MIFF 2011

If I had followers I would apologise for my lengthy absence, but instead I’ll just call attention to it for no reason, to no one in particular. Hey. I attended my city’s film festival (that’s Melbourne for those nonfollowers not playing at home) again, its 60th anniversary, and saw more films than last year: A round 20 in cinemas, a further five features via MUBI for free (please retain this gift every year, MIFF). Since I attended the ridiculously faulty projection of The Turin Horse (in which one reel was half out of frame and the last 30 or so minutes were accompanied by a house lights spectacular ruining the film), I was given a free pass, which I spent on a Surprise Screening prior to their titles being announced -ultimately giving me the sole picture of the festival I disliked. Wow, this is riveting shit, right? Anyway, I wrote little bits throughout the festival when I was bothered to, and have collected them here. They are mostly informal, and some are plain crap. But the idea is to provide others a sense of what’s worth making a priority or what to look out for. I will also take the opportunity of having seen some 2010 films to update my list of last year’s best.

In the order I saw and wrote about (most of) the films, my thoughts:

La Havre was gorgeous, so gorgeous. I’m not sure Aki has ever been so concerned with issues of the zeitgeist, and he threads such things together with the beloved proles, rock music, and love stories the have defined him, along with some reflection on aging. Intriguing use of teal in the set design.

Melancholia is good. Lacks the vicious irony of much of his work and struck me as earnest, which was nice. After a stunning slow motion prologue of bombastic strings over effects-laden tableaux that people will call a massive wank, it jumps into his usual handheld Bergman-esque dramas of some depth, with Dunst’s half (the wedding) being less of a (actually not boring) slog than Gainsbourg’s and probably containing Trier’s best comedy work. Gainsbourg herself is featured every bit as much as if not more than Dunst is, surprisingly. There’s a bit more going on under the surface that I’ll have to ponder on. That being said, I can’t imagine wanting to watch it again for some time.

Later: It’s in the same vein [as Antichrist], certainly stylistically, furthering his impeccable Tarkovsky-inspired digital art whilst retaining that less impressive (but perhaps necessary) handheld stuff. The lighting during the wedding half is so gorgeous, it just glows. However, for me the ambivalence of the relationships, that is to say the richer push and pull, the fleeting good moments that at least exist -and the comedy -make this a stronger film than Antichrist which felt like more provocation and was derived from a deeply depressive mind that I could not appreciate. I just wish Gainsbourg’s half wasn’t quite so ordinary. I said I wouldn’t want to watch it again for quite some time, but that’s no longer true -at least not for the tableaux parts with that increeeedible score which I so want to have washed over me again this moment.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams was a fucked up showing: first the sound was garbled, causing people to stomp their feet and boo until it was fixed, which it was, until 2 minutes from the end it shut down and we had to wait 5 minutes and rewatch part of the film just to see the final two minutes, with a minor crash again. Seriously incompetent. The film was actually pretty great, Herzog waxing poetic and observing idiosyncracies like usual. His 3D doesn’t just map the contours of the cave walls/canvasses but also those contours of the explorers’ faces as they observe. Herzog attempts to understand nascent drawing/painting, music, religion, weaponry, and man’s relationship with all the animals either dreamt and rendered or left to die and remain in the cave. Fascinating.

El Velador is that modern kind of documentary with not just no talking heads, but next to no spoken words altogether, just observational bits and pieces surrounding the workers and grievers of a cemetary made up of mini cathedrals/palaces that are actually extravagant (and tacky) mausoleums housing the, uh, victims of this extraordinarily violent region. Bits of news regarding the drug cartels (deaths, politicians asking for US assistance, etc) are infrequently shown via an old television, but the credits lists these as archival, possibly demonstrating a forced hand in this non-narrative portrait; thus it could be in the field of Alamar or Le Quattro Volte -but apparently not enough to label it fiction. There were a few walkouts, as it has no story or narration. The auteur sheds light on those still living in this place of (never-seen) death, going about daily routines and rituals. It’s not a polemic, nor a genre picture glorifying then demolishing members of drug cartels, but a small-scale humanist chronicle that does not fail to ignore the absurdism inherent in what we are witnessing. The final shot is, well, really two-part, and just perfect. I like this film the more I reflect on it. Not always engrossing, but judicious.

Finisterrae was cute and I admire its absurdism and images and sounds, but I’m not that taken by it. When he views some 80s video art through a hole in a tree that whistled to get his attention… “it’s very funny”. The ghosts are adorably deadpan. I reckon this would become more and more delightful with rewatches.

Martha Marcy May Marlene was alright. It’s very careful in terms of the depiction of both this anti-establishment makeshift cult and Martha’s bourgeois remaining family; at times the cult seems more pleasant and warm while the sister and her husband are a trifle detatched and operate quite rigidly via social norms, their way of living Martha seems to find futile and unfulfilling whereas there was a time she was nurtured (or made to think she was) at the farm. Of course, the cult perform rituals and crimes with delusional or irrational motives, the likes of which we’ve heard about in the news, that ultimately appear to eat at Martha until she flees. The visual MO here is not easy to pin down, it is shot in assured static long takes where subjects move slightly in or out of frame, and along with a lack of score the approach is somewhat objective, but the editing strategy suggests Martha’s uneasy mental state, with flashbacks woven into present experience demonstrating her inability to shake the cult and its effect on her. It’s a far less clumsy execution than that of Blue Valentine. The Olsen girl for me strongly evoked Vera Farmiga, and her curves are given a curious attention, we are supposed to see her as inherently, easily maternal in contrast to her sister. I was worried her experience with a cult was going to be too esoteric and thus I guess lessen the film’s merit, but it finds some universality in the question of nurture and self-worth. But, perhaps, not quite enough. Often on the side of flat rather than unnervingly austere.

