2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)

Quest Status: 761 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #250

Oh boy. Let us begin with this quote from the Criterion Collection's official description of this film: "In 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle), Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering in our ears as narrator. About what? Money, sex, fashion, the city, love, language, war: in a word, everything."

"Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering in our ears as narrator. About what?"

You barely have to read between the lines to realize that even the person who wrote this copy was hard-pressed to know what Godard was talking about most of the time with this movie. I have to be honest - the more Godard films I see, the more I dread seeing the next one. After the first few I saw - Breathless, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le Fou, Contempt (with some reservations) - everything thing else has felt stifled by varying degrees of pretension.

And in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, the pretension level is through the roof right from the start. Jean-Luc Godard whispers about the demoralizing effects of capitalism, two chain-smoking bourgeois Frenchmen drone on ironically about the Vietnam War, a mother (the mind-numbing Marina Vlady) has a deadpan conversation with her son in which both philosophically analyze their dreams without a hint of authenticity. The son (a kid of about 8 or 9) stares into the camera and drones on in a monotone about how he dreamed that two twins merged into one and that represented the reunification of North and South Vietnam. The mother's braindead veneer seems to be on the verge of showing emotion for a split-second... until Jean-Luc Godard's omniscient whisper chimes in with another comment about industrial society.

At this point, I started to feel that ripping my fingernails out one by one might be more pleasant than sitting through another 80 minutes of this nonsense. But about 30 minutes in, there were some extreme close-ups of a man stirring coffee, while Godard intoned pensively about the wide gulf between our subjective opinions of ourselves and the objective views of others. While looking into the deep dark black of the coffee and watching the bubbles form fascinating patterns on the surface, it all seems to make sense for a fleeting moment.

By this point, the tone has been set, and there are more interesting comments like this one if you stick around for the ride. Not to mention some hypnotic color imagery which does its best to emulate the three-tone style of comic strips, 1960s color TV, and the French flag. All in all, it's a slightly more pleasant than the anti-cinematic journey into intellectual hell that Godard unleashed on the world with Weekend, the last of the three Godard films to be released in 1967. But it still feels more like a university lecture than a film - which is all the more disappointing considering that its director started out as one of the world's foremost cinephiles.

 

 --- 239 films remaining ---

Salvatore Giuliano (1962, Francesco Rosi)

Quest Status: 760 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #377

Usually when a person's name is the title of a film, it means that that person is the film's main character. But in Francesco Rosi's multi-genre, quasi-neorealist magnum opus Salvatore Giuliano, the titular character is often talked about, but seen only as a corpse. Giuliano's dead body opens the film, as a crowd of detectives stares vacantly on, examining and describing the position of the "male corpse" as if it were an object on display at some corpse auction.

Giuliano, as we soon find out (in a complex series of flashbacks), was an influential outlaw leader who ruled a small Sicilian town from a mountain outpost. He was involved in everything from political revolution to communist massacres, from petty theft to big time Mafia rackets. Those without a firm grip on the Sicilian societal structure of the time period will be hard-pressed to keep track of all the various groups and individuals who play a part in the convoluted series of events surrounding the elusive Giuliano. This is not a simple world of cops and robbers. In this world, Giuliano's outlaws might work together with the Mafia, but that doesn't mean that these two organizations are not interchangeable. There are soldiers fighting for independence, soldiers fighting for the Italian authorities, and outlaws fighting for the revolutionary soldiers. Then, once independence is finally achieved, not only are there the police to contend with, but also the local vigilante police who wield the real power.

 

 

Rosi's style has something in common with the neorealist masters like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, particularly in his use of non-professional actors from the Sicilian town where the film takes place to tell the film's real-life story. In a title card that precedes the macabre opening scene, he even tells us as that the courtyard where Giuliano's body is found is the actual location! At the same time, while some sequences have a documentary feel, Rosi doesn't confine himself to any one particular style. After the documentary-style flashback detailing Giuliano's involvement in the Sicilian independence movement, the film becomes a mix of neorealist-style crime thriller and courtroom drama - often alternating between the two. Martin Scorsese is a fan of Salvatore Giuliano because of its rich portrayal of his ancestral Sicily, but it's also a vital piece of Italian cinema history, blending various styles to create a whirlwind snapshot of a time and place that is now all but forgotten.

--- 240 films remaining ---

The Naked Island (1960, Kaneto Shindo)

Quest Status: 759 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #876

Kaneto Shindo is primarily known in the West for his classic samurai horror films Onibaba and Kuroneko. But this earlier film shows that he also single-handedly created the Asian slow cinema genre three or four decades before it became a bona fide cinematic movement. The Naked Island is an almost completely dialogue-free portrait of a farming family who are the sole inhabitants of a small island. The lack of inhabitants is likely the reason that the title describes it as a "naked" island, although I'm guessing that more than a few people have gone in expecting something a much different film.

As for myself, I was expecting more dark or suspenseful elements, based on my knowledge of Shindo's other films. But the first 30 minutes, a ravishingly shot but slow-moving sequence of a man and a woman transporting heavy buckets of water from the nearby village by boat to water the steep slopes of their mountain fields, soon establishes that we are not watching a film that plays by the established rules of narrative cinema. These scenes are reminiscent of anthropological documentaries like Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran, but The Naked Island turns out to be brilliantly structured as well, conveying a narrative that's as simple as it is elemental.

