Long Pauses

Tag: Short Take

  • You’re Tearing Me Apart!

    Or, a few more words about Nicholas Ray  . . .

    Born to Be Bad (1950) — If this weren’t a Nicholas Ray film, and if I hadn’t set out with the goal of watching as many of Ray’s films as possible, and if it hadn’t appeared (as if by magic) on the TCM schedule two weeks ago, I doubt I would have made it through the first thirty minutes of Born to Be Bad. Despite its provocative tagline — “Man-bait! Trouble never came in a more desirable package!” — the film is remarkably dull. Joan Fontaine is beautiful as always, but there’s nothing especially vampy about her performance, and so she never quite rises to the level of “bad girl we love to hate.” (Where’s Barbara Stanwyck when you need her?) She doesn’t even get a vicious come-uppance at the end, and the vicious come-uppance is half of what makes films like this so much fun. Born to Be Bad is one of the early films Ray made at RKO under the watchful eye of Howard Hughes, who was at the time trying to woo Fontaine away from her husband, and so I have to wonder how much of the film’s tonal problems were generated behind the scenes. The script has the feel of bureaucratic compromise.

    Rebel Without a Cause (1955) — It’s always interesting to watch an iconic film for the first time. I’ve had the experience several times this year, actually. The best ones — Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, My Darling Clementine — work their magic despite the added burden of their status. For example, I’d seen the clip a hundred times, I’d seen it parodied to death by Carol Burnett, but I still got chills when Norma Desmond announced she was ready for her close-up. Parts of Rebel Without a Cause worked for me, but the strange psychology of the film prevented it from completely transcending its iconic status. The mother/father issues in this film make Hitchcock’s brand of Fruedianism look downright subtle by comparison. James Dean is always fascinating to watch on screen, and I especially enjoyed his scenes with Jim Backus and Edward Platt, but the motivations for the characters’ actions are so flimsy and the Tragic (with a capital T) arc of the narrative is so artificial that I always felt removed from the story. I look forward to watching Rebel again, with different expectations and with an eye more squarely on Ray’s style.

  • And Then There Were None

    Home again. Back in the suburbs. Back in the southern heat and humidity. And just a wee bit depressed about it. A friend’s line last year was, “Thank God there are no more movies. I wish there were more movies.” That about sums it up, I’d say. A last batch of first impressions . . .

    Un Couple parfait

    Dir. by Nobuhiro Suwa

    Suwa offered my favorite line of the festival. When asked why he so often underlit his actors’ faces, he replied, “There are two ways to watch. One is to open your eyes and look closely, the other is to close your eyes and imagine. I want audiences to do both.” To be honest, I only scheduled this film because I’ve developed a bit of an infatuation for Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. (She also has a small role in the new Ozon film.) Un Couple parfait ended up being one of my favorites of the festival, though — a small relationship film shot in long takes, often from a fixed, waist-high position. I asked Suwa what attracted him about that particular shot, and he said that working as an assistant director taught him to hate traditional blocking. He wants, instead, to allow his actors room to move, to embody emotions more complex than those expressed by the dialogue. He admitted, even, to not understanding the actual words being spoken at times (he’s Japanese; the actors are all French). Their emotions were real enough, he said; the words were largely irrelevant. Another great festival find that I hope to write about at length at another time.

    U.S. Go Home

    Dir. by Claire Denis

    The two films I scheduled for Friday afternoon, 51 Birch Street and Bed Stories, were both late additions, neither of which particularly excited me. So I decided to skip them both and spend a few hours, instead, at the Toronto Film Reference Library, where I was able to see (on un-subtitle video) Claire Denis’s 1994 TV film, U.S. Go Home. Starring Alice Houri and Gregoire Colin, again playing sister and brother, it feels a bit like a prequel to Nenette et Boni. I’d read on a number of occasions that Denis’s obsession with Eric Burdon and the Animals was deep, deep, and it’s on full display here. U.S. Go Home will never be released on any home video format because rights to the music alone would surely cost in the millions. Along with the Animals, we hear a whole bunch of Otis Redding and other ’60s soul. The new Song of the Moment, The Animals’ “Hey Gyp,” plays in its entirety in a dance scene that rivals Denis Lavant’s at the end of Beau Travail. If it hasn’t become obvious over the past few months, Claire Denis is now, hands-down, my favorite active filmmaker. U.S. Go Home is another perfect little film.

    The Death of Mister Lazarescu

    Dir. by Cristi Puiu

    Thirty minutes in, I wasn’t sure if I would make it. I was exhausted from the week, and the idea of spending two more hours watching a character die in a Romanian hospital was almost too much to bear. But then a remarkable thing happened. At some point I slipped into the film’s rhythms, forgot that I was watching actors, and became completely engrossed in one of the most technically-impressive and beautifully humanist films I’ve ever seen. Shot entirely in hand-held (that brand of photography we’ve been trained to associate with verite), Puiu’s film exposes class divides, critiques modern health care systems, humanizes patients and medical professionals (for good and bad), and makes allusions to Dante, the Bible, and mythology. And it manages to do so in the service of a brilliant and deceptively complex narrative. Really an extraordinary film. Not to be missed.

    The Wayward Cloud

    Dir. by Tsai Ming-liang

    Oh my. Give me some time for this one. I love all of Tsai’s film, this one included. In some ways, The Wayward Cloud is his richest and most extravagantly emotional film yet. But I’m not sure what to do with that last 20 minutes. Um, wow. My notes are filled with questions. I haven’t come up with any satisfying answers yet.

    Angel

    Dir. Jim McKay

    I’ve come away from TIFF this year with a long “to see” list. To the list of directors I want to explore — Carlos Reygadas, Jean Paul Civeyrac, Ning Ying, Bohdan Slama, and Nobuhiro Suwa — I’ve also added Jim McKay, who impressed me as much by his Q&A as by his new film. I should say, first of all, that Angel is not a perfect film. J. Robert and I agreed that the ending is amibguous in the least satisfying way. But it’s ambitious, and I like McKay’s particular ambitions. When he was asked about the film’s lack of a score, he confirmed what I had suspected during the screening, telling us that he’s been most inspired by recent films from France and Iran (and, I would guess, Belgium, Austria, and Taiwan). Angel is as close as we’ll likely come to getting an American Dardennes film. First-time actor Jonan Everett plays Angel, a good kid from Brooklyn who’s been kicked out of him home; Rachel Griffiths is the social worker who takes him in. The film is a quiet character study of both, shot mostly in close-ups. Another really nice surprise.

    L’Enfant

    Dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

    I’ll say it. I was disappointed by L’Enfant. But part of my disappointment stems from the fact that L’Enfant happens to be the film the Dardennes made after The Son. I think I expected them to improve on what I feel is a perfect film. An unreasonable expectation, I’ll admit. L’Enfant will still be among the very best films I see all year, though, and I’m looking forward to discussing it with others. There’s a lot to wrestle with here.

