A month after the close of 2008, I feel at least vaguely qualified to do top tens for two media. Before the task gets any more embarrassingly belated, here they are.
Films:
1. Lorna’s Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2. Ballast (Lance Hammer)
3. Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)
4. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
5. Sarabande (Nathaniel Dorsky)
6. Boogie (Radu Muntean)
7. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
8. Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen)
9. Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)
10. Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim)
Songs (I'm afraid my album list looks too sorry):
1. Broadfield Marchers – “When Cowards Stall” (The Inevitable Continuing)
2. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Think I Wanna Die” (Pershing)
3. The Mommyheads – “Stupid Guy” (You’re Not a Dream)
4. Broadfield Marchers – “Mondo From Growth” (The Inevitable Continuing)
5. In Elvis Garage – “Residue” (Winning By Cheating)
6. Winterpills – “Burning Hearts” (Central Chambers)
7. Broadfield Marchers – “Sailing Fortune” (The Inevitable Continuing)
8. Bob Mould – “Who Needs to Dream?” (District Line)
9. Times New Viking – “Drop-Out” (Rip It Off)
10. Robert Forster – “Demon Days” (The Evangelist)
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
January: Second Half
PRO:
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (Eric Rohmer, 1993)
Maybe Rohmer’s most formally laid-back movie, with the possible exception of his documentaries: no way in hell such awkward zooms would have made their way into, for example, My Night at Maud’s. Typically, Rohmer builds the dispute over the mediatheque, clearly resolves it—the winner is Fabrice Luchini, pissed-off environmentalist schoolteacher—but hands the baton of cool satisfaction over to Pascal Greggory’s mayor, to whom it just really doesn’t matter all that much. Bonus points for making Greggory two-faced, forming sinister hypotheses with his girlfriend and presenting himself as open to discussion with the teacher’s daughter, and yet so stupefied he’s impossible to dislike.
Boogie (Radu Muntean, 2008)
“Couldn’t be farther from Lazarescu, 12:08 and 4 Months,” multiple reviews note, referring to this film’s fairly breezy account of a night on the town with some high school buds, and its vaguely insidious effect on one’s marriage. But Muntean’s latest is, no doubt, a stylistic cousin to those forebearers, with takes verging on 10 minutes and subtle insinuations of a creeping class and physical divide between the eponymous hero and his pals. Muntean ingeniously tricks us, I think, into precisely sharing Boogie’s virtues and vices: the hangout sessions, although mired in condescension and wasted dreams, are dynamic and enjoyable, and the wife, although smart and loving, seems dreary. Here we have both a searing critique of the basic principles on which friendship is often founded, and the devastating conclusion that those dubious friendships still give more pleasure than traditional ego-boosters like fatherhood.
pro:
Crashing (Gary Walkow, 2007)
Finally: a writer’s movie that revels in complex, accurate self-criticisms rather than crass distinctions. Few works of art so cunningly mirror the artistic process. The downward spiral of self-loathing and fantasizing gets a bit heavy, but the film is sustained by funny, deconstructive energy.
Ask Any Girl (Charles Walters, 1959)
Unlike, say, Sturges, who flirts with crudity but always slaps his own signature on the execution thereof, Walters lapses into rather anonymous schtick. But again and again, he lends the ridiculous story serious consideration: I’m thinking of the chubby woman’s melancholy attitude of resignation towards marriage, or Niven’s reserved, cynical detachment that masks attraction.
mixed:
How to Become Myself (Jun Ichikawa, 2007)
Ichikawa’s stylistic excesses—using split-screen with the same perverse casualness with which Ashby used dissolves in The Last Detail; bold, “cinematic” means of portraying technological communication—are actually kind of interesting and expressive, if distracting. Few directors would dare to emphasize such blah, insignificant details with such sentimental bravura. I like the contrast, but the sentimentality gets a bit much to bear as the film goes on: the film more or less lets the protagonist give herself an hour-long hug.
DNF:
State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman, 2007)
Alas, there’s only so much inner life simmering beneath a meeting on branding cattle to identify diseased cows. No doubt state legislators themselves would share my fidgety idleness.
Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008)
Slick is the word: this exudes overdeliberate coolness that smothers any meaningful tension. I sort of enjoyed the Election movies, but I don’t think I know what to do with To anymore.
Afternoon (Angela Schanelec, 2007)
Sort of like if Lucretia Martel did a Bergman script. Too languorously shot and behaviorally blunt to do much of anything for me.
Literature:
PRO:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
Wrote something I liked about this for class but won’t post it here for fear of dubious self-plagiarism charges. Basically, as in Jude, seemingly worthwhile intellectual development is crushed by its inapplicability to relationships. I don’t quite know what to do with Alec D’Urberville, doubtless an agent of evil by the book’s end. Quite good, but my least favorite Hardy novel so far.
“Barn Burning” (William Faulkner, 1938)
Faulkner, to me, exemplifies holding oneself to a standard of intense emotional subjectivity while resisting the lugubriousness that can often imply, and this story is no exception. Sometimes I wish the dense thickets of language weren’t so forbidding.
“A&P” (John Updike, 1961)
Wasn’t sure if I was going for this at first, but I ended up really liking it: the honor and disgrace brought upon the naïve, horny protag are perfectly balanced.
More short stories from my fiction writing class: I liked something by Joyce Carol Oates, mildly appreciated Charlotte Perkins Gilman, met Rick Moody with groaning indifference, and loathed Kate Chopin and Katherine Anne Porter.
pro:
Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem, 1999)
Given Lethem’s liking for Dostoevsky and Rohmer I’d expected something a little more austere, but this is fun for all of its jazzy aloofness. The convoluted plot mechanics do little the unsentimental interplay between the protag’s OCD and awareness that, for better and worse, others are functioning in a profoundly different way.
mixed:
The Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare, 1594)
The extreme, comic transformation of Katherine seems to me hard to put to good artistic use, and it’s no wonder that the Zeffirelli film, which a bit of was screened in class, is so head-scratchingly awful, Zeffirelli’s obviousness highlighting everything crass and nothing subtle about the play. That’s not to say a good version couldn’t be done, my idea of which would probably try to account for the misery and embarrassment of the personality change. In the text itself, this seems like a relatively marginal goal.
Music:
The Beckies – The Beckies (1976)
Left Banke, Montage and Stories material accounted for, this is Michael Brown’s best work: there’s not a bad song to be found. Download it here.
Times New Viking – “Drop-Out” (Rip It Off, 2008)
Most of this album is bland Indie 101 to me, but this is a nice imitation of a good GBV throwaway.
Plush – “I’ve Changed My Number” (Fed, 2002)
There’s a spirit of innovative craftsmanship coursing through this album, but to my liking it only really comes together on this track.
The Beautiful South – “Don’t Marry Her” (Blue Is the Color, 1996)
How the hell did it take me 13 years to hear this?
The Beat – “Different Kind of Girl” (The Beat, 1979)
This is a masterpiece; “You Won’t Be Happy” is very good, and very Flamin' Groovies-esque; “I Don’t Fit In” is interesting.
Sloan – “Coax Me”
The version off the A-Sides Win compilation from 2005: it lives and dies by a brilliantly tense riff, and the performances I found on YouTube killed the magic by subtly altering it. The Wrens c. Secaucus would be proud.
Bleu – “Snow Day” (1999)
I feel very dorky for loving this song, but I do. The chords in the verses course along with a lot of pleasurable variation, skirting and triumphing over archetypal pop-punk.
Theater:
Uncle Vanya (Austin Pendleton, 2009)
My first encounter with Chekhov, staged with expressive use of the Classic Stage Company’s theater-in-the-round: emphasis is distributed evenly throughout the space. Aside from occasionally delving into complex use of simultaneous action, Pendleton’s major motif seems to be giving most every actor (with the notable exception of Mamie Gummer’s Sonya) an ironic, nervous laugh to accompany despairing monologues. This isn’t a bad device, really, but Denis O’Hare overuses it. Extra-artistic Pleasures Dept.: I’d never really been on the Maggie-Gyllenhaal-is-hot bandwagon prior to this, but having sat a few feet away from her, I change my story.
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (Eric Rohmer, 1993)
Maybe Rohmer’s most formally laid-back movie, with the possible exception of his documentaries: no way in hell such awkward zooms would have made their way into, for example, My Night at Maud’s. Typically, Rohmer builds the dispute over the mediatheque, clearly resolves it—the winner is Fabrice Luchini, pissed-off environmentalist schoolteacher—but hands the baton of cool satisfaction over to Pascal Greggory’s mayor, to whom it just really doesn’t matter all that much. Bonus points for making Greggory two-faced, forming sinister hypotheses with his girlfriend and presenting himself as open to discussion with the teacher’s daughter, and yet so stupefied he’s impossible to dislike.
Boogie (Radu Muntean, 2008)
“Couldn’t be farther from Lazarescu, 12:08 and 4 Months,” multiple reviews note, referring to this film’s fairly breezy account of a night on the town with some high school buds, and its vaguely insidious effect on one’s marriage. But Muntean’s latest is, no doubt, a stylistic cousin to those forebearers, with takes verging on 10 minutes and subtle insinuations of a creeping class and physical divide between the eponymous hero and his pals. Muntean ingeniously tricks us, I think, into precisely sharing Boogie’s virtues and vices: the hangout sessions, although mired in condescension and wasted dreams, are dynamic and enjoyable, and the wife, although smart and loving, seems dreary. Here we have both a searing critique of the basic principles on which friendship is often founded, and the devastating conclusion that those dubious friendships still give more pleasure than traditional ego-boosters like fatherhood.
pro:
Crashing (Gary Walkow, 2007)
Finally: a writer’s movie that revels in complex, accurate self-criticisms rather than crass distinctions. Few works of art so cunningly mirror the artistic process. The downward spiral of self-loathing and fantasizing gets a bit heavy, but the film is sustained by funny, deconstructive energy.
Ask Any Girl (Charles Walters, 1959)
Unlike, say, Sturges, who flirts with crudity but always slaps his own signature on the execution thereof, Walters lapses into rather anonymous schtick. But again and again, he lends the ridiculous story serious consideration: I’m thinking of the chubby woman’s melancholy attitude of resignation towards marriage, or Niven’s reserved, cynical detachment that masks attraction.
mixed:
How to Become Myself (Jun Ichikawa, 2007)
Ichikawa’s stylistic excesses—using split-screen with the same perverse casualness with which Ashby used dissolves in The Last Detail; bold, “cinematic” means of portraying technological communication—are actually kind of interesting and expressive, if distracting. Few directors would dare to emphasize such blah, insignificant details with such sentimental bravura. I like the contrast, but the sentimentality gets a bit much to bear as the film goes on: the film more or less lets the protagonist give herself an hour-long hug.
DNF:
State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman, 2007)
Alas, there’s only so much inner life simmering beneath a meeting on branding cattle to identify diseased cows. No doubt state legislators themselves would share my fidgety idleness.
Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008)
Slick is the word: this exudes overdeliberate coolness that smothers any meaningful tension. I sort of enjoyed the Election movies, but I don’t think I know what to do with To anymore.
Afternoon (Angela Schanelec, 2007)
Sort of like if Lucretia Martel did a Bergman script. Too languorously shot and behaviorally blunt to do much of anything for me.
Literature:
PRO:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
Wrote something I liked about this for class but won’t post it here for fear of dubious self-plagiarism charges. Basically, as in Jude, seemingly worthwhile intellectual development is crushed by its inapplicability to relationships. I don’t quite know what to do with Alec D’Urberville, doubtless an agent of evil by the book’s end. Quite good, but my least favorite Hardy novel so far.
“Barn Burning” (William Faulkner, 1938)
Faulkner, to me, exemplifies holding oneself to a standard of intense emotional subjectivity while resisting the lugubriousness that can often imply, and this story is no exception. Sometimes I wish the dense thickets of language weren’t so forbidding.
“A&P” (John Updike, 1961)
Wasn’t sure if I was going for this at first, but I ended up really liking it: the honor and disgrace brought upon the naïve, horny protag are perfectly balanced.
More short stories from my fiction writing class: I liked something by Joyce Carol Oates, mildly appreciated Charlotte Perkins Gilman, met Rick Moody with groaning indifference, and loathed Kate Chopin and Katherine Anne Porter.
pro:
Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem, 1999)
Given Lethem’s liking for Dostoevsky and Rohmer I’d expected something a little more austere, but this is fun for all of its jazzy aloofness. The convoluted plot mechanics do little the unsentimental interplay between the protag’s OCD and awareness that, for better and worse, others are functioning in a profoundly different way.
mixed:
The Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare, 1594)
The extreme, comic transformation of Katherine seems to me hard to put to good artistic use, and it’s no wonder that the Zeffirelli film, which a bit of was screened in class, is so head-scratchingly awful, Zeffirelli’s obviousness highlighting everything crass and nothing subtle about the play. That’s not to say a good version couldn’t be done, my idea of which would probably try to account for the misery and embarrassment of the personality change. In the text itself, this seems like a relatively marginal goal.
Music:
The Beckies – The Beckies (1976)
Left Banke, Montage and Stories material accounted for, this is Michael Brown’s best work: there’s not a bad song to be found. Download it here.
Times New Viking – “Drop-Out” (Rip It Off, 2008)
Most of this album is bland Indie 101 to me, but this is a nice imitation of a good GBV throwaway.
Plush – “I’ve Changed My Number” (Fed, 2002)
There’s a spirit of innovative craftsmanship coursing through this album, but to my liking it only really comes together on this track.
The Beautiful South – “Don’t Marry Her” (Blue Is the Color, 1996)
How the hell did it take me 13 years to hear this?
The Beat – “Different Kind of Girl” (The Beat, 1979)
This is a masterpiece; “You Won’t Be Happy” is very good, and very Flamin' Groovies-esque; “I Don’t Fit In” is interesting.
Sloan – “Coax Me”
The version off the A-Sides Win compilation from 2005: it lives and dies by a brilliantly tense riff, and the performances I found on YouTube killed the magic by subtly altering it. The Wrens c. Secaucus would be proud.
Bleu – “Snow Day” (1999)
I feel very dorky for loving this song, but I do. The chords in the verses course along with a lot of pleasurable variation, skirting and triumphing over archetypal pop-punk.
