134: Three Brothers (a.k.a. Tre Fratelli)

            
I’m at an impasse with Francesca Rosi’s Three Brothers (1981).  It’s another film that I just can’t decide if I liked.  Usually I give such films a few days to marinate, but this time I’ve decided to start my review just after finishing my viewing.  I know there were things I enjoyed about the film, but they were slow in coming.  In fact, the first half of the movie felt flat to me, without any interest generated in the characters I was presented. 

As one might presume from the title the film concerns the lives of three male siblings.  When their mother dies at their childhood home the three men return to the village for her funeral.  Each brings with him a set of problems that preoccupies his conscience as he travels.  The oldest, Raffaele (Philippe Noiret), has made good as a judge in Rome.  He’s assigned to a commission that prosecutes communist terrorists, and has begun to fear for his life.  He leaves his wife and adult son in the city as threats of assassination begin to mount.  Such acts were commonplace in the Italy of the time and Raffaele knows many colleagues who have become victims of the same crimes they try.

The second brother, Nicola (Michele Placido), is unmarried but has a large family of sorts.  He is a supervising social worker at an urban center for delinquent youth.  His convictions are strong and he believes in what he does, but the problems of the street – drugs, violence, filth – continue to hold high influence over the boys he is responsible for.  Before he leaves for the funeral he is confronted by yet another official accusing his residents of petty crimes.  

The youngest brother is Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno); twenty years Raffaele’s junior.  The two men have little in common.  Rocco supports the workers movement that has polarized the nation, even defending the uses of force that often lead to the crimes his older brother prosecutes.  He brings with him his young daughter who is just old enough to enjoy the rural landscape.  Rocco and her mother are separated, but only Raffaele seems to know this.  When someone asks where is wife is he says that her sister is in the hospital. 

That each man brings with him a specific concern – political, social, and personal respectively – is appropriate, as Rosi intended for them to represent the factions of the fractured Italian society.  Still, none of them seem to be well-developed.  We see their struggles and in some cases their fears, but until the second half of the film they are each so one-dimensional.  This is the risk filmmakers run in drawing on allegorical characters.  The film picks up in emotional depth as each man slowly comes to realize his distance from his past and his childhood home.  This realization is juxtaposed nicely with scenes of Rocco’s daughter discovering elements of her pastoral heritage.

I think what makes the early segments of the film so off-putting is that all three characters of the title share nary a scene, let alone a shot, until about the midway point.  This may have been intended by Rosi, as the film can be viewed as a coming together of family and past relationships, but that point is slow in coming.  But the film is not devoid of poignant moments.  They come in the form of flashbacks and a series of flash forwards that may or may not be the true future.  Nicola remembers as he returns the day of the village’s liberation by an American tank corps, and in the film’s best scene the men’s father recalls his early married life to the now deceased mother.  It rains on their wedding day (a sign of good luck) and on their honeymoon she briefly loses her ring as she plays in the sand at a beach.  Thinking quickly he borrows a colander from a nearby house to strain through the grains.

These moments are moving and quiet in their intimacy despite the outward joy they convey.  They are contrasted by a set of dreams, one of each brother, as they sleep in their childhood bedroom.  Raffaele tosses and turns, awaking in screams as he sees his own assassination.  Rocco reunites with his wife.  They quarrel briefly, but find themselves in each others arms.  Nicola’s dream plays out almost as a musical staged by Gene Kelly.  The children of his parish unite to clean the filthy streets, sweeping the dirt, the syringes, the dirty money, and the garbage in to a pile to be burned.

Whether any of these futures is legitimate is debatable.  In any case they hardly matter.  The film ends as they leave to bury their mother.  Nothing seems to have been solved.  The problems of Rosi’s Italy were not so simple.  The elderly father stays behind with his granddaughter.  In a private moment he seems to find peace with his wife’s death.  His actions seem to imply a wisdom that life goes on despite all problems.  I liked the film’s ending and the small payoff it provides, but it’s a bit too lengthy of a lead up to this moment.

Grade: 2 Hats Off

Language: Italian

Runtime: 113 Minutes

135: David Holzman’s Diary

           The upcoming DVD/Blu ray release of Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary (1967) has sparked some interesting conversation on the net.  Mubi.com writer Ignatiy Vishnevetsky dedicated his most recent “Hot and Now” pick on Ebert Presents… to the film after his cohort at the website, Jaime N Christley, suggested that the movie is a landmark piece of “False Cinema,” an emerging subgenre of the mockumentary.  False Cinema can trace it roots all the way back to early Bunuel, and includes such noted pieces as Peter Watkin’s The War Game (also 1967) and the popular 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project.  However, recent releases such as last year’s Exit through the Gift Shop have spawned new interest in these ostensive pieces of vérité, causing the retrospective labeling of the movement.

Whether or not this style deserves such labeling is still up for debate, but there can be no question about the inclusion of McBride’s picture in such a conversation.  Likewise, there should be no question as to its achievements.  Shooting on a minuscule budget of $2,500 and using friends and relatives as cast members, McBride created something uniquely personal and at the same time strangely universal.  Holzman, played by screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, is an obsessive film addict and would-be philosopher who decides to search for truth in his own life by making 16mm journal.  He quotes Truffaut’s contention that film is “truth, 24 times per second,” convinced that if he films and then watches his own life over and over he will glean some greater understanding.