Is it too early to say The Innkeepers is one of the best horrors ever made? Oh, right, I have my own canon, so it is. West might be the true heir to Polanski, he certainly displays an assured sense of filmmaking accentuating a foreboding worthy of him. But this film is something no Polanski has been for me: often fucking scary. It’s divided into chapters, and near the beginning of the first the male employee shows the female employee one of those internet videos during which the viewer stares at a static image until a creepy girl bursts into sight, a scream blaring. Anyone who saw The House of the Devil knows this was basically that film’s same scare tactic -anticipation (a commendably long delay nonetheless broken up with sinister happenings outside the titular house) and shock (a bloody ending that fails to satisfy). I once mentioned to a friend that had the film ended with no satanic cult, with the protagonist completing her housesitting duty unharmed, the film as revisionist statement/object would be total. But West is no modernist with an agenda, the stretches proceeding the more familiar final moments impart a withholding that may be slightly revisionist, to reclaim horror as an intelligent craft in a milieu proliferated with so-called torture porn trash, but truly West is applying his own patient sense of tension first and foremost. However, the aforementioned chapters and internet video here act as Brechtian-like devices, the former interrupting dramaturgy and the latter hanging over the suspense sequences a teasing reminder. But simultaneously and far more significantly it is classically dramatic, that is to say West implicates the viewer in the scares along with our protagonists as horrors generally do, with masterful skill. It’s a curious and somehow non-abortive contradiction, but viewers today already view horror films cynically predicting scares. The film has a highly typical ghost story that is never fleshed out because…who fucking gives a shit? Certainly not I, and I was grateful for the lack of melodrama. And finally, West proves that he is also a good writer, the slacker comedy element and general characterisation are built with nuance. I have all the usual nagging thoughts…that this is just a genre piece, albeit a strong example, and won’t hold up next to weightier films, but for now I’m just gonna enjoy it.

An aside here: A second viewing of The House of the Devil revealed dullness and I can no longer say I am a fan, nor am I of West’s previous The Roost or Trigger Man at all, though he is clearly improving over time.

Detroit Wild City is sort of nicely meandering and generally meditative, initially dystopian and architecturally-minded before discovering the seeds of new life and hope in parts of the city and people start to proliferate the images. The talking head subjects occasionally spout something truly thoughtful or poetic. I had no idea Detroit was in such a state, to be honest.

Jess + Moss was a mix-tape of pretty, grainy/noisy images of an idyll lazy summer shared between cousins. It may not have been a summer, maybe they hang out all year. Anyway, it evokes the senses and emotions of such an experience pretty well. I could have done without the parental misery as foregrounded as it was. A bit twee.

Post Mortem is quite flat at first, actually the whole way through, but it becomes intriguing enough and the black humour of his previous film carries on blacker still and less Scorsese-like. Certainly companion to Tony Manero in many ways.

The Dardennes’ The Kid With a Bike is as strong as their best work, lightly riffing on Bicycle Thieves as they did with Mouchette. No easy judgments, moving without prying from you, and seemingly effortlessly crafted.

Good Bye has some of the finest steely grey hues you’ve ever seen. And it’s like Jeanne Dielman in that it exhaustively details her every action, the problem is her every action is typical build-up plotting as she tries to escape the country. It’s quite tedious; certainly a very, very serious affair. Mixed on it.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia contains a shot early in the film so beautiful tears welled up, then continues to be about as stunningly photographed in all night scenes. A lot of Kiarostamian long shots of cars driving over the hillside with dialogue over the top. The film could be a riff on the glorious opening of Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, with the men’s dead-time shown in exhaustive, mesmerising detail. It’s quite like a NW Romanian film, eschewing the classical plot dramatics of a Hollywood or South Korean genre movie (often the camera remains with men waiting as they ponder alone or together while “action” goes on around the corner), but even more so in its black farcical humour derived from incompetence and bureaucracy and charm of character. It is indeed Ceylan’s most comedic film, despite the black absurdity of much of Distant. It’s about men, mainly, and it’s quite rich in that sense. A step up from his last film.

Hors Satan is perhaps Dumont’s most difficult-to-decipher parable, but I’ve hardly reflected on it much as this is a festival I’m attending. Rife with religious symbolism. Anyway, I loved its commanding, assured filmmaking. Ceylan and Dumont discover and photograph faces exquisitely.

The Day He Arrives follows Hahaha as a less formalist but more delightful Hong output. Indeed it is one of his funniest pictures. His trademark twice-told narratives here take shape in repeated lines, scenes and single shots, but there is no structural or temporal shifting (the film is linear), instead they take the form of drunken forgetfulness but ultimately go beyond just that. This protagonist (a director, of course, or at least he was at one time) refuses to attach himself to anything or anyone for very long, so he stagnates. All the repetition, and the conversations throughout, echo this idea. Since I really admired the more narratively audacious Oki’s Movie as well, Hong is on a fucking roll.

Tales of the Night, so delightful. The 3D was designed with far less depth than I was expecting, but it’s elegantly subtle. The parables are traditionally moral and told with a repetition that makes for a wonderfully droll rhythm. It’s very French in that playful modernist way, but the postmodern Ocelot typically jumps around geographically and in time with each story and the result is something vaguely affiliative whilst celebatory of history and culture.

Jeonju Digital Project 2011. I hardly understood Straub’s short as is par for the course. Claire Denis’ is more of a DVD extra that will inevitably appear as just that seeing as it’s in preparation for an upcoming fictional feature based on the people encountered here. Which I am glad about, since this is clearly a sketch of a historically and socially complex milieu. I would have been disappointed had it not been for Jose Luis Guerin’s excellent final segment (Memories of the Morning), in which he portraits his own neighbours in relation to each other but specifically to the suicide of a violinist and its effect on them. It’s basically more of what made Guest great, the real people and the bits of light dashing across the wall and papers blowing in the breeze. He’s lovely.

