Hard Candy
30 June, 2008
I figured out, after much puzzling, what it is about this film that I like. It isn’t particularly good, and it’s essentially morally bankrupt. But it is the first film to take the classic Hitchcock formula and modernize it in a way that is truly effective. Rather than copying Hitchcock, Slade has managed to re-tool him, make his typical bad versus worse scenario into something that does not feel clunky and mis-directed. Even the opening credits, which remind me so much of Saul Bass, and the score are perfectly Hitchcockian. Which, by the way, was almost certainly completely by mistake.
So that’s why I like this awful little film.
Wall-e
30 June, 2008
Pixar continues to put out adorable, morally upright, exquisitely animated films. I have nothing bad to say about the piece. Even the movie in-jokes were hilarious, though I was frequently the only person in the theater laughing at them- a position to which I am quite accustomed at this point. I especially appreciated the end credits, with their condensed history of art.
Lewis Klahr
30 June, 2008
Lewis showed three pieces which I do not feel like separating into different entries- The Pharoah’s Belt, Valise, and episode two of The Diptherians. The first two pieces, like much of Lewis’s work, are completely entrenched in his own world of near semaphoric communication- indecipherable except superficially to nearly everyone, and at the same time mesmerizing and beautiful and possessed of a subconscious clarity completely unique to Klahr.
The Diptherians features Willem Dafoe. I don’t really have anything else to say about it.
Standard Operating Procedure
27 June, 2008
The world would be a better place if Danny Elfman were to suddenly disappear. I don’t wish any harm upon the man, but I’d really like him to just go away.
The film would’ve been fascinating in silence. Mr. Morris should’ve taken lessons from Werner when Werner jump-started his career, learned the art of proper reserve. Not that Werner is exceptionally proper or reserved, but he does know when to hold back, when to exercise a modicum of restraint. Generally.
Interlude.
24 June, 2008
The only thing I watched today was my own footage. It’s quite beautiful, and I’m quite pleased. Perhaps someday I will actually make something from it.
The Great Art of Knowing
24 June, 2008
To clarify, I went to a semi-private screening of David Gatten’s work this past Friday- hence the repeated Gatten-related posts. He showed three films- Secret History of the Dividing Line, The Great Art of Knowing, and How to Conduct a Love Affair- in that order. The Great Art of Knowing was followed by a break during which the rest of the audience discussed the first two films. I took that opportunity to sit in the hallway and shake and consider the implications of the work I had been so graciously presented with. I cannot think of any way to address this piece other than in the form of a letter directly to its creator, so you will have to bear with me. Please, feel free to leave off here if you feel so inclined, with the knowledge that the film was good enough that I could not think for a good thirty minutes.
David,
Please know that I mean no disrespect to your other work when I say that The Great Art of Knowing is the most exceptional piece of cinema I have encountered since my first experience with Hart of London or Passage Through: A Ritual. I have not had my faculties so thoroughly removed nor my paradigms so thoroughly shifted since seeing those films.
Your epistemological pondering is, or seems, so thoroughly convergent with my own that I have trouble addressing it appropriately, but I will give it something like a reasonable attempt.
The greatest art of knowing, it would seem, is knowing when an awareness of it is appropriate. There are the hard things, written down in books as a catalogue of information. And there are the soft things, lodged someplace between the diaphragm and the lungs, that you cannot breathe without, or perhaps must breathe in spite of. The contrasts between hard knowledge and soft are endless, and exceptionally permeable- at so many points hard knowledge mingles with soft, in a passionate pursuit of understanding. And yet there must be a line- at which point does hard knowledge no longer play any part? It is easier, of course, to excoriate the hard knowledge from the flesh. Soft knowledge is the flesh itself and cannot be removed.
I am certain that I will have more thoughts on this at some point in the future. Until then, I cannot wring my brain further without doing permanent damage.
With all my affection.
Libi
Before the Rains
21 June, 2008
Santosh Sivan has made an almost note-perfect entry into the ever-growing compendium of third cinema inspections into the source, and subversion, of imperialist power in colonial states. The various power dynamics here- between British and Indian, between man and woman, between boss and employee, between man and wife, man and son- tell a tale of delicate balance, and of balance lost.
The primary power dynamic is between Henry Moores and T.K.; the English plantation owner and his Indian right hand man, a Western-educated man who has been occupied, as it were, by British ideals. The interactions between Moores and his wife; between Moores and Sajani, his housekeeper and illicit lover; between Moores and his wife; between Moores and the people of the village, and so forth, all serve to illustrate the same themes to different or lesser degrees.
The themes are, of course, familiar, but only because they must be. There is nothing else for them to be- the occupied colonies are, at a very basic level, all the same. And it is the variation on the themes that is interesting- in this case, an inspection of the damage wreaked by even the most benevolent power. Even a man viewed as gentle, and harmless, is rendered monstrous by his position of power.
And then, of course, there is the film as a visual thing. Sivan as a cinematographer is superb. While at times he is playful to the detriment of the work, generally the film is sumptuous and elegant- quite simply, utterly beautiful.
How to Conduct a Love Affair
21 June, 2008
This time through was both more and less painful. This perfect little piece of cinema is so achingly beautiful- the subtle colors and the subtle movements, the compositions reminiscent of Edward Weston or of Imogen Cunningham, the pacing reminiscent of nothing I can name save for the beating of my own heart. Like Peter Hutton, David Gatten works in presence and absence- that which is and that which is not. And David does it so very well.
Secret History of the Dividing Line
21 June, 2008
I am reminded of Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross, the Lema sabachthani, quite strongly. Liminal echoes carry throughout, one foot in public and another in private. The spaces between and behind are well established and forsaken until they are lifted up to the heavens and reborn- and the line that divides here and now from there and then is always wavering- at times more permeable than others.
The Alphabet
18 June, 2008
David Lynch has always been… present… in my film consciousness, a sort of hovering phantasm whenever I consider creating anything. Not necessarily his later works, but his early shorts and Eraserhead. The Alphabet is, I think, my favorite of the early pieces. The animation is elegant in its simplicity and the ever-present Lynchian themes are more delicately wrought here than elsewhere. He is a simple man, really, neurotic to the bone about the things that every thinking man is. Children, women, dissemination of seed and of knowledge, power and the loss thereof, waking and sleeping, dying, aging.