Theater:
Uncle Vanya (Austin Pendleton, 2009)
My first encounter with Chekhov, staged with expressive use of the Classic Stage Company’s theater-in-the-round: emphasis is distributed evenly throughout the space. Aside from occasionally delving into complex use of simultaneous action, Pendleton’s major motif seems to be giving most every actor (with the notable exception of Mamie Gummer’s Sonya) an ironic, nervous laugh to accompany despairing monologues. This isn’t a bad device, really, but Denis O’Hare overuses it. Extra-artistic Pleasures Dept.: I’d never really been on the Maggie-Gyllenhaal-is-hot bandwagon prior to this, but having sat a few feet away from her, I change my story.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
January: Halfway Post
PRO:
Counterparts (Jan Bonny, 2007)
The inexplicable recipient of middling reception at Cannes 2007 (sample review quote: “Absence of music also reinforces the small-screen feel”; amazingly, it seems I have watched much more TV than Variety’s Derek Elley), this feature debut employs Dardennes-style camerawork and editing to glorious effect. The scenario, a domestic-abuse relationship with the roles reversed, is played blessedly free of sensationalism: Bonny has a fine-tuned and unusual sense, for example, of the “triggers” afflicting the abuser, such as overdeliberate attempts at reconciliation on the part of the abused. Is she horrific, or is he merely sentimental? On and on it goes…
Falbalas (Jacques Becker, 1945)
This Becker masterpiece is a miracle of acting style trumping shot duration: visuals fly by at a rapid clip, all charged with latent emotion. I’ll be thinking of Becker’s terse dissolves on suggestive facial expressions when polishing my own screenplay. Patience does not necessarily equal wisdom.
pro:
The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008)
From the likes of this and the less impressive All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (not written by Levine), Levine is working out a preoccupation with a social middle ground of sorts, and in this case an ambivalence about youthful abandon. We’re not talking about a Stillman-esque take on the pros and cons of a modern social class system so much as an illustration of an attempt to live life as if that system doesn’t exist, ultimately semi-conceding to it. My biggest quibble is what seems to me a rather mild depiction of benzodiazepine withdrawal, which is a hell I wouldn’t wish on Hitler.
Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol, 1965)
Long stretches of boredom, as usual, permeate this one-take opus, but it steadily develops into an indelibly reflexive take on voyeurism: the position of the camera makes the unwanted observer newly tantalizing.
Slumming (Michael Glawogger, 2006)
Seems to be about revenge, then redemption, and finally eviscerates any kind of straightforward moral oomph. The point, going off the observations of the spoiled Austrian kids, and later on, the Filipino drinking buddies, is that it’s fun, but probably wrong, to try to guess what’s really going on with someone. Admirable, but bizarre.
Guernsey (Nanouk Leopold, 2005)
Both this and Wolfsbergen are detached and elliptical in the manner of Haneke—shots are filmed at about twice the distance they need to be, although Leopold occasionally varies from master-shot mode—particularly Code Unknown. All we need to know, apparently, is that the protagonist travels, has become used to it, willingly trusts most people but operates underneath a constant veil of coldness. Performances are typically muted, but occasionally quite interesting. Sample moment: protag’ll ask a question—“do you think of her now and then?”—and then turn away in the same beat, suddenly meek. Style is at times weirdly showy—one will slowly track out as the characters talk before just lying there—and maybe they’d seem less weird if not for the lack of score, acting style etc.
Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
Ending is very Night and Fog, but as far as stringently ethical treatments of real-life atrocity go, this is for the most part laid-back, to its benefit. (Because why should Folman deny that, despite the undercurrent of sadness in his discussions of the massacre, he trades and enjoys stupid barbs like “It’s a blast,” with his old buddies, as most would?) Most battle scenes, as a general rule, tend to bore me, either because a filmmaker strives to approximate the chaos of war and loses narrative coherence in the process, or in the reverse case, where we’re pinned down to a single perspective, drowns in monotony; both options are satisfyingly plausible and usually dull. That said, I was rarely bored during this film: encounters of otherworldly tension are situated in retroactive melancholy.
America, America (Elia Kazan, 1963)
mixed:
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
Favorite bit: the memory game, perhaps because Ray is so adept at the language of melodrama that when he veers from it entirely, the effect is kind of magical. Not a very imposing movie, but not a particularly expressive one, either.
No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993)
Nobody seems to be able to account for Resnais’ infatuation with Alan Ayckbourn, least of all Ayckbourn himself. Mostly too mannered for my taste, and the formal gamesmanship isn’t anywhere near as deliberate or complex as in Private Fears in Public Places. Resnais does lend light, poetic consideration to crass characterizations, particularly in the way scenes close.
Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
Sometimes I don’t know whether to enjoy the “subversive” quality of Miyazaki’s all-out warmth for his supernatural characters, which counteracts the banality of cackling cartoon villains, or to feel that it’s tediously cozy.
Literature:
PRO:
Diary of a Bad Year (J.M. Coetzee, 2007)
I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Coetzee, but this is my favorite, a conceptually gimmicky novel whose three-pronged design, to my mind, anticipates and negotiates with just about every conceivable intelligent criticism it invites. It’s not hard to imagine a potentially great writer who loves Dostoevsky, longs to approximate his greatness, feels vaguely insecure about his own storytelling abilities, not to mention conquered by lust, but it’s somehow inspiring that that skeletal, somewhat pathetic profile has been transformed into a masterpiece.
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1877)
When Tolstoy attempts to write anything conclusive about human nature, he often ends up chasing his own tail (e.g., much of War and Peace)—which is what makes this novel, in which he observes Levin doing the same and becoming conscious of it in a productive way, superior to that one.
pro:
After Dark (Haruki Murakami, 2004)
Murakami constructs stories of delicate intricacy for the sole purpose of leaving them hanging and watching them flutter in the wind, as usual. This feat is so impressive that the worldview tying it all together, a vaguely mystical summation of Japanese urban life, feels like an afterthought.
Theater:
pro:
Speed-the-Plow (Neil Pepe, 2009)
Seen with William H. Macy in the central role, who seems more suited to the apparently aging, insecure Bobby Gould than thermometer manqué Jeremy Piven anyway. The chief hook—Bobby is wisely stupid, Karen is stupidly wise—bristles with intelligence, even when it’s smothered by cleverness.
Counterparts (Jan Bonny, 2007)
The inexplicable recipient of middling reception at Cannes 2007 (sample review quote: “Absence of music also reinforces the small-screen feel”; amazingly, it seems I have watched much more TV than Variety’s Derek Elley), this feature debut employs Dardennes-style camerawork and editing to glorious effect. The scenario, a domestic-abuse relationship with the roles reversed, is played blessedly free of sensationalism: Bonny has a fine-tuned and unusual sense, for example, of the “triggers” afflicting the abuser, such as overdeliberate attempts at reconciliation on the part of the abused. Is she horrific, or is he merely sentimental? On and on it goes…
Falbalas (Jacques Becker, 1945)
This Becker masterpiece is a miracle of acting style trumping shot duration: visuals fly by at a rapid clip, all charged with latent emotion. I’ll be thinking of Becker’s terse dissolves on suggestive facial expressions when polishing my own screenplay. Patience does not necessarily equal wisdom.
pro:
The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008)
From the likes of this and the less impressive All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (not written by Levine), Levine is working out a preoccupation with a social middle ground of sorts, and in this case an ambivalence about youthful abandon. We’re not talking about a Stillman-esque take on the pros and cons of a modern social class system so much as an illustration of an attempt to live life as if that system doesn’t exist, ultimately semi-conceding to it. My biggest quibble is what seems to me a rather mild depiction of benzodiazepine withdrawal, which is a hell I wouldn’t wish on Hitler.
Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol, 1965)
Long stretches of boredom, as usual, permeate this one-take opus, but it steadily develops into an indelibly reflexive take on voyeurism: the position of the camera makes the unwanted observer newly tantalizing.
