Want more? Film reviews from early 1998 to early 1999
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December 31, 2000
Set in smalltown Scotland, Bill Forsyth's "Gregory's Girl" (1981) is a funny, sweet, charming little film about a teenage schoolboy and his crush on a girl classmate football star. Even minus the surprise of the new when I first saw this in a theater, viewing it on video years later was entertaining.
Denys Arcand’s "Jesus of Montreal" (1989), a provocative, serious, and sometimes funny French-Canadian film, follows a group of Montreal actors who "put on an unorthodox Passion Play which incites the opposition of the Catholic Church while the actors' lives themselves begin to mirror the Passion itself." Its many memorable scenes include one of actors dubbing voices in a sex film, another in which apologetic police arrest Jesus on the cross.
John Sayles'"Brother From Another Planet" (1984) follows the path of a brown-skinned humanoid extraterrestrial as he makes his way through Harlem in an effort to elude two men pursuing him. I saw this years ago and think now it still holds up in many ways. If the sub-plot about drug abuse is trite, the film's overall treatment of the questions of identity are rich. People make assumptions based on how you look and even what you don't say, but what if they really knew?
PS: I too have three toes.
In "Billy Elliot" (2000), an eleven-year-old boy in Durham, England, follows his heart and becomes a dancer, at the risk of alienating his coalminer father and older brother. If the film is a bit predictable (or exaggerated in spots to no good effect), it has a sweetness about it which is somehow satisfying. Personal note: I have a tender spot for films about working class England; they make me think about my roots, both hometown and pre-immigration. For better or worse, I think, these are my people.
"Not of this World" (1999, a.k.a., "Fuori dal Mundo") is a film about the ramifications of one's decisions and living with oneself. Quick synopsis: After a nun taking a walk in a park is handed a baby wrapped in a sweater, her search for its parents leads her to question her own choices in life. Good, if not great. In Italian with English subtitles.
It's nice to be able to walk a block and a half from home to see a film in a theater.
"Book Wars" (2000) is a fascinating documentary about book peddlers on the streets of Manhattan and--more generally--bibliophilia, the used book business, and human diversity. For more info: the "Book Wars" web site.
Ken Loach's "Land and Freedom (1995) is an engaging dramatization about a radical Brit's experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It's already caused me to pull out George Orwell's book on the same topic, Homage to Catalonia. Read what the what the World Socialist Web Site has to say about it.
"Desk Set" (1957) features Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as a corporate librarian and a computer whiz who's planning (or so it seems) to make her job obsolete. It's frothy but amusing, both for its portrayals of librarians and the repartee between Hepburn and Tracy.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962); Academy Awards went to Horton Foote for best screenplay and Gregory Peck for his role as a white Georgia lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape. One word: "Scout." (Tomboys rule.) Buzzwords: "Just spit on it." (To silence a squeaky gate, or...)
The film is dated...but contains memorable images and grist for thought. I like the way disobedience is a relatively subtle theme here, with mischievous children of character who think for themselves (to the point where they disobey their father who is the moral center of the film).
Adrian Lyme's "Lolita" (1997), featuring Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, seems faithful in spirit to the Nabokov novel. Whoo! (I've never seen Stanley Kubrick's version.)
David Steinberg's column on the film is worth reading; his opinion of it is generally favorable, though he calls it "sugar-coated" and claims (wrongly, I believe), that Humbert's wrathful and manipulative side are ignored or seriously underplayed.
"Brassed Off" is a British film focusing on the travails of coal miner musicians--they play in a competitve brass band--as the mine where they work wavers near closure. While the film has some nice moments, much of its set-up and some of its intended big moments are cliche and banal. The film is pro-worker and anti-Tory--and raises a few questions--but it lacks a subtletly which might have transformed it into something with real punch.
"The White Balloon", by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, won the Camera d’Or at the 1995 Cannes film festival for best first film. It's a charming and disarmingly simple tale of a 7-year-old girl and her quest to purchase a goldfish in celebration of New Year.
Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" (1999) entertained me. Occasionally titillating; alternately absurd, funny, and genderbendingly erotic; ambitious if not always profound, it features the always interesting John Cusack and John Malkovich, the former playing a down-on-his-luck puppeteer who discovers a "portal" into actor John Malkovich’s brain, from his workplace on the 7 1/2 floor of a Manhattan office building. I watched this on video over the course of two days; it reminded me some of Terry Gilliam’s "Brazil." It’s only a matter of time before this is labeled a "cult film", I think.
"The Loved One" (1965), a black comedy about a funeral home, adapted from the novel by Evelyn Waugh (rhymes with "raw"), wasn’t as funny as when I first saw it 25 years or so ago. Liberace made a nicely smarmy head mortician, though.
Watched an intriguing video, "Iceland: A Personal Journey With Rick Ray" (Wish You Were Here Productions, 1989), focusing on the people of the island (including public drunkenness in Reykjavik, 100% literacy, and suicide rate 20 times higher than the murder rate).
"Dangerous Liaisons" (1988; directed by Stephen Frears), an intrigue set in 18th century France, has as primary characters a woman and a man (Glenn Close and John Malkovich) who manipulate lovers as if they were garden plants. In the end their whims have not only harmed others but ruined each other. An intensely violent film in a way, it has some nice lines (e.g., “Like most intellectuals, he’s intensely stupid”) and amusing scenes. That said, I'd rather have spent the two hours reading Mark Twain.
A small question: what’s up with John Malkovich’s simpering, bunny-tooth look after nearly every pronouncement his sleazy Valmont makes?
John Waters’ "Pecker" is a mildly amusing tale about the New York City art industry’s propensity to "discover" and exploit young artists, in this case a naive young Baltimore photographer who uses a camera from his mother’s thrift store.
In Luis Bunuel’s "Viridiana" (1961), a young nun is ordered to visit her benefactor uncle, an event which leads to her leaving the convent and taking a raucous group of homeless people under her wing disastrously. Eh.
From moviediva.com: "Bunuel casts doubt on both the value of spiritual beliefs and on the purity of the central character's motives. But, he does not discuss God, but the way God is worshiped. He was greatly criticized at the time for showing a crucifix that turned into a pocketknife, yet this was a common souvenir that could be bought throughout Spain (although not after Viridiana!) Raised as a Catholic (although often quoted, when asked his religion, ‘I'm an atheist, thank God!’) he firmly believed that sin multiplied the possibilities of desire."
"American History X" is a Hollywood film about young white supremacists, one of whom changes his way of thinking. Mixed feelings: It seemed oversimplified, too pat, too--pardon me--black and white, on the one hand, but the acting was compelling.
A friend of mine (JPD) said he'd seen the film on the big screen: "very impressed. scary and the jaw breaking scene, all fine. final rally was over the top for my taste, but worked better? as a movie. Edward Norton is very very good."
Luis Bunuel’s "Phantom of Liberty" (1974) is--like "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie"--creatively deviant and full of memorable surrealistic scenes, but it lacks coherence as a whole. In this, Bunuel’s penultimate film, police cadets act like prankish school children, monks play poker with religious medals for chips, and defecators sit around a table and chat (excusing themselves to go down the hall...to eat), but... so what? The more focused "That Obscure Object of Desire"--Bunuel’s last film--works better for me.)
"Hilary and Jackie"(1998), a film about the relationship between cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her sister Hilary, is based on the book A Genius in the Family, by Hilary and Piers du Pre. In it you’ll see no car crashes and no shootings, though various scenes depict cruelty to musical instruments.
Oh, Roger Ebert’s review goes into more detail.
Claude Sautet's "Un Coeur en Hiver" (1993) is lovely. I concur with Roger Ebert who writes of it, "As a general rule, the characters in French films seem more grownup than those in American films. They do not consider love and sex as a teenager might, as the prizes in life. Instead, they are challenges and responsibilities, and not always to be embraced. Most movie romances begin with two people who should be in love, and end, after great difficulties, with those two people in love. Here is a movie about two people who should not be in love, and how they deal with that discovery."
Andrei Tarkovsky’s "Nostalghia" acted as a soporific for me. I nearly feel asleep and finally gave up on it. Having said to myself, "I’ll give it five more minutes," I kept glancing at the clock and only abided it three more minutes. As much as I love silence, I found it here to be tedious, barren. Highly acclaimed by others, but then so was Wim Wenders’ "Wings of Desire." There’s no accounting for taste.
