Ray (2016) Reviews

• Paradise tells the story of three individuals, Olga, Helmut and Jules as their paths cross amidst the trials and tribulations of WWII during the reign of the German Nazis..

  HollywoodGlee2016-09-25

  Russian Director Andrei Konchalovsky premiered his latest work, Paradise, at the Sala Grande Theater during the 73rd Venice International Film Festival Paradise tells the story of three individuals, Olga, Helmut and Jules as their paths cross amidst the trials and tribulations of WWII during the Hitler regime. Olga, played by Julia Vysotskaya the real-life wife of Director Konchalovsky, is an aristocratic Russian woman and a member of the French Resistance arrested during a surprise Nazi police raid for hiding Jewish children. As part of her punishment she is sent to jail where her path crosses with Jules, a French-Nazi investigator, played by Phillipe Duquesne, who has been assigned to investigate her case. Olga pumps up her feminine wiles with what appears to be some success to get Jules to lighten her punishment. However, events take an unexpected turn and Olga is sent off to a dark and dirty hellish concentration camp. While managing to survive and stay alive, Olga catches the eye of Helmut, a high-ranking German SS officer, played by Christian Clauss, who oversees the camp's operations with an auditor's acumen. Helmut had previously fallen madly in love with the upper-class Olga and still feels the yearnings of love. Slowly and with the utmost care initially, the two embark on a tumultuous and destructive relationship leading to a break in Olga's mental state of what constitutes paradise as an impending Nazi defeat looms. Throughout Paradise Konchalovsky takes the viewer on a compelling journey into the past utilizing what appears to be archival footage and documentary style interviews from the three main characters. He sets the film in 1942 early with the use of a text overlay during the film's prologue and quickly introduces the audience to the world of Olga as a high-class, fashion editor for Vogue magazine. With the blink of an eye, the tone of the film is changed irrevocably as Olga is shown being grilled all night long about why she would hide Jewish children and lie to the police about it. And, Kochalovsky doesn't stop there. He enters into power relationships via sexual manipulation, eavesdropping, concentration camp internment and the visceral art of kapo survival. In the end the paradise unveiled falls into a similar vein to the spiritual realities of war and the fight for what is right displayed in Laszlo Nemes' Academy Award nominated Son Of Saul. Also, like Son Of Saul, Konchalovsky's Paradise has gotten an Oscar nod for Best Foreign Language film. This comes on the heels of Konchalovsky garnering a Silver Lion with Paradise for Best Director at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. Along the way Konchalovsky pays tribute to Russian cinema history in Paradise, shown in black and white with reflexive characteristics of early filmmaking reels unwinding on the big screen hearkening back to the days of Dziga Vertov's Man With the Movie Camera. Furthermore, Paradise editor Ekaterina Vesheva scoured through scores of wartime newsreels in search of the film's soul while keeping an authenticity to resonate within documentary sensibilities. In line with his vision of achieving a dramatic authenticity, Konchalovsky wanted unknown actors audiences wouldn't recognize from well-known projects to play the lead roles. Not an easy task for a casting director to find three actors with Russian, German and French language abilities who could carry out the characters monologues with maximum believability. Consequently, casting was carried out simultaneously in three countries with Elina Ternyaeva as the Russian Casting Director, Uwe Bünker was in Germany and Constance Demontoy worked in France. Konchalovsky's attention to detail continued with copious research into character development and environmental factors of female camp internment. Purportedly, he handed a compulsory list of 40 books for Clauss, which he graciously accepted, to read in preparation for his role as Helmut as a triangle of trust was being created between director, actor and audience. Julia Vysotskaya, a prominent television presenter, wife of Director Konchalovsky and working stage actress shaved her head, lost significant body weight and endured the rigors of the film's highly intense, emotional scene work. Adding additional depth to the Paradise mise-en-scene and furthering the look and feel of the 1940's war era with authentic costuming and set objects were the efforts of Costume Designer, Dmitry Andreev, and Production Designer, Irina Ochina. While the list of Halocaust films continues to grow, Konchalovsky submits a rare twist in Paradise with its exquisite aura and emotional expressions. A highly recommended selection for film lovers. Artistic, informative and transcendent, Paradise permeates more than one metaphysical level.

