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SCREENING LOG
- 11/18-11/24, 2002
Back to 2002 Index
I watched AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON, OUTRAGE, THE BIGAMIST, 8 MILE,
AWAARA, HIGH AND LOW, A MAN ESCAPED, BOOT POLISH, DAUGHTERS
OF THE DUST and GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. In order of preference:
Awaara (1951, Raj Kapoor) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0043306
The film that catapulted Raj Kapoor to international stardom
in practically everywhere [i]except[/i] America and Europe,
this musical-social drama-comedy-action-romance to me remains
the epitome of the Total Movie. The story follows a good-natured
ne'er-do-well who dares to take on the class prejudices instituted
by society, exemplified by his own estranged father, a high-ranking
judge. Made during the infancy of India's independence, the
film set the standard for Bollywood's tradition of trying
to encapsulate in one movie the entire national character
of 800 million people: their immense cultural heritage and
centuries-old mythologies, their industrious spirit and lack
of opportunities to exert it, their infuriating injustices
and inequities, their glamour and grit, their optimism and
despair, and best of all, their songs, which convey all of
the above in a single melody. This is my kind of Big Cinema,
all-encompassing in scope and balls-to-the-wall in style,
from start to finish.
the "whatever happened to philip mahr?" Bresson
movie of the week
A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0049902
In many respects, here is the art of cinema at its most
perfect. The film is based on a true story of how a French
WWII prisoner of war planned his escape; Bresson himself was
a POW, and it shows in how clearly he conveys his protagonist's
imprisonment: every moment is felt with great intensity, not
a single frame in this film is wasted. A 9'x9' prison cell
becomes an expansive universe upon which one man's painstaking
path to freedom is crafted from a rich repertoire of sounds
and images. Not only is this film exciting and suspenseful,.but
Bresson's astounding technical gifts are placed in the service
of a profound meditation on the mysterious ways of God and
chance in shaping one's hard-fought destiny. THE SHAWSHANK
REDEMPTION has nothing on this.
kerpan "Yasu, that's my Ozu" movie of the week
An Autumn Afternoon (1962, Yasujiro Ozu)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0056444
Yasujiro Ozu's last film, about a middle aged man who gives
in to his friends' urgings to marry off his daughter, has
me making associations with, of all people, Howard Hawks.
Not only is the theme of individual desire subjected to communal
duty typical of both directors, but this film delights in
the nuances of human interactions much in the way of Hawks'
late masterpiece RIO BRAVO; both films seem to treat narrative
as an afterthought for the sake of exploring and celebrating
the ritualized behavior that blossoms when old acquaintances
come together. The story seems whimsical, almost jazz-like,
in how it follows various side characters before returning
repeatedly to the stoic father (Chisyu Ryu, in perhaps his
most affecting of all his performances with Ozu). And yet,
all these various sides reflect on the whole in an ingenious
narrative pattern. The virtues of Ozu's artistry may not be
appreciated by most people Ð and even those who do have trouble
explaining his significance. It remains one of the great mysteries
of the movies that Ozu's seemingly light, commercial entertainments
can contain such an abundance of human experience, enhanced
by an assiduously developed style that demands extended contemplation.
bkamberger Charitable Endowment Classic of the Week
Outrage (1950, Ida Lupino)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0042824
A harrowing film directed by and starring the amazing Lupino
as a rape victim who descends into a personal hell of shame
and confusion. The sequence leading to the assault is a landmark
achievement; Lupino steers well clear of any sordid exploitation
inherent in the topic by focusing squarely on the woman's
experience; her bleak urban surroundings become a psychological
landscape of fear and desperation. At times the film's themes
of identity loss and alienating environments startlingly seem
to foretell the works of Michelangelo Antonioni. Though the
film is compromised by a moralizing ending, it achieves a
hell of a lot beforehand; a film of great power and compassion.
The DFC-flix special delivery of the week (by recommendation
of howard.schumann)
Boot Polish(1954, Prakash Arora)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0046799
An energetic, illuminating and moving tale of two orphans
who experience a moral dilemma when a kindly old man encourages
them to work for an honest living rather than beg for money
as most children of their station resort to doing. Watching
this film, I am convinced that 1950s Bollywood represented
a historical pinnacle in popular filmmaking the world over;
it is truly inspiring that these filmmakers had the passion
to honestly examine social dilemmas and infuse them with appealing
characters and extraordinary musical sequences. One of these
days, when enough people have seen these films, there will
have to be a showdown between 1950s Bollywood and 1950s MGM
musicals, where AWAARA, MOTHER INDIA, BOOT POLISH and PYAASA
size up against SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
and THE BANDWAGON. The results aren't as obvious as most film
buffs may think, if only for the reason that while MGM musicals
were fixated on examining their own legitimacy as works of
art, Bollywood musicals focused intently on their role in
shaping the future of their country, establishing artistic
merit in the process.
Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0104057
A self-sufficient African American community isolated on
an island off the coast of Georgia at the turn of the century
deliberates its decision to move to the mainland. I can't
claim to have understood all of this film, which seems to
be recreating a lost society from scratch; how much of it
is nostalgic fantasy and how much fact I have yet to determine.
Since there's not much of a story, the movie moves elliptically
from character to character as they speak their inner thoughts
to others, but in such a way that invites the viewer to share
in this world as well. If anything, this beachside world is
visually ravishing Ð perhaps in a way that borders on romanticized
luxury, but it really does evoke an entrancing sense of place.
This is a fascinating film that brings a lot of questions
of American history and culture to the table, that one viewing
isn't going to solve.
The Bigamist (1953, Ida Lupino)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0045557
Lonely businessman Edmond O'Brien finds himself inextricably
married to two women in Lupino's sensitive exploration of
alternative morality in the modern world. The topic is ripe
for B-level exploitation, but Lupino invests the characters,
especially the lonely yearning soul played by herself, with
compassion and a desire for understanding Ð so much so that
she resorts to her own moralizing at the end, but the complex
situation between the three characters has been mounted so
movingly that it remains intact by the final frame.
The Hood's Kurosawa Classic of the Week
High and Low (1962, Akira Kurosawa)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0057565
There has perhaps been no non-US filmmaker as influential
on commercial filmmaking than Kurosawa, and this suspenseful
social drama of how a business executive and the police match
wits with a kidnapper looks like the kind of high profile
thriller Hollywood can put out on a good day. What's clear
is Kurosawa's influence on Spielberg; superficially, one can
point out how Spielberg co-opted this film's use of partialized
pink coloring of a black and white shot for SCHINDLER'S LIST;
but what's more intriguing is how the film fixates on calculating
the economic value of saving a human life, something also
seen in SCHINDLER'S LIST as well as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Both
directors also share a gift of keeping the viewer captivated
with plenty of plot intrigues and surface action to make it
appear that they're exploring the issues; as he did in IKIRU,
Kurosawa abruptly changes the focus of the narrative at the
midway point, but here it reduces the story into straight
police procedural. The ending is truly chilling and potentially
casts a whole new layer of depth to the film, but it also
makes obvious that Kurosawa hadn't done enough with the ideas
behind his story to earn that moment.
Jiankevin's party-pooper review of the week
Grave of the Fireflies (1987, Isao Takahata)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0095327
This highly regarded animated feature about the miserable
lives of two Japanese WWII orphans is a fascinating though
ultimately problematic blend of children's fantasy entertainment
and soberingly explicit social history. The first half of
the film stunningly depicts an air raid on a Japanese city
and the enormous human loss and human suffering that follows.
As much as I wanted to love the rest of the film, the story
descends into a series of tragedies inflicted on the children
and drenched in such a thick layer of pathos that the experience
is excruciating. Definitely an important film and a great
achievement, though the way it played out left me skeptical,
if not resentful of how mercilessly it wrung my emotions.
The "I should have listened to Eav" movie of
the week
8 Mile (2002, Curtis Hanson)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0298203
Eminem's unique brand of pathology-for-profit, now available
in celluloid format. It's impressive that screenwriter Scott
Silver's world of ghetto and trailer trash clich?s manages
at times to be genuinely, almost profoundly disturbing, thanks
in no small part to director Curtis Hanson's ability to package
the sicknesses of America with such commercial slickness (his
other films L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and THE WONDER BOYS also demonstrate
a gift for turning amoral chaos into entertainment). It's
some kind of achievement that misogyny, homophobia, materialism
and racism can all be marketed as heroic virtues, but, the
film seems to say, when your world is a living hell you gotta
use whatever you can to climb your way out. As it is with
Eminem's music, the really disturbing thing about this movie
is how persuasive it makes that message, how confidently it
sells this cynical nightmare as the American Dream.
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