Filmmaker Steven J. Ross will bring his just-completed feature-length documentary -- Winslow Homer: Society and Solitude -- to the Clark for a special advance screening in the auditorium at 7:30 pm on Friday, June 29th. Mr. Ross is previewing his film at select museums and colleges connected with the project, before general release and broadcast on television. He will be on hand to comment and answer questions after the showing.
The Clark’s marvelous collection of Winslow Homer work figures prominently in the film, as do a number of scholars associated with the Clark. But beyond any parochial interest, the film makes a case for Homer as an essential American master. While surveying a prodigious array of his work in illustration and painting, it tells the story of his life but also sketches the pivotal period of American life represented. Steve Ross has made a film that is visually, intellectually, and emotionally rich, and this is a remarkable opportunity to get an advance look.
The Winslow Homer biography will culminate a Clark film series called “Documenting Artists: Portraits in Film,” composed of documentary features on artists, all shown on Fridays at 7:30 in June. The Clark is trying an untraditional timeslot to make the films available to a wider audience, but except for the final filmmaker’s presentation each will also be shown at the regular Fridays at 4:00 slot. As usual, admission to films at the Clark is free.
June 8, 4:00 & 7:30: Michelangelo: Self-Portrait. (1989, 85 min.) Robert Snyder expands upon two earlier films (including his 1950 Oscar-winner The Titan) in which the camera swoons around the master’s work, adding a narration of Michelangelo’s own words and music by Monteverdi, for an enveloping and revelatory experience.
June 15, 4:00 & 7:30: Vincent: The Life & Death of Vincent Van Gogh. (1987, 99 min.) Paul Cox searches into Van Gogh’s paintings and the places he painted them, creating a canvas for his own intensely introspective portrait of the tortured artist, expressed in the words of Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo.
June 22, 4:00 & 7:30: The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. (2004, 90 min.) Amy Stechler conveys both the life and the times, but moreover the art, of the iconic Mexican painter, in all her painful beauty and tempestuous emotion, through well-chosen archival footage, eyewitness testimony, expert commentary, and close examination of the paintings themselves.
June 29, 7:30 only: Winslow Homer: Society and Solitude. (2007, 105 min.) Steve Ross focuses on the sweep of Homer’s work to illuminate his life, and also essential aspects of an America in historic transition, from the lively early engravings for Harper’s Weekly, through the crucible of Civil War, to a nostalgia for a childlike rural America, a clear-eyed look at the ex-slave’s view of Reconstruction, and on to the natural beauty of the Adirondacks and other landscapes, to reach apotheosis in the seascapes of Homer’s late lonely eminence at Prout’s Neck in Maine, so well represented in the Clark’s own collection.
This series is intended to celebrate not only the lives and works of artists through film, but also the art of documentary filmmaking itself, with each film exemplary in a distinctive manner, capped by the actual presence of an artful director/producer to conclude the survey.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Unknown White Male
A meaningful meditation on memory, this film has been derided by some as a hoax, simply because it seems unbelievable. There is a certain convenience in this case of complete retrograde amnesia happening to Doug Bruce -- handsome, clever, and rich, with lots of beautiful friends in beautiful places -- who happens to have a buddy in filmmaker Rupert Murray. And I would certainly suspect a psychological etiology for the ailment, which is essentially a chance to start one’s life over, simply re-boot and begin again with an empty hard drive, but with all your programs and features in place. But it hardly matters if the anomaly is made up or discovered, since it still raises such interesting questions about memory and identity, mind and brain. Are we the product of our experiences, or is there something essentially us that would remain if our pasts were utterly erased? Despite a suspicious similarity to Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this film seems authentic enough to be ponderable. The testimony of neuroscientists is interesting nonetheless, mysterious in its own right. The breakdown of amnesia into anecdotal, semantic, and operational is instructive, even if it seems implausible in effect. So anyway, this guy emerges from a fugue state on the subway to Coney Island, with no idea of who he is or how he got there, with no ID and even less recollection than Alberto Gonzales. What follows is the highly mediated story of his starting over and trying to piece together his past. In contrast to Iraq in Fragments, here I thought the stylized camerawork and editing contributed to the documentary’s sense of authenticity, since it conveyed the disoriented state of the subject in an artful way. Who knows, maybe I was hoodwinked, but that hardly makes me think less of the film. (2006, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-65.)
Iraq in Fragments
This highly-personal documentary by James Longley comes with multiple Sundance awards plus an Oscar nomination, and is well worth seeing if you can take the pain of witnessing our misguided war from the other side. Working virtually by himself from start to finish, except for translators and other support staff, Longley creates a film that is brave and revelatory, but also aestheticized and, well, fragmentary. The arty compositions, editing gimmicks, and tricky sound design somehow work against the patent authenticity of the endeavor. Maybe the jump cuts, slo-mo, and MTV editing were required to make the on-the-fly shooting work, but they seem distracting. Longley achieved amazing access both before and after the war, something impossible to duplicate now in the spiraling chaos, and fashions three segments: about a Sunni boy in Baghdad who is essentially an indentured servant to a bullying mechanic, about Shia insurgency in “Sadr’s South”, and a relatively pastoral view of the Kurdish north. Though only an occasional tank or humvee appears in passing in this Iraqi eye view, what holds all three episodes together is resentment of the American occupier. There have been plenty of journalists embedded with American troops, but it take a James Longley to witness a self-flagellation ritual by Moqtada supporters or go on a Mahdi Army action against vendors of alcohol in a local bazaar. (2006, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-84.)
Year of the Dog
As a first-time director, Mike White does not have the courage of his weirdness to the extent he did as writer and actor in Chuck & Buck, and does not have the pizzaz of, say, a Richard Linklater directing his script for School of Rock. So this film winds up as neither funny enough nor strange enough, neither sweet or sour, hot or cold. It’s just not crazy or true enough, which makes for a surprisingly long 90 minutes. Which is not to say there aren’t good things in it. Molly Shannon is quite convincing as the 40ish singleton driven quietly mad by the death of her beloved beagle, and is well supported by the likes of Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Dern. But shtick undermines plausibility at some points, and the story begins to seem arbitrarily constructed, rather than discovered in all its quirks and eye-opening twists. (2007, Images, n.) *5+* (MC-71.)