  More

• ready for your interview?

  ferguson-62017-10-07

  Greetings again from the darkness. Hollywood, and the movie industry as a whole, absorbs a fair amount of criticism for the perceived lack of originality and creativity in this era of remakes and sequels. However, filmmakers also deserve some credit for constantly finding fresh stories associated with The Holocaust and World War II - seemingly endless sources of material for new movies. As Russia's official Oscar Foreign Language entry, this film from director Andrey Konchalovsky (co-written with Elena Kiseleva) offers up three distinct perspectives of the same tumultuous period. Julia Vysotskaya plays Olga, a former Russian Countess and member of the French resistance. Ms. Vysotskaya is the wife of director Konchalovsky and has a screen presence somewhat reminiscent of Ingrid Bergman with her ability to appear alternatingly tough, loving, sensitive and stubborn. Her character Olga has been arrested for sheltering two Jewish boys. Philippe Duquesne is Jules, the lead detective assigned to Olga's case. His questionable loyalties are accompanied by a weakness of the flesh that is all too common among those in a position of power. Christian Clauss plays Helmut, a nobleman and German SS officer who is emotionally torn between his personal desires and his duty to the cause of his country. The story is told from the perspective of each character through a blend of flashbacks and interviews. Harsh lighting, stark surroundings, and their respective wardrobes during the interviews appear to show each being held captive as they are interrogated by an entity that remains unheard and unseen. The interviews provide some insight into the characters, but almost seem intent on keeping us off-balance as the film progresses. It's really the flashbacks that are the most interesting and provide the fascinating details for Olga, Jules, and Helmut. Beautifully filmed in black and white with an excellent use of lighting effects by cinematographer Alexander Simonov, the tangled web of paths intersecting during war time offers some terrific sequences: a father and son on a morning walk, an isolated and guilt-ridden officer in a fog-draped forest, the immediate scavenging after an unexpected prisoner death, the excruciatingly emotional deportation of Jews, and a remarkable sequence involving a meeting with Himmler and Helmut's subsequent mission to audit the concentration camps. The brief flashes of joy are usually crushed by the weight of despair and bleakness, yet by the end, we believe we know each of these characters – and what motivates them. Director Konchalovsky's film is an unconventional, creative, and ambitious combination of The Holocaust, Germany's quest for perfection, and the greed and daily desperation of those involved. The interviews might not be what you assume, yet cause us to wonder how might our own interview sound while reminding us that, no matter the circumstances, we can always choose to do good.

  More

• Holocaust drama w sympathetic Nazi, Russian countess, Vichy collaborator

  ncweil2017-11-13

  Paradise - a film by Andrei Konchalovsky reviewed by NC Weil What to make of Paradise? This 2016 collaboration between German and Russian studios, set during WWII and shot in lustrous black and white, gives us a thousand- year-Reich rationale for Nazi policies. We are offered three central characters: Jules, chief of police in Paris - Vichy French, doing the dirty work for the occupiers; Olga, a Russian countess arrested for helping hide Jews in Paris; and Helmut, a Brad-Pitt-handsome young aristocratic German who believes wholeheartedly in the Nazi vision. Spoiler alert! I'll be discussing the whole film. If you want to see it uninformed, stop reading now. Jules lives in a grand old house outside the city with his wife and son. In his office an underling reports that the Russian they have been interrogating all night has nothing to say. "You weren't trying hard enough," Jules scolds. "I broke his knee with a hammer - he can't walk any more." "Go back and try harder." The underling leaves the bloody hammer on Jules' desk. Then Olga, an attractive mid-thirtyish Russian countess, is brought to his office. She eyes that hammer, admits to terror of torture, and offers herself to Jules if he will prevent that. They set an assignation for the next day. But before they can meet, a pair of Resistance fighters execute him. Olga is sent to a concentration camp. Helmut sells his ancestral country home and goes to Berlin to petition Himmler for a job with the SS. It's granted. Helmut has tears in his eyes when Himmler gives him an SS ring, instructing him to wear it on the ring finger of his left hand - truly he is wed to the organization: a perfect German: efficient, straight, incorruptible. He is dispatched to a concentration camp to look for profiteering and the like. Soon after arriving, he encounters an old school friend, Dietrich, with whom he studied Russian. Helmut regrets not completing his thesis on Chekhov - the war has put personal lives on hold. Dietrich is going mad from the pressure of what he must see and do, but Helmut has clean hands. He doesn't have to get involved with the horrific business of the concentration camp - he spends his days going through ledgers while the camp commandant attempts to bribe him, to reason with him, to persuade him that any human would do what he does in that situation. And when Helmut walks through one of the women's barracks, he recognizes Olga, whom he met years before in Italy, when young men and young women with money and free time danced and drank and lounged at a Tuscan villa. He pursued her with letters she never answered. And here she is, a prisoner. He makes her his maid, and they enjoy sweet interludes from the surrounding madness. Konchalovsky intercuts scenes from their lives with what look like interrogations: each, in a plain white shirt, sits unadorned at a table, confessing to an unseen camera what they did, what they expected, how they reacted to events. The puzzle is why Helmut is made so appealing. The other Nazis at the concentration camp are warped by their duties - whatever humanity they possess is tormenting their dreams, turning them to automatons, sadists, or drunks trying to smother all awareness. But not Helmut. He breezes through his tasks, Himmler's orders like a beacon blinding him to the surrounding madness. When it's time for the escape he has engineered for himself and Olga, he sends Dietrich. He himself dies in the air raids of the arriving Soviet army, but nobly, as a warrior. Of the three characters questioned in an afterlife, only Olga is invited by the voice of God to ascend. Really? That's Konchalovsky's answer to the Nazi extermination machine? that they don't go to heaven? 'Scuse me while I find a hole to puke in.

