Ex Libris, et cetera

Given filmmaker and subject, there was little chance I wasn’t going to love Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (MC-91, NFX).  Predictably, I fell hard.  Frederick Wiseman is the unchallenged master of the institutional documentary, and in my view (and perhaps Wiseman’s) the library is the most representative institution of a democracy.  New York, the Public, the Library – all subjects dear to his heart, and to mine.  This is unquestionably my pick for Best Documentary of 2017, though I don’t believe any of Wiseman’s films have ever been nominated, even if he did receive an honorary Oscar in 2016 (check out his puckish acceptance speech).  He’s the ultimate fly on the wall, and lets scenes unfold at length without explication, and without any editorial intervention beyond shot selection, juxtaposition, and pacing.  His method is unvarying; his subjects diverse, but similar in the complexity of interlocking parts; the fascination of watching what he wants to show us is unfailing.  I confess to almost never viewing a three-hour-plus Wiseman film all in one sitting, not because I am ever bored, but rather because I am full up, sated for the time being, needing time to digest, and to refresh my attention.  Much of the film is devoted to the iconic building at 5^th and 42^nd, with the lions out front and Bryant Park out back, but many outlying and specialized branches are visited, including the Bronx Library Center designed by the firm of my architect friend William Stein.  You find yourself at meetings where none of the participants is identified, and at lectures where the speaker is unknown unless familiar from other contexts.  You are thrown back on your own resources of interpretation, though Wiseman is a subtle silent guide.  If you know his films, you must see the latest, but if you don’t, this would be an excellent place to start your acquaintance with one of my very favorite filmmakers.

I recently caught up with two Wiseman films that I’d never had the chance to see before:  Central Park from 1989, and Belfast, Maine from 1999.  These confirm that Wiseman’s work is all of one piece – and all of one quality, excellence – and by now his older films go beyond historical documentation to palpable time travel.  I’ve been following his career for fifty years, as a fellow Williams alum.  Too bad the availability of his films has been so limited, but there is now a representative sampling of DVDs on Netflix and streaming availability on Kanopy for cardholders of participating libraries.

The remainder of this post will be an omnium gatherum of loose ends – films or shows I’ve watched in the past year but never got around to commenting on.  But before the jump, I have to enter recommendations for a few streaming series that I’ve been absorbed in lately.

The Detectorists (BCG, NFX, Acorn) is a subtle, gentle, award-winning British comedy written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, who stars alongside Toby Jones.  The marvelous odd-couple pair spend their days in low-key bantering, out with their metal detectors crisscrossing fields in bucolic Essex, with pints at the pub afterward, and attending meetings with their strange-funny fellows at the detecting club.  This is one of those shows where the pleasures of making it – the people, the place, the material – show through.  The first two seasons stream on Netflix, but the third and apparently final season is only on Acorn (similar to Doc Martin in that respect, as well as others).

Sorry, but to describe the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country (MC-75, NFX), I have to recall Jean Renoir’s rusty but trusty truism, “The terrible thing about life is this: everyone has his reasons.”  Directed by brothers Chapman and MacLain Way, these six-plus hours follow the fate of Rajneeshpuram, a large early-1980s commune in central Oregon.  Though extensive archival news footage shows the media sensation the “free-love cult” became, I was happy in watching the series that I did not know how the story turned out, which left me open to the twists of the tale, and free to change my mind about the central characters over and over again.  On the one hand the direction seems try-anything and somewhat intrusive, like the music, but on the other hand it lets the characters unfold through their own words and memories, as juxtaposed to ample documentation from thirty-odd years ago.  The conflict between the Rajneeshees and the townspeople led to government intervention, and all three sides maintain their sides of the story to this day.  While the guru remains an enigmatic cipher, his steel-willed personal secretary is a fascinating paradox, either visionary or psychopath, or maybe both, an Indian woman we see then and now, as ruthless young go-getter and grandmotherly humanitarian.  It’s up to the viewer to unpack truths stranger than fiction.  This is not a documentary that tells you what to think, but one that presents lots of conflicting testimony and evidence and lets you decide who and what to believe, in an odd, but often repeated, sidelight of American history.

