In the mature period of creativity Olivier Assayas experienced the flowering of creative forces. I started making one movie better than the other. In Something in the Air (2012), like some other directors this century, Assayas explores the youth counterculture of the 60s and 70s. And he's probably doing it the best. Here are the career dreams of a young artist, the desire of the heroes to do something useful for the proletarian revolution, love between representatives of different classes, the encroachment of youth terrorism. Having found a balanced view of things and a detailed manner of presentation, Assayas does not dramatize the protest of young people, does not whip up an atmosphere of aggression. It's about young people as such, always young people, who are spreading across the continent and the world in search of something of their own, something that is unique to this generation. It turns out to be a great film, and a little sad and bright, at least more lifelike than movies and stories about political intransigence.
“I'm not sure what they need. Don't be silly, you know what I need.
Perhaps one of the main problems that the viewer will have to solve, both during watching the movie and forming a holistic opinion after it is over, is it worth taking this film seriously or is it just designed to brighten up our evening? So I, after almost 5 years, decided to touch again the refined, open, bold and, besides, smooth and natural creation of Olivier Assayas, seemingly dated to the recent 2012. The tape, which I felt like a breath of fresh air after a year without a movie, appeared still fresh, but became a little more relevant, without requiring at all to “grow up” before it.
“We are not against old age, we are against that which grows old.”
Despite the presence of a fairly obvious main character, the viewer should not perceive the narrative only through the prism of his personality. The director makes it clear that the focus of personalities is rather blurred and does not try to feed us a “cult of personality”. The era, moods, thoughts and feelings, ways of self-expression, the spirit of protest and the notorious reality that leaves a mark on each of the components - this is what you should look at more closely. Freedom is floating in the air, primarily sexual, creative and ideological. The desire to make everyone count is accompanied by the uncertainty of choice, whether it is a profession, a place of residence or a personal life. The denial of the values of the older generation and the fear of going from words to deeds are inevitably refracted under the magnifying glass of circumstances.
“I am not content with myself: I live in an imaginary world, and when reality knocks on doors, I do not open.”
Towards the end of a short history of several heroes, as if randomly chosen by the author from the crowd of activists of lyceums and residents of underground clubs, we together with them come not to a conclusion, but rather to a conclusion. Whatever is in the air, it tends to gradually dissipate with those who fill it. Problems with the law, drugs and the search for a livelihood proceed on the wave of disappointments from relationships, the results of the struggle either for their rights or for additional privileges, the inevitable maturation with a change of orientation. So the credits do not require you to go to demonstrations or imitate any of the characters, as well as attempts to guess their fate. It is almost fashionable from time immemorial to be in disagreement with the current course of the country or to fight for an increase in the role of trade unions in determining the vector of development of the state, and it is normal to splash out your rebellion through new languages of creativity, light antisociality and political wanderings, like trying to create your own rock band or talk to TV.
The problem is not what it will cost, but how much it suits you.
But if for a well-groomed Frenchman who is in a relative comfort zone, a look at one of the most successful creations of Olivier Assayas will become something like a nostalgic immersion in the “good old”, then the domestic viewer, remembering the phrases of big minds from the media field that we are behind the West for almost half a century, will easily transfer what is happening on the screen to his everyday life, no matter how he relates to it. At the same time, no one prevents you from enjoying beautiful landscapes that you may never see, the carefree ease of European everyday life, the problems of which many of us look with a degree of irony, with which an adult looks at the problems of his child at school or in the team of a sports club. We are so different that sometimes we are lazy even to joke about it, so as not to upset ourselves on trifles.
"Art is solitude."
So the aura of this work does not pretend to get into the golden collection of your heart, does not try to make “History of youth trends of the 70s in France” your handbook, and especially not to try to teach you to live both “in the image and likeness” and “from the opposite”. The charm of French cinema has long attracted us with the ability to present any problems unobtrusively, to envelop the atmosphere of pleasure from the process more than the result, not to take to heart, but to remain in memory. Over the pictures in which the director can write in such colors, time does not have power.
We are lucky – we are in love, the rest fades into the background.
