Earth

Saw Earth. It was a 1930s silent piece of Soviet propaganda. The title refers to soil (not the planet) and the story revolves around noble peasants trying to eke out a living in the shadow of a rich neighboring farmer. The film opens with a promising scene of an old man dying, lying in an orchard, surrounded by ripe apples which a nearby child is eating (the symbolism is clear: the circle of life.) Later, the peasants buy a tractor (or, as they later call it, a communist iron horse) and begin tilling the soil and harvesting at super-oxen speed. The rich neighboring farmer kills the young, attractive leader of the peasant commune and the image of a child eating near a corpse is repeated, this time highlighting the uncertain future of the child, as he cumbersomely picks seeds from his mouth. The commune seems set to fall into despair and a dessicated, ancient priest begins hanging around. But then, the noble, Captain Haddock-esque father of the slain leader casts the priest out (an ugly peasant woman offers the thinnest possible defense of religion at this point: "There may be no god... but what if there is!?") and leads the commune in not a funeral march, but a great parade, affirming their glorious future. This scene is awesome and amazing.

The peasants are always shot from below and with a huge sky behind them. It gives them the appearance of enormous colossi, beyond archetypal and into mythic territory. There was a shot of a peasant when the tractor is delivered that struck me. The peasant is so wizened and ugly, and yet iconic and almost picturesque. Religion is truly shafted by this movie. The priest is clearly a villain, later calling on god to "smite the impious." Even in this he is unwittingly aiding the peasants. They are clearly not the impious ones here. Rather, the evil rich farmer goes mad with guilt, faced with the unbreakable resolve of the peasantry. The climactic parade/funeral is truly nuts. There are inter-cut images of horses stampeding (the unbridled passion of the communists,) a woman giving birth (to a new movement?) the rich farmer losing his mind, the priest screaming to god. Even typed out, it seems so wild and over the top! A scene to rival the staircase scene in Battleship Potemkin.

Clearly propaganda (the climactic march is brought back to earth with a stirring speech about their soaring future, soaring like that communist airplane there (airplane noises are heard, but no plane is shown. Indeed.)) but surprisingly good and effective for its reverend age.

A Serbian Film

Saw A Serbian Film. It has a reputation of being very difficult to watch and it was indeed an ordeal. I understand it has some kind of allegorical message about politics in Serbia expressed via S&M-themed porn (in the grand tradition of the Marquis De Sade,) but this is not clear from the film itself. The film itself is a kind of horror film where a male porn star is drugged for a film shot and then, finding his wife and son missing after waking up, he tries to recreate his footsteps from the previous night (hint: wife and son are not okay.) The film is seemingly full of commentary about the porn industry and sexual politics and also has some crypto-message about politics (allegedly) but I think it's mainly an excuse to push boundaries and gross people out. In this endeavor it succeeds admirably. Grotesque and gross, it is not ugly or cheap enough to be easily dismissed but neither is it smart enough to be anything but dumb torture-porn (a genre I wish was not an actual genre.)

I don't mind having my boundaries pushed and it's really not all that bad (the special effects are okay but sufficiently lacking to make it obvious that most of it is fake. I mean, like comedy and horror, you kind of have to play along for it to be effective.) The gross-out scenes (such as they are) are pretty imaginative and well-shot, but don't expect a good plot or even very interesting ideas. Avoid.

Vanya on 42nd Street

Saw Vanya on 42nd Street (Thanks, Steven!) It was essentially a filmed play. The film is set in modern times, where a group of actors are putting on Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (translated by David Mamet!) in a beautiful, crumbling theater. The actors are all dynamite (with the exception of the guy who played Waffles. I think his readings were too 'stagey.' I could probably do no better mind you, but then I'm not on stage with Wallace Shawn and Julianne Moore.) I was a bit disappointed that the freedom afforded by film wasn't used as much as it is in other stage adaptations (eg: Doubt.) Indeed because this is a play within the context of the film, self-consciously stagey lighting queues and off-stage sound effects are used. There are even inter-act breaks where the actors go out of character and snack and chatter quietly to each other. There's a name for this technique of making the viewer conscious that they're watching a performance, but I don't know what it is.

So, essentially this is really just a play that someone happened to film. But it's a great play (it always shocks me that Chekhov wrote his plays more than a century ago and yet his plays are more relevant to modern life than many films in theaters now are.) and as I've said, the actors are dynamite. It's slightly disappointing as film but as theater, it's glorious. Really, I wish this were more of a thing. If only people would just film and talk about live theater. So many great performances are completely off my radar simply because they were live, and only possibly recorded. Such a pity.

