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Friday, March 8, 2024

Shayda (2024): Sheltering Down Under

Once upon a time, for about forty years, I was a practicing lawyer specializing in family law (i.e. divorce and related stuff). Even so, despite my desire to help clients through tough circumstances, there was one subset of cases that I did not at all relish: those involving frustratingly intractable disputes over custody of young children,. Oftentimes at least one of the parents was so angry and/or narcissistic that they were totally incapable of considering the best interests of their child(ren), a situation that made any sort of negotiated resolution virtually impossible. Among the worst was the parent (typically a man) whose sense of entitlement was rooted in a cultural or religious viewpoint sharply at odds with Western norms and law. If these custody disputes were tough on me, the experience was always far worse for the person I was representing in such cases (typically a woman) – terrified for their child’s well-being and of a very real threat of physical violence to themselves from the disturbed former partner.  Their courage and determination always impressed me. 

Which brings me to Shayda, an excellent new movie about this subject  that's opening this weekend. It’s a story told not from the lawyer’s POV (thankfully) but through the experience of a mother and, remarkably and quite evocatively, sometimes through the eyes of her six-year-old daughter. And it sure rings true, both as a drama and a story of resilience and hope. The film premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award in the World Dramatic Competition. It was Australia’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category.  

Shayda is written and directed by Noora Niasari, born in Tehran but from a young age raised in Australia. Niasari recently won the 2023 award for Best Direction in a Feature Film from the Australian Directors’ Guild for this, her first feature film. All of these awards attest to the considerable strength and appeal of this movie. Its story is based to a considerable degree, on Niasari’s own childhood experiences. Here’s an excerpt from some of her  remarks on this:

    When I was five years old my first experience of freedom was inside an Australian women's shelter living alongside other women and children seeking a life without fear. 

    Despite being a world away from our family in Iran, my mother taught me how to speak Farsi, how to celebrate Nowruz [Persian New Year], how to Persian dance, read poetry and above all, she taught me about the resilience and strength of Iranian women.

    Women like my mother were ostracized [in Iran and the Iranian diaspora] for seeking basic human rights. The right to ask for divorce, to have custody over their children, to choose how they dress, to dance in the streets, to let their hair flow in the wind and exhale.  That's all my mother wanted, these basic freedoms, for herself and for her daughter. 

The mother in the film is Shayda, an Iranian woman who, along with daughter Mona, has accompanied her husband Hossein to Australia, where he is training to become an M.D.. Things have not gone well in their marriage, and by the time the film commences, Shayda and Mona are living in a women’s shelter. Over the course of the film, we will gain a better understanding of why.

Shayda’s fervent hope is to be free from her estranged husband and to make a better life for her daughter. But Hossein has other ideas.  

As the film opens, we meet Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and Mona (Selina Zahednia, amazing) in an airport with an Australian lady, who is leading the two of them around. She tells Mona (through Shayda) to look carefully at where they are at that moment and remember this place. Later we learn that the lady is Joyce (Leah Purcell), the director of the women’s shelter. Joyce tells Mona that if her father ever brings her here, she should run to one of the officers and ask for help.  She tells Shayda that if that were to happen Mona’s name is on a protected minors’ list, and the officers will detain her while they search this watchlist and then immediately contact the shelter when they find her name. They are at the airport because just the day before Hossein had suggested to Mona in a phone call that she would soon get to go on an airplane ride with him back “home” to see her beloved grandma – notwithstanding an apparent court restraining order prohibiting this. Shayda’s attempt to act calm and reassuring for a very worried looking Mona immediately crumbles, and she collapses in tears on a nearby bench. Without knowing much about their past, we are already drawn to both mother and daughter.

Only then are we introduced to the shelter. Eventually, we will learn why Shayda has fled there. At the shelter, we begin to see how both mother and child are anxiously and yet hopefully beginning a new life there - as are other women in a variety of analogous situations. Shayda has filed for divorce (which she never could have done in Iran). Although the legal proceedings are not shown, we soon learn, along with Shayda, that despite pleas from her representatives to limit Hossein’s contact with Mona, the court has allowed him unsupervised visitation rights of four hours a week with his daughter. This is disappointing to Shayda, but it gives us an opportunity to meet the guy, when she brings Mona to the designated meeting place in a shopping mall. 

At the first custody exchange, Hossein (Osamah Sami) looks nice and sincere. But he is thirty minutes late, an issue he shrugs off. And it soon becomes clear that Hossein‘s first priority is convincing his wife to drop the whole thing, reconcile with him and move back to Iran. He promises to change. He insists he still loves Shayda and that deep down she loves him back. Life together in Iran will be so much better and won’t it be great to be among family again? Oh, and by the way, you should know that people back home are talking about how shameful your actions have been, he adds. 

This sort of gambit happens all the time with controlling, abusive men in such situations. They truly believe the crap they are spieling. Shayda knows better, of course, and doesn’t bite. She departs as fast as she can. 

The shelter location is not known to Hossein, and Shayda is fearful of going out, even to the local bodega,  for fear of being seen by him or anyone who might know him. Eventually, like director Niasari’s mother, she does begin to explore, tentatively, the possibilities of her new freedom, dancing, letting her hair flow in the wind, meeting new people, exhaling. But with Hossein out there somewhere, it is still frightening. While initially Hossein presented as a possibly decent guy to us, with each succeeding custody exchange, he gets more insistent and scarier; and while we root for Shayda and Mona, we also worry for them. 

As Shayda, the award-winning Ebrahimi gives a nuanced, credible reading - expressing the character’s fear and distress, hope and joy, maternal love, concern and vigilance, together with remarkable courage and strength - all very naturally without a hint of affectation. It’s a poignant, sympathetic, ultimately uplifting bravura performance. All of the other key actors are very fine, as well.

Like the best international and cross-cultural films - films like Monsoon Wedding (2001), A Separation (2011), Roma (2018), The Farewell (2019) - Shayda has another dimension that adds to its interest. It gives us a chance to see aspects of another culture - with customs, attitudes and expectations quite different from, and sometimes surprisingly congruent with, our own – through the very human eyes and soul of a very relatable protagonist. Not anonymous members of a labelled group in some press report, not a stereotype, but rather someone not unlike ourselves, whose life may touch us.  

And in the person of Shayda, we get not just her relief in escaping a society that oppresses women like her, but a nostalgia and pride in the Persian heritage she has carried with her to Australia, represented by the songs and poetry she is passing on to Mona and the traditional celebration of Nahruz, the Persian New Year, in which they participate with other Iranian emigres.