The movie alternates between medium shot confessionals (not unlike those now often employed by reality television programs) and hand-held street scenes that reveal the characters of Holzman’s New York neighborhood.  In a way these short guided tours of the upper west side are McBride’s love note to the city; part Scorsese and part Woody Allan in nature.  Shot in cool B&W and set to era rock tunes, these scenes are some of the film’s finest as hoods, tramps, and shopping bag ladies are given equal credence by the lens. 

It’s easy to look at this film and label the Holzman character a loser.  He alienates his girlfriend with the camera, seeming to find more pleasure in filming her than being with her.  He complains in his confessions that he is misunderstood, by her and by others.  Subjects he interviews admit that they don’t understand his vision for the piece.  Indeed he becomes so transfixed on his goal that the world beyond the film the audience witnesses him making seems to fade away (or at least we assume it does as all we have to go on is the film itself).  Still, I’m sure that more audience members than just myself have empathized with Holzman.  His attempts in some way (good or bad) resemble my own efforts with this blog – not that I’m searching for truth with this project more so than your average person.  I can’t help but to find a note of sympathy for his cause and for his belief in Truffaut’s philosophy.  Maybe this means I’m a loser as well, but I can’t imagine a much more valid medium for truth than film.

It was difficult to watch this movie and not think of another; one of my favorites, High Fidelity (2000).  That film is more about an obsession with pop music than film, but it follows a character as he searches for the truth about his own romantic shortcomings while hoping to find meaning in music.  The confessional scenes in that picture have a similar feel to those presented here, as the John Cusack character addresses the audience directly throughout.  Likewise, he feels that somehow his fascinations with rock music have prevented him from living life to the fullest.  There’s an eerie similarity between his character’s philosophical question, “did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” and the contention of an interviewee here that “some lives are good movies and some lives are bad movies.”  In both cases the characters are not able to separate their obsessions from their own experiences, indicating that they prefer a life lived via the lens and the record needle.

    The story arc of Holzman’s Diary is fairly predictable.  The girlfriend leaves and causes the protagonist to fall deeper in love with his fascinations, resentments, and fixations.  However it’s ending, the saddest possible that I could imagine, comes out of nowhere.  It’s creative and fully possible and wholly believable and devastating all at once.  This is a film about obsession.  It’s not unreasonable to think that in some way David Holzman foreshadows Travis Bickle.  It’s fitting that until the forthcoming home video release it’s been a difficult movie to find.  I think to see it you have to be a bit of an obsessive yourself.  As I said, I can’t help but see Holzman as a small reflection of myself.  If you love movies, I mean really love them, this is one you should see.   

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

Language: English

Runtime: 74 Minutes

Note: The girlfriend is played by the beautiful Eileen Dietz, who went on to a career in soap operas after playing the possessed Regan in The Exorcist (1973; Uncredited).  I don't know why, but that fascinates me.  

136: The Ballad of Narayama (a.k.a. Narayama-bushi kô)

           
I’m glad that I saw Shohei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama (1983) in a close proximity with The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978; #142).  Both pictures took the Palme D’or at Cannes and in a way they are mirror images of one another.  Both concern communal living in a small farming village and both are eternally concerned with the theme of family.  They take divergent paths as Tree reflects a Western worldview infused with Catholicism and Ballad displays an Eastern perspective, but essentially they are two of the starkest family dramas that I can think of.  That the culture of this film devalues the individual, placing emphasis on the good of the community, makes it perhaps the more difficult view, but one that is ultimately rewarding.

            In a remote agricultural village in 19^th century Japan those who reach the age of 70 are to be carried by a male family member to the top of their sacred mountain of Narayama to be left to die.  The audience is told that this practice has gone on for centuries and through the ballad of the film’s title each villager repeatedly recites elements of the tradition in verse.  In the midst of a series of poor harvests Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto), a family matriarch, has reached the age of 69.  Now more than ever her family needs one less mouth to feed, but she would be leaving them in disarray.  Her oldest son is widowed with two small children, another son is a social pariah because of offensive breath and body odor, and a grandson has begun to fool around with the daughter of known harvest thief.  When the girl becomes pregnant, it’s clear that there will not be enough food in the pot during the coming winter.

            Orin, is not the only village geriatric.  A man her age remains, but he’s been held prisoner in his house by his own son for months.  He tries to escape by chewing through his ropes, but never makes it very far.  Though Orin’s problems aren’t as obvious, she still feels the obligation to tie up as many loose ends as she can before her journey to the next life.  She finds a wife for her oldest son whom he seems to be fond of, but the woman is yet another hungry stomach.  As the food scarcity continues families in the village begin to take drastic measures.  Newborns are found abandoned in fields, left to die of starvation.  Orin’s grandson confides in his lover that he hopes their child is a girl so that they can sell her as apposed to killing a boy.  Through all of these scenes of the daily struggle for life in the village there are brief cutaways to nature, particularly of small creatures as they mate.  Here Imamura seems to imply that the cycle of life continues and that the human animal is just as likely to live in patterns as any other beast.

            When a family is buried alive for crop theft, Orin knows her time grows short.  She weaves the prayer rug on which she will take her final breath, before the god of the mountain comes to take her spirit.  In all of her preparation and all of the village adoration for tradition, Narayama is treated as though it is heaven itself, and that it is a privilege to make the journey to the mountain top.  Watching this film from a western perspective is hard.  It’s direct in its depiction of sex and hardships.  It’s unforgiving of those who do not respect the codes of the village.  Yet somehow it remains innately human.  Before departing for her meeting with death, Orin arranges a lover for her smelly son and gives advice to her new daughter-in-law.  In all of this she remains steadfast in her commitment to dying on traditional terms.

