.
MAY 2020 and the “shelter-in-place” lockdown drones on… Seeing boatloads of great films, but too much sitting down! Starting to feel like the film reviewer’s equivalent of John Lennon’s complaint “I’ve got blisters on me fingers!”- only that’s not where we writers get them.
(All ratings are on a 5 star scale. Note that a classic only becomes a classic after a decade or more.)
(Titles in purple have been expanded for Flix Pix columns.)
> This month I evaluate the following 23 feature films:
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)*****
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991)****+
HOLY ROLLERS (2010)***
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959)**
SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954)*****
SAINT JACK (1979)****
VARIETY (1925)*****
THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948)*****
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES (1937)*****
THE SLENDER THREAD (1965)****+
IMITATION OF LIFE (1934)*****
PENELOPE (1966)***
SCARLET STREET (1945)*****
SAFE (1995)***+
SANJURO (1963)*****
THE HORSE SOLDIERS (1959)****
I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) (1967)****
THE CANTERBURY TALES (1972)****
THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)****
MEANTIME (1983)***+
THREE COLOURS: BLUE (1993)****
THREE COLOURS: WHITE (1994)****+
THREE COLOURS: RED (1994)*****
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) *****
> Yow! Stanley Kubrick blows the worlds’ collective mind with this visionary spectacle. Scope! Enigma! Mystery! All in a cautionary tale about the coming age of Artificial Intelligence.
. This was the fourth time I watched this masterpiece. I sat down to let it wash over me in an in-between moment, only intending to watch a few minutes of it while waiting for exhaustion to bring me illusive sleep. Before I realized it, 2 hours and 44 minutes later, I was watching the closing credits. How is it possible for a film to keep improving on repeated viewings?
. Certainly, every time I watch this film that shattered all box office records of its time, it makes a little more sense. The opening sequence at “The Dawn of Man” with a homo sapien 1.0 learning to use tools for the first time, finally makes clear sense. Conversely, the final experimental sequence “Jupiter and Beyond” finally no longer needs to. I can accept it for what it is: an experience more than a narrative.
. It all begins when a mysterious black monolith of otherworldly origin suddenly appears on earth, and when monkey-man touches it, evolution receives an abrupt kickstart. A pile of bones from a dead ancestor becomes a tool for apeman- and what is the first use for this new implement? It becomes a weapon in a war over natural resources, to determine which tribe will dominate the waterhole- a sadly cynical take on the new age of tools, and probably accurate.
. There is a clear stratification in this film- it has four distinct chapters. This first sequence featuring our vicious, tiny-brained ancestors, a sequence centered around the paradigm-shattering discovery of a similar monolith deliberately buried in the moon long before modern man, the mission to Jupiter, undertaken when the moon monolith begins to beam strong radio waves there- which forms the meat of the story, and the mind-blowing metaphorical ending that made 2001 a legend among stoners of the 1970’s.
. After this film, laser light shows began to pop up in otherwise disused planetariums, unreeling trippy visuals set to dynamic classical scores like “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss, used memorably here to invoke the unfathomable majesty of unknowable cosmic mystery. Though many of my generation took mind-bending substances like LSD to experience Kubrick’s psychedelic “stargate” of Jupiter and Beyond (I was probably among them!), it was hardly necessary. No matter the viewer’s starting point, Kubrick’s magic transports the consciousness to a wholly different place, in an entirely subjective mash-up of space and time.
. It is astonishing how well these images hold up these many decades later- how they still fascinate. The scene where Keir Dullea has to crawl inside the brain of Super-computer HAL to wrest back control of the ship still amazes by the way it makes us actually feel for the murderous machine, as it pleads with astronaut Dave not to dismantle its “mind”. (“Daisy, Daisy! Give me your answer true…”) HAL’s lethal dysfunction presages a vast world of new issues with artificial intelligence that makes 2001 seem virtually prescient. Has a person been killed by a computer yet, without any human decision-making in the process? Probably, but not on purpose- not by design. (Killer drones usually have a killer human at the joystick… so far as we know.) It is too easy to imagine this changing in the little lifetime I have left. Do we want to live in a world where we can be powerless to intervene when some algorithm deems us a threat? Coupled with facial recognition technology, we may be there already. Terrifying! Kubrick’s imagined future is here.
. It is remarkable to think this sprawling epic was birthed by a 1951 short story called The Sentinel, by revered sci-fi storyteller Arthur C. Clarke. Such a small genesis for such a massive work of visionary art. Time for me to read that!
. And that final metaphorical, symbolic sequence: What does it mean?
– Who cares! By the end of 2001, we stare in wonderment at the birth of Kubrick’s cosmic Starchild, having been nudged, however temporarily, into perceiving our Universe through the eyes of the Starchild himself. And nothing will ever look the same again.
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991) ****+
> Edward Young directed this much-respected tragic romance from Taiwan, and at almost 4 hours long, it is almost 4 hours great.