In its portrayal of a woman trying not only to survive but to make a new life and thrive in the shadow of a breakup with a malevolent ex, Shayda brings to mind another memorable movie, the Irish film Herself (2020) starring the brilliant Clare Dunne - which is also well worth checking out, if you haven’t seen it. 

As a first feature, Shayda has a few weaknesses, most notably in the way we are just dropped into the opening scenes, which was a bit confusing at first. But overall it is an assured work - a fascinating, provocative, engaging, emotionally riveting picture with strong performances and characters you will not soon forget. You should check it out. 

1 hour 57 minutes Rated PG-13

Grade:  B+

Shayda has just commenced a rolling release – It opened in New York and L.A. on March 1; and is opening in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC. and several other cities this weekend (March 8), with more towns and venues added weekly.   To find the opening date for this film at a theater near you check Shayda’s official website HERE.  



Sunday, February 25, 2024

My Year In Movies 2023


by Larry Lee

I.

Was 2023 a good year for movies?  Many people have told me that it was, but perhaps they  are experiencing a “Barbenheimer” hangover.  For me, I think every year is a good year for movies.  That makes whittling things down to a “ten best” list a daunting and, really, impossible task.  To illustrate the problem, here are the top ten (or so) lists from four top film reviewers in the legacy print media, with some random comments:

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

  • Killers of the Flower Moon
  • Oppenheimer
  • Menus-plaisirs - Les Troisgros
  • Occupied City
  • A Thousand and One
  • Asteroid City
  • May December
  • Showing Up
  • Orlando, My Political Biography
  • Stonewalling

Comments:  This list includes just two movies that garnered Oscar nominations for Best Picture.  Oppenheimer is a good choice and will perhaps win the statuette in a few weeks.  Regarding Killers of the Flower Moon:  Ms. Dargis is the only one of my four selected professional film critics to name this film to their end-of-year list.  Its nomination was predictable given its production pedigree, its director (Martin Scorsese), its famous cast (DiCaprio, DeNiro), its subject matter, the publicity machine at its back; in short, its overall heft.  Many reviewers and critics have omitted Killers from their top ten lists, and readers patient enough to get to the end of this essay will note that it fails to make the grade from me as well.  I found Killers much, much too long, too repetitive, and given the confused, amoral simpleton at its center (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), not nearly as engaging as it should have been.  For those interested in

seeing a tight, engaging thriller about a different but very real problem affecting Native Americans with characters you care about, I recommend the outstanding Wind River (Prime rental) from 2017, with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.  You will be moved, informed, entertained, and spend almost two hours less in front of your TV than had you watched Killers of the Flower Moon

But back to Ms. Dargis’s list:  I don’t think it’s helpful to include movies that are not available to the general public, like Menus-plaisirs - Les Troisgros or Orlando, My Political Biography.  Sure, Ms. Dargis is in New York, enviable for its abundance of art house and repertory theaters, but inclusion of these movies on her list feels like some arty egghead, showing off.  Although some critics were impressed with Todd Haynes’ May December, I found it overrated, depressing and slightly boring, an unfortunate deviation from his previous efforts Far From Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), or even Dark Waters (2019).  Showing Up, the latest from “slow cinema” auteur Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy (2008), First Cow (2019)), boasted an A-list cast (Michelle Willians, Hong Chau), but seemed pointless.  And slow.

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

  • All of Us Strangers
  • The Boy and the Heron
  • The Zone of Interest
  • Oppenheimer
  • Showing Up
  • Afire
  • Past Lives
  • The Eight Mountains
  • De Humani Corporis Fabrica
  • Poor Things 

Comments:  This list, from a major newspaper in America’s second media center, is subject to the same access/availability criticism noted above (has anyone heard of, or seen De Humani Corporis Fabrica?  How could I even see that?) and repeats Ms. Dargis’s questionable admiration for the numbingly slow Showing Up.  But Mr. Chang’s list includes Past Lives and The Eight Mountains, two very good movies that appeared on my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list.  (See below.)  They slid out of my year-end top ten, but are well worth seeing.  Afire, Christian Petzold’s latest, was also a fine movie, and adds to his admirable recent oeuvre (Barbara (2012), Transit (2018), and Undine (2020)). 

Mr. Chang’s list also includes two films that have garnered much end-of-year, Oscar-season, praise: 

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things.  I understand the impulse to honor what is likely Miyazaki’s final work — he just turned 83 years old — after an enviable career of amazing animated features.  He won an Oscar for Spirited Away in 2003, was nominated for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and (my favorite) The Wind Rises in 2014.  He also won an Honorary Oscar in 2015.  But the animation in Heron is much like all of his previous works and the story felt random and borderline pointless.  Although Heron is nominated for the Animated Feature Film Oscar, a better choice would be Spider-Man: Across the SpiderVerse: more creative animation and a much more engaging story. 

Poor Things, nominated for Best Picture, also deserves comment.  Although admittedly a movie of great visual creativity, this fractured take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein took, for me, an unfortunate turn when Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter character, who has a child’s brain in a full-grown woman’s body, discovers carnal pleasure.  Although I admire the commitment Stone, as an actor, showed this character, as well as her trust in director Lanthimos, I felt the movie at that point became overly prurient, and thus less interesting and less enjoyable.  Although I understand the Bella character is learning about everything the world, being a human, and a woman for the first time, I felt the movie devolved into Bella just learning about, and enjoying, sex.  One struggles to recall a nominee for the Academy’s top prize that had as much sex and nudity.  

Barbie (not on Mr. Chang’s list) was the year’s most audacious movie, calling out mindless patriarchy and pervasive misogyny in a most unique and entertaining way.  But in a year where the director/creator (Greta Gerwig) and star (Margot Robbie) were inexplicably left on the outside of Oscar looking in, that Poor Things, a movie where a woman toys with a man using her sexual availability and then survives in the world by having sex for money, received multiple nominations is extremely disappointing.   

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

  • American Fiction
  • The Holdovers
  • You Hurt My Feelings
  • Anatomy of a Fall
  • Barbie
  • Oppenheimer
  • Joan Baez: I Am a Noise
  • Past Lives
  • Reality
  • Air
  • Origin

Comment: Ms. Hornaday, WaPo’s lead movie critic, has a much more conventional top ten list, though it runs to 11 titles.   Five of her listed movies (American Fiction, The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Oppenheimer) were all nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.  Indeed, she is the only one of these four

critics to include Barbie.  Two of her movies (You Hurt My Feelings, Past Lives) were on my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list and thus understandable choices.  Air is a enjoyable look back to recent history — the development of the first Air Jordan shoe by Nike — but not really top ten stuff unless you’re a sneakerhead. (Google it.)    