            When the time comes, her oldest son carries her on his back over the mountain terrain.  For almost a half hour there is no dialogue save for a brief conversation as the two rest for a moment.  This is the central moment of the film, as the son (Ken Ogata) realizes that the next time he sees this view he will be the carried and not the carrier, and so on and so forth for generations in both directions.  When they reach the mountain top they find what the audience has suspected all along.  The son leaves his mother in a heartbreaking scene and as he descends the mountain witnesses an atrocity.  He races back up as snow begins to fall, just as the ballad foretells, only to find his mother still praying as she freezes to death.

            You can take a film like The Ballad of Narayama in many ways.  Some audiences will obviously be turned off by the frank and harsh portrayal of village life.  Some won’t be able to get past the Western view that this tradition is banal and cold.  But deep down, just as with The Tree of Wooden Clogs, this is a life affirming picture.  It’s beautifully shot and masterfully crafted.  It’s not for young audiences, but I suspect that its meaning would change based on viewings at different points in life.  At its heart it is a family drama with much to say about how we treat the elderly in any culture.        

Grade: 3 Hats Off

Language: Japanese
Runtime: 130 Minutes

137: The American Friend

What role could Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, Matt Damon, John Malkovich, and Barry Pepper have in common? These men have all portrayed varying degrees of ruthlessness, but that each has been selected at different times to portray Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley is a bit surprising.  Thus I suppose the most interesting thing about Wim Wenders’ The American Friend (1977) isn’t contained within the film, but is found in its inevitable comparison to others.  Admittedly, I’m only vaguely familiar with the Ripley character, having only seen Damon’s performance in 1999s The Talented Mr. Ripley prior to viewing this piece.  I’ve been directed by Ebert’s “Great Movies” series to 2002s Ripley’s Game and am now eager to view Malkovich’s interpretation. 

            In Wenders’ piece it’s Hopper who has the honors and I must say that his take on Ripley is quite different than Damon’s.  That Malkovich and Hopper had been tapped to play the same role doesn’t surprise me, but throw this comparison in and I’m left furrowing my brow.  Hopper plays the role like Dennis Hopper but that’s to be expected.  Wenders likely knew what he was in for.  With Damon more than twenty years later, audiences were still waiting to discover just what he was made of.  His Ripley seemed to sidestep stress with a cool intensity as opposed to embracing it with the fervor of a madman as Hopper does.  The two films are based on different installments of Highsmith’s saga so a direct comparison is unfair, but taking both portrayals into account makes for interesting thought.

            This Ripley finds himself still living in wealth in Europe several years after the events displayed in the 1999 film.  He is the American friend of the title, who sustains his lifestyle by fronting an art forgery scam of sorts.  One strange element here is his wardrobe, which I suspect Hopper provided himself, that seems more suited to the American West than the French countryside.  The man whom he befriends is a professional framer (Bruno Ganz), suspicious of one of the pieces an acquaintance has purchased from Ripley at an auction.  Everything seems legitimate but “the blue is a bit off.”  Overhearing at the auction a critical piece of information pertaining to a disease, Ripley decides that he might have a use for this meticulous man.

            Exploiting what he knows, he persuades the Ganz character to commit a murder for which he would never become a suspect, but as always with Ripley much hinges on deceptions and half truths.  When the mission is completed, another opportunity arises from a third party, but the framer wants no more.  Complicating things is the fact that Ripley and the framer have developed a congenial respect and moderate friendship (hence the title).  When Ganz’ character finds himself in over his head, Ripley is miraculously present to help mop up the messy details.  There are some moments of legitimate suspense here, but that emotion doesn’t rival the shear pleasure of watching Hopper somehow work his magic.  He brings something to the role that I’m not sure that I like, but that I don’t believe many other performers could perfect.  He’s intense, and confused, and frustrated, and controlled all at once.  I’m looking forward to the Malkovich take on this same scene if it appears in the 2002 adaptation Ripley’s Game.

            This piece is also notable for Wenders’ casting of directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in smaller roles.  They fill them well but the focus here is on the two leads.  As Hopper unwinds Ganz’ character stirs over the possibilities of an impending death making for an intriguing onscreen juxtaposition.  If interesting performance and odd endings are your fandom forte then this piece is likely for you.   

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

138: Hold Me While I'm Naked

I’ll grant the 1001 text credit for acknowledging in their brief write up on George Kuchar’s Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966) that the film was clearly an influence on the work of John Waters.  Someone familiar with Water’s work couldn’t miss the connections.  However, I’m not quite sure that I conquer with the book’s contention that this particular piece stands so far apart from the rest of the 16mm softcore trash of the 1960s.  The text makes good arguments.  Yes, the titles are incredibly good for being created on a home editing system.  Yes, the film has a humor (particularly the final line) to it that makes it bearable.  Still, it views like an excuse to put a pretty girl in a shower scene, which it most likely was.

Pretty good graphics for 16mm work in 1966

            The girl in this case was the young busty Donna Kerness, and she left the project likely after beginning to suspect just that.  So what did Kuchar do?  He assembled the footage he had and dubbed his actress’s dialogue to make it a film about a young busty actress quitting a movie after she becomes uncomfortable shooting shower scenes for her pervy director.  Said director then proceeds to fantasize about her going home to engage in a legitimate shower rendezvous before he is called out of his own shower to be served a disgusting breakfast by his nagging mother.

