Dionysos

This film is definitely not about uncovering the obvious or hidden faces of Stalinism, but rather about gaining insight into the life of police investigator Lapshin and his friend - and yes, insight into the 1930s, but I would rather not draw complex judgments about this time period from this film. It's not so much about the time period but about a person. A person searching for happiness and security in the face of a harsh and insensitive world that he knows from his everyday work and his past life (and here, the "time period" plays a role). A person whom we are waiting to see if friendship and love will finally help him emerge from loneliness. Despite the mostly black-and-white camera and the omnipresent Russian winter and gloom that engulfs the viewer (and despite the somewhat disorganized first half), the film creates a nostalgic, sensitive, and perceptive atmosphere, best illustrated by the opening scene of the people getting to know each other when the camera familiarly examines and passes through a series of details in the narrator's story (the son of Lapshin's friend) while leaving the "big" outside world behind his windows.

In a sensitive and peaceful spirit, Olmi reconstructs the vanished Europe divided between the agrarian and industrial eras, with factories and the world that comes with them only vaguely and somewhat ominously outlined on the horizon for our protagonists. Today's Europeans can only imagine what it was like when countless estates, mills, fields and gardens, churches, roads, and paths were scattered throughout the countryside, where people worked and lived at an unchanged pace for generations. However, idealization is not appropriate (and credit to the director for not forcing it into the film) – people suffered from the injustice of the social order, were held captive by superstition, they certainly did not reject profit and money, and work was mainly seen as a duty. Yet what can be done when they did everything in their lives with such simple sincerity that no one has today?!

A classically edited documentary about Scottish documentarian John Grierson. The film follows the entire life path of this significant creator, who is credited with pioneering the concept of a "documentary" as we know it today. From his difficult and visionary beginnings at home in Britain, to his equally groundbreaking and innovative work at the Canadian public production body, the National Film Board of Canada, to the period of post-war North American anticommunist hysteria, which did not spare Grierson – from his youth as a supporter of strongly left-wing views in Western society, which always drove him to work on in-depth portrayals of societal reality. After the war, there was a decline, but this progressive creator eventually received full recognition, albeit later in life.

There is nothing easier than living with the idea of ​​taking everything around you for granted. So, what if a person starts thinking about all of this? What if the automated processes start to falter, what if the everyday reproduction of our social (and production) relationships starts to stumble? Well, nothing, I'll light a cigarette. Or I'll watch TV - thanks to modernization, everyone can afford it (even those who can't afford LSD). Advertising dreams are also dreams, and it's easy to forget things when you have them. Then a person doesn't even notice that their house is just another box of laundry detergent... The traditionally Godard-like sociological/ethnographic view of the film's protagonists, determined by the environment in which they live (on a lower level, Parisian suburbs, on a higher level, capitalist social formation), is enriched by a revolutionary approach to the relationship between the author-artist and their work. Thanks to the unique incorporation of voice-overs into the film, the artist establishes new connections and questions between themselves and the viewer, making conventional approaches unthinkable. Or, reflexive film sociology, in which Jean-Luc Godard examines the subject captured by artistic representation as if it were of scientific interest, and through this process, himself as the creator of the work - the artist, immersed in his time, just like Marina Vlady. /// The creativity with form and mise-en-scène is then taken to perfection - consider the famous example with the detail of coffee foam symbolizing the transience of human consciousness or M. Vlady's morning awakening, when the flag of France is unfolded from her pillow and blanket - indicating that what the film showed us in the case of the Parisian housing estate definitely does not apply to it alone.

Fighting against fascism in Spain is difficult, but fighting against a worldwide, amorphous fascism without a name and without borders is even harder. It is no wonder that in such a paranoid and hopeless battle, people start to commit (suicide) murders. In the face of an apparently non-existent enemy, even more internal strength, perseverance, and inner determination are necessary, which not everyone can bear. The test may come soon, perhaps during rehearsing an unpromising Shakespeare play. Who will prevail? Is it the effort to make a play according to one's own conviction, even if it may be less palatable and economically unprofitable for the audience, or surrendering to the dictate of external forces? Maybe they are the enemy we have been trying to see all along. (Or maybe not, who knows what Rivette wanted to say...)

