#drinking games

Trains can symbolize many things: the boundless possibility of a journey, the forced mass-relocation of people. But one thing they often are is regular and predictable. As it traces an elliptical narrative structure equal parts noir and psychological drama, the film’s title character charts change from the close of WWII to the beginning of the end of the USSR. Haunted nightly by childhood memories of the expulsion of Germans from the former Czechoslovakia and now witnessing the Russian presence beginning to pull up stakes, Alois Nebel’s existence is a somewhat liminal one. Drifting from his remote station to Prague and eventually back, his specific story is at once detached from others and densely and texturally invested in the implications and ripple effects of those times. As a narrative, it is enigmatic, almost opaque at points, but as in a dream a sense of rhythm and structure begins to emerge from the repeated visions which awaken Nebel each night. Even trains stop now and again, and the abandonment of the tracks by Nebel and his on-and-off beau Květa for a stormy trek across country indicates a change in pattern for both moving forward into an uncertain future.

Rotoscoped from live performances in black and white, this uses that means more effectively perhaps than Through a Scanner Darkly, but with a less atmospheric and artistic flourish than the filmmakers behind Loving Vincent and The Peasants. This is a harsh world of stark blacks and whites, and hard shadows. A side-effect of this, perhaps intentionally, perhaps animation-induced face blindness, is a homogenization of the story across generations. In part revenge tale, do the sins of the father fall onto the son if they appear so similar to one another? Will this be perpetuated forever?

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that the weird little pies on all of the tables were in fact ashtrays.

THE RULES

SIP

Time jump.

A shipment of smuggled goods is dropped off.

A train dream starts.

BIG DRINK

Someone shuts off a dripping faucet.

Here, every frame is literally a painting. The rotoscoped oils of this village cycle make for a sumptuous visual experience through and through. The swirls of color heighten moments of passion, an impassioned dance seeming to leap out of the frame, or render uglier beats of hive-mind hatred. As it charts the turning of the seasons, the animation allows for some bravura flourishes, the camera pulling back from Jagna's marital bed into the countryside as the landscape frosts over and turns wintry, or Boryna on his deathbed summoned out to the fields one last time by a curling mist. The hand-drawn style still allows for details of facial expression, curls of the lip or arches of the brow still adding depth to character. Overall the style evokes artworks such as van Gogh’s “The Sower” or Millet’s “The Gleaners" in the brushstroke-heavy mode and rich color palettes used to capture the landscape.

Which brings us to the narrative this is in service of, where my interest drops off. Having not read the Nobel Prize-winning source novel, this feels overly episodic and without real connective tissue. We are told that Jagna has the unfair reputation of being the town tart, and as her situation worsens this becomes a cavalcade of cruelty and misery porn. But to what end? To point out that women are often disproportionally blamed for the sexual improprieties of men? To emphasize that these people, when subject to the whims of those more powerful, turn on someone more vulnerable as a punching bag for vitriol and hate? The film can be punishing in that regard, but without a clear sense of directionality. Jagna emerges cleansed and uncertain and yet with a mode of freedom, but to what end.

The score furnished by Łukasz Rosktowski is an absolute top-to-bottom banger. Fucking perfect. A rich folk score, drawing heavily from songs and leaning into a vocal texture which suggests the village operating as one organism, for good or ill.

THE RULES

SIP

Jagna makes paper cutout art.

Marriage is mentioned.

Villagers strike up music.

BIG DRINK

A season intertitle appears.

Love can be a ghost story or a Rorschach test. Or perhaps just losing your mind. Returning to Budapest from the United States seeking a new relationship with a brief acquaintance whom she is convinced is the love of her life, Márta rushes to their agreed upon rendezvous at the Liberty Bridge. But this film, as the vagaries of its title suggest, resists simple romantic gestures. What unfolds for Márta is a quietly noir-inflected exploration of uncertainty. Does she love this man? Who is he really? Glimpses of János hover at the periphery for Márta, whether through a bus window or as a face in a crowd at a concert. Is this János, or some other man? Is János a construct? Soft focused images of nondescript facial features—so many brown-haired, bearded men to be seen—underline Márta’s uncertainty, both in what she desires and how she views the world. The camera and editing lean into this, interspersed psychiatric evaluations casting the shadow of a doubt on the veracity or nature of Márta’s mental state. She winds through monotonous, circular hallways or ascends spiral staircases, a subtly Lynchian sensibility to these moments creating even more of a dreamlike atmosphere. But is János’ ephemeral presence suggestive of an illusion, or is this just an extremely depressed woman living in a barely furnished, shabby apartment trying to find a concrete, external explanation for the emotions with which she’s struggling? Their relationship at points feels like the ink-blot exam that her psychiatrist administers: mirrored bodies imitating one another, each reaching out in imitation as they try to grapple with separate issues. They walk on opposite sides of the street, coy and avoidant. And when it comes to sex, they must first copy one another from far sides of the room before converging. Sometimes János is just what Márta wants, a quietly warm and reassuring presence with whom she can role-play the domestic couple as they search for furniture. But elsewhere she cannot bear to face him, lest it make her complicated feelings too unbearable. The final image is a strange one, but oddly compelling in this sense. An audio speaker being brought into Márta’s apartment, too large for the doorway, is instead hoisted up to go through a window. It hangs there, outside the window, dangling from a rope slung over a pole. The speaker is a gift from János, a gesture of goodwill and a tacit implication of a hope for a deeper relationship. But it’s just stranded there. Will it be welcomed inside, or will it crash down onto the street? Perhaps that’s not something Márta can control at this moment.