TV docs
No, not that kind. I’m not talking about the long line running from Dr. Kildare to Dr. McDreamy, but rather nonfiction films on television. I’ve been watching a lot of them lately, and along with the new baseball season and basketball playoffs (both hopeful this year for a long-suffering Cleveland sport fan), they’ve been cutting into my film-watching. Here’s a brief report.
I’ve plugged it a few times already, but I have to insist: Planet Earth is must viewing, either as broadcast on the Discovery Channel with narration by Sigourney Weaver, or on DVD with BBC narration by David Attenborough. I prefer her to him, less plummy, more straightforward, but the nature photography is stunning either way, a real argument for High Definition TV. The dozen or so hour-long programs are highly miscellaneous, without much scientific coherence, but cumulatively a vivid picture emerges of the diversity and hunger of life, and how that diversity of hungers is fed by the diversity of our one planet -- the ingenuity of evolution, the marvelous, manifold ways living things have found to survive and reproduce.
Another documentary series with a far less exhilarating theme, and much wider variation in quality was the PBS series, “America at the Crossroads.” I couldn’t bear to watch more than a minute of Richard Perle’s feeble re-assertion of righteousness, and several other films sinned against the art of documentary in my view, but there were two worth looking for and at. The Men Behind Jihad was basically a visual recapitulation of the argument of Lawrence Wright’s essential book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and he appears prominently as a talking head, but the film puts together a lot of archival footage that illustrates the story well. And Operation Homecoming was a moving and informative view of the Iraq experience from the perspective of American soldiers.
A Crude Awakening, airing on Sundance channel, was an entertaining and eye-opening summary of America’s addiction to oil.
Putting together a continuing series at the Clark on “Documenting Artists,” I had occasion to look at two films that appeared on the PBS series, “American Masters.” From Ric Burns, in the familiar vein that he has worked with his brother Ken and independently, comes Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006), which at four hours is inflated both in rhetoric and running time, but still makes the case for Warhol’s importance as an artist, while showing how the shy, strange boy from Pittsburgh came to define fame and celebrity in late 20th century America. Norman Rockwell: Painting America (1999) is more modest in every respect, but also fills in the life story of another sort of American artistic icon, even while favoring us with the “expert” testimony of Steven Spielberg and the like.
Just to justify my dearth of film reviews lately, let me note that I also watched the new DVD release of the recent BBC miniseries of George Eliot’s novel, Daniel Deronda, which was good of its kind, but if you want to immerse yourself in an adaptation of a Victorian novel, then I strongly reaffirm my suggestion of last year’s Bleak House, recently rebroadcast and now on DVD.
While enumerating my visual distractions, let me note that I am keeping up with the new HBO seasons of The Sopranos and Entourage, but will save comment till they conclude.
I’ve plugged it a few times already, but I have to insist: Planet Earth is must viewing, either as broadcast on the Discovery Channel with narration by Sigourney Weaver, or on DVD with BBC narration by David Attenborough. I prefer her to him, less plummy, more straightforward, but the nature photography is stunning either way, a real argument for High Definition TV. The dozen or so hour-long programs are highly miscellaneous, without much scientific coherence, but cumulatively a vivid picture emerges of the diversity and hunger of life, and how that diversity of hungers is fed by the diversity of our one planet -- the ingenuity of evolution, the marvelous, manifold ways living things have found to survive and reproduce.
Another documentary series with a far less exhilarating theme, and much wider variation in quality was the PBS series, “America at the Crossroads.” I couldn’t bear to watch more than a minute of Richard Perle’s feeble re-assertion of righteousness, and several other films sinned against the art of documentary in my view, but there were two worth looking for and at. The Men Behind Jihad was basically a visual recapitulation of the argument of Lawrence Wright’s essential book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and he appears prominently as a talking head, but the film puts together a lot of archival footage that illustrates the story well. And Operation Homecoming was a moving and informative view of the Iraq experience from the perspective of American soldiers.
A Crude Awakening, airing on Sundance channel, was an entertaining and eye-opening summary of America’s addiction to oil.
Putting together a continuing series at the Clark on “Documenting Artists,” I had occasion to look at two films that appeared on the PBS series, “American Masters.” From Ric Burns, in the familiar vein that he has worked with his brother Ken and independently, comes Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006), which at four hours is inflated both in rhetoric and running time, but still makes the case for Warhol’s importance as an artist, while showing how the shy, strange boy from Pittsburgh came to define fame and celebrity in late 20th century America. Norman Rockwell: Painting America (1999) is more modest in every respect, but also fills in the life story of another sort of American artistic icon, even while favoring us with the “expert” testimony of Steven Spielberg and the like.
Just to justify my dearth of film reviews lately, let me note that I also watched the new DVD release of the recent BBC miniseries of George Eliot’s novel, Daniel Deronda, which was good of its kind, but if you want to immerse yourself in an adaptation of a Victorian novel, then I strongly reaffirm my suggestion of last year’s Bleak House, recently rebroadcast and now on DVD.
While enumerating my visual distractions, let me note that I am keeping up with the new HBO seasons of The Sopranos and Entourage, but will save comment till they conclude.
