My June Movie Selection

I wish I have more time to watch more movies. When there is so much work to do and lessons to prepare, I rarely can focus in the evenings - the only part of the day when I can freely and unbothered watch a movie - on anything but organising the schedule for the next day. As I cannot watch movies while commuting, as it happens in the case of the books that always accompany my journey across the city, the movie watching department always suffers and unless I will spend days and days just binge watching - which is most likely impossible in the next 30 years or so - there is no chance to watch more than maximum 6-7 movies the day.

However, this month I had the chance to add some movies to my meagre film collection, some of them I wanted to watch for a long time. 

Joker directed by Todd Phillips 

A mentally troubled stand-up comedian is caught into an absurd game of circumstances and turns into an avatar of riots in Gotham City. There are times of social unrest where the law is becoming unlaw. In order to survive, emotionally and physically, you eliminate the cause of your pain instead of going away. Joaquin Phoenix plays a very refined and complex role in one of the saddest movie I´ve watched in a long time. The take on mental health is frontal, without adornments and messages of positivity. Before turning the others into hell, oneself is the door in the front of which all hopes die.

There is No Evil directed by Mohammad Rasoulof

Rasoulof is not allowed to turn movies in Iran and There is No Evil was filmed illegally and therefore it is currently forbidden. Currently available on Amazon Prime, it includes four stories of four average people, some young, whose lives do have encounters with the death penalty. They are no evil, and they don´t want to do evil, but in a world where the moral values are reversed and instrumentalized, the guilt is fluid. 

The young man who wanted to see his girlfriend as soon as possible, accepted to be part of the execution squad to get his leave earlier. As they meet, and he is about to propose any time soon, she is mourning the death of a dear family friend, just executed because of his political activities. It happens to be the man the boyfriend co-killed because he wanted to impress his superiors and see her. 

The everyday drama of encountering evil is heartbreaking, beyond the clear philosophical questions it raises.

Quo Vadis, Aida directed by Jasmila Žbanić

Aida, a former teacher and translator for the UN during the war in Bosnia is duped into believing that her husband and sons will be taken on a safe location. In fact, all the men will be killed in cold blood by the Serbian paratroopers leaded by the war criminal Ratko Mladic. In Europe, over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebenica. UN, represented by the Dutch blue helmets, accepted a deal offered by Mladic with a naivity that in politics is called stupidity. 

The incompetence that lead to the genocide is perfectly portrayed in Quo Vadis, Aida, as it is the hardship of starting life again in a human void. For me, this is the best movie ever featuring the terrible crimes committed during the Balkan Wars. A lesson that was never learnt enough: there are terrible crimes committed in Ukraine or in Yemen or in Syria. And there are terrible incompetent international bureaucrats unable to grasp the meaning of their mission, beyond the glamour expected from adding ´missions´ to the CV.

Children of the Decree directed by Florin Iepan

I don´t understand why all the religious maniacs from all over the world got together and get out of this world before destroying even more life. Why was it needed to reverse Roe vs. Wade decision and return to a time of darkness for women bodies? Why those maniacs not keep themselves busy doing their religious obsessions without going out of their caves and attack women?

The abortion ban reminded to many of the times of the women of Romania whose bodies were regulated by a different kind of maniacs: two illiterates and their clique of peasants. The Romanian dictatorship was one of the most absurd and cruel from the communist countries and the ban on abortions was a horrible experience. Children of the Decree (after the infamous Decree 770 from 1967) directed by Florin Iepan testified about the trauma of a generation of parents forced to have children and their children who were born by the accident of the law. Terrible times generated by terrible people and a trauma that was never healed.

Elser directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

Georg Elser was largely unknown unless a couple of years ago. A carpenter from the South of Germany who never supported the Nazi Party and its criminal leader, he failed to killed Hitler in a bomb attack that missed him by a couple of minutes. Elser, an unusual hero, is presented as an average citizen who couldn´t stand the moral degradation and decided to act on his own, even though the price was his own life. Elser died in Dachau, executed a couple of days only before the complete victory against Germany. Elser´s straightforwardness draws of line beyond which there is no excuse for the popular models of ´resistant´, many of them former Nazi supporters. (Another noticeable exception is the former chancellor Willy Brandt). 

The film is mostly based telling the story than playing with the internal game of guilt and cowardness, therefore maybe missed some potential sub-plots that would have put more salt on the wounds of a past which cannot heal through ignorance.

For the next weeks, I still have movies from the previous months that I haven´t watched yet therefore, some of them with a deep moral/historical topic but hopefully also some light ones for more summer rest and relaxation. Maybe.