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December 27, 2004
"A Hundred Dollars and a T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US" (Microcosm Publishing) asks and answers the questions "What are zines?," "What sort of people create them," "How do they do it?", and "Why?" An interesting, diverse, engaging look at a subculture, it importantly documents the independent publishing community in Portland, Oregon, personalizing the topic and looking at such grassroots institutions as the Independent Publishing Resource Center.
Francois Truffaut’s "L’Argent de Poche" (a.k.a."Small Change," 1976) looks gently at the lives of children, as if through their own eyes: how they think, how they see their parents act, how they relate to each other and to adults.
Set in small-town southern France near the end of a school year, it’s rather like a home-video (instead of being plot-driven), documenting small moments that usually go overlooked: brothers fixing their own Sunday morning breakfast, friends differently advanced in precocity when it comes to kissing, one boy’s successful efforts to disguise his brutal home life, and another’s poignant--and understandable--crush on his classmate’s mother.
Much of the film is set in a classroom whose boys will be grateful someday, one imagines, to recall having had a teacher once who was so understanding, respectful, and encouraging during a time when they were figuring things out for themselves.
As Roger Ebert's review notes, the film is deeply humane.
Thanks to the Internet archive , I just found a transcription of the film's final monologue that I posted on this site on January 20, 2002.
Francois Truffaut's "L'Enfant sauvage" (a.k.a. "The Wild Child," 1970) is based on actual circumstances in 18th century France: The discovery of a feral child who'd been living alone in the woods, and subsequent efforts to civilize the boy.
What does it mean to be civilized? The use of language? In one brief troubling scene, Truffaut--who not only wrote and directed the film but also plays the teacher Itard--suggests that being civilized means foremost having a sense of injustice.
In some ways the film is a counterpart to Werner Herzog's 1974 film "Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle" (a.k.a. "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser").
As Roger Ebert's review notes, the film covers what is perhaps Truffaut's favorite subject, how young people grow (and see the adult world through changing eyes).
Werner Herzog's "Cobra Verde" (1987), the Bavarian director's last feature film with Klaus Kinski, is a wild ride based on Bruce Chatwin's novel The Viceroy of Ouidah. In it Kinski plays a notorious 19th century Brazilian bandit, the eponymous Cobra Verde, who's sent on a mission to West Africa to procure slaves for a sugar plantation. The sole pale-skinned person on the mission, Cobra Verde is rescued from near beheading by a rival of the Dahomey king, then organizes an insurgent army of women for whom he models appropriate manic energy in spearing and slashing.
But what is success when slavery itself is a crime? Cobra Verde--who we are told has fathered something like 65 children--asks himself this question belatedly.
Filmed on location in Brazil, Colombia, and Ghana.
Werner Herzog's "Where the Green Ants Dream" (1985) is a feature film set in Australia where aboriginal people are engaged in nonviolent resistance against miners who they say are disturbing the green ants who dream. I found it pretty tedious, a step up from "Heart of Glass" (the 1976 Herzog production that seemed like the work of a student, not a master), at the level of "Stroszek."
At least one expert viewer liked it. Here's Roger Ebert's review. Note Ebert's report that the film's anthropological details are entirely invented, something not evident from watching it.
Werner Herzog's "Herdsmen of the Sun" (1988), a documentary about the Wodaabe people of the Sahara, begins with a scene showing a line of heavily made-up, slender, androgynous, hat-wearing men who display the whites of their teeth and eyes, accompanied by Gounod's "Ave Maria." That's Herzopg for you. As one reviewer notes, the experience is more like "Paris is Burning" (the film about the "voguing" trend of the 80s) than National Geographic.
As usual, Herzog, who narrates the film in English, is both curious and sympathetic, in this case to a people who at the time the film was made were struggling with the deleterious effects of an extended drought.
Camels walking on their knees. Shy girls choosing the prettiest man. The struggle just to stay alive.
In the comedy "I [Heart] Huckabees", Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman play "existential detectives" who seem more like therapists bent on showing clients how everything is connected, Isabelle Huppert is a sultry French philosopher who preaches that all is abusrd and meaningless, and Jason Schwartzman is a Thoreau-influenced environmentalist-poet who is trying to figure things out. I thought it was pretty intelligently written, but messy. As Roger Ebert writes, "Individual moments and lines and events... are funny in and of themselves. Viewers may be mystified but will occasionally be amused." Here's Ebert's mostly unfavorable review
"Incident at Loch Ness" (2004) is a shaggy dog story in the guise of a documentary about filmmaker Werner Herzog and his attmept to make a film about Loch Ness and its "monster." It presents straightforward Herzog (wise, witty, and warm), documentary-style, but turns into topsy-turvy comedy in which things aren't always how they first appear.
Roger Ebert's favorable review wonders whether the film was "a contrivance from beginning to end" or something salvaged from two failed films. Given that its writer and director Zak Penn plays a laughingly pompous producer, there's a good case for the former. Regardless, I recommend it for anyone interested in Herzog, filmmaking, and the Hollywood film industry.
"Voices of Iraq" (2004) is a documentary strung together using footage from 150 video cameras distributed to Iraqi citizens this year. I wonder about the filmmakers' editing choices, though, since a vast majority of the commentary is pro-United States ("If you think Abu Ghraib was bad, well, torture during Saddam Hussein's regime was twenty times worse"-- that sort of thing). It seems there's a hidden agenda here to support--or even glorify--U.S. policy. Still, one cannot help empathizing with the children seen in this film, and caught in the crossfire of violent governments.
