Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet

A dream come true for art-house film buffs, and anyone whose out looking for an interesting way to spend 90 minutes. This is perhaps one of the most amazing collection of short films. The secret lies in the vast variety of genre and style of the films. From pure eye-candy to dramatic documentaries. In a collection like this, there is no such thing as "out of place". I found all the films enjoyable and interesting. For me, the weakest segment was the Wim Wenders film. It felt like an episode of a made-for-TV mini-series-road-movie. Another let down was the Aki Kaurismaki segment, maybe it's because this was my first Kaurismaki experience, I didn't really "get it". The most powerful being Chen Kaige's nostalgiac reflection of the ever-changing city of Beijing.

The segments in order of preference: Chen Kaige, Werner Herzog, Victor Erice, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Aki Kaurismaki.

My preference could change after multiple viewings. I strongly recommend this collection to film-lovers. Can't wait to see the other collection: "The Cello"

A mostly very recommendable collection of shorts by some of the most renowned arthouse directors. In DOGS HAVE NO HELL a man starts a new life with the woman he loves. Aki Kaurismäki delivers, as usual, grand melodrama in the most deadpan manner. Wonderful photography. Werner Herzog's documentary is his usual ethno-cliche crap: Modernization blows away the culture of a small hunter-gatherer group. Herzog mourns this but uses evolutionist-colonialist vocabulary like "tribe" and "stone age" - he obviously never realizes that his perspective overrates the power of Western culture in the same way as die-hard modernizers do. Embarrassing.

Jim Jarmusch's vignette about movie making combines a calm view of everyday situations with some subdued comedy. Quite unassuming and more complex and substantial in hindsight. Wim Wenders returns to his roots: 35 years after his early shorts we are once again in a car for almost the entire film and listen to rock music. Just this time we get an exciting plot, beautiful retro-psychedelic visuals and a poetic near-death moment: Wenders shows all his abilities.

Spike Lee reports irregularities of the last US-presidential election, quite frightening of course, beautifully shot, but a bit out of place here.

Chen Kaige's 100 FLOWERS HIDDEN DEEP gives us a little parable about the change of modern Beijing, which is a bit silly at first (and includes some awful computer animation), but has a further dimension: The worker's pantomime and the old man's effeminate gestures are stylistic devices from Peking Opera, an art form of the past, virtually surviving "hidden deep" in cinema.

But the one piece overshadowing all the others is Victor Erice's LIFELINE, a portrait of a peaceful afternoon in a Spanish village in 1940, with death and destruction always close at hand: Children play, farmhand reap dry grass, old men play cards, while a baby starts to bleed to death. The beauty and poetic power of the images and sounds is outstanding, only comparable to Tarkovsky (another director with a genuine feel for life on the countryside). Marvelous.

I loved the idea of different directors seeing the same subject. The result is very irregular, but not in quality. Each piece individually is great, but you almost don't see a connection between them.

I'm a big Herzog fan. Thought I'd search the web on "Ten Minutes Older" before I bought the DVD. Found the solitary review on this site and in particular the comments made about Herzog. They were so harsh I felt I should search for more reviews. Honestly, I've never seen anything Werner Herzog has done that wasn't unique, interesting etc.

Here's a snip from another site about Herzog's segment. This way, folks like me (who might otherwise run in horror) have a balanced view.

The third short, Werner Herzog's Ten Thousand Years Older [69], is a fascinating mini-documentary which examines the discovery of what might perhaps be the last lost tribe. Set in the Amazon, the film epitomizes Herzog's willingness to go to the ends of the earth to demonstrate his attitudes about civilization's debilitating effects on nature. Genuine tension arises in scenes such as the one showing the tribe's first contact with modern man, in which a native threatens to spy the hidden camera recording the event. When Herzog tells us that these few minutes of contact with the modern world led to the tribe's demise, the film suddenly shifts into a sadder, but no less interesting mode. Time jumps forward twenty years, and the effects of the modern world are made apparent. Even if it's not one Herzog's best works, it's undeniably an excellent piece of movie-making.

Has its ups and downs. Some good short films - Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders are especially good, and Jim Jarmusch is as sensitive and subtle as always. Some don't quite make the grade - Victor Erice's piece is irritating and self important, and Spike Lee's is quite interesting, but doesn't do well in the context of the films and in its ten minute space.

The anthology is definitely worth watching if you're a fan of any of these directors, or of art-house cinema in general, and if you don't mind stories with no real plot to speak of. Generally speaking, I prefer more versatile film anthologies like Paris Je T'aime and To Each His Cinema, which offer a wider range of styles.