rino-5 Reviews

8½ (1963)

One of the last personal geniuses of cinema

[9/10 · 20 November 2005]

Commencing with the nightmarish traffic shot of silent, hemmed-in despair, and ever after that open to dream, suggestion and imagination, this is the culmination of a kind of cinema we'll never see again. The era of Cinecitta, of oligarchic producers and fabulous set pieces and swirling arrays of extras, littered with personal recollection, wish fulfilments and fear. And total dubbing. And wholly personal, boyish, poetically inventive direction. I love that his critic character, besides spouting an endless bilge of intellectual clichés (all of their time), states early on that his film is nothing more than a sequence of disconnected scenes; a film about film-making must employ self-criticism at some point, and when he talks about the failure of a scene with the dream-girl at the therapeutic springs, which we've just seen, well, it's significant that it doesn't deflate the narrative at all. And of course the critic hangs later on (how could he not see that coming).

The strong mover of the film is the sense of being carried along by large events one is complicit in creating, yet losing all willed responsibility for; the alienating fear of losing the thread, to get off the moving train and admit to not knowing. The endless circus of faces asking for their parts or opinion, always a circular chaos of distractions crossing the line of sight or sweeping up from the corners. The continual demands. The unspoken fear of failure, hungrily grasping at every (feminine) distraction. One of the great films about failure, fact. Fellini has a gift for controlling very large studio spaces, making them buzz and thrive with visual activity and eclectic peoples; contrasted of course with Guido's unflappable calmness at the centre, the quiet heart of adriftness.

Along with childish masculinity, the distractions of feminine beauty, the injection of personal drama (the wife, the musical director, and of course the producer) and ceaseless directorial invention. In a film that is ever erupting into dream and fancy, or rather, which is more dream than real (hence honest about the illusions of cinema). The scenes in the steam baths, the profound nocturnality of the film contrasted with the washed out, over-exposed daylight scenes, the sheer improbable cohesiveness of it all… again, one has to resort to lists to distil the breadth of the scope, and avoid wanting to analyse everything (fear of women, Catholicism etc).

This is film-making on the genius side of Italian cinema: the Fellini method. Renown, production excess, cartoon humour, gorgeous dolls, a frenetic chaos externalised yet humanised by uncertainty and a search for clarity, or simple, useful and effective film-making; and still to be able to say Yes, this is my (mad) method but there's more to it than that… there are lies, begged indulgences, cover-ups and denials, tawdry lovers, common gossip, domestic despairs, staged resolutions and uneven or badly-paced ambiguities in life, and producers bearing gifts… So much personal free reign will never be given in a studio environment again. rino breebaart

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

The idea is there, but the film ain't

[15 June 2005]

Horror? Exploitation? B-Grade? Can B-grade actually be truly horrific, especially when dubbed? I don't think so. Especially when B-Horror plays like a B-Porno (check your genre definitions at the door). This was an 80s romp that probably had no small part in spawning Blair Witch (crew go into the woods, film gore, die; tape is retrieved. Horror!). Here, the slick towers and achievement of New York are deliberately cast against the supposed savagery of the jungle cannibals. A crew of right idiots make an amateur doco/slashfest in the Amazon. They get nekkid, they torch villages and rape 'n kill. They film their antics, they ball. They're surrounded, slashed and eaten. And a nearly legitimate Professor of Anthropology goes back to the scene, salvages the film which the exploitation hacks in NY wanna beam to the jaded masses. 80s cynicism with deplorably B-rate gags and a lilting, dissonantly pretty soundtrack theme. It's amazing how they got the tribes to agree to filming this little jaunt in the jungle: they look like they don't mind getting into the pig's livers or whatever they are. The guileless savagery of the doco team was probably the scariest of all, like, you think you're so civilised with your technology and GI brainsmarts and depraved recklessness…? As though Deodato was going for the heaviest metaphor he could think of to contrast the relative calm of the tribe with the idiocy of the West (every second observation was about 'strange sexual customs'). Ultimately the title is misleading, I mean in terms of sheer numbers, 5 or 6 people for lunch and dinner is hardly a human holocaust: it's more of a Cannibal Incident, really. And despite the great transfer and usually good image quality, this romp might've benefited more from a Vietnam or Going-Up-River angle: obvious metaphoric contrasts work better against a climate of human despair or inner corruption. That is, psychology — B-Grade and psychological depth obviously don't mix. Stick to Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes. rino breebaart

