Reviews

Red is a kind of film that you probably feel self-satisfaction when you watched it. Because it again pull yourself a distance between the what we knew as entertaining Hollywood movies and your own cinematic experiences.

Well but for me it is ambivalent. I hold a great expectation when it had the most reputable critical consensus in the both academia and critiques, but also it had its own arena as a film that proves how self-frantic Cannes Film Festival is, as the PULP FICTION in the same year beat this most commonly known as European Art House film. But to those who believed those assertions and deeply flattered about it, I have not a lot to say, because someone has to live under someone else's opinions and to me this is simply means stupidity.

The RED to me, is a work that wrapped with the husk of those European directors' tenebrous tour de force in its own cinematic style, but to the core, like Kieslowski always did, is quite ponderous and sterile just like those scornful Hollywood commercial movies. To this point, the PULP FICTION won Cannes film Festival may had some reasons as its smooth production and the mature using of loop narrative structure.

I can hardly to understand what the Peter Cowie said about those points about "after 1994 everything had to be explained, it's PULP FICTION won the Cannes Film Festival, instead of RED". The RED is clearly explained, and structured, and you can not find those artistic stretches and poetic details to approach it. Even the dogs, to me it's just like a tool of director to get over the plots, very ponderously to make a bridge between characters, in which the most direct feeling is that, it is not alive, i felt that it is dead, a complete marionette.

But it is not the fundamental problem, you might depict a world that only stayed in the sense of story instead of something superior, something really cinematic. But Kieslowski didn't even do a good job in it. Simply because those you might seek for about the surrealism and the striking poetic part are missing, one of the most important camera movement is also sketchy as it's imitate a book falling down and we finally aware that this old man's secret. And this part probably be the people's agreement about how this film can hit to be a great work, and it is simple-minded ridiculous, that it's just a play of script in a worm-eaten plots that may stimulate those budding audience to reconstruct the whole film and imagine it as a great work in the textual POV.

And yes, there is the question, where is the film? Where is the cinema? What do I perceive is the story, the literature, instead of the beauty of cinema.

Someone might argue those striking cinematography and composition in it, but it's just in the base of okay level.

Some sequences made me recall the THE SILENCE OF THE LAMB (1991), the same salvation heroine and a creepy old man didacting (and those two actors does look alike the Judie Foster and Anthony Hopkins) The BLUE is the one of my favorite in the trilogy, it's really beautiful, and poetic in the cuts between cuts. RED is a blend between the BLUE and WHITE, and it didn't make it better, it made it worse.

Some shots directly to the sun recalled me the RASHONMON The advertising shooting is beautiful.

Cinéma vérité, Director forced himself to be included in the film. And I think this film can be one of the earliest images that close to today's internet rumbles about the interview from a child to an old man, and this one had its own purity. Not absolutely at all but it's belong to the time of 1980s. It's now here became the shortcut of those realness films, how can we trust directors didn't cut some censored parts out? And now we can revise the quote but Jean-Luc Godard to "24 lies per second". Cinéma vérité, Director forced himself to be included in the film. And I think this film can be one of the earliest images that close to today's internet rumbles about the interview from a child to an old man, and this one had its own purity. Not absolutely at all but it's belong to the time of 1980s. It's now here became the shortcut of those realness films, how can we trust directors didn't cut some censored parts out? And now we can revise the quote but Jean-Luc Godard to "24 lies per second".

I would say it's direct cinema in which the director doesn't show up in the film, and make those images to be what we believe the "reality". In fact, I do think those rousing assertions, after Italian Neorealism, about the truth of cinema (probably start from 60s?) are simply those two continents, Europe (by French cinema vérité) and America started with the direct cinema are rapaciously sketchiness. The realness of cinema has already be a cake that being assigned by those early filmmakers, and then those filmmakers from the 60s tried to gain the heritage of Italian neorealism, so that there are two genres.

For me those divisions are nonsense but cultural. We can also take in the filmmakers as the part of realness (like those Orson Welles directors casting themselves in their films), from this point, the cinéma vérité became like a macho French joke came from A CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The point again now is, those discussions are simply awry from the films. Where is the films? Where is the cinema? We came to the stage of the era that those discourses right are far more being concerned than the art itself. And then they might discover it is sheer nonsense to play this game under those circumstances of capitalism.

Kieslowski does make another work, TALKING HEADS closer to the direct cinema, and I think he does not have those traits of opting in those genres, he's trying to capture the beauty of cinema in both textual societal senses and poetic cinematic sense in this one. The ballet dancers' training process does very beguiling as it's dramatic approach of suffering and getting capable of performing on the stage (those classic dancing sequences in the films are inherited from those Edison and originators of film), and you can not do without he's turning of camera between the depth of actors and composition in which, bravo.

