La Truite (1984)

Joseph Losey’s penultimate feature, the under-rated La Truite (1982), revisits the themes of his 1963 films, The Servant and The Damned. Personal relationships are viewed as power struggles and the bourgeoisie as an elegant, affluent moral and emotional wasteland. Centering on a struggling, suppressed woman harkens back to Losey's 1973 adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House. 

The titular trout points two ways. It obviously refers to the men whom the coastal French trout-farmer Frederique (Isabelle Huppert) baits with sexual tease and chastely exploits. The scene where she milks the fish anticipates how she will milk the two businessmen, Saint-Genis (Daniel Olbrychski) and Rambert (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and eventually even their dignified Japanese boss Daigo (Isao Yamagata). She all the while remains true and protective to her gay, ailing husband Galuchat (Jacques Spiesser), who in the last scene himself drifts back and forth behind her like a fish, as he nominally runs the lavish Japanese trout farm Daigo has funded for her. 

But the title is not Les truites but La Truite. That points to Frederique, who swims upstream, against the currents of class prejudice and male power, to transcend her unpromising roots. Her success is hollow, however, as she ultimately admits, for there can be no pride in how she managed to succeed. In baiting and catching the men she has also trapped herself.   

Frederique and Galuchat initially live off his wealthy male lover. They appear to con the businessmen into a big loss at bowling (!), cashing in on Rambert’s immediate attraction to Frederique. His wife Lou (Jeanne Moreau) painfully condones his affairs. Like the older woman Frederique meets (who’s made love 33,000 times, with an accountant’s abandon) and like both Saint-Genis’ androgynous girlfriend and his geisha, the women feel forced to use their sexuality to survive in the male power structure. The men can buy and discard any woman they chose -- but Frederique has since girlhood resolved to milk the men of their money without selling herself. In the bowling alley Frederique always wears an iconic t-shirt. The front reads Peut-etre, the back Jamais. When you see her coming you think, Maybe you can get her; when she goes you know it was always Never. 

But sustaining her physical chastity does not mean she has preserved any purity of soul. Hence the hollowness of her success. Saint-Genis’s confession -- He can’t love anyone because he can never feel generous -- speaks for most of the other characters as well. The main exception is Lou, who is finally released from loving her wayward husband -- so he kills her. 

The Debt (2010)

The Debt (2010)  CALL Discussion Group

Director: John Madden

Also directed: Mrs Brown (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Proof (2005)

In 1966 three young Israeli Mossad agents -- Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain), Stefan Gold (Marton Csokas), and David Peretz (Sam Worthington) -- are assigned to abduct a Nazi war criminal, Dr. Vogel (Jesper Christensen), now passing as “Bernhardt,”  in East Berlin. They are to smuggle him out to stand trial in Israel for his sadistic Mengeles-like experiments on Jewish prisoners at Birkinau. David’s concern for Rachel thwarts the escape so they have to hide with him. As Vogel works on his captors’ minds and emotions, on December 31 he provokes David’s attack, cuts his bonds, and escapes, after slashing Rachel’s cheek. Ostensibly to protect Israel from “a national humiliation,” Stefan persuades the others to claim Rachel killed Vogel, confident he will not reappear. This makes them heroes. Pregnant,  Rachel marries Stefan. After she refuses David’s request to leave her loveless marriage, he disappears in a quest to find Vogel, planning to confess their lie to see Vogel stand trial. Crippled by a car bomb, the womanizer Stefan rises to the Israeli cabinet. 

In 1997 their daughter Sarah celebrates Rachel’s (now Helen Mirren) fame in a book on the incident. David reappears (as Ciaran Hinds) having learned Dr Vogel is living in a Ukrainian asylum and will soon tell all to a Russian journalist. Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) orders David to find and kill Vogel. When Rachel refuses David permission to divulge their secret he leaps into an onrushing truck. On ex-husband Stefan’s orders Rachel speeds to the Russian clinic where she meets a false Vogel but leaves the journalist a confession. As she leaves she and Vogel meet and kill each other.

Here are some things to consider:

