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SCREENING LOG
- 11/3-11/9, 2003
Back to 2003 Index
I watched THE
SEVENTH SEAL, TWELVE ANGRY MEN, TOKYO-GA, EARLY SUMMER, PATHS
OF GLORY, DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY, 25TH HOUR, TWO FOR THE ROAD
and PORTRAIT OF JASON. In order of preference:
25th Hour (2002,
Spike Lee)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0307901/
Back in January
I wrote the following: http://www.alsolikelife.com/Film%20Diary/filmdiary2003/what%20films01-13-03.html.
I revisited the film on a beautiful DVD issue with insightful
commentary by Spike Lee and writer David Benioff who adapted
the film from his own novel, and this time it was apparent
that this film is a masterpiece, perhaps the subtlest and
sharpest portrayal of America's (specifially New Yorkers')
spiritual and moral state of mind in the aftermath of 9-11
(the commentary is useful in describing how the filmmakers
adapted the story to apply to a post-9/11 setting). My reservations
about the chauvinism and the speechifying in which Lee presents
his protagonist's dilemma more or less remain standing, but
I can see how much Lee invests his own honest and sensitive
passions into his construct -- it's the way he works, and
he makes it work. This time it was even more apparent how
great the acting was, with Edward Norton, Brian Cox as his
father, and Barry Pepper as Norton's stockbroker friend as
the standouts -- and Lee's commentary gives some useful insights
in how he worked with his stellar ensemble. This is really
one of the most powerful American films in recent years. #5
for 2002 between THE PIANIST and WAITING FOR HAPPINESS
Antonious De
Witt Happy Unification of Foreign Film Freaks and Hollywood
Hos Fixing Recommendation of the Week
Two for the
Road (1967, Stanley Donen)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062407/
Audrey Hepburn
and Albert Finney star as a married couple whose rocky relationship
is captured over the many driving trips they've taken to France
over a decade, cut up and rearranged into a chronological
conundrum. At first I thought I was watching a sputtering
knockoff of Alain Resnais, with awkward transitions from one
fragment to another glued together by Henri Mancini's thick
syrup of a score. It was rough at first, but gradually I settled
into the story and let the pieces fall into place, enjoying
the numerous visual jokes and one-liners that enriched the
chemistry brewing between the two charismatic leads (though
it took me a while to be convinced that Finney was doing more
than just a gape-mouthed variation on Cary Grant). By the
time it was over, I was certain that I had witnessed one of
the most knowing and heartfelt examinations of marriage ever
filmed, whose consistent wit and disarming humor make the
uncommon story structue into something more than just a gimmick,
a reminder of how to have a little fun by treating our lives
and loves as an endless puzzle. For the record, Jacqueline
Bissett usurps Audrey Hepburn as the most drop-dead gorgeous
person in the movie. #5 for 1967 between THE RED AND THE WHITE
and BELLE DE JOUR
kerpan you-know-whozu
film of the week
Early Summer
(1951, Yasujiro Ozu)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0043313/
Having seen 35
of the 36 Yasujiro Ozu movies still in existence, I can attest
that not only are no two Ozu movies the same, but that each
marks a notable development along the continuum of one of
the most formidable artistic visions in film. This mid-career
masterpiece is no exception -- its unique qualities lie partly
in its assiduous exploration of interior space in an ingenious
opening sequence, beautifully capturing the rhythms and choreography
of a family household as they go about their morning routine.
It's no wonder that this is the favorite Ozu movie of formalist
film scholar than David Bordwell -- Ozu frames and re-frames
his compositions, reinventing spaces with each cut and shot,
turning an ordinary house into a cinematic funhouse -- only
PLAYTIME, IVAN THE TERRIBLE and LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD have
offered similar wonders as far as I'm concerned. Neither is
this style for style's sake: as we follow the story of how
this family is pressured by social convention to marry off
their daughter, the inevitable disintegration of this family
makes the synchronicity and synergy of that marvelous opening
sequence all the more poignant. In between, there is a rich
variety of interactions between three generations of families
and friends as they meet their fates, individually and collectively,
one exquisite, fleeting moment at a time. #3 for 1951 between
DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
DerVin166 Fixing
recommendation of the week
David Holzman's
Diary (1967, Jim McBride)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062864/
Thirty years before
THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and Charlie Kaufman's
narcissistic tinkerings with the cinematic apparatus made
meta-cinema into a Hollywood staple, Jim McBride spent $2500
to create this landmark in independent filmmaking that feels
as fresh as ever. L.M. "Kit" Carson (who would go on to a
lucrative career as a film producer) plays the title character,
a dissheveled, self-absorbed filmmaker who resolves to get
his act together by documenting his life on film. Sure enough,
he winds up alienating his girlfriend and best friend while
becoming increasingly captivated (in a way that the film associates
with sexual potency) by his ability to capture the world around
him, yet is unable to draw any conclusions about what it means.
