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SCREENING LOG
- 6/02-6/08, 2003
Back to 2003 Index
I watched THE LAST BOLSHEVIK, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI
ARSENEVICH, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, HUKKLE, IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS,
LILYA 4-EVER, and INN AT TOKYO. In order of preference:
The Last Bolshevik (1992, Chris Marker)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0105618
My favorite non-fiction work by cinema's premiere essayist,
this is a fascinating feature-length portrait of Soviet filmmaker
Alexander Medvedkin, most famous for this 1934 film HAPPINESS.
Marker offers a compelling case for Medvedkin's envelope-pushing
brilliance, with never-before seen footage from a "studio
train" that Medvedkin created to roam through the Russian
countryside and capture the lives of peasants in incredible
detail -- too much detail, it seems. Medvedkin was a true
believer in Communism, and yet his piercing views of his beloved
countrymen cost him his artistic voice. This masterful biography
expands into a rueful examination of the failure of Communism
under the Stalinist regime and afterward, and the psychic
scars that history has left on leftist idealists like Marker
and Medvedkin. Narrated with a barbed eloquence matched with
a stunningly acute use of video, bobbing, weaving and freeze
framing to the point that no single frame is taken for granted
in its interpretative possibilities. Essential viewing for
anyone interested in Soviet cinema, the Soviet Union, or cinema
for that matter.
In a Year of 13 Moons (1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0077729
The most confounding and baroque film I've yet seen from
Fassbinder -- made only a few years after his more sociopolitically
oriented films like ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL, MOTHER KUSTERS
GOES TO HEAVEN and FOX AND HIS FRIENDS -- this one isn't nearly
as easy to categorize, and is all the more fascinating for
it. The story follows a melancholy transsexual through the
last days of her life, with plenty of bizarre passages shedding
light on her sordid past and the bad decisions made that have
led her to the end of her rope. (To give you an idea of how
things go in this movie: the lead narrates the events that
led to his sex-change operation in the middle of a slaughterhouse
where we see close-ups of cows being butchered.) Fassbinder
has fully integrated the ornate interior stylings of von Sternberg
and Sirk into something wholly his own: garish, dynamic and
menacing, the lighting in this movie is a beautiful monster,
illuminating the dark, destructive impulses that haunt all
of Fassbinder's films. But perhaps the essential contributor
here is Volker Spengler as the transsexual; his understanding
of his character is so internalized that not a single moment
rings false; never does he stoop for pathos or queer effect.
All of these elements combine to create Fassbinder's most
accomplished melodrama, a film that surpasses easy interpretation
and becomes its own living, breathing, magnificently grotesque
being.
One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (2000, Chris
Marker)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0259701
This study of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, interspersed
with footage of him in Sweden filming his last film THE SACRIFICE,
is arguably the single best piece of criticism on Tarkovsky
I've encountered, more illuminating than even Tarkovsky's
own SCULPTING IN TIME. Marker, the master video collagist,
does a splendid job of assembling footage from all of Tarkovsky's
movies (as well as his production of the opera BORIS GODUNOV)
under a series of recurring themes and images and how they
combine to form a most formidable artistic vision. Still,
Marker's inspired collages of Tarkovsky moments did little
to dissuade me from my lingering problem with Tarko's oeuvre,
the talky pontificating and spiritual navel-gazing -- if anything
Marker's essay convinced me that Tarkovsy's movies would be
better with minimal dialogue. Yet at the same time it reconfirms
the cinematic greatness, the harmonious choreography of camera,
subject and sound, found in abundance throughout ANDREI RUBLEV,
MIRROR and STALKER -- and the footage of Tarkovsky on set
in gleeful collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist,
was a joy to behold.
An Inn in Tokyo (1935, Yasujiro Ozu)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0027118
This early great work from The Master is a sobering melodrama
honed squarely on a single unemployed, homeless father struggling
to feed and shelter his two sons. Ozu does a fine job capturing
the dynamic between the two boys by themselves and with their
father, but the film really gets interesting when two women
enter the story: a young single mother, also homeless, and
an old friend who finds the father a job. The maudlin climax
seems to anticipate Ford's GRAPES OF WRATH and DeSican melodrama
-- though in the wrong ways -- but prior to that Ozu comes
up with an quirky expressionist sequence to reflect the father's
unraveling moral state.
Hukkle (2002, Gyorgy Palfi)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0289229
A most unique and curious film, this first feature is technically
audacious -- if precious at times -- and inspiring on many
levels. Set in a bucolic Hungarian village, the highly associational
ÒnarrativeÓ follows one person, object or animal after another,
as they intersect visually or aurally to create an incredibly
dense sensory experience. Eventually some kind of intrigue
emerges involving murder in this small town, and from that
point the exact significance of what's going on starts to
waver. Nevertheless this is a groundbreaking film and a true
delight; I believe it's more than just the academic exercise
it was intended to be (it was Palfi's thesis film) and look
forward to seeing where the director takes his vision from
here.
Lilya 4-Ever (2002, Lukas Moodysson)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0300140
A brutally powerful and effective piece of agit-prop chronicling
the miserable life of Lilya, a 16-year old girl in the ex-Soviet
Union, abandoned by her mother and left with a dwindling set
of options leading inevitably to the unthinkable. The dynamic
camerawork and plucky lead performance do much to propel the
viewer through the slummy settings, but eventually one can
see where this story is going, and people like me begin to
get irritated and resentful that the filmmakers are so intent
on dragging us through the mud in such a perfunctory manner.
But then I caught myself and started thinking, this story
is REAL, every day thousands of girls are suffering this fate
all over the world, and I'm harping on plot predictability?
So I stuck with it and was duly moved, even with the tacky
employment of a juvenile deus ex machina wearing angel wings.
But afterwards I found myself thinking the film's UNICEF agenda
rather cynical and shallow -- the film had done an exceptional
job persuading us that the world Lilya lived in was crap (why
else would they throw in the gang rape scene if not to seal
their case?), so what difference did it make whether she'd
be sold into something equally bad? And for a movie to rip
on the commodification of innocent girls when it itself is
doing the very same thing by casting a pretty young thing
to grace its posters? The more I think about this film, the
more irredeemably nihilistic it seems, with no real purpose
other than to pimp human misery for pity and profit. But that
doesn't mean it doesn't do that very well.
Infernal Affairs (2002, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0338564
This slick, big-budget actioner featuring a slew of A-List
actors won an armful of Hong Kong Film Awards, the reasons
for which are beyond me. Half the movie is spent with people
talking on cell phones -- you call this action? Tony Leung
won a Best Actor Award for this? All he does is sit back and
brood behind a ridiculous goatee. I won't spend much time
on this film as there's already an astute article about it
online: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/26/internal_affairs.html.
Alas, High Concept Hollywood has hit Hong Kong with a vengeance,
and what's lost is the kinetic homegrown spontaneity that
made all those Hong Kong movies from the 80s and 90s so fresh
and exciting. This is basically a retread of well-worn Ringo
Lam and John Woo themes (honor and betrayal drawing an arbitrary
line between good guys and bad guys) given the slick packaging
of your Michael Bay, Tony Scott or Michael Mann, complete
with boring narrow depth-of-field shots in pretty hues of
cool blue (the irony of ironies being that Brad Pitt has bought
the US rights to this; to borrow that line from FIGHT CLUB,
Hong Kong is selling Hollywood's own fat asses back to them).
Depressing.
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