The regular Bleska podcast was started by film critic Marie Barešová with her immediate feelings about the film Jan Žižka, from whose press premiere she came. To her surprise, despite initial skepticism, he was overwhelmingly positive. She praised how it is that we have these they don’t turn too much narrative action and this one is great, as well as the fact that they didn’t forget about female viewers, because there is a strong female protagonist.
Self-sufficient women and characters of a non-white ethnicity or race, in turn, worry the racist and chauvinistic part of the audience Rings of Power serial prequel to the trilogies The Hobbit a Lord of the Rings. Amazon, which bought the rights to the world of The Lord of the Rings and the book add-ons, even put ratings on hold on its streaming service to prevent hateful outpourings from people who haven’t even seen the first two episodes available since Friday 9/2. After looking at them, Marek Slovák judges that the huge budget of 465 million dollars, exceeding even that for the entire ring trilogy, it can be seen that it is still rather a nostalgic return to and wandering around Middle Earth. However, with the promise of things to come thanks to several mysteries in each of the narrative lines, the first quarter of the show is uneven as the fates of the characters remain separate for now.
Dying Japanese
But well-intentioned Minamata it has as its main character a white man who is a savior because he can take good pictures. However, the name refers to a small Japanese fishing community that was affected by water poisoning, as a result of which people lost their sight or hearing, could not move, trembled uncontrollably, went crazy and even died. It was revealed that the chemical company Chisso Corporation was responsible for the water pollution, but it denied responsibility for a long time and stopped dumping waste into the water only twelve years after the death of the first person – and after the death of more than two thousand people! The families received compensation only after decades, when the government ordered it in 2004.
But the film is about the photographer William Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp), who was sent to Minamata to photograph the entire event and thereby draw the attention of the Western world to it. Marie judges that “Depp’s performance, like the entire film, is thoroughly average: Depp’s face is hidden behind his prominent gray hair and beard, we see him wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a beret, but otherwise it’s his standard, typical expression”. She mainly had a problem with the fact that we are following the “expected course of the case”, on the contrary, she appreciated that “the only formal element that is somewhat worth mentioning is the use of multiple pictorial mediation of tragic images of people suffering from a serious illness”. Marek agrees, but adds that Minamata differs from the vast majority of other journalistic dramas in that the hero is a photojournalist, as in Oliver Stone’s much better Salvador, otherwise it is a completely predictable spectacle. Only Benoît Delhomme’s camera is worthy of attention here, especially his work with light and differentiation of individual spaces.
Marek and Marie could not indulge themselves in pictorial compositions, but both of them Minamata they give 50 %.
Censorship of China
They recommend looking at something else, for example One second by the Chinese director Chang Yimou, who is mainly known in our country thanks to the loose trilogy from the beginning of the millennium Hero, Clan of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. One secondlike Minamata, is released years later. Unlike the handsome project with Depp, not because the protagonist was a controversial person, but because China probably had a problem with remembering the period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which in retrospect is evaluated as a failure for its economic and social experiments. One second it was originally supposed to be shown already in 2019 at the Áček Film Festival in Berlin, but was withdrawn at the last minute for technical reasons. In fact, rather because the film passed through one censorship filter (for release in cinemas in its homeland), but not another (for release at festivals and around the world).
Marie almost melted as she recalled another cinematic tribute to Bio Ráj while watching: “What is more interesting is that the efforts of a man who longs to see his daughter are connected for one day with the fate of a single screened film, the space of a cinema, a screening room and a projectionist who is a local VIP and a respected personality that everyone panders to. The watched film becomes not the story of a man looking for a daughter, but a nostalgic tribute to classic film projection, the projectionist’s craft and his status honor, and he even fetishistically admires and ceremoniously repeatedly presents the film strip.” Marek did not completely agree that this would be a nostalgic act, because the pair of characters are striving for a film weekly, but it is to be shown before the propaganda war epic Hrdinní synové a dcery (Heroic Sons and Daughters). One second thus delimits itself towards cinematography as a tool of propaganda, on the other hand it focuses on the fate of people affected by the Chinese revolution, as one central character escaped from a forced labor camp, the second is about film material for financial reasons, so that she can support her brother after being orphaned .
However, Marie was not completely captivated because the plot seemed too banal to her, and Marek also appreciates Chang’s titles from the nineties more like Way home whether No one must be absent, which better articulated the civilian narrative with melodrama. That’s why they both give One second “only” 80 %.
Exploited Polish women
And they also agree on the evaluation of the attempt at satire Beauties from Dubai, although their views on the matter differ. Marie believes that the Polish effort of the director Marie Sadowska, whose filmography focuses on female protagonists, is a failed, cheap production with incomprehensible motivation of the characters and unsuccessful dramaturgy. Although attention is drawn to a serious topic, that over 250,000 Polish women aged 18 to 25 have sex for money, but very clumsily. While Maria was annoyed that even the most basic expectations regarding sexy scenes, exciting situations, naked women and making love to luxury were not fulfilled, Marek believes that this is exactly what the film was about, because Beauty from Dubai wants to be a satire that deliberately does not show women as an object for wonder and does not allow the audience to be intoxicated by the wealth of the upper class. But he thinks he is a bad satire because it is not even clear if the film is feminist, about women making decisions about themselves and how to deal with their bodies, or if the film is more conservative, warning against the pitfalls of the prostitution industry.
Beauties from Dubai they are feminism in the Polish way, i.e. conservatism, and thus they take away from both Mark and Marie 40 %.
You can hear more about individual images in the Ball Lightning vidcast in the video above, or in the podcast, which is also available on Spotify: