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SCREENING LOG
-4/26-5/02, 2004
Back to 2004 Index
The Agronomst (2003, Jonathan Demme)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377031/
An obvious labor of love for Demme, who apparently was good
friends with this video documentary's titular subject, Jean
Dominique, who founded and ran the left-wing radio station
Inter Haiti on and off for 40 years despite years of brutal,
violent oppression by the ruling authorities and subsequent
periods of exile. It's a combination of unabashed hagiograpy
of a charismatic figure whose outspoken personality is captured
over 10 years of informal interviews with Demme; informative
but rather one-sided dissemination of the Haiti's history
of governmental abuse and corruption (aided in some part by
the CIA, what else is new); and stirring agit-prop set to
Wyclef Jean's native soundtrack. I just wished there was less
intent on lionizing Dominique and more willingness to scrutinize
his role and effectiveness amidst the political machinations
that have kept Haiti in the sorry state it's in even to this
day. mixed
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004, Quentin Tarantino)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378194/
I've already said quite a bit on this one: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000010/inline/8059144?d=8121308#8121308.
yes for the film itself, no for the film as a cultural phenomenon,
averaging a mixed (same goes for the entire diptych)
I have an urge to write an essay tentatively titled "Against
Cinephilia" as a point of contention with some of my colleagues
who consider this ersatz assemblage of cinematic pedantry
to be one of cinema's greatest achievements. Cinema is NOT
equivalent to cinephilia -- cinema's greatest potential is
and will always be its ability to reinvest us in the world,
rather than providing a navel-gazing haven for our terminal
self-delight.
Sullivan's Travels (1941, Preston Sturges) second
viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034240/
YES YES - #4 for 1942 between NOTES OF AN ITINERANT
PERFORMER and THE LADY EVE
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033804/
YES YES - #5 for 1942 between SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS and
THE MALTESE FALCON
I watched the excellent criterion DVDs of SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS
and THE LADY EVE, and I was amazed at how self-reflexive BOTH
of these films are in terms of their awareness and active
critiquing and modifying of genre conventions, and (of even
more significance to me) their active interrogation of what
constitutes reality -- the reality of other people (Eve vs.
Jean and Muggsy's insistence that she's "positively the same
dame!" in LADY EVE; Sullivan's earnest naivete in seeking
the reality of the poor), the reality of life that dances
elusively behind a series of veiled surfaces.
These films I hope need no introduction, and if anything
attest to Sturges' incredible range, hitting comic, dramatic
and romantic tones and investing them with tremendous wit,
energy and complicated emotion. THE LADY EVE is a classic
Shakespearean comedy of marriage (or is it remarriage?) --
Fonda and Stanwyck have incredible chemistry (most notably
in that famous horizontal cheek-to-cheek dialogue that lasts
a good minute -- I'm sure that for once, only one part of
Henry Fonda was stiff). SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS is, among other
things, a meditation on what responsibility the popular artist
should have concerning social issues; Sullivan asks himself
what kind of movie he should make, if a drama would be more
relevant to the world than the light entertainments he's thrived
on -- meanwhile Sturges does nothing less in this film than
make several movies of all genres -- slapstick, screwball,
sexy romance, Depression era melodrama, film noir, action
movie, it's all in there. It's an amazing tour de force that
moves like gangbusters through the world of film and the real
world and engages wholeheartedly in the tense relationship
between the two (something Tarantino has lost sight of in
my opinion).
This perception on my part, that Sturges is intensely keen
on playing to the tension between forms/types and realities
underlying them, led to at least a couple of odd moments for
me when I wasn't sure how to react to something. I'll describe
them below and would like to hear thoughts of others familiar
with these films and these particular scenes:
- Jean's transformation into Eve and Stanwyck's god awful
fake trans-Atlantic accent. I just couldn't buy into it, and
I was amazed that the people around her were eating it up,
esp. Fonda. Muggsy, the eternal skeptic, is the only person
who remotely suspects that Eve is a fraud and may be Jean,
but when he brings this to Fonda's attention Fonda offers
the most convoluted rationalization for why Eve and Jean can't
be the same person (something to the effect of "they have
too much in common to be the same person!"). Can we really
say in this case that Sturges is deliberately making the discernible
cracks of Jean's disguise a point of ontological inquiry by
making it less than totally convincing? Is it a kind of alienation
effect? Or could it simply be that Stanwyck's performance
was a mistake?
- Similarly, I felt a bit thrown out of the film with the
famous Mickey Mouse in the church scene in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS.
There is a strong level of discernible artifice that pervades
this scene. It starts with the goody-goodiness of the black
church and its noble preacher, flirting dangerously with liberal
stereotype. And then when the prisoners are seated and the
movie starts, everyone starts laughing uproariously in a manner
that strikes me as so forced, it can be interpreted as either
bad directing or a deliberate affectation. In a way that scene
amounts to Sullivan being in a kind of artistic hell, where
everyone is laughing their asses off at something so mindlessly
simple as Goofy's nose stuck to flypaper -- there's nothing
to aspire to, just offer the dumbest schtick and people will
eat it right up. I feel that this observation (if indeed it
is what the film is intending to make) can be interpreted
in different, even opposing directions. One the one hand,
it's one of the most stunning expressions of contempt for
the audience I've ever seen in a film -- on the other hand,
it's a slap in the face to Sullivan's artistic ambitions/pretensions,
that he's been reaching for these Truths that really have
nothing to do with what people need in their lives. It's a
very difficult, complex scene, that's perhaps as full of humanism
as nihilism, and vice versa.