7 out of 10
If you look through the slogans of the revolutionary youth of France of the late 60s - early 70s of the last century, you will notice that then they demanded not so much revolution as life, real life, without masks, lies, compromises, prohibitions, cases and embellishments, a life of daring, creative and absolutely fearless. For example:
Under the cobblestones of the pavement - the beach!
Rejoice without hindrance!
In a society that has abolished all adventures, the only adventure is to abolish society.
All the power of imagination!
Prohibitions are prohibited.
The revolution is incredible because it is real.
These are very young requirements, and they, in general, are inherent in many, many generations of young people, no matter what age they live in, no matter what clothes they walk around - romantics, nihilists, hippies, punks, etc.
Demanding life from the undead—from those you don’t think are alive—is beautiful. Only through destruction you will not achieve, you need to look for ways of creation. The most creative thing on this planet, judging by the film by Olivier Assayas, is love and creativity. Gilles (alter ego director) managed to fuse them into a single whole (painting, cinema and romantic attachment to the girl), chose the path of creation and received the most important freedom in the world - to be yourself and talk about it creating, not destroying. Banal? I guess so.
Question: Was it really worth making a film with a taste of historicism and a political message, with a nostalgia for the times when everyone was together, and even disunity (Trotskyists, Maoists, Communists, etc.) looked like a single impulse for sincerity and freedom? I don't have an answer. I didn’t like the movie in general. Not because of the beautiful, eternal platitudes above. There are several other reasons.
In an ancient play by playwright Alexander Volodin, one heroine says the phrase: “If it is necessary, I may give everything, and you will think about it.” Enthusiasm, burning, delight, truth that is feverish, readiness for everything for its sake and the bare condemnation of the layman who prefers peace and half measures. That's not in the movie. There is no one to go crazy in it, writhing in a fever of insights, shouting: “I will not let anyone sleep!”, well, that is, to fatten, grow old, lie, grow a cocoon of comfort. No one is inspired, wholeheartedly to love life, not imagining any compromise with it, not wanting to be content with the second-rate, hating the adaptability and indulgence of adulthood. No one...
There are shots with fire, bonfires blazing, a house burning, figures rushing in confusion ... But there is no inner fire in any hero. Shoulder to shoulder to reclaim life from the old world? Infect and infect with passion? Unshakable to believe? Burning a dream? Nothing like that. What exactly is in them is the arrogance of youth. They do not fly, but walk, do not shine their eyes, but look, do not strive, hunger, thirst, but only try. That’s why the film is devoid of inner energy and inner poetry – delight, irrationality, euphoria. The maximum that can be said about him, he is poetic in appearance, remember at least the white dress of the beloved hero or the thin profile of the red-haired girl-dancer.
Question: Does the director approach his young people with criticism, their way of life? Absolutely not. More like memory. As a result, it turns out that the builders of the future are given through dusty glassy nostalgia, so dusty that it is unclear whether the author of the film remembers his youth with gratitude or longing, with tears or with joy, with sympathy or with cold thought. This “dust” infects the dynamics, euphoria, and passion of the revolutionary youth with statics: the heroes do not strive, but walk, do not sparkle with their eyes, but look, do not burn, but warm themselves. And sometimes it seems that they do not live, but flee from life.
In ancient novels, according to the eternal scheme, the hero certainly finds what he was looking for, but not where he expected to find, not as he expected and wanted. The same thing happened with Gilles, despite all the revolutionary character and the novelty he wanted. Life (with all the weightiness of tradition, experience) always turns out to be wiser than rebels and romantics who are fiercely eager to reshape its structure to their ideas about truth. The same, a penny, happened to the textbook rebels - Bazarov, Chatsky, Raskolnikov ... The pioneers forgot about the pioneer dreams, no longer hear the horn signals, and their red ties untied and faded.
Weird, very strange... It would seem that the film is about the thirst for revolution, about the passion for change, about life on the edge of time and death. However, not only the sharpness of the drama, but even the movement of the drama is palpable with difficulty, the contradictions are almost not noticeable, especially inside Gilles (one left (girl, revolution, reason to live) - another came). Quietly, calm surface of fixed scenario waters.