. Young takes a look at the first generation of Taiwanese youth to be born and come of age after China bifurcated and the island went its own way against communism, in the tumultuous 1960’s. It was a time when all cultural tethers were suddenly unmoored, placing Taiwanese identity under great strain, producing a generation in limbo- transitioning from one familiar thing into another, completely unknown. Kids could sense that their parents had little faith in the future, knowing as they did, that what was done by an act of will could be undone at any moment by the armed forces of their former selves on the mainland. Was a new nation being birthed, or was there a reconciliation in both peoples’ shared future, whether they liked the outcome or not?
. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY is a deceptively sunny title for a film tells the true story of a terrible crime that shocked the young nation, and because the film is so long, it is easy to forget that this is where the narrative is going, making the act, when it happens, a shocking deed indeed. And after 4 hours- still a little inexplicable.
. Martin Scorsese rhapsodizes about this film, and it’s easy to see why, since it contains so many of his filmic touchstones: a vivid street culture, the allegiances and betrayals of fellow/rival gangs, the underlying threat of sudden and explosive violence- all presented with great technical artistry. But the film is also a coming-of-age tale that deals with the mad infatuation of youth and the ultimate disappointment of most first love, in a vivid and compelling way.
– It may be A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, but there’s plenty of sorrow to go around.
HOLY ROLLERS (2010) ***
This film tells the true story of a drug smuggling ring with the perfect front: their mules were all Orthodox Jews. With their out-of-place costume and extreme hairdos- who was going to suspect them? Nobody did- for the longest time, but we see it for the house of cards it is, never doubting a big fall a’comin’. Jesse Eisenberg plays a man straddling two worlds. Seduced by the allure of the true American gods of wealth and privilege, his path is leading him away from the flock, and they aren’t terribly thrilled about it. I watched this film so I could follow the conversation in an online Jewish film festival. Though not a big fan of Mr. Eisenberg (his range seems to interpolate between A and B), he is nonetheless a good anchor for this film. His enabler has the better role though, as the man who facilitates his seduction into the pleasures of the material world, and Justin Bartha is very good in that role. The reason to watch this film: a look into an American subculture that is all but invisible to most other Americans.
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) **
> Hollywood stalwart Robert Wise directed this turkey from Harry Belafonte’s HarBel Productions. Whoops.
. I am such a huge fan of Belafonte and of the heist genre, that this came as a serious letdown. The story is promising enough: Ed Begley (Sr.) is a disgraced ex-lawman, putting together a team to rob a bank. He recruits volatile ex-con Robert Ryan and a third henchman- a struggling entertainer played by Belafonte, but neglects to mention one small detail that wouldn’t matter to most people: that their third team member is a “negro”. Should hardly be an issue among thieves- but Ryan is not just any thief, he’s a nasty, virulent racist- setting up the promise of a conflict that the film simply did not deliver.
. The best heist films have many moving pieces that ultimately fit together like a puzzle. The thieves almost never, ever get away. Not in the final reel. In most such morality plays, crime does not pay- unless it is some form of karmic justice. The real fun comes when two pieces that are supposed to fit seamlessly together turn out to be incompatible, and despite the best laid plans of mice and men, the team is forced to improvise, with results that are impossible to predict. Of course, that happens here- but it is all resolved far too suddenly, and in a completely unsatisfying way. Too bad.
. Shelley Winters and professional noir femme fatale Gloria Grahame are here too- spinning their wheels without gaining traction…
– So much talent in a wasted opportunity.
SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954) *****
> This classic film was not on my radar at all, until found the title two European “Best Films of All Time” lists. That kind of praise will make a movie-lover like me sit up and take notice.
. Glad I did! Kenji Mizoguchi is now considered one of the all-time greatest cinema directors, and yet before this, the only other Mizoguchi movie I had seen was the similarly classic UGETSU, made just before this film. Before this, the only Japanese director I was familiar with was Kurosawa. It’s delightful to discover how much more I have to learn about world cinema. It foretells the promise of great pleasure ahead.
. SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a beautifully filmed, beautifully realized drama, taken from a book that was inspired by a Japanese folk tale. It is late in the 11th century. A refined lady travels with her young son Zushiō and daughter Anju to live with distant relatives. They are the family of an unjustly banished governor, a high and virtuous clan brought low by the conniving of a power-hungry lord. Suddenly torn from a life of safety and comfort, they are now in a world of uncertainty and peril. The road is a dangerous place, and reduced to poverty, they cannot afford to stay at inns along the way, placing big targets on their backs for those who prey on the weak. Tricked by an old matron, they are separated by force- the mother off to become a courtesan (let’s be clear: a sex slave), and the children sold into a lifetime of slavery and placed under the tyrannical thumb of Sansho the titular bailiff- by western terminology a steward. Sansho is a vicious, brutal master who does not know the meaning of the word mercy. The slave camp is like a Soviet gulag. Escape is nearly impossible. Everybody is eventually apprehended, and when they are, they get their faces branded to constantly remind them of the futility of the effort. Years pass, and the children come of age. Anju dreams of escape. Her brother Zushiō has become an embittered young man who has forgotten the admonitions of his father to “always be kind to others, even as you are hard on yourself”. Desperate to simply survive, Zushiō has become an enforcer in the slave camp, called on to punish other slaves when they transgress. His virtuous, principled father would be horrified.