The second work of Three Colours trilogy, WHITE. As Tony Rayns said in the June issue of Sight and Sound "Imagine a kind of filmmaking that's truly in tune with the ways you think and relate to other people. A deeply humane kind of filmmaking, but free from 'humanist' lies and sentimental evasions. Not a dry, 'realistic' kind of filmmaking, but one in which all the imaginative and creative efforts have gone into understanding the way we are. A kind of filmmaking as sensitive to silence as to speech, and alert to the kind of meanings we prefer to hide away. To my knowledge, only two directors in the world are currently making films like that. One is Krzysztof Kieslowski in Poland. The other is Edward Yang in Taiwan." Well, it is quite provoking assertions, simply because when I watched the WHITE, I was seeking for an answer to place this so-called "masterpiece" into an explanation of those film theories and argued with myself that there must be something striking, exciting about this work. And then I just went to watch twice of it, and finally I can hardly resonate and I think it is lame.

Unlike the BLUE we were in a quite a melancholic mood in the whole sequences no matter from cinematography of interminable interruptions of editing and somehow the brilliant ending of a panning montage. In WHITE, we were suited in a amusing manner of Zbigniew Zamachowski, in which we might feel sad at the beginning Paris scene in which BLUE's heroine popped up in the courtroom, but again latter we will find out that he is just absolutely a sad sack within those Kieslowski's slapsticks of "humiliation" mostly represented in those genres like "sexual impotency", "financial killing". Well I do not opposed to such universal and ponderous B-type elements surfaced in an European Art house films, as these can not be lethal to a good movie. What we found the problems in the WHITE are based on those abridged stretches in the script (the scenes about their marriage before the divorce) and those simpleminded perfunctory events happened in this ponderous story, and again it proves again how frantic to connect those three notions of French Revolution with this trilogy, it's absolutely nonsense.

BLUE, the beginning of Kieslowski's three color trilogy, or like Jonathan Rosenbeum from Chicago Reader called the work that "this is a movie in which Kieslowski's own liberty manages to sing and soar." Well, perhaps it's sophisticated to understand from that single statement, because it has the background of that critics commonly agreed what those three color: Blue, White, Red are stands for the French flag of: Liberty, Equal, Fraternity. Later we might hear some rumors about "this is not what it originally about" or "it was kept by the producer's will". But we somehow as a literary human being can see some threads of those assertions in the trilogy just from the color-building process. But still, I would prefer not to have those preconceived mind to get into a film, in which it's not healthy for neither film critiques sphere, nor what the film's magic inside of it.

The reason why I saying that is also reasonable, because like all those guesswork surrounded the BLUE, they work same as the "liberty" innuendo, you can put the martial concept, life and music, self-consciousness...etc whatever including the liberty. To this point, I think those colors and annotations became not that fundamental approach to interpret the work, but the fundamental approach to politicalize the work (from the aspects of post-communism Poland, and a Polish director doing a French dialogue film about European liberty).

So let's put away all this politics and see what are films about it. There is, of course, "liberty" in it, but in a different way. It's one of the most mundane and ponderous cinematic tour de force that articulated what is liberty-the glass. Last work you might see so much glasses is probably Varda's 5 TO 7 CLEO. But those glasses are different, Varda's glasses are mirrors, Kieslowski' glasses are glasses. The old saying from Jean Renoir, later exercised by Jean-Luc Godard in VIVRE SA VIE, is that the glasses in cinema stands for a matter that isolated character and the freedom in the other side, characters can see it, but can never touch it. And this became the very motif of cinema: the struggle between the freedom and limits.

In Kieslowski' BLUE there are so much examples of the glasses, and we this is the direct way that we can feel this cinematic motif of liberty in the whole film, including the beginning shot of heroine's daughter (I don't know what you guys recall, what made me think is Tarkovsky's SOLARIS, and PIERROT LE FOU's car scene, but those vagaries of mine don't seem to connect to any of the plots about) through a glass from the back of a car.

Is it impressive? Yes. But this is hardly to make it a "masterpiece". Because those tactics from classics maybe half a century ago are brought back from time to time, and mass audiences seem to tired of watching those old tour de force twisted in our modern eyes. And almost the most of poetic sequences in the film are lame and direct, like the fading frame and the interruption of music. It created a sense of the heroine's mind presence along the whole film. But what still I mean is that that is what it is all about. It's somehow you can appreciate in a certain way to feel it's powerful or impressive, but it's of course very direct and ponderous.

I'm expecting the another two can have something news. Watch twice in a day.