 

 

The first section of the film shows us a normal summer day in the life of the mountain family, which mostly consists of grueling field work in the hot sun. The second section speeds things up considerably, giving us a glimpse of the family's activities over the course of an entire year - fall, winter, spring, and finally back to summer. This also gives us a glimpse of the family's camaraderie, which will be tested by a major catastrophe in the final act. But while the structure allows for a story to be told without the use of dialogue, I often found myself wondering why the decision was made in the first place. It feels unnatural for the characters to remain silent when greeting or thanking someone, for example, since this isn't a silent film.  In many ways, it feels like an experiment undertaken just to prove a point. But no matter how you feel about the film's experimental tactics, there's no denying that this was a groundbreaking film, with some of the most breathtaking cinematography in all of Japanese cinema.

--- 241 films remaining ---

Bad Lieutenant (1992, Abel Ferrara)

Quest Status: 758 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #907

Most movies involving copious drug use tend to try to recreate the experience for the viewer, with trick shots emulating the rush of cocaine or the surging pleasure of heroin. This is meant to put you inside the main character's head and vicariously experience their state of ecstasy without actually having to do drugs yourself. However, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, a brilliant film about a drug-addled police lieutenant in a downward spiral of vice and spiritual guilt, shows us what it feels like to watch someone do drugs. Rather than a vicarious head trip, it's a voyeuristic nightmare.

When Harvey Keitel shoots up in some unknown woman's room, smokes crack in a tenement hallway after handing off a package of cocaine to his dealer, or snorts cocaine after dropping his sons off at school, the camera usually stands static, intently focused on Keitel's staggering self-destruction. And it's not just drugs. He sexually harasses women at a routine traffic stop even as he's supposed to be investigating the rape of a nun. He drinks from the bottle and wildly fires his gun while driving in broad daylight. He dances naked with prostitutes while moaning in primal despair, only to stumble out in the street to happen upon an officer arresting two convenience store thieves and make off with the money himself.

Other directors making normal films would focus on Keitel's gambling problem, which proves to be even more dangerous than the many drugs coursing through his system at all times. However, this is little more than background noise in the context of the big picture. The cop's desperate attempt to come out on top over the course of a heated Mets vs. Dodgers series propels him through the film, but much more prominent is the spiritual torment that he experiences after the nun who has been raped insists on forgiving her assailants. Never has there been a more vital film about Catholic guilt and the question of whether its possible to go past the point of forgiveness. Ferrara goes straight for the gut and hits you with the truth, with dizzying clarity of purpose. There's so much depravity on display that most casual viewers would probably look at this movie and see nothing but smut, but make no mistake: this is a profound work of art. If anything, it deserves to be much higher on the list than it currently is.

 

--- 242 films remaining ---

Floating Weeds (1959, Yasujiro Ozu)

Quest Status: 757 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #966

The films of Yasujiro Ozu are a rare breed. Heavy with emotion, but moving along with a light touch much like the momentum that prods us along with our lives, day in and day out. Still, every time I start to form an idea of what "typical Ozu" is, the next Ozu film I see always confounds me in some new way. This was one of Ozu's first color films, shot by the master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Miyagawa's involvement results in some unusually daring visual moments (most notably an argument during a downpour between people on opposite sides of the street), although Ozu's trademark floor cam is still there - watching the characters from the vantage point of a tatami mat as usual.

 

Rather than the Tokyo-based family dramas (and comedies) that were Ozu's standard fare, Floating Weeds is a sultry summer film set in a sleepy seaside town, which becomes host to a broken-down Kabuki troupe hosted by the surly patriarch Ganjiro Nakamura. Those who have seen Ozu's original 1934 silent film A Story of Floating Weeds will know the basic story. That film was more theatrical, whereas this remake focuses more on the details of setting and season which define Ozu's later films.

 

 

There's also a much harsher take on the main character, whose plays are criticized for being hammy and old-fashioned. This is even more true off stage, as he abuses the women in his troupe and hypocritically attempts to exert control over his son, who grew up thinking of him as an uncle. The drama is more heightened than usual, the characters more grating and desperate, but Ozu's tender sense of humanity still shines through - especially in his warm treatment of the younger characters, whose innocence and sincerity provides the perfect foil for their pathetic elders.

--- 243 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Alexander Nevsky (1938, Sergei Eisenstein)

Quest Status: 756 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #532

"Defense? I don't know how to defend. We shall spite them with all our power!" - Alexander Nevsky

 

Some films can be visually beautiful while being otherwise reprehensible. Alexander Nevsky is one of those films for me. Sergei Eisenstein was never known for his subtlety - as in his most famous film, Battleship Potemkin, one of the bombastic and explosive movies ever made. What bothers me about Alexander Nevsky is that it's a film about war that wholeheartedly promotes war as something virtuous and heroic. And that's something I just can't get behind, even if it is set in the 13th century.

The thing about Alexander Nevsky is that while it's a historical film about a real-life Russian hero (and saint!), it's obviously meant as a work of propaganda. How else can you take a film about fighting the barbaric Germans made just as the Nazis were beginning to set their sights on Europe? And wow, are these Germans barbaric! I mean, giving wailing babies the sign of the cross before dropping them on a giant bonfire, all while an old ghoul grinds a portable organ like the great grand-pappy of Dr. Phibes. Who wouldn't be ready to charge into battle at the drop of a hat (and a few lines about expressing your love for the motherland)?