. But something happens that changes everything: A new song arrives, carried on the lips of fellow slaves, that mentions Zushiō and Anju by name. Recognizing it as a mother’s mournful lament, they realize their matriarch must still be alive somewhere, and singing to the wind of her loneliness for them. Now, despite the horrible consequences, they feel compelled to attempt to escape the merciless bludgeon of Sansho the bailiff, and Zushiō must begin the painful journey back to his own humanity.
. Brimming with sorrow, heartbreak and tragedy, it is still an ultimately triumphant journey to a powerfully emotional conclusion. Beware the righteous wrath of Zushiō!
. Mizoguchi’s usual cameraperson Kazuo Miyagawa crafts gorgeous black-and-white images in long, powerful shots that immerse you into this terrifying world of feudal Japan, and this story of a family, brutalized almost out of existence. The acting is perfect, the direction, impeccable in every respect. Not a single flaw, as far as I can tell.
– Magnificent cinema. Kenji Mizoguchi was an artistic monster!
SAINT JACK (1979) ****
> I had been looking for this hard to find Peter Bogdanovich film for many decades. Access to Turner Classic Movies and a DVR finally enabled me to enjoy it.
. Considered one of his more obscure works, it is a remarkably mature film that paints a vivid picture of a time and a place, and the man for that moment. The character is Jack Flowers, wonderfully played by Ben Gazzara at his very best. Jack is an American ex-pat who came to Singapore and never returned home. Everybody knows and adores Jack- the pimp with the heart of gold. All he wants to do is run a decent brothel in peace, but a local crime family is not too keen on the idea of him horning in on their territory. Jack befriends a pasty English auditor played by the ever-likeable Denholm Elliott.
. As a man with a stubborn streak of immutable integrity, Jack blanches at the prospect of having to do some very unsavory work for the CIA, if he wants to achieve his big dreams. The morally untethered spook is played by Bogdanovich himself, as a man with an arrogant sense of entitlement and immunity. One-time 007 George Lazenby is a politician with a taste for the wrong set of chromosomes. All Jack needs to do is set him up, snap some compromising photographs, and in the destroying of a man’s career, he would have all the resources he needed to be King of Singapore pimps. But even a pimp has principles. Especially Saint Jack.
– This journey to a world within our world is definitely suggested, if you can find it.
VARIETY (1925) *****
> The Criterion Channel has this silent German film in its Expressionist Cinema package, promising a visually engrossing and visionary film for its era, and they did not exaggerate.
. VARIETY is a somewhat lurid tale of obsession, jealousy, and ultimately murder, in the showy shadow of the circus. About five minutes into the movie comes one of the biggest character-driven laughs I have ever gotten from a film, when we see the motley crew who work the sideshow. It tells the story of a former celebrated acrobat (Emil Jennings), who has fallen far in the entertainment world, eking out a living with his faithful wife, running a seedy carnival sideshow. Enter a beautiful young homewrecker who steals his heart. Abandoning the wife and the sideshow, they run off together and eventually form a trio of trapeze artists with a famous acrobat.
. But a faithless woman is a faithless woman. Jennings goes from cheater to cheated on, when the woman he sacrificed everything for makes a cuckold of him.
. There is a spectacular scene where neither lover knows Jennings is onto them as they begin their circus act. All Jennings needs to do is fake a bad hand-off with his rival to see the interloper fall to his death. Will he do it- kill the man who shattered his dreams, right there in front of a full tent of circusgoers, and if so- will he get away with it?
– This silent is a classic.
THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948) *****
> Joseph Losey knocked the ball out of the park in his warm, corny, family-friendly debut feature about the burden and value of being “different” in a world where people just want to conform, so they can be accepted as part of the tribe.
. Frame by frame, it kept blowing my mind that the boy in question was played by an eleven-year old Dean Stockwell, a very good actor who began a very good career, with this very good performance, in this wonderful film. Heavy-handed and obvious, THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR is still a delight.
. A young boy is orphaned when his parents are killed trying to be helpers in World War II, so he goes to live with his warm, loving gramp, played by Pat O’Brien at his most humane and sympathetic. They get on well. The boy is loved and cared for, and gramp is doing his best to be the boy’s new family. But the other kids tease and taunt the new kid about being an orphan, making him wish he were anyone but himself.
. Everything in his life changes when he suddenly awakens one morning… with green hair! Oh man! As if he were not already different enough!
. The boy runs away to escape his outcast identity, but has a magical encounter in the woods with the ghosts of other children orphaned by war, that makes him begin to see being “different” as a potential strength and not a certain weakness.
. Losey’s first film is as sweet as the day is long- making it quite different from his other, far more adult body of work! Warm, colorful and heartfelt with not one ounce of snark in it- there is a place for films like this.
– An antidote for cynicism, THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR is a true family classic.
