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SCREENING LOG
- 2/03-2/09, 2003
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I watched CITY OF GOD, DIVINE INTERVENTION, THE ROAD, JOHNNY
GUITAR, LONE WOLF AND CUB: SWORD OF VENGEANCE, SEAFOOD, PICNIC
AT HANGING ROCK, CLOSE-UP, LES VAMPIRES (episodes 1-4), MASTER
OF THE HOUSE, and HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES. In order
of preference:
Les Vampires (1915, Louis Feuillade) third viewing
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0006206
I am currently collaborating with friends on an action comedy
serial about unemployed immigrants who embark on a Quixotic
hunt for suspected terrorists in New York City. We spent a
day doing dramaturgy, first by watching an episode of the
TV anti-terrorist action series "24", followed by
what we thought would be only a few minutes of this classic
French serial about a journalist tracking down a secret crime
ring victimizing Paris, just to get a taste of its aesthetic.
We ended up watching nearly three hours' worth -- this is
one of my favorite films but even I underestimated how compulsively
watchable it is. There is such a relentless succession of
hidden trapdoors, unmasked identities and sudden bursts of
violence that most of the time viewing is spent in eager anticipation
of what's to happen next. There's a sense of true joy in both
storytelling and filmmaking that glows onscreen; one gets
the sense of a handful of half-crazy French people running
all over Paris with cameras and costumes on their backs, vigorously
figuring out what they want to do on a scene-by-scene basis.
There's also a sense of subterranean existences and sudden
shifts of reality that's the very antithesis of the clean,
straight, downright un-mysterious filmmaking of D.W. Griffith,
but today it's no longer clear whose filmmaking aesthetic
is the dominant mode, on the other hand, it's clear to me
which one is the more evocative and ripe with creative potential.
To me, this is one of the very few ageless films of the silent
era, one that can easily serve as a sourcebook for future
generations of inspired filmmaking.
Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0100234
Since I first saw it a few years ago, this meta-documentary
about an Iranian man who was arrested for impersonating a
film director has been among my favorite films, one that I've
remembered with great pleasure. The second time around reminded
me of how much of a challenge this movie is -- it totally
messes up the fabric of cinematic reality like few films I
know. The film alternates between footage of the impostor's
trial and dramatic re-enactments of his fraudulent activities,
with the real life participants resuming their roles. But
as the film progresses it becomes virtually impossible to
distinguish when this film is a straight documentary or a
dramatic re-creation of events, nor is it clear when people
are being themselves or playing to the camera. Kiarostami's
films have always had this kind of self-reflexive quality
of slipping between reality and fiction, but unlike his other
works, this film has an extremely raw unpolished quality to
it that makes its artistic achievement all the more confounding.
His subsequent films seem much more carefully arranged and
classically composed in comparison, but I'm not sure if that
makes them necessarily better. It may be more of a challenge
to defend this film than I'd always assumed, but that may
be because it's challenges are even steeper than I'd expected.
Johnny Guitar (1954, Nicholas Ray)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0047136
The movie that brought the Western to a new level of abstraction,
a story not so much told as felt: in bold colors, expressive
attitudes and larger than life confrontations. Joan Crawford
stares down an entire village of angry male drones driven
by shotgun-wielding queen bee Mercedes McCambridge. Community,
redemption, the magnetic, inexplicable power of both strong-minded
women and the cinematic medium: you'll find it all here. I
see Sergio Leone and Tsui Hark alike as being deeply indebted
to this film's powerful aesthetic. (For the record, I don't
see an explicitly lesbian subtext in this film -- do macho
women HAVE to be butch? -- but I'm sure there's someone out
there who will elucidate me.)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972, Kenji Misumi)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0068815
The film that would go on to inspire the graphic novel and
movie ROAD TO PERDITION, this is about a samurai executioner
who flees with his baby when falsely accused of treason. It's
very B-movieish to be sure, with plenty of violence and sex
(one scene involves the hero fornicating with a prostitute
in a room full of men in order to save her life -- did Tom
Hanks do this in the remake?) but something in this movie
I found utterly irresistible. I guess I'm a sucker for swordfights
with a man decapitating villains with one hand while pushing
a baby stroller with the other. But seriously, this film has
a mind all its own; there's something unique about the way
that blood gushes from people's necks and heads and limbs
are severed that acquires a strange beauty. I'd even call
it poetic -- it reminds me of how vividly deaths were described
one after the other in the Iliad. I guess this is the kind
of sick n' twisted that works for me.
