Films by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Woody Allen at the Venice Film Festival. Review

At the International Film Festival in Venice, two outstanding films were shown – “Evil Doesn’t Exist” by Ryusuke Hamaguchi in competition and “The Great Irony” by Woody Allen out of competition. Looked at them Andrey Plakhov.

Hamaguchi’s name was given a big name thanks to his previous Oscar-winning work Drive My Car. The new film by the Japanese master is distinguished by the same class of directing, but is built on a completely different material. The action takes place in a village near Tokyo, where life takes place in harmony (possibly illusory) with the surrounding nature. Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), the single father of an eight-year-old daughter, is busy farming. One day, he and his fellow villagers learn that they plan to build a glamping site on their territory, offering the townspeople a comfortable escape to nature. The first part of the film is the debate between the villagers and representatives of the construction company, who very quickly reveal their incompetence. In the course of an initially polite but increasingly tense conversation, it turns out that the project is causing water pollution in an underground source, as well as many other unfortunate consequences, including the ruin of a deer trail. Residents are trying to protest, but the forces are unequal, and the superprofits of the greedy company are at stake. The former patriarchal life is doomed and clearly coming to an end. And then, it seems, nature itself intervenes in the course of events: like an inevitable fate, it leads to tragedy.

One of Hamaguchi’s previous films was called Chance and Guess. Here, too, something must be guessed at, and each viewer may have different versions of what happened closer to the finale. However, it was no coincidence that a shot of an alleged hunt sounded in the distance, and for a moment magnificent, almost mystical deer appeared in the frame. And the most negative character of the film turned out to be a handsome-looking guy in a red jacket, who until recently worked in an acting agency, and now serves a construction company: he personifies urban civilization, uprooted. Evil is impersonal, banal, and requires sacrifice. Nature resists with all her might; the camera pans over the suffering trees to the hypnotic music of Eiko Ishibashi.

Deer hunters also appear in Woody Allen’s film, which is originally called “Lucky Chance” and is known in Russia as “The Great Irony”. This is not the first tape of the famous American filmed in Paris, but the first in French.

Fanny (Lou de Laage) and Jean (Melville Poupeau) are a successful couple: she works at the auction of expensive artifacts, he provides auditing and other services to “make the rich even richer.” Their friends and associates are society gossips; in their midst they are also fond of hunting wild animals. Fanny was reconciled to a respectable marriage, but did not find happiness; a chance meeting with a classmate who was once in love with her turns into romantic adultery against the backdrop of autumn Paris. And then – a criminal tragicomedy of morals, in which the mother of the main character (excellent comedian Valerie Lemercier) will play a key role.

The Great Irony is an absolutely beautiful movie about love, deceit and chance, as well as the hypocrisy of the “deer hunters” society. The author of this film successfully did what Roman Polanski failed in The Palace. He wanted to shoot a caustic satire, but the result was vulgarity. Allen filmed a light French vignette, and a well-aimed satire came out, the French have already lost the habit of this, and even Francois Ozon, one of the few remaining masters of this genre, does not always manage to achieve such grace and elegance.

Before the premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Woody Allen was extremely self-critical about himself in an interview with a Greek magazine: “I had all the advantages. I made money, I had complete creative freedom, so I could make exactly the films I wanted, one after the other. I shot a few good ones, but none of them are masterpieces. Because I failed to create a masterpiece, I feel like I let myself down. Someone who had the same opportunities as me could produce two or three masterpieces.”

And at a meeting with the press in Venice, Allen gave a slightly different picture of his own life. When asked what luck and luck meant in it, he replied: “I have been lucky all my life. I had loving parents, good friends, a wonderful wife and children, and I never ended up in a hospital. Nothing terrible has ever happened to me.”

Even if this is slyness (everyone knows about the serious allegations of sexual harassment, which greatly damaged the image and career of Allen), it would be interesting to hear Roman Polanski’s answer to the same question. And compare. And creative failures happen to everyone, at any age. Like good luck.