Happy Birthday
Watson! You’ve been a great movie
watching buddy. Nobody holds up a couch like you and your Daddy!
Saturday, June 15, 2013
“This is the End”…or is it?
My favorite film (and
thus my favorite lister) begins with these words sung by Jim Morrison of The
Doors. I’m trying to think now if Apocalypse Now (1978) was my favorite
movie when I bought the 1001 text seven years ago. I certainly loved it, but at that point my
favorite film was probably Stephen Frears’ High
Fidelity (2000; not on the 1001 list). That film has only been surpassed by one or
two others in that time, so I think it is safe to say that I am fairly adverse
to changing my own lists of all-time favorite anythings. That being said, it’s important to remember
that one takes on a challenge like the 1001 Movies You Have to See Before
You Die for the reason of expanding their taste and taking in the gamut of
culture that the cinematic art form can offer.
I’ve certainly done that, and in doing so I’ve been forced to look
beyond the list as well. I’m currently
also trying to see the entire Criterion Collection DVD/Blu-ray series, many of
which I was initially prompted to by this list.
I figured it might be a good idea to see everything that they had to
offer (even though I’ve been putting off the Stan Brakhage anthologies after
seeing and loathing Dog Star Man),
and without having to blog them I should be able to get done with the
Collection (with a few hard-to-find exceptions) by the close of this
summer.
Does that mean that I’m done writing for this webpage? Heck no! Obviously my output has slowed significantly
in the last year because the titles got so hard to come by. In fact, without the help of my friend and research
assistant Matt Sands, I’d never have been able to make it this far. (I owe you
big time brother) But with his help and
the support and encouragement of many others I’ve done it! Just under two and a half years ago I sat
down at my dinner table and typed out the initial post for this blog. Now I’m sitting at that same table, and hour
and a half away from the deadline of my 27th birthday, and I’ve
gotten to the top of the mountain. This
was a hard journey, but as I said, I had invaluable support and help along the
way. I doubt that I’ll be able to get
out of the habit of posting film reviews and opinions, but I don’t know that I’ll
be taking on any other significant long-term blogging projects in the near
future. Along the way, I’ve been quietly
viewing the supplemental films to the list, and I have only three of the most
recent crop left to tackle. So I’d
expect to see reviews of Shame, A Separation, and La Harve here sometime in the near future, as well as those of any
other film I feel like spewing my two cents on.
The 1001 text suggests that it is unlikely that
most people who pick up the tome will have already seen all of the entries. This is, of course, true, because without
this book many of the films would be even more obscure than they are with it,
and even fewer people would have motivation to see them (Flaming Creatures I am coughing and looking in your general
direction). I can’t tell you the number
of times I viewed a title and began to research it more by heading to the
Internet Movie Database (IMDb), only to find that the single note in the “Did
You Know?” section of the film’s page read, “Included in the book 1001
Movies You Have to See Before You Die.” But that’s what this book is about; guiding
those of us who can’t get drunk enough on the sweet nectar of cinema toward
those titles that even the people of that endless information superhighway haven’t
yet seen on their radar. My copy of the
book, seven years removed from purchase, now sits tattered and torn on my
bedside table. It has been a constant
companion and a treasure trove of knowledge.
Yes, my wife has threatened to hit me over the head with it, but
weaponized uses aside, it has guided me through this journey. So now without further ado, here are my top
and bottom ten titles from these final 200 movies.
1. Faster,
Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
2.
A Matter of Life and Death
3.
Seconds
4.
The Last Battle
5.
Report
6.
Shanghai Express
7.
Zero for Conduct
8.
High School
9.
The Cool World*
10. Winter Light
*Not
available (Come on Wiseman!)
1.
The Color of Pomegranates (worst; even worse on recollection than initial
ranking)
2.
Touch of Zen
3.
Heaven and Earth Magic
4.
Blonde Cobra
5. The
Asthenic Syndrome
6. Come
Drink with Me
7. Black
God, White Devil
8. Caravaggio
9.