The Debt. 2010? I’m guessing this was delayed for the awards season. This is pretty standard, impersonal Hollywood exploitation fare. It will be deemed important by idiots. There is one decent suspense set piece, but it is suspenseful more in terms of the situtation than in the filmmaking accentuating that. Jessica Chastain, again? She looks just like Jennifer Garner with this dark hair. Good actress, though.

Ranked MIFF viewings:

1. The Turin Horse (Tarr/Hranitzky, Hungary)
2. Le Havre (Kaurismäki, Finland)
3. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, Turkey)
4. The Day He Arrives (Hong, South Korea)
5. Outside Satan (Dumont, France)
6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog, Germany/France, 3D)
7. The Innkeepers (West, USA)
8. Memories of a Morning (Guerín, Spain, Jeonju Digital Project 2011)
9. Tales of a Night (Ocelot, France, 3D)
10. The Kid With a Bike (Dardenne/Dardenne, Belgium)
11. Melancholia (Trier, Denmark)
12. Terri (Jacobs, USA)
13. El Velador (Almada, Mexico)
14. A Useful Life (Veiroj, Uruguay, via MUBI)
15. Foreign Parts (Paravel/Sniadecki, USA, via MUBI)
16. Post Mortem (Larraín, Chile)
17. Detroit, Wild City (Tillon, France, via MUBI)
18. Green Crayons (Radwanski, Canada, via MUBI)
19. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin, USA)
20. Good Bye (Rasoulof, Iran)
21. Take Shelter (Nichols, USA)
    
22. Beginners (Mills, USA)
23. The Accordion (Panahi, Iran, with Good Bye)
24. Jess + Moss (Jeter, USA)
25. Finisterrae (Caballero, Spain, via MUBI)
    
26. Jean Gentil (Guzmán/Cárdenas, Dominican Republic/Mexico, via MUBI)
27. To the Devil (Denis, France, Jeonju Digital Project 2011)
28. An Heir (Straub, France, Jeonju Digital Project 2011)
29. The Debt (Madden, UK/USA)

Ranked previously-seen titles screened at MIFF 2011:

Mysteries of Lisbon, Happy Together, An Autumn Afternoon, The King of Comedy, Beauty and the Beast, The Third Man, Oki’s Movie, Outer Space, La Dolce Vita, Tuesday, After Christmas, Essential Killing, The Devil’s Playground, Curling, I Wish I Knew, Boxing Gym, Class Relations, Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Big Sleep, Outrage, Submarine, Jane Eyre

Films I most want to see post-MIFF:

Pastourelle, Drive, A Separation, Innocent Saturday, Gummo, The Apple, Littlerock, Beauty, The Mill and the Cross, Play, Principles of Life, Clay, It May Be that Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve – Masao Adachi, Face to Face, Tomorrow Will Be Better, Grey Matter, The Woman, RUHR, Project Nim
*

Updated top 20 of 2010:

1. Certified Copy (Kiarostami)
2. Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz)
   
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul)
   
4. Le Quattro Volte (Frammartino)
   
5. Hahaha (Hong)
   
6. The Strange Case of Angelica (Oliveira)
   
7. The Social Network (Fincher)
   
8. Guest (Guerín)
   
9. Another Year (Leigh)
   
10. Leap Year (Rowe)
    
11. Oki’s Movie (Hong)
    
12. Poetry (Lee)
    
13. The Ghost Writer (Polanski)
14. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog)
    
15. Unstoppable (Scott)
    
16. Meek’s Cutoff (Reichardt)
    
17. Aurora (Puiu)
    
18. Tuesday, After Christmas (Muntean)
    
19. Essential Killing (Skolimowski)
    
20. Curling (Côté)

Here I will just add that a) I think 2010 was a phenomenal year for movies,
b) the ranking above was hardly thought through at all and I don’t care, and
c) Godard’s Film Socialisme had such striking images and sounds in its cruise half I feel it needs to be mentioned. I will also mention Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame for its assured sense of action/mystery/sex comedy rhythms, and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu for sheer audacity in conceit.

Horror: A List

I’m not very fond of horror movies. Not because they largely fail to scare or even to disturb me, a relatively unfair criteria on which to judge them despite it being the genre’s primary purpose, but because their aims are mostly base and uninteresting. At least to someone who, admittedly, does not comprehend fear, violence, and trauma as palpable experiences in his everyday life, or his past. Though one so removed from such things should still be able to respond to a number of elements of these films: an astuteness and creativity of form, and most interestingly to myself, use of monsters, aliens, and supernatural forces as allegorical/metaphorical devices. And I do. Albeit rarely. Other horrors are more abstract, and perhaps some of the films chosen here barely pass as horror, but a case could be made for each.

Horror is certainly more difficult to define than the western and musical genres. For instance, producing a rapid heartbeat and unrelenting suspense does not itself denote horror, otherwise the most effective in my experience, Children of Men, would be horror. That film does attempt to generate incredible amounts of tension, but it’s a war movie or action movie tension. The antagonistic forces go far in more accurately defining a horror movie. Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is shot rather similarly to the Cuarón picture, producing suspense from handheld long takes, but in its alien attackers joins Alien and The Thing as horrors of man faced with a threatening species. And there we cross paths with science fiction, but each film features sequences of the terror involved, generally threatening the physical bodies of our human protagonists.

Other brands of horror present in the list include a more psychological, non-supernatural horror. Much harder to define. I considered including Todd Haynes’ excellent Safe in this regard, but it’s ultimately too objective in realising the horror, despite how unnerving it is throughout, and how shattering the end. Thus explains La vie nouvelle and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me being placed; the horror externalised in disturbing cinematic insanity. Edit: Fuck it, Safe is horror. Finally, I should make it clear that I only truly admire the films at the top of the list (the top twenty or so), and decided not to cut off the tail-end if only because it contains some pictures that I feel could use some exposure. As for order, hah. Calling it rough is an understatement, calling it fixed is ludicrous.

