Following our discussion of African film, I ordered Xala up from the local library and was scanning around Netflix when I saw Gio had put this film on her queue, and when I saw that it was the director of Bamako (a film I’d read a lot about in the last year), I bumped it up the queue and watched last night: outstanding film.
Month: June 2007
laurent cantet’s time out (2001)
a few words on time out, which i just saw. it covers some of the same ground as caché, in that it addresses the pervasive discomfort of the first world’s ruling class. just like in caché, the protagonist is a middle aged man haunted by secrets, which he works strenuously at keeping from his family and in particular from his wife. also like in caché, the wife is “innocent,†not part of the husband’s secret life, outside the circle of his tormenting ghosts. unlike the binoche character, she doesn’t express this outsider status with relentless and frustrated questioning, but, rather, with long silences and wrenching looks. the silences between these people who clearly have so much they should be talking about saturate the movie and are perhaps its most disturbing feature. at the end, when vincent runs from home, the wife’s voice on the cellphone feels for a moment like a relief: finally they’ll talk! but no. vincent is out of auditory range and, in any case, muriel is once again making soothing noises without addressing any of the issues that are torturing vincent and their marriage.
Continue reading laurent cantet’s time out (2001)
Sam Fuller
I hate to shift gears, particularly since the thread on Xala is terrific, but I watched Sam Fuller’s The Big Red One last night and I was mightily impressed. I had seen this film long ago, on network television I think. Maybe it was USA or something, because I don’t recall much being deleted. But I couldn’t resist revisiting the film since it’s been “reconstructed”–that is to say, some 45 minutes have been restored. My recollection of the theatrical version is too dim to make any comments about the differences between it and the “reconstructed” version (for anyone who is interested in that, watch the bonus DVD, which has “before and after” scene comparisons). So let me instead just sing praises. Continue reading Sam Fuller
Takashi Miike’s Imprint
Holy crap. So this was commissioned for Showtime’s Masters of Horror, about which I’ve had some complaints, and then it was too much for them–and it was never aired. Set sometime in late-19th-century Japan, on an island brothel, it structurally resembles a classic ghost story of the period: embedded narratives, as a man on a quest is told ever-worse versions of a story by a deformed prostitute. And many of the elements of the story seem classical, as well: long-lost loves, embattled young child, secret twins. But beyond this familiar structure and resonant plot details, the short film contains truly unsettling, discomforting, uncanny images–bodies, babies, brutality, a very grim fairy tale that seemed unlike most anything I’d ever seen before. The story would emerge in one way that bothered me, then it’d be retold and I’d be surprised and a bit horrified by its revision, and again, and again, until I was startled, often nauseated, utterly engrossed (in every sense of that word).
Great stuff. No one but me may actually enjoy this kind of stuff, but I do recommend it. Shot with Miike’s trademark combination of stomach-churning gore and sound to accompany, intermingled with some absolutely beautiful images (e.g., a poled boat laden with customers just off shore, the red lanterns on land dimly visible in a line just over the men’s heads). Miike is the Fellini of horror–this is a very bad dream, and very good horror.
Longford
A quick recommendation for an HBO film that some may have already seen: the titular character (played by the amazing Jim Broadbent) is a somewhat fuddled real-life Lord who took up lost causes, and gets involved with the case for forgiveness and perhaps parole for the female half of a notorious child-murdering duo. Myra Hindley (the equally amazing Samantha Morton) may be truly seeking redemption, may be manipulating the old man — and the film grabs us with that tension. But what resonates even more extensively is the grip of the moral question behind the ‘truth’ of her redemption: does everyone deserve redemption, regardless of their motives? Continue reading Longford
Joe Dante
I’m a fan. I’m not sure any of Dante’s movies completely, totally crystallize — they’re almost all burdened with strange mismatches of tone and the constraints of either too small a budget or too much studio interference . . . and yet I think his films are glorious, the kinds of things that managed to tiptoe along the line between the sincerely low-budget exploitational and the smartly self-referentially genre-invigorating. The Howling veers from its first twenty minutes’ feel of tawdry sex-drenched horror, turning a serial killer flick into a werewolf movie, but then it heads into the woods and becomes homage, parody, recreation of classic horror films in a cheesy 1970s world, complete with John Carradine, Slim Pickens, a terrifying transformation scene, and stray jokes about Thomas Wolfe. (John Sayles, who wrote this script and Dante’s prior estimable Jaws rip-off Piranha, plays a morgue attendant.) Continue reading Joe Dante
Hank’s!
