Some key films of '22, including Tar, Till, Elvis, Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, White Noise + The White Lotus Season 2

 Elliot's Watching - December 2022

Can anyone write a great whodunnit? Aren’t all the plots already taken? I have to say we were enjoying the BBC series Magpie Murders, which had enough originality within the threadbare conventions to keep our interest: A great popular author of detective fiction dies by falling off a rooftop bannister on his rural England mansion, one of several suspicious deaths in the region that may or may not be connected - although the connections are far from obvious - and at his death he left the eponymous mystery novel though absent any trace of the final chapter. His editor goes off in search of same, aided by her visions of the writer’s main character, Detective Pund, who comes to us from the past and guides his protege - and the editor to a degree - in the search to solve the murder mystery. All good, and surprisingly creative, with it’s multiple time levels and veering backend forth between past illusion and present real time. Interested? Stop right here, then, and though I will not give anything away let’s just say that, as w/ so many mysteries, the “solution” scene is a mess - all sorts of coincidences and improbabilities and encrypted messages and great leaps of faith so that everything’s explained except that the solution makes no logical sense. Oh, well. Back to classic movies and literary fiction. 

Among the vast wasteland of mediocre movies streaming in Netflix there stands at least one that was completely engrossing and dramatic, clearly low-budget/indie but not in need of a huge cast or special effects: John Patton Ford’s debut Emily the Criminal (2022). We were drawn to it because of the excellent performance in White Lotus from Aubrey Plaza, who stars as Emily in this intriguing crime drama: Emily in crisis has huge student debt and is unable it seems to get a professional job, result of several arrests in her youth; nearly  by chance she takes a flyer working as a “shopping dummy,” for a small syndicate that hires workers on a cash-only basis to buy major electronics using fake credit cards then selling the stolen produce at a deep discount; obviously, she’s in way over her head and faces a # of crisis points, but proves herself tough as nails - and all within the realm of probability and credibility: no superpowers here, no likely sequel at all - but an entertaining (and informative) 90 or so minutes - and hopes that it opens a gateway for director and star performer. 

Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis (2022) is informative about Presley’s life for those few who don’t know that song already - emphasizing how, under guidance of his less-than-supportive manager, “Col.” Parker, Elvis melded the Memphis Blues sound of “Black” R&B that he’d heard from his youth with the more broadly popular “White” C&W Nashville sound and - by covering numerous songs from the Black musical tradition Elvis changed the nature of rock/popular music and re-established what it was to be a bigger than life star, comparable in universal popularity of his era with only the Beatles. There’s a good story within these parameters, and Austin Butler’s energetic performance is excellent, but BL can’t leave well enough alone, as this was about the most frenetic movie (aside from the occasional explosive crime or war or space movie) I’ve ever seen; for the hell of it I began measuring each “take” and I believe none was more the 3 seconds! Dizzying! Plus, 2.75 hours is far too long - what ever happened to the 90-minute show? A highlight, for better or worse, was an actual clip of Elvis in late career performing in Vegas - he still had it, in some ways, but he looked horrible and he seemed to be struggling with voice, weight, and life itself. Wish I could give this film a stronger recommendation, but the directing and self-indulgence did me in before the last bell. 

It’s disconcerting, troubling, sometimes frightening, sometimes grotesque but a tremendous and powerful true-life film about the infamous Emmitt Till case of 1955; Till (2022) tells the story of a 14-year-old Chicago child (Emmitt) whose mother, Danielle Deadwyler in the sure-bet Oscar nominee role as Emmitt’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who following her son’s murder became a social activist in racial and voting-rights issues. At the outset, she makes an unwise decision to send Emmitt alone on a visit to family in Mississippi, with numerous warnings about how race relationships are different in every way in the segregated Deep South; Emmitt, soulfully portrayed by Jalyn Hall, clearly has some learning disabilities and it’s evident to us that he cannot fully comprehend the warnings from his mom; sure3 enough, Emmit breaks the social code (whistles at a White woman!) and pays for it w/ his life - a brutal, sadistic lynching. The miracle is that two of the perpetrators are arrested and charged; much of the film from that point concerns the national movement for justice, which Mamie has pursued, and the horrors of the Deep South so-called jury trial. Director Chinonye Chukwu does a great job keeping up the pace of the film, never letting the film descend to melodrama or rise to preachiness, keeping the narrative tight and compelling, even though most viewers will know the history and the outcome from the start. 

The 2nd season of Mike White’s HBO smash The White Lotus (2022), similar to the first in its luxury hotel setting for the rich and uber-rich, this time in Sicily, despite recent quibbles about its celebration of conspicuous consumption and display and the free ride that the most obnoxious characters get at the end (no spoilers), was a lot of fun to watch from the outset, and if we hate some of the characters, which we’re supposed to and expected to, well, that’s part of the fun as well. As in Season 1, the series opens with a corpse, this time an afloat corpse, and part of the fun trying to figure out who died and who killed. Few will succeed at that. The Lotus team does a great job defining each character while avoiding the most obvious stereotypes, and at keeping several plot lines moving along and clearly defined. It’s no great expose or analysis of society, but it’s honest within its scope and a kick to watch, especially if you don’t expert more than HBO planned to deliver. I actually think Season 2 was better than Season 1 - a rare occurrence - in that the characters across the board were less hateful and less naive. 

It’s easy to see how and why Vera Chytilova’s film Daisies (1966) was a significant cinematic event when released as this strange romp - two young women each named Marie with little or no back story (who are they how did they meet what is up w/ their lives???) go about their days (and nights) seemingly surviving by hooking up w/ various elderly men who take them out for dinner (and drinks!) at various dinner/dancing clubs - none of which feels likely or accurate - which is part of the point. The 2 Maries are spirits rather than characters, and their role in life is to poke fun and and puncture the autocratic, Soviet-dominated culture of Czechoslovakia in that era. What today looks self-conscious and ludicrous - souped up by many quick cuts and weird camera tricks, very avant guard even in the US in the ‘60s and now quaint and distracting - was at the time a brave political statement: upend the bourgeoisie! The film, though, still has its pleasures; the 2 Maries are spirited and funny, and the concluding segment, a huge table set up for a banquet (nobody seems to be arriving), accessible only through a scary freight elevator, in which the 2 Maries indulge in the word’s biggest food fight - a great scene and not hard to see its ideology: secret riches kept hidden from the public, vast expenditures, vulnerable to direct attack. And that soon ended. 

Tar Fields’s drama Tar (2022) gives us a tour de force portrayal of that chameleonic actor Cate Blanchett - if she could portray to a T Bob Dylan why not the most successful (strictly fictional) female conductor in the world, the eponymous Lydia Tar? She’s tremendous, sympathetic, credible actor in every scene over the course of the nearly 2.5-hour film, and a primary reason for watching - and why it will never be a box-office smash - is the information we get about the behind the scenes workings of a symphony orchestra, both the artistic direction of one such as Tar (although I don’t think any conductor was ever as histrionic as she) and the back-stage politics of who’s staying, going, performing, or not. Personally, I was fascinated by this aspect of the film - can’t think of many other works that touch on this aside from Thomas Mann’s and Yehoshuah’s The Extra. That said, there’s also a deeply troubling side to this film: Why is it that the greatest female conductor etc. uses her prominence to gain sexual favors and to even scores, and why is she so nasty to underlings? To the extent this is true at all, why single out the only woman ever to play this role. Yes, there’s a brief acknowledgement to negative equality - reference to “Jimmy” being chased out of the closet and some lament about Von Karajan without really holding him accountable for his capitulation to Hitler and his all-Aryan orchestra - the setting for Tar btw is the Berlin Symphony - nothing like it in the world, as they note - but why the soft-pedaling re the men and the skewering of the gal? OK, despite all this I was  fascinated throughout the film - some of which is tough to understand because of plot complexity and bad sound design on the many one-on-one scenes in which we can discern what Blanchett is saying but not so for her counterparts. Worth watching never the less, and Blanchett definitely earns an Oscar nod. 