"The Take" (2004), a Canadian documentary by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, examines the current grassroots Argentinian movement of workers reclaiming closed factories in the aftermath of nationwide economic collapse. Powerful images included rich and middle-class-looking people battering down the doors of a bank, middle-aged women clothing makers on the front lines in the street facing police, and worker meetings at factories with no bosses.
Lewis was on hand at the Montreal airing of this film, and related a joke an Argentinian told him:
Q: What is the difference between an American and an Argentinian? A: Two years.
Set during the Cold War, John Frankenheimer's"Seven Days in May" (1964) pits a pro-disarmament U.S. president (Fredric March), whose popularity has plummeted, against an army general (Burt Lancaster) who seems to be plotting a military coup. "Could it happen here?," U.S. viewers may have wondered at the time the film was released. Watching it forty years later I was struck by its prescience: In some ways it already has.
"The Motorcyle Diaries" (a.k.a. "Diarios de motocicleta," 2004) is based on Che Guevara's and Alberto Granado's memoirs of their 1952 journey by motorcycle and foot from Argentina to Venezuela. It features some beautiful footage of land, strong images of people, and good acting in the lead roles but is somewhat less effective at conveying how the trip helped to radicalize Guevara, then a 24-year-old just short of completing medical school.
Here's Roger Ebert's critical review, that is mostly apt, I think, if politically contentious (calling Che "a right-winger disguised as a communist").
"Paper Wedding" (a.k.a. "Les Noces de Papier," 1989) is a modest and straightforward French-Canadian film featuring Genevieve Bujold as a 39-year-old college professor whose sister convinces her to marry a Chilean political refugee so that he won't be deported.
I agree with Hal Hinson who, in his thoughtful review in the Washington Post says this "isn't a great movie, but it is a pleasingly modulated, honest one."
Featuring Javier Bardem, "Los Lunes al Sol" (2002, a.k.a. "Mondays in the Sun") follows the lives of six laid-off Spanish shipyard workers--as the friends alternately stew, drink, apply for jobs and loans, make money by working as babysitting sub-contactors, and otherwise cope with their new reality.
Roger Ebert found that its story was a dead end -- but I say each so-called cul-de-sac is worth exploring. There something here to see -- and something beyond to imagine.
Denys Arcand's "The Barbarian Invasions" (a.k.a. "Les Invasions barbares," 2003) is a funny, smart, philosophical French-Canadian film about a dying middle-aged professor, his semi-estranged family, and old friends and lovers who visit him at his son's request. The film won the Academy Award for "Best Foreign Language Film" -- rightfully so -- and is a sequel of sorts to Arcand's 1986 "Le Déclin de l'empire américain."
The protagonist Remy, high on drugs in his hospital room, talks with the young woman who's brought him heroin:
"I don't want to stop living. I loved life so much."
What was it you loved?
"Everything. Wine, books, music... Women, above all, women. Their smell, their mouths, the feel of their skin."
Were there many of them?
Yes.
Don't they begin to seem the same?
A bit, yes. But I never tire of them.
Arcand also made "Jesus of Montreal" (1989)-- a film I found intriguing and will watch again soon, perhaps.
Here's Roger Ebert's altogether favorable review
In Ken Loach's "Carla's Song" (1996) Robert Carlyle plays a Glasgowegian cab driver who meets and falls in love with a young Nicaraguan refugee woman, travels with her to her home where revolutionaries are battling contras, and ultimately parts from her after she reunites with the lover she's left behind. Among the questions the film raises: Where is home? And is it possible to have more than one?
"All the President's Men" (1976) is a journalistic thriller about the 1973 Watergate break-in and subsequent investigative reporting by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that brought to light widespread political corruption during the Nixon regime. Jason Robards is especially good as Post executive editor Ben Bradlee.
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (also known as "Chavez: Inside the Coup") is a documentary about popular Venezuela president Hugo Chavez-- voice of poor people there-- and the one-day coup that took place in 2002 during the time the Irish film crew were in Caracas making the film. What makes it especially powerful is that the crew was in the presidential palace when the coup took place. Also noteworthy: Example after example of blatant media bias (in Venezuela television) and official reactions from officials in Washington who clearly would be happy to see Chavez ousted.
Roger Ebert's laudatory review
"Germinal" (1993), a film by Claude Berri--the maker of "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring," follows the lives of a coal mining family in 19th century France, before, during, and after miners organize a strike. Adapted from the novel by Zola, the film is remarkable in bringing the viewer back in time over a hundred years. Unhappily, the issues it addresses are still ones alive today: Exploitation of workers by owners, and how workers respond--sometimes against one another, sometimes united--swimming different directions in the hopelessly polluted river of capitalism.
Here's Roger Ebert's review.
Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" is a documentary about the 1976 killing of a cop in Dallas and the apparently wrongful conviction that ensued. Creatively made--with re-enactments, slow motion shots, and a score by Philip Glass--the film seems to have led to the early release from prison of Randall Adams.
Here's Roger Ebert's 1988 review published before Adams' release.
"Brother's Keeper" (1992) is a great documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky following the lives of three elderly, semi-literate brother farmers in upstate New York, one of whom is prosecuted for the alleged mercy killing of a fourth brother. In part it's about the way a small town bands together to protect their own, in part about a lifestyle that most urban North Americans have never seen.