You can barely count on a film at this moment with a title of AMERICAN BEAUTY to guarantee you something dreamlike experience, (though it permeates all the cinematography) but it also hardly do a absolute satire as it's came from Hollywood, so my point now here it probably take a dip into the neutralism. It's not actually neutral, rather mellow, and did what Hollywood can best do, what you might expect the Hollywood films do? LA CHINOISE?

The only part that appreciable maybe for me in that movie is probably those didactic loops (it's lame, and sterile but that's what it all about) across the whole film, and these freak psycho who loves Pink Floyd, and being accused by the director to make those avant-garde rock music enjoyers' stereotypes much deeper.

I found that in the beginning that the feeling of dying cinematography in Hollywood. There are good composition and somehow okay lighting, but one of things that make it ratty is that the connections between shots and shots, that you can barely find those threads of meaning structures in it (they don't want to actually, this isn't what Hollywood made for, it's mainly for entertaining instead of the self-expression of directors) It tires me a little at beginning, like tasting a bucket of greasy junk foods, but it gets milder when it breaks down into those classic Hollywood three-act structures.

We had two wilted men who tried to sight rape those two budding girls with one sexual profligacy, whom made the whole film like a kiddie porn (Nabokov is giggling), and a cynical young daughter, with a documentary camera POV and a self-imagined POV, which I think can basically satisfied the audiences' voyeurism at the beginning of the film. Later we are through into the conflicts between the desires and desires, all those characters seems to not happy with their sex life except this gay couple, and indeed I think this is a pretty gay movie, simply because when you reconstruct the whole plot and you probably will find if the ending scene of Ricky's father turn to be a gay didn't happen, this film will be too cruel to the gay people.

You can count on it with not simply a drama like Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULVARD, which they both have the same beginning of a dead people talking as a narrator. It's pretty a didactic way of teaching you how to live or appreciate your moment, but for me this is not the fundamental way of the cinema. Like, you can simply read any literature or philosophy textbook to gain a much deeper understanding of life in merely ten minutes, and what this film is all about is the entirety of textualized as a parable, but forgot to do what films might really being good at such as the interlinked between shots and shots, it's not these mechanical ending of special montage, or surreal imaginations in hero's mind.

The first and the last till now Palme d'Or film in China mainland directed by Chen Kaige had gone so far for a reason.

I think it finally closed to the Kurosawa's point that all those directors no need to affiliate what western aesthetics is, but to concentrate on what they had inherited, and then the glow glamer might glow itself. Indeed, it's simply divine. And the powerful inner of these cultural things is so striking that made me even give up the approach of textual analysis to dissociate this film.

Though there are some parts of it are too conspicuous and interlocking with the outstanding cinematography that you can't move your eyes away from it like those shaking long takes doing time to time with the rolling history and the lighting, performance, composition, whatever it is, brilliant.

For the story part, I think we were put in a bystander POV, and the whole drama is continuing with the history of last half century of China. It's mechanical and tight, and suggestively composed (Chen Kaige does know how to do some political innuendo at that moment, but now, a tragedy.) And here is a perfect example of a homage to the classic. When the little Dieyi cried, the Opera is going on the stage, you can hardly not recall the VIVRE SA VIE (1962) scene when Anna Karina cried intercut with LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC. But it is a homage that doesn't wilt, it is so fit that we won't say it as a plagiarism.

Hardly to tell why Dieyi committed suicide.

From those pantheon of Japanese cinema, we do sense some certain threads of what they like called "the elements belongs to their own country". To be more clear, we do need to pull out those Kenji Mizoguchi's UGETSU and Kurosawa's DRUNKEN ANGEL, and we concluded that those didactic moral inclusive plots are somehow, inherited in those Japanese cinema culture.

And this time, Takeshi Kitano, most commonly known as famous for being a virtuoso in gangster, mobsters movie, chose to not to begin with a story in a particular rambunctious way, to be compared, it's kind of kiddish but intriguing.

We can hardly tell those what we expected the provoking cinematic sleights in his oeuvre, and also this is not what he really passionate bout. I think Takeshi Kitano is someone that really wanted to tell some stories instead of doing a play of cinematography, from inside and outside, the most poetic sequences are not such obscure than any of those cinema masters (riding a bike in a freely sky).

