Apocalipse nos Trópicos / Apocalypse in the Tropics (American premiere in the presence of Petra Costa)

 

Petra Costa: Apocalipse nos Trópicos / Apocalypse in the Tropics (BR/US/DK 2024).

Language: Portuguese.

Festival premiere: 29 Aug 2024 Venice.

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 31 Aug 2024.

In person: Petra Costa interviewed by Mark Danner.

Mark Danner (TFF 2024): "In her extraordinary study of Brazilian politics and religion, director Petra Costa reminds us that “apocalypse” means not the end of the world but “unveiling, uncovering what is covered.” She tells a story of the evangelical forces taking over Brazilian politics, with a focus on the charismatic pastor Silas Malafaia, whom she dubs “The Kingmaker.” In 2019, Malafaia helped bring Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called “Trump of the Tropics,” to power. With unprecedented access, Costa introduces the viewer to Dominionism, the belief that religion should take over the “seven mountains” of the contemporary state. Brazil once proudly modeled progressive ideals; now, it’s torn by spiritual warfare between the moderate left and a reactionary front led by Evangelical pastors, who have already succeeded in putting one of their number on the Supreme Court. Costa, director of Oscar-nominated THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, has created a film with undeniable resonances of politics in the U.S. and beyond." –Mark Danner (Brazil-U.S.-Denmark, 2024, 110 min)

AA: Petra Costa's magisterial documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics is one of the key films of the year.

In her opening remarks, Petra Costa dedicated this screening to Tom Luddy who inspired her ten years ago, also by sending her photographs of Tarkovsky in Telluride.

Apocalypse in the Tropics is an electrifying epic documentary about Brazil's fateful progress between democracy and autocracy / theocracy, fuelled by the formidable new political force of Evangelicalism.

Costa covers the mighty movements of Brazil in stunning crowd scenes and amazing aerial shots. Even more moving are her candid interviews with the major players. Jair Bolsonaro is open and transparent about his goals and methods. The big revelation of the movie is the astounding influence of the televangelist Silas Malafaia, also jovially on display in in-depth interviews. Lula da Silva cooks some coffee for Petra Costa and lets us witness his human touch at close range.

The film is divided in chapters. In the prologue we learn that the spread of Evangelicanism of the Silas Malafaia school is the fastest religion change of all times.

In Chapter I The King-Maker we get acquainted with the Anti-Feminist Club of Silas Malafaia, on a warpath against "Cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School". "Brazil above all - God above everything".

In Chapter II God in the Time of Cholera we see shocking epic scenes of the pandemic casualties. Over 700.000 died of Covid in Brazil, the second highest death toll in the world. The footage of the graveyards is stunning. On the soundtrack: J. S. Bach: Violinkonzert E-Dur BWV 1042, Adagio, with the most heartbreaking violin solo ever composed (the long continuous melody line of Trauerarbeit). The theme of the Apocalypse is introduced. A central place in the faith of the Evangelicalists has the final book of the Bible - the book of Revelations (Apocalypse) - the foundation book of the new creed. War leads to peace and freedom as Messiah comes to save us.

In Chapter III Dominion the protagonist is Silas Malafaia whose tv sermons have been dubbed into 120 languages worldwide. The pastor is a media oligarch, influencer and cultural warrior. He stands for Prosperity Gospel, fights for a Christian state / theocracy and against abortion law and queer rights, his net worth is USD 150 million. His popularity is "thanks to the left", "Glory to God". In his mass revivalist meeting people are speaking in tongues, including Michele Bolsonaro.

In Chapter IV Genesis we go to the roots of this movement - Billy Graham's crusade against Communism. His was a manichean battle of Communism vs. Christianity. The original sin of today was Communism - "the Ghost of Communism" according to Petra Costa. The fear of the Ghost gave the excuse to repression in a society designed to keep the people poor. One of the most stunning passages in the movie is an archival clip of a Billy Graham revival meeting at Brazil's largest sport stadium. Against Billy Graham rose Liberation Theology with figures such as Ernesto Cardenal, the compassionate Jesuits. Kissinger warned Nixon that the Catholic Church was no longer a reliable ally. We follow Lula's imprisonment under Bolsonaro's regime and his release when the corruption of justice is exposed. "The first step is to kill democracy" when the military coup is in recent memory. But despite loud "authorize" [military intervention] choruses, Lula leads in all polls and is re-elected.

In Chapter V Holy War Bolsonaro keeps trying to demonize Lula as a "Candomblé Catholic". I missed the end of the movie due to an overlap with the next screening. I need to revisit it at the earliest instance.

As Petra Costa said in her opening remarks, this film about Brazil is equally about the United States. Billy Graham inspired the authoritarian movement of Silas Malafaia / Jair Bolsonaro, which in turn has inspired the Donald Trump / U.S. Evangelicalist union. Last week, Trump declared that he had found a new ally: God.

The "drill, baby, drill" agenda is also consistent with the emphasis on the Book of Revelations. We sin, destroy, burn the rain forest, ignore indigenous rights and splurge on fossil fuels, but Jesus saves us in the end to a better world.

...

Petra Costa interviewed by Mark Danner in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine.

Apocalypse in the Tropics: Petra Costa in conversation with Mark Danner (in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine)

Petra Costa (born on 8 July 1983 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil) at Venice Film Festival, 30 Aug 2024. Next day we met her in Telluride.

 
From Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine:

THE REVELATION

DEEP INSIDE BRAZIL'S EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT

How does a democracy end and a theocracy begin? The Oscar-nominated Brazilian director Petra Costa (Edge of Democracy) investigates the growing political power of the evangelical movement of Brazil, one of the world's largest Christian nations. She spoke with Mark Danner about Apocalypse in the Tropics.

MARK DANNER: I'm fascinated by the title of your film, Apocalypse in the Tropics. We think of it as the end of the world, but you point out that the Greek meaning of the word is "unveiling". What does your film unveil about Brazil?

PETRA COSTA: For Brazil, the apocalypse was on our minds during the pandemic. Similar to the United States, we had a president that was going against any norm of sensibility. I started to dig deep to find the essence of why.

    At first, it seemed that [President Jair] Bolsonaro was at the center of our catastrophe, but as we dug deeper, it became clear that there was a religious shift - a tectonic shift - that was even more important than Bolsonaro. Brazil is becoming an evangelical nation, a type of religiosity that is focused on taking over the three branches of power.

MD: Brazil had such faith in modernity. Has the progressive philosophy weakened?

PC: The working class does not identify with the language spoken by progressives. That's one reason for the rise of these movements.

    No one believes the current form of capitalism will improve our lives. It's this kind of savage capitalism, with billionaires who don't pay taxes. Even Adam Smith would be against this form. Everybody feels that. There's a huge crisis of democracy.

    Religion is still one of the strongest mobilizing forces in the world.

MD: You are saying that a collapse in moral structures on the left has allowed evangelism to make great strides among the working class.

PC: Progressives don't look at religion with respect. In the 60s and 70s the civil rights movements were led by religious figures. That's not the case today. The far right has much more energy than the left.

    It's as if the left doesn't know what to propose. They lack, as it's said, the fire of Prometheus. That's with the far right at this moment, and the left has resigned itself to become manager of the crisis of capitalism.

MD: Let me ask you about the televangelist Silas Malafaia, whom you call the kingmaker. How did you begin to document him? Do you think his ambition is distinct from his evangelical beliefs?

PC: We told him that we would love to film with him. He gave us a lot of access during four years. We filmed hours of him giving services. We saw his archival material.

    He thinks that the evangelical religion should take over the seven mountains of influence [family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, buiness and government]. If that's one of his main tenets, there's no contradiction in being ambitious. One of his strengths is that he's transparent about what he wants and how he's going to do it. That's what I find most fascinating - it's rare to find people who explain their methods in politics.

MD: The film is about a spiritual war that's going on. It's not about a single election. That very much reminded me of what's happening in the United States now. What do you think when you compare them?

PC: One is the mirror of the other in a very uncanny way. The number of parallels continues to surprise me every day. What happened to Trump with the attack and the bullet he received in his ear was almost identical to what happened to Bolsonaro in 2018 when Bolsonaro was stabbed.

    The interpretations of their followers were the same: it was a miracle. For Bolsonaro, it was the moment when he became the Messiah, a person anointed by God. Many of his followers believe this to this day.

MD: Do you have words of admonition to progressive forces about what they must do to repair this gap that they let evangelical slow through?

PC: We need to find a common language with people that share similar beliefs. We have to diminish our differences so, at minimum, we can secure our rule of law and our democracy. We have to find what unites us. The most dangerous pandemic of our times is this pandemic of fascism and fundamentalism.

MD: When you say "to find what unites us," what are you talking about?

PC: Jesus is one of the main proponents in the West of a universal human right - the idea that every human being deserves the love of the Lord. The love of God is not just for the chosen ones; it's for everyone.

    It's one of the most revolutionary things about Jesus' thinking. That's the common language. We want every human being to be respected. That's the principle of Christianity and the principle of democracy.

...

Petra Costa in conversation with Mark Danner (Film Watch 2024, Telluride Film Festival magazine)

My blog notes on Apocalypse on the Tropics the movie.