1. That was the “plot,” the events in order. The narrative -- the manner in which the plot is conveyed -- interlaces the two time schemes. Even within each period the time is shuffled. What are the implications of this switching? How does the order things are revealed affect the themes?
2. How do incidental objects become metaphors? What meanings ripple out of, for example, that fatal truck, or Rachel’s scar, or Stefan’s wheelchair, or the needles? What’s the effect of Vogel being a gynecologist, instead of, say, a podiatrist (or the dentist of Marathon Man)?  Can you name any others (objects that because they are in a work of art invite wider reading)? In a metaphor, the object is the bulb, the theme is the light.
3. Speaking of which: in the first and last shots the three young Israelis step out of the darkness of their military cargo plane into the blinding light of Israel. How do you read that shot, in the context of the film?
4. How does the romantic subplot -- the David-Rachel-Stefan triangle -- reflect upon the  larger political story? What themes unite the two strands?  What is the point of the differences/similarities between David and Stefan?
5. What are the nuances in Vogel’s characterization?
6. This film is a remake of the 2007 film (same title) by the Israeli director Assaf Bernstein. What does the film say about Israel? And beyond? Remember: “A work of art is more about the time it’s made than about the time in which it is set. The very best are about the much later times when it is viewed” (anon). 
7. What thematic purposes are served by the variety of violence? 
8. Compare the different forms of lying, playing roles, pretending.
9. Can you make anything (on a thematic level) of the following phrases:
1. the three young agents relive “an unimaginable evil...Israel’s worst nightmare.” 
2. they vanquish the monster by confronting it.
3. “It’s not always a blessing to survive.”
4. “the Americans have pulled out.”
5. “You Jews never knew how to kill. Only how to die.”
6. “We’re not animals. Remember what we are. Remember what we are not.”
7. “So. We were all insane. Is this the answer?”
8. “I didn’t think about myself at all.”
9. “Aren’t you tired of lying?”

Contagion

Contagion (2011): CALL Discussion Group Notes

Director Steven Soderbergh -- Sex Lies & Videotape, Kafka, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Solaris, Oceans 11/12/13/14/15/16,etc., The Good German, Che, The Informant. 

Returning from a Macao conference, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) arranges for a layover in Chicago to tryst with her ex-lover. When she returns to her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) and son Clark in Minnesota she succumbs to a virus and dies. Clark dies at school. The virus speeds round the globe killing hundreds of thousands. Beth’s lover’s wife watches him carried off on a stretcher. 

Internet “journalist”  Alan (Jude Law) exploits the mystery first by trying to sell a story blaming it on mercury fish poisoning, then by claiming to have contacted it and cured himself with the drug Forstina. In Switzerland WHO doctor Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) suspects Beth may have started the epidemic. In Atlanta CDC doctor Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne) sends Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to Minnesota to investigate the disease. Homeland Security suspects it’s a terrorist attack. 

Alan accuses Dr Sussman (Elliot Gould) and the CDC of profiteering. Sussman ignores government orders to shut down his more insecure lab and to destroy the virus samples. As a result he manages to make a stable version of the virus, enabling the development of a vaccine. Mears is stricken and Cheever can’t get her out. In her last action she tries to toss her coat to the shivering victim on the next bed. Cheever urges his wife/girlfriend Aubrey (Sanaa Lathan) to flee Chicago immediately, but she divulges the secret and he will have to face an investigation. Dr Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) notices an effect on the test animals and begins to test the serum on herself. 

Meanwhile the society turns into savage chaos, with rioting, looting, hoarding, murder. A policeman tries to arrest Alan and seize his ill-gotten $4.5 million gain, but Alan’s followers pay his bail and the fraud triumphs. Orantes’  Chinese colleague, whose mother was among the villagers killed by it, has Orantes kidnapped for the ransom of 100 doses of the new serum. To her horror the government cheats the villagers with a placebo. In the serum lottery Cheever injects his Aubrey but secretly gives his own shot to his janitor’s son. 

Mitch, who had forcibly kept Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron), his teen daughter from his earlier marriage, apart from her boyfriend Andy (Brian O’Donnell), now arranges a private prom for her in their living room, welcoming the tuxedoed Andy as her date. When Mitch gets the camera to photograph them he finds the last shots of Beth and breaks down crying. He is heartened by seeing the young couple dance, both secured by the serum.

