The Invisibles

Hiding in plain sight: The Invisibles

Claus Rafle's The Invisibles, released in Germany in 2017 as The Invisibles: We Want to Live, tells the stories of four German Jews who survived the Holocaust by hiding out in wartime Berlin. Reenactments of the four narratives are interlaced with period documentary footage of Berlin and the reminiscences of the four actual protagonists. That we know the four survived does nothing to lessen the tension or sense of paranoia. The Invisibles stands partly as a portrait of indomitable courage, but also one of a wartime Berlin where the Nazi elite wined and dined while most starved and dodged bombs. Like Errol Morris' The Pigeon Tunnel, The Invisibles sometimes suffers from redundancy due to its intermingling of survivors' testimony with the visual recreations. In its favor, the characterizations are largely vigorous and the social scope of the narrative is impressively broad. Rafle allows enough subjective feeling to bleed into the narrative that the film never feels like a history lesson.

The Orphanage

         
J.A. Bayona's The Orphanage was roundly praised when it was released in 2007. I found it well-crafted, but dull. Sergio Sanchez's script situates the film in the sick house genre which includes The Fall of the House of Usher, The Shining, and many others. A medium (Geraldine Chaplin) baldly states the film's credo that structures carry traces of past trauma. The protagonist, Laura (Belen Rueda), spent some of her youth at the orphanage and, in a fit of misplaced nostalgia, wants to turn the shuttered building into a home for the disabled. She and her husband are parents to an HIV+ adoptee named Milo who has a penchant for acquiring imaginary friends in a film is overladen with significance, Of course, the ghostly inhabitants of the house start communicating with Milo who disappears, leading to Laura discovering the abode's deadly secrets.

The cast is fine and the visual, sound and  production design are so expert that it is not surprising that Hollywood came calling for Mr. Bayona soon after. However, the script is derivative, not only of the above films, but also The Haunting, The Innocents, and the work of The Orphanage's producer, Guillermo del Toro. Also, like The Haunting and The Innocents, two horror classics I'm not crazy nuts about, The Orphanage is overly tasteful and reserved. There is very little sense of palpable horror even when the scarecrow boy attacks and bodies are uncovered. A suitable horror film when one is entertaining an elderly Aunt Sadie and Uncle Mort on Halloween, then. 

EO

Jerzy Skolimowski and friend

Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, by my measure the best feature film of 2022, is a remarkable capstone to a magnificent career. The film illustrate vignettes from the life of a donkey, starting with his stint in a circus to his ultimate end in an abattoir. The vivacity and freshness of the director's approach would be impressive in a tyro much less an octogenarian. EO is an ornery and unpredictable film that exposes human folly and cruelty.

The obvious inspiration for Skolimowski and his co-scenarist Ewa Piaskowska is Robert Bresson's sublime masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar. EO is an interesting counterpoint to the work of that peculiar French Catholic Marxist. In contrast to Armond White calling Skolimowski a nihilist in National Review, I would type him as a secular humanist. Balthazar the donkey in Bresson's film is a symbol of Christian suffering and humility. EO the donkey is more of a tabula rasa providing the director an opportunity to offer a heartfelt and sardonic look at his homeland of Poland in the 21st century. Stylistically, the two directors are chalk and cheese. Bresson is an austere director who largely eschews stylistic flourishes. His camera almost always remains fixed, with lots of close-ups of hands. Skolimowski uses all the tricks of the trade to offer a dizzying array of points of view: Steadicam tracks, strobe effects, drone shots. I doubt Bresson would have used a drone shot if a gun was put to his head.

Au Hasard Balthazar

The craft of Michal Dymek's cinematography and Pawl Mykietyn's score help unify the disparate elements that make up EO. Skolimowski has always been an unruly talent with his share of duds, but EO is up there with his masterworks which include Deep End (1971), The Shout(1978), Moonlighting(1982), and 11 Minutes (2016).