SCREENING LOG -10/11-10/17, 2004

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Criss Cross (1949, Robert Siodmark)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041268/

yes (#7 for 1949 between STRAY DOG and THE FOUNTAINHEAD)

Applause (1929, Robert Mamoulian)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019644/

YES YES YES (#1 for 1929)

Trial of Joan of Arc (1962, Robert Bresson)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059616/

I think it's the closest Bresson got to filming a documentary, how much it's simply documenting an event that happened several centuries ago and so he recreates it with as little conscious embellishment as he can. He seems to have chained himself to the transcript, much like Rohmer tried to be faithful to de Troyes' PERCEVAL by letting the source text shape every aspect of the film, or Pasolini sticking to the letter of the book of Matthew, leading to abrupt jumps and movements in the narrative and dialogue that only underscore the same qualities in the original material. So to me it says he's going back to basics, back to the source, and let the essential qualities of the text shape the film. Everything is so spare in this film that the focus is on the words, and the flatness of the line deliveries make us wonder about the mysterious identity of the woman who uttered them -- Bresson's Joan is as much an absence as she is a presence. This is definitely the opposite effect of Dreyer's Joan, but Bresson's films have always been about the things that aren't visible. It also qualifies as an experiment, a transitional film -- by now he's abandoned the fluorishes of his earlier films PICKPOCKET (while alienating his cinematographer in the process -- this would be Burel's last film after an amazing 10 year collaboration with Bresson) and settled into a more rigorous cinema of static observation and rhythmic editing, presumably to sharpen his focus on the essence of his mise-en-scene, an essence which is as palpable (insofar) as it is invisible.YES (#7 for 1962 between LA JETEE and THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL)

Excalibur (1981, John Boorman)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082348/

YES (#1 for 1981)

Fantasia (1940, various directors -- some good, some intolerable)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032455/

mixed - YES for effort and concept, no for results. I was doing YES-level fine from the beginning up to the "Rite of Spring" evolution sequence (did this movie get banned in the Bible Belt?). But then it got really cheesy and indulgent (i.e. the retchworthy animal ballet). The "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence would have turned me around, were it not for the fact that it was a BLATANT rip-off of the opening to Murnau's FAUST!!! .

But I tried to be generous, because I do think it was a fascinating but failed experiment, in how it tries to connect the worlds of high, low and middle culture into a cohesive and all-embracing experience, with animation being the superglue. They want to fuse animation and classical music to combine into an artform that can connect with and appeal to all viewers: children and adults, populists and snobs. That's certainly a noble endeavor. But, relevant to your comment about the interstitials, why does the film have to proclaim its intentions so blatantly and explain everything to the audience? For one thing, it seems like a sign of insecurity on their part: if the art is so great and so universal it shouldn't need to have those long-winded introductions. And the culture-mongering tone of those interstitials seems to betray a condescending hi-toned attitude that contradicts the more democratic aspiration I just described. It's as if Disney were the cartoon Jay Gatsby, lusting after high-culture credibility, using classical music to legitimize his own claim to artistic merit.

And then one has to ask, if the animation is served by the music, how much is the music served by the animation? How much is the animation helping us to connect to the music, and how much is it preventing us from creating our own impressions or associations? Will we ever be able to think of THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE without Mickey Mouse in a blue hat and red robe bullying a broomstick? All I know is that dancing hippos will never expand my appreciation of a work of music, much less anything else. But first two sections and the Rite of Spring section, I think, paid the best compliments to the music: they offered interesting interpretations while not upstaging the music.

In that regard, my evaluation of the film as a whole rested on one question: did it do a better job of fusing animation with classical music than RABBIT OF SEVILLE or WHAT'S OPERA DOC? The answer to that (as well as the plaigiarism of Murnau) was how I decided on "mixed".

