Pina (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

One of my all time favorites.

Best movie ever!

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A previous commentator wrote that there are 'upside down' trains in Pina.There are not..it's a Schwebebahn - a hover train, a train system suspended from high girders, which can be found in the German town of Wuppertal - where Pina was based.I'd love to watch this film in 3D - anyone who knows where I can do so in the UK - please drop me a line.The trailer is gorgeous. All that fluidity. I'm glad Wenders did this tribute - other than him only Lynch would have qualified to do so.

This film did not really click with me. The dance style is like a pending apocalypse. It becomes very dreary sometimes. One wants to yell "Lighten up – have a drink!" Some excerpts brought to mind Monty Python – a woman dancing on a bench in a stream (And now for Something Completely....).There is hardly any exuberance and joy expressed in the dance sequences. Even when the music is bubbly, the dancers seem to have a forced smile.Perhaps it was too avant garde for my taste as well – in one arrangement a dancer is shoveling dirt unto another dancer, in another a dancer performing by a public pool. It all comes off as not only pretentious – but cold and icy. Many of the dancers expostulate rapturously on Pina – but I also got the feeling of someone who was not communicating effectively and hard to reach. Overall I was not impressed. Some of the musical pieces were interesting (The Rite of Spring by Stravinski), but the choreography overwhelmed the rigid dancing.

I went to see this last night, and though I barely retained my sanity to the end, there were many times I wanted to go screaming from the movie theater.Most of the film is filled with weirdly interpretive dance sequences that were crazy enough to make you want to bang your head against a wall (some of the dancers actually did that during dances), but maybe it wouldn't have been so horrible if we were told what they were supposed to be interpreting. I discussed it with one other person (there were only four of us in the entire theater) and I said to her that "Okay, she wasn't crazy because these people swore loyalty to her for so many years, but from these dances...no, she was crazy." Let me give you a few examples...A dancer comes out with two pieces of meat, and yells, "This is veal!" And then she dances for several minutes with the veal in her ballet slippers.One male dancer is walking along and another places a branch on his right shoulder, then another on a left shoulder, crux of the elbow, and so on, until he has several balanced on different parts of his body.A female carries a pillow on a real subway, making monstrous noises with every step, while a make dancer sits at the back of the subway car wearing some kind of weird animal-type ears.One female dancer carries a potted tree on her back around a lake. No dancing, just carries a potted tree around on her back.One woman throws shovels of dirt at a crouching female dancer.This is just a small group of examples. The film had two hours of similar W-T-F routines!!!It is no wonder the dancers in the film all looked so miserable when interviewed! I am hoping to flood myself with other images from TV or wherever now in order to wipe out those memories caused by this film.

Yes, this is a 10 and a magnificent work of art. I have been to many dance performances from classical to modern, and this is great.The documentary/eulogy starts of with music by Stravinsky, Rights of Spring to build a spring board to extraordinary film making.Dance excerpts are interspersed with silent head shot interviews with v.o. of the dancers. Some have nothing to say and are just silent. Excellent in keeping with an elusive concept of modern dance. I love a film that doesn't hit you over the head but asks you to participate in the process, as in this poetic film. Poetic film doesn't necessarily follow a "narrative arc" but presents its own structure.As to 3D. Don't look at it as 3D a la Avatar. Wenders 3D is really contouring the image. As a 2D image it works OK, but the added contouring of the image really makes it come alive. True there is no 3D effect of a "chair" flinging at you. There is a subtle effect of the image reflecting the contouring of the body, dance,movement,space and image.Pina's dance choreography is amazing. I loved the use of indoor/ outdoor dance/space performances. Many sequences are really amazing and wonderful.Herzog, be warned. There is a new camera in town and he is out looking for you. I love Herzog too. Is this the resurgence of German cinema post Fassbinder?Go see it and enjoy. It will win an academy award. Yep.When you get a chance go view Norman Mclaren's, Pas de Deux, a short interpretative film on dance with great pan pipe music. He made it in the 1967. It is about 15 minutes.