Celine and Julie Go Boating
10. Flaming
Creatures
The Final 50 Films in Review
Well I’ve done it! I’ve tackled the beast. I’ve climbed the mountain. I’ve slain the dragon. I’ve gone round the bend with metaphorical
references in writing about these 200 movies.
I’m exhausted and exhilarated.
These last fifty took me over a year to find, see, and blog, and now looking
back on the whole thing I’m thanking God that it’s over. Does that mean that I now hate movies and
never want to see another one again? By
no means. Does it mean that I’m now in
the mood to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark
(also on the 1001 list)? Yes.
But it’s important to see this thing through and do a recap of these
last fifty titles. I noticed as I was
looking over my reviews that I’ve been more generous on these last fifty. I gave 21 of these films a rating of 3 Hats
Off or higher, and only 10 movies a rating of 1.5 Hats Off or lower. Does this mean that these were better films?
Maybe, but I’m inclined to believe that my being near to completing the list
gave me a generosity of spirit, and that the effort I (or my friends) put into
finding these films made them all the more worth watching. Anyway, here are my lists.
1. The
Last Battle
2. Report
3. The
Cool World
4. The
Baker’s Wife
5. The
Unbelievable Truth
The Worst
1. The
Asthenic Syndrome (worst)
2. Black
God, White Devil
3. The
Spider Strategem
4. Too
Early, Too Late
5. The
Puppetmaster
1: Loulou
I’ve never
quite been able to buy Gérard Depardieu as a sex symbol. He’s a fine actor, no doubt, but his
goofiness (just
look at his IMDb headshot) always strikes me as something that would
detract from his appeal to female audiences and characters. Then again, I’m not French. In Maurice Pialat’s Loulou (1980) he lays that foolish quality against the more
underplayed, even cool sexuality of Isabelle Huppert (a more legitimate sex
symbol) and it somehow works. He’s
playing to type as the ex-con and social loafer, Loulou, who somehow is able to
win the interest of Huppert’s Nelly, a bourgeoisie woman whose in the process
of leaving her husband, André (Guy Marchand).
Those are
the basics of the plot, and for the most part they’re all that we get from the
movie as far as motivation goes for each character. Loulou should get a job if he wants to keep
Nelly, but because he initially believes that she is only interested in him for
sex, he doesn’t really see the point in putting effort into their
relationship. Nelly meanwhile can’t
quite decide if she is done with André, and upon an agreement with Loulou, she
returns to work for him to allow him time to come to terms with their
breakup. Films rarely, if ever, come
with a disclaimer that their relationship patterns are not meant to be taken as
sound romantic advice, and Loulou is
no exception.
This is not
a film about great love or about the choices we make in relationships and where
they lead, but more an effective declaration that perhaps we have no real reasons
for making those choices at all. This is
a film in which characters feel emotions and desires and then act on them,
rarely considering what the consequences will be. Consider this conversation between Nelly and André
after they’ve made love during one of their work sessions.
Nelly: I’m pregnant with Loulou. I’m going to keep the child.
André: How
far along are you?
Nelly:
About two months.
André: What
does Loulou think?
Nelly: He’s
very excited
André: And
you?
Nelly: I’m
very happy.
André: Are
you in bed with me to tell me that?
Nelly: No,
I just wanted you. I don’t know why.
Nelly speaks her words with calm detachment,
as if she’d had no inclination to sleep with André again prior to that moment,
and expecting that it will change nothing about her situation with Loulou. Perhaps this is because very little does
change.
The couple move into a nicer
apartment – with the rent always paid by Nelly – and they go about their life
together. Loulou talks about getting
work once the child comes, but he has no sense of urgency. He warns his friends about being tied down by
marriage, but refers to Nelly as his fiancée.
He meets her family and is as charming as he can be, but Pialat’s subtle
direction always makes it clear that these two characters don’t belong in each others’
worlds. She denies it, but Nelly still
needs André for intellectual stimulation, and though she says almost nothing,
she’s appalled when she joins Loulou and a fellow hood as they steal stereo
equipment from a loading dock.