Nickel Boys (world premiere in the presence of RaMell Ross)

RaMell Ross: Nickel Boys (US 2024).

MGM Centenary logo.

Made possible by a donation from Alan & Caroline McConnell.

Viewed at Galaxy, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 31 Aug 2024.

In person: RaMell Ross, Ethan Herisse, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Brandon Wilson.

Robert Daniels (TFF 2024): "A stirring follow-up to his directorial debut HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a biting, visually adventurous coming-of-age story set in Jim Crow-era Florida. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is an idealistic Black high schooler whose aims of attending college are upended when racist law officials falsely accuse and then convict him of a crime, pulling him away from the loving arms of his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). At Nickel Academy, an abusive reformatory school, Elwood befriends a world-weary Turner (Brandon Wilson). Arrestingly gorgeous and daringly immersive, Ross effortlessly switches decades—the story spans the 1960s to the 2010s and changes perspectives. As it swims through memories, traumas, friendships, archival footage, and moments of defiance, Ross’ film offers a radical gaze at the perils of Black boyhood." –Robert Daniels (U.S., 2024, 140 min)

AA: RaMell Ross has created an experimental film based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. "The story takes place in Jim Crow era Tallahassee, Florida. It is about the ordeal of the young African-American Elwood Curtis who is falsely accused by the police of being an accomplice in a car theft. He is sent to a segregated reform school called Nickel Academy. There he forms a close friendship with a boy named Turner as they try to survive the abuse by the school and its corrupt administrators" (from the admirably concise premise in Wikipedia). 

The narration is highly elliptical. More than story-driven, Nickel Boys is image-driven, based on an approach of the immediate experience. It is largely conveyed in a subjective camera point-of-view, made famous in Hollywood by Lady in the Lake but introduced in Somewhere in the Night, also imagined by Orson Welles in his unrealized Heart of Darkness plan, but the first major instance may have been The Man with the Movie Camera.

The unique and striking insight of RaMell Ross in his subjective camera approach is to portray how it is to be looked at as a person of colour. "Race is this really bizarre thing, and it's a dominant, meaning-making social construct. I wanted to cinematically iterate the experience of being a person of colour" (RaMell Ross in conversation with Robert Daniels, in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine).

The achievement is extraordinary. Although the duration is 140 minutes, there is a feeling that each shot is special. The ratio is Academy. There are oblique angles, sideways angles, gratuitous angles, ultrasound images, point-of-view shots of a baby, reflections in an iron, flipbooks, archival inserts, vintage television footage. The general experience resembles a fever dream. We approach altered states of consciousness. RaMell Ross enters the cinema as a visual inventor. One of his most memorable compositions is an extreme high angle overhead reversed two-shot of Elwood and Turner.

Ethan Herisse as Elwood and Brandon Wilson as Turner are great, but the heart of the movie belongs to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Hattie, Elwood's grandmother.

The soundscape is as revolutionary as the visual universe. It is an essential element of the stream of consciousness, sometimes alarmistic, sometimes hypersensitive, sometimes evoking ADHD.

From extreme subjectivity the film opens to the big wide world.  The times they are a-changing. We are aware of the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Age. The vision expands to the cosmic in a view of the night sky. The end credits are based on the aesthetics of the flicker film.

The visual world is unusual yet not gratuitous. The experience is so formidable that I need time to digest - and revisit this remarkable movie.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (American premiere in the presence of Mohammed Rasoulof)

 

Mohammad Rasoulof: The Seed of the Sacred Fig (DE/FR/IR 2024).

Made possible by a donation from Keller Doss.

Viewed at Sheridan Opera House, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 31 Aug 2024.

In person: Mohammad Rasoulof.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just been promoted to Investigator, a stepping stone to the prestigious and lucrative position of Judge in Iran. But there’s a catch: He’s now expected to blindly follow the dictates of the authoritarian Iranian government. When his wife (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki) show some sympathy for protesters demanding human rights on the streets of Tehran, he begins to harden in defense of an unjust system. Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof, himself a former prisoner of conscience, was forced to flee his homeland after authorities learned about the subject matter of his film. With his four brilliant actors, he shows, with meticulous clarity, compassion and poignance, how totalitarian rule can erode even the bonds between parent and child, husband and wife. Agonizingly painful, yet thrilling in its moral clarity, THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (a winner at Cannes) provides one of cinema’s most emphatic statements of the necessity of freedom." –Larry Gross (Germany-France-Iran, 2024, 168 min)

AA: Mohammad Rasoulof's masterpiece The Seed of the Sacred Fig centers around the revolutionary protest movement that rose in reaction to the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 in Iran. She became a victim of police brutality because she had allegedly not been wearing the hijab correctly. The historical movement is covered in unforgettable epic mobile phone video montages that show the magnitude of the revolt and the violence of the security forces.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a film about contemporary history in the form of a political thriller and a family tragedy. The father, Iman, is a rising figure in the Iranian security forces, eagerly awaiting promotion. In the beginning the film seems to evolve in the direction of The Zone of Interest when the family starts making plans based on a better apartment with private bedrooms for both daughters. 

But things start to slip when Iman's gun goes missing, and like in Madigan, that is a serious matter that can cost him his career. The daughters hide their solidarity with the Mahsa Amini movement. But also Iman has kept his true career a secret from his family. The strict conditions of his new position turn intolerable for the daughters, and the conflict escalates to a boiling point.

The mother Najmeh, absolutely loyal to her husband, now registers with pain that Iman submits them all to the official investigation procedure of the security forces, and begins to distance from him. When the gun is still not found, Iman invites his family to his childhood home area, ostensibly to spend some quality time, but there, in the middle of the desert, he imprisons them.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig turns into a prison escape and chase story. The dénouement has terrific momentum and lifts the fabula to a new level. The Seed of the Sacred Fig grows into a tale of patriarchy and theocracy with leverage comparable with Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

Let's register the complexity of the tale. Iman himself is a victim as well as an executioner. He experiences tremendous ordeals of conscience when he is required to sign death sentences without access to the evidence. The judge is finally put to trial and convicted by his own family. The Chekhovian gun acquires a new meaning.

Perfection in all departments: magnificent screenplay, complex and passionate performances of the actors, striking cinematography. 

51th Telluride Film Festival (30 Aug - 2 Sep 2024) lineup

51th Telluride Film Festival poster, art by Luke Dorman of Meow Wolf. "Bringing his third straight design to the Festival, Luke explored the theme of regeneration and hope, an ideal concept for this moment in cinema and the world. Luke is Meow Wolf’s Principal Graphic Designer and a fine artist. His work has been recognized by Print Magazine, Communication Arts and The Society of Typographic Arts." (TFF 2024 Catalogue)

Data from the Telluride Film Festival (TFF) website.

The Show:

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (d. Payal Kapadia, France-India-Netherlands-Luxembourg, 2024)

ANORA (d. Sean Baker, U.S., 2024)

APOCALYPSE IN THE TROPICS (d. Petra Costa, Brazil-U.S.-Denmark, 2024)

APPRENTICE, THE (d. Ali Abbasi, Canada-Denmark-Ireland, 2024) tba

BERNESTEIN'S WALL  (d. Douglas Tirola, U.S. 2021) tba

BETTER MAN (d. Michael Gracey, Australia, 2024)

BIRD (d. Andrea Arnold, U.K., 2024)

BLINK (d. Daniel Roher, Edmund Stenson, U.S.-Canada, 2024)

CARVILLE: WINNING IS EVERYTHING, STUPID! (d. Matt Tyrnauer, U.S., 2024)

CONCLAVE (d. Edward Berger, U.K., 2024)

DISCLAIMER (d. Alfonso Cuarón, U.K.-U.S., 2024)

DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT (d. Embeth Davidtz, South Africa, 2024)

EMILIA PÉREZ (d. Jacques Audiard, France, 2024)

END, THE (d. Joshua Oppenheimer, Ireland-Germany-Italy-Sweden-Denmark-U.K., 2024)

FRIEND, THE (d. David Siegel, Scott McGehee, U.S., 2024)

IN WAVES AND WAR (d. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, U.S., 2024)

JEAN COCTEAU (d. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, U.S., 2024)

LEONARDO DA VINCI (d. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, U.S., 2024)

MARIA (d. Pablo Larraín, Germany-Italy-U.S.-Hungary-France-Greece, 2024)

MARTHA (d. R. J. Cutler, U.S., 2024)

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (d. Adam Elliot, Australia, 2024)

MISERICORDIA (d. Alain Guiraudie, France-Spain-Portugal, 2024)

NICKEL BOYS (d. RaMell Ross, U.S., 2024)

NO OTHER LAND (d. Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, Palestine-Norway, 2024)

ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO (d. Kevin Macdonald, U.K., 2024)

OUTRUN, THE (d. Nora Fingscheidt, U.K.-Germany, 2024)

PIANO LESSON, THE (d. Malcolm Washington, U.S., 2024)

PIECE BY PIECE (d. Morgan Neville, U.S., 2024)

REAL PAIN, A (d. Jesse Eisenberg, U.S.-Poland, 2024) tba

SANTOSH (d. Sandhya Suri, U.K.-Germany-France, 2024)

SATURDAY NIGHT (d. Jason Reitman, U.S., 2024)

SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, THE (d. Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany-France-Iran, 2024)

SEPARATED (d. Errol Morris, U.S., 2024)

SEPTEMBER 5 (d. Tim Fehlbaum, Germany, 2024)

SOCIAL STUDIES (d. Lauren Greenfield, U.S., 2024)

WHITE HOUSE EFFECT, THE (d. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos, U.S., 2024)

WILL & HARPER (d. Josh Greenbaum, U.S., 2024)

ZURAWSKI V TEXAS (d. Maisie Crow, Abbie Perrault, U.S., 2024)

The short films in the main program:

A SWIM LESSON (d. Rashida Jones, Will McCormack, U.S., 2024)

ALOK (d. Alex Hedison, U.S., 2024)

THE TURNAROUND (d. Kyle Thrash, Ben Proudfoot, U.S., 2024)

The 2024 Silver Medallion Awards:

Jacques Audiard (with EMILIA PÉREZ)

Saoirse Ronan (with THE OUTRUN)

Thelma Schoonmaker.