But we do see some beguiling way about Takeshi Kitano handled about those sequences of kids in the school and outside school, and I think this could be the most heartfelt part of the whole movie. From Jean Renoir's perspective, he believes that the windows in the movies can be a fundamental motif of the cinema (though it's quite Hermeneutics), that the characters can see across the windows but they can't really get in touch with the freedom, or whatever outside the windows, the struggle between the freedom and the limits (Jean-Luc Godard adapted those ideas in his 1962 masterpiece VIVRE SA VIE). What Takeshi Kitano did was that created a perfect isolation between the students in the classroom and the two outsiders through a glass, and later we see how they jocularly played with these limits by using a fake doll of the teacher to bounce upon the solemn system (a slapstick), the students laughed but they can only laughed on the seats without movements, and that is what I call the perfect isolation between the freedom and limits that applied in those peculiar topic of children's decadences. We also see similar threads in his striking composition (wilds kids standing and those teachers sitting) and direct cuts between the teachers and students, he definitely knows what he believes and we he perceives.

But then they entered the fight club. So from now we can pull out YOLO (2024), 100 YEN LOVE (2014) and KIDS RETURN (1996) into the same arena, and then we will see ROCKY (1976) pop out and said you guys are all wilted. Or DAS BOXENDE KANGURH (1895) by Max Skladanowsky said the same things. The comparison between the years by years simply is nonsense, but I still wanted to point out, the serious problems of YOLO is not plagiarism (though it is somehow, but we all plagiarize, classics will be refreshed in modern eyes), it's about the intention of Leying in doing boxing, in comparison, KIDS RETURN did this part nearly perfect, but we have nothing to complain, how could expect a standup comedian who never learned any sleights of cinema (it's not really important at all, director needs to read to learn everything about arts) to make a good movie?

Back to the film, KIDS RETURN then entered a stage like the kids in GERMANY YEAR ZERO by Rossellini did when he tried to poison his father and suicide. How could a film with kids not be moralizing and intriguing? I think we are here through a peephole (as Takeshi Kitano doesn't have what they called a "cache" frame) to peep those kids get into the society and facing across the systems outside the system, the power outside the power, and the hierarchy outside the hierarchy, then they probably grow up, or gave up, that's the didactic part.

The taxi driver is quite the best part of the film, it elucidated you can not escape no matter where, the world is tough.

Susumu Terajima's performance is perfect, I can still recall him in the RAN. The boxing part in the latter part is getting redundant and sterile, a little too didactic, but impressive at the end.

I can assume that Bergman must watched this and created THE MAGICIAN's character (Max von Sydow did a perfect job). And our infamous, notorious Hideshi Hino's cult masterpiece MERMAID IN A MANHOLE, somehow utilized this tragic novella by Zika Barantsevich (what a genius, made every artists reflected themselves in a hysterical way including both of cult of feminine and pursuing of death).

How close that beauty is between death, and I think it would be no necessity to bring up Kierkegaard's theory or Psychoanalysis to kill this beautiful images, which to itself is brilliant enough in the cinematic way.

The mute protagonist, what a brilliant sleight of hand to adapt into the silent film, well indeed, it is way more moralizing to appreciate those tragedy in a disability's POV, and we awry feel that the dishonesty of the male in the beginning is way more pathetic than the ending of killing. Perhaps, we do not have enough hysteria from this crazy artist, but what we see somehow is a quintessential and clear pathos that Russian directors at that moment bring to us, this peculiar art of morality and psycho.

I see also a lot Bergman's threads in it, like the stage-within-film, painting-within-film. And even some avant-garde, dolly out, tinted dream surrealism, and depth in the composition with a beautiful parallel action from the front and back with dishonesty of the partner, how brilliant, how moralizing (decreased the CITIZEN KANE's reputation again). And some tribute, probably to the CARMENCITA(1894)or Annabelle's dance (1894-1895) I'm tired with figuring out which dance is earlier, but they do somehow ground this aesthetic of reproducing the dance over the screen.

Poor Gizella Love the plot, evoke my new script.

A French remake of Hollywood noir mobster movies with a little bit of what the critics like called "New-Wave" style, and Truffet's heartfelt cinema.

Story unfolded with a seemingly dispensable sequence with gibberish between Charlie Aznavour, our sedate but sexual prolific hero, and French filmmaker Alex Joffe, whom perhaps be a character like the Jean-Pierre Mieville in À bout de souffle as a "New-Waves" embodiment, also the tribute to Cashiers du cinéma. Those sequences like that I like to call it as the "breath space", or in other terms "irrelevant (sounds negatory)", "improvisatory"...etc. Works pretty well in French New Waves stuffs, especially the Jean-Luc Godards, which they pull the work into the self-talking hallucinating wet dreams. But I hold the judgmental opinion on it, those critics like Pauline Karl, the contrarians, tried to cling to a aesthetic that be against the mass audience and pull it to the extreme to build their own reputation, however to be responsible, the fully praise and promotion of those "breath space" is doubtful. Because it always brought the audiences to the nowhere, and then we forget simply where are we heading to. It is okay, if there were just right amount of "breath space" like in the Kurosawa's films (every breath spaces made the film much more brilliant and neat), but if, like most French New Waves director, Hollywood rom-com and probably some the Tarkovsky to me, they like pulling these sequences to the extreme and became their iconic style, it simply became a game of trash talking writings. I am not saying this sequence and all those sequences are bad, but I'm questioning about their artistic effect when it gets into the abuse. It's subtle to balance it, I think THE MIRROR and Kurosawa's DRUNKEN ANGEL are perfect example. In Truffet's TRIEZ SUR LE PIANISTE, we see however a weird levity of it, accompanying with Godard-like voice-out-frame.

