A lazy day in the country side. An artist expects his son's family to come and visit him and his housekeeper. They do come. The sons' kids run around. The parents dutifully scold them for misbehaving. The artist languidly chats with his son and his son's wife about ordinary things. While most of the grown-ups are asleep, the artist's daugther arrive in a fancy automobile (this is the 1910s). Her arrival puts a sudden end to the tranquility we've seen so far. The daughter is admired by everybody. Will she stay for dinner?
This sounds like a meagre plot. It's not. Or: the plot is not so important. Nothing out of the ordinary happens in the movie, the story of which spans a few short hours. A family is spending leisurly time together. Most things have an air of rituals that have existed a long time, comments that are uttered against a background we are not completely aware of. On some level, they seem to be a happy family (even though this is put in a somewhat new light as the daughter arrives from Paris, a favorite child of the father). This is not the type of movie that hints at dark secrets or never-ending neurotic preoccupations. Yes, there is friction, but it is not the kind of friction that threatens the possibility of communication. What Bernard Tavernier tells us about is rather an unspoken sense of disappointment or an equally unspoken feeling of having disappointed somebody else.
One could say that this film is just as idle as its lazy surroundings. Proust could have written the script. In one eerie scene, we see the family having dinner. Need I say that nothing spectacular happens (they praise the food, one kid brags about having experienced the state of drunkenness) The strange thing is that the picture fades out to a black screen quite a few times so that we expect a new scene to begin. It doesn't. The dinner scene goes on and on, and just as in some moments in Proust's book, we gain a sense of time having freezed. This is the eternity that everyday life sometimes can lull us into (which need not be a sign of false consciousness).
The film's aesthetic builds around a hazy yellowish green that permeats almost every scene (in an exquisite way, I might never have seen such greens!), and produces a dream-like quality. Of course, the dialogue reveals some personal things about the characters (how the son has a complicated relation to giving up art or how the father quietly scornes the son's having changed his name), but mostly, we hear small talk, irritating repetitions, idle chatter. Actually, except for the artist's glamorous daughter, Irene, and her father, who has sunken into a nostalgic form of sadness, most of the characters are dull, respectable, in line with what is expected of them. In the hands of a less imaginative director, this would make for a boring film as well, but instead, we have a film that without a trace of bitterness or glacial irony attempts to give a fair picture of the dull life of the rich.
All this works very well, save for the, in my view, unnecessary ending scene. A Sunday In the Country will perhaps not change your life, but it is a charming little film nonetheless - or one might even say that it is a beautiful film about the magic patterns of everyday life. Some have compared Tavarnier's film to Yoshiro Ozu. To me, that makes sense: both have eyes and ears for life beyond the dramatic or the poignant.
fredag 10 december 2010
Grand Canyon (1991)
Excavating my library of VHS:s, I find many movies that I've seen a long time ago that I remember having liked, but the only thing I can actually recall is some sort of atmosphere. What I remember about Grand Canyon is its slow pace and depiction of the urban jungle where almost any situation can take a dangerous turn. Re-watching it, this proved to be a quite apt description. What I didn't remember is the many clichés, the horrible music and a "social" agenda that is so rediculously over-stated that this film is, at times, rather embarrassing to watch. There are, however, some nice scenes, too. In one of them, we see a father teaching his son to drive a car. The boy is not really focusing on the driving. He talks to his father about family problems. The father is nervous. They end up in a messy traffic hub. The boy is supposed to make a left turn. Red light. We see the boy's impatience and the anxious expression on his father's face. It's time to press the speed pedal. But another car swooshes by and the boy reacts too slowly. A severe car accident is avoided in the last second. In this scene, the director, Lawrence Kasdan, makes the best of the actors and the surrounding. The scene is simple, but it works. It is not too talky, there's music (I think), but it's discreet. Here, Kasdan has discovered the exact pitch for conveying a sense of, first, foreboding and, later, a real and very concrete sense of fear.
But Mr. Kasdan; if I were you, I would have sued Paul Haggis' (director of Crash) ass. As a matter of fact, Grand Canyon is a thousand times better than Crash. At its best, it really has something to say about urban fear. Which Crash doesn't.
