#moview

The Boy In The Woods will be screened at Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax on September 19, 2023.

Colectiv (Collective), 2019, Alexander Nanau, documentary

Most of my entries are quite positive but unfortunately not this one. I saw this movie a few months ago and unfortunately, the longer I thought about this film, the less I appreciated it. Even during the movie, I had to stop from time to time to recollect myself because I got so annoyed by this film.

So the documentary has in focus the aftermath of the fire from a club from Bucharest in 2015 that claimed the life of many young people. Although many died during the fire, a lot more died the following days in the hospitals due to poor conditions, insufficient and inadequate resources and as the movie uncovers, a corrupt system that kept hidden all those problems.

I remember very well the night the accident happened, and the national heartbreak as daily more and more deceased were announced. I also remember the public outrage, which for many middle-class Romanians was a sort of political awakening and call for action, which unfortunately got limited in its scope over time. I remember the protests in the streets and the hope we got when the government fell, and how people were discussing further demands and ways of organizing politically.

Although the film is called Collective, after the club that burned, the documentary has in focus a handful of journalists who investigate the corruption that hid behind the death toll from the hospitals on the one hand, and one politician who was replacing temporary the Ministry of Health after the fall of the government.

The film starts with gruesome raw footage from the fire, which I have to say did not felt very comfortable watching and it felt like opening a closed wound. I don't think many will agree, but I felt the movie was kinda exploiting the macabre image of the fire that triggers a powerful emotional response as well as the image of the burnt victims without actually giving them much thought or voice. This is the main reason this documentary did not sit well with me. I felt when watching the film that the victims had no real agency, were never given a voice or a space to express themselves in any way. I felt that throughout the movie the victims were used as props, as passive objects to pity and not fully-fledged subjects within of a film focused on an accident in which they were directly involved. Although it is suggested, and the movie starts with them in focus, you soon realize that the stars of the movie are some journalists (for which I have all the respect) and one over his head politician, who is framed as some big saviour and tragic hero.

Here is where we arrive at my second issue with this movie, the obvious propagandistic overtone o the film. It seemed to me that the whole movie was constructed on a clear and simple narrative, in which Vlad Voiculescu was some sort of hero that was fighting a corrupt system. Especially the second part was dedicated almost exclusively to the mediocre politician image.

I knew basically nothing about this going in aside from the score, which I first heard because there’s a version of Ecstasy of Gold in the Metallica S&M Album. I was thinking “oh hey it’s an Olden Times film it’ll be like 1.5-2 hours long” no it is three hours long.

Being three hours long is pretty good. Despite there being a lot happening (they go all OVER the place in this movie) each individual scene is very methodical and well paced and it never feels like you’re being rushed from place to place. Lots of extended scenes that just serve to rack up tension, which is a great effect.

(I know this is considered to be like, the best spaghetti western ever made so saying good things about it is a little <Griffin McElroy> Pretty Good Statue!)

Angel Eyes is a very clear-cut antagonist, and according to the actor’s wikipedia page his extremely hard looking nose meant that he basically always got cast as a villain, which is hilarious.

I’ve seen so many like, caricature characters standing in for Clint Eastwood in representations of westerns that I kinda forgot that he actually just looks like that.

When I saw them blow up the bridge I realized “oh, that’s not a model, they blew up a real bridge for that, holy shit” and then I went to look it up and they actually blew up a real bridge twice because the first time round the blast destroyed the cameras.

It occurs to me that trying to put this movie on TV would have been a nightmare for almost half a century. It’s shot in massive widescreen and while some shots are really drawn back long shots, a lot of it is incredibly tight closeups and zooms, which, good luck pan-and-scanning that in a way that doesn’t suck, or broadcast it in widescreen at like 250 lines of resolution.

They really do play that musical motif throughout the entire movie. It’s not like it was one thing that was blown up into an outsized cultural memory it actually plays basically all the time whenever no one is talking. Also The Ecstasy of Gold makes sense in context now but also belongs to a much less dramatic scene than it sounds like it should given I’ve been hyping it up in my head for over a decade.

And since I ended the Alien review with a cat pic, here you go

Manga "Peacemaker Kurogane" anime film series announced and will premiere this year!

Studio White Fox is in-charge of the project!

<Cast> Tetsunosuke Ichimura (CV Yuuki Kaji) Peacemaker (CV Takahiro Sakurai)