The women in it are dramatically sacrificed, hardly resonates with hero.

Those science-fic nutheads of "Brian in a vat" had a finally a work to prove themselves by a cinematic work.

Camera traveling across the spaces to spaces the times to times, we seemingly got in to a nest world like those science-fic boys passionate about. Though it can only be achieved through the film-a lie.

You can't assume that there is an outer space, or there would be infinite ones of nest. Basically this idea is mainly seeking for a host to conquer on his failure of competitive world he is now living in.

Back to film. It's super cool that finally filmmaker showed the existence of camera, the liar showed himself up.

May I assume this is a work of tribute to invention of cinema? And now here is the threads.

The running horse-Sallie Gardner at a Gallop The burning factory-Exiting the factory (they both have horses and carriage and similar gate.

The first try of paint-on colors. It's so absurd or may I say strange, just like an apprentice just learned how to paint, and tried to paint a roll.

Motion picture. Needed to read Delezue to find to find deeper understanding May I assume this is a work of tribute to invention of cinema? And now here is the threads.

The running horse-Sallie Gardner at a Gallop The burning factory-Exiting the factory (they both have horses and carriage and similar gate.

The first try of paint-on colors. It's so absurd or may I say strange, just like an apprentice just learned how to paint, and tried to paint a roll.

Motion picture. Needed to read Delezue to find to find deeper understanding.

A dive into cinematic perception.

The climbing paces of changing camera focal lengths is just like having sex in this hallway, instead it is not a genital, it's a camera, and we expect he could traverse the door break the limit, like those cinematic motif "the struggle of freedom and astrict." But it didn't.

I don't understand why but I kind of seeing the same threads of autonomy of camera in all those structural films. Ernie Gehr is a moderate example, his works are leaning to some certain societal experiences itself, though cinema is including in it, but in the cinematic experience, it can somehow individualized.

It is a completely brilliant work of art of cinema POV. I guess that the Christopher Nolan and most uninspired sterile Hollywood slashes came from these. Maya Deren ascends.

How could she (and he Alexander Hammid of course) do this spectacular immaculate cinematography??! Needed a wholehearted proposition to revisit it and learn from the textbook how to make a smooth transition from objective POV and subjective POV and the perfect anathema of the pageantry of course.

14 minutes consisted an incomparable amount (maybe Chris multiple 10 times)of play of time, space, and spectatorships. (said again Hollywood could never ever duplicate it, it's out of the question) Watched in the halfway of writing of script, and yes, I think I didn't be wild at all.

"What is the human?""what is the story?""what is the war?" I'm regret that I lose my 3D glasses so I watched it in 2D version, I may come back again for the 3D version.

Though I dont know what the truly 3D version is about, I do think this time the use of 3D is quite a highway to the Jean-Luc labyrinth. The whole film is consisted with these overdosed pattern of images and every Godard's elements-sex, war, politics, philosophy and unconventional sleight of cinema.

It's the wildest one, and you have to accept it in ripe Jean-Luc Godard's way, that you do not need to catch anything in it, it's a dive into the perception.

Pretty anti-war, and anti-cinematic languages. The others, I need 2 times watch.

Today's the world's most prestigious film festival-Festival de Cannes, a symbol of artists' free expression, non-politicalized (it's some political standpoint), the equivalence of artists from around the globe, had twisted. Is this a veritable good film? It's hard to say, but is this a film for Cannes? Yes, it is. The threads are pretty obvious: this long, tedious, sleek, consistent trail with mediocre cinematography and everything of it permeates a weird vibe, the vibe of solemnity that leads to nothing.

