7 films to reflect on life and society

In recent years, the best French audiovisual production has returned to the fray. He leaves us notable films, original and very critical of certain performances.

On the other hand, internationally these films are named after women. They are not only protagonists, but directors strengthening their careers and accumulating awards.

What is clear is that more films and series are being made than ever, with the risk, but also the luck that this entails. While it is true that many productions are just to pass the time (something that is not a problem); other productions aspire to something else. To leave us with the feeling that we have been lucky to see that story. We are more cultured, more critical and more devoted to cinema for films that take risks. And they beat us.

Below we list films of various genres that leave us with a plot worth exploring psychologically. They are films to reflect on life and society, which will surely invite you to rethink certain aspects, attitudes and habits.

1. Lamb, by Valdimar Jóhannsson

This is one of the most surprising, mesmerizing and intriguing films of recent years. His psychological and philosophical readings are numerous. The film was a success upon its release and very possibly, little by little, it will become a reference film in fantasy, horror, mystery and cinema. thriller.

A childless couple in rural Iceland makes an alarming discovery one day in their sheep barn. Soon They face the consequences of defying nature’s willin this dark and atmospheric folk tale.

The film silently follows the couple through their daily routines of farm chores and minimal conversations: spending time with them is like a test of patience. After the end of winter, Maria and Ingvar’s sheepdog alerts them to a disturbance in the stable.

The couple discover a human (body)-lamb (head) hybrid and, rather than run to the barren hills, decide to adopt the creature. They call her Ada. After a slow start, Lamb becomes an interesting exploration of the ideas of nature versus nurture.

To say more would be to do spoiler of one of the most original and strange horror films of recent years. It’s a film of stunning vistas, slowly building tension (hints of Hereditary), and gags visuals that make you laugh out loud (like the scene of a little lamb in a blue jacket).

2. Another round, by Tomas Thomas Vinterberg

The winner of the Oscar for Best International Film poses an unexpected dilemma. In the boring and routine life of a man in his midlife crisis… How much alcohol do you need? According to a philosophical approach, drinking 0.05% alcohol to face another day may be the key to getting through it.

Mads Mikkelsen leads the cast of this group of men in the middle of a maturity crisis, in which the experiment is welcomed with enthusiasm because they are tired of their routine. Thanks to a favorable context, since Denmark and alcohol go very closely together, these friends will carry out this challenge that seeks more to avoid pain than to have fun. And therein lies the problem.

Leaving behind the discomfort caused by alcohol usually takes a matter of hours, but the consequences it can have as a means of experiential avoidance can bring more problems than solutions. Behind every glass of whiskey, every friend seeks to drown their sorrows; Of course, each of them will have a different reaction to this ritual, which ends up getting out of hand.

Even so, in each round there appear confessions, sadness, longings for what they wanted to be and can no longer happen. Each cup harbors a truth that they are not able to face in their daily lives. Despite the pain and the outcome, it is an ingenious and fun film with a final dance that will revitalize you more than any “copazo”.

3. Quo vadis, Aida, by Jasmila Zbanic

This masterpiece that has won the award for best film at the European Film Awards. Pure cinema of denunciation, rage and search for justice.

The film chronicles the Srebrenica massacre, the largest genocide on European soil since the Holocaust. The protagonist, Aida, is a UN translator in the very heart of the conflict. Masterfully interpreted by Jasna Djuricic, the translator will have the power to attend almost all negotiations aimed at preventing the Serbian army from annihilating the Bosnian population in the city.

Srebrenica was an enclave called safe by the UN forces, so in the course of events one feels helplessness and stupefaction due to the total passivity of the international forces. When Aida realizes how irremediable the tragedy is, she will try to save her family at all costs..

It is a film that helps us understand the misfortune of a people who only seek protection, without weapons and scared to death. The phenomenon of learned helplessness could be studied not only in the Bosnians, but also in the entire army dedicated to protecting them.

