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Reviews
Niskavuori (1984)
Shakespearean drama with many small villains
This movie from 1984 was released in the shadow of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander (1982), and I believe it has much improved after 40 years. Both films show mighty and proud families with lots of moral load and hardships, but Bergman's vision is of course world class production and this is just school theater play.
It is not "fun to watch" because the main protagonists are not heroic in romantic sense, not true evil also, but very ugly. They all make terrible things to hurt the people around them. Dialogue is delivered in stiff manner, but actually poetic and deeply written.
There are some amazing costume and set details in the film like historic cars and great locations. This film will get better and better as time goes on. It captures so much conflict from class society and christian morals clashing with new liberal values.
Django Unchained (2012)
The ABC of manipulation and collapse of Free Will
I love the style of this movie, but I was utterly disappointed to the audience.
Tarantino shows that even today most people are just slaves. The are slaves to the narrative. They are slaves of basic human behavior.
Tarantino is a brilliant director. He is the master. The audience serves his will with-out any questions.
There is a classic definition of "desire". DESIRE = pro attitude towards a proposition.
In the end of the movie the audience desires to see helpless woman and old crippled man gunned down by the hero.
You can rationalize it by saying that they were not innocent - but it makes no difference. You are still willing to say yes to revenge. Its not just vigilante-justice, but heartless act of murder.
This is the goal of the narrative, Tarantino's grand scheme. He has hypnotized the audience to follow his sadistic desires. Then he proposes: Kill them! Show no mercy! And the whole audience laughs and cheers. Practically no-one sees any moral dilemmas when unarmed civilians are executed without trial.
At this point the members of audience are just members of a violent mob. They take part to a lynching - just like people willingly took part to lynching in the old days. Nothing has really changed.
Viewing this movie in regular theater only shows that practically anyone can be manipulated into murder-frenzy - just as most regular people in Germany was manipulated to believe that the Fuhrer is cool and wise.
Its only a matter of medium and style: music and editing. Through the selected narrative we understand who we are supposed to relate to.
Tarantino uses similar methods as the Nazis and all dictators have used, to promote his ill values and his chosen hero. After few hours we are on his side and then comes the most shocking fact of human behavior: we accept any horrible crimes our hero takes part in.
It is sickening to witness the complete fall of morality in 3 hours.