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SCREENING LOG
- 9/23-9/30, 2002
Back to 2002 Index
I watched AMERICAN RHAPSODY, THE CAMERAMAN, MONSIEUR VERDOUX,
MY BEST GAL, THE GOLDEN COACH, and THE BROOD. I also watched,
at the New York Film Festival, ABOUT SCHMIDT, RUSSIAN ARK
and UNKNOWN PLEASURES. In order of preference:
Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0318034
Over 200 years of Russian history and culture are encapsulated
in a single, 90 minute shot that winds through the Hermitage
Museum in St. Petersburg, the largest art museum in the world
and the private playground for Tsars of eras past. The camera
is the eye of an unseen Russian visitor who is guided by a
sarcastic 19th century French diplomat as they visit each
room of the museum. The tour plays out like a dream of history,
with figures such as Peter the Great and Catherine the II
wandering the halls, doing what they would have done (punishing
a subordinate, or searching for the bathroom). Ever-present
are the artworks that decorate the numberless walls, and yet
their presence becomes ever more inscrutable and eternal as
over 2000 people from various historical periods walk past
them. There's really not much more I can say to describe this
masterpiece, except with a crude description like LAST YEAR
IN MARIENBAD cross-bred with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean
ride. Also, I'm sure one's understanding of the film increases
with their knowledge of Russian history and culture, and its
ambivalent relationship to Europe -- but the sheer spectacle
and technical audacity of the work makes it a must-see, and
its meditations on historical and cultural memory are relevant
to everyone.
Unknown Pleasures (2002, Jia Zhangke)
http://uk.imdb.com/CommentsShow?0318025
32 year-old Jia Zhangke is the most vital filmmaker working
in Communist China; no one else even comes close. His latest
film, shot in a lurid haze of digital video, captures the
dead-end lives of three youths in a post-industrial city in
rural China. The first hour is simply astounding, densely
packed with colors, sounds and images that both represent
and recreate an entire culture from the ground up, a desolate
third world wasteland teeming with wildlife. Yet its unprecedented
ability to convey the pervasive, environmental effects of
media and pop culture on people's lives can apply to any industrialized
nation, and Jia examines these effects with nothing short
of unqualified human compassion mixed with jagged wit and
a sensitivity to profoundly irresolvable paradoxes. Sadly,
the film, like its protagonists, ends up with nowhere to go;
the film's vigorous referencing of pop culture and politics
begins to stall, its hellish nature becomes all too apparent
to the audience, and everyone is left feeling terminally trapped.
This is neither as immediately enjoyable as his breakthrough
XIAO WU nor as majestic as his masterpiece PLATFORM, but some
of the most purposeful filmmaking of the present moment is
on display; the overall experience is overwhelming. Here's
a great article that assesses Jia's relevance and influence
after only three features: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/06/28/bfsfs28.xml
Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin)
http://uk.imdb.com/CommentsShow?0039631
Chaplin plays a serial bigamist who murders the rich women
he marries to sustain his own happy life with his original
wife and children (who, by the way, seem more like a mirage
than reality). An outrageous premise in its time, that gives
Chaplin the occasion to thoroughly trounce his Little Tramp
persona -- though by the end it is painfully apparent that
the Tramp had already been trounced, all but forgotten not
only by the sound cinema, but by a modern industrial society
transformed by war and commerce, too sophisticated and cynical
to embrace the simple elegance of the Tramp's human pathos.
In other words, Chaplin is trying to give what his new audience
really wants: sex and violence -- but he does it on his own
furious terms. As a story this film is inconsistent, though
it certainly has its moments. It's too black to be truly funny,
and yet Chaplin's sweetness doggedly refuses to give in to
outright nihilism. A strange concoction to be sure, but one
whose ultimate tragedy lingers and haunts one's memory.
About Schmidt (2002, Alexander Payne)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0257360
Jack Nicholson plays a newly retired insurance executive
who drives cross-country in a Winnebago, searching for meaning
to his life while on the way to his daughter's wedding. Despite
its sardonic and sometimes predictable take on middle-class
Midwest America (the same know-it-all incisiveness that was
the key weakness to Payne's ELECTION as well as its key strength),
this film is also very knowing and observant about all the
little things that make up our mundane existences. It even
manages to steal a few moments of unexpected beauty from the
clutches of its own assiduous cruelty. Nicholson is perhaps
too much of a star for us to buy into his character as a real
person, but nonetheless he does wonders by making the character
a compelling version of himself; he obviously gained weight
for the role, and his double chin literally seems to stretch
his persona into an anguished distension of impending mortality,
which adds weight to the entire film. Much of how one comes
down on this film depends on how they'll react to the final
scene, they'll either think it shallow and manipulative or
profoundly touching. I'm leaning towards the latter, if only
because it gave me new respect for this film's "lonely
old man" predecessors, IKIRU and UMBERTO D (here the
role of the dog is played by a Tanzanian orphan pen pal named
Ndugu). Not a perfect movie, but very powerful.
The Brood (1978, David Cronenberg)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0078908
An innovative therapist coaches a troubled patient into
having her vengeful desires literally come to life as elfin
spawn wielding crimson hammers. Fascinating sci-fi horror
meditation on the dark side of self-actualization. Cronenberg's
elevated b-movie aesthetic is neither elevated enough or b-movie
enough to come together pleasingly, but as always there are
plenty of ideas to chew on.
The Cameraman (1928, Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0018742
Keaton plays a novice cameraman trying to break into the
newsreel gig, only to break everything else in his path. Never,
not even in PEEPING TOM, has a camera been so obviously equated
with a male phallus. Keaton spends half of the movie lugging
his unwieldy camera around, trying to control it and not swing
it into people's faces. Keaton's movies have always paid particular
attention for man's relationship to his equipment, but this
one takes the cake. Marceline Day's lovely presence as the
love interest barely conceals the real fixation going on in
Keaton's mind.
The Golden Coach (1952, Jean Renoir)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0044487
Highly intriguing story centered on the lead actress (Anna
Mangani) of an Italian comedy troupe stationed in colonial
Peru in the 18th century. The actress quickly becomes caught
up in a love quadrangle between a young officer, a popular
bullfighter and the viceroy of the colony himself. Multiple
negotiations and theatrical behavioral flourishes ensue. The
setup is great on paper but somehow it left me cold in my
viewing -- maybe there's something about this milieu of the
high class and its hangers-on, and the personality tics of
aristocrats that don't garner my sympathies -- call it the
Max Ophuls syndrome. Still this is worth seeing for its story
and its explorations of politics vs. theater vs. love vs.
colonial conquest, and the usual Renoirian geometries of human
figures.
American Rhapsody (2001, Eva Gardos)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0221799
Fascinating story of an American girl coming to terms with
how she had been left behind as a baby when her parents fled
from Hungary in the Ô50s. Unfortunately the film itself doesn't
make the most of this material: the parents' exile sequence
is given the SCHINDLER'S LIST neo-Euro-noir treatment in black
and white, and the scenes showing the daughter's resentful
rebellion against her mother don't offer much insight. Things
get more interesting when the girl decides to revisit the
family in Hungary that had raised her while her parents were
lobbying for her amnesty. I just wish it had been more consistent
or had striven beyond the TV movie aesthetic.
My Best Gal (1944, Sam Taylor)
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0018183
Paper-thin but enjoyable story of a rich boy working in
one of his father's stores who falls in love with a poor co-worker.
Buddy Rogers and Mary Pickford make a very sweet couple (as
they were in real life), though I can't quite see the allure
of Pickford -- this was her last picture, so perhaps she had
outgrown her girl-next-door charms by this point in her career.
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