SCREENING LOG - 6/17--6/23, 2002

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Hoping to find a 12th hour addition to my top 100 list for the upcoming list-o-rama, I watched THE BLUE ANGEL, PERCEVAL, VANYA ON 42ND ST, WINTER LIGHT, FROZEN, SILENCE... WE'RE ROLLING, and ATANARJUAT (THE FAST RUNNER). In order of preference:

Silence... We're Rolling (2001, Youssef Chahine)

Utterly delightful musical comedy involving a wealthy, imperious old lady who urges her pridefully working-class chauffeur to permit his son, a promising young lawyer, to marry her granddaughter, the lusty and idealistic daughter of a famous singer/movie star who is being seduced by an opportunistic young doctor who also wishes to be a movie star, much to the chagrin of the singer/movie star's long time collaborators... In short, this is a breathlessly energetic examination of celebrity culture, social divisions and the various ways in which people push and pull their individual desires towards and against the collective will of their friends and family. In other words, it's Chahine proving, as he did in DESTINY, that he is the living reincarnation of Ernst Lubitsch. The music is superb and Chahine even throws in a few eye-popping special effects to enhance the inspired wackiness of the proceedings. A masterpiece.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001, Zacharias Kunuk)

Released 80 years after Robert Flaherty's breakthrough documentary on the Inuit, NANOOK OF THE NORTH, the first feature film in the Inuit language recounts a 4000-year old tale of the bloody conflicts between two families in a small Arctic community. If anything, this film displays one of the most breathtaking and ingenious uses of digital video to date -- aside from the practical considerations in shooting a three-hour epic in sub-zero conditions, the special quality of video gives the archaic trappings of the story the look and feel of the present; the arctic environs are at once very real and otherworldly, and above all, intensely beautiful. Great performances all around breathe new life into archetypal characters; altogether the film achieves a primal artistry comparable to great silent cinema.

The Blue Angel (1930, Josef von Sternberg)

The movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star, if only as an object of abject desire and unspeakable lust (in her later films was she able to become a protagonist as well as an object) but that's more than enough to make this film an essential work in spite of its plodding narrative. At first, the message threatens to be as pedantic in its cynicism as its prissy hero. a dull college professor who investigates the night club frequented by his students, is in his priggishness. Somewhat miraculously, von Sternberg's direction and Emil Jannings thoughtful performance allow the professor to achieve a poignant tragedy in spite of the depraved mockery levied upon him from all sides.

Perceval (1978, Eric Rohmer)

Eric Rohmer takes a great leap out of the comfortable middle class environs that have constituted almost all of his films and lands in the 12th century -- but it's not that drastic a stretch once one discovers that Rohmer's idee fixe of "fidelity" is as present as ever. Not just fidelity as to one's values, but Rohmer's fidelity to recreating past moments and objects in a cinematic idiom. In his other films, he has strived to achieve a faithfully realistic recreation of everyday interactions between people -- here he strives to cinematically construct the Arthurian tale of Perceval de Gallois as true-to-the-letter as possible, to the point of matching the source text word for word (so that the characters narrate their own actions: "the gentle knight speaks to the damsel"). The look of the movie is faithful to the iconographic artwork of the area: the film is set on a soundstage where knights pass by artificial trees and enter gilded castles barely large enough to fit one person. Apparently the disjointed narrative also is true to the nature of its source. While I found the overall result to be admirable if not astonishing, I was also at times nonplussed by the experience; the thick layers of artifice verge on camp, and after a while the proceedings seemed to stall. Nonetheless, this is essential Rohmer and a must-see by all means.

Frozen (1998, Wu Ming/Wang Xiaoshuai)

Emerging director Wang Xiaoshuai went under the pseudonym "Wu Ming" (Chinese for No Name) to direct this shocking adaptation of a real-life story involving a Beijing performance artist intent to die in a funeral of ice. The film, banned in China, loosely attempts to examine the frustration of contemporary Chinese youths, trapped between the disinterest and misunderstanding of family members and the exploitive encouragement of their colleagues. The insights on the relationship between artists and society aren't thoroughly satisfying, but the subject matter is too rich to ignore.

Vanya on 42nd St. (1994, Louis Malle)

Malle's last film reunites his MY DINNER WITH ANDRE buddies Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn for a filming of a contemporized version of Chekov's UNCLE VANYA, adapted by David Mamet, directed for the stage by Gregory and starring Shawn as Vanya. The film presents itself as a documentary-esque filming of a dress rehearsal; at some point the film shifts almost imperceptibly from being a banal recording of the proceedings to a fascinating document of actors investing themselves in their roles, bringing new life to a 100 year-old play. The results are generally uneven, due mostly to the varying strengths of the cast: Shawn is a lamentably limited talent who can only portray Vanya as a one-dimensional pathetic fuddyduddy; in stark contrast, the standouts are Julianne Moore (her way of reacting to others is both generous and bewitching), Brooke Smith and a deliciously self-serving Larry Pine.

Winter Light (1963, Ingmar Bergman)

Cinema's favorite sourpuss offers a meditation of a middle-aged priest in a crisis of faith. The film erects some remarkable set pieces, only to fritter them away on pedantry: the first scene promises to be a powerfully multifaceted depiction of a full religious service but devolves into a narrative foil for leering at the pathetically desparate souls that Bergman sees in all humanity (complete with extreme camera angles in case we don't get the point). A clever middle sequence in which an entire letter is narrated to the camera lacks sufficient character grounding to fully register; the last scene ends right before it should have started, underscoring Bergman's tendency to pre-empt his metaphyiscal explorations with pre-formed, simplistic conclusions. I'm sure Bergman means well, and I suppose this kind of elementary soul-picking makes for easily ingestible spiritual musing, but never in a million years should it be confused with the superior epiphanies of DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST or ORDET.

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