And after all, if you look around the heroes in general, a good life, not a nightmare, not a hellish abyss. As a result, it is completely incomprehensible why they need rebellion, fights, and other mannered approaches to the revolution. I was only stirred up in the midst of the general ideological blunder of the director's message, the slogan of the French "Sixties" “All power to the imagination!” was visualized in the finale honestly, sincerely, on time and very beautifully, and not in a revolutionary, but in a creative way (a film frame with a girl dissolving in the sun). But again, isn't it corny?
When one generation replaces another, attitudes and lifestyles change. The old seems naive and funny, and the new is correct and progressive. As time passes, the next stage of paradigm revision begins. More recently, current views are again questioned and ridiculed, and completely different ideas take their place. And so on to infinity — everything changes over time.
Most remember the past days with warmth - after all, their youth remained there, life was boiling with hormones, the horizons seemed wider, and the grass was greener. Apparently, for Olivier Assayas, the period of the 60s and 70s is just such a good old time, which he decided to tell through the language of cinema. This film is like a story in a circle of good friends, telling about the period of youth of the main character and his closest friends.
Gilles is passionate, his soul demands revolutionary changes in society. He participates in actions of political movements, pastes leaflets, distributes newspapers, reads ideological literature, watches films about the class struggle, goes to meetings. In addition, he is engaged in his favorite hobby - drawing, does not forget about his personal life.
While the main character is studying, his life is similar to that of his peer friends. However, after some events, their fates diverge. Guys for a while looking for themselves, their place in life - someone longer, someone faster. And finding, growing out of the pants of an ordinary fighter of the revolution, they begin their career growth. Moreover, he who earlier gives up youthful maximalism and ceases to fight the system, sooner gives up politics directly - he, as a rule, has more success in life.
Gilou, with his maximalism, seems to be dragging out the process the longest. However, this is not so – not all the steps of his acquaintances are steps forward. While he continues his studies, his passion Christina works as a secretary for revolutionaries and uses drugs, and a friend and his girlfriend make a trip to Afghanistan - also quite useless. But Gilles still reflects, “I’m not happy with myself.” I live in an imaginary world. As soon as reality knocks on the door, I don’t open it. As a result, all the characters gradually grow up, the situation in the country settles down and this narrative ends.
It is interesting to watch how sluggishly and slowly, like cigarette smoke released from the mouth (and there will be a lot of it in the film), the events in the film develop. How the children of the intelligentsia first fight the system, and then, as if in a mockery of their previous activities, become involved in the operation of its mechanism. As instead of a revolution of the Russian type, when there is hell and blood everywhere, there is a mild revolution - a revolution of views and nothing more. However, watching this is interesting, but nothing more. Something in the Air is as atmospheric as it is boring. Yes, he is very sweet and charming, not devoid of French charm, but there is nothing else there. Whether it’s worth watching “Apres mai” is up to you.
Something in the Air" (in the original "After May") is a film about the search for themselves in the world of a generation of young leftists, due to their age, who barely had time to take part in the events of 1968, but whose worldview and internal evolution were completely predetermined by the French "Red May".
More precisely, as Assayas admits in one interview and what he faithfully makes clear to the viewer from the first shots, about the narrow layer of “all that bohemian society of the 70s, which had a decisive impact” on the “aesthetic and intellectual education” of the director himself.
1.
The collective image of a generation is created by a curious technique. The film lacks a distinct protagonist. The central character, which should be more accurately called “zero”, is a kind of origin of coordinates, relative to which the viewer observes the spreading lines of evolution of the other three key characters. Throughout the film, Gilles does not take any decisive action, which he himself admits in one of the dialogues, which in contrast distinguishes the decisions of his friends.
His first friend finds himself in life through traditional leftist theory, which rests on practical work with the working class, after radicalizing into armed political struggle.
The second is through people who buy confidence in themselves and in their chosen path.
The third at first throws into Eastern spiritual practices, but then he consciously chooses the path of the [apparently leftist] public intellectual.
In addition to the four key characters, there are still a dozen supporting characters in the film, with their microstories illustrating the state of young minds in the early 1970s.
2.
This technique contributes to a detached, neutral presentation of the story, without imposing subjective assessments on the viewer.
