Saturday, April 20, 2024
263. Desperately Seeking Susan
Saturday, April 13, 2024
262. Wanda
Song - I Would Stay (Krezip)
Movie: Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
When done right, there are few things in American cinema better than a romanticised outlaws-on-the-run movie. However, folks who can express themselves colorfully, who can present themselves as cool and attractively distinct individuals, and who are crafty enough to be able to conjure a vision of a better life, and to subvert authority in ingeniously nifty ways, aren't the kind of folks that need to become outlaws on the run in the first place. That's more likely to be the fate of people like Wanda (Barbara Loden), who lasts only two days at the sewing factory. She is too slow, according to her boss. We haven't seen her at the job, but the film never even tries to give the impression that he could have been wrong. Wanda is slow, both mentally and physically, and it's no surprise that when she ends up, almost by accident, in cahoots with a petty criminal she goes along for the ride. She lacks the (financial and intellectual) capacity/imagination to make active choices about her life.
I had been under the impression that this is a film about a woman who, tired of being a submissive housewife, abandons her family for an adventurous life on the road where she can assert her independence. Barbara Loden was married to Elia Kazan, who was by some accounts, patronizing, lealous and dismissive of her ambitions. Despite that. Loden became one of the few women to direct, write and star in an American movie; having read that the film had some autobiographic elements, I expected it to be a reflection of her attitude and intelligence. Moreover, the film is considered a landmark of American feminist cinema, and contemporary American feminist cinema, with some exeptions, doesn't have much room for portrayals of women who are not primarily strong and independent.
Barbara Loden is quite merciless in depicting how men abuse Wanda. Almost every man we meet uses her for sexual and/or material gain and the film is quite clear-eyed about the societal structures that make such exploitation possible. However, Loden is equally merciless in depicting the intrinsic negative qualities of Wanda, leaving little doubt that independently from whichever patriarchal structures exist, Wanda would be incapable of building a better life for herself. Those two ideas rarley live side by side in (American) movies these days - movies that present themselves as feminist are mostly about celebrating the great succeses of specific women who have overcome the hurdles on their way, but rarely question/depict what happens if you are simply incapable of doing that. Too many people refuse to acknowledge that individuals can fail for their own personal reasons regardless of whether existing societal structures are advantaging or disadvantaging them.
It's an understatement to say that Loden doesn't depict its society as advantageous. Most of the film takes place in crumbling rural areas, crummy hotelrooms with barely anything beyond a bed, and on lonely highways. Everything looks so drab, grey and plainly unispiring that it almost feels too pessimistic to call it naturalistic. But the faces on display indicate that what we are seeing is indeed as depressing as it seems. Almost everyone in the film looks as broken down, defeated and disheveled as possible. Still, even within this context Loden manages to find moments of humanity, levity and dark self-deprecating humor - if the film was paced a bit faster it could have been a crime comedy. It's ultimately about two people who fumble crimes because they don't realise they are way in over their heads. I quite liked it and it does indeed feel as an indictment of American cinema that this is the only thing Loden got to direct.
Saturday, April 6, 2024
261. My Fair Lady
Sunday, March 31, 2024
260. Basic Instinct
Song - She's Always A Woman (Billy Joel)
Movie: Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992)
In 1993 George Sluizer directed The Vanishing, a remake of his own 1988 Dutch movie Spoorloos. Such projects tend to be derivative anyway (I haven't seen The Vanishing, but its awful reviews make a lot of sense), but at its best, Basic Instinct already feels like the greatest possible Hollywood remake of Spoorloos. The two don't share the same plot, but are about the same obsession. Both films are about men who are trying to understand the exact nature of a mysterious death/disappearance, where the main question is much less who did it, but how they did it. As a result both men are willing to knowingly put themselves in the exact same life-threatening position as the victim was in before the fatal blow. Now, in Spoorloos that leads Gene Bervoets to one of the most horrifiyngly nightmarish situations imaginable, while in Basic Instinct it leads Michael Douglas to "the fuck of the century." I don't know how conscious Paul Verhoeven was of the connections between the two films, but Spoorloos is based on a famous Dutch book written by Tim Krabbe, the brother of Jeroen Krabbe (who's had multiple major roles in Verhoeven's Dutch films, and is probably the most recognisable Dutch actor outside of Rutger Hauer).
