A great compainion piece to 12 Years a Slave: Sansho the Bailiff

For those who can't imagine watch a b/w narrow-screen Japanese period piece from 1954, surprise yourself and check out Mizoguchi's unfortunately titled Sansho the Bailiff - unfortunately because the title conveys nothing of the movie's drama, themes, or emotions, which are abundant. What the hell's a bailiff, and Sansho's not even the main character, anyway. Story set in feudal Japan, a powerful leader refuses to pay tribute to the warlike emperor because his people are starving and they can't afford to give up resources - he's sent into exile. Sometime later, his wife sets off to re-join him, two young children in tow. The children are kidnapped and held for 10 years in slavery, in service to Sansho. Son escapes, through various ploys he rises to power in Japan, frees all the slaves in his province, then gives up his title, and finds his mother, near-blind, near-mad, aged and ruined, on an isolated island. That outline tells you that this is an epic, dramatic tale - but conveys nothing of the beautiful mood and sensibility - nor of the many powerful and beautiful sequences: the abduction of the children, as their mother gets hauled away by boat almost disappearing into the white sea; the celebration of the slaves upon their liberation, the final sequences of mother and son embracing on a seaweed-wracked beach. This film may remind many of the excellent Twelve Years a Slave; they make a good companion set - both about class, oppression, cruelty, the difficulty of opposing the barbarity of slavery. 12 Years is the more personal story - in Sansho the characters are less deeply developed, they're a little remote and we're not meant to truly identify with them. The actions are at times improbably and melodramatic - but this movie, as noted in its opening frames, is based on a folktale or legend and not meant to be taken quite literally. Yet it's one of those rare films that hold you start to finish, at 2 hours plus it didn't feel a moment too long.

Questions about the conclusion of The Killing

Obviously many spoilers here re the conclusion of the final (4th) season of The Killing: I don't think many fans of this series will be satisfied w/ the 4th season the core murder investigation is, as in the 3rd season, rather gory and preposterous, but I will say that the final 3 episodes really try to get at some aspects of the relationship between Linden and Holder, which is of course what's drawn us to this series in the first place. As they fight and turn on each other - under pressure of the investigation into Linden's execution of Lt. Skinner, the mass murderer, as the end of Season 3, we see some of the better writing and acting in the series; unfortunately, that's set against some of the crappiest writing and acting, which we see in their investigation of the Stansbury family murders and the hazing rituals as the military boarding school, a plot that we don't believe for a second and that makes little sense on examination. At its best, in the first 2 seasons that is, the series played of the Holder-Linden dialectic against an intriguing and far-reaching and for the most part realistic murder that stirred the Seattle community. The murder investigations went off the rails in the last 2 seasons, though, to the detriment of the show. Wondering what others think about the conclusion of the final season: Holder and Linden end in deep antagonism, and then we "flash forward" about 3 years and see that both have left the police force (I agree, how could they stay in after what they know and what's known about them?), Holder has broken off with what's her name his glass-of-water girlfriend but is a good single dad (yes, he loves kids and, yes, she was a total mismatch), and Linden has spent 3 years on the road - really? living how? doing what? That's not explained. She stops in Seattle to visit him, they briefly agree that their time driving around the city in her crappy car was the best time of all (echoes of Sentimental Education here? at least for me there were) and then she head off again on her solo journey - and honestly I thought it should have ended there but, no, the pressure of convention is just too great, and she comes back to him, they look at each other longingly, and embrace. Very sweet if it were an embrace as friends, but we're clearly meant to see that at long last each recognizes the rightness of their relationship - but how can we not know it will last about 10 days? that it will be all wrong? that it feels almost incestuous? No, she should be heading north to Alaska or something, not making yet another mistake and ruining what was good.