            They say that “art imitates life” and I have a feeling that here art hit the nail pretty square on the head.  If you view this short film as a meditation on the lust (conscious or otherwise) that a director is likely to develop for his star then it can be a worthwhile 17 minutes of your life, but a Casablanca it is not.  Good for a laugh, but not much else.

Grade: 1 Hat Off

139: The Battle of San Pietro

One would think that a film directed by John Huston and produced by Frank Capra would be better known, but even the glow of these Hollywood stars couldn’t shine enough light to popularize a movie banned by the U.S. Army.  The film is The Battle of a San Pietro (1945), and it isn’t exactly the collaboration you might expect.  In fact, this 33 minute documentary that chronicles the events of an engagement at a small village in Italy during WWII stands out in both of their filmographies.  Both men were patriots whose films reflected American ideals, but the material here feels too gritty for Capra, and too straight forward for Huston. 

            It was this grit that caused the Army to shelve Huston’s completed version, believing the footage to be bad for morale and even antiwar in nature.  Exactly how footage of combat could scar combat soldiers I’m not sure, but Uncle Sam must have had his reasons.  Admittedly the events covered are brutal and their depiction is intense, but retrospectively footage of the war that is much more horrifying has surfaced. 

            As for the picture not quite fitting the Huston bill I can only say that it feels to direct.  He was a writer and director of stories that twisted and turned and often had no ultimate hope.  There is certainly despair in this picture, but due to army propaganda regulations it still feels forced.  Despite the military’s belief that it did not give an optimistic view of the battle won, it still has a bureaucratic gung ho feel to it.  Additionally, it tends to feel a bit like a military academy class on strategy, as Huston spends much of the film narrating his own pointing at a map.

                It survives in an edited version that stands as a shinning example of government propaganda.  Huston had six corporal cameramen at his disposal to collect footage and certainly captured some amazing images.  I can’t help but wonder how many times Steven Spielberg screened this piece before starting work on Saving Private Ryan (1998).  What’s unfortunate is that the original cut, with Huston’s full edge remains buried.  In either case it stands as a lasting tribute to the brave men and women who gave their lives so that tyranny and fascism could not curtail the lives of others.    

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off    

140: The Wall (a.k.a Deewaar)

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anything quite like Yash Chopra’s The Wall (1975).  It has the scope of Shakespeare and the production of bad blaxploitation.  Its retrospective pitch would go something like “it’s Scarface (1983) meets Fiddler on the Roof (1971).  From an acclaimed script by Javed Akhtar & Salim Khan based on the classic Indian film Mother India (1957: a review of which should be forthcoming on this blog), Chopra creates what is considered a Bollywood masterpiece using several mid-seventies movie trends.  There’s even a scene of Kung Fu in this Musical Drama.  Disjointed though it may be, I can’t say that I had a bad time watching this film.

            Vijay and Ravi are the young sons of a labor organizer in a mining community.  When they are kidnapped their father is coerced into signing an unfair labor agreement.  Unaware of the blackmail for his sons’ lives, the workers harass and torment his family for his betrayal, going as far as to tattoo Vijay’s arm “my father is a thief.”  Disgraced, the father abandons his family and they are forced to leave the community for the city of Mumbai.  Homeless, Vijay and Ravi are forced to live under a bridge as their mother makes a meager wage hauling bricks.  Though they are poor, Vijay, the elder brother, vows to help his mother send Ravi to school, managing to maintain a sense of dignity even as he shines shoes.  In a brilliant scene, he demands that a wiseguy bend over to pick up the coin he’s tossed him for his shine.  “I don’t beg.  I earned that money.  Pick it up and hand it to me.”  He shows the same indignation when a foreman curses his mother when she faints on the job.

            Vijay and Ravi literally and figuratively take different paths in life.  Though they both join their mother at temple Vijay refuses to enter, not willing to bow to a god he views as unfair and cruel.  After a flash forward this trend continues, and though the adult brothers both love their mother, Ravi, with his education, has chosen a path which honors her.  As he searches for a job with his newly acquired degree, Vijay quickly rises in the Mumbai criminal circuit.  A fight over dock worker’s wage percentages garnered to a local crime boss sets Vijay up as both a man of his father’s principles and a streetwise tough.  As he works his way into the syndicate, he makes more and more enemies.

            Meanwhile, Ravi has fallen in love with the daughter of a local police captain.  After not finding work elsewhere he is coerced to join the force at her urging.  He believes in justice and in the law, but never thinks that his profession will put him at odds with his brother.  He learns early on that Vijay is not on the up and up, and when he confronts him about his burgeoning wealth his mother turns his back on her oldest boy.  The wall of the film’s title refers to the emotional and principled split between the two men, who both want to provide for their aging matriarch.  The script can be a bit obvious with its metaphors as this fact displays, but overall is powerful and occasionally moving.  A scene which mirrors the coin tossed at the young Vijay’s feet brings his criminal career full circle.

            Likewise the film ends where the brothers first split.  On the steps of the temple is Vijay’s final confrontation with Ravi and their mother.  His world has come apart at the seams just as he was preparing to leave his life of crime.  Overall, The Wall might be a bit much for any viewer not familiar with Bollywood.  As always there are a few musical numbers that seem to come out of nowhere, but they are few and far between in this film compared to other Hindi film classics.  Despite being a bit different than just about anything else, It might be the place to start for a moviegoer not yet familiar with films from the subcontinent.

