oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx Reviews

Le Grand Amour (1969)

Mediocrity trap

[10/10 · 19 April 2024]

In "Le Grand Amour" (1969), Pierre's life unfolds within the confines of a provincial French city he never ventures beyond (his obligatory national service excepted). Accepting a marriage that offers stability and companionship, he finds himself ensnared in the mundanity of monogamy, familial obligations, and professional stagnation.

Despite its comedic façade there is pain, "Le Grand Amour" echoes the tone of a Demy musical, juxtaposing brightness with an undercurrent of sorrow and darkness. The film's impeccable imagery and meticulous set design immerse viewers in a world where even the smallest details provoke reflection and amusement.

In Alan Garner's (unrelated) novel, "Red Shift", a young man joked on comparing his own lodgings to those of his girlfriend - about her parents' house, as compared to his parents' caravan - "plenty of space for ducks on these walls". The joke is hinting at the bourgeois nature of English life at the time. Pierre comes into abundance and spacious accommodation via marriage, but the supposed increase in potentiality doesn't lead to bacchanalia or to the creation of an artist's studio, or a commune; the situation in which he lands lends itself to ducks on the wall, and even if they can afford ducks painted by Oudry, it's the same thing.

Etaix is perfectly aware of what Jerry Seinfeld with Elaine Benes pointed a generation or two later on in time, that the vast majority of us don't even get what little love Pierre has in this movie ("95% of the population are undateable"). Cupid is the real Procrustes, and you have to fit on the bed exactly in order to walk away with real romantic love in this life. This is borne out by the iconic "driving beds" reverie, as Pierre and his grand amour float past various broken dreamers. The love between Pierre and Florence is complex, for all the wanderings of the heart and the shortcoming between the ideal of love and the reality, short tender moments exist, and moments of marital harmony are welcome to see.

Amidst the melancholy, "Le Grand Amour" exudes a sense of forgiveness and understanding, recognizing the inherent folly of human relationships. Despite its titular promise, true love remains elusive for many, leaving them to grapple with unattainable ideals and perpetual dissatisfaction. The film's literary resonance, reminiscent of Simenon's nuanced explorations of human nature, elevates it beyond mere comedy, offering a poignant reflection on the complexities of love and longing.

In essence, "Le Grand Amour" is a profound exploration of the human condition, where humour and pathos intertwine to reveal the fragile nature of our deepest desires.

100 (1973)

Love, indifference and resentment

[10/10 · 6 April 2024]

Two brothers meet after many years, one is a young drifter and the older a successful actor. We come to understand that they love one another, but when together are also sat in a broth of resentment and pettiness. The actor was the preferred son, the drifter is looking for permission to live, which his brother is unlikely to give him. I think the only reason for good people to live is for others, and Petre will become an architect if his brother simply wants him to.

What brings me back to the three extant features of Saucan? It's the restless camera, the overflowing characters, and a sense of eternalism. What I mean by this last piece is the sense of the world, as Einstein notably saw it, as being already in existence, past and future all one. I feel as if I'm God, watching these movies, like I'm admiring my handiwork, without any sense of suspense whatsoever.

This eternalism is emphasised by transcendental moments such as when Andrei wraps his lover in stars, by the echoing dialogue, and by music that would more usually be found in a science fiction movie. "Listen carefully stars", is a line from Petru, whose end we discover is literally tattooed on his arm from the start. A television documentary of young eaglets in an eyrie fighting over a scrap of flesh is a sort of parallel to a certain psychic vampirism that characterizes the relationship between the two.

The infamous Romanian dictator of the time, who does not deserve to be named, ordered the negative of the film destroyed, which it was. Vast butchery of the film followed prior to a release, although the director's cut has survived to this day through love and willpower. Saucan should have made many more films, what is left, glitters.

Circle of Danger (1951)

Surprisingly mature and interesitng film noir battling to overcome its structural issues

[7/10 · 28 March 2024]

Milland stars as Clay Douglas, an American whose brother Hank enlisted in the British Army in World War II prior to the formal entering into the fray of his country. Clay wants to know what happened to his brother and so tracks down members of his unit. We sense that Clay is pulling on a thread and some unwanted unravelling is happening.

The first part of the movie is noticeable for some really interesting documentary style footage. It feels very sad when you see the jobs that some of the commandos have come back to. Imagine going on very risky missions behind enemy lines only to return to Blighty and be sent back down into the coalpits. Various of Clay's interviews take place at real workplaces of interest.

There's also a feeling of some emotional maturity. Soldiers aren't heroes or villains, there are in between characters, with their own complexities. We don't have a reductive band of brothers motif when we look at this motif, nor do we have a Quantrell's raiders style polar opposite motif. The dialogue between Clay and his love interest gets pretty sophisiticated (Patricia Roc does a fine job), and there is plenty of chemistry.

Marius Goring reprises somewhat his impresario type role from Red Shoes, and bolsters a fine supporting cast.

What everyone who watches the film notices is a really improbable aspect to the ending (alongside a clever twist it should be said). It's not the only structural issue. The film is set at the start of the 50s, but can provide no good reason why Clay waits so long after the war ends to come looking for his brother's story. He was working on a salvage operation with a target of securing twenty five thousand dollars, although no indication whatsoever is given about why he should need such a vast sum (for the time), to go and make inquiries in Britain.

It does help to watch this on a big screen with an audience so you can share in the ripples of laughter at the light relief dating strand in the movie, and to make the documentary type scenes impress all the more.

In its emotional timbre, occasionally the movie is really quite rousing, and it enabled this viewer to overlook some of the obvious structural issues. It was a pity they weren't ironed out pre-production and it feels like the studio felt like this was an assembly line piece, despite some great creatives and synergies being brought to bear on it.