However, Olivier Assayas does not fully cope with it. The storylines of both girls of the central character are not closed, one simply slams the door behind her and leaves, leaving the viewer confused about his future.
However, the lack of elaboration of female characters is partly compensated by the elegant observance of gender balance. Women are not needed by the director to set a love storyline and to be passive objects of passion, giving the initiative to male desires. The share of girls accounts for exactly half of the volitional decisions made by the characters on the screen.
When the screen needs to realize incommunicability / intimacy director once again sends one of the characters to another city. In itself, this formal process, albeit repeated in the film 5 times, nothing shameful. But Olivier Assayas identifies himself with a leftist intellectual tradition in which finding answers to these questions is archival, and avoiding them is frowned upon.
In the end, the director even becomes a hostage of his own reception. In the film, by and large, there is no final scene. The viewer has already been internally prepared for catharsis, and the film is simply cut off and the credits begin to creep on the screen. The indecisive central character in the end allegedly abandons the real world, preferring the fantasy in his head, albeit created by the “most important of the arts”. Compared to the heroes who persistently seek ways to realize their anti-capitalist ideals in the capitalist world, this looks frankly pathetic.
Not having an ending is not the worst option. It is painful to draw a line under the history of an entire generation, especially if it is still alive. Von Merendino, who shot perhaps the most iconic film about rebellious youth “Punk from Salt Lake City”, tried to answer all the questions in the final and almost ruined the entire film.
3.
However, the most important thing Assayas, who shot perhaps the best film about the “stormy sixties”, succeeded.
The director was able to adequately convey the worldview of youth, with its impulsivity, idealism and passion, which pits children against fathers. He did not go to the extreme of cold detached analysis (like the intellectualistic games in Garrel's "Permanent Lovers") and the extreme of full emotional empathy for the characters, which very easily turns into an idealization that simplifies everything to the universal anthem of youth "how wonderful it is to live when you are 17" ("Dreamers" by Bertolucci).
Only autobiography films can truly convey the era of the “revolution of the 68th”, Assayas said in an interview. More sincerely it turned out that Michele Placido also shot semi-autobiographical “Dream in Italian”. However, the Italian himself more than modestly assesses his own abilities as a director, as hints at the end of the tape. But the Frenchman is a first-class master.
Assayas created the image of the era with the diligence of a museum artist. The details are chosen so meticulously that, as the author of the review can judge by himself, the everyday life of the central character and his friends, especially during their training in the lyceum, in the first part of the film, are easily accessible to understand and empathize with any activist of today’s left-wing organization. Up to the fact that the scene with the dispersal of unauthorized action so characteristically conveys the practice of European street politics that the author of the review not without a smile noticed parallels with the protests in Taksim Square, where he specially went in June 2013.
At the same time, the director realizes that with the viewer who came to the show on the stated topic, most likely, they talked more than once. And as is often done in European acute social cinema (examples from the Russian film distribution: Materik, Capital), Something in the Air is filmed dynamically. The fast camera and energetic plot, especially in the first third of the film, create only sketches of images, expecting the viewer to successfully recognize and interpret.
For those interested in the consequences of “Red May”, the film is a must-see.
8 out of 10
Sex - freedom - rock and roll. Love, Komsomol and Spring...
At the festival “Other cinema” showed the film, awarded the prize for best screenplay at the festival in Venice. It is difficult to comment on this choice of the jury: I personally found it difficult to find any special qualities of dramaturgy. Perhaps all the fault somewhat detached manner of narration of the Director (who wrote the script), did not allow to build a close connection with any of the characters of the picture.
But it seems that nothing should have prevented you from identifying with the nominally main character Gilles, who is naturally performed by a pretty young man named Clément Meteyer, making his debut in the movie. However, both in him and in the other characters, there was always something personal that would arouse to everyone, even if not sympathy, at least lively interest. This generalized manner of saying is generally characteristic of Assayas: the personality of the hero is not the main element for him. It seems that he was more interested in the time in which these events occurred.
