![]() ![]() It’s the liberally minded Schlegels who cross the class divide of 1910 London to bring these two distant social circles so close to each other, but it’s the old-world values of the Wilcoxes that make that meeting a tragic one. The film charts the tragic entwining of three families: the progressive and intellectual middle-class Schlegel sisters, the much more traditionally minded and wealthier Wilcox family, and the Basts, a down-on-their-luck working-class couple. Ravishingly shot and performed to career-best heights by many of its cast, Howards End loses nothing of the elegance we expect from a period drama, and yet it also feels thoroughly modern. With Howards End, the magic trio of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala converted yet another turn-of-the-19th-century EM Forster novel into exquisite cinematic form. Instead, this is simply a gentle, gorgeous, and profoundly moving portrait of women who aren’t done living yet. The Company of Strangers grants these women the kind of serious consideration and space that they’re denied in so many public spaces, but it never feels like a strained exercise in redressing that imbalance. They’re a diverse bunch - featuring Cockney transplants, lesbian pioneers, and nuns - and the film’s brief cuts to real photos from the women’s earlier years both underscore the rawness of what they’re saying and serve as testaments to the rich fullness of their lives. As they hunker down and get on with the business of surviving with meager food - something they manage to do largely thanks to the bushcraft skills of Mohawk elder Alice - the strangers reflect on their long lives and open up to each other about their lingering fears and still-burning hopes. The scenario (seven elderly women and their tour bus driver are stranded in the Canadian wilderness for a few days) is contrived, but the rich, lively conversations that feature are all drawn from the women’s real lives. It’s hard to overstate just how lovely - and quietly radical - this largely improvised Canadian docudrama is. There’s so much to learn from him and his perpetually wonderstruck kids here. ![]() Inspiringly, Monsieur Lopez doesn’t just teach the kids maths and spelling - he also gently coaches them in off-syllabus skills, like talking about feelings and reconciling differences (even turning a fraught relationship between two boys into loyal friendship by the end of the year). Chronicling the final year of his career before retirement, this doc shares the instinctive empathy its chief subject has for his pupils and, accordingly, shoots them quite simply, trusting that the high drama of their little lives is enough to sustain the film.Īnd it is: from the cheeky antics of happy-go-lucky four-year-old Jojo to the crippling anxiety of older kids grappling with parental illness and the terrifying move to middle school, we’re plunged deep into a full spectrum of raw emotion. ![]() That comforting atmosphere - which the film imbibes, too - is all thanks to the kindness and patience of Monsieur Lopez, the man responsible for the education of all of the village’s kids (up to age 11). This gorgeous documentary opens on the snowy fields of its rural French setting, but the single classroom it spends much of its time in couldn’t be warmer or more inviting. The overall effect is bittersweet and profoundly inspiring: as with the mirrors she places in front of the tide in the film’s first scene, she’s showing us it’s possible to face the inescapable with a twinkle in your eye. Just as her grief-stricken reflections don’t overwhelm the film with sadness, the whimsical impulses she indulges here - like constructing a beach on the street in front of her office - don’t blunt the sharpness of her candor. The Beaches was made when she was 81, aware of her own ticking clock and still nursing the decades-long loss of so many loved ones (chiefly, husband Jacques Demy). It’s also a testament to Varda’s inimitable artistic touch that she turns a usually-bleak subject - mortality - into something this life-affirming. The Beaches finds the pioneering director in reflective mode as she looks back at her work and life, but her artistic impulses are by no means stagnant: she approaches the past with the same - if not more of the - generous candor and youthful spirit that colored her career. It’s a testament to Agnès Varda’s remarkable ability to glean so much raw beauty and truth from the world that this autobiographical documentary is such a rewarding watch, even for people unfamiliar with her. ![]()
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