188: Da Zui Xia (Come Drink with Me)

Occasionally when I begin to write these reviews I’m compelled to look back at the 1001 text before I begin.  Sometimes I do so to jump start my writing process or to try to remember my first thought of what the film would be (I read the text cover to cover prior to ambitiously undertaking the book’s challenge).  In the case of King Hu’s Da Zui Xia (aka Come Drink with Me, 1966) when I returned to the text, I was looking for anything which justified this putrid film’s inclusion.  What I found was more of an excuse for its presence on the list.  The text’s reviewer warns the reader that “despite [the film’s] great charm, this is still early King Hu; his mastery of all aspects of the medium…would only be perfected in later masterworks.”  I would say that even that praise of this film is too high as I found little, if any, charm.

Come Drink with Me is basically an amalgamation of everything I hate about kung fu films.  From its pathetic special effects punctuated by bad editing, and complete melodramatic tone to its almost complete lack of plot, this one was a real stinker.  The book sets it up as the precursor of the wire-fu movement and films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden dragon (2000), which, though visually interesting, offer little in repeat viewing appeal.  Basically, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen everything the sub-genre has to offer.  This is something that Drink doesn’t even process internally, as one poorly choreographed and seemingly unprovoked sword fight follows another, offer little variation.  By the film’s end I wasn’t even quite sure who the hero was supposed to be anymore.  This same thing could be said about some amazing films, but here it’s just a note of complete confusion. 

My apologies to the Wu Tang Clan and all of their fans, but unless you’re completing the list challenge this one is not worth your time.

Grade: 0 Hats Off     

189: La Jetee (The Pier)

Watching Chris Marker’s La Jetee (1961) I was struck by how many of my memories of films are processed as still images.  That is not to say that I don’t remember elements of both the primary and secondary movement I witnessed.  But even when I think of some of my favorite complex tracking shots they still are recalled in short snippets as opposed to their complete trajectory.  I see Henry Hill slipping the service doorman a twenty and guiding his bride-to-be Karen through the back way into the Copacabana (Goodfellas 1990), but mostly it’s composed of small moments within the larger steadicam shot. 

I write this because La Jetee is visually composed almost entirely of still images.  As 1001 notes, there is a lone shot of movement which, when it comes, reminds us why the movies are so moving.  I feel that this is a film to be seen and not described, as in a way it is beyond description, so I’ll keep it brief.  With such a short runtime (28 min.) Marker does so much.  The DVD case for the film advertises that it was the partial inspiration for 1995s 12 Monkeys and indeed the stories are very much one and the same, but that is where the similarities end.  A double bill of these two excellent films would serve as a great lesson in how two directors approach the same material differently.

While I am a fan of 12 Monkeys, and enjoyed seeing the film which influenced it so greatly, I couldn’t help but also feel that the picture was a great inspiration for elements of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976).  The dark sub-urban shots used for the film’s post-apocalyptic scenes and the costume choices for the primary protagonist all harkened Travis Bickle to me.  Of course my earlier paragraph betrays the fact that I am a Scorsese nut, so perhaps I’m reading into the film what I wanted to get out of it.  Even if this is so, I’d recommend La Jetee to any film fan.   It functions particularly well as a reasonable starting point for the science fiction fan looking to branch into the rewarding world of foreign film.

Grade: 3.0 Hats Off    

190: High School

Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1969) is a near perfect documentary.  Its tone is flawless.  Whereas many contemporary docs try to force a point or even a specific point of view, High school simply does what a documentary is supposed to. It documents.  The events displayed concern the goings on at a Philadelphia high school in 1968, and what struck me most as I viewed the film was that I was watching my parents’ adolescence flash before my eyes.  I kept getting the feeling that if I were to watch the film with my mother she would regale me with endless stories stemming from every scene. 

This is why Wiseman’s laissez-faire approach works so well.  By avoiding the emphasis of a single position or issue he makes the film universal.  Whereas my mother, who would have been a high school junior when this documentary was filmed, could use it as an endless trigger of memories, I was able to read my own dreadful post-pubescent academic experiences into the piece.  While the film was shot during one of the most turbulent years in the 20^th century, it is not without 21^st century connection.  Here all the violent, terrible, and exciting events of the late 1960s are presented, documented through a youthful perspective, but they do not feel so different from my own experiences a generation later in the age of global terrorism.