Though Hulu scored big with The Handmaid’s Tale (which I abandoned halfway through the first season), I took their month’s free trial to watch The Looming Tower (MC-74, Hulu).  Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer-winning book was the one that informed my initial understanding of Al-Qaeda and the lead-up to 9/11, and he remains a much respected journalist, so his involvement here was key for me.  The actors also drew me in – led by Jeff Daniels, Peter Sarsgaard, and Michael Stuhlbarg, though others less known perform equally well, as do name directors in several episodes.  In transition from book to screen, the emphasis shifts from the background of Islamic fundamentalism to American police procedural (or failure to proceed, given lack of cooperation between CIA and FBI), with some romantic complications added gratuitously.  Nonetheless, both stories track toward their familiar confrontation, but remain continuously involving.  The location shooting budget must have been substantial, and the intermix of documentary and drama works quite well.  I was reminded of Olivier Assayas’ outstanding Carlos trilogy.

The rest of this post will comprise brief comments on a number of films, mostly documentary, that I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend, but did not regret watching.  The first is perhaps the most surprising.  As with O.J., JonBenet was a sensational first-name murder case that I resolutely avoided paying any attention to.  With both, recent documentaries made the case interesting in retrospect.  Some favorable comment and Netflix availability (plus their track record with documentaries) led me to Casting JonBenet (MC-74, NFX), which piles gimmick on gimmick to come up with something quite substantial.  Director Kitty Green invites people in the Boulder community to audition for parts in a movie about the 1996 murder, and each brings a batch of memories and baggage to their interpretations of the central roles.  The result is a Pirandellian exercise (or is it Brechtian? – theater is not my strong suit) that I was happy to puzzle along with.

This goes back a ways, but I was so enraptured by the second season of The Crown that I sampled some of Netflix’s collateral programming, and found the six episodes of The Royal House of Windsor (NFX) well worth watching, more substantial history than celebrity-gazing.

Though never a fan of the subject, that Netflix track record also led me to Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (MC-72, NFX).  Always interesting to follow a writer’s career, but I’m still not a fan.  On the other hand, Arthur Miller: Writer (MC-81, HBO) certainly did enhance my understanding and appreciation for the author, though I approached the film through my appreciation of its director, his daughter Rebecca Miller.  The career arc of very early success and celebrity, and the lifelong effort to remain relevant as a writer even when public attention has turned elsewhere, made for a most interesting and intimate story.  It’s a privilege to listen in on conversations between father and daughter, author and director.

In My Journey Through French Cinema (MC-87, NFX), director Bertrand Tavernier takes his cue from Martin Scorsese and mixes cinema history with autobiography, through the great filmmakers he worked with and the films that inspired him.  The survey is extensive, three-plus hours of clips and commentary, but deeply personal rather than comprehensive, likely to be more satisfying to the knowledgeable than to the neophyte.  I (and my favorite critics) lapped it all up, but I can’t speak for others.

A different movie story will have wider appeal.  As a legendary screen goddess, she was never one I worshipped, but nonetheless, I took an interest in Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (MC-70, NFX), both for the review of a career I knew little about, and the career few knew anything about.  The film is not so much about her films, her beauty, her scandals and celebrity, as about her intelligence and persistence.  A lifelong inventor, Lamarr was awarded a patent for a communications innovation, which she gave the U.S. military as a contribution to the war effort against the Nazis.  “Frequency hopping” as a security device is now fundamental to all wireless technology.  Even the prettiest of faces is not just that.

While on the subject of beautiful and intelligent women, screen goddesses worthy of worship, I have to mention Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (2015, MC-75, NFX), which is a shrine I was happy to visit.  Her own words – read by her contemporary avatar Alicia Vikander – and her own pictures and home movies, as well as interviews with her children, make for an intimate portrait of the great, bold actress, whose career careened from Sweden to Germany to Hollywood to Italy to France and finally England, brilliant in all languages.