Slumming (Michael Glawogger, 2006)
Seems to be about revenge, then redemption, and finally eviscerates any kind of straightforward moral oomph. The point, going off the observations of the spoiled Austrian kids, and later on, the Filipino drinking buddies, is that it’s fun, but probably wrong, to try to guess what’s really going on with someone. Admirable, but bizarre.
Guernsey (Nanouk Leopold, 2005)
Both this and Wolfsbergen are detached and elliptical in the manner of Haneke—shots are filmed at about twice the distance they need to be, although Leopold occasionally varies from master-shot mode—particularly Code Unknown. All we need to know, apparently, is that the protagonist travels, has become used to it, willingly trusts most people but operates underneath a constant veil of coldness. Performances are typically muted, but occasionally quite interesting. Sample moment: protag’ll ask a question—“do you think of her now and then?”—and then turn away in the same beat, suddenly meek. Style is at times weirdly showy—one will slowly track out as the characters talk before just lying there—and maybe they’d seem less weird if not for the lack of score, acting style etc.
Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
Ending is very Night and Fog, but as far as stringently ethical treatments of real-life atrocity go, this is for the most part laid-back, to its benefit. (Because why should Folman deny that, despite the undercurrent of sadness in his discussions of the massacre, he trades and enjoys stupid barbs like “It’s a blast,” with his old buddies, as most would?) Most battle scenes, as a general rule, tend to bore me, either because a filmmaker strives to approximate the chaos of war and loses narrative coherence in the process, or in the reverse case, where we’re pinned down to a single perspective, drowns in monotony; both options are satisfyingly plausible and usually dull. That said, I was rarely bored during this film: encounters of otherworldly tension are situated in retroactive melancholy.
America, America (Elia Kazan, 1963)
mixed:
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
Favorite bit: the memory game, perhaps because Ray is so adept at the language of melodrama that when he veers from it entirely, the effect is kind of magical. Not a very imposing movie, but not a particularly expressive one, either.
No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993)
Nobody seems to be able to account for Resnais’ infatuation with Alan Ayckbourn, least of all Ayckbourn himself. Mostly too mannered for my taste, and the formal gamesmanship isn’t anywhere near as deliberate or complex as in Private Fears in Public Places. Resnais does lend light, poetic consideration to crass characterizations, particularly in the way scenes close.
Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
Sometimes I don’t know whether to enjoy the “subversive” quality of Miyazaki’s all-out warmth for his supernatural characters, which counteracts the banality of cackling cartoon villains, or to feel that it’s tediously cozy.
Literature:
PRO:
Diary of a Bad Year (J.M. Coetzee, 2007)
I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Coetzee, but this is my favorite, a conceptually gimmicky novel whose three-pronged design, to my mind, anticipates and negotiates with just about every conceivable intelligent criticism it invites. It’s not hard to imagine a potentially great writer who loves Dostoevsky, longs to approximate his greatness, feels vaguely insecure about his own storytelling abilities, not to mention conquered by lust, but it’s somehow inspiring that that skeletal, somewhat pathetic profile has been transformed into a masterpiece.
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1877)
When Tolstoy attempts to write anything conclusive about human nature, he often ends up chasing his own tail (e.g., much of War and Peace)—which is what makes this novel, in which he observes Levin doing the same and becoming conscious of it in a productive way, superior to that one.
pro:
After Dark (Haruki Murakami, 2004)
Murakami constructs stories of delicate intricacy for the sole purpose of leaving them hanging and watching them flutter in the wind, as usual. This feat is so impressive that the worldview tying it all together, a vaguely mystical summation of Japanese urban life, feels like an afterthought.
Theater:
pro:
Speed-the-Plow (Neil Pepe, 2009)
Seen with William H. Macy in the central role, who seems more suited to the apparently aging, insecure Bobby Gould than thermometer manqué Jeremy Piven anyway. The chief hook—Bobby is wisely stupid, Karen is stupidly wise—bristles with intelligence, even when it’s smothered by cleverness.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
December in Review
PRO:
The Strange M. Victor (Jean Gremillon, 1938)
My first Gremillon, and an amazing movie. He’s a first-class filmmaker: even extra-narrative shots contain remarkable background-foreground tension. He’s also a dramatist to rival the Dardennes, with daring and effective narrative ellipses, and a central character whose burden lies suspended between benevolence and guilt.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Blood Relatives (Claude Chabrol, 1978)
8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby, 1986)
Stands out like a sore thumb from Ashby’s filmography, but he’s a natural at the redemptive thriller: his trademark self-deprecating, hedonistic sense of humor inflects a rather sincere representation of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Andy Garcia’s laid-back, wise-cracking drug lord (“The white stuff? Isn’t that a movie about… astronauts, or something?”) is a perfect villain.
99 River St. (Phil Karlson, 1953)
Prelude (Michael Snow, 2000)
Fascinating: perplexing, yet graceful. Snow’s films are like a very skilled ongoing argument with Bazin, and this short is no exception.
Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)
A Life of Her Own (George Cukor, 1950)
pro:
Sarabande + Winter + Alaya (Nathaniel Dorsky, 1976-1987)
I mused during this screening that there’s perhaps no other director, avant-garde or no, so readily identifiable by looking at a single shot as Dorsky. (Tsai?) His intuitive method is constant and aggressive, especially in the later works: give the viewer complex visual information indicative of some connective relationship, but obscure just what that relationship is. I asked Dorsky if he considered this process unique, and he name-dropped The French Connection (!!), Shoah, Joseph Cornell, Warren Sonbert, Bruce Conner, the poems of John Ashbery, and perhaps most emphatically, Dziga Vertov, which made me wince, although Dorsky himself acknowledged that Vertov’s politics were unsatisfying. (Dorsky is generally a pretty brilliant speaker, by the way, and I think the real answer to my question, albeit unstated, is “Yes, I do.”) Anyhow, as much as I enjoy his films—and these ones are just about as gorgeous as Song and Solitude—I enjoy them so much on the basis of each individual shot that any kind of meaningful editing scheme tends to elude my comprehension.
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
Diane (Alan Clarke, 1975)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
After the somewhat vague, arty aloofness of Paranoid Park, I was surprised by the precise, unresolved tension between private and public spheres Van Sant derives from Milk’s campaigning methods, particularly his imploring for others to come out. Although GVS’s allegiances are clear, a surprising amount of energy is expended giving homophobes dignity and our hero crassness.
Night Train (Yinan Diao, 2007)
Beloved Enemy (Alan Clarke, 1981)
The most audaciously prosaic movie I've ever seen.
Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1963)
A good movie that I can’t quite revere, and one of the more commercial exponents of the French New Wave, with a jazz-laden soundtrack and cross-cutting that uneasily treads the line (or perhaps intends to bridge the gap) between broad, comic effect and contemplation.
Sirens (John Duigan, 1994)
Moloch (Alexander Sokurov, 1999)
The Night of Truth (Fanta Regina Nacro, 2004)
Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1924)
Adua and Her Friends (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1960)
Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1973)
mixed:
A Tree in Tanjung Malim (Tan Chui Mui, 2005)
Tan is a pretty good director: she usually puts the camera in the right place, and clearly enjoys long takes in service of her material. A few scenes are promising: the iffy way characters express themselves is Bujalski-esque. Unfortunately, she occasionally breaks concentration on mode of expression, apparently trying to enter into some direct, Joe-esque communion with the audience. (E.g., the sing-off.)