Origins, also on Ms. Hornaday’s list, is director Ava DuVernay’s admirable film based on author Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," published in 2020.  Although theoretically eligible for an Oscar nomination (according to the Academy’s website), it was not actually released generally into theaters in the U.S. until the middle of January 2024.  So I, admittedly rather randomly, have decided that this movie belongs to the present year and is therefore not eligible for my top ten list for 2023.  But the movie is wonderful and thought-provoking, a creative globe-trotting mix of fictional narrative and documentary, and will almost definitely make my Half-Oscar™ list for 2024.

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

  • Maestro
  • Oppenheimer
  • One Fine Morning
  • The Quiet Girl
  • May December
  • Dream Scenario
  • Asteroid City
  • A Good Person
  • The Disappearance of Shere Hite
  • Nyad
  • What Happens Later

Comment:  Mr. LaSalle, a quirky Bay Area critic known for his affinity for French movies, Pre-Code Hollywood movies, and actresses in general, has an odd list for 2023.  Maestro and Oppenheimer were both honored by the Academy (and make my top ten list as well).  The Quiet Girl, nominated for an Oscar last year for International Feature Film, is a quiet yet wonderful movie you definitely should see (stream on Hulu, rent on Amazon Prime), but is from 2022.  One Fine Morning, a French movie directed by Mia Hansen-Love and starring Lea Seydoux (stream on Amazon Prime), is also worthy of your attention but also from 2022.  A Good Person, starring Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman, is a touching and realistic portrayal of a normal person who, due to personal tragedy, falls into addiction.  It nearly made my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list and, needless to say, it is worth seeing.  For fans of Pugh, she has much more to do here than lounge around naked, as she does in Oppenheimer.  You can stream it on Amazon Prime.  I have more to say about Dream Scenario below.

Asteroid City, on Mr. LaSalle’s list, shows us that director Wes Anderson is continuing his journey into highly stylized filmmaking (see 2021’s The French Dispatch), with actors delivering lines unemotionally while standing in two-dimensional sets that are obviously sets.  It feels more and more like fans of Anderson’s movies (his live action ones, anyway) are in some sort of weird and exclusive club, so this movie is definitely worth seeing if you feel that you are in the club.  And maybe not, if you let your club membership lapse after The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Three of Mr. LaSalle’s top eleven choices feature actresses of a certain age:  May December (Julianne

Moore), Nyad (Annette Benning), and What Happens Later (Meg Ryan).  As previously mentioned, I was disappointed by May DecemberNyad, about long-distance ocean swimmer Diana Nyad’s multiple attempts, when in her 60s, to swim from Havana, Cuba to Florida, is a well-acted, true life drama about an obsessive, fairly unlikeable athlete.  Both Annette Benning and Jodie Foster have been nominated for Oscars and, in another year, Nyad might have been considered for Best Picture nomination.  That the movie lacked a theatrical release and went straight to Netflix probably hurt its chances for that.  But although it doesn’t make my top ten, it is worth seeing.  

I’ll wager readers have not seen (or even heard of) What Happens Later.  Meg Ryan, who also produced and directed, probably intended the movie to return her to her rom-com pinnacle (When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle).  But while the film had its amusing moments (like when the airport PA announcer begins speaking to her like the voice of God), and it was nice to see her in a movie again, I’m afraid the emotional impact of her cute head-tilt and hair toss live forever in the past, much like her original face before plastic surgery.  You can rent What Happens Later on Amazon Prime. 

II.

Before getting to my top ten list, let’s revisit my Half-Oscar™ list from earlier in 2023.

10. Emily  (Showtime, Prime rental, Kanopy)  
  9. Past Lives  (Prime rental) 
  8. The Eight Mountains  (Prime rental)
  7. You Hurt My Feelings (Prime rental) 
  6. Rise (En Corps)  (Kanopy) 
  5. Hilma (Prime rental) 
  4. Chevalier  (Hulu, Prime rental) 
  3. Other People’s Children  (MUBI, Prime rental) 
  2. The Lost King  (AcornTV, Hulu, AMC+, Prime rental) 
  1. How to Blow Up a Pipeline  (Hulu, Prime rental, Kanopy)

I realize many of these movies were released almost 12 months ago and memories of them are fading.  And as in most years, there were many good movies released in the second half of the year, surpassing most of the entries on my Half-Oscar™ list.  By going on record with these films, however, I created a kind of presumption of quality, and later-released movies have to overcome that presumption.  Fortunately, as noted, it was a good year for movies.  

Still, two films (How to Blow Up a Pipeline, The Lost King) have staying power in my mind.  Perhaps a suspense/thriller like Pipeline is an uncomfortable fit for Oscar — it’s unusual for the Academy to reward genre pictures (comedies, action, sci-fi, etc.) — but Oscar compatibility is not a criterion for a top ten list.  That said, The Lost King slots comfortably into a category of past honorees of quirky British stories with plucky heroines, like 2013’s Philomena (Judi Dench), 2009’s An Education (Carey Mulligan), and 1983’s Educating Rita (Julie Walters). 

A Word About Kanopy:  Three movies from my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list can be seen, free of charge, on Kanopy.  If you’ve never heard of Kanopy, well, now you have, and you can thank me later.  Kanopy is a free streaming service affiliated with your public library.  All you need is the app—either on your phone, tablet, computer, or smart TV—and a library card from your local public library.  I access Kanopy on Roku.  Register for Kanopy with your card and an amazing library of movies is at your disposal for free streaming, limited only to 10 per month.  Mostly foreign, classic, indie, and documentaries, but there is some oddball stuff in there as well.  You can see Emily, Rise (En Corps) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline on Kanopy and save a few bucks as well.  [Editor's note: some libraries do not subscribe to Kanopy, but prefer an alternate free streaming site called Hoopla. If your library is one of those, Hoopla is also worth checking out. Hoopla also offeres e-books and other downloadable material in addition to movies and videos.]

My Top Ten for 2023

10.  The Teachers’ Lounge  I originally had a three-way tie for 10th, between this movie, The Holdovers and Other People’s Children.  The Holdovers is a fine, if conventional, movie, the kind they used to make.  I especially loved how director Alexander Payne made the movie look like one from the 1970s, right down to the font of the titles.  It’s the odds on favorite to win two acting Oscars (Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph) which, by itself, is a reason to see the movie.  Other People’s Children, from France and starring Virginie Efira, is a tender and touching movie about modern family relationships.  But let’s face it, a three-way tie for tenth place is cheating, and ten is ten.  So after some thought, I think The Teachers’ Lounge sneaks into my top ten.