The multi-talented Sarah Polley directed the film Women Talking (2022), and quite a challenge that must have been as the film consists largely of the eponymous women, who are living in a present-day dystopian settlement in which the women and men are separated at birth and live only among their same-sex brothers, sisters, etc., w/ the women playing subservient roles (e.g., they are never taught to read), engaged in an ongoing discussion about the future of their community, in which the women were on a recent night/day attacked and raped by a group of the men: Should the women stay? Go? Fight Back? Do nothing? Polley gives us nearly 2 hours of their debate - 10 or so women, all dressed in dark clothing, in a single darkened room in the rafters of a hay loft. How could this be interesting? Yet - it will hold anyone start to finish. Polley does a great job keeping the camera alive but never rushing the shots, letting each of the women to speak powerfully of their experience and ideas. Particular honors go to Claire Foy - who knew the Queen got rant in American? The community itself, which seems so improbable, is apparently based in part on such a segregated community in Bolivia - but that aside, there are obvious parallels to various communities that are illegal, cruel, or otherwise: think Hasidic Jews, the Amish, outlaw LDS communities, the Waco project, and this could go on, so, yes, the nearly incredible may be not impossible. Spacial kudos on this project much to novelist Miriam Toews, on whose same-name novel this film is based; as most of the film entails “talking,” the source novel, we can be sure, provided Polley with much of the language (as well as the whole dystopian-present-day high concept) for her screenplay and treatment. 

We’re definitely in the midst of a Chantel Akerman revival thanks to the surprising announcement from Sight and Sound that her Jeanne Dielman (1975) was the top-ranked film (i.e., appeared on the most total 10-pick ballots) ever made; I have to think that’s a little overstated - Rules of the Game, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story anyone? - but a welcome recognition of the work of female and avant-garde filmmakers, and accompanying that surprising (to me) recognition another one of her early films, the “documentary” News from Home (1977). This film consists entirely a series of photos of NYC - where she’d moved - from back in the day, with some voiceover narration from CS’s mother, reading her correspondence with far-from-home daughter; the letters, despite the title of the film, are mostly un-newsy: There are a few updates about her father’s health and accounts of meetings with other relatives and neighbors, but never any detail; the correspondence mostly consists of statements about how much she misses her daughter/CA and pleading with her to come home and to write more regularly, in other words, typical correspondence from that day between parent and away-at-college kin. Watching this film reminds us of how great a distance separated the U.S. from Europe in those days before email, before computers, way way before cell phones and free “long distance” calls. But that’s just the choral background; the brilliance of the film comes from the photographic structure: a series of shots of scenes of NY life, at a time when the city was at its worst, with graffiti and garbage and pretty crime and even prostitution was out there, everywhere. With the possible exception of the final shot, none of the photos show NYC at its best; this is the opposite of, say, Woody Allen’s veneration of NY in Manhattan; CA’s camera focuses on the dirt and the grit - such as long takes about a moving, jostling subway line - the walls scorched with graffiti, the crowd tired and indifferent (hardly ever does anyone notice her camera). After many such still, toward the end CA takes films from a moving car/van (up 10th Ave.) and then downtown via elevated tracks. Her steady camera doing street photography it looks to viewers as though she was taking still photos and the photos are, just a little bit, coming to life - as the occasion car wooshes by, for ex. The film is by no means gripping or dramatic - but it set forth a style largely imitated in the 45 years since by hundreds, maybe thousands of aspiring filmmakers who today are working w/far more advanced and efficient equipment. But Ackerman was there first. 

Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is about as a definitive marker of excellence for dark comedy - a film with some horrific scenes of abuse and self abuse and a sorrowful tale of angst and loneliness in a small Irish coastal island; the film owes a debt to the great William Trevor in its notes of Irish melancholy and fierce loyalty, its strange juxtaposition or high drama and sly wit. To summarize would be beside the point: to tell of the brutality would be to lose the the fellowship. But in brief, the film lifts off with an elderly man tell his long-time best friend to get lost - he never wants to speak to his friend again, and will not quite say why that’s so. Improbable, yes - but there’s so much wit and drama drawn from this standpoint: you’ll laugh but won’t exactly know why, as this story is so dire and cruel; you’ll back off, but you won’t exactly know why, as this village seems on the surface to be such a peaceable community - with daily conviviality at the pub, with family loyalty, with the love for animals large and small - a brilliant, sly movie that will stay with you for some time. 

Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s film Neptune Frost (2021) is one of those rare films that you have to give yourself up to it and enjoy what you can - especially of the really cool African music and the startlingly vivid costume display and other visuals - while you can because I think most viewers, me certainly, will find the film extremely difficult to comprehend. But does that matter really? Roughly speaking, the film is “about” a young man working in the gold mines of central Africa (Burundi, I think) who strikes (kills?) a team boss and thus goes on the lam to try to save his life and to avenge the killing; he adopts the name Magnanimous Goldmine (or something like that), as well as the title name - as does his sister, in a yin and yang relationship. Neptune (male, though nonbinary) joins up with a cultish group living “off the grid” and hoping to attack the government in some unclear manner. Hmm. Yes, difficult to follow the details and not really necessary if you can just give yourself up to the energy and unusual (to Westerners) Central African setting. To those who prefer or who demand a coherent, accessible narrative with a beginning, middle, and end - this is not your film. 

The Steven Spielberg/Tony Kushner The Fabelmans (2022) is a star-dappled work of cinematic auto fiction, re-creating the childhood and adolescence of SS with particular attention, obviously, to his lifelong passion for films/cinematography. I wasn’t at first warm to the film - it seem to reek a bit of idolatry as we see SS at age figuring out how to stage and photography train crashes - story a prodigy, in other words, and I was afraid the film would drown in solipsism - but, no - the narrative takes off in the second “movement” of the film as we see more about the fissures in the Fabelman/Spielberg family dynamics, putting young SS, aka Sammy F., in conflict with his mother, his father, and his beloved “uncle,” as we feel deeply for this child and recognize that film is his life and his salvation - which comes an even greater part of the narrative in the 3rd “movement,” his h.s. years, notably in a wealthy suburban Cal. community in which he is the only Jew and suffers deeply from antisemitism and bullying - and of course his skills as a filmmaker becomes his salvation, but at a cost. Strangely, the movie feels cut short in the superficial treatment of SS’s dropping out of college and seeking to get work in the industry; we could have used more of this - though the film checks in at well above 2 hours, so maybe it could have been done as a series? Or just leave well enough alone. Particularly moving are the sequences of the h.s. bullying - though this has long been a staple of films about adolescence, and the wrenching portrayal (Michelle Williams) as “Sammy’s” troubled mother, a frustrated artist herself - and a true disrupter, who serves, at least initially, as an inspiration for the young Sammy and later as the agent of destruction in this divided family. 

Noah Baumbach’s film adaptation (2022) of Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985, also approx setting of the novel) is in essence a three-act story, the best of which by far is the middle story - An Airborne Toxic Event - in which a dark cloud of lethal chemicals released ion a truck crash swirls above the mid-Ohio mid-sized city, leading to a mass evacuation of all the inhabitants - all this beautifully conveyed, the tension and conflicting information, the reckless behavior - by NB, a very difficult event to capture I would think. The first part of the story, as in DD’s novel, focuses on the “college on the hill” (in the novel, I’d thought of the setting as Saratoga, Skidmore, though that’s never id’d) and some serio-comic “deconstruction of academic nonsense, as the main character, Jack (Adam Driver) takes pride for his creation of a Hitler Studies program (rivaled by a fledgling program of Elvis Studies) - the satire on academia is kinda funny but let’s face it, these are easy targets (Driver’s lecture on Hitler, which mesmerizes his students in a Hitler-like performance - if this episode is in the novel I don’t remember it, but it’s powerful in this movie, the highlight of Act I). The story line, however, when it moves on to Act III in which Driver’s wife (played by Greta Gerwig, NB’s wife) become addicted to some sort of experimental mood-altering Rx, which sends Driver off to find her Jones - and the film just unravels in this improbable episode: The first half of the film was credible and therefore scary abut the ending seemed to me just a mess (I don’t have a clear recollection of how the novel ended - hey, it’s been nearly 40 years!) - floundering about and way too long a that point, though the highly animated closing credits make it worthwhile to stick around till the end. 

Nope? Nope. And it’s such a shame after a few powerful films from Jordan Peele, most notably Get Out, already on the Sight & Sounds list of the best films of all time. And rightly so - it was a perfect demonstration of how to make a great horror film: It has to begin slowly w/only a vague intimation of what’s to occur and why, and there has to be a clear demarcation between reality, fantasy, terror - as well as a divide between those who recognize the danger (and act on that recognition) the doubters and dissemblers. Nope (2022) has none of these - instead, a hard-to-fathom some kind of possession affecting animals on a ranch for a company that provides trained animals for use in films; there are flying saucers, of course, and attacks on the grid, but why? What’s this all about aside from a display of special effects? So let’s just leave it at that: There oughta be a “feels like” scale as with the weather forecast (45 degrees but feels like 20…: How about 2 hours 10 minutes but feels like 4 hours and 40 minutes? 

 

November 2022: Werner Herzog, Godard, Truffaut, Pasolini, Van Sant, plus Hud, The Crown 5, Blue Dahlia, and The Earth Is Blue...

 Elliot’s Watching - November 2022

Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampire (1979) is a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel (and apparently of Murnau’s silent) and it fully lives up to the standard its forbears set: Dark, creepy, ugly, disturbing, even for those who’ve read the original (I found it terribly dated) or seen any of the many adaptations. Set in a German village, Herzog’s version of the legend begins with a young man with a lovely young wife (Isabelle Adjani) is sent by his boss (they seem to be in the real estate business), a weird guy in his own right, giggling and full of ticks, on a business assignment: Go see this man who wants to buy a major property in town - Count Dracula. Wait as second, who would go on such a mission?! We want to say: Stop! Hold it right there! Go home! But, no, he’s young and ambitious and heads off on his own - a journey of 4 days, mostly on foot, as nobody he meets wants to take him to Dracula’s castle (this part of the plot veers from Stoker’s). When he arrives, he meets his nemesis - played by Klaus Kinski, Herzog’s fave villain/weirdo - who has weird long fingernails like claws, a ghastly bald dome, dark clothes, dark everything - and as he feeds the young many (Harker) a substantial dinner Drac. hovers over everything: He notes that he cannot conduct business during the daylight hours, listens to howling “creatures of the night,” and so on. In short, months, in seems, later Harker returns to his home a completely damaged and ruined man (again, quite differing from the sources), carried by a carriage that contains dirt-filled soil from Dracula’s estate - and the shipment also caries many rats, who disembark and multiply into vast swarms - the plague! Watch it for the extraordinary sense of dread and gloom, esp when Drac clamps onto peoples’ necks to draw his life-sustaining blood. Though it’s not entirely the conventional Dracula narrative, it’s a great intro to this material for those who can stomach it. 

Pier Paolo Passolni’s (short) film (30+minutes) film La Ricotta (as in the choose - 1962) which ran as part of those ominous features popular in intalian art films in the ‘60s is a sometimes hilarious bit of sisal criticism and hypocrisy and a glimpse of the prices of the art and skill or lack thereof of filming, esp crowd scenes shot en pleine aire. This shows PPP’s nihilistic and blasphemous treatment of organize (Catholic) religion, and as elements for offend just about everyone, or at least every disbeliever and skeptic. A ragtag grojp of about 5 actors, dancers, musicians are set to shoot a scene of the death of Jesus o the cross; they’re in one of those outlands, cold and muddy, with lots of new cheap high rises sprouting in the distance, an image of the rising yet still inchoate landscape of postwar industrial Rome - a setting familiar to those who’ve sene Fellini’s early works. The kicker is that as the production crew - led Orson Welles playin a type of himself, an enigmatic and querulous director who has no truck with the Italian journalist on hand to interview the great director - struggle and stumbles to get the actors to tat heron these appropriately costumed and ready at the least with their lines - as he prepares for the grand finale the Crucifixion - essentially arranging his actors into tables of great Renaissance paintings, Everything goes wrong, and in the foothills of this carefully constructed scene the troupe of actors indifferent to the artistic vision engage unjust about all of the 7 deadly sins and more, notably infidelity, gluttony, jealousy, avarice, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, coveting, et al. - all I’m high-energy scenes of hilarity played out at the foot of the Crucifixion re-enactment - with some tragic consequences. No wonder that PPP was banned by the Church of Rome - not something he feared, evidently - and the film holds up today (though what does the title mean?) and makes its point through riotous hilarity (think Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale) rather than dismal pronunciation from on high (think Chaucer’s Priest’s Tale).

Stanley Kwan’s Hong Kong set film Rouge (1987) is not the kind of film I would ordinarily care for - a rom-com/melodrama ghost story - but Kwan tells this love story with such panache and humor that it’s hard not to smile and enjoy this fantasy romp. In essence, it’s about a young woman, Fleur,  indentured from childhood to serve as a “courtesan” - i.e., prostitute - in a high-end Hong Kong brothel that caters to the wealthy young (and older) men. She and one of her clients (Chan)  fall in love; they arrange a meeting with his mother - and Fleur (Anita Mui) is obviously charming, intelligent, poised, lovely 0 but Mom will have nothing to do w/ her because of her sullied past. So - the two drink poison on OD on opium in a joint suicide pact (see R&J, Aida, et al.). Tragic - but - we pick up the story some 50 or so years later in Honk Kong with an unchanged Fleur wanders into a newspaper office planning to place a personal ad to find the whereabouts of her lost love, if he is still alive. Two reporters take up the challenge w/ her, leading to a # of complications but most important - the pursuit leads to two reporters, 2 misfits, to fall for each other (he, Alex Man, is particularly gawky and ill at ease with women) - and their sweet love story evolves out of the star-crossed lovers of the frame story. Kwan manages to find much humor and joy in what could have been a mawkish romp, and the lighting, costumery, and interior and exterior sets throughout - particularly night-time scenes in the rain on the streets of HK - are in themselves enough to hold anyone’s attention in this under-the-radar success. The score will not be to all tastes, but the passages of Chinese opera are integrated very well into the story line (Chan is a wealthy young man who somehow aspires a career as an opera singer - isn’t there a similar film concept in an early Japanese movie that I can’t quite remember?)

Does (Jean-Luc) Godard’s film Weekend (1967) stand up after so many years? Pretty well, I think, in that it’s just as odd, at times hilarious, at times boring and off-putting, but for whatever reason, good or bad, my reaction today is much like my reaction 50 years ago. It’s worth watching if only for the great “traffic jam” sequences, an incredibly long set of 4 (I’m told) shots of cars and truck stuck on a freeway, in which everyone’s blasting away as if that will do any good. Then we get to some really gory sequences, many bodies strewn along the roadside - and what does it mean? You have to be totally “square” or out-of-it even to ask: It just is. We (loosely) follow our protagonist couple on their weekend adventure, during which they make several encounters during which the conversation explores: Are we real people? Or actors in a movie? A very 60s kind of question and dilemma - seems quite antiquated as well. And then two migrant laborers talk at great length direct into the camera about their revolutionary aspirations - again, very ‘60s in the days of idolatry of Marx and Mao. And they film wraps with a Western-movie shootout at a pastoral retreat of some the characters we’ve met en route. And it all amounts to? A critique of society? Not really, but maybe a glimpse of what it would be like 50 years hence, i.e., today, with our over-dependence on gasoline-powered cars and with the remnants of colonialism still hovering over the African nations. Godard was no seer, but he broke the rules of narrative and made viewers think and react, if not with any of the Marxist fervor that he would have liked or anticipated.  

Traces Series 2 (we missed the 1st season but each season stands alone successfully. In this series, set in beautiful Dundee, Scotland (the Scots are really showing their stuff via crime series of late), the main strand of the plot involves the search for a serial bomber who threatens to create more havoc. What’s good is that the pursuit is intense and along the way we learn a lot about forensics and crime investigations, thanks largely to the clear accounts of the ongoing pursuit Laura Fraser (Professor Sarah). What disappoints a little is that - as in far too many crime thrillers - there are about a thousand things that could have gone wrong in the investigation, arrest, and interrogation but - miracle of miracles! - ever guess pans out and everything works. Put aside any skepticism and enjoy, I guess. A more troubling aspect is the absolute and complete mystery of the attraction between Sarah and the lead investigator - possibly the most off-putting and incomprehensible office romance ever filmed, not that I’ve seen them all. 

I had never seen Hud and had consigned it in my mind to a typical American Western, centered on a larger-than-life tough guy (cf Liberty Valence, High Noon, for some better examples). But, prompted by reading a review of  PN’ auto bio, I thought I’d take a look at Hud on Criterion before it was too late (it will drop from Criterion library next month). Wow, was I surprised: Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963) is a really great American film, right from the first frame, when we know this will not be another dull, drab Western exterior. The film, shot by JamesWong Howe extreme Panavision (ie the vantage is always wider and narrower than convention letter-box framing), a great way to feel from the first immersed in aTexas landscape. Plus, filming in b/w - an homage those who shot thousands of oaters - but here the b/w gives the film the look of classic - just beautiful. We see life in a hardscrabble farm house where Newman lives and runs the farm with his grandfather and with his late brother’s teenage son - 3 generations of guys in the one meeting - + plus the girl, Patricia Neale. What a set-up: we could be heading toward Tennessee Williams, or other films of ne’er do well bros and struggling farm fams, see e.g. East of Eden. And in the desolation of the nearby town, where there doesn’t seem much to aside from drinking and fighting; the landscape will remind many of Last Picture Show and maybe the novel Lonesome Dove, both by Larry McMurtry, a genius, and the author the excellent screenplay for Hud. Hud as played by Newman is a vile, sexist, angry, and dangerous man; his smoldering temper - which leads to a brutal assault on Neale and much peril for Hud’s nephew, who worships Hud - and follows him down a path could lead to much self-destruction. One thing curious about the plot, however, is that Hud’s nephew seems to have no friends - a sad side-note that the film never quite recognizes or resolves. As with so many great dramatists - compare Pinter, Strindberg, O’Neill - everyone suffers. 

Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991), aside from its great title, did little for me and I quit on it about 40 minutes in. I found the whole production to be in some ways self-conscious and cute and imaginative but to no good cause; in other ways, the characters are repulsive and dangerous and I just felt the whole movie, or the half of it, was an unpleasant place to be. If you’re interested in the community of dropouts, drifters, drug addict of there Pacific NW, a far better film is Streetwise, which is much more realistic (it’s a documentary) and much more sympathetic to the lives of its participants. It’s note exactly a feel-good movie, but it’s straight=forward and honest and not filled with visual pyrotechnics and other distractions. 

George Marshall’s noir LA film The Blue Dahlia (1946) is best known and appreciated today, to the extend that it is known and appreciated, for the Raymond Chandler screenplay - which I think is one of his few writing credits for original work rather than adapted from one of his novels or stories. The film isn’t great - a far too complex, head-scratching who-dunnit  - but any Chandler project will have some great dialog and this one also  has some fine moments such as the Alan Ladd Veronica Lake drive up the dark coast to and past Malibu, or the opening scuffle in a downtown LA diner, where we get the first sense that one of the characters, William Bendix as Buzz - shows himself to be mentally disturbed - specifically, by a wartime head injury that leaves him with serious PTSD, though the term came into use only later; credit here to Chandler and Marshall for a film that recognizes the price of war on civilian life, even after the armistice, and without a mawkish or melodramatic tone. 

Filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk was traveling/working in Ukraine ca 2020 when she met a family (a single mom and her 4 kids) that was making a film about their life during the war - mostly directed by the teenage daughter who, with some friends, aspires to become a filmmaker herself; IT decided to make a documentary film, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange, about the film - which seems as if it would be a precious, ironic venture - but, no: by filming the fledgling efforts of these teens and their mom and younger sibs and neighbors, we get an intimate portrait of what the family is living through, coping with, and in a real sense triumphing over during the war - which had been ongoing for five years at the time depicted. We see both the spirit and energy of the young filmmakers - for ex., gaining cooperation from some Ukraine tank soldiers for a short staged sequence - and some harrowing accounts of how the family copes with the constant night-time bombings: they hide in a cell in the basement, for the most part. In one interview with children talk about how they’ve learned to distinguish incoming from outgoing missiles. Many winter exterior shots show us the grim, post-Soviet, ugly cityscape - and then there will be a patch of beauty - bridge, a neighborhood along a greenway; and then, worst of all, bombed out apartment buildings, charred beyond repair. The movie is uplifting in the end - but of course that’s not the end, and we have to wonder: What has become of this family, and so many others, since 2020? A scary thought. 

I had to watch it, just because - so into it after 4 seasons, so how can you not watch Season 5 of The Crown, especially as we know what lies just over the horizon: the specter of Diana, pursued by the media and the public, dead on a speedway in Paris. But not yet - that’s for season 6. And Season 5? Just not quite as good, engaging, varied, and lavish as the first 4. What went wrong? top of the list would be the casting of Domenic West as the most un-Charles-like Charles as possible; could not in any way fathom Charles as a handsome, cocky, ladies man, no way. And the conflicts in most of the season were muted and peripheral, unlike the first 4 seasons that really developed a character over time (Eliz. seems the same as in season 4, and not too different from the Queen we all know in her final years, decades. What’s good about Season 5?: the 8th episode that traced the manipulations by the BBC in getting Diana to tell her story via one of its news programs - great look at the Diana phenomenon and at the workings and working-overs of the media; and episode 9, in which Charles and Diana seem to reconcile into a friendship post divorce - but not for long. The last episode seemed a stasis, with the Queen lamenting the retirement of the royal yacht about which who cares? Are 5 castles or whatever enough? Boo hoo.  

Francois Truffaut’s best-known film, Jules and Jim (1962), based closely on the 1953 novel by Henri-Pierre Roche, is the classic love triangle - J&J being the two best buddies who fall for the same girl, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). Over the course of some years or so - beginning with the protagonists as easy-going young men living the vie Boheme in Paris before the Great War - their friendship interrupted by the war (Jules is German, and served on the Russian front; Jim is a journalist who is assigned to write about post-War France) - until, after a gap of some time, Jim visits the now-married Jules & Catherine in rural France. Thus begins Catherine’s on-again, off-again relations with each of the two men, plus at least one outside fling - none of which, at least at first, provokes the jealousy and vitriol that one would expect. But this triangulated marriage/friendship cannot endure forever, as we see in the last third of the film, in which it becomes every more obvious thatCatherine is more than just a flirt but also a seriously deranged and dangerous woman. The great success of this film is that it hovers between romantic idle - esp with Truffaut’s beautiful wide-angle b/w film and topography - and tragic cruelty; try as we might, we can’t truly identify with or aspire to this kind of relationship, so cruel to those so close. If J&J were to be re-made today, of course, the erotic attraction between the two men would be explicit rather than implied or suggested (a recent streaming series from Mexico, Everything Will Br Fine, touched on similar themes).

October 2022: Documentaries: Hostages, Streetwise, Aftershock; Streaming: Bad Sisters; Movies: Touch of Evil, Ludwig, The Photograph

 Elliot’s Watching - October 2022

Pretty much no one will like the ending of Nikos Papatakis’s film The Photograph (1987), and I won’t give away the ending but let’s look at the rest of the film, which follows the course of a young man forced by political opposition to leave his hometown in Greece and heads to Paris where he hopes his well-to-do uncle can help him find a job; thence is far from pleased to have this burden - but then, he sees among the young man’s belongings a photo of a beautiful woman. The young man tells his uncle that the woman is his sister, Joy, and the uncle falls in love with the woman and wants to marry her; problem is, the uncle is illiterate, so the young man becomes the go-between, writing a series of courtship letters. How long can this go on? A # of scenarios play out, some funny, some painfully tragic, and throughout we’re wondering how the young man can get out of the scrape of his own doing. The production of the film is at times amateurish and the subtitles leave much to be desired - but I’d say it’s an obscure film (thanks for saving it, Criterion!) that is crying out for a contemporary, possibly English-language, remake - the plot has much going for it, although the team had no idea how to bring this strangely entertaining film to a conclusion. 

Hostages, an HBO documentary series (2022, 4 episodes, from a team of 5 directors) is a detailed look at the Iranian revolution of the ’70s, the American complicity based on years of support for the brutal Shah, and ultimately the collapse of all social order, a vacuum filled by the charismatic Ayatollah who turns a blind eye on the mob attack of the U.S. embassy, leading to 444 days of imprisonment of embassy staff, a few Marines (or just one?), and other Americans working w/ the embassy. Not only is the documentary footage from the era plentiful and fascinating - but so are the contemporary interviews with several Iranian ex-officials (and one still an official) who participated in the takeover and its brutal aftermath, as well as a few of the hostages as well. Like most, I would think, I had no idea how much footage has survived - and documentarians use the bounty of evidence to give a complete and detailed narration of these scary events. One aspect of the case - hinted at but not fully examined - was with the incoming Reagan administration communicated with the Iranians to hold off on release of the hostages until after RR’s inauguration. Sure looks as if they did, but who will ever fess up? The whole episode was scary and tragic - and harbinger of many other attacks against the US, culminating in 9/11, far, far worse in its death and destruction, but sudden and complete w/in hours rather than months. 

Is Lucino Visconti’s biopic Ludwig (1973) really worth the four-hour commitment? Probably not, but it helps to split the film and watch it in segments. It has the panache and finesse that we expect in late Visconti’s work - extraordinary costumery and regal interior settings - along with a degree of weirdness, and Ludwig himself, aka The Mad King, does exhibit some disturbing behavior, especially dangerous in an absolute ruler. Who could imagine a head of state so removed from reality, so delusional, so cruel and narcissistic? Who can imagine the team of top advisors so troubled by the leader’s erratic behavior that they take steps to remove him from authority? Don’t answer that! If anything, I think the film could be more maddening, as seems almost that LV is enamored of Ludwig’s imperious volatility. Were the advisors wrong to remove him from office? Sure they were - and LV goes lightly on Ludwig’s extravagances (building numerous estates and palaces presumably at pubic expense - and, year, I’ve read that Ludwig got a bad rap and the expenditures were all or mostly from his own wealth - ah, that explains it!). Ditto Ludwig’s obsession with Wagner (whose music constitutes much of the score) - yet not a word, not a hint, about Wagner virulent anti-Semitism. So - despite it’s lavish production - it’s a film about which I’d say proceed w/ caution.

The 3-part documentary Aftershock: Everest and Nepal Earthquake (2022, Netflix) uses some great, terrifying on the spot footage and extensive interviews with survivors to convey the effect of the 2015 quake that killed about 9,000; we follow the course of 3 groups of people to tell the story: Some climbers, including one novice, trapped at Camp One after the avalanche that wipes out base camp and killed many; 3 Israeli travelers who trekked to a remote village and find themselves and some villagers on their own with little or no communication to the outside world, and a Nepalese businessman whose working-class hotel is destroyed - and the fate of those inside - including his family members - is unknown. So, three good story lines, lots of exciting on-the-spot footage (some re-enactment, too, I am pretty sure) - and a good film for those who can’t enough of the myriad films about the hazards of climbing, surfboarding, et al. 

Ira Deutchman’s documentary, Searching for Mr. Rugoff (2019) tells of the acrimonious, volatile eponymous film distributor. well-known if not exactly famous among film-lovers for his 5 NY cinemas that screened many of the greatest art films of the 60s and 70s and were avant-garde in this - his - promotional inventiveness (e.g., putting on body-building exhibitions in the theater lobby when screening a Schwarzenegger film; promoting the films with bold iconography in NYT adverts…). All good, but after an initial montage in which a dozen or more of this former employees spoke briefly of the joy and terror of working for him (as ID had) the film ran out of gas and never quite made me curious to learn any more about Rugoff. OK he once was famous and is now almost forgotten, but truly how many film distributors/promotors are “remembered” decades after their day was done? The film (I watched the first half, about 45 minutes) never really makes the case that the material on hand would or should be of any great interest other than to those who knew the guy. 

Martin Bell’s documentary Streetwise (1984) is a stunning and extraordinary film on the (mostly) teenagers living on the streets of Seattle, then, ironically, known as the “most livable city in America.” This scene is the polar opposite of the Microsoft/Starbucks Seattle culture that we know (of). Bell’s camera follows these children, all of them from broken homes or other terrible and threatening and loveless lives; they’ve made their way to this city and they get by in frightening ways: living in abandoned buildings, scrounging in Dumpsters for food, getting by through begging and through (mostly) petty theft, and most disturbing by soliciting “dates” on the street corners - 14-year-old girls living by prostitution. It’s amazing that Bell and his team had such access to these misdirected lives, and that they could maintain the rigid “I am a camera” conditions - never, apparently, intervening to stop a crime in progress. The film offers no protection to these kids - just exposure of the horrible life that they are in and that they will face; they talk at times about their desires for the future, and we know of course that few are on a path leading anywhere but downwards. Among many incredible sequences, the teenager’s meeting with his father in prison is maybe the strongest and strangest. Also, watching the completely overwhelmed social worker trying against all odds to help these kids get to a better life. There are several follow-up films showing the later lives of some of the key players (available on Criterion); once in, you can’t help but watch these supplementary materials as well. 

You won’t find a more hateful character on screen than Jean Paul (JP) Williams (played by Claes Bang) in the Irish black-comedy thriller (yes, lots of genre crossings) Bad Sisters (based on a Belgian series called Clan) - and we watched the entire 9 episodes waiting for him to get his desserts - and in fact we know that he gets sniffed out in the first episode but it’s a matter of who dunnit. In essence, the series is about 4 sisters you universally despise JP, the 5th sister’s abusive husband, so the 4-some hatch a series of ill-conceived plots to kill JP. No spoilers here - but note that the series cleverly and seamlessly moves back and forth in time, both before JP’s death and after, as we follow two hapless young insurance agents who suspect foul play, which if proven would mean they would not have to pay out on a life-insurance policy. Despite the dark doings, the series his hilarious throughout, thanks largely to the 5 sisters and the loathsome JP. There’s no great meaning or message or thrilling scenes of tension nor bewildering plot twists - just a really good comic story conceived and executed, if that’s the right word?, from the start. 

Wendell B Harris Jr.’s (he wrote it, directed it, starred in it) Chameleon Street (1989) won a top award at Sundance for its ahead-of-its time inventive editing, its unflinching portrayal of a not sympathetic Black lead character, and as a landmark in what today we call “docudrama,” as Harris tells the life story off William Douglas Street, a Black man who talked and charmed his way into several prominent Detroit-area professional careers: posing as a lawyer, a business developer, and, most improbable but tru, as a surgeon - he performed about 50 hysterectomies, with no training (we watch him do his first, horrifying). He also led a troubled family life, at times sweet and romantic but combustible and downright scary (some viewers’ eye closings ((mine)) when he engages in knife play w/ his toddler-aged daughter). The film is perhaps too inventive and unconventional for its own good - choppy, distracting, sometimes hard to follow - which is to say the technique gets in the way of character development; at the end, Street is still an enigma rather than a character as we’re more focused on Harris’s film techniques than on the story at hand. Still - what a loss! How can it be that he never directed another film? One can only guess. 

Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958; wrote - based on a book by What Masterson - directed, steals the show) as a film that’s all about atmosphere and nuance. The plot is particularly difficult to fathom, at least on 1st viewing - something about Mexican gangs and Rs dealers, leading to an attack on an American dealer across the border and into the US territory of Welles’s corrupt sheriff. Her performance is weird and outstanding and the narration show many of the OW quirks, lots of odd angles and shots up from about table height to the looming presences - film could not work and would be long forgotten had he not taken complete control. The opening sequence - a 10-minute or so single take that sets for the entire plot and gives some great footage of life and work on both sides of the Tex-Mex border. The long single take has since then been often eclipsed - thanks mostly to digital - think the coop shot (Goodfellas), that long shot at the opening of the film about an Hollywood agent can’t remember the name, and esp The Russian Ark, the entire film one take! Yet it’s still a great shot because of its scope and its grace and it’s relations to the material to follow. Some of the bit parts are especially well cast and directed - and who  can forget Dennis Weaver as the motel night manager? - but today the film would definitely cast a Mexican actor in the lead role as Vargas - Charlton Heston is fine, but I could never quite see him as a Mexican official. 

John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) gives us just about everything we’d want in a b/w noir film of its era - a plot rich with double-crossings and fatal mistakes, a really good safecracking of a bank vault - maybe not as good as Rififi but good enough, dark streets and many night-time scenes, a despicable self-important evil banker/investor who’s cheating on his wife and (with a 1/3 his age airhead beauty making her major-picture debut, Marilyn Monroe), a really smart and even likable “villain,” the criminal Doctor genius just out of jail and eager for his next heist, the film’s concise length, every scene and every line counts - although I suspect the the police commissioner’s laudatory news conference at which he praises police officers must have pleased the producer and the Code. That aside, the film - directed and co-written by Huston along with co-author Ben Maddow, based on the novel by the prolific W.R. Burnett - definitely holds up after 70+ years - a standard-setter, and not a relic. 

Let’s just say that the 3rd (and final) season of Lisa McGee’s Irish comic drama Derry Girls (2022) is nowhere near as funny as the first 2 seasons, save for an uproar of a comedy in the first 2 episodes (the boring neighbor brings a lot to the show, and the guest appearance of Liam Neeson was great , too ) but then the series kind of wobbled, w/ far too much attention paid to “the troubles” and the ultimate signing of a peace treaty btw N Ireland and GB - obviously important to the makers of this series but much less meaningful to xenophobe Americans (like me). The comedy withered in large part, I think, by almost writing the hilarious Siobhan McSweeney (as Sister Michael) out of show - a big loss (I wondered if her health had been an issue?). Saoirse-Monica Jackson, as the leader of the Girls, is great but not great enough to carry the expectations of this show. 

Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) is a short (25 minutes) documentary in which the members of Suzanne’s family reflect on how their late father brutalized them, S in particular, and the hapless mother, a victim herself of spousal violence, failed to step in and help her daughter in any significant way - a childhood that led almost inevitably to S’s drug abuse and imprisonment. In this film and she her other confront each other and reach a tentative forgiveness and peace. The film is shot in b/w with many darkly lit scenes and noir-ish settings and shadows. The fil holds up well emotionally but what was innovative 40 years ago is, obviously, far less so now - with our so much greater, cheaper, easier, small film equipment creating such a film today would be much easier, and I’m sore about a million film students have done so, w/ varying success. 

Tarr's Damnation, Guilt Season 2, Z, Wanda, The Shooting, The Beatles' Get Back, Visconti's Death in Venice, You Don't Know Me

 Ellliot's Watching - September 2022

Bela Tarr’s 1988 2-hour Hungarian film, Damnation (co-written with Lazslo Krasznahorkai), consists of long, long B&W shots most of which involve extremely slow panning or stasis. There’s a story within this film, though honestly I have no idea what it’s really about: superficially, a man laments that the woman he loves, a nightclub singer, is married to a thug who seems to hang around or manage the club. This fellow tells the protagonist (name?) to leave his wife alone or he’ll break his neck. He doesn’t leave the wife alone - in fact, one of the “stills” is a sex scene - but not much happens in that regard. BT has no evident interest in developing or differentiating the characters - tough going! These remarks, however, do not do the film true justice, as it’s in no way meant to be a thriller or a love story. The film is primarily a visual discourse: Any one of the “stills” would make a great 3-5 minute super-short - but to go to this film seeking plot, character, emotion is wrong. Particularly great scenes are the one in which the chanteuse sings, the celebration (of what?) near the end when, first, couples dance weird Eastern European type of jitterbug (and they’re pretty good!) and, even better, the end of the party when the whole town dances and moves about on the dance floor in so many rings - like a Hora, I think. There’s really no other film quite like this one and it’s not for everybody nor was it meant to be; the best way might be to see it in clips over several sessions rather than straight through for a tough 2 hours. 

The 2nd season of the Scottish crime drama Guilt carries on from season 1 though with somewhat less mordant humor and a lot more dark and foreboding plot threads, as we follow Max on his release from prison (see season 1) and tries to re-establish his working relationship with the Scottish mob boss - a bad decision, especially in that he links his fortunes w/ the dubious private detective, Ken. Can one follow the plot? Maybe not all the way, not without some help and swimming up stream, but enough to feel the tension and too for if not the “good guy” at least the “OK guy.” One things for sure: Most American viewers will want to watch this streaming w/ subtitles - we tried for a wee bit without these intrusive widgets (Do we really need such titles as “file drawer closes”?) but we were left at sea so went back and watched again w/ help. Anyway, it’s a really good series, as good a mixture of dark and light, cries and comedy, as I’ve seen in some time, and the door is left ajar for a Season 3. 

Costa-Gavras’s Academy Award-winning thriller, Z (1969 - based on a novel by Vassilis Vassilikos, based closely on the assassination of a Greek politician (C-G himself an exiled citizen of Greece living at the time in France) is an exciting, dramatic, nail-biter from the top - starting with the combative statement on the opening credits that goes something like: Any similarity to any person or persons living or dead is not coincidental - It is intentional. The film has some of the best and most terrifying depictions of street demonstrations and counter-attacks, and C-G’s management of the flow of action in crowd scenes is the best since Battle of Algiers (perhaps no coincidence that the film shot in part in Algeria). Story line in brief: A politician in the opposition party speaks at a rally - braving early warnings of street violence - when his is attacked and killed - leading to a cover-up that goes to the highest reaches of government (claiming he was hit by a drunken driver) - and is at least in part debunked through the unrelenting and fateful pursuit of truth and justice by one honest, fearless man (w/ help from a witness who tells the truth at his peril) - played well by Jean-Louis Trintagnant. Still worth watching today - in fact, maybe far too close for comfort today; the crowd scenes would inevitably call to mind the attacks of Jan 6 - and a forecast of what violence and cover-ups may be yet to come. 

Barbara Loden’s film (she wrote, directed, plays the lead) Wanda (1970) is something like the anti-Bonnie & Clyde - in this case a troubled, damaged young woman who gets drawn into a bank-robbery scheme that is anything but cool and sexy and glamorized - in that sense far more realistic and gripping than any of its counterparts. Loden, in the title role, plays a woman obviously unfit for family life; the film opens with her divorce proceeding in which her husband testifies that she neglects the children; she does not contest this, and wanders off into life full of danger.  She’s too trusting, and completely incompetent at managing her meager $, and falls into the clutches of the wrong guy, a mean bastard, who puts her in great jeopardy. Honestly, I thought I probably wouldn’t like this film - seemed too dreary and even saccharine from the promos - but it totally held my interest and my pity. The Pennsylvania coal-country backdrop is bleak and evocative, and probably the only wrong note in the film is that Loden - and what every happened too her? - is too pretty for the lead role. 

Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966, screenplay by Carole Eastman) was in essence the breakout of Jack Nicholson, following up on Easy Rider and predictive of Nicholson’s Three Easy Pieces (also written by Eastman), though in this film he plays the bad guy with great aplomb. Is it a good film? Depends how you measure that. I’m pretty sure I saw it a million years ago on initial release and followed the plot line with great interest but never figured out exactly what happened at the ending; watched it again this week - same story - but I still feel the fault is in myself; I’d gonna watch it again, hopes high. That’s mainly because the film is so good a long the way, mysterious and economical: a desert prospector and his feckless sidekick are scouted by a young woman bound on some kind of vengeance mission and she hires the 2 men to take her to a small town across the desert; reluctantly, they oblige - but at some point they discern that she’s leading them into a trap (duh), as they cross paths w/ the evil “Billy Spear” (Nicholson), and it’s clear those 2 are in cahoots, as they say. Why or to what end, who knows? Maybe I will after 3rd (and final) viewing - the bleak scenery is both scary and beautiful, that is, desert-like. 

Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back (2021) is a monumental work of documentary and film editing - Jackson and his team built the 6-hour film from hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of film and recoding of the foursome in studio (and, ultimately, on rooftop) as they spent a month developing what would be their final album, Let It Be. To watch the group at work is to have an even deeper appreciation of their genius - as they start with what seems only fragments, bits and pieces, but nowhere near anything of a completed song - we sense that they will never be ready for their big show (and of course they’re not ready, what began as preparation for either a massive outdoor concert or for a TV spectacle gradually became another album and the brief, famous Rooftop Concert, the first great rock pop-up, in which the Beatles did a few final takes of some of the pieces on Let It Be. Never, ever, have we had better access to artists - to geniuses - at their creative work. And to see these 4 so smart, so difficult, so troubled - what a rarity, a unique, unmatched experience. Songs that start as nothing, a fragment, a core,  become part of the playlist of our lifetime. Of course we see the hostility and tensions play out, as the group was obviously near disintegration - George feeling marginalized, Ringo way out of his league (though each played a vital role over the course of band’s history) - and, especially, the interaction between John and Paul: at times hostile and critical, but at their best it’s almost a romance. It takes weeks to get them to work together - despite Paul’s most valiant efforts - he’s clearly the leader, the musical director, the one who pushed everyone along against all odds. Yet John is clearly the creative genius who moved the group, and Paul especially, beyond simple pop and American blues toward a new, multi-faceted style. Yet he’s a problem, a prima donna so to speak, annoying, probably high most of the time - until they rock together and bring it all home in just 2 or 3 days (after a month of screwing around). Yoko Ono is literally at John’s side throughout the month-long session, a strange vibe for everyone, and the little known pianist, Billy Preston, glowing in his good fortune (the Beatles knew him from Hamburg days), brought in at about the mid-way point when all prospects looked bleak and pulled the group together through his imaginative keyboard backups. 

Luchino Visconti’s late-life film, a (mostly faithful) adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1914 novella, Death in Venice, strange to watch today - as we follow the last few days in the life of a supposedly famous composer on a lonely stay in the Hotel des Bains on the Lido, in Venice (some of the film allegedly shot in the studio in Rome) in which he is utterly nasty to everyone he comes across in the film, most notably the hotel staff members, who fawn on him (it’s part of the work I guess). His main activity over his few days in Venice is to stalk a young (12?) boy who looks angelic and quite feminine; the composer - named Gustav (as in Mann’s novella) - comes across as a dangerous creep - and the young boy, Tadzio, is ambiguous at best - sometimes returning Gustav’s lingering stares and his engineered close encounters. The repressed homosexuality was perhaps a big deal a century ago - now it mostly seems strange and sad. And in the original, I think we do feel sorry for Gustav - whereas here we just despise him. What was Visconti thinking? He makes much less than Mann of the plague that essentially makes Venice a prison, as all transportation to the city is cut off; he also makes much less than Mann of Gustav’s pathetic attempts to look younger than he is. But Visconti does more than Mann w/ Gustav’s musical prowess Mann’s Gustav is a writer): Visconti uses Mahler symphonies for almost all of the score (good!) but also has Gustav engage in some ludicrous hot-air discussion with a (rival?) musician about art and beauty - and he includes a scene in which one of Gustav’s works is greeted with hooting derision (unclear whether this is a terrifying experience he endured of if it’s a dream from which he wakes in a sweat). It’s hard to imagine such a reaction to any piece of serious music - he must have done something right to attract such outrage, right? All told, in my view, this movie is a misguided failure, despite the gorgeous settings of long-ago luxury; my views may be pedestrian, but a likable protagonist (played by the hapless Dirk Bogarde) would help. 

Sarman Masud’s You Don’t Know Me (2021, BBC/Netflix) is a courtroom drama extraordinaire, as the drama, based on the novel by Imran Mhmood, opens with the prosecution addressing the jury and outlining what seems be an irrefutable conviction, and then the defendant (Samuel Adewunmi as “Hero”) rises to present his own closing arguments, representing himself - always discouraged. Over the course of the 4 episodes he slowly and meticulously lays out the facts as he knows them, along the way telling an exciting and moving tale, over the course of which him admits to several crimes and numerous “mistakes” as he calls them - and the question is, do you, and does the jury, believe in his story - with all the nuances of gangs and race and violence and betrayal he recounts  as well as a wholesome and devout family life, which we know of course only from his testimony, so maybe it’s a scam?— so at first you think, with all the bias in the courtroom (though the jury is mixed-race) that he doesn’t stand a chance. Couldn’t his carefully crafted narration just be a another con’s hoax? Or, do we believe him? Obviously no spoilers here, but I found the conclusion to be powerful and provocative, to say the least. Definitely worth watching this series. 

Varda by Agnes, Lesotho film, Black Bird, Buena Vista Social Club, Belfast, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, Thirteen Lives Las Year at Marienbad

 Elliot’s Watching - August 2022

All fans of the work of Agnes Varda - which should mean anyone really interested in European cinema of the past 70 years - should take the time to watch her final film, Varda by Agnes (2019). It’s a tour of (most of) her best films with live narration from Varda herself, addressing various groups of students and filmmakers. She concentrates on her works from late career, with hardly a mention of her earlier, somewhat more conventional films such as her real-time drama Cleo from 5 to 7 or her landmark feminist work One Sings, the Other doesn’t, nor does she dwell on any collaborations with her late husband, Jacques Demy. Rather, these late-career works are more like experiments in participatory, public art - one that describes her work style and her innovation (use of found objects to mark time and space) The Gleaners and I or her harrowing film about the life of an outsider (Vagabond) or the particularly imaginative film Faces, Places, in which she collaborates with an artist, JR, to visit various sites in France to shoot and display a photograph that captures the essence of the community, for example a shot of an enormous baguette sandwich that the villagers eat side by side (if I remember correctly). Her outreach to her subject is touching and inspiring, as is her focus on the marginal and the marginalized. Varda by Agnes should function as an open door to her other films rather than has a summary of her life’s work. A final note: Those lucky enough to watch the film on the Criterion Channel should check some of the commentary, notably the memories of Varda shared at the Telluride Festival, with panelists including her two adult children and her fan and friend Martin Scorsese.  

Lesotho (South Africa) is the setting for the unusual and entirely captivating film from the Lesotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, This Is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019). The film merits at least one revisit, as much of it is obscure on the literal level on a first viewing, at least my first viewing, but any obscurities or ambiguities are outweighed by the mysterious beauty of the setting and the community. The plot such as it is, in essence, centers on an octogenarian woman, Mantoa, played by Mary Twala Mhlongo, a well-known Lesotho actor (who died shortly after this film was completed) who anticipates a visit from her son working the SA gold mines, but instead receives word that he has died (we learn nothing more about his death), the latest in a long line or tragedies and losses she has suffered in her small, remote village. Over the course of the film she prepares herself and other villagers for her death - and for her burial in the small family or community cemetery - with this catch: the SA government plans to flood the entire village (and relocate the villagers) as part of a massive dam project; of course Mantoa organizes resistance to the project, with devastating results. What keeps the film alive is the sense of place and setting, the unusual cinematography, and terrific music both from the villagers and from highly dissonant score from Y Miyashita - it’s pretty much unlike any other film you’re likely to see. 

The American miniseries developed by David E. Kelley and Melissa James Gibson - which strangely is set in London and seems entirely British, who knew? - Anatomy of a Scandal (2022; based on a Sarah Vaughan novel) is worth seeing just to watch the courtroom drama, as the completely despicable MP James Whitehouse (our RI Senator oughta sue!), played by Rupert Friend, endures days in the dock after he’s accused of raping a much younger aide. It’s a he said/she said, which, unfortunately for James requires that he fess up to a 5-month consensual affair, and his lovely wife, played by Sienna Miller, endures the whole ordeal - and gives hubby some much-deserved grief after each court session. The series is engrossing, up to a point - as we watch the smarmy, self-satisfied James get skewered, but unfortunately the writers were stuck with a crappy plot that runs out of gas by about the half-way point and, if you keep watching (which we did) you’ll see one of the most ridiculous and preposterous resolutions (no spoilers) I’ve ever seen in an otherwise reasonably good crime/courtroom drama. Caveat emptor. 

Dennis Lehane’s Black Bird miniseries (2022, Apple) is one of the most successful dramatizations “based on a true story”- terrific and harrowing look at the life of a 20-something straight-arrow seeming guy (Taron Egerton as James Keene), nabbed as an Rx dealer and sentenced to 6 years - but the FBI makes him an offer: They will have his sentence commuted if he’ll go undercover into the prison for the “criminally insane” to get info and and wrench a information from a scary guy (Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall) who’s in jail for the murder of a young woman - and he’s suspected of killing about 20 other young women, whose bodies had never been found, leaving their families in grief. The series gives a brutal and uncompromising account of life in that Midwest prison, including various gangs inside the prison and a corrupt guard and the fear that at any moment Keene will be identified as an FBI plan (and the son of a retired police officer (Ray Liotta, in his final film). The series is tense all the way through - right to the final credits. 

Wim Wenders’s music-documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999) is a totally enjoyable start to finish look at Cuban music - a project that began when the great American guitarist Ry Cooder, who’s been for many years a proponent of world music, travels to Cuba to try to connect with the great stars of traditional Cuban dance music, much of which had been performed by members of the eponymous club. Cooder soon learns that the club itself has long since passed away, but he and his team assiduously track down many of the great Cuban performers - men and women who at that time, inter 70s or older, had largely given up performing. Cooder et al brought these performers into an impromptu studio, recorded their work, and released a hugely successful compilation disk in the late ‘90s. Wenders joined the project and did on-camera interviews w/most of the singers - plus many fascinating location shots in Havana: worth seeing for the old American cars and the weathered grand boulevards and back by-ways - as well as the musicians themselves. The project culminated in a great concert in Amsterdam and then a find, triumphant performance before an enthusiastic crowd at Carnegie Hall. Totally fun for the great music and the strong, quirky personalities of the many artists. 

Stanley Donen’s spy-caper film Arabesque (1966, based on a novel by Gordon Cotlar) ) broke no new ground - familiar femme fatale plot with lots of twists - low-income Uni prof Gregory Peck, American England is called upon for his expertise in ancient languages to translate a small piece of parchment that for some reason has become of great interest to the PM of an Arab nation and a weird crime syndicate - don’t even try to follow the plot because who cares anyway?, it’s all about the exciting and imaginative chases (through Regents Park zoo, and aquarium, chases on horseback, pursued by a chopper, at the Ascot races, buildings blown up and demolished, Peck drugged and stumbling at night through English traffic, and more! - plus Sophia Loren in a sexy/comic/secret-agent role. Lot’s of fun - filmgoers in the 60s got the money’s worth even if, in the end, it amounts to not much but a Hitcirhcock homage: right down to the scene in which Peck and Loren are pursed by a harvester in a field of grain (North by Northwest anyone?) and, in Hitchcock fashion, the bit of cypher turns out to be a bit of nothing - just the “maguffin”that sets this madcap romp romping. Lots of fun; zero depth. 

Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast (2021) is a portrait of the then-troubled city in the 1960s (with some framing shots of a Belfast as a peaceable, bustling city today) as experienced by a young boy - obviously a depiction of Branagh in his childhood - in a Protestant family living in the midst of the struggles; the film opens w/ a frightening street riot aimed at driving newly arrived Catholic families from the neighborhood. Some of the film is idyllic, as the young protagonist enjoys a life of close family ties - esp to the older generation - w/ lots of Irish humor, and much of the adolescent struggle (a crush on a classmate, whom we later learn is from a Catholic family) plus pressures on the family itself, of which the young boy is beginning to get a glimpse and a dawning appreciation, brought on by the father’s gambling habits and need for a more stable, unthreatened life - notably a move to London, which of course upsets the young boy deeply. There’s a lot of humor, much pathos, lots of street fighting and thuggish bullying of those - including the boy’s father - who refuse to take up arms - plus a good musical track with some fine selections from Van Morrison. Though the film ends with some sanctimonious moments, it’s overall a fine work that depicts a difficult childhood predictive of a culturally rich career in the arts - cf 400 Blows or Cinema Paradiso; will there be a sequel? 

But not for me … two completely different series about workplace culture: Industry, about a cohort of new temporary hires at a highly aggressive financial-services company, all vying to be retained come RIF (reduction in force) day, but (most of) the cohort are dislikable or amoral or both and there’s way too much totally gratuitous sex, drinking, smoking - without the counterweight of strong characters, interesting relationships, crises and resolutions. Ditto the much-praised surreal and enigmatic workplace of Severance, which for me was just far too creepy and arbitrary and I probably didn’t give it enough of a chance (2 episodes) but why would I want to visit by evening the fears of my nights? 

Catching up on recent watching of two productions, first the Skye Borgman’s 2022 3-part series, I Just Killed My Dad, is a good program (Netflix) for those like me who are true-crime buffs, and this has a twist in that it opens with the confession that you can see in the title - a young man calling the police to report on his own actions - and it seems the young man gets terrible treatment as ;aw enforcement assume thesis a murder or at least manslaughter face that they have to pin on the kid - but over the course of the drama we see how horrendously he was treated by his father and the misery of his life of near torture and of course we recognize before the cops and the DA’s team do that this kid is guilty of nothing. No spoilers. Second, I re-watched the terrific Romanian 2007 film 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days from Cristian Mungiu - and it’s a film everyone in an abortion-banning state should be forced to watch’ over the 2 hours or so, through a series of mostly long stills, and sometimes long tracking shots in which Mungiu conveys the struggle over few days of two college roommates in Romania, w/ its ridiculously strict anti-abortion laws (couldn’t happen here, could it?), and compromise, the suffering, the expense, the humiliation, the fear these 2 women brave together because of their friendship and commitment to women’s rights. The writing is wise and insightful, and the star s Anamaria Marinca as the fearless loyal friend. Topical, I’m sad to say, and enduring drama. 

Prolific, polished professional Ron Howard, who’s done about a movie a year, almost all of them big-budget and highly successful, since 1982, despite some wavering reviews comes through once more with the dramatic and technically challenging Thirteen Lives (2022), based (closely) on the rescue of 12 Thai kids and their soccer coach from a flooded dave in mountainous Thailand. Though most viewers will be familiar with the rescue, which received much international daily coverage, it still takes your breath to watch the rescue team in action against all odds and expectations. It had to be a huge technical challenge to do this film - many complex crowd scenes, re-creation of the terrifying mountain cave, re-enactment of the treacherous rescue process - you’ve with them all the way what seems an impossible task. If there’s a flaw to the movie it would be that no central character emerges - though that would be the “Hollywood” way the group effort with no individual hero is in keeping w/ the facts so, so be it. Also unfortunate - the Thai Seal rescue team and other local experts seem shunted aside and dependent on the expertise of a few British amateurs - a patronizing structure and not in keeping with current screen mores - but that’s the way it played out, and I think Howard and his team would have been lambasted had they restructured to story include a Thai hero, so more credit to them for staying with the facts of the docudrama. 

Yes, it’s pretentious; yes, it’s enigmatic; yes, it’s preposterous; yes, it’s French - but Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961), screenplay by the equally pretentious/French Alain Robbe-Grillet - and yet, it’s still worth watching for pure weirdness. YOLO. The film - in which to my knowledge none of the characters have names - takes place in what looks to be one of the great chateaus now a grand hotel at the eponymous resort/recovery clinic; the characters wander through the innumerable long hallways and ballrooms, sometimes engaging in small gambling, at one point seeming to watch a play about the movie in which they’re participating, who knows? The story line such as it is involves a man who seems a woman whom he recognizes reminds her of their affair (her hawkish husband plays some kind of gambling or card trick on many of the guests) that began a year ago at this very hotel - and the woman insists that no, it never happened, she has no such recollection. So who’s right in this? What kind of sense does it all make? To me, not much - still fun to wander through these over-the-top decor - 2nd empire style? - and to walk in the garden that is done in extreme French style with all the greenery cut into rigid geometric patterns that look nothing like nature, guided throughout by dissonant organ music (I think that for a few moments some stringed instruments join in?). Obviously a lot of commentary exists on this sometimes incomprehensible film and maybe some of it will clarify Resnais’s intention, aside from bafflement, but many films that were startling and evocative in their time today look like curiosities - Godard and Truffault drove a stake into the heart this type of moody, languorous film with their new-wave cinema built upon by psychology, memoir, character, engagement, history, style, and commitment.