Each tribute program includes a selection of clips, the presentation of the Silver Medallion award, and an on-stage interview.

Special Medallion award:

Les Films du Losange (with MISERICORDIA).

Kenneth Lonergan, this year’s festival Guest Director, presents the following film selections:

ARCH OF TRIUMPH (d. Lewis Milestone, U.S., 1948)

BARRY LYNDON (d. Stanley Kubrick, U.K.-U.S., 1975)

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (d. David Lean, U.K.-Italy-U.S., 1965)

GRAND HOTEL (d. Edmund Goulding, U.S., 1932)

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (d. John Ford, U.S., 1946)

Special Screenings and Festivities include 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (d. Jean Cocteau, France, 1946)

CHARLES, DEAD OR ALIVE (d. Alain Tanner, Switzerland, 1969) presented by Alfonso Cuarón

FLY (d. Christina Clusiau, Shaul Schwarz, U.S., 2024)

HINDLE WAKES (d. Maurice Elvey, U.K., 1927) with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

PRINCE OF BROADWAY (d. Sean Baker, U.S., 2008).

Backlot, Telluride’s intimate screening room featuring behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers screens the following programs, all free and open to the public:

A SUDDEN GLIMPSE TO DEEPER THINGS (d. Mark Cousins, U.K., 2024)

¡CASA BONITA MI AMOR! (d. Arthur Bradford, U.S., 2024)

CHAIN REACTIONS (d. Alexandre O. Philippe, U.S., 2024)

HER NAME WAS MOVIOLA (d. Howard Berry, U.K., 2024)

MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER (d. David Hinton, U.K., 2024)

NOBU (d. Matt Tyrnauer, U.S., 2024)

RIEFENSTAHL (d. Andres Veiel, Germany, 2024)

THE EASY KIND (d. Katy Chevigny, U.S., 2024)

THE HEXAGONAL HIVE AND A MOUSE IN A MAZE (d. Tilda Swinton, Bartek Dziadosz, U.K., 2024)

THE SWALLOW (d. Tadhg O’Sullivan, Ireland, 2024)

The TFF 2024 Program Guide.

Kinds of Kindness

Yorgos Lanthimos: Kinds of Kindness (IE/GB/US/GR 2024) with Margaret Qualley (Vivian), Jesse Plemons (Robert) and Willem Dafoe (Robert) in the first episode: "The Death of R.M.F."

Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos promoting Kinds of Kindness (IE/GB/US/GR 2024).

Kinds of Kindness (Finland).

    IE/GB/US/GR © 2024 Searchlight Pictures. Searchlight Pictures presents - in association with Film4 and TSG Entertainment - an Element Pictures Production - a Yorgos Lanthimos film. P: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Kasia Malipan.

    D: Yorgos Lanthimos. SC: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. DP: Robbie Ryan - negative: 35 mm - black and white and colour - scope 2.39:1. PD: Anthony Gasparro, Cost: Jennifer Johnson. Make-up: Jessica Needham. Hair: Jennifer Serio. M: Jerskin Fendrix. ED: Yorgos Mavropsaridis. Casting: Dixie Chassay.

    C: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer. The actors play multiple roles.

    Soundtrack: "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" (Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart) perf. Eurythmics.

    Loc: New Orleans (Louisiana).

    164 min

    Festival premiere: 17 May 2024 Cannes.

    Finnish premiere: 5 July 2024 - distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland - Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Hannele Vahtera.

    Viewed at Finnkino Kinopalatsi 7, Helsinki, 17 Aug 2024.

Anthology film with three episodes: 1) The Death of R.M.F., 2) R.M.F. Is Flying, 3) R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich. The same actors act in each, playing different characters.

Tagline: "Everybody's looking for something".

Cannes 2024 official: "KINDS OF KINDNESS is a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader."

Cannes 2024 official by Tarik Khaldi, published on 17.5.2024: "Only a few months after the release of Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos joins the Competition with Kinds of Kindness. Could this be the film that will earn him the Palme d’or after his Jury Prize for The Lobster in 2015, and his Best Screenplay award for The Killing of a Sacred Deer in 2017?"

"A new fable by Yorgos Lanthimos, Kinds of Kindness juxtaposes three quests. A man who seeks control of his life, a policeman who finds his wife lost at sea and doesn’t recognize her, and a woman in search of a person with exceptional power."

"Written with his long-time partner Efthimis Filippou, the plot is served by a cast that is, to say the least, prestigious. All three stories are starred by the same actors. Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley and Willem Dafoe are back by the director’s side, along with Jesse Plemons, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer."

"In Kinds of Kindness, the director continues his exploration of free will and conformism: “It’s interesting to observe how humans think they control things or are free to decide on them, while once they have this freedom, they find it difficult to manage.”"

"This latest film marks another milestone in the unstoppable rise of Yorgos Lanthimos.  In 2010, his career changed directions with Canine, which won the Prix Un Certain Regard, and showed the world the quirky aesthetic and gritty tone of the Greek weird wave, the movement of which he was the figurehead."

"In the years that followed, he left Greece to create his own style, sometimes disturbing, always fascinating. There, he attracted the best performers (Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Emma Stone), and developed every aspect of his art, winning four Oscars for Poor Things last March." (Cannes 2024 official)

AA: Following The Favourite and Poor Things, this is the third feature in the collaboration of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone (there is also a short called Bleat). With superstar Stone (The Amazing Spider-Man, La La Land) Lanthimos has access to lavish budgets, and with Lanthimos, Stone gets to play the wildest roles imaginable.

I am still digesting Poor Things, a "too much" film both in transgression and visual excess. Too much can become boring, but I found Poor Things controlled.

Lanthimos pursues a novel absurdism. Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness are nightmare movies and can be seen as horror movies. Although Poor Things channels Frankenstein, it is not a simple genre movie. In the realm of horror, Lanthimos breaks new ground.

He pursues a new aspect of the macabre. What I have not digested yet is the element of callousness. The most disturbing scenes and schemes are displayed in a matter-of-fact way, without emotion. Like in a weird dream, perhaps. Or is this about trivialization, any shock turning gratuitous, in defense mechanisms against atrocity? Like in The Zone of Interest? (It could equally be called The Zone of Disinterest).

A test pilot project. Pushing the limits. Transcending boundaries. Exploring new transgressions. The acte gratuit: the meaninglessness as the point. There is no incitation, motivation or reason. Absurdity as the test of free will.

In the centenary year of surrealism, let's register Yorgos Lanthimos as a major contemporary surrealist.

Great performances, terrific cinematography by Robbie Ryan (the DCP has been created from a 35 mm negative). Yorgos Lanthimos knows what he is doing, but I need to learn to make sense of it.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESS KIT:

Inside Out 2

Kelsey Mann: Inside Out 2 (US 2024).

Inside Out - mielen sopukoissa 2 / Insidan ut 2.

    CGI animation.

    US © 2024 Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar. P: Mark Nielsen.

    D: Kelsey Mann. SC: Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein - story: Meg LeFauve. DP: Adam Habib, Jonathan Pytko - digital - scope 2.39:1 - colour - 3D. AN: Dovi Anderson, Evan Bonifacio. Characters: Michael Comet, Ana Gabriela Lacaze. VFX: Sudeep Rangaswamy. M: Andrea Datzman. S: Ren Klyce. ED: Maurissa Horwitz. C:

Joy / Amy Poehler - Ilo / Minka Kuustonen

Anxiety / Maya Hawke - Ahdistus / Hanna Mönkäre

Disgust / Liza Lapira - Inho / Pamela Tola

Fear / Tony Hale - Pelko / Kari Ketonen

Anger / Lewis Black - Kiukku / Turkka Mastomäki

Sadness / Phyllis Smith - Suru / Tiina Weckström

Envy / Ayo Edebiri - Kateus / Heljä Heikkinen

Ennui / Adèle Exarchopoulos - Linnea Leino

Embarrassment / Paul Walter Hauser - nolous / Petrus Kähkönen

Deep Dark Secret / Steve Purcell - Synkkä Salaisuus / Tuukka Haapaniemi

Lance Slashblade / Yong Yea - Martti Manninen

Bloofy / Ron Funches - Lurppanen / Lauri Mikkola

...

Riley / Kensington Tallman - Seera Alexander

Valentina / Lilimar - Antonia Atarah

Grace / Grace Lu - Mirella Roininen

Bree / Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green - Helmi Kapulainen

Mom / Diane Lane - äiti / Rebecca Viitala

Dad / Kyle MacLachlan - isä / Arttu Wiskari

Coach Roberts - koutsi Roberts / Hanna Pakarinen

    97 min

    US premiere: 14 June 2024

    Finnish premiere: 17 July 2024 - distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland, Finnish translation by Aki Heinlahti.

    Viewed in Finnish spoken version in 2D at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 9, 17 Aug 2024

Official synopsis: "Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone. Maya Hawke lends her voice to Anxiety, alongside Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, Tony Hale as Fear, and Liza Lapira as Disgust."

AA: I blogged in 2015 about the original Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter. Pixar has always been a pioneer, and Inside Out opened a new universe for animation - the inner world of the mind. 

In the animation I found affinities with classics including Len Lye, Norman McLaren and the UPA School, preceded by a decade of innovation at the Disney studios (particularly in the sometimes weird entries in their anthology movies). 

In 2015, the eleven year old Riley's mind-boggling experience was the family's move from Minnesota to San Francisco. 

I found Inside Out awesome but was puzzled by the psychological reductionism. The concept is limited to behaviourism (Skinner, Watson, Pavlov), a stimulus-response schematism like in Pavlov's dogs. In the cinema, the nearest counterpart is Vsevolod Pudovkin's Kulturfilm The Mechanics of the Brain (SU 1926) - featuring Ivan Pavlov and proceeding from dogs to monkeys to people. Stalin praised Pavlov, while Pavlov condemned Stalin's terror. When Stalin called writers "the engineers of the human soul", he was vulgarizing Pavlov.

In Inside Out 2, directed by Kelsey Mann and written by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, based on a story by Meg LeFauve, Riley is thirteen, officially a teenager. Inside Out 2 is a saga of Riley's coming of age, puberty, becoming the hero of her own life.

Watching Inside Out 2 back to back after the Ukrainian animation Mavka: the Forest Song I register similarities. Both are new animations featuring a young girl or woman protagonist. Both create fantastic worlds in 3D and scope. Both are based on the idea of two worlds. In Mavka, they are the village (of human beings) and the forest (of magic spirits). In Inside Out movies, we have the real world and the mind world. The climax in both films is similar: a hurricane / whirlwind / avalanche / revolution - a transvaluation of all values, conveyed in awesame visions only possible for animation.

Riley's mind world has been innovatively visualized. There is the Headquarters with its high-tech console. There is the Imagination Land. There is Riley's Belief System with nine departments. There is the Sense of Self. There is also the Vault and the Back of the Mind. Other creative strokes of genius include a Stream of Consciousness - visualized literally.

Besides five emotions familiar from the original (Joy, Disgust, Fear, Anger, Sadness) we now have four more (Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment). Things are getting more complex. The fireworks of puns and inventions is witty, clever and smart.

But in my humble opinion, the vision of the human mind on display here is so far off the mark that I struggle to find a verdict that would not be a gross understatement. Even in the gaze of a 3 year old child I see a spark infinitely beyond what is being attempted here.

A fundamental failure to grasp the human mind is perhaps a sign of the times, also evident in Christopher Nolan's Inception, with the preposterous premise that dreams are something that can be entered. 

I revere the wonders of modern technology, but the discourses on the so-called AI reveal an abysmal lack of understanding of the psyche. This mystery puzzled already Joseph Weizenbaum, inventor of the first chatbot in 1966. He called AI enthusiasts "artificial intelligentsia".

The animation is masterful in the mind world and high quality in the real world. 

Pixar launched its feature-length animation production with Toy Story, a masterpiece of world art. Digital animation is brilliant for toys, but for all animation human beings are a challenge. 

The Emotions are cartoon figures (see poster above); the human beings are like living dolls. There is an interesting philosophical dilemma. In animation, we accept drawn caricatures, puppets and marionettes, matchstick men, creatures of clay, silhouettes and any extremely stylized figures. But the more human the animated figures get, the less engaging they are.

I have mixed feelings about the Inside Out movies. Do they convey teenage agony today or ever? To say nothing of physical transformations, sexual awakening or becoming a woman (only timidly acknowledged here). Body is inseparable from soul.

But the Inside Out movies are full of joy, wit and imagination. To visualize identity crisis, the revolution of the self-image, the abyss of a teenage crisis in terms of an animated catastrophe is exhilarating.

With talent and expertise in all departments it's a joy to behold. I did not realize that the movie is being shown both in 2D and 3D and failed to select 3D. I saw the perfect Finnish-spoken version with Minka Kuustonen (Joy), Linnea Leino (Ennui) etc. Next I need to see the English spoken version in 3D.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESS KIT:

Mavka: lisova pisnia / Mavka: the Forest Song (2023)

Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban: Мавка. Лісова пісня / Mavka: lisova pisnia / Mavka: the Forest Song (UA 2023).

Мавка. Лісова пісня / Mavka: metsän laulu / Mavka: skogens väktare / Le Royaume de Naya / Maya: Hüterin des Waldes / Maya e la foresta incantata / Mavka: guardiana del bosque.

    CGI animation.

    UA 2023. PC: Animagrad Animation Studio / FILM.UA Group. P: Iryna Kostiuk, Yehor Olesov, Anna Yelisieieva.

    D: Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban. SC: Yaroslav Voitseshek - based on the play Lisova pisnia (1912) by Lesya Ukrainka. 3D animation - scope 1:2,35 - colour - digital. AN: Nataliia Alekseieva. Character designer. Natalia Doroshenko. Storyboard supervisor: Oleh Malamuzh. AD: Kristian Koskinen. M: Dario Vero, Maksym Berezhnyak, DakhaBrakha. S: Yevhenii Prykashchykov. 

    Original in English.

    The contribution of the Ukrainian voice talent as related in Wikipedia: "The animated film was dubbed to the Ukrainian language by the "#skoroukino" studio. The dubbing team: Laiti Biriukova, Dmytro Myalkovskiy; translation - Anna Pashchenko and Alina Haevska. The dubbing producer is Kateryna Braikovska."

    Natalka Denysenko as Mavka - Kateryna Kukhar and Taisia Khvostova (movements and plastique) , while Khrystyna Soloviy performs two of Mavka's songs.

    Artem Pyvovarov as Lukas

    Olena Kravets as Kylina

    Serhiy Prytula as Frol

    Oleh Mykhailiuta as Leo, Lukas' uncle

    Natalya Sumska as the Healer

    DakhaBrakha as Lucas’ friends, village musicians Nina, Iryna, Olena and Marko

    Mykhailo Khoma as Hush

    Julia Sanina as Ondina, a mermaid

    Nazar Zadniprovskyi as Lesh

    Oleh Skrypka as the One Who Sits in the Rock

    Nina Matviienko as the Narrator

    Andriy Mostrenko as Erick and Dereck

    Kateryna Osadcha as various women

    Natalka Denisenko

    Artem Pyvovarov

    Olena Kravets

    Soundtrack:

"Krokovee Koleso" perf. DakhaBrakha, Maksym Berezniuk 1:22

"Mova Vitru" ("Song of the Wind") comp./lyr./perf. Artem Pyvovarov, Khrystyna Soloviy 3:45

"Harnaya" ("Beautiful") perf. Maria Kvitka 3:31

"Vesnyanka" ("Spring Song") DakhaBrakha, Maksym Berezniuk 0:55

"Pisnia Lisu" ("The Forest Song") comp./lyr./perf. Khrystyna Soloviy 3:35

"Sho z pid Dubu" ("What is Under the Oak") comp./lyr./perf. DakhaBrakha 3:48

    The collection of the orchestra music for the movie was presented by “Animagrad” studio in May, 2023. The soundtrack was created by the Ukrainian-Italian team. The team consisted of: the symphonic orchestra “Kyiv Virtuosos”, Oksana Mukha and Maksym Berezhniuk, and also Italians Dario Vero, Fabio Patriniani, Federico Solacco, Barbad Bayat and Fabricio De Karolis. The album has got 49 instrumental compositions.

    99 min

    Ukrainian premiere: 2 March 2023 - distributed by Film.UA Distribution Kinomania.

    Finnish premiere in four spoken language versions: Ukrainian, English, Finnish and Swedish, alternatively with Finnish or Swedish subtitles - 2 Aug 2024. Finnish release only in 2D.

    Viewed in 2D in the Ukrainian version with Finnish subtitles at Finnkino Kinopalatsi 9, 17 Aug 2024

Previous film adaptations: 

- Lisova pisnia (UA-SU 1961) D: Viktor Ivchenko, live action.

- Lisova pisnia (UA-SU 1976) D: Alla Grachova, short animation.

- Lisova pisnia. Mavka / Metsän laulu (UA-SU 1981), live action, PC: Dovzhenko Film Studios, D: Yuri Ilyenko. Telecast in Finland: 27 Nov 1985 Yle TV1.

- Mavka / वनपरी (IN 2021) in Hindi.