I guess I can make more sense of it than the ending, which
really makes me scratch my head, what with Sullivan's dubious
line "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did
you know that that's all some people have?" (is Sullivan referring
to the dispossessed of the world, or to his own limited talent
as an entertainer?) followed by the composite shot of McCrea
and Veronica Lake's faces surrounded by the laughing faces
from the church screening. There's something mad and unresolved
about this scene, even though on the surface it seems to be
making the most banal, conservative platitude about the role
of art as a palliative for people's suffering, as opposed
to an active agent for social change that the likes of Eisenstein
and the Italian neo-realists firmly believed in (SULLIVAN'S
TRAVELS is like a critique of neo-realism avant lettre). The
best light I can see this incredible film is as a deeply unresolved
meditation on the place that artists have in society; otherwise
if I take it at face value I find it an appaling defeatist
apologia for the production of the same Hollywood crap that's
numbing the minds of consumer-viewers today.
Anyway, getting back to consumer advisory mode, the DVD extras
are great in both films -- there's excellent spirited commentary
on SULLIVAN'S by, among others, Christopher Guest and Michael
McKean (oh if only their films were as layered and less cheap
as Sturges'), and Marian Keane (heavily citing the writings
of Stanley Cavell) gives a provocative account of how the
film reflexively calls attention to the Hollywood cinematic
apparatus.
Thanks Antonious for:
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965, Russ Meyer)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059170/
I enjoyed this quite a bit for the most part -- it has several
great set pieces and a bracing sense of movement that at first
seems as linear as a salt flats speedway but increasingly
circles in on itself like the flight patterns of buzzards
as the characters hone in on each other with fatal intent.
I only wish that any one of the bad girls survived their showdown
with the patriarchy -- it seems that Meyer's conclusion isn't
as radically or progressively feminist as some would argue,
since the two most normal/boring/neo-con characters are the
ones left standing (and one of them is a Playboy centerfold,
which in the world of this movie is tantamount to mainstream
bourgeois conservative). yes #9 for 1965 between CHIMES
AT MIDNIGHT and HELP!
Roaring Across the Horizon (1999, Chen Guoxing)
not listed on IMDb
So get this: a film that glorifies China's development of
its very own atomic bomb during the '60s, told in the most
lamentable Chinese nationalist noble self-sacrifice bullshit
cliches imaginable: lacking a supercomputer to make all the
innumerable intricate calculations for nuke-making, the Chinese
government enlists a roomful of mathematicians using abacuses
; the head scientist heroically plugs away at his desk, seeing
his dutiful, long suffering wife only once a year and even
then foregoing conjugal privileges in order to maximize his
time and energy in the interests of national security; and,
in the climactic finale when the bomb is exploded (presented
in stock footage straight out of DR. STRANGELOVE), we get
five minutes of wild cheering and celebration (in slow-motion,
of course) and a voice-over that proudly exclaims, "This was
the day that China rose up against the American Imperialist
threat," but guess what music is playing in the background:
Aaron Copland's all-American "Fanfare for the Common Man"!
But most baffling of all is that this film is included in
a 50-film package distributed by the Chinese government to
promote "the glories of Chinese cinema" to international audiences.
What the hell were they thinking??? In a word, NO
Journey to the Western Xia Empire (1997, Lu Wei)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123329/
A troubling but fascinating adventure yarn possibly disguising
a harsh political allegory of governmental abuse: in the 11th
century the Emperor sends out armies to collect "blood tax"
from peasants -- 10 baby boys are abducted from a village
to be conscripted for the ever-depleted army reserves. However
the ride back proves as perilous as a Mann Western, as a expectant
mother, kidnapped so that her child can be taken as soon as
it is born, puts up resistance. I'm surprised that this passed
the censors as the outrage at this state-sanctioned barbarism
is made explicit by the end -- but I guess it's applicability
towards understanding the contemporary Chinese governement
is ambiguous enough to slide off. yes
Stolen Kisses (1968, Francois Truffaut)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062695/
The adult adventures of Antoine Doinel, taking his first
awkward steps into the world of work and sex, are rendered
in a much lighter tone than 400 BLOWS, but the incidental
breeziness is a major part of this film's charm, as close
as Truffaut could hope to evoking his idol Lubitsch. Still
I'm not sure if this is enough to fully satisfy me -- one
major problem I had was reconciling the film's version of
Paris '68 with the Paris '68 that is documented vividly in
the Criterion DVD's wonderful extras -- footage of Truffaut
and other New Wave figures demonstrating outside the Cinematheque
Francais in protest to the firing of its irreplaceable director
Henri Langlois; Truffaut boldly insisting at Cannes press
conferences that the festival be shut down in a gesture of
solidarity to the students and workers demonstrating all over
France and Europe. The contrast of a highly politicized real-life
Truffaut with this virtually apolitical film (there's faint,
quaint mentioning of demonstrations over a telephone conversation)
feels like an irresolvable paradox, and, I'm afraid, a sign
of the film's limited scope, despite its undeniable charm
and universal appeal in charting a young man's coming of age
(though Jean-Pierre Leaud has perhaps rarely had as little
to do as he has here, a passive, fumbling model of naive youth
led through one whimsical incident after another). A blond
Delphine Seyrig's intensely sexy turn as Doinel's unexpected
sexual initiator -- she out-Mrs. Robinson's Mrs. Robinson!
-- ensures that this film gets a solid yes.
One Fine Spring Day (2001, Hur Jin-ho)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295192/
A gentle, quietly mannered romance that delicately plots
a long-distance relationship between a sound recordist and
a rural radio announcer. The theme of sound is introduced
quite prominently through the occupations of the two lovers
and through their memorable first encounter recording the
sounds of nature for a radio broadcast. But I feel this idea
was lost as the film charted the emotional vicissitues of
long-distance romance. It's a nice film but I was left wanting
by the end. mixed
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