The Seagull’s Laughter (Ágúst Guðmundsson, 2001)
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Martel’s compositional obliquity is omnipresent, as is an inscrutable relationship between narrative and performance. Some will say it’s beguiling and mysterious; I say that with a few faint exceptions, it’s unrewarding and deliberately unobservant.
The Southerner (Jean Renoir, 1945)
con:
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Ledger is the sole point of interest here; Nolan is pretty much a non-entity in terms of directing actors, emphasizing action in an interesting way, etc.
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
Did the 1920s-era LAPD kill Clint’s cat or something? A promising movie in the first reel: perhaps a better director could have made a bit more out of making Jolie unsympathetically emotional, and the police surprisingly rational.
CON:
The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)
Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005)
DNF:
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) [0:40]
As if I’d ever have finished this. That said, not as painful as I’d suspected—Luhrmann is many things, but pompous is not one of them, and while as far as tonally jarring goes he’s no Bong c. Memories of Murder, at least this doesn’t quite fit the traditional mold for these sort of projects.
Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008) [0:10]
The beauty of Serra’s compositions is a hushed, abstracted, plastic thing that doesn’t seem worth trying to penetrate. On the bright side, I’m now more comfortable knowing that Serra is an asshole in person.
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) [0:10]
The Quarterly Balance (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1975) [0:45]
Baal (Alan Clarke, 1982) [0:40]
Clarke’s most overtly distanced movie, understandably suited to the Brecht material but lacking the vigor of his better work. Bowie’s deliberately bland “songs” are in keeping with a sense of muffled creativity in service of the play.
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (George Landow [Owen Land], 1966) [0:02]
This is something like 5 minutes long, and still I could not finish it. Some kind of imperceptible shift in hue seems to occur along the filmstrip, which wasn’t quite pleasurable enough for me, I suppose. I may revisit Landow, as I’ve heard his other works are more dynamic. (Why is it that I have such an easy time with some a-g artists, e.g. Dorsky or Kyle Canterbury or Bruce Baillie, and such an impossible time with guys like Landow or Michael Robinson or Bruce Conner or, much of the time, Brakhage? Perhaps I’ll have to write my own history of avant-garde cinema one day…)
And as for literature...
PRO:
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895) [2nd reading]
The Eternal Husband (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1873)
The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal, 1839)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy, 1874)
The Wings of the Dove (Henry James, 1902)
Late James, for me, is the literary equivalent of Akerman: rough going, and at times outright dislikeable, but astonishing anyway. One unfortunate extreme of James’s personality is blind adoration of social tact (i.e. unironically time and time again labeling composure "wonderful"), and the other is inconsistently employed narrative obscurity, in which the reader is called upon to dig through pronouns for clues. On the other hand, he’s totally adept at reshaping the reader’s moral perspective.
pro:
Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding, 1742)
The Strange M. Victor (Jean Gremillon, 1938)
My first Gremillon, and an amazing movie. He’s a first-class filmmaker: even extra-narrative shots contain remarkable background-foreground tension. He’s also a dramatist to rival the Dardennes, with daring and effective narrative ellipses, and a central character whose burden lies suspended between benevolence and guilt.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Blood Relatives (Claude Chabrol, 1978)
8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby, 1986)
Stands out like a sore thumb from Ashby’s filmography, but he’s a natural at the redemptive thriller: his trademark self-deprecating, hedonistic sense of humor inflects a rather sincere representation of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Andy Garcia’s laid-back, wise-cracking drug lord (“The white stuff? Isn’t that a movie about… astronauts, or something?”) is a perfect villain.
99 River St. (Phil Karlson, 1953)
Prelude (Michael Snow, 2000)
Fascinating: perplexing, yet graceful. Snow’s films are like a very skilled ongoing argument with Bazin, and this short is no exception.
Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)
A Life of Her Own (George Cukor, 1950)
pro:
Sarabande + Winter + Alaya (Nathaniel Dorsky, 1976-1987)
I mused during this screening that there’s perhaps no other director, avant-garde or no, so readily identifiable by looking at a single shot as Dorsky. (Tsai?) His intuitive method is constant and aggressive, especially in the later works: give the viewer complex visual information indicative of some connective relationship, but obscure just what that relationship is. I asked Dorsky if he considered this process unique, and he name-dropped The French Connection (!!), Shoah, Joseph Cornell, Warren Sonbert, Bruce Conner, the poems of John Ashbery, and perhaps most emphatically, Dziga Vertov, which made me wince, although Dorsky himself acknowledged that Vertov’s politics were unsatisfying. (Dorsky is generally a pretty brilliant speaker, by the way, and I think the real answer to my question, albeit unstated, is “Yes, I do.”) Anyhow, as much as I enjoy his films—and these ones are just about as gorgeous as Song and Solitude—I enjoy them so much on the basis of each individual shot that any kind of meaningful editing scheme tends to elude my comprehension.
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
Diane (Alan Clarke, 1975)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
After the somewhat vague, arty aloofness of Paranoid Park, I was surprised by the precise, unresolved tension between private and public spheres Van Sant derives from Milk’s campaigning methods, particularly his imploring for others to come out. Although GVS’s allegiances are clear, a surprising amount of energy is expended giving homophobes dignity and our hero crassness.
Night Train (Yinan Diao, 2007)
Beloved Enemy (Alan Clarke, 1981)
The most audaciously prosaic movie I've ever seen.
Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1963)
A good movie that I can’t quite revere, and one of the more commercial exponents of the French New Wave, with a jazz-laden soundtrack and cross-cutting that uneasily treads the line (or perhaps intends to bridge the gap) between broad, comic effect and contemplation.
Sirens (John Duigan, 1994)
Moloch (Alexander Sokurov, 1999)
The Night of Truth (Fanta Regina Nacro, 2004)
Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1924)
Adua and Her Friends (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1960)
Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1973)
mixed:
A Tree in Tanjung Malim (Tan Chui Mui, 2005)
Tan is a pretty good director: she usually puts the camera in the right place, and clearly enjoys long takes in service of her material. A few scenes are promising: the iffy way characters express themselves is Bujalski-esque. Unfortunately, she occasionally breaks concentration on mode of expression, apparently trying to enter into some direct, Joe-esque communion with the audience. (E.g., the sing-off.)
The Seagull’s Laughter (Ágúst Guðmundsson, 2001)
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Martel’s compositional obliquity is omnipresent, as is an inscrutable relationship between narrative and performance. Some will say it’s beguiling and mysterious; I say that with a few faint exceptions, it’s unrewarding and deliberately unobservant.
The Southerner (Jean Renoir, 1945)
con:
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Ledger is the sole point of interest here; Nolan is pretty much a non-entity in terms of directing actors, emphasizing action in an interesting way, etc.
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
Did the 1920s-era LAPD kill Clint’s cat or something? A promising movie in the first reel: perhaps a better director could have made a bit more out of making Jolie unsympathetically emotional, and the police surprisingly rational.
CON:
The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)
Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005)
DNF:
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) [0:40]
As if I’d ever have finished this. That said, not as painful as I’d suspected—Luhrmann is many things, but pompous is not one of them, and while as far as tonally jarring goes he’s no Bong c. Memories of Murder, at least this doesn’t quite fit the traditional mold for these sort of projects.
Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008) [0:10]
The beauty of Serra’s compositions is a hushed, abstracted, plastic thing that doesn’t seem worth trying to penetrate. On the bright side, I’m now more comfortable knowing that Serra is an asshole in person.