So let's clarify: if I want to know a trail's record, I can go to the local government's website and read it or watch a MUCH "verite" poor surveillance record of the trail. Justine Triet, obviously a director knows what to do, then she decided to put some her solutions in it, like those shaking, zooming, VHS-like sequences in the trail. I don't know what you guys recall, for it's the Abbas's CLOSE-UP, and the whole became the blend of Kurosawa's IKIRU and Rashonmon. But then here are flies-on-the-wall, the clearly, clean cinematic shots intercuts within it made the whole thing weird. What we expect to be the "verite" part became the Brechtian directors' self-reflexity, but this is not supposed to be what really proper to be here, that's the part we perceive the director's unawareness of making them all fall down. The whole sterile trail became the most unbearable scenes of the whole film, and in fact, that's what this film consisted about, it made no difference in art to boils down it under one hour, but why for that long? The consistency of the cinematic plots, for Cannes' aesthetics and this vile French and English blend dialogue.

Notated Chinese film critic Dai Jinhua, yesterday in Peking University had made a claim about realism in this film, which I think to the Bazin's sake, this could be the lowest level of the realism ingredients in it. Not every anti-dramatic film is realism, and for sure, director's compromise on artistic effects is the thing needed to be criticized about, what we all see about Dai Jinhua is she clearly does know how to pretends to be a film critic as a contrarian (pretty sure the Pauline Kael is her persona for sure), and not responsible for what the film is really related (which is the different parts from Pauline Kael.) The kids in it is quite a wilting purpose. We expect to see the children in the film to do something not "children", let themselves moralizing. The Rossellini's GERMANY YEAR ZERO, De Sica's THE BICYCLE THIEVES, the children are heterogens, they witness how this ugly world is and moralizing everything. But in ANATOMY OF THE FALL, the kid doesn't really have a clear position, it's delible, because he is not described innocent enough to be moralizing, he acted like adults from the start, and that's it. If we replacing it as a friend or something of our heroine, the effect would be same, or even better, because it's somehow weird that he being here. The whole story is not moralizing enough to be using a kid, in THE BICYCLE THIEVES, we directly see whole the struggling this dad in the Italian society, but what we see in the ANATOMY OF A FALL is, how deliberately the director wants to moralize it, for a story not moralizing enough. Except the ending of a Hitchcock-like two case related heterogeneous hugs with each other.

The thing happens in Peking University is much more interesting than what this film is about, and it does show how Dai Jinhua and the rest of the Chinese old-pedants are nothing nothing about cinema. If this film could be examine under the feminism's standard, this could be about 1 or 2 scale from 1 to 10. It's reasonable ridiculous to pull this to the feminism. But again Dai Jinhua is smart enough to cheat all the people, cinephiles and brainless-phony-feminism to build her own reputation.

In Amarcord, Fellini boisterously took away the meanings but remained the meaning structure in it. Non-linear, hyperlink, whatever you like to call it, it deserted the traditional dramatic structure of narrative (though it is pretty phony-dramatic) as the term of Brechtians-the epic.

The entire conflicts between people and city, and ideologies that he remember are so capering, we felt like there is a glass between us. It became alike to the children channel's cartoon, full of mess of carnival, but in the end, the filmmaker herself put her own flair in it (I wouldn't say Fight Club as it is too obvious, PERSONA perhaps), sometimes frightening, sometimes even made this comedic effect even stronger, or even upended the meanings of everything happened. Yes, and it is some parts of film, that you don't know why it is in there. The best way to understand, interpret it is to just let it happen, and then you need to review it retrospectively. You need to see it as a whole, the beautiful peacock, the cow, the ship of greatest regime, the burning witch, all those colors and patinas are phony, it's paper tiger, you can penetrate it as you wish, but in fact, it already completed their mission, to hallucinate you.

The closest example might be the William Klein's Mr. Freedom, which it used the B-type dialogue, costume, American cartoon, to make the political satires boils down to neutralization, it's not game of left or right, it's a game of anti-politic. We saw the same approach in the Amarcord, this jocular burlesque joke, and interminable comedy with unbounded vulgarity, then the striking fascist pageantry with teasing psycholagny reduced it from the seeming perfection of human ecstasy to somehow as a boy's wet dream. Fellini likes it, putting a strike without warning, and made you contemplate.

I also see these similar thread in the Kurosawa's DREAM, which is a work of art pure imagination as the title suggested. What's the differences between these two, which I didn't actually see too much. Maybe Fellini is more joking, Kurosawa keeps the solemnity, but they do share same approaches of cinematography, creating an illusion, materializing your restless dream.

I prefer Kurosawa's piece somehow. Fellini gave me feeling of too jocular, and the only part that works tremendously to me is when the phonograph fell down, innuendo of our great communist revolution. They others I felt it's just too theatre like, it's feeling like a play (we even have a narrator). The carnival and funeral and lost are all in it.

Paris Theatre 35MM.