Everything about the Russians, and the titular warrior's attempt to lead a ragtag group of peasants against the German horde, is just as pure and good as the Germans are corrupt and evil. Battle and the ability to wage war is seen as the foremost human virtue. Courage on the battlefield is the only standard that women use to choose their husbands. Add that to the fact that approximately a third of the film is one long battle sequence on a frozen lake. Of course, when the visuals are as masterful as these, it's hard to complain too much. The scene where the German battalion slowly creeps across the lake from far off in the distance is simply sublime. If only the rest of the film wasn't so hard to swallow.

 

--- 244 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

An Angel At My Table (1990, Jane Campion)

Quest Status: 755 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #622

Even after 120 years of film history, and lots of advancements (as well as setbacks) in women's rights during that time, it still comes as something of a shock to see a film by a female director, with a female main character, more women than men in the cast, written by a woman and based on the autobiography of a female author. It's a good shock, of course, but it serves to illustrate how few films like this there have been - and why directors like Jane Campion are so important in film history.

As for the film itself, it's actually based on not one, but three autobiographies by the New Zealand poet and novelist Janet Frame. It was made as a three-part TV miniseries, with one episode for each book, which actually makes it feel like a pretty brisk watch. The first episode, To the Is-land, focuses on Janet's childhood. It's a lyrical and evocative portrait of growing up in WWII-era New Zealand. The second episode, which shares the title of the main film, is the most harrowing of the three parts. It covers Janet's failed attempt to become a teacher and her subsequent diagnosis with schizophrenia, which landed her in a lunatic asylum for eight years. Here, the necessary compression of time is noticeably, as it doesn't feel like eight years have passed once she's finally released, but the utter destructiveness and cruelty of the "hundreds" of electroshock treatments and inhuman treatment she received are palpable.

The third episode, The Envoy from Mirror City, finds Janet in the midst of a late blooming which occurred well into her adult life, during which she traveled around Europe and wrote some of her most acclaimed works - including a novel about her horrific experiences being treated for schizophrenia. This episode is like the calm after the storm, and is notable for Campion's exquisite rendering of how it feels to be a woman experiencing life's many pleasures and pains for the first time. To add to the list above, it's also highly unusual to see a woman who doesn't fit traditional standards of beauty in full nudity - but we see Janet naked quite a bit in this last section of the film. As with just about everything else in the movie, Campion captures it with incredible lyricism and delicacy, transforming a movie that could have been an average biopic into one that manages to convey something of the essence of its subject.

--- 245 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville)

Quest Status: 754 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #350

When I think of Jean-Pierre Melville, I think of Alain Devon in Le Samourai, a lone wolf in a world of cool, emotionless gangsters. Army of Shadows is a film about the world French Resistance rather than gangsters, but the two worlds turn out to be surprisingly similar. Both are painted in the same chilly greys and blues. The action here seems to play out in perpetual winter, and much of it at night, as well. The heroes wear the same trenchcoats and are guided not by love, but by a stoic devotion to a mysterious boss whose rule over his men is absolute.

 

In other words, Army of Shadows is about much of the same things that defined his work in the crime thriller genre. He focuses on the minutiae of the Resistance's attempts to evade the Nazi occupation forces, with very little time spent on political or personal matters. When the middle-aged leader of a Resistance group in Marseilles meets a young communist in a camp for political prisoners, the two bond, not over ideology, but over the realization that they both have "comrades." 

 

 

As in Le Samourai, the important thing isn't the code that one adheres to, but that one adheres to that code with unwavering fidelity. Maybe what drew Melville to the world of the Resistance in the first place is that it must have felt like a losing cause, not unlike the world of crime. Anyone who joins must accept that it's only a matter of time before they are caught, tortured, and killed - and not everyone is able to deal with the pressure. For those who are, there's no better reward than the knowledge that they remained true to their comrades. And that when fate comes knocking, the belief that they will have the courage not to run.

--- 246 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Ludwig (1973, Luchino Visconti)

Quest Status: 753 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #975

I haven't seen most of Luchino Visconti's movies for close to ten years, when I was still in the midst of my initial obsession with film. In those days, I devoured movies morning, noon and night - often using a portable DVD player to fill every waking minute of time with movies. Regrettably, legendary Visconti masterpieces like The Leopard and Death By Venice are among the ones that I remember watching on that device for the first and only time. So when I come to a movie like Ludwig, it feels like I'm coming to Visconti with a blank slate to fill with new impressions (even though there are a few of his movies that I've digested properly).

 

 

Ludwig starts out as a sane movie about an eccentric and somewhat childlike king, and over the course of four hours, slides slowly into increasingly colorful and sprawling excess. This mirrors the journey of its subject: the "Mad King" Ludwig II of Bavaria. At first, his exploits consist mainly of spending huge sums on his patronage of Richard Wagner, who staged Tristan and Isolde for the first time on Ludwig's dime. As the film progresses, however, Ludwig starts building castles with underground ponds and swan boats, while also opting for illicit homosexual affairs with male aids rather than marrying and continuing the royal lineage. 

An Italian-German co-production with an international cast (who spoke in English and had their lines dubbed in Italian after the fact), Ludwig was initially cut down to a less decadent length and sanitized for mass consumption, but it really needed to be four hours long in order to properly convey the king's slow descent into madness. What it didn't need were the occasional faux-documentary asides where ministers from Ludwig's government talk candidly about their disapproval (or, occasionally, approval) of the monarch's ruling style. It may have seemed like a fashionable idea at the time, but the rest of the film is more than able to convey these ideas on its own.

