SCREENING LOG - 4/1-4/6, 2003

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I watched WILD BERRIES, DODSWORTH, L'HUMANITE, THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI, SABOTAGE, THE MISSING GUN, UGETSU MONOGATARI, THE LAST LAUGH, and THREE. In rough order of preference (I feel compelled to pair some of these up due to their similarities):

2 x Making poetry out of prosaic film style:

Ugetsu Monogatari (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi) second viewing

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0046478

Having recently watched a couple of Mizoguchi's 30s masterpieces and the radical approach to compositions he employed (see last week), it was disheartening to see how much Mizoguchi settles for conventional Wyler-esque camera set-ups for a good stretch of this story. I'm not sure if the plotline with the wannabe samurai and his wife really added that much (other than being a perfect counterbalance to the samurai misogyny of Akira Kurosawa)-- the film might be even more powerful if it was just about tragic love triangle between the potter, his wife, and the mysterious noblewoman who leads him astray (the love scenes between them are the essence of true eroticism). It is in those scenes that the film achieves true lyricism and becomes one of the all time great ghost stories as well as one of the all time great films. The final scene, where Mizoguchi's lifelong theme of the dead instructing the living takes itself most literally, will either come off as too literal or haunting in the extreme. While I put myself in the former camp, it still doesn't stop me from seeing this as a masterpiece with moments unlike any other in all the movies.

Dodsworth (1936, William Wyler)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0027532

I came into this film expecting to like it a lot, and I have to say that this is possibly the liveliest and most emotionally sensitive work that I've seen from William Wyler. A lot of the credit goes to Walter Huston, who in a single performance sets the blueprint for the careers of Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, William Holden and every other white-bred actor who made his stardom by playing it safe down the middle. While I don't think Wyler is as intuitive about the complex feelings behind sexual relationships as your Ernst Lubitsch or Leo McCarey, it's remarkable seeing the topic of divorce being handled so sensitively back them. Ruth Chatterton does a fine job in the thankless role of the pathetically superficial nattering wife which Annette Bening would reprise 60 years later in AMERICAN BEAUTY; it's only in the ending where the script falters and Chatterton becomes an ungrateful foil to elevate Huston's dignity for the audience's approval. Everything leading up to that feels fresh and superb.

2 x making poetry from poetic film style:

The Boys from Fengkuei (1983, Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0085533

The film that introduced Hou Hsiao-Hsien to the festival circuit and a remarkable work that establishes his singular aesthetic at an early stage. It follows three shiftless boys as they flee gang problems at home to seek a new life in the big city. Reading reviews of this film, I've grown tired of the countless comparisons to Ozu (the only similarities are a secularist worldview and a penchant for patterned compositions), especially when his style readily offers itself to half a dozen other points of comparison: Mizoguchi (exquisite use of the long take), Ray (a pastoral sensibility that turns sentimentality into a contemplative virtue), Scorsese (the pursuit of sensual pleasures and a fascination with the underlying violence in society), even Terrence Malick (a poetic narrative structure of seemingly non-related scenes, giving emphasis on the power of the image to convey effect). But what sets Hou in a class of his own is his way of shooting scenes as if filtered through memory: his visuals have a rare clarity of construction as if they'd been played and replayed in the mind as it reaches repeatedly into the past. Which is odd given that this film takes place in a contemporary setting, but it's totally appropriate given the sense of irretrievably lost time that spills over at the end.

L'Humanite (1999, Bruno Dumont)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0197569

Bruno Dumont's follow-up to the similar THE LIFE OF JESUS, at once very simple to watch and very difficult to comprehend, follows a brooding detective and his moments of deep internalized despair as he tracks down the culprit who brutally raped and murdered a teenage girl in his rural town. Dumont's film has moments of great pastoral beauty complicated by scenes of graphic sex, though the way he does it isn't exploitative at all. I read someone liken it to nature documentary -- and I think that's true -- it's very much a film that focuses on human nature above the morality that humankind constructs to make sense of its own senselessness. I don't know just how much there is to this movie as a narrative; in terms of what the story means I can't be certain that he has as much to offer. But just as an experience it was tremendous -- Dumont's story moves in terms of lucid moments. It's hard to think of a filmmaker working today who has a deeper reverence for silence, allowing the power of visuals to work their wonders. 2 x innovators of form and technology