Valmont
Though wobbly in tone and language, Milos Forman’s adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons makes it into my Fragonard-related film series at the Clark next Fall simply on the basis of costume and set design. This is a lovely film to look at, and will look great projected widescreen on the museum wall. Made at the same time as Stephen Frears’ version of the 1782 Laclos novel, Valmont ceded priority and esteem to the bravura ensemble of Glenn Close-John Malkovich-Michelle Pfieffer-Uma Thurman. Here the characters are embodied by Annette Bening-Colin Firth-Meg Tilly-Fairuza Balk -- not bad but no match -- their lines have little flavor of period or place, and there’s more bedroom farce than revelation of malevolence and decadence. But oh those locations, dresses, decor! (1989, dvd, n.) *6*
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Reader advisory
I’ve been hither and yon lately, but I assure you I have no intention of abandoning Cinema Salon. On the contrary, I am planning new features. So please bookmark the site and please come back.
And please contact me with comments and/or suggestions (or even heckling) at: ssatullo@clarkart.edu. I am eager to make the site more useful and appealing. Now that Google has improved the Blogger search function, I urge you to use the search box at the top of the page, for ready access to my commentary on a given film or director or actor, to compare opinions or seek recommendations.
I am curious whether other features would make Cinema Salon more attractive. The name was supposed to betoken a discussion website, but I turned the comment feature off when it filled with spam. Now I have seen a number of sites where threaded commentary works well, and I wonder whether a moderated discussion by registered users would be worthwhile? Technical simpleton that I am, I am also contemplating late adoption of another common blog feature, in making a live link from the Metacritic rating I append to most reviews.
As for my own rating system, I will restate my rationale. My 10-point ranking compares neatly with Metacritic’s 100-point scale, though arrived at quite differently. Without pretense to collective objectivity, my ratings are unabashedly subjective, though I like to think they are offered with an informed subjectivity. But I don’t imagine that I am assigning some objective value to a film, but rather my particular response to a particular screening in a particular situation. It might alter considerably upon re-viewing. I wish only to share my enthusiasms and offer my caveats. So here’s what my scale implies:
*5* = B-. Anything less should be taken as a warning, since life is too short to spend on the less than good.
*6* = B. Definitely worth seeing, if you have the time and interest and opportunity.
*7* = B+. Recommended viewing, worth looking for.
*8* = A-. Among the best films of any given year, worth seeking out.
*9* = A. Among the best films of all time, must viewing.
*10* = A+. Go and see this, then come and talk to me about the art of film.
And please contact me with comments and/or suggestions (or even heckling) at: ssatullo@clarkart.edu. I am eager to make the site more useful and appealing. Now that Google has improved the Blogger search function, I urge you to use the search box at the top of the page, for ready access to my commentary on a given film or director or actor, to compare opinions or seek recommendations.
I am curious whether other features would make Cinema Salon more attractive. The name was supposed to betoken a discussion website, but I turned the comment feature off when it filled with spam. Now I have seen a number of sites where threaded commentary works well, and I wonder whether a moderated discussion by registered users would be worthwhile? Technical simpleton that I am, I am also contemplating late adoption of another common blog feature, in making a live link from the Metacritic rating I append to most reviews.
As for my own rating system, I will restate my rationale. My 10-point ranking compares neatly with Metacritic’s 100-point scale, though arrived at quite differently. Without pretense to collective objectivity, my ratings are unabashedly subjective, though I like to think they are offered with an informed subjectivity. But I don’t imagine that I am assigning some objective value to a film, but rather my particular response to a particular screening in a particular situation. It might alter considerably upon re-viewing. I wish only to share my enthusiasms and offer my caveats. So here’s what my scale implies:
*5* = B-. Anything less should be taken as a warning, since life is too short to spend on the less than good.
*6* = B. Definitely worth seeing, if you have the time and interest and opportunity.
*7* = B+. Recommended viewing, worth looking for.
*8* = A-. Among the best films of any given year, worth seeking out.
*9* = A. Among the best films of all time, must viewing.
*10* = A+. Go and see this, then come and talk to me about the art of film.
Clean
Maggie Cheung plays a cross between Yoko Ono and Courtney Love, in this film by her ex-husband Olivier Assayas. It says something about her appeal and skill as an actress that she makes such a grating personality into a sympathetic character -- she has presence and conveys feeling. Nick Nolte contributes a mannered but effective performance, as the father of Maggie’s OD’ed rock star husband, and guardian of the son she is too strung out to take care of. She struggles to get off drugs and put her life together, maybe for the first time, and he offers a message of forgiveness and redemption, played out in small steps and tiny gestures. Assayas’ style is intimate but visually exciting, and he’s got a subtle but sure touch with writing and direction. Can people change for the better? This film holds out a modest hope. Will be interesting to compare to Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-75.)
One Bright Shining Moment
“The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern” is the subtitle of Stephen Vittoria’s documentary. Though the man himself may be forgotten, the term “McGovernite” remains a term of abuse and ridicule in general political discourse, but I remember him with great fondness and regret, so I was happy for this film to resurrect memories and buff up the image of the “prairie populist,” the “right from the start” preacher man “too decent to be President.” The time is still too vivid for me to be in need of much recall, but it was good to hear from McGovern himself both then and now. The film is unabashedly partisan, to its own detriment, but the Vietnam-Iraq parallel does not have to be heavily underlined for the contemporary relevance of this documentary to be painfully obvious. If only we’d listened to George then, we wouldn’t be afflicted by W. now. Sigh. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-64.)
Overlord
This semi-documentary about D-Day won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, but wasn’t released in the U.S. till 2006, probably just as a promo for the now-released Criterion Collection DVD. With a small sample of reviews, it ranked absurdly high on Metacritic’s averaged ranking of the best films of the year. Maybe if I were able to read the liner notes by my old acquaintance (and now ubiquitous film critic) Kent Jones, I might have been more convinced of the importance of this film, but having only the dvd from Netflix, I have to say my response was lukewarm. As a use of Imperial War Museum film archives, it did not satisfy as much as the World At War tv series, which I watched religiously way back when, and can still summon the memory of the music and Laurence Olivier’s narration, behind the footage brought back by some amazingly brave and composed combat cameramen. Here, a slender story of one British soldier from conscription to just the moment before hitting the beach at Normandy is interwoven almost seamlessly by director Stuart Cooper with vintage documentary footage. The rigors of training and then of waiting, without any knowledge or control over your own fate, are most effectively portrayed. The contemporaneous horrors of war come almost as nightmare to the young soldier awaiting deployment, along with premonitions of his own death. It’s an honorable effort but the staged scenes are a little skimpy; what stands out is the documentary footage, and that makes me want (but dread) to watch World At War all over again. (1975, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-88.)