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) [0:10]
The Quarterly Balance (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1975) [0:45]
Baal (Alan Clarke, 1982) [0:40]
Clarke’s most overtly distanced movie, understandably suited to the Brecht material but lacking the vigor of his better work. Bowie’s deliberately bland “songs” are in keeping with a sense of muffled creativity in service of the play.
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (George Landow [Owen Land], 1966) [0:02]
This is something like 5 minutes long, and still I could not finish it. Some kind of imperceptible shift in hue seems to occur along the filmstrip, which wasn’t quite pleasurable enough for me, I suppose. I may revisit Landow, as I’ve heard his other works are more dynamic. (Why is it that I have such an easy time with some a-g artists, e.g. Dorsky or Kyle Canterbury or Bruce Baillie, and such an impossible time with guys like Landow or Michael Robinson or Bruce Conner or, much of the time, Brakhage? Perhaps I’ll have to write my own history of avant-garde cinema one day…)
And as for literature...
PRO:
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895) [2nd reading]
The Eternal Husband (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1873)
The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal, 1839)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy, 1874)
The Wings of the Dove (Henry James, 1902)
Late James, for me, is the literary equivalent of Akerman: rough going, and at times outright dislikeable, but astonishing anyway. One unfortunate extreme of James’s personality is blind adoration of social tact (i.e. unironically time and time again labeling composure "wonderful"), and the other is inconsistently employed narrative obscurity, in which the reader is called upon to dig through pronouns for clues. On the other hand, he’s totally adept at reshaping the reader’s moral perspective.
pro:
Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding, 1742)
Monday, December 1, 2008
Scattered Notes on 2006/2008 Catch-Up, + Various Auteurist Excursions
Bled Number One (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche, 2006)
Outsider from France adopts an attitude of casual resistance—“Do you not know how to pray?” “No, I don’t know how to pray,” he answers—but ultimately cracks yet again under the pressures of living in his homeland. Depiction of religious violence is electrifying: Ameur-Zaimeche doesn’t downplay threat or even victimization, but transforms the surrounding terror into a cacophony of conflicting impulses, rendering disunity monstrous. Le Dernier Maquis was so uninflected I couldn’t catch on, but then I was spectacularly disengaged during that screening—perhaps more on that someday.
Lucy (Henner Winckler, 2006)
My first encounter with Winckler, who seems assured and certainly immune to cheap pathos, even if this film leaves a rather vague, bland, slice-of-life taste. Maggy’s slight recessiveness is almost always interesting, and Winckler is good at blending cross-currents of conflict ((a), Maggy’s attempts to balance motherhood with a social life and (b) Gordon’s apparent maturity that ultimately leaves one wanting). Sometimes he seems content to turn the burner off entirely on one when another is at a boil—it’s hard to accept the idyllic phase of her relationship with Gordon, for example, and sure enough Winckler doesn’t seem to buy it himself.
Two Friends (Jane Campion, 1986)
Like Sweetie, curiously muted and strikingly composed, but I like this one more—the sharp structure lends import to a withholding style. Somewhat hindered by a (likely autobiographical) impulse to include borderline-meaningless anecdotes, though. I also watched and enjoyed her shorts Peel and A Girl’s Own Story.
Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
So similar to McCarey’s 1957 remake that it barely registers as a distinct film.
Ni d’Eve Ni d’Adam (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 1996) [DNF]
Not at all like Civeyrac’s last two films. Along with the short Life According to Luke, his early work strives to poeticize the lives of irredeemable whores and thieves… and to my mind, fails, as Civeyrac’s definition of “poeticize” amounts to a brief moment of introspection sandwiched in between scores of juvenile theatrics. There is, however, a documentary looseness here that occasionally works to his advantage, and my not finishing the film might merely speak to my impatience w/r/t sifting through an undeveloped sensibility for good bits.
Don’t Worry, I’m Fine (Philippe Lioret, 2006)
A cleverly structured melodrama whose sense of loss and stasis is at odds with its almost Mamet-like plotting.
The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (Andre Delvaux, 1965)
In retrospect, Delvaux uses a strong undercurrent of infatuation in order to dissolve it, but you wouldn’t guess that by watching, oh, the first 85 minutes. Lead performance = tic-laden, but it’s interesting how sometimes he seems to have a neurotic aversion to grandiosity surrounding him and other times lifts it. (He’s of mediocre, unassertive intelligence, but this weirdly works to his advantage and perhaps results in Fran’s unexpectedly sympathetic reaction.)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander MacKendrick, 1965)
The secret of this “kids” film is to make the wonder of children both innocent and unseemly, e.g. the boy who retorts, “really? Wish I’d seen!” upon hearing that the schoolmaster on board has nearly been burnt to death. Bumbling Villain Anthony Quinn, meanwhile, is curiously noble, at his worst when the kids seem to be making fun of religion. The Ladykillers (1955) is less visually impressive, but pulls off the curious trick of deriving suspense predicated on the remaining intelligence of a woman well on her way into dementia.
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1959)
Badly staged at times, but Ray redeems it by pitting Our Morality in such direct opposition to Theirs. Dance sequence at the trading post is lots of fun.
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941) [DNF]
I tried, but kept putting on Prefab Sprout instead, “When Love Breaks Down” vaguely synching up with Ford’s unusually direct mood, other songs not so much. I’d be curious to watch a version without the score, which is quite bad and intrusive. But there’s lots of misjudged emphasis here: even when the doe-eyed protagonist might have worked to the film’s advantage—as when he looks dolefully on as his sadistic teacher is given a pounding—Ford overwhelms this subtle moral development with low comedy. Also watched (and finished) The Last Hurrah (1958) and The Horse Soldiers (1959): the former polemicizes but keeps its cool, and the latter is prime Ford: Wayne’s “humanizing”-moment-as-drunken-rant is a highlight.
Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008)
I sometimes find the Coens’ sense of humor kind of repulsive, sometimes too ready to mythologize, e.g. just about anything said about Chigurh in No Country, and also ready to shunt minor characters in a rather blasé way, like Richard Jenkins’s loser in this film. It seems their best moments occur when caricatures clash together, e.g. Clooney’s encounter with Pitt, in which the former’s alarm is just as comically inflated as the latter’s grinning, gee-wiz adieu.
My Brother Is An Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, 2007)
The “other side” of (decent) Italian cinema opposite Garrone, where catharsis isn’t deliberately obscured by a harsh artistic persona so much as distended into a confused aria of emotion. Could have been really insufferable if the fraternal shenanigans and political oppositions weren’t so interwoven.
Poor Boy’s Game (Clement Virgo, 2007)
I can easily imagine Virgo making a bad film, given this one’s occasional sops to easy sentiment. It’s redeemed by a powerfully muted performance by Rossif Sutherland, which takes the Ed-Norton-in-American-History-X character to the inevitable conclusion that reformed racists endure genuine shame from all sides, rendering redemption a hazy concept.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Homages to Hawks abound: a character says “easy, easy” to a dog; MacReady (get it?) is posited as a model of unfeeling but necessary efficiency. And yet Carpenter’s horror-film impulses are in many ways the reverse of Hawks’s original, decidedly focused on amplifying disunity, panic, and unease among the crew, and removing the love interest that gave Hawks’s otherwise manly protagonist an inferred soft side. I vastly prefer the Hawks, and it seems those who love the Carpenter seem to be expressing a preference for disunity over unity, when Hawks forges a dialectic between the two.