A German film nominated for the International Feature Film Oscar, The Teachers’ Lounge is a taut, realistic thriller that has, at its origin, a situation that happens all the time in public schools.  (Indeed, I heard the director Ilker Çatak speak and he said a similar thing happened to his class when he was in middle school in Istanbul.)  When the grownups, largely but not entirely people of good conscience, respond thoughtfully to the events, things nevertheless spin out of control in fairly realistic ways.  Small grievances are magnified, lines are drawn, enemies identified, and it feels like there is no way out.  Although The Zone of Interest will likely win the Best International Film Oscar (based on pre-ceremony hype and its nomination for Best Picture), The Teachers’ Lounge would be a worthy choice.  As of this writing, it is still in theaters.

9.  Rustin  I’m so sad Rustin was not nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, for the possibility, however remote, of seeing Barack and Michelle Obama onstage as executive producers is an intoxicating one.  But that delicious fantasy aside, Rustin is a moving and admirable retelling of a pivotal period in the life of a great American whose life story, and critical role in 1963’s March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom, had until now been lost to history.  Bayard Rustin was a gay Black man who faced down so many detractors and those who sought to undermine him for that reason, including (depressingly) the leadership of the NAACP, and eventually achieved an important step on our nation’s road to racial justice.  Because of Bayard Rustin, we have a collective memory of Dr. King telling us “I Have a Dream. . . .”  Stream it on Netflix, and think about what ex-Presidents can do with their free time once they are out of office.  Compare and contrast.

8.  Perfect Days  This movie, from 2023 but currently in theaters, is unlike all the other movies on this list.  Quiet and gentle, repetitive, even meditative, it tells the story of a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo.  Every day.  Over and over.  But he has managed to find personal satisfaction in his life, a measure of grace, even joy.  There are hints of his backstory suggesting he is, or was, a man of greater conventional substance.  But the beauty of the film is that it is not about who he was, or could be, where his life is headed, or not headed.  Instead, we see someone who is satisfied with himself, his seemingly simple life, and his place in the universe.  Others with whom he comes into contact are affected by his serenity, and project their concerns on him.  In that way, the movie is a little like 1979’s Being There, with Peter Sellers.  Directed by acclaimed German director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire (1987), Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Salt of the Earth (2014)), Perfect Days was submitted for Oscar consideration by Japan, and is the first submission from that country not directed by a Japanese person.  If you’re interested in a gentle yet satisfying movie, with no violence, sex, aliens or weird deviant behaviors, this is it. 

7.  The Lost King  This is just one of two movies that survive from my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list, so I’ll just repeat my views from six month ago:  this wonderful tale, based on a true story, tells the story of Phillippa Langley, a middle-aged woman who is just being worn down by life.  “After her latest setback, she is at a complete loss where to turn but, somehow, gets the idea that she can find the final resting place of King Richard III, the location of whose mortal remains has been a mystery for hundreds of years.  Richard has been tarred as a child-killing, hump-backed usurper to the English throne by none other than William Shakespeare.  But was he?  Langley (Sally Hawkins) is, of course, dismissed as a crank if not a crazy lady.  But is she?  Even a broken clock is right twice a day (to repeat an aphorism from pre-digital, analog days).  Hawkins portrays Langley with intelligence, pathos, and vulnerability, and her focus and nervous energy undergird an impressive performance.  Directed by Stephen Frears (Florence Foster Jenkins, Philomena, High Fidelity), and costarring Steve Coogan as her admirably supportive ex-husband.” 

6.  How to Blow Up a Pipeline  This movie topped my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list, and remains—to me—one of the best movies of 2023.  Although not on Oscar’s radar, it seems that every year, a movie no one else is talking about gets its hooks in me and simply won’t let go.  Last year, it was Montana Story, with Haley Lu Richardson.  The year before:  Ad Astra, with Brad Pitt.  In 2020:  director Paul Greengrass’s News of the World with Tom Hanks.  In Pipeline, we are confronted with a disparate group of young people who firmly and sincerely believe that the United States, and the world, are not moving fast enough to avert a climate catastrophe.  So they hit upon a plan to draw attention to the problem and hopefully achieve some course correction.  Can we say they are wrong?  Clever and thrilling, with unpredictable twists and turns, the movie addresses as timely a topic as Barbie (mysogyny, toxic masculinity), American Fiction (racial prejudice, cancel culture), or Oppenheimer (nuclear annihilation, government duplicity) do.  It also stars a group of young up-and-comers that need no computer-generated de-aging to appear onscreen.  

5.  Maestro   Following 2018’s A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper is now two for two as a director, and rarely

has an actor moved into the director’s chair with more immediate and sustained success.  (Another recent example:  Greta Gerwig, although her acting career did not have the same wattage as Cooper’s.)  Maestro is a fascinating examination of the life of a giant of the American creative world of the mid-twentieth century, whose life was much more complicated than we ever knew.  Leonard Bernstein was a creative genius who would not be contained by socially accepted limits of music or personal relationships.  Thus, not only did he conduct classical music, he composed it as well.  And not only did he compose classical music, he also composed popular music (see West Side Story).  Not only did he have a fabulous wife and family, but he also had a succession of male lovers.  Cooper is wonderful as Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan is deserving of her nomination for Best Actress nomination as his extremely tolerant wife, Felicia Montealegre.   

4.  American Fiction  There have been moments lately, when things are quiet, that I feel in my bones thatAmerican Fiction was the best movie of the year.  There is something about the tone of the movie, the wry humor, the humanity, and subject matter, that spoke to me.  How to deal with racial injustice?  Cancel culture?  Snowflake college students?  Performative anti-racism?  The difficulty of maintaining one’s integrity and true self when financial temptations abound.  Aging and increasingly infirm parents.  Troublesome, selfish siblings.  The movie has it all, and handles it with dry, glancing humor.  Jeffrey Wright is wonderful in the lead and his Oscar nomination is gratifying, although he likely will not win against a group of stellar co-nominees:  Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer, Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, and Coleman Domingo for Rustin.  It was never a truer statement than that it was an honor for Wright just to be nominated.    