I think criticism that this film is “dated” is off-base. What film isn’t dated in some way? Casablanca (1943) is one of the greatest films ever made and still has massive universal appeal, but it doesn’t mean the same thing in 2011 that it did in 1943.  It simply can’t.  Nazism, while a credible go-to for an antagonist in any Steven Spielberg film, has been (almost totally) defeated. History has written that book. Hitler was a bad guy.  The threat of Nazis doesn’t feel as real to the contemporary viewer as it did when Casablanca was released.  The reason that film is never labeled as “dated” is that the emotions in it still feel real despite the archaic political message.  High School is the same way.  Yes the clothes are out of style, and the external turmoil the film addresses has subsided, but their will forever be guys with glasses who get punched in the face, and whiney kids who argue the merits of detentions with assistant principals.  

What makes this film great is its universal tone.  What makes it particularly special is the fact that some of the most important events of the 20^th century are being documented as they happen.  The King assassination and the space race are given equal weight as the powder puff pep rally and the school fashion show.  This is what high school felt like.  Each day contained events that in retrospect were trivial, but meant the world at the time.

           And then of course there was that one teacher, the young one who seemed to still care about connecting with students. I hated this guy in high school, but in the film there is a special scene in which a young English teacher brings in a Simon and Garfunkel record to teach her pupils about poetry.  She plays them “The Dangling Conversation” and for a brief moment Paul Simon’s words seem to be less about a relationship in decline, and more about the disconnect that exists between us all; those things that remain unspoken in youth because we are too frightened put them into words and be labeled as an outsider.

Grade: 4 Hats Off

191: Onibaba (The Demon)

What a delightful film. Kaneto Shindo’ Onibaba (1964) is a Japanese horror film like no other I have ever seen.  It is a film that is sure of itself, so sure that it takes its time becoming a horror movie.  For more than the first hour of its 101 minute run-time Onibaba plays out as a drama, one that addresses both personal and political themes.  The film concerns the lives of three peasant farmers caught up in a power struggle between medieval Samurai war lords, and the ways in which this lust for power is reflected in their own fleshly temptations.

            The demon of the title does not make an appearance onscreen until late in the film, but ominous dialogue regarding retribution for sins foreshadows his coming.  The film begins with the ambush of two wounded soldiers searching for shelter amongst a seemingly endless field of reeds.  The wounded warriors are killed by a mother and daughter-and-law team who often supplement their meager living by selling the armor of soldiers they kill, having dumped many of their bodies into a deep pit hidden in the high overgrowth.  Though these women profit from murder they find no fault in their actions. 

            The pair awaits the return of the man who connects them as he has been commissioned into the fighting.  When a local farmer returns from the battles having escaped from almost certain death, he informs them that their loved one has himself died.  Here is where I feel that an American film would begin to descend into heavy-handed melodrama, but even as the farmer and the younger woman begin to engage in a sexual affair, Shindo keeps his filmic cool.  He portrays the relationship (and the sex) frankly, displaying the rift it creates between the two women.  The mother-in-law fears being forever abandoned and begins to warn her daughter of the tortures reserved in hell for the lustful.

            What makes the film great is that Shindo allows the elements of the human drama to play out here before he switches gear into horror.  Jason Voorhees would have decapitated four horny teens by now.  The story turns when a mysteriously masked warlord lost in the reeds implores the mother to show him to the road to Kyoto.  The rest of Onibaba should be seen, and my description would do it little justice.  I’ll tease it further only by saying that the twist you’ll see coming is only the beginning of its wonderful final scene.

            It’s important to mention that much of the horror technique employed by the film’s final act appears to be constructed through make-up, but is actually the result of the nuclear fallout in Japan.  Taking this into account, it should be noted that Onibaba was making a bold political statement upon its initial release.  

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off 

192: Akira

I don’t like anime. I just don’t. Maybe it’s that I’ll always associate animation with children’s entertainment, which has for the most part been lost on me since the age of 13.  I’m also not the biggest fan of sci-fi and fantasy, which seem to encompass the majority of genres which anime incorporates.  Obviously there are exceptions to these trends.  I have found much of the Pixar catalogue to be good or even great, and am a Star Wars fan, but typically I find the most personally rewarding film experiences are those based in reality.  Sci-fi and fantasy work for me only in the instances in which they create an entire world within which their story unfolds.  Thus films such as Blade Runner (1982) and the Lord of the Rings (2001; 2002; 2003) Trilogy seem real because they present an entire mythology, environment, and history in which the events that transpire are totally plausible.

