All in a week

So, in the span of one week I caught four films – three in the cinema, one at the National Museum, which by the way is a wonderful place to visit. That’s more than what I would normally have watched in easily a few months (although to be completely honest, I hardly go to the cinema to catch a show.)

The Singapore International Film Festival was on-going last week and I caught 3 of the films that were being shown. That’s not bad except that out of the 3, two of them quite frankly bore the hell out of me. I am no film connoisseur or critic; in fact I am a member of the amorphous masses who don’t have any background in film appreciation.

Still, one of them seems to me genuinely bad – and unfortunately, it’s a local one – because the characters don’t seem to accord with reality (unless there’s a dramatic purpose in the apparent incongruity), and the whole film leaves one puzzling as to what the Director is trying to convey. The plot was flimsy and I certainly wasn’t convinced of its depiction of characters.

As for the other one that bored me quite completely, the abstract in the festival catalogue has this to say: this aesthetically brilliant noir-thriller promises to leave a hauntingly indelible impression on its viewer.

What it didn’t say is whether the impression is for the better or worse.

No doubt, the Director is a deft old hand when it comes to the use of cinematic devices in this particular genre. His noir film unfolds with consistency and flair, the angles of camera and distances used to good effect in creating suspense. However, all this is overwhelmingly overshadowed by the excruciatingly slow pace in which the plot unravels; and this is further heightened by the lugubrious silence of the film, which is in black and white.

The scenes are shot at but a few locations, each of which the camera nearly always lingers for an awfully long period of time. This creates a claustrophobic mood. It’s a challenge to follow through and discover the truth – but not before one’s patience is put to test.

Lest I be accused of being unappreciative of the aesthetics, well, within 15 minutes of the film’s starting, there were audiences who walked out of the cinema. After that, more and more people left the cinema in the next 2 hours. One gets distracted after sometime, wondering when the next person will leave. After the first hour, I dare say it never took longer than 10 minutes before the next group of people walked out of the show.

The last film that I caught at this year’s SIFF was, as the brief of the film puts it, ‘a memorable ode to music’ that quite simply pleases. This one comprises a string of fantasy sequences that flow with ‘poignancy and wit’. The music, settings and spoken words create a poetic mood that delights; and one can surely identify with the idiosyncrasies and human emotional frailties that were depicted.

To tell the truth, the films that we wanted to watch at the SIFF were all sold out by the time we got to buying the tickets. There were many good shows but unfortunately they all had limited screenings. One can only hope to do better next year, and hope also that some of these films might be available for screening locally in the later part of the year.