    Backstage

    Emmanuelle Bercot

    I should have stayed in the hotel or gone out for a beer. But the pull was too strong. One last film. One last chance to watch that damn anti-piracy short. Emmanuelle Seigner plays an emotionally disturbed pop singer; Isild Le Besco plays an emotionally disturbed fan who forces her way into her idol’s life; both look really hot. And then there are some scenes with music and backstage drama. Honestly, my favorite parts of the film are two montages of Paris at night. Backstage was shot by Agnes Godard and looks typically amazing. There’s not much else to recommend the film, though.

    And so that’s it. I hope to write about a few of the films at length, but I’m not sure when that’ll happen.

  • Movies, They’re Everywhere, Man. EVERYWHERE!

    Last Thursday, Girish introduced me to a friend of his, a Toronto native who had just returned from Montreal, where he had seen 54 films at that festival. He had another 45 tickets in hand for TIFF. I don’t get it. I just left my 31st film (I think), and I’m exhausted. Completely. Like I felt the week I took my doctoral comprehensive exams.

    I’ve realized that part of the reason I’m so tired is that I’m just not built to process films — or any information, really — in this manner. I’m not shy, but I’m deeply introverted, and so, as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing the festival experience with a group of friends, the social element — the scheduling and the meals and the intense discussions between films — is taking its toll. I’m enjoying this moment right now. Alone in my room, drinking hotel coffee, staring out the window, taking a long pause. Nice.

    I’ve also realized that I’m the last person who should be posting first impressions live from a fest. It’ll take a few weeks’ time and several hours at the computer before I discover what it is that I particularly like and dislike about the films I’ve seen. I’m finding myself increasingly tongue-tied when asked to justify my fondness for some of the films I’ve enjoyed. They worked for me. I enjoyed experiencing the world from each director’s particular perspective. Why? I have no idea. Give me time. I’ll get back to you.

    But, in the interest of this on-going experiment, here are a few more quick thoughts . . .

    Vers Le Sud

    Dir. by Laurent Cantet

    I’ve seen only Cantet’s previous film, Time Out, and I like it quite a lot. I appreciate his ability to make money real in that film. It’s not just another middle-aged white man has a crisis story; instead, like Bresson’s L’Argent, it shows money changing hands and determining lives. That was my favorite part of Vers Le Sud, as well. The story of wealthy western women who vacation in Haiti in order to sleep with young black men, the film is very much about “exchanges” — of money, power, love, domination. I appreciate the ways in which Cantet explores the pathology of the relationships, acknowledging both the benefits and the degredations inherent in them.

    Where the Truth Lies

    Dir. by Atom Egoyan

    Let’s see . . . I liked the music, so that’s something. And I enjoyed seeing Egoyan in person. (Much shorter than I expected.) Where the Truth Lies is a fairly unexceptional thriller, and, despite all of the controversy, it’s not even particularly erotic. So, disappointing on all counts. The most interesting part of the afternoon was hearing Egoyan recount his fights last week with the MPAA.

    Cache

    Dir. by Michael Haneke

    Please don’t expect me to draw any conclusions about this one yet. It might be the best film I see at TIFF, but I’m not sure why. It works perfectly well as a thriller — who knew a shot of a man laying down for a nap could be more exciting than a car chase? — but Haneke has also crafted a complex study of Europe’s post-colonial history and bourgeois guilt. Someday I hope to be able to justify that last sentence with a full-length response. Really remarkable film.

    Tristram Shandy

    Dir. by Michael Winterbottom

    Ten years from now, when asked to name my all-time favorite film comedies, Tristram Shandy will no doubt be near the top of the list. Like, maybe once a decade, a film this smart, this well-made, and (lord be praised) this funny comes along.

    The Wild, Wild Rose

    Dir. by Tian-lin Wang

    Tsai Ming-liang introduced this Grace Chang musical from the early-1960s, then hung around afterwards for a half-hour or so to talk about his film-going experiences as a child in Malaysia and the influence of the Cathay films on his own work. (Five of Chang’s songs can be heard in Tsai’s The Hole, and another is used in his latest, The Wayward Cloud). Chang is the “Wild Rose” of the title, a nighclub singer with a checkered past who seduces a young, naive pianist and drives him to alcoholism and crime. Quite a synapsis, eh? Part musical, part thriller, part comedy, part noir. I’m eager to track down other films of the era.

    The highlight of the screening, though, was listening to Tsai recount the history of the Cathay studios. Someone in the audience asked why he and other Chinese filmmakers (like Hou) seem to be obsessed with the late-1950s and early-1960s, and Tsai gave two reasons. First, because it was a golden era for film buffs. Tickets were cheap and, without VHS or DVDs, film-watching was a communal experience. Also (and more interestingly, I think), Tsai admitted that he is nostalgic for the genuine and oversized emotions on display in those films. “The music,” he said, “is the most pure form of those emotions.” The musical interludes in The Hole, I assume, are to serve the same purpose — offering a kind of psychic counter-point to the absurd human alienation that marks so much of the film’s “real” world. I see The Wayward Cloud first thing tomorrow morning.

    Why We Fight

    Dir. by Eugene Jarecki

    Why We Fight opens with a snippet from Eisenhower’s farewell address, the speech in which he coined the term “military-industrial complex.” That choice gave me great hope that this film would offer a rich historical analysis of what Daniel Bell called America’s “permanent war economy,” a term that preceded Ike’s by more than a decade. Instead, director Eugene Jarecki constructs an argument only slightly more nuanced than Michael Moore’s in Fahrenheit 9/11, moving much too quickly, I think, from the Cold War to what is clearly his main target, Iraq. I’ll admit that I’m mostly faulting Why We Fight for not being the film I wanted to see, but I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with Left-leaning critiques of America that don’t do the messy work of wrestling with multinational capital. Jarecki missed several opportunities to discuss the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and America’s “open door” economic policies, which, in my opinion, contributed a great deal more to “why we fight” than Haliburton. Also, I’m getting tired of filmmaker’s who cut in shots of, say, “regular Americans” sitting in small town diners, and do so with an air of condescension. I have other strong opinions about this film. None are particularly favorable.

    Le Temps qui reste

    Dir. by Fancois Ozon

    While discussing Ozon’s latest with Girish afterwards, I realized that the film — which isn’t particularly great — did touch me in unexpected and deeply personal ways. When he introduced it, Ozon called Le Temps qui reste a “secret” film, and I think I know what he means, though I’m sure I won’t be able to explain it. It’s a film about “survival instincts,” I think — words used by Jeanne Moreau to describe the decisions she made after her husband died. And did I mention that Moreau walked within inches of Girish and me? Jeanne Moreau! Inches! That is so much cooler than spotting Cameron Diaz or Charlize Theron. The woman who walked through the rain wearing that black dress in La Notte walked right past us. sigh.

  • Losing Touch with Reality

    This is such a very strange way to live. Last night, while running from the Paramount to Jackman Hall, I actually felt a bit drunk, outside of myself. I’d come out of Capote, my fourth film of the day, and was surprised to find it dark outside. The sun had set, and I couldn’t recall having seen it that day. My back is starting to hurt, and, to be frank, so is my ass.

