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May 11, 2002
Spare, beautiful, and poignant, Satyajit Ray's "The World of Apu" (1959) follows the life of a young writer in Calcutta and the effects of his decision to marry.
No one films rain as wonderfully (and meaningfully) as Ray. No one uses a blank white screen better.
This finale to Ray's "Apu" trilogy is both memorable and a film to watch more than once.
Uptown Saturday Night (1974) was a lightweight vehicle for the talents of Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier. Set squarely in 1970s Harlem--dig those fashions--it's a fairly entertaining comic caper film. "Genius" isn't too strong a word to apply to Pryor (and Cosby sometimes approaches it).
"The Life of Birds" (1999)--a 10-part BBC/PBS series featuring David Attenbourugh--is excellent and downright awesome. Its zoom cinematography, shot from treetops and other precarious places, focuses on birds' flying skills, tool use, eating habits, hunting and fishing technique, mating, and raising of fledglings. Not for the squeamish, it includes scenes of hawks killings flamingos and coot mothers practicing infanticide.
I've been watching 19th-century films lately. Stay tuned for a report.
Imagine Luis Bunuel and Jean Cocteau as Icelandic-Canadians. In Guy Maddin's stark black-and-white "Tales From the Gimli Hospital" puppet theater is used as anesthesia, fish are squeezed for use as hair tonic, a patient eats a nurse's cap, odd tongues are spoken. It's weird, interesting, occasionally beautiful, erotic, hilarious, and disturbing. I'm reminded of what Charles Mingus said a psychiatrist had told him about a poem Mingus had written, "Well, Charles, that certainly is a very personal expression." Credited characters include "Fish Princess" and "Angel with Moustache".
The documentary films of Les Blank are visionary in another way, whether depicting substream musical currents such as zydeco, Cajun music, polka, and conjunto, or such idiosyncrasies as "Gap-Toothed Women" and love for "the stinking rose" ("Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers"). I've just watched for the first time "Always for Pleasure" (1978) which focuses on New Orleans funeral parades and African American carnival traditions in the Crescent City), and "Innocents Abroad" (1991), a feature-length documentary about an American tour group seeing ten European countries in two weeks. Good stuff.
I've watched Krystof Kieslowski's "Blue" for the second time in less than a year. It's strong in many ways. (See May 8, 2001 entry below.) This time I've included a link to Roger Ebert's review. "A more adult, inward, knowing way of dealing with the emotions..."
F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922), the original Dracula film, clocks in at about an hour, yet conveys more than most films do in twice that time. Both creepy and artistic, it is interesting to compare with Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu" which now seems to me an homage.
Roger Ebert's review tells you more.
Marty (1955) is the wee tale of a pot-bellied thirty-something Italian American bachelor who lives with his ma in New York and is tired of people asking when he's gonna get married. Then he goes to a dance and meet a wallflower school teacher and can't stop talkin'.
The film ended and I said, "That's it?" Maybe that's a good thing.
Marty is played by Ernest Borgnine and Clara by Betsy Blair, about whom the Internet Movie Database interestingly says, "Blacklisted because of her left-wing sympathies, although she never actually joined the Communist Party. She wanted to join but the Party decided that she was more useful as the wife of 'liberal, progressive' Gene Kelly. Nonetheless, she was blacklisted despite an Academy Award nomination for 'Marty'...."
Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" (1995) is a moody, black-and-white, darkly humorous, some will say slow-moving and violent, western about a young man followed by bounty hunters, aided by a "mixed blood" Indian (played by Gary Farmer), from Arizona all the way to flippin' Neah Bay, a distance of over 1300 miles (a dubious journey never explained, along with the failure of Johnny Depp's character to grow more than the slightest whiskers during this time).
That said, I laughed cathartically through much of the film, and though its ending was both slow, predictable and a little pretentious, I would watch it again. Roger Ebert panned it heavily; I'm glad to see that we differ. Ebert despised Neil Young's score, about which he says "for the film's final 30 minutes [it] sounds like nothing so much as a man repeatedly dropping his guitar." I rather liked it. And found the whole not so much confusing as wisely crazy. As lagniappe: there are bit parts by Iggy Pop, Robert Mitchum, and others.
"Did you kill the white man who killed you?"
