One of the things that we probably all did over the summer was watch a few movies. All the time that we spent inside undoubtedly gave us the opportunity to catch up on our list. I caught up on my watch list too, and although I would love to list them all, I shall keep it short and discuss my top 3 favourites.
The Platform
I came across this on Netflix and watched it on an impulse. I do not regret watching it one bit so I would definitely recommend it. It also premiered in the Toronto film festival in 2019 and won the People’s Choice Award for ‘Midnight Madness’. The film takes an extremely interesting take on the modern capitalistic society. The inhabitants live in a building with an unknown number of floors and get assigned to one randomly at the end of each month. [Spoiler] The protagonist, Goreng, wakes up to find his roommate at the other end of the room waiting for a table full of food to descend. This table, which has enough for all the inhabitants, descends from the topmost floor and stops at each floor for exactly two minutes for the inhabitants to eat from. Unsurprisingly though, people at the higher floors are greedy and hog over the food and so the people on the lower floors get less and less to eat. The twist, however, is that regardless of the person’s deeds, at the end of the month they can end up on any floor. Goreng himself gets assigned to lower floors many times and just survives starvation. In his last month, he was paired up with another partner on the 6th floor, only 5 floors below the topmost floor. One day, Goreng and his partner decided to go down with the table to ensure that people only ate their share, so that there was enough for all. As part of this, they had to resort to all sorts of violence, and his partner almost died. In the end, at the bottom of the building, they find a child, unharmed and untouched from the cruel practices so they decide to send her up with the table, to send a message of them having won. Quotes from Don Quixote along with the film is the only possession Goreng decided to take with him, which brings the whole story to a full circle. [End spoiler]
The Seventh Seal
This film, by Swedish filmmaker Ingar Bergman, is pretty old and was released in 1957. This is a period piece set in the backdrop of the Black Death in medieval times and explores the concepts of faith and humanity. The protagonist, Ingör, is a knight who comes back from the crusades, only to find his country rife with the plague. [Spoiler] All of the other soldiers leave, and he finds death itself has come for him. However, he challenges death to a game of chess in a bargain for his life. What I find most striking in the film is the cinematography, and the imagery that convey the themes so well, even though it is a black and white film. As the film progresses, along with the gripping match, Ingör meets society’s outcasts, who seem totally bizarre in the modern world. Through his reflections on the torment of mortality and the inevitability of death, he is ever so determined to evade death for as long as possible to complete one redemptive act before surrendering. [End spoiler]
Lost Bullet
This crime-action-thriller is a gripping tale of a man trying to prove his innocence by navigating through a corrupt police force. [Spoiler] The protagonist of the film, Lino, has a passion about Ram cars and tweaks the engine of an ordinary car to give it a lot of horsepower; he and his accomplice then use it to break into a storehouse for a heist. The police arrive at the storehouse quickly and Lino gets arrested because his seatbelt gets stuck. One of the officers offers him a deal to modify the poor engines at the service to enable the cars at the police force to go faster to retrieve contraband. A few days later, a confrontation breaks out between the officer and his peers about running a racquet, and the officer gets shot. The others scapegoat Lino and have him arrested. The rest of the story follows his adventure into retrieving the bullet lodged inside the car to prove his innocence through a series of exciting scenes. [End spoiler] There is plenty of car bashing, and the graphics and stunts are utterly amazing and include everything imaginable from cars toppling over one another to driving a car half set on fire. The story line and character development are fantastic, and the direction and cinematography stellar. I therefore highly recommend it.