Kieslowki's "Decalogue", parts V-VI and X (see below). Strong, fascinating, provocative. The tenth episode is perhaps the best of the lot, or at least the most satisfying.
Lars Von Trier’s "Breaking the Waves" (1996) is compelling, thanks especially to the presence of Emily Watson who plays Bess, a church-oppressed young woman in northern Scotland who marries an oil rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard as Jan) in whose presence she blossoms. When Jan is paralyzed in a work accident, Bess becomes convinced that she can heal him by offering herself to other men.
For more info: Roger Ebert’s review
Krzyzstof Kieslowki's "Decalogue", parts IV, VII-IX (see below): At their best, these Polish dramas about the lives of people living in a Warsaw apartment building raise questions without answering them, present moral dilemmas without pat resolutions.
Krzyzstof Kieslowki's "Decalogue", a series of complex hour-long contemporary dramas, appeared originally on Polish television in 1988. Released in the U.S. last year on video, it was also screened in its entirety at the Walker Art Center recently. Darkness and a realistic ambiguity infuses parts I-III (of which I'd happily watch the first and third again). Cinematography, acting, scripts: the whole package is compelling. I'd rather not have read plot synopses beforehand, however, and won't summarize them here.
For more a useful overview of the series: Glenn Erickson's review.
For me it's been a film-free month. Fine, it's spring. What I've been watching instead:
chestnut-sided warblers
birch limbs flexing in wind
herring gulls perched on the remains of a 98-year-old shipwreck
orange full moon rising over Basswood Island (Chequamegon Bay, Lake Superior)
Brian Gilbert's film "Wilde" (1997) is about Irish author Oscar Wilde (approporiately-named), a married father who comes to love young men and who goes to prison for it. Though it’s partly about tolerance and intolerance, I was more interested in the way it raised polyamory as an issue worth cogitation. What’s up with film sex scenes in which nude men are truncated below the waist, though? Hypocrisy reigns all these generations post-Wilde.
Here is Roger Ebert’s thoughtful review.
Etienne Chatiliez's "Tatie Danielle" (1990) is a black comedy about a mean old auntie. Why is she so mean? I’ve seen it twice now and I still don’t know. Neither am I convinced that the film’s denouement is believable, but it’s still provocative.
Here is Roger Ebert’s review.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf's "The Silence" -- a.k.a. "Sokhout" (1998) -- is a simple film about a blind boy who becomes enraptured daily by sounds which lead him astray. While he's supposed to be working to save his mother from being evicted, Khorsid hears the buzzing of a bee, the strumming of a street musician, and the tapping of pot makers. Meanwhile his brain is obsessed with the first first four notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The most captivating presence in the film is not young Khorsid (whose eyes are never seen) but a girl who accompanies him, dances to his tuning, and rescues Khorsid when he disappears. It is her serenity--a certain kind of silence--that truly makes the music.
Krzysztof Kieslowski's "White" (1994) is sly, romantic, yearning, and requires some leaps of faith. The plot, such as it is: Polish hairdesser Karol is divorced by his French wife, makes it home to Warsaw moneyless and barely alive, somehow becomes a wealthy real estate baron, then sets about enticing his love to come to him. Roger Ebert’s review, justifiably calls this "anti-comedy, in between the anti-tragedy and the anti-romance."
In its video release John Frankenheimer's "Seconds" (1966) adds a minute of nudity to a California, hippie/neo-Pagan, stomp-the-grapes scene. This campy black-and-white film is a parable about middle-aged male desire to start a new life--and the ends to which some men are willing to go in order to achieve this.
Francois Truffaut's "Jules et Jim" (1961) holds up well after all these years. A portrait not so much of a ménage à trois as a woman (Jeanne Moreau as "Catherine") who loves much and is adored by many, it turns traditional gender roles upside down. (Witness one scene with Catherine in male drag.) I'm still a little skeptical about the ending, though.
As a technical aside, I like the film's stop action shots.
Les Blank's "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" and "Burden of Dreams" (the latter about the making of Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo") are recommended for fans of the philosophical German filmmaker.