I saw this film for the first time about six years ago, and it's held up well. Here's Roger Ebert's review.
"Il Postino" (1994, a.k.a. "The Postman") is a sweet and quiet film about poetry and metaphor, as witnessed through a man who delivers mail to Pablo Neruda during the time the poet is exiled to coastal Italy.
What were those lines uttered by the mail carrier? As best as I can recall: "Poetry doesn't belong to the poet. Poetry belongs to people who need it."
Never a false step in this film that I first saw in a theater shortly after its release in the U.S.
Here's Roger Ebert's review.
I saw "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004) on a rainy afternoon in Dubuque, Iowa, after having read none of the Harry Potter books, nor having seen the two previous films in the series. That said, I was entertained, in part by the continual appearance of British character actors whose work I've previously enjoyed--David Thewlis, Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, and others--and in part by books with claws and other creative effects.
"Hearts of Darkness" (1991) is an interesting documentary about the making of Francis Ford Copolla's "Apocalypse Now." A case study in artistic chutzpa and drive, it shows how the film was made despite role changes (Harvey Keitel replaced by Martin Sheen), a lead actor's heart attack (Sheen), and the regular disappearance of helicopters loaned by the Philippine government for real military use, using material recorded by Copolla's wife that was never intended to be shared widely. Here is Roger Ebert's review.
Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979) features Martin Sheen as a captain on a special mission in Vietnam to track down a renegade colonel played by Marlon Brando. Based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, it's a powerful experience--and reminiscent of Werner Herzog's "Aguirre: Wrath of God," another film about a river trip to hell.
Here's Roger Ebert's 1999 review.
"Girl With a Pearl Earring" (2003) is a speculative look at the story behind Vermeer's painting by the same title, adapted from a novel by Tracy Chevalier. It's quiet, slow, and nice to look at, but not necessarily deep. Instead it hints at depth, the way Vermeer's paintings did.
Roger Ebert's review is more enthusiastic about it.
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) examines politics in the wake of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and makes explicit a multitude of connections--between the U.S. presidency and Saudi Arabian financial power, between Bush administration officials and corporations that profit from war, and between economic inequality in the United States and soldiers needlessly dying as pawns in a quest for oil.
The film is more propagandistic than journalistic, containing powerful, even horrifying, images, from dead and wounded civilians and U.S. soldiers in Iraq, to the President of the U.S. sitting in a elementary school class after he's been informed of the World Trade Center attacks.
Here's Roger Ebert's review
"La Bûche" (1999) is set in the days before Christmas as three French sisters, adult children of divorced parents, try to reconcile their feelings about their multiple relationships. Insubstantial but pleasant enough to view.
Here's Amy Taubin's review from the Village Voice
"Chocolat" is --I am told secondhand-- a foreign film for those who don't like reading subtitles. I was expecting to hear French spoken, but instead I heard English spoken with phony French accents in this film about a woman and her daughter who come to a straight-laced village and open a chocolaterie during Lent. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom ("My Life as a Dog"). Roger Ebert liked it
"Babette's Feast" (1987), directed by Danish filmmaker Gabriel Axel, covered a similar plot more effectively, though I remembered liking it more the first time I saw it. It presents--at somewhat tedious length--the dreary puritanical lives of a nineteenth-century Danish village, and how they are enlightened, at least for one evening, after a French housekeeper who has won a lottery prepares and serves a sumptuous dinner.
"Promises" (2001) documents the lives of seven Israeli and Palestinian children and their well-developed views of each other, the rift that divides them, and a one-time meeting between several of them that raises hopes a single notch above despair. This film aired on the PBS P.O.V. series in 2001.
Jonathan Demme's "The Agronomist", a powerful profile of courage personified, documents the life and work of Haiti radio journalist Jean Dominique, founder of Creole radio station Radio Haiti-Inter, twice exiled to the United States, twice returned to Haiti, assassinated in 2001, but whose spirit lives on.
The story is mostly told through firsthand footage of interviews, but is always engaging, thanks largely to the journalist's great passion and vitality, evident as he pronounces one carefully chose word at a time, fervor for justice in his eyes. Here's Roger Ebert's review
"My Architect" (2003) is a documentary about the life and work of Estonia-born architect Louis I. Kahn, as seen through the eyes of his son Nathaniel. After viewing it I went out into the world and saw architecture differently.
One of the film's interesting moments is when a younger colleague conjectures extemporaneously that Kahn may have favored certain architectural practices -- such as leaving flaws showing (or at least evidence of how a building had been constructed)-- due to his own facial disfigurement from childhood burns he experienced.
Also interesting: Kahn's "Ask a brick what it wants to be" (he says it wants to be an arch), and about using materials appropriately based on their physical characteristics.
While many of Kahn's buildings show great bilateral symmetry (and right angularity), his curves stood out for me, such as those in the surprisingly beautiful interior of the Exeter College library in New Hampshire. Some of his monumental exteriors held interiors that invoked a much more open and less stern character.
The film also describes Kahn's life as a married man who fathered three children with three other women, the difficulty that caused for the children (and his wife and the mothers), and how he died alone in a train station carrying i.d. cards with his address obliterated.
Here is Roger Ebert's review
I went to see "Touching the Void" (2003), Kevin Macdonald's film about mountain climbers Simon Yates and Joe Simpson, after having read an account of Yates' and Simpson's survival after a mountaineering accident described in Laurence Gonzales' excellent book Deep Survival. The combination of interview and reenactment (some on location in remote Peru) effectively conveyed the experience. (The film is based on Simpson's book, also titled Touching the Void).