But Mr. Kasdan; if I were you, I would have sued Paul Haggis' (director of Crash) ass. As a matter of fact, Grand Canyon is a thousand times better than Crash. At its best, it really has something to say about urban fear. Which Crash doesn't.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Having seen only of Pasolini's ... works (which I regret having seen, it was awful) I did not quite know what to expect from The Gospel According to St. Matthew. That the film patiently, without eerie digressions, follows the events & words of the gospel itself makes reviewing no easier. The film's restraint surprised me. I expected Jesus to preach Das Capital, foam dripping out from his mouth, a few Roman sadists lurking around the corner. But it wasn't like that. Yes, the emphasis of Jesus preaching was on social justice, but whether that should be ascribed to the film or the gospel of Matthew I am too unenlightened heathen to say.
The scenes containing preaching were perhaps the least interesting ones, except for one quality. In most films about Jesus, the way the preaching scenes are filmed tend to be very predictable: Jesus in the centre, people standing around him in an orderly, quiet way. Pasolini makes all crowds bustle (true to the spirit of neo-reaolism, perhaps). He works with long shots that capture the movement and disorganization of the crowd. What is quite mesmerizing is that the crowd is never transformed into one entire wobbly, anonymous body. The crowd consists of people, the camera focusing on a group of people, a face, a piece of cloth. The crowd comes to life as something else than a dumb, beastly organism ruled by some demagogue (yes, Pasolini was a marxist, which might be of importance here). One can perceive this pattern throughout the film.
Another very successful element of The Gospel is the use of music. The soundtrack (sensitively mixed so that it is somehow on a par with sounds of people and nature) is a bold mix of African folk music, American blues/gospel, Bach and choir music. The sometimes dramatic pieces of music don't stifle the scenes, they bring out something new in what we see.
Actually, The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a good film. Undoubtedly, also a religious one. I.e.: his is NOT Mel Gibson.
PS: The history on philosophers on film is, I think, not a very extensive one. Here, we see Giorgio Agamben acting as one of the disciples!
The scenes containing preaching were perhaps the least interesting ones, except for one quality. In most films about Jesus, the way the preaching scenes are filmed tend to be very predictable: Jesus in the centre, people standing around him in an orderly, quiet way. Pasolini makes all crowds bustle (true to the spirit of neo-reaolism, perhaps). He works with long shots that capture the movement and disorganization of the crowd. What is quite mesmerizing is that the crowd is never transformed into one entire wobbly, anonymous body. The crowd consists of people, the camera focusing on a group of people, a face, a piece of cloth. The crowd comes to life as something else than a dumb, beastly organism ruled by some demagogue (yes, Pasolini was a marxist, which might be of importance here). One can perceive this pattern throughout the film.
Another very successful element of The Gospel is the use of music. The soundtrack (sensitively mixed so that it is somehow on a par with sounds of people and nature) is a bold mix of African folk music, American blues/gospel, Bach and choir music. The sometimes dramatic pieces of music don't stifle the scenes, they bring out something new in what we see.
Actually, The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a good film. Undoubtedly, also a religious one. I.e.: his is NOT Mel Gibson.
PS: The history on philosophers on film is, I think, not a very extensive one. Here, we see Giorgio Agamben acting as one of the disciples!
tisdag 7 december 2010
Things to do in Denver when you're dead (1995)
Things to do in Denver when you're dead is the type of neo-noir that is somehow fun to watch but upon re-watching it you're quite not sure whether you've seen it before, because which neo-noir doesn't have:
a) sickly neon lights
b) a plot driven by men and women are reduced to lovers
c) people end up dead in every second scene
d) a poker-faced Andy Garcia
e) poetic imagery revolving around food
f) a drab place (like Denver)
g) a few lurid jokes
h) mafia talk
i) sleazy diners
j) silly names
k) Steve Buscemi in a minor role, Christopher Walken in another.
l) one ... more .... job (just one more)
a) sickly neon lights
b) a plot driven by men and women are reduced to lovers
c) people end up dead in every second scene
d) a poker-faced Andy Garcia
e) poetic imagery revolving around food
f) a drab place (like Denver)
g) a few lurid jokes
h) mafia talk
i) sleazy diners
j) silly names
k) Steve Buscemi in a minor role, Christopher Walken in another.