--- 247 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)

Quest Status: 752 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #692

Memories of Murder is not your typical true crime serial-killer thriller. It follows the police investigation of a real-life serial killer in a rural Korean farming town, but it lacks suspense, or any clues to lead the characters on their "inevitable" path to find the killer. In fact, it's practically impossible to categorize. However, it does succeed as an enigmatic mystery that gets in your head and stays there much longer than the 132 minute running time.

 

A lot of this has to do with Bong Joon-ho's unconventional approach to tone and character development. The first half of the movie is often more of a goofy cop buddy comedy than a thriller, with inept sidekicks Song Kang-ho (the father in Bong's recent Oscar-winner Parasite) and Kim Roi-ha trading wisecracks and beating suspects into confessions, when they're not butting horns with the seasoned new recruit from Seoul (the brooding Kim Sang-kyung).

 

 

But as the film unfolds, layer upon layer of uncertainty is added to the investigation, and the dynamics between the characters begin to subtly shift. There are moments of dark humor, frustration, creeping dead, and inertia - while the truth seems to drift farther and farther out of reach. It's a classic case of "the more you think you know, the less you actually do." One of the thing that makes the film so unsettling is that while the characters' unpredictable behavioral shifts make them seem human and relatable, these shifts also make it impossible to know who they really are. Everyone seems vulnerable and transparent, both the police and the suspects, but are they really? Can we ever really know for sure who's guilty and innocent? These are the types of questions that Bong Joon-ho asks in this film, even though even he knows that the answers are just blowin' in the wind. Or, in this case, in the rain.

--- 248 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Kagemusha (1980, Akira Kurosawa)

Quest Status: 751 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #544

It's been awhile since I've seen an Akira Kurosawa film for the first time. I guess the last one was Sanjuro a couple years back. Kagemusha has a few shades of that film in it, with a plot involving a lowly drifter becoming involved in the upper echelons of feudal society. There are also hints of Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, and other Kurosawa classics. But the consensus on Kagemusha seems to be that it pales in comparison to Kurosawa's earlier work.

Those who say this are forgetting one important thing though: this is Akira Kurosawa we're talking about here. It's impossible to compare Kagemusha to his earlier films. The use of vivid color cinematography - relatively new to Kurosawa's work at the time - gives the film a painterly style, foreshadowing the impressionistic qualities of later films like Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. Gone are the visceral, tactile battle scenes of Seven Samurai. Instead, we have a three-hour historical epic which is largely about resisting the urge to fight in an attempt to hold territory. When the film's climactic battle scene finally comes, the character's fates are already decided. There is the build-up to a fight, and then the aftermath. The viewer is never caught in the crossfire, which might have something to do with why the film doesn't get as much praise as some of Kurosawa's classics from the 1950s and '60s.

There's a resigned pessimism to Kagemusha that sets it apart from those earlier movies. Being Kurosawa's reintroduction to the world after a painful period of depression which left him mostly inactive for most of the 1970s, this film about a double living in the shadow of the man he is charged with impersonating feels deeply personal. Kurosawa almost certainly felt the pressure of living up to the Japanese public's memory of his past self, as well as the new audience which the names of executive producers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola brought to the film. Kagemusha might not impress Star Wars fans, but it is a work of elegiac grandeur, signaling the return of a master throwing himself into his art as if it were the last film of his life.

 

--- 249 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)

Quest Status: 750 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #124

I've been watching a lot of long films recently, so I was a little wary of A Brighter Summer Day's four-hour length. I'm sure that distributors were afraid of the same thing when they neglected to give this film appropriate distribution back in 1991. But make no mistake, if you're still on the fence about watching this film, don't be. It's the rare instance of a film that I instantly know on first viewing is a MASTERPIECE.

It's hard to put the beauty of A Brighter Summer Day into words. Yes, the cinematography is staggering. Every shot in this film, even the simple ones, are exquisite works of art. They convey a poignant sense of time and place, not to mention humanity. And what's it about? Well, the Chinese title alludes to a real-life murder that occurred in 1961 Taipei. It's a teen drama that deals with romance in the awkward and overly serious way that teenagers do. It's a family story that covers the relationships between husband and wife, father and son, brother and sister, and even neighbors and friends without a moment of heavy-handedness. It's a warm, breezy epic with occasional bursts of violence that could rival any Martin Scorsese gangster film. In other words, it's pretty hard to categorize. Which is why A Brighter Summer Day, even after Criterion's shimmering HD restoration, will forever remain in the domain of cinephiles who don't need their movies neatly packaged and labeled.

P.S. I'm 75% finished with the quest now!

 

--- 250 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Opening Night (1977, John Cassavetes)

Quest Status: 749 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #463

Many of John Cassavetes' films focus on relationships coming to a head, often with explosive improvised fights between couples or friends. Opening Night is one of his first films to focus in specifically on a single character, Gena Rowland's frighteningly unhinged theater star Myrtle Gordon. Cassavetes himself plays a smaller (but pivotal) role as one of Gordon's fellow actors, with whom Myrtle shares a scene that she feels is particularly humiliating, giving the two actors' past romantic relationship. Ben Gazzara and Joan Blondell both also have meaty roles which entail butting heads with Rowlands in almost every scene they're in.

