Just watched this interesting film "Vienui Vieni" in Lithuanian. Shot in black-and-white in 2003, it has (perhaps unconscious) echoes of Soviet propaganda films but with the plot the other way round. Very moving. Amazing that the widow of Lithuania's most famous partisan, Juozas Lukša-Daumantas, is still alive.
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6 comments:
Indeed, it is amazing, even scary, how big was the effect of the propaganda on the people who had constantly been subjected to it, required to spread it, and got used to switch from their normal colloquial language to the "governmental" clumsy phrases, no matter how insincere. People were turning into anxious children when they had to speak on tv, to militia (police), officials, bosses or becoming cold, distant and indifferent to hold a required ritual empty propaganda speech in front of their friends.
Here's the a Lithuanian villager caught driving drunk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXk0c6GLfs0
Well, Lithuanians are Catholics, maybe that's where certain pathos, feel of need of certain theatrical acts and [louder] rhetorical figurative speech in public comes from.
I watched the film a couple of years ago... the idea and plot was ok (after all it was showing one of the more exciting bits of Lithuania's history of the 20th century) but the technical side... oh dear. I wish such films would be done by the likes of Emilis Veyvis (i.e. the new-generation Lithuanian directors who have a more contemporary thinking and open mind). It was a disappointment, I must say.
I hope someone will be able to create a movie about Lithuania's post-war independence fighters which would actually be interesting to watch.
'the technical side' - what are you talking about, amigo? the black-and-white shooting perfectly fitted the historical and emotional background of the time, even helped to properly portray it. What did you actually expect from a movie telling this kind of story? Hollywood-styled special effects? explosions? computer graphics? obscene language? Is is this what the teenagers, like you, expect?
New generation directors like Velyvis... OMG, if this is what you call a contemporary thinking and open mind... feel sorry for u...
Cheap copying of Tarantino and Ritchie, trying to slightly adapt it for the local audience... makes me feel sick...
'the technical side' - what are you talking about, amigo? the black-and-white shooting perfectly fitted the historical and emotional background of the time, even helped to properly portray it. What did you actually expect from a movie telling this kind of story? Hollywood-styled special effects? explosions? computer graphics? obscene language? Is is this what the teenagers, like you, expect?
New generation directors like Velyvis... OMG, if this is what you call a contemporary thinking and open mind... feel sorry for u...
Cheap copying of Tarantino and Ritchie, trying to slightly adapt it for the local audience... makes me feel sick...
I don't mean B&W, I have no prob with that. I'm talking of the acting and setups which look soooo typical to the old Soviet generation of Lithuanian directors.
And Velyvis may not be world class but he's among the best Lithuania has today. Certainly better than the old Soviet-styled directing we see in Uttery Aone and a whle bunch of other movies by the "established" Lithuanian directors... no wonder Lithuanian cinema was virtually extinct for the past 20 years. And no, I'm not a teenager. And neither do I admire Hollywood. I'm much more into Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian and Indonesian cinema.
B&W imagery is no problem, the problem is the black and white thinking, stereotypical ideas and fear or inability to show the more complicated, more various, more lively and more natural picture. You look at it and don't expect to hear or see anything new to you or to your grandma, because the creators fear to say a word against the new heroes and be criticized by somebody now-important to the creators. If the Soviet black (evil) people are dressed in white and the Soviet white (angelic) people are dressed in black now, is that interesting, fair and right then?
Oh, and Velyvis' Zero was quite funny. I'm not a fan of cursing, but I didn't take that as a sign of drama (like some did and labeled the movie as drama then).
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