Filmsweep by Persona

I'm an audio kinda guy. Always have been. From the time I was sixteen rocking metal for Mr. Jesus; to eighteen going solo with a four-track recorder (and likely a mirror, Narcissist Little Me); to a mid-twenties tormented artiste with Swedish buddies and copious amounts of two-inch tape; to my current love of digital surround sound and the iPod on which I groove, I marvel at the possibilities of Time and Sound in a captivated sensorial type of way.

I once wrote a fifteen page college paper, probably after reading way too much John Cage, on my theory of dimensional black holes lying in-between the notes we actually hear. Diagrams and dimensions and everything. Figure 1-A between G and G-sharp. The paper got an A, with one word from the prof on the cover of my report: "Brilliant!"

I guess I tricked good ol' Professor Brubaker. With that kind of ability, perhaps I should have stayed in school.

I wrote and toured my own songs but also worked in sound solely for others, and I remain fascinated by everything from the chord structures and rhythmic stylings of Radiohead and Blonde Redhead, to the vocalizations of Bon Iver and Iron & Wine, to the layered synth meanderings of Mates of State and The Knife, to the unzipped-pants-rawk of the somewhat spiritually downtrodden Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Starflyer 59.

I was destined to, at the very least, appreciate Blow Out, a film that is essentially about sound. It's about an audio guy with a political conspiracy on his hands and proof of the Reality on tape. (Those who visit here often enough also know I have a thing for Reality. Capital "R.")

I was destined to appreciate this film.

However.

For a film about sound, it sure has some crappy sounds in it. There are some awfully dated moments when background filler sounds like early 80s Spirogyra, a schmaltz-like fusion with half-distorted guitar licks sprung out of 70's-era porn.

And, it's a lot to wade through to get to those final mesmerizing fifteen minutes of pure pop movie bliss. Sure, the ending is killer. But there's a lot of filler to get to the killer.

I don't really get why this is the De Palma film everyone seems to love. It's -- eeh, it's OK. As I've noted in all my De Palma adventures over the course of the past few weeks, the cinematographic style is in moments as self-aware as it is astounding; certain shots are a visual feast. One in particular that stands out spins our eyes around a room where John Travolta discovers all his tapes have been altered. He frantically tears through tape after tape that he's backed up from an original, only to find all of his tapes mysteriously erased. But we only see him poking in and out of frame in his maddening hunt. The camera continually spins in 360 showing us the room, the blanked-out evidence, with Travolta caught in the chaos of his loss and the sounds of all the tape machines, each having been erased with a different mechanical sound. Stylistically, the shot is a great choice, but it ends with a greater exclamation point. We cut to an edit from above, a God's Eye on Travolta, looking down on a defeated man exiting the room, the tapes still playing blanked-out white noise, tape and audio equipment all over the floor.

Travolta as sound man Jack Terry is actually pretty good, and in moments, his sidekick Sally (Nancy Allen with a voice like a feminine abrasive) brings a nice chemistry to their scenes together. They met when he saved her, nearly drowned after the car she was in had a tire blown out and was thrown from a bridge; we learn as we go that a presidential candidate was also in the car with Sally. The tire was no accident, there are tapes with a shot ringing out. The candidate is dead. Sally and Jack could be next.

But are these real characters, like Roger Ebert wrote in his four-star 1981 review? Or are they, to borrow a phrase from a recent article in cineaction, animated simulacra, characters which seem real but serve the simpler purpose of advancing a film's trajectory?

In terms of story, the trajectory feels to me kind of like a dot. Once the blow out takes place, probably around twenty minutes in, it's mostly the same story from there to the end of the film. Little surprise happens. No big reveals. The conspiracy theory at the heart of the story is fun, but by today's conspiracy theory standards, it's actually a little bit tame.

What may save a good portion of the film in my mind is that I love the idea of conspiracy in and of itself. I'm inclined to believe that the media is its own message, and the message is often false. I thoroughly enjoy the stuff of juicy unknowns: the Zapruder tape, the 9/11 documentaries, secret societies and the X-Files. I am certain there's always more going on behind the scenes than we know, and at its best, Blow Out shows exactly how a political cover-up might take place in real time. In that aspect the film is golden.

But once again, even though Travolta is decent in this role, I find myself watching a De Palma film where characters are suffering from under-exposure. Not that we don't see them enough, but they're used so much in advancing the plot that we never know them enough to care about their lives. De Palma, ever masterful on the visual level, injects an incredible amount of style into the film - just not enough to trick me into believing that his style is his substance.

Dressed To Kill. (1980) Brian De Palma

2011-06-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

Essentially, this is the story about a woman in a one-day affair, along with a hooker, a transvestite, a psychologist, a cop, and a nerdy teenage brainiac. These people would never meet at a party, they'd never share a drink at a bar. In fact, nerdy teenager is too young for a drink anyway. Stuffing such a vast blend into one cuu-razy story (and all of the characters' juvenile plasticity) makes the film only worth a look if you're doing a Brian De Palma month like I am. But at this point, I am starting to wish I'd just dedicated the month to Hitchcock.

It's not a very good film at all, but if you'd like to see the best parts of it watch the very first murder scene, and then fast forward to about fifty-eight minutes, the moment when De Palma's signature split screen shows up, and man, does it ever. The use of a TV in two separate rooms combined with excellent design and placement of the shot brings another magical De Palma moment.

Sadly, as in The Fury, the magic is only momentary. A Scooby Doo wrap-up and a chiller thriller finale (ripped straight from the end of Carrie -- hey! That worked, let's do it again) finally pushes Dressed To Kill into the bowels of complete nauseousness.

. . .

As one travels through De Palma's back catalog, you see things that suggest a fascination with the dark side, in particular, the vile nature of exploitative sex.

BFI's review of De Palma's second film but first theatrical release, Murder à la Mod (1968), a film I have yet to see, "Finds various young women... being auditioned by their boyfriend (the offscreen voice is De Palma's own) for a skin flick he's got to make to pay for his divorce." How interesting even in the early part of his career that De Palma's actual voice is being heard; one could say that his "voice" is heard through many of the rest of his films as well. The themes which captivated him early on are scattered throughout his work, never suggestively. Manipulation and bartering through sex, often leading to murder, began early in his oeuvre and continue through much of his career:

In Sisters it was a brutal murder by butcher knife the morning after a one night stand; Obsession leaves us with the idea that incest might be more biologically natural than we'd once thought; Blow Out, blogged here tomorrow, tells of a politician's affair resulting in death; in Scarface (blu-ray coming out this September), most of the sex is gift wrapped like an exchange, quid pro quo; Femme Fatale creates the kind of sex that is so enrapturing one can actually thieve off another's body in the process; Body Double and The Black Dahlia both lens prostitution and pornography in a "cool," glorifying manner, while dealing out a sad end for those who participate in such activities. (These two films want their cake and eat it, too.)

Sex isn't respected or honored in the context of these stories. It's always, "You got it, I want it, I've got this to give if I can get it."

After watching too much De Palma, you sometimes feel you need a cold shower. And just hope that nothing like the picture above gets you while you're in there.

Resembling Carrie, the opening scene of Dressed to Kill is that of a naked woman in the shower. But in comparing the two films, you can actually feel the more shameless way Dressed to Kill is shot. Whereas the opening shower scene in Carrie set the viewer up for an introduction to the innocence and confusion of its lead, a similar scene in Dressed to Kill is hyper-sexualized, focusing blatantly on Angie Dickinson's breasts - she's looking turned on by the bar of soap. The tone is utterly gratuitous, so over the top that it's ridiculous to watch, like an even worse Nine 1/2 Weeks, spiced up with murder so double your fun.

But, Reality Check: This film, and many from the director, are not supposed to be a reflection of reality.

So what are we watching? And why?

I guess we are fascinated by stories about people who do that sinful or immoral thing we're not supposed to. Sleep around. Commit murder. Make love in the shower with your bar of soap.

I am personally fascinated by the lens itself, the way it relays image to our eyes and, from there, straight into the soul. I am not persuaded that all stories are really good for us unless we're willing to challenge them, to pick them apart and take them on.

Dressed to Kill, in that sense, feels like voyeurism and a waste of time. Hardcore De Palma fans will find plenty to absorb in the way the camera draws us in, the split screens at the middle, the intrigue over sex, despair and murder.

That we're fascinated by some sort of code that's broken, some sort of gate we're not supposed to go through, makes the watching feel like a lonely fellow addicted to pornography. It's the thing that he can't have that he obsesses over. He's engulfed in it, addicted to it, willing to give his eyes to that thing that escapes him.

We are a strange bird, us humans. We've built the greatest means for entertainment. We can bask in a million different stories at which we'll marvel. But for some of us it always comes back to those things we just can't have: an affair, a cover-up, a murder.

Seems kinda boring when you think about it like that.

The Fury. (1978) Brian De Palma

2011-06-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

This film is a disaster, a far cry from the other horror/paranormal film De Palma directed only two years before, Carrie. The Fury is overstuffed with people, plots and scenes that only exist to get to other scenes, you know, the ones with the action. It's a frustrating viewing experience because it borrows from everywhere and can't settle into any groove or decide what it actually wants to be. Is it a spy film? Is it a film about ESP? Is it a comedy? Is it horror, a drama or a farce? A very rare film can be all of these at once; The Fury is not that film. I wanted to stand up and shout at it, "For crying out loud, pick a side! Any side."

Flashes of De Palma's brilliance are found in pieces lying in the wreckage. One brilliant flash in particular has main character Gillian (Amy Irving, luminous as always as she switches gears from a witness to the paranormal in Carrie to the one who is the paranormal here), tripping on the stairs - her mentor grabs her by the hand to steady her and she instantly has a premonition, gripping his hand which begins to bleed, her thoughts racing to other events that she can see due to him touching her. We see her thoughts as though she stands against a black and white screen behind her. Brilliant "premonition technique" in scenes like this and an engaging-as-always score create masterful moments in this otherwise mess of a film.

Kirk Douglas, who I raved about a few weeks ago when I saw Paths of Glory, is the spy that lost his son, but he looks lost, and he's miserable to watch in a script that goes all over the place and loses itself in its maze. It was interesting to see him at the age he was here, though, and compare him to his son these days. In my head, I kept thinking I was seeing Michael.

It was nice to see Chicago in the seventies, though, and there was at least one very funny line: "I told you we should have moved to Melrose Park."

But really. What an awful mess of a film. All the depth I found in Carrie is not found here. And whereas Carrie had a bombastic, gut-wrenching ending, I had a hard time making it to the end of this cluttered wreck.

Carrie. (1976) Brian De Palma

2011-06-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

A standard in horror - 70s b-grade type, but still riffed on three decades later - Carrie probes the rich themes you'll find in any great film, regardless of genre. To limit Carrie to "horror talk" oversimplifies it; the film is loaded with deep, storybook emotion, which makes its terrifying grand finale more memorable. Many films have tried to borrow from Carrie over the years, usually with less appeal, due to the fact that they aim for the style of it without focusing on much of the very substance.

Seeing a crime on the street brings less emotion than seeing a loved one involved in the same crime. Seeing a kid get hurt in a high school football game is harsh, of course! - but seeing your kid hurt in that same game will send you into a state of sheer panic. Human nature suggests we are driven by something deeper, something that resonates inside - not just what we see on a day to day basis. The more our emotions are involved in the life of another, the more seeing that person's suffering will hit us where it actually hurts.

It's the same way in the movies.

Stories have grounded us in each other's lives since oral tradition around the caveman's fire. We bond to one another through the stories of our lives, and the meaningful stories we make up, too. Sharing stories is to our emotional well-being what eating, drinking, and breathing is to us physically. It's a part of the fabric of our being that has extended through thousands of years; it's how humans relate, how we care.

It's for this reason that much of what horror peddles, we simply don't care about. The genre creates a lot of schlock with very little heart. I've often said that I'm a fan of the idea of horror more than a fan of most of the films themselves. Monsters, killing sprees, butcher knives and masks often feel like a glossy item on sale in a window, but when you walk inside you find out there's no store. I have always liked to refer to films like these as "empty scented boxes."

After going back to Carrie, a film which has become one of my favorites from repeated viewings, I noticed a few things that stand out, things which bring deeper meaning, getting us involved long before the carnage that later stamps the film as horror:

Competition. Folks often remember the first scene of Carrie as the locker-room scene, but this is misremembering. The locker-room scene is actually the second scene in the film, which the credits and music play over and which ends with Carrie's first terrifying exposure to her period. The very first scene in the film is on an outdoor volleyball court, one high school team of girls pitted against another in gym, with Carrie unable to help and eventually losing the game for her team when the ball is intentionally hit hard in her direction. The girls exit, her team having lost, one of them swatting Carrie with her baseball cap, another telling her she eats shit.

It's a perfect representation of the pissing contests of girly high school histrionics. Remember the teen girls in your high school hallway that used to scratch at each other like cats in the alleyway? The high school girl in De Palma's film represents puffed up pride from the outside in, the idea that image is better, that beauty is all that matters and that it really is only skin deep. (Think: Mean Girls, but less cute.)

It is no mistake that the very first scene in Carrie is that of cat fighting high school girls caught up in stuck up contests of the exterior. The film seems to suggest that the tragedy at the end could have been stopped from the beginning if it weren't for the need some feel to be seen as better than others, and not just be seen as better, but to constantly expose how others are worse (whether it is actually true or not) - through humiliation, verbal abuse and insults. It's the lie that says we're better than someone else because we can find "fault" in them, instead of looking at ourselves. It's a leap in logic which is a strong historically in the nature of man. It goes back to Cain and Abel, who, rather than celebrating and embracing their differences, chose instead to out-do each other for God's supposed approval.

My point about the competitive nature that sets the events of Carrie in motion sets the framework for much of the following:

Cruelty. It's certainly fair to say that in Carrie, personal competition in the introductory scene also leads to the following scene of utter cruelty. Witness scene number two, the aforementioned naked and half-dressed locker-room scene, where innocence and eroticism, symbolized in the nature of the room itself (any room of naked females eroticizes a scene to the mind of a man), melds as one in Carrie's own body, where, in the words of her own mom, she becomes a woman by receiving her first period.

But the cruelty comes from every angle: Carrie's mom has been cruel enough to not explain the nature of the changes in her body; Carrie lives with constant cruel taunts from the popular crowd; and when she notices the blood between her legs while in the shower, she freaks out, berserk with a gripping fear that something in her body is terribly wrong. It is also cruel that she should even have to see it this way, when in fact the blood is evidence that something is right in her body, perfectly normal. Having no clue of what's happening to her, she screams and shrieks and begs the girls for help. The mob backs her into the shower, throwing tampons and chanting for her to, "Plug it up!" She has no idea what this even means.

The cruel nature of everyone surrounding Carrie's life creates an internal tension, isolating her at first. But when put to the boiling point in Carrie it will bring out a torrential wave of wrath.

Isolation. Carrie is symbolic of the kind of person that has nowhere to go but inward. She has been burnt, used for laughs, and is obviously neglected by her mom. She is cut off from help from anyone outside of herself. She turns to books about science and miracles to try to figure out her uncanny and uncomfortable telekinesis, which seems to be growing stronger in puberty.

The Absence of Men. There is only one man present in the film, and he is a wimp - the principal, a pushover, a blundering rolypoly leader. When Carrie needs a man to simply speak her name, he isn't even up to this simple task. Other males in the film are either ignorant, immature, or horny teenagers with no knowledge of what it takes to be a man. De Palma's high school world portrays the need for a strong man to bring balance to all the chaos and cruelty.

Tommy Ross, the boy who takes her to prom, seems decent enough for a big headed jock, but even he, in his eventual kindness, is too little, too late to the task of saving this world. He's as close to a man as the film is going to get, but he's caught up in the moment too much like a boy to be able to make a man's kind of difference.

One has to wonder where all the real men are.

Spiritual Abuse. Carrie's mom uses Biblical-type language, most of which isn't contextually Biblical and a good portion just thrown in from left field. "The raven was loosed by Eve, and the raven was sin and the first sin was intercourse"?

She makes Carrie repeat this mantra while smacking her in the face with some sort of guide to the "Good Book." It's hard to say exactly what her religious point is, ever, but most of the time she's a power hungry accuser, ensnaring everyone in guilt, heaping her own brand of legalism on top. Whatever she is, whether some kind of Christian or not (pictures of the Last Supper and crucifixes are all over the house, so one is led to believe this is some kind of Christian cult mentality), the word and deed reeks of nothing but abuse. She's a feminine prototype foreshadowing of David Koresh, and will usher in the same Waco-like destruction.

Looking at the description I just wrote, one has to wonder whether she is for Satan and not God.

Justice, wrath or revenge? What happens when Carrie finally does blow her lid, using her powers to wreak havoc on the students and faculty at Prom? Was it premeditated? It doesn't seem so. It looks nothing like the coolly malevolent kids of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, who have planned out the Columbine-like deaths of their peers at school. Carrie, in that awful onslaught, has the look of a zombie, half-crazed or from another world, as if possession has taken over. But we know it's still her.

The vindictive thought has to have crossed her mind already - with her incredible skills in telekinesis she could wipe out her people problems in one fell swoop. The thought of total annihilation has to have already entered her mind. Does this incredibly wrong act seem somehow justified? If she would have lived and been brought to court, would she have been declared temporarily insane or given the death chair?

The viewer knows her story before we see her cruel act, which changes everything about the nature of what we see. We identify with the need for justice, but we end up involved in her revenge. If we celebrate the revenge, we're implicated along with her whether we understand her background or not. The scene of wrath is so effective (aside from the greatest De Palma use of a split screen on record) because we've already traveled some hard road with Carrie. We've seen through her eyes, we've rooted for her both at home and at school. Other horror stories might come up with similar scenarios for the killing scene itself, but it is rare that an audience cares. Carrie is rooted in traditional deep story structure, and Story keeps us involved.

Guilt Complex. In post-traumatic stress, Sue, in her dreams, is scarred forever. Her mother, who believes in nothing more than the hope and the power of human will, is of little help to her battle tattered psyche. Sue was a part of the second-scene locker-room romp, and after Carrie and her boyfriend Tommy has probably grown the most in the film. By the end, she is one of the good guys and not one of the bad. But she will be scarred by layers of guilt forever. This is what happens when a good person gets lost in competitive back biting, cruelty, isolationism and the lot, regardless of her early role in it and her attempt to create something better.

. . .

The wonderful (now retro) creepy background musical stylings, and sound effects ripped straight from the shower scene in Psycho (Aii! Aii!), aid the split screen use at the film's tragic end; these brush strokes combined with Sissy Spacek herself all play a role in how the film throttles the eye with relentless imagery, using sound and creative acting technique to charge ahead hard. It is the imagery one is left with.

But none of that would reach us more than any other horror film out there were it not for the deep delving of the initial horror story.

Obsession. (1976) Brian De Palma

2011-06-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

Voted #27 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

I'm surprised to say that I really, really enjoyed this, even watching it on YouTube on my chest*. If it were shown on as retro-fun in the big city (I'll bet it's been featured in more than a few midnight screenings over the years), I'd be interested in checking it out the way it was meant to be seen - on film.

I saw two basic things when watching Obsession: De Palma honing his craft, fine tuning his skills, and switching from Rear Window and Psycho to Notorious and Vertigo in the way he created tension through lensing, long silences, and the use of a beautifully overwrought score.

It's basically the story of a wealthy land developer, Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson), happily married, whose wife and daughter are kidnapped and held for ransom -- but in a botched police sting the two are involved in an accident, their bodies never recovered. Years later in Florence, Courtland runs into his wife's doppelganger (or -- ?), in the church where he originally met his wife. He instantly falls in love. He can't take his eyes off her, gazing at how closely she resembles his wife, looking as vibrant and young as over a decade ago. It's as if the same woman somehow made her way to Italy, and she hasn't aged a bit in all these years. He follows her everywhere, in the beginning very close to a silent stalking (think: Vertigo). Eventually he gets a dinner date, and puts his plans in motion to bring her back to the states and marry her.

De Palma seems to have a thing for actresses who plays two characters in the same film. French Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold, as Courtland's wife and then the Italian doppelganger, was in her early thirties when Obsession was released, and she has an overwhelming beauty, a mysterious kind of attractiveness that would give any man butterflies in the gut. As a guy, I could continue to talk about that, but I won't say too much more. There's a fine line between being captivated and being a pig, and there are threads on the IMDB message boards that already dig into what certain men think about Geneviève. I find this kind of talk worthless, but acknowledge how much easier it is to watch any film - ever - which has a woman whose beauty transcends time.

Obsession didn't have the same second-half nosedive that I noted in De Palma's earlier film, Sisters. The nosedive here was only in the final fifteen or twenty minutes. But the more I think about how outlandish Obsession became, the more it reminded me of exactly why I liked the first half hour of Sisters. In his review, Ebert referred the film's "overwrought excess," which he relished as its own reward in Obsession. I tend to agree with him, and after Obsession I'm understanding even more the early De Palma comparisons to a contemporary film maverick, Quentin Tarantino. Excessive, overloaded, always over-indulgent but coolly slick, and eye-popping to look at, these kinds of films are hypnotic to watch. Image for image's sake.

I've been wading through the De Palma oeuvre and I've spoken excitedly about returning to Carrie very soon. It's interesting that I consider the entire second half of Sisters to be a nosedive, and the final twenty minutes of Obsession to be, well, not exactly a nosedive, but definitely koo koo, a trip to la-la land -- but I can't wait to see the ending of Carrie again for the first time in many years. It's as if in that film, everything came together for De Palma, from his crazed need for parallel story telling made to suit different perspectives in split screen edits, to a splash or two of the gore he seems to love to gross out his audience with, to his need to finally (Finally!) bring about the most bombastic and traumatic ending one can see. Once De Palma started firing on all cylinders, he made a film like Carrie and also several amazing movies that followed.

It's a joy to watch these films in order as De Palma progresses in his craft.

* This is the first time I remember watching an entire film this way. While it obviously isn't the preferred method for viewing Obsession (or much else), I made it work, and here's how: turn every light out completely, lie down on your back in total darkness - maybe with a blanket, maybe in bed (but don't fall asleep) - put the laptop on a pillow on your chest and use the Earbuds from your iPod for sound. The sound is phenomenal, and the Wifi streaming to a point these days where it works just fine. On my chest, that close to my face, even my small Dell Notebook made me feel like I was in a theater (although you can easily tell the difference between digital on the Net and film), but I can't stress highly enough how great the sound is, and with Obsession, the sound is huge to the feel of the film. YouTube was the only way I could track down Obsession, which isn't available through Netflix. I normally only use my iPod or a laptop for documentaries, and even then it's rare (like on the four-hour train between Grand Rapids and Chicago), but I bent my movie-watching rules to make it work for this film, and honestly, it worked great!

Sisters. (1973) Brian De Palma

2011-06-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

A June Light Experience.

With persistent references to Read Window and Psycho and an over-indulgent soundtrack which accentuates dread-fueled moments of shock, Sisters was to the 1970s what Final Analysis might have later been to the 90s, or a worse version of Shutter Island might have been to last year. They are films which either rip off or pay homage to Hitch; they borrow and steal with a wink and a nod. But if you're going to steal, why not steal from the best?

It seems like a reasonable question. But if you steal from the best, your work will be remembered for not being the best, but rather a copycat, a reflection or a recurrence. You're the student who wishes he could be as good as the master while he eyes the master's every move.

Such is the fate of the first half hour of Sisters, by Brian De Palma, the director who would make a decades-long career out of tipping his hat to Hitchcock.

The rest of the film is such a nosedive that it wouldn't be fair to even remotely compare it to Hitch. But it is a spectacular nosedive to observe, teetering on the brink between utter stupidity and that phrase that b-movie house managers love, that loathsome phrase, "admirable flop."

The story starts out with some usual Hitch-like moral probings - in this case, situational ethics on a "Peeping Tom" television game show and the more-highly-debated-37-years-ago topic of interracial relationships, seen when a normal black man beds a white woman, a model. This could have been fertile ground in which to dig, except that the man, the only black in the film, is killed off rather quickly from the start. (Bad De Palma!)

At the point of said death the film completely switches gears. We know that if the possibility for rich topics were there for digging before, we're certainly not going to be digging now. We're jolted instead into split screen viewing, murder, and movie sibling psychoanalysis. Things turn somewhat predictable in nature, and when events aren't predictable, they're still predictably dumb. Margot Kidder (later Christopher Reeves' Lois Lane), who plays twin sisters Danielle and Dominique and is the only interesting person in the film, gets traded in for a poorly acted newspaper reporter and an out of nowhere Private Eye, of which the film quarter-bakes the former and nearly forgets about the latter. They should have called this The Descent rather than Sisters - it would have perfectly summed up the script, the acting, the trajectory, and audience interest.

There were, however, a couple of Bests:

Best use of a hideaway bed, ever. Best birthday cake surprise ("Whoops!"). Best fake fake blood I've seen in quite a while. Best non-authentic looking archival asylum footage.

The first viewing in my "June Lite" month has only reinforced my initial bias towards De Palma. There is little doubt this is going to be a fun month, as long as I remember the eye candy I'm in for. There's little protein in this diet, lots of sweet stuff involved, but I'm certain there will be unforgettable moments as I continue forward on the timeline of these films. (I personally can't wait to return to Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables again.)

But like the split screens De Palma is known for - a technique I actually kinda dig - Sisters can be divided exactly in half. Most of the first half is interesting, retro-chic, suspenseful and creepy. The unraveling of the second half turns the whole of the film into a laughable, ludicrous mess of a wreck, as predictable as a train on tracks headed over a cliff.

June Lite. (2011)

2011-06-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

I hate to pick on Brian De Palma. I really do. I like his films, the ones I've seen anyway, so I feel kinda bad taking a month to chronologically focus on his output while I refer to the ordeal as "June Lite."

I guess there are two reasons why I chose to use June like this:

1. I'm currently taking on other artistic endeavors and don't have time for much in-depth writing in my reactions to film. I'm taking this month off to simply go "lite."

2. De Palma's films perfectly cater to my need to be "lite" for a little while. While fun in terms of style and form, the films give me little to actually chew over, nothing much to think about in depth. I don't find much "spiritual significance" or nourishment in De Palma films, but I know several of the movies are stylistic showpieces, great for eye candy, and that's fine for me right now. They are exactly what I need at this point in time - I can watch as many as I want, and not feel the need to think or write too much.

So my concentration on De Palma this month will give me a reprieve from thinking! - while not losing ground with those all important two words: Film and Fun. There are sixteen De Palma films I'd like to get to. We'll see whether that goal can be achieved.

Non-lollipop Docs.

2011-05-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. (2011) Morgan Spurlock

This idea is sheer genius.

Morgan Spurlock made a name for himself by simple ideas executed with his magnetic humor and panache, but not without heart. In Super-Size Me (2004) it was, "What would happen if I ate three full meals a day -- at McDonald's -- for a month? How would that affect my health and my family life?" In Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden (2008) it was, "Where in the world IS Osama Bin Laden? And who would I meet if I flew to the other side of the world to find him myself?" His latest, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, is Spurlock saying, "I'm an indie documentary filmmaker: How can I get funding for my art?"

Simple ideas, fun editing technique and Spurlock's own personality -- a mixture of charisma, charm, and bad-boy antics that the good-girls love -- make his films altogether enjoyable, but I think The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was the most fun I've had at a cinema this year.

Spurlock has created a doc inside of a doc about product placement in (where else?) the movies. He accomplishes this by completely selling out. Hounding company after company to finance his feature, he gets the cash he needs by placing their products in the film itself. As such, he is held by contractual obligations to only endorse the products from the companies in his film -- he can only drink Pom Wonderful ("The Greatest Drink Ever Made!"), he can only wear Old Navy ("The Greatest Clothes Ever Worn!"), he can only fly jetBlue ("The Greatest Airline in the World!") and he can only stay in Hyatt hotels ("The Greatest Hotel Ever Visited!"). My personal favorite was the choice for the film's music, "The Greatest Song I Ever Heard," played by OK Go, "The Greatest Band in the World!"

What we end up with is a transparent and honest doc about money and marketing, and how the very nature of writing and creating is changed by corporations who bypass the artist for the exposure of their product. The film is laugh out loud hilarious and almost unconventional in its transparency, especially after last year's I'm Still Here, Catfish, and Exit Through the Gift Shop -- documentaries in which you didn't know where real-life truth was separated from fictional reenactment or all out lie -- The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is the polar opposite of those "docs," so utterly real that it gets eaten up and altered by its own reality. Spurlock, like many filmmakers before him, realizes half way through the production that he is no longer running the show, but the products now are. This is unanticipated, but of course appreciated in the context of this film.