It's not much of a spoiler to reveal that Basic Instinct ends with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in bed, with the camera panning to show an ice pick underneath it. The film opens with a blonde woman killing her sexual partner in bed with an ice pick, and although her quick movements and concealing hair make it hard to identify her, once we get a few good looks of Sharon Stone, it becomes fairly evident that she is the killer. As a result Basic Instinct is least succesfull when it pretends to be a investigative thriller. It produces a lot of repetitive scenes that logically always lead to the same conclusion, while we are asked to believe that they potentially don't. Equally frustrating is Verhoeven's need to always be signifying. A cigar is not just a cigar and a blonde woman is not just a blonde woman, but also a reference to film history (especially to Hitchcock), and more importantly a symbol of how American society is supposedly much darker and perverse than we notice on the surface. This would be more effective if Verhoeven was capable of integrating his symbolism much more organically within his story, but many of his choices keep stopping the film in his tracks. That's much less a problem here though than in Turkish Delight, Elle and espcially Starship Troopers (it's amazing that people still misinterpret that movie, but that doesn't make it good. I think it is the most boringly obvious satire I've seen).
Still, most of his films are good, smart and entertaining, and Basic Instinct is much more interesting and provocative than even its reputation suggests. Yeah, there is not a moment when Sharon Stone is on screen, when she isn't doing something sexily, and her chemistry with Michael Douglas is great. It's a film that fully earns the right to call itself an 'erotic' thriller, but Verhoeven connects the eroticism directly to danger and death. Douglas' atrraction to Stone is not in spite of her murderous criminality, but heightened by it. The most sexy and erotic scenes in the film are also the ones which are the most violent, or have the most potential for violence (The 'fuck of the century' described my Douglas is shot and cut to explicitly resemble the opening scene) All of this is highlighted in the interrogation scene, where, even before Stone's famous crossover, the cops in the room are fully helpless, They are not just attracted to her beauty, but to the way she combines that with her viciousness and her complete disregard for laws and rules. That gives more than just a sexual connotation to Michael Douglas' obsession and also puts the ice pick at the end of the film in a different context. What if we are not supposed to see that as a clue to solving the mystery of the murder, but as a clue to why Douglas despite his better judgement still chooses to be with Stone?
Saturday, February 10, 2024
259. Edge of the City
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
258. Beau Travail
Song - Denis (Blondie)
Movie: Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
In my write up of Leos Carax' Mauvais Sang, a long time ago now, I compared Denis Lavant to Robert De Niro. I probably just found him immensely cool, because I don't really see where that comparison came from otherwise. Lavant is one of those completely singular actors, but even if you insist on looking for his American 70's counterpart, Jack Nicholson and his great explorations of male (not just sexual) impotence and anger, would be more apt. However, Beau Travail does often feel like a feature length adaptation of the famous shot in Taxi Driver where the camera moves away from De Niro's sad phone call towards the empty hallway. Like Taxi Driver, it is one of the great films about loneliness. Unlike Taxi Driver, it is also one of the ultimate 'dudes rock' movies. I don't like using 'too cool for school' internet speak, but there is really no better way to characterise Beau Travail, in part because it's central conflict arises from Galoup's (Denis Lavant) inability to rock with the dudes, for both professional and psychological reasons.
I also don't much like reading critics who are too in love with using the phrase 'bodies moving in space'. I do increasingly though like the kind of movies to which that phrase is applied. People watching can be more fun than plot, and despite not yet having seen many Claire Denis films, it is evident that she is one of the best people watchers out there. This is a great film that consists of little else, which is probably for the best, as the scant narrative that does exist suffers from flat and too literal-minded plotting. Denis follows a squad of the French Foreign Legion as they are doing training exercises in Djibouti, led by their commanding officer Galoup. As France is not at war, these exercises mainly serve as male bonding activities, allowing a group of rootless youths to create a connection through shows of strength, athleticism, honor and masculinity. While there is a compettitive element to all they do, the collective experience and performance of these actions is the ultimate goal. As their commanding officer, Galoup can't be one of the boys, even when he is around them, and he can't quite assert his authority as he feels his leadership is inadequate and threatened by Gilles Sentain (the most charismatic of his soldiers). Additionally, Galoup greatly looks up to his own higher-in-command, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) and you never get the sense that he feels that he has the capacity to be promoted. As a result he is stuck between two worlds he can't enter.
The soldiers engage in running drills, stretching exercises, weapon trainings, road reparations and other military activities, thoough we also see them ironing their clothes, cook dinner and go out dancing. Througjhout all this Denis highlights how aware the soliders are of both their own actiions and of the actions of the others, and how they adjust their behavior to exert themselves more as individuals or to become part of the group.. What stands out is the concentration and commitment they dedicate to all these activities, making it evident that they place great value on being part of this experience. This is only further emphasised by Denis whenever she sets the soldiers' activities to extracts from the opera adaptation of Billy Budd, giving their experience an almost mythical, religious dimension. Especially during these 'Billy Budd sequences' the soldiers are often barechested and Denis fully objectifies their bodies, often letting them pose as if they are classical marble statues that have come to life. If you see this as an expression of Galoup's point of view, the great ending scene becomes even better, a furious expression of how it feels to be excluded of an experience you see as holy.