Where this story goes is
interesting, but it ultimately isn’t the point of the film. The third act contains a point of ambiguity
that depending on perception might alter an audience’s view of these
characters, but by that time we’ve been with them for over an hour and a half,
and we’ve seen them at their worst and their best. Depardieu and Huppert turn in performances
here that make these characters worth our investment simply in that these
actors are brave enough to show us this gamut of their experiences. Guy Marchand’s performance is impressive as
well, as he’s able to be despicable, pathetic, sympathetic, and then forgettable
all at the right moments.
From a technical standpoint Loulou is lacking in the lighting
category, as night exteriors are often imperceptible. But when the actors’ faces and bodies are
visible they hold the screen magnificently.
Consider that so many scenes feel both dangerous and improvised. Pialat challenges his actors here with
difficult situations and emotions and is brave enough himself to let their
craft speak for itself. He doesn’t
employ directorial flourish because he knows that his screenplay (written with
Arlette Langmann) gives his characters all the motion (and emotion) they need. He isn’t interested in their innermost
desires. He wants the blood, the sweat,
and the tears that pour out of them.
Language: Franch
Runtime: 101 Minutes
Friday, June 14, 2013
2: The Baker’s Wife (a.k.a. La Femme Du Boulanger – Original French title)
Marcel
Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife (1938) is yet another title that screams out
for the Criterion treatment, and, indeed, upon watching it I was shocked that
it had not already been christened into that other great canon of titles. My only speculation about the holdup of such
a release: the audio on the version of the film that was sent to me through a private
link is hampered by a significant motor hum, which I presume may be near
impossible to remove. No matter,
Criterion should give it their all, as The
Baker’s wife is a gem. My only fear
in recommending this film is that I didn’t have the benefit of subtitles to
pick up on the details of the comic exchanges. I don’t speak ten words of French, and I didn’t
need to in order to appreciate the humor. The timing and the rhythm were there, and any comedian
will tell you that that’s 80% of any good joke.
A criterion print transfer with subtitles would be the oh-so-justified
icing on the cake.
The reason
this film flies so high is the performance of Raimu in the role of the
cuckolded baker, Aimable Castanier. The
humor and humanity he conveys is miraculous from the movie’s opening. The middle-aged man has moved with his young wife
(Ginette Leclerc) to a provincial village in southern France to open his
bakery. He produces magnificent loaves
of bread, but he’s no sooner finished his first run out of the oven then his
wife is struck smitten with a handsome local shepherd. She leaves in the night after the young man
serenades her by moonlight. Awakened the
next morning by the excess smoking of the ovens, Aimable finds her bed stuffed
with pillows.
After a frantic search of the
village, it becomes clear to where, and to whom, the wife has gone. Incensed but still composed, Aimable is, at
first, tempted to explain her absence and carry on, not knowing that the
villagers have already begun to mock him behind his back. Their laughter turns soon though to
desperation, when after a sermon from the pulpit on the virtues of marriage – which
is clearly aimed squarely at the baker – drives him to drink and to swear off
lighting the ovens again until his wife returns.
Hunger begins to drive the
villagers toward the cause of the cuckold, and even old squabbles between the
village’s opposing moral and political factions are set aside to assuage the
desperation and aid in the return of the wayward wife. Arguments are had about the best plan of
action, enemies forge friendships in support of the cause, and Aimable is
driven slowly mad by the thoughts of his lost love in the arms of another man.
The ease with which Raimu seems
able to move in and out of anger and despair, into blind rage and then
energetic reason is the true magic of this film. The actor, large in stature and personality,
is kept small in the confines of the screen by DP Georges Benoit, and this
ironic approach brings to his performance both profundity and basic
decency. He is not unaware of the power
of love to make us do crazy things, but he is dismayed at the audacity of love
to perform its cruel tricks on him. Part
Chaplin, part Oliver Hardy, and with a touch of his contemporary Michael Simon,
Raimu creates here a character that feels somehow both ubiquitous and unique;
comfortable and yet constantly surprising.