And he didn't even mention McDonalds. (Somewhat disappointing, I would have loved to see him have the Big Mac as "The Greatest Hamburger Ever Sold!")

As an aside, the movie provided two buzzwords that I know I'll be using in the near future: Faction, a cross between fact and fiction (a word which advertisers must love) and Docbuster, a documentary blockbuster, of which there probably aren't many. (The last time I remember being in a packed house for a documentary feature -- festivals aside -- was for Bowling For Columbine back in 2003.)

I really enjoy Spurlock's onscreen demeanor. His points are often simple, but still worth saying, and the way he presents a topic is highly entertaining. I drove eight miles home on a highway after the viewing and must have seen twenty billboards, at least, in those eight miles. I don't remember seeing them on the same trip before I saw the film.

The Other Side of Immigration. (2009) Roy Germano

Roy Germanos' 55 minute freelance exposé packs more in its short running time than some docs do in twice its length.

Efficient, educational and illuminating, The Other Side of Immigration is too short for mainstream distribution but has been on iTunes for a few months and recently became available for streaming via Netflix. An official selection at university events and many renown film festivals, the doc has already won several awards, including the 2011 American Library Association Notable Video Award. (I found my DVD copy at the KDL Library in Grandville, Michigan. Thanks, Grandville!)

Interviewing hundreds of Mexicans, specifically those on the northern border seasonally migrating to the U.S. for work, and members of the families who miss them, the doc relays the plight of the illegal worker who wants to keep food on the plate in his home country. He's working in U.S. wealth in order to keep his family back home afloat.

When some in the U.S. encounter (or more likely hear about) illegals without taking time to understand their background, it leads to misconceptions about the nature of these hard, driven workers. All too often we get selfish about protecting our borders without fully thinking through the nature of the migrating issue. Those most seemingly concerned about the border issue are really only silently enforcing their white prejudice.

The typical migrant's desire is to work seasonally and then return home. It doesn't feel to the migrant like a choice, but rather, a duty. If you think it's hard to find a job in the U.S., try finding a job in Mexico. When Mexicans can't find work at home, they come here and work hard at jobs Americans refuse to do. In the process they also put up with a lot of uneducated bigotry about who they are and what they do. They're seen as a threat, but its more threatening to the one doing the migrating than to any citizen observing from their safety at home. The migrant has to pay thousands of dollars just to be smuggled across the border, and there have been many who haven't even made it that far.

The film's website does a fine job explaining its importance in education, but I can sum up my own reasons for seeing it, too: it sheds light on a subject Americans have created lot of fear around but perhaps do not fully understand. Hence, the importance of education. Hence, the importance of the film.

The question becomes: do we want to understand the problems our neighbors to the south face? If we recognize a serious issue between "us" and "them", do we then decide that we're as globally minded as our nightly news suggests, or are we only globally minded when it benefits us, like when we use other countries for outsourcing jobs and fight terrorists in far away lands? We post band-aid guards to patrol our borders unless we're shipping in food from other countries. We are a globally minded nation when it comes to sucking oil out of another country's ground, or selling our products across the ocean. I am ashamed of the way my country is so "globally minded."

But there's hope at the end of The Other Side of Immigration. The case is made that Visas are a potential answer to current border "solutions" that have never worked to solve anything anyway. It's an interesting take, one that I'd like to learn more about, and I'd gladly support a politician who had the guts to put this on his agenda.

In the Realms of the Unreal. (2004) Jessica Yu

"Am I a real enemy of the cross, or a very sorry saint?" questions the voice of Henry Darger, a pure art practitioner who died in 1973 as a poor old janitor shut away from the world in an apartment in Chicago. An outsider from birth who grew to excel in Outsider Art, Henry's work was posthumously discovered by the same people he distanced himself from when he was alive. He kept completely to himself in his later years, the recluse only breaking his silence to come out of the house and work as the custodian at a local Catholic church.

He didn't talk to anyone, but all of the residents in his apartment complex have memories of the conversations that were held in his room behind closed doors. It sounded like many people were in that lonely place, adults and kids alike. The truth is that no one was there but Henry, who spoke in voices to himself as he whittled away at his craft.

His craft is front and center in Jessica Yu's In The Realms of The Unreal, the title of the film based on the title of Henry's 15 volume book, suggested to be the world's largest novel approaching over 15,000 pages. In those pages Henry's mind is on display as he imagines a story about the Vivain girls, seven little princesses and their adventures on an alternate Earth that orbits a larger planet of spiritual beings. Like Lewis and Narnia, Darger's fairytale land has a name, and of course this is the "Realms of the Unreal."

Henry, a declared schizophrenic and an institutionalized child orphan, attended Mass every day by the time he was older and working on the novel. His work is a reflection, but fictionalized in story book format, of what he went through early in life. Thousands of pages of journal entries, stories, hundreds of paintings (many over ten feet long) were created by him, the volume of work amazing even before you consider the book. All of this work is fascinated by the divide between religion and amorality, sanity and insanity, obedience and lashing out, innocence and domination. He had an odd relationship with a God who was ever present in his stories, a loving but stern Catholic-looking dictator God whom he felt at ease to question regarding his life's lot.

Yu's doc must have no doubt been a hard one to make. Unlike the similar and more recent Marwencol, where the artist is still alive and can be interviewed, Darger's story is built from only three pictures of himself and the self-taught art brut he left behind. His story is also relayed from neighbors who had to put things together long after his death. They might have known he was seriously strange when he was living, but after his death and all that was found they had to consider the puzzle in a different light, they had to put the pieces back in place with new information.

Darger's story isn't told without some discrepancies here and there, but it paints a picture of an isolated man, abandoned to his own sense of design, simultaneously lashing out at and loving a hard to fathom God, and like his Creator, alone in the creating process. Henry picked up on creation where God left off.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston. (2005) Jeff Feuerzeig

The Devil and Daniel Johnston feels like a first cousin to In The Realms of the Unreal (and the recent Marwencol, too) in its depiction of strango weirdo "outsider" art. Not that Johnston can be classified "outsider" the same way someone like Henry Darger can, because his underground success in the 80s and the fact that he works around the world in some fashion today puts him on the inside, or at least not fully outside, even though he's clearly not your average Joe. But his thinking, the way that he creates, the ideas that are constantly colliding in his head -- he clearly is and has always been "outside" the norm. In the same world that continually turns "alternative" into "mainstream," it's good to still have a few artists like this around.

Johnston's parents, who are extensively interviewed along with his brothers and sister and friends, make the claim that Johnston was born different, that he has always been the outsider, that this is how he was from birth. He drove his family crazy as a teenager, separating himself from the family's Church of Christ roots, and delving deep into art, no matter the medium: drawing, painting, music, recording, acting and making films with his Super 8 camera. He artfully edited those films together and the doc shows a good deal of his early footage, giving us an idea of the kind of "out there" talented teenager Johnston was.

Somewhere along the line (his parents claim it was around Junior High), Johnston started getting a little more "off" than "outside". He started becoming socially weird, anti-normal, not pursuing anything other than writing songs and drawing pictures alone. Didn't do his homework. Probably skipped on his chores. Drove his suburban Christian parents up the wall when they saw some of his end product and referred to it as Satanic.

Johnston ended up in Austin, Texas, where his music began to draw crowds. This is where I have to separate my reaction to Johnston's music from the film itself. I have a deep respect for the film and find is subject matter admirable and interesting. The music, in my opinion, is grating, and Johnston comes off as a never-developing hack who has no interest in honing the few chords he knows into true talent. He's been doing this for years and he can't even tune a guitar.

His lyrics? Heartfelt. Sometimes gripping. Very emotional. It's good to know from the film's post-script that his tunes are mostly being played by other people, because there were moments where I couldn't tell the difference between Johnston's piano playing and that of my five year-old who likes to play thunder and lightning on the piano. But I'll consent that the lyrics are a mixture of the profound and the poetic, rich, rewarding, and reaching out.

Johnston moved to New York, began tripping on LSD and completely lost his mind in that city. A few key scenes show members of Sonic Youth trying to find him while he wanders the streets of NYC. From that point he visits mental institutions on a consistent basis. Those close to him talk as if he had a mental illness of some sort all along, but the only illness that is ever referred to is depression. If his mental illness is the reason for all the breakdowns, the film certainly doesn't back that suggestion up with any concrete evidence. It's much easier to conclude that he was an alienated artist who grew up in a repressive religious family, that he left home and went on an acid trip, met some form of Jesus in a Lonnie Frisbee-like hallucinogenic experience and simply never came back to reality.

And that's the kicker, and the reason to see the film. Johnston may have rejected those familial Church of Christ leanings earlier in his life, he may have thought his parents and siblings a little nuts for Mr. Jesus. But he couldn't get away from Jesus or the church or the blood that saves or the Devil that chases. He's felt the Devil pursuing him all his life; we witness him preaching (and probably high) at many of his performances. The struggle between light and dark is evident in Johnston, and his brain and personality and the way he functions certainly altered from the typical human experience, but it's hard to pin down the source that the struggle came from. Whether it's a previous mental condition that arrived earlier in life or the drugs he started taking later, I guess it's good to know Johnston's got Jesus there to help him through it all, regardless.

I would never buy Daniel Johnston's music on its own, but the doc is worth enduring his music to see.

Paths of Glory. (1957) Stanley Kubrick

2011-05-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

I have an aversion to classic American black and white war movies. They've just never been my thing. As far as war movies go, I personally think the conflict in Vietnam produced much more interesting cinema. I've been throttled by films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter. They're films that stand the test of time and never let up in intensity. They are as eye opening today as the first time you saw them decades ago.

Due to my own bias, I wasn't prepared to think that Paths of Glory, a film about the French in the first World War, would also be something I'd consider as "eye opening today" as it was when it was made. But it isn't a typical war film. It's older, sure, and in black and white, but it's issues aren't the kind you can divide into neat little categories. It's a film that rides a gray area dealing with backsliding personnel from your own unit, conflicts inside the team you're already on - and whether we ignore, confront or support a team member's actions when he is clearly making an immoral choice. These ideas get internalized toward the end of the film, too, showing a roomful of soldiers drinking and laughing it up in a barroom scene that brings the horror of war closer to home. The film goes from wondering about the other men you're fighting alongside to wondering about the fight within yourself.

Paths of Glory is the true story of three men unjustly accused of mutiny by retreating from battle, a battle their superiors knew they'd lose but planned anyway. The film's depiction of history got it banned, not playing in France until nearly eighteen years after it was made.

The use of long tracking shots in Paths of Glory is masterful, especially in the trenches before the major battle scene, and in the battle itself. As a camera travels right to left and the soldiers try to advance, we're in the thick of it with them, right there in the battle with explosions and bodies piling up all over the battlefield. Later, a final march toward a firing squad is also masterfully done in a long tracking shot, the men moving toward a backward moving camera, the same technique used in the beginning in the trenches.

The cinematography in Paths of Glory is as astounding as the story. The two combined made a believer out of me. It's another example of a fine film I've been introduced to because of the A&F Top 100.

Of course, Kubrick's later war story, which I also sat down to watch for the first time in over a decade, I kinda still like, too:

Full Metal Jacket. (1987) Stanley Kubrick

The Straight Story. (1999) David Lynch

2011-05-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

Voted #38 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

In the eighteen months in which I've blogged here at Filmsweep, I've probably tackled all sorts of strange subjects, some weird ideas in film. Some of the weird ideas are also some of the most fun to examine and pick apart. And speaking of weird, this isn't the first film I've blogged that is directed by Mr. David Lynch.

Additionally, it isn't the first G-rated film I've blogged. (Unless I'm forced by Child #1 or Child #2, more likely both at the same time, I'm just not much of a G-Rated kind of guy.)

But this is the first (and only) G-Rated film that I (or anyone else) will be able to track down by the master of the absurd, the swami of the surreal, Mr. Lynch. (And why do I always sing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," switching Grinch for Lynch in my head?)

The Straight Story feels like Lynch paused from all the weirdness, took a long, deep breath, stepped outside of koo-koo Land if only for a moment, and wrote a story that doesn't contain any of his typical Strangely Bizarre - no small feat for the auteur who seems to have landed from the world of the strangely bizarre.

You might have seen the trailers, and you might have avoided The Straight Story for the same reasons I did. "Wow, does that look sappy." "Oh my word, it just looks so sentimental." And I'm not going to lie about it - I'd shy away from the word "sappy," but I am certain that "sentimental" captures portions just right. On first appearance, the film looks nothing like typical Lynch.

If you're familiar with the film then you already know it's about an old guy, Alvin, that rides a lawn mower from Iowa (which he pronounces with a hard "A", "I-Oh-WAY") to Wisconsin, to meet with his brother, who is suffering from a stroke and whom Alvin had a falling out with years ago. Don't ask why he rides the lawn mower, at least not yet. He just does.

Along the way he shares a meal of a wiener with a pregnant hitchhiker, gazes at a cross-country bicycle marathon, finds a half-crazed woman who just ran over her thirteenth deer in seven weeks, lives it up with some frolicking college kids, and meets a few grown-ups who help when his mower goes out of control on the downward side of a very large hill. In quite a few of these moments the old guy is a typical wise old movie-man scholar, maybe the Morgan Freeman type: has seen a few things, even done a few more, he's known the good, the bad, and the ugly. The wrinkles on his face, like the rings inside a tree, can't be made through buying or selling - only aging.

And yet, just because there's wisdom, or because you've aged and have those strong encouraging words, it doesn't mean you've always been wise, or have always done the thing that's right. In many ways, this is a film about a stubborn old geezer riding his way to repentance, on the downward side of a roller coaster life of aches and addictions, moments of joy and moments of doom. Alvin got back from the Great War years ago and, having to deal with the atrocities that accompany war, turned to the bottle to get him through, and he didn't look back for years. He may have lost a grandchild due to his drunkenness, and it's obvious he's lost relationships with some of his kids - his wife gave birth fourteen times and seven survived, but we only get the chance to meet one (Sissy Spacek). (And we wonder why he couldn't get a ride? Why he's actually on the lawn mower to begin with?)

That's what makes it an interesting film. It's not the idea of a funny old codger on his cross-country lawn mower, but it's his history - His Story, however harsh his background is. We're witnessing a survivor, a man who not only survived the Great War but the wars within himself. He's not wiser because he's older, it doesn't work that way. He's wiser because he has obviously faced himself. He took the long gaze into what Arcade Fire refers to as the "Black Mirror." He chose to deal with his own stink, he faced Reality and seems to have beaten his demons.

Alvin is willing to drive that mower for weeks at a time to get to a brother that's been dealt a physical hardship, because he's lived long enough to realize the importance of close ties, the importance of making peace and returning to relational health. No matter what was said in the past, a brother is still a brother. It's a bond that will always be, and it might be forever if they reconcile now.

So while it is a beautiful film with wonderful, hope-filled themes, it's also got that background Lynchian ethos that we've loved in films like Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive. It's a departure in the Lynchian oeuvre that I've avoided for sentimental reasons, and yet it's a sentimental film I know I'll go back to again and again over the years.

Of Gods and Men. (2011) Xavier Beauvois

2011-05-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Cannes Grand Prix winner came to Grand Rapids this week. Of Gods and Men is the true-to-life story of nine Trappist monks in Algeria during the country's civil war in the mid-nineties. A peaceful lot (they are monks - duh!), practicing prayer, song and communion, they work in an impoverished Muslim community bringing medicine and clothing needs through their humanitarian outreach. They live a quiet life and help people that don't share their faith or beliefs.

These extraordinary men are caught off guard when they are threatened by terrorists claiming something horrible will happen should they refuse to get out of the church, flee the country and head back to France. The men decide to stay, and the results are tragic.

It's a film I'm going to have to see more than once to make up my mind about. Quite honestly at this point, I can't decide whether their decision is the right one. But no matter what they choose, there will be good and bad ramifications - for them, for the people they daily help, perhaps for the good of the country itself. Watching them fear and discuss and try and figure out this quandary is akin to watching any Christian try to figure out what the right choices are, what that next right step might be. For that reason, for that honest depiction, the film is a winner and deserves to be wrestled with.

It's an absorbing film, though. And I think I'll enjoy the chance to make up my mind about it when I do get the chance to see it again. Hopefully it will come out on DVD sooner rather than later.

My friend Steven Greydanus has some wonderful reflections on the film Here.

Ponette. (1996) Jacques Doillon

2011-05-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

Voted #47 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

The eyes of a child, what they see and choose to see is fascinating. Sea shells are diamonds, firetrucks and fireflies are flickering stars. Children are built with sheer imagination, inherent imagination, much larger than the knowledge they possess because they've had so little time in Reality. They haven't yet had the chance to find out how the world really works, which keeps them innocent, unafraid to probe, always seeking knowledge but not necessarily agreeing when logic is presented.

The grandiose dreams of children are loftier than the imagination of an adult - our experience holds an adult mind back. And yet when it comes to mystery, specifically the mystery of the heavens - or of God and mankind and how Creation is supposed to work, the mystery of what's out there that we can't see or even what happens to a soul after a last breath - the adults pretend to understand when explaining it to a child. We explain a meaning of life that we aren't able to come to terms with ourselves.

A child might believe whatever an adult tells them, and between this and the daily encounters with other selfish kids, hurt is formed, children grow into adults, and an adult child imagines less but has an even lesser appreciation for the wonder of the heavens - the mystery.

Ponette is a film that not only captures this tension perfectly, but uses the language of children to show the absurd views that adults try to share, sometimes indoctrinating the minds of the kids without a clue of their own ineptitude.

It's also a beautiful, lovely film of children themselves, trying to grapple with a time of crisis, and it might have one of the greatest performances ever caught on film - a performance from a four year-old little girl.

There really is no other film quite like Ponette. From a gentle little girl that tries to understand the death of her mom, to her friends that try to console her, to other kids that sometimes blame her for mom's death, to her tear-stained eyes that constantly pray to God and mommy at night: If Jesus can come back from the dead, why can't my mommy?

Such a simple question from the mind of a child. It is one of many simple questions that turns upside down, completely flipping into the profound. This is a film that will keep you in thought for a long, long time. The film is somewhat about a miracle, but in many ways the performances here are nothing short of miraculous on their own.

The Human Resources Manager. (2011) Eran Riklis

2011-05-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

In light of the announcement that the good folk at Film Movement are launching a new niche club focusing on the bi-monthly release of Jewish-themed films, it isn't a surprise to find The Human Resources Manager, an Israeli production, sent out to subscriber mailboxes as the May "Film of the Month." As a pale U.S. Caucasian who considers his story and heritage an extension of the Old Testament, the news that a New York company is interested in getting undistributed but deserving Jewish films to the public leaves a wonderful ring in my ears -- but the global film lover in me worries that the company's new focus will disrupt a wealth of quality films they already deliver from around the globe.

The Human Resources Manager mostly bypasses my worry, being an Israeli film with very Jewish-sounding background music taking place mostly in Romania, and having the feel of one of the better films of the Romanian new wave. From that movement, The Human Resources Manager reminded me of two films in particular: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, for its absurdist portrayal of social care (in that film it was health care), and The Other Irene, with its very similar subject matter about a deceased woman transported mysteriously from another country in her coffin. Whereas in The Other Irene the mystery was about what happened to the woman before she was put in the coffin, in The Human Resources Manager it's a more practical mystery: what to do with the coffin the body is in.

The story begins with an unnamed Human Resources Manager receiving bad press in Jerusalem when the city paper finds a worker dead from a suicide bombing and no one from the company has noticed her missing. HR guy's boss, unimpressed with his work (she claims he's not even there when he's there), sends him away to arrange for her burial in Romania in a publicity stunt to make the company look more compassionate. The journalist who broke the story, referred to as "The Weasel," tags along for the trip snapping pictures at all the wrong moments, attacked a few times for his indecency. Needless to say, HR guy can't stand the journalist's presence, he's a constant reminder of the fraudulent face of the company, but he can't get rid of him either -- the weasel's pics will show the care of the company.

While aiming to help the grieving family in Romania, HR guy is disappointing his own family back back home in Israel. They expected him home for family reasons, but once again he is missing due to work. He carries a tension that hangs between doing the right thing for himself or for the face of his company, as well as knowing that his absence is helping another family more than his own.

The only person named in the film is the Romanian deceased worker, Yulia, who at this point, as one Romanian official points out when the troupe is arrested carrying her body to her burial place, could probably care less where or how she is buried. Everyone else in the story has an opinion and does care, including Yulia's mom, who they travel a journey of several days taking the body to. All the conflicting opinions about Yulia's final resting place suggests that each of us has different ideas about death and the importance of a proper burial. Likewise, we have different motives and interests in following the dead to their place of rest.

The film is about a dead person, certainly. But it's more about our reaction to death than it is about death itself.

The biggest problem with THRM is that it climaxes about an hour in and never really goes anywhere from there. Yes, there will be another irony at the very end, and I think it's worth watching for that. But it's a shame the film couldn't sustain the same tempo from which it began. It goes from a highly engaging film of mixed motives to a bit of a bore in the end.

But The Human Resources Manager, much like any department the film depicts, is just engaging enough to keep watching even when it slows down a bit. Relational issues are front and center, but are only fresh with new encounters. The film reminded me of Jaffa, another Israeli film about a clash between cultures -- a "nice" film that could have delved much deeper. I'm happy Film Movement has its attention on global cinema, I honestly think life would be worse without their presence on the scene -- but from what I read daily in various blogs and magazines, there are much better films worthy of their attention.

Super. (2011) James Gunn

2011-05-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

A UICA Screening.

With all the heart of the 2006 Michael Rapaport ordinary-guy cum super-hero Special and a wee bit of the thrillish gore from Kick-Ass, but surpassing both films and easily holding its own in the faux superhero film canon, Super gives us the first powerless hero that I can remember who receives his calling from a Christian Television show and a vision from no other source than God Himself. Whether our hero lives up to God's calling or simply falls into the well established genre pattern of redemptive violence (a term that describes a myth, the way of the gun that only works at the movies) is hard to say. The film, however, is thoroughly engaging, from the onscreen visuals to its thumping heart.

An entertaining hodgepodge that meshes corny comic pastiche with a spiritual need for a life's calling, Super comes off as a winner, something I wouldn't have believed going in. It's hard enough to believe in a new superhero film even when it takes itself seriously, but these "comedies" are even harder to put much stock in. Super is a film that won me over regardless of any bias I had going in.

The film's got some stars with staying power, too. When restaurant cook Frank (Rainn Wilson - Dwight from "The Office") loses his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) to a drug relapse, she ends up living with the seedy gangster Jacques (Kevin Bacon) who happily keeps her habit in supply in exchange for having her. Getting on his knees bedside to pray, Frank gets the vision that he's a child of God, chosen to take on the enemy in the streets. Soon he dons himself in red and he's transformed into the Crimson Bolt, out to fight crime if he can find it, which takes a little while for him to figure out. Every hero needs a sidekick, and Frank's been visiting the comic book store to learn more about his new trade. The store's cashier Libby (the ever-adorable Ellen Page) will be transformed into Boltie, and the two will track Sarah down at Jacques' remote and secured fortress.

Super is pastiche art, compilation filmmaking where much of what we see is borrowed from previous sources. Sometimes it lifts elements in a tongue-in-cheek way, cleverly amusing as it borrows from 60s Batman TV (BAM! POW!). In other moments it reminded me of Tarantino, Robocop and Sin City. Perhaps a lower budget Tarantino, Robocop and Sin City.

But the film wouldn't have won me over without that element that is front and center -- as I mentioned before, it's got great heart.

Crimson Bolt and Boltie are clearly sociopathic, and we witness them, especially early in their careers, quick to jump the gun and kick the shit out of even the smallest of criminal acts: a line jumper at the movies gets his brains bashed in, a fellow that might have keyed someone's car is nearly beaten to death. But my interest in where the film takes these characters is two-fold: 1.) The need for a calling, a vocation, which is seen in both characters as greater than the need for revenge, and 2.) The calling of God that is on them (or at least on Crimson Bolt), which is questionable at best, but then again, what Old Testament prophet wasn't seen as half-crazed or at least questionably psychotic? Ezekiel, tied in ropes to lie on his left side for over a year? The plagues of Moses? The fire of Elijah? The prophet Jonah who gave the world's shortest prophesy and got the greatest results of them all?

There is little doubt that the same God that sent a pestilence killing 70,000 men because King David took a census could use a confused sociopath who, separated from his wife, is lost in the world and will find life's meaning fighting crime. The finger of God that touched Frank's brain and throws him into vigilante justice very well could have been the Real Deal. To rule that out is claiming a knowledge of All. But more than likely, the vision Frank got he only received because his brain is already warped. He is interested in the law and finding all those who break it, but what happens to a few of the lawbreakers he finds can hardly be referred to as just.

The film knows this, though, and plays in the themes of Frank's head to perfection. When it's all said and done, the audience can decide whether the actions of Frank are of God, or are even just -- but the film is smart enough to give us a side to land on, it suggests that there's a decent explanation.

It's also a smart enough film to steer away from a sequel, which makes it desirable to go back and see again.

I guess we can refer to Frank as an anti-hero. He's in that Travis Bickle/Michael Douglas Falling Down kind of mould. But from the laughs in the film's beginning to the serious sense of closure that we get, this is an anti-hero that I think gets a chance to grow. I really do hope we never see a sequel. It would help me to think that Frank moves forward.

Little Sparrows. (2011) Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen

2011-05-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

"For My Mother," reads the post-script to Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen's gentle drama about a mom, her final bout with breast cancer, a distant father aiming to make up for lost time, and their three grown daughters -- still seen by mom as the "little sparrows," which she'll have symbolically and beautifully tattooed on her skin.

Shot in hand-held, dogme-like fashion, with a moody background waltz made from pianos and accordions and acoustic guitar strumming, Little Sparrows feels like a cross between indie cinema and a Lifetime channel event. On Mother's Day it would be a good film for the women of the house to take in while the men do the dishes and clean up from the meal; it is unique for a bonding experience between grown-up daughters and their moms, but one for the guys to skip and either watch the NBA playoffs or go out for a round of golf.

The film tells the simple story of a mom (Susan) whose cancer has returned and spread and she knows she doesn't have much time left. She wishes for a happy family get-together at Christmas, which may be the last Christmas she is able to see, certainly the last Christmas she'll be home for. Her husband James, an actor who has put his work first over the years, is the first to receive the news. As he confronts his own sadness and is told by Susan to keep it together for the sake of their daughters, they begin plans for Christmas, when the three daughters and their grandchildren will be home, and the news that will need to be shared. The film shifts and we then get the stories of each daughter, sometimes speaking directly to the camera but mostly told in reenactment. The film jumps in time between the Christmas party and the separate lives of the women, and it shifts perspective on a few events that bring excellent insight into how all three deal with the situation of their mom and her cancer.

Anna, the middle child is an actor like her dad. She is married to filmmaker Mark but is having an affair. The fact that Mark is a thickheaded, doltish jerk doesn't change the fact that both Anna and her lover Rick know that the whole thing is wrong. What we will learn from Anna is that we might feel that we have power and control over even the craziest of situations in our lives. Sadly, we either don't, or if we do it will still be released from our grasp.

Christine, the youngest of the three, is a closet lesbian and has been her whole life. She is a med student and still living at home. She brings the two most interesting scenes to the film: the first is when she and her lover bump into Anna and Rick downtown. This is obviously awkward for all. Christine doesn't know about Rick, and Anna doesn't know about her little sister's closeted sexuality. The second scene is a quite funny story that Christine relays to her mom in a hospital bed. It has to do with orange juice and a carpeted white library floor and the spilling of a liter of the orange stuff and sneaking out. And like the orange juice, in regard to the cancer, Christine will walk away, not wanting to face it when her sisters meet to tell them about mom. But she will grow in this tale, replacing fear with an inner strength that perhaps even she didn't know she was capable of.

The eldest sister Nina is a widow with two children of her own. She has felt for years that she needs to be the glue that holds everyone together, but when she married an alcoholic and he died, her guilt left her unraveling for years. It has been five years since her husband's death, and Nina keeps her feelings and needs securely locked away. She bumps into Simon, the Best Man from her wedding, in a grocery store. Simon is still alone, still working the same job, same old Simon from years ago. Nina casually mentions it to Susan, and mom has hopes that Nina will find love.

All three of the women will be consoled by their dying mom in a reversal of sorts that makes sense. We often think that a dying person's need is to be consoled as they are taken care of. It might be the other way around. That person's final mission could very well be to take the tears of those close to them, to breathe life to their loved ones even if it comes from their dying breath. There are beautiful scenes in Little Sparrows where Susan has the opportunity to reach out, suggesting that perhaps even in death or in a dying state, the best way to live is giving to others.