1. Why do Disaster films have an all-star cast? What’s the effect in Gwyneth Paltrow (who usually carries the film) dying off right away?
2. What does seeing Elliot Gould as a rebel doctor (Sussman, who against orders manages to recreate the virus) remind you of? 
3. Does this film have political import? What’s it saying (i) from the left, or (ii) from the right?
4. In the opening global survey why are we given the various population figures?
5. Why do we enjoy disaster films?
6. The film’s opening: On a dark screen we hear a cough. Can we briefly wonder if that’s in the theatre not the film? How does that connect with our having “Barnsey’s” physical perspective on the mouth mask being put on him? Why the September opening for a film about a nightmarish extension of flu symptoms? Is that something to sniff at?
7. The ending reverts to Day 1: Beth shakes hands with the Chinese chef in Macao, who has just handled the pig contaminated by a banana-eating bat. How do you read the ending? Has this Disaster flick been redefined as a Whodunit? What’s the effect of bringing the two genres together in this way?
8. Compare two series of shots. In the first we get a sequence of closeups on mundane objects: Beth’s peanuts, a file holder, etc. In the second we get shots of eerie vacancy: empty streets, gyms, etc. How do the series work together?
9. What’s the connection here: (i) The janitor’s kid has Attention Deficit Disorder. (ii) As Dr Mears points out, a plastic shark will keep people out of the water, but grisly warnings on cigarette packages fail to deter.
10. Disaster films attack our complacency and pride. How does that play into all the scenes of advanced technology? Mitch referring to his stepson as “the mighty Clark”? 
11. Why is our first victim (Beth) given a deliberate five-hour layover (so to speak) so she can have a tryst with her exlover in Chicago? (Clue: Pat Robertson would like this.)
12. Compare the movie references. Jude Law cites monster films: “King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein, all in one.” Fishburne cites the more natural threat of the Disaster film: “The birds have already weaponized the bird flu.” (aka, What’s it all about, Alfred?)
13. How do the epidemic and the net journalist plot lines reflect on each other? What connects/distinguishes them?
14. Does the epidemic work as a metaphor? Can it point to something beyond disease? What about Jude Law’s cynical mentions of Katrina and Wall Street?
15. What distinguishes the heroes from the villains? How is Fishburne complicated on this count? And the nurses who strike because they can’t do anything? The 25% absenteeism among law enforcement?
16. What’s the point in Mitch’s changing treatment of his daughter’s boyfriend Andrew? How do you read the teens’ snow angels, in context?
17. What does the Jude Law character represent?
18. Given that the epidemic is traced back to a less than fastidious Chinese chef, and the Chinese kidnap a woman doctor as hostage for vaccine, is the film racist? What contrary evidence is there?
19. Why is most of the score electronic music?
20. What’s the point in this cut: From a scene of urban rioters Soderbergh cuts to Mitch and his daughter being stopped at the Wisconsin border and denied exit, under state quarantine.
21. What’s the meaning of Fishburne giving the janitor’s kid his own vaccine and Winslett tossing her coat towards the guy shivering in the next bed? The Americans (at the Chinese insistence) buying Dr Orantes’ freedom with a case full of placebos?
22. What does the prom symbolize?
23. Does the film have anything in common with Soderbergh’s other work?

What thematic use can you make out of this dialogue:

1. “Print media is dying. Dying.” Alan.
2. “Start thinking with your head, not your heart. “ That’s the janitor to Dr Cheever.
3. “How are we defining ‘contained’?”
4. “Call EVERYONE.” Cheever to Mears.
5. “Wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”
6. “It’s figuring us out faster than we’re figuring it out.”
7. “Our first job is to find Ground Zero.”
8. “We need to make sure nobody knows before everybody knows.”
9. “The best defense is social distancing.”
10. “There are 50 states, 50 health departments, 50 protocols.”
11. Can’t we put the new vaccine in the water, like flouride, to cure a lot of people at once?
12. “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anything.”
13. “Blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.” Sussman.

Kon-Tiki (2012)

The Ronning/Sandberg retelling of the Thor Heyerdal epic journey from Peru to Polynesia is one of the year’s most religious films. It posits two kinds of faith. 

Heyerdal (Pal Sverre Hagen) has faith in his anthropological knowledge, even if it sails in the face of the science of the day. When he throws the modern wire coils overboard, he rests his and his five mates’ lives on his confidence that his theory will prove true. He will complete the crossing with only the primitive technology. The Inca sun god Kon-Tiki is the other object of faith. Emblazoned on the sail, the god’s face frequently commands the men’s attention, heartens them through crises, and attends when they seem all alone in the world. 

The two faiths work together. Because Heyerdal can’t swim his very undertaking seems an act of religious faith, a confidence that the dangerous and mysterious world beyond will support him. This is borne out when he’s thrown overboard by the killer reef -- just when he can walk to the Polynesian shore. The conventional science of the world's scholars is trumped by the insight and courage of the man who trusts the knowledge his experience has won him.

Obviously a sea journey is a kind of Road film, where the characters grow into maturity by confronting and overcoming a series of tests and tribulations. Each of the men grows through the experience, like the engineer who grows into a fisheries career and the man who at first hates the parrot but is outraged when the sharks feed on it. The engineer’s theory of the 13th wave being the strongest has no grounding in science, just the superstitious faith in that number. As it happens the anchor is cut loose by a jagged rock after the 10th wave, in the kind of happy accident in which the faithful find the hand of their god.

The film’s religious core is the cinematic tour de force right after the navigator assures the men they are indeed on course to Polynesia. After their exhilarated celebration they collapse on the right side of the deck, their heads together, their bodies radiating out into a star shape. The camera pulls up and away from them. The heroes we have watched in closeup sweat and strain through storms and battles shrink into a speck in the darkness. The camera tracks through the stratosphere, past the Milky Way, through the heavens -- a god’s eye view if there were one, other than that painted Kon-Tiki -- and then it reverses back down to return to the mortals on their raft in the daylit water. That sequence defines the magnificence of man as recognizing his modest place in the interwoven elements of the natural world -- and the putative beyond. Man realizes his greatest self by submitting to the larger order. The film’s most obvious splurge of technology is its clearest statement of old-fashioned faith.