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES (1937) *****
> I have a 40-year relationship to this H.G. Welles fable, even though I had never read the story or seen the film. How could this be?
. The thing is, I wrote essentially the same story, independently of the great futurist, in my early 20’s! I composed the outline while attending college in 1975, intending it to be my first book. I had the story- and the outcome, but I couldn’t make the threads fit into one rope. There were too many of them! Basically, my story told of a perpetual complainer, always claiming he could do a better job than God, if given the same powers over the earth. God is sick and tired of hearing these complaints. He has an infinite number of other Universes to tend to, not just one measly planet in the Universe we call home. So He sends a bitter, cynical angel with a sharp gallows humor to the complainer, with the message that he can have the damn planet for the next year! Anything to make him just stop kvetching! The angel remains as a reluctant sidekick to enforce the necessary “rules”. I planned to have 365 short chapters- many less than a page, to chronicle how the best of intentions collide with the law of unintended consequences, and make each succeeding day a bigger disaster than the day that came before it. I tried to attack the project from several different angles, but found that I just did not have the imagination or foresight to construct this chain of cause-and-effect. Frustrated, I put the project away for a while. Then, when I went to film school, I tried to write it in visual terms, as a screenplay. Again: could not wrap my brain around all those variables!
. Fast-forward to April 2020, and THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES turns up on TCM. (Amazingly, Welles himself wrote the script! I had no idea he had any movie credits.) I was gobsmacked to find that it told almost the same story!
. In this classic fantasy film, the Gods observe Earth from the Cosmos and quibble about the value of humankind. One of them decides to give an Ordinary Joe Earthling infinite power, just to see what they would do with it. Considering my personal history with the story, seeing this film was both demoralizing and encouraging. It occurred to me that countless numbers of dreamers may have had this same idea! It must be a kind of universal way to frame a prevalent human fantasy.
. Here, a delightfully ramshackle Roland Young (TOPPER!), plays Everyman/God George Fotheringay. Stunned by his new powers, George frets endlessly about how best to use them. He seeks advice, but realizing Fotheringay is such a meek lamb that could easily be manipulated, his advisors begin to imagine themselves the power behind the power. But George gets wise, and decides that a stable genius like himself does not need lesser mortals to do his thinking for him.
. That’s when the shit really hits the fan!
– THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES is a five-star classic!
Ultimately, I did finish that story. I found it fit very snugly into my Somnambulant Stories series. My version is called “God is in the House”, and while no one could accuse me of being H.G. Welles, it’s pretty damn good!
Enjoy it HERE:
https://lastcre8iveiconoclast.wordpress.com/2020/07/29/somnambulant-stories-29-god-is-in-the-house/
THE SLENDER THREAD (1965) ****+
> Here is another film I had been searching for a great many years, and it’s a gem.
. Sydney Pollack directs from a Life Magazine story about what happens at a telephone crisis line when a true life and death crisis is called in.
. Sidney Poitier plays Alan, a psychology student volunteering to man the night shift as part of his educational training. The shit hits the fan when a desperate woman named Inga calls to say goodbye cruel world. It is Anne Bancroft, she has overdosed on sleeping pills and is searching for a sympathetic voice in her final hour. Alan feels completely out of his depth here, but working behind the scenes to locate the desperate woman before it’s too late are a detective, played by Ed Asner and a doctor played by Telly Savalas. Alan must think of every trick he can to keep her on the line, while they attempt to trace the call.
. THE SLENDER THREAD is just terrifically exciting, and does not let up until the very end. Happy to note, that not a single mention is made of the fact that Alan is a black man. Why bother? Does it matter if Alan is white, black, pink or bright chartreuse? He is just a man- a deeply caring man with a love for his fellow man, trying to save a life that doesn’t think it wants to be saved.
– It’s a terrific, colorblind performance in a terrific film!
IMITATION OF LIFE (1934) *****
> This is the first go-round of a story that was remade to great acclaim in the late 50’s by ‘women’s filmmaker’ Douglas Sirk.
. In fact, that is the film I thought I was about to watch… because Turner Classic Movies mistakenly matched the wrong graphic to the identical title. If the remake is even a pale imitation of this original version with Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers, it must be a very fine film indeed.
. Considering the year this was made, IMITATION OF LIFE was a remarkably forward-looking film, dealing far more honestly with race in America than was customary in 1934! In fact, it had great trouble with the heads-up-their-asses censors of the era, forcing it through the hands of a total of nine writers, to find a way to finesse this story into something acceptable to the self-appointed arbiters of public morals who were the cinematic gatekeepers of their time. In 2007, Time Magazine called IMITATION OF LIFE one of the 25 most important films on race.
. It tells the story of a widow and her daughter, struggling to get by in the aftermath of family tragedy. They realize life could be a lot easier if they take in a black housekeeper named Delilah and her fair-skinned daughter. When Delilah shares her family recipe for killer pancakes, the widow Bea, being the person with the right skin color to secure financing, starts a restaurant along the Atlantic City Boardwalk and the hotcakes sell like… well: hotcakes. Bea meets a mendicant who gradually morphs into magnate, managing her growing commercial empire. This fellow is played by deadpan character actor Ned Sparks, and it is a delightful turn.