"What name were you given at birth, stupid white man?"
"You are being followed, William Blake."
"How do you know?"
"Often the evil stench of white man precedes him."
"I'm telling you, he killed 'em, he fucked 'em, he cooked 'em up, he ate 'em."
"I will take you to the bridge made of waters."
In Melvin Van Peebles' "The Watermelon Man" (1970) Godfrey Cambridge plays a white insurance agent who wakes up black one night and can't turn back. His wife (Estelle Parsons)--after initial fright--is patient with the change for a while, but, only "liberal to a point," she becomes exasperated: "Oh, why do you insist on being Negro?!"
This turn-things-topsy-turvy satire alternately hits and misses, but it's certainly unique. Here's a more detailed review.
The ultimate bad party movie, Luis Bunuel's ominous "The Exterminating Angel" (1962) is a disturbing allegory which is literally about guests at a post-opera soireé who are trapped and cannot leave. I watched it before going to a party, oddly. It's more or less horrifying, but compelling. Roger Ebert's review places it in the context of Bunuel's half-century ouevre.
"Little Voice" (1998), written and directed by Mark Herman ("Brassed Off"), stars Jane Horrocks (from Mike Leigh's "Life Is Sweet") as a young woman cowed by her mother into silence but harboring a talent for vocally impersonating Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe. Like "Brassed Off" the film is pretty good, if not great, and Roger Ebert's opinion more or less matches mine, once again.
"Saving Grace" (2000), an amusing comedy set in a Cornish town, follows the fortunes of a debt-laden widow florist who turns to marijuana cultivation in order to bring in some cash. Roger Ebert didn't think much of it.
"Where the Heart Is" (2000), a ludicrous stick-figure cartoon of a film, combines utterly predictable outcome with heavy reliance on what Roger Ebert calls "incident, contrivance, coincidence, improbability, sudden reversals and dizzying flash-forwards (sometimes years at a time)". And yet Ebert liked it more than "Saving Grace." There's no accounting for taste. Here's Ebert's review.
Two new documentaries worth noting:
Richard Cohen's "Going to School" ("Ir a la Escuela") looks at special education students in a Los Angeles middle school and their integration into regular classes thanks greatly to persistence from one steadfast parent.
"Refugees of the Global Economy" is a 28-minute video profiling three economic refugees to the U.S.: a Filipina domestic worker, a Haitian who went from stitching baseballs for a dollar a day to picking oranges in Florida, and a Bolivian couple who once ran their own manufacturing plant but now feel fortunate just to be reunited with their children.
Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1958) presents a justifiably height-fearful ex-cop (Jimmy Stewart) hired to tail the wife of a former schoolmate. While I found it charming at first (I liked the Barbara Bel Geddes interplay with Stewart), it became laughable in places (a 60ish nightmare scene which must have seemed avant garde in the late 50s), and eventually awful. Yes, there are some masterful Hitchcockian touches of interest-- cinematographically and musically--and lovely San Francisco area locations, but this was a case of my eventually no longer being able to suspend disbelief.
Wendy Lesser writes about watching "Vertigo" many times over the years (and gleaning new meanings from it) in her forthcoming book Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering (Houghton Mifflin).
"Burnt By the Sun" (1994)--which could have been subtitled "Stalinists are Human Too"--won an Academy Award for best "foreign language" film." Colorful in its rural setting and eccentric characters, it blends light comedy and real romantic tension, with only whiffs of politics until the end (when Stalin's image rises up).
Roger Ebert's somewhat erroneous review --a stranger does not show up wearing a gas mask as disguise but a moustache, beard, dark glasses, and hat--and neither is he accompanied by two thugs in a black car-- communicates an opinion that the film wasn't very original and that it ends forseeably, though it does have "interesting moral and political ambiguity". I think it's better than that: not great, but certainly compelling.
Francois Truffaut's "Small Change" ("L'Argent de Poche", 1976) has a nice penultimate scene in which a male teacher extemporaneously tells his class (boys age ten or so) thoughts engendered after one of their classmates was taken from parents after a school doctor exam showed evidence of severe abuse:
"Boys, we’re all thinking about the same thing…about Julien Leclou…. You heard your parents talk about it. Before we all leave on our vacations I would like to talk about Julien. To begin with I don’t know anything you don’t but I would like to tell you how I feel. [Sits on desk, then tells them Julien will be placed with a family with whom he’ll be better off].
