A Course L’Abime
26 October, 2008
Stop thinking you know what you are doing.
Elegy
24 October, 2008
Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper make out. I’ll repeat that, just in case you didn’t read it right the first time. Sir Ben Kingsley and Dennis Crazyeyes Hopper have a passionate, full tongue, seconds-long kiss that fills the entire screen. Dennis Hopper also brings Ben Kingsley breakfast in bed and feeds him eggs as though he were a child, making the choo-choo noise and everything. Oh, god, such absolute glee.
Anyhow. I’ve got that out of my system.
The film is superbly acted and almost incredibly good. I say almost because the ending is somewhat flaccid and lacks the zeal of the rest of the film, and a bad ending is near as disappointing as a bad beginning, and far more likely to stick with you. Peter Sarsgaard, as usual, is unexpectedly delightful; and sometime in the last year or so Penelope Cruz learned herself some acting skills. Hopper and Kingsley are, of course, brilliant.
Coixet shows incredible deftness, slipping into the male voice with an ease that most female directors lack- not to say that they are incapable of doing so, because to be a female director means to be capable of taking on a masculine persona, at least at this point in cinema. There is nothing tentative about it, and there is nothing in her approach that attempts to simplify the emotional life of men, which is quite frequently the failing point of many female directors- a tendency to reduce what they do not directly experience into something easily compartmentalized. The same thing that male directors frequently do with their female characters.
ANYHOW, after that unintentional sidetrack, all I really can say is the film is worth seeing. It is not perfect, but its imperfection is endearing and does not detract from the experience.
Phil Solomon
19 October, 2008
Brakhage practiced closed-eye seeing and Phil, Phil practices open-eye dreaming. Both are without equal and without comparison. Phil is simply closer to my heart because he is a part of my heart, a part of my soul without whom I could not live the life I lead.
His work is only available in abbreviated form on his website, but even that small gift is worth viewing.
Click on the ‘films’ title
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
19 October, 2008
The storytelling here is easy, the plot suggests itself. But visually, the Coen boys did something spectacular. There is such a supreme understanding of off-screen space. The frame is breached and re-asserted so many times it is difficult to keep track, the world within and beyond the frame is in a constant visual and auditory dialogue. There is very little wrong with the film, and it clearly served as exceptional grounding for their more serious recent work.
Nearly as impressive as their awareness of the frame is their awareness of their palette. The consistent muting of all colors, without playing tricks to make certain things pop, creates an overall more impressive effect than films in which the contrast between muted and bright hues serves to illustrate some superficial point. The subtlety of the color scheme lends an overall mood and an overwhelming sense of the general moral turpitude of every character in the film.
Nuit et Brouillard
19 October, 2008
You cannot film this. Not a recreation of it, not a representation of it, nothing. It can only be spoken of, hushed, and shown through first-hand documentation. You cannot film this horror in a way that does not demean or belittle it. You cannot and you must not. There are some things the camera cannot and should not do.
City of Ember
14 October, 2008
They make such pretty worlds, and then they freeze. They do not know what to do. So in these beautiful places they tell the same ugly stories- same winners, same losers. The stories never change. And the places tarnish, and are corrupted in the end, by the needs of the pocket and the public.
Mat i syn
12 October, 2008
In time all things pass. In time the moth, too, will die with the mother. The end comes with a scream and a sigh, lasts for a moment suspended forever. To remember her you forget yourself and you have been lost.
everything will be ok
11 October, 2008
You don’t understand, do you? Everything could go to hell and it still would be ok. Horrible is ok. Everything is ok.
Blindness
6 October, 2008
I am sure there are technical issues here that I ought to discuss… the pacing was not quite right and I take issue with the inconsistent representation of blindness as either dark or light, though the cinematography is stunning. But that is all secondary. The deeper issue, here- even beyond the hastily thrown-together social discussion and the relationship building and the primal fear of sightlessness- is the idea of pathological compassion.
What is it that leads one to care for others, when there is no benefit to the self- when, in fact, there is only detriment? Is it love, or arrogance, or genuine empathy? Does it stem from a belief in or a disdain of those around you? Do you care, to the point of doing yourself serious harm, because you believe that they deserve it? Or is it because you believe you do not? Because you believe that they would not manage without you? Because you believe yourself to be superior? Why? Why bother?