3.  Barbie  By now, we all know about Barbie.  Had it been released in October, we would still be in full-on Barbie-mania.  But enough time has passed that we now have the backlash to the Barbie craze, and people feel comfortable informing their friends that, by the way, they did not like, nay, hated Barbie.  Hence the Oscar “snubs” for Margot Robbie (Best Actress) and Greta Gerwig (Director).  Perhaps there is still enough time for a backlash to the backlash.  A double feature with Barbie and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022) would be interesting, for many of the same people I know disliked both films, and both movies had a certain look, a certain sensibility, and women in their centers.  Is it an age thing?  An intolerance of this kind of satire or storytelling?  Maybe make it a film festival with JoJo Rabbit (2019) and Promising Young Woman (2020).  Do we sense a trend?

I think Barbie and these other movies indicate, if not a sea change, something like a ripple in The Force or a tear in The Matrix, indicating that a new style of moviemaking is upon us, one that is popular with young audiences.  And these movies draw people into theaters, hungry for a communal cinematic experience and not just the feeling one gets, sitting alone, streaming a movie at home.  

2.  Oppenheimer  Christopher Nolan has crafted a monumental adaptation of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, creating an immersive movie that is the odds on favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar, and may sweep the major awards.  Indeed, the movie is so immersive that the viewer can easily get lost in the crowd of physicists working at Los Alamos, but the story of the creation of the first atomic bomb in human history is, nevertheless, strangely thrilling.  The nuts and bolts of the massive endeavor, the personalities of the various scientists, the life or death stakes, the morality of introducing the world to the nuclear age, the political fallout after the war was over, this is a complex and important story made comprehensible by Nolan’s script and direction.

Considering the thing almost 80 years later, it is easy to forget that it was never a given that Oppenheimer and his team would succeed in his quest to manipulate atomic fission to the point where the U.S. could deliver a controlled nuclear explosion in a distant land.  Who knows when World War II would have ended had Oppenheimer failed?  How many more Americans would have died?  And who knows what would have happened if Hitler had created the bomb first?  (On this point, I recommend the six-episode Norwegian series called The Heavy Water War:  Stopping Hitler’s Atomic Bomb on MHz Choice, or rentable on Prime.)  With so much at stake, seeing Nolan’s depiction of the bomb exploding for the first time is, as I said, strangely thrilling, if for no other reason that we realize that nothing would ever be the same.    

1.  Anatomy of a Fall   The Academy has shown remarkable acumen in nominating not one but two movies that are not in English (and Past Lives is partially in Korean).  I wonder if this is part of a happy trend.  The other non-English speaking nominee, The Zone of Interest, is a very interesting movie and surprisingly experimental for a Best Picture nominee.  But Anatomy of a Fall is head and shoulders above Zone (and Past Lives).  French director Justine Triet has given us a remarkable movie that presents as a traditional, old fashioned courtroom drama.  Did the wife kill her husband by pushing him out of a high window?  Did he slip?  Or did he jump?  The movie gives us plausible alternatives in the style of Rashomon, but it is a tribute to the clever writing and standout performances that we don’t really know the answer, even after the movie ends.  Gripping from the opening scenes, actress Sandra Hüller is remarkable and should (but likely won’t) win the Oscar.  (Remarkably, she played a very different character in The Zone of Interest.)  Although there was no pre-nomination Oscar buzz, French actor Swann Arlaud, who played the prosecutor, was simply remarkable.  

Much like other courtroom dramas, there is potential deception baked into the story, as we the audience must decide who is telling the truth and who is not.  But Hüller’s character, Sandra Voyter, is a complicated character with whom we identify.  A published writer, she is remarkably self-aware and hyper-verbal, to the point where her husband feels left behind.  There are hidden family traumas that must be brought to the surface, but who is to blame, and who blames whom, may be key to the proper resolution of the case.  Highly recommended. 

Worth a Look

In addition to my top ten, every year brings many other worthwhile movies.  Here are some small ones that flew under the radar that I quite enjoyed:

Landscape With Invisible Hand  (Prime)  What would life be like under a benevolent alien occupation? 

Even if our new overlords were not violent or physically aggressive, our society would change in so many ways.  Landscape is a sometimes-amusing, often-thought provoking look at one possible scenario, with sly comments on our present influencer culture, the fleeting, ethereal nature of teenage love, the need to learn the language of one’s occupiers, and the sometimes context-dependent nature and value of art.  And I love how the alien overlords are portrayed:  not humanoid (like in E.T. The Extraterrestrial or Star Wars), not big bugs (like in District 9 or Starship Troopers), not weird blobs (like in Arrival).  No, they are . . . something else.  (Scratch, scratch)  Certainly not for everybody (full disclosure: my wife did not like it), but there weren’t many films from 2023 that were more original.     

Dream Scenario  (Prime rental)  Nicholas Cage extends his remarkably varied career (Moonstruck (1987), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Rock (1996), Adaptation (2003), Pig (2021)), with this slow-burning, ever-evolving tale based on an a single intriguing premise:  How would your life change if you suddenly, inexplicably, involuntarily, began appearing in other people’s dreams?  Could that be a good thing?  More to the point:  Should you hire an agent and try and monetize the situation?  A sly and funny comment on our society’s celebrity culture, but be forewarned, the movie morphs into something much, much darker.  Cage would easily qualify as a dark horse candidate for a Best Actor nomination this year were the field not already so strong.    

Eileen  (Prime rental)  This is an old fashioned film noir starring Thomasin McKenzie as a young woman in a dead-end life.  Her mother has suddenly passed away, so she left college to return to her boring hometown to care for her father, a down-spiraling alcoholic.  She’s stuck in a depressing clerical job in the state prison sited in her drab little town.  It would appear there is no hope for her.  But then a bolt of lightning flashes into her life in the form of Anne Hathaway as a strange and charismatic new prison psychiatrist.  But, as I said, this is an old fashioned film noir, and when it hits you, I doubt you will have seen it coming.  

The Origin of Evil  (AMC+, Prime rental)  It seems we can’t get enough of stories involving smart but crazy poor people insinuating themselves into the families of the superrich.  2022 brought us Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Menu.  This year, Emerald Ferrell’s Saltburn is the latest to mine The Talented Mr. Ripley motherlode, but I enjoyed The Origin of Evil much more.  In French and starring Laure Calamy (My Donkey, My Lover and I, Two Tickets to Greece, Call My Agent!), this enjoyable flick keeps you guessing until the final scene, and the beverages were much less icky than in Saltburn.  (If you’ve seen Saltburn, you’ll know what I mean.)