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
3 Cyranos
The character of Cyrano is so familiar, in the common coin of cultural currency, that it came as a surprise to find that I didn’t really know the play at all, aside from the basic premise. And an even greater surprise to find out how deep and resonant it is. I couldn’t have told you that Rostand’s play premiered in 1897, that it was written in Alexandrine verse, or that it was considered the last great popular historical romance. So the 1990 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau and starring Gerard Depardieu came as a revelation to me, most in how close to home the theme felt -- the fond hope that beauty of language may be more attractive than beauty of person, closer to the soul. Lavishly produced and festooned with awards, this French production is meticulous in its recreation of a 17th century milieu. The music of the language comes through even when one knows little French, and the subtitles written by Anthony Burgess effectively transmit the poetic meaning. This film made Depardieu an international star (after he had made 80 of his 160 films to date), and he is both an imposing and a wistful presence, swashbuckling and sensitive, up to rousing action and to plaintive retreat as well. And it’s easy to fall for Roxanne in the person of Anne Brochet. All round, an impeccable adaptation. *8+*
Jose Ferrer won a Best Actor Oscar for the 1950 Hollywood version of Cyrano de Bergerac and his way with the poetry in translation makes this highly watchable as well, sticking close to the play itself, or at least to the French movie. The other credits are unfamiliar, but while Michael Gordon’s direction is workaday, stage-set stuff, Mala Powers was good enough as Roxanne to make one wonder why she didn’t have much of a career thereafter. All round, an honorable adaptation. *7+*
So then I went back and watched Steve Martin as an updated Cyrano in Roxanne (1987), which was probably my only direct acquaintance with the character heretofore. It’s certainly charming enough as a contemporary romantic comedy, with Fred Schepisi directing well in a Rocky Mountain town setting and Darryl Hannah as charming as Roxanne (Kowalski, in this case) as she was as a mermaid in Splash, but just as imaginary. Martin as scriptwriter jettisons most of the plot and all of the poetry, retaining a few bravura scenes and some of that wistful faith in the power of words. His fire chief C.D. Bales is as adept as the traditional Cyrano in some ways, though in others the film is somewhat slapsticky. Still, a competent and amusing effort, which suffers only by close comparison to the original. *7-*
Jose Ferrer won a Best Actor Oscar for the 1950 Hollywood version of Cyrano de Bergerac and his way with the poetry in translation makes this highly watchable as well, sticking close to the play itself, or at least to the French movie. The other credits are unfamiliar, but while Michael Gordon’s direction is workaday, stage-set stuff, Mala Powers was good enough as Roxanne to make one wonder why she didn’t have much of a career thereafter. All round, an honorable adaptation. *7+*
So then I went back and watched Steve Martin as an updated Cyrano in Roxanne (1987), which was probably my only direct acquaintance with the character heretofore. It’s certainly charming enough as a contemporary romantic comedy, with Fred Schepisi directing well in a Rocky Mountain town setting and Darryl Hannah as charming as Roxanne (Kowalski, in this case) as she was as a mermaid in Splash, but just as imaginary. Martin as scriptwriter jettisons most of the plot and all of the poetry, retaining a few bravura scenes and some of that wistful faith in the power of words. His fire chief C.D. Bales is as adept as the traditional Cyrano in some ways, though in others the film is somewhat slapsticky. Still, a competent and amusing effort, which suffers only by close comparison to the original. *7-*
Notes on a Scandal
Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett -- ’nuff said. They’re not the only good things about this film, but they are a sufficient recommendation. As directed by Richard Eyre from a Patrick Marber adaptation of a Zoe Heller novel, it surmounts two liabilities going in, a spoken narration and an overbearing musical score by Phillip Glass, until the conclusion resorts to histrionics instead of a quiet chill of psychological menace. But you’re in fascinating company with Dame Judi and babe Cate, the former an old battle-ax of a history teacher and the latter a novice art teacher at a London high school, who fall in with each other out of asymmetric need. Dench needs the companionship of a protege, needs to touch the life and person of a younger woman; Blanchett needs the excitement she missed when at 20 she married an older man and disappeared into motherhood, needs the touch of a younger man -- much younger, a 15 year old student of hers. The older woman wants to be a confidante, but settles for emotional blackmail when she discovers the younger woman’s affair. It’s a game of cat and mouse that turns into a fur-flying cat fight. Again, the two stars save the film, because they make their basically odious characters intriguing and even sympathetic (something an accomplished quartet could not do with the misanthopic Marber’s script for Closer.) They each get a quiet scene at the end, but not before things get very noisy indeed. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-73.)
Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World.)
