The District #2 - Eastern Promises (2007)

Read it HERE.

The District #1 - Mean Streets (1973)

I am aware that I have neglected this blog. However, it was not without cause. I have begun a new gig doing some film-writing for The District Weekly, an up and coming Long Beach publication. The first of these (small) pieces, is HERE.

Damnation (1988)

Damnation is Bela Tarr's first film in what would later become his primary aesthetic, the sort of glacial pacing and extended takes that comprise his masterpieces Satantango (1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). Unlike either of those films, however, Damnation is essentially a noir (and purpotedly, one of Susan Sontag's favorite films, for what that's worth). Tarr boils the genre down to its fundamentals, and what is left is a film thick with existential angst, breathtakingly expressive black and white cinematography, and a pervading doom.

The film opens with a man being rejected a final time by his married lover, who has decided not to leave her family for him. The man wanders through the bleakest of Hungarian towns in a near constant downpour. Eventually, he is approached by a friend who offers him some sort of smuggling job, which he in turn offers to his lover's husband (in order to get him out of town). The film really has only enough narrative to occupy your mind, so it can occupy your very soul with its formalist experiments (if you can't tell, I am a fan). The dialog wanders quickly from matters at hand to resonant deliberations on basic human existence. While a wise old women recites a lengthy biblical passage on spiritual death and hunger, the camera wanders through the foggy streets to find ragged, stray dogs lapping from puddles. A tramway of some sort passes high overhead, increasing the God-forsaken quality of the town. Damnation seems to be essentially a rumination on a damned soul, damned from first frame to the last by his own self-imposed emotional isolation (pride, essentially). While cinema has a dynamic ability to express change, Tarr here seems fascinated by it's cyclical power to create (here) a doomed stasis.

The genre itself even rejects Tarr's main character: he proves an unforgivable stool pigeon, turning everyone in to the police after being betrayed. He wanders off into a junkyard, fighting with stray dogs. Tarr captures this impending doom in several virtuoso sequences, including an endless take of a conga line in a bar, plodding in joyless circles. The circular movements of the camera, the themes, the characters, all create a hypnotic, near spiritual experience, where the thematic discord and the harmony of Tarr's artistry are given equal voice.

The River (1951)

The River, an adaptation of Rumer Godden's celebrated novel, is Renoir's first color film and remains one his most loved. Like many a giant of European cinema, late in his career Renoir found himself in Hollywood, void of funding and out of vogue. Unable to generate interest for the film among any of the studios, Renoir eventually found a private financier, an owner of a chain of flower shops who had served in India during the war, and had long hoped to make a film of the novel.

Shot entirely in India in glorious 3-strip technicolor by his nephew Claude Renoir, The River proves a formidable visual rival of The Red Shoes (1948) or Black Narcissus (1947) (also a Godden adaptation). The film primarily concerns the children of the owner of a jute-mill: the adventurous young Bogey, the twins Muffie and Mouse, the "ugly duckling" Harriet, and her beautiful and ferociously misanthropic older friend Valerie. Both of the latter develop a crush on a visiting stranger, Capt. John, a confused young man who has lost a leg in the war. He, in turn, finds himself entranced with a beautiful young Indian girl, who happens to wrestle with her own half-British heritage.

Though there are some faltering performances (partly due to the use of several non-actors), the pain of growing up is expressed with great sensitivity, and the film is filled with unique female energy. As Harriet watches "her first kiss" go to another, Renoir creates one of the finest sequences of his career, following three young women as they run and hide in a grove of palms, each composition as carefully composed and lit as one of his father's paintings. Though the film is classically sentimental, such powerful filmmaking elevates the form to its peak, and illustrates how moving and honest it can be.

Renoir is a master of the sort of high-humanist filmmaking that has enthroned him, The Rules of the Game (1939), The Grand Illusion (1937), etc. The River finds him reaching further, grounding the wistful and sentimental coming-of-age story in more of a spiritual understanding of the world. As is suggested by the pervasive metaphor, the film begins and ends with a sense of ceaseless, gentle flow of life. Excellent observational footage of daily life on the river, fishing and mending of nets, evening prayers and religious ceremonies, all heighten the lyrical, spiritual tone of the film, especially as they are set to hypnotic ragas.

There is much to celebrate The River for, but even if there wasn't, we must laud this film for launching the film career of Indian master Satyajit Ray. Ray, who had been discouraged by several early career setbacks, met and befriended Renoir during his year in India and was newly inspired to make Pather Pachali (1955), which began his Apu trilogy.

The Ninth Configuration (1980)

The Ninth Configuration is the directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the novelist and screenwriter of The Exorcist, among others. Previously titled Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane, the film concerns a gothic castle full of deranged soldiers, a distraught astronaut, the adaptation of the works of William Shakespeare for dogs, and Stacy Keach as Col. Kane who may or may not be a psychiatrist sent to take control of the institution.