Too Early, Too Late (1982, Jean-Marie Straub, Daniele Huillet)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083230/

mixed - YES for concept, no for results and for getting away with it

From the New York Film Festival:

The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423176/

Jia Zhangke's new film, his first made with the formal blessing of the Chinese government, is certainly ambitious and "important" in what it's trying to say and how it says it. This time his recurring ensemble from rural China has finally fled the boondocks and landed in big bad Beijing, with all the expectations of self-fulfillment that they and hundreds of millions of other migrant workers in China cling to. They've ended up stuck in the middle of a massive theme park and entertainment center that simulates the landmarks and cultures of the world, where they don kitschy costumes to entertain tourists while being paid minimum wage. The resultant jokes and social insights about globalism, urban alienation, mass culture and the imprisoning superficialities of capitalism and technology are ripe for the picking.

Jia opens the door to a rich and strange world that is very much our own, and yet for me the film never rose beyond the expected, this despite several bold precedents on the part of Jia's style and content. Flash animation segments are inserted anytime someone uses a cell phone, presumably to underscore the artificial reality and mobility of virtual communication. He uses chapter headings, each one referring to a different geographical area (Paris, Ulan Bator, Tokyo). The most impressive passages in the film involve a Russian dance troupe imported into the show -- the first non-Chinese to appear in Jia's films. Less impressive are his borrowings from other filmmakers: a puzzling tribute to TOKYO STORY to draw a connection between Ozu's tragic elderly couple and a Chinese couple who cry over their dead son, but cheapens the meaning of both instances. He even borrows the Taiwanese music composer of Hou Hsiao-hsien's MILLENNIUM MAMBO to supply the movie with a similar trip-hop soundtrack.

All of these devices are interesting experiments, but they ultimately seem to serve as window dressing to the same despondent outlook he's had for the last five years. It's an outlook I have passionately endorsed in the past (PLATFORM remains my favorite film of the decade), and perhaps my hyperfamiliarity with his work is partially responsible for my feeling of disappointment. But I simply feel that Jia is doing a lot of searching but not a lot of finding -- while he picks out one grievance after another, there's a detectable lack of a larger vision that can rise up to really address the dilemmas and difficulties of living in the 21st century. His narrative, more fragmented and irresolute than ever, may be intended to reflect the fragmented ways that people experience 21st century life, but it also strikes me as sloppy and not very constructive, too content to mirror the way of life he finds so troubling. Not unlike the Fellini of LA DOLCE VITA, he's so bewildered by the world around him that the best he can do is point out how absurd and fragmented and tragic it all is. As with UNKNOWN PLEASURES, Jia's ultimate way of responding to all these elements is to arrive at an Altman-esque gesture of tragedy, a default maneuver done to remind the audience of how importantly and urgently this is all to be taken. It's not that Jia makes a bad movie; in fact it's very much worth watching, just like newspapers are very much worth reading, for the information it contains. It's precisely because the material is so rich and so full of potential, and so in need of original perspectives, insights and discoveries, that anything less than the expected is bound to be disappointing in terms of art.

At this point Jia seems to be locking himself into the role of designated naysayer to the purported economic and social progress made by China and other nations of the developing world. While social criticism of this sort has an essential role in a vital contemporary cnema, it seems rather insincere for him to complain about globalism when his own career has benefitted greatly from being connected to socially conscious critics and cineastes the world over. Not unlike Quentin Tarantino, Jia seems to be content in the role he has fallen into, having found his own niche audience to whom his films pay lip service. a cautious and disappointed yes

Cafe Lumiere (2003, Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412596/

In a year filled with films that revisit, deconstruct or just plain nostalgically fetishize the films of the past (BEFORE SUNSET, LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, KILL BILL),Hou Hsiao-Hsien's tribute to Yasujiro Ozu is quite possibly the most sensitive and forward-looking of the bunch. The plot is as minimal and incidental as any of Ozu's narratives: a woman returns home to Japan, hangs out in coffeeshops, repeatedly runs into a timid booktore owner with a big fetish for locomotives, tells her family she's pregnant from an overseas fling, and makes daytrips to do research on a Taiwanese composer who lived in Japan back in the 40s. In other words, the seemingly haphazard and unremarkable incidents that constitute a life, the same material Ozu transformed into art over five decades of filmmaking. And yet Ozu fans may find Hou's manner of filming these moments to bear little resemblance to the late master. Hou's minimalist use of long, attentive takes makes Ozu's mellow but deft editing rhythms seem baroque in comparison.

