Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

Yes, JustaFied, Decline is a prequel of sorts to Barbarian. Yes, it's worth checking out but it's not as memorable as Barbarian (although it won 9 Canadian Academy awards and a FIPRESCI award at Cannes).
Barbarian is more expansive both visually and thematically. As you've pointed out, the dichotomy between the boomers and the next generation is particularly interesting, and you won't find that in Decline. My recollection is that the prequel is just as funny and perhaps just as sad. It takes place on a single day and it's even more dialogue-driven than Barbarian. The basic thesis is that the boomers obsession with hedonistic pursuits at the expense of everything else is indicative of a society in decline. There are three set ups: the men at Remy's lakeside house, the women at the health club, and a gender clash over dinner. The main topic is sex and the game of choice is intellectual oneupmanship.
Please share your opinions if you decide to watch it.

Sunday April 3rd

The Wind (1928) on TCM

Highly atmospheric feature directed by Victor Seastrom, who returned to his native Sweden in 1930 and pursued primarily an acting career (the lead role in Wild Strawberries was his last performance). The film stars Lillian Gish, who had collaborated with Seastrom on The Scarlet Letter, as a Virginian ingenue who travels west to live with his cousin in a ranch bordering the Mojave desert. She encounters misfortune and is driven mad by social isolation and terrible weather conditions. I had the luck to watch the original cut of this film at the theatre many years ago. TCM showed the version that had a happy ending tacked on against Seastrom and Gish's wishes. Guess what? It really ain't that bad. Not as ludicrous or preposterous as one would think. I would normally be prejudiced against such practice, but I have to be honest to my reaction that the happy ending is not illogical though I still prefer the tragic one intended by Gish and Seastrom.

Monday April 4th

At Five in the Afternoon is the third feature directed by Samira Makhmalbaf (The Apple, Blackboards) and the first film shot in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban regime. The film was co-written by Samira and her father Moshe Makhmalbaf, the veteran Iranian director (Kandahar, The Ciclist).

The plot concerns a young woman named Nogreh, who manages to attend a secular school without her fundamentalist father's knowledge. Like most residents of Kabul they experience extreme deprivation as there is a shortage of housing, food, and other basic necessities. Nogreh lives with her father and her sister-in-law, whose infant is dying of disease and malnutrition. Nogreh decides to run for president of the student body but lacks knowledge of how to write and deliver a speech. She meets a poet, recently returned from exile in Pakistan, who offers his help and seems interested in courting her. Nogreh's father is increasingly frustrated by town women showing their faces in public and by music emanating from transistor radios. He talks about moving the family to a "real Islamic town".

At Five in the Afternoon is quite arresting in visual terms and provides even more evidence of Ms. Makhmalbaf's eye for image composition and her ability to extract credible performances from non-actors. She won two awards at Cannes 2003 for this film. But many critics complained the film is bleak and depressing. The director's response: "The Taliban are in the minds of the people, in the culture of Afghanistan. It's not like an external wound you can dress. It's like a cancer. I try to portray the reality, not just make what I want. No more lies." In other words, in order for the film to be true to what Ms. Makhmalbaf observed and what has been amply reported regarding life conditions and prospects of Afghans following the defeat of the Taliban, At Five in the Afternoon, had to be sad and bleak. I feel optimistic about the future of the world and the future of cinema when I realize there are uncompromising, talented filmmakers like Ms. Makhmalbaf who won't compromise the truth (as they see it) to make palatable entertainment.
This film was not released commercially in the USA. I watched it on dvd from the Uk which includes an interview with the director and a "behind the scenes" shot by her teenagage sister Hana. The latter directed a documentary called Joy of Madness, about the process of casting the film, which is not included on this disc.

