Fell asleep last night while writing this one. It is probably for the best though; I needed some time to process this film. I really either need to start watching my films earlier, or not pick such heavy material to watch at 10pm.

Zama (2017, Dir. Lucrecia Martel)

Zama is the type of film that really causes me to regret my lack of any formal film criticism training. I can tell you that Zama is beyond brilliant, and that I was in constant awe watching it, but I am not sure what specifically about it activated those feelings in me. The film is a period piece taking place in 18^th century Argentina, but the setting has an air of surrealism that creates a constant unease. Spanish elegance is made a mockery of while set upon mud floors and occupied with donkeys in a way that creates a unique world for Martel’s film.

While the setting in Zama may exists in an intermediate space between reality and full-blown surrealism, the film’s narrative symbolism is anything but vague.  At its core, Zama is an extremely critical satire of colonialism. Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and the rest of the Spanish occupiers are portrayed as excessively foppish. The film is constantly juxtaposing the white men who look a fool in their garish costumes with the indigenous people mostly naked, but able to survive in the tropic environment. While the power dynamics are as grim as they were in reality, Martel’s innovative look at the time provides a welcome reframing of that history.

I swear, some days it feels like it goes straight from 6pm to 10pm with nothing in between. All that is to say, I am not really sure where the day disappeared to, so today’s movie once again was started late. Still after this spotty month of viewing, if I watch and write about something I am considering it a success.

Wadjda (2013, Dir. Haifaa Al-Mansour)

While this film was on my radar for quite some time now, it was seeing Haifaa Al-Mansour most recent film, The Perfect Candidate, as part of the Seattle International Film Festival that inspired me to move it up my list. Like her later film Wadjda tells the story of a Saudi woman attempting to navigate a country that is only beginning to expand its understanding of women’s rights. While The Perfect Candidate focused on a young professional woman, Wadjda instead follows a young girl’s need to rebel against her restrictive surroundings.

Eight years later, Wadjda is more remarkable for what it meant than what it is. The film is good to great on an artistic level. It has some slight pacing issues but there is little to complain about and a lot to enjoy. What stands out more than any of the films text is its place in the culture. When it came out Wadjda marked the first time a woman made a feature film in Saudi Arabia, and it is clear that Haifaa Al-Mansour took the honor with the respect it deserved and created a film addressing the same injustices that kept her from the big screen before this film.

I am sorry I went AWOL for the last week plus. On Sunday the second, I got my first COVID shot and proceeded to get almost immediately extremely sick. My need to do nothing but sleep led me to missing a few posts and from there the anxiety and depression really took hold. Each day missed begat the next day missed until more than a week went by without a single post from me. I have felt awful about myself because of the misses, but as I felt worse it became harder to motivate myself to watch anything and thus it became a spiral down. Thankfully, tonight I managed to take a seat on my couch, let a cat jump on my lap, and watch a movie. Thank you for putting up with a longer blog section and a shorter movie review as I get back in the swing of things.

Wildlife (2018, Dir. Paul Dano)

To this day the only film directed by Paul Dano is a complicated depiction of a volatile family set in 1960. Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) has been uplifting his family in search of an easy answer, and after he refuses to take his job back following a wrongful termination, he instead leaves the family to fight wildfires until the first snow. This abandonment is one too many transgressions for his wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) to take. The bulk of the film follows Joe (Ed Oxenbould) as he watches his mother attempt to process her remaining feelings for her husband and the selfish actions that he takes.

For being a freshman director, Paul Dano displays a precise handling of tone in his period drama. Shot primarily from Joe’s point of view, Dano taps into the emotions of an overwhelmed 14-year-old watching both parents individually tear apart their marriage. While some of the personal complexities may be over Joe’s head, Dano captures these intricacies without betraying Joe’s point of view. As a whole the film is superb, but if there is any flaw, it would be that Gyllenhaal is not especially convincing at playing someone from 1960. This deficiency is further exacerbated by casting him aside Mulligan who was born to play roles from the mid-20^th century. It is not enough to ruin the film by any extent, but it did stand out.