Conversation Piece (1974)

The Collector

[10/10 · 13 March 2024]

Conversation Piece is a very important film to me for two reasons, firstly it's very easy for me to identify with "The Professor" (Burt Lancaster's character is never referred to by any other name), and if a film has the same purpose as Franz Kafka said a book has, to be "the axe for the frozen sea within us", then this film is an axe for me. Secondly it's a fascinating experiment, what we have here, in the isolation of a chamber piece, is an entire wealthy family, but we never see the far right industrialist patriarch. What we get instead is a kindly old man transplanted in his stead. It's really beautiful, the effect that has.

The movie takes place in the home of a retired professor, who shuts himself away from the masses to concentrate on art appreciation, rejecting the world in favour of his imagination and the imagination of others. Like the professor I withdrew from science after completing advanced studies due to a suspicion that it was not a liberating force. I have also surrounded myself alone with beautiful things, with music, with pictures, and with art, in an apartment in the sky; I am twenty years his younger and on his path. We shared the same perception, the public is a flock of crows, and you cannot change that, you dismay has no power, any actual positive change so rare as to be written down to fluke or accident of an evolving economy. Many choose to become crows.

A great creative choice is to use Burt Lancaster as the actor, to make the Professor someone physically attractive, so the audience doesn't cop out with, "this man is alone because of his looks". There is also the risk that we say, "he is from another, better time". In fact I think men of sensitivity and ethics have found public life impossible for millennia, and have often withdrawn into eyries (I say men because men have usually been the ones to be in the financial position to achieve solitude, as well as being under less pressure to end it). In fairness there is some sense of the contemporary to the movie, as it takes place during the so-called Years of Lead when political assassination became normalized.

The professor's home is invaded by a vibrant and spontaneous gaggle of an extended family, sans patriarch. Despite the unhappiness they bring, he also realizes too late the value in being part of the lives of others. There is also the sadness that a man such as himself is seen as a great father but not as a great sire. Evolution's trick on us that these are not the same thing.

I say, with some considerable irony, that Conversation piece is another of those movies that gives men a glimpse of what it would be like to be in love with a brilliant woman. Just as we know what it's like to kiss Grace Kelly from Rear Window, Conversation Piece shows what it's like to marry Claudia Cardinale. Irony, because voyeurism and abstraction is what has imprisoned the Professor, something he finds out all too late.

Like another great Italian chamber piece (Ettore Scola's "A Special Day"), this movie has the power to lift us out of the river of time, and to reflect sacred truths. The trouble it stirs up inside me is a precious type, and I hope I will live with this movie and use it to be happier, either that or I will stand condemned by it.

Paroma (1985)

Reconnecting to the self's past

[10/10 · 6 March 2024]

Parama is a housewife in Calcutta whose life is turned upside down when handsome photographer Rahul returns from America and decides to make a photoessay on the traditional Bengali housewife; Parama is chosen as the quintessential example of such. Superficially Parama is fulfilling her traditional role, she is living the bourgeois hoped-for life, running a well-to-do household, her husband is very successful. But we quickly learn that Parama is a shell of herself, taken for granted by her husband, and the artistic part of herself has shrivelled away, she has sleepwalked into self-death.

Rahul helps her to push her boundaries (visualized by a perilous rooftop climb) and to remember her true self. She falls in love. She starts to play the sitar again, and yearns after a beloved plant variety from her childhood, the name of which she has forgotten.

Various adventures and the obligatory incaution that develops in romantic affairs follow.

My favourite memories are of Parama playing the sitar whilst it rains, it is almost like she is creating the raindrops, the scene made my hair stand on air. Also there is a nice visual of the pair of lovers climbing a spiral staircase, spiritually ascending as it were, to their love nest. I note that the plant in the movie is likely different from the genus named. In the movie the plant is referred to as Euphorbia, but Euphorbia are very visually distinguishable by their chartreuse colouration. I think rather that the name is used because of its meaning in ancient greek, "true joy". For Parama, to connect to the world of feelings from her childhood is true joy.

The lesson we are meant to learn is that life is nothing without creativity, autonomy, and without your foundations.

Love Street (2002)

Heady and strange tale of amour fou

[8/10 · 28 February 2024]

This story is about a prostitute (Marion) and her loving friend, bricoleur and brothel mascot (Petit Louis) in post-WW2 Paris. He believes that he is not good enough for her, he mentions that he cannot make her smile (she does however love him in her own way, a fondness without rapture). But he has a selfless amour fou and so sets about finding a man who does make her smile (mainly is good looking and reckless enough to make her smile).

The story reminded me a lot of the work of Marguerite Duras, she also told tales of amour fou and desperate living. This movie, similar to her India Song, has a chorus of three women in the background, providing some narration / commentary / framing. It feels like an overt homage / reference to Duras.

Whilst I did enjoy the movie, it wasn't capable of achieving those Duras-ian heights. Leconte wasn't working with Delphine Seyrig and Michel Lonsdale, nor with a cinematographer like Pierre Lhomme. Also, Leconte is not a madman. The movie does not have that Duras / Genet level of absolute commitment to madness, it does not have the weird revelry of those who felt the scorpion's sting and just went with it / danced the tarantella, instead of looking for help. It is a mad tale that is not imbued enough with madness. It should be liquor-soaked and hallucinogenic, it is not. The calibre is not the same as with a masterpiece of urban madness such as Berlin Alexanderplatz.

It is not helped by very improbable in scene action moments.

Another jaw-dropping oversight is to create a movie set in a brothel in the transition from Occupation to Post War Paris, and just not mention that one of the main reasons they were closed was collaboration with the Nazis. It's a gobsmackingly large elephant in the room.

I did give the movie a good rating in the end, because I got a glimpse of something beautiful of something that was close to happening, of a near entrant to that obscure and overgrown part of the cemetery that holds the pantheon of despair-drenched mad love movies. Because of the shiver I had whenever that black Citroen turned up.

Fallen Leaves (2023)

Go to the cinema and fall in love...

[9/10 · 10 December 2023]

..not with the movie, but with another seeker. That seems to be the main idea of Kaurismäki's movie Fallen Leaves.