Most of Blatty's work deals directly with his Catholicism, frequently exploring issues of faith, the existence of God, etc. The Ninth Configuration attempts, in an albeit inventive way, to illustrate how the Gospel might be lived out among a suffering population, and how its effect might be curative. The film itself is a bit curious. The synopsis alone had me almost salivating, but it isn't quite the oddity I expected. Blatty's direction is, despite some brilliant flourishes, a tad bland. The visual aesthetic is almost nonexistent except in some wonderfully artificial fantasy sequences, and in a climactic biker-bar brawl. His use of the actors is a bit broad, as is most of the comedy, despite some real absurdist zingers.

Most of the thematic material is worked out between Stacy Keach's Col. Kane and Scott Wilson's unhinged astronaut, Capt. Cutshaw. The best executed scene in the movie comes after Cutshaw's escape to a biker bar. There, a gloriously maned Steve Sandor, resplendent in mirrored sunglasses and (after their removal) raccoon-like eye makeup, abuses Cutshaw mercilessly. In a sort of strange Passion play, Kane goes to every length of sacrifice and humiliation to save Cutshaw from this frightening brood. In the end, however, Kane's "other personality" shows up with brutal force. Blatty won't leave it at that, and in an almost Fire Walk With Me-like (or in that case, Exorcist-like) image of self-sacrifice, peace is restored. All this is folded in a bit awkwardly, and without some of the cinematic snap or mood the material screams for. Still, overall an enjoyable film quite worth anyone's time: sign me up for Blatty's second effort The Exorcist III: The Legion (1990).

Red Desert (1964)

Antonioni's first color feature, a clandestine fourth entry into his celebrated trilogy (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse), is a fascinating transitional film. It holds a near perfect balance between the sort of psycho/sociological explorations of his previous films, and the abstraction and ruminations on photographic truth that would follow in Blowup (1966). The film stars Monica Vitti as a Giuliana, woman who has never quite recovered from a traumatic car accident. Her husband (a wealthy factory owner/engineer) is increasingly frustrated with her erratic behavior, but Antonioni makes his industrial existence so oppresive, so airless that the audience quickly find themselves sympathetic only with Giuliana. From there emerge the themes you would expect from Antonioni: the isolation of modern life, existential crisis, spiritual death/life, etc.

The thing that makes Red Desert stand out from his previous films is how Antonioni seems to intermittently lose interest in these themes, dividing his frame with colored lines, shooting the backs of heads in deep focus, shooting industrial machinery through suffocating fog, etc. His viusal methods, (through Carlo DiPalmi's exquisite cinematography) certainly contribute to Giuliana's increasing alienation from her environment, her inability to inhabit the spaces society has built around her. However, Antonioni is after bigger game with his lens, and frequently Red Desert becomes almost an essay film, exploring the ability of the camera to direct, distort, and fragment space. The visual images are simply stunning throughout, frequently shot with long lenses to flatten the space, and with carefully chosen color. The great formal masters of 60's cinema took to color photography very slowly, seeing it as a vast new element of content to be mastered. The colors in Red Desert, as well as the compositions, are chosen with painstaking care, which both helps and hinders the film. In some sense, the emotions contained in the images are transferred powerfully to the viewer. On the other hand, the half of the film that attempts psychological narrative is hindered slightly, as the characters sit uneasily in these meticulous compositions. Red Desert is a unique opportunity to see clearly the tensions that would characterize Antonioni's career, and to see how this tension can create vibrant film-art. Because it inhabits its own skin so uneasily, it doesn't approach the perfection of those that sit on either side (L'Avventura and Blowup), but it certainly is a powerful piece of filmmaking.

The Son (2002)

Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Son won the Palm d'Or at Cannes in 2002, cementing their reputation as the go-to siblings for consistently excellent realist dramas. All based in nondescript industrial Belgian towns (where the brothers are from), the Dardenne's construct their films with a formal rigor that recalls the (overly self-conscious and short-lived) Dogme movement, and perhaps more favorably, Robert Bresson. Like all of their films, The Son is shot with only available light, handheld camera, and no score.

The less that is known about the plot the better, in order to preserve the rather ingenious narrative structure of the film. It revolves around Olivier, a carpentry teacher at a center for boys who have been released from juvenile detention. His obsession with one boy in particular is completely ambiguous, and rather discomforting. The Dardenne Bros. heighten this uncertainty by shooting relentlessly over his shoulder, rarely revealing his face. The result is fairly compelling, and when all is revealed everything unfolds beautifully (or maybe snaps shut like a trap), and a tad biblically. Here's a hint, the first time he is alone with the boy is in a cave-like locker room; the boy is asleep. The second time, the boy is relieving himself. Shades of 1 Samuel?

The film is really a quite profound example of grace as the only means for peace or reconciliation, in this case grace given from one human to another. In some sense, there is unity found in craft, and a craft that isn't without metaphor, as Olivier quietly teaches each boy the trick to carrying a heavy wooden beam. And boy-howdy do the Dardenne's love them some closing shots, which they frequently mention are directly Bressonian (compare L'Enfant (2006) and Pickpocket). This one does not disappoint.