Look at Me (2004)

Feminine maturity slash grace

[15 June 2005]

When recording Zep II, the young Jimmy Page was experimenting with different recording methods; one technique he used on Whole Lotta Love was to mike the guitar amp from a distance rather than up close as is the norm. You've got to turn the amp up louder to get the same levels, but he also noticed you get a fatter, fuller sound. In like manner, though this will be somewhat discounted by the technical gaps in my memory, I wonder if criticism and reviews come out different if they're written a week or more after the original viewing/experience. Certainly, the peaks and valleys of impressions should be more defined; whatever's worth truly remembering should still be there and the rest just dribbled away. Which of course is detrimental to those inclined to loving fine detail. But something I'm starting to think more and more is that the detail is integral to mood and not always consciously absorbed/observed; and that mood is essential to how we remember the bigger bits and streams of culture. Which of course begs the question of a bad initial mood dampening the effect of a work which might (in other circumstances) transcend petty predispositions; or which demands that reviewers in all walks of write be even, balanced and emotionally calm and consistent people, which is an insulting waste of speculation when your competition's an autocue hound like Richard Wilkins. Ultimately, the purpose and value of art is to engage. And in the best works, to generate an experience that stays with you. An historical trace of artistic stayers would be pretty similar to the accepted canon of greatness and talent. Just as there's a lot to be said about critical passion and the heat of thought's immediacy in getting a review down, there's also significant value in considering works from a distance, both temporal and spatial and or contextual. So then. I mean to talk about Agnès Jaoui's film. I saw it almost two weeks ago. Jaoui is a rare specimen of French female actor-directors: she isn't as intense as Isabel Huppert but is more attractive, acting-wise. Hers is a clear talent immediately readable whilst retaining a distinct femininity; youthful, subtle in its cares, natural in its movements. It's not a talent measured by intensity but thoughtful grace and naturalism in the moment. I'm writing it up, of course; and there's something to be said for directors acting in their films, especially those that know and identify deeply with the character, especially as the focus around which others base their performance. (Jaoui has an amazing vocal talent; her role is customised to suit). But it's a mature form of charming which I found wholly agreeable. At times bristling with crisp wit and well-edited comedy, the film is a great character vehicle. Not all the leads excel, but the arrogant father figure (Jean-Pierre Bacri) was played to a razor's edge precision (husband and wife team alert: a reprisal of his role in Le Goût des Autres, also by and with Jaoui). The father whose reputation and fame cause others to dance with nimble adulation and sycophantry. The daughter desperate for the smallest scrap of recognition in the face of a rejection of the profoundest regularity. The house in the country where it all unfurls; relationships unwinding and reintegrating into other intrigues; the nagging undercurrents of failure and ambition's insecurity (backdropped by sheer parental and unspoken jealousy). Emotionally even and balanced by pace, you almost completely lose the sense of a mediated, constructed experience. I want that more and more: to lose the sense of experiencing cinema, to immerse myself. And as always with French films, it's mostly about writers — my theory being that the only place one really sees writers represented is on screen (them paper bios and interviews just don't cut it in terms of representative art and power). Every second or third French film of late has involved or resolved a particular question of writers, or, more generally, auteur's. Which is why it's high time to make a nicely bland doco-film about the real slog and visual ennui of the writing process. The little making-of doco on the DVD was also illuminating, one of the better ones yet. To see shots made and developed under the most natural, gentle and contributive atmosphere had me thinking of Eastwood. None of that poncy French faux-intellectual storm und drang, no mealy theoretic or abstractions; just plain, simple drama. The work of precision built into every scene. The painting of grass to match the season. The in-car shot whose punctuation is crucial. The nearness of love and resentment. The small and intrusive rudeness of the world (mobiles, taxi drivers). The shifts of mood and music (from Schubert to TuPac). The director as guide, conduit and fine-tuner. Proof that subtlety behind the screen (backed by natural talent) equates with subtlety and grace on screen. rino breebaart

