Muriel (1963)

Saw Muriel, a challenging film that opens one a woman visiting an antiques store.  The banal dialogue plays out over a rapid-fire series of close-ups, of the proprietress smoking, a coffee maker bubbling, the woman crossing her ankles, a ring on a finger.  This is a disconcerting introduction to a disconcerting film.  The entire film feels like glimpses and missing reels from a different, longer film which is more coherent, but which is also perhaps more boring.

The plot of the film centers around the woman who runs the antique shop, her (maybe) ex-boyfriend, the boyfriend's current girlfriend, and her son.  The antiques owner and her son have both been impacted heavily by the recent Algerian war.  She missed her opportunity to marry her ex-boyfriend.  Obsessed with what could have been, she surrounds herself with the objects of the past, to preserve and dream.  Her son meanwhile, is haunted by the war, and obsessively collects documentary materials as "evidence".  Both are obsessed with the past, but the mother's obsession centers on what could have been while the son's centers on what was.

The themes of the film are interesting, but you need to pay very close attention to the film to avoid getting lost.  Many times there was a blink-and-you-miss-it shot, coupled with a sudden musical sting which indicates an important scene in a normal film, but here we're rapidly moving on and whatever it was that was dropped, I missed entirely!  After an hour or so of feeling confused and paying close close attention just to figure out what's going on, I got very tired.

The film is too difficult for me.  It's shot like a short story: full of little scenes and observations.  Unlike a short story however, we can't linger on the scene to understand it.  We're always rushing along to something else ergodic and evocative.  The same director directed Last Year at Marienbad, another film that was too inaccessible for me to enjoy very much.

So, this film got the better of me.  Under all of its strange editing, the story is relatively straightforward, but the editing is something to contend with.  This film may benefit from multiple viewings, or perhaps from none at all: the editing is all in the script, written by a poet.  It might be better to read than to view.

The Florida Project

Saw The Florida Project, a film about a little girl living with her single mother in a long-stay hotel on the strip outside of Disneyland.  It's a sweet although sort of sad film about this girl finding fun and life and existence on the margins of society.  It's similar in theme to Beasts of the Southern Wild, but this film is somewhat more tame both in terms of style (there's no apocalyptic CGI boars in this one) and in terms of the characters' poverty (the adults here can afford a hotel room.)  But both films are a child's-eye view of the effects of poverty and how they do and don't impact these kids.

The child acting is amazing.  Apparently a lot of the children's dialogue was improvised which helped it feel more natural and more strange and creative and kid-ish.  There's a few scenes in the climax of the film where you can hear a script-writer's words coming out of the kids' mouths, but this is understandable, given the importance of the climax of the film!  Also, that climax is still very raw and moving.  We see the hard shell that this little girl built up crumble, crushed under the weight of poverty and forces outside her control.

The film also takes place in the shadow of Disneyland, an expensive resort that the kids don't even dream about attending.  Nonetheless, they are often seen walking under giant Disney signs, past novelty shops with garish mascots and frequently interact with tourists on their way to the Magic Kingdom.  The main character herself lives in the Magic Palace hotel, a castle-themed hotel painted an eye-searing pink.  She has friends in Future-land, another hotel with statues of rockets in the parking lot.

The contrast between the fantastical names of the hotels vs the poverty of the residents is cutting and ironic, but the film is generally kind to its characters, so it never feels cruel, this juxtaposition.  There's also poignant parallel to the children's imaginary lives.  To them, this is a magic palace, a future-land.  They uncritically accept their surroundings and do their best to have fun, make friends, and go on adventures.  The childhood wonder on sale at Disney only a few miles away is alive and well, even in the ghettos of the magic kingdom.  It's sort of sad but also sort of hopeful.

It's a Gift

Saw It's a Gift, a W C Fields comedy about a grocer who wants to move out to the sunny orange groves of California.  In the manner of comedies, the plot is secondary to vignettes of relatable suffering and bad behavior.  The film is okay, but prepare for some tame, old-timey fun.

The main drawback of this film is just how unpleasant every character is.  I'm used to seeing W C Fields as a sort of rogue character, a con man or grifter.  Here he's the straight man, humorously under-reacting to his proud wife, his flirty daughter, his bratty son.  But absolutely everything goes wrong in this guy's life.  Simply trying to shave becomes a test of ingenuity and dexterity as he dances around his family's interruptions.  A day at work leaves the grocery in a ruin.  This is all played for laughs, but I began wondering why this grocer guy didn't just leave.  Just walk down the road and continue until he died from exhaustion.  Surely that would be better than being perpetually tormented like this.