. Their venture is a big success. But Delilah is reduced to a bit player in her own story. To complicate matters considerably, at war with her own skin, Delilah’s daughter has been passing for white at school, and when Delilah shows up in the classroom the girl is outed as “colored”. Could this possibly be more painful for both mother and child? I could not even begin to describe how much this has to say about the deep, ingrained cancer of racism in American culture, and how this exposes the absurdity of making judgements about a person based on the color of their skin.
. Louise Beavers does an extraordinary job of both delivering the requited racial tropes of the time and transcending them, with pure, heartfelt emotion and Claudette Colbert as never been more sympathetic, despite the fact that her character was clearly, to some extent, exploiting and capitalizing on her black housekeeper’s labor and intellectual property. Both these characters had to negotiate the time the lived in. We can’t apply today’s standards to yesterday’s behavior. We can grow, and learn from history though, and anyone who both loves great cinema and cares deeply about equality of human rights should see this film.
– Looking forward to finding Douglas Sirk’s 1959 remake.
PENELOPE (1966) ***
> Natalie Wood in a screwball caper film from the mid-60’s? Sure! She was adorable in the mid-60’s if I remember THE GREAT RACE and GYPSY as well as I think I do.
. Poor Penelope (rhapsodized in a running theme song that will drive you crazy before the final reel!), just wants the attention and adoration she so plainly receives from every other straight man with a pulse, but she has married the wrong guy. Her husband is wedded first to the bank he helms, so if she’s going to get his attention at all… well then, she’ll just have to rob the damn bank in disguise as a gentle old lady! It’s a fun setup. Penelope confesses all to her psychiatrist- Dick Shawn (So hysterical in THE PRODUCERS), who of course, is also in love with her. His sessions with Penelope drive him immediately into the arms of his own therapist. When the oh-so-charming bankrobber does her best to come clean, she admits to the crime, even tells them how she did it, but unlike in “Columbo”, police detective Peter Falk cannot see her obvious guilt through her disarming allure.
. This was actually quite a bit better than I expected- except for one egregiously awful, useless, stupid scene of Jonathan Winters jumping around the room like a jackrabbit attempting to get his lascivious paws on poor Penelope. Never has a truly great comedian been so ill-used in a film. The 60’s were not a great decade for screwball comedy, but this Arthur Hiller film was a lark- kind of a palate cleanser between the cinematic equivalent of heavy meals.
– PENELOPE is minor fun, but it’s certainly drenched in groovy!
SCARLET STREET (1945) *****
> Fritz Lang kicks noir ass again in this classic black-and-white tale of a wronged man, gone wrong.
. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, milquetoast bank cashier Christopher Cross (a painfully earnest and sympathetic Edward G. Robinson), is walking at night when he comes upon a woman being pummeled by her absolute lout of a boyfriend. (Joan Bennett as wily Kitty and a smarmy, amoral Dan Duryea as craven Johnny make a vile duo.) Though terrified, Chris knocks Johnny out cold to rescue the lady in distress, escorting Kitty safely home, like a gentleman…
. Bad idea. Both choices come back to haunt him.
. Chris falls hard for this untrustworthy dame, (the classic femme fatale!), who plays him like the winning hand in a high-stakes game of poker. Amoral Kitty and petty thug Johnny scheme to take Chris for everything he is worth- which turns out to be a whole lot less than they hoped. But they find one angle they can play: Chris has been an unheralded amateur folk artist all his adult life, and though the works look like a child’s simple renderings to Johnny, he steals them and puts them on consignment, only to discover that highbrow gallery owners consider the work exceptional- and valuable! The two schemers brilliantly con Chris into allowing Kitty to claim the unsigned paintings as her own work and the dough comes rolling in.
. But this house of cards cannot stand. Chris is in for a rude awakening, when he discovers Kitty is not the woman he willfully mistook her for. Once his blinders are off, Chris is a man cheated and defeated- and we see what happens when you push a decent man too far.
. The final shot of this film bristles with brilliance. It could not be more perfect- or more heartbreaking. Lang uses a cinematic device that shows us just how broken and defeated Chris has become, in the most stark and elegant way. It’s just brilliant.
– Fritz Lang was one of the very greatest directors the cinema has ever known.
SAFE (1995) ***+
> Todd Haynes’ influential cautionary tale about what happens when our environment becomes unlivable to the most sensitive among us feels far ahead of its time.
. People with what has come to be called “environmental illnesses” are our canaries in the coal mine. How long can we continue pumping nasty toxins into the world without expecting the chickens to come home to roost?
. This unsettling film focuses on one comfortable California housewife (an unusually passive Julianne Moore), and the way her sudden onslaught of symptoms gradually accelerates until it threatens her family, and perhaps- her life. Desperate for some hope that she will one day be well again, she goes to stay at a retreat in New Mexico led by a kind of New Age guru, full of people like her. Will she find help or exploitation?