The film in places is like a shot of estrogen, one of the reasons I gave for kicking the men out before seeing it. But it does have a holistic feel, where the dying and the living are in a healing state together.

The Station Agent. (2003) Thomas McCarthy

2011-05-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

This film was getting excellent reviews and I wanted to see it when it came to theaters in 2003, but looking back through my online posts and journals I see that the choice of what to see went to a few other films instead: Bus 174, an Iranian Films showcase (Abadan and Tehran 7:00 A.M.), and Pieces of April. I don't feel bad about seeing any of those in front of The Station Agent, they are all quality films and in the case of the two Iranian films they are films that never received distribution. But The Station Agent is one of those movies I'm sorry I didn't get back to earlier. I stumbled across the DVD at the library the other day, and after my recent screening of Win Win, which I quite enjoyed, I realized The Station Agent was an earlier film by the same director, and I remembered all the critical praise.

It's such a lovely film that I'd have no problem placing it alongside others as a new classic. Like Lars and the Real Girl, it's a film that brings a sense of satisfaction and even peace at the end, a movie I know I'll be revisiting down the road. And I don't think I'll look at a train, or a dwarf, the same way ever again.

The Traveler. (1974) Abbas Kiarostami

2011-05-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

This 37 year-old black and white gem from Kiarostami is tucked away as an extra on the Criterion release of Close-Up, a documentary which I blogged about yesterday. The only information we get prior to watching the relatively unknown film is from Criterion's quick blurb:

At one point in Close-Up, the main figure, Hossein Sabzian, says, "I am the child from the film The Traveler who's left behind." Made in 1974, Abbas Kiarostami's The Traveler tells the story of a young boy who goes to great lengths to take a bus trip to see his favorite soccer team. Kiarostami has said that he considers the film to be his first authentic feature.

It makes sense then, that the story opens with the boy, Qassem, in a scene that lasts over a minute, late for school playing soccer with his friends. Another kid reminds him of where he is supposed to be, and he collects his small soccer goals and the ball and heads to school. When he shows up for class, he's got the excuse planned out but the teacher has heard his excuses before. "Where the hell have you been?" asks the man, perturbed that the kid is late for school once again. "I had a toothache," says Qassem, his head wrapped like he's been to a cartoon dentist. "Toothache my foot!" cries the teacher. "It's infected," says Qassem. He's allowed to sit in the class, but it doesn't last long anyway. He's kicked out in less than five minutes for reading a soccer magazine instead of the book the class is studying.

The film is about obsession, specifically childhood obsession, and in this case Qassem's unhealthy obsession with the sport. He daydreams about it, buys soccer magazines he can't afford, skips school, and rather than doing his homework he sneaks out on his mom to play. But what do you know when you're a kid? Qassem's mental faculties aren't developed to the point where he understands the idea of an unhealthy obsession. When his illiterate mom nags him to keep up his schoolwork, or when his teacher gets upset to the point of spanking his hands with a switch, all Qassem knows is the difference between the adult world and his, that there are things adults expect that don't top his list of priorities.

Some kids, no matter what you do as a parent or teacher, simply don't get it. Qassem is even more obsessed with soccer than the kids from this year's Colombian film, The Colors of the Mountain. He finds out about a professional game taking place in Tehran, and though he'd have to raise money for a bus ride and a ticket to the event, and though he'd be skipping school and lying to mom and dad in the process, and though he might lose a few of his friends in the way he procures his funding, he sets his sights on the game, on being there to see it live, on hanging out with the men and rooting and jeering and cheering his team to a win.

The results of the trip to Tehran will be tragic, but I don't know if this kid will learn his lesson. There is a definite moral of the story in The Traveler -- that unhealthy obsession gets you nowhere.

I did have to laugh early on in the tale. When mom shows up at the school to discuss Qassem with his teacher, the conversation that takes place is so foreign to how we deal with kids today. I wonder if just a tad of the abrasive way the man confronts Qassem's mom (and later Qassem) might be something worth looking into for handling some kids today:

Mom: Sir, I'm Qassem Julayi's mother.

Teacher: Well, well. What brings you here?

Mom: He goes to bed every night without doing his homework. When I ask, he says he's done it. I'm here to find out if he's doing his schoolwork and coming to school. I can't read or write...

Teacher: (Heated) You come once a year to see if the little vagrant is coming to school? He's made my life hell and turned the whole school upside down. He's not a child - he's a monster.

Mom: What can I do? I ask if he's done all his homework, and he says yes. He goes to bed early and gets up early. He leaves for school before the other kids. I ask him, "Where's your homework?" He says he did it at school, or on the way, or out in the yard, or on the roof. How am I to know? I can't read... Then the neighbor's child tells me Qassem's not coming to school. So I've come to see you to find out if he's doing his schoolwork. You're in charge here...

Teacher: (Angry) That's right! If a chicken snuck out of your yard, you'd follow it halfway across town. In all these years have you ever come to see what he's up to? Have you even come to see what the school looks like? Now you come and say, "You're in charge."

Mom: (Quietly, frustrated) Just last night he acquired a new habit I don't like one bit. Last night I put five tomans under the rug. This morning I served their breakfast and gave him the five rials he'd asked for. After he left, I tidied up, and when I went to get the five tomans, they were gone. No one else goes in that room. What do I do about this new habit of his?

Teacher: What do you expect from such an ill-bred boy with parents like you? What am I supposed to do with him?

What we're witnessing here is a single conversation depicting the eternal struggle in parenting, teaching, mentoring and the like. There is never a guarantee. No birth is ever gift wrapped. You try to do the right things to raise a child, but two plus two doesn't always equal four. The teacher blames the parent, the parent requests more help from the teacher, but that kid will still be on the bus to Tehran to check out a game instead of getting on the right road for his life. In the process, he'll let everyone down and feel like a fool, and I'll bet he gets the spanking of his life. I just hope he learns from the tragedy that is about to take place and finds some balance with his unhealthy obsession.

Close-Up. (1990) Abbas Kiarostami

2011-05-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

Voted #47 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

On the commentary track for Criterion's Close-Up DVD, Chicago critic Jonathon Rosenbaum describes that many of Abbas Kiarostami's films are about people who are lost. I thought back to earlier Kiarostami films I've seen and he's right. (As usual!) There is a sense of loss, and it is displayed both internally and externally as a recurring motif in all of the Kiarostami films I've seen. A man seems emotionally lost in a new town in The Wind Will Carry Us, and in Taste of Cherry another poor soul drives all over town and the countryside frantically searching for someone to bury him after he kills himself. I also thought of the more recent Certified Copy, and though Juliette Binoche and William Shimell aren't necessarily lost as they plod along on the streets in Tuscany, they do meander aimlessly for a better portion of the film. In fact, as Rosenbaum points out, an earlier title of one of Kiarostami's films is Where Is the Friend's Home?

In Close-Up we have a character so lost in his own misfortune that he simply gives up on himself and pretends he's someone else.

With the recurring motif of lostness there is also a recurring Kiarostami trope which aims to break through the fourth wall of a given performance. Fans of last year's Catfish, Exit Through the Gift Shop and I'm Still Here might be interested in this Iranian blending of documentary filmmaking and reenactment, where the lines between reality and imagination are somewhat blurred, and your perceptions and allegiances shift between characters by the moment.

What we know to be true about the following story is this: a man was put in jail and taken to court for fraudulently claiming to be a famous Iranian film director. Another famous Iranian filmmaker liked the case, got involved, and made a film about it ala cinéma vérité.

An every day average but currently unemployed man named Hossain Sabzian is carrying a copy of the book The Cyclist on a bus as he travels around town. The passenger next to him, Mahrokh Ahankhah, notes the book is a film she's seen with her husband and two grown sons (the film I blogged two days ago here). She comments on it to Sabzian, and Sabzian (who looks like director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to the point where I was confused) claims he is the man behind The Cyclist, Makhmalbaf himself. He autographs it and gives her the copy. She's amazed to find the great director taking a ride on public transit. He claims he likes to use the bus to travel around town in search of new subjects for his films.

It might have all ended there, but Sazbian is invited to the Anankhah home, where he is introduced by mom to the family, who are all very interested in art and filmmaking. Sazbian, in full Makhmalbaf mode, says he's interested in doing a film in the house using the Anankhah family as actors. Of course they are all delighted, but dad remains skeptical. After a few days of prep and a full surveying of the house, it is revealed that whoever this man is, he is not Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and he is arrested and taken to court on counts of fraud and attempted fraud.

It is assumed that since he surveyed the house, he obviously was intending to burglarize it.

As Sazbian sat in a jail cell awaiting his court date, Kiarostami got involved in the case. He visits Sazbian in jail, camera on, gets his permission to film him, and talks to him about filming the trial and reenacting parts of the story. Sazbian is eager to relay this story to the world. This is a guy who has had no real attention before. He's divorced, without work, probably broke, a Nobody. He was a Somebody when playing the part of Makhmalbaf, until he was busted for the whole ordeal. All the sudden with Kiarostami's involvement, he's got a chance to be a Somebody again.

Kiarostami creates a film about the crime and its people using the original players, everyone playing their own part. Scenes that took place in real life are reenacted by the very same people in order to show what happened earlier in their lives. It's a reflection of a previous event, which calls attention to the reality of film itself. We don't always know which scenes are happening right now (most of the time we can guess), and even if we figure out which ones are reenacted, they won't be the same as what they were before Kiarostami started filming. Are people ever the same when the cameras are on?

At the start, in a move of pure genius, Kiarostami drops us right in the middle of the story during the arrest of Sazbian in the Anankhah family's home. But we never go inside. We stay on the outside with a cab driver, who is waiting for the cops to bring Sazbian out. We think, "What is going on inside the house?" We can't know for certain, but we do see the cops bring Sazbian out and take him away in the taxi. From this point the film moves through the story's timeline in a non-linear fashion, until later when we finally get to see the scene we were so curious about in the beginning. By making us wait for it, Kiarostami adds tension to the story, but it isn't a noticeable tension -- it's simply ground we wish would get covered.

When we finally do witness Sazbian's arrest, and watch the actual courtroom proceedings, we're never really sure if he's playing himself or still in a role. This is another slight tension that simply hangs in the air for a while, until Makhmalbaf actually shows up in the film. When the two finally meet face to face it is a tender conclusion in which a full answer is given, and it tells us that we may have been deceived once or twice, but everything suddenly feels so wonderfully humane.

After the viewing, I thought about the different roles I've played in life, from son to father, musician to minister, worker to drifter to writer and more. I wonder if any of those roles are accurate about "who is the real me." I've even erected this "Persona," that in some ways creates a mystique around my Internet presence, but more than that it gives me freedom to write exactly how I want.

Like Sazbian in Close-Up, I wonder how often we think it would be better to drop out of our own lives and become someone else. How much of that kind of thought plays into the sports we watch, the magazines we consume, American Idol, reality shows, Charlie Sheen? Is the Reality of who we are more than what we believe or do or see in others? And what is that thing Reality stares at when we shift our gaze to the mirror?

The Cyclist. (1987) Mohsen Makhmalbaf

2011-04-30T19:42:00.000-07:00

Voted #50 on the 2010 A&F Top 100.

As soon as you pop in KINO's "Kimstim" DVD of The Cyclist, you get a warbled sound on the Menu, not unlike an old warped vinyl record, needle dragging across the lines on a turntable where the music feels not only dated but like it needs a shot of Pepto Bismol. I first saw this film on one of the most beat up VHS tapes one can encounter, from the barely discernible exterior title to the scratched and mangled tape inside, so this was a perfect way to revisit the film, which I recently did, and once again I was enthralled.

The Cyclist, a 79 minute Iranian film from 1987, is Makhmalbaf's retelling of an event he witnessed in childhood, but while the story is personal he also opts for it to be told in a social and somewhat political manner. It's about an Afghan refugee named Nasim, whose wife is dying and needs an extended stay in the hospital. A former bicycling champion in his home country, Nasim is now broke and has to figure out a way to pay for her health care. The work he is doing barely pays the bills they already have. He meets a gangster type who makes a living placing bets. He urges the desperate Nasim to involve himself in a wager that he can ride his bike for seven days straight. The event will be promoted for all to see.

The film didn't make the cut on our Top 100 for this year, but placed at number 50 on our list from 2010. After recently seeing Certified Copy (which I blogged Here) and hearing quite a bit of discussion about Close-Up over the years at A&F (a film which is partially based on The Cyclist and holds its position on our current list), I decided to revisit The Cyclist before diving into and blogging Close-Up, which I'll be aiming to write about tomorrow. The former is generally known as paving the way for the latter, Close-Up being the critically recognized film. What I had forgotten is what a great movie The Cyclist still is.

The film is a love story at heart. It's about the lengths Nasim goes to in order to save the spouse he loves. It is a hyper-expressionist film that in some ways hearkens back to the best of Murnau - the passion dramatically expressed in silent cinema is very similar to the feel of The Cyclist. The cinematography is also excellent as it captures all the drama on display, the drama being the hope-filled enjoyable kind. Elements of the downtrodden are certainly present, but the story itself is exciting and just plain fun.

Watching Nasim as he bicycles to save his wife's life, watching him sweat and nearly fall, watching him evade people and objects thrown in his path, in a state somewhere between utter exhaustion and the dream state of a fever, is a one man sporting event akin to the 15 rounds of boxing in the original Rocky. A big difference being that the "punches" here are mental and emotional, as well as physical, as he rides round and round in circles. His thoughts race back to his love in a hospital bed, his heart aches to save her and he knows this is the only way.

The crowds show up, growing exponentially each day. Tickets are sold. The gamblers and the feel of crime is a constant shadow over the event. Government officials see the display as a kind of threat. Vendors and palm readers and an ambulance are just within reach... Nasim splashes buckets of water on his face to keep from falling asleep and falling off his bike. Riots break out around him, nearly knocking him over as he bikes through a crowd of angry protesters. There is a referee constantly present, and many gambling over the event. Cheating with attempts to knock him off the bike becomes normal life for Nasim to deal with.

He eats on the bike. He drinks on the bike. He pees on the bike. He carries his son on the bike. He yawns and falls asleep and is awakened by the crowd on his bike. He even takes a phone call on his bike. He grows faint and his vision goes blurry; he thinks of his wife and saves himself from total collapse. He sweats and weeps and gets a cold and freezes at night. All of these things he does on his bike. He dreams that he's asleep while still awake and riding his bike.

Amidst the crowd of money-grubbing vendors and gamblers and those just there to be entertained, there are quite a few acts of friendship and kindness toward Nasim. There are acts of grace that is the kind of charm Iranian cinema is known for. And the final act is spectacular. This is a film that carries its weight in hope.

The soundtrack of the DVD is a little warbly, but not as warbly as the Menu might lead you to believe, and I think it actually adds to the charm of the tale. The transfer ain't so great but absolutely worth wading through for the story itself. This is a film where story transcends form, that is, the form of the transfer and not the film itself.

As more and more Americans find it difficult to navigate the health care system, and as employment continues to be replaced by uninsured jobs for the "temp" worker, this film becomes more relevant than it was at the time of its release. The lengths one goes to in finding a job and getting insured, or what one would do to save a loved one whose health is jeopardized by inflated health care costs, are issues of greater prevalence every day. America in 1987 wasn't nearly as close to Iran in 1987 as is the 2011 version of the American dream.

The Mirror. (1975) Andrei Tarkovsky

2011-04-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

Voted #11 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

Over the past week or so, I've been studying what is commonly referred to as Tarkovsky's most personal film, The Mirror.

I say "studying" because I've gone back since my first viewing and watched bits and pieces of it here and there -- thank God for the DVD! -- and read quite a bit about this fascinating film on various blogs around the web. Somewhere in the house I've got a copy of Tarkovsky's book, Sculpting in Time. I wonder if that might be a good reference for carving out an understanding of this film, too. The montage, which he often referred to in the book as the "rhythm" of a film, seems very different in The Mirror than in the other Tarkovskys I've seen. (Solaris, Andrei Rublev, Offret and Stalker.)

And, for many, that's a good thing. One of the largest complaints about those other films is in regard to their deliberate, snail-like pacing. In a sort of hindsight reaction to the rapid cuts of his filmic forefather Eisenstein (in The Odessa Staircase, for instance), Tarkovsky is well known for long, drawn out scenes and an extremely slow tempo where a shot can reach eternal proportions and a cut can take several minutes to get to. It's either mesmerizing or frustrating depending on the viewer. Tarkovsky felt that the cut was a false reality, and in his attempt at truth, an ideal he held in the highest regard, he widely employed the long take, a sometimes agonizing approach in which emotions are reached not through the manipulation of the edit but rather the truth of the reality depicted (perhaps most famous in this three minute railroad sequence from Stalker).

And yet I can use a word like "agonizing" as easily as I can use words like "enriching" and "rewarding." I really appreciate Tarkovsky's ability to slow down our pulse, giving us space to think and breathe, helping us seep gently into the layers of one of his films. In the digital age we rarely have a chance to consider reality, and the rapid edit goes hand in hand with a lot of CGI. I've sat and counted 1.2 seconds between edits in many frustrating movie houses. Our culture despises patience but it is patience that always pays off. Tarkovsky created films that teach from their image as well as their philosophy.

One of the things all Tarkovskys have in common with each other is that they are a complete visual euphoria. And while Tarkovsky seemed to steer clear of overt metaphor, the images conveyed in his films constantly point to an unknown Creator. "Through the image is sustained an awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form," he has said. The Mirror is certainly no different in this regard. From a bottle tipping from a table for an unseen reason to several flurrying portions of mystical montage, viewers are transported into a greater awareness of life; there is more than just the physical that meets the eye. Tarkovsky employs tricks in the mis-en-scène as well as tricks in scene blocking and the lensing. It's a visual feast -- not scopophilic, but transitory.

It is for this reason one can make it through The Mirror for the first time. If it weren't for these visual flourishes, the film would be lost on us at once. The Mirror is visual poetry, with autobiographical details that won't ever be fully understood by anyone in the audience. This is why people who love the film say they've seen it ten, perhaps fifteen times, and that they get something new out of it every time they sit and watch. This is Tarkovsky on Tarkovsky, full stream of consciousness, and he gets away with it because of the film's Eye.

It has something to do with three periods of time: pre-World War II, the actual time of war itself, and the Russian recovery from the war all the way into the sixties. There is nothing chronological about the way these periods are rendered. They pop up sporadically at will. Archived film, newsreels, also pop up wherever they want, some of the grainy black and white images astounding. The most memorable images being soldiers in a time of war, or a man on a chair in the air on one of the very first flights in a balloon.

The film follows a few main characters that seem to stand in for Tarkovsky as a boy, with his mother and lover always close by (lead actress Margarita Terekhova playing both roles). We see into all their lives in a non-linear story in which random moments of their existence play out. The time the barn burned down and all they could do was watch. The time the kids got in trouble in their battle training. The time that lady came over instead of mom coming home. The time the water ran out in the shower. A good portion, if autobiographical, is also a jaunt into childhood memories, ones that won't be forgotten because they're preserved on film forever.

The film is punctuated by philosophical poetry, the narrator asking the important questions about life. Wind and nature are a constant source of reflection as if we should meditate on these elements daily. Quite a few times I was reminded that my favorite director Lars von Trier dedicated his movie Antichrist to Andrei Tarkovsky. Going back to The Mirror, you can see where von Trier borrows, how he playfully uses the methods that have been passed down to him from the Russian master. And you can see why he holds the Russian master in highest esteem.

If you're not prepared to simply bask in the visual elements, I think The Mirror can be a frustrating trip for a first-time viewer. If you're not at all familiar with Tarkovsky's work, it will undoubtedly be a point of frustration. While the film is surreal, I still can't put meaning to it the way I can with a film like, say, Eraserhead, where I have loved for years to dip into the tiny details and drag the symbolism out of the film. Eraserhead remains in my mind a surreal work of art from which I continue to take away personal reflections.

So The Mirror, to me, is an incredible achievement, an expansive and majestic work of art, and yet I cannot derive much meaning from it in my first few days with it. This is Tarkovsky's own reflection and perhaps only he fully understands it. But it reminded me of the greatness of his entire body of work, and I find myself in the wake of The Mirror wanting to revisit the four I've seen very soon. And perhaps I'll add a few I haven't seen to the list.

Marwencol. (2010) Jeff Malmberg

2011-04-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Story and Imagination as forces for healing and redemption are greatly displayed in this perfectly paced doc about a 38 year-old man and his Barbies.

After being attacked and dragged outside a bar where he was beaten and kicked until laying on the ground unconscious, Mark Hogancamp spent 40 days in a hospital, the first nine in a coma after which he relearned how to eat, write and how to walk. He literally had his brains bashed in in that bar fight, losing all of his memory after the attack. He woke up not remembering a thing about his past - about his life, about his talents in drawing, his alcoholism or his ex-wife. Going back through his journals to discover himself he found a horror story of a life gone awry; realizing what he had become but what he still couldn't recall felt like something from a Stephen King novel.

The drawings in the journals are just as horrifying as the words he reads. Pictures of Mark clinging desperately to two large letters reading "AA," and other drawings of himself being tortured by his drink. There is no doubt he was lost, enslaved. He was desperate, and according to his drawings and words, he knew it.

Unable to physically draw due to the nature of his post-attack brain function, and unable to mentally draw on any memories in his past, Mark, ever the artist, turns his back yard into a set for miniatures where WWII heroes and SS soldiers, Nazis and Barbies form a town in his brain called Marwencol. It is here that Mark's imagination replaces his memory, filling in the gaps of his memory banks for a therapeutic session of storybook photography. Many of the dolls are based on real-life people in Mark's life, in fact the name of the town stands for Mark, Wendy and Colleen, the latter two being the first girls he had a crush on in returning to his "second half of life."

The photos he comes up with are amazing.

Mark takes these miniatures and creates grandiose stories, stories of survival, war and love - drama queen stories where the girl drops her man for Steve McQueen, stories of bloodshed and tears and riots and revolts. He's front and center in most of the tales, his own miniature alter-ego bumping up daily with the town's folk. The women he's liked in real life are present too. He hugs and kisses the dolls sometimes. It's a little bit creepy.

The general underlying theme of the story is that Marwencol is a town striving for peace, that Mark and the soldiers and Barbies live there together and they'll fight off any Nazis that plot to take over. Marwencol is always under the gun. The forces are always out there, ever looming over the town for their chance to seize it at any moment. It's up to Mark and his friends and the 27 Barbies to make sure Marwencol is safe for today and tomorrow.

The town's battles are an obvious stand-in for the trauma Mark has experienced in real life. Likewise the drama between some of the Barbies and their boyfriends seems to function as a gateway to Mark's loneliness and isolation. The film is quite rewarding as Mark opens up; we get to see his thought process as he builds sets and photos it all. Thousands of photos are stored away, photos that will later be dragged out when Mark is invited to a gallery in New York. Perhaps with these artists he'll finally find a place to fit in.

Director Malmberg does a brilliant job in simply staying out of the way. We see the story develop from Mark's initial beating to the hospital stay to the design of the sets and the photographing of Marwencol, all the way to the gallery in New York where Mark's town and its stories hit the public. There are a couple of surprises along the way, including the reason for the beating. And it's a shocker. It's one of those things you might need a moment to think about, and when you really consider all you've seen it makes sense, but then, hmm, it doesn't.

Like Stevie or Prodigal Sons, or maybe a not so violent but still artistically relevant Tarnation, Marwencol is a documentary that studies one person, his unique and beautiful mind, his actions and a path that is only his. It's insightful to see into the mind of someone else, to take a break from yourself and relish another. In Marwencol, it's like studying about that guy on the street you've seen every day for years. It's an interesting trip into the mind of a man wrestling with fallout and transcending his creation.

Paris, Texas. (1984) Wim Wenders

2011-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Voted #72 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

Weary, dizzy, and bone-dry dehydrated, a catatonic sunburned bearded stranger steps out of the Texas desert into a bar. He's been wandering in the scorching sun, apparently going nowhere, headed for a destination perhaps long forgotten. But for what he needs now, alcohol will not suffice. If he can't find some water in this dingy little dive there's really no question that he will die.

He stumbles across the darkened room to an ice box to quench his thirst. His dry, dusty mouth is quickly relieved in crunching the cubes, but immediately upon swallowing his body falters. He crashes to the floor and passes out. Upon waking, he's under the care of a cigar toting German doctor who finds his ID and makes a phone call to his brother in L.A. We learn he's been missing four years. His brother comes to collect him, but by the time he gets there, the wanderer is gone, traversing the desert terrain yet again.

Working with only the first half of a full script and shooting in chronological order, Wim Wenders, in these opening scenes where a man tries to help his drifting brother, draws us patiently into all the themes that will gently unfold in this story of a man who trails back to his lost son. It's the Prodigal dad returning home from a mysterious wasteland of the heart. Then again, it's the Prodigal husband who recklessly wandered away, leaving the ruins of a relationship in the dust. The desert can be a physical place, but it can symbolize an interior condition, too.

Travis, the bearded wanderer, will soon be shaving and meeting his eight year-old son Hunter for the first time since the boy was four. What happened during those years is anyone's guess, but Hunter has been staying with his uncle, the brother now saving Travis, meaning Travis will soon be reintroduced to his boy. But picture an eight year-old who already has a daddy and mommy, being introduced to a man that they're both hailing as long, lost dad.

In a cute scene capturing eight year-old Hunter trying to come to terms with all this, he explains to a friend how he now has two dads. "Who is that guy? You know him?" asks his friend. Hunter: "Yeah, he's my father's brother... No, they're both brothers... No, they're both -- they're both fathers... Aw, just forget it."

It will take some time for the two to fully bond, and there is still the question of the past four years, the desert wandering, and the missing mom. What happened to her? What actually happened to them? What is that awful event that Travis won't talk about that brought them to the point of losing their son? The bonding continues, and the two begin working toward some answers, but not before we meet a screaming, mad prophet standing over a highway insulting the traffic flowing below. In one of the greatest scenes in the film, this soapbox traffic-hating apocalyptist comes from out of nowhere, like a fire-breathing turn-or-burn preacher on acid. His sermon seems to launch Travis and son on a road trip to their source, and Travis will finally give his story as a reflection in an isolated confessional. There are believable, tender, heart wrenching scenes at the end of this story. Bring some Kleenex. You have been forewarned.

Paris, Texas functions as a place where land is owned, but it is ground no one in the story has been on. The idea reminds me of the words of another Wenders title, Faraway, So Close -- We're not always meant to be together, and some mistakes can't be undone. Restoration isn't always possible; we can only do our best with what we have, living daily to take care of the present. Paris, Texas feels more like an idea than a title or a location or a purchase of land. The film of this title is like a longing for home, but perhaps it's a place we can't go.

Born to Be Wild. (2011) David Lickley

2011-04-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

This is an IMAX 3D film currently in theaters. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it is in the wild but no penguins this time. Instead we have baby elephants in Kenya and orphaned orangutans taken care of by humans in the rainforests of Borneo.

This is easily the deepest, richest 3D experience I've seen. Yes, that includes Avatar -- because this is reality, and you can see these lands for miles. Truly an inspiring work, I felt like I had visited these countries through this masterfully made nature film.

I know Herzog has a documentary coming out in this format (not sure if it is supposed to go on IMAX screens), but I hadn't really considered how well suited 3D is for a documentary feature. Here, it really drives home a wealth of visuals in a world that escapes most of us.

Certainly a rewarding little info-piece of a film, but I didn't walk away without reservations for recommending it, mostly due to its length and the cost to get into the theater. More Here.

Certified Copy. (2011) Abbas Kiarostami

2011-04-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

A UICA Screening.

Hauntingly beautiful with devastating dialogue, Kiarostami's first film shot far from his original home in Iran is so vibrant and full of life -- its foils, its struggles, its yearnings -- that it needs to be seen more than once to fully digest everything it launches at the viewer. It's THE ONE the film buff waits for as he wades through hundreds to finally arrive here. It's THE ONE film buffs will talk about years from now, and average moviegoers won't have seen.

It was seen by many at Cannes last year, and it was there that Juliette Binoche, amidst applause and mumbled groans at the predictability of it all, took home the Best Actress award for her role, the latest in an endless amount of roles the committed star was born to play. She carries the film like it will live or die on her shoulders, her every facial gesture as amazing as always, and though I've said it before I'll gladly say it again: she has taken her talents to an amazing new level. To see Binoche in practically any film is to see the Best of the Best, and as the years go on she ages perfectly with time. With time, she simply ascends.