I suspect it was looking up Vikander’s credits that led me to this documentary, which in turn led me back to Bergman’s films.  I may do a more comprehensive retrospective at some point, but for now I just watched her first and last major starring roles.  I’d never seen Intermezzo (1939, NFX), the Hollywood remake of her biggest Swedish hit, in which she plays a young piano accompanist to famous violinist Leslie Howard.  On tour they fall in love, but Howard is married with children, so heartbreak is in the cards, played to weeping strings.  The film is fairly standard romantic melodrama, but Ingrid Bergman is luminous.

As she remains, though darkly so, in Autumn Sonata (1978, NFX), returning to Swedish to play Liv Ullmann’s mother in Ingmar Bergman’s film.  In this at-last meeting of the two great Bergmans, she is again a renowned pianist, who has largely abandoned her now-grown children to pursue her art around the world.  As the documentary shows, Ingrid had plenty of personal experience to go on, and delivers a powerful performance.  Meanwhile Liv, who has made a life of her own as a parson’s wife, shrinks in the shadow of her illustrious but chilling mother.  Very Bergman-esque – Ingmar, that is – the film is a painful dissection of human interaction, but as a chamber piece with three giant artists working at their best, it has a genuine humanity.  Even if the extras on the Criterion disk demonstrate that the principals did not get along at all.

The rest of this post will deal with a few revivals and rediscoveries.  Don’t remember what led me to catch up with The Selfish Giant (2013, MC-83, NFX), but it was a good call.  Director Clio Barnard delivers rough stuff, but worth it.  Two boys on the scrap heap of Bradford, England, scrape to get by stealing metal for an evil scrap dealer.  Is there a way out for either of them, or is their fate sealed?  The nonprofessional performances are astounding, viscerally alive, even if doomed.  I’d call this kitchen sink neorealism, except that those boys would just make off with that kitchen sink, take it down to the junk yard.  Barnard finds loveliness in the most unlikely places, and hope in a pit of despair.

A couple of film revivals got brief write-ups in the New Yorker, so I tracked them down.  Little Fugitive (1953, MC-91, NFX), made by the photographer couple Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, is a crossroads milestone in cinema history, between Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, between Cassavetes-style American independents and cinema verité, not to mention “Our Gang” comedies and street photography in general.  Beautifully shot on Coney Island and the streets of Brooklyn, mostly with a hidden camera, it works as a city-symphony documentary, but also as a naturalistic character study of an 8-year-old boy, on the run because he’s been tricked into thinking he killed his older brother.  Well worth seeing for its own sake, the film is an essential part of cinema history.

Can’t say the same for Born in Flames (1983, NFX), which nonetheless seemed mighty timely and topical, despite datedness.  Directed by Lizzie Borden, whom I remember well from Working Girls, a gritty feminist study of prostitution, this film depicts a post-revolutionary America, where women are still an embattled part of the underclass.  Two female empowerment groups run radio stations, one black, one white, but they eventually join forces with a Women’s Army, which mounts an attack on the World Trade Center.  The film is a mishmash, but thought-provoking.

Before a trip to Lyme Regis, I revisited two films with memorable scenes that take place on the Cobb, its serpentine stone pier dating to medieval times.   I liked each as much or more than the first time I saw them.  Persuasion (1995, NFX) has always been one of my favorite film adaptations from Jane Austen.  Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds are still great, as are costumes and location, but the HD revolution has set a visual standard for these period pieces that this film predates (or maybe the DVD I saw was not so great).  Still, few adaptations are as true to Austen’s spirit as this.

In Karel Reisz’s French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981, NFX), adapted by Harold Pinter from the John Fowles novel, a very young Meryl Streep is a Pre-Raphaelite dream, which enchants gentleman paleontologist Jeremy Irons.  In a Pinteresque twist on Fowles’ binocular narrative viewpoint – then overlaid by now – there is a parallel tale of the two them playing the actors playing the characters in the period movie.  So the film ably conveys both the Victorian melodrama and the ironic post-modern parallel story.  And oh Meryl, the screen goddess of my generation!

Soon to follow, a post to wrap up and tie a bow on the films of 2017, but thereafter I intend to spend more of my time viewing favorites from the past, rather than trying to keep up with (near-)current releases.