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

141: The Last Wave

Consider the following retrospective pitch: “It’s A Time to Kill (1996) meets Stir of Echoes (1999) meets a tidal wave disaster film.”  Therein you have Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977).  Weir is the Australian director responsible for Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Truman Show (1996), and Master and Commander (2003) as well as several pre-export Mel Gibson films, and has earned his place with film fanatics as a multi-title Criterion approved director.  Along with Hanging Rock this 1977 effort has been deemed worthy of the Collection treatment.  At first it can be difficult to see why, but Weir’s picture is just strange enough to warrant such reverence (and it’s certainly more worthy of canonization than anything in the 2- volume anthology of Stan Brakhage).

            Television regular Richard Chamberlain does solid work in this feature as David Burton, an ambitious young attorney brought in to defend a group of Aboriginals being charged with a somewhat bizarre murder.  His case depends on justifying the killing as a tribal ritual, but both the system and the defendants themselves seem to be working against him.  Their customs are guarded in secret and to reveal that they are the last remaining members of a tribe native to Sydney could threaten their sacred underground landmarks. 

            Meanwhile the city and the continent have been experiencing unprecedented weather patterns.  Hail falls in the middle of the desert and black rain coats the Sydney streets.  The weather bears a strange resemblance to the events of Burton’s dreams and he begins to wonder whether he may be a clairvoyant.  In either case the dreams become more and more vivid as they start to invade his waking visions as well.  Water, namely in the form of the aforementioned rain, is prominently featured here as it so often is as a metaphor for the fragility of human life.  It both grants and shapes our existence, but can also be a source of our demise, as it was in the case of the murder victim.  If this film were up for a remake, Sam Mendes would be the logical choice of Director, as he so significantly employs this symbolic use of H2O, often working it to death.

            As the plot unfolds the connection between Burton and his defendants grows.  He fights to have the courts recognize their rights under tribal law as he learns that he has been blessed with a gift of vision uncommon outside of their lineage.  The film is set up from the beginning as a sort of mystery, but doesn’t really get going until the second half.  It’s not quite exciting enough throughout to be labeled a “thriller,” and not quite focused enough to be a drama.  In this respect, the courtroom scenes feel rather flat and don’t deliver much on their promise.  By the time they do come around the film has moved in another direction. 

            As burtons visions grow stronger and the real world events and dangerous weather begin to affect his young family, he seeks out a final confrontation with the men whom he defended.  Being led back to the place of the genesis of the crime, he crawls deeper and deeper under the city.  After trudging through knee-deep sewage systems he finally reaches the ancient religious grounds of the Aboriginal tribe.  What transpires therein and thereafter makes for one of the oddest ending of a movie that I can recall.  Weir is both ambiguous and ambitious here, seeming to predict the very end of the world.  This isn’t a picture that’s engaging throughout, but it does have moments of tangible expression and surprise.  It also tugs at some philosophical questions regarding the meaning and importance of laws in the western mindset.  It might be all over the map, but it does stop in some interesting locales.

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off        

142: The Tree of Wooden Clogs (a.k.a. L’Arbero Degli Zoccoli)

There is an unmistakable charm to Ermanno olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) that was not lost on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the coveted Palme D’or.  I have seen few films that so thoroughly qualify to be described as a “slice of life.” In this case it is the life of a small group of peasant farming families at the turn of the 20^th century who inhabit a shared living community in the Italian countryside that is three miles from the nearest village.  Those miles are important because they are the distance that the young son of one of the families must walk every day to school.  At the outset of the film his parents question sending him on such a walk each day, but urged by a priest to nurture his young intelligence, they finally agree.  Though neither of the parents has been educated, they seem to sense that the changing world will not be kind to hired farmhands forever.  And it would be a sin to not follow the instructions of the priest.

            Religion plays an important role in this movie, but I disagree with the 1001 text calling it a religious film.  Faith and practice are such a part of these families lives that it would be wrong to exclude them from this film, but I don’t believe that Olmi is driving at a point of religious significance.  Religion enhances the lives of his characters – in some cases directly as with a cow that is saved by a miracle – but it is not their beliefs that make them who they are.  They are daughters and sons and husbands and wives and grandfathers, and it’s clear that their relationships are what drive and sustain them. 

            This is not a film of stories but a film of moments, as olmi attempts to show us the daily and seasonal tasks of the farming community.  Geese are beheaded, pigs are gutted, cows are pushed through the mud, and all of this happens in clear view of children who see it as the way that life simply is.  Within the course of the three hour film, a baby is born, young love blooms, crops are planted, and the harvest is taken in.  The movie is slowly paced but never slow.  These people are a joy to spend this time with despite their many hardships.  A mother of six takes in the wash of the other families to put food on her table, and a grandfather teaches his granddaughter the importance of using chicken coop droppings as a fertilizer which produces early tomatoes.  Each happening, sad or enchanting, is a part of life, and each day will end as the families gather around a fire to listen to ghost stories.  Mothers rock babies in their arms while darning socks as they listen to save as much of the day as possible.

            This is not an easy life that we see, but it is beautiful.  The cinematography is understated, using as much natural light as possible, but Olmi certainly knows where he’s taking us, using Bach when he needs to message the point into the audience.  Tragedies occur on both large and small scales in this film as in life.  When the young gifted boy breaks a shoe on the long walk home there is no money for another and no vendor to sell them.  His father is forced to cut down one of the trees of the landlord under cover of darkness to whittle a new clog.  Though they problem appears fixed there are consequences to be feared.

