Tag: Ideas
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Early Spring (Zagreb, Croatia; May 1st, 2020)
To keep this blog film-related, I decided that the title of each subsequent post dealing with my experiences after the Zagreb earthquake, and the destruction of my home, will be the film title of a great film I love, with a symbolic undertone. For this post, I chose Yasujirō Ozu’s Early Spring. Although it is…
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The Nameless God: Ingmar Bergman’s Mythical Tale “The Virgin Spring”
Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is an adaptation of a thirteen century Swedish ballad. Christanity became a state religion in Sweden in the twelfth century, while the process of Christianization of Sweden began roughly in the ninth century. This means that the tale we witness on the screen, portrays an age in which Christianity…
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In Federico Fellini’s Words: Movies = Dreams
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream. Federico Fellini…
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January – Black and White European Cinema Month
The first article I have published this year on this site was about a contemporary black-and-white Hungarian film Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), with the title “A Mortal God”. In this article, I explored the apocalyptic symbolism behind a decaying whale, and the pessimist philosophy of cosmic proportions presented in the film. Later, another article about a…
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Everlasting Iniquities of the Fathers: Haneke’s “The White Ribbon”
The White Ribbon is, as it is proclaimed at the beginning of the film: “A German’s Children Story”. It is narrated by the School Teacher who is now in his late years, and has presumably survived two World Wars. He says “I don’t know if the story I am about to tell you is entirely…
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In Michael Haneke’s Words: Confrontation with the Unknown
“I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. It’s the same with this film – if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of “Caché (Hidden)”. The point…
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Decay of a Mortal God: Béla Tarr’s “Werckmeister Harmonies”
Valuska, a dreamy, and intellectually “slow” postman, with a poetic understanding of his surroundings, stages a little scene with a bunch of weary drunkards, in a bar, at the very beginning of the film. He arranges the drunkards to act the roles of the the Moon and the Earth, as they revolve around the Sun.…
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In Béla Tarr’s Words: Evolution in the Understanding of Art, Life and Cinema
“At the beginning of my career, I had a lot of social anger. I just wanted to tell you how fucked up the society is. This was the beginning. Afterwards, I began to understand that the problems were not only social; they are deeper. I thought they were only ontological and when I understood more…
Vigour of Film Lines 