12 movies that challenge your intelligence

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

12 original films from this collection will help you better understand cinema and will definitely make you think.

Metropolis

• Science fiction, thriller, drama.
• Germany, 1927.
• Director: Fritz Lang.
• Duration: 145 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 3.

Fritz Lang created the first dystopian movie. For its time, the special effects in the film were astounding. Imagine: 1927, and in the frame there are fantastic scenery, a futuristic metropolis and robots.

But this is not what made Metropolis a legendary painting. More important are the social problems raised, which are embodied by the city divided into two levels. In Lang's creation, different motives are intertwined (the biblical opposition of Paradise and Hell, artificial intelligence), which organically flow into each other.

Andalusian dog

• Horror, fantasy.
• France, 1929.
• Director: Luis Buñuel.
• Duration: 17 minutes
• IMDb: 7, 8.

The film is based on the dreams of Dali and Buñuel. A chaotic action unfolds on the screen: a man looks at the moon, then takes a blade and cuts the eye of a girl sitting nearby. Characters commit meaningless acts, it is difficult to find a logical connection between the events taking place.

But the film has the logic of the unconscious. The surreal method involves the creative reproduction of random images in order to give the unconscious the opportunity to speak. The film contains many references to psychoanalysis.

Citizen Kane

• Drama, detective.
• United States, 1941.
• Director: Orson Welles.
• Duration: 119 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 4.

While the Shawshank Redemption usually wins the ratings of the best films in history, Citizen Kane most often takes first place in the charts of professional film critics.

Cinema is not only a plot and a play of actors. Thanks to the composition, lighting and filling of the frame, Citizen Kane became a revolutionary film in its time.

Dizziness

• Thriller, melodrama, detective.
• USA, 1958.
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
• Duration: 129 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 4.

Hitchcock's films are attractive to the general public. Vertigo is a great detective story. But every Hitchcock film has complex symbolism.

In Vertigo, one and the same element - a spiral - appears at different levels: visual, plot, psychological. The motive of constant repetition, movement from false to true and vice versa, permeates the entire film. The composition of the picture connects the starting point with the ending point, between which the events of the film take place.

Hitchcock's visual dialectic is complex and ambiguous. This is supported by a dozen different interpretations of the film. Watch a movie and reflect on it yourself.

On the last breath

• Drama, crime.
• France, 1960.
• Director: Jean-Luc Godard.
• Duration: 90 minutes
• IMDb: 7, 9.

“In Last Breath” is one of the most prominent representatives of the French “new wave” movement, which cultivated an author's, non-commercial approach to filmmaking. It was then that experiments began with the camera, angles, types of characters, which later became the norm in cinema.

In Godard's film, one can notice innovative techniques that in the classical school of cinema could only be assessed as carelessness: rough cut joints, free handling of the camera, its inclusion in the event series.

8 and a half

• Drama, fantasy.
• Italy, France, 1963.
• Director: Federico Fellini.
• Duration: 138 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 1.

The best works of many directors are devoted to the topic of filmmaking. Perhaps because this topic is close to the directors. The personal character of the film "8 and a Half" is obvious: the prototype of the hero of Guido Anselmi is Fellini himself.

Cinema is an analysis of the director's creative process. But this is not a rational-logical analysis. Fellini tries to visually reflect the processes that remain outside of awareness, this explains the incoherence, meaninglessness of many scenes.

Guido cannot put his film together, and Fellini's film is not something complete and framed. Fellini did not create "8 and a Half" as a film in the usual sense of the word. This is not the result of his search, this is the very process of the search.

Andrey Rublev

• Drama, biography, history.
• USSR, 1966.
• Director: Andrey Tarkovsky.
• Duration: 175 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 4.

"Andrei Rublev" is a film about Russia and its fate. When these topics are raised, a Russian person begins to torment his conscience, mental suffering, an awareness of the cause of endless worries and doubts appears.

The Russian soul does not know where and why it should move, and blames itself for this ignorance. All this can be read in the mood of "Andrei Rublev". Tarkovsky offers his own vision of Russian spirituality, but it turns out to be vague.

2001: A Space Odyssey

• Science fiction, adventure.
• Great Britain, USA, 1968.
• Director: Stanley Kubrick.
• Duration: 149 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 3.

This film is a visual explanation of what cinema is, what makes it unique as an aesthetic work. The slow development of events allows the cinema language to come to the fore. When spaceships waltz against the backdrop of bottomless space, when the bright red eye of artificial intelligence recognizes a sense of fear, the viewer feels genuine awe.

From a perspective, 2001: A Space Odyssey is simply immense. This is an understanding of the history of the development of mankind, reflections on the essence of man, the beauty of the universe and the boundaries of reason.

Zed and two zeros

• Drama, comedy.
• Great Britain, Netherlands, 1985.
• Director: Peter Greenway
• Duration: 115 minutes
• IMDb: 7, 5.

The director's handwriting is well recognizable: highlighting objects in close-up, symmetry of the frame, musical minimalism. Greenaway seems to be more interested in things than people. Every now and then he demonstrates apples, dead shrimp, a music player. People here are a tribute to tradition, without which cinema will not be accepted.

So the theme “Zed and two zeros” was chosen unusual. Greenaway is not interested in death, traditionally opposed to life, but in decomposition - the destruction of organic matter, a process opposite to natural development. Since cinema is a visual art, the director is simply obliged to explore such a hidden part of the history of a living organism as decomposition.

Akira Kurosawa's dreams

• Drama, fantasy.
• Japan, USA, 1990.
• Directors: Akira Kurosawa, Isiro Honda.
• Duration: 119 minutes
• IMDb: 7, 8.

Kurosawa is an original director. His paintings are also interesting because they are imbued with Japanese folklore, worldview, beliefs. Therefore, Western viewers manage to discern in Kurosawa's films an insignificant part of the ideas embedded in them.

"Dreams of Akira Kurosawa" - eight stories that are not connected by a single storyline. They can be interpreted in different ways, but they are all beautiful and similar to the revived paintings of Van Gogh. By the way, one of the dreams is dedicated to him.

Mulholland Drive

• Thriller, drama, detective.
• France, USA, 2001.
• Director: David Lynch.
• Duration: 147 minutes
• IMDb: 8, 0.

After watching this movie, you will be left at a loss and think that you have missed something. But if you carefully revisit Mulholland Drive again, the pieces of the mosaic will form a single dramatic story.

Playing with composition isn't just a director's whim. Thanks to the original script, Lynch was able to demonstrate the work of the unconscious.

Coffee and Cigarettes

• Drama, comedy.
• USA, Japan, Italy, 2003.
• Director: Jim Jarmusch.
• Duration: 95 minutes
• IMDb: 7, 1.

People come to cafes, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and talk about everyday topics. Nothing happens, there is no plot as such. Jarmusch's film was created to satisfy the human need for beauty.

Coffee and Cigarettes is a beautiful film that doesn't make much sense. This is the original idea of the picture.