Saw Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The title is the protagonist's name and address. This bit of information is very personal (you wouldn't give it to someone on the street) but it is not revealing at all. Who is Jeanne Dielman? The film follows her daily routine, as she makes dinner and coffee, bathes, talks to her son. This all seems very personal and revealing as well, but we don't really get to know her. She sits passively and is only summoned to life by door buzzers and kettle whistles. Until almost the end of the film, she displays all the personality of a fancy kitchen appliance. Again we ask, who is Jeanne Dielman?
I kept trying to discern if she had even a personality, hiding deep within her, or if she was really the void that she presents. Bits of her past are revealed via nightly talks with her son, but they reveal a life of further passivity. She reveals one night that she did not particularly love her husband but only married him because it seemed like the thing to do.
There's a painful scene near the end where she starts off literally staring into space but is called into action/existence by the door buzzer. It's the baby she minds for a bit each day (which she does by completely ignoring the baby in its bassinet as she makes dinner.) But, dinner made and presumably bored, she picks up the baby and tries to coddle it. As soon as she touches it, it bursts into wails. Again and again she tries and the baby just can't stand her. A failure as a baby-holder, she sits back down and stares into space again.
Two things I've not touched on yet: first is that she has a side-business of prostitution where middle-aged men discretely show up at her apartment and leave, after a while, giving her a tidy sum. I think this fits in thematically as further kinda-exploitation via her passive persona.
The other thing is that this film is incredibly slow and dull. Most of the time we are only watching a possibly-personality-less woman go about her boring routine. The flow is spiced up by domestic emergencies (a hunt for exactly the right button, over-boiled potatoes that must be replaced,) but it is testament to the tedium of this film that these count as "spice."
The question of the existence of her inner life is finally answered, at the climax of the film five minutes before the very end of it. It is a twist of sorts which is shocking and kind of vindicating. It didn't make the previous 3+ hours worth it for me. If you see this movie, see it with someone else, so you can keep each other awake! An interesting movie, but incedibly austere.
Nov 11, 2013
Leon, The Professional
Saw Leon, The Professional. It was very good. It was a tricky combination of bad-ass action and a touching story of parenting (maybe.) The story is as follows: young Mathilda's horrible family is killed by crooked cops. Fearing for her life, she hides in the apartment of her neighbor, Leon, who happens to be a professional hit man. They (blarg) cause mutually beneficial growth in each other, Mathilda having a caring care-taker for possibly the first time in her life and Leon having to nurture and thus becoming something more than a death-machine.
Mathilda is at first confused by her foster-parent's profession but, fed a steady diet of cartoons and domestic violence, quickly comes to accept it and is soon begging him to teach her. There's something interesting here, in the effortless way she transitions from merely streetwise to stone-cold deadly. Is she supposed to be the troubled latch-key kid of the 90s? Are we to believe that the only thing preventing the youth from becoming stone-cold killers is who they know? She is shown watching TV, but only Transformers. Not the most compelling cartoon if the film did indeed want to suggest that she has a deeply troubled mind. It may well be that Mathilda doesn't appreciate the reality of what Leon does. She accompanies him to hits, even helping out, but <spoiler>doesn't ever actually kill anyone, though she is obviously ready and willing.</spoiler> At the very least, there is something about desensitization here.
Mathilda later declares her sexual love for Leon. I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take this development, but I chose to believe she's misinterpreting her feelings of respect and admiration for him. Her behavior towards him is very uncomfortable at parts (she sings him Happy Birthday Mr President, ala Marilyn Monroe.) and her clothing is kind of precocious but Leon (thank god) never acts on her advances. The level of seriousness in her love is left fairly ambiguous however, which makes the movie feel slightly dangerous and interesting. It gives the non-action-oriented viewer a little mystery to puzzle over as the film progresses. As I say, I choose to interpret her love as misinterpreted love for a father-figure but there's room for debate (of the strongly oh-aren't-we-edgy variety.)
At any rate, I was captivated by the film and found it entertaining enough to keep me awake through a post-caffeine crash. Good show.