*
A top 60:

1. Safe (1995, Haynes)
2. Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
3. The Shining (1980, Kubrick)
4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992, Lynch)
5. Dead Ringers (1988, Cronenberg)
6. The Night of the Hunter (1955, Laughton)
7. Day of Wrath (1943, Dreyer)
8. The Cremator (1969, Herz)
9. Possession (1981, Zulawski)
10. The Thing From Another World (1951, Nyby/Hawks)
11. La vie nouvelle (2002, Grandrieux)
12. White Dog (1982, Fuller)
13. The Host (2006, Bong)
14. Wake in Fright (1971, Kotcheff)
15. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Wiene)
16. Cat People (1942, Tourneur)
17. The Birds (1963, Hitchcock)
18. Bedevil (1993, Moffatt)
19. Alien (1979, Scott)
20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Cuarón)
21. Suspiria (1977, Argento)
22. War of the Worlds (2005, Spielberg)
23. Amer (2009, Cattet and Fozani)
24. Opera (1987, Argento)
25. The Territory (1981, Ruiz)
26. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Weir)
27. The Thing (1982, Carpenter)
28. Halloween (1978, Carpenter)
29. The Innkeepers (2011, West)
30. Diabel (1972, Zulawski)
31. Sisters (1973, De Palma)
32. The Shout (1978, Skolimowski)
33. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979, Herzog)
34. Trouble Every Day (2001, Denis)
35. The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989, Greenaway)
36. Witchfinder General (1968, Reeves)
37. Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Polanski)
    
38. Martin (1977, Romero)
39. The Fly (1986, Cronenberg)
40. Road Games (1981, Franklin)
41. Lost Highway (1997, Lynch)
42. Poison (1991, Haynes)
43. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Epstein)
44. The Addiction (1995, Ferrara)
45. The Seventh Victim (1943, Robson)
    
46. Let Me In (2010, Reeves)
47. The Old Dark House (1932, Whale)
    
48. Black Sunday (1960, Bava)
49. Nosferatu (1922, Murnau)
50. Day of the Dead (1985, Romero)
51. I Walked With a Zombie (1943, Tourneur)
52. Peeping Tom (1960, Powell)
53. A Page of Madness (1926, Kinugasa)
54. Raising Cain (1992, De Palma)
    
55. Eyes Without a Face (1960, Franju)
56. Kinatay (aka The Execution of P, 2009, Mendoza)
57. A Bay of Blood (1971, Bava)
58. Celia (1989, Turner)
59. What Have You Done to Solange? (1972, Dallamano)
60. Baghead (2008, Duplass/Duplass)
    *

My February in Review

Number of films watched in total: 64

*

1. Where is the Friend’s Home?/Life and Nothing More… /Through the Olive Trees (1987/1991/1994, Abbas Kiarostami)
2. The Red and the White (1967, Miklós Jancsó)
3. The Quince Tree Sun (1992, Víctor Erice)
4. Flowers of Shanghai (1998, Hsiao-hsien Hou)
5. Le Pont du Nord (1981, Jacques Rivette)
6. Centre Stage (1992, Stanley Kwan)
7. Mélo (1986, Alain Resnais)
8. The Holy Girl (2004, Lucrecia Martel)
9. A Scene at the Sea (1991, Takeshi Kitano)
10. Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987, Eric Rohmer)
    *

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Runners-Up

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937, McCarey)
Sound of the Mountain (1954, Naruse)
The Shout (1978, Skolimowski)
Cold Water (1994, Assayas)
Smooth Talk (1985, Chopra)
*

Best Rewatches

8½ (1963, Fellini)
The Shining (1980, Kubrick)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Two Lovers (2008, Gray)
35 Shots of Rum (2008, Denis)
*

Worst

The Set (1970, Brittain)
Heathers (1989, Lehmann)
Pure S (1975, Deling)
Anything for Her (2008, Cavayé)
The Great Silence (1968, Corbucci)
*
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Wow. What a top ten. I’d almost be content with that as a top ten of all time. It was with February that my fondness for the 1990s as a decade in cinema started to go from mild to extraordinary. I also found some ’80s films I actually admire, too. I cheated a bit and put Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy as a whole in first place because the three films had such a phenomenal effect on me, and if you’ve seen them you’d know that each build upon the previous and thus are best considered in relation to the others. Where is the Friend’s Home? is one of the most incredibly touching movies I’ve ever seen, and it stands on its own without the self-reflexivity of the other two as a strikingly simple piece of cinema. The next two are decidedly more complex, both in terms of their breaking down of fictional aspects and in form. Seperately perhaps none are as strong as a couple of the following entries in this February list, particularly The Red and the White, which I wrote about here, Erice’s delicate The Quince Tree Sun, and one of Hou’s many masterpieces, Flowers of Shanghai.
*

Further Imagery: In the Mood for Love / Farewell, China

A Night in the Dark with Maggie Cheung

Last week I attended the Melbourne Cinematheque’s second week of its Maggie Cheung cycle, which I had been greatly anticipating for months. Not only would I get to see In the Mood for Love (2000) on the big screen for the first time, but it would be followed by Clara Law’s Farewell, China (1990), a particularly hard-to-find title. I skipped the first week because I’d seen both films (Stanley Kwan’s extraordinary Centre Stage, and Olivier Assayas’ admirable Irma Vep), though now I regret doing so. This was perhaps my most complete viewing of In the Mood, and I’ve seen it several times. Was it the size of the screen, the clarity of the soundtrack? I just know that after Tony prepares his goodbye, that slow motion shot of Maggie’s hand crawling delicately up her own arm attempting to retain his final touch is the most overwhelmingly beautiful moment in a film of almost nothing but. Tears well up. And the first time Yumeji’s Theme swoons in sends a shiver down my spine. Is there a more exquisite piece of music in any film?

