|
SCREENING LOG
- 9/02-9/08, 2002
Back to 2002 Index
I watched ACCATONE, SEVEN CHANCES, TEOREMA, PUTNEY SWOPE,
TOL'ABLE DAVID, CIRCLING ZERO: WE SEE ABSENCE, films by the
Lumiere Brothers, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY and BARRY LYNDON.
I watched the last four during my first visit to the American
Museum of the Moving Image, several blocks away from where
I now live. If you visit New York, honestly there are a dozen
other places more worthwhile than this one to visit, but should
you happen to find yourself in Queens for God knows what reason,
it's well worth spending an hour or two at this lovely museum,
especially if you have an interest in the history and inner
workings of the movies in America. I hadn't visited the museum
for itself, having heard little praise about it. My intent
was to watch a documentary on September 11,
CIRCLING ZERO: WE SEE ABSENCE,, a documentary by noted avant-garde
filmmaker Ken Jacobs, which isn't listed in IMDb but received
an enthusiastic write-up in the Village Voice. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0236/hoberman.php
The film is an unnarrated personal account of the days immediately
following the attack on the World Trade Center. Much of it
feels like unedited footage, more of a home movie than a documentary
-- and yet for that very reason it stands in stark and valuable
contrast to the many polished and easily digestible accounts
of that event. It's a work of unresolved feeling, and it is
as accurate a memoir of those days of confusion as anything
one can expect to see. However, such an unresolved film is
hard to take -- and after an hour I was exhausted. Jacobs
wrote in his program notes that the film is ideally experienced
in segments, so I decided to take his advice. I walked into
the lobby exhibition for a breather, expecting not to find
much and eventually return to the screening. I was pleasantly
proved wrong, as I found myself trapped for an hour in an
interactive exhibition on the history of video games. The
first work on display was a very simple game where two spaceships
fly around shoot at each other, developed in the '60s. That
was followed by an antique video game machine for Pong, as
well as an original Atari system. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Mortal
Kombat were all represented, as were new game systems such
as the X-Box and Playstation 2. I examined each artwork thoroughly
(since I don't have them at home). Since the movie was over,
I decided to wander upstairs to see what there was to see.
I found two floors full of exhibitions. The second floor focused
on the history of the movies, with lots of precious memorabilia.
The showcase exhibit displayed the costumes of Robert DeNiro
throughout his illustrious career. I was more impressed by
the really antique stuff, such as fan magazines dating from
the 20s, a genuine Edison kinetoscope, and a looping video
of the earliest movies by Lumiere and Porter:
Workers Leaving the Factory
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000010
Photographical Congress Arrives in Lyon
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000021
Train Arriving at the Station
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000012
The Sprayer Sprayed
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000014
Feeding the Baby
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000029
Playing Cards
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000026
Demolition of the Wall
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000070
I was most impressed by DEMOLITION OF THE WALL, which still
manages to be profound despite its simplicity of technique.
IMDb user Alice Liddell has contributed some interesting user
comments for all of these films, reading a lot of subtext
into each one -- it may seem that sometimes she overstates
her case with these 1 minute movies, but it is interesting
to think that the brevity and simplicity of these films can
allow at least one person to extrapolate an impressive amount
of meanings. I would love to get into discussing some of them
but in the interest of brevity I will move on toÉ
The Great Train Robbery (1903, Edwin S. Porter)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0000439
I was genuinely impressed by this film, for it remains an
effective entertainment whle also showing a lot of formal
ingenuity. It is remarkably aware of the possibilities of
cinematic staging, using long takes in various settings that
give a creepy sense of how the bandits (effectively dressed
in black) creep like bacteria from one area of the screen
to another. The end of the film, where a bandit shoots at
the audience, is an immortal screen image. The third floor
was a real treat, with interactive exhibits explaining the
behind the scenes workings of the movies. Visitors could create
their own special effects, sound effects, do audio dubbing
(I had fun dubbing over Bacall kissing Bogart in TO HAVE AND
HAVE NOT) and animation. Very family friendly and illuminative
about how movies are put together. I left the museum, got
groceries and went home to retrieve my fianc?e so we could
go back to the museum to watch an evening screening of:
Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0072684
I last watched this film while in high school and was both
impressed and bored by it. Now I am frustrated and amazed
by it. Often considered the most underrated of Kubrick's films,
this methodical account of an 18th century upstart's rise
and fall is most certainly the most visually ravishing of
any of his accomplished features. To me, it is also the most
direct and eloquent statement of his disturbingly antihumanistic
worldview, in all of its haunting poignancy. While I have
my share of reservations with Kubrick's observations, which
sometimes seems to snicker at the world, I was stunned by
the clarity in which it was expressed, and ultimately challenged
by reflecting on the ways that Redmond Barry faces one confrontation
after another, and where it takes him on life's winding path.