Tuesday April 5th

Chimes at Midnight (1965) on PAL dvd

Orson Welles incorporated the pieces of Falstaff that Shakespeare had strewn over the two parts of "Henry IV", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Henry V" and "Richard II", and fastened them into place with Ralph Richardson's narration from Holinshed's "Chronicles", a historical source used by the Bard himself. A Spanish/Swiss co-production, filmed entirely in Spain with an international cast that includes John Guielgud, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutheford, Fernando Rey, and Orson's daughter Beatrice (as Falstaff's page boy). Welles directs and stars as the obese, profane, merrymaking lover of sugar and sack, Prince Hal's favorite companion Falstaff. The scene in which the former Prince, now Henry V King of England, rebuffs and humilliates Falstaff publicly, is truly heartbreaking. Pauline Kael on the film's battle scene: "Welles has directed a sequence, the Battle of Shrewsbury, which is unlike any battle done on the screen before. The compositions suggest Uccello and the chilling ironic music is a death knell for all men in battle. The soldiers, plastered by the mud they fall in, are already monuments. It's the most brutally somber battle ever filmed. It does justice to Hotspur's great O, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth".
Chimes at Midnight is required viewing, possibly as great as Welles's Othello, my favorite Shakespeare film.

Wednesday April 6th

El Bruto aka The Brute (1953)

Luis Bunuel directed more films in Mexico than anywhere else. Because of the poor distribution of Mexican films in general during the post-war years, Bunuel remains one of the major directors whose career has not been properly debated and analyzed.
His two English language films have suffered the same fate until recently, with the dvd release of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. At least one major critic considers the other one in English, The Young One, a masterpiece. I hope to have the chance to watch it in the near future.
Bunuel's Mexican phase was his most prolific. El Bruto is the 8th film he directed after moving there in 1947. Pedro Armendariz is the slaughterhouse worker hired by a greedy landlord to intimidate the tenants of a building he plans to demolish. El Bruto is seduced by the landlord's younger wife (Katy Jurado) but falls in love with the daughter of a tenant he kills accidentally. The film combines elements of film noir, melodrama, and Italian Neo-realism. But as usual, Don Luis manages to impose his personal vision. While clearly pointing a finger at the bourgeoisie, the depiction of the poor is far from sympathetic (in the Italian tradition) or romanticized (in the Mexican tradition). And there is a perverse moment or two you won't find in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The political subtext involves a simpleton's acquisition of class consciousness (still a taboo topic in the good old...). I am avoiding giving too much away in the hope that you will avail yourself of the dvd made in USA by Cozumel Classic Films, which doesn't advertise the fact that it comes with nice yellow English subs.

How did you get these DVD's (rent or purchase? from where?).

What are the main ways that Bunuel's Mexican films differ from his European-made ones?

I feel your journal is increasingly better written as you go along, and, not so incidentally, more personal and warmer in style.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
How did you get these DVD's (rent or purchase? from where?).

At Five in the Afternoon and Chimes at Midnight are rentals from Nicheflix. I bought El Bruto from overstock.com for $10.09.

What are the main ways that Bunuel's Mexican films differ from his European-made ones?

Bunuel made three relatively short films in Europe free of any narrative constrictions: the surrealists L'Age d'Or and Un Chien Andalou, and the doc Las Hurdes. Then he was inactive for 15 years (1932-1946). The two films he made in the USA and the 20 or so he made in Mexico are characterized by the tension between commercial pressures and narrative logic vs. his need to express his anarchic and surreal impulses. He returned to Europe in the 60s when the French New Wave and the popularity of "art cinema" created a benign climate in which commercial pressures were minimal. It's my opinion based on repeat viewings of most films that it's wrong to conclude his European films are "better" than the ones he made in our continent. Rosenbaum considers the American The Young One (one of the few I haven't seen) to be one of his very best. Moreover, most critics would agree that Los Olvidados and El Angel Exterminador, made within the commercial Mexican film industry, are clearly superior to the French The Milky Way (1968), for instance.

I feel your journal is increasingly better written as you go along, and, not so incidentally, more personal and warmer in style.