Lesya Ukrainka (b. 1871 in Novohrad-Volonskyi, today's Zviahei, Zhytomir Oblast, d. 1913 Surami, Tiflis Governorate, today's Shida Kartli, Georgia). One of Ukraine's foremost writers, poet, playwright, feminist, bisexual and translator of the Communist Manifesto among other books.

International names of Lisova pisnia include Das Waldlied / Canción del bosque / La Chanson de la Forêt and Il canto della foresta.

Official synopsis: "Mavka - a soul of the Forest - faces an impossible choice between love and her duty as guardian to the Heart of the Forest, when she falls in love with a human - the talented young musician Lukash. Our story is about the magical power of love. That kind of love that enables human nature to find the magic within and reveals abilities and qualities that empower a person to reach beyond possible and to hold against evil and human vice."

AA: Oleh Malamuzh and Oleksandra Ruban's engrossing animation Mavka: the Forest Song is my first encounter with the work of Lesya Ukrainka and her fairy-tale play (1912), a living classic as a play, opera, ballet, live action cinema and animation. This newest animation has become the highest grossing film in independent Ukraine. Ukrainka's play has not been translated or staged in Finland, but it should, because its forest mythology strikes a chord in the land of Kalevala. 

Neoromanticism and symbolism  (Maeterlinck, Debussy) were powerful currents in Ukrainka's days, and nowhere more than in Finland, prominent in the art of Sibelius, Järnefelt, Aho and Linnankoski (The Song of the Scarlet Flower, based on forest mythology). Not forgetting American transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller) or Tolstoyan-Neo-Rousseauan currents, preceding contemporary ecological awareness.

The Forest Song is sometimes viewed as a Romeo and Juliet tale, and if we accept that, the love story of Mavka and Lukas is probably the most cosmic entry in that lineage. It is a love story connecting a human village with forest magic.

The animism of the play feels familiar to a Finnish viewer. It is close to the ancient faiths in the various provinces of what is now Finland such as Karelia, Tavastia and the Sami world of Lapland. The forest and the lake are alive with spirits, usually benevolent. Despite the victory of the Crusades, animism never ended in Finland. The story of Mavka has a spiritual affinity with Katja Gauriloff's Kaisa's Enchanted Forest (2016)

I understand that the adaptation of Oleh Malamuzh and Oleksandra Ruban is different from Lesya Ukrainka's play. But the directors have grasped the connection between animism and animation.

There is a thrilling energy, imagination and drive.

The power of Lukas's flute evokes the ancient Greek myth of Pan, associated with Fauna (divinity of the countryside) and Silvanus (guardian of the forests). He is human, but with access to the spirits of the nature. He is able to inspire Mavka herself. She in turn repairs Lukas's broken flute. Pan of course evokes Pantheism.

There are issues. Animals are ideal for animation, but animating people is a challenge that can hardly ever be perfectly solved. There are moments bordering on kitsch and shades of the saccharine.

But Malamuzh and Ruban have the courage of their convictions. The spell of the nature magic is genuine, the feeling of the fountain of life is compelling, the atavistic powers are formidable, the ecological myth of the destruction of the forest is terrifyingly topical. In the climax, the vision of the burning giant tornado, inside which Mavka faces eternity, has cosmic grandeur, and is expressed in a way only possible for animation.

The music by DrakhaBrakha, who also appear as animated characters, is essential to the experience.

Bravo.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESS KIT AND WIKIPEDIA:

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Greg Berlanti: Fly Me to the Moon (US/GB 2024) with Scarlett Johansson (Kelly Jones), Channing Tatum (Cole Davis).

Centenary of Columbia Pictures.

Fly Me to the Moon [Finland] / Fly Me to the Moon [Sweden]

    US/GB © 2024 Apple Video Programming. PC: Apple Studios, These Pictures. P: Keenan Flynn, Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Lia, Sarah Schechter. EX: Robert J. Dohrmann.

    D: Greg Berlanti. SC: Rose Gilroy (screenplay) - Keenan Flynn (story) & Bill Kirstein (story). DP: Dariusz Wolski - Arriraw 4.5K - intermediate: 4K - release: 4K DCP - colour - 2.39:1. PD: Shane Valentino. AD: Lauren Rosenbloom. Set dec: Susan Benjamin, Laura Wallgren. Cost: Mary Zophres. Makeup: Deborah La Mia Denaver. Hair: Lawrence Davis. VFX: RISE Visual Effects Studios, Framestore, Nexodus, Zero VFX, Halon Entertainment, Ingenuity Studio, Good Company, Company 3. SFX: Wayne Rowe. M: Daniel Pemberton. S: Laurent Kossayan. ED: Harry Jierjian. Casting: Ellen Lewis. Special thanks to: Buzz Aldrin, John Tynan.

    C: Scarlett Johansson (Kelly Jones), Channing Tatum (Cole Davis), Woody Harrelson (Moe Berkus), Ray Berkus (Woody Harrelson), Ray Romano (Henry Smalls), Jim Rash (Lance Vespertine), Anna Garcia (Ruby Martin).

    Loc: Cape Canaveral (Florida), Savannah (Georgia), Tybee Island (Georgia), Fort Pulaski (Georgia).

    Soundtrack: "These Foolish Things" perf. Sam Cooke ; "Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)" perf. Bobby Womack ; "Hold On I'm Coming" perf. Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown ; "Security" perf. Etta James ; "It's Your Thing" perf. Ann Peebles ; "To Love Somebody" perf. The Bee Gees ; "Sweet Soul Music" perf. Arthur Conley; "Nothing Can Change This Love" perf. Sam Cooke ; "Destination Moon" perf. Dinah Washington.

    132 min

    Festival premiere: 3 July 2024 Brussels International Film Festival

    US premiere: 12 July 2024

    Finnish premiere: 12 July 2024, released by SF Studios, Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Saliven Gustavson.

    Viewed at Finnkino Kinopalatsi 20, 10 Aug 2024.

Tagline: "Will they make history... or fake it?"

Official synopsis: "Starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, FLY ME TO THE MOON is a sharp, stylish romantic comedy set against the high-stakes backdrop of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Brought in to fix NASA’s public image, sparks fly in all directions as marketing maven Kelly Jones (Johansson) wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis’s (Tatum) already difficult task. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as back-up and the countdown truly begins…"

AA: Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy directed by Greg Berlanti based on a screenplay by Rose Gilroy and a story by Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein. It is a Scarlett Johansson vehicle.

The theatrical distributor is Columbia Pictures in the United States and Sony Pictures Releasing worldwide. Since 1989, Columbia Pictures has belonged to the Japanese electronics giant Sony.

In celebration of the centenary of Columbia Pictures, the film begins with a montage of its logo changing during history: Lady Columbia, the personification of the Americas and the United States, in reference to Christopher Columbus, the -ia ending connecting it with Britannia and Gallia.

During Hollywood's Golden Age, Columbia Pictures was one of the "Little Three" among the eight majors. Now it is one of the Big Five.

During the Great Depression, Columbia was a pioneer of the rapid-fire "screwball comedy". Its main house director was Frank Capra. Also Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey and George Cukor did great work there. Jean Harlow, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell were among Columbia's comedy queens in the 1930s. The comedies were not just divertissements. They were also vehices of satire, sometimes of the savage and disturbing kind.

After WWII, another Columbia comedy star was born: Judy Holliday, guided by Cukor. Jean Arthur ended her contract because of sexual harassment by the studio boss Harry Cohn. Marilyn Monroe made a single appearance, her first major role (Ladies of the Chorus), but quit for the same reason.

...

I write the above to make sense of the reasons to be cheerful for Fly Me to the Moon, because I'm all smiles.

To start with the Lady Columbia logo: Fly Me to the Moon is a great satire about America. The one with a healthy identity and self-respect can stand criticism and laugh at oneself.

It is a Cold War and Space Age satire. America is losing the Vietnam War, and the disgrace is for all to see on live tv. Russia is leading the Space Age, and America's Apollo program is in trouble.

The serious and true blue foundation is the commitment, scientific expertise, hard work and team spirit of the Apollo Program. Not forgetting a reverence for three martyrs who died in the fire during the launch pad test of Apollo 1 in 1967.

The embodiment of the Apollo spirit is Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), a responsible leader who earns his authority by inner dignity without needing to assert himself.

The Nixon administration hires a marketing maven, Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), to promote the Apollo Program to the max to ensure a bigger budget and lucrative sponsorship deals. Truth is a flexible concept for Jones, and she is a master of finding an excuse for anything.

Opposites attract - or more accurately: extremes attract. It is love at first sight between Cole and Kelly before they know each other. It is hate at first sight when Cole realizes Kelly's game. They reconcile, but Kelly is hiding from Cole the biggest betrayal. 

The Nixon administration does not believe in the Apollo 11 program, and they hire a film production crew and a soundstage to fake the Moon landing for the live television broadcast. Against direct orders, Kelly arranges the true live broadcast anyway and feeds Neil Armstrong the line "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

Fly Me to the Moon is a Scarlett Johansson vehicle, and she is a perfect Lady Columbia. Running in my mind a montage of classic Columbia comediennes, I recognize that she is as radiant and brilliant as any of them, and a versatile and original genius in her own right.