IMDB reports that her character in the film is named Elle, but I don't know where they got that. It's not in the film I saw. For the purposes of Kiarostami's original idea for Certified Copy, I'll simply call her "She."

We find She with her skateboarder-looking teenager at a book signing in Tuscany. The esteemed author is British middle-aged James Miller (William Shimell, carried in the film by La Binoche) who has authored "Certified Copy," a book about artifice and art. As the two take a jaunt around the outskirts of Tuscany, the film begins to model the ideas of the book in its majestic cinematography, in the locations the two choose to visit, and in the dialogue and interaction between the characters themselves, whose relationship is completely transformed (think: the shifts in perspective of Persona, but replacing the lesbian tendencies with marriage struggles). She and James discuss life, art, artifice, outright fraud, aging, parenthood, problems and the frustrations they immediately have with one another. They discuss these things like they're going to fall in love or punch each other at any moment. It's as if they've known each other for years, caught up in romance and intolerance, and as such the film feels like a more original, more masterful Before Sunrise or a Tuscany-replacing-Tokyo Lost in Translation. The dialogue and chemistry between She and James is of the highest calibre you will find in a film. Binoche can give you eight emotions in eleven seconds, every single one of them tearing a hole in your heart.

Kiarostami is the master behind the lens, taking us into mirrors, windshields, alleyways and marriage ceremonies. He shifts the film's perspective as our persectives on the two leads shift. There's a playful sense that we're being tormented by an illusion, a reflection, or a glance in the mirror at ourselves. Every shot in the film is poetry, a walk through Tuscany aiding all the beauty found here.

As they continue their walk and as they talk they shed layers, most notably demonstrated in the removal of Binoche's bra in a church bathroom. I know that last thought looks a little weird when you read it -- it is as tasteful and perfect a metaphor as anything in Haneke's Code Unknown. (Which is yet another incredible film rendering the capabilities of Binoche's codes.) There's a shift in the way She begins looking at him, and a shift in the way we look at her. She is more than a walk around Tuscany. The role she's now taken is fully engaging.

The film ends with church bells ringing, an interesting choice for an Iranian filmmaker set free of the constraints of Iran. There's also a final choice that is perhaps left open to interpretation, but most will interpret as full tragedy. It is easily one of the most gripping finales you will see on a screen this year, and yet no words are spoken, a decision is made, and that's it. The bells ring out through the credits.

I've seen the ending twice, both times with small audiences, and I was amazed that no one could get up to leave the theater. They sat through the entire credits sequence, which is not in English, bells continuing to ring out, as if they'd just witnessed an honest, raw, devastating choice, like a couple's split that has left a child whiplashed, wounded by their delusions, their (in)sincerity about themselves, and the nature of greed and how it affects all parties in a Union.

Heartbeat Detector. (2007) Nicolas Klotz

2011-04-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

Voted #58 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

Heartbeat Detector is a somber little film, a narrative tone poem that feels like a visual "Disintegration" by The Cure. It's about a company's psychologist who uncovers some harsh truths about his company's past that sends him, and a few other execs, reeling. It would be a simple story about a guy who digs up some bad stuff and is then forced to make a choice about what to do with the info, except that the film is built so beautifully and poetically that it creates an entire visual element, sensually so, bringing effective albeit somewhat melancholic mood to the tale.

It begins with Simon Kessler, the human resources psychologist, who is asked to get to better know his company's alcoholic and despondent CEO, Mathias Jüst -- to monitor his behavior and report back to Karl Rose, the vice president. Simon gets the novel idea to begin an orchestral program that was attempted a few years back with the goal of getting Jüst involved on his violin playing with any blue or white collar worker willing to be involved.

The film plummets some ground that hit me personally pretty hard. There's a political back text that becomes front and center in the film's second half that anyone who reviews the film will talk about, that of European disillusion even sixty years after WWII, and how corporations and their employees still have to stare those days in the face and work in the midst of it. I found that aspect interesting, very much so, but it's not what got my heart pumping. What got to me was director Nicolas Klotz's ability to place all forms of music in the heart of the film, a music we very quickly learn that neither Jüst nor Simon can relate to. Because they can't relate to much of anything or anyone, really. It's amazing how much communication it takes to put the right pieces in place to run a company, and how you can create wealth like moving chess pieces on a business platform -- you can seemingly have it all and still be an unrelatable miserable grouch who has slipped through the cracks -- you've forgotten the importance of breaking through your own isolated humanity, that it is misery to be trapped and alone, and yet even those in business at the top of their game can fall into this horrible life pattern.

Jüst cannot gain even a simple pleasure from listening to music he created in the past. He says it physically pains him, and we see it bring him to the point of tears. As he slowly descends into a pit of isolation we see Simon trying to put the social program together for employees who don't really want to have a part of it. But it doesn't end at the workplace for Simon. Klotz gives us so many chances to peek into the life of the company psychologist who attends raves and drinks and dances the night away and has a girlfriend that could beautifully sing to him if only he'd stop and listen and quit trying to bed her instead. The music that permeates the film -- from classical to latin flavored to house and then simple soundtrack filler -- can be heard by any viewer as touching in some way. One of the film's secondary ideas, the one that got to me, was watching this character in the midst of it all, unable to join in the song of life because he is trapped in his own isolation. His heart won't thump to the vibrant sounds around him. It's sad that there can be such beauty around us every day, and many times we just let it go by, barely noticed, the art we can't connect with because we're so revved up in consuming it.

Then again, maybe I just liked that theme because I spent seventeen years in music that took me all over the globe, and I haven't touched an instrument in months.

The film is on our Top 100 at A&F, probably more for the political and spiritual text I mentioned, and there's been some great writing done on it already. We've been discussing the film Here (and some of us Here), and I highly recommend my friend Michael Leary's review Here, and my friend Darren Hughes's very visual review Here. It's always a joy to read any of these guys. When they get their thoughts down to words it is a stirring, emotive experience.

The Searchers. (1956) John Ford

2011-04-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

Voted #18 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

I had a poor reaction to this film but I've been talked into seeing that my reaction might have been steered that direction -- that perhaps the whole point of it is having that bad reaction. So, I guess, I can respect that, but it's not a fun experience. I've been told I'm not alone in that initial response, so perhaps I'll try it again in a few years. But about thirty minutes in, the dialogue and acting become so cliched that I'm simply assuming (for now) that I don't get it and this film is not to my tastes. That's not to say that tastes can't change over time. I think they do. But for now, my response to The Searchers is pretty much blechth.

The Peter Bogdanovich commentary on the DVD does help explain all the love. It's simply not a love I currently share.

Forty-One for my Forty-First. (2011)

2011-04-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

1. Tender Mercies. (1983, Bruce Beresford)

2. Lars and the Real Girl. (2007, Craig Gillespie)

3. It. (1927, Clarence G. Badger)

4. The Maid. (2009, Sebastián Silva)

5. Children of Heaven. (1997, Majid Majidi)

6. Junebug. (2005, Phil Morrison)

7. Wings of Desire. (1987, Wim Wenders)

8. Raising Arizona. (1987, Coen Brothers)

9. The Hudsucker Proxy. (1994, Coen Brothers)

10. Sunshine Cleaning. (2008, Christine Jeffs)

11. Italian For Beginners. (2000, Lone Scherfig)

12. Whale Rider. (2002, Niki Caro)

13. Heaven. (2002, Tom Tykwer)

14. Planes, Trains & Automobiles. (1987, John Hughes)

15. The Jerk. (1979, Carl Reiner)

16. Cinema Paradiso. (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore)

17. Garden State. (2004, Zach Braff)

18. Pieces of April. (2003, Peter Hedges)

19. Juno. (2007, Jason Reitman)

20. The Dreamlife of Angels. (1998, Erick Zonca)

21. The Son. (2002, The Dardennes)

22. Heartbreaker. (2010, Pascal Chaumeil)

23. A Film With Me In It. (2008, Ian Fitzgibbon)

24. Fraulein. (2006, Andrea Staka)

25. Persona. (1966, Ingmar Bergman)

26. Notorious. (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)

27. Sunrise. (1927, F.W. Murnau)

28. Make Way For Tomorrow. (1937, Leo McCarey)

29. Walk The Line. (2005, James Mangold)

30. (500) Days of Summer. (2009, Marc Webb)

31. Four Shades of Brown. (2004, Tomas Alfredson)

32. Adaptation. (2002, Spike Jonze)

33. Punch-Drunk Love. (2002. Paul Thomas Anderson)

34. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (2004, Michel Gondry)

35. The Science of Sleep. (2006, Michel Gondry)

36. Malèna. (2000, Giuseppe Tornatore)

37. Troubled Water. (2008, Erik Poppe)

38. Little Miss Sunshine. (2006, Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris)

39. Borat. (2006, Larry Charles)

40. Adam's Apples. (2005, Anders Thomas Jensen)

41. La Moustache. (2005, Emmanuel Carrère)

Get Low. (2010) Aaron Schneider

2011-04-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Get Low, a reference to a person going six feet under, is built partially from an event in the 1930s where a backwoods codger planned his own living funeral, mythologized in Schneider's film to probe the meaning of being redeemed.

And what does it mean to be redeemed?

I use the term purely in the Christian sense, because the film so closely aligns itself with that worldview. Many films have plots and characters which draw on themes of "redemption". While misguided about redemption from the standpoint of southern faith, the crotchety old man played by Robert Duvall in Get Low is still looking, in the Christian sense, to be redeemed.

For forty years Felix Bush (Duvall) has hidden himself away in his cabin deep in the woods in Tennessee, a mysterious geezer-hermit with all kinds of legends that the locals just love to chew on. He's like the neighbor lady I saw as a kid who used the hose to water her driveway and gave away soup on Halloween. We were never quite sure what her story was, but man, could we make some up.

Stylin' on a stagecoach, Bush heads into town one day, shotgun in hand, to visit the fellows at the funeral home. He tells them (one of which is Bill Murray and his oh-so-30s moustache) that he wants to plan a funeral. His funeral. Right now, while he's still alive. He wants to invite all the townspeople to tell a few of the tales about him, live it up, party on, and celebrate his demise. He's putting his land in a lottery to be collected at the time of his death, the raffle winner being announced at the funeral.

After Mr. Bush gets a decent haircut and makes the announcement over the radio, the event turns into the talk of the town. In such a remote setting, it will surely be the event of the year. Maybe the event of a quite a few years.

But it is apparently more than a fun get-together for nutty old Mr. Bush. It seems he's got something he wants to talk about at the big show. Something deep and dark that he's buried in those woods, hidden away for the past forty years. Rumors around town are that he killed a man, maybe two or three. We meet Sissy Spacek as an old flame: "We had a go," he wryly tells the funeral guys. There's something about this relationship that is a mystery. The two come from a place where grunts and glances are as good as any words. The spaces between their words are filled with a background we can only guess at.

This is one of those stories where this is about that. We might be looking at the tall tale of a kooky backwoods flea scratcher, but the film is actually about preparing your heart for what's later by clearing your schedule and making amends now -- and if you can't make amends, at least setting some stories straight. The heart of Get Low is as good as anything in the story, and it's a reason I look forward to seeing it again very soon. (If I had seen it before the end of last year, it would have given me serious pause in trying to pick a Top Ten without it being somewhere on the list.)

Since I've borrowed the idea of this being about that from Rob Bell, I might as well go ahead and say that I just finished reading "Love Wins" (soon twice, and I'll most likely blog the book here soon), and that the timing on reading the book and seeing the film together is about as satisfying an arts experience as one can get. The two would make a great double billing. First read "Love Wins," and then see Get Low. Then ask yourself:

Did Mr. Bush repent to God? Has he atoned for his sins? Is repenting to your fellow man enough? Isn't it enough in some Christian circles? Are words really EVER enough? Is the action of the words in confession to a thousand townsfolk any better than the action of building a house of worship years ago? If someone somehow stumbles on truth and amazingly gets the actions right, coming from a pure and contrite heart, but doesn't actually get their words to the right source, has that person really made atonement for their sin? Did King David have a Jesus to repent to? Did Cain get to pray the "sinner's prayer"?

We have a character in Mr. Bush that's desperate to make peace in the world before he moves on to the next one, whatever that is. The question is more about having God's peace correct a long standing situation here and now then it is worrying about the fires of hell. Guilt has eaten away at the crotchety old man for forty years, and he needs to out this thing now, and not just for himself. It's a character doing the right human thing, the right, honorable Christian thing, while not necessarily in the confines of Christianity. That said, there seems to be an understanding that what he is doing, he is doing for peace, for reconciliation. He lives surrounded by God's beauty all the time. These backwoods types breathe God's air every day. He has watched the land around him every day for forty years and knows that the corrections he needs to make in the flesh have vast, earth shattering, heavenly implications.

This is a gorgeous film, with a wonderful, subdued soundtrack. Gosh, that bluegrass music lingering quietly in the background is fun. My grandpa was a bluegrass player in Mississippi. This stuff gets to me on a personal basis as a part of the family tree I've always enjoyed. I was a musician on the rock road for many years, but the roots of bluegrass must be where it all started for me. Somewhere inside this boy who loves the big cities and crowded night life is a backwoods red dirt finger-picker just longing for a banjo at heart.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew. (1964) Pier Paolo Pasolini

2011-04-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Voted #7 on the 2011 A&F Top 100.

I'll preface my reaction to Pasolini's Gospel rendition by stating that I'm already a huge fan of this story, have been my whole life, which is probably obvious if know me or have read something here before. The Gospel is a story I'm willing to base my life on, but at times I feel it's a cosmic gamble of sorts -- one plus one rather seems to equal two, so in the grand scheme of things the Story makes the most sense. I don't deal well with the collective baggage of contemporary Christianity, but I like the Christ story. I hope that such a beautiful thing can also be the Truth (capital "T"), but I'm willing to follow this narrative understanding of the Universe as opposed to quite a few bullet- and power-point sermons blithely spoken across the land on many Sunday morning gatherings in the US.

I'm not always a fan of the Gospel story when it is portrayed in film. I can't say it's usually done well in this format. I am, however, a huge fan of at least three Jesus films which have really sunk themselves into the core of my understanding of life: The Miracle Maker, which I wrote about Here and is #26 on this year's Top 100, is the first one that comes to mind. Artistically created with stop-motion puppetry animation, it is that rare version of the Gospel that appeals to both young and old, a perfect introduction for children that's also suited to the tastes of appreciative adults.

I also have a tremendous amount of respect for The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's bloody, raw, visceral and some say anti-Semitic rendering of Christ's final few hours (and a film I scooped years ago in putting up the first review on the net), and The Last Temptation of Christ, a fictional psychological retelling of the Gospel which got inside the head of Jesus to figure out how he managed mentally as God lodged in human flesh -- the struggle ingrained in a psyche that is fully man and yet fully God, Jehova wrapped in the skin of original sin.

These are the three that have stuck with me so far. Many more that I can't name come to mind as films that I'd rather not remember -- usually low budget features made by serious minded but artistically defunct evangelicals. My friend Matt, who is an expert in this field, would probably recommend quite a few solid films that I've never even heard of. He specializes in Jesus films and blogs about them Here. It is through his recommendation, and quite a few others at the A&F community that I finally took a chance on The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

This is not the family friendly introduction to Jesus in The Miracle Maker, nor is it the deeply probing psychological profile study of The Last Temptation of Christ. Neither is it anything as violent and visually gripping as The Passion of the Christ -- the grande finale of the crucifixion scene itself is rendered as bloodless in Pasolini's film. It is, however, a version that I think stands out from the rest. Quite a few unforgettable moments bring visuals to scenes that have lived in the heads of Christians for years. But the film has a slow, meditative, challenging nature to it, and it is old, which may present problems to contemporary viewers.

I'm no film scholar, so it would be hard for me to relate what the film meant to anyone who saw it in the mid-sixties, but viewing it now is in some moments like taking in a large scale art school project. Long, static scenes of silence with a roving camera in close-up travels from face to face in large gatherings of people. Shots like this are held for excruciating lengths of time, which can lead one into a sleepy mode of movie watching. I have several friends that love the film, who say they fell asleep the first time they tried to view it.

It's also shot in black and white, captured mostly outdoors, and at times feels like Ingmar Bergman got involved with the project, though this is a larger scale film than you'd find in Bergman's productions. But the Bergman mention is apt -- it gets at what I was trying to describe earlier when I mentioned art school.

None of this is to say it is a bad film. It isn't. It's an epic, sprawling, majestic piece of cinema. But let this serve as a warning for what you're getting into when you sit down with The Gospel According to St. Matthew. There are moments that will surely try any reasonable viewer's patience, combined with moments which shed a unique light on the story of Christ, perhaps not present or told like this in other Gospel films.

There are more than a few haunting moments: the visit from the Magi brings about Herod the Great's Massacre of the Innocents, depicted here as soldiers chasing down scores of women and children to spear and cut the heads off of their newborn or very young sons; Jesus on his knees praying and fasting in the desert and wrestling with the chaos of temptation over control of the world; John the Baptist baptising Jesus before being imprisoned and having his head laid out on a literal chopping block; and of course the Sermon on the Mount, which I believe this film is known for, laid out in a montage which takes place over several days and nights and locations -- suggesting the sermons were steadily repeated over time.

After the calling of his disciples, a grotesque figure approaches them, a leper asking Jesus for healing. Only words are spoken in this amazing, miraculous scene where the healing is shown as instantaneous, and it is perfect. It's stunning to be suddenly presented with a normal looking man after seeing him at first in his ugly deformed state. As would be the usual, Jesus asks him not to tell anyone, but the man, of course, immediately attracts a large, questioning and excited crowd.

Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on the back of a lowly mule is another moment that absolutely mesmerizes. There must have been hundreds of extras. They're all waving palm branches as they should, and throwing down garments for the path of their approaching King. The expectation and the excitement is that Christ will soon be setting them free from a life under Roman rule. There is joyous fervor here, electricity fills the air. They are intoxicated at the thought of their oppressor finally "getting theirs", though many in the crowd will turn on Jesus in just a few days. The Triumphal Entry in this version leads Christ straight into the temple, where the greatest confrontation yet is going to take place.

This is the scene where Jesus is the liberator of the religiously oppressed, the spiritually abused. His roughback moment of turning over tables in the temple is a pivotal, highly charged moment. He doesn't stop and create a whip first -- rendered here, it is a rash, quick moment of righteous anger. He screams that the temple is made for worship, now being made into a den of thieves, and immediately all of the scribes and Pharisees see what he's done and the commoners rush into the house of worship. The children immediately exalt him, and it is perhaps here where we see his glowing smile in the film, a moment of the sheer satisfaction at what he's just done and the pleasure he gets from the mouths of children. They are waving their palm branches and shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" It is clear in Pasolini's version -- and it seems to make a lot of sense when you think about it -- that this is the final blow in a conspiracy surrounding his approaching imminent death. The scribes and Pharisees can't believe their eyes at what he's just done on their turf. Their plot to have him dead and gone is ratcheted up another notch. Things will not be the same from this point forward.

The Jesus of Pasolini's film is serious, solemn. Aside from the satisfaction with the children in the temple, he really doesn't smile very much. This Jesus isn't the hippie rocker messiah of Jesus Christ, Superstar. He doesn't smile at his own parables or laugh when he teaches, as he did in other filmed versions of the story. He doesn't seem amused with himself or his stories at all. This is a Jesus who clearly understands the solemn nature of his messianic mission. He knows his role in the world, he knows the sacrifice he is here to make. He knows the political forces he is in conflict with and can see to the core of their religious hypocrisy. He calls them out on it in quite a few searing scenes where he preaches outside their walls and windows, blasting them as vipers ensconced in the allure of religious power and wealth. (As an aside, the Jesus of Pasolini's film, actor Enrique Irazoqui, did stop in for a few brief appearances on the A&F forum beginning Here.)

The crucifixion, as I've said, is bloodless, but the power of Christ even from the cross is onscreen. As Jesus screams in agony that God has forsaken him, an earthquake rockets through the city, pummeling several buildings along the way. We don't see the temple vale torn in two, but can surmise that it happened in this moment. And of course, there's a resurrection (and an assumed ascension), unique to a film created by a Marxist-atheist, showing that Pasolini really was interested in the story itself, and the movement that ensued and changed the world.

One of the other things I find interesting is that if Pasolini was an atheist who read the four Canonical gospels and suddenly found himself interested in the Jesus story, why does he include the prophesies that authenticate it as Reality? The wise men from the east telling Herod that the baby will be born in Bethlehem; a narrator that points out the prophesy "Out of Egypt I have called my Son"; Jesus in many moments showing the parallels between the words of Old Testament prophets and the actions surrounding his life. Prophesy and its fulfilment is loaded into the film, illustrating the director's poetic sensibilities in front of his Marxist-atheist worldview. I wonder if the Story had any greater impact on him, or any of the other actors or workers involved, than simply the making of a great Italian art epic.

Overall, the film is solid, perhaps a masterpiece in its day, but too artsy and neo-realist for today's average movie goer. The kid that loves Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (these poor gamer teens just don't know any better) will find the film dry, tedious, old and "boring." I can't say the same. The further I got into it, the deeper and richer the film became for me, to where at the end I could only admit that it is a "classic." But as far as the Jesus story goes for contemporary audiences, I'd still list the other films I mentioned before this.

April Showers of Blessing. (2011)

2011-04-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

In April and May I'll be focusing on the long overdue task of tracking down films from A&F's "Top 100 Films of Arts & Faith." I'll be working on the ones I missed from both the 2010 and 2011 lists. It will be impossible to see every one I've missed, as I'm sure that would be over fifty films with the two lists combined, but these lists are so rich I'm sure I'll love whatever I can cover.

My work schedule will be through-the-roof-crazy this month, throwing my typical lack of sleep into a new phase of very strange hours of a lack of sleep. But I'm going to post something for each film I see, even if what I post turns out to be quite small. I've found joy in the past when digging into the championed films this community has voted on. These are typically very strong films from the canon of film history -- often masterpieces -- sometimes forgotten or left behind, or simply looked over in the past.

But they won't all be my cup of tea, so this is an exercise in growth for me as well.

As per usual, anything new I find in theaters I'll try to blog about as well, and link to as I do from around the web -- especially when I find an admirable film, for my favorite joy is to write about an experience I loved. But I'll be honest, too, and if I spend money on a stinker, I'll post something about it here and let you know why I think it stinks.

I'm also hoping to resurrect the Non-Lollipop docs feature in April/May, as I've had fun with it in the past and miss turning those write-ups in. The doc film form has been my favorite kind of movie from the past few years.

Grace and peace to you. Happy April, let the sunshine in.

A Screaming Man. (2010) Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

2011-03-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

Often when I choose to see a foreign film it's simply out of a curiosity to peek into another culture. Other times I'm looking for global ideas in storytelling, the kind of ideas that stray from the control of western culture. A Screaming Man caters to both of these needs, packing a realist family drama in an artistically shot film, capturing Chad and its land and culture in an absorbing film.

The simple story almost feels like an Old Testament tale, like Abraham, Moses or Joseph -- stories which can be told in a few quick chapters but have been expounded on for generations.

Adam, a former champion swimmer now referred to as "Champ," now pushing sixty, works as a pool attendant at a N'Djamena hotel. He and his son Abdel share the responsibility of the place each day. They go home to mom Mariam at night, who feeds them well and looks after the family's emotional well being. The country is in the throes of a civil war and the military has begun asking families to volunteer -- which in Adam's case would mean signing up his son -- or contribute money to crush the rising rebellion. It is assumed that every family will at some point contribute something. Adam doesn't have any money that he can give.

When new owners take over the hotel and Adam's friend, a long-time chef is let go, change is obviously in the works. Adam is told that the job of pool attendant should be done by one person, there's no need for both him and his son. He's informed that Abdel will be permanently taking over the job, and that he will now being wearing a uniform outside the hotel as the gatekeeper. He goes into a deep, dark depression. The pool has been his life. He sits at the gate opening and closing it for cars that come and honk at him, pulling him out of a zoned state. He is crushed.

In the moment of crisis Adam makes a decision regarding the fate of his son that will ensure he'll be back in his old position. It's not too long before he regrets what he's done, but it is too late. He asks his friend David, the ex-chef, whether he believes in God. Some transgressions might be rectified in the next life but can't be taken care of in this one. Sometimes a lapse in judgment cannot be recovered. This is a film about a decent man who has lived moral life, wrecked by one wrong move. It's about the guilt and consequences of dealing with that one mistake you can never get over.

It is also a film with a very strong crescendo. It might seem like it's very simple when it begins. It seems like it's only got a few tricks left at the half-way point. But the final frames of the story are pointed, as we observe Adam only trying to recover and put the pieces back in place. To compare the opening scene of Adam and Abdel hugging and frolicking in the pool with the final scenes of devastating consequence is a reminder that life can turn on us fast, that we need to guard every choice as fragile and choose wisely in every decision.

The Colors of the Mountain. (2011) Carlos César Arbeláez

2011-03-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

This strong debut from director Carlos César Arbeláez hasn't been released yet in its home country, Colombia. It is only beginning to crawl around the festival circuit; Film Movement scooped it up rather quickly. I'm glad they did, I hope they're able to put it in as many US theaters as they can. A war story where war is off-screen, the film centers on childhood innocence, capturing breathtaking mountainside cinematography that would be scrumptiously suited to the big screen.

In remote Colombian villages, families of farmers who peacefully tend the land are forced to choose between military forces and the guerrilla rebels endlessly fighting outside their homes. Manuel, pushing his eighth birthday, has witnessed horrors no kid should be subjected to, the worst being psychological -- a constant fear that dad will soon be carted away to the fight. While milking a cow or working the land, if dad sees the approaching rebels, he hides, and mom tells the group he's gone for the day in town. The rebels tell her to make sure he gets to an upcoming meeting. He never makes it to a meeting in town.

Manuel has his own obsession -- soccer -- and he gets together with other school-skipping kids for constant play. The kids have designed a sort of league, Manuel thinking his team can take on anyone around the village. When his parents celebrate his eighth birthday, Manuel gets a gorgeous professional looking soccer ball in place of the slosh ball they've been kicking around. The kids on his team are amazed and can't wait to give it a whirl. Trekking off for a jaunt of sport, they note the guerrillas already camped in the mountainside location where they play. They decide it might be best to wait until later.

The villages are trying to prosper and live normally, keeping order and hope for all the families. Though the last school teacher was chased off by the rebels, a new hire is excited about the possibility of educating these kids. She settles into her living quarters in the school, lining up all the kids to meet them, first through fifth grade. She puts up with political graffiti on the side of her school and the fact that when she's not around, the building is used for rebel meetings. In her youthful zeal she has no idea she's walking into a hopeless situation.

When a neighbor loses grip on a cow running through the soccer field, all will know in no uncertain terms that this field has been recently mined. Years ago, the military used the place strategically and the rebels need to make sure they cannot land a chopper or walk here again. In a turn of events, the new soccer ball will sit there at the end of the field under a large tree, with the children unable to pick it up for fear of being blown to bits. It sits there for days as they make plans on how to get it. It becomes an obsession, the need to get that ball that glares at them from the end of the field.

Being kids, having that more reckless mentality of a child's mind, they will no doubt attempt to get it. There are several intense, gruelling scenes of Manuel and his friends hanging from the tree, navigating the minefield in order to grasp that childhood object of desire. At one point Manuel's albino friend loses his much needed glasses trying to grab the ball. It's awful to think of him facing his parents -- the loss of glasses being a secondary crime to him being in the minefield in the first place.

The soccer ball and a view of life through Manuel's eyes are center at the heart of this story. In many ways, the film is reminiscent of Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven, though in the Iranian masterpiece the brother's search, that thing in jeopardy, was his sister's shoes. The Colors of the Mountain doesn't get the chance to be as tender as a Majidi film though, because there are always rebels on the land, explosions in the distance, helicopters overhead -- the interruption of normal life by an encroaching war that will not go away. This is a hard, stern look at the life of war-torn children who can no longer grasp at even the simplest of life's pleasures.

Two Missed Cocos.

2011-03-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

I missed both of these rom-fem biopics in the theater setting. Released almost exactly a year apart, I remember that I wanted to see them but couldn't fix my schedule to get to either one.

Coco Before Chanel, which made its theatrical run two years ago, is about Coco Chanel's life from maybe her late teens into her early thirties. It is an excellent setup for the second film, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, a film which had its theatrical run last summer, about a later more ordered time in Chanel's life.