Thoreau's words from The Maine Woods apply: "The tops of mountains are the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent [people], perchance, go there."
Unhappily, the theater where I saw this film was heated to match a jungle survival film, thus the disquieting experience of watching very cold people from a position of womb-like warmth. (I think the film would be better experienced in cold theaters.)
Here's Roger Ebert's review
"Dutch Light" (a.k.a. "Hollands Licht") is a documentary about painters' (and other people's) interpretations of the light in the Netherlands. (What makes it special? The distant flat horizon? Light reflected off water?) The film was shown at the Twin Cities International Film Festival. It would have benefited from more editing, I think.
Highlight: The filming of the light at one dike through the course of one year, at different times of day.
Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher's "Anarchism in America" (1981) interestingly investigates not only the historical anarchist movement in the U.S. (and public confusion over just what the word means), but also examines strains of libertarianism and cooperative activity not ordinarily thought of as being anarchistic. Thus it includes footage of Emma Goldman, interviews with Murray Bookshin and exile Mollie Steimer, and Kenneth Rexroth reading a poem about Sacco & Vanzetti, as well as interviews with all sorts of 20th century libertarians, from a truck driver, to a woman who started a worker-owned clothing plant in North Carolina, to a homesteader in Arkansas.
Key issues raised include responsibility, ethics, and the connection between "right wing" isolationism (and anti-authoritarianism) and anarchism.
Archival footage includes a stern-looking Hubert Humphrey asserting, "Extremism is the midwife of anarchy!"
Werner Herzog's "Invincible" is, I think, his first English language film. It covers the ostensibly true story of a young Jewish blacksmith from a Polish shtetl who in the early 1930s was convinced to travel to Berlin to appear on stage in front of audiences that were largely Nazi.
For the most part the film is straightforwardly told and effective. Tim Roth plays a dissembling, power-hungry charlatan who may may mesmerize or repel you.
Those of you in the U.S. with television might want to put a note on your calendars: A 90-minute documentary about Emma Goldman is scheduled to air the evening of Monday, April 12, as part of the PBS "American Experience" series. The film was written, produced and directed by Mel Bucklin (WGBH and Nebraskans for Public Television).
I watched an advance video copy and thought it offered a fair overview of Goldman's life, though 12 of the 14 talking heads were men and (including Tony Kushner, Martin Duberman, E.L. Doctorow, and Andrei Codescru) -- and the sex scene reenactment was perhaps unnecessary (though maybe appropriate). There was occasional insight, covers of Mother Earth and The Blast were shown, and... well, I wanted more. The 90 minutes managed to cover an outline of Goldman's life, perhaps ttestament to a life fully lived. Besides Goldman and Alexander Berkman, only Johann Most and Ben Reitman were named from the radical milieu of the time in the U.S. (and Leon Czolgosz who --to the filmmaker's credit -- was called a "would-be anarchist"). Voltairine DeCleyre's image was shown but nothing said of her. The Haymarket martyrs were described briefly but not named.
Sources cited include the Labadie Collection and the Tamiment Library, and those thanked included librarians Julie Herrada and Howard Besser (with Nicholson Baker, Tuli Kupferberg, Victor Navasky, Fermin Rocker, Franklin Rosemount, and others).
The PBS web site just has a little info posted here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/
Australian director Bruce Beresford's "Black Robe" follows a 17th century French Jesuit priest as he makes his way up the St. Lawrence River in wintry weather, accompanied by Algonquin people, to bring Christianity to the Huron people. Bloodshed ensues.
I found the film to be technically proficient but imaginatively flawed. It was good hear native languages spoken, but why did the French converse in English? Cruelty was done by Indians to the French and to other Indians. A dying Algonquin had a vision of Mary (or so it seemed to me-- I sure didn't think "Manitou Woman"). The sound track played Christian chorale music as desperately ill Huron people lines up to be baptized at the film's conclusion.
I've never seen any of Beresford's other films ("Driving Miss Daisy," for example), but my hackles go up in viewing such Eurocentric presentations of history that deal with cultures clashing, especially when outsider Europeans make incursions into other homelands. At its best, a film such as this will raise questions that beg to be answered by reading deeply from such source materials as The Jesuit Relations), but it is unrealistic to expect viewers to do more than ask the questions and be skeptical.
Read Roger Ebert's review
Woody Allen's "Interiors" (1978) is a well-written, -acted, and -directed film about three adult sisters and the dissolution of their parents' marriage. Somewhere between Allen's inane and silly early movies, and the tedious, overwrought ones of later years, came well-crafted ones such as this family drama that provokes a little laughter at the oddest times. Its characters may be overly delineated--as neurotic or sane--but I went along for the ride.
Supposedly an homage to Bergman, the film is mostly set--as with some of Bergman's--in a beach house.
Geraldine Page and Maureen Stapleton are especially good as obsessive interior decorator mother and stepmother/mensch respectively.
Aki Kaurismäki's "Ariel"(1988) and "Hamlet Goes Business"(1987) screened as a double feature in the continuing Walker Art Center retrospective (see below). The first is a straightforward modern film about an out-of-work miner who comes to the big city (Helsinki), promptly gets robbed, and has things go somewhat downhill from there. Shot in color, it's nevertheless pretty bleak, if sometimes humorously--and often realistically-- so. The plot, such as it is, seems straight out of Hollywood (romance, injustice, dire deeds done in order to escape), but is carried out in such a subdued way that viewers may forget they're watching a movie.