This is a movie I’ve always felt slips away from me immediately after watching it. The closing quote comes to mind; each moment passes and is vanished forever. And since the film’s form already resembles memories (however linear) with its Bressonian collection of specific body parts committing precise actions, the claustrophobic sense of space and offscreen action/sound, the culture fetishism, the prolonged Yumeji sequences zeroing in on the briefest of encounters, we too can only ever recount and replay. 2046 was the inevitable progression for an artist whose work is borne out of an evolving stream of preoccupations and obsessions, now reflecting back on itself. Hence why My Blueberry Nights feels like an aberration, an attempt to recreate (“Wong doing Wong”, as they say) the tone of his ’90s work, a moment passed in time.

Wong contemporary Chinese filmmaker Clara Law’s oeuvre also evolves quite naturally in theme and form, though I must admit I have yet to watch any of her pictures set in ancient China. If the Cinematheque coupled last week’s choices together for the shared discourse on performance, identity, and film production, In the Mood for Love and Farewell, China can both be seen to detail a modern world where the possibility of global travel can destroy relationships, and both feature a series of near-misses, a “chase” to reunite. For Law, and this is the principle motive of her work, it is an account of diaspora. I’d say Chinese diaspora specifically, but her proceeding films have acknowledged the plight of other nations’ citizens, essentially “building a house” on the topic (to riff on Fassbinder). But unlike Law’s efforts immediately following this, Farewell, China suffers from heavy-handedness and a cynicism of outcome that seems unrepresentative of the general real-life diasporic experience and, as this article astutely puts it, argues an Either/Or logic that ignores ambivalence and any chance of hope. Despite this, the allegorical device used (in which Cheung’s immigrant Hung has developed split personality since coming to America) is very interesting.

As Hung’s husband Nansan (played by the other Tony Leung) desperately retraces her steps in New York in order to find her, he encounters those who briefly knew her, and we are given flashbacks of her troubled experiences. The first account of her given is startlingly different to the delicate Hung we’d followed earlier in China -she now a shrill, Americanised, and superficially cultured monster. We are as puzzled as Nansan. Every proceeding account tells of the loving wife and mother anxious to reunite with her family except for one instance of maniacal violence. Law and long-time partner/writer Eddie Fong rather bravely commit to this final act in which Nansan and Hung’s tender reunion is jump-started the next morning by a turn for the worse. The idea is that immigrants either adopt wholly American culture to survive, or remain fearfully and depressingly the Other in an uninviting land. Hung literally destroys her past, and the camera pans up to an American flag, the least subtle moment in a film full of them. So yes, I’m torn; the “point” itself rings false but the metaphorical telling of it is inspired. Read without subtext, however, it would be hysterical melodrama.

Getting back to the unsubtlety -and I find this an irksome feature of most of her films- Law is prone to grotesquery and caricature that often cheapens the picture to an extent. Certainly it may have seemed more bothersome directly after viewing Wong’s melancholy masterpiece, and also considering the first part of Farewell that takes place in China is not at all the After Hours-esque farce of what follows. Particularly tiresome are the moments where Nansan inexplicably seems to forget how to walk and manoeuvre now that he’s in the US, so he stumbles about idiotically. I guess it’s comedy, but it’s not good comedy. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Law and Fong had actually been inspired by the Scorsese film, even the cinematography reminded me of it at times. Though it’s surely a bit Jim Jarmusch as well, with its flat side pans over buildings. In fact, as with Law’s other movies, it’s gorgeously shot. There’s almost never a dull shot in terms of lighting and composition. The film has other qualities I’ve failed to mention too. For instance, there is much tenderness throughout to balance the unpleasantness (basically all of the China scenes, a dream of the couple sharing food, the many sympathisers throughout, the reunion), and Cheung and Leung are both very good. I’m so glad the Cinematheque screened this, as a Clara Law and Maggie Cheung fan, and also as an admirer of not watching movies of poor transfer quality on DVD’s I’d have to blind-buy from Asia. Bring on this week’s Ashes of Time Redux and Song of the Exile.

My January in Review

This is several months late, and my last in this format. Writing even this little on each became a bit much for I’m too lazy to jot down something right after viewing the films. They are not ranked this month, because I found that far too difficult to do.

Number of films watched in total: 78
* 

 
‘Sebastiane’
Derek Jarman/Paul Humfress | UK | 1976 | 90 mins 

A film of such ambivalence. The featured soldiers are at once coarse and tender, cruel and playful. Their sexuality is not rigidly defined. The film’s subjective point-of-view shifts about as fluidly as its editing, disolving serene images together often in a slow motion display of transfixed beauty and sensuality. Its ancient world naturalism reminds one of Pasolini’s endearing works of the ’70s. I haven’t admired any Jarman film as much as this one.
* 

 
‘The Crimson Kimono’
Sam Fuller | USA | 1959 | 82 mins 

Fuller provides all the demented, searingly scrutinised mid-20th Century Americana I need. Kimono starts as a decent pulpy noir and slowly forgets about its plot to focus on kitsch racial melodrama, then by the end somehow fuses the murder investigation with the social commentary/love story perfectly and to our complete surprise. And all in long takes with wonderfully loose and enjoyable characters.
* 

‘The Dead’
John Huston | UK/Ireland/USA | 1987 | 83 mins

I’m fond of a few much earlier Huston pictures -Key Largo with its impeccable blocking, The Asphalt Jungle and its lack of histrionics, Reflections in a Golden Eye‘s bizarrely sexual nightime aura -but his last film is surely his richest. The man had considerable talent for crafting atmosphere, which certainly contributes to The Dead‘s wonderfully warm party ambience, and later its mournful conclusion. It’s like Gosford Park without the scathing screenplay and far less elaborately mounted. And what a refined colour palette!
*

‘The Scarlet Empress’
Josef von Sternberg | USA | 1934 | 104 mins 

I had seen The Blue Angel before this, but that film didn’t give me the same impression of Sternberg and Dietrich’s great feminist cycle as this did. And, since I’m writing this well after viewing it, I can say The Scarlet Empress remains the greatest of the one’s I’ve seen. It’s so very lurid; much juicier than I had expected. And as a fan of Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, which is extremely similar story-wise, I thoroughly enjoyed its tale of another real life royal figure. But Catherine the Great’s transformation is stronger than Antoinette’s, and Dietrich revels in every step of it. Yet this says nothing of Sternberg’s visual delights, of which there are countless. 
* 

 
‘The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice’
Yasujiro Ozu | Japan | 1952 | 115 mins 

I wrote something on this Ozu here.
*

 
‘Martha’
Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | 1974 | 116 mins 

Martha is, as with all Fassbinder, impeccably shot; compositions and camera movements deftly illustrating emotion. It’s a dark comedy of sadism in marriage that makes Bunuel’s Tristana seem quite ineffective in retrospect. Fassbinder was always careful not to mock his characters too much, though the ending takes this premise to the extreme, confirming it as a ludicrous cautionary tale.
*

‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
Wes Anderson | USA/UK | 2009 | 87 mins 

This film’s images are so immaculately composed that finding a shot which would look decent enough in the crushingly wide frame of the accompanying picture above was absurdly difficult. Anderson’s delightful fastidiousness naturally carries over into the animation medium and none of his idiosyncrasies are lost. Although its superb artistry and rollicking yarn set it apart from every other commercial film of late, it’s Anderson’s dryly played yet reverent brand of familial perseverance that reminds us again why he’s one of the finest contemporary American auteurs.
*

 
‘I’m Going Home’
Manoel de Oliveira | France/Portugal | 2001 | 90 mins 

Oliveira is perhaps the most interesting discovery I’ve made this year; his utterly precise sense of composition, shot timing, and repetition displays a confidence that is not just comforting to watch but enhances the ironies of the material for a tone both dryly humourous and silently devastating. Although themes present in his work for a while now, Oliveria here zeros in on old age and one’s work, specifically how the former affects the latter. It’s beautiful.
*

 
‘Floating Clouds’
Mikio Naruse | Japan | 1955 | 123 mins 

With this I broke my Naruse virginity. And as one does with something new, I tried to categorise him amongst familiar filmmakers. This was not Ozu’s Japan, in which there is generally a strong sense of home, even when characters are leaving theirs to create new ones, but rather a displaced Tokyo filled with unsettled and miserable citizens. Granted, Floating Clouds details post-war living. And though his account of this struggling woman much closer resembles Mizoguchi than Ozu, it was Fassbinder that to my mind best compared. The characters tend to interact only when it involves material things (the bedding she steals, for example), always in a negative sense. And the leading man’s cruelty towards her is very Fassbinder-like indeed. However, Naruse lacks an expressive visual sense, it seems. Despite this, a subtle and expertly played picture.
*

 
‘Days of Being Wild’
Wong Kar Wai | Hong Kong | 1990 | 94 mins 

With this, only Wong’s second film, he found his style. Granted, it’s substantially more subdued than his following modern day-set pictures, and a trifle less experimental with form and narrative. His preoccupations with time, transient, lovelorn characters, shifting protagonist/narrator, and extreme colour-grading are all present. While very beautiful, the emotional pieces don’t quite transcend like those in some of his other films, but he was on his way. Mmm.

___________________________________________________________________________________ 

Runners-Up 

The Wind (1928, Sjöström)
Camera Buff (1979, Kieslowski)
À nos amours (1983, Pialat)
Une femme mariée (1964, Godard)
Ohayô (1959, Ozu)
Peking Opera Blues (1986, Tsui)
The Dust of Time (2008, Angelopoulos)
Invisible Waves (2006, Ratanaruang)
Praise (1998, Curran)
Quiet City (2007, Katz)
* 

Best Rewatches 

Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
* 

Worst 

Modern Love (2006, Frayne)
Sherlock Holmes (2009, Ritchie)
Love and Other Catastrophes (1996, Croghan)
Van Diemen’s Land (2009, auf der Heide)
I Was a Male War Bride (1949, Hawks)
* 

Animal Kingdom

‘Animal Kingdom’
David Michôd | Australia | 2010 | 112 mins

Animal Kingdom is the kind of film which, in the hands of another director, could easily have been trite and histrionic. And for all of Michôd’s astuteness, the material is nonetheless typical crime-drama stuff, albeit given an impeccable polish and infused with details preventing banality. It does not and could not have the scope and ambition of, say, The Wire or The Sopranos, and this minor family/police saga, as strong as it is, isn’t exactly teeming with complex ideas or advancing the genre in a time when HBO is achieving just that. But enough of this unfair comparison and on to Animal Kingdom‘s accomplishments.

The film is loosely based on the Walsh Street police shootings of 1988, and though Michôd’s telling takes place today, he charts the consequences of the pseudo-vigilantism inherent in the police’s procedure to apprehend criminals at the time. That Michôd presents the killings in as cold-blooded a fashion and style (or colder, given for instance the more brutal account of Graeme Jensen’s death) as that of the police’s procedure indicates a clear criticism of such action. However, he is careful enough to depict the criminals equally as merciless, and though we observe the Cody family for the most part, there’s no glorifying in any way. In fact, they’re not even built up to later be torn down (as in Goodfellas); we meet them at the beginning of their downfall, as our young protagonist ‘J’ (played superbly by newcomer James Frecheville) enters the family. All we learn of the family’s armed robbery past is relayed in photos and clippings underneath the opening titles. Michôd never gives in to genre or dramatic sensationalism or easy judgments, and is more interested in mapping the emotional, the psychological, and the procedural.