            On a surface level this film might draw comparison to Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976).  But that film was about class conflict and seemed to be making a political statement.  Here, audiences can take whatever they want from Olmi’s picture.  It is not about anything larger than itself.  It simply is as life is.  Perhap the reality comes from the fact that only nonactors were used.  Here friendship, work, religion, laughter, and love are all featured, but none is given precedence.  They all equally make up the adventure that is the human story.

Grade: 3 Hats Off

143: The Ascent (a.k.a. Voskhozhdenie)

I didn’t intend for three of my most recent views to be of Soviet era Russian films.  It simply worked out that way in my Netflix cue.  That being said, I think this is a trend I’ll try to avoid in the future.  It’s not that Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1976) is a bad film, but it is infused with the same emotional distance that I mentioned in my review of Dersu Uzala (1974; # 144).  These two films are also similar in theme and narrative, and thus I feel that I’ll be a bit hard on the former in this piece. 

            Set amidst the backdrop of the German invasion, The Ascent begins focused on a meager group of partisans fleeing from Blitzkrieg pursuers.  Two of the soldiers break away from the group to scout and possibly scrounge rations, but find themselves in a skirmish with a German patrol.  When one of them is injured they are forced to hideout in the attic of a village woman who is struggling to make ends meet with her three children.  They are quickly captured and taken, along with the woman, to a makeshift prison camp.

            As they await their fate and endure the torturous interrogations of the camp’s sadistic commandant the film begins to dwell in the philosophical questions posed by loyalty in war.  Story-wise this film is basically split in two; with the chase by the Nazi troops encompassing the first half of the film, and the imprisonment in the camp occupying the whole of the second.  Both of these halves include moments of heightened emotion and tension between the characters, but because the audience is given so little introduction to them it becomes difficult to empathize with their plight in these moments.  Ultimately, on the narrative front the film fails for this reason, but it does do a proficient job of displaying the brutality of the Nazi war machine against both soldiers and civilians of the Soviet Union.

            Aesthetically, the movie has much more to offer.  Shallow focus seems the right choice here, as none of the characters are given much depth, and the use of B&W photography strikes the right chord.  However, where some shots seem meticulous in their construction, others feel bland and unimaginative, and this visual juxtaposition is almost never a positive choice for a filmmaker, as the occasional good shots tend to highlight the rash of bad ones.  Likewise, I was put off by the titles supered over the opening sequence.  They were distracting and shielded some of what would have been the film’s finest visuals.

            All in all I can’t say that I hated this movie, but I can’t say much about it that is positive either.  I understand it’s placement on the list, but only recommend it to be viewed when it’s been a while since your last dose of Soviet cinema.

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off      

Note: I’m publishing this post in the early minutes of my 25^th birthday.  I have two years to finish 142 films, but I’m about to hit a wall with Netflix.  Any suggestions for free/cheap (and legal) viewing of some of the list’s more obscure titles would be appreciated.  I might be publishing a list of my remaining films for potential help in finding them.  My thanks to all.

144: Dersu Uzala

It’s interesting to note that for a time in the mid 1970s Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa was not appreciated in his native country.  During that period, the film industry of the Soviet Union beckoned and Kurosawa answered the call, undoubtedly aware that the soviet government-funded industry there would spare no expense in financing one of his pictures.  The result was Dersu Uzala (1974).  This epic captures much of what was great about Kurosawa’s productions in his homeland, but feels infused with the emotional distance which often accompanied Soviet films.

            That’s not to say that this film is altogether cold, in fact it features a warm friendship, but that the characters themselves never feel developed or offer themselves to the audience.  The story centers on a Russian army captain (Yuri Solomin) who is charged with leading a topographical expedition of Siberia at the turn of the century.  He is a good leader and his men respect him, but none are prepared for the harsh conditions they will face.  When they meet a local hunter, Dersu (Maksim Munzuk), who has experience and knowledge of survival in the unforgiving landscape, they take him on as their guide. 

            A relationship develops between the Captain and the hunter that initially seems strange to the men.  Though they embrace their guide’s advice, he is to them more of a clown than the sage that the Captain perceives.  As their friendship grows, so slowly does the respect of the other members of the expedition.  The first half of the film features some exciting sequences of survival, as Dersu and the Captain battle the elements at every turn.  In the film’s key scene they are caught in a storm out on the tundra when Dersu saves the Captain’s life by constructing a makeshift hut to shield them from the wind.  Though the Captain profusely thanks his companion, the old man acts as if this was all in a days work.

            Though the expedition ends, the Captain returns to the area in subsequent years to finish his mapmaking work.  He reunites with Dersu joyously, remarking that he seems to defy time.  Though Dersu does not know how old he is, and despite the Captains remarks, it becomes clear that his site is fading, leaving him more prone to the elements.  Though the Captain invites his friend to live with him in the city, Dersu cannot adjust to life away from his native hills.  Ironically, though Dersu saved the Captain, he is unable to return the favor. 

            The film is in many ways a beautiful testament to friendship and the lasting nature thereof, but as I said it has a distance that keeps it from effectively functioning.  Though much of the cinematography is beautiful as well, capturing the vast and haunting reaches of Asia, it is unbalanced and dark in some portions.  Though it may have been the intension of D.P. Fyodor Dobronravov, the scenes which take place in at the Captain’s home in the city are downright flat.  This flatness offers an interesting juxtaposition, but one without a pleasing aesthetic.