"Hamlet", on the other hand, is a wild black-and-white romp on the Shakespeare drama, set in contemporary Finland, but looking more like the mid-1900s. Its music, staging, and acting are often intentionally melodramatic. I sensed that Kaurismäki had fun making this.
I can't unequivocally recommend these films the way I can "La Vie de Bohème"--they both seem to lack deep substance-- but at the very least they're not trite or boring.
Here's Roger Ebert on "Ariel", the first Kaurismäki film he saw.
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's "La Vie de Bohème"(1992) was screened at the Walker Art Center, part of a two-week retrospective of Kaurismäki's works. "La Vie de Boheme" is a new take on the old story of starving artists--a writer, an artist, and a composer who throw their lots together to survive, sou-less but not soulless, living in squalor but preserving artistic dignity (such as it is). Set in 20th century Paris, the black-and-white film is dark and light, humorous and bleak, romantic and a gentle pastiche of romance all at once. I liked it.
"The Fast Runner" (a.k.a. "Atanarjuat", 2002) is the first Inuit feature film I've ever seen. I think it's the first ever made. (It was also my first experience watching a DVD.)
It's an old story set in a locale most people have never seen. A murder tale set in the arctic, it features two murders (one a patricide) and a rape, romance, family feud, throat singing, igloo-building, naked running on snow, raw flesh, shamanism, and banishment as the way to deal with people who have done evil things. I was fascinated by its language, the landscape, the snow, and a culture I'd previously only read about, even more than I was enthused by the film's northern magic realism.
It's a long film and I would like to watch it again.
Here's Roger Ebert's review
Ingmar Bergman's "The Silence" (a.k.a. "Tystnaden," 1963) is the third in a trilogy that begins with the two films described immediately below. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought it was directed by Luis Bunuel. A twisted, dark, erotic film with dwarves, it's set mostly in a hotel--in a made-up European city with a mysterious language--where two adult sisters have come with a young boy, the son of one of them.
"Can you say "emotional child abuse"?
Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light" (1963) is the second in a trilogy that begins with "Through a Glass Darkly" (see below). A wintry film set in a rural town, it takes place over the course of a Sunday, focusing on a priest who has a bad cold (and is going through a crisis of religious doubt) and an atheistic teacher who faithfully loves him.
Unlikely to bring strays back to the fold.
Ingmar Bergman's "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961) is a beautifully filmed picture, shot on location on the island of Färo in the Baltic Sea, about a mentally disturbed young woman and her relationship with her husband, 17-year-old brother, father, and the voices beyond the wallpaper in that vacant room upstairs.
"Funny--you always say and do the very right thing... And it's always wrong."
Nicolás Echevarría's "Cabeza da Vaca" (1991) is based on the account of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a 16th century Spanish explorer who, with a few others, survived shipwreck off the coast of Florida and then spent eight years wandering across the continent, during which time he claimed to have become known as known as a healer of Indians, before re-encountering Spanish soldiers near the Pacific coast.
I just watched this on video again, the first time since an initial viewing shortly after it was released. It's compelling.
File this one under Magical Realism, Sorcery, Going Native, and Reverse Culture Shock.
Luis Bunuel's "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz" (1955): mediocre black humor, not particularly dark or funny.
What I've been watching-- and enjoying: sunsets
Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" (1985), startlingly in color, is an epic film of betrayal and revenge, based on Shakespeare's "King Lear"--complete with a fool--but set in feudal Japan. After an aging warlord divides his land and troops between three sons, internecine struggle commences-- involving banishment, conniving, madness, bloodshed. ("Ran" translates into English as "Chaos", appropriately.)
In one notable scene, a horrific battle takes place while --for the longest time-- only classical music is heard.
Roger Ebert writes about this "most expensive Japanese film ever made"
Kurosawa's "Sanjuro" (1962), sequel to "Yojimbo", again features Toshiro Mifune as a wonderfully slovenly samurai, in this case aiding the efforts of nine inept young warriors.
These samurai films of Kurosawa heavily influenced a generation of Hollywood filmmakers whose blends of violence and humor usually fall short of their mark. Kurosawa is like Picasso or Beethoven. His less heralded works are more full of life than the works of countless contemporary directors whose works are considered "great".
Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (1961) is a dark tongue-in-cheek take on Hollywood westerns and itself the film upon which "A Fistful of Dollars" was based. Toshiro Mifune's samurai, who plays a town's rival factions against one another, predates Clint Eastwood's nameless gunslinger by several years.
It'd been some years since I'd seen "Yojimbo", and I was entertained all over again by the stylish Sixties music (1960s), the 1860s setting that could've been the same one used in "3:10 to Yuma" or countless other filmic westerns, and the black humor throughout.
Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru" (1952) is the story of a career civil servant, Watanabe, who comes to realize he's wasted his life at the time he learns he has cancer. What he does next is interesting, believable, occasionally poignant, and sometimes funny, presaging films as wide-ranging as DeSica's "Umberto D" and Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories". Takashi Shimura's sickly Watanabe is almost the opposite of his "Seven Samurai" role-- and it was also interesting to see other actors from "Seven Samurai" play businessmen in 50s Tokyo.