Flora and Son  (Apple TV+)  Two of the songs from the movie were shortlisted for the Best Song Oscar, and either one could easily have made the grade over some that were eventually nominated.  (They are “High Life” and “Meet in the Middle”; you can find them on YouTube.)  But even if you are not a Best Song Oscar aficionado (and why would you be?), the movie is quite enjoyable.  Starring Eve Hewson (daughter of U2 frontman Bono) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this gritty look at the Irish working class still manages a give us some lush romance amid the graffiti-filled empty lots.  If you liked 2018’s Wild Rose with Jessie Buckley (and why wouldn’t you?), you’ll like this movie.  


Friday, February 23, 2024

The Zone of Interest (2023): Extreme Banality

The Zone of Interest is intended as a cinematic exploration of the notion first put forward – or at least named - by the German-American philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt: “the banality of evil”.  Arendt had covered the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann – a key organizer and administrator of the Nazi undertaking to exterminate all European Jews at Auschwitz and other death camps, a.k.a. the Final Solution a.k.a. The Holocaust. Eichmann was charged with crimes against humanity, mass murder, and related offenses. His defense was, essentially, that he was a technocrat and just following orders, thus innocent of any crime. He showed no remorse.

As Arendt saw it, Eichmann was neither a psychopath nor an ideologue or fanatic, but a rather a relatively ordinary person who tended to go along with the crowd out of a need to belong, so as to please his superiors, get promoted and be important, which is to say successful. The meaning she ascribed to “banality” in these circumstances does not mean that Eichmann’s actions were ordinary, but that they were the product of an indifference about the nature of the tasks assigned to him. His job was to carry out the Fuehrer’s plans and wishes, and he voluntarily did so unquestioningly and enthusiastically. That this is not so uncommon as you might think, considering the horrendous work that Eichmann was engaged in, was subsequently born out to some degree in a notorious series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960’s. 

In The Zone of Interest, the subject is not Eichmann, but another holocaust villain, the notorious Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss –  and, just as importantly, his wife Hedwig. It is a rather low-key movie about how the Höss family (Rudolf, Hedwig, and their five young children) live a pleasant, opulent life (one that what they consider quite blissful) in their lovely manor house near Auschwitz, where Rudolf works. “Near” is an understatement: directly behind the house is the camp wall, topped by barbed wire, with dark smoke from the crematorium chimney clearly visible a hundred or so yards away, and with occasional gunshots, harsh shouts, and other camp sounds punctuating the Höss family’s otherwise idyllic afternoons. 

The proximity to a place of murder and horror just across the wall does not seem to bother anyone in the family. Nor does the nature of Rudolf’s job. They are complacently enjoying their good fortune and privilege, which is all that seems to matter. We see the kids playing in the yard, Rudolf fishing and the kids frolicking in the nearby Sola River, Hedwig tending her garden, gossiping with friends, making snide jokes about Jews, ordering the household servants (prisoners all) around. 

What we don’t see at all is the inside of Auschwitz – the gas chambers, crematoria, corpses, emaciated slave workers – in short, what is happening there. 

And that is a big part of the problem with The Zone of Interest. Audience members are expected to themselves supply the context - i.e. to come to the picture knowing all about what was going on at Auschwitz – required to understand the point of the movie. The other part of the problem is that the film itself is banal, which is to say trite, trivial, and obvious. More on these observations in a moment. 

The movie had a lot going for it when the project was being put together, starting with an award-winning British writer-director in Jonathan Glazer. Glazer got his start as a successful director of music videos (notably for Radiohead) and television commercials, and then hit it big with a couple of interesting and generally well-received motion pictures, the gangster film Sexy Beast (2000) starring Ben Kingsley as a ruthless crime kingpin and the rather cerebral sci-fi film Under the Skin (2013), which he also wrote, starring Scarlett Johansson as a seductive (and hungry) alien.

The Zone of Interest project also caught the interest of Sandra Hüller, the great German actress [Toni Erdmann (2016)].  Hüller, nominated for an Academy Award in the best actress category for her other 2023 film, Anatomy of a Fall, co-stars in The Zone of Interest with award-winning German actor Christian Friedel. He plays Rudolf Höss; she plays Hedwig Höss. Talented composer, Mica Levi, who worked with Glazer on Under the Skin, and composed scores for Marjorie Prime (2017), Zola (2020), and Small Axe (2020), also signed on. As it turned out, The Zone of Interest won the award for best soundtrack at the 2023 Cannes festival, and its score may be the most dramatic thing about the film.

The picture also was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023 and is nominated for five Oscars including best picture, best international picture, and best director. Most critics have lauded the film. In my view, however, most of the praise is misplaced.  Typical is reviewer Robbie Collin of The Telegraph: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, Theodore Adorno famously wrote. Glazer’s film gives us the prosaic, refashioning it into the darkest, most vital sort of art it might be possible for us as a species to produce.

Sounds good, but what does Collin actually admire about the film? He likes just the things that I disliked!  He praises Glazer’s tactic to show us nothing about what is happening on the other side of the wall as “a bold and brilliant choice.”  To understand this tactic, here’s what the director has said about he was aiming for:

        What the film is trying to do is to talk to the capacity within each of us for violence. Wherever you're     from. And to try and show these people as people and not as monsters was a very important thing to do.     The great crime and tragedy is that human beings did this to other human beings and it's very                   convenient for us to try and distance ourselves from them as much as we can because obviously we           think     we can never behave this way and we don't behave this way; but I think we should be less            certain [about] that.

Remember, Glazer does not show us anything about the Auschwitz death camp itself. We’re supposed to
know about the violence, the crimes and the tragedy already. Those of us who do understand what was going on there are expected to be aghast at the Höss family’s blasé attitude and to remain so scene after scene for the length of the movie.  As if we had never thought about the people who ignored the horror they or their fellow citizens were committing at the time, as if we had never contemplated the banality of evil before. 

But let’s be honest, eighty years after the fact, while most moviegoers presumably have heard about the holocaust, if only from history class, fewer know much if anything about Auschwitz, and fewer still are well informed about it.  Yet, for the conceit of this picture to have much of an effect, viewers must bring to the experience a vivid understanding of the inhumanity of Auschwitz – the barbarity, the terror, the wholesale murder of tens of thousands of innocent people daily, the heinous treatment of those assigned to work camp, etc. etc. 

So, Glazer’s decision to not depict the death camp itself seems to me to be a bad one. Trying to evoke the banality of evil without showing the evil is a bit like trying to make strong tea with a used teabag.  Given Glazer’s oblique approach to the subject matter, his one note narrative theme - focusing exclusively on the banal, complacent life of the commandant’s family - does not sustain us over the course of a 105-minute movie. Simply put, the film packs no punch.