l) one ... more .... job (just one more)
måndag 6 december 2010
The Snapper (1993)
The Snapper was released in 1993 and that's exactly what it looks like. It's a movie where everything looks kind of scruffy, kind of worn-down, kind of homey. That's what's so charming about it. A re-make in Hollywood would certainly be impossible: the reason why I love The Snapper is that you get to see Colim Meaney wearing ugly jumpers and that nobody looks as if they have had five nose jobs. Meaney is a good actor (I want to watch The Van again!) - sometimes. Here, he is heart-wrenching as a father who learns something about himself. If there were more films like The Snapper, the world would be a better place. Better beer, too. And philosophical wonder on a par with "how come a dog can have so much shit in it" you will surely fail to find anywhere else...
lördag 4 december 2010
Playtime (1967)
In Playtime, Jacques Tati has constructed yet another world of never-ending mazes and technological monstrosities. This film inhabits a planet of its own. Welcome to Tativille (which cost a fortune to build). Well, if you've seen some of Tati's own productions, you'll know what you are in for. There is no "plot", no "characters" (only one or two have actual names) and no "dialogue" (mostly blurry English) - but it does have world. Most of the time, you'll find yourself busy: just to keep track of what goes on in these medium/long shots takes some effort. A lot goes on, all the time, everywhere (don't forget the blood pressure medication). Playtime is a giant torrent of people, vehicles and eerie noises. This torrent is systematic and perspicuous at first, but towards the end of the film, the order is abolished.
I'm surprised how contemporary Tati's futurist vision feels - Tati could have been the architect of my work place: gray/white/black, steel and glass; endless corridors; every place look like the place next to it, and so on, and so forth. A non-place, a passage, something to travel through, if you have some business there. The people populating Playtime do seem to have "business", at least for a while. But the world of business, errands and intentionality gradually fall apart, and we end up with a joyous and anarchic sense of disintegration.
Mr Hulot - and his umbrella - is the anonymous "hero" of the film (you might recognize him from Mon Oncle). Mr Hulot wreaks havoc. Mr Hulot is hailed by people who seem to know him. Mr Hulot walks from place to place, without seemingly really going anywhere. Do we here him utter any words? Maybe a quiet "yes" or "hello". Mr Hulot is slapstick humor at its classiest.
I know too little about Tati to say anything about the politics about the film. What I know is this: Tati is a far more observant interpreter of the anonymity of modern space than a bunch of conservatives and marxists alike. Like some contemporary critics of modernity, Tati shows us a world in which an airport is hardly distinguishable from a cafe or an office building. Often, it takes some initial work to figure out where the characters are located. Hell - that is an apartment! Wow, it sure looks like .... everything else! Everything looks the same. The diference is that Tati is never whiny. His rendition of modern standardization and technical "progress" never fail to be surprising, moving and disturbing. In Tati's world, humans are never totally immersed in the steel&glass dystopia/utopia; he shows the enormous humorous potential of human reactions of confusion and reverie in the face of escalators, beeping buttons, skyscrapers - and the total indifferent shown by these glorious inventions. Walls are knocked down, doors are bumped into, invisible doors are closed, chairs are messed with, elevators are accidentally boarded, ceilings are ripped apart, floors are destroyed - etc, etc. The interesting thing is that what this surrounding IS will be shown over and over again in a multitude of ways in how people interact with it. Totally indifferent, and yet ---.
I guess Deleuze might have been a fan of this film. Like Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus, Tati places his hopes in disorder, but also in a change of perspective: humans are no longer humans, but a sort of weird appendage to machines. It's just that people are not the slaves of machines. They don't adapt. They don't fit. Nothing fits. The point is that new matches and mismatches emerge all the time, so that new situations appear, but not "situations" in the familiar sense of the word, where a situation has a clear direction. What makes me think of Deleuze (and maybe some marxist situationists, too) is the film's merry purposelessness. For Tati, like for Deleuze, the world is not "going" anywhere. Mr Hulot makes his way through the city - and the city makes its way through Mr Hulot. (If you want to watch a deeply anti-foucaldian film - watch this.) For the first 30 minutes, I thought that Playtime would be a grave attack on urban alienation. Instead, it turned out to be a film about our notorious ways to always inhabit the world, to always make the world our own, no matter how standardized and clinical it appears to be.