The Killing Season 4: What a falling otf

I am dutifully watching the final season, six episodes, of The Killing, but lamentably have to note what a falling off is there: the first two seasons were terrific, as Linden and Holder unravelled the complex case, Who killed Rosie Larsen? The 3rd season was not nearly as good as it went for a grotesque, sensational, and highly improbable case, as opposed to the original case which was, on the surface, more or a routine homicide that proved intriguingly complex and ambiguous as more facts emerged in each episode. The great thing about the first season was combined minimal and maximal approach: a lot of the focus was on the family of the victim, who at times were suspects themselves, and also on the politics of the city, as a mayoral candidate got caught up in the sweep of the investigation. And of course the developing relationship between Linden and Holder, made especially interesting in these two seasons as we never quite knew whether we could trust Holder. By the 3rd season, he was more rock solid and the two of them were like a thousand other buddy cops trying to solve a case. Few were satisfied with the wrapup of season 3, and that's where season 4 picks up, but the season never gets off the ground. L & H begin investigating another pretty gruesome case - the killing of an entire family save for the son who's at a military academy and immediately becomes a suspect. We know by now that the formula is to shuffle through a sequence of likely suspects, each one cleared in turn, until finally settling on someone we'd least suspect (or so they think - I figured out season 3 pretty quickly). The main element of the story (spoiler for those who haven't seen season 3) is L & H trying to conceal the fact that she executed Lt. Skinner at the end of season 4. There are so many loose ends to this plot element that it's not even worth analyzing or thinking about; I would say however, that episode 3 has a few fine moments centered on Holder, who, surprisingly, is beginning to crack under the pressure of concealing their crime - returning to drink and drugs, pretty much breaking up his relationship with a nice young woman (they seem a terrible mismatch, however), heading for the deep end. It's the personal stuff, not the baroque plotting, that can maybe save this final season of the series.

Fascinating story from start to finish: Finding Vivian Maier

As a work of cinema it breaks no new ground - and I really wish contemporary documentaries would give up on the idea of a pulsating, beat-driven musical score - but John Maloof's Finding Vivian Maier tells an incredibly fascinating story and is riveting from start to finish - constantly amazing us and provoking us with complex and unanswerable questions about a strange genius with a dark and mysterious personality. As all probably know, Maloof bought a cache of undeveloped negatives at a Chicago auction house - he was looking for some pictures of old-time Chicago for a history project he was working on - and found the photos he bought to be of extraordinary quality. He engaged in the research of a historical detective - he must have training in the field, as well as incredible drive, tenacity, and curiosity - and found that the photographer, Vivian Maier, was a complete amateur with no training - she worked for many years as a nanny in suburban Chicago. The film consists of interviews with the for whom she worked, the now-adult children in her charge, as well as some photographers and film historians. Maier shot thousands of frames - as well as some super 8 film - over the course of her life and never made any serious effort to show her work to anyone. Anyone looking at these knows right away that these are simply great photographs - and now they've been exhibited quite widely and she's gained or is gaining posthumous recognition as one of the great street photographers of the 20th century. It's incredible and shameful that nobody recognized this in her lifetime, but she just didn't have the connections - right school, right agent, right gallery, right friends - to get her work seen. She also was hindered by her very odd personality (actually, her oddity is probably what allowed her to approach people, often people in pain and suffering, and take beautiful photos) - she was clearly a victim of abuse, was distrustful and even hateful of men, was often cruel to the children in her care, later in life because a very serious hoarder - apparently a few people she worked for and with helped her out in the last years of her life (she died in 2009) but Maloof leaves this a little vague. She died in poverty, though, and her photos are now worth a lot of $ - Maloof quite frankly says he wishes he could share his bounty with her in some way. I think he has! One of the astonishing moments - maybe not surprising, when you think about it - is when he shows that he offered her collection to MOMA only to receive a form letter saying sorry not interested. Connections matter, I guess - be they wish now that they'd actually looked at what Maloof was offering. BTW I would not consider Maier an "outsider" artist; she was an outsider person, but her work is not outside of any tradition of unusual in itself - it is direct (as Maloof notes) in line with the great street photographers who were her contemporaries or predecessors - Arbus, Cartier-Bresson, et al.

Palestinian-Israeli conflict - a powerful film about this crisis

Not sure of the provenance of the recent film Omar - certainly suspect it's from a Palestinian cast and crew, though very often the low-budget, intelligent "foreign" films such as this one are co-produced - but in any case it's a very thoughtful and well-constructed dramatic look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the POV of a single young Palestinian man committed to his revolutionary ideals but torn as he begins to suspect some of his co-activists of complicity and double-dealing. The eponymous Omar takes part in an ambush attach on some Israeli soldiers; the youngest of the trio in the ambush, as a kind of initiation, takes the first sniper shot and kills an Israeli soldier. Subsequently, Omar gets arrested and tortured in prison but he refuses to give information, bravely. A fellow prisoner briefly befriends him and gives him warnings about confessing to a crime; Omar says he will never confess to anything, which proves to be his undoing - the seeming friend is an Israeli intelligence agent, who works to win over Omar to becoming a spy for the Israelis; Omar seems to agree, but then becomes a double-agent - leading to many further complications. Despite the many nuances - a great deal of tension, as we stay strictly w/ Omar's POV and have no idea who among his co-conspirators may have turned, if anyone - the movies is a very clear narrative line and easy to follow - and even has an emotional subtext, as Omar is in love and hope to marry, but the revolution - including suspicions among his people that he may be an Israeli spy - all inform against him. Like most political movies, I guess, this one is very one-sided: the Israelis are universally horrible and the Palestinians are the noble and oppressed minority: to its credit, the film shows them assassinating an Israeli soldier in a random attack, but there is no emotional component to that death - we know nothing about the man who was shot to death or how his death may have affected family, friends, others. Still, it's a strong movie on its own terms and gives yet another window into the tragic dynamics of this increasingly insoluble crisis.

