Long Pauses

Tag: Critics

  • Nora Alter on Sans Soleil

    Nora Alter on Sans Soleil

    After a second viewing, I still needed some help wrapping my brain around the structure of Marker’s Sans Soleil. The following is a summary of useful ideas from Nora Alter’s book, Chris Marker (from Illinois UP’s Contemporary Film Directors series, 2006):

    Nearly all of the locations in the film are islands: Japan, Cape Verde, the Isle of Sal, Iceland. Alter sees this as part of Marker’s larger interest in the relationship between space and time, which Krasna, the film’s “author,” identifies as the major preoccupations of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. An island is “separated from the mainland and operat[es] according to its own, relatively autonomous flow of time,” Alter writes. (Note: Twenty-five years later, this idea seems almost quaint in our globalized world.)

    Like the small Icelandic village where it was shot, the image of happiness that opens the film (the three children) is obliterated by darkness: volcanic ash buries the town, blank leader buries the image. Sans Soleil presumes that manufactured images are likewise burying memory, killing off ritual and history in the process. Krasna asks, “I wonder how people remember things, [people] who don’t film, don’t photograph, don’t tape?”

    Krasna’s first instinct upon returning to Tokyo after a twenty-year absence is to “see if everything was where it should be: the Ginza owl, the Shimbashi locomotive.” These landmarks remain, but Japan is a radically different place. Modernization is complete, and society has become totally mediated by technology. Alter points out that both the sights and sounds of the city are seductively micro-managed and offers as an example the strange sequence in which people mourn the death of a panda with curiosity rather than sorrow. “Death has become abstract,” she writes. “By way of contrast, Marker then inserts, without commentary, a graphic and drawn-out film clip depicting the shooting of a giraffe.”

    For Alter, the giraffe scene also serves as a transition to the portion of the film that deals with successful revolutions against the Portuguese in the 1970s. Contrary to Krasna’s earlier claim that only “banality still interests him,” Sans Soleil contrasts its images of mediated Japan with a “story about the promise of liberation and its subsequent disappointments.” Which isn’t to say that the revolutions — and our understanding of them — aren’t also mediated. Alter examines Krasna’s fascinating reading of the photo of Luiz Cabral decorating Major Nino, then concludes: “The impermanence of images merely mirrors the impermanence of history. They are constantly shifting, fleeting, being rewritten and re-remembered.”

    The most obvious form of technological mediation that we experience in Sans Soleil is “The Zone,” the digitally synthesized images that, in Krasna’s view, are “less deceptive than those you see on television. At least they proclaim themselves to be what they are: images, not the portable and compact form of an already inaccessible reality.” The following shots are among the most memorable:

    Sans Soleil (Marker)

    Sans Soleil (Marker)

    Alter identifies five distinct uses of The Zone: first is a rethinking of a documented past (protests of the 1960s); second is the development of video games and representation of the burakumin (“They are non-persons. How can they be shown, except as non-images?”); third is the function of memory; fourth is Japan’s recent history (kamikazes); and fifth is a return to and re-remembering of Marker’s own images (like the screen captures above, which are separated by nearly an hour in the film).

  • P. Adams Sitney on Film Bloggers

    The other day I was talking to a group of younger filmmakers about a current situation I simply cannot understand. There seems to be a tremendous revitalization of avant-garde filmmaking now, but there’s absolutely no one publishing anything about it, anything. . . .

    The universities have completely imploded. They’re the places to go if you believe that the media discourse of French philosophers is the only viable approach to film, and that the empirical relationship of the viewer to the work of art is utterly passe. . . .

    I can only fantasize about young independent people who love these new films and want to write about them.

    — in an interview with Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema, Vol. 4, May 2000

    Okay, so technically he wasn’t talking about film bloggers. Or, at least he didn’t know he was talking about film bloggers.

  • The Politics of Form

    The Politics of Form

    Peter Watkins in a 1981 interview with Scott MacDonald (A Critical Cinema vol. 2), discussing the television miniseries Roots (if the quote seems jerky and repetitive, it’s because I mashed together snippets from several pages):

    It’s pukemaking. I really can’t look at a narrative film anymore — not one with these traditional rhythms going on. The manipulation is so patent. . . . I would go so far as to say that to put the black experience into a conventional narrative structure is racist. Because you are feeding into a language that neutralizes it. How many people say, “I can’t even remember the film I saw last night.” You put the slave experience through the same rhythms as Kojak and Love Story and . . . well, I think that’s a real problem now. . . . In Roots, you’re given a seemingly bleak or radical look at history, which in fact isn’t at all because you’re swimming along in this warm reassuring Jell-O: the narrative form in which it’s given to you. . . . The point that I keep trying to hammer home these days is not only that the ideas on TV are conservative, but that the form with which they’re presented (even if there were ideas with which you and I might politically agree) defuses them.

  • Boring Art Films

    I just stumbled upon a review of Un Couple parfait that calls it the “quintessential Boring Art Film.” The same critic dismisses Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man because it “cares more about impressing the audience with profound ideas” than about giving them a compelling narrative. (I watched Dead Man for the first time Sunday night and am pretty sure that, after a few more viewings, it’ll work its way on to my short list of favorite films.) I have no qualms with this particular critic. In fact, he and I are often in agreement. All of which makes me wonder, Why do I love Boring Art Films?

