2021).

 

In 2022, a massively multiplayer online virtual reality roleplaying game titled Sword Art Online is launched, and on 6 November ten thousand people log into it for the first time but then discover they cannot log out of it. The creator Akihiko Kayaba (the voice of Koichi Yamadera; David W. Collins in the English dubbed version) then reveals himself to tell the players they must defeat all one hundred floors of Aincrad, the steel castle in which the game is set, if they want to be able to log out. If they die inside the game or have the headgear they're wearing removed, they will also die in reality. Asuna (Haruna Tomatsu; Cherami Leigh in the EDV), who has logged into it with her friend (Inori Minase; Anairis Quinonis in the EDV), initially struggles with having living inside and beat the game, until she meets knowledgeable lone wolf Kirito (Yoshitsugo Matsuoka; Bryce Papenbrook in the EDV), who joins forces with her.

This second entry (after 2017's Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale) in the anime movie series based on Reki Kawahara's light novel series Sword Art Online: Progressive is technically amazing, with intoxicating animation and Yuki Kajiura's pulsating music score. But before seeing it I was unfamiliar with both the novel series and the previous film and while I could follow the narrative well enough, I didn't find very much here to appeal to people who weren't already avid fans of the franchise (here I think I should note that Kawahara also wrote the screenplay). I certainly detected no backstory to help non-fans familiarise themselves with the story, anyway. Director Ayako Kono demonstrates an enthusiasm for this narrative and a lucidity with keeping the visuals consistently crisp, but again I think she needed to make that narrative appeal more to people who were going to see it without knowing the franchise's previous entries, as I think it's safe to say that was probably inevitable that some viewers would be in that boat. As it is, Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night therefore underwhelmed me. 6/10.

On the Morrison Government's proposed new religious rights bill.

This week in Australia, one matter has dominated our national political discussion and its news coverage. The Morrison Government has tried to legislate an extension to the Religious Discrimination Bill, which, as its name clearly suggests, protects Australian citizens from discrimination based on their religious or spiritual beliefs. Morrison, an active member of the Hillsong Church, has actively and publicly championed this extension of the Bill, and I sincerely agree all citizens are entitled to think whatever they choose to.

However, the issue I take with this amendment to the Bill, and indeed what has made it so topical and contentious, is the freedom it will grant religious Australians to discriminate against other groups, namely, of course, the LGBTQ community. Australia legalising same-sex marriage in 2017 sparked, perhaps unsurprisingly, a backlash from right-wing politicians and religious groups who, as Morrison then stated, were now finding themselves in the minority.

Well, if that's true, maybe now they have a chance to become able to empathise with groups including the LGBTQ community who have been marginalised, albeit for entirely different reasons, for centuries. Whether they will all be willing to do that is, of course, another question altogether and, I suppose, their own choice. But, at least in theory, now Australians of faith are coming to understand how most religious people have historically made those other groups feel.

The Morrison Government on Wednesday struck a deal with several more moderate members of its Liberal Party, agreeing to make changes to other legislation in order to protect openly gay school students from discrimination in education, in return for said MPs supporting the Bill. This will apparently mean removing Section 38.3 of the separate Sex Discrimination Act, which enables religious schools to discriminate against students and staff on the grounds of sexuality, gender identity, marital status and pregnancy. Meanwhile, however, the Religious Discrimination Bill, if passed, will also extend to discrimination in employment.

Numerous legal experts and rival politicians have publicly criticised the Bill, with University of Sydney law professor Simon Rice claiming it is "bizarrely complicated" as it is "trying to dress up freedom as discrimination." Victorian MP and Reason Party founder and leader Fiona Patten says it will licence bigotry. Monash University law associate lecturer Liam Elphick said, "It's a drastic overreach from the federal government and something we've not seen in the last 40 years of discrimination laws in this country. There have been plenty of examples in recent years of religious schools in Australia excluding gay teachers. This bill only makes it easier for them to do that," while Tasmanian lawyer and former anti-discrimination commissioner Robin Banks argued, "Discrimination law is about enhancing social cohesion by asking us to think about things before we say them or do them. This is the opposite of that."

As our Federal Parliament has now concluded sitting for 2021, the Religious Discrimination Bill is in limbo. Personally, come 2022, I hope it is not passed.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/01/religious-discrimination-bill-moderate-liberal-mps-strike-deal-after-protection-for-gay-students-promised

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/what-s-the-proposed-religious-discrimination-law-about-20211129-p59d6q.html

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #272: Collective (2019).

 

In 2015, a fire killed 27 people in the Collectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, with another 37 people dying of burns over the following months. The national government healthcare scandal that emerged in the tragedy's aftermath is the focus of the Oscar-nominated 2019 documentary Collective from writer, director, co-producer and editor Alexander Nanau. 

Let me warn you upfront: this documentary is glacially slow and very subtle. However, that's partly why it works so well because half of it is told from the perspective of journalists at the Gazeta Sporturilor newspaper as they uncover and then report on the Collectiv fire and then the Romanian government's response to that; the other half is shown from the perspectives of that government. This technique is employed for impartiality and restraint, with it working thoroughly.