In Praise of Love (2001)

A fading elegy, sadly

[15 June 2005]

History. Hollywood and Americans (but which Americans? The ones without history who buy others' images, the ones between Mexico and Canada). Adulthood (which doesn't exist). Resistance and WWII. Cinema. Spielberg, Schindler. Balzac (but briefly). Simone Weil. The Matrix (dubbed into Breton, please!). The English. Nude scenes in films. Grandparents. The past, self and memory. What could be finer than a JLG romp through the modern world? It starts with B&W stock and ends in saturated video and imposed montage. It has texts, quotations, historical anecdotes, book covers; and hence is in itself eminently quotable. There can be no resistance without memory or universalism. Isn't it strange how history has been replaced by technology? But why politics by gospel? The Church is in step with time. The truth may turn out to be sad. Every thought should recall the debris of a smile.

Vaguely didactic, this film left me slightly worried about JLG's intensity as an artist of ideas. There's signs of the onset of scattered carelessness, of not being bothered with the unity or expressive power of ideas. And unity is what JLG's extraordinarily broad canvas has always been about. It's still hallmark JLG — no other director can get away with such a bold and direct transcription of ideas onto film. I was channel surfing of an evening and came across spare B&W dialogues about artists and projects and literature. I thought, This could only be by a New Wave director. There's the standard multiplicity, or what I like to call the trialogue of his style: dissociated, cut-up or multileveled/multilingual dialogue layered onto diverse semantic images, sometimes doubled images or of varied media, mixed with natural sound, musical refrains, interjections. Text, sound, image — usually concordant, sometimes broadly dissonant and multivalent, sometimes silent. But always thinking, writing, philosophizing. A poetry of three media; a tricolour meditation. And, as always, things, ideas and events shift subtly in meaning in the JLG cinema, in the space of thought, the crossed trialogue, the unreality of the mind — a train deliberately honking past an ambling reader is somehow neither intrusive nor uncontrolled; there's a sense of pre-ironic structuralism maybe (from studies in ethnology), of images stripped of semantics and signs, to toss jargon in a way unfair to a film decidedly a-theoretical. But when a character turns and says, When did the gaze collapse? and the dialogue becomes one about TV's precedence over life (I feel our gaze has become a program under control. Subsidised. The image, Sir, alone capable of denying nothingness, is also the gaze of nothingness on us. (I hope not, says another)), then you're in very close and delicate (as narrative) thought space. Something close to mere ideas, or ideas only, stripped of coherent context. There's also a background insinuation of deeper melancholy or near futility; of the difficulty of making a difference through signs and words, of fatigue or exhaustion with the world and ideas; as though JLG no longer wills the poetry from the image or desires its latent mystery. Whether or not this functions as a critical element of the film re: modern media, I dunno. The worry lies in resultant projects that are mere thought files set to image and music.

The film seems to be stitched together with quotes. Let feelings bring about events, not the contrary. Be sure to exhaust what can be communicated by stillness and silence. (Bresson) What bothers me is not success or failure. It's the reams and reams written about it... Why bother saying or writing that Titanic is a global success? Talk about its contents. Talk about things. But don't talk around things. Let's talk on the basis of things... They're confusing life with existence, treating life like a whore which they can use to improve their existence. The extraordinary to improve the ordinary. One can enjoy existence, but not life...