Grade: 2 Hats Off

145: Cria Cuervos (a.k.a. Cria!)

Something that has always fascinated me about directors, particularly world cinema directors, is that so many of them choose to tell at least one of their stories through the perspective of children.  Malle, Fellini, and Truffaut all made some of their best films about children.  Steven Spielberg was once dismissed as a children’s picture director because of E.T. (1982), but now that film seems to have been a point of departure in his anthology of work.  In any case, I find it interesting that so many filmmakers are compelled to project their vision of the often confusing world through the eyes of children.  Carlos Saura attempted to do just that with his Cria Cuervos (1975).

            To play his young protagonist Ana, Saura chose Ana Torrent, fresh off of her performance from Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973; #168).  While this film is not as good as that one, Torrent’s performance here is almost as enchanting.  The film begins as she descends the stairs of her large home in urban Madrid while a woman quickly exits the bedroom of her widowed father.  The father lies dead in bed, and Ana takes it upon herself to wash out a glass of milk sitting on the nightstand.  Later we learn that she believes that she has poisoned her father and was attempting to dispose of the evidence, though it’s clear to the audience that he died of a heart attack.  What makes this situation even odder is that one actress, Geraldine Chaplin, plays both the dead mother who scolds Ana (in a sort of dreamlike hallucination/flashback) and the adult Ana reflecting on the events and narrating her emotions. 

            Both of these characters add a strange sense of omnipotence to the film; one that transcends time and perspective.  The film takes place in the present of 1975, but features the adult Ana of the future reflecting on the events which unfold.  Conversely, the deceased mother and subsequently the now dead father appear throughout in these dreamlike memories which Ana holds of her parents.  Her mother seems to offer her both council and comfort but does not appear to have found peace in the afterlife.  Ana often descends the stairs to find her waiting up for her father who in death seems to come home late as often as he did in life.  Much time could be spent attempting to dissect these scenes, determining which elements are memories and which aspects are fragments of imagination, but such efforts would be pointless.  Dreams don’t work that way.  They are scrambled segments of our consciousness which include both the developments of the past and our hopes and fears of the future.  Ana observes most of these projections stoically, unable to affect her own dreams.

            When her overwhelmed aunt comes in to take care of Ana and her two sisters, she is unprepared for the task.  The three girls aren’t bad children, but a dead mother and a neglectful father have left them unmannered.  While her older and younger sisters seem to react to this change of authority gracefully, Ana is still attached to her mother and resistant to the new rules.  She is caught between being too young to understand, like her younger sister, and old enough to accept the adjustment, as her older sister is.  She seems to be disbelieved by everyone, dismissed as having an active imagination.  Her dreams about her mother seem so real to her, but everyone else is so tired of hearing about them that when she tells them of her father’s affair with his best friend’s wife (the woman from the film’s opening), she is scolded for making up stories.

            This is not a film about truth so much as it is a film about confusion; about a time in life when the world seems so big and scary a place that the only relief from it comes by holing up in your room to listen to records.  It’s fitting that so often cinematographer Teodoro Escamilla shoots the exterior of Ana’s large home from above, highlighting its place amongst the busy streets.  The walls of the villa protect Ana and her sisters from the world outside and the urban soundscape that plays so heavily on the audio track.  Thus it’s fitting that the final shot of the film show them finally walking out onto those boulevards, back to school from their lengthy vacation. 

            The film’s odd title comes from a Spanish saying – “Raise raven and they’ll pluck out your eyes.”  It speaks both to the inevitable nature of life dealing out comeuppances, and to the naughty nature of Ana and her sisters at the film’s outset.  They are not bad children – after all, Ana makes a strong case for why she intended to poison her father – but they are the result of what neglect can do at this fragile age.  As a film about that age, and about the how confusing adults seem at that time, this picture succeeds, however overall it falls short of being any sort of masterpiece.  It has been read as an indictment of Franco’s Spain and the nature of rebellious feelings under his dictatorship.  I’m not a cultural historian so I’ll make no such connection or comment thereon accept to say that the theory is interesting.

Grade: 2 Hats Off         

146: The Mirror (a.k.a. Zerkalo)

I have to admit that when I read over the remaining titles on the 1001 list, there are a few that I’m dreading.  But I always hope that films that I’m not looking forward to will surprise me, as was the case with 36^th Chamber of Shaolin (1978; #150).  Anything by Soviet director Andrea Tarkovsky throws up just such a red flag.  Of his films that I’ve seen, many of them i.e. Andrea Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), and Stalker (1979) which are considered masterpieces, I haven’t enjoyed a single one.  Yes I’m probably a viewer too young and too thoroughly westernized to enjoy these semi-ethereal Russian works, but that’s just how it is.  His movies are achingly slow, and as such I wasn’t exactly excited about his The Mirror (1974).

            In this case my ominous sense of dread seems to have been dead on.  Again Tarkovsky delivered a snails-paced meditation on God know what that simply missed the mark for me.  The 1001 text notes in the write-up on The Mirror that avant-garde American director Stan Brakhage (of Dog Star Man infamy) was one of Tarkovsky’s greatest stateside supporters – in what must be one of the most blatant examples ever of one hack praising the hackery of another.  Both of these filmmakers made pictures that no one could possibly understand, and I would bet that they generated equal pleasure for that experience.