    I haven’t decided if the quality of films is improving or if I’m simply developing calluses to sentimentality and failed ambitions, but I’ve seen several good films (though few great ones) since my last update — and not a dud in the lot. A few more first impressions . . .

    I Am

    Dir. by Dorota Kedzierzawska

    I added I Am to my schedule because it was selected for NYFF and because the still image in the TIFF program is so stunning. It’s of a young girl, her head resting on a wooden table lit by candlelight. She’s staring at the camera, and another hand reaches from beyond the frame to stroke her cheek. It reminded me of the farmhouse scenes in Tarkovsky’s Mirror, and, as it turned out, so did many other images from the film. It’s just beautiful to look at. Amazing, really. The sepia-toned palette seems to have been chosen to match the freckles on the cheeks of the young boy at the center of the film. But the film lacks the mystery and transcendence of Tarkovsky (an unfair comparison, I realize). I Am is a “child in peril” story, and I’m not sure what more to say about it.

    Perpetual Motion

    Dir. by Ying Ning

    I have a real weakness for this type of film. A successful woman learns her husband is having an affair, so she invites to her home her three best friends. They gather to celebrate the spring holiday, but the host’s real goal is to discover which woman has betrayed her. As in a Bergman chamber drama or a Eugene O’Neill play, the characters in Perpetual Motion move gradually from light-hearted small talk to brutally frank discussions of their loss and pain. During her Q&A, director Ning Yang told us she is frustrated by depictions of women in Chinese cinema, claiming that one symptom of liberal markets is the commodification of youth and beauty. The result, she said, is that young women in Chinese films become copies of copies. With Perpetual Motion, she’s trying to counter that trend by focusing on menopausal women (her word), and she’s made a hell of a film in the process. I have several pages of notes on this film, too, and look forward to writing it up when I get home. Great film. I like it more with each day.

    Something Like Happiness

    Dir. by Bohdan Sláma

    My new favorite shot of the festival: Camera cranes up over the horizon of a field we’ve seen earlier in the film, pans to the left to reveal (and reintroduce) a major character, follows her down a path, then waits behind her as a bulldozer knocks down a brick wall a few feet away. I’d have to give away too many plot points to explain why the shot is so powerful, but it’s one good example of director Bohdan Slama’s creativity and economy of shotmaking. Something Like Happiness is another great festival find. Three fantastic performances (especially from Pavel Liska) and a really well-told story, from beginning to end. Too few films have had great final scenes this week; Something Like Happiness is the exception.

    Mary

    Dir. by Abel Ferrara

    All of my friends are seeing Mary later in the week, so I’ll hold off posting too many comments until we’ve all discussed it, but for now I feel confident in calling it an interesting mess. Some parts work, others don’t — most of them don’t, actually. But I could maybe be convinced otherwise.

    Little Fish

    Dir. by Rowan Woods

    I’ll admit it, I scheduled Little Fish in hopes of seeing Cate Blanchett. No luck. But the good news is that the film works. Blanchett and Hugo Weaving give the finest English-language performances I’ve seen all week — Weaving, especially. It’s a meaty role, for sure, but he knocks it out of the park. (Lord help me, I’m sounding like a celebrity reporter.) My family has been touched in really horrible ways by drug addiction, and Little Fish is one of the few films I’ve seen that shows adults (rather than teens and thugs) struggling to overcome the particular banality of its evil. Unfortunately, the script falls apart in the final act, but the film is worth seeing for the quieter scenes.

    Capote

    Dir. by Bennett Miller

    I have way too many personal connections to this story to write objectively about the film. Joanna is from Monroeville, the small town in south Alabama where Truman Capote met Harper Lee, and Miss Nell is a friend of the family. (I haven’t had a chance to meet her, unfortunately.) I liked the film quite a lot, but perhaps what most surprised me is that, despite Hoffman’s Oscar buzz and the typical biopic trappings, Capote remains a genuinely small film. It feels European, even. It’s shot almost entirely in tight close-ups, for instance, and in really shallow focus. It’s a story told by the actors, by the slight expressions in their eyes. (The cinematographic style of Capote is actually quite similar to Laurent Cantet’s latest, Vers Le Sud, which I’ll write more about later.) I look forward to seeing it again with Joanna.

    Wavelength

    Dir. by Michael Snow

    I traded my ticket to Gabrielle for a screening of Michael Snow’s landmark structuralist film, Wavelength. I’m really glad I did, as chances to see it projected with Snow in attendance are rare. Enough has been written about it already, but I’ll just add that I enjoyed all 45 minutes of it. Sometimes a film does live up to its reputation.

    I saw two other films this morning, but will write about them later, when I have more energy. Cache begins in two hours. Haneke. I’m not sure how to get into the right head space for this one.

  • The Very Best Intentions

    After three days, 14 films, a brilliant Sufjan Stevens concert, several fantastic meals, and too little sleep, I’ve abandoned my ambitions of blogging a brief capsule review of everything I see. There’s too little time, and I don’t want my TIFF experience to be hampered by blog guilt. Instead, here are some brief comments — first impressions and unsupported opinions, mostly. I hope to write up longer responses to the best films after I get back home and find some breathing room.

    Ballets Russes

    Dir. by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine

    There are so many interesting films to be made about the Ballets Russes. There’s the story of their collaborations with the finest artists of the Modern era, including Dali, Picasso, Miro, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, and Copeland. There’s the story of how the Ballets Russes thrived at times under the glamorous spotlight of celebrity, bumping elbows with Hollywood elite. There’s the story of sexuality and the early-20th century ballet — of masculinity, in particular, and gay men who became women’s fantasies. But these stories are only hinted at here. Instead, Geller and Goldfine appear to have become trapped by the good fortune of their interviews, and the film plays like an episode of Biography in which dancer after dancer recounts those favorite stories that, I can only assume, they’ve been telling for the better part of eight decades. The surviving members of the Ballets Russes are endlessly entertaining, and there’s a real charm in their storytelling. The women are still elegant and graceful — sexy, even; the men are still full of piss. But the film doesn’t do much beyond providing a platform for their pride (in the best sense of the word) and nostalgia. Ballets Russes will likely play well on cable and PBS.

    The Sun

    Dir. by Alexander Sokurov

    My favorite moment in The Sun is a shot of Emperor Hirohito as he steps onto the front porch of his Palace. Sokurov shoots him from a low angle and tracks slowly — very slowly — to the left, panning right as he goes. The effect leaves Hirohito alone and still at the center of the frame but sets the background in motion, a perfect visual metaphor for the much-transformed world the Emperor has entered. If I’m not mistaken, it’s literally the first glimpse of sunlight in the film, and it comes forty or so minutes in. Set during the hours preceding Japan’s surrender, The Sun studies Hirohito in close-up, fusing the film’s perspective with the character’s subjective view. (Hirohito’s subjectivity transforms the battle sequences in particularly amazing ways.) I have two full pages of hand-written notes on The Sun. Great film. Really great.