1971, Paris. And three years after the events of May 1968, French students are still playing the revolution. It turns out they somehow not very: daring sorties are more like street hooliganism. It is similar to what happens after football matches. On the other hand, verbose talk about Lenin, Mao, the revolution and the working-class movement begins to awaken. But here comes a hint of a relationship, that is, something more thorough and, most importantly, traditional for French cinema. But the love-romantic line remains on the periphery of history. To confess, at that time I had hopes that the authors were about to force the hero to choose between revolutionary fun, the creative search for an aspiring artist and interest in girls, or even try to combine all this in “rattling ecstasy.”
Against the background of “Dreamers” Bertolucci “After May” (that’s how the film was supposed to be literally translated from French) looks like a nostalgic sketch restoring the youthful ideological quarrel of the creator, who seems to have not yet decided on his main theme. I’m not going to lie to you, but something touched me. It was rock music. And although it was used in homeopathic doses, the few musical inserts that I honestly couldn’t identify during the film were so emotional that every time something like insight happened to me, and for a few seconds I was almost perceptibly transported into the past. I think that just for this opportunity to travel through time, we can thank this movie.
It seems that the brains of the then French teenagers were thoroughly washed by the thunderstorms of May '68. The elder comrades, who, however, were alienated from "Soviet communism," kept asking them: "What have you done for the working class?" Just like our party at the Komsomol. And perhaps it could have been genuinely admired, as the Venetian public did last fall, had we not experienced all this in the past. In any case, I did not have much nostalgia about this. Apparently, he ate the romances of the revolution at school matinees, when classes flocked to the gym to listen to the speeches of Komsomol leaders, who on paper urged everyone as one to stand up for Louis Corvalan, Angela Davis, etc. under the major songs of Pakhmutova.
It is not difficult to excite me...
I got excited every time.
When wearing a gas mask,
Prepared for the Cold War.
It's from our school folklore back then. No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten. Still. Although today we already know that the leftist demonstrations of the young French revolutionaries did not lead to anything special, and the Gauls continued to slowly stagnate, building a consumer society. The next morning, I suddenly found myself thinking that these hot, empty ravings of bully revolutionaries still seemed to me sweeter than the current alienated conversations online.
The third of the films Assayas watched surprised with its simplicity even on the background of his usually not very emotionally rich and low-dramatic films. A step-by-step story from the life of a boy who, as a young man, participated in street riots and because of the brotherhood, used a couple of young leftist self-taught girls, and then decided to study art. There is not a single memorable scene, the casting is so so so, everything is quiet and very measured. Bourgeois. Against the background of Bertolucci’s paintings about “after the revolution”, for example, “Dreamers”, and even, it is scary to say, against the background of “Tender age” Solovyov’s film Assayas is seen as a perfect empty space.
I haven’t seen a miniseries about Carlos that might change my mind about the director, but to date I think Assayas is doing the wrong thing. Judging by the scenarios, he is a man of sluggish temperament, not very smart and subtle. Despite the fact that the staging skills are, there are no errors against the cue, on the contrary, there is no choice of pleiner and nature. With such anemicity, the director, perhaps, should have taken a strong and time-tested literary classical basis, something like Maupassant and tried his hand as a screenwriter and illustrator of other people's stories. The script activity of Assayas seems to me to go against the decorative features of his discreet, but quite available talent.
5 out of 10
France of the late 60s of the last century with a wave of social protests, when to experience the strength of the bourgeois foundations rushed and students. Assias uses these events as the basis of the film. More precisely, take echoes: the very beginning of the 70s.
The original title is "Apres mai" - "After May." However, in our rental the picture came with the title - "Something in the air." And if the truism of the “fragrance of the era” is appropriate, then the film, in my opinion, has developed exactly fragrant. Think about it: is it just a fleur, a watercolor sketch of events, time, participants? Or does the viewer need a deep dive? In the reaction of Russian criticism, this reproach is seen - insufficient disclosure of the topic - both the history itself and its young heroes.
If you briefly skip through the plot, then here he is, the main hero-lyceist Gilles and his comrades. The life of a guy is a dualism of art and political position - a magnificent cocktail of youth, which emotionally beats as much as a Molotov cocktail and easily makes the first acquaintance with the era and its hippos and protesting residents. It may seem that the first acquaintance remains the first, without adding anything special to the subsequent presentation. It may seem that Assias jumps too easily from one affection of the heroes to another, without stopping too much anywhere. But here is the phrase of the hero, when he says how afraid he is to miss his youth, he fears that life will not whistle past him - and in it the key, the main property of almost any youth: to hurry to live with everything that is around right now, to which the reaction of the heart will not slow down - an absolutely normal search for yourself.
