|
SCREENING LOG
-2/09-2/15, 2004
Back to 2004 Index
I watched NOTES OF AN ITINERANT PERFORMER, ME AND MY BROTHER,
PROCESS, A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, COUNTRY OF MY SKULL, END OF
THE CENTURY: THE STORY OF THE RAMONES, DEMAIN ON DEMENAGE
<<TOMORROW WE MOVE>>, BEFORE SUNSET, SOUTH OF
THE CLOUDS, MARIA FULL OF GRACE, LOST EMBRACE, MONSTER, DISTANT
VOICES STILL LIVES, THE FRESHMAN, and WHY WORRY?
From Berlin:
Notes of an Itinerant Performer (1941, Hiroshi Shimizu)
not listed on IMDb
YES YES (- Absolutely wonderful use of space, a dramatic
and dynamic use of foreground and background in a way that
conceals and reveals characters, up there with the best of
Renoir and Mizoguchi in this period. Like Mizoguchi, Shimizu
also seems punch drunk on tracking shots, and uses them to
a stunning variety of effects, from dramatic to comic, sometimes
at once. The compositions are immaculately conceived, each
character and object placed in a way that they seem to give
off their own glow in relation to each other.
- The story seems like textbook Mizoguchi -- a dancer in
a travelling show is sold to a rich household to be the dance
trainer for the girl of the house. When the patriarch of the
household dies the family is thrown into disarray, but the
woman makes sacrifices in order to save them. The resolution
however is rather un-Mizoguchian in its looseness and candidness
-- instead of going for full throttle dramatic intensity it
opts for something less assuming, more frank and unexpected,
almost spontaneous like in some of Ozu's endings. Like both
of them he seems very attuned to the transience of life and
how people make moral decisions in response to the less-than-ideal
situations in which they find themselves. I really want to
see more of Shimizu's films. If they're as good as this one
then he really should be considered among the all-time Japanese
elite filmmakers.
More on Shimizu here. There will be a 12-film retro in Berlin
in March -- hopefully this will make its way to the States.
http://www.fdk-berlin.de/forum2004/pdf/000b_shimizu.pdf)
Me and My Brother (1969, Robert Frank)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063286/
yes
Process (2004, C.S. Leigh)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354848/
NO NO
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Kim Ji-Woon)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365376/
yes (I had problems with the setup but gradually as the story
started to fold in on itself I was duly impressed. Kind of
like the last 1/2 hour of MULHOLLAND DR. stretched out ad
infinitum. I saw this with a Columbian and a Turk (who basically
went on my recommendation) and they were both amazed, and
thanked me profusely. So if anything I have this film to thank
for cementing my reputation as a discerning film buff among
an international coterie! (but of course I have you to thank
for telling me about this film to begin with) On the other
hand, a Korean filmmaker I met who's based in LA said he didn't
like this, and another Korean filmmaker I met said he didn't
like how the film borrows its trappings from Japanese gothic
horror flicks (which in turn were inspired by Hollywood horror
movies)
Country of My Skull (2003, John Boorman)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349260/
no
End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones(2003, Jim
Fields, Michael Gramaglia)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368711/
yes
Demain on Demenage a/k/a Tomorrow We Move (2004, Chantal
Akerman)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328990/
mixed
Before Sunset (2004, Richard Linklater)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381681/
YES YES (I'm not sure I knew what to expect from this one,
esp. given that it was a sequel -- I have great respect for
Richard Linklater and I enjoyed BEFORE SUNRISE well enough,
but I simply wasn't prepared for this. 9 years after BEFORE
SUNRISE, Ethan Hawke's Jesse is back in Europe, this time
Paris; now he's a writer on a book tour, his book, naturally,
is a recollection of that magical day in Vienna when he had
an extraordinary day-long conversation with Celine (Julie
Delpy). Wouldn't you know it, he spots Celine in the audience.