    Three Times

    Dir. by Hou Hsiao-hsien

    Hou Hsiao-Hsien is in a close race with Claire Denis right now for the title of “Darren’s Favorite Active Filmmaker.” (Claire and Hou are incredibly jealous of the title, as you can imagine.) I had a stupid grin on my face during every moment of Three Times. There’s no chance I’ll see a more beautiful film this week, and, while I wasn’t as moved by it as I was Cafe Lumiere last year, I found it more interesting. It’s juxtaposition of three eras harkens to Good Men, Good Women, my favorite of Hou’s films. Three Times, so far at least, is the highlight of my festival, but I would have predicted as much.

    Shanghai Dreams

    Dir. by Xiaoshuai Wang

    For the first 90 minutes, I thought Shanghai Dreams was an interesting but flawed film, but then it broke one of my cardinal rules: Only really, really, really talented filmmakers get to rape a character for dramatic effect. At that point I began to actively dislike the film. My friends liked it a bit more than I, but we were all disappointed by the final act.

    Wavelengths 1

    I’m not sure what to say about Peter Tscherkassky’s Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine except, um, wow. Five minutes in I realized that my left hand was gripping my right forearm to the point that both actually hurt. One of the local critics described the film as the most exciting 17 minutes of the festival, and he was exactly right. It’s Modern in the defamiliarizing, “Make it new!” tradition, but it’s also a pastiche of pop culture, and it’s hip-hop in a way that someone like Darren Aronofsky only hints at. Amazing.

    Mrs. Henderson Presents

    Dir. by Stephen Frears

    Although nearly everyone I’ve spoken to in festival lines would disagree with me about this, I think this film has some serious pacing and tone problems, and I was also annoyed by a late plot development, but, good lord, Judi Dench is great fun to watch. There’s a scene between her and Christopher Guest that might include the greatest spit take in the history of comedy. Despite my complaints I laughed pretty hard at times, and it played well to the audience.

    L’Enfer

    Dir. by Danis Tanovic

    During his Q&A, Tanovic spoke often about how this film is his homage to Kieslowski. K’s spirit is alive and well in the content of the film — it poses another of those classic moral conundrums without offering anything like an answer — but I felt little of Kieslowski in the style. I’m ambivalent about this one, so I’ll hold my comments for a bit.

    Battle in Heaven

    Dir. by Carlos Reygadas

    I went in with doubts, but by the ten-minute mark I had surrendered my trust completely to Reygadas. Like Claire Denis’s L’Intrus, which sparked a great deal of conversation among my friends here last year, I enjoyed Battle in Heaven as a character study that does most of its work through a subjective camera. Though I have some theories, I’m not sure which parts of the film “really happen” and which are dreamed, and I’m not at all convinced it matters. All of the film is very, very real to the main character. I found myself thinking occasionally of Bruno Dumont during the film, as well. There’s something to the camera movements, especially, that suggest some kind of outside or transcendent force at play in Reygada’s world. It’s related to the film’s Catholic iconography, I’m sure, but I haven’t yet decided how. If it were playing again I’d be tempted to give it another shot. This might be the film so far that I’m most looking forward to discussing.

    A History of Violence

    Dir. by David Cronenberg

    It’s going to be a lot of fun watching how this one plays to American critics. It works wonderfully as a genre film, and based on the laughter and cheering that errupted throughout the screening, it will definitely play as such to many audiences. But it also subverts the genre and offers an allegory on Bush’s America that, in my opinion, holds together much better than Dogville. Another great film.

    Sketches of Frank Gehry

    Dir. by Sidney Pollack

    I’m addicted to the TV show American Chopper for the same reason I enjoyed this documentary: I love hearing experts talk about fields that are a complete mystery to me. Pollack’s film doesn’t break any new formal ground, but he avoids most of the biopic pitfalls (it’s not arranged chronologically, for example), and his close friendship with Gehry allows him some intimacy with the subject.

    A Travers la Foret

    Dir. by Jean-Paul Civeyrac

    I arrived a bit late to this screening after a mad dash down Bloor, so take my comments with a grain of salt. This film has some fine camerawork and nice performances, and I really enjoyed the tone. It worked for me as a “mood” piece (for lack of a better word), but I’m not sure if there’s much there there.

    Les Saignantes

    Dir. by Jean-Pierre Bekolo

    I scheduled this one because it was made in Cameroon and because only at TIFF do I get to see films from places like Cameroon. If I watch a film a day for the next ten years I’ll likely never see another one like Les Saignantes. Bekolo introduced it as a “science fiction, comedy, horror film about the future of his country” and said that making the film rescued him from despair. It’s about a movement of women who use their sexual power to overthrow the government. In the process, the film manages to suggest a kind of cool, untapped feminist political power, but unfortunately it does so by projecting onto women degrading male fantasies. Baby steps, I guess.

    L’Annulaire

    Dir. by Diane Bertrand

    Apparently during her Q&A, Bertrand said that she read Yoko Ogawa’s novel three times, wondering all the while how she could turn it into a French film. The comment doesn’t surprise me. As I watched it, I sensed that many of the scenes that played so badly on screen would work better on the page. L’Annulaire is ambitious, it’s a film of ideas, but it really didn’t work for me. I found myself laughing at scenes that I assume weren’t intended to be funny, though even that is up in the air, as the tone of the film was quite a mess.

    Marock

    Dir. by Laila Marrakchi

    Films like Marock are the reason that every filmlover should attend TIFF at some point. I knew weeks ago what my first 20 film picks would be; it’s the next 25 that take some research and some risk. For every Les Saignantes and L’Annulaire — films that, at some point, you stop watching and start waiting to end — there’s a Marock, a genre picture that likely won’t get American distribution, that will never be available to American audiences in any format, but that is just a delight to watch. Laila Marrakchi is a young (mid-20s) filmmaker from Morocco who has drawn from her own life for her first feature. It’s a coming-of-age film that employs all of the coming-of-age conventions, but it does so with a real confidence and grace. I was constantly suprised by small touches — slow pans, perfectly timed dissolves, great lines of dialogue. Hell, I was even moved by it, tears and all. Plus, you have to love a film that rediscovers David Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide.” I’ll never think of the song in the same way. Highly recommended.

    Enough for now. I skipped Sunflower this afternoon for a much-needed walk in the sun but need to head out for I Am. Post any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to reply.

  • A Few Words on . . .

    • Films Watched: The Battle of Algiers dir. by Gillo Pontecorvo; Down by Law dir. by Jim Jarmusch; Saraband dir. by Ingmar Bergman; 35 Up dir. by Michael Apted
    • Books Finished: Libra by Don DeLillo; The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation by Hayden White; The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
    • CDs Purchased: Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; Pixel Revolt by John Vanderslice; Donnie Darko (soundtrack) by Michael Andrews

    Remember that episode of The Office when David Brent interrupts a training seminar to sing his ode to the free love freeway? The comedy in that scene is about a mile-and-a-half thick. There’s the typical embarrassment of Brent’s colleagues, there’s Tim’s disbelieving stares into the camera and Gareth’s interruptions (“She’s dead”), but what I most love about the joke is that Brent, a middle-aged paper salesman from Slough, has written — and is earnestly performing — a song about driving a Cadillac through the American southwest, bedding lovely “senoritas” along the way.