It is interesting that beyond spending time with the soldiers, Denis also makes some digressions to showcase life of ordinary Djiboutians. She presents them as people who simply go on with their lives next to the French military camp. Though they are not rich, they are also not dependent on French goodwill or protection for their livelihood. The Djiboutians treat the presence of the soldiers neither as a threat nor as a blessing, but simply as an ordinary, unremarkable occurence. The soldiers are just some people who have a job and uwind by dancing to Tarkan just like the locals, contrasting the soldiers' self-absorption and self-glorification. Through this depiction of Djibouti, Denis makes national and cultural identities and differences a non-factor, largely in line with 1999's hopeful visions of globalisation. I wish those visions were more prevalent these days. but Claire Denis' newest film Stars at Noon, which I actually like more than Beau Travail, shows we are far away from that.
Stars at Noon finds Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn lost in Nicaragua. They are the kind of western middle-class young professionals who have shaped their career based on the unspoken promise that if they get a graduate degree and parrott vaguely liberal ideals about freedom, democracy ans equality they can the have the lives of their dreams. Trish and Daniel have reached the point where they can theoretically start those lives, but running into COVID; corrupition, local hostility and the CIA, they find that their qualifications, attittudes and knowledge are only useful for seducing each other, which leads to a sexy and melancholic romance. Between Stars at Noon and Beau Travail I am fully on board with Claire Denis after a rocky start. I thought Bastards was a terrible film that boringly obfuscates what is completely obvious, while Let the Sunshine In is good, but also completely insular in its depiction of the problems of rich elitist Parisians.
Sunday, January 28, 2024
257. A Short Film About Love
Saturday, January 13, 2024
256. Orlando
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
255. Cats
Song - Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Movie: Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019)
Definitely not one of the worst films ever made, which is a bit of a dissapointment. I was secretly hoping for a spectacularly unique misfire, but it's just a bunch of actors in CGI cat costumes on CGI sets twirling to random mediocre musical theatre. The CGI sets make London look drab and anonymous, but that's what you get from the average contemporay effects-driven Hollywood blockbuster, whose CGI robs all locations from any sort of character. The CGI 'costumes' are mostly dumb, as rather than making the characters look and behave like actual cats, they make them look and behave like humans badly pretending to be cats. Interestingly, the cat-like features of a character seem inversely proportional to the fame of their actors; Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift and Idris Elba look much more like themselves than the other 'cats'. That's better for Swift and Elba, the only people in the film who perform with some spunk and personality and manage to evoke something else than wide-eyed reverence, than it is for McKellen and Dench. They are no great singers and also too old to waste their acting talents like this; there are fewer sights in contemporary film sadder than a skittish (barely disguised) McKellen licking milk from a plate, but the scenes of Dench sprawled out on a sofa like a smutty cat come close. Dench recently showed that at the age of 89 she is still capable of reciting Shakespeare sonnets on the spot. Here she brings the same gravity to lines like "So first your memory I'll jog, and say a cat is not a dog".
I had little clue of what Cats was about before seeing this, and was surprised that it's sort of the silliest riff on Greek mythology imaginable. There is a railway cat, a theater cat, a magician cat, a cat of the underworld, a fat cat, all taking part in a singing competition, judged by Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) who will decide which cat gets to ascend to cat heaven. Each cat sings a song about itself, showcasing its particular characteristics and traits, how it is more mythical than humans imagine and how it affects the human world in ways that we take for granted. Unsurprisingly, a quick (this is definitely a rabbit hole I don't want to disappear in) Google search shows that there is a lot of Cats fan fiction being created, and you can easily imagine that a more cynical version of Andrew Lloyd Webber would have created a whole Cats universe out of his smash hit. Him not doing that does make the whole thing somewhat more interesting, turning this essentially into an origin story without follow up. It's transparently ridiculous nonsense that doesn't strain to find any higher meaning, social commentary or deep subtext, yet is performed with gravely earnest seriousness. If we can see the art in lighthearted comedy about dark subjects, then surely the opposite could, when done well, also have some value?
I would have liked it more if the songs were a bit better, but they are quite monotonous (as is the dancing). Most of them start off in a different genre, but are quickly theatrified in much the same way, with the addition of instruments and singing voices that seem to serve no further purpose oither than to add fat to the song. The audience is never allowed to feel that they are not getting enough music for their money, and so the songs also go on for much longer than needed, absolutely wearing out their welcome. Taylor Swift doesn't need any more praise these days, but 'Beautiful Ghosts', the one song she has written for the movie, is miles better than any of the orginal songs written by Webber, including Memory, sung here by Jennifer Hudson. She is a great singer who probably would have been better off following Barbra Streisand's lead and just sing the song outside the context of Cats. Streisand's performance is more evocative as it connects to actual human feelings, rather than trying to make us care about a cat we barely know.