These relationships are not the main focus though. Myrtle has far worse problems, mainly provoked by the death of an obsessive fan after a show, but also because she has to grapple with aging and failed romance in the play - two issues that she doesn't know how to express on stage. But to say that Opening Night is about the pressures of being an aging actress is like describing A Woman Under the Influence as a film about mental illness. Cassavetes doesn't so much probe his subjects as he does slit them open with a jagged hunting knife and let them bleed out for the audience to see. Myrtle's alcoholic meltdowns verge on the schizophrenic, but the people around her hope against hope that these inner demons will eventually produce a great performance - resulting in a baffling grand finale that holds a mirror up to reality in a way that's pure Cassavetes.

--- 251 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Amores Perros (2000, Alejandro G. Iñárritu)

Quest Status: 748 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #835

I avoided watching this movie for a long time, mainly because I knew it involved dogfighting. This was definitely a valid concern. It may be true that no animals were harmed during the making of the film, but the simulation is convincing as hell. This was a more harrowing watch than Salo for me. Even putting the animal cruelty aside, there's just as much human cruelty, and scenes of a dog trapped in a dark hole with rats, making for one of the most stressful viewing experiences I've had in a long time. So view with caution...

That being said, this movie initially seems like it's going to be a Mexican Pulp Fiction with graphic scenes of simulated dogfighting thrown in for added grittiness, but this impression starts to fade after the first hour. The film has a complicated structure, with three main stories that bleed into each other at various points and one major point of intersection between them. Despite the fact that these stories intersect, the characters don't really end up interacting with each other like the ones in Pulp Fiction. It's more about comparing people from different social classes and exposing the undercurrent of violence running through Mexican culture as a whole. It's an explosive film, not to mention that it was Alejandro González Iñárritu's debut, creating enough of a splash to catapult him out of Mexico and into Hollywood.

--- 252 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

La Ciénaga (2001, Lucrecia Martel)

Quest Status: 747 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #615

Director Lucrecia Martel said in an interview about this film, her debut feature, that she wanted the viewer to feel uncomfortable from the start, and to always be unsure what was going to happen next. Well, mission accomplished. La Ciénaga starts with a highly stylized and unsettling opening sequence, with a group of middle-aged drunks lounging around a pool and drinking heavily, dragging their chairs loudly over concrete tiles while gunshots sound in the nearby mountains. This surreal opening provides the set-up for an accident that introduces us to an extended family with more than its fair share of issues - mostly hinted at - but child neglect, alcoholism, incest, mental illness, and racism are all fair game in this free-floating tale of festering familial decay.

The title is the name of the town where the film takes place, a thinly-veiled take on Martel's hometown of Salta. This name, which translates as "The Swamp," is a fitting metaphor for both the family seen in the film and Martel's narrative style. Everything we see in the film is only the scummy surface of a larger swamp. It could be a metaphor for degenerate upper-class families like this one, or for Argentine society as a whole. No matter how you look at it, everything in this film is putrid and rotting. There's not a likeable character in sight, but it is a beautiful film in its own unflinching way.

--- 253 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Taipei Story (1985, Edward Yang)

Quest Status: 746 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #861

The only other Edward Yang film I'd seen before was Yi Yi, and that was years ago, so today I felt like I was making a fresh start with Edward Yang - one of the legendary masters of the New Taiwanese Cinema movement that started in the '80s. After decades of martial law, Taiwan was moving into a new era, and that included film as well. Watching Taipei Story, it seems like Edward Yang (and star/writer Hou Hsiao-Hsien) were trying to create the polar opposite of Hong Kong's loud, violent and commercial cinema.

 

 

Taipei Story is quiet and understated to the extreme. Even when characters are angry, it's conveyed as briefly as possible - a slap to the face, a few sharp words, a slamming door. Then they go their separate ways, arguing in tense whispers when they finally reconvene. Many directors in many different countries have portrayed the difficulties of being caught in the middle of a generation gap, but Yang captures the unique emotional dilemmas and social changes of this particular moment with a deep sadness that creeps up behind and sinks its teeth in until you find yourself sinking down with the characters.

--- 254 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)

Quest Status: 745 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #259

Memories of Underdevelopment was released in 1968, but it takes place during the most famous period of modern Cuban history - starting in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion by US-sponsored counter-revolutionaries in 1961 and ending with the looming threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. It starts out with dancing in the streets, followed by scenes of a bourgeois man watching his wife and parents leave for America. He has no political sensibilities, no feelings about the revolution one way or the other. Much stronger are his sexual desires, as he starts prowling around, leering at every attractive young woman in sight.

As a result, the first half of the film is something like a Fellini-esque sex comedy with ambiguous political commentary thrown in around the edges. In the second half, the man's philandering ways come back to haunt him, as the political situation in Cuba becomes increasingly confusing and fraught with tension. For me, the most interesting aspect was that Sergio, the protagonist, chooses to stay behind in Cuba and live the life of an outsider - despite having no connection to or even a coherent understanding of the revolution going on around him. Through Sergio's eyes, Memories of Underdevelopment examines the passive observers within its country with a critical eye, while also asking the viewer what side of the line they would fall on if placed in the same situation.

--- 255 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Touki Bouki (1973, Djibril Diop Mambéty)

Quest Status: 744 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #305

Heavily inspired by French New Wave films like Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Pierrot le fou on the surface, there’s much more to this densely layered tour de force than initially meets the eye. Rebel without a cause Mory decides to shake off the dregs of Dakar and head north to Paris with his girlfriend Anta, first setting off on a carefree crime spree to raise the funds. But while the core story is straight out of Pierrot le fou, Mambety isn’t just a stylist looking to transplant French cinema into an African setting.

