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SCREENING LOG
- 11/10-11/16, 2003
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I watched THRONE OF BLOOD, HAPPINESS (SCHASTYE), EARLY SPRING
IN FEBRUARY, LA BELLE NOISEUSE, UNE FEMME DOUCE, THE FLAVOR
OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE, OEDIPUS REX, DESPERATE LIVING, and
ELEPHANT. In order of preference:
Happiness (1932, Aleksandr Medvedkin)
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0575963/
Traditional fable about a farmer named Loser and his wife
who get exploited and put-upon by a landowner but get theirs
in the end. Medvedkin takes the fantastical elements of the
ethnographic content at face value, showing spotted horses
sitting on rooftops and other surrealistic images that suggest
Alexander Dovzhenko-meets-Luis Bunuel. It's also incredibly
funny like no other Soviet silent I've seen. Gets my vote
for most original and visionary movie I saw this week. #3
for 1932 between SCARFACE and VAMPYR
ali-112 film of the week courtesy of DFC-flix special
delivery
Oedipus Rex (1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0061613/
I've never been a big admirer of Pasolini's aesthetic in
his later color films, with camerawork that often struck me
as flat, slightly shaky, almost amateurish in appearance,
with colors that tend to be murky or unattractively overexposed
in prints I've seen. OEDIPUS was his first color film and
finally all of these aesthetic elements made complete sense
in preserving the primal power of this famous myth -- unburnished,
forceful, driven by passion while mindful of the devastating
effects of knowledge in determining our fates. The eclectic,
world-spanning soundtrack is less jarring than its counterpart
in GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW and contributes immensely to the
intensity of the proceedings. A clarivoyant film that has
triggered me to reconsider my misgivings concerning everything
Pasolini did afterwards. #5 for 1967 between THE RED AND THE
WHITE and BELLE DE JOUR
Elephant (2003, Gus van Sant)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/
The one teen movie in the history of teen movies that gets
how so much of what defines the high school experience is
found in what it feels like to walk down a high school hallway
during recess. Now here is a film that understands that both
movie storytelling and the experience of life itself are matters
of perspective, and seeks to frame one seemingly inconsequential
moment of high school life in a series of shifting perspectives
among several students, captured in long winding steadicam
shots that are beautiful to behold, right before this moment
explodes into inconceivable horror. I loved this film because
it makes the viewer ask questions about what it is seeing
and how it is being presented for them to see it -- even moments
that appear at first to give rhetorical explanations as to
individual motives (teenage boys showering together before
going on a shooting spree) upon reflection become open-ended
provocations that force the viewer to question what real explanations
lie behind the most unthinkable acts. In other words, before
any explanations can be made, before the construction of meaning
can be attempted, before judgments -- moral, sociological
or otherwise -- can be made, there must be clear-eyed depiction
of direct experience; everyone's experience.. #3 for 2003
IMDb releases between CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS and RAJA #4
for new films seen in 2003 between BLISSFULLY YOURS and DIVINE
INTERVENTION
Throne of Blood (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050613/
Shakespeare's MACBETH pared down and distilled for pure
cinematic spooky effect, with resulting moods and images that
rank among the best of his storied career, and could just
as well belong in a Tarkovsky movie. Toshiro Mifune as Macbeth
and Isuzu Yamada as his Lady make for a marked contrast of
acting styles, hot and heavy vs. mask-like restraint. Not
a particularly deep film but certainly effective on the level
of sheer sensation and dreamlike horror. #10 for 1957 between
WILD STRAWBERRIES and PATHS OF GLORY
La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Jacques Rivette)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0101428/
No matter how many Rivette movies I see, the experience is
invariably one of initial boredom and disappointment for the
first half hour or so followed by gradual settling in and
familiarization with the characters opening up to dramatic
intrigue as the emotional and psychological connects begin
to emerge and the story starts to take some interesting turns