Saturday, January 6, 2024
254. On Golden Pond
Thursday, January 4, 2024
253. Scandal
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
252. Paris, Texas
Song - The Long And Winding Road (The Beatles)
Movie: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
Wim Wenders' newest movie Perfect Days follows the daily routines of Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a Tokyo public toiler cleaner. He takes great pride in the seemingly thankless job, and finds plenty of joy outside of it, devoting time to take pictures of the city's trees, read Faulkner and Higshmith and sing along to his cassette tapes of Patti Smith and Lou Reed. We learn little of his life beyond that, though we get a brief glimpse of his estranged relationship with his sister, a woman who wears expensive suits and has her own driver. She is definitely not devoting parts of her days to soak in The Velvet Underground, but does have a daughter called Niko. It's a wonderful detail, especially after seeing Paris, Texas, which is in part about how the same childhood influences can move two siblings in two completely different directions. The film spends plenty of time on highly romanticised American highways and their roadside restaurants and motels, getting to Terlingua, Houston, the Mojave desert and Los Angeles. It never reaches Paris, Texas, but the idea of it drives everything forward.
Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) and Walt (Dean Stockwell)'s father met their mother in Paris, Texas. When introducing her, he liked to note that she came from Paris, without adding more details, presenting her as a 'fancy woman'. However, she was just 'plain' and found it deeply unpleasant having to pretend, even for a bit, to be something she was not, making her relationship with her husband much more difficult. It's fairly obvious why Travis tells this story to his son. He is just back from three years of mysterious solitude in the desert, trying to make sense of his life and his destructed marriage with Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who he idealised so much he lost track of reality. Following Travis' dissapearance Walt took his son in and raised him as his own. Walt is a well-adjusted man, but he is married to an actual French woman and works as a designer of highway billboards, selling fancier lives to drivers between Texas and California.
The film itself might as well be a billboard for the American Southwest. Wenders and the Dutch cinematogropher Robby Muller film everything with highly expressive, somtimes unnatural colors and lighting, giving a special air of cool, slightly melancholic distinctiveness to every location. Near the end there is a (famous) shot of Stanton standing in front of a hotel in Houston. He is enveloped by green streetlight, contrasted by the sunset in the background causing the sky to transition between blue and red. The hotel itself is mostly in the dark, with only a couple of lit rooms. The Italian neorealists would probably balk at this shot, but it's no science fiction either. This always remains a real place and even if it is never again captured as beautifully as it is here, you get the sense that it could be, under certain circumstances, or if you know how to look at it. This is true for many of the scenes and I like that you can look at this approach from different angles. Are Muller and Wenders naive Europeans who have fallen under the same spell as Walt and Travis, looking for fanciness where there is none? Or are they counteracting their father, showing you don't to need to look for Europe, or escape in romantic fantasy to find beauty in the plainness of daily life? The latter is very obviously the point of Perfect Days, and that lack of ambiguity is one of the reasons why that film, despite its pleasures, can't hold a candle to Paris, Texas.
Another reason is Paris, Texas' conclusion, which has rightly earned its place in film history. Finding out that Jane works at a peep show, Travis becomes her client 'confessing' their story to her. You could probably develop a whole film class on shot composition just from the various ways in which Wenders frames the two people on either side of the glass, but his most effective shot is a simple close up of Kinski, as she listens to Stanton telling his story and slowly starts to understand who her client really is. Wenders holds the shot for a long time, almost literally putting us in her shoes, evoking how it is both exhilirating and upsetting to hear a long forgotten voice without seeing the face behind it. From Travis' monologue (and Jane's subsequent response) we get a good idea of why their marriage never had a chance. Neither Jane nor Travis knew how to handle their big love for each other, and even less so the difficulties they faced as a result of that, leading to jealousy, irrationality and eventually abuse, mostly from Travis' side. The film doesn't condemn either of them for what happened, but it forces you to consider your emotional reaction to all of it. You can end the film having sympathy for Travis, or disdain, or something in between, but your response will depend on how you feel about certain specific things that you need to take into consideration and that will always complicate your thoughts. The major flaw of Perfect Days is that it consciously avoids this, letting the audience completely off the hook. The film vaguely hints of a tragedy/misfortune in Hirayama's life, but he remains a blank slate on whom you can project your own feelings and emotions and always feel good about it.