Foreign films fascinates movie buffs

K S Sivakumaran in Thiruvananthapuram, India

Among the films I was able to see at the KIFF (Kerala International Film Festival) a few were impressionable. Out of these I wish to spotlight a few in capsule format to be mindful to restrict to the minimum words.

One such film was Jericho, a film from Germany directed by Christian Petzold. If you go by the plot the story is another presentation of the eternal triangle of love variety. There are three characters: Thomas, Ali and Laura. Thomas has fought in Afghanistan and had been discharged from the army. Ali is a Turk running a business concern.

Laura had been in prison and had debts. Ali settled her debts and married her. Ali is affable and generous but is very strict if there is cheating going on. Laura is devoted to Al despite his beating her.

Thomas has ideas to seduce Laura. She resents at first and later yields her to him out of passion. Ali suspects a plan of the two to kill him. But Ali who has only two months to live due to a terminal disease deprives everybody of getting hold of his possessions and kills himself by driving into the sea and gets drowned.

All three characters team up to an existential drama. It is a curious sort of relationship.

The next film is by the legendary French New Wave director Francois Truffaut, a critic (of Cahier du Cinema fame) turned filmmaker. It’s called ‘Jules and Jim’.

Existential Life Style in the 1960s in Europe might have been a forerunner to Feminism and the practice of ‘living together’ as seen from the film. I saw this film 47 years ago but now it was not as refreshing as I saw it then. The reason is that I had seen several ‘Existential’ films since then. They have stirred me and made me understand the medium of the cinema. But the film was fresh, innovative and awe inspiring five decades ago.

The film featured one of the remarkable international actresses, Jean Moreau and also Oskar Werner,Henri Serre and others.

The script involves three men and a one indomitable woman. Unlike the ‘moving images’ the film rests heavily on dialogue full of poetry and philosophical statements. Still images especially of the icy mountainous spots, enthralling musical score and restrained acting by the heroine were all something new in the process of development of the cinematic medium.

True to the conventions of the period there was no nudity but judicial use of implied sex. Two men can have healthy and close friendship without any semblance of homosexuality tendencies. A man could love and marry a woman and at the same time gets infatuated and have sex with another woman. The film has a finale with the end of life with ‘Death’ as a personal choice. The film could be read with several layers of understanding. The film was cerebral and I liked it that way.

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