With two hours before he has to catch his plane, he and Celine
decide to hang out together and catch up on each others' lives,
having not seen each other since that fateful day. Whereas
BEFORE SUNRISE captured the highlights of that day in 90 minutes,
this time the film captures every single one of the 90 minutes
spent between Celine and Jesse in real time. Technically this
is a virtuoso accomplishment, demonstrating just how much
skill Linklater has acquired in his craft over the last decade,
in how seamlessly he integrates his scenes so that they flow
naturally from one to the next, without a single moment lost
or ringing false. It's also a testament to Hawke and Delpy
in how utterly natural their performances are -- as they did
9 years ago, they do an awful lot of talking throughout this
film, and as with the previous film this dialogue-heavy premise
succeeds with the viewer if they buy into the notion that
two people can hit it off like Hawke and Delpy do. The first
film may have been dismissed by some as a male collegiate
coffehouse poseur's European sex fantasy -- and while I agree
that both films amount to a sort of fantasy, they're purpose
isn't escapist -- these fantasies make us more in tune to
what is real vs. what may be possible. I give Linklater a
helluva lot of credit for believing that a magical connection
between two human beings as he depicts here is possible, especially
because in this film he goes so far as to show why it MUST
be possible. These two poor souls meet with 10 years of personal
baggage, and the lines on their faces are all the real life
sadness and tragedy that this film needs -- the gleaming perpetual
idealism of the first movie has been replaced with a wisecracking
weariness and a grinding sense of insecurity, obligation and
even mortality. They talk about their jobs, their families,
the loved ones they've lost, and the things they feel they
have to do to keep their lives going. Whereas the talk talk
talking of the first movie was generated by youthful exuberance
and tireless play with various classroom theories and ideas,
here the endless conversation seems to be driven out of desperation
-- they talk about whatever surfacey topics come into their
heads... sometimes they seem like they're trying to impress
each other, presenting a version of themselves based on the
topics they choose to discuss... but this is merely the surface.
it's not just about talking -- the talking is just a front
for what's really going on between these two people, about
how they are actively LISTENING to each other, trying to figure
out how much the other has changed, if they are the person
they thought they had been captivated by 9 years ago and were
a hair's width from starting a new life with them if only
that... and then the assessment is no longer about the other
person, but about themselves, how much THEY have changed over
this time, what choices they have made and where it has led
them to in life. And this is the point where I just lost it
and broke down. It's hard to remember a film that so specifically
captures a moment of human existence, with such vividness,
as if the screen had evaporated and you're riding shotgun
in the taxi cab listening to two people slouched in the backseat
and bantering wearily, two people whose lives could have been
changed if they had stayed together instead of letting each
other slip away from their lives, and now they find themselves
back together after all these years and accounting for how
they've lived their lives in each other's absence -- this
tremendous sorrowful sense of the life that could have been
lived, of decisions that were made amidst the naivete of youth
and the longterm effects they have had on their adulthood.
These two people trying their hardest to communicate their
emotions as honestly and as clearly to each other as they
can, when even they can't fully understand their own despair...
what is this but human communication as an act of faith --
they throw everything they've got into the belief that the
other person understands them, in the dwindling moments they
have before they have to say goodbye once again.
And then there's the ending. Beautiful, unexpected, unbelievably
perfect, so naturally real it's unreal. So fitting for a movie
that plays it moment by moment because it understands that
life, for better or worse, is about being in the moment you
are in right now and making the most of it. It's all you really
can do.)
South of the Clouds (2004, Zhu Wen)
not listed on IMDb
YES (I went to see SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS first at a screening
with German subtitles instead of English. I didn't think this
would be a problem as I thought my Chinese listening skills
would be sufficient -- but they weren't. I was pretty lost
during some stretches, but I did appreciate some of the visuals
a good deal. In fact the most beautiful shot I saw of all
the films of the festival was in this movie: an overhead shot
of the surface of a lake with the blue sky and the clouds
reflected in it. Then a boat comes sailing through as if drifting
upon the clouds! It was as if it were straight out of DEAD
MAN. In fact SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS in some ways resembles DEAD
MAN -- a retired factory worker feels alienated from his family
and decides to travel to western China, where he has always
dreamed of going. The interesting thing is that midway through
the film, just when he arrives at his destination, we slip
into a dream sequence that plays as like the idealized version
of his odyssey. Somehow we never quite wake up from this dream,
even when it turns into a horrible Kafkaesque nightmare.