After all, Senegal had only recently gained their independence from France at the time this film was made. There’s a sarcastic edge to much of the self-consciously French New Wave flourishes, like the song on the radio incessantly crooning “Paris, Paris, Paris” and jokes at the expense of those who have sold themselves out to the new neo-colonial order. And when Mory finally has his chance to leave Senegal, Mambety uses allegorical montage to signal his change of heart, a stunning moment of free-flowing visual poetry that leads into an impressionistic dreamlike sequence to end the film. Mambety’s vision is vivid and defiant, integrating French influence into a framework that is proudly African, with logic defying montage and cinematography so vivid and striking that it threatens to explode right off the screen.

--- 256 films remaining ---

 

NOTE

This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.

Limelight (1952, Charles Chaplin)

Quest Status: 743 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #558

"I thought you hated the theatre?"

 

"I do. I also hate the sight of blood, but it's in my veins."

 

 

In a way, I could say that I owe my love of film to Charlie Chaplin. The Gold Rush was the stepping stone that led me to look beyond Oscar winners to find great films from the silent era and around the world. It's the movie that made me thirsty for as many films as I could get my hands on, leading me to look for lists like this one. In the short term, it also made me an avid Chaplin fan, leading me seek out all of Chaplin's silent features, and later shorts. The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux came later. But something always kept me from venturing on to Limelight. Although he made two films after this, this one always seemed like Chaplin's swan song, and I preferred my memories of his earlier films to be kept intact - without the taint of melancholy and old age.

 

Of course, Chaplin's best films always tread the line between comedy and pathos. Limelight is no different. It is a self-indulgent passion project, with a fair amount of material that could have been trimmed to make it tighter and more focused. It's about a washed-up old vaudeville star who saves a beautiful young ballet dancer, only to have her fall hopelessly in love with him - an old man's fantasy which was echoed by Chaplin's own obvious weakness for beautiful young women in his own personal life. Thankfully, Chaplin's Calvero takes the high road in his relationship with Claire Wright's emotionally fragile Theresa, with his greatest fault being his penchant for long-winded philosophical monologues - an unfortunate hallmark of Chaplin's sound films.

 

So although not without its weaknesses, Limelight is still pure Chaplin. It's one of his most personal films, one which finally bridges the gap between his vaudeville beginnings in London and his success as a Hollywood comedy star. The vaudeville scenes are the unexpected highlight of the film - showing not the Tramp, but Chaplin the entertainer, his craft stripped down to its bare essentials. The collaboration with Buster Keaton at the film's finale only lasts for one brief scene, but it features some brilliant physical comedy that proves that these masters of silent comedy had it in their blood. The film denouement is a mix of heroic, tragic, romantic and poetic. There may have been some delusions of grandeur on Chaplin's part, but there's no doubt that he bared his soul here, in the film that could be seen as the great comedian's last true stand in the limelight.

--- 257 films remaining ---

Spring in a Small Town (1948, Mu Fei)

Quest Status: 742 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #161

Spring in a Small Town is a true rarity: a Chinese film made during the short window between World War II and the rise of Mao. What's even more amazing is that a movie made during this brief and turbulent time period just happens to be one of the few Chinese films included on a master list of the 1,000 Greatest Films ever made.

 

 

The film might be best described as the Chinese Sunrise. The ailing heir to a family in decline and his long-suffering wife eke out their daily lives in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of a small town. Despite the title, the town is never seen - confining our view completely to the insular world of the family estate and the crumbling wall that overlooks the town. One day, a visitor comes in from Shanghai, turning out to be both the husband's lost lost friend and the wife's long lost lover. Sparks immediately fly between the two reunited lovers, but they agonize over their respective responsibilities to the man of the house, resulting in near constant tension.

Although it was made during the sound era (which was late in coming to China), Spring in a Small Town has surprisingly bare-bones sound design. There is hardly any music in the movie, except for brief bookends at the beginning and end of the film. During non-dialogue scenes, the soundtrack often goes silent - even during one emotionally charged scene of passion. The result is a feeling of stifling suffocation, of almost unbearable tension. For a film about unrequited love, it's the perfect effect.

--- 258 films remaining ---

DOUBLE FEATURE: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors / The Color of Pomegranates

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964, Sergei Parajanov)

Quest Status: 740 / 1000

Like the tall tree that fatally kills the protagonist's brother in the opening scene, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a towering film. The title is fitting: made in the Soviet Union but set in 19th century rural Ukraine, it's a film which evokes a past which had already been forgotten. Watching more than 50 years later, the world that it depicts could just as well be 1,000 years in the past rather than only a century and a half. The language is a regionally specific Ukrainian dialect which would have been all but unintelligible to contemporary Russians, not to mention the costumes and folk music. Director Sergei Parajanov isn't interested in explaining this world to us - just recreating it as best he can and throwing the viewer unassisted, to find their own way or get dragged under by the tide.