Julien’s case was so terrible that we begin to think of ourselves in his place. Myself, for example… my childhood wasn’t as tragic as his, but, believe me, I was always yearning to become an adult. Because I saw that adults had all the rights. They were masters of themselves. An unhappy adult can start all over again from scratch somewhere else. But an unhappy child is doomed to be helpless. He knows he’s unhappy but maybe he can’t even put that unhappiness into words. But even worse, something inside him keeps him from being able to—to contest his parents or those who made him suffer. If a boy is unloved, battered, he thinks he’s responsible and that’s what’s so horrible. Among all the injustices of the world I think that injustice to children is the foulest, the most despicable.
Life isn’t always fair and never will be but we’ve got to fight for justice. It’s worth fighting for. It’s the only way. Things aren’t moving fast enough. There’s progress, but not enough. The politicians, the ones who govern us always are shouting in our ears the government is impervious to threats, But in reality it always has to cede to pressure. If we have obtained progress it’s because we have demanded it. Adults know that. Adults know how to go about it. They have demonstrations, they know how to use pressure. If I tell you this, it’s to prove one thing, that adults, when they really want something, may improve their lives, may improve their lot. But children’s rights are totally ignored. There is no political party that’s really concerned with children, children like Julien and so many others. And there’s a reason. Children don’t vote in elections. If children had the right to vote you’d suddenly be able to get a better education, better technical instruction, and better sports facilities. And you would get it all because politicians want your vote. For example, you might obtain the right to come to school and hour later in winter instead of rushing out before daylight.
I also want to say that because of my childhood memories I am not in favor of the way children are treated. That’s why I’ve chosen as a profession to teach in school. Life isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s important for you to harden yourselves to make you able to face it. Now look, I don’t mean to get hard-hearted. I’m talking of stamina. Strangely enough some of us whose childhood was difficult are often better equipped to become adults than those who were overprotected—and loved. It’s the law of compensation. Life is hard, Maybe, but it’s wonderful, If you’re ever in bed for a few days with a cold or the flu or a broken leg, you begin to feel you want to go outdoors to breathe a little. We sometimes forget how much we really love it.
Well, you’re about to go on vacation. You will discover new places. Make new friends. And then in September you’ll move up a grade. I want to tell you next year there will be girls here as wall. Time flies. Before long you’ll have children of your own. I hope you’ll love them as they’ll love you, The fact is, they’ll love you if you love them. And if you don’t love them, they’ll transfer their love, their affection, their tenderness to others or to other things, because… because life is such that one cannot help but love and be loved…"
Luis Bunuel’s last film, "That Obscure Object of Desire" (Cet obscur objet du désir ) , (1977) diabolically portrays a wealthy middle-aged man’s obsession with a young woman who strings him along. In French with English subtitles, it features Fernando Ray as pursuer, with two different actresses alternating as the supposedly eighteen-year-old Spanish light of his life, "Conchita."
Let’s see how it goes. She is strapped for cash; he has plenty of money and gives some to her, she accepts it without much hesitation. He sniffs her hanky. (Did he purchase that pleasure?) She tells him she’s a virgin, not using that word. She says she can’t be bought, that she’s not that kind of girl. (She has a young lover, can’t he see?) "You only want what I refuse you. You have to wait, that’s all."
"Why do you want to make love to me?," she asks.
"To be closer to you, because I love you."
"I love you too and yet I don’t want to make love to you. We’re together, I let you hold me, I caress you… Why do you want to make love?"
"Because it’s normal, it’s natural. People who are in love make love." (Wrong answer, dude.)
"So you think that I’m not normal?"
Not so subtly, the film’s beleagured romance is set amidst terrorist acts—here a bombing or a shooting in the street, there a newspaper reference to a hijacked plane that crashed.
Lying in bed together, she pulls down the top of her nightgown. "If I gave in you wouldn’t love me anymore." (She turns out to be wearing a sort of leather stitched chastity corset.)
Conchita: I’m nobody’s—I’m mine and I keep it that way. My most precious possession is me.
Mathieu: And those men?
Conchita: I thought you loved me more—enough to commit suicide."