All in all, I can't say this is satisfying cinema like Two or Three Things I know About Her or Masculin, féminin, and there's almost zero performance quality in this — just bland faces reading (not acting) mildly philosophical lines (these characters are not even objects, let alone subjects). Neither has it the shouted intensity and layered brain work of Hélas Pour Moi. Eloge is not a plot less anti-story but something nearly a-storical that retains elements of meta narrative (disquisitions on tragedy etc). A lack of emotional integration or joyous inwardness, offset by tired, late-night images reaching for poetry and finding very little (the most suggestive scenes were the empty train sheds). And not as much sharp humour as could be: the Americans get the occasional barb, but they're mild, easy stings. Not a consistently questioning essay nor an intensely located setting for ideas and disquisition, nor an acting out thereof, this is largely a struggle to define the late arrival and realisation of History in terms that are opposed to cinema and culture (the yanks with their contracts and fat thoughtless dollars, the exploitation of historical verité, the End of Cinema etc). Sporadic without rambling, unreal whilst actuating thought (the intrepid manufacture of ideas), I yearned for the guerrilla-intensity of hardcore JLG. He's still one of the primary artistic models, and I love his head space, but...

Rino Breebaart

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

More of the same really, but wonderful same

[15 June 2005]

Mr Anderson, I loved thee. Another film about middle-age failure and father-hungry sons, there's probably a few too many relationships at work in this film. Which drag it down, diffuse the focus and leave the viewer slightly at sea. Sea films are dangerous, they swallow attention and careers. The detail was as always superb — Mr Anderson truly loves every fine touch — he aims for an absolute of set control and flavour which is admirable. The background of Italy was a nice touch. The ensemble was great. The best touches were the singing Brazilian, the electro-keyboard song and the outrageous gunfights. The interview scene with the killer whale in the background was tops. Cate Blanchett was luminous and consistent. Bill Murray was either not quite chaotic or essential enough to carry the drama. I love thee too, Bill, but something was missing. Between him and Owen and Anjelica and Willem there just wasn't that access of depth and emotional reality (or need) that kept Tenenbaums rolling. Like the guy on IMDb says, there's touches of Fellini comedy rubbing off from the Cinecitta studios. But Fellini, even at his nutty and dreamiest always has a foot firmly planted in humanity. At least this one is slightly more specific and detailed about mid-life wash-ups and mild desperation and resurgence. Take the scene with Werner, Klaus' son. It could've been a real identifier, a child-moment of salvation, but it failed. Alas. Would it be inconsistent to ask for greater focus on human detail, the emotional fine print, as opposed to the set detail? I so much wanted to love this film that I felt a little jilted. Maybe a complementary set of them Adidas would've helped. rino breebaart

Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003–2005)

Retro animé just doesn't work

[14 June 2005]

What's the deal with the retro-animation of Star War: Clone Wars? I mean, did they go to some ageing, near-bankrupt animation agency in Japan to knock together some Transformers-era hand animations over painted backgrounds? With the CGI arsenal available at the Lucas ranch, why revert back to the late 80s? It boggles and scrabbles the mind. And of course the dead dialogue and minimum plot/maximum action scenario and squinting, trembling faces make it all seem incredibly trite and mundane. It doesn't matter how many post-it notes they fluttered on the fight choreography, this animé couldn't draw a bored teenager away from his Wheatos or Playstation. Unless, of course, it's meant to offset the cartoonish simplicity of the real show and its attendant universe, which it does in spades. I kept thinking this was a commercial tie-in with some cereal box action figurines; completely tossed-off in quality and marketed to the shortest attention spans, a cheap give-away. rino breebaart

Fela in Concert (1981)

In the groove, all night long

[6/10 · 27 January 2005]