Parajanov employs a wide range of bravado visual techniques to immerse the viewer in this disorienting world - including frequent use of handheld camera that mimics the point of view of some unseen observer, or crane shots that emphasize movement in or around the frame. My favorite shot was one which passes over a giant wooden raft as it soars down the river carrying the heartbroken Ivan, whose childhood love has just died in a tragic drowning accident. In the section that follows, Ivan falls into a deep depression, which is captured in grainy black and white scenes, occasionally interrupted by superimposed montages rendered in vivid color for maximum contrast. In the midst of all this visual cacophony, the story often becomes practically nonexistent - especially in the second half, which consists mostly of brief and indistinct vignettes. Still, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is chock full of visual genius that's worth a watch for all fans of the weird and otherworldly.

 

 

The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov)

Quest Status: 741 / 1000

With his follow-up to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov managed to do everything that made Shadows controversial with the Soviet censors--and then took it ten steps further. Various actors portray a poet-like figure who can be seen as a mythic representation of the Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat Nova, although the viewer is given no biographical information about him whatsoever, and what actual events are portrayed are filtered through layers of symbolism and visual poetry. A huge flock of sheep flood into a church to attend a deceased dignitary’s funeral. A nun dressed in white is hoisted up and down by a rope, while other nuns walk up the stairs behind her. Men duel on horses while a bearded man holds a peacock’s beak tenderly in his mouth. An angelic baby is often seen spinning in the background, mystic women hold tapestries and gaze into the camera, and when the poet’s death comes, a green and white Angel of Resurrection douses him with wine (or blood) from a blue urn before sending him to his final rest amongst a sea of candles.

 

 

Believe it or not, that list doesn’t even begin to cover all of the weird things that happen in this movie. But besides being a supreme example of weird cinema, The Color of Pomegranates also manages to realize the cinema of poetry that Jean Cocteau strived for but was never quite able to reach. With its three-act structure featuring different actors and settings but united by common symbols and themes, Pomegranates is reminiscent of Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet, as well as his final film, The Last Testament of Orpheus. But where Cocteau’s films often feel like incomplete sketches, weighed down by theory and the written word, with Pomegranates, Parajanov succeeded in creating an entirely unique visual language that stands alone in the history of film.

 

--- 259 films remaining ---

DOUBLE FEATURE: Dancer in the Dark / Dogville

Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier)

Quest Status: 738 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #695

Dancer in the Dark is the third film in Lars von Trier's so called "Golden Heart Trilogy." I haven't seen the second film in the trilogy, The Idiots, but this film is definitely cut from the same cloth as the trilogy's first installment, Breaking the Waves. In Dancer in the Dark, von Trier pays tribute to the pure filmmaking standards laid out by the Dogme 95 manifesto, shooting most of the film himself with low-quality digital cameras, natural lighting and location shooting, but breaks the manifesto's rules on one point - the use of non-diegetic music. Because, in fact, Dancer in the Dark is a musical.

 

 

For those coming to this film having seen any of von Trier's other films, he would probably seem like an odd choice to direct a musical. And indeed, the musical elements never really gel with the rest of the film, a depressing melodramatic about an immigrant factory worker whose life spirals into tragedy as she begins to lose her sight. For one thing, the songs (sung by the idiosyncratic Iceland singer and lead actress Björk) are clunky and superfluous - adding little to the film other than giving us a break from the crushing drudgery of the main story. There's also a cruel irony to the musical sequences, which tease us that "nothing dreadful ever happens in a musical" even as von Trier repeatedly reminds us that this is one musical where that rule does not apply.

Dogville (2003, Lars von Trier)

Quest Status: 739 / 1000

 

TSPDT Rank #348

After finishing his "Golden Heart Trilogy" with his first English-language film, Lars von Trier embarked on another (as yet unfinished) trilogy set in the USA - despite the fact that he's never been there, due to a fear of flying. Dogville takes place in a Depression-era town in the Rocky Mountains, although it was filmed entirely on a bare, warehouse-like set with streets, houses, and even the town dog existing only as chalk outlines on the floor. The set is theatrical and minimalist to the extreme, while the story is narrated in Dickensian fashion by John Hurt and divided into nine chapters, evoking a fairy tale atmosphere that clashes with subject matter that grows increasingly bleak as the story unfolds.

Whereas previous films like Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark had featured female lead characters made to endure unfathomably painful dilemmas, in Dogville, the humiliation endured by Nicole Kidman's Grace reaches absurd heights unusual even for the misanthropic von Trier. (It's potentially worth mentioning that Dogville features numerous instances of rape, which are largely written off by both the narrator and the other characters.) Because of this, Dogville is often difficult to watch, but it's a stylistic success if nothing else. Despite the minimalist sets, the film envelops the viewer fully in its punishing fantasy world, leading us through a tangled web of situations which force us to ponder the human capacity for cruelty and forgiveness. Still, much like the pretentious and self-important would-be novelist Tom Edison (Paul Bettany), the catalyst behind many of the story's twists and turns, von Trier might be guilty of many of the sins he accuses his characters of in this sprawling portrait of the evil lurking behind the innocent facade of a stereotypical American small town.

--- 261 films remaining ---

The Tin Drum (1979, Volker Schlöndorff)

Quest Status: 737 / 1000

TSPDT Rank #774

Based on a towering literary classic by Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass, The Tin Drum starts from absurdity and builds to insanity, conveying the inexplicability of fascism. It follows a boy named Oskar, the son of an incestuous nymphomaniac conceived from a potato field tryst between a peasant woman and an arsonist. Oskar stops growing at the age of three out of disgust with the adult world, a conscious decision that he disguises by throwing himself down the cellar stairs. Even at birth, he has the body of a six-year-old, which never seems to grow or change, even after his fateful third birthday.