As a Marilynologist, I sense, like in Asteroid City (another Space Age and Nuclear Age satire), that Johansson is, among other things, channeling Marilyn. There is a link between wit and sex. Sex is beautiful when it is innate and life-affirming. Johansson is wickedly aware of her assets. Like in classic Hollywood, there is no need to be explicit.

There is an extreme contrast between the rock solid Cole and the volatile and mercurial Kelly. Almost cosmic. But perhaps it takes Kelly to pull Cole from his single-minded work orientation. And perhaps it takes Cole to stop Kelly from getting lost in her fabrications.

It is a great screenplay, and the film is well made but not brilliant as a whole. Perhaps marrying serious space drama (worthy of The Right Stuff) and screwball comedy requires so much time that momentum suffers. The soundstage stuff is funny, but I would remove it except for the climax only. Still, the film is better than one could expect from the impossible combination.

Might Fly Me to the Moon be another victim for the Pandemic Lethargic syndrome?

No danger of lethargy on the fantastic compilation soundtrack, with generous helpings of 1960s Atlantic and Motown, and "To Love Somebody" by The Bee Gees in the romantic turning point. Timeless.

I look forward to revisiting Fly Me to the Moon.

Anselm - das Rauschen der Zeit / Anselm (3-D) (revisited, Helsinki, 2024)

 

Wim Wenders: Anselm - das Rauschen der Zeit / Anselm (DE 2023). 

Anselm [Finland] / Anselm [Sweden].

    Master format: 6K - Source format: 6K dual-strip 3-D - colour and black and white - 1.50:1 - release format: 4K DCP.

    Finnish premiere: 28 June 2024, released by ELKE, 3D version with English subtitles, 2D version with Finnish subtitles, 2D version with Swedish subtitles.

    Viewed in the 3D version with English subtitles at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 10, Helsinki, 10 Aug 2024.

I first blogged about Anselm on 1 Sep 2023. While watching I knew I soon want to see it again.

In Anselm, Wim Wenders for the first time takes stock of German history. It is like he has waited all his life for the right approach to do justice to the enormity of the subject.

The approach is art documentary. Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann, those friends and lovers long gone, are key witnesses, reading their poems in extenso in archival inserts. They are soulmates and fellow travellers for Anselm Kiefer, the protagonist.

I have returned to Adorno's "poetry after Auschwitz" question on the occasion of my most powerful art experiences this year: a Mark Rothko exhibition and the film noir dimension in an Anthony Mann retrospective.

Anselm the movie is all about it, too: the life's work of Anselm Kiefer, and the fellow poets Celan and Bachmann.

The risk is to be crushed under the heaviness, and there are moments where Wenders's view of the demiurge creator is on the verge of the bombastic.

The suspense stems from our anxiety: will Wenders survive the challenge? Humour and comedy are not his strengths, but a sense of play is, and that is his way of transcendence on this passionate journey into German history and the artists' struggle to make sense of it.

Having overcome my concerns over demiurge poses and bombastic moments I'm thrilled by the grandeur. Wenders is known for intimism, but he excels also in the epic. I belong to the admirers of even Bis ans Ende der Welt, to say nothing about Der Himmel über Berlin and Das Salz der Erde.

Anselm raises a lot of questions, thoughts and associations. One of the most important is the end of art, The Question in art criticism since WWI. Traditional categories of aesthetics, valid since classical antiquity, turned meaningless in 1914-1918. What we have is no longer about the beautiful and the sublime.

In the modern and the post-modern eras it is not wrong to speak about Anti-Art or Negative Aesthetics. Also in the wastelands in Anselm Kiefer's monumental work. Such is his horror mirror.

Wim Wenders is a master of 3-D, and 3-D is essential to the vision of Anselm Kiefer and Wim Wenders. The 3-D projection at Tennispalatsi was brilliant and perfect. Viewing the film today I again felt the urge to revisit it soon.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MY PROGRAM NOTE FOR LOVE AND ANARCHY, THE HELSINKI FILM FESTIVAL:

Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation / Rīgas vēstures un kuģniecības muzejs (permanent exhibition

Unknown artist: Port of Riga. Second half of the 17th century. At the time Riga was under the rule of the king of Sweden. Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation / Rīgas vēstures un kuģniecības muzejs. 

Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation / Rīgas vēstures un kuģniecības muzejs

Palasta iela 4 - Riga - Latvija

Visited on 13 July 2024

Based on a private collection by Nikolaus von Himsel and launched in 1773, Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation is one of the oldest museums in Europe. What is now called Riga has been an important hub for millennia, thanks to the sheltered harbour by the river Daugava which during the Viking era was instrumental in the trade with the Byzantium, via the Dvina-Dnieper route.

The artefacts date back to around 9000 BC, the end of the last glacial period. There are tools from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. We witness the times of the resistance to Christianisation, the Livonian Crusade, the founding of Riga in 1201, and the reign of the Hanseatic League. Because of its strategic location, Riga was a focus of combats between the Teutonic Order and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the Great Northern War, the Swedish Empire crumbled and the Russian Empire was born under Peter the Great. In 1710 Riga became a Russian city. The first independence started in 1918 after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, until 1940. This ends the period covered by the fascinating and beautiful displays of the Riga history museum.

Scale model of a frigate. Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation / Rīgas vēstures un kuģniecības muzejs.

Among the special exhibitions there is a fabulous Silver Cabinet and an impressive Navigation Exhibition - including beautifully crafted scale models from Viking ships till modern vessels. There are some 400 exhibits on display. Also the development of the Latvian ports of Riga, Ventspils and Liepaja is documented. This section is a joy to behold for admirers of arts and crafts.

The Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn: permanent and topical exhibitions

    Friedrich Hartmann Barisien, Christian Gottlieb Welté: Põltsamaa lossi talvine vaade / Põltsamaa Palace at Winter (1783). Oil on canvas. 210,5 x 160. Eesti Kunstimuuseum EKM j 9257 M 3700.

Eesti Kunstimuuseum Kumu. The Kumu Art Museum is situated on the limestone cliff between Kadriorg Park and the Lasnamäe district. Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1, 10127 Tallinn. The building opened its doors to the public on 18 February 2006. Architect: Pekka Vapaavuori.

Eesti Kunstimuuseum Kumu. The Kumu Art Museum 

Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1, 10127 Tallinn

Visited on 12 July 2024

I have visited Kumu before and admired it as a building of inspiration, a space for rich associations with plenty of room to breathe. Today I visited the permanent exhibitions of the Art Museum of Estonia for the first time. They are on display on the third and the fourth floors. It was a fabulous day.

The Third Floor houses "Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700-1945". We are welcomed by distinguished busts of Estonian cultural figures such as Lydia Koidula sculpted by August Weizenberg. Over the centuries, Estonian visual arts reflect the general outlines of continental trends, but peculiar landscapes, seascapes, faces, costumes, buildings, climates, seasons and qualities of light and air give it all an original distinction. From the Great Northern War to the end of the Second World War we experience the persistence of the Estonian spirit against the Swedish Empire of King Charles XII, the rise of Russia since Peter the Great, the German landlords, the Nazi Occupation and the Soviet Occupation. There is much to discover. Innovative solutions of hanging break the routine. There is an excursion in the depiction of sex work. There is a portrait room where the quantity of the portraits transforms into quality - and into an act of installation art / conceptual art. Similarly, and even more so, in a bust room developed by Villu Jaanisoo around Tamara Ditman's bust The Seagull, with dozens of important figures ranging from Peter the Great to V. I. Lenin. I am also impressed by the Black Room where selected paintings glow with rare illumination - paintings such as Ernst Hermann Schlihting's Toolse varemed / Toolse Castle Ruins (n.d.). 

Aili Vint: Mees merd kuulamas / Man Listening to the Sea (1972). Oil on canvas. 160 x 98 cm. Eesti Kunstimuuseum EKM j 15105 M 4599.

The Fourth Floor exhibition is called "Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940-1991)". The curator is Anu Allas working with an inspired team, and they have also written an excellent guidebook, which is a true keepsake. Estonian art reflected the same periods as Soviet art in general: Stalin - Thaw - Stagnation - and Glasnost. But because Estonia was the most Western outpost of the USSR, liberty was reflected more openly. I learn about the image of power and the power of the image. I learn about inner exile. I learn about trauma in secret art such as Olga Terri's Prisoner (1949) and Fear (1952). I learn about Stalinist Impressionism - a paradox, because Stalinist art was tendency art, and impressionism, whose 150th anniversary we celebrate this year, was against tendency and even against big subjects in general, art for art's sake. After 1956, modernism was tolerated within limits, and even abstraction, when it was understood in a context of architecture and design. Surrealism, whose centenary we celebrate this year, flourished in the underground circle of Ulo Sooster in Tartu. A work like Ilmar Malin's Fading Sun (1968) was possible to register as surrealist art, abstract art, figurative art or symbolic art. It is striking to notice how the international trends of 1960s modern art found expressions in Estonia. Pop Art was an ambiguous reaction to consumer society - a phenomenont absent from Estonia. But here we have Estonian Pop Art - an original and different reflection. We have also psychedelia, collages, assemblages, records of performances, media art, happenings, self-referential art, found photographs and environment art. The individual spirit was highlighted against the collectivist agenda. Socialist realism was never abandoned, but artists transcended it via hyperrealism.

