This week I have watched...
"Bronson" by Nicolas Winding Refn
Michael Peterson was sentenced to 7 years in prison in 1974 aged 19 for an attempted armed robbery. He became Britains most notorious prisoner spending an actual 34 years in prison during which he transformed his character into 'Charles Bronson'.
The film is an accurate depiction of a troubled and misguided individual and Tom Hardys portrayal is excellent.
"Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
This is an animated autobiographical piece about a young girl growing up in war torn Iran. It follows her struggles with religion, ethnicity, relationships and the oppositions of a muslim life versus a western influenced one.
The animation is simple but effective and very easy to watch. The production involved old fashioned drawn pictures and the quality and life within the drawings really shows through. It was interesting to see all these conflicts through the eyes of this individual and I quite surprisingly enjoyed it.
"Container" by Lukas Moodysson
This avant-garde style film expresses the internal conflicts faced by a male to female transsexual. The imagery is set to audio of a woman whispering random thoughts and feelings. At points they line up and the visual representation of those thoughts is brilliant but alas it is far too long and without direction so therefore loses impact in my opinion but I still liked the styling and concept eg. when the male ventures outside he carries the female on his back yet when in his own space - the container - they co-exist together.
"Antichrist" by Lars Von Trier
This film is disturbing visually and emotionally but I'm glad I managed my way to the end as it was excellently written and directed. The use of sunlight to portray good was clever and the use of many small disruptive situations helped build the tension whilst allowing the characters unawareness of impending strife to remain believable. Some scenes were a little coarse in their content but I understood why that had been decided. Not one for the feint hearted!