. This film plays on so many layers. It is awash in ambiguity. We both doubt and believe. The characters who are bonded by their suffering are very compelling. The dialogue often fascinates. Haynes gives these actors some real meat to work with. We find ourselves wondering if this poor housewife has drifted into a Christian cult or a true support group that might really improve the quality of her life.
– Think for a moment, gentle reader: What if environmental illness is a real thing that causes real human suffering, and a growing problem that defies solution, worldwide? As our environment steadily degrades where do you GO if you suffer from this?
– Planet B?
SANJURO (1963) *****
> I was mad about Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s iconic samurai film YOJIMBO, it stands to reason that I would be equally mad about its sequel SANJURO…
. No surprise: I was!
. The great Toshiro Mifune returns as the jaded, casually cynical warrior, wielding a lethal blade and a comic swagger like testosterone on steroids. It is a performance for the ages.
. Nine young samurai are convinced their lord chamberlain is a corrupt official, and being young and idealistic, they decide they must act. But Mifune’s rambling Ronin (a samurai with no master, who acts as free agent), overhears and offers the voice of experience. They are loathe to take advice from a bum, but sure enough, it isn’t long before he convinces them they are being tricked, saving all their lives when he senses a sneak attack coming. Reluctantly drawn in, the Ronin who calls himself “Sanjuro” (a pseudonym meaning “30-year old camellia”), joins their cause, using his considerable tactical cunning to help the righteous band free the innocent and kidnapped chamberlain and his family.
. Again and again, the group wants to act impetuously but Sanjuro stops them, offering better thought-out plans of action that sometimes sound absurd at first blush. He infiltrates the enemy and despite their suspicions, brilliantly manages to play them like a deck of cards. It is up to him to send the signal to attack at exactly the most vulnerable moment- a sudden flow of camellia flowers in the stream that runs through the compound, but that assumes he can stay alive long enough.
. It’s a great story, tightly paced and exciting, beautifully composed and shot, as were all of Kurosawa’s films. Mifune has never been better as the ornery old fart, disdained and discounted as too old-school, yet able to leave the younger whelps choking on his dust.
– SANJURO is more great cinema from a great Japanese master!
THE HORSE SOLDIERS (1959) ****
> A John Ford horse opera starring John Wayne and William Holden? Say no more. I am so there!
. This one takes place during the Civil War. Wayne, as Col. John Marlowe, is given the nearly impossible mission of leading a Union cavalry regiment deep behind rebel lines to destroy a train depot that helps supply the Confederate war effort. Naturally, he must travel with his nemesis: a fellow officer who, as a kind of conscientious objector, became regiment surgeon rather than carry a firearm. As usual, William Holden is perfect in the role, and an excellent foil for the more militant Wayne.
. Along the way, they occupy a plantation that has been left entirely to the womenfolk after the men put on their grey uniforms and went off to play at war. Here, they acquire a second thorn in Wayne’s side: Constance Towers as a feisty southern belle who attempts to undermine his mission at every turn- before falling in love with her captor in an early cinematic example of Stockholm Syndrome.
. It all leads up to a tense, exciting action sequence. Even should they achieve their unlikely goal, there are virtually no escape plans for after the deed is done, when they will be stranded deep behind enemy lines- unless they can outwit their relentless pursuers, cross a crucial bridge before them, and destroy it in their wake.
– Romance! Duty! Action! Sacrifice. Good stuff.
I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) (1967) ****
> I remember when this scandalous European shocker hit the L.A. art houses around 1970- the way this got the nation’s knickers in a twist!
. Well, I finally got ‘round to seeing this Swedish import that so offended America’s moral piety by its frank, casual depiction of lovemaking.
. This film feels like a companion piece to WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM, as both examined sex through a socialist prism. (The big difference between the two? This one works a treat. WR sucked!) Seized by customs as a violation of U.S. obscenity laws until the courts found it morally fit for American consumption, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) is indeed a curious creature- part erotic drama part documentary, well before such hybrids started to appear. (YELLOW) has a companion piece called I AM CURIOUS (BLUE), available separately, although they were originally intended to be one 3¹⁄₂ hour film. (Yellow and Blue are the two colors of the Swedish flag.)
. In a self-referential loop, writer/director Vilgot Sjöman plays himself, making this movie. He sleeps with his leading lady, the brash and beguiling Lena Nyman, who is playing a passionate young intellectual in a fearless, sexually charged performance, getting frisky with them even as she exerts her sexual independence from all men. Lena is a mess of contradictions- and an absolute delight. A volatile spitfire, Lena studies the world and keeps her room stacked to the ceiling with files about it. Her goal: to smash the patriarchy and dismantle class structure.
. There are parts of this film where Lena conducts “Swede on the street” interviews- a kind of vox populi or “voice of the people” segment, that is very revealing about the turbulent moment in world and European history the film reflects. She asks passersby: “Is Swedish society a class-based system?”, and gets everything from full-throated denials to enthusiastic agreement- though it seems most people don’t want to be bothered by such lofty concepts.