    Oh, dear lord, how I wish I could chalk up Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s new album Howl to an extended exercise in irony. Generally speaking, I avoid power-trio rock-and-roll, but BRMC’s last record Take Them On, On Your Own was one of my favorites of 2004. It’s heavy when it needs to be but also features melodic songwriting and great guitar noise. Howl, apparently, is their attempt at “roots” music. Acoustic guitars? Check. Harmonicas? Check. T-Bone Burnett credit? Check. Song titles that make confused, sepia-toned allusions to southern spirituality and Depression-era heartache? Check. Apparently these California boys turned off their Jesus and Mary Chain records just long enough to watch O Brother Where Art Thou seven or eight times, and now they’ve lost their way in the funhouse of Americana simulacrum. Fortunately, The Disc Exchange has a ten-day return policy, so I’ll be getting that New Pornographers album instead.

    The week wasn’t a total bust for new music, though. After spending most of the last month listening obsessively to John Vanderslice’s “Exodus Damage,” I picked up the new album, Pixel Revolt, and it’s a beaut’. Vanderslice is a story-teller. Okay, so that’s not terribly unusual. But he’s a story-teller who works in genres. For example, “Continuation” is a police procedural. Seriously, it’s sung by a detective who’s working a case. And it has a cello solo. You’re probably going to laugh at some point during the first twenty-two seconds of the song. Then Vanderslice will start singing, and by the time he hits the chorus, you’ll be tapping your foot and smiling.

    Still high from the Miranda July film, I also picked up a used copy of the Donnie Darko soundtrack this week. (Both films were scored by Michael Andrews.) Except for its inclusion of three, barely-distinguishable versions of “Mad World,” I like it a lot. Maybe instead of a Fender Rhodes, I should be on the lookout for a Mellotron.

    Another week, another book of critical theory, another postmodern doorstop. In The Content of the Form, Hayden White asks, “Could we ever narrativize without moralizing?” For White, the interpretation of history, like the acts of fiction-making and criticism, is a moral and political act. Reading White alongside Don DeLillo’s Libra made for an interesting study of theory and praxis. DeLillo’s “Author’s Note,” included on the last rather than first page, reads:

    This is a work of imagination. While drawing from the historical record, I’ve made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any questions raised by the assassination.

    Any novel about a major unresolved event would aspire to fill some of the blank spaces in the known record. To do this, I’ve altered and embellished reality, extended real people into imagined space and time, invented incidents, dialogues, and characters.

    Libra, in effect, is about the writing of history, the transformation of “real” events into a narrative. It’s a job, DeLillo implies, shared by novelists, historians, CIA analysts, politicians, and anyone else — Lee Harvey Oswald, for example — who writes themselves into human history. That’s an admittedly pedantic description of a novel that was honest-to-god fun to read. I was blissfully ignorant of the JFK assassination before picking up the book, so I was swept quickly into the various intrigues and conspiracies. I have no idea at this point how much of the novel is “real,” which, I guess, is precisely the point.

    If I watched fewer films this week, it’s because much of my spare time was spent parsing through the list of 256 features and 79 shorts that will be playing at TIFF this year. Again, I’m holding off on commenting on the 7 Up films until I finish them all, and I have a longer response to Saraband in the works, which leaves only The Battle of Algiers and Down by Law. I missed Algiers during its theatrical re-release a year or two ago, and I’m sort of glad that, instead, I was able to see it now, at some remove from Bush’s march to war and the prison abuse scandals. That Pontecorvo’s film was made forty years ago, and that America now finds itself in a situation so similar to colonial France’s (the same arrogance, the same disregard for history, the same dehumanizing mistakes), is just maddening. It’s almost too much to watch — and I mean that as the most sincere compliment. Again, Doug has two really fine essays on the film and the DVD release.

    Down by Law is also a great film, and for completely different reasons. What happens in Jarmusch’s film is irrelevant — three guys are arrested and make a jailbreak — all that matters is that it happens to three guys who are endlessly watchable. John Lurie doesn’t so much act as simply embody cool. In fact, I like him best when he’s standing still or functioning as the straight man. Tom Waits is Tom Waits is Tom Waits. And Roberto Benigni, despite what you might think of him after Life is Beautiful and the Oscars, has some kind of superhuman comic timing and this crazy gift for swinging effortlessly between mania and pathos.

    When I first mentioned Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree, Bulb wrote in a comment, “I left [a copy] in my guest bathroom and it never fails to elicit favorable comments.” I don’t mind admitting that I read most of Spree two or three pages at a time. It’s great in small doses. Hornby tells us what he read, why he read it, and whether it was worth the effort, and he does so in a typically charming and insightful manner. I can’t write fiction. It’s a complete mystery to me. Which is why I so enjoy reading writers write about writing. Best of all, Spree has given me an unexpected and much-needed push toward the book shelf (and the blog).

  • Week in Review

    Week in Review

    • Films Watched: Nosferatu dir. by F.W. Murnau; 28 Up dir. by Michael Apted; Vers Nancy dir. by Claire Denis; Me and You and Everyone We Know dir. by Miranda July; Los Angeles Plays Itself dir. by Thom Andersen
    • Books Finished: The Public Burning by Robert Coover; Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction by Amy Elias
    • CDs Purchased: Until the End of the World (soundtrack) by various artists; Me and You and Everyone We Know (soundtrack) mostly by Michael Andrews

    With apologies to Nick Hornby. While reading The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns from The Believer, two things occurred to me. First, Hornby’s columns are essentially blog posts by another name: they’re written in the first-person, they’re chronological (especially once collected in book form), and they’re unified by a single topic. Second, like Hornby, I could chart the course of my life by pacing slowly through a library full of books, CDs, and DVDs.

    Because Long Pauses is essentially a notebook, a diary, and an archive, all in one, I’ve decided to give this “Week in Review” idea a shot. Granted, seven days from now this will all likely have taken on the smell of a deadline, but for now, it seems a fine way to spend a Sunday morning. If I stick to it, the Song of the Moment feature will probably be absorbed into the weekly review, Borg-like.

    As I mentioned a few days ago, Miranda July’s first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, left quite an impact on me, though I sense the effect waning somewhat. I worry that, when all is said and done, the film’s message is only slightly more nuanced than “carpe diem,” though, really, as far as messages go, that’s a pretty good one, especially when handled with a certain grace. July has a deep, deep fondness for her characters and a child-like wonder about the world in which they live. As a storyteller and filmmaker, she’s ambitious in the best sense of the word, and her ability to capture something of the beauty and fear (often simultaneously) that characterize love and life in the modern world is something special. Maybe the best compliment I can give the film is to say it doesn’t feel like it was made in America. “When I call a Name” is the opening track from Michael Andrews’s fine soundtrack, which reminds me a bit of those Brian Eno Music for Films albums.

    Nosferatu is the latest entry in my Great Films series. I watched it last Sunday after a long weekend that involved two trips to the emergency room, an overnight stay in the hospital (for Joanna), and very little sleep. Which is to say that Nosferatu is an almost perfect film to watch in a waking dream state. Murnau’s brand of expressionism is so organically “uncanny,” and Max Schreck’s performance is so utterly alien. It’s my new favorite Dracula, bar none.

