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SCREENING LOG
-9/27-10/03, 2004
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Cleopatra (1934, Cecil B. DeMille)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024991/
yes (#9 for 1934 between IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and THE GAY
DIVORCEE)
Gerry (2002, Gus van Sant)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302674/
mixed
The Run of the Arrow (1957, Samuel Fuller)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050915/
YES (#5 for 1957between TOKYO TWILIGHT and A KING IN NEW
YORK)
It's a Gift (1934, Norman Z. McLeod)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025318/
yes
Park Row (1952, Samuel Fuller)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045009/
YES (#2 for 1952 between SINGIN' IN THE RAIN and IKIRU)
La Signora di Tutti (1934, Max Ophuls)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025791/
YES YES (#4 for 1934 between L'ATALANTE and ANGELE)
Man of Aran (1934, Robert Flaherty)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025456/
YES (#6 for 1934 between ANGELE and FLOATING WEEDS)
The Philadelphia Story (1940, George Cukor) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032904/
yes (#8 for 1940 between DANCE GIRL, DANCE and THE LETTER)
Verboten! (1959, Samuel Fuller)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052354/
yes (#10 for 1959 between THE CRIMSON KIMONO and SHADOWS)
The Gay Divorcee (1934, Mark Sandrich) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025164/
yes (#10 for 1934 between CLEOPATRA and IT'S A GIFT)
From the 2004 New York Film Festival:
The Big Red One - Reconstructed (1980/2004, Samuel Fuller)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/
Sam Fuller, veteran of the army division whose name serves
as the title of this film, spent most of his career planning
for a movie that would be a true representation of the World
War II soldier's experience (rejecting opportunities to direct
THE LONGEST DAY and other WWII films along the way). When
he finally got his chance, he made his epic with a paltry
$4 million budget, only to see the results trimmed by an hour
by the studio upon release. I haven't seen the original cut,
but this reconstruction by Time magazine critic and Fuller
biographer Richard Schickel, using footage recovered in the
Warner Brothers vault and edited to follow Fuller's shooting
script, to me fulfills Fuller's objective stunningly. The
narrative is loose -- there's no real three-act structure
or what have you, just a series of sharp and memorable anecdotes
based on factual events, with a piercing eye for detail that
attests to Fuller's journalistic background. The narrative
winds its way through four years of combat, from North Africa
to Italy to Normandy to Belgium, each with its own distinct
situations, moods, and invariably expendable characters, that
accumulate to form an overwhelming impression of lived experience.
By the time the unit reaches the concentration camps of Czechoslovakia,
relief, anguish, exhaustion, hatred and hope all start to
swirl together in a vortex of messy humanity, and no emotion
establishes a lasting advantage over another. Fuller doesn't
craft a streamlined, jingoistic entertainment out of wartime
atrocity like Spielberg (who no doubt was out to outdo Fuller
with SAVING PRIVATE RYAN even as he cribbed liberally from
it), nor does he indulge in the lyric, rhapsodic philosophizing
of Terrence Malick, nor does he make a clinical, cerebral
study out of wartime behavior like Kubrick. His film is very
much a soldier's film -- making no time to dwell in larger
themes or "war is hell" statements, it's a film that's thoroughly
entrenched in the immediacy of one predicament after another,
where moral, existential and tactical problems are one and
the same, and survival the only goal worth fighting for. YES
YES (#1 for 1980) (#1 for new films seen in 2004)
Triple Agent (2004, Eric Rohmer)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374294/
Critics have been calling this period spy thriller a startling
departure for Rohmer (now in his 80s), but I see plenty of
connections to his other films. He's always been fascinated
with how individuals determine their morality in the face
of challenging social situations, and as with his last film
THE LADY AND THE DUKE, he's taking this concern to a distinct
historical context. This time it's pre-WWII Paris, where a
White Russian ex-general (Serge Renko, who pleasantly resembles
John Cleese) is playing for advantages against fellow Whites,
Red Communists and the local government, with the Nazis as
the wild card lurking in the wings. Unfortunately his lover
(Katerina Didaskalu) becomes the main victim, psychologically
and emotionally drained by her uncertainty over his true allegiances.
This is all fascinating on paper but Rohmer's direction is
drier than usual, and this is coming from someone who usually
warms up to Rohmer's cerebral, deliberate execution of scenes.