A single piece of music haunts the film. I believe it’s the Schubert Lied “Die Forelle.” It represents Márta’s fixation on János (as he sang it in a childhood concert which she watches recordings of repeatedly) and informs in deconstructed sense the score. This sort of dissection is exactly what Márta seeks to do with the relationship, though it isn’t like one of her neurosurgery cases.

THE RULES

A hospital sign appears onscreen.

We catch a glimpse of János.

Phone hold music starts to play.

BIG DRINK

Characters view the Liberty Bridge.

Eating disorders and mental illness are no joke, but this clinic’s approach to treating them sure is. Following a cohort of patients with myriad behaviors in a mental institution, this would be one of those “lunatics running the asylum” scenarios but for the empathy Park Chan-wook’s film exudes for them. There’s screwball comedy to be found here: group therapy sessions quickly devolve into mutual accusations of wild scenarios, and any manner of locomotion, from skipping to rolling, is equally likely. But as we meet apparent cyborg Young-goon’s peers we come to delight in their personalities, from a man who apologizes for everything because surely it’s his fault to a prolific fibber who concocts wild back-stories for everything. Crucial to Young-goon’s experience there, and to her journey toward both being comfortable eating again and also coming to terms with her connection to her grandmother, is Il-soon, who steals everything up to others’ personality traits. This becomes a sort of empathy exercise, Young-goon wrestling with her cyborg Deadly Sin which rejects sympathy for others, and Il-soon working out ways to get her to eat through the contrivance of a machine which converts rice into energy. The imaginative empathy is all the more moving in contrast with what the institution has to offer. While soft-pedaled, this humanistic connection is contrasted with practices which are ethically grey at best, cruel at worst: patients are subjected to electroshock therapy for their ailments, or force-fed if they decide not to eat. In this scenario, personal connection bests anonymous, robotic treatment.

With a whimsical production design, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay is prone to double-edged flights of fancy. A sequence of electroshock therapy becomes a sort of cyborg treatment chamber in Young-goon’s head, and later when confined she is whisked away with the help of static-charged socks for a rendezvous with the grandmother whose dentures she’s been trying to return for ages. They talk briefly before grandma is yeeted into the air by an elastic band. This comical recreation of her vanishing in an ambulance is quickly followed by a more somber impromptu memorial service in the forest, two ways of presenting death and grieving. This blending of reality with perception never vanishes, but Young-goon is finding new ways to interact with the world around her, and she’s got someone with her to help. She feels compelled to use a lightning rod to realize her destiny of blowing up the world, but Il-soon protects her with a cork atop the rod.

Park Chan-wook’s filmmaking has such a density within frame as to create a sense of constant, propulsive movement. Especially in the opening sequence this presents incredibly kinetic storytelling, whether it’s jumping back and forth between timelines even within a single phrase, or acquainting the viewer with the world of the mental hospital by means of a cold plunge into a gleefully chaotic space. This busy, almost overwhelming style by contrast feels like a deep sigh when it allows for quieter moments to develop: Young-goon communes with the vending machines of the hospital, and when Il-soon first sees her do this, he sneaks a coin into the payment slot to make her summoning of tea a reality. It’s a small gesture, but one that suggests what their emotional journey and growth will be together.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'radish', 'thief', or 'dentures'.

Rabbit mask bi-color vision moment.

Light-up toes.

BIG DRINK

A time jump occurs in the narrative.

Someone takes out dentures.