Perhaps aware of this problem, Glazer has attached a few scenes near the end of his film showing Rudolf in meetings with other Nazi brass, clinically discussing how to most efficiently transport hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz and dispose of their remains after gassing them. It’s like, in case you haven’t gotten the point, here is some red-meat evil for you: mass murder being discussed as if it were a waste management problem. 

After this Glazer made one final addition to The Zone of Interest that really got me steamed. A few concluding scenes are tacked on to convey the enormous human tragedy of the holocaust,  lest viewers are confused about that. These scenes do not show any events on the other side of the Höss’s back wall, or the masses of murdered human beings, or mourning families or even a survivor recalling what it was like in the camps. Rather, we get to see present day people visiting the Auschwitz museum and some of the exhibits there, like a large pile of victims’ shoes and another pile with victims’ luggage, both at a remove behind large plate glass windows. More obliqueness - representing a genocide with a pile of things

There are many movies about the holocaust, perhaps too many, a number of which are on the cheesy, melodramatic side, milking our sympathy while trying to make a buck. But at least they evoke our compassion. However well intended, The Zone of Interest seems to me to be a sterile exercise, more intellectual than evocative and not particularly educative. It’s a hollow film about an important subject. Those who know little about Auschwitz or the holocaust more generally will learn nothing from The Zone of Interest. Those better versed in this history will understand the film better but will gain little from the experience.

There are much better movies about the holocaust out there that are both informative and emotionally affecting. Films such as Night and Fog (1956), Schindler’s List (1993), The Pianist (2003),  and Son of Saul (2015). Despite the PR blitz citing The Zone of Interest  as an “important” picture, feel free to give this one a pass.

1 hour 45 minutes

Grade: C

In theaters. A digital edition is available for purchase ($19.99) on several streaming platforms.  No VOD (rental) release date has been announced, but The Hollywood Reporter estimates “sometime in April or May”. 


Sunday, February 4, 2024

The Promised Land (2023): Undaunted Mads


The new movie The Promised Land is advertised as an epic journey. At its core is certainly an old-fashioned idea. A rugged, resolute man sets out to transform an inhospitable wilderness into arable land and thereby make his fortune. Could be any of dozens of American frontier stories. But it’s not: this one takes place in wild Denmark. The central character is not a man with family or the leader of an outcast community seeking a new start, but a singular man on his own with a vision. He wants to make his mark in the world. This sort of protagonist is rarer, but still not unique. More unusual is the fact that his biggest challenge is not the harsh, unforgiving frontier, but the obsessions of a lunatic aristocrat and a callous, contemptuous gentry.

It’s 1785.  A former army Captain, Ludvig Kahlen, arrives at the palace of Denmark’s king seeking a royal charter to establish a farm and build a settlement in the vast, barren, empty Jutland heath. He is of lowly birth and has no connections at court. He also has no money other than his modest captain’s pension. Indeed, Ludvig has no bona fides at all to recommend him for the commission he seeks, other than his 20-some years of military experience and his unequivocal determination. Oh, and the chiseled, rugged looks and square jaw of Danish star Mads Mikkelsen.

Ludvig is met by a group of royal advisors, who tell him that what he’s proposing is impossible. Nothing grows on the heath, and anyone who has tried to settle there has died. Besides, Ludvig is a commoner, a nobody. Maybe so, but he is an insistent one, and when he offers to finance his plan himself, the foppish coterie stops laughing. All he wants – only if he succeeds – is a noble title, a manor house and the means to support it - in other words, entrée into the hierarchy from which he has been excluded his entire life. And he is willing to work for it. Believing his chances of success to be negligible and knowing that the crazy King would love to get some settlements on the vast, empty heath, Ludvig’s proposal is approved.

That part was relatively easy. The balance of The Promised Land is the story of what happens next, which turns out to be anything but. For one thing the land is a bitch to tame: terrible soil, gruelingly bad weather, short summers, marauding brigands – factors which have already defeated everyone else who has tried, and which nearly defeat Ludvig as well.  But worst of all is the megalomaniacal landowner Frederik Schinkel. (“Call me ‘de Schinkel’ – it’s so much more refined.”). Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) fancies himself the lord of all the heath (although it’s truly the monarch’s property) and will tolerate no competition. Before Ludvig even has a chance to establish himself, Schinkel wants him out – or at a minimum to be wholly subservient.  When Ludvig refuses, the enraged Schinkel reacts with violence. This is a really bad guy – the kind moviegoers love to hate: vain, petty, vulgar and shockingly cruel.

Contending with a harsh physical environment and a powerful human antagonist, Ludvig is up against
more than he bargained for on his incipient farm, even with help from some runaway servants [aka slaves] formerly belonging to Schinkel – Anton ( Gustav Lindh) and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, excellent), and also from a lowly, but idealistic local cleric. The only things keeping him going are desperation – Ludvig has banked everything on this venture: his fortune, his dreams and his pride – and his own bit of megalomania; because he has become so obsessed with his plan to conquer the land and reap its rewards, he's blind to everything else. This obsession proves to be Ludvig’s greatest adversary.  I won’t tell you how it turns out but can say I admired how, near the end,  Mikkelsen’s character came to change as a result of his experiences.

Director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel [A Royal Affair (2012)] has produced an engaging drama about Ludvig's extraordinary struggle to succeed against all odds - about a man whose own hubristic flaws may destroy not only him but everything he cares for. The land itself is beautifully photographed, and the tone of the narrative is stark, gritty, grim and inspiring even as, somehow, it explores themes of love, connectedness and family. It really is rather epic. Mikkelsen has never been better in a pure drama. 

But the film is not altogether an easy watch – The Promised Land contains some pretty horrific violence, not slasher-film violence nor wholly gratuitous stuff, but still hard to witness. Think of Django Unchained (2012) – if you could watch that, you’ll be fine with The Promised Land.  Here’s a link to the trailer to give you a sense of it. 

The Promised Land was Denmark’s submission to the coming Academy Awards in the international film category. Although it did not make it into the final 5 nominees, the movie has received a solidly good critical score of 74 on Metacritic and an even higher score of 95% on RottenTomatoes.  If you like the stolidly determined version of Mads Mikkelsen’s onscreen persona or, more generally, a man triumphing over adversity, you should definitely see this film. 

2 hours 7 minutes 

Grade: B+

In theaters - US release date  was Friday, February 2, 2024. Unofficial online estimates suggest a release on VOD streaming services in late February or early March.


Sunday, January 28, 2024

The Teachers’ Lounge (2023): Trying to Do Right

Films set in schools are often popular and, when pitched just right, are frequently memorable. The milieu is certainly relatable. Our school days are among our most cherished and/or also most hated. If you think about it,  middle school and high school  were among the most dramatic years of our lives, the inception of our coming-of-age, shaping so much of our adult selves. 

