The Color of Pomegranates

Saw The Color of Pomegranates, a fairly inscrutable film from Russia, 1969, about the life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova.  The twist however is that this film is telling Sayat-Nova's life story as told by his poems.  Thus, it is often striking, beautiful, brutal, haunting, and totally incomprehensible.  Let's explore.

The film follows the poet's life, growing up apparently in a monastery.  He's surrounded by the earthy, simple industry of the monastery and also by the other-worldly, elevated symbolism and ritual of religion.  As he gets older, he discovers women and music, realizing at this point I think that he was not meant to be a monk.  As he gets yet older, he leaves the monastery but seems already world-weary, his poems speaking of the beauty of becoming soil and of the peace of death.

The above story is visually told by oblique and posed and strange imagery.  Mandolins spin above his head as he learns to play music.  Women hold conch shells over their breasts and monks sway back and forth like bells.  Freshly beheaded chickens are pelted at the poet's body.  Blind angels press naan against a headstone.  There is no dialogue, there is no narration.  Only a few of the poets poems, appearing in title cards like a silent film, are there to guide us.  It brings to mind the bizarre hallucinations of Jodorowsky's work, or Un Chien Andalou.  Striking stuff!

The net effect however is a little overwhelming and wearying and wore me down about a third of the way through the film.  The visuals are very intriguing, but I felt the need for a commentary track.  To a simple movie-watcher like myself, I can't fully appreciate this high-concept work and need someone better versed in (perhaps) this poet's work or in Armenian culture to decode it for me.  It's very evocative and not one to shy away from a high concept, but a little too inaccessible for me.  I need a boost!

Edit - the Criterion collection blurb points out that the tableaux in the film resemble religious ikons.  Often they are arranged in sets of three like a triptych.  This elegantly mirrors the religious traditions of the Armenians.  I need to leave this movie criticism/interpretation business up to the pros - woof!

Point Blank (1967)

Saw Point Blank (1967).  I loved it!  It was a late noir, full of grim violence and brittle, crystalline women.  It opens on the protagonist, Walker, waking up in a jail cell.  The film jumps back and forth as he recalls that he got there by being double-crossed in the middle of a heist.  His wife and his friend turned on him.  We get flashbacks of his friend and him rolling around on the floor of a class reunion together.  Then, when Walker finally comes to, the film jumps forward to find Walker on a boat, talking to some bald man, being asked to help the bald man help him, to take down The Organization.  From there Walker kills a lot of people.

The film is just marvelously abstract and strange.  The identity of the bald man, for example, is never fully explained.  Is he a government agent?  A rival gangster?  Death?  Satan?  An angel?  Similarly, there's the intriguing opening, with the main character possibly dying in a jail cell.  Is this his afterlife?  Or is he now trapped in the prison of pointless revenge?  The thematic implications are never fully teased out but are doubly fascinating for what they subliminally suggest.

The film is Lynch-ianly chilly and full of arresting images and otherworldly performances.  It is Hitchcock-ishly posed and choreographed.  It's mostly grim and violent, but stylishly so and in a nice, intriguing way.  It's clever and classy, tipping its hand a few times and letting you know that this is all pointless.  At one point one of the gangsters shouts at Walker "You're a very bad man, Walker, a very destructive man! Why do you run around doing things like this?"  It's just such a deliciously absurd line and so wonderfully undercuts the seriousness of the action.  "A very bad man" indeed!

I didn't think I'd enjoy this film but I really really did.

John Carter

Saw John Carter.  It wasn't bad in the end, but it gets off to a very very rocky start.  We kick off on Mars, where we set up the Martian conflict.  Then we shoot back to earth, New York, in the year 1881, following the titular John Carter.  He then dies and we read his journal, taking us back 13 years earlier, to Arizona (I think) 1868.  THEN we get to Mars where we see John Carter interacting with some aliens and discovering he can jump very high on Mars because of  … bone density?

The start is definitely a mess.  you kind of have to accept all of this as fantasy-land nonsense.  It is sort of sad that the source material apparently did not know that gravity is greater on Mars and that lower gravity does not mean greater strength (you can't break moon-chains just because you can jump high on the moon) but then again, there are also not four-armed green aliens either, so I guess we just kind of need to accept that this is Mars sort of  in name only.

Anyway, once the basic stupidity of the film is established and it gets more into its groove, it improves somewhat and becomes a kind of sand-and-sandals-type film of swashbuckling daring-do and court intrigue.  This latter bit is not so bad, and the main character's arc seems to be transitioning from nihilistic self-interest to being willing to fight and stand up for a worthy cause.  It is unfortunate that his nihilism is established while refusing to help Custer's regiment to keep Arizona safe.  In the original book, I feel this was the obviously just cause that, later on in the book, he would have manfully accepted.  Oh well - that bit is left in the intro and never brought up again, thank goodness.

This was basically a silyl movie.  Once you accept its fundamental silliness, it's much easier to handle, but the very bumpy beginning puts up serious hurdles to anyone's enjoyment.  I've read some defenses online and I get the sense that this film has some relatively half-hearted defenders out there, but for me, this is not worth defending.  It's not terrible in the end, but its too pointlessly convoluted and interested in imaginary politicking to be of much interest to me.