. An online review referred to this as more of a “cultural artifact” than a movie- and they certainly have a point. Parts of this film are D.O.A. For a film that is supposed to be erotic, it is distinctly un-sexy. We see the lovers tenderly regarding one another’s genitals, but it feels more like therapy than lovemaking. Celebrated critic Roger Ebert hated this film. He used the rather witty double-entendre “flaccid” to describe it. Again- the man had a point. The polemics here work better than the matter-of-fact sexuality. Divorced from historical context, and taking the way cultural standards have morphed over the decades into account- it’s hard to tell what the hoopla was all about, YELLOW or BLUE. But for me, despite its many flaws, at least Vilgot Sjöman was trying something new here- nudging the cinema forward despite the reactionary backlash it engendered.
– As a document of the role of women in the wake of the cultural revolution of the sixties, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) is quite the time machine.
THE CANTERBURY TALES (1972) ****
> I remember when my oldest brother Jeff came home in 1972 and said he had just seen a “sexy movie from Italy”. Scandalous!
. It occurred to me that although I had read a great deal about him, I had never seen a film by gay badboy Pier Pasolini. It’s about time I find out what all the hoopla was about.
. This is the middle installment of Pasolini’s ‘Trilogy of Life’, and I certainly enjoyed it enough to want to see THE DECAMERON, which came before it, and ARABIAN NIGHTS which followed. Known as a serious artist who fearlessly pushed the boundaries of his day (much the way Mapplethorpe did later), Pasolini tells the tale of storyteller Geoffrey Chaucer composing 8 of the 24 ribald stories that became his ribald popular classic “Tales of Canterbury”.
. Pasolini himself plays the writer sitting there musing, getting inspirations, and using ink and quill to scribble them down with a giddy, guilty delight, and then we see reenactments- more or less. Really, THE CANTERBURY TALES is just a scattershot, free-association of a movie, punctuated by lust, betrayal, sodomy, cuckoldry, greed, condemnation and murder… via the Catholic Church. Even though half of the stories don’t amount to anything, every frame is carefully considered and constructed, and although the film stock Pasolini chose is fuzzy and grainy, the details of color and composition are clearly rendered with an artistic hand, with a nod to classic painters.
. But the final story is the doozy: Pasolini takes us on a crazy over-the top excursion down to the fiery pits of hell, where the Devil’s giant red buttocks is gleefully excreting endless scores of corrupt clergymen, from his giant, red rectum. Fun!
– That was certainly my experience of the Church…
THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) ****
Ah- that rare beast: a horror film with respected credentials. Oh, it’s a B-movie alright- it’s just a very good one. Joel McCrea plays a celebrated hunter who is survives a shipwreck on the shores of a remote island. He has stumbled into the gothic abode of ominous Count Zaroff, who shares McCrea’s love of hunting- but as the island’s resident madman, Zaroff prefers hunting a more wily, dangerous game- like McCrea, for instance. Winsome Fay Wray at his side, the hunter becomes the hunted, as they struggle to survive until dawn- the only way they can possibly win the deadly game. Tense, exciting filmmaking! A film does not have to be “good” to be good!
MEANTIME (1983) ***+
> British treasure Mike Leigh directed this family drama for BBC TV in the early 80’s, near the start of his accomplished career.
. Like almost all his work, it’s a bleak, unjaundiced look at class in the U.K. and a de facto indictment of Thatcherism. In fact, I found the peoples’ lives depicted here so bleak, their treatment of one another so abysmal, that in these dark Caronavirus/George Floyd days, it was almost unwatchable at first. I had to hit pause and come back when I was in a better frame of mind.
. As usual in a Mike Leigh movie, extremely deft dialogue delivered by great actors saved the day. Sneering, unlikable Phil Daniels lives with his prattling parents and his preternaturally awkward “special” brother Tim Roth, in a beautifully heartrending performance. Everybody is on the dole and life in Thatcher’s England is the shits. An impossibly young and thin Alfred Molina makes an appearance, as well as a barely-tethered punk Gary Oldman, memorable as a volatile loose cannon with a short fuse. You could tell this actor had a great future ahead!
. Mike Leigh certainly knows his countrymen. The naked way he depicts them in their everyday lives must make them hate him.
– Mike Leigh/MEANTIME: Difficult message: lucid messenger!
THREE COLOURS: BLUE (1993) ****
> This accomplished film was the opening salvo in what eventually became the “Three Colours Trilogy”, loosely based on the three colors and corresponding principals of the French flag: red, white and blue, which have come to represent liberty, equality and fraternity the ideals of the French Revolution.
. Pretty sure I saw this film in my early 20’s, but I wasn’t keeping track back then. I was still a neophyte. Honestly, my critical facilities were still in their infancy, and although I couldn’t tell you what made a good film good, I recognized quality when I saw it, and the thing about BLUE that stuck with me was leading lady Juliette Binoche, who is heartbreakingly vulnerable here. I never forgot the way the camera adored this fine French actress, and came to be a big fan in the ensuing decades.
