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.

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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.

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