Thank you very much. So far, I've found the time to write what I want to say. I'm afraid that won't always be the case.

Thursday April 7th

Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad) on PAL region 3 dvd

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai director who studied filmmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago, gets my vote for most original film artist. I haven't seen his previous film, The Adventures of Iron Pussy, a musical comedy about a transvestite spy. I admired both Mysterious Object at Noon and Blissfully Yours, but neither prepared me for Tropical Malady, which won a Jury Prize at Cannes, was named Best Film of 2004 by Cahiers du Cinema, and will be distributed in the US by Strand Releasing.

The film opens with the following quote: "All of us are by nature wild beasts. Our duty as humans is to become like trainers who keep their animals in check". Keng belongs to a group of soldiers assigned to an area bordering a dense forest. They find a corpse. There's a long shot of a naked man walking nearby. The soldiers bring the corpse to the village. Keng meets a local labourer named Tong. They develop a close relationship with romantic overtones. They go to the movies, visit a cavern where they find a Buddhist temple, take Tong's dog to the vet, have a soda with two middle aged women but decline the marijuana one offers, ride a motorcycle, then a very curious night scene: Keng smells Tong's hand lustily; Tong responds by meticulously licking Keng's hand, then turns around and walks into the dark. The screen goes black for 15 seconds until the drawing of a tiger and the title "A Spirit's Path" appear, and then "Inspired by the stories of Noi Inthanon". It's a Thai legend about a shape-shifting shaman spirit. This second half of Tropical Malady is told mostly via drawings, intertitles, and at one point, the translated grunts of an orangutan. It consists of Keng's search and confrontation with this spirit deep into the forest. The spirit often takes the form of a Bengal tiger but at times looks like Tong, naked with skin painted to simulate a tiger's hide. It provides an evocative sensory experience particularly due to dramatic lighting and superb sound design. "A Spirit Path" may be construed as an alternative telling of the story in the first half. I simply feel that Weerasethakul decided that, at a certain point, the story was better served by a radically different style.

As is the case of any truly original work, Tropical Malady has its detractors. Count me among the awed admirers of Weerasethakul, but I'll admit I had to resist the urge to fast forward during a 15 minute sequence consisting of nothing but Keng tracking the yet unseen "beast". Also, the film is so enigmatic and mysterious that some viewers will be baffled by the experience, and find the film unsatisfying. It's certainly not one to recommend casually to the average moviegoer. For lovers of "art cinema", Tropical Malady is reason to rejoice.

This is one I've heard about here (Tropical Malady) and I look forward to it. I may not read too much about it because I think it may be showing somewhere soon? Or am I wrong? Thanks for all the other information. So you're still sticking with nicheflix--I thought at one point you were thinking it was too expensive? I have to confess I rented Los Olvidados once and I couldn't get into it. Maybe I should try again, and maybe it was a bad copy, on tape of course. You're getting to the point where you could teach film at a college.

Have you seen the work of that guy, I think he's Hungarian, Béla Tarr. who is supposed to have influenced Gus Van Sant in the making of Gerry? I happen to have liked Gerry quite a lot though it took a lot of patience to walk. I say this apropos of some of what you say about Tropical Malady. I am not that impressed by Chantal Ackerman, I fear (another influence Van Sant cited).

*I don't think Strand Releasing has announced a date for Tropical Malady. I'd be very impressed if they decide to spend money on it.
*Nicheflix is not a smooth operation like Netflix, but I'll extend my membership another month to rent European dvds I cannot afford to purchase.
*Surprised re: your comment about Los Olvidados. Seems to me to be an accessible precursor to films like Pixote and Salaam Bombay.
*Chantal Akerman is a director whose films I've neglected. I watched the excellent Jeanne Dielman almost 30 years ago, but my friend was terribly bored because "nothing happens". I liked one called Night and Day from the 90s. Some of the best critics are huge fans. I cannot say I've formed an opinion yet. Your inquiry will probably result in my viewing some of her stuff this year.
*Extremely upset about having missed Tarr's retro at Toronto '95 (I didn't know of him at the time, Satantango was sold out) because the two films of his on dvd with English subs (PAL from UK) are wonderful. I've posted about him before. I agree with your earlier comment regarding the need to give precedence to films one hasn't seen but Werckmeister Harmonies and Damnation are there on my shelf demanding re-viewing.