This helplessness is not in Aída, who strives to protect her people and her family. A tough, but essential film that makes us understand that not intervening sometimes is actually doing so to promote horror.

4. A Promising Woman by Emerald Fennell

Emerald Fennell writes and directs this film, acclaimed at the 2020 Sundance Festival and winner of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It hit theaters in February of last year and promises to become an icon of the vengeful rebellion of sexually abused women in a dehumanized pack.

Carey Mulligan plays a waitress and former medical student who is traumatized by the suicide of her best friend. A suicide that she considers a murder by omission of help by a community that ignored her and mocked her.

At a university party, her friend is sexually assaulted by a few classmates of university, who, not content with the abuse, record her and laugh at her situation of drunkenness and absolute vulnerability.

Therefore, Mulligan will look for a rape revenge not only to the executors, but to all those who did not collaborate with the investigation and complaint, including senior university officials.

Mix the thriller and comedy with a dramatic endingwhich does not sound like victory and happiness, but rather a weak justice that appears only when someone does some desperate act to obtain it.

5. The Power of the Dog, by Jane Campion

It took Jane Campion twelve years to return to the cinema and she did so with this film, an adaptation of the novel by Thomas Savage. Benedict Cumberbatch gives the best performance of his career. He is unrecognizable, unexplored and wild in his role as a (not so much) Wild West villain.

Campion explores the toxic masculinity of a cowboy who represses his feelings to the point of anger, suffering and obscurantism, for not wanting to recognize their true sexual tendencies. The scene of masturbation in solitude is one of the saddest, a struggle to hide what he wants, until he becomes exhausted and weak.

The images of The power of the dog They place it among the best films of 2021 for its beauty, its care and the faithful reflection of the tension and toxic love of Cumberbatch towards a fragile and indecipherable Jesse Plemons.

His mother, Kristen Dunst, a widow and annulled woman in this western, reflects all the fears for her son’s integrity, since the discovery of the truth could end his life.

6. Titane, by Julia Ducournau

Julia Ducournau is a French screenwriter and director who already slammed the door in the face of conventions with his feature film raw, a mix of vegetarianism, cannibalism and rebellion against family and norms. There it is nothing.

However, it was only the beginning, because this year she was crowned with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival for her film titan, being the first woman in history to achieve it. Therefore, it has won a historic award including being among the best films of 2021.

Very little can be said about the plot of this film. Only that it is, in principle, about the story of a young man with a bruised face who is discovered at an airport. His name is Adrien Legrand and he disappeared 10 years ago as a child. For his father, Vincent, this marks the end of a long nightmare and brings him home.

Soon the film becomes a slasher. It resonates with the most violent French terror around the body and identities, such as martys, Under the Skin either Climax. Horror and violence are unleashed at the same time as an unexpected love story.

7. Dear Comrades, by Andrey Konchalovskiy

Shot in black and white, this is a film about the disillusionment of a social ideal. About the manipulation and lies that a group can exert. When the communist government raised food prices in 1962, rebellious workers in the small industrial town of Novocherkassk went on strike.

The massacre that follows is seen through the eyes of a devoted activist. Lyudmila (Yuliya Vysotskaya) is a local communist party worker and factory worker. His companions are “dear comrades” full of contradictions.

Romanticized by the non-existent figure of Stalin who guides her to Lyudmila (Yuliya Vysotskaya), this devotion is definitively dissolved with the disappearance of her daughter Svetka (Yulia Burova) due to the chaos, amidst gunfire, all of it sown by the KGB. A chaos where ideals do not exist and survival prevails.

Andrei Konchalovsky introduces us, with a superb and somber image—even dry in a positive sense—into the massacre that took place in Novocherkask. He leads us to the disenchantment of a mother’s ideals and the disappearance of her daughter as a denial of the future.

A future condemned for the next generations and a present wide open, discovered, housed in the purest contradictions. Some confusing thoughts lodged in the victims themselves, corrupted in their humanity by a social ideal that attacks its own devotees.

You might be interested…