To make up for the below-mentioned misfortune, I watched Ingmar Bergman's so-called lesser effort "Brink of Life" (1958) about three women in a hospital maternity ward. Bergman's shades of gray are lovelier than most filmmakers' colors.
Video night disaster. Made it through half of "Farewell My Concubine" before bailing out, then quit "Waiting For Guffman" even earlier. The former I found tedious--recommended only for sadomasochists, the latter unsubtle and unfunny. "There's no accounting for taste," he lied.
"American Movie", a documentary about individual dedication and how one person’s obsession affects others, focuses on a Wisconsin filmmaker’s efforts to complete a long-in-the-works feature. It's hilarious, serious, and very midwestern. I recognize these people, but now I know them better.
Here's Roger Ebert's take.
Werner Herzog's "My Best Fiend" (1999; a.k.a. "Mein Liebster Feind"), a film reminiscence about Herzog's director-actor relationship with egomaniacal Klaus Kinski, should be fascinating for fans, but probably far less so for anyone else. Includes clips from "Aguirre: Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo," "Nosferatu," and "Stroszek."
December 31, 1999
"A Great Day in Harlem" (1995) documents the story behind a single photograph, taken in 1958 on the street in Harlem, of a gathering of jazz musicians young and old. To the surprise of many, the turnout to the call from Esquire magazine was tremendous: over 50 people showed up, including Monk, Basie, Mingus, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins. Jazz fans will enjoy the sense of camaraderie, fun, and competition, as Dizzy Gillespie, Marian McPartland, Art Blakey, and others alive when this film was made reminisce about their fellow musicians and that day in particular.
I confess to having watched films recently without reviewing them here. Agnes Varda's "Vagabond", seen for the second time, is good but didn't hold up as well as Werner Herzog's "Aguirre: Wrath of God" (third time). The latter was an anti-celebratory Thanksgiving Day video at Chez DeSirey-Dodge.
Jan Svankmaier's "Conspirators of Pleasure" (1996) is a wordless farce following the intricate and unusual sexual fetishes of several contemporary citizens of Prague. No dialogue: just industrious humans foraging and concocting affairs involving toe-sucking fish, dough balls, chickens, straw-stuffed dummies, four-handed robots, and nail-studded rolling pins. Partly animated (Svankmaier is primarily known for his puppetry and claymation), this amusing film goes on for too long. It would have been better trimmed by two thirds.
Repeating to myself: I will not judge a genre on the basis of a small sampling. That said, I think martial arts films are not my cup of tea. Tolerated some shoot 'em up Jet Li film until I could take no more, then went outside and watched constellations, a planet (Saturn, I think), and a half moon. October 3, 1999
"Wing Chun" (1994) (a.k.a "Yong Chun") is a chopsocky, strong women, Hong Kong-made martial arts film--kinda like an action comic book turned into a film. The Foley artist really got a workout with this one: WHSSSh WHSSSh WHSSSh…. WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP. There are some funny scenes and easy to watch actors (the lead role is played by Michelle Yeoh, once Miss Malaysia), but I'm in no hurry to seek out more of this sort of thing. The nearly constant fight scenes--that's what the genre is all about, after all--mostly bored me. Oh: this was a dubbed version. An odd experience. Thanks, Cath!
Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957) features a bird, a squirrel, a fox (in a matter of speaking), and a man imitating a dancing bear, but no seal, dagnabbit. I first saw this film on the big screen about 24 years ago. Something--perhaps the years or the screen size--seems to have shrunk it. Though watchable, certainly, it's not terribly profound. How about a feminist remake?
"The Old Woman Who Walked in the Sea" (1991), a.k.a. "Vieille qui marchait dans la mer," is candy for adults: a tasty theft-and-blackmail-and-sex comedy, if neither filling nor nutritious. That said, I would watch Jeanne Moreau do anything. In this film she and Michel Serrault are an aging con artist duo who bombard each other with caustic comments, some of which center around jealousy which springs up due to a third person. Besides snappy dialogue, the highlight of this witty and naughty film is when Lady M's young companion reaches into a box and retrieves photos of her at three previous ages (actually photos of Moreau in her teens, twenties, and forties). It's one poignant and memorable moment in a film which may otherwise melt away like chocolate.
