I'm quoting his words either verbatim or cutting his utterances short: "In a way it's a cautionary tale." Michel Franco started writing the script seeing the far right rising first in Europe, next in the US. He's aware a film can't fix things but believes it can start a discussion. And this one has. It was a big success in Mexico but divided people along the same lines as in the film. 50/50 viewers were for/against the movie. It's become the centre of discussion for many weeks and there's ongoing debate. He likes and has faith in people individually but questions group behaviour. "The world is going in the wrong direction and no one is trying to prevent it." There are 70 million poor people in Mexico. Europe is getting the 3rd vaccination dose, most of Africa has had none. Cases of Peru, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela - "as we speak" - have shown that the rule of the military leads to nothing good. He said: "I couldn't care less about politics" but admitted many issues come down to it. Asked about whether violence has a gender, he admitted: "In Mexico it's more dangerous to be a woman than a man. You can be raped or killed just for being a woman." He referred in jest to the ambassador present in the room as he'd be able to confirm what the Mexican reality is and continued explaining his point of view on gender: in hard times women are more brave, men calculate more and are cowards. In Sarajevo what women had to go through is worse than the war itself. In the film Victor represents politics. As for the director himself, he's 42 years old and was born into a privileged class. He believes that a small percentage of Mexicans owns so much they could give away a small percentage of their wealth. The poor have no way to alter their fate. It's like with the French Revolution, there's a small elite and it's going to explode. Chile or Black Lives Matter's slogan "Eat the Rich" corroborate his point. The world's biggest problem is social disparity and the lack of the will to change it. In the film, as usual in life but rare in movies, the good ones pay the highest price. His movies generally end bad but he'd love to change that. He tries not to show all the killings because an ongoing shock would tire people, it's better to leave space for imagination, he tries to show as little violence as possible. The created world may be dystopian but the burning of bodies, rapes, disappearances are nothing new. "I think the movie isn't very violent, it's just a small piece." "I like the cinematic challenge of pushing to the extreme." "A movie should be complex enough, even contradict itself." - he trusts the intelligence of the audience. At the same time, "It was such a big effort" to make the movie. Achieving credibility with low budget was the hardest. The story starts with a wedding, because such an event showcases social disparities. Former militaries acted in the scenes in the barracks so he didn't need to direct them but e.g. at lunch he wouldn't mix the military with actors. The actors understood the idea, they all thought: "How come it's not happening?" In his view, the status quo won't last. In the film he included references to books, mostly by Vargas Llosa, "Blindness" by Saramago or "1984" but also a reference to the still shots of the Yellow Vests and the damages after a weekend of their protests. As for the green paint, it's the colour of the Mexican flag, it's also very cinematic, e.g. the water in the tap, which leaves doubt as to whether the woman has seen it or has imagined it. It helped showing the spread of the revolt as well. He concluded it had been the longest Q&A session he'd ever had - over an hour - but he found it flattering.
My own European impression is that the movie does contain a number of gruesome images and I don't see the class issues as big problems but we don't have such huge economic disparities here, most of the population is middle-class and we're exposed to much less violence in Poland than in Central or South America.
THE WAR WITH GRANDPA
Recommended again. "The War with Grandpa" rocks! All the actors, whether young or old, famous or unknown, give strong performances. Situation humour, e.g. when the granddad hangs on the window pants down, and witty lines sounding even better in the translation than in English, since it makes use of Polish language puns, make this comedy a compelling escape. This time I spotted some subtle clues to Robert de Niro's earlier movies, e.g. "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull" and "The Irishman". And the parental tips from the movie make sense too.
УРОКИ ФАРСИ (PERSIAN LESSONS)
Recommended. The opening informs you the main protagonist is going to survive but the gripping story, with a number of twists maintaining tension, makes you quickly forget this certainty. The movie's Russian-Belarusian but you forget that in the first minute, so much effort has been put into language credibility when the characters speak French, German or Italian. Hairstyles of the time disguise them further. Plot-wise, not only is the story unusual, also Nazis are presented as individual people, with their own personalities, dreams and aspirations, not a mass embodying evil as it's common in other films of the genre. Technically, the sound is so authentic at some point I thought someone fell asleep in the audience since snoring surrounded me perfectly but it was just a night scene with people sound asleep in the barrack. Smart dialogue is the icing on the cake.
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