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Joel25
Reviews
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Unspoken
Like Permanent Vacation, this film establishes Jarmusch as standing for something alternative to the conventions of mainstream American cinema. It is altogether a more mature collaboration than Permanent Vacation, a stronger indication of important artistic sensibilities, and perhaps exhibits a more solid bond between aim and execution. It is where the boat moored after Permanent Vacation, so it is out of the same universe, the same general headspace, but in a different country, a new world.
I'll recount a part of the story, because I liked it.
Willie lives in Purgatory, somewhere in New York. He comes from Hungary, but suppresses his European heritage under a facade of hip film-noir Americanism. His cousin, Eva (the femme fatale if we see it as noir), who has just arrived in America from Budapest, blows into his life like bad news from an Aunt Lotte in Cleveland. Willie is forced to 'babysit' Eva while his aunt stays in hospital for 10 days. He is aggrieved by this disruption to his life, even though TV dinners, games of solitaire, and long sleeps are about the only things to disrupt.
Willie's small, dour apartment holes them up for the duration like the prison in Down By Law. Their time together is uneventful in the large, but very frank in revealing the slow time ordinariness and emotional seclusion of Willie's life. He bans Eva from speaking in Hungarian even though he knows the language, he forbids her from answering his phone, prohibits her from going anywhere with him, presumably because it would contradict the barricade of his cool, noirish, self-image, and impatiently attempts to educate her in Americanisms he barely understands himself. Their only interruption from themselves or each other is a visit from Willie's gambling buddy, Eddie, whose warm and polite attempts to include Eva in their adventures outside are upset by his deference to Willie's personality. When it comes time for Eva to leave for Cleveland, Willie has acted upon a bud of affection but can only express it in jaded terms. He insists Eva wear a dress he bought for her, even though she doesn't like it, because she should dress like an American when she is in America.
This is where the first part ends, or nearly. On the street, after Eva and Willie have exchanged goodbyes, Eddie finds Eva abandoning the dress that Willie bought as a gift. Eddie does not mention this to Willie, presumably because he does not want to hurt his feelings. It is all unspoken. Willie and Eddie sit and drink beer, both reflect on Eva's visit without speaking.
Originally, the film ends here. It was shot using leftover film from Wim Wenders' The State of Things. A year or two later, the group decided to extend the film or finish it. I won't go into the next 2/3. Suffice to say, after hustling some money in a poker game a year later, Willie and Eddie decide to visit Eva in Cleveland. Perhaps Willie realised he was missing something and Eddie did hide a profound sense of loneliness.
Stranger Than Paradise is shot in a way that subverts mainstream notions of entertainment and engagement. It is an action film, but its definition of action is subtle and internal, left to the sensitivities of the watcher to engage with. The weather is a strong and active force, negotiating the lives of the characters like another character. This, I guess, has something to do with Ozu, mentioned by Eddie in his reference to Tokyo Story as the horse to back while he reads Willie the odds.
Jarmusch has been strongly influenced by and is educated in World cinema, establishing him as a kind of outsider at home, just like the characters. The film with its surface deadpan, hangs back from the perspectives of its characters in a kind of suspended relativism, which is throughout all of Jarmusch's work. The emotional depth is neither affirmed or denied. There is no absolute position.
John Lurie (he played Willie and composed the music) composed sparse and sensitive strings to comment on his character, which serves to further the gap between the film's stance and its subject. This general stance does not endorse Willie's peevish superficiality nor does it extrapolate it into misfortune. It suggests a more natural, but didactic approach. A film noir protagonist's end always reflects on their preceding actions.
Watch it if you haven't, watch it again if you have, or don't watch it. But it would surely fit any worthwhile definition of a 'good' film.
Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
Dick jokes
This is a simple formula comedy engineered to allow Carrey to do what he does best. He plays a normal guy, a bit quirky of course, but without the extraordinary or exaggerated 'trait' that drives the plots in his other comedy work. He is a spin doctor by profession, but this is not leveraged very well.
But we can laugh because Carrey is a funny guy with funny and endearing expressions. The broader context doesn't really matter. The story is just an excuse.
Unless you bring expectations to this one, the presumption that Carrey's career is steadily progressing, perhaps, then you probably won't find it offensive. You might even enjoy it, although you've been on the same ride before, many times.
Quills (2000)
Psych 101
This is a well written script that works on a couple of levels. As an allegory of repression,a tight symbolic construction. Others have excoriated the writing for its historical inaccuracy, but this is not about de Sade as historical figure, but de Sade as mythological icon, as the archetype of the uncensored artist, as representative of the unconscious. As the film progresses, de Sade becomes less of a person, both literally and metaphorically, and more of an idea, until finally, at the end, he reaches his apotheosis as a thought-pattern or archetype in the Abbe's wearied brain.