Read Barbara Shulgasser's review from the San Francisco Examiner .
Witness: District 202: When Politics Become More Important Than Liberation (1999) is a 55-minute video made by Joanna Kohler about her experiences at District 202, a nonprofit Minneapolis-based center intended to provide a safe space for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth. Starting as a small storefront operation in 1993, it subsequently moved to a larger, specially remodeled location after a major fundraising campaign. This video offers evidence that this growth and institutionalization has gone hand-in-hand with paternalistic behavior by at least some of 202's adult staff. At its best it features articulate young people talking about their experiences at 202 and reading things they've written about it. Clearly there is a sense of 202 as a crucial place which has fostered a sense of family for kids on the margins, but here are also explicit complaints about feeling disempowered, used, and mistreated. (One youth was accused of taking money, another--the filmmaker--had a protest poem censored.) Sadly, workers at social service agencies often act less concerned about their constituents than they do about their own jobs and cachet (such as it may be) that comes with them. In the case documented here, there's an additional power discrepancy based partly--if not chiefly--on age. Three cheers for young people who are not only courageous enough to dissent, but to express themselves by speaking out, writing, and creating videos. While this is not a complete story--and though it might have been more effective minus a few experimental touches (dream sequences, for example), it deserves attention and thought. (Minnesota Media Project, 262 E. 4th St., #501, St. Paul, MN 55101, 651-290-2653, FAX: 651-225-8826; $25 + $5 shipping).
"Slam" (1998) has a premise which is fine, poetry as a lifeline, in this case to a young African American man who's been jailed in D.C.. That said, it was way too melodramatic and unbelievable for me. What caused overpowering cognitive dissonance was the disparity between film characters' lame poetry, and widespread public reactions to it (by prisoners and a poetry slam audience) as though the words were manna from heaven.
Roger Ebert is slightly more generous , but admits "I was underwhelmed by some of the material in this movie."
Good Will Hunting won all kinds of awards. Helped by Robin Williams in a key supporting role, it even contains a favorable reference to Howard Zinn's A people's history of the United States. So what is it about this tale of a young MIT janitor whiz kid that seems so totally wrong? I think it is that in real life men do not outnumber women six to one. This film reminds me of works by Spike Lee: promising, true in many ways, male-oriented, essentially flawed, eventually irritating. I suppose I am in the minority again with this opinion.
John Duigan's "Flirting" (1991) is an Australian boarding school coming-of-age tale involving romance between a precocious girl from Uganda and a boy who seeks respite by reading Camus and Sartre. It's the second time I've seen this, but it held up well. Its humor is gentle and the film sensitively portrays adolescent sexuality and two individuals' attempts to integrate emotion and intellect amidst an atmosphere of repression. It's been pointed out to me that the film's adult characters are relatively one-dimensional, but I think they caricature proto-fascism successfully. The key roles are well played by Thandie Newton and Noah Taylor, though the video package hypes Nicole Kidman who appears in a supporting role.
A sequel to "The Year My Voice Broke," this film was given praise by Roger Ebert.
Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged", a.k.a. "L'Assedio" (1998), a showpiece for Thandie Newton and David Thewlis, seems a not-very-plausible male fantasy, though filled with compelling music and threaded together skillfully. (One memorable segue moves effectively from a beer's foamy head to soap suds on a mosaic floor). A refugee from Africa where her husband is in prison, Shandurai is a live-in domestic worker in Rome for reclusive pianist "Mr. Kinsky." (Oh: she's also a medical student there and friends with a gay fellow student.) Kinsky is smitten by her (and lurks about sneaking gazes), she fends him off. He plays Mozart, she plays African dance music, but why must these subtle difference keep them apart? How (and why) did Shandurai come to Rome, anyway? How come Kinsky's paintings, sculptures, and-eventually-piano disappear? Besides examining the loveliness of Thandie Newton, the film is most powerful during two appearances by an African musician whose role is accompanist to a dream. Lovely or not, the films appears to offer a trite (and even ludicrous) lesson: you don't win a person's love with flowers and jewelry--you win it by helping effect the release of the person's spouse from prison in a remote country.