Katrin Lot, the wife of Navy officer Richard Lot, begins seeking a divorce after years of marriage. She has made this decision because she feels that their relationship no longer has any love in it and that maintaining it would necessitate mutual deception and pretense. However, her husband, primarily out of fear for his promising career, disagrees with the divorce and therefore disguises himself under the cloak of morality, which becomes nothing more than a false and superficial cover. Unfortunately for her, the majority of people in Katrin's surroundings also stand behind the same moral barrier out of convenience or resentment, turning her struggle for divorce into a battle against societal prejudices. After a very weak and drawn-out first half of the movie, which was only enlivened by a few games with form, the quality surprisingly improved when Katrin found herself in conflict with colleagues, the law, and the courts.

This film serves as a warning for those who have forgotten how to live after May in the same way they lived during May. At the same time, it is a challenge for those who want to live according to May, even after it, even though they do not yet know what it means. It is because May 1968 was never meant to be the end, but the beginning (similarly to how the events of The Chinese were only the first steps for students discovering revolutionary ideas). Similarly, the story of Him and Her is a movement from the "revolutionary" spring to the gray reality of 1972, where May mainly serves to make one realize what it was all about. It showed the willingness of some to fight for something new, and the willingness of others to maintain the status quo. The disillusionment with the failure of the labor unions, the communist party, and the uncertainty about one's own ideals from May are thus at the beginning of what everyone (in this case, left-wing intellectuals) should realize - it's about finding new content and new forms, outside the framework of the capitalist consumerist system. P.S. The greater responsibility for this film lies more with Gorin than with Godard.

Anyone who wants to watch this film as an "ordinary" crime thriller about a person's disappearance in a deserted town somewhere in the depths of Russia will surely be disappointed. However, surprisingly, there is no mention of a thriller or crime in the film's description, as it is in fact described as a drama and as mysterious. It is actually better to look for something else in the film rather than just the tension of the investigation, which should definitely not be the main focus. Successful singer Ljuba, after climbing up the social ladder, wants to leave Russia, but she has no idea that the country she grew up in won't let her go that easily. She wanted to sing solo, but she forgot that in places like Yuryev and in a place like Russia, there is no place for soloists, at least if they still want to be true Russians (and not just quote Chekhov and others from memory). When she sang alone, she lost her voice. When she finds her way into the choir, she may still have hope of getting her son back someday.

Defiance and rebellion of the youth against society and the system, constrained by outdated conventions and social order symbolizing the shackles of justice and freedom. The two main characters embody the bitterness and strength of the entire movement, which emerged in the West and particularly in the USA in the late 60s. The young man, Mark, idealistic yet energetic, is determined and capable of taking action for change (albeit naïve). The girl, Daria, instinctively feels the same resistance to the state of society but seeks relief in escape (through meditation, music, and fantasies) instead of action. Their paths briefly merge, and both fully enjoy the experience of being a young attractive man and a young beautiful girl in the era of hippies.... But then a turning point must come, just as a turning point had to come in the history of the movement. The one who decided to actively act against the system must inevitably be destroyed by the system, given the overall circumstances. The one who decided to "move forward" embodies all those who, either on their own or under external pressures, have grown out of their (simplistically speaking) "hippie intoxication" or had to give it up. The destruction of the old society and its system remained forever only in their imaginations. (P.S. - In the better case, they later paradoxically became yuppies, young consumer-oriented ambitious members of the upper class who fully identified with the main social characteristics they had fought against in their early youth.)

A film about a woman lost in an endlessly modernizing world, at a time when technological advancement is supposed to benefit humanity, but at the same time can quickly turn against it and crush it with its vastness, even if not literally, then at least internally. Perhaps Monica Vitti felt something similar, realizing her insignificance compared to the giant factories, towering towers, or rushing trucks. Her hypersensitive soul, inevitably generating fear for everything close to her, does not fit into this world, where everything is constantly on the move and where it cannot hold on firmly. She would like to somehow reverse the scales back to the state when she was close to people, to bring back the intimacy between them, instead of the measurements of her industrial epoch, in which humans are powerless and tiny compared to their creations, mere servants and maintainers of something they have created but no longer control.