The handsome, oppressive cinematography inscribes much of this detached viewpoint. The (surely excessive) slow motion sequences, quiet zooms, occassional silhouetting and general low lighting, shallow shifting focus, relatively long takes, and offscreen action together generate a mood of inevitable tragedy. It’s inevitable in that contemplative Michael Mann way, and tragic not at all in a romanticised or melodramatic fashion, but it’s not entirely objective either as it coolly watches this sad tale unfurl. The richness of the mise-en-scène extends to the clothing here; Ben Mendelsohn’s Hawaiian shirt shows his age and general daginess, especially when compared to Luke Ford’s more fashionable brother, and this difference makes for a good little scene in which Ford is criticised by Mendelsohn for his “gay” clothes and choice of drink -making it clear that it’s okay if he’s gay, just as long as he’s open about it. This is fairly typically Australian goading, and certainly the behaviour of an older brother hoping to restore a noncommunicative, disintegrating family. ‘J’s generally baggy clothing conveys his initial naiveté and introverted nature, and Jackie Weaver’s somewhat youthful but smart attire perfectly displays her female cunningness.

The Hawaiian shirt, along with Guy Pearce’s dated moustache, and a lack of temporal identifiers blur to an extent the time in which the film is set. We know it’s modern day for ‘J’ is distracted by Deal or No Deal on TV in the opening scene (and there are mobile phones), but perhaps Michôd is purposefully alluding back to when the real events occured. Because a precise time is irrelevant? To suggest little change in police procedure? To distance itself from the true story while also drawing from it? It’s strange.

Animal Kingdom doesn’t possess the detail and authenticity of Rowan Woods’ The Boys, however, and in more than just its mise-en-scène. Though Michôd’s is more of a genre film that aims for classical grandness and Woods’ a raw, vigorously real portrayal of working class criminals, the latter is the more probing and insightful and is void of clichés (no matter how carefully Kingdom masks or underplays its tropes, they are tropes nonetheless). Michôd’s Cody family is likened to a pride of lions, the title and plaque shown in the opening makes this clear, and it’s this animalistic tension that makes the family interaction interesting. But given the scale of the drama here, such moments are unfortunately few, especially compared to The Boys which plunges the depths of terrifyingly volatile human terrain.

Though it will likely be considered to many as one of the finest Australian films ever made, Animal Kingdom does not find new ground as a crime piece, nor is there much more to it than its well-played tale of a family’s downfall. But it does what it does with such a finesse and intelligence that it makes for suspenseful and engrossing viewing.

The 100 Best Films I’ve Not Seen Update #2

Another ten films down, that’s 20% of the full list for those playing at home. Certainly not as strong a bunch as last time. I blame whoever put this list together. I mean, Sam Peckinpah? Eww. As usual, best to worst: Olmi’s Il Posto is just sublime. Stripped back completely of possible melodrama, the film is slight and dull in any conventional sense, but for one who thrives on an attention to human nuance and compassion in his cinema, it’s about as good as it gets for me. Little moments like the two youths hesitating after having coffee together for an ignorance of café etiquette (they look to another table to know to leave the cups on the table), display a sweet innocence made poignant (and rather heartbreaking) come the film’s end. Also must be mentioned are the mature use of natural sound (no score) rare at the time, rich atmosphere, and a slight comic air that reminds of Tati but without exaggeration. I knocked out one of the ten bolded biggies with Abraham’s Valley, which surely contains all of Oliveira’s preoccupations and obsessions in its 3+ hours. Not a film to know with one viewing, no doubt requiring many to tackle it properly. Regardless, I loved its pace, poetry, mise-en-scène, and music. A thorough and complex beast of a film. The Japanese masters continue to move and impress me, this time Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. As with his excellent Floating Clouds (also starring Hideko Takamine), the people’s relationships are largely based on, if not at least strained by, survival in a cut-throat capitalist society. Naruse dissects with great sympathy a modern Japan in which women’s freedom to choose a lifestyle is nonetheless still dictated by men.

Beyond the undeniable worth of Germany Year Zero as a document of Berlin’s actual ravaged physical state following the war, Rossellini communicates the people’s far-from-relieved emotional and economic state by way of a fictional family’s struggles, microcosmic in the smaller details but decidedly melodramatic at other times. Though harrowing, the latter’s moments aren’t inappropriate or heavy-handed for they condemn and grieve for a world in which such tragedies are allowed to occur, specifically involving the young. In other words, anything extreme is founded and not just sensationalism, and beyond that, leaves an impression. On the opposite end of the cinema spectrum lies the next film. Though not on the level of the last update’s Renoir, French Cancan is a very charming candy-coloured celebration of people and the stage in which, in typical Renoir fashion, a number of characters are tied together in a web of attraction and jealousy and machinations treated with a light nonchalance. I tend to forget Chabrol’s films soon after viewing them, and Violette isn’t really an exception despite my liking it. However, it is a sophisticated yet inelegant slow-burning black comedy that is undeniably frustrating but not necessarily to a fault. Isabelle Huppert’s shrewd performance, along with its satirical case against the destructive power of class ideology meeting pettiness, place this alongside La Cérémonie as top-tier Chabrol and as a sort-of companion piece.

Another Oliveira gone with Inquietude, which I had not known was a three-parter until watching it. What’s interesting is how the three together consolidate a number of his usual themes not unlike Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times, only without the consistency between stories. The first is the best, a very stagey comedy that contemplates work, immortality…and suicide. Its staginess turns out to be less of a fault than a cheeky pulling of the rug from under the viewer, which oddly enough had also occured in two other films I’d viewed around the same time: The Asthenic Syndrome and the very fine Tale of Cinema. Unfortunately it segues into a second act I’ve already forgotten, and that into a third, rather bizarre little fable. Having completely forgotten Wajda’s A Generation, I didn’t expect to respond much to Kanal either, and I didn’t. It’s decent enough; after some standard war film stuff we’re taken into the sewers where the traversing is blind and endless. While not particularly potent or interesting, it’s not exactly a feature of every other war film. Another filmmaker I just don’t respond to as others do, Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito came and went. I prefer his previous Pather Panchali but neither are as much my cup of tea as Charulata. Finally, and easily the worst film of the list at this point, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. As genre film sensation it’s unsensational; a lot of bang bang and no tension. It plods on forever, and Peckinpah’s form is feeble. As anything else…it’s just tired “tragic romanticism” that I guess many find profound but I got nothing out of.

