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TIFF19 REVIEW: Nobadi [2019]

2019/09/172020/03/24 Jared Mobarak

Stop calling me bloody master! Heinrich Senft (Heinz Trixner) is alone on his little patch of land within a gated senior citizen community, his pension sustaining ready-made meals and the care for his dog Argus. When the latter passes away suddenly in the night, Heinrich has nowhere to project his grief but the veterinarian who sold him the vitamins he’s quick to blame for the pet’s demise. Unable to afford to have her pick the body up, he decides to bury it in the backyard despite being ninety years old…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit [Heimat is a Space in Time] [2019]

2019/08/252020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. How much of our ancestry is tied to the history of the places we call home? While some of us would probably answer “None,” we’d be wrong. Just because your family tree was lucky enough to exist on the periphery of major historical moments as bystanders doesn’t mean you haven’t been impacted by wars, tragedies, inventions, and art in ways that defined your choices and subsequently the choices of your children. Why did my grandfather immigrate to America from Lebanon (then part…

REVIEW: Hagazussa [2018]

2019/06/172020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

We don’t have to be afraid here. What creates a witch? An evil that takes hold of willing vessels yearning to do his/her demonic master’s bidding or a populace’s mass fear that turns mankind’s own evil against those who are different than them and therefore a threat to the status quo? If you’re a believer in the occult, some version of the former is probably at the forefront of your philosophies on supernatural powers in the real world. And if you aren’t, the latter’s perspective provides clarity as to the…

REVIEW: Die Unsichtbaren [The Invisibles] [2019]

2019/03/032020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

After a little while you noticed that they were scared. We’re so used to stories of Holocaust survivors talking about what they endured inside the concentration camps that we forget around seven thousand Jewish men and women stayed hidden during World War II. While only about fifteen hundred ultimately walked away to live their lives in the aftermath, it’s impossible not to hail them and those who assisted them as heroes. The tales of close calls and secrets alone are worth discovering and yet these four (Cioma Schönhaus, Ruth Gumpel,…

REVIEW: Werk ohne Autor [Never Look Away] [2018]

2019/02/222020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Everything that’s true is beautiful. The thing that people who didn’t attend art school or don’t have a foundation in art history never understand is the reasoning behind postmodern art. They find it funny to reductively joke about how their three-year old child could net them a million dollars by scribbling on a canvas because they refuse to look beneath the surface and let the image speak as emotion through abstract form rather than some ingrained sense of realism. These artists had the skill to paint portraits but chose to…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] [2018]

2018/08/312020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

Stay cool. Okay? It starts with a rape. I won’t lie: I sighed thinking Sven Taddicken‘s Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] was going to end up another drama about coping and retribution like most others wherein Liv (Luise Heyer) struggles as Malte (Maximilian Brückner) protects. So it was a welcome surprise when we’re moved past this harrowing prologue to meet the couple two years later working, smiling, and possibly healed in a bid to forget. Not only that, but Liv proves the one who wants to celebrate upon…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Endzeit [Endzeit – Ever After] [2018]

2018/08/242020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

Go out and bury what haunts you. What if humanity’s apocalypse wasn’t the world’s end? We’ve become so used to treating ourselves as rulers of this planet despite knowing so little about it and the surrounding universe while also doing our best to destroy everything we touch. So what are we truly besides another in a long line of species with no greater hold on Mother Nature than the last? Our demise doesn’t therefore have to be by our own hand and hubris. Perhaps those two things merely place our…

REVIEW: Western [2017]

2018/08/162020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

What are you searching for here? When a group of Germans enter rural Bulgaria on an assignment to divert water towards a new power plant, those unversed in the area and its history wouldn’t think too much about it. Those like me would assume whatever conflict at this story’s back would arise from differing languages and cultures, but be sparked by individual personalities rather than inherent nationwide prejudices. As Valeska Grisebach‘s Western proves, however, that is far from the case. As one character explains around midway through the runtime, the…

FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Blue My Mind [2018]

2018/07/142020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

I’m wasting my youth on trains. Adolescence is a metamorphosis from youth to adulthood—a time defined by its constant state of flux physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Puberty is the backbone to this period because of the changes it inflicts. It alters our hormones and appearance while also providing a moment with which to be reborn. To shed your skin, so to speak, by putting the past behind you in order to embrace a future you can define. Rebelliousness is therefore a common theme as we reconcile who we want to…

REVIEW: Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free [2016]

2018/04/162020/04/10 Jared Mobarak

Become who you are. There’s a great line spoken by an aged Lou Andreas-Salomé (Nicole Heesters) to new friend and potential biographer Ernst Pfeiffer (Matthias Lier) upon his praise-fueled declaration that the way she lived her life—her freedom—was a touchstone for modern feminism. Her reply is, “Nonsense. What’s changed for us women since then?” It’s not presented as a jaded reaction or one specifically attached to the era in which she spoke it (the 1930s), though, because you could say the same today and not be wrong. Yes, women do…

BERLINALE18 REVIEW: Cobain [2018]

2018/02/112020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

My little man. There’s a scene in Nanouk Leopold‘s Cobain where the titular fifteen year-old (Bas Keizer) tells his estranged, junkie mother Mia (Naomi Velissariou) that he wants to help. Her response is to ask whether she cares about what he does, the answer tragically understood before his mouth utters the word “No.” To watch her shrug her shoulders and say, “Why should you?” epitomizes love’s power and its strength in circumstances where you couldn’t be blamed for believing it didn’t exist at all. Mia has never been a mother…