Beyond the Ashes [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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The Game of Politics from Eulogizer to Politician.......2007-11-18

"The Career of Nikos Dyzma" (2002) is a comedy about an undertaker/eulogizer (as played by Cezary Pazura, who also stars in "Tato," "Sara," and "Happy New York") whose life takes a dramatic turn when he signs for the mail of a deceased politician. The letter he signed for is an invitation to a party for wealthy and powerful figures. At the party, Nikos puts the Vice-Premier in his place after he bumped into Nikos, knocking over his salad. This action gains him the respect and admiration of the room, as the Vice-Premier was not well liked -- opening the way for Nikos into the world of politics.

The wives of the politicians are all interested in Nikos as their husbands are all much older and impotent. Gaining the liking of the politicians' wives only provides Nikos with valuable political information and the power of the wives to influence their husbands.

A reoccurring political comment that Nikos makes in the film is for the people to buy and use Polish made products, despite lower costing imports, so that their own people will have jobs. The working people see the truth in this idea and look favorably upon Nikos for supporting them. Nikos also gave great eulogies, a skill he now uses for political speeches that move the people.

"The Career of Nikos Dyzma" is directed by Jacek Bromski. The film is in Polish, but has optional English subtitles. Special features include the trailer, bios, photo gallery, and a short piece on the making of the film (spoken in Polish with no subtitle option). This 105 minute film has several popular Polish actors, such as Anna Przybylska (who stared in "Sucker Season" and "Superprodukcja") and Katarzyna Figura (who stared in "Zemsta," "Happy New York," and "Pianist"). "The Career of Nikos Dyzma" would easily get an "R rating" by American standards for nudity.

Amazon.co.uk Review

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's Talk To Her is his least stylised, most accessible and arguably greatest movie. Covering the same, highly provocative terrain as Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle and The Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma", Almodovar forges a work that's funny, compassionate, engaging and deeply touching.

Unusually for Almodovar, the emphasis is on the two male characters, with the female leads spending much of the film as "objects" in a vegetative state. Dario Grandinetti plays Marco, a journalist who befriends Lydia (Rosario Flores), a female bullfighter. Following a goring in the ring, she lapses into a coma. At the clinic where she is kept on life support, Marco meets a somewhat effete male nurse, Benigno (Javier Camara) who lovingly tends to a ballet student, Alicia, also chronically comatose. They strike up a friendship, their respective stories emerging through flashbacks. Both, however, respond to their common fate in different ways. Marco is distraught at the loss of Lydia, whereas the dysfunctional Benigno is blissful, tending to Alicia, for whom he nourished an obsession prior to accident. Reduced to being a vegetable, she is fully, unresistingly, his.

It's a tribute to Almodovar that he is able to handle the outlandish, potentially appalling subject matter of Talk To Her with such finesse. Emotionally, it's often on a knife edge; there are moments when you don't know whether to laugh, gasp or sigh. But when ultimately you find yourself welling with tears of sympathy for an alleged rapist, you realise what a master filmmaker Almodovar is.

On the DVD: Talk To Her offers an excellent transfer of a visually handsome movie. Extras are a little disappointing--just trailers for Almodovar's more outlandish Live Flesh and All About My Mother. --David Stubbs

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