"Ikiru" is a great film, though the end takes a long time to happen. There seem to be about twelve endings but it just keeps going.
Watanabe's scenes with a young woman from his office are all too true -- disturbing and funny at once. "Your energy amazes me," he tells her, and she backs away, entirely creeped out.
"I'm drinking this expensive sake as a protest against my life up to now."
Roger Ebert's essay on "Ikiru"
"Lonely Are the Brave" (1962) is a black-and-white 20th century cowboy tale (a noir western?) about an anti-establishment loner (played by Kirk Douglas) who breaks into jail (in a manner of speaking), fails to convince a friend to escape with him, then escapes with his horse into the hills, eluding not only the local sheriff but also an Air Force helicopter, before an unfortunate meeting with modern technology.
I watched the film because it's based on an Edward Abbey novel, The Brave Cowboy. Adapted by Dalton Trumbo, it seemed entirely two-dimensional to me, the roles insubstantial for its cast of character actors, including Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, Gena Rowlands, and Carroll O'Connor.
I think those guns were firing blanks.
In Akira Kurosawa's compelling "Seven Samurai" (1954), a village of farmers hires samurai (for room and board) to protect them from marauding bandits. Most of the film follows preparation for a war that takes place over several days, and interaction amongst the samurai and villagers.
Toshiro Mifune is excellent as a spirited, impetuous, head-scratching samurai whose peasant roots are always evident. Takashi Shimura is equally good as the samurai's level-headed general.
Full of memorable scenes, such as a climactic battle in a downpour, "Seven Samurai" is beautifully photographed and uses motifs and techniques appropriated afterward by other renowned filmmakers. It's not so much about war as about destiny, honor, and the tension between individuality and social cohesion.
I watched the remastered and newly subtitled long version, about three and a half hours long.
"Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), a documentary made by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky ("Brother's Keeper"), casts doubts on two juries' guilty verdicts against three teenage Arkansas boys. Mix three parts parental anger, a defendant who dabbled in Wicca and listened to Metallica, a confession made under dubious conditions, growing hysteria about "Satanic" ritual killings, and a host of inconsistencies, and the result is three in prison (one on death row) who seem unlikely to have committed the crimes of which they were accused and convicted.
Like "Capturing the Friedmans" (see below), it's impossible to watch this film without becoming more concerned about the wrongly convicted and their families.
Read more about the case here: West Memphis Three
Roger Ebert's review of the film
Akira Kurosawa's influential "Rashomon" (1950) famously tells the same story from four different points of view. What they all have in common is that a bandit has accosted two travelers in the woods, a woman has been raped, and a man has died.
I didn't exactly "like" it -- in part because the one female character is treated like an object-- but it does effectively articulate that each person has his or her story, and that this can be confusing if one is searching for one truth, one answer to (in the case of the film) "What really happened?"
Ground-breaking at the time it was made (in part for showing flashbacks that did not agree with one another), "Rashomon" is a film of darkness and light.
It includes one laughable scene of a bumbling, cowardly sword fight.
Toshiro Mifune's performance is engaging (and his sneer predated Clint Eastwood's).
Read Roger Ebert's essay on "Rashomon".
"Capturing the Friedmans" (2003) is a documentary about a sex crime case that dates from 1987 Long Island when a fifty-something school teacher was arrested for sending and receiving child pornography in the mail. After subsequent investigation, Arnold Friedman and his 18-year-old son Jesse were charged with over a hundred counts of criminal sexual conduct involving boys.
Why was this film made? (Or at least, why now?) It stems from director Andre Jarecki having interviewed a celebrated New York City birthday clown who shared with him a body of 8mm home movies taken by his father. Later the clown, David Friedman, shared additional films, ones he'd made of his family as they were traumatized by the arrest, charges, and incarceration of their father (and husband) and brother (son).
Pedophilia is so stigmatized that the tendency is to hide it instead of bringing it into the light of day. Arnold Friedman was guilty-- if you can call it that-- of owning magazines in which boys were depicted having sex with men. What seems dubious, however, was the deluge of charges of child molestation that followed his arrest, charges aimed not only at him but at his youngest son. After all, police theorized, "Where there's smoke there's fire." If there was child pornography in the house of a man who taught computer classes in his basement, it must indicate something more is going on. And if his son was helping with classes, he must be covering up something too. So the thinking went. (If all those boys were brutally raped so many times, one wonders, why did they all sign up for another round of classes?)
In this film-- which includes interviews with students, parents, and author Debbie Nathan, an expert on false memory syndrome-- police investigators' questioning is called into doubt. What do people choose to remember? What do people confess? Does everyone lie to themselves sometimes? Even police, lawyers, and judges? To whom do you give more credence: character witnesses who have known a person for a long time, or alleged victims with fuzzy memories who've been hypnotized? How resilent can people be? What can happen when the truth is denied and covered, when things are blown out of proportion, when humans are demonized, and witnesses and psyhicatric patients coerced?
I wonder about the psyches of police and prosecutors, about righteousness and hypocrisy. Is it okay for them to look at pornography with a suposedly clinical eye or disgust, but not for a man who finds them erotic?
A world of hurt is evident in this family-- and I empathized with all of them, a father who was deeply closeted, three sons who felt real love from their father but not from their mother who who must have felt rejected by them all. (She refers to them as having been like a "gang".) Two of the sons interviewed in the making of this film, David and Jesse, must have wanted to shake fresh air into dirty laundry and open up the windows of their stuffy house. But I also empathize with the son who declined to be interviewed for the film.
