Wim Wenders's 1984 film - Paris, Texas - brings together a good team of actors (notably Henry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell), a great musical score (Ry Cooder!), fantastic cinematography (Robbie Muller - I don't know anything about him), a intelligent and mysterious screenplay (Sam Shepard), and most of all WW's sensibility as a director. Every scene, every frame is like a work of art - no coincidence I guess that I've just read a news item about Gregory Crewdson, who makes terrific photographs staging and designing each one as if it were a movie still; his work and sensibility recalls WW's work. This film brings WW to a new setting for him, and it's obvious how much he's intrigued by the variety of visual landscapes in the SW (and to a degree in LA): ranging from the terrific opening sequence in an arid desert landscape, and then encompassing weird roadside restaurants and motels, then the car-choked streets in the American urbaneia - so many visually memorable moments for this ever-curious director and his team. Is it a great movie, though? Maybe not quite. The story, in essence, is that Stockwell's brother Travis (Stanton) has been missing for 4 years when he suddenly is found at a tiny and sort of scary medical clinic; older bro Walt (Stockwell) leaves LA to bring his brother back to civilization and to the family (he'd left his wife and newborn, Hunter, who has been raised since childhood by Walt and wife, Anne). Good plot set-up - but the plot development strains credibility almost to a laughable extent - probably intentional (for ex., Walt finds his runaway brother just by driving aimlessly on some Texas backroads; similarly, Travis and Hunter, trying to find H's mother, improbably track her down at a bank and follow her through a maze of Houston traffic). OK, so Wenders isn't a director we go to for logical and well-designed plots; the movie also challenges us, however, w/ Travis's almost miraculous awakening as a character, and we never really get a good explanation of what happened to him during his years of exile nor why, initially, he seems so traumatized. All that said, the conclusion is warm and affecting and, thanks to all the other strengths of the film, worth waiting through occasional languor and obscurity. 

Some films and series that we didn't finish watching

On this blog (elliotswatching) I post on movies and miniseries we've watched, but rarely post on shows that we start to watch and then abandon - so this blog may give the (false) impression that we like everything! Not so. Without belaboring the point, here are a few shows that we recently started hopefully and abandoned for various reasons, all on Netflix:

A Very Secret Service (France) was funny, at least at first, as it's a Jacques Tati-like satire of the ineptitude and sometimes malevolence of the equivalent of the French CIA, largely seen through the lens of a hapless  recruit who gets involved in helping African states in their push toward independence (set ca 1960). We laughed, at first, but by the 3rd episode it became clear that the humor was tinged w/ racism and paternalism, all of which made us uncomfortable, even though the show probably had the best of intentions.

Sacred Games (India) is mean to be a mystery/police procedural as a down on his luck detective gets a mysterious call from a stranger, a violent criminal who wants to narrate his life story. OK as a premise, if not quite believable, but the caller's criminal activities are so gruesome and violent as to give us pause - and plot itself was ridiculously baroque. Dropped it. 

Unsolved Mysteries (2020). As it sounds, a series of one-hour documentaries about true unsolved cases, leaving the ending open and calling on the viewers for any useful info. I like this more than M did, but it can be somewhat voyeuristic and unsettling; unlike most narratives, these offer no conclusion. 

Stateless (Australia). A tendentious show about the obstacles and difficulties an immigrant faces, with over-the-top performances by Domenic West and Kate Blanchette that make no sense at all. Strange that a movie in large part about immigrants to A and focuses on a white Anglo woman.

We did like the first part of Hexagone, an hour-long standup show from the French comedian Fary, though much of the humor eluded us (e.g., his takes on French Canadians) and of course much is lost in tr. We didn't watch part 2. Shows by Hannibal Buress, Eric Andre, and Mark Maron lacked the essential element of comedy - laugh lines.

Wasp Network, a film about 2 refugees from Cuba get involved, in different ways, in the attempt to overthrow the Castro regime and to aid the "boat people" - well intentioned, but incredibly confusing as there are so many organizations and schemes, most of which will not be familiar to most of the viewership. 