Life is hard and monotonous. It's also petty, particularly when you're on low wages. So find someone to squeeze. Have a go at a bit of solidarity too.

Ansa and Holappa are both working annoying jobs in modern day Finland. They listen to news of the latest atrocities from the Russian army in Ukraine, they have a cigarette or a swig, they sit in unhappy bars, they struggle with their bosses, they are lonely. They admire the cinema.

Some of the vignettes are well informed about poverty, earlier in my life I worked in a supermarket where we would be in trouble if we took out-of-date food, even though we were hungry and were being made to throw it in the bin. The bosses' view was that we would deliberately let things go off, or over prepare fresh food if we were allowed to take the out-of-date food away. When we have money we take for granted things like internet access, when you don't someone will gouge you for a few minutes access.

Spend some time with someone who catches your fancy, use some energy to not mess it up. There's no sex in the movie and I quite like that in a society that over-fixates on fetishized addiction sex. Sometimes it's just lovely to have company, to talk and listen to music, just to feel their presence. Wouldn't you like a person round the house oh lonely cinema goer?

Berlin Alexanderplatz: Eine Handvoll Menschen in der Tiefe der Stille (1980) Season 1, Episode 4

Peak crassness

[1/10 · 29 October 2023]

This instalment of Fassbinder's self-proclaimed 15 hour "film" of Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz contains a scene that is breath-taking in its stupidity, blasphemy and cruelty. A man dressed as God manhandles a clearly distressed sheep upside down and then calmly murders her. "They Kill Animals And They Call It Art" to quote T. E. D Klein's withering and accurate expose of arthouse cinema's propensity to end lives to shock audiences and to ape profundity.

Aside from the wilful cruelty of one scene, this particular episode stands out as being quite hard to take, gloomy and full of longueur with hardly any action or involving content, the spectator simply views protagonist Hans Biberkopf feeling sorry for himself and pickling his insides.

Some of the episodes are very interesting and stimulating, but this one and the epilogue particularly are complete messes. Part IV: A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence deserves to be condemned. I condemn it.

As Without So Within (2016)

Textures, worlds, colour contrasts, enchanted refuges

[10/10 · 4 September 2023]

This beautiful film mostly uses superimpositions of minimalistic single colour objects against a dark background, sometimes these appear to be fragments of statues (lovely smooth surfaces, but also with ragged break faces), sometimes metallic objects, sometimes stones or other items. The main colour experimentation is an interplay between red and blue. Sometime dramatic impossible planetary landscapes are revealed, sometimes atomic level details. I saw things like a huge shard of luminescent stone set in a dark cliff high above the precipice, and forests of deep comfort and forgetting. The film also has an element of structuralism, where the grain of the film stock starts to play at low light levels. Later into the running time these fields of energy come to predominate.

The film reminded me of both Pneuma and Alaya, early films from Dorsky; Pneuma has many grain effects (it means the breath of life), whilst Alaya, uncharacteristically for the artist is set in darkness, with wondrous colours. If you like red and blue (hot and cold?) on black, you could do worse than take a look at Victor Vasarely's work Deuton RB, from his portfolio of works "Homage to he Hexagon". A film such as this or a picture such as Vasarely's or the soundscape of the Delibes-ian jungle can be places to hide, portals to soul places, where the indignities of the outside world are washed away.

Brick and Mirror (1966)

Art is long and life is short, decision difficult, experiment perilous

[10/10 · 29 July 2023]

The movie opens with a dazzling cinemascope shot of night-time Tehran covered in brightly lit signs, which could be Las Vegas if not that so many are Farsi. Times have changed since then. The hook that draws you into the movie is the fantastic sense of Tehran's spaces at night, and a particular metaphysical architectural feel like you can get from de Chirico's paintings.

What the movie is actually about is having the confidence to live life even when you're living in a panopticon society where everyone disapproves of deviations from the normal.

It is a movie that has a love story, between Hashem and Taji, a taxi driver and sex worker, who bond as reluctant Samaritans when a baby is abandoned.

Will Hashem have the confidence to overcome his neighbours' disapproval, will he seize what seems like a mystical opportunity (and after all what else is life but a mystical opportunity?), a chance at hard-won happiness and belonging for all three.

The movie, when it moves into its moral predicament phase, is incredibly intimate, bringing us into embryonic family scenes that billions have faced over history (how to stop a baby crying, how to look after a baby with next to no money).

It is also a rich entry into the canon of "the city is a wolf" movies (Midnight Cowboy is another, and I got that quote from the Russian movie Brat or one of its sequels). A character opines that one of the main reasons we have institutions, is loneliness, filling a gap left by people who do not want to care or look after one another, necessary once we have so extravagantly proliferated that we have large cities to hide in. The movie is particularly astonishing when it lingers in the orphanage, showing all the wonderful terrifying babies without parents. I wonder if it prompted people to adopt after watching it?

The title of the movie is a conundrum for me, having watched it twice I still cannot marry it up with the quotation it's based on, "What the young see in a mirror, the old see in a brick". The first time I saw the movie Golestan was there and had got bored of answering the question, and I've never seen a convincing explanation. He might be saying that in life, if you're not careful, you end up being a moulded, harsh, conformist lump, and so you don't need to look into a mirror to see that, you just need to look at a brick. I raise it only to say that you can absolutely appreciate the movie without answering the riddle.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Cherry picked perfect ensemble cast + emotional intelligence + character development + thrills and spills = MI7 is the best one yet!!!

[10/10 · 16 July 2023]

First up, it's a part one, but don't worry you won't feel short-changed or teased (unlike another lengthy summer blockbuster this year, the animated one, which seemed to stop mid sentence).

Some of the weaker Mission Impossible movies have felt fast foody and I don't really remember what happened by the end. This one, yes, a part one, is the longest of the movies yet at 163 minutes, and what that gives it time to do is develop multiple characters and allows for very long, complicated and breathless action sequences.