Subdued but ravishing, this Alain Corneau film makes the case for music not just as the essence of human feeling, but as a way to raise the dead, literally a resurrection of spirit. Gerard Depardieu is court composer to Louis XIV, and though resplendent in ribbons and lace amidst the Baroque splendor of Versailles, he owes his soul to his severe mentor on the viola da gamba. He recalls his teacher in extended flashback in which his character is played by Depardieu’s own son, Guillaume. Jean-Pierre Marielle is the old Jansenist who becomes even more hermetic on the sudden death of his beautiful young wife, and neglects his two young daughters except for their musical education. Anne Brochet is the elder, who falls in love with the younger Depardieu, who insinuates himself into the master’s household but lacks the feeling to reciprocate in full. Later, after success at court, the older Depardieu is mortified into renewed submission to the tutelage of his master, now stripped of all human connection except through his music. A still life painting figures in the story as a parallel to music in art, nature morte indeed, and the cinematography by Yves Angelo is painterly in the extreme. Though I put together this “Age of Claude: Films of Painting and Performance in the 17th Century” series rather casually around a tenuous hook, it turned out to be much more powerful and coherent than I expected, with this film offering a perfect summation. (1992, dvd@cai, r.) *8+*
Heading South
Make a mental note of the name Laurent Cantet -- with this successor to Human Resources (1999) and Time Out (2001) he establishes himself as a director who guarantees an intellectually engaging film. Keenly attuned to the realities of economic life, he brings a political agenda that is tempered by a tough-minded empathy that extends across class lines. So this is a film about neocolonialism and sexual tourism, with lots to say about race and gender, but with clear-eyed sympathy for all its characters, except for Baby Doc Duvalier’s thugs in 1970s Haiti. We arrive with Karen Young (recognizable as Adrianna’s FBI case agent from The Sopranos) at a beachside resort, where she makes a beeline for a black youth lying on the beach, and soon meets Charlotte Rampling, a French literature professor from Wellesley who is the rooster-hen who rules this migratory roost of aging birds, well-off white women nesting with pretty black boys. They vie for the attentions and favor of the beautiful young man, who has troubles of his own outside the sequestered confines of this paradisal resort on an infernal island. There is no reflexive moralism here, but rather an honest acknowledgement of mutual need, and revelation of character under emotional stress. There is no taking of sides, just a depth-charged understanding of each side. Beautiful to look at, this film is even more impressive to think about. (2006, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-73.)
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
A week’s wrap-up
I’ve seen a lot of films in the past week, but I’m not up to offering succinct summations and assigned ratings, so I’ll make do with a series of rambling observations.
I was amazed to discover I had never seen Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) before showing it in the Clark auditorium as the penultimate film in my “Age of Claude” series about painting and performance in the 17th century. I assumed my memory was merely vague and nonspecific, but somehow I’d missed this film despite all its accolades (5 Oscar noms & 1 win, 11 Cesars, Cannes grand prize) and despite the fact I had it in my Video Archive at Either/Or (I confirmed by checking online with the Milne Library in Williamstown, where the collection now resides.) (Since I’m rambling anyway, I will digress to remind you that the Milne Library also gets the DVDs of all the films I show at the Clark, available to anyone with a Western Mass library card.) Anyway, this Cyrano was so good, I moved two other versions to the top of my Netflix queue and will review all three together soon. This lavish French production starring Gerard Depardieu and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau will be hard to beat.
So that made two weeks in a row for my first time ever showing a film I’d never seen, and it worked out fine. I put this series together rather casually, so I’ve been surprised myself by its excellence, in detail and in sum -- as well as in audience response. If you’re in the area, I can offer a definite recommendation for the final film in the series this Friday at 4:00, another Gerard Depardieu film, this time playing a court composer to Louis XIV in All the Mornings of the World (Tout les Matins du Monde.)
Otherwise my watching has been an unaccountable mishmash, which I will organize into arbitrary double features. First off, my impromptu Rico Tubbs duo: I never watched the 80s tv show Miami Vice, so it took me a while to figure out who that familiar face was in Sparkle (1976), and it took the final credits for me to sort out his three first names, Phillip Michael Thomas. I did recognize Irene Cara as the title character, but I wonder why I didn’t recognize Lonette McKee as her older sister -- she had so much screen presence and yet I don’t remember her from anything else. Anyway this DVD release piggybacked on the theatrical release of Dreamgirls (which I missed but await on DVD), and some reviews cited it as a better film about a Supremes-like girl group in the early Sixties. Though this film certainly had moments of exuberance in the early going, it limply followed a template already old thirty years ago. I actually enjoyed it a bit, but it is definitely not something I would recommend.
In Michael Mann’s self-appropriation of Miami Vice for the big screen (2006), Tubbs is played by Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell is Crockett, and Gong Li (!) is the drug queen. All four are more than capable of holding the screen on their own, so this thriller is continuously watchable though intermittently intelligible. Rather than sun-kissed, this is a dark, tangled vision of a Carribean crossroads between heaven and hell -- fast, frantic, obsessive, visually striking but not particularly rewarding. I actually admired it a bit, but it is definitely not something I would recommend. (MC-65, me: *6*)
Now another ad hoc duo: very, very French films about amorous conflicts, notable for the ambition of the director and the astounding magnetism of the female lead. Isabelle Huppert has been as ubiquitous as Gerard Deperdieu in French film of the last three decades, and is equally capable of ringing changes on her persona. In Gabrielle (2005) she might just have recycled Madame Bovary in another tale of erotic misery, this from a story by Joseph Conrad, adapted by Patrice Chereau, but she plumbs new depths of despair as an upper class trophy wife who leaves her husband but then chickens out and returns within hours, but not before he has read the note she left behind, so devastating to his complacent self-regard (well embodied by Pascal Greggory.) Chereau’s direction is typically unblinking in its view of emotional desolation, though a little over-ingenious with switches between black & white and color, title cards, jump cuts, and other violations of cinematic convention. The two performances carry the day, however, grim as the proceedings may be. (MC-79, me: *7-*)
Large claims are made for Maurice Pialat’s A Nos Amours (To Our Loves) (1984), just released on DVD with full Criterion Collection treatment, but for me it was made remarkable just by the star-is-born debut of a 15-year-old Sandrine Bonnaire, as the confusedly promiscuous teenage daughter in a disintegrating family. Even if unaware of the subsequent career that would take her from Vagabond to Joan the Maid and many other notable films, you can feel the camera fall in love with her immediately, the subdued watchfulness broken too rarely by the radiant smile. That doesn’t mean you can really understand the actions of her character, or the rest of her dreadful family. The absconding father is played by Pialat himself, and the American correlative would be the films of John Cassavetes, to whom I never responded particularly and haven’t watched lately, despite his having become a touchstone for so many critics and young filmmakers. So this film is painfully intimate, ragged and supposedly real. I don’t know about that, but I do know that Sandrine is always a woman to watch.