“Zing Boom Ta-ra-rel. Join in a glass of good cheer.” Welcome to Hank’s Bar at the Hotel Stillwell. Hank first tapped the kegs in 1954. Since then, his bar has become a bed rock haven for downtown’s barfly jambalaya. Henry “Hank” Holzer (R.I.P 1998), born 1908 in Greenwich Village, NYC, opened Hank’s after retiring from a lauded career as a professional prizefighter. Apparently, Hank gathered inspiration for his bar from the classic Noir ficiton of Damon Runyon and Raymond Chandler. He came out West looking for adventure, and, by all accounts, was a stand up guy who took to memorizing his patrons’ names, faces, and favorite drinks. Hank sold the bar in 1970 in order to look after his ailing wife, but returned in 1984 to run the bar until his death in 1998 at the age of 88. He’s said to have credited his longevity to drinking Screwdrivers and not smoking tobacco. Go figure. Hank’s Bar delivers on all fronts: nostalgia, seediness, odd customers, strong drinks, charming bartenders, wall to wall eye candy, live fish, popcorn, and a healthy prescription of low light.
Vengeance is Mine
Shohei Imamura’s film is technically a true-crime story, documenting the capture (and flashbacking through the crimes) of a sociopathic lowlife in the mid-sixties. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is something of a smiling cipher, who seems one thing in early scenes, a stonefaced whackjob, then emerges from scene to scene in ever complicating fashion–coming across as something of a naif, then a dumb thug, then a slick con man, and so on–and by the end of the film I hadn’t some simple narrative of his motivations but a rich, unsettling, and ambiguous portrait which never quite explains or resolves his actions.
Worse–or, aesthetically, better–the film’s portrait of the contemporary Japanese social milieu is equally unsettling. Enokizu’s violence and rage is echoed everywhere Continue reading Vengeance is Mine
xala
to mark the recent death of ousmane sembene, i moved xala to the top of our netflix queue, and we watched it last night. it is based on his own novel (which, by the way, was one of two texts fredric jameson referred to in his notorious argument about all third world fiction comprising nationalist allegories). apparently, sembene moved from writing to film so as to be able to reach a larger audience than that of elite literary culture in senegal. keeping this in mind may be useful in making sense of the film’s aesthetic which is a blend of modes: beginning with a satirical parable and then moving in and out of a realist framing of events if not of psychology (by which i mean that character development, motivations, consistency etc. are not major concerns). all of this may makes it sound avant garde as opposed to populist, but i suspect that what is also being utilized is the structure and logic of folk forms. not being familiar with senegalese narrative traditions i am unable to confirm–though there do seem to be elements which bear such a reading out: a group of peasants and beggars who function as a kind of chorus and then make a substantial narrative intervention at the end, occasional comic interludes etc..
or perhaps that’s a multicultural copout on my part. but it did make me think of the international reputation of the great bengali director, ritwik ghatak, whose films, unlike ray’s did not fall into either a recognizable universal humanism in their thematics nor structurally resemble the international (really, european) art film–and who consequently is not as well known as ray. his films too often featured a realist frame sutured with the logic and structural elements of other forms, particularly folk theater.
Continue reading xala
An Unreasonable Man
This documentary about Ralph Nader takes its title from a line by George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” That gives a flavor of the central dilemma facing any assessment of Nader.
The documentary is straightforward enough: archival footage and interviews. Nader himself is interviewed several times, and prominence goes to the so-called “Nader’s Raiders†who worked with him in the early days. The first hour charts Nader’s career as a consumer advocate from the early conflict with GM and the formation of his “Raiders†through the highpoint of the Carter years when Nader was largely responsible for some of the most important consumer protection legislation of the late 20th century, to the exasperation of the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton years, by which time American business had learned how to fight and win the public relations battles and Nader watches his legacy slowly dismantled. The second hour covers the period since 2000 and Nader’s two presidential bids.
Continue reading An Unreasonable Man