Werner Herzog’s "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser" (1975) is a dreamlike account of a real adult "foundling" who showed up in Nuremberg, Germany, one day in 1828, the subject of subsequent conjecture (and, in fact, entire books). It captivates from its opening scene of a sea of grass woven by the wind to its incorporation of found footage (e.g., a desert trek with camels). Depicting the smarmy treatment of Kaspar Hauser by churchmen, it winds up with the literal dissection of his brain by physicians after his violent death. (In the film Hauser himself suggests he fell from grace when he left his basement prison and came into the world).
I first saw this film at the Walker Art Center in early April 1999 as part of a Herzog retrospective. See my comments from that time here.
"Yol" (1982), a Turkish film made by escaped political prisoner Yilmaz Güney, follows the paths of five briefly furloughed men traveling home from prison to meet their families. It depicts Kurdish villagers under attack, internecine family warfare, rampant cultural sexism, much smoking, slight cracks of hope amidst doom, and--like "Journey of Hope" (and featuring that film's lead actor Necmettin Çobanoglu)--brutal, haunting scenes of travel through snow.
In this time of increased civil rights abuses in the U.S., it's important not to ignore struggles elsewhere. Here's a current case in Turkey publicized by Amnesty International, that of Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman elected to Turkey's Parliament, imprisoned since 1994 for being a member of an illegal opposition group. (She wore a headband with the Kurdish traditional colors red, yellow, and green to her inauguration).
"Salt of the Earth" (1954), a film based on an actual miners' strike in New Mexico, was banned in the U.S. upon its release due to its "communist" overtones. Although generally unsubtle, the film's feminist, anti-racist, pro-working class sentiments express the need for courage, solidarity, and action in pursuit of justice and equality.
"(We Aren't Blocking Traffic,) We *Are* Traffic: A Movie About Critical Mass" (1999) focuses on the history of the monthly Critical Mass bike ride in San Francisco (and its spread to other communities). Held the last Friday of every month, at its best it's both a mobile party and a chance for bikers to feel ownership of the streets. (Dept. of Good Ideas: signs saying "Honk if You Love Bikers".)
Watch for the cameo of anarchist librarian Howard Besser during footage of arrests. (He's the bearded white guy wearing a white T-shirt.)
Although it's ten degrees Fahrenheit in snowy Minneapolis today, I feel inspired to hop on my bike.
"5 Girls" is an engaging documentary about five teenage girls growing up in Chicago. I felt solidarity with all of them: Aisha whose overbearing father yells personal criticism from the stands at a basketball game and insists on selecting his daughter's clothes; Corrie whose father despises her bisexuality; Amber whose father is absent but who is fortunate to have a couple of adults in her life concerned that she not throw her options away; Toby, daughter of two doctors, who goes against her mom's arguments that she not join the cross country team; Haibinh who can't go back to Vietnam because she has no green card.
The PBS website about the film includes interviews with the girls (young women now) conducted two years after the filming. Some of their comments are heart-wrenching. Bright and warm Haibinh reports, for example, that on watching the documentary again she finds herself no longer "as hopeful, forgiving, patient, or amused." She says, "I'm losing faith in the written word, in philosophy, knowing that it's much easier to give advice than to practice it."
Warning: watching this film is likely to make you want to reach out and hug these specific five young adults, an impossibility. Instead, you'll need to find five young women in your own life to give hugs and encouragement.
In Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award-winning "The Virgin Spring" (1959) a stuck-up blonde teenager is raped and murdered, her father--a well-to-do medieval farmer--lashes out in vengeance (killing a birch tree, two guilty men, and an innocent boy), and nearly everone feels guilty, though "God alone bears our guilt."
Memorable images: a live toad sandwich and Max Von Sydow wrestling a birch tree.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie (2001) is lighter, sweeter, and more coherent than his "City of Lost Children", and with as many laughs as his "Delicatessen." Set in Paris, it involves a photo-booth mystery and a young woman determined to reunite an old tin of toys she's discovered with the man to whom they once belonged as a boy. Romance, intrigue, art, and caprice: good fun.
Roger Ebert's review speaks for me, for the most part.
Yesterday: four mallards in a puddle.