 

His third birthday is notable, not only for his portentous fall, but for the present that he receives from his mother: a red and white tin drum. He carries it with him everywhere, and whenever some poor soul tries to take it away from him, he screams bloody murder--shattering everything from his teacher’s glasses to cathedral windows across the street. In this way, he soon learns that he can control the adults around him. As he grows older, everyone continues to treat him like a toddler, although he becomes more intelligent and aware of the world around him than he lets on.

 

At first, we sympathize with Oskar. The world around him is certainly worthy of disgust--even before the Nazis come to the forefront. Director Volker Schlöndorff does his best to make everything seem sick, never shying away from an opportunity to make the viewer uncomfortable. Oskar’s birth is a hellish nightmare vision, and his mother’s incestuous philanderings with her Polish cousin are sweaty and filthy affairs--as far from erotic as possible. Later, during a seaside family outing, Oskar and his parents watch a fisherman haul in a horse head infested with countless squirming eels. His mother vomits, the father takes the eels home and cooks them--only able to convince his wife to eat them after her cousin pleasures her to stop her from crying.

However, as Oskar grows older, we see that his stunted physical growth cannot prevent him from being corrupted by the adult world. After his mother dies from overdosing on raw fish, his grandmother brings in a 16-year-old girl named Maria to help at his father’s grocery store. Being 16 himself, Oskar is filled with lust for the pretty Maria, first feeding her sherbet powder made fizzy with his spit before attempting to seduce her. He’s filled with jealousy when his father also becomes sexually involved with the underage Maria, revealing a monstrous rage that shows that he is capable of just as much cruelty as the adults around him.

But let’s not forget Oskar’s trademark tin drum, often seen as an instrument of protest against the rise of Fascism. Maybe this is the case when Oskar disrupts a Nazi rally by leading the band away from their rigid march into a swinging Blue Danube waltz, to the great distress of the Reich dignataries in attendance. But what about when Oskar joins a troupe of dwarfs in performing for the Nazi occupation forces in France, even looking on as the soldiers gun down a group of nuns collecting shellfish on the beach at Normandy? The film’s central allegory is clearly more complicated and ambiguous than it’s usually made out to be, although its unflinching view of fascism and innocence corrupted gets closer to the soul of Nazism than most films about the era have ever dared.
 

 

---263 films remaining---

REWIND: Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)

TSPDT Rank #674

Initial viewing: c. 2008

"Only pain and suffering will make you realize who you are. Only when you're in extreme pain, do you realize your own mind."

Takashi Miike is widely known for his outrageous shock tactics and lack of subtlety, but his most famous film, Audition, is notable for its surprising serenity. Make no mistake, Audition is definitely worthy of its classification as a horror film. There are moments that may send the viewer flying out of their seats - many involving a large bag positioned conspicuously in the middle of a tiny, sparsely-lit apartment. But most of the time, it's a quiet and subdued film - a symphony of loneliness and painful memories laced with a dark undercurrent of creeping dread.



The film’s unassuming first act focuses on lonely widower Aoyama’s attempts to find a woman to marry who can live up to the high standard set by his late wife. Despite some subtly unsettling moments, Audition doesn’t really begin to show its hand until Aoyama is already head-over-heels with the girl of his dreams. But this isn’t to say that the film relies completely on the element of surprise. It begins with the death of Aoyama’s wife, whose memory continues to haunt him right up to the moment when he meets his new love, Asami, a young girl fixated on death.



From the moment Asami first shuffles quietly into the audition room, something sets her apart from the women desperately trying to promote themselves in the awkwardly comic montage that precedes her entrance. Aoyama is blind to her oddness, but his producer friend is the voice of reason: there’s just something about Asami that doesn’t feel right to him. She’s too quiet, too polite, too hard to pin down. For Aoyama, however, these are positive attributes, and he soon starts seeing Asami in private. Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t see anything strange about his sleazy method of seduction. To the contrary, she’s grateful for it, and insistently pleads with him to continue taking her out. Intermittent shots of her staring motionless at the telephone in her apartment are the only signs that something is seriously wrong with this picture.



At this point, Miike steers the story into detective territory, as Aoyama begins looking for assurances that Asami is the normal girl that he desperately hopes she is. She mentions a family in Chiba, a part-time job in a Ginza dive bar, and a record company agent, but Aoyama finds none of these. Instead, he finds a perverted old man in a dilapidated ballet studio and tales about a grisly murder involving Asami’s agent and her supposed employer. But by this point, Aoyama is already deep in the girl’s clutches, having pledged his eternal faithfulness after sleeping with her on an ill-advised weekend trip.



The film’s final act is a sweeping tour de force, beginning with an extended dream sequence in which all of the women in Aoyama’s life combine and merge into one. In an audacious subversion of narrative logic, Miike shows us a second version of Aoyama and Asami’s first dates. The scenery is the same, but the conversation is different. Asami describes brutal abuse in her earlier childhood, revealing the lies beneath her calm facade. Again and again, Miike sows subtle seeds of doubt in the viewer’s mind. Exactly how much of what happens is in Aoyama’s head, and which version of the story is the “real” one, is never explicitly drawn out - at least not until the film reaches its horrifying denouement, a proto-torture porn set piece that is both weirder and more concise than anything Eli Roth ever dreamed up. But as infamous as that denouement may be, it’s only one part of the masterfully structured psychological puzzle that is Audition.