Playtime is a mess. But a wonderful one at that. It's one of the most strangely optimistic films I've seen in a long time.
I'm surprised how contemporary Tati's futurist vision feels - Tati could have been the architect of my work place: gray/white/black, steel and glass; endless corridors; every place look like the place next to it, and so on, and so forth. A non-place, a passage, something to travel through, if you have some business there. The people populating Playtime do seem to have "business", at least for a while. But the world of business, errands and intentionality gradually fall apart, and we end up with a joyous and anarchic sense of disintegration.
Mr Hulot - and his umbrella - is the anonymous "hero" of the film (you might recognize him from Mon Oncle). Mr Hulot wreaks havoc. Mr Hulot is hailed by people who seem to know him. Mr Hulot walks from place to place, without seemingly really going anywhere. Do we here him utter any words? Maybe a quiet "yes" or "hello". Mr Hulot is slapstick humor at its classiest.
I know too little about Tati to say anything about the politics about the film. What I know is this: Tati is a far more observant interpreter of the anonymity of modern space than a bunch of conservatives and marxists alike. Like some contemporary critics of modernity, Tati shows us a world in which an airport is hardly distinguishable from a cafe or an office building. Often, it takes some initial work to figure out where the characters are located. Hell - that is an apartment! Wow, it sure looks like .... everything else! Everything looks the same. The diference is that Tati is never whiny. His rendition of modern standardization and technical "progress" never fail to be surprising, moving and disturbing. In Tati's world, humans are never totally immersed in the steel&glass dystopia/utopia; he shows the enormous humorous potential of human reactions of confusion and reverie in the face of escalators, beeping buttons, skyscrapers - and the total indifferent shown by these glorious inventions. Walls are knocked down, doors are bumped into, invisible doors are closed, chairs are messed with, elevators are accidentally boarded, ceilings are ripped apart, floors are destroyed - etc, etc. The interesting thing is that what this surrounding IS will be shown over and over again in a multitude of ways in how people interact with it. Totally indifferent, and yet ---.
I guess Deleuze might have been a fan of this film. Like Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus, Tati places his hopes in disorder, but also in a change of perspective: humans are no longer humans, but a sort of weird appendage to machines. It's just that people are not the slaves of machines. They don't adapt. They don't fit. Nothing fits. The point is that new matches and mismatches emerge all the time, so that new situations appear, but not "situations" in the familiar sense of the word, where a situation has a clear direction. What makes me think of Deleuze (and maybe some marxist situationists, too) is the film's merry purposelessness. For Tati, like for Deleuze, the world is not "going" anywhere. Mr Hulot makes his way through the city - and the city makes its way through Mr Hulot. (If you want to watch a deeply anti-foucaldian film - watch this.) For the first 30 minutes, I thought that Playtime would be a grave attack on urban alienation. Instead, it turned out to be a film about our notorious ways to always inhabit the world, to always make the world our own, no matter how standardized and clinical it appears to be.
Playtime is a mess. But a wonderful one at that. It's one of the most strangely optimistic films I've seen in a long time.
Days of Being Wild (1990)
In Days of Being Wild, the ever-recurring themes of a Wong Kar Wai movie are already present. It's a film about obsessive love, obsessions that spread like a disease, love that doesn't leave its prey in peace but feeds on the heart. Usually, Wong Kar Wai is quite successful in exporing this dark side of "love", but here, it seems to me that only a handful of scenes evoke the appropriate quiet & implicit maelstrom of emotion. Most of the scene baths in a mysterious darkness. Most scenes are composed so that an eerie light is situated somewhere on the edge of the frame. In one scene, we see a girl talking to a police officer doing the night shift. They wander through dark alleys and talk about what goes on in their lives. This is a very good scene. It work just the way it should. I wouldn't consider it an insult to say that Wong Kar Wai makes mood films. It's just that in this film, he doesn't really have the skill to strike the right note. Too many scenes appear unfocused and the conversations seem idle and unncessary. In the best Wong Kar Wai films, every word functions as a dagger. Here, those moments are few.
