American Postmodern Film and a Polish Melodrama with a Happy Ending | PIOTR GZOWSKI
Wes Anderson – An American postmodern filmmaker
In 1998, a 29-year-old filmmaker released his first major motion picture, a crime comedy starring the Wilson brothers (Luke, Owen, and Andrew) entitled Bottle Rocket. Although the box office returns were extremely poor, the critics and the general public enjoyed the film enough that via word of mouth and the DVD sales it launched Wes Anderson’s career as a key player in the motion picture industry. His next release, Rushmore (1998), which sparked comedian Bill Murray’s career as a serious actor, was not only enthusiastically received at the box office (generating over $71 million) but also marked the start of a series of collaborations with some of the most respected writers, actors, and composers within the industry.
One of the greatest advantages for any director in the creative arts is the ability to attract top rated talent to participate in the formation of a production. Since his debut, Anderson has established a reputation strong enough to form an readily accessible ensemble of actors which includes Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldbloom, Angelica Houston, Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Edward Norton, Tony Revelori, Liev Schreiber, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Timothee Chalamet, George Clooney, Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Dany Glover, Jeffrey Wright, Ralph Fiennes, and most recently, Brian Cranston, Steve Carell, Margot Robbie, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlet Johannson, and Tom Hanks. Accordingly, this reputation has awarded him membership to that unique club of filmmakers (the Cohen brothers, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, and Woody Allen) with whom everyone wants to work. Over half of Anderson’s list has been with and for him more than a half-dozen times.
Anderson is a postmodernist. Consequently, a requirement for his audience to enjoy his films is that they must surrender all disbelief. Notions of chronological order, the differentiation between highbrow and lowbrow comedy, the typical conceptions of class, gender, race, and time, all must be dismissed. What is normally considered improper, within the abnormal conditions of an Anderson scenario, is considered appropriate. Often the movement within the story is determined by the movement of changing scenery rather than the characters moving within it. The players within the story perpetually reveal their deepest secrets, emotions, and fears. Life is a confessional of flowing context contained inhabited by complications where the personality searches for any relief it can find from itself. Consequently, the Anderson film is an eccentric assortment of themes that require a dismissal of the ordinary in order to discover the extraordinary. Anderson’s latest feature is a good of the director’s postmodernism.
Asteroid City opens as television broadcast introducing a live theatrical production about a 1950s town located somewhere in the southwestern U.S. desert, near an A-bomb testing area where, in a primordial age, an asteroid struck crashed into the earth. Into this town arrive large groups of tourists who are subsequently quarantined by the military after an extra-terrestrial land during the commemoration ceremony and brazenly steals the relic asteroid. When news about the alien visit reaches the outside world, hordes of unwelcomed unwelcome curiosity seekers invade the town. Social propriety begins to deteriorate. Even, the main premise of the film succumbs to anarchy. The actors portraying the main characters abandon the play to go backstage confused by their dialogues, unsure about their performances. Flashbacks of the play being written, cast, rehearsed suddenly appear. The film appears to deconstruct before our eyes until suddenly everyone returns to their places and the story continues without interruption to its end.
For an audience that prefers the well-defined plot lines of conventional commercial dramas and action films, Asteroid City can be perplexing. However, for those who have an appreciation of the absurd, it is a visit to a candy shop stocked with a potpourri of odd behavior, goofiness, nostalgia, and sentimentality, enough to satisfy a sweet tooth for the uncommon, and yet, still offer the audience a moving insight into the frailties of the human condition. Asteroid City is the culmination of all the most enjoyable techniques that define Wes Anderson’s style. It is also the most ambitious project the director has attempted.
On the other side of the coin…
British author Roald Dahl (1916- 1990) a popular writer, poet, and screenwriter has been labelled as “one of the greatest storytellers for children in the 20th century”. Mostly known in this country for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, (all which eventually were adapted into films), is also Wes Anderson’s favorite writer.
As a tribute to Dahl’s unique storytelling Anderson offers his own eccentric style by creating short films of four Dahl short stories - The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison. And the results are quite remarkable. Without changing a word of the author’s text, the director weds his own eccentric visual style with Dahl’s prose to creates “short books on film” that are fully illustrated, musically scored, superbly narrated and portrayed by an all-British cast ensemble of Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Friend , Richard Ayoade and Benedict Cumberbatch. It is a perfect marriage of the media, and some of the very enjoyable to watch.
Forgotten Love (Polish film -originally titled Znachor (The Quack)- Michal Gazda, director
Within the last few years, the dramatic Polish films offered on the streaming services have been glum. Despite the powerful impact of works like the television series 1983, the Mateusz Rakowicz film Mother’s Day, or the Jan Komasa feature, The Hater, the cynical and pessimistic themes of the pieces compel one to approach the works only if there is a chilled bottle of Chopin nearby. Michal Gazda’s feature, therefore, arrives as a welcomed relief.
Based on the Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz novel Znachor (The Quack) which takes place in Poland in the period between the two World Wars, Forgotten Love is a melodrama about story about a successful surgeon - Rafal Wilczur (portrayed by Leszek Lichota) - who at the peak of his career is abandoned by his wife who, when she leaves, takes Wilczur’s beloved young daughter Marysia with her. In his pursuit of them he is brutally attacked by hoodlums, and then presumed dead when only his overcoat is recovered by the police. Fifteen years later he emerges as a wanderer in the rural countryside totally unable to recollect his previous life, yet still gifted with his remarkable medicinal skills which he generously, albeit illegally, shares with anyone in need of them. Eventually, he unwittingly crosses paths with his daughter (played by Maria Kowalska), now an adult working as a waitress at a local inn after her mother’s death, hoping to save enough money to study medicine in Warsaw.
Forgotten Love contains all the required emotional elements of a melodrama - unrequited love, struggle, conflict, near death, a rescue, a dramatic trial, and then the final reconcilement of matters and the final happy ending. The pitfall of most melodramas is that they tend to be saccharin. However, this one is surprisingly appealing. The performances by the cast - Leszek Lichota, Maria Kowalska, Anna Szymanski, Ignacy Liss, Miroslaw Laszewski and Izabela Kuna as the principal characters are engaging, the original music composed by Pawel Lucewicz underscores the emotional elements aptly, the cinematography by Tomasz Augustynek is admirable, and a screenplay by Marcin Baczynski, Mariusz Kuczewski and Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz holds its weight throughout the course of the film. It is a film that on the list of Netflix’s Polish dramas appears as a welcomed anomaly. It is a pleasant counterpoint to dreariness offered on the stream, and consequently it offers the viewer a pleasantly spent two hours and twenty minutes.
Despite the fact that streaming is a great convenience, watching a motion picture at home rather than on a giant screen leaves me a bit unsatisfied. And though I still enjoy Wes Anderson and Michal Gazda’s work on my 54” flat screen, I feel that I am overpowering their films rather than their films overwhelming me. Films, dear readers, were created to be larger than life. And the motion picture theater is much larger than my living room. Happily, the movie houses, the film festivals (46th Denver Film Festival is around the corner), and the film societies are still active, and lately I have found myself drawn back to them. If you have an urge to do the same, I encourage you to act on it. There are no places better to absorb films.
Of course, as always, this is only my opinion. Get out there, see something outside of your home and then judge for yourselves.