There is a flamboyant and noteworthy cast of women. I really thought when the casting team landed Rebecca Ferguson for Rogue Nation that they just got lucky, then they landed Vanessa Kirby for Fallout. In this movie we get both of them (playing Ilsa Faust and the White Widow), and two franchise newcomers of the same calibre. Just think about that, there are four incredible women with incredible roles in this movie, and it doesn't feel forced or inauthentic. Vanessa Kirby's welcome return proves a great decision as she is even better this time, and her White Widow has some real character development, then they've cast Hayley Atwell as Grace, another incredible decision, she is a revelation, sassy and kick-assy. Henchwoman "Paris" (Pom Klementieff - great name by the way) doesn't get as much development as the others, but has great style and gets more time towards the end.

Over to the villains: there's continuity and ingenuity when an old friend returns from the first movie and then Esai Morales completes a wildly perfect casting process, as the sensual and contained Gabriel (great name by the way, evoking the archangel, and playing on his allure and deadly sweetness). The non-human character in the movie is also pretty great without giving anything away.

Perfect villain casting was one of the strong points of the Bond franchise of old (a royalty of European arthouse actors including Max von Sydow, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Michel Lonsdale, Robert Shaw etc), and that's not the only thing the Mission: Impossible crew have learned from nor the only action movies they've been watching. The "Empty Quarter" sequence for one seems very much out of the Nolan playbook (the villain offering a dilemma too), whilst the "James Bond isn't able to protect his women" motif is applied well to Ethan here.

I feel like they got everything right with this movie. Some of the dialogue and filming of dialogue is sensational, and it feels like it's an emotionally mature film too. Ethan emotes, and there's just little things, like the way Ilsa hugs him that have a great emotional intensity to them. The core team are showing their age for sure, but they've harnessed that, Luther (Rhames) is at his best and most soulful here. There is no reason for action movies to be immature and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is proof of that.

Rimini (2009)

Masculinity in crisis

[8/10 · 15 July 2023]

The film is split into two strands, the first follows a kriminalinspektor, a zombie cop who starts a new investigation despite a suspension, and the second a project manager at an automotive engineering firm who spontaneously decides that doing what's expected of one in life, and doing it successfully, isn't really what he's interested in.

The film has a couple of moments with genuine tooth and claw but lapses into bathos or dramatic irony depending on your point of view. The film is enjoyable for the humour of Herr Breser's "falling down", the inventiveness of the credits sequence, the often really great framing/compositional work, and there's a really memorable visual effect two thirds of the way into the movie going down an escalator into a subway station. The movie seems to often satirize American stories / tropes, showing how ridiculous Falling Down, Pulp Fiction and Fight Club are as ideas, particularly when transplanted to Austria.

A bourgeois malaise is evident, a teenaged delinquent involves herself in happy slapping, despite coming from an affluent and loving home, whilst Breser introduces himself by essentially reading out a curriculum vitae, becoming aware too late, that life is not primarily about filling out that particular piece of paper, it's experiential, it's spiritual, it's emotional. The choice of employment is particularly relevant as it embodies "success" in that part of the world.

The title of the movie is unusual (also chosen recently by another Austrian, Ulrich Seidl), it refers to the childhood holiday destination of Breser, and is used as a metaphor, a place where Breser believes the exoticness of Africa can be seen if you try hard enough.

Suzhou River (2000)

Trash heap flower

[10/10 · 30 April 2023]

Suzhou River is a story about youthful love awry. An homage to Vertigo both textually and thematically, it doesn't make a meal out of the link and feels very much its own story / direction. The film is often shot how people see, in saccades, in absent mindedness, in a "this dream we call life" way. Structural interest is further enhanced by a protean narrator and riffing with the original story.

The subject matter is "male gaze", the obsessive attention that many men give to women and their appearances. A pungent moment for me was when Mei Mei applies a temporary tattoo of a flower to her inner thigh and then the camera pans up to her impassive glitter-masked face, grimly returning the viewer's gaze.

This is for those whose lives are like the eddies in Suzhou River, ephemeral, contorting, pulled into a personal orbit.

Medea (1969)

Passion betrayed

[8/10 · 11 April 2023]

At the heart of this exceptional adaptation of the Medea story the self-immolating passion for which it is famous is bared. Medea ruptures the priestly sacrament with her goddess Hecate, abandons her homeland, and commits the gruesome act of dismembering her younger brother Absyrtus, all for the love of Jason. These profound acts of desecration, lead to catastrophic consequences when Jason ultimately spurns her votive act of love.

Although this story is well-known among knowledgeable audiences, what sets Pier Paolo Pasolini's vision apart is that he breathes new life into a corpus of work which has been diminished by bowdlerization. By immersing us in a world that is genetically similar yet utterly experientially different from our own, Pasolini brings a fresh perspective to a story that has been sanitized over time. Watching this work is not for the faint-hearted, as it speaks directly to our atavisms. Medea is not the Hollywood-ized work of a de Mille or a Don Chaffey, it is the work of a visionary artist.

Maria Callas is an inspired choice as Medea, a priestess who laments that wisdom speaks through her, not from her. As "La Divina", her ability to infuse emotional timbre into arias makes here a notable co-author of songs. Her soprano's insecurity, however unjustified, is something that would be within her to draw on, in her unusual outing as an actress.

Pasolini's use of animal bodies in the film is concerning and raises questions about the ethical treatment of other sentient beings. The inclusion of dead rodents hung on religious ornamentation, and bloody organs on display is questionable. Respect for other sensing and feeling creatures is an essential component of a humble existence.

The film's general roughness can be considered wildness and are critical to its flow and beauty. The repeated scene of Glauce's key moment is not a carelessly inserted retake, but a consummation following an imagining or envisioning that contributes to the film's overall effect.