A cavalcade of ideas such as honor, deception, war and chance
are set into motion with moments and images that rhyme endlessly
with others; Kubrick's persistence of vision burns itself
into one's memory. Every scene is densely layered in ironic
observations that confront us with our own (mis)perceptions
of life even as they distance us from feeling direct sympathy
with the characters, who for the most part float like pale
phantoms in a dimly lit corner of history, the same fate,
Kubrick concludes, to which all of us shall be consigned.
As famous as DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001 and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
are, they are far more likely to show their datedness years
from now than this masterpiece, which may have more to say
about the human race as any of them. Interestingly enough,
Alice Liddel has the most valuable user comments on this film
as well -- who is this lady?
Teorema (1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0063678
A young British man (Terence Stamp, in tight pants), visits
a bourgeois Italian home and seduces each member: maid, mother,
daughter, son, father. Then he disappears, leaving each member
to resolve themselves painfully to his absence. It took me
a while to resolve myself to this audacious premise by one
of cinema's most controversial provocateurs, but once I did
the ideas started coming. The terms of Pasolini's revolution
-- sexual liberation and class upheaval, charged with the
faith of the religious -- are clearly stated, though his conclusions
are manifold and seemingly impossible to resolve. The film
is by turns infuriating and awesome, lamely banal and outrageously
brilliant.
Accattone (1961, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0054599
I originally thought more of this chronicle of the life
and death of a lower-class Italian pimp than of TEOREMA, and
maybe I will feel that way again in the near future. It is
more conventional than TEOREMA though it still was a breakthrough
in the Italian neo-realism movement: this film feels far more
comfortable with the unpleasant aspects among the working
class poor, as well as the rambling banality of their everyday
existence, all done in the least condescending manner. I personally
couldn't get into the unpredictable structure of the story
or Pasolini's examination of to what extent social environment
causes the misdeeds of the individual. For now I was content
that I was allowed to share in the lives of these people.
Putney Swope (1969, Robert Downey Sr.)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0064855
An advertising firm mistakenly votes its sole black board
member to become their CEO, leading to all sorts of corporate
chaos. As much as I loved the premise of the film and the
way it is set up (with what must be the most hilarious business
meeting in the history of the movies), the story becomes an
utter mess for the remaining hour. The humor is as anarchic
as the Marx Brothers but comes at the expense of whatever
anti-establishment points it wishes to make, and the pacing
is somewhat awkward. Nonetheless it feels like a significant
work, capable of inspiring even better works on a very important
set of ideas.
Tol'able David (1921, Henry King)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0012763
A young Appalachian boy (Richard Barthlemess) must take
a violent path to manhood when a gang of hillbillies harrasses
his family, leading to the deaths of his father and brother
in law. This story seems like the archetype for all the "killing
in the name of self-righteous family vengeance" plots,
Mel Gibson's movies being the prime recent examples. But there's
no denying the beauty of the rustic moments of peace, and
Barthlemess' performance is quite endearing, even though everyone
in the movie (including the movie's intertitle narration)
badgers him for not being a man until he kills the bad guys.
Very well-made despite its objectionably goading storytelling.
Seven Chances (1925, Buster Keaton)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0012763
Keaton must marry a woman within a day if he is to receive
his grandfather's inheritance. Even if I were to overlook
the chauvinism of the premise as well as its execution (with
some racist and anti-semitic sight gags thrown in for comic
effect), I'm still left with a rather unfunny movie, that
is, until the climactic chase sequence. The scene with Keaton
dodging the boulders is one of the most amazing moments ever
captured on camera, perfectly capturing Keaton's pure gifts
as a physical performer.
Back to 2002 Index
|