Next up are two documentaries from 2006 that I TiVo’d from IFC and PBS respectively, but which are also available on DVD. Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated effectively demystifies the MPAA film rating system, but its efforts to be entertaining come across as cute and puerile, so I appreciate the service it provides but discern special interest pleading in its Metacritic score of 75. Contrariwise, a collective score of 79 doesn’t do full justice to Stanley Nelson’s Jonestown: the Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, which interweaves a wealth of material into a powerful summation of an 1978 event that for someone of my generation and inclination was one of the horrific peaks of historical and emotional devastation on the continuum from the JFK assasination to 9/11. This perversion of hope into tragedy, as a vibrant and idealistic community committed suicide at the behest of a deranged leader, more than 900 people drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid in the isolated jungle of Guyana, is something that made my life sadder but wiser, and this film makes it present again in a judicious but lacerating manner.
While on the subject of documentaries, let me reiterate my strong recommendation that you catch up with Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel or on DVD -- it really represents the state of the art when it comes to nature cinematography, and it doesn’t dilute the wonder of evolutionary diversity with excessive anthropomorphism. This week I will be watching the ballyhooed PBS series, America at the Crossroads, and will report back to you..
I was amazed to discover I had never seen Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) before showing it in the Clark auditorium as the penultimate film in my “Age of Claude” series about painting and performance in the 17th century. I assumed my memory was merely vague and nonspecific, but somehow I’d missed this film despite all its accolades (5 Oscar noms & 1 win, 11 Cesars, Cannes grand prize) and despite the fact I had it in my Video Archive at Either/Or (I confirmed by checking online with the Milne Library in Williamstown, where the collection now resides.) (Since I’m rambling anyway, I will digress to remind you that the Milne Library also gets the DVDs of all the films I show at the Clark, available to anyone with a Western Mass library card.) Anyway, this Cyrano was so good, I moved two other versions to the top of my Netflix queue and will review all three together soon. This lavish French production starring Gerard Depardieu and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau will be hard to beat.
So that made two weeks in a row for my first time ever showing a film I’d never seen, and it worked out fine. I put this series together rather casually, so I’ve been surprised myself by its excellence, in detail and in sum -- as well as in audience response. If you’re in the area, I can offer a definite recommendation for the final film in the series this Friday at 4:00, another Gerard Depardieu film, this time playing a court composer to Louis XIV in All the Mornings of the World (Tout les Matins du Monde.)
Otherwise my watching has been an unaccountable mishmash, which I will organize into arbitrary double features. First off, my impromptu Rico Tubbs duo: I never watched the 80s tv show Miami Vice, so it took me a while to figure out who that familiar face was in Sparkle (1976), and it took the final credits for me to sort out his three first names, Phillip Michael Thomas. I did recognize Irene Cara as the title character, but I wonder why I didn’t recognize Lonette McKee as her older sister -- she had so much screen presence and yet I don’t remember her from anything else. Anyway this DVD release piggybacked on the theatrical release of Dreamgirls (which I missed but await on DVD), and some reviews cited it as a better film about a Supremes-like girl group in the early Sixties. Though this film certainly had moments of exuberance in the early going, it limply followed a template already old thirty years ago. I actually enjoyed it a bit, but it is definitely not something I would recommend.
In Michael Mann’s self-appropriation of Miami Vice for the big screen (2006), Tubbs is played by Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell is Crockett, and Gong Li (!) is the drug queen. All four are more than capable of holding the screen on their own, so this thriller is continuously watchable though intermittently intelligible. Rather than sun-kissed, this is a dark, tangled vision of a Carribean crossroads between heaven and hell -- fast, frantic, obsessive, visually striking but not particularly rewarding. I actually admired it a bit, but it is definitely not something I would recommend. (MC-65, me: *6*)
Now another ad hoc duo: very, very French films about amorous conflicts, notable for the ambition of the director and the astounding magnetism of the female lead. Isabelle Huppert has been as ubiquitous as Gerard Deperdieu in French film of the last three decades, and is equally capable of ringing changes on her persona. In Gabrielle (2005) she might just have recycled Madame Bovary in another tale of erotic misery, this from a story by Joseph Conrad, adapted by Patrice Chereau, but she plumbs new depths of despair as an upper class trophy wife who leaves her husband but then chickens out and returns within hours, but not before he has read the note she left behind, so devastating to his complacent self-regard (well embodied by Pascal Greggory.) Chereau’s direction is typically unblinking in its view of emotional desolation, though a little over-ingenious with switches between black & white and color, title cards, jump cuts, and other violations of cinematic convention. The two performances carry the day, however, grim as the proceedings may be. (MC-79, me: *7-*)
Large claims are made for Maurice Pialat’s A Nos Amours (To Our Loves) (1984), just released on DVD with full Criterion Collection treatment, but for me it was made remarkable just by the star-is-born debut of a 15-year-old Sandrine Bonnaire, as the confusedly promiscuous teenage daughter in a disintegrating family. Even if unaware of the subsequent career that would take her from Vagabond to Joan the Maid and many other notable films, you can feel the camera fall in love with her immediately, the subdued watchfulness broken too rarely by the radiant smile. That doesn’t mean you can really understand the actions of her character, or the rest of her dreadful family. The absconding father is played by Pialat himself, and the American correlative would be the films of John Cassavetes, to whom I never responded particularly and haven’t watched lately, despite his having become a touchstone for so many critics and young filmmakers. So this film is painfully intimate, ragged and supposedly real. I don’t know about that, but I do know that Sandrine is always a woman to watch.