. Here, she plays a broken woman, unable to escape the crushing grief of losing her husband and child in a terrible car wreck. She pulls up tight into a self-protective ball and spins a cocoon of isolation inside her Parisian flat, to shield herself from the bottomless grief. But this deep blue isolation is hard to maintain in a bustling city like Paris. She encounters an old friend who has always carried a secret torch in his heart for her, beginning the long, arduous journey back to the world of the living.
. BLUE is lovely to look at, but oh so cold. Grief is a bitch. The grieving widow’s world seems drenched in blue, in a way that does not correspond to subsequent films in the Colours Trilogy. WHITE is not as white, nor is RED as red, as BLUE is blue.
– BLUE is a deep, melancholy, funky blue trip through human grief and the slow healing of time.
THREE COLORS: WHITE (1994) ****+
> In this middle segment to his trilogy, Krzysztof Kieślowski paints with a lighter touch, closer to dark comedy than drama.
. His leading man Zbigniew Zamachowski could not have been better, as a poor put-upon Karol Karol, a Polish immigrant to France, hopelessly in love with a woman he cannot possibly satisfy. Zamachowski has a sweet, hangdog look and sad, empathetic eyes, you just like the guy immediately and want him to triumph.
. WHITE begins in a Parisian court, (seen briefly in BLUE), where Karol’s new bride (French beauty Julie Delpy at her bitchiest), is suing for divorce on grounds that the marriage was never consummated. (ahem: Erectile dysfunction.) Just a slight embarrassment for Karol, a temporary thing made into a colossal public shaming by the court proceeding. But six months is long enough for Delpy! She is ready to move on in every way. Now, Karol finds himself unexpectedly single, unemployed and stateless, when he is loses his visa after losing the family business to his ex in the divorce. Karol’s life, simply, has gone to shit.
. Busking rather lamely in the subway, humming into his comb, Karol meets fellow Polish expatriate Mikolah who offers him a job with a very big payday, but it’s kind of a specialty gig: He has this “friend”, see? A guy who is tired of living but too timid to take the necessary steps to do anything about it. If Karol agreed to pull the fateful trigger, he could go from broke to flush in an instant. Karol agrees, but only if his suicidal new friend will smuggle him back to their homeland… in a suitcase! (Yes, there is plenty of comedy in this dark tale of revenge!) Naturally, when Mikolah gets to the baggage claim, the suitcase is gone. Some airport opportunists have stolen it. Are they in for a surprise when they pry it open! From here, Karol begins to rebuild from the ground-up, plotting to get his wife back if he can, or failing that, to completely destroy her life.
. The scene where Mikolah calls upon Karol to hold up his end of the bargain was unforgettable. Have I ever been more in the moment, while watching a film? maybe not! I have thought about this moment so many times since I saw the film. Hard not to!
– Again, Krzysztof Kieślowski delivers a perfect little story about the irony of justice. Loved it!
THREE COLORS: RED (1994) *****
> This was the final film in great Polish dramatist Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colours Trilogy”. I found all three to be excellent filmmaking, but in its way, RED is the greatest of the three.
. A subtle and complex work of moral ambiguity, RED plays against our own ethical reactions.
. Pretty young French model Valentine- a beguiling Irène Jacob (Why are all French actresses so beguiling?), is driving in her ‘hood when she hits and injures someone’s pet dog. Tracking down the owner, she finds Joseph, (an acidic Jean-Louis Trintignant), a man who is indifferent almost to the point of hostility. Joseph is a retired and very embittered ex-judge, who seems completely done with the world. Cynical, detached, hardened, the ornery curmudgeon doesn’t seem to care much, and gives the wounded animal to Valentine with a kind of “you broke it, you bought it” attitude. Offended by his coldness, she takes the animal home and nurses it back to health, but her boyfriend is a real piece of work. A controlling manipulator, he seems somehow threatened by the presence of the dog, insisting she bring it back. When she complies, Valentine discovers Joseph’s shameful secret: he is regularly eavesdropping on his neighbors’ phone conversations. Outraged, Valentine confronts him and they debate the morality of the act. Joseph challenges her to reveal his surveillance to his neighbors, but ends up doing it himself, even though he knows that the judge will now be judged
. Trintignant gives a memorable, diamond-hard performance as this emotionally catatonic man who is brought back to the world of the living by a chance encounter that leads to a wholly unexpected friendship, which offers the possibility of a deep, inner healing he no longer thought possible. Damn he’s good.
. Hang in there for a big, unexpected twist at the end. Kieślowski and Piesiewicz have a sly trick up their sleeves, when a catastrophic event causes RED to become intertwined with BLUE and WHITE, in one surprising twist that brings together the characters from all three films into one shared fate.
– What a storyteller! RED is a classic of the 90’s. The Three Colours Trilogy is an important piece of modern European cinema.
*
SO MANY movies- hard to keep up with ‘em all! Bet there were a few titles I forgot about this month! Until our next go-round, I wish you:
Vive Cinema, faeries & sprites!
* * *
© Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
KPKworld 