PARIS MOVIE JOURNAL (Oct.Nov. 2018)

[Chris Knipp]

PARIS MOVIE JOURNAL OCT.-NOV. 2018




FIRST MAN (Damien Chazelle 2018). A movie about the Moon landing and Neil Armstrong that's radical in its harsh minimalism. It's hard to forget the final sequence where Neil (Ryan Gosling) and his wife (Claire Foy) stare wordless at each other when he's in quarantine, or the many blastoffs that are shot as a series of explosions and blurry closeups. You think it was a budget issue but then, given some sequences, probably just an artistic choice. Did Armstrong really take his sorrow over his dead daughter into his moments of greatest triumph? Was he so inarticulate, and did his wife push him so bluntly to say goodbye to his sons and admit he might not come back? Beyond the triumph here, there is a constant sense of tragedy, and very little celebration. Props for originality, but somehow it feels false, starting with Gosling, who isn't monolithic and grand enough. Watched at UGC Odéon 23 Oct. 2018. Metascore 84. AlloCine press rating 3.9.



THE SISTERS BROTHERS (Jacques Audiard 2018). Audiard has sometimes been the French director of the past few decades who I've admired the most, but his new Gold Rush era Western with John C. Reily, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed takes me out of my comfort zone and maybe out of his. It is after all his first English-language film. It takes place in Oregon and California in the 1850's. It works in a street scene of San Francisco and conveys the rapid change then under way, with men (anachronistically; it came a bit later) enjoying their first flush toilets and (validly perhaps) awkwardly wielding their first tooth brushes. A chemical formula to detect gold in water leads to dire consequences. What we see here are desperadoes longing for a peaceful life and partially moving in that direction, moving away from genre convention. It's pretty decent, original stuff but lacks the brilliance of Audiard at his best. Watched at UGC Danton, 23 Oct. 2018. Metascore 78. AlloCiné press rating 4.3. Metascore 78.