Looking back at The Last Picture Show

Incredibly enough I had never see Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film The Last Picture Show until now - and maybe that's to my advantage; it was enlightening to look at the film some 45 years after its making and to see it as a triple-retro piece: it was made in 1971 but set in 1951 and using film techniques (b/w cinema, somewhat stagey dialog, ambitious plotting) perhaps more typical of the 40s or even the 30s. Amazingly, the film holds up very well and we can still see its influence today on many other films that have examined the frustrations, challenges, and social codes of small-town life and the rage of young people who feel both loyal to and stultified by their surroundings: think about the recent, excellent Nebraska, which also used b/w cinematography, though in wide-screen format and with high-def photographic precision, rather than the rather grainy cinematography that Bogdanovich sought. As noted, the film is rich in plot and has several strong lead characters - and supporting characters, notably Chloris Leachman as a sorrowful middle-aged woman ignored by her husband (there are strong hints that he, the high-school coach, is a homosexual) who turns to a young man in town for fulfillment and affection, with the obvious unhappy consequences. There's a lot of sorrow, and humor as well - all the men in town razzing the football players about their horrible performance on the field (this is a an anti-Friday Night Lights, in a sense - the town is much more isolated and lonely and the mood far, far darker). The femme fatale, played well by Cybil Sheppard in the debut, is a force who destroys everything she touches in town; the lead character, Timothy Bottoms, is sweet, weak, and trapped: what will he become? Well, we know the answer, sort of, because Larry McMurtry, who wrote the source novel, did at least one sequel - in fact, it was awful and I would ignore it. He was great on this film, and I think the film helped make his career as a writer - which culminated w/ his masterpiece, Lonesome Dove. It's a shame that the film didn't lead to better things for Bogdanovich - who was really smart and brave to pick this topic and to make such a powerful and heartfelt film from this bleak though emotionally rich material. My impression, from the documentary on the DVD, is that PB was extremely difficult to work w/, which may in part explain the relative dullness of the rest of his movie career (though he's done a lot of TV work and played a great in peripheral role in The Sopranos).

Hyper-realism in Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami's 2012 film Like Someone in Love is a further step in his unusual, international career - compare with his early Taste of Cherry set in native Iran and more recent Certified Copy set in France - and in all three cases serious, literary plot, focus on two central characters, long scenes played out in real time - like Rohmer but a step further - little character background, unexplained mysteries about the central relationships, and abrupt endings that don't quite resolve all of the conflicts. I have to say I admired Like Someone more than I actually liked it; K. becomes I think one of the few Western directors to set a movie in Japan, in Japanese, with an all-Japanese cast. This story focuses on a young woman, college student, moonlight as a high-priced call girl (why a woman with her youth, beauty, and charm would do so is completely unexplained and unexamined - she doesn't appear to have a drug problem or any other issue that would drive her to such behavior). In first scene her pimp gives her an assignment with a man whom he says he really respects; she tries to get out of the deal, but relents - blowing off a visit from her grandmother who came to Tokyo unannounced to see her - we hear many poignant voice messages from this elderly woman, and the girl, Akiko, takes a cab to the train station where she sees her grandmother waiting and she keeps going - obviously shamed. The man who's hired her turns out to be an elderly professor; their relationship, at least that night, is chaste - he takes her to her college where she is to finish an exam and there he's confronted by her "finance" who believes him to be her grandfather, and he asks for advice and for his blessing, and of course complications ensue. On the one hand, I do admire K's films and others that develop their story lines slowly, lovingly, and carefully - and he's among the best at use of real time: when we talk with someone for say 10 minutes it seems like nothing but when characters in a movie engage in one scene of dialog for 10 minutes it seems eternal - and K uses this dichotomy very well for effect, the scenes seem realistic but also, within the faster paced grammar of cinema, they feel strange and artificial, hyper-realistic. Sometimes, as a result, my patience waned and I just wanted the story to move along - and as it builds toward its conclusion it ends with a burst of energy and violence, which K keeps at the periphery of his film - though others would have used this as their central conflict, or even their opening scene. He has a style all his own, or mostly his own - one that's not for all viewers but a accomplishment in and of itself.