Even compared to Hou's earlier films, his current, ultra-subdued narrative style is a departure -- but his treatment of narrative has always been in evolution, and I see the progress he is making in terms of his treatment of time: past, present and future. In just about every one of his films, there's a fascinating juxtaposition between the past and the present: sometimes his contemporary films (SUMMER AT GRANDPA'S, BOYS FROM FENGKUEI) feel more like nostalgic flashbacks, whereas his historical films seem to unfold in a dynamic, uncertain present (THE PUPPETMASTER, CITY OF SADNESS). But I think one important thing that runs throughout his films is the idea of history as the dramatic process of developing one's consciousness, not just within one moment but over a series of accumulated experiences. By this I am not just referring to the fact that the two main characters in CAFE LUMIERE seem morbidly obsessed with historical artifacts (a dead composer, the arcana of railways). These characters may seek the past as a kind of refuge (not unlike those who haunt Classic movie boards), but Hou's technique is more poised as ever to call his characters back into the world. More than ever, things happen in Hou's films without foregrounding and explanation, it's as much an idea of "in medias res" as "le temps mort", and it's not until the end of the film that the protagonists, and more importantly, the viewer, has accumulated enough experiences to develop an awareness of how much has happened and how this act of awakening to one's awareness is worth reflecting on in itself. With each new film he seems to push further in this direction, focusing on aimless lives spent with no apparent historical or social importance, and yet the fact of their existence being documented acquires a significance upon reflection.

These kids are obviously smart but they seem to invest so much in arcane, trivialÊmatters.Ê It may be dubious to say this, but maybe Hou is trying to show that you don't have to be doing something "important" in order to serve as a torchbearer of history, one that is meaningful and constructive.Ê Or maybe his focus has now shifted from a national collective history to a post-national, individualÊhistory, one that crosses borders and selects its own predecessors.Ê We may find this hopeful or dubious or both, but in any case these may be ideas worth considering and pertinent to our world in ways we may take for granted.Ê We are authors of our own histories, creators of our own culture.

This argument can probably be made as well for Ozu-- but this quality has even more in common with two other filmmakers to whom I think Hou is paying tribute. In fact, what puzzles me is that I haven't noticed ANYONE mention (I'll have to dig up Chris Fujiwara's piece in FILM COMMENT) how the film is as much a tribute to the filmmakers identified in the English language title as it is to Ozu. What Hou, Ozu and the Lumieres all have in common is a high level of confidence in the implicit historical signficance in the simple act of filming people and places. In other words, Hou delves into the cinema of the past, if only to become more engaged in discovering the life of the present.

I would need to see this again to give more detailed instances to support my argument. But the film left me excited in wondering what possibiliites and challenges exist for artists trying to capture the essence of contemporary existence -- the same challenges the Lumieres tackled over 100 years ago. In that regard, and as a tribute to Ozu, this film is much more thoughtful than Jia Zhangke's THE WORLD (with its contrived homage to TOKYO STORY shoehorned into a bundle of familiar reportage). YES #5 for 2003 between LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF and CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS #8 for new films seen in 2004 between LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF and MOOLADE

Saraband (2003, Ingmar Bergman)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299478/

I think I just like late period Bergman; I find it less gratingly acerbic than the 70s movies and more filled with a sense of mystery -- mellower and more sedate and yet no less alert or creative. SARABAND is nominally a sequel to SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: Erland Josefsson and Liv Ullmann are reunited after their divorce 30 years earlier, and gently rekindle their long-dead relationship while tending to the problems between his widowed son and overprotected granddaughter. Tonally, it's less related to SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE than it is a combination of AUTUMN SONATA (intergenerational conflict going mano a mano), FANNY AND ALEXANDER (a profound mixture of old-age mortality and childlike wonder), WILD STRAWBERRIES (an old man grappling with his limited control over his family) and SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (a kind of rondelay setup involving multiple characters involving themselves in each others' business). And I'm sure you'll be able to see traces of his other films as well -- I think it qualifies as a kind of career summation, in a less obvious way than FANNY AND ALEXANDER.

