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SCREENING LOG
-7/19-7/25, 2004
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Begone Dull Care (1949, Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041169/
yes (#9 for 1949 between MYRIADS OF LIGHTS and ADAM'S RIB)
Gloria (1980, John Cassavetes)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080798/
yes (#6 for 1980 between THE SHINING and THE BLUES BROTHERS)
Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942, Marcel Carne)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035521/
yes - I liked this more than JOUR SE LEVE or CHILDREN OF
PARADISE (#5 for 1942 between TO BE OR NOT TO BE and THE ROAD
TO MOROCCO)
Loulou (1980, Marcel Pialat)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081076/
yes (#4 for 1980 between AIRPLANE! and THE SHINING)
Le sang des betes / The Blood of the Beasts (1949, Georges
Franju)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041842/
If you already know what this film is about, you'll be startled
by how it opens: in a junkyard on the outskirts of Paris,
where according to the voiceover, the unwanted refuse of the
affluent finds its way to be salvaged by the poor and destitute,
those who might appreciate its discarded beauty. We see all
kinds of decorative objects lying in heaps of rubble: a broken
chandelier, a painting, a mannequin that looks almost like
a modern plastic Venus di Milo. This is a startling and provocative
opening because it asks us to think about what is beautiful
and useful in our lives, vs. what is ugly and useless. In
this way, Franju prepares us for some of the most ghastly
and horrifyingly frank depictions of the slaughterhouse captured
on film. Following the two ideas of "beauty" and "usefulness",
the two main thoughts that ran through my head as I watched
the ways that several skilled butchers knocked out, bled,
flayed and butchered various horses, cows and lambs (whose
body parts still jerked wildly seconds after being decaptiated)
were "damn they sure make thorough use of just about every
part of the animal" and "damn, these guys are skillful" --
so much so that it's almost a thing of beauty watching them
hack into each animal with an eerie sense of efficiency and
grace to their movements, like an All-Star baseball batter
taking his swings. In this way Franju is really able to push
his film beyond the realm of reactionary liberal guilt that
one might expect in any movie that depicts the abattoir with
such brutal explicit detail. Apparently a number of the user
comments read the film as a call for animal rights, but I
don't think this is what Franju is after. I think his mentality
(made at a time when vegetarianism was hardly a known idea)
is simply acknowledging that we as human beings have to be
fully aware of the acts committed for the sake of sustaining
our lives, if only because it puts us back in touch with all
of the world, the horrible as well as the beautiful -- and
perhaps we may even see how the horrible can be beautiful
as well. I think he sets us up for these thoughts with the
junkyard scene -- we can't be like those bourgeois people
who throw away their household items when they cease to be
beautiful or pleasing to them. We can't treat life as if it
were so disposable, and we can't ignore how a cheap attitude
towards the things in our lives affects us. How odd and seemingly
ironic that Franju makes this argument, that the things in
life are something to be cherished as precious and not cheap
-- by depicting these acts of slaughter. But we have to be
accountable to this slaughter, and for what purpose it is
carried out, if we want to be accountable to our lives in
a meaningful and honest way. We can't just live in a vacuum
and pretend that the meat we so quickly gobble down during
our meals comes from nothing of significance. This is a really
amazing film. But make no mistake, it is awful hard and gut-wrenching
to watch, but I think that watching it will affect your sense
of life and humanity in ways few films could ever hope to,
I think for the better. The sad thing to realize is that,
as horrifying and upsetting as the slaughtering of animals
in this movie may appear, it's probably nothing compared to
the mass-processing of animals by the modern food industry,
as documented in books such as FAST FOOD NATION. Now THAT
is inhumane.
YES (#4 for 1949 between LATE SPRING and ON THE TOWN)
Samson and Delilah (1949, Cecil B. DeMille)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041838/
mixed
After the Apocalypse (2004, Yasuaki Nakajima)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404745/ mixed (with flashes
of YES)
The Beautiful Washing Machine (2004, James Lee)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407568/
yes (#8 for 2004 IMDb releases between JAMES' JOURNEY TO
JERUSALEM and SAVED! #19 for new films seen in 2004, between
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD and A TALE OF TWO SISTERS)
Free Radicals (2003, Barbara Albert)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372814/
yes - who let Paul Thomas Anderson loose on Austria?
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