SCREENING LOG - 8/01-8/07/2005

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DVD Screen Captures of the Week:

Chinese cinema circa 1934:

vs. 2004:

vs. 2046:

The Highway (1934, Sun Yu)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121180
YES (#4 for 1934 between L'ATALANTE and LA SIGNORA DI TUTTI)

Rebels of the Neon God (1992, Tsai Mingliang)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103935
yes (#10 for 1992 between RESERVOIR DOGS and CENTRE STAGE)

Stranger Than Paradise (1984, Jim Jarmusch) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088184
yes (#4 for 1984 between THE TERMINATOR and THE SECOND SPRING OF MR. MO)

Broken Flowers (2005, Jim Jarmusch)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412019
mixed
Personally I was more invested in understanding the lives of the women he left and whether we were supposed to regard them with sympathy, condescension or just write them off as ultimately unknowable and inaccessible beings just as they are to Don Johnston. The thing is, the lives of the women he's loved and left don't seem that much better than his, so I'm not sure we're left with, other than "the present", as Murray's character says to his suspected son. Which is certainly a nice thought but it felt like this movie settled on that because it had nothing else to say. Near the end of THE WIND WILL CARRY US a character basically gives a similar speech and the effect is about a million times more heartfelt. Come to think of it, there is something Kiarostami-esque about BROKEN FLOWERS, the sense of playfulness and minimalism.

I think it's interesting how a lot of viewers buy into the premise and are absorbed by it, when Jarmusch puts a lot of metafictional stuff to indicate that this is as much a formal exercise (the pink symbols, the references to other movies and pop culture elements - Don Johnston, Lolita) as it is an earnest inquiry into one man's life, that to me ultimately becomes a distraction. I think having Bill Murray in the middle accounts for a huge chunk of it -- I find him to be the most overrated actor in the planet whereas Mike's review elsewhere in this thread offers the prevailing view. To quote the Village Voice's review:
"After this and The Life Aquatic, Murray is a case study in the Kuleshov effect: Some may see a soulful master class in subliminal melancholy; others will watch him coast on the depressive-midlifer autopilot he programmed for Wes Anderson."
But what the review says next is the most acute and pointed critique I've read about the film, it's very relevant to things you've been discussing recently, and to me it touches on how the fillm's very gaze, it's way of looking, is sexist:
"At least the somber stillness of his visage is a matter of choice, which can't be said for a couple of the female performers here, who don the plastic surgeon's ghoulish mask of Botox, collagen, eye lifts, and cheekbone implants. As Bill Murray—whose doughy, timeworn features can be a film's subject and motor—plays opposite beautiful actresses who've peeled, ironed, and sanded away the histories inscribed on their faces, Broken Flowers inadvertently provides a handy case study of a Hollywood double standard, one so pervasive it can even encroach upon a film by the most beloved and trusty of true-blue independents."

Consider this: can you think of a movie where the most charismatic middle aged actress you can think of (and preferrably one who hasn't had any work done on her face) goes around visiting her old loves while her face barely moves? Would people watch this movie? Would her performance be regarded as brilliantly minimalist and tender, or would she be decried as a stony bitch?

Pink Flamingos (1972, John Waters)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069089
yes

Bad Lieutenant (1992, Abel Ferrara) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103759
mixed

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005, Miranda July)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0415978
yes (#10 for new films seen in 2005 between THE MOTEL and RIZE)
I found the stuff involving the two boys and the two girls really disturbing and looking at it from a certain way very offensive. But I do have to hand it to Miranda July that, as far as with the boys, she pulled it off. But the stuff with the girls and the guy who wanted to screw them I found not so much tasteless as poorly executed. that's the thing with great art, you can get away with anything so long as you do it great, and I think she gets away with it half the time. So half the time I'm groaning, the other half I think this is really something amazing and special. Along these lines, another interesting thing is that in this movie people aren't so much having conversations as performing monologues to each other (after all she's a "performance artist" by background). Even when they're by themselves they seem to be performing (when July's character gets pissed off in the car and writes an obscenity with a marker on her windshield -- i thought that was wonderful). It feels both contrived and unique. And then there's this other aspect to it that's pretty cheesy and perhaps too sentimental for its own good. We'll see which side of her unruly but formidable talent prevails over time...

The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959, Li Han-Hsiang)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194984
yes

The Funeral (1996, Abel Ferrara)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116378/
mixed

2046 (2004, Wong Kar-Wai) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212712
Unfortunately the bootleg DVD (the second one I've bought, the first one didn't have English subtitles) could only play the first hour. Two things that struck me - that I understood just as much the first time without the subs (in some ways I understood more), and second, this is a more tricked up version of BROKEN FLOWERS and probably shouldn't deserve any higher a rating. mixed

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