The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0015064

The film in which Murnau took the camera off the stand and let it soar. This film was famous for Murnau, as was his nature, experimented tirelessly throughout the film's making, coming across a dozen or so lasting innovations in the process. As a film itself it has its moments. Most memorable to me for Emil Jannings, who has begun to intrigue me a lot. After his turns in this film and THE LAST COMMAND I am very impressed with his restrained acting, and his slightly artificial appearance suits the role. The imposed happy ending was a bit bothersome but Murnau did a valiant job of selling it.

Sabotage (1936, Alfred Hitchcock)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0028212

An early pinnacle of Hitchcock's groundbreaking formalism, and undoubtedly brilliant, though somewhat in a cold way. I just couldn't buy into the relationship between the villain and his wife, as well as the kid brother. But Hitchcock plants a number of self-referential elements in his storytelling; the plotter operates a film theater and he plants his bomb inside a film canister. At first glance these references don't seem any more insightful than his famous on-screen walk-ons, but I'd like to see this again to give those elements a closer look. The image of an audience held "captive" in a movie theater while the madman proprietor plots mayhem literally behind the screen compelling at the very least on a conceptual level -- in fact, it's downright prophetic in an age where the media terrorizes our minds as much as actual terrorists.

3 x Hip Contemporary Asia

Three (2002, Peter Chan, Ji Woo Kim, Nonzee Nimibutr)

http://www.imdb.com/Title?0324242

In case you though Japan was the only player in the field of contemporary Asian horror, here comes a triptych of chiller cinema, three shorts from Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong. Memories, the Korean film, is the most formally ambitious, slipping through various layers of subjective and objective reality in exploring a woman's attempt to find her way home after peeling herself off an empty sidewalk, while her husband sits mysteriously brooding at home. But if that's too esoteric for you there's a great shot of a woman digging pieces of her brain out of her skull. The Wheel, the second installment, about a Thai puppeteer who comes across a puppet with a curse, is standard late night cable fare. Coming Home, about a Hong Kong man who has kept his dead wife preserved in his apartment for three years while hoping for her resurrection, is the most satisfying in terms of narrative craft and emotional resonance, comparable to M. Night Shyamalan. With great acting by the ever-reliable Eric Tsang and a creepy yet soulful Leon Lai, and helmed by Peter Chan (who also did an exceptional job with Lai and Tsang in COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY).

Wild Berries (2002, Miwa Nishikawa)

http://us.imdb.com/Details?0359395

Charming comedy about a dysfunctional family with the laid-off patriarch amassing debts in the hands of shady hoodlums until the chickens come to roost -- but not before his disowned son pops up to save the day and make a bid to return to the family -- but is he really trustworthy? It's a decision ultimately left to the daughter, the only character in the film with a real moral compass despite the web of lies which seems to be her family's custom. Produced by Kore-Eda Hirokazu (MABOROSI, AFTER LIFE) though all it has in common with Kore-Eda is a sensitivity to modern Japanese life, but in a more upbeat way (accentuated by the hip funky score) reminiscent of Japanese comedies of the 80s. The plot is a bit meandering but the richly-drawn characters make this worthwhile.

The Missing Gun (2002, Lu Chuan)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0342778

While the world should fear North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, film buffs the world over should cast a wary eye on China, whose filmmakers apparently have finally acquired that all-destructive technology, the MTV aesthetic. Generous helpings of pointless stylistic excess are heaped upon this hollow story of a cop who races through town trying to locate his missing gun. Heralded by some as a kind of film "never before seen in China"; while a Chinese movie aspiring to hipster counterparts in the West is entertaining as a novelty, I hope it doesn't spread like the SARS virus to infect all of Asia with split-second superficial thrills in place of substance.

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