Early on in the film Chiron speaks words that set the tone for Pasolini's task as a film poet: "...in the ancient world, myths and rituals are living reality. Part of man's everyday life. For him reality is such a perfect entity that the emotion he experiences at the sight of a tranquil sky equals the most profound personal experience of modern man." Pasolini successfully achieves the viscerality that these words call for.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

A reflection after twenty years with Aguirre

[8/10 · 11 April 2023]

Aguirre, was a film that heavily contributed to my obsession with films. I saw Herzog's journey into darkness around the turn of the millennium as a university student, and I felt "film is for me, film is my thing now". It wasn't the first stepping stone, but it was a major one, it was a film I proselytized with. Seeing that train of people descend through the clouds at the start of the movie fascinated me. It fascinated me because they were in real danger, and that's why Aguirre is not just merely a film. Hundreds of real people traversing a tiny perilous path in a slippery humid environment is madness. The Popol Vuh soundtrack, the sheer aesthetic beauty of the arcing line, and the Gaspar de Carvajal narration intensifies the madness. However this movie is not so much about artifice as it is about being a documentary; the most interesting thing about the film is its fact not its fiction. Later on we see people in unwieldy trappings, going down a river in foment, these are real people in real danger. This is a film which makes various great points about the mania of colonialism, but it is also itself a mania.

The film got to me both at the start and at the end. Aguirre's traitor speech particularly grabbed a hold of me. He talks about his ambition of being a great traitor, and that deeply resounded within me at the time as a young man with deep rivers of anger in the subterranea of my soul. Yes, betray everything, betray the parents, betray the schools, betray the churches, betrayal as an avenging triumph ending in obliteration.

Watching this after the passing of two decades, for the umpteenth time I was surprised to find those rivers of anger were still flowing, it took me some time to calm down after the movie. Whatever else it is, the movie is full of power.

I also came to understand Aguirre as God's puppet. At the start of the movie he is very clearly a cautioner, he repeatedly tells his superiors of the folly of the expedition. He undergoes a very sudden transition to Punisher, which seems to point to a divine intervention.

The main pity of the film is the way the animals are treated. At the start of the film a cage with a chicken hurtles down the abyss and smashes to pieces, later a horse is bullied and in clear distress pushed off a raft. The most haunting shot of the movie as a better adjusted adult is the horse staring back at the raft from the river bank, awaiting devouring, pining after abusers. Haunting because it is real, not acting. The coolest people in the movie are the little swimming monkeys, glorious experiencers having a great time except when one is hauled up in Kinski's mitt.

As a film Aguirre has been an incredibly important one in my life, but as a document of abuse, it cannot remain a favourite.

Three Colors: White (1994)

Droll exposition of a turbulent romance

[10/10 · 8 April 2023]

"White" reminded me of some lines from a Grémillon movie, Remorques (1941), spoken by Capitaine Laurent, "Say, Tanguy. You came to see me about your wife. You were wrong. And so was I, to give you advice. What goes on between two people, no one else can understand." It had become public knowledge that Tanguy's wife sleeps about. And yet, this is not to say that Tanguy's marriage is a bad one, just that it is far more complicated than many assume. In White, we see such a "complicated" marriage, and Kieslowski tries as hard as possible to let us inside that which "goes on between two people", which is strange indeed. The strangeness is reflected in the expression of Aleksander Bardini's notary, when he stops typing as Karol says he wants everything in his will to be left to "my ex wife Dominique".

Karol does the thing that we're always told not to do these days, he puts Dominique on a pedestal, literally reflected by a bust he purchases. I think if a relationship movie were being made today no-one would sympathise with this character, but for people of my generation certainly, it might make a lot of sense. Like Karol, the sole reason I entered the capitalist system was to earn enough money that a woman would take me seriously. The sheer weirdness of romance here is what I like so much. I also love how Kieslowski understands that we all privately lead mystical lives, and this is why his collaborations are important, Zbigniew Preisner and Edward Klosinski are onboard to get that effect, the music and cinematography are critical.

The movie is funny, the first major link we have to "white" is a bird urinating on Karol, and the reintroduction to Poland via a garbage heap has a good line; despite this there was not a single laugh in the threatre I sat in, White is a droll movie rather than a raucous one.

Finally some life advice, to add to the drollery. Never fire a blank out of a pistol at point blank range next to someone's heart. You may well kill them! A blank is still an explosion and still produces ejecta.

The Ruling Class (1972)

Over-indulged mess

[3/10 · 2 April 2023]

The Ruling Class is a sprawling film maudit. Its success relies somewhat on the sympathies of audiences, it takes aim at the crassness of the hereditary class system in the UK. The 99% simply agree with the filmmakers, and much is therefore forgiven or overlooked. It has a main point that a schizophrenic lord's ravings are indistinguishable from various cultural narratives. Sanity is described simply as going with the flow of your class milieu. This distinctly overlong, poorly edited and over-lit movie, is divided into two halves, in the first mad Jack, Earl of Gurney, believes he is God, in the second, Jack the Ripper.

Major complaints for me are firstly that the musical numbers in the film are meritless, every single one of them, and indeed the movie does not work as a musical at all; there are also graphic scenes of animal torture (a terrified rodent is injected by a syringe, and a wire is inserted into the brain of the same); finally the movie suffers from didacticism, it tells you things rather than showing them to you.

There's a phrase from one of the Psalms, "Beatus vir, qui timet Dominum." "Happy the man, who fears the Lord". Bad Jack, lectures on the need to fear the law, and to fear God. Good Jack lectures on the need to love everyone, My take is "Happy the person, who fears themself".

50 years on and the class system is still with us though far more camouflaged.

Jofroi (1933)

Lovable and valuable

[10/10 · 25 March 2023]

Jofroi is a rickety yet feisty old man who lives with his wife in Maussan. He sells their orchard in order to purchase an annuity and live his old age out with his wife. The problem is that the fruit trees in the orchard have long since stopped bearing fruit. The purchaser, Fonse, would like to tear them down and crop the field with wheat. Jofroi, objects to the plan but already sold the orchard.