Next up are two documentaries from 2006 that I TiVo’d from IFC and PBS respectively, but which are also available on DVD. Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated effectively demystifies the MPAA film rating system, but its efforts to be entertaining come across as cute and puerile, so I appreciate the service it provides but discern special interest pleading in its Metacritic score of 75. Contrariwise, a collective score of 79 doesn’t do full justice to Stanley Nelson’s Jonestown: the Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, which interweaves a wealth of material into a powerful summation of an 1978 event that for someone of my generation and inclination was one of the horrific peaks of historical and emotional devastation on the continuum from the JFK assasination to 9/11. This perversion of hope into tragedy, as a vibrant and idealistic community committed suicide at the behest of a deranged leader, more than 900 people drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid in the isolated jungle of Guyana, is something that made my life sadder but wiser, and this film makes it present again in a judicious but lacerating manner.
While on the subject of documentaries, let me reiterate my strong recommendation that you catch up with Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel or on DVD -- it really represents the state of the art when it comes to nature cinematography, and it doesn’t dilute the wonder of evolutionary diversity with excessive anthropomorphism. This week I will be watching the ballyhooed PBS series, America at the Crossroads, and will report back to you..
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Mother
Roger Michell is not a name that leaps to mind when one talks about the best directors working today, but maybe it should. Persuasion was the best of a spate of Jane Austen adaptations in the 90s, and Notting Hill is about as good as a frothy romantic comedy can get. Here he does well by a Hanif Kureishi script, with its characteristic candor and insight into the erotic lives of contemporary Londoners. It starts almost like a British transposition of Ozu’s Tokyo Story (a great place to start!), with provincial parents paying an unwanted visit to their upwardly mobile children in the city, in an excruciating clash of culture and family. But when the father dies suddenly, the mother can’t go home again, and intrudes on the life of her children, most grievously by involving herself with her daughter’s lover. Anne Reid is pitch perfect as the difficult woman in her 60s trying to imagine a new life for herself, and Daniel Craig (who is emerging as one of the best actors working today) convinces equally as the 30ish man who feels sympathy and something more for her, despite or because of the disorder of his own existence. Now we’re in the terrain of Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (a great place to wind up!), an unblinking look at the erotic connection between an older woman and a younger man, each character all too real. The result is well-wrought and well-judged, with a dynamic visual style and a strong emotional pull. (2003, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-72.)
Carnival in Flanders (La Kermesse Heroique.)
This was the first time I’d ever programmed a film at the Clark that I hadn’t seen myself, based only on critical reputation and fit with the theme of the series. Otherwise unavailable in this country, I had to order a DVD from Britain and rely on the A-V wizardry of the Clark auditorium manager to find a way to show it. The film turned out to be well worth the effort, a true specimen of the golden age of French filmmaking (pre-New Wave, that is.) Exquisitely designed and wittily directed by Jacques Feyder, it brilliantly evokes the world and style of native Flemish masters, particularly Brueghel, while demonstrating political and cultural prescience in its amusing dissection of the war between men and women, as well as occupier and occupied in the military sense. When a Spanish army on the march stops in a remote Flanders town, the men run and hide and the women take up the conjoined causes of homeland defense and sexual liberation. Entertaining and provocative, this is an old film with a modern spirit. (1935, dvd@cai, n.) *8*
The Lives of Others
Though Pan’s Labyrinth would win my vote, this German film from first-time writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnesmarck was a worthy choice for best foreign film at the Oscars. It’s portrayal of East Germany’s transition from the gray, Stasi-haunted landscape before the fall of the Wall, to the graffitti-plastered freedom of re-unification is extremely persuasive. The focal character, played with just the right touch of melting steel by Ulrich Muhe, is reminiscent of Gene Hackman in The Conversation, the agent experienced in surveillance and interrogation gradually changed by the lives he spies into, in this case a playwright of ambiguous affiliation and the actress/muse he lives with. The film runs a little long as it tries to pack in resolution of all its themes, and the central conceit that if you are receptive to art and beauty then you must have a conscience, and a soul despite the stoniness of your personality, is rather baldly stated -- but carried off by the skill of the performances and detail of the filmmaking. (2006, Landmark Chicago, n.) *8-* (MC-89.)
The Notorious Bettie Page
Slight but well-made, Mary Harron’s film about the Fifties pin-up queen is surprisingly charming. The same can be said for Gretchen Mol in the title role, really delightful in both appearance and personality. The B&W evocation of the era is slightly reminiscent of Good Night and Good Luck, though here David Strathairn plays Estes Kefauver instead of Edward R. Murrow. Along with Lili Taylor, he typifies the top to bottom quality of this production. Rather than heavy breathing over pornography or censorship, this film comes across as good-natured and winsome as its subject, a Southern girl of religious bent who was preternaturally comfortable undressing and dressing up for the camera, even in bondage regalia, innocent and yet kinky. Bettie/Gretchen is as sunny in aspect as the colorful Florida interludes that punctuate the film in faux-Technicolor, more sweet and funny than powerful or penetrating, but still a thoughtful effort all round. (2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-64.)
Saturday, March 31, 2007
HBO and other spectacles
Though the HBO documentary series Addiction is not pinpointed to my interests, I have been watching because it brings together an all-star lineup of documentarians, really everybody from Pennebaker and Maysles forward, with characteristic work from Barbara Kopple (about the Steamfitters Union’s self-insured and union-run alcohol treatment program) and Berlinger & Sinofsky (about Boston Drug Court.) All of these notable filmmakers submerge their identities in the oddly configured series, which is surely destined more for DVD than broadcast. All the various stories are squeezed into a 90 minute compilation, and then offered with more completion as a supplemental series of 15-30 minute films. If the subject interests you from a personal or therapeutic standpoint, or if you might appreciate a compilation album of the finest documentarists, then this series would be worth your time. It certainly hammered home its main scientific point with me, that addiction is a disease of the brain that we are learning more and more about, and that it is amenable to treatment based on extensive experience and experiment.