            The Mirror is supposedly a multigenerational examination of the experience of being raised without a father, an experience Tarkovsky knew well.  It’s been highly praised for its personal nature by Brakhage and by others for years, but I found it little more than distant and apathetic.  It is supposed to be clear that the protagonist, who’s POV we experience without ever seeing his adult face, is Tarkovsky himself, grown and now guilty of the same sin of abandonment.  He doesn’t seem particularly apologetic for his actions, and doesn’t appear particularly to care for anything at all.  He complains to his mother over the phone about having a soar throat, using it for his excuse not to visit as he idles away in his dilapidated apartment.  This lodging in particular pushes the film from “personal” to self-indulgent, as an Andrea Rublev poster is hung on the wall.  How insecure can director be when he has to use art work promoting one of his films as a set piece for another?  This is more that George Lucas hiding “THX 1138” in all of his movies. This is pure narcissism.

            And how about naming a film that is supposed to be a self-reflection “The Mirror?”  Did he copy this script off of a bathroom wall at the obvious metaphor bar?  To be fair, the film really is full of reflection shots and sets full of mirrors, but placing them there doesn’t really enhance the film’s meaning.  Compliment these factors with bad editing and the added confusion of having one actress play both the mother of the past and the wife of the present and you get a disjointed Oedipus complex movie. 

            There are however some brief bright moments, more credited to Tarkovsky’s vision than his filmmaking abilities.  He incorporates the use of stock footage, most of it concerning major moments of 20^th century Russian history, setting them to the compositions of Bach and Purcell.  These instances are brief but powerful, and speak volumes more than anything Tarkovsky committed to his own celluloid.  They seem to imply, in the context of his almost incoherent work, that Russians are affected, generation to generation, by the history of the land in which they make their lives.  On these notes the film hits the right chord, but unfortunately they are all but lost in the midst of Tarkovsky’s filmic ramblings.  Brakhage said of Tarkovsky’s work that it was dreamlike, “illuminat[ing] the boarders of the unconscious.”  He did get one thing right.  Unconscious is what most viewers will be about ten minutes into this one.

Grade: 1 Hat Off              

On Film Criticism

Film Criticism is, when thought about, one of the most pointless of all professions.  The public at large pays little attention to the musings and opinions of local and national film critics, choosing instead to visit the overpriced megaplex to see the latest over-hyped, under-developed, opening weekend-concerned blockbuster.  They ignore the advice and miss the subtle homage and witty illusions of those individuals who have dedicated their lives to the appreciation of film, choosing instead to fall victim to the whims and wills of corporate marketing executives hoping to retire at 35 on their foolishly spent dollars.  As the average moviegoer (the adolescent to young adult male) pours out his allowance/wages to see the latest special effects-littered slasher flick megahit, devoid of character, but always with the promise of exposed cleavage, the critic can only sit back in disgust and dismay.

            While the art house and black and white foreign films of the critic’s fancy appeal to fewer and fewer filmgoers by the year, it becomes painfully obvious that he serves only the function of personifying the aspirations of his dying faithful as they salivate over found Metropolis footage and desperately anticipate unauthorized midnight screenings of Cocksucker Blues.  Yet have no pity for the critic, for as much as he may claim to wish that his suggestions were heeded by movie-going millions, it is in his distance from them, and thus his distain for them, that he finds his true pleasure and passion in life.  The critic exists as the absolute middle between the artist and the public, a position he often relishes as his own true talent is but the dissemination and interpretation of the work of true artists.

            Therefore, that intrinsic and universal desire to be loved, which exists in all artists and is juxtaposed by that other ironic artistic desire, to not be appreciated in their own time, is magnified in the humble critic.  Thus he relies on the emotional high provided by the near worship of a few filmic faithful who blog and write letters in the frantic hope of response, and hence their own recognition.  Indeed, the film critic functions solely to perpetuate the slim hopes of these desperate dweebs that their own useless opinions and musings will one day be respected by others of their oft-dateless ilk.  But as I said, have no sympathy for the critic, for he has risen to a position of public semi-respect by doing little more than watching countless movies.  Though this can not be considered true sloth, as many of these films take great intelligence and a strong will to sit through, it can not also, by any conventional means of the word, be considered “work.”

            The critic is the proprietor of the half-art; creative only in it description and dissection of the art of others.  Reaching this pinnacle of mediocrity he can take solace in knowing that he has garnered enough credibility to fall just short of incredible.  No one can take away his realized aspiration, except say a supervising editor to whom he must feign his respect, as journalism is but another world in which he is only a fringe citizen.  Do not forget that the critic is not totally without respect from the general population, as his opinions, while not always respected, are regarded as informed.  He would also rank highly on a list of anyone attempting to compose a winning team for a local junior high-sponsored trivia night. 

            It is in these respects that he has socially surpassed the likes of the true artist, or say… the average stock broker.  The critic has found a niche through which he has filled the two highest aspirations man can aspire to when seeking employment.  These aspirations of course present themselves in the form of the most often asked questions of the job seeker.  First, and most important to the common man: “Does this position provide me with the means to support those who depend on me financially?”  Second, and most important to the artist: “Does this work fulfill my inner needs of expression and self-worth?”  While the first question/aspiration may be difficult to fulfill for the struggling Catholic critic of impeccable potency, it should suffice for the protestant critic with at least minimal sense.  Now consider the artist who enters his profession with the aspiration of wealth.  He would be considered by many men to be a complete idiot.  Conversely, the stock broker who finds a sense of expression and self-worth in his position would be considered by many men to be a complete ass hole.  Thus, the Critic could do worse.