Much humour has already been had by this point in the simple exchanges at the notary's office and in Jofroi's field. Whilst the film is comic, it also runs extremely deep. For my part it is almost a textbook on conflict resolution, I learnt from this film. The writing and depictions have a deep understanding of the nature of violence and sentiment, violence here meaning that which is not voluntary. Jofroi, half mad, and clinging to sacred sentiments, has no legal rights over the orchard, perhaps not even moral rights, but human feelings traverse those domains. Both Fonse and Jofroi suffer emotionally from their disagreement, both seek community arbitration. The resolution is finely crafted, even in the absence of one of the parties, respect is given.

I have seen showier films, I have seen maximal films, I have seen armies clash, dragons flame, ringed planets, gangs armed to the teeth. I have not seen a more human film than Jofroi. I wish this were shown in every school.

La Cérémonie (1995)

Spiralling spite and insensitivity

[10/10 · 13 March 2023]

In the country kitchen of the wealthy Lelièvre family (this surname literally means "the hare", the Lelièvres are therefore the hares), hangs a painting of a dead and trussed up hare. This early image does not bode well. As the movie progresses, the new servant of the household and her friend at the post office gradually have their class-based resentment stoked and a confrontation with the upper crust Lelièvres becomes increasingly likely. In part this is brewed by the warped and traumatized minds of the underlings, in part the snobbery of the haughty Lelièvres, and in part by misunderstanding.

The movie is very observant. Different registers, both emotional and verbal exist to communicate between the different classes, behaviours taught in no classroom, the safe languages of obsequiousness and baby talk. The Lelièvres feast whilst the postmistress gleans girolles. The servant gorges on gibberish from her goggle box, whilst the Lelièvres enjoy an opera on tv as a family, with an old bilingual libretto anthology on their laps, a neat visual metaphor for cultural capital. The rapaciousness of the employer is shown when the servant Sophie is required to do extra work for a birthday party when she has a pre-existing commitment. She does very well, but is still criticized. The rich are acquisitive, of people, services, land, money and objects.

One of the most incisive observations regards charitable donations. The postmistress observes that the vast majority of donations are old, superfluous, worn out and broken, the well off see donating as more convenient than using garbage cans, and get to feel virtuous for doing so. People rarely if ever buy to donate. Hand me downs enforce a hierarchy.

Chabrol had a good eye for the invisible. Here he exposes the workings of the class system, operating with a fine cast. Events end as expected. Madness and injustice breed madness and injustice. Huppert and Bonnaire get the juicy roles and don't disappoint.

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

A vision of youth, perfect in its imperfections. Perfectly animated.

[10/10 · 13 March 2023]

Whisper of the Heart is story about fate, love, and exploring your creative capabilities. The narrative handles these themes in a finely balanced and mature way, respecting all the characters. Whisper was the first directorial credit for Yoshifumi Kondo, anointed as Ghibli's future-holder, but tragically taken from the fold too early.

The film follows teenager Shizuku Tsukishima as she struggles to balance her love for fiction, studies for her high school entrance exams, and her need for adventure and romance. She's a girl with a lot going on, and so the movie has a lot going on.

Shizuku is creative and wants to find out if she has what it takes to achieve as a fantasy writer. She is overtaken by the need to create, like the Pythoness of Delphi, a deity speaks through her as she imperils both her physical and financial security.

The film is mature in that it's made clear that there is a safe and secure way to proceed (do well at exams, go to university, get hired on the "milk round"), or you can take a risk and go off the path into the forest. Certainly there is no insistence that one is a better idea than the other. In Tsukishima's case though, she feels she has to know. The location of the "World Emporium" seems to hint at the precariousness of talent, the back of the premises is perched on stilts over a precipitous drop.

The film is notable for its atmospherics, and the way the animation incorporates light and wind effects. The start of the movie particularly speaks of summer. The fantasy scenes that come later in the move were pioneering in the way they merged various animations via the use of computer stitching.

The cat of many names, Moon, Muta, and maybe Baron Humbert von Gikkingen is a fascinating character I took for a personification of fate. We never really find out whether Moon is a guide to the curious, or just a funny-looking cat. We can impute meaning to him, we can find significance in his taunting of the neighbourhood dog (fate is fickle, lazy and cruel), or maybe we are just making it up.

Another thing I liked is the movie's promoting of involvement, Seiji will only play his violin if Tsukishima will sing. So much for the society of spectacle.

Part of me will now forever be on a hill in West Tokyo with Shizuku Tsukishima. Whisper of the Heart in my book, is one of the greatest films ever made. Its sheer immersion and capture of youthful trials is outstanding.

Accident (1967)

There were four in a bed and the little one said roll over...

[10/10 · 9 February 2023]

Whenever I've asked the question, "if we are both sat in silence, who is the onus on to start the conversation or to be interesting?" Every time I get a strange look and the person says it's equally on us. However the reality of the matter is almost always different, and it's because of things like class, physical attractiveness, financial swag, a whole host of invisibles, some of which may never have been seriously identified or described by those who dedicate themselves to the social sciences.

Losey and Pinter as a superorganism, or cross-media holobiont, seem to have a strong understanding of those invisibles, and that is why it's such a joy for me to watch their collaborations (Pinter plus Friedkin, and Pinter plus Clive Donner plus Nic Roeg have also worked well). Almost everything we say to one another seems in some form or another to be a deceit, a great example in the film is when Oxford tutor Stephen tells him pupil some sanctimonious line about having as his first responsibility to protect his new tutee from "male lust". In reality both of them are angling after the same woman. This seems banal until you realize Stephen was lying not just to William but also to himself (despite some level of knowingness in the delivery); another positive balancing factor is that Dirk Bogarde has activated his A game for this scene. The high-falutin' folks of Oxford become more visible under the lens of primatology.