Roughly ordered list of films viewed:

Il Posto
The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir
The Asthenic Syndrome
Damnation
Abraham’s Valley
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Tabu
Germany Year Zero
The Gang of Four
French Cancan
Violette
They Were Expendable
Fort Apache
Stromboli
Dust in the Wind
Inquietude
Kanal
Pakeezah
Aparajito
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

The 100 Best Films I’ve Not Seen Update #1

Well, ten films down in just eleven days (not including other films not on the list). My favourite so far is definitely The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir, a supremely delightful Ophüls-like presentation of vignettes both satirical and humanist. The Asthenic Syndrome was an excellent surprise; an irrational, almost free-association narrative in which altruism (largely lack thereof) seems to be the prevalent theme. Damnation is the first Tarr I’ve actually appreciated strongly and has me wanting to revisit Werckmeister Harmonies in particular. Some of the most stunning black and white photography I’ve ever seen. Tabu is simply beautiful. What a love story! The Gang of Four is pure Rivette, though it lacks the spirited adventurousness of his masterwork Celine and Julie Go Boating and signals the more sombre tone of his nineties work. A very subtle film, its feminism and use of the theatre to highlight the facades upheld in real life are very present but only there if you want to read into them. Two John Fords down already, Fort Apache and They Were Expendable -equally strong. Both involve men sacrificing themselves for oftentimes ludicrous orders during war. As usual, Ford balances the heavy with scenes of delicate humanism and joy. Both films also handsomely shot. Stromboli was passionately told but not melodramatic. I read a review from the time of its release which said Bergman was miscast. Apart from the real-life controversy strangely placing Bergman in a public “shame” not unlike that of the character she plays, this role has Bergman all over it: haughty and seething with occasional lapses into utter helplessness. It was in movies like Casablanca which she was miscast, considering her unused talent. Her performance in the other Bergman’s Autumn Sonata remains her finest, however. Hou’s Dust in the Wind was very good in the same way all of his films are, but I liked A Summer at Grandpa’s (which I also saw this week along with Daughter of the Nile) more. Finally, Pakeezah. My first Bollywood film. One can tell the film’s production was heaped with troubles all too clearly. The result is a very inconsistent, even confusing, romantic tragedy. The sets are undoubtedly impressive and pretty, however.

The Red and the White

‘The Red and the White’
Miklós Jancsó | Hungary/Soviet Union | 1967 | 90 mins

The only thing black and white about this film is the photography, which along with the title, ironically keys us in to the central motif of greyness. Narratively, the film fluidly shifts its eye from the Reds to the Whites and back to the Reds and so on as each side cyclically lose and gain control of the area. This messy, repetitive shifting in narrative perfectly illustrates the futility of war. And yet it’s not so messy to the point where we become confused as to who’s fighting for who, but it wouldn’t matter if we did. The battles here are anything but grand, melodramatic and inspiring in the most horrid Hollywood fashion; Jancsó doesn’t choose a side but rather puts them on an equal level. These men and women aren’t heroes patriotically dying for their country, though a few are shown that they believe just this, but figures running about the countryside getting swiftly and senselessly killed. Thus too explains the lack of a main protagonist, and of any unnecessary character details.

While the futility of war is a well-trodden theme, rarely has it been expressed so distinctly. It’s not a message hypocritically slapped onto the end following some “cool” battle sequences as with many war films, nor are we reminded of it periodically throughout -it is the film from start to finish, pushed right to the forefront. What’s really impressive is how it uses mise-en-scène to enhance this feeling of cold, senseless action. The film is a series of long takes. In the same one take a soldier is ogling a woman bathing in a river, who swims around to a pier while in the foreground an enemy has been discovered hiding, is forced to sing, then help the woman out of the water, to which he is pushed into and bayonetted, leaving the woman to cower naked and alone. We’d met this “enemy” previously and thought of him as a possible protagonist, so his offscreen capture and distant execution is somewhat surprising.

Jancsó doesn’t let us get attached to anything, and so the staging in these long takes consists of people unexpectedly coming out from any part of the frame, to which the camera then reacts in flowing observation. No anticipation. Stuff happens and we watch, or we hear it happen offscreen. So many actions and changes of fortune can occur in a single take and we subconsciously (or consciously, why not?) feel the futility of it all, precisely because they are so condensed. With so few cuts the viewer understands that time doesn’t stop for any of the depicted, and Jancsó appropriately refuses to allow the characters to emote much, resulting in distancing, unmanipulative succinctness. I wonder if Alfonso Cuarón watched this in preparation for Children of Men, for it uses similar cinematographic techniques, albeit with a desire for crafting a great deal more tension than found here.

Getting back to the greyness, there’s a repeated action of stripping clothes throughout that seems significant. Mainly it’s in the systematic releasing of prisoners forced to strip themselves of their uniform in shame before running naked to the hills. It seems to reinforce the fact that the uniform is practically the only indicator of which country these men allegedly serve and that underneath the flimsy mask are men of equal standing. But then, women too strip down to nothing in the film, often forced by soldiers, indicating the constant misuse of military power. I greatly look forward to seeing the rest of Jancsó’s work to learn more about his political self, but more so for his intelligent and impressive skills as an artist.

IMDb