SCREENING LOG - 11/17-11/23, 2003

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I watched HOLES, ROPE, MOUCHETTE, IN COLD BLOOD and I WAS NINETEEN. In order of preference:

Mouchette (1967, Robert Bresson) second viewing

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0061996/

Remember that line in AMERICAN BEAUTY, "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I just can't take it." Great line, wrong movie. The last of Bresson's black and white masterpieces is an object lesson in the transformative powers of observation, spending 90 minutes with the kind of girl no one would ever notice in the real world, making her the active-passive, resistant-complicit participant of a world full of fascinating, frightening qualities and endless mysteries. At this point in his career, Bresson's well-honed method of isolating and breaking down sounds and images into forms that reflect on their own innate qualities has superseded conventional concerns with narrative development or moral argumentation (which one might argue lies implicitly his observational approach). Though the film has been criticized (rather simplistically) as being a cheap, manipulative exploitation of an innocent girl's unhappiness, the film resolutely avoids easy sentimentality or any definitive form of judgment due to its full-on embrace of life's details: the stark nighttime flash of headlights peering through the windows of a ramshackle roadside hut; the unappreciated artistry of a girl's graceful method of pouring tea for her family; the sideways Mona Lisa smile of a girl in the throes of bumper car bliss (this movie has THE GREATEST bumper car sequence in the history of cinema); the sad, choked sound of a shoe losing its wearer in the mud; the distant splash of a dying body against water against blistering wind and piddling drops of rain; the smoldering crackle of an all-consuming fire breeding warm compassion between humans which devolves to horrific lust; the earth-shatter of a teacup crashing against the ground like the sound of all the doors of one's world slamming shut; the irridescent ripples across a pond concealing a body and a being that three seconds ago was alive and playing a game whose rules were known only to itself. A film that allows us to bear witness to that world, resisting our attempts to simplify it with convenient interpretations, holding us accountable to its unassailable details. #4 for 1967 between TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and THE RED AND THE WHITE

I Was Nineteen (1967, Konrad Wolf)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061802/

Wolf's own experiences as an interpreter for Soviet forces in the last days of war with Germany provide the material for this harrowing and insightful look at the uneasy negotiation of the Nazis' surrender in the last months of World War II. The narrative is rangy and episodic but has many memorable scenes that shed light on the dead end logic of nationalism and martial honor: a pack of SS officers huddled in the basement of a fortress, unwilling to surrender; a surprise attack by desperate fleeing Nazis on the eve of surrender, and most surprisingly, an assembly line of Soviet soldiers happily making dumplings for an evening party -- these images, filmed in gritty black and white that always feels authentic, with a finger pressed firmly on both the absurdity and humanity of war. #10 for 1967 between DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY and THE DEMOISELLES OF ROCHEFORT

In Cold Blood (1967, Richard Brooks)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061809/

Richard Brooks' forceful and engaging adpatation of Truman Capote's famous examination of a mass homicide is a veritable encyclopedia of mainstream movie gimmickry circa 1967: flashbacks, flashforwards, cross-cuts, John Schlesinger dream sequences hogtied to standard-issue Freudian insights, excellent mannerist acting by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson (any relation to Owen and Luke?), cool black-and white cinematography that turns on a dime from sober verite to hyperexpressive film noir thaks to the trusty craftsmanship of Conrad Hall (the film's best asset), and a trendy, overwrought jazz score that transplants Greenwich Village to Topeka courtesy of Quincy Jones (the film's worst asset). All of these disparate elements combine to make a film that has an intriguing mix of voices both within and around the film to make up for its lack of singular insight -- as if aware of this, the script throws in a journalist moonlighting as one-man chorus at gallows-time to anchor the movie with a scattering of concluding insights that's too little too late. But it's an arresting ride throughout. #12 for 1967 between THE DEMOISELLES OF ROCHEFORT and BONNIE AND CLYDE

Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040746/

A pair of collegians (patterened after Leopold and Loeb) kill a classmate and hold a party for his friends and family while the kid's corpse is hidden in a trunk in the middle of the room. Hitchcock himself dismissed this famous work, in which a 80 minute period is filmed seamlessly via long uninterrupted takes, as a mere technical exercise; it is certainly dazzling on that level (straddling the spatial worlds of cinema and theater), but it also offers as much psychological insight into the criminal mind as any Hitchcock film. It's worth considering how the emphasis of the story shifts from the killer's delight in their own intellectual and technical mastery to James Stewart's outraged cry for intellect applied in the service of moral goodness, and how this may amount to a personal artistic statement. However, despite these intriguing themes, the feeling of the film never quite escapes the rigidity of its construction, and the psychological unraveling of one unstable killer leads to a predictable ending. Nontheless this is well-worth seeing and reflecting on. #8 for 1948 between A HEN IN THE WIND and MYRIAD OF LIGHTS

Holes (2003, Andrew Davis)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311289/

Andrew Davis (THE FUGITIVE) revisits the "wrongfully accused" theme helming Louis Sachar's adaptation of his own Newbury Award winning children's book, a fantastical, somewhat Kafka-esque tale about a boy who is sent to a juvenile correction center in the midst of a vast desert for a crime he did not commit. The daily punishment for the inmates is to dig five-foot holes in search for a buried treasure sought by the warden. Very ambitious for a Disney children's entertainment, making wide leaps in chronology to give the story an interesting historical foreground -- but the overabundance of coincidences (the kind that works better in novels than in movies) left me dismayed. The acting is uniformly charismatic, esp. by Shia LeBouef as the hero and Khleo Thomas as his sidekick; and Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voigt and Tim Blake Nelson have fun playing up their stereotypically perverse prison guard characters (are there any movies where Tim Blake Nelson isn't playing up to stereotype?). The real strike against the film is its lamentable decision to play a different song every minute, incessantly shifting the tone of the film, which might work for 9 year-olds suffering from ADD but kept throwing me out of the film.

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