Finally [couldn't even remember the title at first!], Tangle, another Australian show, started off OK as the story of a young woman absent for many years returns to her family in A w/ intention of reuniting of the teenage son whom long ago she'd entrusted to her sister. But the plot as it develops is completely improbable and the lead character is so dislikable that we had no interest in going beyond the first episode. 

Another excellent, timely film from the Dardenne Brothers, Young Ahmed

I've been a huge fan of the films of the Dardenne Brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc), even noting in an earlier post that the two of them may become the first filmmakers to win a Nobel Prize in literature; their films chronicle the lives of young people living in the margins in the industrial territories of Belgium and northern France - a world that had been completely unexamined in film and literature, and a suitable ground from which to build an entire opus and career, much like, say, Faulkner's Yoknapatapha or Erdrich's North Dakota (she's another potential Nobel winner). The Dardennes' latest film - which wend straight to Criterion, which is great - Young Ahmed (2019) - is a bit of a break for them: same territory and milieu but focused on a teenager who has recently become absorbed in a extremely conservative Muslim mosque, whose young and charismatic leader has seemingly pushed this vulnerable young man to criminal extremes. Ahmed - I won't give away key plot points - eventually is sent to a reform prison for young men, where he is helped to a degree by a caseworker - but where will still see his extremism and dangerous behavior. Will he mature in some way and recognize the extremes of his youth and how he had been used by the mosque leader? Or is he a ticking time bomb, so to speak, destined eventually to cause destruction and death? The ending is left open and ambiguous, which may frustrate some viewers, though I think it's typical of the Dardennes' work, leaving us to think about the discuss the film and come to our own conclusions. It's also notable, from the title alone, the this film may be the first in a series on the life of Ahmed, something like Truffault's and Ray's early films.

A documentary - 1971 - about the anti-war movement and an incredible break-in at an FBI office

Johanna Hamilton's documentary from 2014 entitled 1971 is in the tradition of Thin Blue Line, as Hamilton blends archival footage, contemporary interviews, and scripted re-enactment to tell the strange story of a group of 9 anti-war leftists in the Philadelphia area who planned and successfully executed a break-in at an FBI field office (in Media, Pa.), during which they stole all of the FBI files and, over a period of weeks, mailed copies of selected files to various media outlets. Improbable as it may sound today, the files - rejected as criminal and unusable by some media outlets - did lead to a series of stories in the Washington Post, later picked up on by other outlets, culminating in Senate hearings on illegal FBI surveillance of anti-war activists (and others, notably the Black Panthers and several women's-rights organizations!) and a change in national police - a rare defeat for the FBI - that stood in place until the attacks of 9/11. The most amazing thing about the film is that none of the nine was ever caught or prosecuted; the statute of limitations has long expired, but who knows what might happen? Yet a few of the participants agreed to be part of the film, w/ no attempt to disguise their faces, though they're ID'd by first name only. Hamilton does a really good job capturing the look and mood of the era and conveying the extremely risky operation that could have gone dreadfully wrong in so many ways. There were many acts of sabotage and destructed aimed at various Draft Board offices across the country - but this action was apparently the only successful break-in at an FBI office; the planning was so daring that they got the layout of the office when one of the nine pretended to be writing a paper on opportunities for women in the FBI and made an appointment for an interview w/ one of the field agents. Incredibly brave, perhaps even reckless - songs from another era. 

Fantastic photography and a strong central character drive the Oscar-finalist documentary Honeyland

