Looming, absurd and ominous, intruding, a reckless invasion, chaos and bloodshed, the imminent horror of the irresolvable, all under that delusive guise — the promise of entertainment. A promise as violent as it is empty. A promise that shrivels on the lips of those who loudly proclaim it's worth to that silence that simmers, begging for the boredom it had before luxuriated in. Curiosity is pushed upon them to suffocate resistance. A delusionary wonder, an awe that is forced only…
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Winter Sleep 2014
Compassion and indifference inflate and shrivel, biding their time, each crouches, silent as though dead already, until one is called upon to steer the conscience of the fickle-minded. In the steppes unfurl conflicts that hardly form, they are stillborn, nudged into being as though out of sheer boredom. But something simmers beneath the agony of a surface apathy, something brutal and mad, a smashed window, splinters of shame and shrivelled pride, the splinters of a boy watching on in silent…
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Taxi Driver 1976
He lives in tormented intimacy with the night. His is the curse of insomnia and, condemned to eternal wakefulness, he grows to loathe the world he can never shut his eyes to. Strangers flit in and out with the fleetingness of moths, fluttering to self-sabotage, but after all, the moth flies to the candleflame of its own accord. He watches, disgust etched into the curve of his mouth. Silent and intractable is his repulsion. Until something insidious curls like poison…
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Three Colours: Blue 1993
Close the door on the disease of grief. Close your eyes to it as it spawns, unbearably intimate and exposed; a horror of disfigured nakedness. Cringe back from it, recoil, flinch, but in your willed-for distance it only scuttles forward to close the rift, to entwine itself to the deserter. Your repulsion is nothing more than desire to isolate. And, as anticipated, it can only shrivel in the face of immense grief, for you can still hear it squealing beyond…
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Autumn Almanac 1984
A flat, steeped in ruinous decadence, permeated by the smoke of cigarettes and flaring tensions, hosting a series of struggles and conflicts that simmer and spill over like borscht left to boil. Dialogues are steeped in venomous spite, hostility hardly concealed. One man, a drunkard, hopelessly lost, groundless, seeks shelter within the claustrophobia, chased by unresolved debts and mounting poverty. Here he is met with blood, degradation, tenderness and something like self-awareness, though one that manifests crudely and brokenly. Another…
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Three Colours: Red 1994
A lyrical suffering, soft and transient, like a mist dispersing or the wavering final notes of a song. The subtle, sprawling threads of lives that branch out, tangle, encircle and become one with another's, the way a single action can birth a spiralling web of connections, dreams, awakenings, losses. Above all, it is a sequence enthralled with the interconnectedness of all, the immense harmony that defines our world.
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Close-Up 1990
To evade the self, to scuttle from truth, to cloak oneself in the robes of another, weave elaborate fantasies, tangle others in the webs of his delusions, all the while never meeting his own eyes, never confronting the self he feels compelled to flee from.
When spite comes along, Art dons a veil.
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The Northman 2022
A tale untangling against the bitter cold planes of 10th century Scandinavia, The Northman throws us into the earthy yet surreal Viking world, into a web of visions and prophecies overshadowed by gleeful brutality. Fantasy and religion converge with psychedelic ceremonies and hallucinatory rituals to craft a world palpably distanced from our own.
Within this coldly disoriented terrain unravels the story of Amleth, a young prince who bears witness to the betrayal and death of his father, King Aurvandil. In…
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Nosferatu 1922
phantasmic presence looming, overshadowing. expressive, farcical, heightened despair, terror, love. a lone building, decaying, reaching, steeped in darkness. plague manifesting physically and psychically— a plague of incertitude, sheer, senseless terror of the other. that which cannot be defined. sacrifice, purity, perverse in it's simplicity. an explanation willed, a solution dreamt. terror of the unknown lingers— a poisoned fog deeply concentrated within.
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Shame 1968
He; an escapist. I believe in living in hope. She; rooted, terribly, tragically, in reality. Governed by a reckless courage.
It is war. The two, in love though it is the kind of love that strains, tugs and binds them. They share a tense and tortured dialogue. Smiles exchanged are quick to fall… something helpless and unfinished lingers between them.
I'm so sick of you I could die. Clanging of bells ring out like an omen. Cry, if you think…
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Jules and Jim 1962
I'm afraid she'll never be happy on earth. She's an apparition, not a woman meant for one man alone... a force of nature that manifests in cataclysms. In every circumstance, she lives in clarity and harmony, convinced of her own innocence.
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Autumn Sonata 1978
A haunting, ravaged sequence, a splintering of superficiality, of roles assumed, of love falsely fashioned. Mother and daughter. What a terrible combination of emotions and confusion, and destruction. The daughter shall inherit the mother's injuries, the daughter shall suffer for the mother's failures. Here, Bergman presents us with a struggle, immense and harboured dangerously for too long– decades of hatred and bitterness, resentment, loss and love ill-received– emotions like sickness that boil over at last, strive to make themselves known.…