Hanna Rennt

This post also appears online at MediaBlvd Magazine.

This weekend I finally saw Joe Wright's thriller Hanna, starring Saoirse Ronan in the title role, and reuniting her with her director from Atonement.  Hanna is a girl raised deep in the forest by her father Erik Heller (Eric Bana), who has trained her to be an intelligent, skilled, fighter and survivalist.  He has raised her with the knowledge that they have one true enemy, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), who killed her mother and who will stop at nothing to end Hanna's life.  At sixteen, Hanna has learned all that Erik can teach her, and is ready to go out into civilization.  She wants to hear music, see the world, and make a friend.  With this, she knows the battle with Wiegler will come.

Whether or not Erik has been telling Hanna the truth her whole life is very slowly revealed over the course of the film, as is the reasoning behind why Marissa Wiegler could be viewed as a threat.  I didn't know whether to be impressed by Hanna or feel bad for her, or whether she was actually fighting for a good cause or not.  Wright, cinematographer Alwin Kuchler, and editor Paul Tothill do a good job of contributing to the cloaked mysteries by obscuring the high-energy action scenes with usage of handheld camera, optical illusion editing, and some mind-bending camera angles.  In particular, the scene where Hanna is being held in a CIA compound takes on a surreal vibe, when 360-degree camera tracking combines with a motif of circular cameras, tunnels, and windows.

This unsettling feeling of never quite knowing what's what is accompanied by The Chemical Brothers' frenetic score.  I don't know whether it was the music, the augmented reality, or the hyperactive storytelling flourishes, but I got a very 1990s vibe throughout the film.  Unlike Wright's Atonement and Pride and Prejudice (both adaptations), Hanna displays more of his background in music videos, feeling at home alongside films by David Fincher, Danny Boyle, Baz Luhrmann, or Michel Gondry.  Scenes when Hanna struggles to understand the sensory overload of unfamiliar technology in a Moroccan hotel room, or when she later visits a demented storybook house complete with cartoon statuary, contribute to the otherworldliness of the story.  Sometimes it feels a bit over-the-top, such as when Wiegler visits an associate at a German sex club, and the dialogue is written to provoke without contributing in any way to the plot or characters.  Wright does keep his signature tracking shots in top form, but they don't beat the one from Atonement.

Bana's performance is merely fine, but he doesn't really have that much to do, compared to Ronan and Blanchett.  The young star's performance is physically demanding, and she does a good job punctuating her warrior coldness with a love of learning and a genuine fondness for the new friend she makes in English tourist Sophie (Jessica Barden).  Barden was a pleasant surprise, turning what at first seems like a caricature of an annoying teenage brat into a surprisingly multifaceted girl longing to be interesting.  Blanchett plays a villain straight from the pages of a comic strip, with her severe hairstyle, heavy Southern accent, and fixation on dental hygiene.  Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng contribute enjoyable performances as Sophie's hippie parents.

I considered Hanna to be an art film from its first, atypical hunting sequence, which helped me to overlook flawed story elements that would have been more bothersome if the form of the movie weren't so compelling.  We are, eventually, given just enough backstory to tie up most of the loose ends the story introduces, and the action satisfies enough that the "Why?" is unimportant.  That said, it is never explained how Heller manages to swim across the Baltic Sea in wintertime in a pair of capri pants, but that is a point of contention best left for my dad and I to joke about, as it doesn't really have any bearing on the story.

Two from the vault

(Since I have repeatedly open and shut this blog like a vault...)

Today I browsed some discount DVD racks and picked up two of my much-enjoyed movies which I heretofore did not own. It's such a joy to be able to revisit a movie you have loved in years past, pop it in the player whenever the mood strikes, and remind yourself of how it made you feel when you first watched it. Who you were back then. Who you are now, and why you love the movie in a different way.

I am now the owner of Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998), and Taylor Hackford's White Nights (1985). Lola is the sort of movie that I obsessed over as a teenager, aping Franka Potente's shock-red hair time after time, finding romance in her scenes with Moritz Bleibtreu (despite the harsh German accents), and totally "getting" it when I was just a kid who wanted to be cool and Donnie Darko and Memento hadn't come out yet. White Nights appealed to a different part of me, a ballet dancer who was naïve about but fascinated by political intrigue from before I was born. I could lose myself watching the masters, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines, dancing for their freedom. I dreamed I'd one day be as beautiful as Isabella Rossellini (impossible). Lola spoke to my fast heartbeat and hard edges, and Nights to my soft daydreaminess.

In high school I studied ballet under a divorced couple (who still remained "close") that had sought political asylum in the U.S. from Cuba. They were such a fascinating pair, and excellent dancers, and I guess there is something so romantic about escape when you have never had to do it. He was dark and wore tight pants and controlled the classroom with the kind of terror that gets the best out of the students. She was gentle and beautiful but would explode when you were being slovenly in class. I'll never forget when a girl tried to excuse her lethargy with a vague plea that she hadn't eaten much that day. It's sort of a rule in ballet that eating disorders aren't talked about much if at all, so the student had been bold to invoke them. The instructor was so pissed off at this lazy lie of an excuse. "In Cuba, we sometimes ate catfood! And sometimes all we had to eat all day was a little bit of cafecito! But we still had to dance perfectly!" The unspoken "or else" hung in the air.

Run Lola Run is the kind of movie you watch in introductory film classes to learn about nontraditional narrative timelines and sound editing. It's sort of a primer for movies that make you think about heavy stuff like free will, and true love, but that's still totally fun and energetic. Lola is so pretty and determined and fearless, and what teenage girl doesn't want to be like her? Plus, this is the perfect movie to show to people who don't know what it's about. You get to smirk at their furrowed brow when they learn of the 20 minute "ticking time-clock," and then nod at them like "Right?! Get ready," twenty minutes later.

I hope you have seen these movies. If you haven't, please give them a try. I'd love to hear how they sit with people who see them for the first time as adults.