Au Revoir Les Enfants (Louis Malle, 1987)

                         5/5 stars - a netflix instant view
     This film is from the French auteur Louis Malle. Malle started his career collaborating with legendary film directors Robert Bresson and Jacques Cousteau. Cousteau was the inspiration for Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). He also collaborated with Miles Davis, who scored Malle's first feature film, Elevator to the Gallows (1958). Louis Malle directed 33 films over the span of 41 years.


     Au Revoir Les Enfants translates to "Goodbye, Children" in English. This film is an autobiographical account of Malle's life as an eleven year old boy in Roman Catholic boarding school, during Nazi occupied France. As a WWII film, or Holocaust film for that matter, Au Revoir ranks among the best and most personal. The film is almost entirely based in the confounds of the boarding school, yet resonates the entire experience of fear and anxiety associated with the Jewish people in this horrible era of human history. The film doesn't just explore the ideas and atrocities laced within the war, but also endears a common truth about what it is like to be young. Malle's remembrance of the these times encounters those who fought for equality and morality, as well as those who fought to damn the Jewish race. This film is one of the most endearing and powerful experiences ever processed through cinema. It is a true telling of the most disgusting and unfair time in human existence, but it does not rely on blood and gunfire to get to it's point. It is a story about heroes and villains, with one of the most powerful endings ever imagined... and it really happened.


     On a side note - Malle creates the most delightfully touching and sentimental homage to Charlie Chaplin, when the boys watch The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917). The scene comes along right before the end of the film and it reinforced my feelings of how film can be used to escape the world around us... if only for a moment. 


Mk

Mk's ten best directors

A simple list of my ten favorite film directors. Accompanied by 3 characteristics of their work. These directors are complete filmmakers, or auteurs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory.


10. Federico Fellini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Fellini
           - nostalgic, carnivals, italiano
9. Wes Anderson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_anderson
           - off beat, creating, colorful
8. Martin Scorsese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Scorsese

           - captivating, preserving, pop music

7. Woody Allen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_allen
           - new york, existential, frequent
6. Joel & Ethan Coen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_and_Ethan_Coen
           - the dude, the blood, the craftsmenship
5. Charlie Chaplin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin
           - little tramp, greater good, innovator
4. Alfred Hitchcock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock
           - macabre, suspense, master of
3. Jean-Luc Godard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Luc_Godard
           - defiant, groundbreaking, important
2. Akira Kurosawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa
           - simple, complicated, humanistic
1. Stanley Kubrick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick
           - perfection, repetition, perfection


Mk

instant viewings' inaugural post...

     My basic concept for this blog is to provide insight into films that I feel are good and important, and to get you to watch them. I decided to focus on instant streaming films from Netflix, seeing as how every movie conscious mind has easy access to them. Currently showing films of interest that are in theaters will be included as well. I will also post lists of ten bests, 100 greatest, etc. I encourage followers to send me their lists, to be posted along with mine. Interesting film happenings, thoughts on filmmakers and other info will also be a smaller portion of posts. Pass along this site to anyone you think would be interested in following...


Mk