I’m sure that for the legion of fans of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988) this rings true.  A post-apocalyptic Tokyo is created in which the events that are presented do not seem inconceivable, and for that I give much credit to Otomo, who wrote the graphic novel on which the film is based.  But for me Akira felt like a primer in teenage demographic entertainment; a guided tour of anime lead by everyone whose ever tried to explain to me why it is so cool and eventually, dismissively decreed that I “just don’t get it.”  To be fair, they’re right. I don’t, and while the concepts presented in Akira might interest me were they to be presented in a live-action format, here I’m just lost amongst the stylistic flourishes of the film’s creators.  Yes, I can appreciate that animation is one of the most challenging professions in the film industry. Perhaps I do even over-romanticize film-in-camera, lighting decision, difficult secondary movement, message through editing filmmaking. I acknowledge that filmmakers employ animation to present images that could not be created through even the best makeup, production design, and old-school special effects, but those are the things I love. 

Animation is certainly preferrable to original Clash of the Titans (1981) -style hokey Claymation and remake Clash of the Titans (2010) -style CGI everything, but like Claymation and CGI animation can have the opposite effect of its intended use.  When these techniques are employed I’m less likely to suspend my disbelief.  I’m not anti-classic Disney, or anti Wallace and Gromit, or even anti CGI in every case, but when these elements replace the essence of narrative filmmaking, when they are prioritized over story, character, and decent writing they are put to use in vain.  The point of movies is to engage an audience in a story, and for me Akira failed at this basic level of narrative.  I didn’t care about the characters, or their struggles, or even the plight of their world.  This is also why Avatar (2009) sucked.  

Grade: 1 Hat Off       

193: L'Eclisse (Eclipse)

The third installment of Antonioni’s “trilogy” of early 1960s Italian classics, L’Eclisse (1962) leaves me wanting more.  While the first two films of his productive spree, 1960’s L’Avventura and 1961’s La Notte, had moments where they felt aimless and cold, L’Eclisse feels entirely empty.  I’ll concede that this emptiness is perhaps the result of the progression of feelings for which Antonioni was striving with these efforts, but with the first two installments he did not seem lost amongst his convictions, or lack thereof.  I wish also to concede that L’Eclisse is a strikingly beautiful film at points.  The cinematography of Gianni Di Venanzo and the editing of Eraldo Da Roma combine throughout the movie to create several moments which could be amazing free-standing short films, but here they seem lost amongst the heavy-handed nothingness of the feature.

While that last clause may seem oxymoronic, it feels like the only way to describe Antonioni’s picture.  In both L’Avventura and La Notte the director presents some aimless and lonely characters and provides little resolution for their plight, but by L’Eclisse he’s proven his point and needs to move on.  These three pictures are referred to as a trilogy often, as all three are read as commentaries on Italian culture of the late fifties and early sixties and the directionless tone of the national ethos.  In many ways Antonioni deals here with the same themes as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), albeit in a manner less reliant on spectacle.  But where the characters in Fellini’s picture seem relentless in their radiantly pathetic pursuit of the sweet life, Antonioni’s characters don’t actually seem to want to find happiness, despite what they may say. 

Of the three films, I find La Notte to be the most engaging.  Like most of the Antonioni I’ve seen, it is a simple story about complex emotion.  In that film, a couple whose marriage is disintegrating find, after a night of heavy partying in the suburbs, that they cannot break their connection to one another so easily.  While based in deep relational emotions, it clearly separates itself from L’Avventura’s ostensive plot involving a missing girl and the resulting relationships between those who search for her.  L’Avventura’s structural metaphor is plane: we get lost as we search for that which we cannot find.  La Notte takes a less direct approach to addressing the difficulty of separating ourselves from that which we have found. 

As Antonioni moves through his trilogy it becomes obvious that he relies less and less on premise. Events mean little here and serve only as the external basis for internal struggle.  It comes as no surprise when the third film has almost no premise at all.  Primary characters break off relationships, meet friends, and have bad days at work, but rarely are these events more than catalysts for reserved emotional turmoil.  In the film’s final sequence, the eclipse of the title takes place. It has not been referenced before in the film, and is perhaps not even observed by the characters. It simply is.  The only statement here may be that the world moves in and out of darkness with little care or attention paid to its meager inhabitants.          

