Becket, The Story of Qiu Ju, & The Isle

Becket is something of a prequel (even though released earlier) to The Lion in Winter, about Henry II's relationship with Thomas Becket (I keep wanting to use two Ts in Becket). It has Peter O'Toole as Henry II, and Richard Burton as Becket, along with John Gielgud in a fairly minor role as Louis VII of France. Both Burton and O'Toole are excellent, and the film itself is fascinating (even if it keeps the inaccuracy of Becket being a Saxon rather than the Norman he was). My main complaint was that beyond the top three, most of the cast did nothing to stand out, and those playing the women tended to be absolutely horrendous. Especially Pamela Brown as Eleanor of Aquitaine, played so superbly by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. Also, the later film just seems better to me, although that could be because of the martyrdom of Becket just bugs me immensely, as I disagree that the church should be above the law of the land. That's just me and my crazy wacky anti-organized religious ideas. The film, though, is very worth watching.

The Story of Qiu Ju is a film set in some unnamed small village in rural China where a very pregnant Gong Li lives and whose husband is kicked in the nads by their chief after a misunderstanding. She then tries to mediate with the chief, but has to continue to go higher in the government bureaucracy as all she wants is for him to apologize, and he seems insistent upon not doing so and just buying her silence. Clearly, the administrative law and the government as a whole cannot quite figure out what she wants when she says that she wants the "right thing" to be done. It starts out pretty funny, but quickly becomes extremely sad, when you realize just how expensive everything is to these poor chili farmers in the quest of getting a simple apology. The last few minutes of the film are even worse. Thanks Zhang Yimou, for making me so exasperated with the Chinese bureaucracy that I am happy that I don't live there, and haven't been kicked in the balls.

The Isle is a fairly early Ki-duk Kim film, apparently his fourth, and it again has very little dialogue. My problem with the film, besides the POV shot of someone leaving a dump (something that I never needed to see), is that it's extremely disturbing from a violence standpoint. Lots of anti-fish violence, and also some very disturbing fishhook on face, on hand, and (most squicky) on vagina bits. The film was beautiful, but I really just found it completely bizarre. Especially that last metaphor, which seemed to suggest the reeds were her pubic hair. I think. Kim's later films are better. Well, at least the two I've seen, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring and 3-Iron.