Raw and rangy and often quite inventive in its experimental
effects, the film gains depth when one realizes that this
diary has been largely scripted and simulated -- creating
a bizarre relationship between fiction and reality, plotting
and improvisation. This is arguably the first "mockumentary"
and is still one of the best. #8 FOR 1967 between MOUCHETTE
and LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT
Twelve Angry
Men (1957, Sidney Lumet) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050083/
Not quite the
unabashed liberal's pat on its own back I had remembered it
being (though it certainly comes quite close), this taut,
effective demonstration of how to run a jury session can be
viewed most favorably as a revealing self-evaluation of white
middle class male American values in the mid-1950s (and possibly
today); to its credit, it skewers the qualities that make
Americans who they are even as it glorifies them: arrogant,
self-righteous, iconoclastic and doggedly idealistic. The
script, a model of classroom efficiency, does a splendid job
laying out all the various personal biases or flaws in jury
logic that can impede the progress of fair verdict, though
it shows its didactic hand too obviously when it dwells on
those personal biases to the point of humiliating its less
sympathetic characters (the racist juror's monologue being
the most painful instance of a PC fascist's wet dream). Lumet
does a stellar job in his directing debut, keeping the proceedings
taut and suspenseful, helped tremendously by a distinguished
ensemble portraying all different walks of white male life
in such a way that makes a virtue of caricature, and Boris
Kaufman's camerawork that squeezes every interesting expressionist
angle it can muster out of a tiny one-room set. If the film
had done a bit more to make Henry Fonda into less of a superman,
let the other jurors take a more active part in deducing a
reasonable doubt, and seem less eager to let the conservative
jurors hang themselves by their own rope, we'd probably have
a true masterpiece on our hands rather than a worthy edutainment
whose reputation is built on a brilliantly executed gimmick
by which to deliver its politically correct truisms with all
the subtlety of a campaign infomercial. #12 for 1957 between
KANAL and THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
Lee-109 Righteous
Dissension of the Week
Paths of Glory
(1957, Stanley Kubrick) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050825/
I consider it
a pointed irony that some of the viewers who are most critical
of this much-ballyhooed anti-war film are those who, in doing
so, best uphold the virtues the film espouses concerning righteous
dissension and dogged individualism against the tyranny of
mass opinion-making. The film, while often brilliant, is not
the unqualified masterpiece it is commonly regarded to be,
because it is overly determined to shoot down its targets
of indignation and milk the plight of its victims for absurdist
pathos, in the same clockwork manner that made THE KILLING
feel similarly overcalculated. However, this is not to say
that Kubrick is not up to something more than just an anti-war
polemic. For starters, Kirk Douglas lends a powerful presence
as a conscientious officer who, despite his best intentions,
more or less becomes implicated in the system he opposes,
a paradox that is quintessentially Kubrickian. There is also
the deeply ambiguous ending, which is not as heartening or
redeeming of humanity as some people think it to be -- the
way that the soldiers suddenly shift from one mood to another
as if they were Pavlovian robots, suggesting how they (and
we the audience) have been conditioned to respond and act
in certain ways, is another disturbing take on human behavior
that Kubrick would examine for the rest of his career. It
is in these instances that Kubrick's genius emerges from what
otherwise amounts to an effective, well-structured polemic
that at times feels disappointingly facile. #15 for 1957 between
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and MAN ON THE TRACKS
Portrait of
Jason (1967, Shirley Clarke)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062144/
A notable entry
in the '60s cinema-verite movement that comes off as audacious,
contrived and altogether disturbing; the camera focuses squarely
on the face and body of Jason Holliday, bespectacled African-American,
houseboy, male hustler, and all around social and sexual dillettante,
as he recounts his sordid and murky personal history for 106
minutes, as part confessional, part performance art, part
con. This film is too ambiguous and in some ways disingenuous
to be classified strictly as "documentary", and perhaps knowingly
so -- we never see the people who ask him questions about
his life, giving the film the unique quality of the documentary
interview as a form of gang rape, the filmmakers possibly
exploiting Jason for the sensational details of life as a
young gay black male. But Jason is no angel either, sharing
the particulars of exploits he has witnessed as well as committed
in an enigmatic monologue that often got on my nerves. Definitely
an intriguing film, but it left too bad a taste in my mouth
about its subject and its filmmaking technique for me to recommend
it wholeheartedly. #13 for 1967 between ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN
and THE GRADUATE Lucia Harper delayed response to your inquiry
of the week
The Seventh
Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) third viewing
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/
In writing workshops
they often ask participants to list three good things about
someone's work before being allowed to launch into a critical
tirade, as a way of demonstrating fairness. I'll do something
similar:
Pros:
- I had a much
better appreciation for the humor of the film, still as sardonic
as I remembered it but received more favorably this time.
It helps that I saw SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT before this as
the same kind of farcical, free-flowing, multi-character narrative
approach is at work, with similar barbs and witticisms regarding
human frailty flying through the air.