Divine Intervention (2002, Elia Suleiman)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0274428
This deeply personal, somewhat aloof but immensely enjoyable
comic meditation of Palestinian life under Israeli surveillance
has a fragmented, episodic structure that may baffle many
viewers, but somehow I found it to be quite suitable to the
state of living it is trying to reflect: half-concealed, half
unresolved, with moments of inexplicable violence and unexpected
beauty. There are plenty of laughs in this movie, but they
are borne of a world faced with terror and absurdity on a
daily basis. Consider a film that tries to express the feelings,
yearnings and frustrations of a place that can best be described
as MESSED UP, and the understated madness contained within
this film starts to make a world of sense.
Seafood (2001, Zhu Wen)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0297161
Possibly the most transgressive Chinese film I've seen, about
a prostitute who goes to a seaside hotel to kill herself,
but is noticed by an affable police officer who tries to save
her from her own morbid thoughts, with rape being part of
the rehabilitation. I suppose one could read this scenario
allegorically as the relationship between underprivileged
Chinese people and their government. I was taken in more by
how the story and the characters seemed to reinvent themselves
from scene to scene -- it feels very fresh and vital, comparable
to the best of the Dogme movies whose handheld digital aesthetic
it employs effectively.
City of God (2002, Fernando Mereilles)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0317248
Much is being made of this ultra-slick telling of the rise
and fall of Brazilian slum gangs during the 60s and 70s; the
film, with its attention to pop period details and sudden
burst of violence that are paradoxically horrifying and entertaining,
immediately invites comparison to Scorsese's MEAN STREETS,
GOODFELLAS and CASINO, and doesn't necessarily come out unfavorably.
There is an exhaustive array of camera tricks on display by
this first-time filmmaker, and only half of them seem indulgent.
The best thing it has going for it is how lucidly it lays
out the system of perpetual crime that keeps sucking underprivileged
children into its black hole. One could say the film is exploitive
-- like Scorsese, it often seems to indulge in the shallow
pleasures of pulp -- but I also think it gives a fairly straight
reflection of how these youths see themselves and the good
times that they do have, indeed, that they are desperately
trying to have, when they're not fighting for their lives.
As an unapologetically nihilistic look at the lives of the
"young and the damned" it deserves comparison to LOS OLVIDADOS.
Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922, Benjamin Christensen)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0013257
This chronicle of witchcraft seems too dated in its observations
to qualify as anything deeper than an unintentionally campy
novelty, but as novelties go this is an extremely dynamic
and impressively made feature with numerous historical reenactments
of witches fraternizing with devils (played by men dressed
in devil suits) and subsequently persecuted by overzealous
church authorities. Possibly the first exploitation movie
(as well as the first pseudo-documentary a la History Channel)
ever made, the film seems more intent on milking the sensationalist
aspects of the material than in doing anything else -- it
makes simple declamations against the persistent allure of
superstition and ascribes female witchery mostly to Freudian
hysteria. The version I saw featured a silly English voiceover
by William Burroughs, which was detrimental to my ability
to take the film seriously. Too bad, because visually the
filmmaking is first-rate.
Master of the House (1925, Carl Dreyer)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0015768
This film that immediately precedes Dreyer's PASSION OF JOAN
OF ARC is a genuine rarity: a Dreyer comedy. An abusive husband
is "rehabilitated" by his old nanny to appreciate all that
his long-suffering wife does for him at home. The film is
essentially didactic but as the film progresses Dreyer elevates
his characters above stereotypes and brings out their humanity
in a genuinely touching manner. His attentive camera is in
evidence, here taking on a feminist significance as it patiently
and sympathetically observes the unsung details of household
duties.
The Road (2001, Darezhan Omirbaev)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0301481
I had never heard of Omirbaev, who hails from Kazakhstan,
but apparently his career is substantial enough that he issued
this highly personal film based on his experience of marital
discord and the death of his mother while finishing his previous
feature. There are Fellini-esque flights of fancy (one involving
a woman so beautiful it makes me want to check out Kazakh
films more often!) as the director considers his personal
and creative options, but on the whole this is a movie filled
with moments of quiet observation, often humorous and attuned
to its own unique culture and way of life.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0073540
Elegant mood piece that meanders through a chronicle of the
disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher during
a class picnic in the Australian wilderness. The film is an
enigma wrapped in a conundrum encased in picturesque photography
of repressed innocent-nubile Victorian schoolchildren brooding
and pining both indoors and out for the better part of two
hours. The movie is supposed to suggest a world of meaning
through elliptical narrative structure and unresolved mystery,
but that's another way of saying it's letting the viewer make
as much as they want out of it. While I tend to endorse such
open-ended filmmaking, here it strikes me as a tad lazy. It
treads on similar ground covered by Nicholas Roeg's WALKABOUT
(not to mention shades of David Lynch), but instead of raw
lyricism we have prettified longing too ambiguously rendered
to really catch fire. Still, quite enjoyable.
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