Onibaba

The miseries of civil war afflict a nation with desolate abstemious dereliction, crops having failed people starving while the thund'rous death machine brings moribund destruction. 

An older woman awaits the return of her conscripted son with increasing desperation, as does her daughter-in-law their resolute team struggling to survive the scurrilous agency. 

To find food and maintain their health they murder stray samurai who show up in their swamp, and sell their armour and swords and trinkets to a dissolute profiteer flush with millet. 

One day the son/husband's friend whom he left with long ago appears, with a sad tale denoting the end of their imagined saviour heads hang low.

But he takes a shine to the widowed maiden who is far too destitute to deny her will, their resultant coupling enraging the elder who sees starvation as her only future. 

She pleads with the worldly opportunist to let her partner in crime live free.

He loves her far too much however.

To deny his innocent jouissance. 

A sordid examination of despondency as dismally applied to wanton logic, people struggling to find food while others flee through reckless innovation. 

Grim realities to thoughtfully consider the frugal basics embracing thrift, if you value your life it's best not to join although there's no telling what desertion may aggregate. 

The atheist basks in comfort after escaping the feckless bloodshed, living day to day even hour to hour but remaining certain of his scorned trajectory. 

The elder employing supernatural tricks to convince her compatriot not to leave, the eventual extensive forlorn irony as unexpected as it is deceiving. 

Lost in the luscious swamps of medieval Japan driven mad by hunger.

Enabling strategies accidentally emergent.

Ethereal endowments.

Spiritually embalmed. 

When was it worse to be an atheist, medieval or contemporary times? ♞

Philomena

An out-of-work atheistic professional journalist teams up with a devout confident assertive mother to write his first human interest story in Stephen Frears's Philomena.

The two work well together.

I wouldn't be able not to say that (lol) because Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope's script has created two wonderful characters, one with elite qualifications, the other comfortable within the kitschy continuum, the kitschy elite and elitist kitsch notwithstanding, both successes in their respective domains insofar as they've groomed themselves well over the years, brought them together to conduct investigative research, and given them both enough humanity to be able to work as an effective team, both partners listening to one another and making related adjustments throughout which demonstrate facets of humble active listening, snide though it may occasionally be, their power relations not being strictly governed by a master/slave dichotomy, but rather a constructive allied argumentative breach, which playfully and dismissively gives and takes on both sides.

Martin Sixsmith's (Steve Coogan) intellectual capacities are higher than Philomena's (Judi Dench) and he has trouble refraining from expressing this fact, especially before 9 am (why do you have to pretend to be in a good mood before 11 am?), which is to be expected, but they're also high enough to recognize their own particular shortcomings, their exclusive ornate prejudices, which helps Martin learn to accept Philomena's difference, her loves, her passions.

Philomena doesn't shy away from defending her values and even though she's likely never studied advanced rhetoric nor frequently schmoozed in realms where it's condescendingly applied, she holds her own when Sixsmith criticizes her beliefs, breaking through his sound observations (with which I tend to agree) with cold hard forgiving faith.

How she could continue to believe after what certain religious authorities put her through is beyond me but she does and justifies her position coherently enough.

The metaphorical extract (the breach) distilled from their colourful exchanges is a fluid effervescent bourgeoisie, competent mediator of the clashes, comprehensive, cogent, chill.

First time I've briefly forgotten it was Judi Dench acting for awhile, her divergent performance creatively testifying to her dynamic multidimensional strengths.

Not that I've seen most of the films she's been in.

The Rite

Mikael Håfström's The Rite succinctly examines a doubting would-be Catholic priest's confrontation with theological proof. After having decided not to take his vows, Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue) is 'convinced' to spend two months studying exorcism in Rome. He ardently believes that the possessed are simply suffering from mental illness and doesn't respond to his studies enthusiastically. In order to challenge his beliefs, Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds) introduces him to an exorcist, Father Lucas Travant (Anthony Hopkins), who allows him to witness his sessions. The sessions are neither mundane nor theatrical and Kovak is initially disquieted by their quotidian mysticism. A beautiful reporter (Alice Braga as Angeline) writing a piece about the legitimacy of demonic possession is hoping to exercise his scoop, thereby serving to further destabilize his conscience. Then, as his father (Rutger Hauer) dies and Travant loses his mind, Kovak must decide where his belief truly lies.

The Rite is a modest sharp-witted calling card for the Catholic faith. The troubles facing Roman Catholicism in Western countries are resignedly referred to and the arguments contradicting its dogma given free room to play. The film is modest insofar as it doesn't bombard you with passionate pleas for legitimacy and showcases several characters, many of them of the faith, possessing the same doubts as the typical disbeliever. The film's modesty generates its sharp-wit because underlying its form is the awareness that intense elevations of Catholic principles don't receive much Western airtime these days, leaving proponents in check, requiring a subtle next move. The Rite is subtle and psychological and presented in the agnostic tradition while still remaining firmly devoted to Catholicism. On a spiritual intellectual contemporary level the film works. Structurally, however, it's somewhat condensed. The film is about Kovak but the most compelling character is Travant. If more screen time had been devoted to Travant's character, examining his history and conscience more zealously, his sudden decent into 'madness' would have seemed less like a gimmick and more like a tragedy.