Even without the rodents, Hamelin is a den of greed and debauchery. Jiří Barta's evocative retelling of the classic legend immerses the viewer in a world of cruelty. The town is an industrious place, rising each morning like clockwork and carrying out repetitive tasks. But it is populated by people motivated by one thing: material wealth. Haggling can turn into a brawl, and vendors carry out petty little acts, whether stealing back the flour they "sold" or modifying jewelry to inflict injury. Rats arrive as a sort of divine retribution, industrious in their own sense as they wreak havoc and steal the wealth everyone venerates above all else. There is only one glimmer of purity in Hamelin in the form of a pious, soft-spoken woman. She resembles a china doll whereas everyone else is a caricature hewn from clay and wood. Perhaps the ultimate testimony of her character is that she connects with the mysterious Pied Piper who arrives to balance the scales. Hamelin's rescinding of their bounty promised him is a rude rebuffing, but it's the debauched murder of this woman which pushes him over the edge. Rather than with the original, revenge happens against the villagers themselves, driving them to the same fate as the rats. There would be no space for children in a community this greedy, after all.

Evoking German Expressionism, Barta crafts a clockwork hell where beauty is rarely glimpsed in flashes of nature. An earthy palette and twisting, distorted perspective render Hamelin a nightmare, a vortex of iniquity. But there's a humor to it as well: gibberish dialogue gives key characters instant character, from the foppish tailor to the boorish jeweler to the psychotic butcher. The coin-minter... yeah. The Piper himself feels like a classic Tim Burton character, sinister yet tragic. I CAN FIX HIM!

THE RULES

SIP

A guild insignia appears onscreen.

Gears turning.

A mouse runs off with something.

BIG DRINK

Push in on a minted coin.

This is quietly a body-horror film. Sylvain Chomet’s pantomime farce reflects on the strangeness of the human body through exaggeration: years of training as a cyclist turns ‘Champion’ into a long-schnozzed freak who is 90% calves and quads, and the French mafia consist of tri-bodied entities of henchmen and boss who fuse into one form like Lego bricks. Champion’s grandmother Mme Souza’s eyes blink like lamps from behind her glasses, and her jack-of-all-trades dog is a bowling ball. Buxom women and large-toothed celebrities are the standard of beauty in this vision of the world. The Triplets of Belleville pushes this exaggeration into a sort of reverse anthropomorphism: cyclists take on the vague appearance and whinnying of horses in the mob boss’ strange Zwift-anticipating cycling game, and the mechanic who created the contraption is mousey in every regard. All of these antics are grafted onto an environment which feels like an extension of Jacques Tati’s Playtime (the director explicitly called out in a poster on the wall of the Triplets’ flophouse apartment), Belleville pushing the urban density of Manhattan onto the rugged terrain and Old World architectural flourishes of Québec City. An intricately choreographed chaos of traffic and city life has a sense of zany logic to it, interrupted by the parody of mob violence that is the final pursuit, treating limousines like dominos or other such toys. It’s a singular delight, expressing a creative vision in the way only animation can achieve.

While the heyday of fame may have left them behind, nothing sustains the Triplets quite like a good tune. Charming musical sequences pepper the mystery, a mashup of 1930s jazz with a touch of Latin flair. Improvisatory instrumentation—vacuum hoses, refrigerator shelves, the badly trued spokes of a bicycle wheel—create a sense of spontaneity which is impossible not to tap your toe to. I’d say the sisters have impeccable taste, but, well.. there’s no accounting for the frogs of it all.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone rolls a cigarette.

The dog starts barking at the train.

BUTTS

BIG DRINK

Frogs are food.

People start performing music.

How does one interpret The Odyssey while extricating all supernatural elements and digging into the interpersonal core of the finale? The first interaction between Penelope and Odysseus is a masterclass in subtext and a dissection of how two people might start to prod at one another when they have been apart for decades, suspicious and yet attentive. There is so much intimacy and suspicion between Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes that cannot be understated, layers of knowing and denial. Penelope has waited for Odysseus’ return all of these years. She has suffered. What did Odysseus do in Troy? What crimes did he commit? Penelope confronts this seeming stranger about it, but how much of her heart knows that this is him? Can she bring herself to admit that? Avoidant eyelines define both performance and camera language, which are countered in later conversations when the truth finally comes to light. Odysseus makes choices which directly affect his ability to return home, whether jeering at Polyphemus after escaping his cave or falling asleep and allowing his men to butcher the cattle of the Sun. But that is all in the past now and never touched upon in this adaptation. Instead we are left with Odysseus the man rather than the myth, and forced to sort out his choices and sins.

They really were just doing anything with cloth and calling it an outfit back in the day, weren’t they. All of the cloth wraps and scraps of this vision of Greece clash against fuck-ass haircuts in some cases, though at the very least we avoid any broccoli fades. That will be the true death knell of the period piece. One thing is for sure, though: absolutely no chance Matt Damon hangs dong like Fiennes did here.

THE RULES

SIP

Loom closeup.

Antinous starts to lecture Telemachus.

Caprine imagery.

BIG DRINK

Dong.

Someone dies.