Mathilda is at first confused by her foster-parent's profession but, fed a steady diet of cartoons and domestic violence, quickly comes to accept it and is soon begging him to teach her. There's something interesting here, in the effortless way she transitions from merely streetwise to stone-cold deadly. Is she supposed to be the troubled latch-key kid of the 90s? Are we to believe that the only thing preventing the youth from becoming stone-cold killers is who they know? She is shown watching TV, but only Transformers. Not the most compelling cartoon if the film did indeed want to suggest that she has a deeply troubled mind. It may well be that Mathilda doesn't appreciate the reality of what Leon does. She accompanies him to hits, even helping out, but <spoiler>doesn't ever actually kill anyone, though she is obviously ready and willing.</spoiler> At the very least, there is something about desensitization here.
Mathilda later declares her sexual love for Leon. I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take this development, but I chose to believe she's misinterpreting her feelings of respect and admiration for him. Her behavior towards him is very uncomfortable at parts (she sings him Happy Birthday Mr President, ala Marilyn Monroe.) and her clothing is kind of precocious but Leon (thank god) never acts on her advances. The level of seriousness in her love is left fairly ambiguous however, which makes the movie feel slightly dangerous and interesting. It gives the non-action-oriented viewer a little mystery to puzzle over as the film progresses. As I say, I choose to interpret her love as misinterpreted love for a father-figure but there's room for debate (of the strongly oh-aren't-we-edgy variety.)
At any rate, I was captivated by the film and found it entertaining enough to keep me awake through a post-caffeine crash. Good show.
Nov 9, 2013
Shaolin
Saw Shaolin (thanks, Basil!) It was a martial arts movie set in an unspecified time shortly before world war 1 in China (my knowledge of history is abysmal. Machine guns are new and amazing but guns are common. Electricity exists, but China is being torn apart by warlords. Make of that what you will, those of you with better background than I.) The plot is a bit too complex to be easily summarized, but essentially a vicious warlord is brought low by his own betrayal of his "sworn brother" and the subsequent double-cross-betrayal of his right-hand man. He joins a central Shaolin temple, renounces his evil ways, and sets about making amends and also defeating his power-mad and evil ex-right-hand man.
The film is increasingly histrionic as it progresses. There are scenes of crowds of people crying and wailing in slow motion as sad violins play and all but flash neon signs emblazoned with "THIS IS SAD NOW, OK?" at you. This is annoying but kind of to be expected. People don't go to martial arts movies for the subtle acting. Also, what subtle acting there is may be slightly lost in translation. In any case, I found little nuance in the performances.
The action scenes are kickass however. Jackie Chan makes a cameo as a cowardly cook (which I don't buy for a second. C'mon: he's Jackie fucking Chan! and sure enough...) He gets to be in a pretty good (though goofy) fight with some children aiding him. There's many fight scenes with what I take to be Mongolians (again, my knowledge of history. Mea culpa) which are neat and well-done. There's some Shaolin monk vs rifleman fights which stretch my imagination a bit, but they never become unbelievably absurd, so good.
The film is also surprisingly nationalistic. The hidden engine which drives all of the conflict (and which ultimately becomes the overt antagonist) are non-specific but English-speaking foreigners. They have a nefarious plot to loot China of its cultural riches by pitting the warlords against each other. The protagonist, when he's still a warlord, cautions his right-hand man not to make agreements with the foreigners, but to leave China to the Chinese. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Chinese films must get past their own censorship board after all, and I'm sure nationalistic pictures are more likely to get through. It's not like we don't have our share of chest-beating feel-good-about-the-US films. It doesn't spoil the picture or anything, just something to notice.
So, not a bad movie. High on action and low on nuance.
The film is increasingly histrionic as it progresses. There are scenes of crowds of people crying and wailing in slow motion as sad violins play and all but flash neon signs emblazoned with "THIS IS SAD NOW, OK?" at you. This is annoying but kind of to be expected. People don't go to martial arts movies for the subtle acting. Also, what subtle acting there is may be slightly lost in translation. In any case, I found little nuance in the performances.