I recently caught the DVDs within a few days of each other, and found that seeing them chronologically -- which applies to the release dates as well as the timeline of Chanel's life -- is best. The second film is far more compelling artistically, strengthening my theory about watching the two in this way: they build from a somewhat average but entertaining first film to an incredible climax in the wonderfully rendered latter film, the two time periods of Chanel's life bleeding together like you're taking in a four-hour film or a mini-series.

This is going to be short and sweet, but I wanted to put the experience down now so I can fondly look back on it later. Here are just a few paragraphs on each:

Coco Before Chanel. (2009) Anne Fontaine

Here we have Audrey Tautou (whom I adore) as the ambitious Coco Chanel, beginning in a run down orphanage as a forgotten little girl and quickly making a living as a music hall chanteuse. She's in business with her sister -- the two have several numbers they've put together -- but we immediately see that it's all about survival. The gigs are less about the singing and more about a demeaning and sexist meat market. Approached by men constantly, Coco points to the whores on the other side of the bar. She's in survival mode but she's not going to stoop to that level. The irony being that later, when she ends up a rich mistress, it isn't very different from a whore's existence except for a lavish lifestyle living with a single wealthy john.

As a mistress Coco gets to live in a mansion, though she's initially tucked away in a room upstairs to avoid any visiting socialites. Too empowered to be hidden for long, she meets the wealthiest in a burgeoning capitalist culture making hats for rich women and working on their outfits for social gatherings. This is how her talent fully emerges; she goes from being a commodity to filling consumerist desires. It's the beginning of a fashion empire originally launched from a room shamefully hidden away in the house of one who would buy her affections. The man, who lacks generosity and compassion, she grows to detest and later pity. She leaves him for her first real love, Boy, who is smitten by her unbroken nature and overpowering gaze.

She's a character a viewer can begin to hope for, and root for. She will find love, but then she'll quietly obsess over it, lose it, and make a move toward business where she'll trade in any emotional hopes for thriving financially. Her change sets us up for the second film where she is colder, calloused, totally financially independent, and able to exploit whoever or whatever she wants.

This is a good if not great film that has a few moments of emotional tug. When you see what Chanel went through for the nature of survival, it's sometimes a bit sad to watch. Tautou retains her typical ability of lifting the material to meet her acting abilities, but I'd recommend Coco Before Chanel only if you're planning to see both films.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. (2010) Jan Kounen

There are a couple of reasons I really fell in love with this film, which in moments is a stylistic rush, at other times downright sexy.

In the first twenty minutes a life-long historical bewilderment I've had is relayed with incredible force. It's an orchestral concert, with Chanel in the audience. The date is May 29, 1913. If you're a classical music aficionado you recognize this as the date of the riots over the premier of "The Rite of Spring," at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Stravinski's music drew unsuspecting listeners into a fury. They simply weren't ready for the atonality of this art. Chanel, cutting edge in the fashion industry and now a sophisticated urban bourgeoise, immediately finds in Stravinski's music a force to connect with. Here are two people ahead of their time, mindful of the arts and driven by their creative passion. Only their egos are bigger than their passion, and no moral or marriage will keep them apart.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky turns into a smoldering story of raw unemotional sexuality, unhinging the erotic nature of these otherwise restrained characters (think: Henry and June or The Lover). Anna Mouglalis is a completely different Coco than Audrey Tautou -- rightfully so, since it's a person at a different stage in her life. (Don't most of us completely change every ten or fifteen years?) Whatever she once was, whatever she is now, captured in this film is an onscreen siren, one which any man would simultaneously fear, obsess over and ache for. I haven't seen a spitfire woman so smoking red-hot since Giovanna Mezzogiorno in the first half of Vincere.

The film is a visual delight filled with greater splashes of nuance than Coco Before Chanel. It captures Chanel's household, where the two end up living -- along with Stravinsky's wife and children -- with visual passion and a tension that matches the affair. Coco's cool and collected nature is coldly amazing, but from the first film we've seen all the roughened stages setting this callousness in place; she builds an empire on the concepts of female empowerment and beauty but closes herself behind walls of accumulated power, commodities, and isolation.

Devil. (2010) John Erick Dowdle

2011-03-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

Bojana Novakovic dragged to hell... again.

I know I said the intended use of the rest of March would be set aside for catching up with a few foreign films I hadn't gotten around to, but this little horror/thriller morality tale completely took me by surprise. I popped it in tonight looking only for a quick fix, a bit of lighter fare, but, wow, wish I'd seen this one in the theater. Great little film ripped straight out of I Peter 5:8. M. Night is responsible for the story -- what, has this guy been digging into the Good Book lately? He'd better keep it up. It's certainly better stuff than his last two films.

I put up a speed of a bullet post with possible light spoilers at A&F; if you want to check out a "Reaction on the Fly," it is Here.

EUFF Wrap. (2011)

2011-03-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

I was once again grateful to get to so many new films from Europe this year. The fest, made of people who are typically used to members being local, was quite accomodating in helping me obtain tickets over the phone when Ticketmaster couldn't figure out how to make it work for a non-local. The people at the Siskel have always been good to me, and it's nice to feel that kind of warmth from the classiest place to see a film in the Chicago area.

I do feel like I hit a few of the wrong films this year; my Reactions here at Filmsweep were sometimes a mere "Blah," and in other places serious contempt (especially toward the two Swedish films, which as a big fan of the country's films I admit I react against harder). But if it weren't for EUFF, I wouldn't have seen Amer and Letters to Father Jacob on the big screen, where they were both riveting in their own ways and larger than life. I also scooped Korkoro and Trust Me, turning in the first English language write-ups available on the web.

I missed two films I had tickets for: a documentary on the French New Wave called Two In the Wave, which just became available on Netflix, and Danish film Applause, starring Paprika Steen as an actor coming out of rehab -- a film which Ebert loved, and one that I was sad to have had to pass up. But you can't hit 'em all, and that is a film that won't escape a future DVD release.

Thanks again to the Siskel Film Center (great pic of their location above). They'll be launching their Asian showcase in April. Meantime, I hope to fill out the month catching recently released foreigns, which of course I'll shout out about here at the blog.

Letters to Father Jacob. (2009) Klaus Härö

2011-03-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is a moving little Finnish film, wonderfully made, that reminds me a bit of Babette's Feast, or perhaps the recent Lourdes.

It's about Leila, a woman who has spent twelve years locked away behind bars. She's suddenly pardoned and due to be released and she can't quite figure out why. She argues with the warden that she's supposed to be a "lifer," that she shouldn't be going anywhere, that she was destined to live out her days in jail. She doesn't have anywhere to go anyway, except the one place the warden suggests: she should live with an elderly retired priest named Father Jacob in a remote parsonage in the Finnish countryside. There she will care for his needs and live a life of quiet in the old home.

When she arrives she is clear about what she will or won't do. "I don't do windows," is one of her first phrases to Jacob. She's surprised that Father Jacob is blind, and so old, and that the only thing he wants, the only job he actually desires from her is to read the letters he receives on a daily basis in the mail and dictate as he gently responds.

The letters are from parishioners Jacob has known throughout the course of his ministry. They are petitions for prayer from those who struggle with all kinds of things -- drunken spouses, sick children, depression, and more. They are sent because folks know Jacob is an honorable man; they know he will intercede on their behalf, and if their story is relayed, they know the holy man's words will reach God's heart.

Leila, agnostic but perhaps thinking herself an atheist, humors Jacob and reads the letters. The notes, she believes, can't be better than religious hope -- there's no God to answer Jacob's prayers. But in small moments she is touched by his relentless compassion. He answers every letter he receives and petitions God for help on a daily basis. She sees his dedication even if she thinks it's all for naught.

A third character, the mailman, arrives on bicycle with the letters. Leila waits outside for him every day, gathering the envelopes and sometimes throwing a few out. You might think this is where the love story is going to take place, Leila and the mailman, the mailman and Leila. But Letters to Father Jacob isn't a film about earthly love. He's scared of her. He knows she's an ex-con and immediately puts up walls, avoiding her at all costs, bicycling away from the parsonage when he sees her waiting for him out front. He even goes so far as to stop bringing the mail. When she catches him in a criminal act and nearly beats the fuzz out of him (Leila is no small woman), things in their relationship go from strained to total avoidance.

But Leila is of a hardened type that is well adjusted to these kinds of relationships. She's probably created them a few times before. Constantly unimpressed, sometimes brash and too much to the point, she doesn't joke, barely laughs, and puts up with others rather than enjoying them. Perhaps she has not enjoyed any day with or without anyone else for a long, long time. She's had time to think about her crime during those twelve years incarcerated, and the thinking and constant guilt have eaten away at her soul. She functions in her day to day routines, but any joy of living was sucked out of her a long time ago.

Kaarina Hazard as Leila was nominated for a Jussi, the Finnish equivalent of the Oscar, and she is perfect in this unglamorous role. Heikki Nousiainen as Father Jacob won the Jussi for the Best Actor award. The two together, the caring and compassionate old preacher and the uncaring and dispassionate ex-con, end up digging thoroughly into each other's backgrounds and psyches, and each are going to learn something valuable about their own self as well as the other.

A miracle or two will take place before the end of the film, but we can't be certain how much it changes Leila's outlook on life. This might be more like real life than any miraculous event that suddenly changes everything about her. We all see miracles all the time, but most will go unnoticed.

With its deep, lovely visuals of the interiors and exteriors of the abandoned church they live by, this is one of those quiet films of subtle nuance that you really want to see on the big screen. But unless you live near a big city you probably won't get that chance. That's a sad fact, but as luck would have it the DVD was just released earlier this month, and the film is available through Netflix. One way or another, I highly encourage you to track it down.

My friend Nathan from Cinema Truth wrote an excellent review that sheds light on the film's Bressonian qualities. It is posted on my buddy Jeffrey Overstreet's site, Looking Closer. I highly encourage you to delve more into Letters to Father Jacob -- that enlightening review is posted Here.

Trust Me. (2010) Johan Kling

2011-03-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is the second seriously awful Swedish film I saw at this year's EUFF -- two out of two for me, which is highly disappointing since Sweden remains the country I've traveled to most outside of America, a country known for some stellar filmmaking. (Bergman, anyone?)

Older filmmaking aside, Sweden's output in recent years has throttled me. Even in the last decade it has become the country I've most looked forward to for masterpiece films that relay wonderfully human stories: Lukas Moodysson (Together, Lilya 4-Ever), Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor), Mikael Håfström (Evil), Tomas Alfredson (Four Shades of Brown, Let the Right One In), and lately Daniel Alfredson and Niels Arden Oplev (The Millennium Trilogy, now being created for US audiences by David Fincher). These are all accomplished directors with great films that, if you still haven't seen, I encourage you to track down the DVDs.

It's just too bad that the two I've seen this year don't live up to any of the films listed above, the largest problem being that nothing happens in these films! Behind Blue Skies, which I railed against Here, is still a step above Trust Me, a film I like the original title for much better. ("Puss" would directly translate as "Kiss." Don't know why that needed to be changed. Actually neither one of the titles makes much sense in the context of a film that barely has a kiss or a lack of trust. Yet I digress.)

The movie reminded me of TV's "Glee." OK, fine, I'm no fan of the wretched boob tube and I've never seen an episode of "Glee," but I've seen its horribly artificial, vacuous and trite commercials, and that whole mess still seems better than the bulk of Trust Me, which has no comedy, no intensity -- no real mood for that matter -- but is a monotony of nothingness which isn't Jarmuschian and intending to be a "cool kind of nothingness," but really wanting to be something. And it isn't.

To give details about the plot would almost pretend that this is a script that actually exists. I prefer to think that the script is pretend and the whole film experience never happened.

But, alas --

It's about a youthful theater group in which most of the actors, for reasons unexplained, don't want to be there, and the building's landlord, for even more unexplained reasons, no longer wants the group on the premises. He's trying to figure out a way to evict them, and of course he will or the story won't be able to progress, and of course it won't work or the story won't get to a happy ending.

The stiff-necked actors and the people that work around the theater are, of course, all in love with someone who is in love with someone else, and the director, of course, can't quite bring things up to speed to get the next play ready for opening night. She's the only one who cares about the production, and even she is unhinged when learning of her fiance's affair with a member in the cast who is, yep, you guessed it, with child. His.

There's a stage gun that will no doubt get used, various pictures taken that will no doubt be revealed, and a mysterious hole in the wall where people watch people take off their clothes. There's also a bum who lives on the premises, unknown to all, and he stinks and the stink is often misunderstood as, well, something else that stinks that I guess is supposed to be funny.

And then there's the fat girl. Unappreciated, unloved, the film gets her drunk and laid backstage, and for one glorious moment you think things in her unnoticed life might begin to turn around. Sadly, they don't. The film seems to hate her, and it reminds me that I never saw a fat girl in all my years in Sweden.

The actors in Trust Me can't bring life to this lifeless script. How would they be able to? There might be some fine actors here, but they've got nothing to work with in such a sap headed story that can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama, and seriously fails at both.

As if legitimizing Trust Me, some in the EUFF crowd attempted to break into a half-hearted applause at the end, at which I cleared my throat quite loudly, even unexpectedly to myself, and realized that the world is starving for something that matters. If it's Trust Me that fills that hole, we're in greater danger than I thought. We're like the humans strung up in The Matrix and the machines have taken over. Hopefully the machines are kind enough to send "Glee" reruns to our decaying brain cells while we lie there like zombies not even existing.

The Temptation of St. Tony. (2009) Veiko Õunpuu

2011-03-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

Like an art school project that got too deep for its own good, created in black and white flourishes and wearing its baffling abstract influences on its sleeve (Tarr, Lynch), The Temptation of St. Tony was described by EUFF as, "A Euro-modern riff on Bosch’s painting, The Temptation of St. Anthony."

Here is an image of the triptych, widely regarded as a powerful work about a tormented soul urged to participate in sin. However, if you've seen the film, the painting itself might produce a sort of shrugging of the shoulders. Nevertheless:

For a much better view look Here, or Here.

I don't know if I got all that out of the screening I attended, but this seriously strange film is at least as busy as the painting with a cast of odd, indecipherable characters who each bring a temptation or two to central frizzy-haired Henry Spencer-like character, Tony.

There are moments early on when the film is darkly humorous, and rather enjoyably so. It seems like this is going to be a trippy, fun ride. A worn-out looking Tony, leading a funeral procession for his deceased dad with a small band ensemble (big bass drum, out of tune horns) takes mourners on a dirge through an Estonian countryside only to witness one of the strangest car wrecks you'll ever see, a solo accident crashing the car straight into the Baltic, apparently causing another death. The procession obviously notices, stops for a gaper's delay, shrugs the event off, and continues in their mournful march. It's a laughable moment of irony and inhumanity, perfectly setting the tone for all the events Tony's about to be thrust into.

Continuing in a mode of black comedy, a few minutes later at a business dinner the cast is approached by a bum who stares in through the window at either the elegant meal, or the people at the table, or perhaps their wine bottle which he wants. They are all put off, grossed out by the transient and not knowing how to handle the situation. Tony picks up the bottle, walks outside, gives it to the man, who empties it of its contents and saves it with a bag of recyclables he's been carrying all along. Scenes like this provoke ironic laughs, but they rarely show up again as the film envelops us in its non-linear redundancy.

Tony himself is a good-natured fellow, constantly thrown into artificial situations that no one would know how to handle. The fact that some of the situations make no sense, in a film that makes very little sense, actually brings film viewers out of the experience itself and into the realization that we are watching a movie, and at points just waiting for it to end.

The film divides itself into six parts, represented by Roman numerals, small black letters against a large white backdrop. It continues to follow the considerate Tony, who seems to live in two alternate universes, one with his wife and daughter and the other with a girlfriend he's left the family to be with. In one of the more interesting scenes which probably lasts about twenty minutes and could be turned into an outstanding short film, Tony is silently followed in a dream-like state, camera behind him ala the Dardennes, and he ends up in a cabaret nightclub called the Golden Age where all of the most perfect Lynchian elements come to life. These elements are already suited for the strange and surreal nighttime club experience anyway (think: Betty and Rita at the Club Silencio performance in Mulholland Drive, or anyone in Twin Peaks who had a dream experience with The Red Room of the Black Lodge). The scene extends itself into a cannibalistic nightmare, suggesting man's ability to trounce on another (for any number of reasons), the whole thing witnessed through the eyes of a now shocked Tony. It is seriously an excellent scene, and is easily the scene in the film that puts director Õunpuu on the global map.

I don't want to oversell this film though. It is tedious to sit through, a nightmare in its own right. Of interest in the theater were the loud yawns coming from a young female viewer behind me who obviously wanted everyone at the Siskel to know how thoroughly bored she was with the whole thing (and I honestly can't say that I blame her), countered by the protests coming from an older woman in front of me who was upset about the rude yawning behind us. (Can't say that I blame her, either.) I probably agree more with the woman sitting in back of me than the frustrated lady in front.

But Õunpuu has created something worth discussion here, I'm just not sure I know the crowd that would be interested in discussing it. When I was a kid, a group of film nerds and I loved digging into Eraserhead, constantly fidgeting with the material in attempt to solve the riddle of its mystery. They were always fun discussions, often leading to red faces, heated arguments. I'm not certain that type of discussion could be attempted with St. Tony, because I'm not sure there are any real life parallels you can drag out from all these enigmatic visuals. There are a few moments, though, where the visuals are wildly fun, confrontational and chaotic in a certain sense -- but you wade through much filler to find the golden nuggets.

This was the official Estonian submission for Academy Awards consideration but it didn't make the shortlist for final nomination. Compared to a film like Dogtooth, which can be seen from so many different perspectives, I can see why St. Tony didn't make the cut. While unique and absurd, it is overly long and at times quite forced, and other perspectives will be hard to come by because really any one perspective might be difficult. I will, however, keep my eyes peeled for any future film by Õunpuu, who has an obvious talent for visuals but might need to corral that wild narrative, at least enough to give the audience an idea of what's going on.

Fear Me Not. (2008) Kristian Levring

2011-03-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Just a few sentences on a solid DVD I caught between EUFF screenings.

Ulrich Thomsen has nothing to fear except for... fearing himself.

I've been a fan of director Kristian Levring since his knockout desert survivalist film, The King is Alive (Dogme film #3), where passengers on a broken down tour bus present "King Lear" in the sands of a wasteland terrene -- and his Conrad "Heart of Darkness" allusion, The Intended, a trip of a film which I was lucky enough to see on the big screen years ago. (Thanks, Facets!)

I've also loved Ulrich Thomsen in practically everything I've seen him in: Festen (Also known as The Celebration, which was dogme film #1 and a perfect launch to the movement); Per Fly's The Inheritance, another near masterpiece; the original Brothers, long before Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman even heard of it; and a small unknown film called Adam's Apples, which is a great reference for Fear Me Not. These are just a few of the films I've loved him in, and they're probably the easiest to track down. Seriously, I don't think I've seen Thomsen in a stinker.

I've also often bragged about Paprika Steen (no stranger to the dogme movement, as seen Here), whom I have a date with this weekend (the Danish film Applause -- thanks, EUFF!).

It would seem that the combination of many of my favorite artists teaming up for Fear Me Not would create a film perfectly suited to my tastes.

After seeing it, that assumption about sums it up.

It's an excellent film, though perhaps not perfect. Levring actually held back where I wished for greater tension, something he's certainly not had a problem with in the past. However, the story itself is quite intriguing and applicable today to many floating around in the haze of modern "medicine."

Thomsen plays modern day business man, Mikael, who is sliding backwards on the social scale; a mid-life crisis, perhaps, or a breakdown. He might be dealing with depression, not wanting to admit it, or perhaps he's just feeling more aloof, disconnected from the real world when all he does is work, work, work. He's like the guy from Ecclesiastes with two hands full that needs a third hand to grasp for more.

We catch him at the beginning of a leave of absence from work. His wife, Sigrid (Steen), seems a little worried about his lack of desire to go back. His brother-in-law mentions a clinical trial for a new pill of some sort, an anti-depressant, and without hesitation Mikael signs up for the deal. The rest of the story follows how this drug makes Mikael feel stronger at first, but then brings hallucinations that he often drags into reality, hallucinations that get him into trouble.

For instance, sitting at the doctor's office awaiting an appointment regarding the use of the new med, he believes other patients are getting into a ruckus of sorts, and as he leaps into the fray and punches out a man it's revealed that the ruckus never happened, but his blow to the man's face did. He just punched out an innocent man in the doctor's office. Perhaps that's a reason to discontinue the drug.

The trial is cut short due to some other patient reactions, and Mikael, with a four month supply, tells his brother-in-law he has thrown all the meds in the garbage. Which at one point he even does. Too bad, that like a dog back to his own vomit, he heads out to the garbage truck and picks through the trash to get his pills.

At some point it's no longer hallucinations that are putting Mikael over the edge. We actually see his personality change. And to his own detriment he begins chronicling these changes in a journal on his laptop. He becomes abusive to people in and outside of the family, he becomes evasive to people's concerns and outright confrontational when challenged. He hurts several people with terrible schemes hatched out of his head, and we're curious to know why he can't see how horribly the drug has made him.

There is a reveal in Fear Me Not about twenty minutes toward the end of the film that is mind boggling. It at once reverses everything we've understood to this point, and feels like an entire reboot of the film. From that point on, anything can happen, which is a shot of adrenaline at just the right moment.

For fans of this director or these actors or for fans of Scandinavian cinema in general, it is definitely a film worth tracking down. For those who haven't made inroads into Danish cinema quite yet, I might still recommend something like Festen first. But this is one more film from a part of the world that seems to explode with very great, very real and human stories. It's a film that addresses the situation of successful men today as well as how some make it in this world, enhancing themselves, but sometimes the enhancement is destabilizing.

The Army of Crime. (2009) Robert Guédiguian

2011-03-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

There's a fine line between resistance and terrorism, and that's just one of the ideas explored in Robert Guédiguian's latest French pseudo-reality melodrama, The Army of Crime, the second French WWII film screening this week at Chicago's EUFF.

France in 1943 is a country rolling over. They have declared neutrality, but it's a declaration built on nice thoughts, meaningless words. Intimidated citizens are pushed into collaboration with the occupying regime, forced to aid in the transportation of Jews and minorities on cattle cars to Auschwitz. Even the police are involved in the capture and torture of civilians to obtain information about the resistance. It must have been a confusing time to know the right, moral way to resist -- if such a notion of resistance even existed. If you kill a countryman in order to save other countrymen, is the act considered allegiance to France or terrorism? If you throw a grenade into a roomful of Nazi soldiers with wives and other young girls present, have you served your country or only added to an already endless volume of innocent blood?

Like The Battle of Algiers, the 1966 masterpiece which flips the French from its neutral role in Guédiguian's film to the role of outright oppressor (and is even referenced quite a few times here, most notably in a scene where an escapee flees only to be tripped in the street), The Army of Crime explores the idea that resistance absolutely isn't futile, that it's a necessity, but a muddled affair. As Robert McNamara points out in The Fog of War, in order to do good, you may have to engage in acts of evil.

The resistance, represented here as a makeshift group of immigrants, are aware of the choices they make daily; the ramifications of their actions will be considered by some heroic, by others dangerous and degenerate. Whether they're a resistance force or a terrorist group isn't just based on the perspective of the side you're on, but often a question of how far you're willing to go for the sake of your own freedom -- the morality of immoral acts, so to speak -- and though I'm not crazy about this film, that's a theme I always find intriguing.

The group's leader is Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist, a poet and a pacifist. At first a conscientious objector to the very idea of a war, he's not someone you might consider leading the laborer division of the Parisian Resistance. But after throwing a grenade into a group of marching SS soldiers, he lead the ragtag group on 30 brutal operations against the Nazis. He goes against his objections over killing because he's in a situation outside the laws of morality.

The operations become more and more elaborate, the group hoping for attention among the citizens and in the press. No matter what feats they boldly pull off, they'll have a harder time getting in with the press. The Germans are a little too smart for that. One of the best ways to understand the Germans' knowledge of the power of the media is to listen to the radio, often heard as a break between scenes:

"When a train derails or locomotives are destroyed, that isn't one less train for the Germans, it means the French will go without," the man on the radio announces. "When a power station or a dam is bombed, when saboteurs blow up a transformer or cut power cables, French workers go idle, French housewives lack electricity, French craftsmen have to down tools..."

The obvious point that these terrorist are really hurting the French.

Later: "Near Chalon-sur-Saône, 18 dead and 32 wounded in an attack. In Grenoble, a terrific explosion causes 1,500 casualties. In Bourg-en-Bresse, pillaging during General Dobenet's funeral. This is the work of foreign terrorists, nearly all Jews. Armenians, Polish Jews, Red Spaniards... We shall answer violence with fair but merciless repression..."

Although spoken in French and riding the airwaves over France, it's obvious where these words are coming from. The news has just reported, blamed, and planned an assaultive attack all at once.

I purposefully called the film a melodrama based on a part of the definition of the word, "emphasizing plot/action at the expense of characterization." It's not a film that is going to stick with me, but it wasn't the worst experience either. But where it attempts at characterization it clearly fails, and it loves to continuously ride along its repetitious plot.

Maybe it's a general feeling I have of being tired with WWII movies, but I found The Army of Crime long winded and lacking in interest. I barely made it through. After taking forty-five minutes to finally set the proper characters in place, the film becomes a basic "Spy vs Spy" routine. They plan, they bomb, the shoot, they plan more, they bomb and shoot more, they get caught, they get tortured, they make more plans and bomb and shoot more until getting caught finally, once and for all. The film tries to dip into the waters of a love story for a moment or two toward the end, but by the time it gets there we're too bored to care. And when the end credits roll and the director admits he had to alter certain events, that it was "necessary to recount this modern legend to help us live here and now," I kinda didn't get it and felt the whole thing was a giant waste of time.

WWII was a horror words cannot even express. The more we study it, we simply know it. We're glad it's no longer with us and we hope to never go back to that kind of a world. I understand that films like this are supposed to be a reminder to us of a world we hope to never go back to, but lately I feel like these films are done to death, that there's a new one on the market every month. And by "on the market," I mean just that. There are so many films that need to make money from these atrocities; they claim to want us to remember so that we never forget, but they feel like the same panhandler you see on the street every day.

The problem with The Army of Crime is that brings nothing new to the genre, and it is a genre that, unfortunately for this film, is beginning to look more mechanical than heartfelt. It's not a good or a bad film, in fact the intentions behind it may have been quite good. The timing, maybe not so much in a film world that is currently saturated with the same stories.

Korkoro. (2010) Tony Gatlif

2011-03-10T11:08:00.000-08:00

The first of two EUFF World War II films from France, each showing the cooperation, even the collaboration of the French under an intimidating German regime, Korkoro (also known as Freedom) centers on a group of Roma gypsies splintered and torn apart by the Holocaust. The destruction of property rights and life is a topic usually reserved for Jews in WWII films; here we learn of the similar oppression and slaughter of an entirely different group of people, one largely forgotten and totally unknown to many more.

The year is 1943. A large gypsy family sets course for the region of Burgundy for seasonal work in harvesting like they traditionally do each year. This year they will face greater hostilities. The regime has created laws regarding the nomadic nature of the gypsies -- wandering has become prohibited. The family no longer fits in with the new order. Fortunately for the group a local teacher and a veterinarian/mayor form a quiet opposition, a resistance to Nazi hostility, providing the group with a temporary home -- an unused and empty house where they can stay without a problem.

But problems seem to track the family down from all sides. The neighbors are already scared of a regime they cower from daily, and they don't want the gypsies as their neighbors. In a scene displaying the baser side of humanity they attempt to force the gypsies out. The mayor and the teacher arrive just before all hell breaks loose, and the mayor, Théodore, even threatens to take on the locals lest they back off. They do back off, but Théodore and the pretty teacher pay for their allegiance to the family -- they are soon arrested and beaten by Nazis who could care less whether they are pummeling a man or a woman.

Things are briefly OK for the family, and in a few scenes we get to see them better, meeting a culture that's typically lost on us. Music is a huge release for the family. Dancing and singing with spirited violins and assorted instruments mean much more to them than simple light entertainment. Their music is a meaning of connection, expression and brief escape. Director Gatlif allows quite a bit of room for us to peek in and see their dancing, their frolicking and delight in music which brings a healing ointment through hard times and sorrows.

The group also has some strange spiritual preoccupations. They seem obsessed with ghosts, constantly feeling the presence of spirits and seeing them around every corner. They even bless and anoint the house upon moving in to make sure the spirits go somewhere else. The ghosts are as real to them as any oppression from the Nazi forces; their ability to decipher unknown elements and true evil becomes confused when they're so transfixed.