Awesome trees, one huge green one with red leaves just at the tips of branches, like fruits. One almost entirely bare except for a yellow skirt. Another naked except for huge squirrel nests, bordered by a red-leafed maple and one tree still green. Bushes with fuchsia leaves ablaze as if it were May and these were flowers. Trees with leaves the color of forsythia blossoms.
Tree tops in the light of sunset while a deep shade obscured lower branches and trunks.
Today:
At dawn: dark clouds on the southern horizon and the sky above also overcast, but with a growing lightness as the sun rose.
Seemingly incandescent yellow-green leaves of the tree nearest my window, as if emitting light rather than simply reflecting it.
Dozens of geese on the pond. Biker in flannel with a stocking cap and a backpack. Tall grass bending in a breeze.
Reflection in the pond of a gull flying above it.
A flying gull.
The space the gull has now departed.
I experienced Ken Loach's rousing Bread and Roses for the second time (see June 18, below), this time at my neighborhood theater. My opinion stands, though I've heard a killjoy somewhat dismissingly refer to it (or to Ken Loach's films in general) as didactic. Feh.
Here's what I've been watching instead of movies:
Sunlight shining through translucent rabbits' ears: orange triangles.
Brown-eyed susans, yellow petals drooping, like badminton birdies.
Cloud feathers tickling a pale half moon, mid-morning.
Male cardinal flying across a path.
The ripple of a blood red awning.
One white seed carried by wind.
Tall grasses bending.
Gull on a lamp globe.
"MicroCosmos" is a fascinating documentary about insects. The second film I've seen recently which featured water skimmers. (See below.)
Roger Ebert wrote glowingly about it.
Guess the common theme in these films: "Blood Simple" (1984), the Coen Brothers first feature, is an inspired work of bloody black humor. (Roger Ebert's review of the 15th anniversary "director's cut" says: "If you are squeamish, here is the film to make you squeam.")
"Giant" (1956) garnered director George Stevens an Academy Award. A little campy when seen today. ("Doctor, that sure is a beautiful animal," says Rock Hudson's Bick Benedict character, gazing at Elizabeth Taylor on a black stallion). Watch the lead actors' hair turn from black to bright blue to gray in this big epic saga spanning generations (Taylor was only 23 at the time, but plays a grandmother). Listen to marble-mouthed James Dean (also 23, in his last film) and watch him go from hired hand to drunken oil magnate. Entertaining, with redeeming social value, to boot.
Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas" (1984) is long, but slow. And yet... I found Harry Dean Stanton compelling as an amnesiac who wanders off the highway and begins to retrace the path of his life back to his young son and estranged wife. Interesting European film about North America, featuring atmospheric soundtrack music by Ry Cooder.
Robert Altman's "Brewster McCloud" (1970): I couldn't watch more than about thirty minutes of this tripe. (I think it was my second failure to sit through this film starring Bud Cort as young man determined to build himself wings and fly.)
Pather Panchali (1953) was Satyajit Ray's first film (and the first in his "Apu Trilogy"). Made in black-and-white, it's the tale of Durga, her little brother Apu, their parents (the writer father goes away in search of work), and an ancient aunt whose gauntness epitomizes the family's poverty and mirrors Ray's spare filmmaking.
Long shots of waterbugs skimming the surface of a pond and lotus leaves curling in the rain: exquisite remedy for a Hollywood overdose, should you need one.
Ken Loach's Bread and Roses (2001) is a moving picture about a Mexican undocumented woman worker and her part in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles. Don't miss the opportunity to see it--in Mineapolis the film opened on a Friday, and three days later these words appeared on the newspaper listing: "Ends Thursday". Is this the fate of political films: a run so short that people who are out of town on vacation miss it?
Subtitled in both English (when Spanish was being spoken) and Spanish (for English), the film reminded me a little of John Sayles' "Lone Star". It has integrity, strong acting, and enough righteousness (with a little romance) that I was a little dewy eyed and choked up at points throughout.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
Roger Ebert's review provides more detail.
I found Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Double Life of Veronique" (1994) to be a mostly tedious and pretentious. Don't let this film about doppelgangers Veronique (French) and Veronika (Polish) be your introduction to the works of Kieslowski. I recommend instead watching any of the films in the Trois Couleurs trilogy or The Decalogue series.
V: "Stop, Nicole, you're playing off key."
