The Quiet Girl.
This one actually had me crying at the end. But unfortunately, almost nothing happens. It is a subtle movie — quiet, like its title. A young girl is sent to live with some foster parents because she is rebellious — I can’t even remember if they are related or not. The foster parents or Uncle and Aunt, had lost their only child a number of years earlier. But somehow, they are able to tame her rebelliousness and she is able to make them love again. It’s not in the theaters anymore, but it had it was like finding a cup of really great tea. A little boring. Not much action. But ultimately, deeply satisfying.
John Wick 4.
One thing that’s always puzzled me about Keaanu Reeves being such a kind human being and his Hawaiian name meaning “Cool Breeze” is that he also makes incredibly violent films. The Matrix scene where he and Trinity blast their way into an office tower, for example, shows thousands of spent ammo cartridges and almost complete devastation of the lobby when there were only, basically 4 or 5 guards. Granted, they were going up against a computer virus and in that make believe world, anything is possible, but in the end, they got on an elevator and pressed the floor they wanted (with absolutely no feelings.) In fact, I think that may have been what the movie was about: the lack of feelings of both the machines/computers/simulations and the people as well.
But in the John Wick series, the level of ultraviolence is off the chart. It’s, basically, the effect of video games on entertainment. In real life, if someone shoots you, you usually die. In video games, because each character is given a certain amount of “Life” or “HP” (health points), you might have to shoot them fifteen times to bring their health down to 20%.
This seems to be the m.o. of the John Wick series, until now. Supposedly each man is wearing a flexible kevlar fabric made suit, so they often pull their lapel over their heads, their most exposed points. I can’t even remember why John Wick became a movie character, except that it was probably based on a cartoon and Keanu, who seems to have a problem with speaking, preferred to shoot people in the heads rather than speak. My guesstimation, knowing that he likes to ride his motorcycle through Manhattan, is that he got into acting on a whim, figured out how to speak some lines with as little emotion as possible (My favorite is “free clean energy, for everyone,”) and because of The Matrix, kind of got caught. It’s been reported that he has only 384 words in this movie, but the entire story and camera is focused on him. My favorite moment, and probably Keanu’s best acting moment, was his last word: Helen.
The Conformist. (Bertolucci)
This was probably my favorite of the last several movies I’ve seen. I wanted to see it 40 years ago when it was showing at my local Saturday night art house but I was probably so young and stupid I would have gone drinking with friends instead. So I never saw it. But I knew there were some gay – related issues in it and, true enough, there were. But I was surprised because I don’t know my history as well as I think I do.
The story is about the rise and fall of fascism in Italy. We like our history neatly wrapped, like the day the world went to war, or Pearl Harbor was bombed, or 9/11. But Italy had already abandoned Hitler a couple of years before he was finally killed. So this movie takes place between the rise of fascism and its death, in Italy, where it was born in the first place. The main character, “Marcello” let’s say, is haunted by a homosexual encounter he had when he was 10 or 12. Somewhere thereabouts. I presumed, because of my prejudice about old movies, that this encounter was going to be traumatic. But actually, the young boy is incredibly turned on by the soldier or fascist who turns out to have women’s length hair and may also be a transsexual. It’s not clear and I think maybe this was on purpose. But whatever happens or happened to “the conformist,” it was something he enjoyed as a ten year old. This is pedophilia of course, but it’s portrayed much more innocently than when we think of groomers or others who have sex with children or are predators.
But the important part of the movie is that he becomes a conformist and in order to “pass,” must join the fascist party of Mussolini. In a harrowing scene that was later re-imagined in New Jersey in The Sopranos, one of his best friends is murdered in the woods, after seeing him and begging him for help. He doesn’t help and by the end of the movie has lost his mind. Reporting everyone for being a fascist. Pointing fingers in every direction, but not at himself.
Btw, the episode where Drea De Matteo playing Adrianna La Cerva, girlfriend to Christopher Moltisanti, is probably one of the most horrific and heartless scenes I’ve seen on TV. And it’s a direct homage to Bertolucci and The Conformist, which also deals with Italians and their Brutish mobs.