Big Fan

Saw Big Fan. A very dramatic movie about fandom. It revolves around a Marty-esque loser played by a never-shlubbier Patton Oswalt. He plays a fanatical NY Giants fan. That team is his one ray of sunshine in his depressing life, living with his shrill mother and working a dead-end, minimum wage job. His small-time lawyer brother owns a colossal house and a spray-tanned wife with tits out to there, his boring but kind sister works as a dental assistant and offers to help find Patton a job, which he interprets as charity and grumpily rebuffs her. He is a man who has painted himself into a corner. His fandom acts as a cage, protecting him from the sadness of life, but also stifling his growth. Much of his life is spent on insisting that he's happy.

One day he spots the power-house quarterback of the Giants in a parking lot, follows him, unwittingly witnesses what is probably a drug deal, follows him further to a strip club, fan-boys all over the quarterback, accidentally lets slip about the maybe-drug deal, and has his ass beat. The quarterback is suspended pending investigation and Patton's family urges him to sue. The papers descend, his brother tries to get him declared mentally incompetent, cops are sniffing around, sport news-casters are talking about him, and without their quarterback the Giants are losing game after game. All of this mounts and mounts up to a climax that is almost hilarious in its melodrama. Still, it's very effective in its mundane, (sometimes literally) kitchen-sink drama.

The final conclusion of the film seems to be that, yes, Patton is an overgrown child. But he is a happy one, or at least believes himself to be. The film argues/hopes that this is the same thing. A deeply sad film, but hopeful in the end.

Baghead

Saw Baghead. It was, I believe, an actual real-live indie movie. It had actors I'd never seen before, clearly no budget whatsoever (I think I could have financed almost everything in the film on 20$,) lots of money-saving close-ups, and believably improvised dialogue. They had the artless 'um'-filled conversations that actual real people have. Amazing.

The plot is as follows: four struggling actors hole up in a cabin the woods to write the film that will star all of them and make them famous. Little romantic crossed wires and petty jealousies are revealed and then a boogeyman (or men) begins terrorizing them. It's only slightly scary (even for a big wimp like me) but it's fun. There's a lot of low-key comedy in the thing (at one point they hear the bad guy tinkering with their car. One character looks out the window and says "Is he fucking stealing the car?" As though killing them weren't bad enough. Hilarious.) as well as some predictable plot points. But the film they're writing (yeah?) is THIS FILM! I know, contrived, but I liked it. There's a lot of playing with what's going on vs what we're seeing to notice here.

Not a bad movie. Unexpected and low-key. It's an interesting take on the slasher genre with plenty of line-blurring to keep things interesting. I tepidly recommend it.

Paisan

Saw Paisan, a 1946 war film. It was structured as a series of vignettes set during the allied invasion/occupation of Italy. I was surprised at the nuanced view of the allies. The final vignette ends with a clearly telegraphed war-crime on the Nazi's part, so it's not like this film totally transcends its time-period, but there is another vignette about an American MP who has his shoes stolen by a street urchin. He demands his shoes back and makes the urchin bring him to his shack in a sort of tent-city, a place thronging thick with displaced woman and children. At first their excitement at seeing him seems almost charming, but then the hungry eyes and outstretched hands of starving children get to be too much for him and he flees their slum, still shoeless.

Many of the vignettes similarly avoid pat happy endings. They show a worrying similarity to the 'gotcha' twists of The Twilight Zone (especially the first vignette,) but never actually become quite that campy. The nonsense and black irony of war is on full display here, but avoids becoming wearying or trite. Perhaps the memories were still too fresh for anyone to dare to try and provide morals or points.

Very interesting and quite exciting. This film also predates the discovery that dirt existed on the soldierly form, so everyone's very clean-shaven and photogenic.

Return of the Pink Panther

Saw Return of the Pink Panther. It was a passable and pleasant Peter Sellers comedy. He does his usual thing of being hilariously bumbling (there's a scene in a night club where he slurs "here's lookin' at you cuh-hid" that I think had his scene-mate genuinely laughing.) I noticed an increase in things going wrong beyond his control (there's a bathroom that disintegrates around him through no (er, well, little) fault of his own) I think he's best sewing his own discord. The actual plot is kind of boringly advanced by the jewel thief of the previous installments. There's some awkward '70s racial humor ("his little yellow skin" eh? Oh dear.) and clearly the jewel thief is supposed to be a sort of James Bond type (though not nearly as entertaining and just as pompous.) The final catastrophic set-destroying joke I saw well in advance, but it was the best part of the film just the same. Not Sellers' best work, but funny in a laff-a-minute sort of way and a pleasant way to waste two hours.