Another sort of HBO series to which I made a completist commitment has just concluded, and I have to say that I was not sorry to see Rome end, even though the story cuts off with the rise of Augustus. I would put it in a category with trashy but readable historical fiction. There’s enough history and visual opulence to keep you watching, spiced with blood and sex for those who like it hot. If you go in for the ultraviolence and a bit of the old inandout, you will find it horrorshow. (Turns out the Roman past is just as brutal as the Clockwork Orange future, and twice as alien.) If you like historical reconstructions, you will find plenty to keep your eyes busy, and some to keep your mind busy as well. Dramatically it’s just a lavish soap opera, with villains and villainesses, shocking revelations, broad emotions, and sex-sex-sex -- not that that’s a bad thing, you understand.
For different reasons, I had occasion to look at two recent cinematic spectacles that met with lukewarm critical receptions, and I found myself sharing the averaged reaction represented by their cumulative Metacritic scores, giving both a *5+*. I watched Idlewild (2006, dvd, n.) because it was strongly recommended by one of the critics I trust most, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com. (I think our disagreements must be confined to musicals, since I remember her disparaging one I liked a lot, Gurinder Chadha’s faux-Bollywood Bride & Prejudice.) Anyway, when it comes to OutKast, I’m an outcast -- never heard a song of theirs, didn’t recognize them as the stars of this film -- so I’m out of it from the get-go. Even if I bought into Bryan Barber’s hyperkinetic vision of a 1930s speakeasy in Idlewild, Georgia, once the music started and the singers started rapping, I was distanced from the proceedings in a way I wasn’t by the anachronism of, say, Marie Antoinette. (MC-55.)
Though I’d enjoyed the book, poor reviews kept me from Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha. (2005, dvd, n.) There was something just so Hollywood in the way the movie had three Chinese actresses playing Japanese geishas speaking English -- that sort of cultural “whatever” smacked of the old days of painted movie illusion. But on the other hand, those three Chinese actresses were Gong Li, Ziyi Zhang, and Michelle Yeoh, so that’s some serious star power to go with dazzling beauty. Which of course the film ladles on in a big way. So the eye candy is certainly sufficient to make this a watchable experience, as obvious and inert as the film may be dramatically. (MC-54.)
A different sort of spectacle is on view in Rize (2005, dvd, n.), a rap musical I could get behind, about a form of rapid, even violent, but artful street dance indigenous to the mean streets of L.A., various strains of which convey a different sort of communal identity from Crips and Bloods. This is the first documentary from David LaChapelle, apparently known for his fashion photography and music videos. That background comes through in the disjointed quality of the film, watchable in its moments but not cumulative in its impact. This is no Paris Is Burning, the marvelous and deeply moving 1990 documentary about the vogue for vogueing among a community of transvestites in NYC. It’s less a journey than a gyration, but it does give voice to lives less noticed. *6* (MC-74.)
One last note before I’m away for a week: if you are partial to spectacular nature documentaries, I advise you to tune into the series Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel or on DVD. It represents the state of the art -- awesome in the truest sense of the word.
Another sort of HBO series to which I made a completist commitment has just concluded, and I have to say that I was not sorry to see Rome end, even though the story cuts off with the rise of Augustus. I would put it in a category with trashy but readable historical fiction. There’s enough history and visual opulence to keep you watching, spiced with blood and sex for those who like it hot. If you go in for the ultraviolence and a bit of the old inandout, you will find it horrorshow. (Turns out the Roman past is just as brutal as the Clockwork Orange future, and twice as alien.) If you like historical reconstructions, you will find plenty to keep your eyes busy, and some to keep your mind busy as well. Dramatically it’s just a lavish soap opera, with villains and villainesses, shocking revelations, broad emotions, and sex-sex-sex -- not that that’s a bad thing, you understand.
For different reasons, I had occasion to look at two recent cinematic spectacles that met with lukewarm critical receptions, and I found myself sharing the averaged reaction represented by their cumulative Metacritic scores, giving both a *5+*. I watched Idlewild (2006, dvd, n.) because it was strongly recommended by one of the critics I trust most, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com. (I think our disagreements must be confined to musicals, since I remember her disparaging one I liked a lot, Gurinder Chadha’s faux-Bollywood Bride & Prejudice.) Anyway, when it comes to OutKast, I’m an outcast -- never heard a song of theirs, didn’t recognize them as the stars of this film -- so I’m out of it from the get-go. Even if I bought into Bryan Barber’s hyperkinetic vision of a 1930s speakeasy in Idlewild, Georgia, once the music started and the singers started rapping, I was distanced from the proceedings in a way I wasn’t by the anachronism of, say, Marie Antoinette. (MC-55.)
Though I’d enjoyed the book, poor reviews kept me from Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha. (2005, dvd, n.) There was something just so Hollywood in the way the movie had three Chinese actresses playing Japanese geishas speaking English -- that sort of cultural “whatever” smacked of the old days of painted movie illusion. But on the other hand, those three Chinese actresses were Gong Li, Ziyi Zhang, and Michelle Yeoh, so that’s some serious star power to go with dazzling beauty. Which of course the film ladles on in a big way. So the eye candy is certainly sufficient to make this a watchable experience, as obvious and inert as the film may be dramatically. (MC-54.)
A different sort of spectacle is on view in Rize (2005, dvd, n.), a rap musical I could get behind, about a form of rapid, even violent, but artful street dance indigenous to the mean streets of L.A., various strains of which convey a different sort of communal identity from Crips and Bloods. This is the first documentary from David LaChapelle, apparently known for his fashion photography and music videos. That background comes through in the disjointed quality of the film, watchable in its moments but not cumulative in its impact. This is no Paris Is Burning, the marvelous and deeply moving 1990 documentary about the vogue for vogueing among a community of transvestites in NYC. It’s less a journey than a gyration, but it does give voice to lives less noticed. *6* (MC-74.)
One last note before I’m away for a week: if you are partial to spectacular nature documentaries, I advise you to tune into the series Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel or on DVD. It represents the state of the art -- awesome in the truest sense of the word.
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