The Big Heat

Saw The Big Heat, a classic noir film that starts off in grand style: a closeup of a gun, a hand grabs it and the hand's owner shoots himself in the head.  His widow shows up and, before calling the cops, calls some gentleman in bed in his mansion.  This kicks off the rollercoaster of events in this brief, taught film.

There film revolves around none of these people in the intro scenes, but around an honest cop who is trying to get to the bottom of this, in spite of corruption at the highest levels.  His happy domestic life is contrasted with the various politicians and gangsters' lives of excess and nightclubs.  Indeed, as the case progresses, it begins to interfere quite heavily in his happy domestic life, causing him to symbolically topple his daughter's toy castle.

There's a lot of strange, unused business around parenthood in this film.  The head gangster has a gigantic painting of his saintly mother over his mantlepiece and a shady bartender at one point claims he was merely calling his mother.  When the squeeze is on, the main character's daughter is sent to hunker with (you guessed it) his parents.  It's not reflected in the plot of the film, but I believe is meant to further contrast the gangsters' corruption (painted facsimile of a mother, using the mother as a cover) against the main character's genuine domestic harmony and (attempted) separation of work and life.  I'm reminded of the film White Heat, where Cagney's gangster character is coded as deviant by his being something of a mama's boy.  At any rate, parents come up a lot here.

Outside of that, I enjoyed the femme fatale who was originally supposed to be Marilyn Monroe but who they swapped out for another actress.  The other actress had the Monroe beautiful mess thing down pat however and seems to be the template upon which Harley Quin and other such bubbly gangster-chicks are based - a sort of manic magical pixie femme fatale.  She's always a delight to watch as she flirts with dangerous men.

The film was alright.  It was very taught and kept humming along, but it contained few surprises. It does contain an awful lot of violence for a Haye's code era film and there's a fair amount of cop corruption (although they all have an un-earned, 3rd-act redemption of course.)  Outside of that, it's a well-made, solid, standard noir.  Well done all around.

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)

Saw Memories of Underdevelopment, a film set in the recent aftermath of the Cuban socialist revolution.  It follows a wealthy landlord who was able to get his parents and wife out of Cuba but who is not leaving himself.  He stays behind nominally to work on a novel but mostly really to hit on women and reminisce about his past and generally go slowly crazy.

This film is about death and rebirth.  In the glow of the socialist revolution, something new is about to begin. But to make room for the new, something old must die.  Specifically this man's way of life must end.  Returning home from the airport, he finds his caged bird is dead.  His maid tells him about her baptism, how it is a death and a rebirth.  He meditates on the murders carried out for the revolution and how the foot-soldiers were condemned so that society at large could remain morally pure.

The main character is a member of the decadent landlord bourgeois intelligentsia, so despised by the revolutionaries.  He is paralyzed by understanding - of wanting to preserve his way of life and also by despising it and despising himself.  He's a stand-in for the upper class in general however and so his personal life mirrors his increasingly perilous sociopolitical situation.  He starts dating a 16-year old girl who is too naïve to recognize herself as just another hookup.  Like Cuba's new socialism, she is the fresh new thing, and although she is being exploited one last time by the older landlord, she may be the agent of his destruction.

The landlord rolls his eyes at his girlfriend's lack of appreciation of fine art and generally hates her childish naivete, but he himself lasciviously rubs the breasts of Venus in an art book.  Several times his erotic imagination is displayed and used to indict him as shallow, decadent, bored and horny.  When his maid tells him about her baptism, he imagines her wet white dress clinging to her breasts.  He is certainly not naïve and immature, but is his decadence really any better?

The style of the film is very French New Wave, very Fellini.  Lots of men in suits and thick glasses languishing in ennui and smoking in coffee shops, talking politics and philosophy and leering at women.  Unlike those films, the action here is intercut with references to real events in the news which strongly grounds this landlord's struggle in larger events, but which is also fairly daring.  The film is telling us that it is not just commenting on this fictional man, but on the historical events themselves.  Always a tricky business.

The film was fairly interesting however a bit dated and chilly.  It's hard to sustain a portrayal of wealthy decadence without having it become fairly boring after a while.  By the 2/3rds mark I was ready for it to end, but I was pretty well entertained by it up until then.

Le Plaisir

Saw Le Plaisir, a trio of short films directed by Max Ophüls.  All three films are on the theme of romance in conjunction with pleasure.  We start with a creepy film about an old man who disguises himself (with a mask) to look like a young dandy.  We visit him briefly and listen to his wife complain about him.  He was always a womanizer and now, in his old age, uses masks and wigs to continue to harass women.  In his getup, he looks like a serial killer.

The next, and much longer segment, follows a crew of prostitutes as they go to visit the Madame's niece for her first communion.  The setup is a ridiculous joke - whores on holiday for their first communion - but it turns kind of sweet in the end, as the whores sleep on the floors and couches of the niece's family farmhouse, making the family proud with their fancy clothes and weeping at the sermon.  Everyone comes off as a bit silly but mostly happy and mostly alright.  The men in the city celebrate the return of the whores and the farmhouse glows with pride at its fancy relatives.