Arnold Friedman took his own life in prison-- overdosing on antidepressants. Jesse served 13 years, entering prison as a boy, leaving prison as a balding man.
One of the prosecuting attorneys interviewed in the film remembers looking out the a courthouse window and seeing the three brothers clowning around with a camera. He couldn't understand, and seemingly felt revulsion.
We live in a time when thought itself has become criminalized.
"While there is a soul in prison, I am not free," said Eugene Debs.
Partial disclosure: I know one of the people in this film.
Mina Shum's "Double Happiness" (1994) is a refreshing film about the life of a young Hong Kong-born Chinese-Canadian woman who struggles with self-identity and the tension between wanting to please her parents and needing to be herself. I like the way the film doesn't take itself too seriously, from its whimsical opening credits to occasional short scenes in which actors speak to the camera. No matter the artifice, "Double Happiness" is as true a view (if not more so) than films which adhere to dogmatic rules.
Lone Scherfig's "Italian for Beginners" (2000), a sweet and quirky romantic comedy set in Denmark, follows the connected lives of some people who have stumbled their way to an Italian language class.
In Danish and Italian with English subtitles.
A space ship plummets into Lake Powell. Three surviving astronauts raft ashore and clamber up red rocks. Are we in Utah? No, we're watching "Planet of the Apes" (1968). In it Charlton Heston plays a time traveler who is captured by a simian society that treats humans as beasts. Sure, the film is campy, but there's more to it than that. It features amusing dialogue co-written by Rod Serling (from the Pierre Boulle novel), a few iconic scenes (one funny one probably intended to be serious), and countless digs at human arrogance and violence comfortably projected onto the apes. Despite the obligatory Hollywood chase and fight scenes--and stereotypical music -- there are lots of bits to hang onto and ponder here. Which, I'm reminded, is what the best science fiction always provides.
"Cane Toads: An Unnatural History" (1988) is a documentary by Mark Lewis about the disastrous introduction of cane toads (Bufo Marinus) to Australia, a case study in non-native species run rampant. Intended to aid in controlling a beetle that was destroying sugarcane in the 1930s, the toads over-reproduced, killing would-be predators (from snakes to kookaburras) with venum. Reminiscent of the films of Les Blank, "Cane Toads" is comical and serious at once, as much about humans (some of whom treat the amphibians as pets) as it is about one species' relentless drive to reproduce.
"Winged Migration" (2001, a.k.a. "Le Peuple migrateur") --an Academy-Award-nominee documentary film by Jacques Perrin, the director of "Microcosmos" -- depicts the worldwide biannual north-south migration of bird species, the beauty and power of their flight, and hazards they face along the way from predators (including humans), storms, avalanches, etc. The film isn't explanatory in the manner of David Attenborough's "The Life of Birds" series, but pictorial, providing unusually close views of birds thanks to the use of flying robots and other technology to carry cameras where cameras have never before gone. Especially amazing: Canada Geese stopping over in Monument Valley (looking like tourists, which in a way they are) and gannets diving from sky into water en masse.
June 2, 2003"Spellbound" (2002), another Academy Award nominee for best feature-length documentary, follows eight children in their quest to win the national spelling bee competition. This isn't a group of suburban kids with everything going for them, but rather a diverse lot, including hyper-kinetic livewire Harry; plucky Angela, child of undocumented Mexican immigrants; and April, the pessimistic daughter of a self-deprecating bartender. You'll empathize with them and root for them equally.
It's a film about smart kids, odd words, precocity, being different (while at the same time part of a group), and parents as coaches--and amazed bystanders.
Here's Roger Ebert's review, while here's a review that engages the film's perceived political shortcomings.
"Rivers and Tides" (2001), a documentary about the work of British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, is an inspirational, thoughtful and provocative look at temporality (and curves) in art and nature.
"Total control is the death of work," says Goldsworthy. "The real work is the change."
Coverage of Goldsworthy in the February 1997 issue of Smithsonian may have been my introduction to his work.
Ken Loach's "Raining Stones" (1993), shot on location in the Middleton borough of Manchester, follows the life of two middle-aged, unemployed male friends as one of them, Bob (Bruce Jones), seeks money to pay for his daughter's first communion dress. (The other, Tommy, is played Ricky Tomlinson who's as excellent here as he was in "Riff Raff", a film with similarly thick accents.)
Yet again, a video package misleadening labels something "comedy". While there is humor throughout, this is another film about the working class struggle to live when it rains stones seven days a week.
Ken Loach's "Ladybird, Ladybird" (1994), based on a true story, follows the life of a woman whose children are taken away from her by the authorities, again and again. I found it almost unbearably brutal, and the sympathetic male character just barely believable. A film about anger and how abuse is internalized and perpetuated, Roger Ebert liked it far more than I did.
"The Celebration" (a.k.a. "Festen", 1998), a Danish film directed by Dogme director Thomas Vinterberg, is part mystery story and part gut-wrenching drama about family secrets revealed at a father's 60th birthday party, well-acted and compelling through and through.
Although "The Celebration" is not without humor, the video package is a case study in misleadingly making something appear lighter and gayer than it actually is, once again. ("Funny satire"?)
There are some truths that people do not want to hear. What then? Say them. Say them again and again, even if you are pilloried for it.