Well, it's not how it started. It's what happened to those rebels today. Not everyone was left in the underground and fighting. Conformity came along with age, and the system didn't break down radically. And today we live in the same bourgeois world, with the same rules of the game of material success and sly politics, which, as before, tends to bring peace to the system. What about those students? The challenge was thrown by age itself, the protest was expressed, the actions were made - and ... the students are mostly non-political ways, moving away from the radical method of rebuilding the world.
No depth, they say. Too few ideas as such, without pictures of violence and blood, refused to carefully study the political aspects – watercolored, ironed, sprayed with the fifth canella, all spoiled – no theme, no hero, no character either. Paradoxically, it is the watercolor of the picture that gives ease of viewing and allows you to fall with pleasure into the contemplation of beautiful youth with its peak of perceptions and sensations. I didn't see Assias concentrate the revolution. I didn't find a flaw in that. In the film, in our lives one thing: who fights, who draws, who has an abortion, who falls into love, hippies, goes through vein preparations, wears boho skirts, burns fires or jumps out of a window, gives up everything at all - let everyone play their own games - God has a lot. And we will easily recognize the era from those games, because there was something in the air in the late 60s. Special.
“Something in the Air” is a very intriguing, calling title of the film, making you spend an evening in the company of phenomenal boredom and nonsense. But the name does not deceive the viewer – “Something” is almost the same as “nothing”, only a little.
For two hours, you will be led by the nose and shown a large number of empty and intermittent frames: here is the main character Gilles at a party, and here he is in bed, and here he gives out proclamations, and here he fights for obscure youthful ideals, and here he draws. It seems that the main characters do not need to dress and wash after a stormy night, and they are already running to throw bottles filled with explosives at innocent security. The directorial reception is clear - Olivier Assayas tried to concentrate on the most important and not pay attention to the little things, but it turned out to leaf through the headlines of the newspaper, meaningless, unrelated. Although no... some of the little things he still paid attention - women's naked breasts. It seems that when the director did not know how to make the transition from one episode to another, he simply inserted bare female nature, everywhere (indiscriminately both the shape and size of these breasts).
The topic of adolescent maximalism and extremism is complex and tricky. In one film, it is almost impossible to cram the torment of love (as for two girls), and opposition to society, and the search for purpose, and relationships with his father, and the awareness of boundaries – did not work out for Assayas.
Separately, I want to note the actors’ play and the team’s work. The film is made beautifully - it is pleasant to admire the beautiful panoramai, good camera work. Guys who play teenagers like to believe, but their wonderful game is not able to fill the boredom and sense of deception throughout the film.
The May 68 student riots in France are a controversial topic. Some call them the last revolt of intellectuals, some petty-bourgeois games of war. But the fact remains that the events mentioned in some way influenced the fragile (then) adolescent minds, and one of these sympathizers was the director Olivier Assayas - he was barely thirteen at that time. On memories and nostalgia, the Frenchman builds his new picture: May died out, the “children of May” think what to do, how to continue the work of older comrades. And in this regard, the original name somewhat more accurately reflects the essence of things, because the month of May will remain May, no matter what you think, but the presence of “something” in this very “air” is a very controversial moment.
The author begins confidently and very concretely, diligently articulating every thought. Here students are fighting with the police in protest, here they are freely turning paint into slogans, here they are noisily discussing the political situation. Hateful topics in the range: Mao, Brezhnev, the CIA. Who's brainwashing who? Are people living well in Laos? Where do we put the proletariat? What have you done for the world revolution? Assayas cursively mentions this and much more, the truth does not stop in detail anywhere, but instead of answers he hastily delays “How young we were ...!”, diluting the acutely social sentimental. Cinema, meanwhile, loses its former clarity, and love boldly wins screen time from politics. And, I must say, the bright feeling in the performance of dreamy teenagers is almost the main success of the film. A time when everyone is so full of energy and free in thought that a languid glance and two and a half timid touches are enough - and a politically active couple significantly moves away in the direction of the invocationally blooming shrubs. Or you can hide in the shadow of a large tree to look at your newly built castles in the air. The sun shines, the grass turns green, the cicadas give a sound background - patterned, a little speculative, but damn beautiful. It always works.