Girl cellist: "Yes, I know."
Roger Ebert's review makes more of it than I do.
Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Red" (a.k.a. "Rouge", 1994) is a masterwork, the third in the Polish director's "Three Colors" trilogy. Following a young woman model and her connection with a retired judge who spends his days eavesdropping on neighbors, it is a powerful, complex examination of obsession, alienation, motivation, honesty, and regret. As always with Kieslowski, visually stunning (garnering cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski, 1958-2001, an Academy Award nomination) and providing good questions with no concrete answers.
Here is Roger Ebert's review.
Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991) is a beautifully photographed, powerful film about concubinage and cruelty, full of memorable scenes, many involving lanterns: lit each night after the "master" (who we never see up close) decides which of four wives to visit, shrouded in black as a mark of castigation, snuffed by strong puffs through a long pipe.
Gong Li is compelling in her role as interloper, mistress number four.
"What do people amount to in this house? They're like cats, dogs or rats. But certainly not like people."
Here is Roger Ebert's laudatory review.
"The Inheritors" (1998; a.k.a. Die Siebtelbauern) is a subtle, lovely, and eventually grim tale of seven Austrian peasants who inherit the farm on which they've long labored, then resist efforts to force them off the land. I think I'd like to watch this again.
"Children of Heaven" (1997) is an Iranian film (in Farsi with English subtitles) about a young brother and sister who share a pair of shoes. Somewhere between sweet and sappy, I thought.
Roger Ebert's review is unequivocably favorable, saying it "lacks the cynicism and smart-mouth attitudes of so much American entertainment for kids and glows with a kind of good-hearted purity."
Zhang Yimou's "The Story of Qui Ju (1992) is an engaging fable about willfulness of two people in conflict. Gong Li plays a pregnant country woman who sells most of her family's pepper crop in the course of pursuing justice after her husband is kicked in the balls by a village chief equally adamant that he'll pay a fine but not apologize.
In this film, country and city seem not only different places but different centuries.
Hal Ashby's "Being There" (1979). Peter Sellers is a talented actor, but, well... Perhaps you had to be there.
Krystof Kieslowski's "Blue" (1993, in French with English subtitles) has no gratuitous car chase--though it opens with a helluva smash-up-- and no gratuitous nudity, but plenty of gratuitous use of the color blue. A young woman's life changes after her composer husband and their daughter are killed in a car crash. Nicely subtle, not overtly profound, sometimes beautiful; strong acting by Juliette Binoche. Kieslowski is always worth watching.
I've once again been watching things other than films:
A gray heron returned to Loring Park yesterday, swooping down and landing on the marshy shore of the pond. Later a sparrow alighted on my ledge briefly.
Seen during an interstate drive last week: Bison grazing; hawks perching and in flight; water overflowing the banks of the Upper Iowa River.
My hometown's busiest intersection once, 8th and Main, empty at 5:15 on a Friday afternoon.
One small forsythia bush in full yellow bloom on a rainy Easter morning.
In Ingmar Bergman's "The Devil's Eye" (1960), Satan hopes his sty can be cured by sending Don Juan and his valet to earth for a day to seduce a virgin about to be married. This sly comedy merits more than one viewing. I liked the virgin's father, a Pollyanna-ish preacher who lures the devil into his closet.
"Tom Jones" (1963) contains amusing moments (many related to eating: one character wipes his greasy face with his long hair), but I think I'd prefer to read Henry Fielding's bawdy tale of 18th century England than to watch this Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Go figure.
Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973) is strong and insightful, demonstrating the complex nature of relationships and love over time. Liv UIlman says more in one unspoken expression than most actors do in a dozen lines. In the last scene the film's couple reconvenes at a remote cabin, like illicit lovers, ten years after divorcing. A fog horn blows in the distance.
J: "In fact, you and I love one another. Here I sit with my arms around you in the middle of the night in a dark house somewhere in the world."
M: "Let's sit like this all night long."
J: "Oh, no. My leg has gone to sleep, my arm is dislocated and my back's cold."
M: "Then let's snuggle down."
J: "Good night, my darling, thanks for the talk. Sleep well."
M: "Same for you."
J: "Good night."