The precursor of WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE. Genius, Iran master director, the man who draw the cinema to the fullest, Abbas Kiarostami's first feature film.

If there were a certain form for the moralizing film, and it must be the children-heading-film.

The children in the cinema, according to Bazin, is the most beguiling moral motif. We are expecting this innocent, naive, impeccable face I'm moralized. Like in GERMANY YEAR ZERO, the child's face had no changes between killing his father, committing suicide, and lost of game with his friends. And it is also granted with the actions that may not expected at that ages, it's a sheer experience of reverse social identities.

In THE TRAVELER, the kid, our hero, is the existence of unbounded, struggling in this ruthless system from his own flair, which is the fundamental of the cinema-the struggle between freedom and confinement.

The unexpectedly using of musics is wonderful. The ending shot is beautifully inane. Drives me cry.

Paris Theatre.

No one can imagine how Rohmer's freneticism of colors, natural setting, and petit trivia.

Two girls, one lives in modernity and one lives in a rural area. The chemicals between both two somehow completely different but shared cultivated values of society unfolded in 4 separate stories.

The first one is the best for me, the most beautiful cinema comes from nature. Then the second and third get a little closer to the conventional drama of people's heterogeneity in the modern city. It's enjoyable to see Joelle Miquel's stupendous unfamiliarity conjured in this Rohmer-comedy.

The fourth then gets back to the silence topic, corresponding to the first one's "blue hour", Rohmer also challenges the concept of languages and silences with his jocular dialogues (though they are mostly modified by actresses).

Best use of colors, and It could be a quiet chick-flick, the waiter's persona is very misandrist. Rohmer's style is, slow, quiet, beautiful, modernism.

Metrograph (I sneaked in for Rohmer, the ticket was sold out. Thank God New York is raining, so that not everyone came for it)

It's a 30 minutes adventure or the revival of eye contacting in the street.

We only see the parts of people's bodies and their actions, and soon pass, never keeping them longer, just like what we might experience when we are walking in the street, but as Ernie and the structural filmmaker did, play with the point of view and the subjectivity and objectivity, we saw a long shot including the entire people and parts of the street, this essential shot, proved the existence of the objectivity. They are there, never faded away.

But then after the intercuts of shots of reality, which too brilliantly imitated the views of people's eyes, the Brecht-self-reflectivity had shown up by the directors and movie camera's interruptions of changing in the exposure and the yellow-lacquered images. I guess this is the part of Ernie's own signature, and I think it somehow ruined the former experience, but continued unraveled the camera's functions.

One of the most beguiling cinema is came from the people of the bottom (Satyajit Ray's Apu Trailogy, Akita Kurosawa's High and Low, Abbas' CLOSE-UP, and our great Italian neorealism, etc.), the forgottens, Los Olvidados, and brilliantly the children, the young and the naïveté.

As Bazin had put on the The Bicycle Thieves, the kids in the cinema had one peculiar effect, we are expecting the kids to behave like us, to behave like adults, to love, to hate, to lie, to commit crime, to pary for redemption, and accept the karma or the reality, punishments, post-modernity. Bunel had specifically made scenes of the poor-street kids in LOS OLVIDADOS, and the whole story unfolded from this context, it's a journey, an adventure toward the demoralization and moralization, emphasized, recovered by those groups of kids.

I also feel the rhythm of Satyajit Ray's cinema, those direct, simple dialogues, black or white, plain, and specific-cinematograph, the shots cut only when it needs, but it still remained a stylized, splendid, capturing picture like the collage of what mentioned at beginning that "everything is nonfictional". It pulls the picture to a stage of humanism, first there needs the humanism and then realism.

Surreal beautiful dreaming sequence made me finally aware this is Luis Bunel picture.

You are not gonna expect any iconic intertwined sleight in Polanski's films and that's why it bored me a little in the middle of the plot, a corrupted, inane, sporadic shady LA, interminably shown by rambling Jack Nicholson and poor, sacrificed Faye Dunaway.

In fact you shall take a deeper look in his handle of a script by Robert Towns. Soon you might discover it's more beguiling than Polanski's part in it. Perhaps in some ways, Polanski's beautiful twisted delible cinematography (the okay lighting, okay composition, okay spiritual framing) is the best way of elucidate the comedic Jack Nicholson and Faye Runaway, he let them, the characters by Robert Townes, alive and informative. In this brilliant end (he holds up the story, and left it over, tramping, but transient), we have to admit that how those characters are so vivid and unforgettable.

The most astonishing cinema came from these brave, incantatory temperaments of characters fighting against incestuous, phallocentric systems. Is there anyone who doesn't shake by this bravura technique, is she human?