The action scenes are kickass however. Jackie Chan makes a cameo as a cowardly cook (which I don't buy for a second. C'mon: he's Jackie fucking Chan! and sure enough...) He gets to be in a pretty good (though goofy) fight with some children aiding him. There's many fight scenes with what I take to be Mongolians (again, my knowledge of history. Mea culpa) which are neat and well-done. There's some Shaolin monk vs rifleman fights which stretch my imagination a bit, but they never become unbelievably absurd, so good.
The film is also surprisingly nationalistic. The hidden engine which drives all of the conflict (and which ultimately becomes the overt antagonist) are non-specific but English-speaking foreigners. They have a nefarious plot to loot China of its cultural riches by pitting the warlords against each other. The protagonist, when he's still a warlord, cautions his right-hand man not to make agreements with the foreigners, but to leave China to the Chinese. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Chinese films must get past their own censorship board after all, and I'm sure nationalistic pictures are more likely to get through. It's not like we don't have our share of chest-beating feel-good-about-the-US films. It doesn't spoil the picture or anything, just something to notice.
So, not a bad movie. High on action and low on nuance.
Nov 6, 2013
Gosford Park
Saw Gosford Park. I now understand the attention given to Robert Altman. The film is set at an upstairs/downstairs sort of country estate. The film is filled with multilayer scenes, where in foreground one scene is going on, in the background a subplot is unfolding, and on the soundtrack we can overhear scraps of some conversation which is important to a third storyline. The action progresses smoothly upstairs and downstairs, with both inevitably neatly meshing.
The servants are clearly exploited throughout. Their sense of self-worth and dignity is clearly bound up not in who they are, but in who they serve. There are echoes of Remains of the Day, though this film is a bit more wacky. Especially exploited is the more central Mary, maid to the never-more-childishly-cruel Maggie Smith who casually commands her to stay up all night washing a shirt, only to languidly decline the freshly washed garment in the morning. She's really delightfully horrid. She has this cutesie little 'yummy-yum-yum' that she says before every meal. This is the (second) most egregious abuse of the servants in this film, but reflects the upstairs mindset. At one point one of the gentlemen is smooching with his lover when a butler enters the room. She's startled and he says "don't worry, it's nobody." Indeed.
There is a slightly painful scene where one of the guests (an actor, much despised as a performer by the old money) plays a song on the piano. The other guests can scarcely conceal their boredom, but all of the servants (who have only seen him in the cinema or heard him on the radio) stand in dark hallways watching through cracked doors and listening to echoes in stairwells.
There is another subplot where an actor goes undercover as a valet to research a role. He is supposed to be a sort of James Dean type who (it is suggested) is pumping both sexes for their money. He also kind of casually almost-rapes the maid Mary and makes advances on another maid, so clearly this is also kind of sport for him. (The subjugation of women is also on this film's mind perhaps.) Anyway, this actor's subplot seems to pay off in an exchange with a maid after he has come clean about his non-servant status. He can't understand why the servant treat him so differently. She tells him, "you can't play for both teams." This is a delightfully rich line (the implicit opposition of the 'teams,' the implied bisexuality, the explicit 'you're one of them now,' etc.)
A rich film, bursting with hidden bits and pieces that must be fit together post-viewing. It is busy and yet somehow streamlined. I loved it.
The servants are clearly exploited throughout. Their sense of self-worth and dignity is clearly bound up not in who they are, but in who they serve. There are echoes of Remains of the Day, though this film is a bit more wacky. Especially exploited is the more central Mary, maid to the never-more-childishly-cruel Maggie Smith who casually commands her to stay up all night washing a shirt, only to languidly decline the freshly washed garment in the morning. She's really delightfully horrid. She has this cutesie little 'yummy-yum-yum' that she says before every meal. This is the (second) most egregious abuse of the servants in this film, but reflects the upstairs mindset. At one point one of the gentlemen is smooching with his lover when a butler enters the room. She's startled and he says "don't worry, it's nobody." Indeed.
There is a slightly painful scene where one of the guests (an actor, much despised as a performer by the old money) plays a song on the piano. The other guests can scarcely conceal their boredom, but all of the servants (who have only seen him in the cinema or heard him on the radio) stand in dark hallways watching through cracked doors and listening to echoes in stairwells.