I came away from the film with a fresh perspective on Bergman, largely due to the awareness that this in all likelihood would be Bergman's last film. This awareness weighed heavily on my viewing and turned all my longstanding misgivings about his aesthetic on their ear. Seeing him pull out all the ol' tricks in the Bergman bag for one more lap (direct address to the camera, long, breastbeating monologues, sardonic sniping among wounded family members), I actually realized how familiar he is to me, that despite my protestations I've somehow managed to watch 17 of his movies, and that I was actually grateful to see one that was brand new, and recognize how distinctive and inimitable his dour, self-absorbed voice really is to my ears. It's truly a dysfunctional relationship when one is comforted to be reunited with these foibles; whereas I've long found them annoyingly familiar, this time I found them familiarly annoying, if that makes any sense.

But the thing is that this film also sheds new light on those familiarly annoying elements; like I said this is ultra-late Bergman, with a feeling of twilight that gives everything, even the bitter arguments between characters, an underlying sense of grace and eloquence. My only real complaint is that it feels rather stagey at times -- and yet there are other moments where he breaks through the staginess and gives the film a livewire charge; there are quite a few surprises in store between the characters, which I will refrain from spoiling. His shooting on high-def digital video also gives his familiar settings a strange new palette of colors and textures, as if it were a Bergman film being beamed from another land of soft pastels and slightly metallic hues, almost as if it were a dream. It was really impressive how he took on the latest technology for his last film, and mastered it, redefining his entire oeuvre in the process.

Similarly, it's quite surprising to say that the best performance, among a uniformly excellent cast that includes both Ullmann and a splendid Erland Josephson (and this coming from someone who's almost NEVER liked Josephsson except in AUTUMN SONATA), is given by the youngest, Julia Dufvenius. Both the character and the actress are young ingenues dealing with elder family members as domineering as redwood trees, and they face down the challenge stunningly, giving a fresh energy and to the otherwise agreeably geriatric ensemble. It's wonderful to see that in his advanced age Bergman is as captivated as he was waaaay back around SUMMER WITH MONIKA by the passions and dilemmas of youth, and contrast it vividly to the confusion of old age.

In the brief time I was able to spend at the post-screening Q&A with Liv Ullmann, someone asked her if Bergman's shooting technique was different since they were shooting with HD equipment and not film. She replied yes, that when shooting on film, Bergman would usually sit right next to the camera so that when the actors performed directly to the camera they were also performing directly to him, to generate that kind of intimacy he's famous for. But this time the HD equipment prevented Bergman from using this technique -- not only was he kept away from the camera during takes, he was in another room watching on a monitor! But then Ullmann said that when she heard "action", she suddenly was able to sense Bergman in front of her, as if she was receiving signals from him telepathically. I think this attests to the result of this long and intense relationship the two of them have had as collaborators... and when you think about it in terms of Bergman's impending mortality, this ability to feel his presence when he's not really there is pretty ominous, and profoundly moving -- in fact it gets to the very essence of cinema. YES #12 for 2003 between THE FOG OF WAR and 15 #15 for new films seen in 2004 between TROPICAL MALADY and 15

Moolaade (2004, Ousmane Sembene)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416991/

The man who helped create the African cinema, now age 81, takes a confident step towards reaching the wide audience he deserves, by making a feel-good movie about female genital mutilation. This is one of several contradictions Sembene is somehow able to pull off: on the surface this seems like the kind of politically correct, culturally exotic pap that the soon-to-be defunct Miramax would drop on arthouses all over America. But as atrractive and accessible as the film is, there is a lot of intriguing subtext to be explored, centered firmly on a passionate dialogue concerning the role of women in the tug of war between African cultural traditions and post-colonial modernity, between women getting circumcised in the name of chastity and getting men to put on condoms and stick with one wife. There's a stunning array of remarkable imagery, from the colorful bric-a-brac of a trader's makeshift outpost to a burning heap of radios set fire in the heat of fundamentalist fervor; it rivals the likes of JOHNNY GUITAR in making forceful, lyric poetry out of community turmoil. YES #2 for 2004 IMDb releases between BEFORE SUNSET and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND #9 for new films seen in 2004 between CAFE LUMIERE and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

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