Abbe de Coulmier, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a progressive man of God, who sees the value in providing his mentally ill patients means of expressing themselves, emotionally and artistically. This film is essentially about his struggle with his own carnal nature. The more the Marquise is repressed, the more he is stripped of his instruments of expression, the more perverse and damaging he becomes. And finally, the Abbe becomes a victim of his own repression, committing necrophilia while his fantasies of wanting Madeleine to be alive are confused with the reality of her death.
Interesting.
The Luzhin Defence (2000)
Chess Goes To Hollywood
This is part of the game or sport genre that has enjoyed commercial success over the years. Only a few eccentricities manage to differentiate this from its sibling films, yet you feel that this could have been a lot more. Especially since its an adaptation of Nabokov. But it is simple melodrama. Predictable and sentimental. It could have had edge, seeing that it is about an obsession that leads to self-destruction. But it plays it safe and unintelligent.
One interesting snippet, towards the end, was when Luzhin reads a letter from Valentino attempting to manipulate him into finishing the event. Luzhin burns the letter but the voice-over continues to play. You can see that he is being consumed by his own obsession, just as the letter is being consumed by the flames. The symbolism of Luzhin's king and queen chess pieces is rather heavy handed. The opening image: the light at the end of the tunnel, was an obvious presentiment of Luzhin's death.
Klute (1971)
Fonder
Klute has the idea but not the execution; the foreplay but not the sex; and the self-referential notion: acting as prostitution. Klute bounces off Bree, who is the focus, and so Sutherland isn't asked to give too much away. Fonda acts, Sutherland reacts.
This could have been really good.
For the time it was made, this is conventionally unconventional. Late 60s and early 70s American cinema was in an experimental phase, and many European art-house techniques were finding their way into American films. Here we find a pleasing visual schema through the use of expressive lighting, lots of shadows and contrast (particularly in the culminating scene with Bree and her stalker), and claustrophobic compositions that enhance the appropriate atmosphere for the genre.
But it falls down because the story is incoherent.
There are reportedly two versions of this film floating around. In one of them, a crucial scene has been omitted. I'm not sure which version I saw, but I don't think it matters. There are a number of scenes that don't seem to integrate together, and the pacing feels wrong throughout.
I wonder how much influence the studios had on this. And if that was the killer.
Would make sense.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
cowboys and indians
As an action-adventure Western this is competent enough to permit enjoyment. It overuses much-used cinematic vocabulary to situate us in a fairly structured and very familiar world, but it comes at a cost. Into this world of ready made notions and symbols it pours the ingredients of a transformational psychological drama and leaves it to the characters to work or not.
Unfortunately for me, the characters are ideas rather than personalities. Rusty Crowe;s character is more god or mystagogue than human (he plays this role very well, I must add). He plays the manufacturer of myths, which is great, but he is also the model, which is not. The specific notion of manhood that he defines is adolescent, idealised, and unlivable. He is the fulfilled wish of a 14yo boy with an ordinary dad who lacks an heroic myth to insulate his identity, not someone who bleeds real blood.
For a psychological drama that requires a solution of a moral conflict to succeed, I think, it needs real human emotion rather than a language, visual or otherwise, that represents emotion. How do you achieve real human emotion in a movie? An Ariadne thread that provides a connection to reality no matter how deep into the labyrinth of illusion they tread. The "Western" is so stylised by now that to aspire to this reality of emotions with a straight bat seems misguided. Ironies, folds, and other quirky calculations are surely needed to communicate to the audience the nature of this problem and a reasonable resolution. This didn't have enough awareness of itself.
It is up to you to decide whether the resolution you observed was acceptable. But if you do accept it, you;re not pushing hard enough on the skin of your mind.
Meantime (1983)
In the MEANtime
What happens here happens in the space between events that usually constitute a plot, in the meantime. There are only temporary allegiances between characters, if at all, before one will turn on the other, destroying any impulse that reaches upwards, beyond the meantime. A film like this works or doesn't work depending on the acting. The characters are not merely collections of traits, they do not represent abstract ideas. Their complexity and opacity alone make or break the film, whether or not it is grounded in reality. No answers, only questions. No ideas, only experiences.
I came to this after hearing solid praise for Mike Leigh's work.
Rocky Balboa (2006)
R.I.P Rocky Balboa
He was a good man. A flawed champion who redeemed his questionable character through a last confession, a confession vulnerable enough to be brave, muted enough to be vibrant, reflective enough to be touching, before winking out of celluloid existence.