The main gypsy we'll remember is Taloche, played with a physical presence by James Thiérrée (Charlie Chaplin's grandson), who is more scared of the ghosts than anyone, constantly slipping in cracks and crevices to avoid them. It is Taloche that originally discovers an orphan boy who has been following the group for a time. Taloche dives headfirst into a patch of weeds where the boy is hiding, originally locating him by his scent. They urge the child to leave, but he manages to stick around. He'll be with them through thick and thin.

With the arrest of the teacher and Théodore, the group decides it's time to leave the house and risk the outer elements once again. When they are predictably arrested and hauled off, in a harsh scene filled with faces full of tears, they urge their arrestors to leave the orphan boy behind. "He's not with us! He's not one of us!" they cry. Whether French or German in the arresting squad, no one believes the boy isn't a member of the family. He'll continue to cling to this group like their own new son, and whether they're set free or sent to concentration camps, his fate will accompany the family.

Korkoro is the family tragedy of maybe 12 or 14 people reflecting a time where hundreds of thousands of gypsy families like this were sent into exile and killed. The film tells us that an estimated quarter to a half million gypsies were brutally murdered at the hands of the Nazis out of the two million gypsies living in Europe at the time.

The topic is admirable, and honorable, and Gatlif should be applauded for his efforts. This is the first film I've seen from him, and I understand he has taken on the gypsy cause before, as well as maintaining a personal vision that is pure and unrelated to the worries of how much money films will make. This is certainly a film that will bring light to lost history.

But it's a film I wanted to like more than I actually did. The gypsies are often caricatured, especially Taloche, who comes off a bit like Torisho Mifune in Seven Samurai. He's a bit wild -- a little too much so at times -- making him an unpredictable character who is hard to understand, hard to identify with in a group that is already largely misunderstood.

I was happy to have seen Korkoro, glad to have seen into Gatlif's world which sheds light on an area left out of the textbooks of history. Sadly, the film could have been better built by delivering more realism in its cast so that we care about its cause.

Behind Blue Skies. (2011) Hannes Holm

2011-03-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

A big dick fills the screen at the onset of Behind Blue Skies, with a young pretty blond in Lewinski mode, making sure the film won't be distributed in the U.S. anytime soon. It's instant overkill, a very cheap and pointless ploy, especially for a film that isn't about the nature of sex and has no further nudity throughout. It catches you off guard, but it's the only rise in the film, a story that could have used an erection anywhere else.

Bill Skarsgård plays Martin, the boy with the large penis that (excuse me while I clear my throat) becomes a man by learning the drug trade from his girlfriend's dad while working for him at a summer resort. Martin's step into manhood is solidified in a final confrontation with his own father, a moment we've seen coming for at least 95 minutes in a film that's 85 minutes too long already.

Martin's dad is an alcoholic. It's kept as a family secret. He might start with wine at the dinner table but a typical night sends him on a hunt for the vodka bottles stashed away around the house. He's a blackout drinker, the kind that stumbles and swears and tries to throw parties but will be picked up and dropped into bed when he's done. Ugly, angry, violent and unpredictable, he scares Martin and his mom every night, and when they've all awakened the next morning he can't remember what he did. Martin and his mom remember everything, every recurring day, and have no real option but to repress it.

In a recent filmcomment interview with director Mike Leigh regarding his latest, Another Year, Leigh points out the alcoholism that crops up in a few of his films, and notes that when alcoholism is portrayed in film it isn't about the alcohol, but it's more about the pain. He says, "We know that people are driven to alcohol because of the pain, and it's the pain we're talking about."

Had Behind Beautiful Skies stayed with the story of Martin and the family pain in the aftermath of his father's nightly sprees, it might have been an OK film. The scenes between Martin, his mom and his dad are captured with a grave reality. But time isn't spent there, and some very good scenes are lost to the rest of the film. I didn't time it, but I'd be surprised if even twenty minutes are devoted to Martin's home life. It's treated like bookends, setting up family life in the opening chapters so we can come back and confront things in the end. Presenting the story like this with no depth treats it as a movie cliche, even without the bumbling scenes of drug dealing taking place in the film's middle portion. And the middle portion certainly doesn't help the film either, as it stumbles like Martin's drunk dad: out of control, all over the place, it's a disaster and a mess.

The film wants you to look at it like it's all about different classes in Swedish culture. While Martin and his parents are a working class kind of people, the summer resort where he's headed is intended for the rich. A friend's wealthy parents invited Martin there for the summer, and when he arrives his friend takes off with some other snotty rich kids, and Martin takes a job as a bus boy.

He'll get a promotion to waiter, get fired for stealing beer (he's the fall guy), he'll find a girl he really likes, get re-hired on the side by her dad (same employer that fired him, the drug dealer), he'll begin to make drops for the man, learn to siphon the restaurant's cash, and learn how to negotiate between the police and the dealers in staying out of a coming raid -- all of this before he gets to go back home to punch out daddy. The summer scenes are as unbelievable as the coming roundhouse punch, and I can't stress enough how predictable that knockout punch is.

Writer/Director Hannes Holm must be somewhat young to think that being taken under the wing of a drug dealer is going to make you a better person in the end. There are quite a few paths to manhood, and this simply isn't one of them. I heard a few ladies chatting as we walked out of the theater, saying, "Oh, but he was such a nice boy." I rolled my eyes at the thought. Maybe his manners were nice -- as Swedes typically are -- but this kid's actions prove otherwise and should have landed him behind bars. No one forces Martin to go into a life of crime. No one forces him to continue with the drops when he's fully realized what's going on. He takes the job to stay at the resort with the hopes of meeting up again with the girl.

So this is a film about drug runners in Sweden (uh-huh), and a love story between the drug dealer's well adjusted daughter (uh-huh) and Martin, who is supposed to be likable even though he intentionally chooses a life of crime and comes from an alcoholic home (uh-huh), all of which is boring (oh, uh-HUH!), and bookended by a story that could have been an OK twenty minute short film.

I'm sure Martin inwardly blames dad for many of his problems, but there's no guilt or consequences for any of the wrong Martin has actually done. Yeah, he's a nice kid. Yes, he has nice Swedish manners. But this is a shell of a character, which makes him unsympathetic to this viewer as he kind of bounces from one place to the next like a pinball in a pinball machine, regardless of the morality or lack thereof in any new situation where he finds himself. And just because he predictably lands a blow on daddy's head near the end of the story, how does that make him a man?

I'd like to back up, though, and concentrate on Martin's erect penis in the opening scene. I'm trying to figure out why it bugs me the way it does. I'm old enough to have seen anything any other guy my age has seen. It's not the image itself that I find disgusting here. It's its empty use, a cheap tactic that seems thrown in simply to throw off. Were the film a deeper probing even about sex in and of itself, I might have not been as bugged as I was. But this is PG-13 material that ends up in NC-17 territory, all because of less than ten or fifteen seconds of film. Strange choice.

Holm might want to see some of his countryman Lukas Moodysson's films in order to understand when and where to use this explicit stuff. Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever, the story of a sixteen year-old Estonian seeking a new life in Sweden that ends in sex slavery, is a credible and complex topic which might justify a human body being captured like this on film. But even Moodysson's film with a topic centered on sex is more tastefully done. And even when Moodysson is at his ugliest, his most debased, a viewer can still grasp why he's descended into the trash. What is A Hole in My Heart more than a tormenting experience which tries to create another (cliched) "moral of the story"? We can at least understand what Moodysson is intending, due to the context and the nature of the topic. We might not like it, but we get it.

Or maybe I'm just a prude. That could very well be. But I don't think that is the case. Not here.

When Carlos Reygadas makes a film like Battle in Heaven which I rave about regardless of its opening shocker of straight fellatio, there must be a contextual difference as to why I would react so positively to that film and so negatively to Holm's initial perfunctory sex scene, which set a negative tone in my mind for the rest of the film regardless of how dull it really is. Reygadas uses material like this for an actual purpose, dealing with the guilt and consequences of wrong actions, even the ramifications of sex when it is used in as an escape from the body rather than a connection with the soul of another.

There needs to be a point to sexual activity in mainstream film, and in my mind the opening scene in Behind Blue Skies crosses the line into pornography as much as anything in Winterbottom's 9 Songs. The fact that any of these scenes are artistically rendered for whatever purpose doesn't change that it is what it is. I hate to use this description, sounding like the famous US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when describing The Lovers, but, "I know what it is when I see it."

There's muddled, wrong thinking involved in the creation of this story that is more worthy of delving into than the brief opening scene of a functioning penis, but the film as a whole is so long-winded, falling into the "been there, done that" category, that I don't really care to put more thought into it.

Amer. (2010) Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

2011-03-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

Full steam ahead, it's time to blog some reactions to EUFF, and the first film I get to write about absolutely throttled me.

That is not to say that I loved it. I think that will only be determined after I see it a few more times. But man, oh man, is it one to admire. I long for a second screening, grateful I was able to catch it the first time in the right place -- a packed-house theater with grown men shrieking behind me, and big, bad, rattling and bellowing speakers.

Horror from Belgium, Amer instantly brought to mind two reference points that might be helpful for anyone deciding whether or not to see it.

The first is Kill Bill, which is actually more gruesome and bloodthirsty with its enjoyment of arms and heads cut off and flying through the air, drenching anything close by in the red of its blood. Amer has nothing like those barbaric scenes, although in quick instances it comes close. Where Amer is similar to Tarantino's revenge epic is in its rapid eye edits, its intensely cut visuals which are fascinating as they flicker by, and in its use of unnatural and amplified sound, an incredibly eclectic audio design. When Uma Thurman spins her head or pulls out a sword in Kill Bill, the exaggerated sound effects hail back to early Bruce Lee and 70s Kung Fu flicks; in Amer, when an eye blinks or a corpse is present, or when the victim is struggling in the clutches of her killer, the sound hails back to retro horror, mostly gialli, which the visual stylings reference, too.

The second film that so quickly springs to mind is Ti West's The House of the Devil, a guilty pleasure of mine from last year. That film paid homage to earlier horror classics in its creepy Halloween-like score, its babysitter left alone in a large house, and Satanism lurking in the back of the script. It was set in the mid-80s and built as if it were made then, using cameras from the era and edited in the exact same fashion as those slasher flicks you saw on HBO as a teen. It's the retro-chic, throwback feel that is similar to Amer, and if you've ever enjoyed a film by Dario Argento, you're destined to love Amer.

The plot is so fucked over it is impossible to coherently describe. If it has more than fifteen lines of dialogue, well, I'll eat my hat. This is a film based strictly on sight and sound. It lives by it and dies by it, and to decipher its plot is somewhat meaningless.

But I can try.

Like the panels in a triptych, the film shows three moments in the life of heroine Ana. (Anton Bitel in his Sight & Sound review wonderfully notes that her three-lettered palindromic name reflects the film's "tripartite cyclical structure.") Each Ana is played by a different actress: Cassandra Forêt as Ana enfant, a scared innocent, perhaps aged eight or nine; hottie Charlotte Eugène Guibbaud as Ana adolescente, mid-teen and ready to sexually burst and challenge (perhaps replace) the old bag mom; and the captivating Marie Bos as Ana Adule, repressed and reacting to everything the first two Ana's have already seen.

Not since Un Chien Andalou in 1929 has an eye been so fearfully relayed. (And I just realized that Buñuel's startling plot-less short could be another apt reference for Amer.)

After the death of her grandfather, his corpse laid out downstairs, Ana enfant locks herself away in her room, constantly covering the keyhole through which the family housemaid, supposed a witch, gazes in with one ugly eye. Ana eventually grazes downstairs, curious about the corpse, and takes a watch from her grandfather's hand. She breaks off a finger in the process. His eyes open, the housemaid witch reemerges, and Ana is wrapped up in her black shawl, which we see through her eyes.

Ana adolescente walks into town with her mom. Her burgeoning sexuality is pitted against the fact that her once beautiful mother needs to get the gray out. She is heading in to get her hair dyed. As Ana waits outside with a schoolboy she's too mature for, she wanders from the salon and notices a biker gang outside. She walks provocatively in front of them, her thoughts racing with a rebel teenage eros. Her mom tracks her down and gives her a biting little slap on the face. We're never certain whether her mom is being protective or jealous. The two make their way back home.

Ana Adule returns years later to the villa where all this began. The home is dilapidated now, no one has been here or lived here for years. Ana fantasizes about the taxi driver who drives her there and some locals that take her boxes outside the home's gates. The film from this place completely explodes. One, perhaps two killers are stalking Ana, and at least one will kill her by the film's end.

The film is sexually provocative, but unlike much of contemporary horror, not a whole lot of skin is shown. You might find it here or there, but it doesn't need to be shown. It's embedded into the psyche of every element.

In moments along the way, one tone of pure color stands out and is nearly blinding. Red, green, and blue are predominant, and when they're used they seem to go on for minutes at a time. I cannot describe the creepiness of these scenes, nor can I describe the alarming mood of the sound. Like Lynch at his best, Amer influences mostly through suggestion. You're on the edge of your seat and don't always know why. Then, like Rob Zombie -- but for only seconds at a time -- you are fully introduced to the spectrum of horror that abounds.

The film is excessive, over the top, overflowing with references to Italian horror, and writhing as if possessed with atonal image and sound. It is not for the faint of heart, but not prone to the gore of, say, Suspiria. There are moments that it's all just too much to take in, and I'd be open to those who said their mind began to wander.

But it is moody more than anything, and the mood is salient terror, with a suspense that builds to a tragic climax which leaves you desirous to experience it again.

Transcendent Man. (2011) Robert Barry Ptolemy

2011-03-06T22:22:00.000-08:00

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has a dream.

It's a foreshadowing, a prediction of an age when sickness and death will disappear, blinded eyes will see and the deaf will hear again. "Humans" lucky enough to be alive during this age will gain exponential growth in intelligence. It's the culmination of the ages -- mankind's Utopian moment of perfection.

He's not talking about God or heaven. Those things for him do not exist. At least, not until we create them.

He gets dreamy-eyed when describing our next evolutionary step, a thought he constantly obsesses over whether in writing or lecturing or inventing. The convergence of the body with technology, the two woven into one sole fabric, he says, is beginning now and will accelerate over the next few decades.

That chip in your cell phone today is a million times smaller, cheaper, and more powerful than the same computer years ago that took up half a building and was shared by thousands of students. Being one of the original kids who worked with early computers like this, Kurzweil has seen first-hand how technology evolves exponentially. He wonders why, if everything is getting smaller by the decade, chips won't be implanted in blood cells in the next twenty or thirty years.

Remember The Matrix and The Terminator? Until now we thought all this was simply fiction.

Remember The Borg, that Star Trek pseudo-race of flesh and technology combined? Maybe they're not the bad guys after all. From Wikipedia:

Whereas cybernetics are used by other races in the science fiction world (and in recent times the real world) to repair bodily damage and birth defects, the Borg voluntarily submit to cybernetic enhancement as a means of achieving what they believe to be perfection (they also force their idea of perfection on others).

The idea of "forced perception" is perhaps closer to Kurzweil's ideas than he'd like to admit. He seems to think that because he wants this, everyone else wants this, and that it is not only our destiny but the most moral next step for human progress.

All of this is happening on the same timeline as the "Singularity" -- when computer chips and machines become life-like, self-aware in their decisions. By that time they should have already assimilated us, so this is something we need to pay close attention to.

While apocalyptic movies like The Terminator and The Matrix (and much of David Cronenberg's films) have a gloom and doom dystopian future, Kurzweil's ideas of assimilation are much more upbeat. The enhancement from strictly bio to bio-mechanical can only be seen as a good thing, he says. Nothing but good has come from science and technology so far, and he sees nothing but good happening when we give ourselves over to it completely.

He's a passionate visionary. No doubt about that. And the documentary about Kurzweil and his work is fascinating, well thought out, mind-blowing in places. But behind his passion is a suffering heart, bruised from the death of his father and hopeful that the heart disease that killed him is not hereditary.

A part of what drives this visionary man is the fear that he might die like his dad. Perhaps, even the fear of death itself, regardless of how it happens.

Kurzweil takes what looks like hundreds of vitamins and pills a day to fight off any oncoming hereditary issues. He also mentions that in the fight to prevent his own death is the hope that one day he might bring back his dad. "Death is supposed to be a finale, but it's actually a loss of everyone you care about," he says. While the film doesn't explicitly say how he might be able to bring his dad back, it is assumed that this will be done through the same DNA Kurzweil wants to alter with nanobots, the achievement happening sometime after Kurzweil's full transformation to a superior being. He will then have access to information that will reveal how this can be done.

Later he speaks about the evolutionary plan as a whole: "Nanobots will infuse all the matter around us with information. Rocks, trees, everything will become these intelligent computers.It's at that point we can expand out into the rest of the Universe. We will be sending basically nanotechnology infused with Artificial Intelligence -- swarms of those will go out into the Universe and basically find other matter and energy that we can then harness to expand the overall intelligence of our human machine civilization. If the Universe will wake up, it will become intelligent. And that will multiply our intelligence trillions and trillions fold. We can't really contemplate. That's really the main reason this is called the 'Singularity.' But regardless of what you call it, it will be the Universe waking up. So does God exist? Well, I would say, Not yet."

Without admitting it up front, Kurzweil makes a case that there is a standard present that the body isn't currently achieving. I don't know if this is something he has really thought through, but I'd like to know where he thinks the standard comes from. Who says the body should be better than it is? By what reasoning should there be no sickness? Why should there be no death? If a standard actually exists that says that these things really are bad, doesn't that suggest a plan already in place that's supposed to correct them?

He's also missing the current beauty that already surrounds him, both in the creation of his own body as well as the heavenly bodies above.

This... (I'm simply staring into the palm of my hand)... isn't already a sign of intelligence? We need technology to bring out the intelligence in creation?

I'm as confused as Kurzweil. I go back and forth on the God issue myself, but at least I recognize that if there is a standard, it didn't necessarily come from our heads. There's as much wrong in the body as there is in our own wrong choices and actions. We see daily evidence in the local news of those who won't improve, won't advance, people who are willing to trade in their morality instead of desiring to become better. I don't think mankind is ready for the "Singularity," even if Kurzweil says it is inevitable.

The whole film feels much like last year's excellent Collapse, the revelatory film about Michael Ruppert who also made predictions. Ruppert's prophetic thoughts were along the lines of the coming oil crash and the ensuing state of world collapse. Kurzweil is like the anti-Ruppert. There is no approaching nightmare. Technology saves us from everything. He's the flip-side to Ruppert, where everything that can go wrong won't. Praise to the little chips. Hopefully we can get them in the blood stream real soon.

The film is excellent and enthralling. Kurzweil himself is naive. Perhaps like many of us, he's stacked all his eggs in one basket. Unfortunately for him, his basket has some gaping holes in it.

But it's a great film to watch for the suggestive probings of the future alone. It's a film that gets the brain cells firing. It's fun to consider that we might someday be a part of a collective. Some of us even think that this is possible without technology.

Waste Land. (2010) Lucy Walker, Karen Harley and João Jardim

2011-03-03T06:14:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while a documentary comes along that's so illuminating and alive with life that you soak in the images of a filmmaker you learn to trust, you believe he is at least trying to relay a truth -- and the "truth" takes on a capital "T" in your heart. Sometimes when someone aims at a truth, they actually hit the stuff, and those moments are stirring. It seems we're sometimes starved for Truth, that we actually need it in order to believe in Reality.

Waste Land is once such film that strives for "Truth," and settles wonderfully into a humane "Reality." It should sit alongside other fine docs that have done a similar service, films we remember so well because they've been faithful to a truth, and yet hopeful and breathing with the full of human potential: Stevie, My Flesh and Blood, Young at Heart, Born Into Brothels, Doctors Without Borders, The Fog of War, Budrus. These are hallmark works that challenge us to give, change, and overcome the odds -- the self-imposed ones as well as the cultural. These films to me are a picture embodiment of the age-old expression of success: "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve!"

Waste Land is an achievement in more than one way: as a doc fully capturing both progress and art, and as a springboard for the merging of art with social justice. It starts out as a phase in the life of artist Vic Muniz, a Brazilian New Yorker. He's a master of his trade, a culturally-savvy avant-garde pioneer, globally known for large-scale works which dabble in multiple mediums in their design. In the past, Muniz has been fascinated with elements of the earth ranging from chocolate to sugar, cotton, wire and thread. In Waste Land you find him in Rio in the largest trash dump in the world, working with local catadores -- trash pickers by choice -- creating art from trash, with empty wine bottles and cans, lids and used tires, computer wires and diapers and rotten food parts.

Muniz photos the pickers in retroactive art poses, each scene created with what they've been picking and wading through. He then blows up the photo, creating an outline as large as a basketball court, and sets it on the floor in his hideaway studio. Teams of workers fill in the outline with more refuse dragged in from the dump. He takes a second photo from above, blowing up the new creation to gigantic proportions, making an extra-large poster-size photo that's framed and entered in exhibits at quite a few art museums. The works are auctioned off to the highest bidder.

I don't know how much of the money Muniz made from the project he ended up keeping himself. What I do know are the tears on many faces after selling their work for cash. The end credits show the project did a lot of good for many of the workers, even leading to the establishment of classes for those who had nothing to do with the project. Teachings are now offered to better their lives and get out of a picker's life, if that's what they want. Many of the pickers end up financially helping their families and transitioning to other jobs -- when before they'd thought that was out of reach.

What Muniz does, with and for these people, challenges every viewer to bring as much of heaven to earth as we can. That here, and now, there is a calling to benefit others; that if we're only living for ourselves we have truly missed the mark. We can't all do something on the scale of Muniz and his art project, but there's a right way to live, using what we have to benefit the world. To not offer the very best of ourselves is to withhold our best potential.

This is a story very much like Born Into Brothels which shows how art can be more than just a soul-stirring experience. Sure, it moves us, but it can also move us to a better place, moving the marrow in our bones to a desire to move and change the world.

It was interesting to see it the night before the Oscars and compare it with the other nominations for Best Documentary. Exit Through the Gift Shop is basically tricking people with art. The year's winner, Inside Job is about soulless bastards who live to empower themselves to riches and suck the life from others in the process. I do wish Waste Land would have won in this category. It is rare that a truthful film can be so inspirational.

March Madness. (2011)

2011-03-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

One of the highlights of the 2010 year for me was in March, catching some great films at the 13th Annual European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

I attended eleven films there last year, including Finland's hard to find Forbidden Fruit, which landed at the #2 position on my Top Ten year-end list.

To say that I'm excited for March 2011 would be an understatement. The 14th Annual EUFF is under way and I've made plans for nine films this year. These are brand new productions from various countries like France, Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Estonia, Denmark and the like. One film in particular I've been looking forward to for some time, Finland's Letters to Father Jakob, still unreleased in the U.S., I'll be seeing on the big screen on March 19. I am stoked out of my gourd.

When I can't be at EUFF I'll be using March to write about recent foreigns I missed on their initial run, or films still seeking distribution: White Material, Enter the Void, Waste Land, A Screaming Man and The Colors of the Mountain are just a few I have in mind.

With films like these the odds have spiked through the roof that we'll see green by the end of the month.

Coffee and Cigarettes. (2003) Jim Jarmusch

2011-02-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

My fourth Jim Jarmusch B&W in the previous five days takes things further than the typical nobodies going nowhere and walking dead men tossed into his films before -- this is a plot-less film, a film not about nobodies or nowhere, but about nothing in and of itself. It's a rare achievement, a film that goes nowhere purposefully, aiming to accomplish nothing and succeeding.

A simple obligatory description: twelve short films woven into a pastiche creating one big film, Coffee and Cigarettes. All twelve scenes are shot in one take involving two or three characters chatting over the title's main course, and no two scenes have any crossover whatsoever. It's like reciting the alphabet: A, B, C, D... A has nothing to do with B which has nothing to do with C, etc., ad Z.

I've heard of those less enthused with the premise, in fact I've heard about people at original screenings eight years ago getting bored or tired and finally quitting, giving up and walking out. I can't say that I blame them. This one won't be for everyone. But I think fans of Jarmusch were happy with the film, and it continues to add fans today. (I'm an addition.)

I tried to watch it years ago and don't remember if I made it through or not. With the number of films I actually see (five or six a week, minimum) this one slid to the nether regions of my brain where no memories care to exist, or if they do exist they certainly don't tell. It's the event that I know I was at, but don't remember names or faces; the gig I only know from a scribbled schedule found on crumpled paper.

It's funny how timing and the way we perceive things can change if we allow it to. Having just seen the previous three Jarmusch B&Ws in chronological order -- Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law and Dead Man -- having spent a little time in Jarmusch's brain and witnessing his vision of the world and all its stream-of-fog-conscious features (the often overlooked simple parts of daily life, the strange coincidences that pop up in an average day), I must admit that the final film on this particular trip in the land of Jarmusch was rewarding, and felt like the perfect ending note in a small sonata.

All actors play themselves, or at least a version of themselves, perhaps the version they think that we think they are. And while all the scenes are solid, with dry undertones of a laughable yet melancholic humanity, three clearly stand out:

The first scene stars Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright. Has there ever been a more odd pairing of individuals? Benigni seems to be recapping his "Bob" role from Down By Law, essentially him playing himself but amped up to Italian with a capital "I", and Wright cracks jokes from his usual routine, stuck in stand-up mode at a sit-down diner with Bob. They fidget with their coffee cups, their nerves shot from all the caffeine, their fingers shaking as they drink, like addicts relapsing. The plan they wryly come up is the perfect entry into the rest of the shorts, and all it involves is a trip to the local dentist. If you don't find the first scene funny, or interesting at the very least, you might as well give up now. It's not for you.

Cate Blanchett gets the most fun playing herself in conversation with her jealous sister (also Blanchett). Don't know how this scene was pulled off, but the gimmick itself wouldn't work without a stellar actor in the part. Blanchett is one of my favorites, and here she doesn't let down in either character. In so many of these scenes we know exactly what's being said without either character actually saying it. Here, Cate's sister seems to be saying, "I wish I were you," and Cate just wants to connect.

Then there's Bill Murray as a waiter, again -- playing himself, taking care of a table where RZA and GZA (Wu-Tang Clan) recognize him, and as he drinks his coffee straight from the pot they tell him how bad caffeine and nicotine really are. They know the chemicals and the biological implications, they know of its danger for poor Bill Murray. At the end of the skit they head out to their studio to further enjoy the day and smoke some pot.

Iggy Pop and Tom Waits also have a hilarious scene together, as do Jack and Meg White, but if I continue I'll just have to name all of the actors and all of the scenes, and really there's no bad scene in the film.

And the fact that there's no bad scene in the film just goes to show you that if this one is not for you, then it's not. It's the final resting place of the initial thought I shared regarding Stranger Than Paradise -- this film is more about the viewer than it is about the actual film. Coffee and Cigarettes takes this idea to the extreme, where upset viewers will eventually just walk out.

Were I to deny the film is entertaining I'd be lying. Perhaps that's what its original goals were, to simply be a piece of fun, an entertainment. But it might have also been to just hook up a camera and see what happens when short films are strung together. Regardless, the series of shorts, shot over years of time, seems fine with simply Being. It's OK with sight and sound personified, and that's all. The fact that it's entertaining feels like it surpassed its goals, so there's more bang for your buck then even intended.

Oscar Reaction 2011

2011-02-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

A Black and White February Interruption.

Not the same as usual "Meh" this year. I really felt 2010 was a great film year, many of the Oscar films included. I felt great for the wonderful The King's Speech, and happy for Bier's In a Better World, and also for Colin Firth and Natalie Portman and even Christian Bale.

I predicted nine winners this year and got eight of them right. Um, if I were at the horses, I'd be headed for the door never returning to the track.

I may never return anyway, due to my most cynical pick actually coming true -- the Oscars no longer know the difference between cinematography and CGI. Forget: "Video killed the Radio Star," now it's: "Graphics killed the visual win." Avatar and Inception are now your last two cinematographic winners, Academy. Congrats to the terminally confused. No wonder Godard hates you.

And I say this as a fan of Inception, and a fellow that didn't even mind Avatar, for what it's worth.

Dead Man. (1995) Jim Jarmusch

2011-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

The strangest of the three Jarmusch black and whites I've seen this week, and as strange a role as Johnny Depp has played in a career of strangely weird films, Dead Man's posters and title give away the film's thrust without need for extra thinking involved: Here is Depp in a somewhat facetious pseudo-western, shot in the chest early in the film, now a walking ghost just waiting for his pulse to stop, which will transition him to the afterlife and all its awaiting mysteries. That he's on the run via horseback in the dry, western wilderness is a throwback to the earlier Jarmusch films I've been writing about, particularly Down By Law, where three escaped convicts traverse the Louisiana swampland on the run. Though this is the first time a lead character is practically dead and still walking, figuratively one could say that about many of the characters in other Jarmusch productions.