 The 2019 Oscar-finalist documentary from Macedonia, Honeyland, is driven by outstanding photography and by its rare access into the lives of some rural people living on the margins of the modern world; we follow a 50something woman, Hatidze, who scrounges out a meager living for herself and her mother, by tending to several swarms of bees and bottling and selling the honeycombs wholesale to local farmers' markets. She's entrepreneurial and very devoted to the care of her grievously ill mother - but it's hard to fathom that she's living in the 21st century - it comes as a shock when she rides a train to the closest city to sell her wares. The dramatic content to the film, such as there is, occurs when a family of immigrants from Turkey take over a small dwelling alongside H's primitive quarters. This family turns out to be intrusive, crude, abusive, and dishonest - eventually nearly destroying H's apiary - a happenstance that is all the more sorrowful as she does seem to enjoy having company and she's especially warm w/ the children. So, as a drama, the story line is a bit slack - though we do get a close-up look at a life and a way of life far removed from the lives of most cineasts. But what drives the film are, first, the strong character of Hatidze, a survivor of many hardships and likely to survive many more (we have to wonder how the filmmakers, Tamara Kotevska and Ljudomir Stefanov, found her, why she agreed to lay her life bare for the filmmakers, and how the film has changed her life, it at all), and second, some truly extraordinary photography - notably the opening sequence that shows her climbing a cliff and rock face to get to one of her hives and the many film in the dimly lit stone hovel where H lives w/ her mother - these shots looking every bit as beautiful as a Rembrandt nightscape. 

Ali Wong's hilarious comedy special, and a contemporary v. of Berlin Alexanderplatz

A twofer: Last night we really enjoyed watching the spirited hour-long comedy special from Ali Wong, Hard Knock Wife, terrific and memorable not only for her fantastically energetic performance and her terrific comic timing but for the range of her materials, that stretches from a feminist take on a # of issues, especially sex on all its permutations, but also marriage equality, labor, breast-feeding, c-sections, the need for universal paid maternity leave - and on the lower end of the spectrum, fart jokes. She also had a few insights in her Asian cultural/ethnic background (a funny riff on Korean v Mexican culture in LA). The material here isn't really groundbreaking, but the humor, from the rancid to the fervent, is brought to life by a great performance before an enthusiastic audience - and via Netflix we have front-row seats, which is great because Wong's facial expressions and contortions are part of the show. 

Also last night finished watching the 1931 film v. of Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, worth noting because the screenplay was by Doblin himself. In 90 minutes he managed to hit most of the highlights of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-hour BA series, which isn't to say the shorter v is the better. RWF had much more time and space to develop the personality of the lead character, Franz Biberkopf; in fact, RWF is far more cruel to Biberkopf that was Doblin: in the 1931 film, Biberkopf comes off more as a fool and a dolt with a drinking problem - whereas in the RWF v from 1980 FB comes off as an awful man, a brute and a womanizer, full of rage and self-pity. One reason to watch teh 1931 v, however, is that we can see exactly what the scenes looked like at the time of the story (set in 1928); we see the urban bustle, the crowds, the ratty-looking shops and bars, the street cars and auto traffic, and even some of the new developments that were rising in postwar Germany at the time. RWF does a fine job in re-creating the era, but there's only so much he could do in a studio setting.

Berlin Alexanderplatz as a groundbreaking 13-part narrative for TV - and its woeful epilogue

By any measure Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 13-part (plus epilogue) series, Berlin Alexanderplatz was ground-breaking in 1980 and has been hugely influential in charting the way for a highly intelligent and literary long-form narrative for television (today, streaming). BA is the antecedent of such long-form, character-driven dramas as The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Cards - the list could go on. RWF's epic, based on the 1929 novel by Alfred Doblin, does look a little dated, of course - some of the voice-overs and title screens look more '60s than '80s, but in its scope and ambition alone it stands well ahead of its time. The series is set in the heart of postwar Berlin in 1928, a time of huge unemployment, no social services, an economy still reeling after the war, and a time of political unrest, w/ right- and left-wing organizations vying for power and public attention. Checking back on my notes from when I read Doblin's novel 5 or so years back, I can see that RWF hued closely to the novel - except in his free-wheeling 2-hour epilogue, which is largely RWF's vision. At the center of every moment of the series (and novel) is Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht); the series begins w/ his exit from prison, where he has served 4 years (!!) for the murder of his wife. Throughout, he remains an entirely unsympathetic character: cruel and violent toward women, a petty criminal, full of self-pity. And yet - we see him as part of his time and place, a victim of an indifferent society that offers no help or hope to people like him, no way to get his life on track: We see him for a while try to make a living in sales (newspapers, pornography, shoe strings!), with no success, so he's of course drawn to violent crime and to "pimping" - even of his seemingly beloved Mieze. You can't root (or even hope) for this guy, but you can's stop watching his demise. Interestingly, in both book and miniseries, there is a not a bit of back story on Franz (nor on any other character, for that matter). The filmmaking itself is largely convention - a social-realist drama that could well have been played on stage; RWF does a great job creating a visual (and audio) reality - nearly the entire film shot in hues of brown and orange; in the very few moments when the plot diverts from the urban setting, the bright colors or an ordinary summer day are shocking and astonishing. The musical score involves "theme" music for most of the major characters and a period re-creation using some 20s jazz motifs. All of which brings us to the epilogue - where RWF breaks ranks and shows his own interpretation of Fran's fate - which involves a journey through an afterlife and a search for his murdered girlfriend (and perhaps for vengeance?) - and I can only say that this part of the series seems pretentious and labored and is at times so gruesome that I had to skip ahead rather than watch more naked bodies being dismembered - so, viewer, beware.

Last Chance U season 5 is about much more than football

 Last Chance U is another one of the sports documentaries that is definitely not for sports fans only; in this instance, football is the vehicle but the show itself is about so much more than football - it's about communities, leadership, poverty, inequity, and the "collision of forces" that's inevitable in any high-pressure sports enterprise that is part of an academic setting. The show has gone on - and just concluded - w/ 5 seasons. The first two were clearly the best, a look at a small Junior College football team that has achieved top national rankings and sent many on to Div 1 and the pros, set in rural Miss. in a town that is completely devoted to the sport, so much so that there's continuous pressure on the coach to win at any cost. For some of the players, this setting is truly their "last chance" - they are almost all hoping for a pro career (which few will get) or at least div 1 offer for last 2 years of eligibility (which many will get). For seasons 1 and 2, the show caught the proverbial lighting in a bottle as we watched the progress, or lack, of several key players and the growing tension between the coach and the academic counselor. We never really warmed up to season 3/4; saw only the first few episodes, and it paled by comparison, which was perhaps not fair - we didn't really give it a chance. We were won back, however, by Season 5 - the last apparently - which focused on the state champion junior-college team in Oakland (Laney College). It's maybe not as great as the first 2 seasons - possibly because it took too much time to find its focus on 2 or 3 main players - but it's quite different from the other seasons - focused on a low-income urban setting, in which football is a minor happenstance and not the lifeblood of the (Southern) community; like the other seasons, however, it's a social documentary, and we learn about the lives of a few of the key players (one of whom lives in his car as he manages to balance school, sports and work; another is the father of 2 young girls), all of which is full of struggle and abuse (though not always a struggle w/ poverty - one of the players is from a surprisingly well-to-do and literary family). The main player is the coach - and the constant question is whether his toughness on the players is good for them or only for him; he often screams at them during the games in a way that seems abusive and demeaning ("Catch the damn ball!"). Do they need that tough love? Or is it all about his need to win? These questions are left open to a degree at the end, that brings us right up to the present and the Covid19 crisis, which is shutting down many college programs just as these young men, most of whom have little else going for them, seek their "last chance" for a football scholarship and, maybe, career.

An important documentary about the life of an early advocate for the rights and safety of Black men and women, Ida B.Wells

We're seeing lots of interesting and important material emerge and re-emerge thanks to the Black Lives movement, and one of the pieces of info most worth checking out is the brief William Greaves documentary Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989). Though her name is by no means a household word, it should be, at least among journalists: She was probably the leading Black newspaper writer and columnist of her early 20th-century era (roughly 1880-1930) rising to the role of editor/publisher of the leading Black newspaper in Memphis; she took on many dangerous issues, in particular the horror of lynching, at great personal (and financial) risk; ultimately she moved to Chicago and continued her career as a lifelong advocate for the rights of Black people - becoming a hugely influential advocate and a national leader on civil rights. Greaves does a great job conveying the sense of her life and times with many stills of newspaper graphics and archival photographs, some of them painful to look at; Wells left behind not only her journalism and a diary or memoir with details about all of the activism and advocacy; Toni Morrison reads sections from Wells's writings, which gives this film a real voice of hope and courage.