Jevgeni Zolotko: an installation of gravestones with names erased in the exhibition The Secret of Adam (2024).

The Fifth Floor is dedicated to a monograph exhibition of Jevgeni Zolotko (born 1983) called The Secret of Adam.

Kumu: "Jevgeni Zolotko’s large solo exhibition in the Kumu Art Museum displays some of the earlier chapters of his creative legacy and creates new ones. The Secret of Adam is an exhibition that consists of various works, and constitutes his most massive work thus far, synthesising recurrent subjects and images in his oeuvre. Zolotko, who entered the art scene in the late 2000s, is one of the most idiosyncratic contemporary artists in Estonia. Instead of dealing with the topical and political, the context of his art is Western cultural history in the broadest sense, embracing antiquity, the Bible, belles-lettres, philosophy and folklore. His works deal with human existence: life, death, loneliness, silence and decay, as well as hope."

Curator Triin Tulgiste-Toss (1987–2024) about the exhibition: 

"While it is often possible to point out shifts in artists’ choices of subject matter or emphasis over time, Zolotko’s art can be compared to a tower: every new work of art grows out of the previous one, specifying and elaborating on what has been said. The Secret of Adam combines previously used elements and those that have been developed further with completely new ones, returning to the central issue in Zolotko’s art: the question of the relationship between things and language."

"It seems like the artist is finally providing us with a clear answer. Words are as old as the first human being and inseparable from his nature, serving in addition to the physical body as a way of communicating with the world and understanding it. The realisation that we need both the physical and language to cope in society becomes evident."

"According to Zolotko, his works are not autobiographical, and his main interest in art is to deal with universal topics. Considering the emotional effects of his works and their perceptiveness, one gets the sense, however, that only a person whose works emanate from personal experience and acknowledgement, not theoretical ideas, can say something like that."

"The purpose of Zolotko’s works has never been to generate intellectual reflection but to induce recognition. You may approach them like a detective trying to find the clues hidden in the installations, but by doing so you will miss something intrinsic. Zolotko’s works are meant to be inside of, like being in nature, and it seems that the sole purpose of the artist is to make sure that the viewer does not feel alone during these moments." (Kumu)

This exhibition is not only monumental but possesses true magnificence and gravity. I am thinking about Anselm Kiefer, now topical also because of Wim Wenders's remarkable movie. The Jevgeni Zolotko exhibition consists of sculptures, images, photographs, paintings, assemblages, objects and videos. It is a one-man adventure in the multitude of contemporary art. The most impressive entry for me is a vast room full of gravestones with names erased. An original and haunting image about the evanescence of memory.

Elisàr von Kupffer (1872-1942): Uus liit / The New Covenant (1916). The central figure is an auto-portrait of the artist himself. Elisarioni keskus, Minusio omavalitsus.

In the nooks and crannies of the Third Floor we can discover a very special exhibition: “Elisarion. Elisàr von Kupffer and Jaanus Samma”. "Come if you dare", we would have said in the 1980s about these flamboyant displays of queer pride created a hundred years ago. They are also idyllic celebrations of gay happiness. Irresistible.

Kumu: "This exhibition brings together the works of the Baltic-German artist Elisàr von Kupffer (1872–1942) and the Estonian artist Jaanus Samma (b. 1982). Elisàr von Kupffer, also known as Elisarion, was a colourful personality, versatile creator and something of a visionary. He was passionate about painting, literature, art history and philosophy. He was also one of the founders of the neo-religious movement Clarism (German klar “clear”).Today, Kupffer is recognised as a pioneer who promoted tolerance for people of different sexual orientations."

"In the exhibition, Elisàr von Kupffer’s homoerotic paintings, influenced by ancient and Renaissance art, are in dialogue with contemporary works by Jaanus Samma, who explores the sexuality of Estonian peasants and queer folk art. His works highlight the relationship between Estonian peasants and the German-speaking elite: a fusion of fear, hostility and desire, and a juxtaposition of the high and the low."

"Jaanus Samma has created a new video work for the exhibition, The Clear World of the Blissful. Also on display is Karl Joonas Alamaa’s installation Limited Fun."

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin (2024 Savonlinna Opera Festival)

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, Savonlinna Opera Festival, 3 July 2024. Photo: Jussi Silvennoinen.

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, Savonlinna Opera Festival, 3 July 2024. Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Karita Mattila, Timo Riihonen, Lucio Gallo & Choir. Photo: Jussi Silvennoinen.

Olavinlinna, 2 October 2023. Photo: Savonlinna Opera Festival.

THE OPERA

    Lohengrin : Romantische Oper in drei Aufzügen

    DE 1850 [Weimar, Thüringen, Königreich Preussen]. Musik und Libretto: Richard Wagner. Durchkomponiert. Originalsprache: Deutsch. Literarische Vorlage: Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival (1200-1210). Uraufführung: 28 August 1850 - Grossherzogliches Hoftheater - in Weimar - unter der Leitung von Franz Liszt.

    Figuren: Heinrich der Vogler, deutscher König - Lohengrin - Elsa von Brabant - Friedrich von Telramund, brabantischer Graf - Ortrud, seine Gemäldin - Der Heerrufer des Königs - Vier brabantische Edle - Vier Edelknaben - Vier Kammerfrauen - Sächsische und thüringische Grafen und Edle, brabantische Grafen und Edle, Edelfrauen, Edelknaben, Mannen, Frauen, Knechte.

    Die Handlung spielt in Antwerpen in der 1. Hälfte des 10. Jahrhunderts

SAVONLINNA OPERA FESTIVAL TEAM

Conductor / Stephan Zilias

Director / Roman Hovenbitzer

Set designer / Hermann Feuchter

Costume designer / Hank Irwin Kittel

Lighting designer / Wolfgang Göbbel 

Video designer / Andreas J. Etter 

Choreographer / Janne Geest

Chorus master / Jan Schweiger

Savonlinna Opera Festival Choir

Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra

Language / German

Surtitles / Finnish and English

Duration : approx. 4 hrs 30 min, 2 intervals

CAST

TUOMAS KATAJALA / LOHENGRIN

KARITA MATTILA / ORTRUD

SINÉAD CAMPBELL WALLACE / ELSA

LUCIO GALLO / FRIEDRICH VON TELRAMUND

TIMO RIIHONEN / HEINRICH DER VOGLER

KRISTIAN LINDROOS / THE KING’S HERALD

PERFORMANCES AT OLAVINLINNA CASTLE

Olavinkatu 27 ; 57130 Savonlinna ; Finland

Capacity: 2.264 seats

5.7.2024 - 9.7.2024 - 12.7.2024 - 15.7.2024 - 18.7.2024

Visited on Friday, 5 July 2024

Savonlinna Opera Festival introduction: " Finally – here is Karita Mattila’s debut at the Savonlinna Opera Festival. She is a cunning sorceress and deep-voiced plotter in Wagner’s opulent Lohengrin. And what a Finnish celebration the evening will be, with Tuomas Katajala, the most internationally successful Finnish tenor of today, singing the title role. "

‘ Only one Finnish star can fill Olavinlinna alone. ’

Helsingin Sanomat about Karita Mattila’s concert, 15 July 2012 

" Wagner’s mythical work of art is a fairy tale about the relationship between utopia and reality. ‘It is a child’s dream of an intact, reconciled world. The world has dreamed of this hundreds of times and keeps dreaming of it again and again. The work is about this human longing – and the painful realization that it can never come true’, says director Roman Hovenbitzer. "

" Right from the intense prelude, Lohengrin grips the listener. There’s a rumble of thunder in the castle walls. The music is highly charged, even hypnotic. With Wagner, time loses its meaning. When the secrets are revealed and the performance ends, you walk out of Olavinlinna into the summer night and ask yourself what really happened. "

‘ There is an empire on the verge of collapse, a people waiting for its saviour, and Lohengrin, the saviour. There is love, loyalty and Wagner’s medieval world of myths. ’ – Director Roman Hovenbitzer 

AA: The setting, Olavinlinna castle, provides a magnificent context. The building was launched around 1475 by the Kalmar Union (1397-1523), in what proved to be the last stage of this union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with Copenhagen as its de facto capital. The monarch then was the Danish King Christian I, followed by his son Hans. The construction was launched by Erik Axelsson Tott, the regent of Sweden.

The Kalmar Union had been established as a counterforce to the Hanseatic League, but by now new powers were gaining prominence. Lithuania had grown into the greatest state of Europe. Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, pushed Lithuania back from the East. The Byzantine Empire (330-1453) ended in the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Ivan III wed Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Moscow finally liberated itself from the Mongol / Turkish rule of the Golden Horde (1242-1502). It also annexed the mighty Novgorod Republic (1136-1478).

Against this new formidable power of Ivan III the Kalmar Union fortified itself by strengthening the Castle of Vyborg (est. 1293) and building Olavinlinna.

Visiting Savonlinna Opera Festival today we cannot help meditating the power of history and the history of power. The troubles of history and the history of troubles. "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (William Faulkner: Requiem for a Nun).