    Borrowing Girish’s bulleted list format, here are a few rough ideas. Maybe I’ll add more as they come.

    • A compelling narrative (read: plot) too often privileges what a character does over what a character is. Granted, we’re all defined, to some extent, by the actions we take, and blah, blah, blah. But the best Boring Art Films develop characters not by thrusting them into a particular scenario and guiding them down a particular — and particularly exciting or extraordinary — path, but by watching them during the quiet, mundane, banal moments in which we all spend the majority of our lives. As a viewer, I find myself empathizing with the characters rather than simply sharing vicariously their thrills and chills.
    • In the mad dash to build and resolve, build and resolve narrative tension, most movies use standard continuity editing to do the work for us. In the perfect genre film (Psycho, for example), we’re at the director’s mercy. We willingly surrender our freedom for two hours and go wherever the film leads. Boring Art Films, by contrast, are often elliptical. Instead of splicing together a perfectly coherent line of narrative development, they leave gaps. I like the words “parataxis” and “hypotaxis.” The former juxtaposes, the latter draws connections. “I left. She cried.” versus “When I left, she cried.” Boring Art Films typically use parataxis to force the viewer into a participatory role. We get to be creative when we watch. We get to fill the gaps.
    • In Boring Art Films, form (how the story is being told) is as important as content. And I’m fascinated by form. I long ago stopped caring about “what happens” in novels. That Ahab is chasing a White Whale seems downright irrelevant compared to the brilliance of Melville’s writing. A family travels across town to bury their mother? Who cares, except that Faulkner explodes the story into a community of strange and competing narrative voices. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for Modernism, but I like Boring Art Films — the great ones, at least — because they reshape my understanding of what film can do.
    • Boring Art Films have a distinct voice. The voice of an auteur (more or less). I usually decide ten or fifteen minutes in if I can trust that voice — if it’s a voice of authority or wit or insight. If so, I’m grateful for an opportunity to listen in.

    Others?

  • The New Cine

    From Jonathan Rosenbaum’s latest:

    All of this stuff is available to anyone with access to the Internet, which is as much a part of this adventure as DVD technology itself. Film buffs around the world, many of them still in their 20s, are swapping information and educating one another about this unprecedented bounty via blogs and chat groups. All this is amplifying and intensifying grassroots, word-of-mouth communication in a way that threatens to forever alter the power bases that influence cultural matters. Because you no longer have to live in Paris, New York, or Chicago in order to find out who Feuillade was or why he’s so great — and because a “movie” like Outfoxed no longer has to open at a theater or even exist on celluloid in order to have a sizable social impact.

    And along those lines, I’m pleased to announce Cine Club, a new group blog that I hope will evolve in interesting ways. In the spirit of Andre Bazin and Francois Truffaut, I recently began hosting weekly film viewings with a small group of friends. As much as I enjoy watching films alone, something of the cinema’s communal experience is lost when we do that. Our cine club and the blog are an experiment of sorts — an attempt to use technology (projectors, DVDs, online publishing) to discover great films and to recapture that community.

    For now, only a few of us are participating in the blog. Keep an eye on it for further developments.

  • The Great Divide

    For a useful snapshot of the problems facing anyone who wants to talk seriously today about the arts and spirituality, check out the reader feedback at Christianity Today. CT recently expanded its movie coverage — wisely, I think — and, having been engaged in an ongoing electronic conversation with many of their writers for the past few years, I’m confident that the decision to expand was made for all the right reasons.

    Two weeks ago, Jeffrey Overstreet published an interesting piece in which he defends his appreciation of many films that feature profanity. The piece is well-informed, it’s delivered in a voice familiar to his readers (and maddening to non-evangelicals, I would imagine), and it is patient to a fault. He makes a very convincing argument, too, and it’s one that I hope his readers refer to during conversations with friends. I genuinely admire Jeffrey for his willingness to write this stuff. I’m glad that someone is doing it. I’m even more glad that that someone ain’t me.

    Just look at this stuff. To Jeffrey’s claim that art should accurately reflect the world around us, profanity and all, one reader responds:

    I don’t work with people who speak that way and I’m not around them away from work. If someone attempts to use this kind of language around me, I will quickly point out that I don’t like it and then remove myself from the situation.

    How perfectly awful it must be to live in a bubble containing only other people whose experience of life is exactly the same as yours. I’m having difficulty finding a New Testament precedent for that one. And even when Jeffrey’s critics make a valid point, they undercut it with evangelical jargon and biased assumptions:

    Today’s movies are not so much an art form as they are a means to generate wealth. It is big business, and godliness does not sell tickets. When you recommend these movies, you are encouraging the people of God to use their resources to support an industry that shamelessly glorifies sinful behavior. . . . Giving a rebuke to another is not being judgmental. Rather it is an act of love attempting to pull another back from evil.

