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Celestial Purity and Carnality in Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire”
The original title of the film Wings of Desire is Der Himmel über Berlin (Sky Over Berlin); the English title beautifully captures the main antinomy present in the film – the one between spirituality and celestial purity and the carnal, eroticism and sensuality. In Marion’s character, the sensuality and existentialist wondering about being-in-the-world (Heidegger) are […]
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Fight for the Cursed World in Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke”
In 1995 Hayao Miyazaki took a group of artists and animators to the ancient forests of Yakushima, which inspired the landscapes in the film. At the beginning, the narrator says: “In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, where from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods. Back then, man and beast […]
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Soulless and the Sublime: Terrence Malick’s “Badlands”
[This article has been edited on 11.3.2018] Badlands, Terrence Malick’s first film is loosely based on real-life events following the murders a couple had commited in 1958, in the United States. In 1993 the United States National Film Registry elected Badlands for preservation since they considered the film to be “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant”. The […]
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L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) “Looming Shadow of Modernity”
It is somewhat ironic that we are commemorating a total solar eclipse which occurred in the United States a week ago, with a film that can be easily interpreted through Marxist lenses. Although, since the Cold War is over, one can afford such leeway. Speaking of the Cold War, L’eclisse was filmed in the aftermath […]
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Four Perspectives Echoing the Truth in Kurosawa’s “Rashōmon”
To claim that Akira Kurosawa is an enigmatic director would be an understatement. One of the greatest filmmakers in cinema history, but also a paradigm (and a synecdoche) of post-war Japan, he combines influences from Western literature (e.g. Dostoyevsky) and philosophy with distinctive Japanese aesthetics and tradition. After the American occupation, Japan found itself flooded […]
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Poetry of Destructive Love in Wong Kar-wai’s “2046”
Wong Kar-wai is not just a movie director, he is a psychologist and a poet dealing with romantic love. His style is so nuanced and brought to perfection that he can be put in the same sentence with the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri; the early poems of the aforementioned poet are not his authentically, […]
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In the Eye of the Beholder – Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors”
In its quaint particularity, Holy Motors approaches themes like sexuality, modern life, libertinism and aesthetics. It opens wih a shot of people in the theater watching a film, suggesting that film-watching experience is a dreamlike state. The film follows a day in the life of Monsieur Oscar who is, as we can tell, a businessman […]
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Vigour of Film Lines 