Agnes Varda's "The Gleaners and I" (1999, a.k.a. Le Glaneurs and le glaneuse") is a documentary about people who glean and salvage: pickers of potatoes after the harvest, those who gather edibles left behind each day at markets, even those who dumpster dive and use the objects they find to create works of art. I liked the way these people were allowed to speak for themselves in the film, and it was interesting to learn a little about their legal status (in France), but I thought Varda stretched too far in including herself in the film as much as she did. Yes, she is a gleaner of images, but a little of this indulgence goes a long way.
Wong-Kar Wai's "Happy Together" (1997, a.k.a. "Cheun gwong tsa sit") is a sad... if stylish... film about a break-up, focusing on a young gay Chinese couple in Argentina. Perhaps a little too relentlessly arty, switching black and from black-and-white to color, holding a long shot of a roiling blue waterfall, etc. Or maybe just a little thin on story: There really is none, other than the ambivalence of lovers as they begin to "start over", engaging in sex, fighting, stewing in unhappiness. (That said, one of the characters, played by Tony Leung, was more sympathetic.)
Wong Kar-Wai's "Chungking Express" (1995) is a stylish, if light, film featuring two handsome young Hong Kong cops, a mysterious blonde-wigged woman in dark glasses and a trench coat, a spacy fast food clerk who loves "California Dreamin'" (acted by pop singer Fay Wong), some edgy cinematography, and a sound track which ranges from the Mamas and the Papas to roots reggae. Generally playful and a little intriguing. I can imagine watching this again.
Roger Ebert liked it, but with some equivocation. Here's his review.
In Agnes Varda's "Happiness" ("Le Bonheur", 1964), a joyously colorful, beautiful, almost idyllic film, set to music by Mozart, a young married carpenter, father of two small children, falls in love, then tries to reconcile this new relationship ("It's like I have eight arms") and to honestly include it. One of the principle characters cannot abide such expansive loving, however.
Audience reaction at the Walker Art Center (where the film played as part of a Varda retrospective) seemed mixed. Perhaps it was those with limited imaginations who found it risible.
Charles Burnett's "To Sleep With Anger" (1990) is a cautionary tale about a contemporary trickster (played by Danny Glover) who disturbs the lives of a African American family in Los Angeles. When this genial friend from "down South" reappears after many years' absence, showing up unannounced on their doorsteps, he's welcomed warmly, but things begin to go awry before long. Can you say "shite poke"? Or "shit disturber"?
I first saw this some years ago on the big screen and it was good the second time around, even on low quality video.
Here's Roger Ebert's review.
Set in Taipei, Ang Lee's "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994) is a film about food and relationships. A master chef widower lives with his three young adult daughters, all of them loving (or looking for love) in a different fashion. In Chinese with English subtitles, this was as nice the second time around (on video) as it was the first (big screen, I think).
Lina Wertmüller's "Swept Away" (1975), seen for the first time many years ago: a provocative, disturbing tale about class, gender, and power. Roles are reversed when a crew member on a yacht (Giancarlo Giannini) and an obnoxious rich woman who's essentially his boss (Mariangela Melato) become marooned on an island.
"Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould" (1993) provides--at its best--fascinating insight into the life of an eccentric and truly creative person, classical pianist Glenn Gould. Not a documentary but a scripted bio-pic of sorts, this might have been great had it been pared to "Sixteen Short Films." The best segments include one in which people talk about their role in Gould's life as people to whom he talked on the telephone and another in which he copes with a gauntlet of people backstage before his last concert. Also: the music is fine, from Bach to Schoenberg.
Watched Francois Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows" (1959), such a long time since I'd first experienced it years ago. This film about a wayward young boy in the city: is it deceptively simple or just plain simple? It reminded me of part of my own boyhood, the petty thievery part. Bottom line: good, but not as great as some have said.
Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ": I started watching it on video and gave up quickly. In this case unwilling to suspend disbelief, I spent the evening reading Marya Hornbacher's Wasted, an intense book about her horrifying experiences with anorexia and bulimia.
"Malena" (2000) is a mediocre Italian film about a boy's puberty and (in Roger Ebert's words) "a woman whose life is destroyed because she has the misfortune to be beautiful and have a great butt."
Ebert would rather watch a Fellini film for the nth time, it seems. Here's his panning review.
Want more? Film reviews from early 1999 through the end of 2000
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