- I used to be
critical of this film for not having a coherent thematic line
of development, that it kept repeating the mantra of "life's
a bitch and then you get checkmated." But this time I had
a better appreciation of the film's distinctively formless,
variations-on-a-theme quality that at best seems to float
along with a dream-like sense. It plays sort of like a variety
show of human suffering -- a TV holiday special from hell.
It's apparent to me that Bergman is trying for something akin
to Shakespeare, presenting an unvarnished depiction of humanity
through a variety of moods and modes.
- The film benefits
greatly from simple yet powerful iconography, the visage of
Death being the most famous example, as well as Sir Von Sydow
sprawled out like a martyr on the craggly shore with that
absurdly memorable chessboard beside him. Fortunately for
Bergman strong, brash, obvious imagery is usually all it takes
to captivate most viewers.
Cons:
- Live by allegory,
die by allegory. The character types that populate this film
are easily recognizable, which is perhaps what constitutes
this film's claims to "universal" appeal; yet they are so
square they blister and crack from their own rigid definition.
Max Von Sydow won the lottery with this role, because there's
nothing calling on his acting abilities beyond just looking
grim and Aryan for 90 minutes -- he's an arthouse Arnold Schwarzennegger,
his overdetermined angst-ridden visage is all there is to
it. Gunnar Bjornstrand's terminally cynical squire is proto-Bill
Murray wisecracking schtick. Jof and Maria as naive, milk
and strawberry consuming innocents representing the hope of
humanity (complete with glaring Biblical connotations to their
names) amount to a shallow construct worthy of the Coen Brothers'
gimcracking salt of the earth types (Bunuel would have had
a field day preying on this simple-domesticity-as-redemption
nonsense). Going back to the comparison with Shakespeare,
the key thing that's missing here is Shakespeare's ability
to cut through the pat observation or stereotype and get to
the complex, contradictory heart of each character, presenting
them vividly for who they are rather than what they represent.
- Dead end theological
content. Bergman seems hung up on high school notions of narcissistic
despair in the face of God's demise and living and dying in
an existential vacuum; he might have benefitted from less
Kierkegaard and more Sartre. The metaphysical gloom and doom,
as well as the positive life-affirming constructs he can provide
to counterbalance them, are all essentially male in their
empirical rigidity and self-assured pontification (so says
Mrs. jiankevin). Bergman's wears his anti-clerical prejudices
on his sleeve, enacting a pointless revenge fantasy on a corrupt
priest that muddles his argument over the existence and meting
out of spiritual justice. Then there's the immortal chess
game, which evolves into a kind of suspense mechanism over
which hang the lives of aforementioned naive innocents, which
plays fast and loose with the boundaries of Death's omniscience
if only to provide Von Sydow with a sudden crack at redemption
that feels slapped-on because it needed to be there. It only
goes to show that Bergman is more into wowing and entertaining
the viewer than in giving a sustained and consistent line
of argument.
- Despite the
free-flowing form of the narrative, the contents feel vacuum-sealed,
as if Bergman is too content to live with his own truisms
of human life, unwilling to surprise himself. This is what
makes the film feel repetitive and predictable despite its
shapelessness. On the one hand, this kind of tunnel-vision
allows him to concentrate on generating some arresting images
and moments to express his ideas, such as the dark and smoky,
procession of mourners through the village, which sits uneasily
somewhere between what Bunuel and Tarkovsky would have done
with such a scene; and the way that everyone in the end bows
down in their own way to their grim collective fate. On the
other hand, it's when the film is subjected to interpretation
that the whole thing starts to sound overly codified: the
more that meanings get teased out, the less the film retains
its mystery. In sum, I have a better understanding of what
I like and don't like about this film, with my essential reaction
unchanged: a film that shores up tremendous iconic strength
in its simple images and concepts if only to belie their lack
of ideological or spiritual depth. #20 for 1957 between A
FACE IN THE CROWD and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Tokyo-Ga (1985,
Wim Wenders)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0090182/
Three decades
following the death of Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders goes to Tokyo
to see if there is anything left of Ozu's Tokyo: what he finds
are pachinko and video game addicts, students who hunger for
American pop culture, and two of Ozu's old collaborators,
actor Chisyu Ryu and cameraman Yuharu Atsuta. Wenders' insights
into Japanese society aren't much more insightful than his
profuse descriptions of Ozu's cinema seem as self-serving
as Paul Schrader's transcendental theorizing -- much of this
plays like LOST IN TRANSLATION twenty years before the fact.
Still, Wenders doesn't come off as badly as Werner Herzog,
who Wenders runs into atop a Tokyo observation tower, beating
his chest about how human civilization has no images worth
capturing anymore (the very opposite of the very principle
that seemed to guide Ozu's ingenious depictions of everyday
life). The uncontested highlights of this documentary are
the interviews with Ryu and especially Atsuta, whose heartbreaking
interview seems to speak for so many people's reasons for
loving the films of Yasujiro Ozu: here was a man who came
into the world, who presented us ever so quietly with an odd,
eccentric, and completely original way of seeing the world,
and our lives have never quite been the same since. #12 for
1985 between CRIME WAVE and AFTER HOURS
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