There is another subplot where an actor goes undercover as a valet to research a role. He is supposed to be a sort of James Dean type who (it is suggested) is pumping both sexes for their money. He also kind of casually almost-rapes the maid Mary and makes advances on another maid, so clearly this is also kind of sport for him. (The subjugation of women is also on this film's mind perhaps.) Anyway, this actor's subplot seems to pay off in an exchange with a maid after he has come clean about his non-servant status. He can't understand why the servant treat him so differently. She tells him, "you can't play for both teams." This is a delightfully rich line (the implicit opposition of the 'teams,' the implied bisexuality, the explicit 'you're one of them now,' etc.)
A rich film, bursting with hidden bits and pieces that must be fit together post-viewing. It is busy and yet somehow streamlined. I loved it.
Nov 4, 2013
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Saw Hannah Takes the Stairs, another mumble-core about romance. This one follows Hannah, serial monogamist at large. She starts off breaking up with her friendly but ambition-less boyfriend who recently quit his job (and his band) to find something that he enjoys. This freaks Hannah out and it's on to the next romance for her. Her central problem of not being able to settle down is spelt out fairly explicitly in one of the final scenes in a conversation with her next new boyfriend. We abruptly close on a shot of the two of them in the bath. We hope the best for them, but the sharp cut to credits leaves us uncertain.
This film was not as funny or ingenious as the other films I've seen in the genre and it has the feel of heavy improvisation. This almost always works and when it works it feels like a high-wire act, barely sticking its landings and not falling into ridiculousness only by the greatest care. The drunken half-sentences that riddle the script (much of the film takes place in cheap, echo-y living room parties) reveal the characters' inner thoughts more succinctly (if not more articulately) than full sentences. The film has an artfully guileless feel (which is of course carefully contrived) which will probably annoy some (the eternal handheld camera started to get to me too, by the end,) but is refreshing and sufficiently different to entertain me.
This film was not as funny or ingenious as the other films I've seen in the genre and it has the feel of heavy improvisation. This almost always works and when it works it feels like a high-wire act, barely sticking its landings and not falling into ridiculousness only by the greatest care. The drunken half-sentences that riddle the script (much of the film takes place in cheap, echo-y living room parties) reveal the characters' inner thoughts more succinctly (if not more articulately) than full sentences. The film has an artfully guileless feel (which is of course carefully contrived) which will probably annoy some (the eternal handheld camera started to get to me too, by the end,) but is refreshing and sufficiently different to entertain me.
Nov 3, 2013
Belle Du Jour
Saw Belle Du Jour, directed by Luis Buñuel, a man who makes some strange films. This one opens with an attractive woman and her also attractive husband on a horse-drawn carriage. Sleigh-bells jingle as he asks her if everything's perfect. They are the picture of Barbie-doll bucolic love. Suddenly they begin arguing and the husband, in a fury, commands the coachmen to 'do what we agreed!' They leap down and drag her, struggling, into the woods where they horse-whip her. We close up on her face to find that she's actually kind of enjoying the whipping and then zoom out to find she's been in her bedroom the whole time.
This sets the ambiguous tone of the whole film. She slips into other fantasies with little warning throughout the film. On its surface, it is the story of a libidinous woman who slides into a very pleasant-looking life of prostitution (apparently out of sheer frustration with her squeaky-clean husband.) Eventually her double-life comes to a terrible climax, and an apparently happy ending is rendered deeply ambiguous by the deafening sound of sleigh-bells.
But has the whole thing been imaginary? It seems the stuff of fantasy for a suburban house-wife to join a brothel. Perhaps the ending is a double-fake and is the signifier of a return to reality? To be utterly pedantic about it, the entire film, as we know, is a fantasy. This woman does not exist: she is only an actor. This line of thinking begins to teeter on the brink of a hall of mirrors. Exactly how much of what's being shown on screen is real and how much is fantasy is the engine that drives this film.
Edit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061395/trivia?item=tr0641582 Well that's stupid.
This sets the ambiguous tone of the whole film. She slips into other fantasies with little warning throughout the film. On its surface, it is the story of a libidinous woman who slides into a very pleasant-looking life of prostitution (apparently out of sheer frustration with her squeaky-clean husband.) Eventually her double-life comes to a terrible climax, and an apparently happy ending is rendered deeply ambiguous by the deafening sound of sleigh-bells.
But has the whole thing been imaginary? It seems the stuff of fantasy for a suburban house-wife to join a brothel. Perhaps the ending is a double-fake and is the signifier of a return to reality? To be utterly pedantic about it, the entire film, as we know, is a fantasy. This woman does not exist: she is only an actor. This line of thinking begins to teeter on the brink of a hall of mirrors. Exactly how much of what's being shown on screen is real and how much is fantasy is the engine that drives this film.
Edit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061395/trivia?item=tr0641582 Well that's stupid.
Nov 2, 2013
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It was a grizzly western. Unlike the romanticized wild west of John Wayne this film has the old west fetishized in a different direction, trading the fantasy of the noble cowboy for the fantasy of the wild outlaw. This at first seems more realistic, but when people start cleanly dying by clutching their stomachs and gracefully falling down, it becomes clear that we've only traded one dream for another.
The film stars a trio of baddies all after a pile of loot buried in a cemetery. They circle around and around each other, the "ugly" and the "good" guy mostly against the "bad" one. (I use quotes because this film engages heavily in the no-one's-right morality of a lot of action films. The "good" guy is called so not because he is actually good, but merely because he is less bad.) The plot twists and turns and it is left ambiguous almost until the very end who will come out on top. The shoot-outs are tense and the nods at characterization are well done. There's a scene where the "ugly" meets his brother that's revealing and good.
However, the film takes place during the American civil war and has a lot of creepy sympathy for the soldiers of the confederacy. The only time union soldiers are shown, they are cruelly exploiting their prisoners of war (at the protest of a (literally) lame captain who is openly sneered at and made to seem hopelessly naive, but then we are supposed to hate the union. I guess.) or, later on, drunkenly proclaiming that the side with the most booze wins a war (which is something that sounds funny and true late at night in a bar, but doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny.) The confederates are always tearful and noble and beautifully, pathetically dying. I understand that for the most part the confederate soldiers were small people at the mercy of forces beyond their control, but the focus on the nobility of the confederates smacks of lazily rooting for the underdog for the sake of rooting for the underdog, never mind their stance regarding slavery.
Anyway, the film is pretty grizzly and bad-ass and quite respectable but is therefore, unfortunately, not really something I'd dig. I need to see more shitty films, so I can appreciate a movie like this.
The film stars a trio of baddies all after a pile of loot buried in a cemetery. They circle around and around each other, the "ugly" and the "good" guy mostly against the "bad" one. (I use quotes because this film engages heavily in the no-one's-right morality of a lot of action films. The "good" guy is called so not because he is actually good, but merely because he is less bad.) The plot twists and turns and it is left ambiguous almost until the very end who will come out on top. The shoot-outs are tense and the nods at characterization are well done. There's a scene where the "ugly" meets his brother that's revealing and good.
However, the film takes place during the American civil war and has a lot of creepy sympathy for the soldiers of the confederacy. The only time union soldiers are shown, they are cruelly exploiting their prisoners of war (at the protest of a (literally) lame captain who is openly sneered at and made to seem hopelessly naive, but then we are supposed to hate the union. I guess.) or, later on, drunkenly proclaiming that the side with the most booze wins a war (which is something that sounds funny and true late at night in a bar, but doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny.) The confederates are always tearful and noble and beautifully, pathetically dying. I understand that for the most part the confederate soldiers were small people at the mercy of forces beyond their control, but the focus on the nobility of the confederates smacks of lazily rooting for the underdog for the sake of rooting for the underdog, never mind their stance regarding slavery.
Anyway, the film is pretty grizzly and bad-ass and quite respectable but is therefore, unfortunately, not really something I'd dig. I need to see more shitty films, so I can appreciate a movie like this.
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