Thanks to Jessamyn (belatedly) and Solveig for the viewing tip. Roger Ebert says, "Imagine Eugene O'Neill and Woody Allen collaborating on a screenplay about a family reunion. Now let Luis Bunuel direct it."
I've been watching Kieslowski's "The Decalogue" again, episodes 2-6 over the past couple of weeks. These films are provocative and go beyond superficiality. Engaging deep thinking about philosophical and moral questions, they examine the human world-- family, responsibility, the meaning of love, capital punishment-- and take it seriously.
Here's a comprehensive article about "The Decalogue" from Christianity Today.
Krzysztof Kieslowski's "No End" (1985, a.k.a. "Bez Konca") is a combination ghost story and ethical drama set in early 80s Poland during time of martial law (a key to better understanding the courtroom denouement). Like Kieslowski's "Three Colors" tetralogy -- and his Decalogue (in which some of the actors here later appeared)-- "No End" is marked by a dark mood and fascination with fate's whims. The plot revolves around the legal case of a strike organizer who's conducting a hunger strike in jail, and involving a beautiful professional woman, her dead lawyer husband who won't go away, a pragmatic older man, and an innocent boy.
"My every breath is a compromise with injustice," someone once wrote. (Karen LeBacqz?) Kieslwoski's films examine this human condition stylishly.
Here's a fair review by James Berardinelli.
"Signs of Life" (a.k.a. "Lebenzeichen", 1968) is Werner Herzog's first feature film. Shot in black and white, it includes some beautiful cinematography accompanied by Greek music-- a scene of hikers coming upon a vast field of windmills, for example-- but is ultimately as hypnotic (or soporific) as its subject matter: a German soldier bored to the point of insanity on a Greek Island, despite (or perhaps exacerbated by) the companionship of a wife and two other soldiers.
Intriguing.
Here's a review by Vermont-based movie buff Dennis Schwartz, a fan of "Touch of Evil" and "Dead Man" (two films I also like).
Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep" (1977) is a beautiful, poignant, gritty time capsule from the maker of "To Sleep With Anger", a portrait of a working class African American man and his family and neighbors in the 1970s. Its conversations seem real rather than scripted-- and its children at play (and fighting) don't seem choreographed but actual. Set to music by Earth Wind & Fire, Dinah Washington, Little Walter, Paul Robeson, Elmore James, and Rachmaninoff, this movie also works on a metaphorical level, with more sheep per minute since I've last seen something by Bunuel.
Made on a low budget, the sound quality of "Killer of Sheep" is sometimes sketchy and people's words aren't fully audible, but even this makes it seem like we're eavesdropping on real people.
Credits thank "Earl's Columbia Liquor Store" and "Solano Meat Company", location of the only shooting besides streets and households. The film was Burnett's graduate piece for the UCLA Film School and made for less than $10,000, says this article in CineScene.com.
Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" (1982) isn't the comedic ghost story the video packaging suggests. Set in early 20th century Sweden, it's a family drama about love, lust, cruelty, regret, and magic, infused with a measure of humor. Three hours long but never dragging, it's luminescent: effectively acted, beautifully filmed, intelligently written.
Gustav Ekdal speaking at a family dinner near the close of the film:
"We must live in the little world. We shall be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it.
Suddenly death strikes, suddenly the abyss opens. The storm howls and disaster is upon us. All that we know, but let us not dwell on it... The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and goes through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes... So it shall be.
Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary, and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world, good food, gentle smiles, fruit trees in bloom, waltzes..."
Werner Herzog's "Woyzeck" (1979) leaves something to be desired. Taken from a classic tale, it depicts the horror of being driven mad and killing a beloved, and contains some of the most anguished, pain-seared faces I've seen anytime, anywhere (the desperately agonized, tortured, haunted visage of Kinski as Woyzeck). That said, it's not very coherent, as this review from The Onion's AV Club describes.
Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies" (1996) was named best film at Cannes (Palme d'Or) and justifiably so, perhaps. Unlike Leigh's earlier works I've seen that are also set in working class London and follow a struggling family, here a story coheres. Though its principals sometimes stumble along, they're stumbling toward enlightenment.
The film includes some wonderfully humorous photo session cameos, painful family scenes, and the understated but powerful presence of Timothy Spall (though Blenda Blethyns was awarded for her role as a mother reunited with a daughter given up for adoption at birth).
Here's Roger Ebert's review
Mike Leigh's "Meantime" (1982) puts the camera on a family of London East Enders. Dad and two sons are on the dole, while chain-smoking ma is unsurprisingly peevish. Son Mark is a wise-ass (trading barbs with both his parents who he calls by their first names); younger brother Colin is a bit mentally retarded, though his upwardly mobile aunt thinks she's doing him a favor by hiring him to come help her redecorate. Do any of these people understand themselves? -- perhaps, barely. Does anyone understand another? -- hardly at all. The brothers' skinhead acquaintance Coxy emblematizes the torpor of their lives.
Bleakness, with bits of humor -- even the hint of gentleness at the end.
Subtitles would make a nice addition for North American viewers -- the accents are thick.
"Rabbit-Proof Fence" (2002) is an Australian film based on a true story of "half-caste" Aboriginal girls kidnapped by the government and sent far from their home to be "trained" -- a practice that continued till not much more than a generation ago -- and who not only escape, but walk 1200 miles bacck to their mother, evading capture.
Want more? Film reviews from May 11, 2002 through the end of December 2002
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