My week's films

I watched First Reformed (2017) by Paul Schrader (starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried) on Saturday and it left me thinking about it for the rest of the weekend.

The film slowly burns just to finally explode in the final scene. Ethan Hawke masterfully plays Reverend Ernst Toller, a protestant pastor struggling with several personal issues like the death of his son and alcoholism, his thoughts being captured in a handwritten journal which he plans on keeping for a year and to destroy it after a year. He then meets Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant attendant to church, who asks for his help in counselling her husband, a troubled man who is not wanting to keep their child. Then many issues start coming into play and we slowly see Toller free-falling, with Mary being perhaps his only source of comfort with whom he develops a strong non-sexual emotional connection.

I found the whole film enjoyable, and despite it being a bit sombre, it has some beautiful scenes (namely the floating one), although there are some cliched depictions and so on (probs would not make happy a fair chunk of religious people). Then I found the final scene absolutely marvellous, I think it is somewhat up to interpretation, but if you understand how troubled the mind of Toller is, you might have a different perspective on it; in brief, I think he does go ahead with the drano, with the last seconds unfolding only in his head, until...

Then, just yesterday, I found out about a streaming of some of Tsai Ming-liang's films on Mubi. Naturally I'm currently interested in finding out more about Taiwanese cinema; I now recognise, for example the names Edward Yang or Hou Hsiao-hsien, also the film A Sun (陽光普照) Chung Mong-hong, streaming on Netflix, is highly recommendable. I first heard about Tsai Ming-liang from this beautiful video on Fandor:

The streaming of the films is part of UNAM's 11th international film festival (FICUNAM) based here in Mexico. Unfortunately, the streaming of Ming-liang's films, specifically, only lasted from the 18th to the 24th of March.

Anyhow, I had the chance to watch Rebels of the neon God, in Chinese "青少年哪吒" (Qīngshàonián Nézhā) literally meaning Teenage Nezha; from Wikipedia:

The Taiwanese title refers to Nezha, a powerful child god in Chinese classical mythology who was born into a human family. Nezha is impulsive and disobedient. He tries to kill his father, but is brought under control when a Taoist immortal (Nezha's spiritual mentor) gives the father a miniature pagoda that enables him to control his rebellious son.

Many things can be said about the film. The only bad thing about it really is that it doesn't seem to be readily available online: films like these are nowadays at least available for rent, but apparently not this one or other Tsai Ming-liang's films. Hopefully during my time in Taiwan I'll be able to find these and other cornerstone Taiwanese films more easily in stores or otherwise.