HEAD ON (2004)
Head On is about two Turkish immigrants living in Hamburg. Sibel wants to get married because she wants freedom so she doesn’t want to live with her family. Cahiit is a guy in his 40s who’s addicted to booze and drugs. Sibel meets him at a mental institution and asks him if he would marry her. They would just be labelled as married but ehy would not be actually behave like a married couple.They will just have to live together, but they could see other people. But soon they develop feelings for each other, and things don’t go right.
This is a great meditation on two characters, and nicely shows how these two different people find themselves in the midst of their so called marriage. They face many emotional ups and downs, and its all portrayed in a very poignant way. I also liked the style that Fateh Akin has adopted, the first half is more of a not so intense drama filled with music. The music often playing an instrumental role in taking the story further. The second half is way more intense, with characters facing consequences for their actions and coming to understand themselves better.
The performances are excellent, I felt like I was myself experiencing the despair that they went through. The characters are so well fleshed out that you actually relate with them. Birol Unel is great as this alcoholic, he’s kind of this rough nihilistic guy in his 40s. Sibel Kekilli is as good, her arc is way more tragic.
I was really impressed by the bleak and unsettling story, it affected me deeply. It’s bitter to watch but everything is shown really beautifully. It’s also very human and realistic, and very different from most mainstream love stories. In the end, Head On is a great piece of filmmaking. It’s poignant, moving, unsettling and one of the best tragedies I’ve ever seen.
THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939)
The Roaring Twenties (1939) is about Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) who returns to America after fighting in the first world war. America is under the prohibition law which bans manufacture and sale of alcohol. Eddie gets into the bootlegging business and his business flourishes. The film is basically about his rise and fall, shown in the span of twenty years.
The Roaring Twenties has inspired most gangster films that you see today.The layered screenplay with cracking dialogues and one liners make this a massively entertaining film. James Cagney as Eddie carries the film with such ease. He’s so charismatic as this character, it was amazing seeing him. This film is one of Bogart’s earliest roles and he kills it as this short tempered and sadistic world war vet. I loved the way they’ve shown characters turning against each other and all the mindless gun slinging. Even the love triangle in this movie was really well done, and unique for that time period.
The film immaculately portrays the roaring twenties, a time when the U.S. prospered a lot, also a time when there was the prohibition law. It was a time of modernisation and I just loved how the film captures it in the background. I also really liked the music along with the jazzy score, adding to the glamour of that time period. Raoul Walsh has directed this epic time period very gracefully.
All in all, The Roaring Twenties is a slick gangster flick, with great writing and one of the best performances ever given by James Cagney.
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