Erick Zonca's "Dreamlife of Angels"(1998), a.k.a. "La Vie rêvée des anges," is somewhat reminiscent of Agnes Varda's "Vagabond." Where that film follows a young woman drifter as her life runs out of options, this one is about two working class women whose lives converge for a spell. When Isa arrives in Lille with nowhere to stay, she cadges a lousy sweatshop job long enough to meet--and move in with--Marie. The latter is apartment sitting for tenants who've been in a severe accident (a mother has died and daughter lies in a coma). "Dreamlife" interestingly examines a friendship that develops and withers as Isa and Marie cope differently with their station in life, crappy job opportunities, men. While Isa reads the daughter's journal and goes to sit with her in the hospital, Marie pursues a doomed relationship with a rich nightclub owner. What makes the film so watchable is its resolute dedication to avoiding glamorization and stereotype. A fat nightclub bouncer is not the buffoon he first seems--and as he'd be portrayed in a typical Hollywood production--but gentle and thoughtful. Marie doesn't ride off into the sunset with the handsome nightclub owner (who personifies arrogance). Even heroic Isa doesn't hit the road with her thumb out for a ride: in the film's final scene she's back in a seemingly dead-end factory job. By this point, though, viewers may well imagine that her spirit will survive, and that all her women factory co-workers lead real lives outside the assemblyline, going on courageously.
In Farida Ben Lyziad's "A Door to the Sky" (1989)--a.k.a. "Bab Al-Sama Maftuh--a stylish Moroccan who's been living in Paris returns to Fez to visit her dying father. When Nadia's French boyfriend shows up, she spurns him and takes direction from a dream in deciding to turn the family home into a battered women's shelter. The plot is thin to nonexistent, but the location scenery and music compelling. One theme here is identity: Nadia's brother wants to be French and her sister Moroccan, but she wants to be both. She shows up at the airport in Fez with two-toned hair, and wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt. It's a stretch to imagine her totally comfortable in both designer clothes and the traditional garb in which she's clad at film's end, but perhaps that's the point.
"Bandit Queen" is a violent fictionalization of the life of Phoolan Devi. Taken in marriage at age 11, Phoolan Devi suffered under India caste practices, was brutalized by men, endured rape and prison, captured by bandits, herself became a legendary outlaw and heroine, and only surrendered to authorities (after her army was decimated) under a list of provisions (one was not to be hung). Here the film ends, although in real life Phoolan was imprisoned in 1983, released in 1994, and later elected to Parliament. That this film will not be easy viewing is apparent from the start when a small girl looks at the camera and says "All men are motherfuckers." Directed by Shekhar Kapur with music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Indian feminist author Arundhati Roy criticizes the film for focusing solely on rape (practically glorifying it) and caste, making Phoolan appear a "One Man Woman" (romanticizing), and ignoring aspects about her life (from an early age) in which she asserts herself and protests against injustice. I am doing some follow-up reading: I, Phoolan Devi: the autobiography of India's Bandit Queen, published in London in 1996, has never been issued in the U.S. but is available in some libraries. For more on the film, read Roger Ebert's opinion and that of South Asian Women's Net readers. Also: two web pages on Phoolan Devi, one with an interview and one with photos/reviews/links.
Werner Herzog's new "Wings of Hope" (1999) is not a film a fearful flyer would generally choose to watch the night before boarding a plane for DC to attend Dewey Classification Editorial Policy Committee meetings. My partner nearly walked out on it since this documentary is partly about a plane crash. In the early seventies a Peruvian passenger jet went down, euphemistically speaking, after which searchers could not locate it as the wreckage was swallowed entirely by dense forest cover. Twelve days later a sole survivor walked out, an 18-year-old mini-skirt-clad girl whose parents ran an ecological station nearby. To make this documentary, Herzog convinced the woman this girl has become--now a biologist specializing in bats--to return to the site and recreate her survival. Years ago this account was turned into a lurid German feature film which horribly twisted it to fit into a stereotypical damsel in distress package. In fact, Herzog's documentary, a companion to his "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," makes evident that Juliana survived because of her scientific knowledge. Knowing to follow waterways, realizing which animals were a threat and which were not--these sorts of things were crucial. In fact, the film is a sort of paean both to the will to live and to dispassionate science.
