Why Is Eureka a Good Film?

Don’t be afraid of the 217 minutes! Although the film’s pace is slow, a deeply psychological and substantial plot is brought to surface. The photography is excellent (Matsaki Tamura). The photographer uses more shots in one set up. He moves the camera from long shot to close up and back. Right from the film’s opening sequence this defines the atmosphere. This frequently creates a very complex screen as well. It points at the internal struggle behind the actors seemingly aimless and hesitant wandering. The photographer applies depth composition amazingly. He doesn’t use wide angles but uses long lens (for example in the film of Carlos Reygadas the Battle in Heaven). Thus the objects and actors can only be seen at a particular distance. It makes a unique effect to pick or hide the important parts of the film. It also depicts the characters' relations to their environment and to other people; expressing their non-existant, or rather uncertain connection with the world. They are isolated from normal life. They are connected by the tragedy they experienced and now they try to find a way out together.

Shinji Aoyama: Eureka

Orderly Chaos or Why Is Babel the Babel?

The story of the Babel is the symbol of incomprehensibility. In the Love Dogs, Inarittu showed he is a master of the more event thread passing narrative. Why couldn’t he replay it? Was it too big work with him? This film all the same runs, it’s complete. It’s simple, effective, spectacular. It’s a good movie but absents from analysis and discovery so only it is just a film of the many other ones. It doesn’t exceed on the scheme but it use that skilfully. It doesn’t show new elements from reality. We don’t understand the problem better than it represents: the incomprehensibility, the difficulties of communication, which go under the cultural and linguistic differences. We feeze the characters, but we forget them after we leave the cinema. It doesn’t change anything of the world, neither does ours. I expect a film that disturbs and leave me with plenty of questions. Of course I like relaxing too, but in that case I wouldn’t have chosen this film. It remained between only two types. It took big, but it hold small and it couldn’t get rid of the narrative’s models.

Alejandro González Inárritu - Babel (American Drama, 2006, 142 min)

Reflection on Film Criticism

What is criticism good for? Is there any objective measure for the appreciation of films (or other products)? Is there? Then what is it needed for? What one likes the other gets upset. What one laughs at, the other cries. All of us can only see the world that we live and experience. We interpret everything with the help of them. The woman who was raped she wouldn’t relive the experience on film screen definitely but it would probably free her from her trauma. Perhaps it would be very painful, but it might help her face up to fears.
There isn’t only one objective measure but many different ones and still there are works and films, which are chosen and subsisted. We talk about them; we see them over and over again. Why does it happen? Is it only a result of an arbitrary choice? Why do we say that Picasso was a big painter? Why do we talk about Orson Welles as a big director? Because of the critics who say that? Do these artists thank their reputations for coincidence? I don’t think so. Then what for? Most of the public became alienated from them. They don’t appreciate their works. Then why are we enthusiastic about them? I think because they teach to see us, if we let them. A critic’s task is to mediate between the public and the creator. The critic can show a way, a door, which is only his view. This might help us to find our own ones. It depends on our decision to enter it or not (for example Franz Kafka’s Before the Law).