Friday April 8th

Is Paris Burning? (1966) on dvd from my public library

Entertaining war epic about the collaboration between American troops and the French Resistance to thwart Hitler's plan to destroy Paris. Directed by Rene Clement (Forbidden Games, Purple Noon) with a cast that includes Welles, Belmondo, Delon, Boyer, Anthony Perkins, Glenn Ford, Robert Stack, J.L. Trintignant, Leslie Caron, Simone Signoret, etc. The biggest star is the city of Paris shot in widescreen black and white. The film incorporates real footage of the Liberation. Disc includes both English and French soundtracks.

I also would like to see the work of Tarr.

I should have watched Los Olvidados more carefully, but whether I'm really a Bunuel fan I don't know. Certainly an auteur from the get-go. I first learned about him from The Secret Life of Salvador DalÍ, the limp watch artist's fascinating autobiography which in unique in beginning with "intra-uterine memories." "A day in the history of the cinema...a date marked in blood," he says after describing how at the first showing of Un Chien Andalu people threw ink pots at the screen and rioted.

I probably avoided Is Paris Burning? as schlock. Obviously it would have historical interest today with all those people in it. You meant René Clément, not René Clair; I used to confuse them.

*Thanks for pointing out my error. I've corrected the director's name.
*I think the "schlock" designation has a lot to do with the producer's decision to release Is Paris Burning? with the French and German actors' dialogue dubbed into English, the fact that big budget epics were considered old-fashioned, and the lack of psychological depth of the characterizations. I found it worth watching, with some well staged action sequences, nice photography, and a script that makes a complicated story accessible. Sophisticated viewers may want to head straight for Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and The Pity, the best doc I've seen about the French Resistance.

Saturday April 9th

Inside Deep Throat at the Gateway in Ft. Lauderdale

Documentary about the culture wars engendered by the porn film Deep Throat and the efforts to keep sex movies away from mainstream outlets of film exhibition and distribution. A chronologically-ordered doc combining historical footage, clips from the actual film, and interviews with those involved in the making and exhibition of the film, those who supported its distribution, and those who fought to supress it. How much you'll learn obviously depends on how familiar you are with these events of historical import, which probably depends largely on your age.

In the Realms of the Unreal at the Gateway Theatre

Director Jessica Yu wants to put you in Nathan Lerner's place. Landlord and photographer Lerner went into the room occupied for 41 years by Henry Darger and found a 15,000-page novel, a shorter one, his memoirs, and a multiplicity of paintings, clippings, and collectibles.

Henry Darger (1892-1973) was a Chicago native who lived in an orphanage and a "Home for Feeble-Minded Children" after his mother died giving birth to his sister when he was 3 years old. He was a reclusive eccentric who spent his life working menial jobs, attending Mass, and producing novels and paintings inside his Lincoln Park room. Darger avoided social contact. Yu interviews people who knew him but they have little to report. The bulk of the doc consists of Dakota Fanning reading from Darger's novel "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unknown of the Glandico-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" which borrows liberally from a variety of texts including the Oz books, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and other known novels. Darger illustrated the novel by creating panoramic scenes containing drawings he made by tracing clippings from ads, comics, newspaper photos, etc. He created huge collages which Yu cannot seem to fit into her doc's frame. She shows them in close-ups that fail to give a sense of their composition. Yu uses digital animation to give movement to the drawings but the novelty becomes tiresome. After about an hour, I began to lose interest in the excerpts from the novel, which are interspersed with readings from his memoir, and the interviews. Yu does an excellent job documenting Darger's obsessions with Catholic motifs, weather phenomena, children's vulnerability (including a fixation on a 1911 picture of a girl who was murdered), war themes,etc. Yu's presentation of the material seems to indicate she's more interested in Darger the weird eccentric than in Darger, the self-taught artist. Seems to me that his genius has a lot to do with the placing of borrowed elements within a large canvas, in the composition of his huge scenes, but they are only shown in close-up. Moreover, Yu's decision to completely ignore the literature on Danger's artistic process, methods,etc. left the art lover in me unsatisfied. On the other hand, as presented, the writings and art work provide very rich, raw material for psychological conjecture and interpretation.