(One interesting aspect of the film is how it is one of the male characters that is eroticized to an extent that is very unusual in mainstream films, where it is usually female characters that are treated in this way.)
(One interesting aspect of the film is how it is one of the male characters that is eroticized to an extent that is very unusual in mainstream films, where it is usually female characters that are treated in this way.)
Fucking Åmål (1998)
The human faculty of judgement is fickle and unreliable. That was my point of departure as I, a while ago, sat down to re-watch Lucas Moodysson's Fucking Åmål, a film I first saw at the age of 18. 12 years later, I am still impressed by the smooth treatment of the story, the dedication to the characters and a good ear for how kids talk (plus: how hapless adults talk when they try to convince themselves that they mean what they say). The film has just the right kind of restless intensity. No LOL:s, no obvious jokes. Fucking Åmål still strikes me as a good attempt to depict the oppressive habitus of small-town life. Of course, Fucking Åmål has its "feel good"-moments, the application of the blueprint of what a movie about rebellious youth should look like. But Moodysson's film rarely feels like an adaptation of the rule book. It is a likeable film that never patronizes its young characters. Immaturity is never glossed over (this is actually a film in which kids don't talk like small business CEOs), nor is the characters' joy and hope portrayed as the cute yet capricious feelings of people too inexperienced to become jaded and world-weary.
By the way, films where teenagers play the main roles often tend to be written off as less insightful than films about older characters. This is a misconception. I'm not saying this is Shakespeare, it isn't. But it is too easy to fixate a pre-conceived idea on a film like this one. Another misconeption is that adult film-makers cannot make movies about teenagers without becoming creepy voyeurs capitalizing on the innocent lives and lusts of the young ones. Moodysson is no voyeur.
By the way, films where teenagers play the main roles often tend to be written off as less insightful than films about older characters. This is a misconception. I'm not saying this is Shakespeare, it isn't. But it is too easy to fixate a pre-conceived idea on a film like this one. Another misconeption is that adult film-makers cannot make movies about teenagers without becoming creepy voyeurs capitalizing on the innocent lives and lusts of the young ones. Moodysson is no voyeur.
fredag 3 december 2010
Wittgenstein (1992)
Few films about philosophers or philosophy have ever been made. OK, made philosophers are not blockbuster material. Iris hardly counts. Wittgenstein does. Derek Jarman was a director that sometimes made films that were interesting rather than good, but somehow, I have always liked his work. If you know the slightest bit of fact about Jarman's filmography, you will know that Wittgenstein cannot be an example of conventional docu-drama. It's not. Instead, Ludwig W is thrown into a bustling, yet stripped-down, milieu of aristocrat young men, Austrian family members and --- an Über Gewissheit-framed creature from Mars. The film builds on Wittgenstein's life, and if you've read his books, or read some biography about him, you will recognize most of what is said here. Yet, if there are many familiar things that the philosopher can rest her head on while watching Wittgenstein, the style proves all the more striking. This could have been a theatre play. The background is black. The set design is made up of colorful, striking objects. So is the clothing; remarkably lavish and colorful, extravagantly over the top, no single piece of garment displayed in the present film fails to make an impression on the viewer's eye. Except, of course, Wittgenstein's unchanging drab outfit (but no tie!), that mirrors his overall psychological tendencies towards the ascetic.
Wittgenstein employs an eerie sense of humor that is hard to explain. The philosopher whose philosophy was transported from the strict arena of logic to the rough ground of everyday life, is characterized as a person with very mixed attitudes towards "the everyday" in his own life; tired of his aristocratic surroundings, he dreamt of "a simpler life" of work and honesty (not only for himself, but also for his lover). This striving is depicted with a warm, gentle form of humor. Wittgenstein is less a film about this particular philosopher's thoughts than it is a humorous account of an ever-problematic relation between the thinking life, a life of work and a life of leisure and play. In one of the funniest scenes, Wittgenstein is interviewed by a Soviet bureaucrat. Wittgenstein has set his mind on going to the USSR to be - a manual worker. Of course, that doesn't happen. A recurring theme in the film is the idealized image of work within the mind of an aristocrat (even the über-aristocrat Russell seems to take a more sober attitude).