    Like any great essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself is almost too rich to be eaten in one bite. I want to watch it again before commenting at length, but three quick points for now: 1) It made me want to watch Blade Runner again. 2) It made me want to track down the films of Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima, Billie Woodberry, Julie Dash, and other independent black filmmakers of the 1970s. 3) I love the idea of looking for documentary moments in narrative films, an idea that was raised in Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves, as well. (Doug has a really great essay on Los Angeles Plays Itself, by the way.) I’ll return to the 7 Up films and the Denis short in later weeks.

    Seeing only two titles on the “books finished” list undersells the size of my accomplishment, I think, considering that the novel weighs in at 534 pages and the other is a book of critical theory. The next chapter of my dissertation, ostensibly a tight reading of The Public Burning and E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, is actually about the rise of the academic Left in the 1970s and 1980s and the political problems of postmodernism. Elias’s book posits that “history is something we know we can’t learn, something we can only desire,” which she wraps into discussions of “the Sublime,” the traditional historical novel (think Walter Scott), and post-1960s American fiction, in particular those novels she calls “metahistorical romances.”

    Did I mention that Elias is on my dissertation committee? Or that her book was blurbed favorably by Linda Hutcheon? Or that in her preface she thanks Hayden White for his encouragement, advice, personal generosity, and kindness? (I know those two names mean, like, nothing to most people, but if you’re working in history and postmodern literature, they mean a lot.) The Public Burning comes up quite a bit in Elias’s book as an example of an avant-garde metahistorical romance, which is quite a nice way of describing it, I think. Its voice alternates between first- and third-person (the former from the p.o.v. of Vice President Richard Nixon), and Coover also cuts into “Intermezzos,” which take on various forms: a poem pasted together from snippets of text from President Eisenhower’s public statements, a dramatic dialogue between Ike and Ethel Rosenberg, and a mini-opera sung by the Rosenbergs and James Bennett, then-Federal Director of the Bureau of Prisons.

    The novel reaches its climax in the middle of Times Square, where all of American history has come undone. Betty Crocker, Uncle Sam, and the nation’s Poet Laureate (Time magazine) are all there to witness the Rosenberg execution, as are the Republican Elephant, the Democratic Donkey, Cecil B. DeMille (who’s producing the spectacle), Walt Disney (who’s selling souvenirs), and fighting bands of patriots and redcoats. Elias (via Soja, Jameson, Frank, and Foucault) would describe the scene as an example of spatialized metahistory: “What one gets is a view from above, a critical view akin to the perspective of aerial photography, flattening out time, space, and history in order to map them.” The question for my chapter is this: “What does this mean for a ‘real’ politics of the Left?” I’m intrigued by the line that ends Elias’s second chapter:

    The humanities [English and philosophy departments, for example] not only take seriously the challenge to history in fantasies and novels; they have forcefully asserted that history is fantasy and fiction allied with power, and have thrown down a gauntlet to the social sciences to prove otherwise.

    That “prove otherwise” puts an interesting spin on the debate, I think.

    That covers everything from this week except for the Until the End of the World soundtrack I picked up used for $7, proving once again that spontaneous buys are seldom good buys. I think I’ll enjoy these songs more when they show up randomly in iTunes. They don’t make for a very cohesive or compelling album.

  • The Great Films, Part 1

    The Great Films, Part 1

    In a deliberate effort to beef up my cinephile cred, lately I’ve been loading my GreenCine queue with selections from the list of 1,000 Greatest Films compiled by the folks at They Shoot Pictures. With 30 or 40 films now in my queue, I’ve stopped prioritizing or shuffling the list and just watch whatever happens to show up on my door. It’s probably not the best strategy — perhaps I should instead queue up ten films of a particular genre or, say, all of the John Ford or Japanese films I’ve never seen — but I’m enjoying the variety. It’s been a fun, summer-time distraction from the brain-wearying work of dissertating. Next up are Some Like It Hot and My Darling Clementine.

    Some quick thoughts on recent viewings. (I’m afraid that none were overwhelmingly positive, so any feedback would be much appreciated.)

    The Blue Angel (1930, dir. Josef von Sternberg) — My first Marlene Dietrich film. Also, my second Emil Jannings film (after The Last Laugh). Both are fun to watch here, though I find it almost impossible to imagine how they would have been received by an audience in 1930. Jannings is the subject of our ridicule and sympathy, and von Sternberg’s balancing of the two is tricky. Dietrich is likewise a complicated character — a femme fatale, a seducer, and a betrayer, whose charm is irresistible. Two weeks later, what I most admire about the film are its images of the creative world behind the stage curtain, which bring to mind the magic of Bergman’s films.

    Jules and Jim (1962, dir. Francois Truffaut) — Jules and Jim was my first New Wave film. I remember checking it out from the Wilmington public library eight or nine years ago, when I was first dipping my toes into world cinema. What little lasting impression it left was mostly negative. I recall being annoyed with all of the main characters and confused by their behavior. A decade later, I now recognize some of its precedents — writers like Flaubert and, to a lesser degree, James, both of whom saddle their characters with particular flaws then watch (as if casual observers rather than authors) as those flaws become manifest in the inevitable and messy consequences.

    I appreciate Flaubert and James, but I don’t read them for pleasure, just as I seldom watch Truffaut for pleasure. To be fair, I’ve seen far too few of his films (five or six, maybe) to make any blanket statements, but, aside from The 400 Blows, I don’t recall ever being pestered by one of his films. By “pestered” I just mean that mixture of confusion and curiosity that follows (sometimes days later) an encounter with great art — or, if not great art, then interesting or daring or insightful art. I don’t mean to imply that Jules and Jim is lacking here on all counts; only that, the morning after, I wasn’t the least bit curious to know more about Jules, Jim, or Catherine. Perhaps I’ll give it another go in ten years.

    The Life of Oharu (1952, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi) — Much to my embarrassment, it’s time that I own up to the fact that, on a number of occasions now, I have found myself surprisingly unmoved by the great Japanese filmmakers. There’s something so thoroughly alien (other-worldly, even) about the customs, politics, music, and rituals of, in this case, 17th century Japan. But I feel excluded, also, by the film style. The long takes, which I so admire in many other filmmakers, try my patience in Mizoguchi. His actors’ movements, which are so graceful and balletic, are impossibly strange to me. I can’t seem to penetrate through to the emotional core of the characters and, so, remain uninvested in their tragedies.

    About 40 minutes into our screening of The Life of Oharu, I leaned over to a friend and joked that I felt like I was watching a Thomas Hardy novel. He chuckled, then a few seconds later added, “Hey, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Mizoguchi’s film is, with one notable exception, textbook Naturalism. Oharu, like Tess, Maggie, and Carrie before her, is abused by a patriarchal system, to be sure, but the depths and the ironies of her suffering suggest that a vast and indifferent universe is conspiring against her. The Life of Oharu is like an anti-picaresque novel, a compilation of vignettes in which our heroine, rather than outsmarting her abusers, is instead toyed with, degraded, and openly mocked by them. I love Mizoguchi’s camerawork in this regard. He often looks down upon her from a high angle, forcing the horizon line above the edge of the frame so that we, like Oharu, seldom catch a glimpse of the sky.

