Three Day Weekend (Part 2)

Distracted by my housemate's DS Lite and a copy of Brain Training (damn you Dr. Kawashima!!!), the movie viewing took a temporary back seat. Thankfully, after discovering I have the brain age of a 43 year old (what happened? I used to be so youthfully sharp), more movies seemed the ideal escape.

Set against the backdrop of WWI, A Very Long Engagement is a sweeping romantic tale. Reuniting director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with the elfin beauty of Audrey Tautou, it is an exquisitely shot epic bathed in a vivid and varied palette.

In the rain soaked trenches of the Somme, five men are charged with self-mutilation in a bid to escape the fighting. Sent out into no-mans land to die, one of them is Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) the fiancee of young Mathilde (Tautou). Despite the seeming certainty of his fate, when Mathilde hears the news she refuses to believe he is dead and takes it upon herself to discover what has become of the man she loves. Her determination helps to gradually piece together the complex story of the five abandoned men.

The plot moves at a steady well timed pace, focusing on the hope of Mathilde in the face of the absurdities of war. Moments of breakthrough are tempered with seemingly impossible setbacks, and the emotional impact this has on Mathilde is sympathetically portrayed by Tautou. With support from her Aunt and Uncle (Jeunet stalwart Dominique Pinon in heavily bearded guise) and an enthusiastic postman, she never truly gives up on Manech. And while complex, the story comes together beautifully as we eagerly follow Mathilde step by step on her journey.

The scenes in the trenches are shot with a grim reality and plenty of attention to period detail; arguably some of the movies most visually memorable moments. Lighthearted scenes from Mathilde's detective work seem frivolous by comparison. With one or two nods to the style of Amelie present (which is no bad thing) the movie ultimately carries a far greater emotional impact. Given the build up to it, the resolution does seem a little underwhelming. In this case though, the journey is certainly more important than the destination.

Next up, a piece of groovy sixties cinema set in merry old London.

Obtuse and hard to grasp, Blow-Up was a critically acclaimed piece of cinema upon it's release in '66; though this may have had more to do with it's liberal attitudes toward the depiction of sex and nudity on screen. Thomas (David Hemmings) is a somewhat nihilistic and self-important fashion photographer. Bored with the shallow nature of his work, he has taken to photographing the real lives of people in London. It is during such a voyeuristic episode in a local park, that he may have unknowingly captured something far more sinister on film.

The question of subjective reality is at the core of the movie. Obsessively pouring over the park photographs, Thomas builds an elaborate narrative for himself as he focuses on ever more slight details in the captured images. Did the photographer really witness a murder, or is he seeing more than is really there? The aimlessness and distance of the character certainly indicate he may be responsible for constructing the event in question; wanting something more to his shallow life. The closing scene also lends a degree of weight to that hypothesis.

There is plenty of ambiguity to see things anyway you choose, and perhaps that was the ultimate intention; but you can't escape the feeling you are shut out of any deeper meanings the movie might be trying to convey. Like so many of the photographer's actions in the movie, nothing is ever finished. The detective story ultimately goes nowhere, ideas and themes are hinted at but not really expounded upon, and you are left wondering what is really trying to be said. One to puzzle over on a second viewing perhaps, though a little too inaccessible.