    That this reader has raised the issue of commerce and profit is a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, rather than using his soapbox as an opportunity to discuss the influence of capitalism on real evangelical values — a complex issue, no doubt — he instead relies on gross generalizations and Sunday School sentiment. All movies are “a means to generate wealth,” he writes, never for a minute considering any film made outside of Hollywood. By the way, I’ve never heard the words “giving a rebuke” or “acting out of love” outside the strange confines of the American evangelical sub-culture.

    I can’t even find the energy to respond to Bettie Phillips Tyree, who writes:

    I do not attend movies because I am a Christian, and the junk that Hollywood turns out is trashy and unfit for our children. Most of today’s movies and television shows only teach children bad language, how to sass their parents or any other adult figure, how to kill, maim, how to rob and steal, how to perform sexual activity at early ages and a lot of other bad habits. I will not help to finance an industry that supports blatant sin!

    (Okay, one quick and obvious comment: Why then, Miss Tyree, were you reading CT‘s movie section? To protect us from ourselves?)

    The most interesting comment, though, comes from Anthony Kaufman, a self-described “non-believing Jewish-born film writer, critic, die-hard liberal and leftist.” In response to Jeffrey’s review of Dogville, Mr. Kaufman writes:

    When I think of Christian media outlets, I usually imagine cantankerous, close-minded conservatives who are too prude to appreciate art, especially groundbreaking and provocative art like the work of Lars von Trier. I found your review even-handed and extremely thoughtful and perhaps unlike I was expecting, braving von Trier’s themes with respect and maturity. I’m a reader of the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, and I have to say your comments were as insightful and intelligent as anything that I read in those publications. For me, this is a huge deal. You have given me faith—at least in the quality and sophistication of the movie coverage at Christianity Today.

    Knowing Jeffrey the little that I do, I’m guessing that that last comment will linger much longer than the others, and not because it’s a compliment. Rather, it’s evidence that the hard work of criticism occasionally pays off. Occasionally a reader finds a writer, and somewhere, somehow in that exchange there is a moment of recognition.

  • Biskind Blows

    Via GreenCine Daily  comes this link to Biskind Blows. At the moment, it’s relatively light on content, but the owner’s intention is obvious enough: expose the questionable reportage of Peter Biskind, Hollywood historian cum gossip columnist. I haven’t read Down and Dirty Pictures, and have no real desire to, but, based on others’ reports, I feel safe in assuming that my main beef with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls applies to his newer work as well.

    BiskindBlows.com links to a fun Movie Answer Man column in which Roger Ebert offers his account of a “notorious” exchange between himself and Todd Haynes. Ebert includes a letter from Christine Vachon, the independent producer responsible for making Biskind aware of the exchange:

    At those Independent Spirit Awards (a million years ago it seems like) we had been told that you were not a fan of the film. Todd did introduce himself to you. I remember you appeared a bit flustered. I did not say that you said ‘who the hell is Todd Haynes.’ And I certainly do not remember saying ‘you pulled your hand away.’ I told the story — innocently, I thought — in the context of how far Todd and I had come with our little film. We’d heard you didn’t like it, so it was an uncomfortable encounter — but absolutely not in the mean-spirited context Biskind put it in.

    I have not talked to Peter Biskind since the publication of the book. He has not returned my calls. There were several things he quoted me as saying that I felt were taken out of context, like calling my longtime partner Ted Hope a ‘thuggish frat boy’ — yikes!

    My biggest disappointment in the book (besides the tedium of one Bad Harvey story after another) was that there was absolutely no sense of the pleasure of seeing the films themselves. I remember seeing some movies at Sundance (like “The Hours and the Times”) and being stunned and excited. Seems that the book should have had you rooting for Miramax at least half of the time.

  • Still Cranky (After All These Years)

    Armond White is the crankiest film critic this side of Ray Carney, and God bless him for it. In this week’s piece for the New York Press, “Entertainment, Weakly,” he rips into Ron Howard’s latest, The Missing, along with the glossy magazines that would promote it as pop art. I especially enjoyed White’s take on Entertainment Weekly‘s recent feature, “50 Greatest Tear-jerkers”:

    In pop culture there are few sights more maddening than seeing a great work of art stripped of its human essence. EW treats Sounder as if it were Disney’s Old Yeller — a blunder that exposes the magazine’s approach to pop as affluent kiddie fodder. When cultural journalism was healthier, critics proudly sought evidence of profundity and depth. Sounder was produced in an era when American filmmakers and audiences valued a critique of social conditions and admired signs of human endeavor every bit as much as the Italian Neorealists had. Today, that respect is reserved for Iranian movies. EW’s insistence on further reducing movies to a marketable commodity only recommends the shallowest audience response.

    White doesn’t allow his fellow critics off the hook, either. After calling A Beautiful Mind “the most ridiculous film ever to win a Best Picture Oscar (turning a real-life story of psychosis into an action-adventure/love story),” he then blames its win not on that most scarred of whipping-boys — the Academy itself — but on his colleagues, who failed to fulfill their most noble function:

    Critics didn’t properly lambaste it, subsequently accepting the ludicrous, sentimental premise as entertainment. That meant Howard got to work his bad magic once again.

    I don’t read White for his reviews, I read him for his attitude, and I wish there were more out there like him.