Recorded in Paris in 1981 on what's billed as an all-night session, this is a good little guide to how African big bands do it. It's so easy-rolling that an entire evening could've been filled this way. At times eerily reminiscent of the early 70s JBs but almost diametrically opposed in rhythm structure (tight lock grooves vs. this free form rolling improv), this is more an exercise in African jazz. Long solo excursions, big horn sections. Fela is the same hard-driving lead man, strutting around with a joint, goading musical cues, cueing the change, calling the shots. And directing the sound engineer to turn up the bass or cancel the effects. One man leading a big band. He discusses US and European-supported police-government/colonialism in Africa with the audience. Talking 'bout the government through music, but potently. He struts and moves almost the entire show. Leads the chant. There's about 17 members to his band (The Africa 70). The show isn't so much about putting on a show as expressing music as life: you've gotta be pretty deep in the groove to pull this off all night long. Call and response, horn breaks and wide open spaces slowly building and breaking again. Then heavier breaks. Fela does choppy organ chords and horn solos (the latter not as accomplished). His painted and bangled dancers come out and do an, er, floor show (ever seen African women dancing on their hands and knees?). And all of it on the simplest beat: just a rim shot with a ricochet echo and a two-note bass hit. Building up all the time. 'Hey darling, show me your living license.' 'How can you criticise music when you're not playing it?' It's great just to see the man in action, get the full picture. The only pity is the rather poor video transfer and atrocious sound. The entire band just doesn't come across clearly; and the early 80s editing fit this into very late or early morning French TV schedule where only stoners come across it. But with the rhythm and horns in full swing, Fela at the console, it's pretty great stuff. All night long. I want all music to be like that.

rino breebaart

JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December (1994)

complexity with grace

[10/10 · 2 July 2000]

This film, a companion piece to Hélas pour moi, is so rich in theme and idea that one can only begin to write about it. Godard's artistry (which as always, is total) works like a gadfly across many levels, and so maybe the best way to go about this is to list its main themes.

* Swiss/French Nationality (father, homeland and identity)

* Semiotics of Imagery (composition and idea, the duality of reality, technology)

* Editing (blindness and sight)

* Perception (phenomenology, the humanity of the image)

* Music (the layered nature of sound association/interpretation)

* Politics (current affairs and historical, Europe/America)

* History (literature: in quotation - Rimbaud, Diderot, Kafka etc. and socio-political)

* Oeuvre (reference and statement, responsibility and reputation)

* Time (memory and culture as co-dependent, predictions and 'passing', death.)

* Love (the portrait GIVES, JLG as affect)

* Meditation (the reflective writer, interpretation & truth, translation and puns)

* Cinema Industry (distributors, censors/classification)

* Tennis (Proust)

• With so many themes, all patiently painted in close to an hour, we should admire Godard for his patent fluency. Even in the early 90s he is still at the height of his powers (despite the 70s rumours), much like the peak of the Baroque period several centuries ago.

rino breebaart

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)

making sense of the world again

[10/10 · 30 March 2000]

There is something sublime about this film; whether it is the perspective, the idea behind the story (from an article about married women living in the new flat buildings of Paris suburbs taking on part-time prostitution) or the often sublime sequencing of events, there is a continuity of thought at work behind it, the continuity of the artist (as film maker, painter, philosopher) at work. The film has elements of meditation, social comment, and faith which seeks not just to analyse or explain what is is to live in this modern world (since, as Godard observed, living in Paris inevitably involves some form of prostitution) - but to put meaning back into it again, to raise ideas and thought about observing this life, to speculate. So the ideas about a superficial love of products (cars, washing powder, magazine) may seem a little dated and old-school post-modernist for us, but how many directors tackle the questions so openly, artistically and honestly, on a multitude of levels all at once? The film is about Godard's eye and mind of course, secretly feeding dialogue directly to his actress with microfone and earpiece (fulfilling Renoir?), as well as fulfilling a cinematic history of boys filming girls. The coffee cup analogy of consciousness emerging, the car wash scene, the tripartite openness of the film, the perspicacity... there is too much to say about this film. If only there were novelists or writers around who could do the same, with such beauty.

rino breebaart