Naturally, despite Nanau's detached and neutral directorial tone the journalists' conduct contrasts wildly with that of the featured government officials, but that simply demonstrates who was and was not committed to exposing the truth about this entire scandal and applying responsibility. The result is a riveting, powerful and thought-provoking investigation into corruption and maladministration that I'd recommend to anybody when they feel like complaining about their country's health care system. After watching it, hopefully you'll consider it better than Romania's.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #271: Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019).

 

15-year-old Daniel Bagnold (Earl Cave; Nick's son) is having to spend the summer in the countryside with his estranged mother Sue (Monica Dolan), who he openly hates. He thought he was staying in Florida with his father, a plan he was looking forward to, until this change. Now, amidst their constant arguing, they have to both find common ground again. Meanwhile, Sue finds romance with local history teacher Douglas Porter (Rob Brydon) and support in her masseuse friend Astrid (Tamsin Greig), with Daniel hanging out with his androgynous mate Kye (Elliot Speller-Gillott) and joining young metal band Skullslayer.

Well, so much for this apparently being a comedy. Based on Jeff Winterheart's 2012 graphic novel, Days of the Bagnold Summer marks the directorial debut of Simon Bird, former star of UK sitcoms The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner (the latter of which also starred none other than Greig as his mum), but I didn't laugh once throughout it. Moreover, I found this to be just stuffed to the brim with cliches and really lacking in edginess. But what I found most offputting was Daniel; he is such a misanthropic, sullen teenage protagonist that I think even Holden Caulfield would've told him to lighten up. Cave also feels quite typecast in the role. As the story's most sympathetic character Dolan gives a powerful turn, with Greig making a suitably eccentric second banana to her, but the rest of the cast let these ladies down for me.

Belle and Sebastian's restrained but ultimately repetitive score also increased my boredom, and Bird's wife Lisa Owens' screenplay felt quite incongruously watered down (for a start there's not even any swearing and Daniel's a metalhead), with his direction striking me as very stagnant. I'm afraid these Days of the Bagnold Summer were ones I was impatiently counting down like Daniel does. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #270: '71 (2014).

 

As the title says, it's 1971 and in Northern Ireland the Troubles are quickly escalating. New British Army recruit Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) is sent to Belfast to serve in the inexperienced Second Lieutenant Armitage's (Sam Reid) platoon stationed in a very precarious area. Once the fighting gets underway, Hook is soon separated from the rest of his platoon and left to fend for himself in an urban warzone.

That's basically all the narrative to be found in this effort from feature debuntante director Yann Demange and writer Gregory Burke. I know for most people the appeal of war films lays in the violence and there's tons of that here, but I find action far more compelling when it's woven into a suspenseful or involving plot and this one's plot ticks neither of those boxes. There's very little spread-out or unique about Gary's adventure, which disengaged me and that in turn meant it had no emotional impact for me either. The photography and editing, respectively by Tat Radcliffe and Chris Wyatt, also take the respective Saving Private Ryan styles and run with them, and David Holmes' score is increasingly excessive.

O'Connell tries his best, and Demange and Burke undoubtedly mean well, but even as somebody with Irish ancestry this film about the Troubles focuses too much (and too unimaginatively) on action at the expense of a fresh and thought-provoking war storyline. '71 gets a 6/10 from me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #269: The Ash Lad: In Search of the Golden Castle (2019).

 

In this sequel to 2017's fun and charming The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King, titular hero Espen (Vebjorn Enger) and his love Princess Kristin (Eili Harboe) are back and taking another adventure. This time, they have to rescue their sidekick friends Per (Mads Sjogard Pettersen) and Pal Elias Holmen Sorenson) who've been falsely accused of poisoning the king and queen and are now imprisoned in a dungeon awaiting their execution. Espen and Kristin must now find the mythical Soria Moria palace, home to the so-called "water of life" which can save her parents, and from there reveal who was really responsible for the crime.

The Ash Lad: In Search of the Golden Castle is darker than its predecessor, but that's about the only new thing I noticed here. Returning director Mikkaele Braenne Sandemose just doesn't infuse the narrative, based on an eighteenth-century Norwegian fairy tale again, with quite the same rollicking pace and exuberance the second time around and the result, therefore, was something of a buzzkill for me. Also, Enger doesn't give as much of an enthusiastic turn this time in the lead and there are a couple of scenes that feel almost jarringly like references to ones in earlier, Hollywood adventure flicks, namely one that invokes comparisons to the laughing over dinner scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the score is too heavy-handed in places.

The visuals are once again beautiful especially for a very low-budget fantasy flick, and as I said the tone is somewhat darker in this sequel. But that one change could not mask the lack of changes elsewhere or the comparative lack of zest alongside the first film. A third is reportedly planned; let's hope it's a return to form for Sandemose after this misstep. 6/10.