Richard Wagner's Lohengrin is set in a precise moment of history 500 years before Olavinlinna, but it is not a historical play. It is a dream play, a fairy-tale and a mythological quest inspired by Arthurian legends. The formidable walls of the real castle provide a rock solid sounding board to the ethereal fabula.

As a music lover I am an amateur and armchair listener who hardly ever ventures to a live event. Knowing Lohengrin as a radio listener only I am moved and stunned by the subtle power and refined perfection of detail in a first class live performance. Live music is a superior physical experience, shared by a spellbound audience in a castle with a capacity of over 2000.

I realize that Richard Wagner started to discuss "unendliche Melodie" ("endless melody") only ten years after the premiere of Lohengrin and that this work is the last which he called an opera, meaning that it still obeys the conventions of arias and choruses. Yet already here I am most moved by the unity of the suspense that begins with the Vorspiel and holds until the tragic finale. 

Later Wagner works have been compared with the stream of consciousness and inner monologue, but already here it is the most compelling feature. "The poet's greatness is mostly to be measured by what he leaves unsaid, letting us breathe in silence to ourselves the thing unspeakable; the musician it is who brings this untold mystery to clarion tongue, and the impeccable form of his sounding silence is endless melody" (Wagner 1860).

The cast of characters are like sleepwalkers in a shared dream, which we are invited to join. The most striking feature of the music is its gentleness and tenderness. It is an experience of serenity, nobility and a presence of the sacred. The Arthurian element (Lohengrin, Graal) belongs to Christianity, but there is also a presence of the ancient Teutonic gods of Wotan and Freya invoked by the witch Ortrud, Lohengrin's formidable adversary.

The most famous feature of Wagner's music is das Leitmotiv, although Wagner was not the inventor of the method  nor did he use the word himself. He only spoke of motifs (Motive), but did not accept the standard discourse about his work. Wagner's emphasis was always on organic unity and the integration of elements, including motifs.

I stumbled upon a beautiful online lesson by Professor Laurence Dreyfus (Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, 7 Nov 2019) in a "Lohengrin TimeMachine app". He discovers 14 motifs in Lohengrin and selects one of them for close study, das Frageverbot ("don't ask"), which appears 18 times in the opera. Dreyfus really opens Wagner's way of composition in a fascinating way.

After the Olavinlinna performance I have been listening to the opera on cd, and for the first time registered something that aficionados must have always recognized: the affinity of the Frageverbot motif with the "Flight of the Swans Theme" (the key theme first introduced in Act I:9: Finale andante and Act I:10: Scène moderato) in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (comp. 1875, perf. 1877). A profound and meaningful homage by the Russian master to the creator of the Swan Knight.

The prohibition to ask the question is at the core. Elsa is the suspect of the murder of her brother, but comes a knight in shining armour drawn by a swan to save her. He also proposes to her, with one condition:

Nie sollst du mich befragen,

noch Wissens Sorge tragen,

woher ich kam der Fahrt,

noch wie mein Nam' und Art!

(Never shall you ask me / nor trouble yourself to know / whence I came / my name nor my kind!)

The most famous passage of the opera is the Brautlied / Bridal Chorus in the first scene of act three ("Treulich geführt" / "Here comes the bride"), probably the most popular and joyous of all Wagner melodies. Again, I am impressed by the sober and gentle interpretation. Less is more. The restraint and the solemnity make it feel special.

But: in the context of the opera it is a tragic song, because Elsa breaks her vow never to ask the question. The mysterious stranger is compelled to reveal that he is Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal the Grail King, a guardian of divine power, which he loses if he reveals who he is.

Lohengrin gets ready to go and leaves his horn, sword and ring for Elsa's brother. The swan sinks, and Lohengrin lifts Gottfried from the water. Gottfried will be the new ruler of Brabant, Lohengrin vanishes in his boat now drawn by a dove. Ortrud collapses. Elsa embraces Gottfried and sinks lifeless to the ground.

For the first time in my life I see Karita Mattila in a live performance. It is also her first visit to the Savonlinna Opera Festival. I am a long term Karita Mattila admirer. The title of her biography is characteristically Korkealta ja kovaa ([High and Loud], 2019). Her star quality is ideal for the biggest arenas, and only they are big enough for her. As a radio listener I have never felt that I have really known her.

Now I do. All singers are great, but I focus on Karita Mattila because this performance revealed a new aspect that I did not know before. She is the villain and the monster, and she commands the stage effortlessly with her mere presence. It is an understated performance with psychological nuance. There is bitterness, and a barely hidden sense of condescension and superiority. And a pathos of evil. The monster is finally a victim of herself.

This is a new Karita Mattila. Even her voice has changed. The soprano is a mezzo-soprano for a change.

Lohengrin is a mystery play, but it is never confused or insecure. It is always compelling, often in a quietly self-assured manner. It is based on myths, but there is nothing decorative in Wagner's approach. Claude Lévi-Strauss admired Wagner's audacious way of grasping complex associations from various myths and his ability of conveying a profound and genuine emotional impact via them. Lévi-Strauss even called him the "father of the structural analysis of myth".

Otto Rank put Richard Wagner on the couch, paying attention to the hero's arrival on "the billows' azure mirror", the forbidden question and the white swan pulling a newcomer out of the water, and the even more devastating implications of the unknown identity and the anxiety with triangle situations.

Otto Rank's suggestions may seem preposterous, unless we pay attention to Wagner's recurrent obsessions both in his work and his life: Already in his first opera, Die Feen (comp. 1833, unproduced until prem. 1888) includes themes of the forbidden question, search for father, conflict between worldly and otherworldly love, compassion for an animal and a key musical motif expressing aspiration towards transcendence. Wagner never found certitude about the identity of his father. He hardly knew how to live except in a triangle situation, usually with a married woman. But this private trouble he sublimated into works of universal grandeur.

The Wagnerian swan image in Lohengrin and Parsifal stems from the Knights of the Holy Grail for whom the swan was a sacred creature. Universally swans are also a symbol of everlasting love. Universally and since ancient times birds in general are sexual symbols. But often birds also appear as images related to death: harbingers from beyond, images of souls flying to heaven. I also think about The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius based on Kalevala mythology but also "Sparven om julmorgonen" ("Sparrow on Christmas Morning") written by Zachris Topelius in memory of his little son, in the superior Finnish translation "en mä ole, lapseni, lintu tästä maasta ; olen pieni veljesi, tulin taivahasta" ["My child, I am not a bird from this earth, I am your little brother coming from heaven"].

Because this is the first production of Lohengrin that I have seen I cannot compare it, except perhaps with Lohengrin scenes in Luchino Visconti's Ludwig. I was impressed with the musical achievement, the performances and the Olavinlinna Castle. I was puzzled by the production and costume design. They look impressive in photographs, but in the real experience I felt like following a children's room performance. I was asking: are we still too close to Hitler that we must deconstruct Wagner glory to the max? Are we living in an écolo period of opera design that the approach must be ars povera, recycling. (I don't mean that this is the third revival of this production in Savonlinna, seen before in 2011 and 2013). Video: whenever there is video in a stage performance or art exhibition I look the other way or close my eyes.

I guess that the director Roman Hovenbitzer does not believe in transcendence. The sacred dimension may not be mean much to him. From the first notes to the last, Wagner's opera is an exalted piece of spiritual poetry, but Hovenbitzer's stage interpretation remains in the world of prose. Entzauberung instead of Zauberfeuer.

But the musical performance is triumphant.

...

Wagner and the cinema? "The Wedding March" from Lohengrin has been one of the most popular themes in film music since the early days. For some reason I'm thinking about the double wedding of Dorothy and Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: "Remember, honey, on your wedding day, it's alright to say yes." Today the wedding ceremony might be between Dorothy and Lorelei.

Les Timidités de Rigadin (FR 1910) is an early comedy with Rigadin (Charles Prince) as Lohengrin, the knight in shining armour. Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (IT/FR/DE 1973) is a key film about Wagner's faithful patron of arts, with a lavish scene about staging Lohengrin at Schloss Neuschwanstein. Lohengrin was for Ludwig a point of complete identification.

In a class of his own is Hans Jürgen Syberberg, especially in Parsifal. His Ludwig, Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König (DE 1972) is naturally deeply Wagner relevant, including Lohengrin passages.

Not Wagnerian but Arthurian: two unique films untypical for them by Frenchmen: Lancelot du Lac by Robert Bresson and Perceval le Gallois by Éric Rohmer. Walt Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

A book could be written on Wagner and the cinema, and probably has. Suffice it to mention the controversial side: "The Ride of the Valkyries" in The Birth of a Nation and Apocalypse Now. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg inevitably in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (shot on location in Nuremberg). In Brute Force, a prisoner is sadistically beaten to the accompaniment of the Tannhäuser overture of Richard Wagner.

À propos: Daniel Barenboim in dialogue with Edward Said on Wagner and Ideology: " A lady who came to see me in Tel Aviv when the whole Wagner debate was taking place said, “How can you want to play that? I saw my family taken to the gas chambers to the sound of the Meistersinger overture. Why should I listen to that? ” (Daniel Barenboim.com, 1998)

One film is genuinely Wagnerian. Vertigo.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MORE DATA FROM THE SAVONLINNA OPERA FESTIVAL WEBSITE: