Sunday, December 10, 2006

the host, shoot the piano player, the steel helmet


The Host
d. Bong Joon-ho, 2006

One of the most acclaimed films of the year amongst serious cinephiles (though it won't actually be released in the States this year), The Host is an unlikely success. Ostensibly a movie about a monster and its effects on South Korea, it turns out to be more of an exercise on how audiences will react to such a story. Beautifully directed, The Host effortlessly carries the viewer through its involving story. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie, let alone one about a monster.

Shoot the Piano Player d. Francois Truffaut, 1960

Made a year before Jules and Jim (Truffaut's greatest film), Shoot the Piano Player is somewhat less serious--at least during its first hour or so--and more playful than Truffaut's other works of the time (1959's The 400 Blows and 1961's aforementioned Jules and Jim). The film tells the story of a shy and reserved piano player who gets involved in a tricky crime story through his careless brother. More than that, however, Truffaut is using this vehicle--which he adapted from a crime novel--to craft a carefully observed character study. Clearly the pioneer of other noir deconstructions (The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, or even Bonnie and Clyde, which Truffaut was at one point set to direct), Shoot the Piano Player has its cake and eats it too--it manages to be gritty noir while at the same time revealing the deep insecurities behind typical crime-movie leads. If for nothing else (though there clearly is a lot more), the movie is a masterpiece for Raoul Coutard's cinematography and Georges Deleure's score. Oh, and the last act is to die for.

The Steel Helmet
d. Samuel Fuller, 1951

Two years before tackling the New York crime scene with Pickup on South Street (arguably his biggest success), Samuel Fuller made a more savage and gritty film, 1951's Korean war movie The Steel Helmet. It seems senseless to try to explain in words why this movie is so great, as it's more a film to be experienced than one to be analyed. Suffice it to say, Fuller's take on the subject of war is like none I've ever seen before, and like none we're likely to ever see in American movie theatres. His film isn't about heroism, but about a group of men that, for better or worse (probably the latter), are fighting a war that they neither care about nor fully understand. 55 years after its original release, it remains a relevant and poignant account of the madness of war.