Just like his filmic self, Rocky, this has taken Sly out of the jaws of a cynical joke. Both, can now coexist in a heaven of forgiveness.
Yes, Rocky is dead. Face it. He died in the last round of the fight vs Mason. You heard Paulie and his son foreshadow the idea just before the start of the round. You saw his entire life flash before his eyes when he was knocked to the canvas. What followed, didn;t really happen. At the end, you saw him put flowers on Adrian's grave and then, like a ghost, disappear into thin air.
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Orders of Allegiance
Perhaps it was the shambles of the 1980 Moscow Olympics that justified a dramatic examination of the personal and political machinery that drives Olympic athletes and draws an audiencethe motives, the principles, the ideals, nationalist, religious, or otherwise. If this is true, we have the reason why this film would flop today. It struggles to breathe outside of its historical context.
Elements of this can still be appreciated. One, the manner in which it compares the different machinery (order of allegiances) driving Abrahams and Liddell, revealing the full consequences of each character's drive without hammering the point into our skulls or overtly moralising. Both cross the finish line first, but only one wins. Two, the ambitious and much-talked-about Vadelis score that has aged without grace. It has been described elsewhere as striking a balance between classicism and futurism. I can't deny that, however, I think this balance arises more from the nature of the instrument useda modern synthesizerfor a drama set in the 1920s. This anachronism results in an ironic pleasure separate from whatever dramatic and aesthetic value the actual music possesses, similar to Woody Allen inversely placing 1920s slapstick in the context of a futuristic dystopia in "Sleeper".
I could have forgiven the film's reliance on context if it had of managed to harness the inherent self-referential power of its scenarios, but it did not. We have a staggering number of scenes that revolve around the notion of performing for an audience (the essence of film). Not just the races, but a play, a sermon, a lecture, a memorial, a training session, a musical numberand no hint of self-awareness, no leveraging of the idea that this film itself is a performance for an audience. Instead we get a straight story only, drearily oblivious that it too, like its characters, is driven by the political, theoretical, and technological machinery behind it.
Amadeus (1984)
Through the eyes of mediocrity
This is a fine example of what Bordwell & Thompson call 'classical Hollywood film-making," and what Mark Cousins, in his book, The Story of Film, defines as 'closed romantic realism." The defining mark of this method is a rigourous narrative order where everything is ultimately explainable. Every door that is openedshuts.
This method creates worlds or worldviews that could only be regulated by a rational (pre-existential) god. Every event has its place on a causal chain, every loose end is tied up, and there is no room for ambiguity or chance.
Of course, we're looking at this through Salieri's eyes, and whatever we see could be explained as a kink in his insane mind. But it doesn't really matter. What we have is a scrupulously sane recounting of events that led Salieri to the mental institution. There is a unity to this retelling that is a reflection of Salieri's understanding of events sewn in to the story's form. Every event in the film is motivated. There is not a look, a phrase, a camera move that is not subservient to the aims of the story. The characters' motives are transparent and conform to an uncomplicated, clearly readable, psychology.
We have an aesthetic of sensation to keep the audience entertained, and all that is missing there is the sex. It is censored out by Salieri's chaste consciousness, substituted for sweets. This sounds like a particular brand of mainstream cinema, which Salieri actually embodies. Competent enough but without depthlacking magic.
We get to indirectly recognise that magic, but never do we see its point of view.
This is a celebration of the Salieris of the world, not the Mozarts.
Ordinary People (1980)
Extraordinary Actors
There are at least two types of basic filmmakers. One comes to the film with a cinematic vision and shuffles all elements of the film to serve this vision. For this type of filmmaker, acting is merely one component of a larger whole. It is an element to be manipulated and integrated according to the needs of the grander vision, even if the performances have to suffer for it. For the other type of filmmaker, performance is the issue; it is the end in itself. Other elements, such as the script, editing, music, camera, photography, etc, are tailored to specifically foreground the performances, or, to put it another way, are intentionally bland (or minimalist) enough to focus all energy into the performances, which have every opportunity to sky. Often actors who turn their hand to directing will embrace this mode of film-making. If they are good actors, they understand the craft, and if they are good communicators, they know how to elicit the best in their actors (think here, Eastwood's Mystic River). So it is with this. It makes sense that Redford should pick a script like this for his debut as a director. Usually films achieve a sufficient balance between these two modes of film-making that a theoretical differentiation like this is unnecessary, but this film is an example of an almost purely performative film, with the necessary absence of cinematic style.