Intertwined bodies intercut with one of the most astonishing footage and artistic sleight of human history. (christopher nolan's premiere of oppenheimer in Hiroshima needed to go to hell, though the existence and critical consensus, academy award of it prove that how the US medias' attitude to this vile history, history's meaning won't automatically appear, it needed to be given by people, they are now still trying to call white black, unforgivable and unforgivable, indelible.) "What else film you can make in Hiroshima, except peace?" Oh wait, and the love.

Alain Resnais's first featured film (hardly to believe this wild genius made it as a political one), with dialogues from Marguerite Duras's iconic capering, critical words, and his own adventures into the characters perception--the direct cuts between divine Emmanuelle Riva's memories of dead ex and present lover, lingering, percolating with Duras' beguiling rom-dialogues. He nails it, so naturally transitions. But you can't expect any realism in it (not Bazin's hierarchy of realism), the montages between spaces are intriguing, and to some points distressing.

Eiji Okada's performance is a little bit too loosen, and obsessive. The Emmanuelle Riva is suffering everything except the A-bomb in it. After the marvelous, beautiful beginning, the political intensity goes down, and became derelict.

Well, what can I say about this one of the most classic monster movies of all time...now at least I know that the blockbusters 70 years ago are no different from the blockbusters 70 years later.

The every parts of it are in ado, the Godzilla is stepping on the screenwriter's brain, so that he could write this penny-dreadful, comic, sterile story and dump it to the mass audience. All the turning points of characters are inexplicable, like for some particular reason, this unknown B scientist, the Japanese Oppenheimer, told a girl about his clandestine version of H-bomb, a effervescent tablet, that he could even sacrifice his life on it (this concept is incredible, majestically sarcastic for the American A-bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nakazaki, mentioned time to time in the film, and the performance of this scientist is way too ironic if you were comparing it to the Oppenheimer's patriotism with the Japanese genuine film humanism, and heroism.) and then this girl kept this secret for not a long time, then break it, why? It is confounde, but quite clear. After a long, tedious, overwhelmingly entertaining scene of Godzilla destroying the Tokyo, shoot by miniatures, and the scenes of suffering Japanese people just alike the documentary of A-bomb explosion, she immediately came out and snitched this secret weapon within no even any scenes to elucidate her attitude, or direct experience and emotion to the disaster. She just popped up, and became the symbol of this lame humanism. And then both of them went to convince this scientist to use this weapon, hilariously, he completely turned his attitude like when this girl broke her promise, by watching the records of dying people in the catastrophe. If you told me what is a bad script, and yes this is, all those symbols of humanism became too deliberate, like those sequences in the children entertaining channel, the characters became nearly hysterical in and out of different moods, everything described important, turned to be a pinch of salt, then the mass audiences with degenerate intelligence and Hollywood-abused adrenals can easily gain such a feeling of changing the world in a few words.

Also it is a quite pathetic and sorrowful strike when the reporters said "this is not play or film, it is real" it made me consider that, the magical, fictional creatures in film needed to be second-proved by self denying the picture on the screen, from Hegel's term like "oppositional determination", and it is the self-referential part, but I think it is a deficiency in a monster movie. The monster is already on the screen, we are expecting that film is the "cache" of the reality, and the fictional movie as a "cache" of the surrealism, then self-reflecting cinema came out, pointed out that "this is not a film" the film is mentioned again, though it is in the way of denying it, we became aware that we are watching the film. Perhaps we can evaluate this sequence that Ishiro is trying to draw us out to think about his anti-nuclear and humanism, heroism in the film, but when the Godzilla is trampling around with ear-blowing sound effects of explosions, and put the whole modern city into the sea of flame, it is really not match with what this sleight supposed to be positively used in this sequence. So now we can say this is a really sad move, the Godzilla in the screen has to be double-emphasized that he is real, instead just authentically live on the screen, we do not need this second alarms, films have this function.

I don't know if it's only me, but the scene of groups of policemen and Takashi Shimurai discussing about Godzilla, made me recalled the scene in the Kurosawa's Ikiru. And the tenebrous ending of heroism is also pretty Kurosawa. Pitifully, Takashi Shimurai, didn't have a real development in his obsession in studying Godzilla, it is a great branch, but like the other potentials in Godzilla, it faded away in this half-done, ponderous script.

Ishiro did have some scenes with great composition and lighting, deep focus, but it doesn't take what it is, he lost his point, except the great anti-nuclear standpoint, and the humanism, horror and obsession of destroying creatures. It is a film with and full of the ambition, but without a proper solving of putting ideas into film languages.

FILM FORUM JAPANESE HORROR.