And so the whole movie: a pairwise diffusion of politics, sex and art. The narrative advances like one of hundreds of cars in the middle of a daytime metropolis, "moved, drove, stopped." Here is youth according to Assayas: arguments, fights, impulsive actions, then sit, think about life, and then again in battle, in battle with a non-existent enemy, a vicious circle. Borders are erased, frames flicker, young people are constantly looking for themselves, and find it in painting, then in drugs, then in dancing, then in burning cars. And all those feeling-shooted throws are really just a thousand and one projections of how the sharp blades of reality cut the sweet biscuit of dreams. After all, it will not be possible to impose Maoism on the world if the bike ran out of gasoline. However, if a certain kind of stream of consciousness was successful, the details are sometimes surprising with predictable schematics. Hippies here -- they've got long hair, they've got an unfocused eye, they're into some Tibetan stuff. There's a nice girl who's obsessed with art, and she's bound to get in touch with an older guy, and he'll hook her up on drugs. And so on. Of course, not bears with balalaikas, but attention to the little things here is clearly lacking.
"Something in the Air" certainly stands out as a good script. The plot lines skillfully separate, being brought closer to the final together, in places intricately intertwined, and it looks all quite pleasant pattern. But it is necessary to rise to a level higher, it is inductive way to get away from specific life stories - and the pattern will dissipate, betraying the ephemerality of what is happening. Assayas, in fact, did not reveal any of the political themes in detail, and all his images came out blurry, like watercolor drawings of one of the student rebels. What are they, the French children of May? Why aren't they of this world? No answer. You can find here the enthusiasm of early Godard or the running rhythm of the prose of the beatniks – many different hints, but absolutely nothing original. Pardon me, we had the French New Wave, there was a hell of a lot of lost generations, why repeat? Even recently hospitable postmodernism will not shelter such a movie, because there is no deconstruction, there is only a beautiful presentation of interesting, but not new and not their own ideas. Semantically zero movie statement. And Assayas’s film remains a cute nostalgic sketch, perhaps even capable of causing some reflection, but, like the heroes of the film, only dreams of revolution and confusion in their own thoughts. What are you saying in the air? Yeah, it's just hippies.
Mad youth, millions of roads of opportunity, the endless energy of youth, love, passion, attachments and new interests in the unknown – all this in Olivier Assayas’ film Something in the Air. The film perfectly erases the off-screen reality and transports the viewer to those times of rebellion, youth. Colors, music, manner of shooting - everything works for immersion. First of all, the picture remains in the memory of its atmosphere and precisely something in the air - that in youth is so fascinating. All who are determined in life are already concentrating energies in the direction of creation, rushing into one stream - clearly knowing what they want and what they dream of achieving. Rebels are rushing in search of their way, smashing everything that is, questioning every opportunity to change or say no to another political idea. It is remarkable that Assayas does not show sorrow in lost freedom, in lost time and opportunities, the film does not look like a requiem in his beautiful youth, as a regret for the past - everything creates an atmosphere around it, apparently exactly what he saw and felt in his youth.
I can’t say anything special about this film or original – just a good, atmospheric film with great cast, production and camera work.
In part, Olivier Assayas’ autobiographical film tells about life in France and in Europe in general in the early seventies, immersing us in an atmosphere of struggle for our beliefs, youthful maximalism, love, friendship.
I am sure that today’s high school students would be interested to know how and what their parents’ generation lived in France, when they were not yet eighteen.
In addition to protests, rallies, posting leaflets, they as sincerely as they believed in the ideals of the revolution, loved and dreamed.
Not necessarily, those teenagers can be cited as an example of today’s teenagers, but to find out what they breathed, how they argued and what they spoke, I am convinced, is worth it.
And it seems that at that time young people were at least interested in something, unlike today’s generation of consoles.
7 out of 10