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

194: Gertrud

Four of the five features Carl Theodore Dryer made in a career marked by controversy and lengthy gaps of production find their way onto the list of 1001.  While his unquestioned masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) would be the picture that most cinefiles know, and which I once watched totally enthralled without any soundtrack accompaniment, it is Gertrud (1964) to which I believe I’ve had the greatest emotional connection.  While Dryer is rumored to not have been economic in the traditional financial sense when making a film, he is certainly so in his limited use of shots.  The shot list for this, his final effort, reads a measly 89 lines for a picture 116 minutes in length.  When viewing a film such as Gertrud, you can’t help but wonder what the long-term effects of Michael Bay’s crimes against a generation of filmgoers will be.  Will the film students of 2021 have the patience for Gertrud’s story of anguish in love to unfold?

        Writing this review I can’t help but find the similarities between this final work of the Danish master and the debut feature of Spike Lee, 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It.  Both films concern the particulars of a woman torn between three lovers, who despite their best efforts, can’t seem to meet her desires for true love.  In both films we see two options with whom the potential for happiness exists, and one who is clearly the wrong choice.  In both cases the woman at the center of the film spurns all three men, believing that none can live up to her expectations while accepting her for who she is and what she desires.

        Set in turn of the century Denmark, the ideals of the period would seem in total contrast to 1980s Brooklyn, and yet the similarities exist because the theme of love is eternal.  It is said that it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, and if this is so, then Gertrud is the patron saint of women.  If the character sounds like a stereotype at first let me assure you that she is anything but fickle.  Her decisions are based on carefully examined feelings regarding love.  Nina Pens Rode plays the title character as neither coldly calculating nor emotionally unstable, but simply a woman who is willing to make decisions to pursue her ideals of romance.  Having made the choice to leave her husband she is torn between the aging poet with whom she once had a lengthy affair and the young musician unable to be faithful.  Through conversations and coincidences she learns that she can choose neither and find happiness. 

        Covering the events of only a few days, with a “years later” epilogue tied on at the end, the film manages to carry such and emotional weight in such a chronologically small basket.  I was struck most by the titles character’s reactions to two thoughts of her poet lover.  One is his proudly spoken credo: “I believe in the passion of the flesh and the irreparable loneliness of the soul.” The other is a note he has scribbled on a post card reading “a woman’s love and a man’s work are mortal enemies.” Both sentences profoundly shape the events of Gertrud’s life and eventually lead her into aged celibacy.  At the film’s conclusion as she ponders her death she confides to a friend, “There is nothing in this life but youth and love.” 

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

195: An Actor's Revenge

Kon Ichikawa’s 1963 picture An Actor’s Revenge (Yukinojo Hinge; A.K.A Revenge of the Kabuki Actor) isn’t so much bad as it is difficult to engage.  The first fifteen minutes are the toughest to get through, but while the remainder of the film is better, it is certainly no easy Saturday afternoon watch.  Shot in a style reminiscent of the Kabuki theatre to which the film pays homage, this revenge piece is all melodrama.  Typically this is not my fare, so I’ll concede that my opinion is openly biased. 

I won’t go so far as to say that the film is without merit, but 1001’s praise as “one of the most outrageously entertaining Japanese films” is a bit over the top from any perspective.  The story itself would seem simple enough, but a basic revenge plot becomes muddled as auxiliary characters clutter the narrative.  I’ll write frankly (hoping not to come off as ignorant, or worse, a bigot) and say that the similarity between the Japanese names used helps to further this confusion.  Still, I acknowledge that these complaints could be my ignorance coming through. I don’t dislike all melodrama. In fact, I’ve found several of the Douglas Sirk pictures which the list has directed me toward to be wholly rewarding.  As for the similar names, I suspect that perhaps Ichikawa employs them to imply the similarity between his characters.

In all, as I make these concisions, I realize how drawn toward realism in film I am.  Melodrama and fantasy tend to be lost on me. I don’t and won’t ever rule them out. Some very fine pictures are based in the surreal and the unreal, but the simplistic approach in set design in An Actor’s Revenge, which is intended to bring focus to the drama and the characters, feels like the cheap approach to me.  When fantasy or science fiction do draw me into films, it’s usually when the filmmakers are wholly and completely dedicated to the alternate world which they create (Such as with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Blade Runner), and I just didn’t get that sense with this picture.

Grade: 1 Hat Off