The film is okay, but a little aged.  There's nothing very objectionable about it, but it leans heavily on the comedy of enduring through suffering, which I get tired of pretty quickly.  I enjoyed the film okay, but it was a little tame and staid by modern standards.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a nice little coming of age film about a boy who is just starting high school.  He has no friends and his high school is played up as one of those movie-places where letterman-jacket-clad jocks are always hazing the freshmen.  His life begins looking up when he meets a to-cool-to-be-popular brother and sister who introduce him to cool music and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The film reminded me of Silver Linings Playbook in as much as it's a fairly fluffy film which is not afraid to delve into some darker psychological waters.  In particular, there's a freakout sequence near the end of the film which I adored.  The film leading up to that point is fairly standard attractive teen melodrama (which I greatly enjoyed since I have a fondness for melodrama) but the ending tips into sublime psychodrama (which is the drama that I like best of all!)

The film is very slickly shot but with some elements of subtle story-telling.  We get the sense that something is wrong with the main character, that he has some troubled past, but we don't get to know exactly what's eating him until far into the film.  But he drops little clues here and there that presage the ending and help explain why he's such a non-entity in most of the film.

I liked the film alright.  It felt like a slightly updated John Huges film, with sweetness and sincerity that feels a hair manufactured, but which is nonetheless.  Unlike John Huges however, this film is shot in a more modern, cozy way, with handheld cameras lending an air of intimacy and close-up shots galore.  It's not the most trenchant film, but as teen fare goes, you could do worse.

Kes (1969)

Saw Kes, a sort of sad film about a little boy who lives in a Yorkshire mining town with his single mother and drunken older brother.  He is bullied by his brother, bullied by teachers, bullied by other kids.  Things change a bit however when he starts training a kestrel.

The film starts off with the brother bullying the main character boy, signaling that this will not be a happy movie.  The small town is not a slum, but everyone is visibly struggling and worn out by the struggle.  At one point the boy buys some meat to feed the bird and in the background you can hear a screaming match going on.  That's just life here.  Similarly at school the teachers are indiscriminately cruel, not so much arbiters of justice as terrible ogres to be avoided at all cost.

The kestrel symbolizes the main character's soul: his desire for something more and his bright personality, not yet worn down by his harsh life, but already beginning to be subdued.  The bird is what he aspires to be like and, in one scene where he talks to his classmates about the bird hunting, the bird makes him unique and fascinating and splendid.  Of course we viewers know that it's hard to maintain any of that in the slums.

The main character is fairly young but acts with great naturalism, apparently improvising a lot of his dialogue.  The film is shot almost entirely via hidden camera, which gives the film a grainy look.  Often the corners of the shot are cut off, making everything feel cramped and dim.  In contrast, the scenes of nature are shot more conventionally, giving them the feeling of comparative light and space and beauty.

The film is relatively dismal, but not without its moments of tenderness and happiness.  It's the sort of film you show to teenagers to inspire them and to try to get them to be empathetic.

The Golden Door (2006)

Saw The Golden Door, a very narrowly focused film about an Italian family immigrating to America in the 1920s.  The film opens following a small family and, as they proceed through immigration, it widens into a broader look at specifically what went down in Ellis Island back then.  The film employs elements of magical realism which are at first jarring but become lyrical at the end.

Combined with this trip across the Atlantic, there is a budding romance developing between the patriarch of the family and another immigrant woman.  The film uses this relationship as a mirror for the excitement and anxieties of immigration.  On the one hand, they strongly desire to immigrate, but are they fit enough?  Are they worthy?  These questions are reasonable for a relationship but less so for immigration.  At one point, one of the immigrants berates the officers, demanding who they think they are, to judge ones worth?  This contrast is brought to a peak in a scene where "brides" must be identified by their American "grooms" in a highly ritualized, government sanctioned ceremony overseen by a disinterested bureaucrat.

Early in the film, we spend a lot of time in the nearly medieval squalor of rural Italy, but the latter half of the film involves a lot of scenes of bureaucratic cruelty.  The film has a spare, floating quality to it, featuring long silences and sudden tonal shifts.  I found the film engrossing, although it was a bit of a downer.  It feels like a glimpse into another time, another world, one which still exists to some extent.

My Life as a Dog

Saw My Life as a Dog, a sweet coming of age film about a little boy who is sent to live in a remote town with his uncle's family due to his mother's poor health.  In this new remote town, he makes friends and has fun, haunted and troubled by his mother's illness and the chaos it brings to his life.  He deals with the sweet and the bitter, trying to resolve them in his mind.

The film is one of those coming of age films that are sweet and melancholy, acknowledging the pain in the protagonist's life, but stridently dusting him off and hustling him on to new adventures.  We ruminate, but we don't mope.  The child's view of the world is accepting but uncertain.  Is this the way things are?  Or just how they happen to be?

I enjoyed the film okay.  It didn't make a huge impression on me, but it's a serious and kindly film.  You could watch it with your parents if you wanted.