Back to Classics, Back to Cinema: Night on Earth and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

“Back to classics, back to cinema” is a personal journey through the movies. For every older movie I am going to talk about, I will  go to the cinema and watch a new one. Because if the classic movies and their directors teach you one thing, it is:

Go to the movies.

Night on Earth-Jim Jarmusch-1991

Famously this work of independent mastermind Jim Jarmusch deals with five different stories in taxis at night in five different cities. (Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki) Beside the fact that the stories all take place in a taxi with the cab driver as the main person there are more parallels in terms of plot and mise en scène. Jarmusch introduces the cities by showing different, characteristic impressions far away from any postcard-romanticisms or contractually defined beauty-shots some colleagues lately praised themselves with in Barcelona or Paris at midnight. Throughout the whole movie there are mainly easy shots and it is all about characters.

Moreover every story deals with social misfits: Foreigners, immigrants, rebels and lost souls: Well, heavy smokers. The guys you would expect in your regular Jim Jarmusch film. The movie makes no big secret of its moral: Tolerance. The message is delivered in two ways: Firstly within the stories and secondly because of the fact that one easily sees that although every country has its peculiarities, basically it is everywhere the same, especially at night in a taxi. Praised is the loved outsider of cinema, with her odd behavior, with his aura of strangeness, with their weaknesses. Night on Earth can be watched as an instructional film of how to establish loveable characters. Under the surface lurks their humanity! Never make a character too good! Give them characteristics the audience finds themselves in! Make them tragic! But Jarmusch is by far too much of a true filmmaker to just try to win the audience. He really believes in his characters and by not taking them or himself too seriously he gives room for interpretation. It also appears to be the nature of the beast that one can find these loners and drifters particularly at night. If they drive or go by taxi does not matter. What matters is that their stories are true stories. They have nothing to do with Hollywodd-clichés. This is personal filmmaking.

Still “Night on Earth” has almost all the time an American feeling to it. Even in the three episodes playing in Europe. This could be due to the constant Tom Waits (very American indeed) background sounds or the jazzy approach to dialogue and staging. Sometimes you have the feeling as if an American is looking at some places he once was. This could be a negative aspect but not with Jarmusch. The funny, distant but still heartwarming way he looks at the people is simply entertaining and rewarding. His absurd humor comes best into the play in the second story when an East German taxi driver, who seems to never have been riding a car before, picks up a talky, black passenger who needs to go to Brooklyn. It is all about being aware or not being aware of oneself. It is all about the first impression; it is about the way we look at things or we don’t look at things. Certainly “Night on Earth” is far away from being a perfect film. But it succeeds in being as human as its protagonists and therefore it remains a classic. Not only in terms of a portrait of the late 20st century but also from a cinematic point of view. It shows that cinema is more than just watching things. It is about you, about the world and about heavy smoking.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia-Nuri Bilge Ceylan-2011

Close-Ups of suffering, raddled faces, rich of lacking expressions are shot against a dreary landscape full of surreal almost dangerous sights. If this sounds paradox to you, you can divine the richness of the latest picture by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan which premiered in Cannes last year. It is hard to cover the various aspects of the film in a short review but let’s give it a try:

Plotwise the movie circles around a convoy of officials (Police, doctor, attorney…) who take two convicted murderers and travel through Anatolian dessert to find the buried corpse of the crime. But it is also the story of a woman who announced the exact date of her death, just to really die on that day. This story is discussed between the doctor and the attorney on an almost philosophical level which adds to the epic feeling the movie creates without anytime being heroic. Due to some fine character drawing and an outstanding cast, even people who are not from Anatolia or Turkey can easily understand what this film is all about: One just has to look into their faces, follow their glances like Ceylan follows an apple rolling down a hill, falling into a little stream where it is carried away until you discover that there are many apples with the same faith and it all stops because the stream is too narrow; they are their environment and their environment is drawn into their famished eyes. It is a metaphorical movie but every metaphor is part of the real world, none is created although the film sometimes states that everything is a story. But if this is a story than stories are real, aren’t they?

Slowly the images start to conquer your mind. They are beautiful, yet you still don’t feel comfortable. They are quiet but full of violence, empty but full of secrets. Rarely has any director captured the contradictions of life that successfully. Instead of showing some ordinary story and constantly arguing how special it is (American Independent Cinema), he shows some special story and constantly argues how ordinary it is.  And it works because Ceylan delivers a symbiosis of form and content. He knows the people he is talking about. In one striking scene which is to be considered as one of the most cinematic of the last twenty years, the young and beautiful daughter of a mayor brings some tea for the tired and thirsty convoy. The reactions captured in Close-Up shots with low lightning differ from gratitude, to love, to surprise, to sexual desire. Nevertheless they are all human and there is no difference between potential murderer and police officer. It is a magic feeling when in this world of emptiness such beauty appears. She is almost treated like the crying baby in the middle of war in a world where no more babies are born in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men”. That says a lot about Anatolia without any word spoken. And if you think you figured out the style of Ceylan he suddenly gives you some very humoristic scenes adequate to some dark comedies. But when these characters are laughing, you have the feeling that they are crying. Once upon a time in the cinema the lights went on after the film and it was the biggest surprise that outside of the cinema there was no Anatolia: At least not geographically.