*I was somewhat disapointed with this, which I saw at Film Forum during its opening showing in January, and I sense you were somewhat disapointed too. YOu omit mention of the fact that Darger apparently had one dear friend. To say that those who knew him had little to report perhaps also understates things. Obviously he was mysterious and remote but that is not to say that people had nothing to report about him. He had regular contact with some people, as the film shows. I like you was also disappointed in the novel or novels of Darger, which I compared in my mind with the homoerotic novels of world domination, corporate expoitation, and drugs that William S. Burroughs wrote. Of course Burroughs' work, or some of it, is a literary classic and verbally and technically rich beyond most of what one encounters in the world of fiction even today; he was also a very smart man with a penetrating vision whose thoughts about the nexus of political and economic power, military and law enforcement and capital, are increasingly relevant. Darger is a fascinating case, and I was struck by how articulate his writing is, but he does not have Burroughs' sweeping, analytical mind or one iota of the richness and daring of Burroughs' imagination. For all his drugs Burroughs had a very clear head at all times. And he was also very connected with the world, with an enthusiastic young audience in his later years and connections with some of the major literary and artistic figures of his generation, starting with the Beats and the Tangiers expatriots. I mention Burroughs because there are parallels between the wandering gangs of girls in Darger's book(s) and Burroughs bands of"Wild Boys." Darger's novel isn't why Darger is a known figure. His artwork is. As an outsider artist, he is a kind of American superstar, I gather (I'm not much into outsider art myself). This, as you say, the filmmaker does not sufficiently explore. It would have been simply valuable to show Darger's works on display in museums, and to talk to curators or critics to hear what they have to say about his visual work. I don't think we'd bring up these shortcomings if the movie had a richer content in and of itself, but after all, the main character is absent in more ways than one. (There are several documentaries on William Burroughs, in which he like Charles Bukowski in Born into This is the dominant figure because plenty of footage exists. Don't get the idea I'm saying Burroughs was a nutcase...but of course he was out there...that's why the young people liked him.)

*Your description of Is Paris Burning? doesn't exactly make me want to see it, though there is still the fact of all those amazing actors in one place. Have never seen The Sorrow and the Pity, despite Woody Allen's frequent references to it. There are also lots of very long Russian novels I haven't read.

*Have not seen Inside Deep Throat and don't want to. The reviews have not been at all favorable, and the subject matter isn't appealing to me. Those other Deep Throats -- the political ones -- on the other hand, I'd like to know more about.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by oscar jubis
In the Realms of the Unreal at the Gateway Theatre

---

I find it just an "okay" movie ... see my comments here ...
http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/show...?threadid=1205

I was deciding whether to watch, and saw it being listed as a top 10 here ... so I asked my friend along ... he was totally bored ... I felt so bad ...
(I guess there were too few good documentaries last year ... hee hee)
http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/show...+of+the+unreal

;)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Untold Scandal...

---

Hmmm ... I watched it quite long ago and wrote a review on the old foreignfilms.com. It has been deleted after the revamp.

Anyway, in simple terms, I do not like the new Korean version. It does not capture one's emotion nor the wit in the dialogues very well.