SCREENING LOG - 3/25--3/31, 2002

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I watched Senso, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!, and Gosford Park. I also watched short "documentaries" by two of my favorite filmmakers working today, at the Tsai Ming-liang retrospective playing at the Boston MFA. Both documentaries challenge certain assumptions of documentary filmmaking and make good use of handheld digital video. In order of preference:

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! (1933, Lewis Milestone)

A real treasure. This Depression-era musical starring Al Jolson celebrates the life of a homeless leader of a community of Central Park vagabonds who joyously espouses a life of dignified poverty. All is well until he falls head over heels in love with a socialite suffering from amnesia and gets a job in order to build a life with her. It's hard to recall another film where the modern-era conflict of ideals -- socialist equality vs. individual consumerist self-fulfillment -- has found such lyrical expression. (The film even employs Eisensteinian montage to vivid effect.) The sense of communal delight through song and dance resembles Rene Clair's work of the same era, and the tragically robust romanticism prefigures Gene Kelly's ethos. But the way this story ends retains a sense of mystery and fatalism that is exceptionally rare. It may very well be my favorite Hollywood musical of all time.

Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman) Second viewing

Even more pleasurable the second time around. Now that the immense cast of characters of this English upstairs/downstairs tale of manners, class conflict and intrigue is already established in one's mind, one can watch the intricate series of interactions and nuances with more fascination. Certainly one of the best instances of ensemble acting to occur in all of Altman's films -- his trademark tendencies to caricature and scoff at his subjects is given a greater sense of purpose and human weight thanks to a plethora of highly-invested performances by a disciplined cast.

Senso (1953, Luchino Visconti)

Visconti's storied attempt to translate the operatic experience in cinematic terms leaves me in the same state as I would be after a three-hour opera: half-stunned by epic opulence, half-bored by bourgeois melodrama. Alida Valli and Farley Granger are effective as a pair of ill-matched lovers caught in the midst of Italy's 19th century war with Austria, but I admit I wasn't able to devote sufficient attention to the film through it's length, even after the sweeping grandeur of the opening sequence. Seems like a film that truly deserves a big screen to realize the heft of scope and story that Visconti aspires to achieve. As it is, I was impressed but not swept away by what I saw.

In Public (2001, Jia Zhangke)

Jia Zhangke (XIAO WU, PLATFORM) is the most exciting filmmaker to emerge from China in the last decade, and perhaps even the decade before. Few filmmakers seem as committed to conveying with great care and artistry the everyday lives of ordinary people. In this 30 minute documentary, shot on digital video, Jia examines a bus depot in a remote part of China, part of which has been converted into a restaurant and dance hall. Within different areas of the depot Jia's camera follows and focuses on several individuals as they do what they do. Jia makes it a point to acknowledge the presence of his camera and how it may alter the actions of his subjects, nonetheless his observations of people manages something close to a revelation.

A Conversation with God (2001, Tsai Ming-liang)

Taiwanese director Tsai (WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?, VIVE L'AMOUR) seeks God with his digital camera through a series of events that can best be described as "confrontational": a man at a wedding banquet going through ritualistic torture; a striptease (to the music of Britney Spears, no less); a series of dead and dying fish on a polluted riverbank; and a medium who may or may not be channeling God. The lurid up-front-ness of the subject matter wasn't altogether to my liking but it illustrates Tsai's trademark "take it or leave it" way of presenting his material. A minor work, of interest to those charting the progress of a modern master.

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