Well, spring is here, finally, which should be a great thing. For some reason, though, this always seems to be the most hectic time of the year for me. It’s the middle of the semester and a bunch of exams and essays for various courses all need to be written at the same time. That probably isn’t entirely true, but since I don’t know how to plan my time, that’s what it ends up feeling like. Today I handed in a take-home exam I’ve been working on all week, and next week I have an oral presentation I’ve barely started working on yet. That’s all for gender studies. I also need to hand in another Slovene translation sometime soon, as well as finish that political science thesis…
Chances are this site won’t be updated very often this spring. Since it hasn’t really got going anyway, and I haven’t informed everybody of its existence yet (I kinda wanted to get into a habit of posting regularly first), that’s probably all for the good. I’ll make sure to regather some strength in the summer (going to Slovenia as usual) and come back here with new energy. I’ll check in here once in a while, though, whenever I have something I just have to get off my chest. As for right now, I have to go and translate some Slovene poems into Swedish. Oh joy.
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Just because the Oscar race is over doesn’t mean I have stopped watching films. Here are some short reviews of a few of the films I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks. I have also set up a Film Review Archive, where you can see what I thought of some this year’s Oscar winners and nominees. Mostly only ratings there so far, but that should change as I add reviews for the new films I see.
Paradise Now
This film deals with the topic of suicide bombings without asking you to sympathise with one particular side. Yes, it humanizes suicide bombers, but the feeling it evokes towards the main characters is not sympathy, but pity, and it delivers a fair share of criticisism to everyone involved in the ongoing conflict. A surprisingly intriguing story which had me captivated all the way to the end.
V for Vendetta
Think Nineteen Eighty-Four with a hint of The Phantom of the Opera and The Scarlet Pimpernel and you should have a pretty good idea of what this film is about. I sincerely hope that the Wachowski-haters out there don’t write this off as another The Matrix, because V for Vendetta is very different from that franchise. There are no overly long fight scenes here, and on top of being a visual masterpiece it also has a skilfully told story and a highly relevant political message. The film’s anarchic undertones may be uncomfortable to some, but it brings up some difficult issues in a thoughtful and provocative way. I’m not at all familiar with the graphic novel by Alan Moore, but as a fan of dystopian fiction à la Orwell and Huxley, I loved every minute of this film.
Keane
The best portrayal of mental illness I’ve seen in a long time. Even though we are never told what the protagonist, a man named William Keane, suffers from, it seems to me that he’s a paranoid schizophrenic. The story follows Keane as he desperately tries to function in the world, and as he searches for his missing daughter. Whether or not she is real, we don’t know. Damian Lewis does an excellent job in the leading role. His face is on camera most of the time throughout the film, and since there is no music present, the suspense relies entirely on the viewer being able to read Lewis’ gestures and facial expressions. Writer and director Lodge Kerrigan seems to like this type of story-telling, as his previous two films, Clean, Shaven (which also deals with schizophrenia) and Claire Dolan, also feature characters who won’t let us know what they’re thinking, forcing us to pay attention and decide for ourselves. It’s a style probably not appreciated by everybody, but I like it.
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