Depp plays William Blake (not the poet), lead by Indian guide Nobody (who considers Blake the poet, or at least feigns the belief that he is) on a road-weary journey to his early demise. Blake's parents passed away in Cleveland a few months before he was hired as an accountant and asked via mail to move out west. On a train on the way there, in one of the strangest most quiet movie openings you'll find, Crispin Glover as the Train Fireman appears to Blake like the legendary Devil. You feel like he might pull out a fiddle and challenge Blake to a duel. He basically functions as a Foreteller, telling Blake he shouldn't have gotten on the train but enjoying that it's too late.

The job is a sham, and Blake, who spent all he had to head west, has barely enough money for a pint at the local saloon. He drinks, ends up in the wrong woman's bed and has a shootout with a gun stashed away under her pillow. Two are dead, he is shot and dying, and from here on out we watch him bleed all over everything in the script. It's a film about the tracks of blood he leaves as much as the harrowing reality in front of him. You feel like the grim reaper is lurking behind every shadow, but if he is, he's wearing a black cowboy hat.

It's sort of a "Pilgrim's Progress" where Blake is being taken "from this world to that which is to come." But Blake's journey is rife with hardship and other killings on the way. He has an appointment with a similar River of Death, but Blake might be descending in his last days rather than on heavenly ascent. His final victim, a vicar of some sort, tells him, "God damn your soul to hell." Blake replies: "He already has." The vicar and another man are shot, the other falling through a swinging door with a sign that reads, "Work Out Your Own Salvation." If this is a journey of the Bunyan sort, it uses similar means to get to opposite ends. We might call this "The Pilgrim's Regress."

This sounds dour. It is and it isn't. While more serious than Stranger Than Paradise or Down By Law, it retains certain characteristics of both of those films, neither of which fit easily into any one genre. There are quiet, surreal scenes, nightmarish fights ending in bloodshed, hilarious moments of biting and witty dialogue, and the film's greatest laugh -- a big one -- with a single gun shot that rings out over one of Jarmusch's famous fade to black markers. There are also a few scenes that come close to having a Lynchian flavor to them... And if we can use the term "Lynchian" in today's Film Lexicon, then I'd have to submit that these films can only be called "Jarmuschian."

Oscar Picks 2011

2011-02-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

A Black and White February Interruption.

You've got to make picks, even if you think it's mostly bunk.

I shot with 75% accuracy last year, so I'm feeling pretty good about this. Then again, I chose selectively, getting three of four right. I'll aim just a bit higher than that for my 2011 predictions:

Film: The King's Speech
which nominee deserves it: The King's Speech

Director: Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
which nominee deserves it: David Fincher, The Social Network

Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
which nominee deserves it: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
which nominee deserves it: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
[note: The Kids Are All Right is one of the few I haven't seen in 2011. I'm basing this deserving on "all-time deserving," like the Jeff Bridges win last year.]

Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
which nominee deserves it: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, The Fighter
which nominee deserves it: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Cinematography: Inception
which nominee deserves it: Black Swan
[note: This is my most cynical pick. If Inception wins this, as Avatar did last year, this category might as well be thrown out and turned into "Best Misunderstanding of CGI and How It Works."]

Documentary Feature: Inside Job
which nominee deserves it: Waste Land

Foreign Language Film: In A Better World (Susanne Bier, Denmark)
[note: no pick for "deserving" as I've only seen one film in this category. This pick is based on the film's reviews, which have been highly favorable, and the fact that Ms. Bier has already made countless films that are worthy of a win in this category.]
[final note: If Dogtooth wins, there will be a riot. Somewhere. Maybe only in blogosphere FilmLand, but I know it will happen somewhere.]

Down By Law. (1986) Jim Jarmusch

2011-02-25T17:18:00.000-08:00

The title Down By Law can refer to the film's three unique male leads, arrested and dumped in Orleans Parish Prison -- but it can also be street slang referring to the unlikely bond they share when plotting a plan to escape and later roaming free. "Unlikely" because at least two of the men would rather bond with anyone else, but when fleeing they've only got each other, and they're going to need each other to survive. The third guy plays monkey in the middle like the comedic child holding two divorcing parents together.

The story feels built from the foundation of Jarmusch's previous Stranger Than Paradise, released two years before Down By Law. It's shot in a similar black and white style with black cuts between many scenes (but not all), and uses silmilarly subdued characters on the verge of nothingness trying to decipher their roles in life and the bad hands they've been dealt. But the film takes greater risks than Strangers In Paradise in roving cameras and tracking shots, exposing the outer garments of New Orleans in the beginning, and later the area bayou in an alligator infested swamp.

A difference, too, is in the film's use of humor -- where Stranger Than Paradise brought curious and delighted smiles to my face, Down By Law, when settled into the story of three convicts caught and later running together, brought big belly laughs from the pit of my gut -- ironic, since I wouldn't consider this a comedy, but I would be hard pressed to suit it to one genre.

It's about a pimp named Zack, a DJ named Jack, and Roberto Benigni as Bob the Italian (who would have guessed). Bob struggles with English, carrying a pad he scrawls words in wherever he goes, and often confuses Zack for Jack and Jack for Zack. The three are forced to spend time together in a cell, where perhaps none of them should even be: Jack was framed, Zack was set up, and Bob's story of throwing an eight ball and killing a man in self defense is as quirky as he turns out to be. "I ham no criminal," he says, in a thick Italian accent. "I ham a good egg."

This was Benigni's first major role, and his comedic presence took Ebert by surprise when writing about the film in '86. This is true Benigni, and if you've seen him and loved him elsewhere, you're sure to fall for him here, too. A jail cell scene where Bob tries desperately to cure his hiccups is quite hilarous, and when he later refers to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Glass," it's as funny as anything he's done since.

The role of Jack is played by John Lurie (Willie from Stranger Than Paradise), and while I'm new at these Jarmusch films, a quick online scan shows he's in quite a few of the Jarmusch productions. I found him much more believable and approachable in this film.

Tom Waits does double duty providing the musical tracks as well as filling the role of Zack. The DJ can step in front of a mic at a moment's notice and make sense to thousands doing the weather or traffic on the air waves, but he's dumb enough to take a side job driving, getting drunk in the car and failing to check the trunk. He's the greater of the two framed saps, but honestly, if you're hired by a slime ball at $1000 for one drive across the city, it might be a good idea to look in the trunk first. (And not drink when you drive.)

The swampland plays a huge role in the second half when the three stooges escape from jail and wander aimlessly in the muck and woods. I don't know how as children all three dodged the Boy Scouts, but none of them know East from West and they wander in circles like alligator bait.

The final twenty minutes are killer in the most Twilight Zone of ways. No, it's not science fiction. It's much more strange than that. The delicate balance between coincidence and destiny implodes with a comic aura of love, still hanging in the Louisiana air.

Stranger Than Paradise. (1984) Jim Jarmusch

2011-02-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

This is a story about three go-nowhere twenty-somethings that end up going lots of places, and every time they get there they don't think much of where they are.

There's a sense of black comedic despair that hangs over the three lives in Stranger Than Paradise. It's something I can't quite put a finger on, but they really make me smile. The film can be serious and sad or affectionate and fun. If there were ever a reaction that were more about the viewer, this might be the film that brings it.

It is, partially, some sort of a comment on our inherent immigrant nature, that thing inside that propels us forward when we don't even know what direction forward is. It can also be interpreted as a wry comment about America itself: the place where immigrants come and find fortune, or the place where immigrants come and get lost. For those of us born in America who understand how the place works already (or don't), it might be the story of some of us who are tossed about on its land, like a chasing after the wind, kind of drifting between cold states.

Willie, a Brooklynite who seems to despise employment, gets a phone call from his Hungarian aunt in Ohio. She informs him (in Hungarian, even when he instructs her to stick with English) that his cousin Eva is flying in from Budapest and will stay with him for ten days before joining her aunt in the Midwest.

Willie, who does little outside of the race track and neighborhood poker games, if he is true to the family, should be more than welcoming to Eva when she arrives on his doorstep with only a suitcase and a tape recorder. But he's not interested in any family ties, and he isn't exactly excited about her arrival. He offers her a bed for one night. She stays the whole ten days, and in the quiet of the apartment with only the TV and TV dinners, they form a strange bond, though it's rickety and built on anything outside of the norm.

Willie's friend Eddie, who also avoids a job and seems to not have a home of his own, quickly takes to Eva, probably because of her Eastern European look and her accent. The feeling doesn't seem to be mutual, but not a lot is said so it is hard to really tell. It's obvious that Eddie would like to spend time with Eva, and not in the company of Willie. It never happens. After ten days, she's off to Ohio to live with her aunt. She might have just been forgotten by the two, but the two don't have much else in their lives to think about.

At this point we fast forward a year, with the boys still playing poker in Brooklyn. Willie wants to get out of town, Eddie has a car, and they decide to take a road trip to Cleveland. The two don't seem like they've been anywhere outside of New York, so while they again don't say too much about it, it's probably a real adventure for them to go to Cleveland. I know there's a joke here, something about Cleveland, I just can't think of what it is.

The two make it to Aunt Lotte's house, and it turns out that Aunt Lotte is the only sign of life in the story. She's a hilarious side character played with spunk. The few scenes she's in are filled with energy, bringing life to a deadpan world.

Figuring out that working at a hot dog stand isn't a chapter in any book on the American Dream, Eva ends up with the boys on a road trip to Florida. Eva has the same tape recorder she arrived with in America and always plays her favorite song, "I Put a Spell On You." Willie hates the music, and she tells him, "It's Screaming Jay Hawkins, and he's a wild man, so bug off." Eddie, of course, loves it. I must admit that the song ingrains itself into the atmosphere of the film so much that one wonders what kind of spell Eva has put on the two Brooklynites, if that's even possible.

What happens in Florida is pretty weird. The three end up separated, and I'm going to guess they never see each other again.

If there were ever a mood film, this is it. The scenes are all straight forward and shot in one take, almost like each scene is divided for the theater. There's a black edit that falls between all the scenes, adjusting time and space for the need of the next quiet take.

The story, too, is divided in half. In "The New World," where Eva first arrives in New York, greeted by no one and navigating the empty streets on her own, she walks past a clue spray painted on a garage door: "U.S. OUT OF EVERYWHERE YANKEE GO HOME." From the beginning we see that this land might either outright reject you, or ask you to leave.

When the three head off to Florida we're in the film's second half: "Paradise." They imagine pelicans and flamingos, white beaches and girls in bikinis. But Florida is in many ways a dying man's version of paradise -- retirees head there live out their lives and find it, but they do so only after they've actually been in the state for a while.

I don't know how anything in Florida is actually "Stranger Than" paradise. But the film could also be called Escape From Paradise, because it seems like none of the three will end up there in the end. We really don't know. They'll each plod along in their own go-nowhere haze, one wealthier, one in a bit of a living stupor, and the other so far gone he won't be seen anymore. I get the feeling they were always separated by something, even in their few brief moments together.

Citizen Kane. (1941) Orson Welles

2011-02-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

I am shimmering. I am glimmering.

I'm basking in the end credit afterglow and can't quite process this marvelous achievement.

Some people are shuffling out and seem quite joyous. Others are leaving their seats more slowly -- they look in deep thought, a little bemused. I'm stuck in my seat. I don't want to leave. It feels like a holy moment. I want to soak it all in, like the best Sunday service in memory. I need a pipe organ to kick in with a recessional.

While the Sanctuary clears, I marvel at what I've just been thoroughly immersed in. I'm in post-cinematic reflection over the stupendous Citizen Kane on the big screen.

It is already obvious I'm headed to Rant-land today, so let's clear the air of all facade and I'll open my Reaction with full disclosure:

[ / Fan Boy Rant Fully On]

The ever fascinating story of Charles Foster Kane, the idealist publisher corrupted by capitalist wealth -- the boy who needed love becoming the man who couldn't love -- is legendary, credited with inspiring more directors than any film in history and frequently referred to as the greatest film of all time. It was selected to the Library of Congress National Film Registry for preservation in 1989 as one of the most important films in American cinema history.

Citizen Kane is, to me, one of those "chicken and egg" scenarios. Did I start loving it before I'd heard the stories of its glory, or did I hear how great it was first and then run off to find it on VHS? No doubt I first heard from mature cinephiles in whose steps I hoped to follow that I needed to check it out. I'm only approaching 41 years; the film was hailed as the Second Coming long before I was even born. Yet I can't remember any one person telling me to see it. Maybe it was Ed. Maybe it was Armand. Maybe it was Dave. Maybe I just stumbled across it at Blockbuster in the early 90s.

All I know is that I did see it, I did fall in love, I hailed it as a masterpiece and have seen it every few years since -- except for recently. My theater trip today marks the first time I've seen it in over eight years (if I'm to trust my Film Journals, which I do), but today is also the first time I've seen it on the big screen.

Though it has been some time since my last viewing, it is amazing how much I remembered of the story. It's like it is a part of me now, integral to every other story I see: the young Kane inheriting an empire upon an empire of wealth, holding the loot of the world. Disinterested in the money, he takes a publishing job for one of the papers he owns shares in, set for telling the truth (and using the headlines as a personal tool of revenge) until he learns that the message is the truth when it's printed in large letters, boldened in black on the highly visible front page. He marries but fails in marriage -- at the end of his first marriage his wife sits across the table reading his main competitor's newspaper. He marries again and fails, ghost writing a bad review for his wife's public opera, a singing career he forced her into.

And of course, all of these stories find their way into his papers. If anything, he learns how to promote his own name there -- suited to the opinions he likes, structured to the truth as he sees it.

I remembered that the film was visual, but oh! To see it on the big screen makes it not only larger, but deeper and wider, with better contrast in the darkened room. I don't know if the forty other (mostly older) folks in the theater were there for their first theater screening of the film, but there's nothing like that setting to see it in. And see it you do. The visuals -- the smokey interiors filled with grim light and ominous shadows, the darkened figures in alleyways and balconies, the large rooms of the mansion Xanadu filled with collectibles from the earth and puzzles from a wife in flight, the delighted laughs and transformed anger on faces in various stages of life -- they come to life like a marathon runner from the opening shot off a starting block, but they never seem to break a sweat.

The things I'd forgotten about were amplified, too: the screams of a fight outside a room while Kane's wife, in a fight with him, stares blankly ahead; an interrupting, jolting edit of a cawing bird flying away as the wife leaves Xanadu for freedom. The audio, too, in these two quick mentions is as breath taking as anything else. Surely this film stretched the boundaries of aural and visual cinema in the time of the day it was made.

When I think about Citizen Kane and everything that went into it, from the perplexing character of Kane to the jumps in the storytelling timeline, from the witty, quick dialogue to the innovative use of sight and sound,I feel sorry for any film that followed after it -- I dream that all movies ended right there in 1941. They just halted, came to a complete stop. No need to make a movie ever again after that, because we have a full understanding of what makes the ultimate film experience.

And whether intended or not, Welles dropped a film that matched my worldview. Kane, the unloved and unloving, the one who fights all and grows old and keeps fighting when he can't remember what the fight was even about -- he, who collects millions of dollars of junk to stuff in closets in lieu of an emptiness inside, is representative of the parabolic words recorded in Matthew: "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?" And that's Kane.

Rosebud might be a childhood item that Kane lost which has never been found. Kane himself might be a man that was lost in childhood and can't fully find himself. He had the whole world, but like any other man, didn't have an understanding that the whole world brings nothing, it is a clashing of cymbals or a clanging gong without love. Kane always thought love could be bought or traded. He was rejected time and again not because he wasn't loved, but because he couldn't love himself.

This film deserves all the accolades it has been given, no matter how extreme, no matter how hyperbolic. It puts all other films to shame -- it is the greatest film ever made.

[Fan Boy Rant Off / ]

Ashes and Diamonds. (1958) Andrzej Wajda

2011-02-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

After the Nazis we were baited by the Russian bear
Our "liberators" wanted Poland for a thoroughfare...
-Steve Taylor, "Over My Dead Body"

The lines from the alterna-ccm song from 1984 kept floating through my head in regard to Ashes and Diamonds.

The third in Wajda's loosely connected trilogy of films based on Poland during the second World War, Ashes and Diamonds is set in May, 1945, in the same few days that their Nazi oppressors unequivocally surrendered to Allied Forces.

Poland is scarred, in battle-tattered shambles, and will stay that way for quite some time due to neglect from the oncoming Communist party which will annex the land as its own. As someone points out early in Ashes and Diamonds, the war might be over, but the battle has just begun.

A group of Polish patriots on a mission to assassinate a mid-level party functionary botch the mission, killing two of their own in the process. The rest of the story revolves around their guilt, their new course of action, and the small role they play in the larger story of Soviet annexation -- their startled country, where millions have already died, is caught in the throes of "liberation."

Maciek, the trigger-man, acts like a duty-bound soldier taking charge of the failed mission, but his interior thoughts are of a man not mentally prepared for the next phase. He's tired of the ever-present destruction, the waste he sees all around him; he no longer cares about Germany from the West or Russia to the East. He simply wants to go back to school, to be a student in his homeland and live a normal life.

While waiting for a second chance at the mark he originally missed, he has a few drinks at a bar and falls for the pretty bartender. To his surprise she stops by his hotel room that night, and they mistake lust for love in a time where both are nothing more than a fleeting thought. He wanders with her through the city in the night trying to decide whether to leave the assassin's life behind, or whether he can pull off the deed that's still to be done and not have to get on the next train out of town.

It was a forceful film in its day, a story resonant with the times and devastation that won't ever be forgotten. I'm not so certain the film is capable of translating to audiences today, especially audiences that are younger and foreign. Even the most educated and pure in the film buff crowd will have a hard time making it through Ashes and Diamonds. It's exceptionally made, especially for the time and place it was made in, with quite a few scenes that are nothing short of cinematic. But it remains a tough sell. It wouldn't be my first suggestion to the artsy hipster crowd trying to find out more about the end of WWII -- however, if a college kid were looking to write on Poland at the end of the war, this might be the best piece to track down.

I've been to Poland, briefly, but admittedly know very little of its history. The film seems to suggest that in 1945 only the Nazi and the Bear had any vision for the country. While there were small groups like the patriots in Ashes and Diamonds, it seems that most were only scrambling, hoping for resistance but more concerned about staying alive. It took decades of oppression and a visitation from a homecoming Pope to galvanize the populace for political reform -- but this is a film about a people who are lost, caught in the midst of a terrible affliction, practically burned blind by the things they've been witness to. They tremble at the notion of an approaching Soviet darkness, but the light of their freedom is decades away.

The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) Max Ophüls

2011-02-18T20:53:00.000-08:00

This post makes five bloggings in a row with a threesome.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The Earrings of Madame de... is French, certainly, but made in 1953 and not that type of a film. But going back through my four previous B&W entries, there's Following, Notorious, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Place in the Sun, and now this: a film in which one central character is torn between two lovers, feelin' like a fool. If February blogging was meant for black and white as I originally intended, I guess it's also meant for red -- it is no surprise you'll catch VD* in this peculiar film month.

The thing that may set The Earrings of Madame de... apart from those films, or at least closer to Hitchcock's Notorious, is its carefully crafted lensing. A masterwork of cinematography, it's a feast for the eyes, with sweeping, long, mobile shots of characters popping in and out of frame, gently followed from one position with visual delight. The central character Louise, the madame in Madame de... is seen gliding down staircases, dancing around elegant ballrooms, surrounded by onlooking men who tend to gaze along with a grazing camera. She's the focus of the story, and the lens, too, which fixes on her beauty as she spoils it with her deeds.

Louise, a wealthy socialite referred to as the Countess, is frantically searching through closets and jewel boxes in the film's first long take. She's looking for something to sell -- she's spent too much, and it's suggested this isn't the first time. She'll have to pawn something to get out of debt, and keep the whole thing a secret to herself.

Several items she glosses over have worth. We can tell by the jewelry, the furs, and noticing the lavish decor. But she comes across an item that should have sentimental value, given as a gift from her husband the day of their wedding: a pair of earrings with a diamond heart -- costly, and gorgeous to behold. They should be treasured and held as a memento from the one most dear to her. Sadly, for whatever reason, they are not.

She's off to the jeweler, pawning sentimentality for cash, telling the workers in the house to be vague if her husband -- the General -- asks about her whereabouts.

The jeweler isn't interested in the purchase at first. He sees the earrings as belonging to the General, the Count and not the Countess. This may be culturally true, a fact she'll learn soon enough. She uses the appeal of her status and her stunning good looks, and finally a quick fainting spell to win him over to her reasoning; he quickly agrees to buy the earrings he once sold to the General for his bride. The money is on its way, but now she needs to make a little lie for the whereabouts of the earrings sold off. Her stories beget stories, and the story of the earrings begins.

The earrings are a sort of character of their own. They do a bit of traveling, out of the country and then back, touching the hands of a cast of lives who are intertwined and woven together. Their voyage and return sheds light on those who touch them along the way: the General is at the end of an affair and gives the earrings to his exiting mistress; the Countess is beginning an affair and receives the earrings from her man as a gift; and the Jeweler that sells the same earrings four times -- he's probably the happiest of anyone in the film.

"Coincidence is only extraordinary because it is so natural," says the General in reference to the jewels that mysteriously return. He might as well be describing the Countess, misplacing her passions in an affair with a foreign dignitary, Baron Donati.

It seemed like fate when she kept bumping into the Baron: meeting in the street after locking eyes weeks earlier at a train station, and later introduced to the Baron by the General himself. It's a case where events seem less random than somehow synchronized. But thinking that the Universe is aligning to bring you a love life is self-centered at best, delusional at worst, and one rarely considers that the events of fate could be aligning for your unhappiness, or even your end.

Along with the mistake of believing in fate, the Countess stops by church when facing emergencies, throwing fire escape prayers at the heavens. The prayers, like destiny, help little with her problems. There's either a God that's unimpressed with those wishing to avoid consequences, or, more likely in Ophüls' world, prayer and God are like destiny and are only constructs. The only thing found when Louise walks into a church is the gaze at her stroll by men who came there to pray.

Her husband -- the stern military General outside, the Count within, the firm "head of the house" -- might have had his own hypocrisy in a misplaced affair, but it won't stop him from ending hers.

In a few short months Louise has lost her place of standing. Everyone knows of her rendezvous. They know about the earrings, the Baron, and all the lies. She's humiliated, isolated, left to rot away the hours solo in a dimly lit bed. She's surrounded by wealth but willing to give it all up for love, surrounded by comfort but uncaring.

When he finally feels she's been put her in her place, the General, who has been gentle to this point but remains a military presence to be feared, turns the crank even harder on her unhappiness. Telling her humiliation is the easiest of things to get over, he cruelly assures her a fate that is sealed in more suffering, making her ever unhappy, even as he claims that unhappiness, "Is our own invention."

I have little patience with lovesick fools in film, those who think that love or the lack thereof is worth dying for, killing for, or killing yourself for -- that the only thing that matters is that one other person, like the the empty thought of those horrible words uttered by Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, "You complete me." That's a lot of potential drama dropped in the lap of someone else, and they can hoist it to foil you whenever they want.

Louise lives a false reality of that perfect lover that completes her. She thinks that she can't be whole on her own without another, and if that was ever the General, it certainly isn't now. When that notion of another is gone, when the lovers have all moved on, when there's no happy ending in context in sight, is there really and truly nothing left?

It's better to be complete in the first place and not find someone to complete you. Louise is one of many lovers in film (and, unfortunately, life) who thinks that two halves make a whole. She forgets that 1 X 1 = 1.

I won't hold this too hard against such a finely crafted film. The fact is that there are millions like this all around the planet, every day in real life, at your office or on the job. I guess if they exist, which they do, they ought to be present in a few films. The problem is that the films tend to reinforce their misguided thinking.

The Earrings of Madame de... is a beautiful film with misguided people at its core. Some of the best stories and films are a lot like this. It's a film I'd recommend, but encourage one not to buy into its notions. If your true love leaves you, it doesn't give you the right to go all Romeo + Juliet.

Madame de... has had a large awakening over the past few years, especially with its 2008 DVD release by Criterion. As is often the case with Criterion, an education awaits when delving into the features on their disc. Packed with enough in-depth extras to almost rival the film itself, the commentary alone by film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar is wonderfully suited to the Netflix crowd. Plumbing Freud, feminist film theory, philosophy, psychology and sociology, it's like a film class tailor made for DVD. These are two wonderful scholars that are wonderfully scholarly.

But for those willing to lay down cash for the whole package, there's a booklet containing the original novel, an excerpt from the book "Max Ophuls," by the fimmaker's longtime costume designer Georges Annenkov, and an introduction by Village Voice writer Molley Haskel, aptly entitled, "The Cost of Living." Haskel's writing is superbly written, feeling like a sort of ode to a film she's fallen in love with. Pointing out subtle nuances, especially in much dialogue I never picked up on, it also gives a bit of the history and background of the writers and makers of the film. Her writing is spellbinding -- it made me go back for another viewing, for all the beauty she finds in it.

* Valentine's Day.

A Place in the Sun. (1951) George Stevens

2011-02-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

A Place in the Sun has its moments, but it has its problems, too.

Stevens won an Oscar directing the film in '51, and for the life of me, I can't see why. Most of the film's problems stem directly from the top, to the overseeing of production and technical aspects, the job of a film's director.

The film also took home an award that night for "Black and White Cinematography," and that, is just plain absurd. Also nominated in the B&W category that year were A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Frogmen and Strangers on a Train. I'm only familiar with two of those and it's been a long time since I've seen them, but I can't imagine their cinematography was any worse than A Place in the Sun; that it won suggests that promotional campaigns then might have been as fierce as they are now.

A Place in the Sun is so uninventive in its lensing as to leave actors' backs to the camera for minutes at a time with no narrative reason or rhyme. It also fails to bring light to quite a few of its darkened scenes, thinking that the lighting of a cigarette or the fact that there's a small bit of light in an open window is somehow a measure of success in dealing with nighttime shots. It isn't. Viewing these scenes today feels like the film was edited without looking at it; for it to receive an award for its visual presentation is laughable.

The story riffs on Sunrise, the 1927 silent by F.W. Murnau. Both films are about a man trapped between two women, with his responsibility leaning toward one but his sense of love and freedom leaning toward the seductive other. Both films have a rowboat incident in which the tense male lead has to decide whether or not to pitch his old flame overboard. Both are also about the fallout -- neither of the men following through with the crime -- but Sunrise is a tender, classy tale of temptation and betrayal and the ultimate test of loyalty, whereas A Place in the Sun is mostly meaningless schmaltz. It made quick cash for Paramount Pictures appealing to a mostly female fan base, but other than the women who saw it and are still alive, the film has been largely forgotten, and rightfully so.

For the record, even twenty-five years earlier Murnau knew how to light nighttime scenes. I've seen both films on the big screen, and I'll forever remember Sunrise as one of the all-time achievements in cinema -- nevermind the fact that it is a silent.

A Place in the Sun I hope to remember for Elizabeth Taylor, but even she might disappear into the lost jungle of my memory banks.

The reason I darted out of the house to catch the film on the big screen was that I'd just finished ripping on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and truth be told I was feeling bad for Liz. She's had a hard life, at least lately, and I've never written about her before lambasting a film she starred in in the sixties. I don't know too much about Taylor other than knowing about her failed marriages (and who can possibly not know that?), and of the friend she was to Michael Jackson all the way to his early demise. I've got youth on my side in my lack of Taylorian knowledge, but as a film guy it's a turd in my closet.

She was radiant in this film. Gorgeous, intelligent, and headstrong, she filled the role as best it could be done. She was radiant.

I suppose there was a time when she was radiant in general. I'll try to keep this in mind for continued investigation as I check out films from when she was lovely and young, and not the drunk I so despised in Virgina Woolf -- a film I am still trying hard to simply forget.

It's not that A Place in the Sun is horrible from beginning to end. Like I said, it has its moments. It's just not the film I was thinking it was, with all the awards and accolades I've seen along the way.