When I interviewed Zhu (after seeing it a second time with
English subtitles, after which I was convinced it was a masterpiece),
I was tempted to ask him if he had seen DEAD MAN, but before
I did he told me his general attitude towards watching movies:
"One must realize that when watching a film they are losing
90 minutes of time they could be spending in the world". (Nonetheless
he later admitted to wanting to see the new films by Angelopoulos
and Rohmer at the festival.) His background is fascinating
-- five years as an electrical engineer, writing novels on
the side, six years as a renowned writer, and then one day
he decides that he needs to make a movie in order to continue
his artistic development, and without going to film school,
without ever having touched a movie camera, he makes SEAFOOD,
which next to PLATFORM is the second best Chinese film I've
seen this decade. Talking with him about this phenomenon,
I came away feeling that a craftsman's knowledge of a given
medium isn't as important as having a clear vision of what
you are out to do, and then it's just a matter of getting
it done. This is the second time I've heard a filmmaker say
that seeing movies isn't important in making good movies (Bruno
Dumont was the first).
It takes a pretty confident person to make this kind of assertion
-- and his confidence is apparent in both films he's made,
in the way they make sudden radical shifts in their narrative
and still manage to feel natural and organic. Shifts that
seem to parallel the shifts in his own life, from engineer
to novellist to filmmaker. In any event talking with him was
a transformative experience -- I came away from it feeling
that everything I needed to do was quite simple and it was
just a matter of focusing on what really mattered.)
Maria, Full of Grace (2004, Joshua Marston)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390221/
yes
Lost Embrace (2004, Daniel Burman)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366137/
mixed
Monster (2003, Patty Jenkins)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340855/
very very mixed (I can't say my impression of the film is
crystal clear as I saw it while suffering from jet lag (in
fact I'm still waking up at 3am these days and going to bed
at 8). I couldn't tell for sure if the direction was either
remarkably matter-of-fact and non-judgmental or if it was
perfunctory and bland. Perhaps both. I couldn't tell if Christina
Ricci was annoying and trite because her character was simply
meant to be annoying and trite or if because Ricci was hitting
the wrong notes. Perhaps both. I couldn't tell if Theron's
performance was pretty-rich-girl doing the po-white-trash-thang
or really sincerely committed to the human being whose life
she wanted to portray. Perhaps both. Kind of the same feeling
I have for DeNiro's Jake Lamotta -- the most totally committed
and heartfelt gimmick/stunt/Oscar-mongering performance of
all time. Anyway Theron's got it in the bag so I wish her
well. I'd be curious to revisit this film to better clarify
my thoughts, on the other hand I don't think I ever want to
see this film again!)
and thank you bkamberger for:
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095037/
YES (it reminded me somewhat of Parajanov, and though I found
the use of music to stagnate somewhat towards the end, I am
willing to doubt myself and assume that this film might be
on to a form of narrative progression I haven't encountered
before. I would very much like to see this again to ascertain
this hunch. In any case it's a beautiful film.)
The Freshman (1925, Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015841/
YES
Why Worry? (1923, Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014611/
mixed (perhaps I shouldn't have seen this right after THE
FRESHMAN, which may now be my favorite Harold Lloyd movie
and most definitely an influence on Ozu's collegiate pictures.
Why Worry doesn't seem to have as much of an auteurist mark
to it -- instead of playing an underdog Lloyd is a spoiled
rich kid who jaunts to Latin America for a series of impressive
gags and rather tiresome jokes of the banana republic variety.
It's quite good as an entertainment for the most part, but
I also found it bothersome and inconsequential.)
Back to 2004 Index
|