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
A staggering masterpiece, which I don’t have much to say about besides finding it fascinating that some find Dorothea hypercritical and pretentious, and others a triumphant feminist heroine. (She’s both, of course.)
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936)
If this is weaker than other ‘30s Renoirs—well, it is—it’s because Renoir encourages us to take pleasure in the melancholy contemplation of characters, rather than letting us do the contemplating ourselves.
Lemming (Dominik Moll, 2005)
Shame that Gainsbourg’s characterization, impressive and nuanced in the film’s first half, pretty much gets annihilated for gamesmanship’s sake.
Still hate Heavenly Creatures and Whale Rider.
Outsider from France adopts an attitude of casual resistance—“Do you not know how to pray?” “No, I don’t know how to pray,” he answers—but ultimately cracks yet again under the pressures of living in his homeland. Depiction of religious violence is electrifying: Ameur-Zaimeche doesn’t downplay threat or even victimization, but transforms the surrounding terror into a cacophony of conflicting impulses, rendering disunity monstrous. Le Dernier Maquis was so uninflected I couldn’t catch on, but then I was spectacularly disengaged during that screening—perhaps more on that someday.
Lucy (Henner Winckler, 2006)
My first encounter with Winckler, who seems assured and certainly immune to cheap pathos, even if this film leaves a rather vague, bland, slice-of-life taste. Maggy’s slight recessiveness is almost always interesting, and Winckler is good at blending cross-currents of conflict ((a), Maggy’s attempts to balance motherhood with a social life and (b) Gordon’s apparent maturity that ultimately leaves one wanting). Sometimes he seems content to turn the burner off entirely on one when another is at a boil—it’s hard to accept the idyllic phase of her relationship with Gordon, for example, and sure enough Winckler doesn’t seem to buy it himself.
Two Friends (Jane Campion, 1986)
Like Sweetie, curiously muted and strikingly composed, but I like this one more—the sharp structure lends import to a withholding style. Somewhat hindered by a (likely autobiographical) impulse to include borderline-meaningless anecdotes, though. I also watched and enjoyed her shorts Peel and A Girl’s Own Story.
Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
So similar to McCarey’s 1957 remake that it barely registers as a distinct film.
Ni d’Eve Ni d’Adam (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 1996) [DNF]
Not at all like Civeyrac’s last two films. Along with the short Life According to Luke, his early work strives to poeticize the lives of irredeemable whores and thieves… and to my mind, fails, as Civeyrac’s definition of “poeticize” amounts to a brief moment of introspection sandwiched in between scores of juvenile theatrics. There is, however, a documentary looseness here that occasionally works to his advantage, and my not finishing the film might merely speak to my impatience w/r/t sifting through an undeveloped sensibility for good bits.
Don’t Worry, I’m Fine (Philippe Lioret, 2006)
A cleverly structured melodrama whose sense of loss and stasis is at odds with its almost Mamet-like plotting.
The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (Andre Delvaux, 1965)
In retrospect, Delvaux uses a strong undercurrent of infatuation in order to dissolve it, but you wouldn’t guess that by watching, oh, the first 85 minutes. Lead performance = tic-laden, but it’s interesting how sometimes he seems to have a neurotic aversion to grandiosity surrounding him and other times lifts it. (He’s of mediocre, unassertive intelligence, but this weirdly works to his advantage and perhaps results in Fran’s unexpectedly sympathetic reaction.)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander MacKendrick, 1965)
The secret of this “kids” film is to make the wonder of children both innocent and unseemly, e.g. the boy who retorts, “really? Wish I’d seen!” upon hearing that the schoolmaster on board has nearly been burnt to death. Bumbling Villain Anthony Quinn, meanwhile, is curiously noble, at his worst when the kids seem to be making fun of religion. The Ladykillers (1955) is less visually impressive, but pulls off the curious trick of deriving suspense predicated on the remaining intelligence of a woman well on her way into dementia.
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1959)
Badly staged at times, but Ray redeems it by pitting Our Morality in such direct opposition to Theirs. Dance sequence at the trading post is lots of fun.
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941) [DNF]
I tried, but kept putting on Prefab Sprout instead, “When Love Breaks Down” vaguely synching up with Ford’s unusually direct mood, other songs not so much. I’d be curious to watch a version without the score, which is quite bad and intrusive. But there’s lots of misjudged emphasis here: even when the doe-eyed protagonist might have worked to the film’s advantage—as when he looks dolefully on as his sadistic teacher is given a pounding—Ford overwhelms this subtle moral development with low comedy. Also watched (and finished) The Last Hurrah (1958) and The Horse Soldiers (1959): the former polemicizes but keeps its cool, and the latter is prime Ford: Wayne’s “humanizing”-moment-as-drunken-rant is a highlight.
Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008)
I sometimes find the Coens’ sense of humor kind of repulsive, sometimes too ready to mythologize, e.g. just about anything said about Chigurh in No Country, and also ready to shunt minor characters in a rather blasé way, like Richard Jenkins’s loser in this film. It seems their best moments occur when caricatures clash together, e.g. Clooney’s encounter with Pitt, in which the former’s alarm is just as comically inflated as the latter’s grinning, gee-wiz adieu.
My Brother Is An Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, 2007)
The “other side” of (decent) Italian cinema opposite Garrone, where catharsis isn’t deliberately obscured by a harsh artistic persona so much as distended into a confused aria of emotion. Could have been really insufferable if the fraternal shenanigans and political oppositions weren’t so interwoven.
Poor Boy’s Game (Clement Virgo, 2007)
I can easily imagine Virgo making a bad film, given this one’s occasional sops to easy sentiment. It’s redeemed by a powerfully muted performance by Rossif Sutherland, which takes the Ed-Norton-in-American-History-X character to the inevitable conclusion that reformed racists endure genuine shame from all sides, rendering redemption a hazy concept.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Homages to Hawks abound: a character says “easy, easy” to a dog; MacReady (get it?) is posited as a model of unfeeling but necessary efficiency. And yet Carpenter’s horror-film impulses are in many ways the reverse of Hawks’s original, decidedly focused on amplifying disunity, panic, and unease among the crew, and removing the love interest that gave Hawks’s otherwise manly protagonist an inferred soft side. I vastly prefer the Hawks, and it seems those who love the Carpenter seem to be expressing a preference for disunity over unity, when Hawks forges a dialectic between the two.
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
A staggering masterpiece, which I don’t have much to say about besides finding it fascinating that some find Dorothea hypercritical and pretentious, and others a triumphant feminist heroine. (She’s both, of course.)
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936)
If this is weaker than other ‘30s Renoirs—well, it is—it’s because Renoir encourages us to take pleasure in the melancholy contemplation of characters, rather than letting us do the contemplating ourselves.
Lemming (Dominik Moll, 2005)
Shame that Gainsbourg’s characterization, impressive and nuanced in the film’s first half, pretty much gets annihilated for gamesmanship’s sake.
Still hate Heavenly Creatures and Whale Rider.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Here's More Random Stuff; Or, I Suck at Titling Blog Posts
Windows on Monday (Ulrich Kohler, 2006)Decidedly desultory, and sometimes vaguely quirky to the point of evoking Tati more than Hong, but no matter: it continues to grow in the memory, and contains the single most inspired take I’ve seen all year, a sort of inversion of The Wayward Cloud’s bittersweet reconciliation that is hilariously audacious in its blunt, albeit measured pessimism. I initially found star Isabelle Menke (pictured above, on the left) a bit of a blank, but Kohler unleashes her when necessary, and I can’t think of another movie character whose personality so closely mirrors my ex’s.