    The one exception to this Oharu-as-Naturalism theory is the final, enigmatic shot, in which Oharu, now old and alone, looks up with reverence at a tower in the distance. I say “enigmatic” because I simply lack the context and understanding to read the image. Is the tower the home of her son, now a powerful lord? Is it a temple, and, if so, what does it represent to her? In an earlier scene, she has found some consolation in religious ceremony, but it’s an earthy, human consolation — the smiling face of Buddha becomes a talisman of her one moment of perfect happiness, the love she once felt for a young man. Regardless, Hardy, Crane, Dreiser, and the other literary Naturalists tended to leave their heroines in the grave, so the finale of Oharu felt hopeful to me. I’m not sure if that hope is justified, however.

    Note: I didn’t rent this one from GreenCine. It is, however, available as a good-enough R2 DVD from Artificial Eye.

    L’Age d’Or (1930, dir. Luis Bunuel) — L’Age d’Or‘s images aren’t as striking as those in Un Chien Andalou, but I found it a much more compelling film. I guess I prefer my surrealism to be grounded a bit more firmly in narrative, no matter how loosely the term “narrative” must be employed in this context. That Bunuel uses a love affair as a framework around which he builds his political and aesthetic critique gives the images (such as the one in my new title) a deeper resonance. There are humans in this film rather than simply a collection of subjects or symbols. L’Age d’Or seems to be more distinctly a Bunuel film as well — Un Chien Andalou has too many of Dali’s fingerprints on it, in my opinion — and, indeed, a pairing of it with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie would feel perfectly natural, despite the 42 years that separate them.

  • Short Takes

    Short Takes

    I’m adjusting to a new schedule. Getting up early, driving to campus, setting up my laptop in the library, and forcing myself to sit there — to write — until late-afternoon. In other words, I’m finally turning my dissertation into a full-time job. By the end of the day, I have little energy left to write about films or anything else, really, so instead I’ve been relaxing each night with a DVD. Because GreenCine doesn’t carry the later seasons of The West Wing, I’ve re-upped with NetFlix as well, meaning that, until I cancel one of the subscriptions, I’ll have a steady stream of titles to choose from. Good times. Some recent viewings:

    Notre Musique (2004, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) — I won’t even attempt a reading of this film after only one viewing, and I’d be suspicious of any reviewer/critic who does so. Is it anti-American? Anti-Semitic? Anti-Intellectual? Maybe. I have no idea at this point. I’ve already mailed the disc back, but I think I’d like to buy copies of Notre Musique and In Praise of Love (which I loved, also after only one viewing) and give both films the time and attention they deserve.

    I can say without hesitation, though, that the opening ten minutes of Notre Musique, the “Hell” section, are absolutely compelling. A collage of violent images, some real (documentary), some imagined (fiction), “Hell” is disgusting and fascinating. Godard digitizes, distorts, and makes abstract a timeline of human sadism and suffering, and I’m beginning to suspect that the remainder of the film is an argument about the moral and political consequences of that very act.

    The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, dir. William Wyler) — The night before my grandmother’s funeral, my grandfather told me about a letter he wrote to her when he was in Europe. Actually, he dictated the letter to a nurse. And in it he told her that he would be returning “half the man” he was when he left. He’d been wounded badly by a German mortar somewhere in western Europe, and he was ashamed of the toll it took on his face. I wish now I’d had the chance to watch this film with them.

    If I hadn’t seen Best Years, I wouldn’t believe a film like it could exist. The story of three men returning from war to the same home town, it unsettles every expectation I had about Hollywood World War II films. The heroic Army Air Force captain is haunted by nightmares and unable to find his place in a booming postwar economy that places little value on the skills he learned as a bombardier. The gruff and hard-drinking ol’ Sarge’, a staple of service films, is a banker who discovers that words like “collateral” and “investment” are absurd when used back home. And Homer, who lost both hands to a fire, returns to a society better-equipped to accept a heroic death than a disfiguring wound.

    And along with that setup, you also get brilliant performances from Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Hoagy Carmichael, and Teresa Wright (with whom I’ve fallen in love again); you get the patient, impeccably-human direction of William Wyler; and you get a stream of jaw-dropping images from Gregg Toland that rival his more famous work in Citizen Kane. Best Years might be my single favorite film of the classical Hollywood cinema. An absolute masterpiece.

    Sunrise (1927, dir. F. W. Murnau) — I first watched Sunrise several years ago on a 9″ viewing carrel* at the university library. Having now seen it projected at 100″ — thanks to the kind generosity of a friend — I finally get what all of the fuss is about. I’d seen Janet Gaynor a week or two earlier in Frank Borzage’s Street Angel, which was made the same year, and I’d become fascinated by her face. It’s the perfect silent film face — all round eyes and round cheeks, like Betty Boop. Her character is almost too perfect, too forgiving in Sunrise, and I wonder if the film would hold together if not for that face.

    The star of the film, though, is Murnau’s camera. Nearly every image is a knockout, but it’s the double-, triple-, quadruple-exposures that take your breath away. I’m not sure which film is the greater miracle, Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera, which was brash enough to toss away the old book of film grammar, or Sunrise, which displays many of the same feats of daring but in the service of a more traditional narrative.

    Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (2004, dir. Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller) — I think I’ve watched too many great essay films over the past year. Too much Resnais, Marker, Varda, Jost. They’ve changed my expectations for non-fiction films. Unfairly, perhaps. I tuned in to Moving Train on IFC a few nights ago because I was curious about Zinn, and the film gave me all of the information I was looking for — a biographical sketch, interviews with him and those who have known him, archival footage of key moments from his career, and historical context. Moving Train is interesting because Zinn is interesting. I wish the film were more than just a Biography channel profile, though. I wish it had a voice of its own, a voice offering insight into why Zinn matters, if Zinn matters.

    * Note: Apparently, this is the first time I’ve ever typed the word “carrel.” Did you know that both “carrel” and “carrell” are acceptable spellings? English, really, is a ridiculous language.

  • Random Musings . . .

    Random Musings . . .

    On some recent viewings . . .

    Shame (Bergman, 1968) — Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow star as Eva and Jan Rosenberg, cultured musicians who escape to a rural island when their orchestra is shut down during a war. Their new, more simple life as farmers is soon interrupted when their home is invaded, and they are forced to confront the violence that they had so meticulously avoided. Shame is typically described as a psychological portrait of the dehumanizing consequences of war. The splintering of Eva and Jan’s relationship, then, becomes representative of savage self-interest and alienation, and the interruption of their careers (captured most obviously in an image of Jan’s broken violin) serves as a metaphor for war’s denial of Art, beauty, and culture.