Like Wittgenstein's philosophy (and love of musicals and detective stories) Jarman does not eshew what to most people appears silly. But that particular silliness augments one important quality of the film: its tenderness.
Actually, I found the film to be a rather moving portrait of Wittgenstein. Moving, because it doesn't deal in "genius cult" but rather strips Wittgenstein down to very humane forms of fear, doubt and loneliness.
No matter how much Bertrand Russell's work bore me in real life - I absolutely adore Bertie the character in this film. Plus: Tilda Swinton is (unsurprisingly) making magic with her sheer presence. Ergo: YOU should watch it.
Wittgenstein employs an eerie sense of humor that is hard to explain. The philosopher whose philosophy was transported from the strict arena of logic to the rough ground of everyday life, is characterized as a person with very mixed attitudes towards "the everyday" in his own life; tired of his aristocratic surroundings, he dreamt of "a simpler life" of work and honesty (not only for himself, but also for his lover). This striving is depicted with a warm, gentle form of humor. Wittgenstein is less a film about this particular philosopher's thoughts than it is a humorous account of an ever-problematic relation between the thinking life, a life of work and a life of leisure and play. In one of the funniest scenes, Wittgenstein is interviewed by a Soviet bureaucrat. Wittgenstein has set his mind on going to the USSR to be - a manual worker. Of course, that doesn't happen. A recurring theme in the film is the idealized image of work within the mind of an aristocrat (even the über-aristocrat Russell seems to take a more sober attitude).
Like Wittgenstein's philosophy (and love of musicals and detective stories) Jarman does not eshew what to most people appears silly. But that particular silliness augments one important quality of the film: its tenderness.
Actually, I found the film to be a rather moving portrait of Wittgenstein. Moving, because it doesn't deal in "genius cult" but rather strips Wittgenstein down to very humane forms of fear, doubt and loneliness.
No matter how much Bertrand Russell's work bore me in real life - I absolutely adore Bertie the character in this film. Plus: Tilda Swinton is (unsurprisingly) making magic with her sheer presence. Ergo: YOU should watch it.
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
A man drives a big car through a herd of sheep. The man is hollering, "hello, hello" into his ancient mobile phone. The car trudges up a hill. The man steps out of the car and starts talking in the phone with his employer. Everything is wrong. His project is stuck. Gently, he kicks a turtle that happens to walk by. The camera focuses on the turtle. The car drives away. The camera zooms in the turtle again. The turtle starts to abscond from the camera.
This is one of the brilliant scenes from Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, a slightly absurd study of frustration and human encounters. A group of men, we are not sure of their profession, arrive in a village. Something is to be done. The only man we see in-camera, a slightly dour middleaged man, mostly trods along aimlessly in the village, talking to people, asking for milk, asking about the old lady who is rumoured to be dying. Why is he inquiring about the lady all the time? Eventually, it is clear that they are to document a mourning ceremony, if only the woman were to die...
Nothing much happens in the film. We see almost the same scene repeating over and over again, ritualistically. The man drives up the hill, and down the hill again. Make no mistake: Kiarostami does not bore us. His film, one might call it a comedy, is full of life. Of course, I am not a speak of the languages spoken of the film, so should not really say this, but from the contexts, it seems as if language is used very fluidly here, not as a conveyor of information, but as a part of the life people are living, the way the understand one another, or don't.
This is one of the brilliant scenes from Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, a slightly absurd study of frustration and human encounters. A group of men, we are not sure of their profession, arrive in a village. Something is to be done. The only man we see in-camera, a slightly dour middleaged man, mostly trods along aimlessly in the village, talking to people, asking for milk, asking about the old lady who is rumoured to be dying. Why is he inquiring about the lady all the time? Eventually, it is clear that they are to document a mourning ceremony, if only the woman were to die...
Nothing much happens in the film. We see almost the same scene repeating over and over again, ritualistically. The man drives up the hill, and down the hill again. Make no mistake: Kiarostami does not bore us. His film, one might call it a comedy, is full of life. Of course, I am not a speak of the languages spoken of the film, so should not really say this, but from the contexts, it seems as if language is used very fluidly here, not as a conveyor of information, but as a part of the life people are living, the way the understand one another, or don't.
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