Simon is of course remembered so
well for his work with Jean Renoir, and retrospect has placed that director’s work
among the greatest films being made anywhere in the world during the 1930s. While Renoir’s masterpieces The Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) aren’t
likely to be usurped in their placement as some of the finest movies ever made,
I believe that this comic work by Pagnol far exceeds Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), and
that Raimu’s work here has a leg up on the Simon performance in that film. A Criterion double feature of the two pictures
would likely convey that point better than any words that I could commit to
type, but it appears we will have to wait for such a an opportunity.
Language: French (NST)
Runtime: 133 Minutes
Grade: 3.5 Hats Off
Saturday, June 8, 2013
3: Last Chants for a Slow Dance
There is an
unmistakable sense when watching Jon Jost’s Last
Chants for a slow Dance (1977) that you are watching something being born
and something dying. One way of life,
and of filmmaking, draws its last breath while a new America and a new American
cinematic movement are emerging from the second great period of U.S. filmmaking. The irony is, of course, that Last Chants was released in the same year
as Star Wars (1977), the film that
effectively ended – with its product tie-ins and lines around the block – the Hollywood
interest in personal filmmaking, splitting the industry into the blockbuster
driven studios and what we now call the independent American cinema.
Last
Chants is at the forefront of the latter movement, and indeed much of what
was to come from independently financed movies over the next two decades owes
its look and feel to this film. The
obvious comparison is Henry: Portrait of
a Serial Killer (1990), but I was struck by how much Last Chants’ antihero Tom Bates (Tom Blair) was resembled in the
River Phoenix character in Gus Van Sant’s My
own Private Idaho. Those sunglasses,
that hair, the denim, the sense of wandering; they’re all there in Van Sant’s
film.
Last
Chants for a Slow Dance doesn’t have a plot so much as it has a central
figure. Bates (I wonder why Jost chose
that name…) is a drifter. He has a wife,
Darlene (Jessicas St. John), and two boys, Billy and Bobby, but he’s only at
home with them for a brief segment of the film.
He and Darlene argue about the things that he’s told another drifter
that they argue about, and he’s on his way again, ostensibly looking for work,
but really looking for a way out. He
sits in bars and diners, talking to other customers, always trying to get laid,
but he never betrays any sense of real motivation. He wants to be free to sit in bars and diners
it seems, and to try to get laid. He’s
got no money for anything other than smokes, drinks, and gas, and while he
seems bitter about the state of things, he’s resigned to find comfort in the
fact that “you can’t get ahead.”
Country music, mostly ballads, play
on the radio as he drives across Montana.
He calls Darlene from the apartment of a woman he’s just had a one night
stand with and their conversation sounds like it’s the same one they’ve had a
hundred times before. He hangs up and
tells the woman that he was talking to his boss, then realizes that he doesn’t really
care if she knows now that he’s married.
There isn’t much more to Tom than
what meets the eye. He’s almost all Id
and libido, with any elements of concealment only lasting long enough to convince
a woman into bed. Jost finds a way to develop
his shallow character economically, using very few shots and sparse cutaways
that are effective if not overbearing.
The slaughter of a rabbit in close-up effectively stands in for other
acts of violence, while conveying the desperation of Tom to break free from a
life that is in actuality not so terribly restrictive. He’s a rebel without a cause and as such, he
seems so desperate to simplify life to animalistic urges. As a portrait of 1970s America he is thus
effective, conveying a need to dismiss traditional values and norms while
denying the need to establish a newly sufficient median.
Made for only $12,000, and
comprised of fewer than one hundred 16mm shots, Last Chants for a Slow Dance is, in the eyes of many, the prototype
for the latter 20th century independent film. Jost is hinting at so much by saying so
little here, and though Last Chants is
a difficult and vexing movie, it’s an interesting contrast to other 1970s
statement pictures. It’s infinitely more
interesting that Two-Lane Blacktop (1971),
and, as the 1001 text points out, refreshingly less muddled than Nashville (1975).
Language: English*
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Grade: 2.5 Hats Off
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