0507 – La cité des enfants perdus / The City of Lost Children (1995)

The City of Lost Children (French: La cité des enfants perdus) is a 1995 dystopian/ science fantasy/ steampunk/ drama film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Gilles Adrien, and starring Ron Perlman. An international co-production of companies from France, Germany, and Spain, the film is stylistically related to the previous and subsequent Jeunet films, Delicatessen and Amélie. The musical score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti  with costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Interpretation       imdb

0506 – Saul fia / Son of Saul (2015)

spacetime coordinates:  Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Poland  6 – 7 October 1944

Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul fia) is a 2015 Hungarian drama film directed by László Nemes and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer. It is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and follows a day-and-a-half in the life of Saul Ausländer (played by Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando. The film’s many historical sources included the personal accounts of Schlomo Venezia and Filip Müller, the records of Miklos Nyiszli, a Romanian-Jewish doctor who was forced to work in the crematoria, and Claude Lanzmann‘s Shoah (1985).

During the preparation, director László Nemes, cinematographer Mátyás Erdély and production designer László Rajk made a pledge to stick to certain rules, or a “dogma”, which included: The film cannot look beautiful. // The film cannot look appealing. // We cannot make a horror film. // Staying with Saul means not going beyond his own field of vision, hearing, or presence. // The camera is his companion, it stays with him throughout this hell.

The film took five months of sound design, where human voices in eight languages were recorded and attached to the original recording of the production. Sound designer Tamás Zányi described the sound in the film “as a sort of acoustic counterpoint to the intentionally narrowed imagery”. The music score by László Melis is intentionally kept so subtle that viewers won’t even notice it. (read more: imdb, wiki)

The film follows the same stylistic approach as László Nemes’ first and most successful short film Türelem (2007). In the short, the camera follows a woman proceed with her daily work routine with a very narrow focus and vision, until she walks up to a window and sees a group of Jewish prisoners stripped down by Sonderkommando prisoners and SS officers. The short is available online HERE.

505 – Downsizing (2017)

spacetime coordinates: near future Norway / NebraskaDownsizing is a 2017 american science fiction  / high-concept social satire / comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by Payne and Jim Taylor and starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, and Kristen Wiig. It tells the story of a couple who decide to undertake a newly-invented procedure to shrink their bodies so they can start a new life in an experimental community.

Starting with Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, there exists a rich literature as well as many films dealing with mini-humans usually called dwarfs. The idea of shrinking human bodies in order to reduce the consumption of raw materials available on earth necessary for the life of mankind was presented for the first time in the novel Das Miniatom-Projekt (2006) by Richard M. Weiner. In the novel the miniaturization takes place at CERN by decreasing the sizes of atoms with the help of the world’s biggest particle accelerator, while in the Downsizing film the shrinkage is performed by bio-medical methods, by decreasing the sizes of cells.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/

0504 – Jumanji

spacetime coordinates: New Hampshire 1869 / 1969 / 1995 / 1996 / 2016

Jumanji is a 1995 American fantasy adventure film directed by Joe Johnston. It is an adaptation of the 1981 children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. The film was written by Van Allsburg, Greg Taylor, Jonathan Hensleigh, and Jim Strain and stars Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, David Alan Grier, Jonathan Hyde, and Bebe Neuwirth.

The story centers on 12-year-old Alan Parrish, who becomes trapped in a board game while playing with his best friend Sarah Whittle in 1969. Twenty-six years later, in 1995, siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd find the game, begin playing and then unwittingly release the now-adult Alan. After tracking down Sarah, the quartet resolve to finish the game in order to reverse all of the destruction it has caused.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113497/

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a 2017 American adventure comedy film directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg, and Jeff Pinkner, from a story by McKenna. It is a part of the Jumanji franchise, serving as a sequel to Jumanji (1995). The film stars Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, and Bobby Cannavale.

Set twenty-one years after the first film, the plot follows four teenagers who are transported into the video game world of Jumanji, playing as the characters they chose. Uniting with another player, they must overcome the game’s magical power in order to win and return home.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2283362/

+ Sequel +

503 – I Sell the Dead (2008)

spacetime coordinates:  early 1800s Ireland I Sell the Dead is a 2008 horror comedy, the feature film debut from Irish director Glenn McQuaid.  The film is a period horror comedy about grave robbing  and supernatural hijinks inspired by the story of William Burke and William Hare, the famous body snatchers that operated in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early 1800s. the movie stars Dominic Monaghan, Ron Perlman, Larry Fessenden and Angus Scrimm.

A graphic novel of the film has been released, with Glenn McQuaid writing and illustrations by Brahm Revel (October, 2009).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0902290/

502 – El cuerpo / The Body (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 2012 Barcelona Spain

The Body (Spanish: El cuerpo) is a 2012 Spanish crime thriller mystery film directed by Oriol Paulo. The plot follows a detective searching for the body of a femme fatale which has gone missing from a morgue.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1937149/

501

Excerpt from Examined Life, 2008. (imdb)

Slavoj Zizek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

Slavoj Žižek on CBC radio

Political Correctness Is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism