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.