Light is Waiting (Michael Robinson, 2007)
Good for a laugh, but so is this. Being engaged with a text and being able to fashion grotesque abstraction out of it are not the same thing, and Robinson doesn’t even strike me as particularly aware of the little that Full House has going for it formally.
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
The poster gives away the best bit, in which Fonda and Stanwyck, huddled closely together, flirt in a way that suggests the possibility of genuine aversion. I guess I buy Stanwyck’s series of internal transformations, but there’s a big contradiction between that degree of internal conflict and her extroverted personality that isn’t quite fully explored, in my view.
Haut les coeurs! (Solveig Anspach, 1999)
Anspach is obviously a born filmmaker, utterly committed to concision, contrast, and structure, and an unerring sense of where to put the camera and how to end a scene. Characterizations are almost too intelligently drawn: one doctor is admirable without being nice, another nice without appearing adequately sensitive. More impressive is Anspach’s control of atmosphere, which gives the impression of a world that is basically ideal—contented, yet sensitive—but oppressive to her protagonist anyway.
A Cry in the Dark (Fred Schepisi, 1988)
I will never forgive my Australian Cinema class for choosing to watch this instead of Sirens, but concede that they may never forgive me for giggling at Streep’s misery.
High Heels (Pedro Almodovar, 1991)
Barely remember anything about this a mere few days later—the melodrama is more theoretically “subversive” than finely tuned, a recurring problem with Almodovar—although Letal’s initial seduction of Rebecca is unassuming sexual confusion at its finest.
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, 1905)
Impressionistic in a way that doesn’t intensify emotion so much as particularize it, which works for me. Wharton’s worldview is like Austen + malice, tortured rather than bothered by a learned preoccupation with luxury. That said, her mastery is to never fully embrace contempt: character descriptions bordering on hateful are tempered by behavior anything but.
Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1970)
I had trouble consistently enjoying Drake when I first started listening to his work, but in retrospect the problem was one of distinguishing between the Five Leaves Left period and this album, which now seems to represent a big leap forward in songwriting. I read somewhere that legendarily shy Drake was in awe of John Cale’s work on his records, which baffles me, since I hold Drake in much higher esteem than Cale. I would, however, be curious to have seen what Drake’s face looked like upon watching Richard Thompson play guitar on “Hazy Jane II.”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The week (well, past few days) in review.
U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994)
I’m not a huge Denis fan, but this might be my favorite of hers. She likes diffuse tangents, not for contemplation of drama so much as willful disengagement from it. In other words, every once in a while, her inner Warhol takes over. This can have a really satisfying effect: when Gregoire Colin rocks out for three solid minutes to (The Animals’ (?)) “Chevrolet,” for example (pictured above), is the otherwise constricted character’s necessary moment of private glory. And there’s lots of well-considered character stuff here: in this supposedly autobiographical work, Denis ruminates on her own passivity and the sorrow of men she let down, whether handsome and rakish or decent-looking and spirited. Her own (i.e. protagonist Martine’s) sorrow is expressed in a half-laugh, half-cry, and an attraction to Vincent Gallo at his most whiny. Not all of it works for me, but I’m glad I saw it.
Keep It for Yourself (Claire Denis, 1991)
… which I can’t say for this one, in which self-effacing Denis either lets things get excessively vacant or lets Gallo shtick carry the day. Didn’t help that the print was burnt, and that the burn looked like a vibrating, Antonio Gaudi-designed UFO gracing the top of each frame, especially apparent against blacks and dark grays.
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
I’m watching this again in a couple weeks. That’s right, I’m in two separate classes screening Heavenly Creatures. (Not to mention two separate classes featuring The Castle of Otranto.) Jackson’s overemphatic style is just as painful to take as it was a few years ago in the LOTR movies, and I don’t have much to say about him besides that I’m baffled he’s taken seriously in some circles.
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996)
Not exactly riveting, but I sort of enjoyed this. Ripstein’s sequence shots, which might have some Ophuls or Sirk influence behind them, given the melodrama theme, actually feel less like either of those guys to me than Gaspar Noe on downers, roving miserably about rooms at random. The acting is too big for my taste, but there’s an inherent sense of mystery to the material. What remains unspoken—what the killers can’t say to the victim and Coral’s mistrust in Nicolas—blurs the traditional boundaries of killer/victim identification, particularly because the killers have a sorrowful, insecure streak and their victims, however doomed, get righteously vindictive.
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949)
Lean and sometimes expressive, but I can’t help but feel that Lewis’s commitment to the dichotomy between nervous, trigger-happy Annie and sensitive Bart is limiting. He also lets genre conventions blunt characterizations: what, for instance, is up with the third act’s cheery amusement park montage, in which neither Peggy Cummins, screaming joyously in the same way an actor in a Six Flags commercial would, nor Lewis, editing smoothly and playing happy music, shows knowledge of the tormented, murderous Annie we know?
The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby [Howard Hawks], 1951) [third viewing]
Albeit anchored by an efficient, terse protagonist, I find this an exemplary Hawks lesson on how to use a crowd: everyone, even the effete, anxious scientist, is trying to contribute, which means engaging in the art of contradiction, and to observe them crowd the frame is to take in an overload of rational energy.
Waverly (Walter Scott, 1814)
Very enjoyable, even if I had a hard time keeping up with the background material. As historical novelists go, I think Tolstoy’s better at avoiding generalizations or phraseology, keeping things human and making drama stem organically from situations rather than ideas, but Scott is better at resisting the impulse to toot his own apolitical horn, and even goes to the point of ending on a note of near-embarrassing humility. He (Scott) is a bit like Edward Waverly himself, actually, who often makes strained attempts to express big emotions with tact.
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, 1900) [second reading]
This feels more like a masterpiece than it did the first time. Dreiser is an amazing writer of dialogue: his characters’ speech is wholly independent from their inner lives. Hurstwood, whose fall from grace leaves him a self-loathing, desperate fool, musters extraordinary strength in resisting alliance with strikers or policemen; Carrie, talented, modest, and kind, is avaricious in a way invisible to everyone but herself. Perhaps Dreiser explains too much of these contradictions away, but they’re also evidence of a sensibility forever fixed on the contrast between the workings of the mind and the body.
Adam Elk – Labello (1999)
Not as good as the two preceding Mommyheads albums, but few LPs are. First two tracks are terrific, as well as “Ripple Effect,” in which Cohen “runs away from the ripple effect” with a chord mimicking a sudden distance from natural progression.
Marshall Crenshaw – Downtown (1985)
Crenshaw is always at least a little interesting, and terrific about a quarter of the time. Highlights here are “Little Wild One (No. 5),” “Yvonne,” and “Lesson Number One.” “(We’re Gonna) Shake Up Their Minds” has a nice melody, but it’s also exactly the same one Crenshaw would use in the 1991 Kirsty MacColl song, “All I Ever Wanted,” which I prefer.
Jackie Greene – “About Cell Block #9” (Somewhere Sweet Bound, 2004)
This song is vivacious and dynamic and really pleasing, but all the other Greene stuff I’ve heard is pretty bad.
The dB’s – The Sound of Music (1987)
It’s no Stands for Decibels, but it’s still a masterpiece anyone interested in pop music should seek out immediately.
Graham Parker – “And It Shook Me” (Struck by Lightning, 1991)
A lot of later Parker suffers from smugness, so perhaps this song is an anomaly for making vague, residual pain its subject.
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