Some might also question why I am raising class, when all of the scrimmage of characters are "upper class" by today's public understanding. Well, a key to unlock the film is that William and Anna are not in the same social class as the two dons. These youngsters are from noble families, the Dons are of the yeomanry. Between the two Dons there is, for the time, an emergent class distinction, one has graduated to being a public intellectual on the tellybox (a hubristic and poisonous role), whilst the other is still dreaming of being invited to that panel. In reality even the seven class system in current vogue in the UK (which produces two "established middle classes" and two "elites" from our group) is a simplifcation of an exceptionally complicated ever-evolving class lattice.

The appearance of a quadrangle goat through the window in an early scene is a foreshadowing of essentially a scapegoating later in the movie. One of the four ends up the victim of machinations of the other three (not a spoiler and the "Accident" of the title). So this is a bitter film essentially, although the languidness of the images and the score lull one into a peaceful doped up state.

It was redolent to be British, an Oxford graduate and forty-something whilst watching this movie. The two dons are both fellow quadragenarians and developing sensitivities about their bodies and the world, no long can I or they pretend to be of the ilk of a spritely bouncing Breathless-era Belmondo. It's the age when young men test boundaries with you, more primatology. A key scene is the rugby like game played at William's patrlineal seat, in the Palladian theatre, site of ancient thrustings, a visual metaphor of the popularity contest called life, they all but bare their arses to one another.

This brings me to that wonderfully self-applicable word shibboleth. A biblical word, the pronunciation of which is a matter of life or death. We can note that our class systems involve many alternative pronunications and word usages intended to segregate us in the hierarchy. Note that I deliberately used education-demonstrating words in this reviews that you might not know, also words from different high and lows of the lattice to demonstrate cultural capital. Just when you think you're doing something neutral like reading my review, an invisible becomes visible. Oxford is the home of strange cliquish words: Hebdomadal Council, encaenia, battels, torpids, one of the fun ones that comes up in the movie is Provost. Because all the colleges can't do the same things, three of them are led by a "Provost", others are led by Deans, Principals, Masters, Presidents, Rectors and Wardens.

Many people may watch the film and say, "so what?". The so what is that it's just not easy to be this observant and to etch the results onto celluloid, and then into engrams that expire only when the mind itself can no longer hold grip of anything.

The Guest (1963)

Ordinary Significance. Spoilers start after paragraph one.

[10/10 · 19 January 2023]

The Caretaker is a stimulating and intimate film that is deceptively simple. It's about two days in the lives of three ordinary men in and around a rundown flat; two brothers and a homeless man and their rights to inhabit a space. It is not Gunga Din, or Amadeus, it is not an escape, it is an inscape. Whilst the events cannot be considered pivotal in the lives of these three nondescript men, the film also has got as much in it as you can bring to it, match it in effort and it expands. It is a very well shot and deliberate movie, it reminds me that every moment of every individual's life has a preciousness, a nobility, a significance, however saturated they might be by fallibility and ignorance, which they unfortunately almost always are.

What does the title "The Caretaker" mean? Most obviously it's the role of building caretaker, but it's also about the care Mick takes of his brother Aston, even if he does it in a misguided way, the care Aston attempts to take of broken household items and Mac, and maybe about how Mac takes care to keep warm. It's a film that reminds me that one of a human being's core objectives is to maintain body temperature within a very tight range, we construct what we call houses mainly to achieve this objective, and that's why housing is so emotive. I was glad to have watched this in British January, as the film was clearly shot over a cold Winter (the actors breathing often condenses).

It spoke to me a lot about power. What does it mean to have rights over a property, how easy it is to exert power over someone who has dropped out of a system; how we both fight attempts to control us in one breath, and in another attempt to control others; how we are both aggrieved and pitiless. Is any social interaction untainted by this wrangling? Aston certainly seems to have withdrawn from society and may well believe so. He is consoled by a plan to build a shed in the garden, an authentic space that he will have made with his hands and his labour, that he can own and feel pride in.

One of the excitements of the movie is to see actors who were never really given room to astound on screen being given exactly that. Robert Shaw, talented stage Shakesperian playwright and novelist gets a rare chance to impress in front of a camera outside the limitations of character acting; Donald Pleasance entrancing in a role he honed to perfection in the stage version of the play. It is not possible to single out Bates, Shaw or Pleasance as "leading man", they are a triskelion.

The Caretaker felt in general like a labour of love, many celebrities felt that this adaptation of Pinter's play was worth funding (Peter Sellers and Elizabeth Taylor among many others are mentioned in the credits as funding the movie) and culturally significant, commercial imperatives be damned. Nic Roeg, who would go onto achieve widespread public acknowledgemnt as a director was the principal photogrpaher on this movie and does a lot without showiness or insistence, some of the micro tracking shots are worthy of study and greatly enhance the psychological effects of certain scenes.

Each character is allowed moments to emblazon the screen, Aston when he recounts his electroconvulsive treatment, Mac in his terror in the dark, Mick as he wordlessly empathises with his brother in the garden. In the end every man does as he sees fit and has the same right to exist as any other. Even Mick's abject villainy is an attempt to help his brother. By whatever miracle or obscure sequence of events we humans, we "ancient race", come to be here, we have not been gifted with much capacity for self reflection. Each character in the play is well aware of the faults and delusions of the other characters, but their own dubious gameplans and blemished histories seem well formed to themselves, as at the fairground when our images are distorted and sent back by funny mirrors, but here the characters are wonky whilst the mirrors reflect back coherence.

The original play is inspired by moments from Pinter's own life and characters he knew and made impressions on him during his struggle years. It is worth noting the small mercy that by the time the film was made, the crude and drastic measure of electroconvulsive treatment was performed under anaesthesia as standard (Aston's character received it on the wrong side of history, circa twenty years before the events of the film if we assume Aston's age was the same as the actor Robert Shaw's). It is now no longer used as a standard treatment for schizophrenia.