The last film, we are warned, is more of a tragedy: a painter with a fleeting infatuation with his model.  This one, like the first, has a fairy-tale quality - a sort of timeless simplicity that is old and quaint and yet universal: man chases girl, gets her, and sees he doesn't want her.

There's a narrator walking us through all of these stories with a sort of affected humility.  He begs our pardon several times and apologizes for having "old stories" when we are "so modern".  The film feels like a close adaptation of a book with a strong authorial voice.

Another thing I noticed was that we're very often outside of the houses where the action is taking place.  The camera is always peering through windows and through stairway railings, making us into outsiders peering in at the desire and love on display inside.  The action seems to not be for us, but we are witnessing it anyway.

All this aside, the film was quaint and pokey, dealing with desire and such but in a very chilly, almost cerebral way, prostitutes notwithstanding.  This being the 50s, we of course could not deal frankly with sex and I wonder if this is the sort of boundary-pushing film that would have had un-simulated sex in it nowadays but which is rendered pretty tame in this modern, boundary-pushed time.

A quaint little film.  It's apparently one of Kubrick's favorites, but I can't see why.

Night and Fog

Saw Night and Fog, a fairly heavy film essay about the holocaust that lasts about half an hour but feels much longer.  It contains a lot of archival and newly shot footage of the death camps, with a narrator speaking over it.  At times the narration is ironical and stark, at other times almost despairing of this project, feeling like a DVD commentary:  "we are slowly following these tracks, what do we hope to find?"   "we can show you only the surface of what happened here."  Indeed, the footage and the facts, we are all somewhat familiar with, but the reality was far more harrowing than we can understand or imagine.

The narrator starts the film pointing out the the irony of the banal and common details of the camps.  Some are constructed like garages, we are told, others like stadiums.  Architects and surveyors were involved, everything so dry, so calm.  The banality of evil.  As the film progresses, we are told of the strange make-believe society in the camps - there were hospitals and prisons, bordellos and (in some) even zoos and greenhouses.  As the film goes on, we see fresh, healthy prisoners juxtaposed with skeletal long-timers.  Puzzles and knots of chests and limbs lying in snow and dirt.  It's very upsetting.

The film was apparently made as a commentary on the then-current invasion of Algiers by the French and of course today the message of vigilance against genocide and mass murder is as unfortunately salient as ever.  We have a montage of prison guards, workers, and politicians all denying responsibility.

Soul

Saw Soul, another Pixar film by Pete Docter, creator of Up and Inside Out.  Like those films, this one is a moving film about dealing with life.  Also sort of like those films, this one is sort of a muddle.  The main character is a Jazz musician who is laboring away in obscurity as a teacher.  He dreams of greatness but, on the night of his big break, dies and goes to a sort of glitch-aesthetic afterlife where he runs into an unborn soul and tries to sort of convince it to want to live slash steal its ticket to earth.

The whole thing is a little muddle-y.  I really thought the lesson at the end would be that happiness is where you find it and that being a teacher can be a perfectly satisfying life's goal.  Similarly, that adopting a weary, seen-it-all attitude is a mask for cowardice.  None of these points are made however.

It's a fairly rollicking adventure film really, almost a heist, with bodies and souls and Earth-passes serving as the heisted treasure.  I feel like the real heart of the film comes near the end when the Jazzman has attained his goal and now feels let-down by his success.  He's asks what now and is told, now we keep going.  That moment is the most straight-faced and unambiguous, but also difficult in its simplicity - difficult to act on and obvious on first hearing.  The rest of the film like that too: full of obvious revelations about life that are simple and complex at the same time.  Perhaps they are profound?

Limelight

Saw Limelight, nearly the last film starring and directed by Charles Chaplin.  It's a talky but is full of the sentimental gentility and mugging of old silent films.  It's a very indulgent film - it follows an aging , alcoholic vaudeville comedian, played by Chaplin of course, who happens upon a ballerina mid-suicide-attempt.  Together, they re-forge their artistic sparks and try to make it in the world.

This film is nakedly about Chaplin giving a victory-lap to his greatly successful career.  The central comedian is perpetually beloved and everyone who comes upon him is shocked that he's not working anymore.  Everyone loves him, even his cruel, bullish landlady.  His alcoholism is never that serious or realistic.  The film starts out with the aging comedian lying in bed, listening to beautiful music played by tramps on the street-corner.  Everything's so precious.

That said, it's fun to be swept away by a sentimental film once in a while.  And while the sentiment is omnipresent it's only occasionally cloying.  I enjoyed the movie overall.  The ballerina character has not aged super well however.  She is fairly wooden, even the throws of her failed suicide attempt.  In addition to being a somewhat slight character, she's often sidelined or ignored.  Her pre-show stage-fright is slapped away and her love-life is stage-managed by her fairy godfather, Chaplin.

I'm being really harsh here, and know that this is by no means a bad film.  There's a few bum notes, definitely, but it's a winning film that's slightly creaky, showing its age a bit.  It is like the career of the central comedian, of Charles Chaplin himself - an ouroboros of a film.