Maybe the problem is that his rendering of the period is so
immaculate, with sets so rich in detail, that it feels more
museum-like than contemporary -- stylistically it has none
of the boldness of THE LADY AND THE DUKE (much less PERCEVAL).
Still, it manages to bring back a good deal of the tension
and anxiety of a politically tumultuous time and place. yes
(#18 for 2004 IMDb releases between VANITY FAIR and KILL BILL,
VOL. 2)
Tropical Malady (2004, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381668/
Another mysterious object from one of the most fearless and
beguiling filmmakers on the planet. The story appears to be
about a Thai soldier who befriends a villager, in what develops
into a homoerotic relationship. AW's storytelling consistently
stays a step ahead of the audience, treating us to unexpected
developments and breathtaking digressions, practically halting
the story in its tracks to indulge in a karaoke duet or a
casual spelunking expedition with some of the colorful locals.
But then the story takes a daring leap into Thai mythology
and creepy naturalism reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce, as the
soldier tracks down an elusive beast-man that's been terrorizing
the villagers. It's unclear exactly what happens at the end,
but along the way there's some of the most attentive and reverent
nature cinematography in recent memory. This one sent much
of the audience scratching their heads in a less than satisfied
state; while I don't think the ending merits unqualified admiration
(at least not after the first viewing), there is much originality
and visual brilliance on display. YES (#6 for 2004 IMDb releases
between SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS and FAHRENHEIT 9/11)
Notre Musique (2004, Jean-Luc Godard)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360845/
Godard's latest is as overwhelming in ideas and images as
his best films, but I wasn't sold on its masterpiece status
until it was vindicated by my wife... who was watching her
first Godard film (and now wants to see more!). Remarkably,
she found that it fell into her own thought process and creative
endeavors, where images are presented as vessels of meaning
to engage in a non-narrative reflection on the forces that
shape one's experience. The dialogue on Israeli-Palestine
relations no doubt piqued her interest as well. The film is
divided into three sections: "Hell" is a montage of grainy
video clips of real war footage mixed in with movie war clips.
There's a palpable, ugly beauty to the sequence (predicated
upon Godard's old-school film aesthetic bias, that video can
only be beautiful if it's ugliness is amplified), and this
paradox of ugly beautiful war is one of several dialectical
oppositions Godard explores through the film. For instance,
in "Purgatory," which takes place around a cultural conference
in present-day Sarajevo, we overhear dialogues about the relationship
between the powerful and the powerless, how this relationship
breeds separate cultural histories whose irreconcilability
in turn breeds more hatred and destruction; Godard also ties
this to an onscreen lecture he gives on the politics of the
shot/reverse shot. Everywhere on Godard's canvas there are
images of recovery (a major theme in twilight-period Godard);
a librarian collects books from donors, each donor admonishing
the limitations of each book to adequately represent its subject;
an ancient bridge demolished during the Bosnian War is reconstructed
stone by stone. Finally, an Israeli girl contemplates becoming
a suicide bomber for peace, as an attempt to break through
the walls of routinized understanding between Israelis and
Palestinians. Her afterlife is envisioned in the last segment,
"Heaven", a surrealist landscape that somewhat recalls the
final scene in WEEKEND: a lush green shoreline guarded by
US troops (is this an Israeli's fantasy?) where the film ends
with a man giving a woman an apple, a provocative inversion
of the first-ever assertion of a power dynamic in mythical
human history, the first-ever human tragedy.
Indeed, one could say that history has become the dominant
idea in Godard's late films, and his insistence on the importance
of being aware of history, culture and politics makes his
films alienating for many, and yet heroically vital. Much
of this film will probably be lost on those without some kind
of background on Balkan or Israeli-Palestinian conflicts...
though even those with a background may still not get it.
During the Q&A a Jewish woman wondered aloud why the Israeli
girl commits suicide, when it's a well-known fact "that Jews
love life". Of course what this statement inversely implies
about Palestinians tells you everything about the huge gap
of misunderstanding and misperceptions of others, the same
gap that the Israeli girl, and Godard, are trying to overcome
in this film. YES (#3 for 2004 IMDb releases between BEFORE
SUNSET and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) (#9 for
new films seen in 2004 between LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF and
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND)
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