  More

• The documentary part makes it slow

  Andres-Camara2017-12-07

  For a long time watching this movie, I'm wondering, what do you intend with the documentary part? I have come to the conclusion that I did not know how to state what I wanted and decided to do so. Actors looking at camera. But to me at least, this makes the film very slow and also makes me lose interest and sometimes lose myself. We have seen Nazi movies many times. This is one of them in which the Nazis, if we did not know about them, would not be bad. You do not see them doing anything bad. If they tell it, but this is cinema and it has to be shown, in a novel it is written, here it is told in image. As it is done as in episodes, it is sometimes cumbersome. Sometimes he loses you. It has a way of making the plans that surprise me on the one hand today. The camera is fixed and he does not care if the actors leave the screen. Cut bodies, heads, entire characters, it does not matter. He does not care where he puts the camera, he just wants to tell a script and he does not care how. The actors are very good, it's true. Even children, the little that lets us see their faces, are fine. They convey what the characters have to feel, pity that the director does not know how to pick it up. The picture is pretty good, in the documentary part, I do not know why those moments are like burning the tape. In the film part too, but when you put a lot of light through the windows, I do not like it, there is a moment when an actor looks like a ghost. The director, is not very clear about some things. He knows what he wants to tell, but between making tricky episodes and not knowing how to position the camera, he makes the film long and slow. I think it's a misused movie

  More

• Paradise may be an illusion, but this film is not

  Horst_In_Translation2017-08-13

  "Ray" or "Paradise" is a Russian/German collaboration that is fittingly for the protagonists' nationalities partially in the French language, partially in the German language and partially in the Russian language, so unless you are really a language talent, make sure you got a good set of subtitles while watching. The film runs for over 2 hours and is the newest work by lauded Russian filmmaker Andrey Konchalovskiy. He had his 80th birthday recently, so he was already alive back then already when the film is set, namely during the days of World War II. This maybe also explains his creative decision to turn this into a black-and-white movie as if it was really made back then. However, it certainly does look too modern for other reasons to make such an impression, at least for me. It's perfectly fine though. I muse say with the exception of supporting actor Peter Kurth, I don't know any of the cast here. Kurth gave a good supporting performance as a ruthless Nazi officer. He was perhaps the only character in this film who was downright evil and did not have any shades to him in terms of black and white. The female central character played by the director's wife Yuliya Vysotskaya (the one who received most awards attention from the cast) was maybe the exact opposite. The two male characters in the center of the story have a great deal of shades to them, even if they may seem like evil guys initially too. They were more thrown into the abyss of the Nazi movement, also for self-protection partially, than really driving forces, especially when it comes to the Holocaust. For Christian Clauss, the German lead actor, it was his very first performance I think and for that it was really impressive. The most interesting part to me, however, was the one involving Philippe Duquesne early on. After he was gone after the first half hour or so, things got slightly worse for the rest of the film I think. It really was the highlight as the story of French collaborators is really one that hasn't been done as often yet as stories about German soldiers or concentration camp inmates. But it is still a good movie I think. Had it managed to stay on the level of the first chapter for the following 1.5 hours too, it could have managed the Oscar nomination and not just made the list of the final nine contenders. Still a pretty good achievement admittedly. This is a definite contender for best Holocaust film of 2016 and I recommend checking it out. The only thing I did not really like about it were the scratching sounds when they jumped a few seconds in these scenes when the 3 protagonists are talking to the camera justifying why they did what they did, which also results in a big plot twist at the very end that I will not go any further into detail now to avoid spoilers. Enough said now. This one's definitely worth watching despite occasional lengths in the second half of the film.

  More