Agnes Varda's "Jacquot" (a.k.a. "Jacquot des Nantes") is a gentle homage to the director's life partner, French filmmaker Jacques Demy. Told in dramatized flashbacks, it's about a boy's growing passion for film, from making cardboard puppet play sets to salvaging newsreel film from a dump and creating his own. While "Jacquot" would probably be most interesting to someone familiar with Demy's films, it has a certain charm on its own.
Is Varda's "Les Creatures" (1966) available on video? Many years ago it was my introduction to her films.
John Sayles' "The Secret of Roan Inish" (1994) is good, if you like that sort of thing. I found this contemporary retelling of the selkie folklore to be thin, treacly, and eventually tiresome. There, I've said it.
Roger Ebert liked it, as have most viewers.
I'd previously seen Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre" (1979) on video, but this was the first time on a large screen. It easily stood up to a second viewing, with a chance to pay more attention to details: Klaus Kinski's Dracula make-up, the Delft location shooting, use of light, rat wrangling, etc. About this film, Leonard Maltin succinctly synopsizes: "spooky, funny, reverent remake of F. W. Murnau's vampire masterpiece." Like most effective folktales, it operates on different metaphorical levels, this time causing me to consider rereading Camus' The Plague.
Werner Herzog's "Heart of Glass" (1976), a.k.a. "Herz aus Glas," is a tedious--nay, torturous--film "about" a community of glassblowers (played by a hypnotized cast) who have lost the secret to making "ruby glass." As pretentious as a student film, it caused widespread yawns and walk-outs at the Herzog retrospective screening at the Walker Art Center. Recommended as punishment only.
Herzog's "Lessons in Darkness" (1992), a.k.a. "Lektionen in Finsternis," stunningly documents the ravages of war, specifically focusing on the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells. Its apocalyptic images--set to the music of Mahler, Verdi, and Wagner--are awesome and horrifying. This 52-minute film is highly recommended to pyromaniacs and firefighters alike.
A brief review by one Max Hoffmann…
Ken Loach's "Hidden Agenda" (1990) is a political thriller set in Northern Ireland. After an American human rights activist has been killed by the R.U.C., an independent police investigation gets underway, only to run into layer after layer of cover-up. (This corruption, leading into ever higher levels of government, independently reminded the three of us viewing the video together of our respective libraries.) Engaging and suspenseful, "Hidden Agenda" is like "In the Name of the Father" crossed with "Prime Suspect" and "Seven Days of the Condor."
Werner Herzog's "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997) is an
unnerving and intense documentary about German-born Navy pilot Dieter
Dengler. On his first Vietnam War mission, Dengler was shot down in Laos
and taken prisoner by Viet Cong. Tortured, held captive for six months,
starved down to 85 pounds, he managed to escape. Herzog not only
interviews Dengler, from whom words spill in torrents, but recreates his
captivity and miraculous barefoot flight to freedom on location. Vividly,
sometimes horrifyingly, Dengler relives a past which comes alive. We
learn how to start a fire using bamboo and how to pick handcuffs with a
paper clip, but so many questions remain. If the Viet Cong were so brutal,
how does that jibe with the archival color footage we've seen of U.S.
planes napalming lush Southeast Asian farmscapes? How do we reconcile the
image of a gaunt bearded survivor with the young zealous Dengler we see
interviewed at a press conference in starched Navy whites after he had
recovered? The sadness and futility of war are apparent here, but what
about Dengler's family? Does he now live alone on a California mountain
top?
Roger Ebert's views on this film
Herzog's "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser" (1974)--
a.k.a. "Every Man for Himself and God Against All"--is based on the 1828
public appearance in Nuremberg of a man who had previously spent his
entire life in solitary captivity. The account of how this "wild child"
(or "foundling") was adapted, taught to read and write, and then murdered
had been previously documented in books, but Herzog claims the film
version was "waiting all those years for me." Unfolding like a dream,
this tragedy is not without comic elements. Townspeople alternate between
confusion, caring, and patronization; some struggle to explain, while
others exploit this strange person. Through it all, Kaspar Hauser
(played by "mental patient" Bruno S.) is the image of tortured integrity.
Set to music by Dvorak, et al.
Want more? Film reviews from early 1998 to early 1999
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