And there is nothing behind the performances here but ordinariness, blandness, cliché. Luckily, the performances are extraordinary and it works because of them. Tyler-Moore as the frosty wife/mother, Sutherland as the warm, sympathetic father/husband, Hutton as the unexpressed conflict between the two, a feotus in the throes of delivery, to be born as an actor/human. All three could have won Oscars.
The psychologist plays the surrogate (or metaphor) for the director, Redford, coaching his subjects towards the appropriate expression of feeling for ordinary people. That is what this film is about, more so than grief, repression, or familial relationships. Redford got the Oscar for how he directed his actors, not the film.
The French Connection (1971)
No connection
Some of the most tired adjectives in film writing need to be pulled out here. Gritty, realistic, raw, ruthless, intense"The French Connection," and no, there is no connection to the French New Wave movement that had paved new roads for cinema throughout the previous decade.
What we have instead is the cop show reinvented; a documentary aesthetic that excuses (or demands) a variegated cinematography; a camera liberated from its passivity, physically participating in the action, drawing the audience in; the renunciation of a melodramatic depiction (black and white good vs evil) of the cops and dealers. Had this happened previously within this genre? I'm not sure. Information on the internet is conflicting. "Bullit" appears to be a forerunner in some ways, but I haven't seen it. Whatever the case, these relatively fresh conventions for 1971 account for the film's rawness and intensity.
The plot mostly involves the narcs watching, waiting, and following. Their position is a reflection of ours---we are both trying to piece together an understanding of what's going on, trying to discover all the connections. This reflective device, along with the new camera, attempts to pull us viscerally deeper into the narrative than any film (from the same or similar genres) had done before. But the experiment doesn't work for me. The film is just too loudly wailing its own fictional brand of 'realism'. If I'd have seen it in the 70s I guess I would have been moved more.
I compare this to "Midnight Cowboy" and "Taxi Driver" in its depiction of a sordid and dismal New York, a symbol here for sprawling filth, corruption, and immorality. It plays like a character itself, ultimately consuming Doyle and nurturing the sly escape of Frog One.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
horses, not cowboys
A lot of reviews note that this film has not aged since its release. I think that's false. Popular conventions have caught up with it both in its stylistic conceits (which were then borrowed from Europe) and its treatment of seedy subjects. It might have been mildly innovative and daring in its day but whatever influence it had on cinema has ultimately been its undoing. What it attempted has been done better since.
On the surface, this film is about a drifter hustled out of his simpleminded desires by a brutish New York, which I guess is meant to represent "the real world." The perspective shifts gradually from Joe's subjective-fantasy life to the harsh objective reality of a modern day capitalist setting, in league with his increasing maturity. At one point we are even tethered to the fantasies of Hoffman's character, which are altered according to his perception of events, but the shuffling between these perspectives comes across confused, even chaotic. Art can be dug for here, sure, but it doesn't come naturally. As such there is no central, stabilising aesthetic, but that's probably the point. It finds its centre in its aimlessness, as it drifts through a melange of styles. At times it jars like a gritty documentary, other times it moves like a surrealist experiment, and the overall feel is like an extended film clip for a popular song, ala The Graduate. That's what I will probably remember it as. It may have worked better with a more coherent vision, a director who could juggle all the elements into an integrated whole without necessarily abandoning its stylistic playfulness, but it comes out a mess, carried only by the sturdy performances of its two leads.
Monster (2003)
Unjustified
The filmmaker's avowed intention here was to compensate the media portrayal of Aileen Wuornos - which was supposedly designed to show the public just how evil and worthy of a death sentence she was - by honouring the complexity of a life.
Not what happens. Instead we get a complex life reduced to simplicity through an essentially melodramatic mode of presentation, all designed to justify the filmmaker's sympathetic response to the real courtroom events.
Everyone knows about Theron's performance. But every other element of the film suffers for it, orchestrated, as they are, to place the focus solely on Theron, and distract from what is really going on behind the camera. Without the strutting performance of Theron, this would be a TV movie.
It's All About Love (2003)
It's all about the DVD interview
Penn plays the director, Vinterberg, "soaring" after the success of his dogma efforts, unable to come back down to earth, "writing a report on the state of the world," doomed to crash, as this film did in the eyes of the critical establishment. Funny stuff. This film was MADE to fail.
My feeling is that instead of setting the film in 2021, they should have worked on the script until then.
The problem is not too much ambition or pretension. But not enough. Not enough effort, either. There is something in the idea of a pretentious romantic epic. But this is a bad seed.
Back to the kennel for the DOGMAn.