It’s not surprising, then, that the range of this genre is so deep, with films like Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) – nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture; To Sir With Love (1967) with Sidney Poitier; Dead Poets Society (1989) with Robin Williams; The Hunt (2012) [Denmark] with Mags Mikkelsen; even outliers like Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn (2021) – little seen, but winner of the top award [Golden Bear] at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. And of course there's 2023’s The Holdovers – recently nominated for 5 Oscars, among them for best picture, best actor [Paul Giamatti], and best supporting actress [Da’Vine Joy Randolph].  The subject of this review is also nominated for an Oscar (for Best International Film). It’s the terrific 2023 German film The Teacher’s Lounge

While many of the films in this genre reflect a student protagonist’s perspective and some center on that of
a courageous (or struggling) teacher, there also are a few films with a school setting that have broader aims in mind. The Teacher’s Lounge falls into that camp. Award winning director Ilker Çatak has fashioned a film that is at once a character study, mystery, emotional drama and thriller. Set in an unnamed German city, it has a universal feel. It could just as easily be Oakland, or Austin, or Indianapolis. Although it's a rather simple and straightforward story, the movie raises and addresses a tangle of issues. Among them are the play between power dynamics and free will, children’s rights, objective versus relative truth, prejudice, cancel culture, the dangers of certainty, the limits of empathy, and the increasing incapacity of people to actually listen to one another. Sound familiar?

This is not to say that the film is preachy. Far from it. No answers are provided, which is one reason the story is so credible and so resonant. Nor is it the least bit dull. From the first scene to the last, The Teacher’s Lounge is engaging and intriguing. It moves along briskly, and is devised so your expectations keep shifting with every scene.

At the center is Carla Nowak, played by Leonie Benesch [Around the World in 80 Days (2021 series), Babylon Berlin (2017 – 2020)]. Carla is a talented, idealistic, devoted young teacher just a few months into her first job, teaching math (and also a gym instructor) to middle school kids. She’s good at her job and beloved by her students. Being new, she has not fully melded with the other educators at the school – not that she is disliked, just not yet seasoned. But certain problems at the school, some of which concern students in her class,  quickly put Carla on the spot. 

Here's how it starts [no real spoilers, just the initial setup, to give you an idea]: Carla attends a meeting in the school’s administrative office. Present are Thomas (Michael Klammer), a fellow teacher and Milosz (Rafael Stachoviak), the vice-principal, along with two students, both from Carla’s class (which is presumably why Carla is attending). The kids are there as “student representatives”  to discuss a recent raft of thievery at the school. Both kids say that they don’t know anything. But Thomas wants more than that. You don’t need to be certain, he tells them. Maybe you just suspect someone. If you have noticed another kid suddenly wearing expensive duds or flush with cash, that would give us a helpful lead. Under pressure, the boy representative eventually fingers a kid in his class. As the students are leaving, Thomas reminds them “to keep what we’ve discussed to ourselves.” Carla is visibly uncomfortable with all this but says nothing. 

In the very next scene, Carla is teaching in her classroom, when Thomas and Milosz, along with the school principal, Dr. Böhm (Anne-Kathrin Gummich) abruptly enter. The girls are told to leave. The boys are required to surrender their wallets for inspection. “It’s voluntary, of course”, says Dr. Böhm to the 12 and 13-year-olds, “but if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” The wallet of a boy named Ali contains more cash than usual for a kid his age, and he is removed from the room. In the next scene, now in the principal’s office, Ali’s parents sit with their son and explain that they gave him the cash that morning to buy a gift for his cousin after school that day. They are seething with anger that their son was singled out in front of his peers – certain that this was because they are Turkish. “Our son would never steal”, says his dad, forcibly. Carla stands by, clearly dismayed.  

Carla spots a colleague pilfering some change from the coffee-contribution piggy bank in the teachers’ lounge. Maybe students should not be the sole suspects, she thinks. Which gives Carla an idea about how to catch the thief in the act on video. Which kind of works - in that she gets her evidence - but far from resolving the problem, this only complicates matters. For one thing, she didn’t go through proper channels before acting, and for another, the suspect she uncovers vehemently denies everything. There is outrage, scurrilous rumors, and counter-accusations - overall a real scandalamity. Much of the ire is directed not at the thief but at well-meaning Carla. This is unsettling and confusing for her, but worse still, the suspect’s son, Oskar (Leo Stettnich) is in Carla’s class - in fact, her favorite student - and he's taking it hard. Oy!

The Teacher’s Lounge succeeds, in part, because its carefully crafted, well written screenplay - by director Çatak and his long-time collaborator Johannes Duncker – so seamlessly incorporates so many elements. The dialogue, the setting, the framing of the issues the movie raises – all are first rate. You may not know where it’s going to go next, but you feel in good hands on the journey.  The sense that serious and perhaps ominous things are about to happen is aided by the pitch perfect film score by Marvin Miller. 

The film also works due to superb performances by the entire onscreen ensemble. The kids playing the kids are especially good, in particular Leonard [“Leo”] Stettnich as Oskar.  Still, Leonie Benesch as Carla is the star at the center of the movie, and she is marvelous. It is quite an achievement, especially considering that we are given virtually no backstory about Carla. Does she live alone, have a family, a lover, a hobby? It doesn’t matter – she’s a likeable, believable, complex protagonist. In this respect, Benesch’s performance reminded me of Julia Garner’s character, Jane, in The Assistant (2019), about a well-meaning professional person simply trying to do the right thing. The Teacher’s Lounge is not nearly as stark as that film. But like Jane, Carla is naïve.  Her world is rocked when her earnest intentions result in ugliness, instead of the approbation she expects. Benesch’s performance of all this is quietly magnetic and, in my view, faultless. She’s someone to keep an eye on in the years ahead. 

At the conclusion of The Teacher’s Lounge, nothing is cleanly resolved. That is as it should be. The issues raised by the story exist in the real world and, in the film as in life, have no easy solutions. To its credit, the movie is too honest to offer facile resolutions to the complex dilemmas it explores. It's a wonder that a 98-minute film can encompass so much so effortlessly and so beautifully.

1 hour 38 minutes Rated PG-13     [Got a teen? Take your teen to see this film]

Grade: A

In select theaters, including Landmark Opera Plaza in S.F and Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, Ca; Laemmle Royal in L.A.; Music Box Theater in Chicago. Rolling out to more each week through mid-February. Click HERE for a venue near you.