Cerebral
Created | Updated Mar 6, 2011
The following is not intended to usurp the Post's movie review section. I would never try to compete with Awix, who regularly produces savvy and insightful film criticism. As you will see, my taste in cinema is what I naively call 'eclectic', but which experts in the field have labeled…
Cerebral
Elektra is mad at me for wrecking her Netflix profile.
Wrecking someone's Netflix profile is practically an actionable offence among young web users. It has even been known as the revenge form of choice against cheating partners, second only to deleting their MMO characters for sheer nastiness. I have protested my innocence – the Neflix account, though in Elektra's name, is being paid for on my credit card – but she insists it's my fault the DVD people keep telling us we want to watch Un chien andalou and Chekhov. This makes it hard for Elektra to browse what she's really looking for, such as another Benjy movie. (Elektra never met a dog she didn't like.)
Netflix, for those who don't know, is the US-based online DVD lending library. We've been fans from the early days – you can't beat the price, there are no late fees, and they have good stuff like Rutger Hauer movies in Dutch – and now that Netflix has begun streaming videos, and computer screens have gotten larger, we can ignore the television and watch films and shows commercial-free. Netflix is so popular that its stock is through the roof, and Internet Service Providers worry about net outages during peak viewing hours.
Netflix has sort of a built-in yenta that recommends films based on your viewing profile. The more films you watch and rate, the more refined the recommendations become. In theory, that is. I think I make the algorithm nervous.
You see, based on our viewing of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, the Netflix kibitz assumes, not that I want to see more films about German resistance during World War II, but that I like movies with 'strong female characters who buck the system'. My penchant for lining up an evening of Israeli film means, not that I like, say, Israeli film, but that I like foreign films. The suggested list will now centre on the oeuvre of John Woo. Help, I am allergic to kung fu. Watch a British gangster film? They'll suggest Bertie Wooster next, I kid you not.
The real problem with the Netflix algorithm is that it labels everything I really like as 'cerebral' and/or 'witty'. I don't mind cerebral, and I love witty, but Elektra is beginning to approach the computer screen gingerly. She sleeps through a lot of these things. My attempts to buck the profile have been equally dangerous – when I picked a gormless piece of what the Germans call 'äction' containing our beloved Rutger Hauer, we spent half the night laughing helplessly at the viewer reviews. Okay, okay, the mindless film in question was shot in English by Hungarians using a bogus phrasebook…
When it comes to demographics, I can't win. This constant refinement of the user profile recently led to the fact that, while on a fruitless h2g2-inspired Asterix search, I ended up discovering…
Romanian New Wave Cinema
Corneliu Porumboiu is a genius. Somebody gave this man a camera, but forgot to explain what moviegoers want – namely, action and hot babes. Instead, he uses his camera to trap us in the alternate reality of Vaslui, Romania, and subject us to epistemological comedy. It's pretty much as if somebody had stuck Flann O'Brien into a viewfinder and given Franz Kafka the cinematographer's chair. The French appreciate this – Porumboiu's brilliant (and to me, hilarious) 12:08 East of Bucharest won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 20061. What you need to appreciate his films, besides the ability to read subtitles (or understand Romanian), is…well, patience. First, you have to get to know Vaslui, a sad but endearing town in a poverty-stricken, post-Soviet world with changing values.
Elektra's first response to Politist, Adjectiv, Porumboiu's 2009 film about police business and language, was, 'We need to send CARE packages. With cleaning supplies.' It is true – Vaslui appears not to have been given a good spring cleaning since, say, the fall of Ceausescu. After fifteen minutes of outdoor shots, Elektra added that we had to pack Malabarista and Tavaron, h2g2's resident architects, into the CARE package. Somebody has to do something about the fact that these lovely people are living in decrepit concrete housing. In the midst of natural splendor, they are trapped in the kind of socialist nightmares that cry out for controlled implosions.
About half an hour in, I speculated, 'Why was there a costume person on the credits? They look like they're wearing their own dirty laundry.' About five minutes later, the dialogue confirmed this conclusion:
Anca: You need to change that pullover.
Cristi: Why?
Anca: You've been wearing it for four days.
Cristi gives new meaning to the term 'plainclothes detective'. Even his wife Anca noticed. We have just been watching Cristi eat a late supper while his wife Anca listens to a favourite song on the web. During the meal, the song runs three times. When Anca accuses Cristi of having too many beers, we are witnesses. We've watched him consume them all. Then the couple have a semantic argument about the imagery in the dorky pop song, and we realize we've memorised the lyrics.
The thing about Porumboiu is, he doesn't let you look away. You watch Cristi eat an entire bowl of soup. You have to think about soup. You notice his dirty dishes. You notice everything. You realise how tedious and soul-destroying his job is.
Elektra napped during the surveillance sequences. Spying on teenage drug users behind the kindergarten building was really boring. She woke up for the footage in which the audience had to read the surveillance reports, though – line by line. With subtitles. If we had paid attention, we would have seen the misspelled word Cristi's wife later points out – it's actually a plot point.
This is what life is really like. Cinema usually lies about it, though.
After seeing 12:08 East of Bucharest, I knew what to expect, so I woke Elektra again for the last half hour. That half hour made the previous 90 minutes worth it. The last half hour – which involves three men in an office, a blackboard, and a weaponised Romanian dictionary – is a gripping, chilling, and mind-blowing revelation of the power of language to control our thoughts and actions. This was the point of the enervating, Kafkaesque 'police procedural' – the menace was not in pot dealers or car chases (or total lack thereof), but in the Romanian Academy's linguistic reforms.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Corneliu Porumboiu is a genius. If you've got access to a DVD library, and if you can spare two hours and read subtitles, try this out. Your brain will be different afterwards. And you'll understand a lot more, not only about the poorest country in Europe, but about the inner workings of your own mind and heart.
Oh, a warning: Somebody might call you 'cerebral'.
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