But the last half hour, which goes on into eternity, made me constantly fidget in my seat like my pants were still wet from a short run in the dryer. It's a 120 minute film that could have have easily wrapped at 90 minutes and not lost any of the steam it had built up to that point. It was at that point in the story that the male lead, played by a rather boring and dull (read for the ladies: mystique!) Montgomery Clift, was arrested in the woods and carted off to jail. Hitchcock would have abruptly ended the film right there, and he would have been right in doing so. Instead we get Raymond Burr as a prosecuting attorney (wasn't he just an investigative cop a few scenes before?), and a whole new film about the courts and juries and the penal system and the death penalty. We transition from some type of a love story -- or, rather a "caught between loves" story -- to Dead Man Walking, and wow, is that last half hour a total waste.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Mike Nichols

2011-02-15T18:47:00.001-08:00

#43 on the 2011 Arts & Faith Top 100

Who would want to spend time with these people? They're so busy zeroing in on everyone else's defects in character they can't notice the gaping issues in their own lives, the clutter on their floor. If one of them approached me at the bus stop, or more likely in a bar, I'd know in two minutes I wasn't interested in any further conversation. Some people lack the ability to at least cover their digged up dirt. What is it that's sometimes said about first impressions being the only impression? It's a good thing everyone in Virginia Woolf already has a job, because they're all too calloused at this point to even remember the days of prepping for an interview.

Liz Taylor won a second Oscar for her restless role as malcontented Martha in this adapted theater production, a perfect post-VD* hangover film. It's a story that makes you want to forget rather than remember the significant other in your life; makes you want to stay single, break your engagement, call off the family vacation or get divorced before you get old and fall into relational zombification: drunk and distant unless hungry and ready to consume the human you live with.

Plot summary: George and Martha invite a couple over for the night. Everyone has too much to drink, and yes, once the liquid party begins all bets are off, and it is off to the races. The film takes place over a five or six hour period on a Saturday night, the get-together at George and Martha's actually being a post-party party beginning at 2 am. Though at one point they make a pot of coffee, no one sobers up, ever, and we're enveloped in the onslaught of discontented lives.

Martha gets mean when she drinks, but at certain points everyone has their moment; if they're not downright mean, they're still certainly ugly. So we have over one hundred thirty minutes of drunks who mock the cruelty they dish out while simultaneously trying to make sense of their existence through a stupor and a haze. They all thoroughly inhabit the crawlspace of their own humanity.

Does it go without saying at this point that I didn't enjoy the film?

One might respond that enjoying it isn't the point, but then again, what would said point be? That alcoholism is a bad idea? Or that staying married to the wrong person and living a lie is just as bad? Common sense tells us enough about this already, and any film that tackles the subjects should do more than stand in and represent. As far as the better films on the subjects go, see: Alcoholism: Tender Mercies; Bad Marriage: Revolutionary Road.

To give an idea of how much the film hates any mix of Cupid's arrow or sobriety in general, below are some of the great words of dialogue offered in only the first fifteen minutes of the film, even before the guests arrive at George and Martha's house. It only seems fair to list the quotes, as yesterday I listed quotes to illustrate the romantic tension between the spaces in Notorious. In Virginia Woolf, the words are searing, full of contempt, always bitter, always condescending. They're a poking of a finger in the spouse's open eye.

"What a cluck you are."

"Dumbbell."

"Fix me a drink."

"You make me puke."

"You are such a simp."

"You pig."

"Fix me another drink, lover."

"There isn't an abomination award that you haven't won."

"I swear if you existed, I'd divorce you... I can't even see you. I haven't been able to see you for years. You're a blank, a cipher, a zero."

"No more sickening sight than you drunk and your skirt over your head. Your heads, I should say."

"...subhuman monster..."

"Goddamn you!"

It's at this moment that the guests walk in.

One would think that when the guests arrive, George and Martha might straighten up. If there are guests in the home you might want to stuff it and at least give the appearance of being cordial for the sake of the guests' serenity. Not so here. Alcohol is constantly poured, and I'm sure that plays a part for the rest of the wretched night, but the truth is that George and Martha are so wound up in their world of spite and spitting that they're past the stage of social manners or even a form of suburban plasticity. After years of forming their relationship into an alliance of animosity, turning the house they live in into a war zone with only allegiance to themselves, they simply don't give a shit what happens at home anymore, whether isolated together or with guests in the house; they don't care who they shit on or show their shit to. They're addicted to their shit, and like an addict who has bottomed out, their shit is on display. It's with them everywhere they go, a stench to anyone they encounter.

There are plenty of reasons to hate the characters and thus, hate the film, too. There's an argument made that catharsis is reached in the final chapter of the story. I don't buy that argument. Even a death in the family wouldn't change the hearts of these worn out and hollowed out characters. If anything, it would amplify their hideous hearts of vile and venom.

* Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I took that opportunity to blog on the romance between the spaces in Notorious.

2011 A&F Top 100

2011-02-15T18:47:00.000-08:00

The gang at IMAGE/Arts & Faith have counted all the votes, and the 2011 list is now fully on display! Check out the latest iteration of the Top 100 Here.

I can't say enough about how this forum, these people, and lists such as this have shaped and changed me for the better. They have expanded my worldview, challenged me to a higher plane in my viewing habits, taught me about the morality of forms of cinema, and all the while let me grapple with words like "Christian" and "spiritual" along the way. This is a cutting edge group grounded in the traditions of faith and cinema, intentional about better viewing, better thinking, and better living. I am glad to be a part of this community, and I'll do and be my best to preserve the beautiful thing we have.

Voter turnout this year spiked from 44 to 65 votes -- another record turnout and more representative of the community as a whole, though over a thousand are currently registered.

This year we created a "three per director" rule to make way for several areas we may have overlooked in the past. Dreyer, Bergman, and Kieslowski are still represented, but the seven Bergmans on last year's list left a bit of a bad aftertaste. (Although I must admit, I kinda liked it.)

We created another rule that some of us have since changed our minds about, that all films must be feature-length. This has stricken Brakhage from the list, which, for a list that originated with the words "spiritually significant" attached, is a devastating loss. Through the absence of Brakhage and shorts, we've apparently also lost our link to the world of abstract film. It's my hope that this is a temporary issue which will be corrected in the next vote; the list lacks balance with the absence of a few of the shorts, and abstract filmmaking in particular.

The Top Ten basically stays the same from year to year, but two remarkable things happened in 2011: Ordet was dethroned for the first time in our history (and I am aghast, although it was dethroned by another Dreyer, so that does help the pain in some small way); and a new film came out of nowhere, cracking the Top Ten and landing at number six -- the first time I remember this happening. The reason for the latter is a multitude of voters who were introduced to the film in 2010 (myself included); the reason for the former is impossible to determine. (I think it was rigged.) (OK, I am joking when I say that, but I believe it must be some strange anomalous occurrence, that's the only explanation I can come up with.)

Another first: this year we took a vote on a separate list of a genre specific twenty-five. The idea is that we'll be doing this from time to time. Our first genre specific vote was horror; the list is Here, and I believe it is the finest list of horror films I've seen. I used to think I was a horror aficionado, but looking at the seven films I've not seen makes me think I might have been a bit haughty in that self-assessment. Regardless, this is the finest list of horror films I've seen from a bunch of Christian critics and bloggers.

The cherished and esteemed Stephen D. Greydanus has a perfect introduction to the new Top 100 Here, and the respected and appreciated Jeffrey Overstreet, a friend whom I've previously praised here, has the Intro the the Top 25 Horror Films Here.

I've added blog-spots for my contribution as well; I wrote three blurbs for the Top 100 and they're reprinted here at Filmsweep. I also scratched out a few sentences about the horror films, too, so check it out whenever you get the chance, and be certain to check out as many of these wonderful films as you can!

Code Unknown. (2000) Michael Haneke

2011-02-15T18:46:00.001-08:00

A melting pot of social, racial and biological interactions, with injustice and violence and voyeurism thrown into the mix, Code Unknown is a film about owning up to the mystery of human relationships -- how we stumble to connect through the maze of our own expressions. The film's continual emphasis on cameras, and on the deaf and their sign language is a reminder that gestures carry just as great a weight; that symbols are as important as words.

On a business day on a crowded Parisian street, Anne (Juliette Binoche, outstanding as always), a local actress, is surprised by her lover's little brother, Jean, who has run from his father's home and needs the code to get into her flat. She loans him the key with a stern reminder that the place is small and that his stay will be short-lived.

On his way back to her flat he discards a wrapper on the lap of an immigrant woman sitting in the street. He is immediately challenged by a young black man, Amadou, about the rudeness towards the woman. Amadou seems interested in justice and demands that Jean apologize to the woman, who at this point seems to want to get away from the developing scene. The hardened kid refuses an apology, a street scuffle ensues and the police are quickly on the scene.

In the first key misfire in deciphering a social disruption (a sort of "code"), the police arrest Amadou and the immigrant woman is detained, and later put on the next plane out of France. Sometimes you speak for justice only to create a larger, more alienated mess. The scene cuts away suddenly, as do many scenes in the film, leaving you wondering how the strange event ended up.

The story picks up with Anne’s acting career -- she is constantly in front of cameras and directors (her photographer-lover Georges is out of the country snapping war photos for a feature in a respected journal) -- and several immigrant families and their isolation in a Paris that, for them, is harder to live in than they thought.

The fragmentation of society and the isolated lives within it are at the film’s central themes -- regardless of the social or economic status of the individual.

At one point Anne stands on an empty, dark theater stage in an audition for an upcoming production. For several minutes in a static, still shot, she gives her lines in character, giggling and laughing hysterically, absorbed in the lively role. At the end of her lines the room is silent and still. With the spotlight in her eyes, she can't see anything in the room. "Anyone out there?" she questions, and it feels like the central question of the film. Yes, the director and his assistant are still there. Yes, they've seen and are evaluating her scene. She waits like a refugee for an answer.

And yet in another brilliant moment the film counters the notion that we're alone, that someone will be there in the middle of our need. On the subway, Anne is later threatened and intimidated by some kids with nothing better to do but act like jerks to traveling passengers.

Their intentions are not known, but one of them gets a taste for barking at Anne and abusively follows her around on the car. When he gets nothing but the silent treatment, he goes so far as to spit in her face. A man she's never met takes a great risk and stands up to the kid. He stands the kid down, and when the kid gets off, Anne, who has been courageous up to this point, finally falls apart in tears. A stranger has just come to her aid.

There are particular things to watch for in the minimalist editing and camera movement in Code Unknown. The film is based on a series of one-takes which lends an honesty to the way the story develops. There's no deception in the image, and no soundtrack to manipulate the viewer. The well-acted scenes are relayed in a pure way; they live and die by the strength of the acting.

The camera also follows this route in aiming for full disclosure, almost moral in its use of tracking and still shots, in prolonged takes that are horizontal in motion in honor of human connectivity and concern. Watch for movement that sweeps from right to left, and back, until one of the final, lingering images, where an unknown code is lost while a key character gazes skyward.

As Georges says, when going through photos from a recent trip: "It's easy to talk about the 'ecology of the image,' and 'value of the non-transmitted message.' What matters is the end result." It sounds like the resolute words of our story-teller, director Michael Haneke, on his most honest and well thought-out film to date.

Dogville. (2003) Lars von Trier

2011-02-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

#91 on the 2011 Arts & Faith Top 100

What — or rather, who — is Grace?

Perennially controversial and once again in a mood to provoke, Danish director Lars von Trier has in Dogville constructed a minimalist tale of a bygone era on a simple symbolic stage. The film’s depiction of evil and our own response to it inevitably generates intense debate.

The story centers on runaway Grace, hiding out from both the mob and police in the small town of the film's title. Nicole Kidman, as Grace, brings one of her finest performances to the role. She, and her story of blending in and serving the town's people, are quite subtle — almost kind — at first.

But Dogville is a huge crescendo of a film, ending on the grandest scale possible, a Shakespearean-style tragedy of Biblical proportions that's willing to swallow whole anyone that gets in the path of Grace.

The director's well-known and worn out trademark from recent films is his misogynistic treatment of the leading women in his films. Take note: Dogville is no exception to this. But to this viewer von Trier makes a habit of being concerned with capturing the suffering and, in general, the abuse of grace as well. He is a consummate artist whose ambitions are often to wrestle with or against the sky, whether he admits there's anyone up there or not.

Von Trier, as the one who holds the Joker and stacks the deck, is sometimes compared to Werner Herzog in his probing of things natural and eternal. These are artists willing to strike first and ask questions later; they are sometimes despised for their willingness to take risks.

Dogville's greatest strength is in its ability to evoke so many (sometimes infuriating) views and perspectives. It spawns multiple readings, which are as varied as its viewers. Critics often talk about the film's political agenda, but there are quite a few interpretations that are overlooked: New Testament grace in light of Old Testament law; how far grace is willing to go before judgment steps in and takes over; blood ties of a prodigal daughter and the lengths a father goes in bringing her home; and the typical critic's view, which is American puritanism (then) vs. capitalist, imperialist greed (now).

The latter is obviously the anti-American angle, and the reading, judging from the film's closing credits, isn't undeserved. The song of choice (David Bowie's "Young Americans") that plays over the credits is like poking a finger in your face if you happen to live in what the film calls, "The US of A."

There's a lot to chew on here, but the subject remains the disposition of Grace. Some viewers may forget the meaning of the word when it begins with a capital G, but that may be the deepest meaning of all in this provocative film.

Ratcatcher. (1999) Lynne Ramsay

2011-02-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

#98 on the 2011 Arts & Faith Top 100

An art film disguised as social melodrama, Ratcatcher funnels Scotland's notorious garbage strike of the 1970s through the eyes of children in an impoverished Glasgow housing project. The film's beautifully captured images of these kids beset with hardship are remarkably honest, sometimes disturbing, and often haunting.

On the banks of an infested sewage canal running adjacent to their home, young James and neighbor Ryan Quinn are playing or fighting
-- it's hard to know the difference growing up in urban decay. The kids are prone to the typical adolescent problems one expects in a neighborhood like this; if growing up is difficult anywhere, then growing up here can be downright traumatic.

After their brief encounter, James isn't certain of his guilt or innocence in Ryan's death. He fled the scene too quickly to know for sure. What he does know is that he bullied the smaller Ryan, and when he fled the scene Ryan was in the cold currents of the canal, being drawn underneath to a quick and frightening end.

The guilt eats away at James, creating a rubbish in his heart like the clutter no trash man can take away. The bulk of the film follows James and a guilt constantly there behind his eyes, reflecting a conscience he somehow holds to in the midst of many crises. An alcoholic and unemployed dad inside the home and bigger-boy bullies outside, he needs to get away from a world he sees in a perpetually rotting state.

As the kids chase rats in the piled up heaps outside, James hops a bus to nowhere, no destination in mind. He finds a new, more prosperous housing project on the other side of town -- the kind his family wants to move into. Even the same sky with the same clouds seems prettier in new structures and open fields on the town's other side.

Ratcatcher is a film about learned behaviors, from James being bullied and then becoming a bully when he can, to street kids who create the same sexual tension they've seen at home, to a housing project left in disarray, where even the ever-present garbage symbolically speaks of a neighborhood left behind.

There's a neighbor kid, Kenny. He's a bit slower than the rest, not quite as bright. He functions as a sometimes comic relief in a film that desperately needs him. All of us have a Kenny in our lives -- the person who is often overlooked, the one that gets by in the joy of his own world, a world that when shared is seen as "different."

Kenny doesn't need much attention as he tends to his own quirky behaviors. He's also the "ratcatcher" in the film, and as such gives us an unexpected, delightful scene of imaginative reprieve from the spiritual and social squalor of trash-infested Glasgow.

Rich, raw visuals fill up Lynne Ramsay's debut directorial feature, lending poetic imagery to the hardship she depicts. Criterion's choice of subtitles helps with what would be unmanageable Scottish accents; titles are available on the disc as well as streaming at Netflix. This is a good thing -- the film is in English, but it's barely recognizable, which adds to the other-worldly feel of this neglected neighborhood.

Notorious. (1946) Alfred Hitchcock

2011-02-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

So, it's Valentine's Day. Time to check out some black and white love.

Finding the love in this film, however, is less like waiting for a watched pot to boil and more like waiting for the same from a swimming pool. But a sizzler of a swimming pool it is.

Here are some of the awesome, awesome anti-love quotes that build to a stunning, intense, climactic attraction in Notorious:

Devlin: Why do you like that song?
Alicia: Because it's a lot of hooey. There's nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh.

Alicia: I like to make fun of myself. I'm pretending I'm a nice, unspoiled child, whose heart is full of daisies and buttercups.
Devlin: Nice daydream.

Alicia: The time has come when you must tell me that you have a wife and two adorable children, and this madness between us can't go on any longer.
Devlin: I bet you've heard that line often enough.

Alicia: That isn't fair, Dev.
Devlin: Skip it.

Devlin: Pretty fast work.
Alicia: That's what you wanted, wasn't it?
Devlin: Skip it.

Alicia: Well, you never believed in me anyway, so what's the difference?
Devlin: Lucky for both of us.

I'm certain the printed lines don't translate half as well as they do when performed by Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman -- two well liked and well known actors playing "notorious" characters in a film by cinema's most admired and beloved director.

The romance in this film, or rather the built-up tension in the lack thereof, is, in the words of Jim Carrey in The Mask: "Sa-mokin." The chemistry between Grant and Bergman is of feverish intensity, but circumstances create a situation where only the wrong words can be said.

I always hated what I referred to as the "soap opera dilemma," which is that a bad situation could be 100% corrected if only just one line were spoken, but it never is. There's time for the line, but for some reason the info never gets relayed. In soap operas, the reason this happens is that people writing the show have to continue writing every day, and if they solve the problem today they'll get a bad case of writer's block tomorrow.

But here's a film that takes that space between the words and makes sense of it. There's always a reason the right words don't get said in Notorious, and the film is just as amazing for its perfect use of dialogue as it is for the dialogue left unsaid until the hopeful ending finally arrives.

It's plot is like a spy-thriller, a device Hitch fell in love with. Devlin is some type of Fed bringing Alicia, the loose, rich woman into an investigation against some post-war Nazis, where only she has what it takes to get inside. Her Benedict Arnold dad had connections with Germans setting up a company in Rio de Janeiro; she's to infiltrate the group by falling in love with one of its key players, but things nosedive when she falls instead for Devlin and the key player asks for her hand in marriage.

Last year I made a vow to myself to see more films by Hitch. I'll never aspire to cult status as a true film buff unless I make this so. I re-watched Vertigo and Rear Window, and for the first time took in North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much ('34), and Notorious. I'll freely admit that it took me a few viewings to really get into the world of Notorious, but I've fallen in love with this film over the past six months and can't get over what a masterpiece of cinema it is.

There's a shot in the middle of Notorious that begins at the top of a balcony with a long, winding staircase. You barely notice Ingrid Bergman on the floor below. The camera begins a long, steady zoom, as if gliding past the spiraling staircase, until you notice that it's got part of her back in the frame. You might wonder for a second why she's a little off center, not completely the center of focus. But the camera keeps zooming in, and now the picture is lopping off her head. She rests her hands behind her back, and we're not done zooming yet. Behind her back, her left hand is more and more revealed until finally, in perfect focus, the shot rests on a key in her hand, which is significant to the story in that moment. It is a breathtaking shot, to say the least. I didn't know they had cameras that could do this sort of thing sixty-five years ago, but it would still be an incredible shot by any of today's cinematographic standards.

It goes to show how the things from the past come more fully into focus over time, and how perfect they can be when we slowly let the picture zoom in on its aged, artistic majesty.

This is a wonderful film. It's an interesting love story, but it's best for the love in its spaces.

Following. (1998) Christopher Nolan

2011-02-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

Like Europa, blogged only a few days ago Here, Christopher Nolan's Following has all the main ingredients for the making of a modern film noir: a down and out writer, an investigating cop, a sassy blond dame, a gangster, a blackmailing, and a few double-crosses where characters are as quickly and easily betrayed as they are discarded. Shot in black and white on a shoestring UK budget, the writer/director's debut deals in what would later become standard in his stories: time-shifting mazes, non-sequitur paradoxes, and the schemes of powerfully weak characters voyaging to a certain elusive section in the dark corridors of the human psyche.

Nolan likes puzzles. There's no doubt about that. His films are like navigating that old brain boggler, the Rubik's Cube -- it can be done, but it's never easy, and you might have to twist and turn along the way. Even Nolan's 2010 blockbuster Inception gave us a summer popcorn movie plugged with references to Escher, lost labyrinthian corridors and the architecture of a dreaming mind in disarray. The Maze is a regular character that turns up in Nolan's stories; it's one of the reasons we look forward to new projects that bear his name.

The stories are always different; there's no regurgitation from film to film. But The Maze is always involved, one that characters endlessly grapple with and stumble around in. There are many different ways to put it on display, and Nolan always has a knack for a new entrance into it. Where Inception and The Dark Knight challenged the popcorn crowd with layered dreams, higher moralities and paradoxes -- and earlier films like Memento and Insomnia dealt with memory and its survival in time -- Following is the film that set these circular themes in motion. It's the smallest of Nolan's films, but feels unmistakeably Nolanesque, launching the vibe he would be known for: the weaving of layered schemes and stories together.

An unemployed and somewhat bored twenty-something, who fancies himself a writer, takes to the streets to find subjects for his own interests, and maybe he'll get some some writing done, too. He, who the script calls "The Young Man," and maybe lies about his name when he says it is Bill, becomes addicted to "Shadowing," his own term, which is following different people around. Any age, race or gender, he just wants to see who they are, where they're going and why. He makes rules to keep himself safe in the daily hobby, like never following a woman down a dark alley, or never shadowing the same person twice. It's when he breaks these codes of conduct that the hobby becomes more of a burden than he intended.

He's cornered and confronted by a man that he's followed into a diner -- Cobb, also the name of DiCaprio's thief-character in Inception. Cobb has noticed the fellow shadowing him, but he's been up to an interesting hobby himself -- he's taken The Young Man's idea of following strangers to an even higher level of danger. He quickly takes The Young Man under his wing.

Cobb isn't interested in simply following people around or guessing what they're like. He knows how to find out everything about them without ever saying a word. The answer, he says, is in home invasion. He teaches "Bill" that sneaking into someone's flat can provide an adrenaline rush like one has never felt before, and as a bonus you can steal things if you want to. Burglary isn't really the point though. The point, says Cobb, isn't found in any valuables within the house. The point is to see into their consumerist lives, and to take, so that they realize what they had.

When they end up thieving together, they aren't interested in jewels or gold or cash that might be hidden under a pillow. They're more interested in CDs from the family room stereo, or digging through a resident's underwear to leave at another victim's place. They're into mementos and family pictures, diaries and books with personal notes in them. "Stuff" is not the ultimate goal of these robbers -- it's privacy, and the knowledge that they've been there. They'll take only one of the two earrings in a woman's jewel box -- leaving just one behind only adds to the mystery.

At one residence they pop the cork from a bottle of wine, but barely drink a drop before being caught in the act of drinking it. They've got to act on their feet quickly to get out, but the couple in that place will remember them forever.

I've heard of people that need to break out of the structure of their isolationism, but this is ridiculous.

The idea of a burglar that isn't interested in material possessions almost sounds Robin Hood-ish, like stealing from the rich to give to the poor. I'm unconvinced of Robin Hood's nobility in the first place, but I can see the parallels in such a tale (depending on which version of the legend). However, there's nothing noble about these robbers and their habit of breaking into flats, even if only for a peak. It's voyeurism gone extreme -- social studies for the socially maladjusted, on an urban sprawling scale.

"You take it away to show them what they had," says Cobb -- but it's unconvincing when he speaks, like someone talking to a cop about a speeding ticket. Cobb's real motives remain elusive even at the end of Following, but Bill is just pathetic, useless, bored, and slightly dangerous in his boredom. He's an un-magnificent man in an un-magnificent life. He's going nowhere fast, following nothing that nourishes him, so why not follow the first thing that comes by on the street or in the local mall? The idea that people so easily fall into traps like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate is more understandable when considering a man that blindly follows.

There's a noted difference between Following and Nolan's, um, following films in the way-too-indie feel of the production. The first film from a debut director is obviously not going to have the production values of something like The Dark Knight or Inception, but it's the music in Following that bugged me most. It's lifted from public samples of some amateur software like Sonic Foundry, and in many scenes it sounds generic, or sometimes grating, or just filler. I imagine this is where most new filmmakers have to begin -- they don't any money so there's no orchestral composer on hand. Still, the samples aim for a Trent Reznor industrial-type background, and as easily seen in The Social Network, only Trent Reznor can be Trent Reznor. I don't think this film would have worked with more silence, so I don't have any answer to this, just an opinion of what didn't work as well.

The black and white visuals are edited tightly in and rather save the film from its audio implosion. There are a few holes in the story itself, a plot that doesn't hold up when fully thought through, but you don't necessarily think about it while you're caught up in the back and forth time shifts of the events. It is, in a way, like dealing with a less humorous black and white Pulp Fiction. You don't worry about missing holes, because you're being tossed back and forth in so many.

The ending is rushed -- I do think this 70 minute film would have worked a bit better at 80 minutes -- but it leaves its central character "The Young Man" grasping at straws, reminiscent of classic noir. It's not a perfect film by any means, but remains an interesting look into the beginnings of Nolan's universe -- where chaos and collision and moral mazes and memories, and even where the name "Cobb" comes from.

Europa. (1991) Lars von Trier

2011-02-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna have some splainin' ta do.

So before I talk about Europa and why I think it's worthwhile (or not), let me first approach the confessional booth like a dogme filmmaker breaking a vow of chastity:

I've been aiming to only cover black and white films this February. This film is not entirely black and white. It is, shall we say, mostly black and white. But splashes of color are gingerly brushed in as the mood of the moment dictates. (And together, the two styles are an engaging combo, I might add.)

The film is still in line with themes I've been aiming for this February. At least, it feels like it is in my head. The monster movies have been out there. Lynch is most certainly out there. And if in my last post I called Eraserhead the film I'm still most fascinated with, then Lars von Trier is the director I unapologetically remain most fascinated with.

Europa, called Zentropa when it came to theaters two decades ago, was a step into the big-time for von Trier. It was the third film in his first trilogy, but it would break out of Scandinavia in a way the first two films never could. Made with a bigger budget, a more polished film crew, and shot mostly in a foreign land (Poland) with 500 extras on the set, it would send the great Dane into notoriety at Cannes for one of his first great wins on the world's greatest film stage.

Poland in 1990 was a perfect choice for locations that looked like Germany at the end of the second World War. I was in Poznań playing music in the winter of 1990 and I assure you there were places that still looked devastated. I remember taking a taxi through the outskirts of the city late one night, and my view through the falling snow was that of dilapidated buildings, even 45 years later.

The location and the setting are worth mentioning because the strength of Europa is in its presentation -- not just that of a land that still looks wasted from war, but the way that place is captured and presented to its audience. The strength of Europa is in von Trier's urge to present an engaging film experience, mostly through sight and sound. The story, though good, is somewhat in the background to the actual experience at hand.

We meet Leo, an American in Germany, working for the Zentropa train line. During the war, Zentropa was used for transporting Jews in cattle trains to concentration camps. The war has ended, the German nation is in disarray, and these days much of the train's use is in transporting American officers first class as they watch out for "werwolfs" -- a resistance that won't end the fight even though the war is officially over.

Leo came to Germany as some kind of human symbol of peace and unification. He seems genuinely interested in lending a hand to the country. He's somewhat innocent, maybe naive in his desire to be a comfort to a traumatized land. He quickly learns that the war may have ended, but it doesn't mean there aren't sides that still want him for their cause. He falls in love with a woman who seems to flirt in the camp of the werwolfs, and like a sheep to the slaughter he feels a tug from both sides, when all he wanted was peace for all.

Europa might be about Germany and the war, and it might actually be about post-WWII Europe in general, but it has the look and feel of a classic American film noir. Well, strike the word "classic" from that last sentence. It's a noir, but updated with every trick in the book that a film can pull off half a century after classic noir. If you haven't seen Europa, it might help you to know that my recent viewing reminded me of another film that carries the same style: Sin City. Although that film is far more bloody and violent, it seems like it must have borrowed heavily from Europa.

The visuals are key to the enjoyment of this film, and that's what I remember from when I first saw it twenty years ago: Silhouetted lighting sets the visual tempo of a noir, but the modern is captured in subtle split screens, front projection against matted backgrounds, remote control cameras rotating on ceilings, and shots that seamlessly glide through windows, turning corners for an entirely different view. Walking platforms are often used as characters stroll along in color against archived film or black and white Poland in the background. The trick visuals and lighting are extraordinary in Europa, and it's fun to see von Trier in his youth and in his element. At this time in life he's still experimenting, still looking for the "zip." He's already trying to prove he's the greatest director in the world.

The shots are hypnotic, matching a hypnotist who narrates. This is one for the film school students still looking to be impressed.

Eraserhead. (1976) David Lynch

2011-02-07T19:49:00.000-08:00