SCREENING LOG - 3/04--3/10, 2002

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I watched Parade, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, Mystery Train, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Awaara - The Vagabond. In order of preference:

Awaara - The Vagabond (1951, Raj Kapoor)

Raj Kapoor, the first superstar of Indian cinema brought about India's first international success with his account of a boy who is abandoned by his father as illegitimate and comes back to challenge both him and the entire Indian social system. What appears to be derivative of Dickens at first evolves into something unmistakably unique: high and low comedy, social drama, sweeping melodrama, and delightful music and dance sequences intertwine to form an astounding artform that seeks to entertain, to enlighten, to do everything; a lusty, ambitious cinema whose charisma is exemplified in its lead performer. In short, it is the Bollywood masala aesthetic at its brightest. It's too early to tell, but this may be one of the greatest films I've ever seen.

Parade (1973, Jacques Tati)

It's been a while since I've seen anything by Tati, and what brought me to this videotaped program of circus acts was Jonathan Rosenbaum's personal reflection on his late friend, "The Death of Hulot", as well as the fact that he placed this in his most recent top 10 list. While I am not thoroughly familiar with Tati's oeuvre, I can certainly second the following sentiments from Rosenbaum: "It's literally impossible to determine when one "act" ends and another one begins, because of a complex process of displaced emphasis and a graceful dovetailing of details; it's equally impossible to tell from the brilliant and deceptively simple mise en scene how much is straight documentary and how much contrived fiction. All this proceeds so naturally and effortlessly that one might misread the film as nothing more than minor light entertainment (although it certainly succeeds on that level). But Tati is clearly after much more--a vision of spectacle, of dexterity versus awkwardness, of seeing versus being seen that carries the filmmaker's antielitism to the point of dissolving all distinctions between stars and stargazers, performers and spectators, accomplished acrobats and children at play." Suffice to say, this serves quite nobly as Tati's last will and testament: as entertaining, challenging and downright generous a worldview as there ever was.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Certainly a film for our times, this adaptation of Douglas Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS matches an middle-aged woman with a Moroccan immigrant and pits both of them against an unforgivingly prejudiced German society. Fassbinder's unique dramatic and visual style (which I find has more in common with Robert Bresson than Sirk) keeps the rather obvious melodrama, and the audience, in a perpetual zone of alert discomfort rather than gratifying release.

Mystery Train (1989, Jim Jarmusch)

Ushering in the 90s' Era of the Interconnecting Storyline is this gem from the soulful maverick Jarmusch. Three chapters cover different people's experiences in a Memphis hotel and its vicinity over the same 24 hour period. The first chapter, involving a Japanese tourist couple, is undoubtedly the strongest, since it is most attentive to the nuances of its characters' behavior. Interestingly, Jarmusch eventually moved away from such interests went on to bolder statements of purpose in DEAD MAN and GHOST DOG.

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001, Ashutosh Gowariker)

Astoundingly, this is the first film from the largest national film industry in the world (800 movies a year) to ever be nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The film wears the honor well enough: it's a patriotic tale of how a band of 19th century Indian villagers ended taxation (the lagaan of the title) on their province through a legendary cricket match with their British colonizers. As such it plays like a cross between BRAVEHEART and THE BAD NEWS BEARS, and at four hours it certainly savors its own storytelling. But by the end the blend of freedom-fighting and sports cliches prove irresistible, and the music had me checking Amazon for import prices. In a perfect world, the lovely score and songs like "Mitwa" and "Rhada Kaise Na Jale" should take the place of Diane Warren and John Williams in the Oscar race. Widely available in video stores and online, for those who have yet to experience the pleasures of Bollywood, this is as good a place to start as any.

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