and some remarkable insights on the mysterious process of
artistic creation and its mercurial relationship with personal
happiness. Very few films I've seen have devoted as much attention
to the creative moment, the camera attentively following brush
as it finds its way around a canvas, the strokes making little
sense until a wider shot reveals the vision. Exceptional performances
all-around, especially by Michel Piccoli as the aging artist,
pre-collagen injection Emanuelle Beart as his tempestuous
muse, and Jane Birkin as his old muse turned wife. #5 for
1991 between THE NAKED LUNCH and RHAPSODY IN AUGUST
Une Femme Douce (1969, Robert Bresson)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0065152/
Bresson's first color film feels like a fresh new start after
his devastatingly masterful black and white capstones AU HASARD
BALTHAZAR and MOUCHETTE. This time Bresson takes on the mysteries
of love, reveling in its liberating potential before charting
its decline in tragic fits of possessiveness and despair --
this is a film about two people who spend the entire movie
looking at each other but never seeing. One last time, he
resorts to his famous voiceover techniques that were his bread
and butter narrative device back in the fifties. He also returns
to the city with wide-eyed wonder at its electric delights
-- the glitter of streetlights and the hypnotic blue glaze
of a TV set glowing in the dark; on the whole it lacks the
singularity of his best work, but paves the way for more seismic
explorations of the sinister allure and endless distraction
of urban life a la THE DEVIL PROBABLY and L'ARGENT. The real
standout here is Dominique Sanda in her debut, giving the
Bressonian method of acting all the validation it needs with
a performance composed almost entirely of defiant looks while
also doubling as one the most expressive dead bodies in the
history of cinema. #6 for 1969 between RED LION and Z
Kerpan movie of the week
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952, Yasujiro Ozu)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0044982/
An unassuming husband finds the nerve to employ non-violent
resistance against his contemptuous wife after hanging out
for an evening with a rebellious niece who skipped her own
interview with an arranged fiance. I really could have cared
less about the story as the characters were so lovingly drawn
and their interactions were a joy to listen to, and that's
really where the action is in Ozu movies, the sounds and spaces
between people as they repeatedly bump into each other and
modify each other's state of mind in ways both large and small.
Masterful as is almost always the case with Ozu, the film
only let me down at the end when it seemed to side firmly
with the henpecked husband, as if this were a wimp's rendition
of TAMING OF THE SHREW. #6 for 1952 between EL and THE GOLDEN
COACH
BREAK OUT THE SAKE AND THE MOJI BALLS AND SEND IN THE
GEISHA GIRLS -- I HAVE NOW SEEN EVERY ONE OF THE 36 YASUJIRO
OZU MOVIES STILL IN PRINT!!!!!!!!!
DerVin166 movie of the week
Desperate Living (1977, John Waters)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0075936/
An extremely neurotic and paranoid housewife runs for her
life with her 300 pound black housekeeper after the housekeeper
kills her husband by sitting on his face. The first 25 minutes
of this film are hysterically perfect; it helps that there
are specific middle-class targets being skewered -- the rest
is hit-or-miss and fairly repetitive as the unlikely duo in
crime enter a transgendered netherworld where Waters unloads
his brain of numerous perverse conceptions, with mixed results.
As far as otherworldly liberation fantasies go, it actually
makes for a vivid companion piece to STAR WARS. #8 for 1977
between THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
OF THE THIRD KIND
Early Spring in February (1963, Xie Tieli)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0057713/
Selected as one of the 100 greatest Chinese films in Asia
Weekly's one of a kind survey, this is a story of the community
hypocrisy that emerges when a kindly teacher lends compassion
and financial support to an impoverished older widow while
developing a relationship with a young colleague, only to
be labelled a philanderer. This would have been something
really juicy in the hands of a Douglas Sirk (the film has
some thematic ties to ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), but here it's
treated in a high and dry manner typical of Communist Chinese
movies of its era. As it is, it's a respectable work that
means more than it feels. #12 for 1963 between DONOVAN'S REEF
and CHERYOMUSHKI
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