Mám ráda nudný zivot (2009)

Peace comes dripping softly

[10/10 · 11 December 2022]

This Czech short, a little under a half hour in running time, is one of five films by Germans and Czechs that were commissioned under the loose thematic of decelerating time (if my translation was accurate). They've been presented together and separately, when together the project is called Breathless: Dominance of the Moment.

Some ordinary diary entries are narrated whilst we see images from a small Czech neighbourhood where the camera pirouettes elegantly. Sometimes the journal text and the images line up, sometimes there's a misalignment but in an uncanny or interesting way, and sometimes they appear separate. Everything is absolutely ordinary, yet the ordinary is presented as extraordinary. Every day for example, is an anniversary of something personally momentous from some time, even if we don't know of what, every labour a prayer. The Mitteleuropean landscape is too bland for most location scouts, but happily presented here. The house is full of utter kitsch but somehow seems to fit together, and the people that inhabit the spaces are comfortably dressed and cheerful. Although much of the information in the diary is in some sense nonsense, the general feeling is one of acceptance of the moment and harmless credulity. My personal favourite moments were of a silly but charming picture of a whale catching the sunlight, and a mention of prayers down by the ferns on midsummer's night. It seemed to be half an hour where I could suspend judgement and watch characters who have also in general, suspended judgement in order to live life in a fluid manner.

I once said that a film about ordinary people could not be made, because ordinary people don't create art, all artists are in some sense extraordinary and speak of themselves and others like them in the main. This film is however a counter thesis, a superbly well-made document of ordinary peaceable people going about their lives and appreciating moments. It seems very special indeed somehow.

Nightmares Come at Night (1970)

I drank delicious nectar from a dark flower

[10/10 · 9 December 2022]

A delirious waft of midnight jasmine from Jesus Franco. Do not bother with this one if you require a film to be coherent. Do watch if you have ever appreciated having a fever.

Anna is a stripper in a so-called second class "boîte de nuit" in Zagreb, when she falls into the devices of a bisexual adventuress. Anna is installed in Cynthia's mansion and passed off as the "Princess of Istria". Well, she certainly is a princess of Istria in some sense, not in a sense any College of Arms would recognize though.

Anna is taught to be Cynthia's odalisque, Kali, and Anarkali, if it's even fair to attach words to these various creations. There is an ultimate plan that provides some level of suspense. But in an atmosphere of heavy incense and nudity, in the fabric night garden of the pleasure dome, it becomes less and less important.

The movie has a wildness to it, an ambiguity, an editing that makes no logic but every sense. It is often fanciful in a delightful way, a playmate describes how after sex he feels like jumping out of the window and running on the rooftops. The movie is comfortable and familiar with the sexually-drenched mindset in a way I have only seen in the films of Yann Gonzalez.

It is said that this movie is stitched together from unused footage originating from more than one movie, and that makes sense to me, there is a whole thread with Soledad Miranda and Andrea Montchal as the eerie "neighbours", that certainly doesn't look shot in the same neighbourhood or even country. This is used to great suspenseful effect and is tied together in the end, although these players never appear with the other players on screen. The segment has a wonderful Manchette-ian feel to it "life is all s___" daubed on the wall of the hideout in bright red made me think of his anarchistic novel Nada.

It feels and is fragmentary, but the fragments are glorious, there's a scene where a glittering skirt appears and disappears, swaying in the darkness and then there's a great perspective shift. The movie can be appreciated for its visual trickery alone.

Diabolique (1955)

Swamp story

[10/10 · 3 October 2022]

The Delassalles run a second rate boarding school in St Cloud, the site of cruelties both quotidien and painstakingly planned. Monsieur le directeur, is a penny-pinching fastidious tyrant, Madame la directrice, a child-tender blessed spirit of the building, and to complete the love triangle, Nicole, a sort of a statuesque female Tom Ripley. The film creeps up on you slowly in its apparent effortlessness, lack of showiness, and reliance on suggestion. It is known for its gradually crescendoing tension, which is heightened by Mme Delassalle's weak heart, a case of art imitating life as actress Véra Clouzot would die of a heart attack a few years later, aged 46.

Henri-Georges Clouzot has been accused of straightwashing the Boileau-Narcejac story, although a wordly eye notices many allusions to a relationship between Christina and Nicole, the clearest example when asked whether a bed is Christina's or Nicole's, Christina defiantly replies, "ours". This is as much as commerciality and the mores of the 1950s cinema allows. An easy intimacy is shown by the implied dorsogluteal (bum!) injection Nicole delivers to Christina late on in the movie (Christina lies on her front and the injection is delivered too quickly to have been intravenous).

The opening credits background, a chaotic strew of duckweed and water, is accompanied by an enervating tune, increasingly sinister and raucous, one of several times Les Diaboliques is unsettling without resorting to crassness. The movie is one of those examples where artistic restraint noticeably elevates the results, where redolence trumps exposition. Perhaps my favourite image in the movie is of Nicole using tongs to carry a glass retort around her classroom, full of a boiling black substance, a stomach-shaped visual metaphor for what is going inside her.

The dialogue is very tight and pretty flawless, and again, very suggestive. As the Insitut Delassalle breaks for half term, M. Raymond breaks the prim facade of school life by mentioning that tomorrow he will be completely naked; he must escape from the stifling bourgeois act. Various hints of the inequity of the world and its inherent stupidity garnish the central black pudding. The children have taxis and chauffeurs whilst the well-studied teachers have to beg for a swallow of cheap wine from the headmaster, and live stifled and petty existences. A choice dark note is when the teachers who Nicole lets rooms to confidently prognosticate that Mme la directrice and their landlady must eat far better food than them due to their social situation; we the audience have already seen them eating flaccid gone over morsels out of slop. How easy it is to get our imaginations of one another's existences flat out wrong; hell is born in how we appear in other peoples' imaginations, as Sartre opined.

The film escalates to a diaphanous vision in the night and unhinges into the mystical. Highly recommended.