    Shame is my least favorite of the Bergman films I’ve seen. By setting the action amid some unspecific, fairy tale-like war, Bergman (who obviously knows a thing or two about the proper uses of symbolism) invests too much “Meaning” in his characters and in their actions. Shame is an Allegory with a capital A, trapped uncomfortably somewhere between absurd, dystopian satire and the real here and now. I think I would have preferred the film had it jumped completely to one of those extremes. As with all collaborations between Bergman, Ullman, von Sydow, and cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Shame is packed with remarkable performances and jaw-dropping photography, and it’s well worth seeing for those reasons alone. I was only disappointed because it fails to reach Bergman’s own ridiculously high bar.

    I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (Zahedi, 1994) — Zahedi, his father and half-brother, and a small film crew spend Christmas in Vegas, where Zahedi hopes, among other things, to heal his familial relationships and to prove the existence of God. With this film alone as evidence, I would say that he accomplishes neither, but the attempt is fascinating to watch. Caveh is a polarizing figure, to be sure, and Las Vegas shows him at his most obnoxious and manipulative, particularly during an extended sequence in which he attempts to talk his 62-year-old father and 16-year-old brother into taking Ecstasy. I’m still not sure whether or not he succeeded.

    To me, the appeal of Caveh Zahedi is his willingness to emote unapologetically, to subject those emotions to close scrutiny, and to do so all under the watchful eye of a camera in which he places an almost naive faith. In his more recent film, In the Bathtub of the World (2001), and in this interview with Film Threat, Caveh talks about his disappointment with an experience (reading a great book, attending a film festival) that failed to be “salvational,” and I think that word is the key to his project. There’s something beautiful about watching someone search so desperately for that salvational experience, particularly in a mostly Christian nation like America, where we are so comfortable with the language of grace and forgiveness. Caveh’s films remind me of a concept that I seem to come back to again and again: negative transcendence — “God appears only as the Absent One, as that which is signified only by the depth of the artfully expressed yearning.”

    Before Sunrise (Linklater, 1995) and Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004) — I had planned to write up a full-length response to these films, which, when taken together, are something of a minor miracle. Sunset is my favorite film of the year so far. Told in real time, it captures an eighty minute conversation between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), a couple who spent “one magical night together in Vienna” nine years earlier, then never spoke again. When they finally reunite in Paris, they are older (their early-30s) and somewhat hardened by experience, and their reunion unravels the comfortable lies upon which their lives are founded. I can’t seem to write or talk about this film without rambling on about my wife, about how we met ten years ago, and about how our ideas of love and romance have evolved since, which is why I’m cutting this short. I’ll just say that Before Sunset is a remarkably well-crafted film that ends at precisely the right moment and that treats its characters and its audience with great tenderness and respect. Like I said: a minor miracle.

    The School of Rock (Linklater, 2003) — A film that doesn’t for a minute divert from its by-the-numbers plot but that is a hell of a lot of fun to watch anyway. In other words, I laughed when Jack Black tried to be funny and I got goose bumps when the band played their big show. Plus, any film that mentions Rick Wakeman’s keyboard solo in “Roundabout” get bonus points. The School of Rock‘s biggest surprise: Who knew Joan Cusack was so hot?

  • Hour of the Wolf (1968)

    Hour of the Wolf (1968)

    Hour of the Wolf is Ingmar Bergman’s vampire film. Let me repeat that: Hour of the Wolf (1968) is Ingmar Bergman’s vampire film. I had no idea. Watching it for the first time on Saturday was one of those revelatory experiences in which my preconceptions were proven so utterly wrong that, midway through the film, I had to stop (not literally), gather my thoughts, and (I never thought I’d use this cliche to describe Bergman) enjoy the ride.

    In many ways, Hour of the Wolf is the culmination of Bergman’s progression from the existential nightmare of Through a Glass Darkly to the absurdist imagery of The Silence and the self-conscious conceit of Persona. The story of a husband (Max von Sydow) and wife (Liv Ullman) driven to insanity amid the isolated landscape of Faro island, Hour of the Wolf is like a 90-minute version of the dream sequence in Wild Strawberries — a slow montage of ridiculously disconcerting imagery that is at once terrifying and beautiful. (Sven Nykvist did things with a camera that no one will ever match.) The “ghosts” who haunt the film are so frightening because they barely resemble ghosts at all. They simultaneously embody bourgeois banality and the sublime nothingness that, in Bergman’s formulation, will inevitably follow. Two parts 8 1/2-era Fellini, one part “Uncanny”-era Freud.

    Like Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), I would call Hour of the Wolf one of the director’s lesser films — a rare instance in which Bergman’s style trumps his substance to just too great a degree. But I have a tendency to too easily dismiss works from the horror and gothic genres. I’m surprised, actually, that I was able to see this film without having ever read a bit about it. It’s just stunning to look at. Three days later, and I still can’t push some of its images from my mind.

  • Fahrenheit 9/11

    Fahrenheit 9/11

    Like millions of others, I lined up this weekend to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Charles Pierce summarizes my opinion pretty closely:

    Frankly, as a movie qua movie, I thought the thing was kind of a hash. My eyes glazed at the endless Bush-Carlyle-Harken-Saudis-Hallburton segment at the beginning, and I’d heard most of it before. The “Bonanza” thing was really dumb — and I mean FILM-SCHOOL dumb — and it used the wrong theme music, besides. However, he does make up for that with a music cue during C-Plus Augustus’s aircraft-carrier stunt that put me on the floor.

    That having been said, the good stuff is really good. The American soldiers are strikingly eloquent, both here and Over There, and anybody who accuses Moore of undermining Our Troops has to argue that he does so partly by giving the grunts a voice. The Senate sellout of the outraged members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the wake of the 2000 election scam should make Tom Daschle and Al Gore lock themselves in a closet for a month. (Not one Democratic senator would stand with John Lewis?)

    I wish, in fact, that Moore had cut most of the cheap Bush jokes and focused his attention, instead, on only Iraq and the American military. The last hour of Fahrenheit 9/11 is fantastic; I just wish it were cut into a film that wouldn’t alienate so many Bush voters.

  • A (Very) Few Words on Twentynine Palms

    When all is said and done — after the endless driving, the explicit sex, the pain-faced orgasms, and the brutal, brutal violence — Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms, I think, is really a film about a red truck.

    A much longer response is in the works.

  • Late August, Early September (1998)

    Late August, Early September (1998)

    I had planned to write a full response to Olivier Assayas’ Late August, Early September, but when I sat down to do so I realized that I just didn’t have much to say. It’s a smart enough film — well made, finely acted, and a pleasure to watch — but like, say, one of Rohmer’s late comedies, the charm of Late August is found almost entirely in its characters (all of whom are likeable enough and three-dimensional enough) and in the smart things they say to one another. They twist themselves in existential knots, struggling to balance their idealized visions of integrity with the muddy necessity: compromise. They try to love themselves and others, in that order. They smoke. And drink wine. It’s all captured in cool-filtered, hand-held 16mm, and there are some fun, self-referential lines about gauging artistic success based upon the size of one’s audience. All in all, I would call it a pleasant and mostly forgettable distraction.