(Some of the) Films This Week

(Click here to read my general introduction to the 'Films This Week' series of posts.)

 

A slightly streamlined version this week as, although I've watched nine films, most of these have been for work purposes (I'm researching a new project), and this means that the notes I've made have been focused around a particular aspect of the films in question – useful for me, probably not very interesting out of context. So, I'm going to hold off from publishing them here. Maybe they'll surface in a future post, maybe in another book – or maybe they'll stay private.

 

Due to my heavy workload, there have also been films that I've seen and enjoyed (Spellbound and Verity's Summer), which I've simply not written anything about. So, only two this week…

 

The Legend of the Suram Fortress

 

06/03/13

Watched The Legend of the Suram Fortress, which was astonishingly beautiful, and quite extraordinary. I really responded to the tableau style and quirkiness…though it feels like a film you need to experience. Writing about it, or trying to intellectualise it, seems pointless. (This is not a criticism, but the highest form of praise).

 

10/03/13

Went the Barbican to (finally) see A Page of Madness. It was pretty much everything I expected it to be – and everything I wanted it to be. It comes across like a dizzying battering ram to the head. Since watching Sir Arne's Treasure last week I've been wondering if silent cinema somehow had a faster conduit to the inner lives of its characters, and A Page of Madness would seem to support (confirm?) this thesis. There's something about the purity of the medium when it was still silent, its use of a purely visual grammar, which somehow opens up the soul of its characters in a way few modern films seem to achieve. What's so striking about A Page of Madness is the way it's all so simply achieved: double exposures, whip pans, distorted mirrors, tracking shots – it's hardly a fully equipped experimental arsenal… and yet the skill with which these techniques are deployed, and the results achieved, are extraordinary. It's all a bit too much to take in in one viewing (I don't think I could write anything approaching a detailed plot synopsis) and yet the film, as a portrait of madness, seems all the better – all the more effective – for the confusion. I have a feeling that subsequent viewings may well confirm it as one of the supreme achievements of the silent cinema. Truly masterful.

 

A Page of Madness

 

Quote for the Week

'There are a million places to put the camera, but there is really only one' – Ernst Lubitsch

Films This Week

(Click here to read my general introduction to the 'Films This Week' series of posts.)

 

Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

 

27/02/13

Went to see Jeanne Dielman at the BFI. At first it seemed a little too much, a little too self-conscious, almost like a parody of a certain strain of post-Bressonian slow cinema, but gradually it drew me into its ballet of contrasts: stasis/motion, light/dark, repetition/variation, sharp focus/soft focus. Never before has a film with such an unflinching, unmoving camera been so balletic (the camera is rigid, solid, drawing attention to what is happening both within and beyond the frame). I became lost in the ebb and flow of its mesmeric rhythm, all sense of personal time and space disintegrating, meshing with that of Jeanne's (the editing – perhaps the film's strongest suit – is masterfully handled, the ellipses in the action at once beguiling, unexpected and perfectly placed). As the screws begin to turn and Jeanne's world begins to crumble, it becomes almost excruciating to watch: what a sigh of relief when a missed button is finally done up! Even the corridors seem to shrink. The dropping of the boot-polish brush, its thud on the floor, is heart breaking (much like the moment when the mother trips and spills the water in The Naked Island). Yet ten minutes later, when Jeanne drops the spoon, it begins to feel like overkill. The film emerges as a pointed precursor to The Turin Horse, a comparison with which at once highlights Jeanne Dielman's strengths, while simultaneously revealing its weaknesses (it contains little of its offspring's visceral power). The final act of violence, meanwhile, may very well (when viewed in the context of the film as a whole) be a comment upon traditional narrative conventions, but it also feels like something of a concession to these same conventions (no such concessions in Tarr). Whatever the case, it feels like a slight undermining of what's gone on before, an added touch of drama, a dramatic conclusion to the most undramatic of films. Perhaps it's a necessary culmination of Jeanne's mental disintegration, but it lost my interest (much like the film's unconvincing and uninteresting dialogue scenes, it may well be designed to add to the film's thematic and structural enquiries, but the film would play better, to me at least, without it). But still, Jeanne Dielman undoubtedly remains a great work. (Its use of time, its repetitions, and its focus on the mundane also struck a chord with me, chiming as they do with some of the intentions behind the making of Life Just Is.)

 

28/02/13

Back to the BFI to see Side Effects, which I really liked. In managing to explore interesting social and philosophical issues in the guise of an effective thriller, the film serves as a good reminder that it's possible to explore deeper issues within a compelling and commercial narrative form, thereby making them palatable to a wider audience. (A film dealing with issues such as depression, pill-popping, and whether conscious intent is necessary to determine the morality of our actions could very easily have gone down a much less commercial route.) It's very much of a piece stylistically with Soderbergh's recent, post-Che work – perhaps a sign that he is tiring – but no less beautiful for it (I still think Soderbergh may be one of cinema's must underappreciated cinematographers). I was struck by the film's formal simplicity, and how effectively Soderbergh manages to build so much from so little (for instance, the haunting moment when Rooney Mara looks into a mirror and sees her distorted reflection builds so much from… well, from a mirror!). The matching shots at the start and end seem to imply that all life is a prison. The BFI programme notes suggest that Side Effects is a film about storytelling, and point back to Soderbergh's comments about the tyranny of the narrative. Perhaps it's not life which is a prison, but filmmaking – something that I can definitely relate to! But it's a shame that Soderbergh has managed to break out. Still, if Side Effects really is his final film, it feels like a fitting conclusion to one of the most interesting and diverse body of works in modern cinema.

 

02/03/13                     

Watched Sir Arne's Treasure. Despite some extremely powerful visuals and some very startling (for the time) camera moves, it's actually a very title heavy film (perhaps a result of its literary heritage?). Still, there was lots to enjoy. It's a rather haunting film in a lot of ways: the use of double exposures is expertly done. It's incredible to think it was made in 1919. I have a feeling it's a film which will stay with me for a long time to come.

 

The extraordinary moment when Sir Arne's wife has the vision of the

sharpening of the knives in Sir Arne's Treasure.

 

Quote for the Week

'Film form film form film form! can be a hang-up. Wasn't the lens open, letting light in – and all those living people? They made it through and onto film, onto videotape, onto a memory card. (Memory card is a sweet name.)' – Ken Jacobs, in his tribute to Jonas Mekas in Sight & Sound, January 2013.

Films This Week

The station set in Liliom

(Click here to read my general introduction to the 'Films This Week' series of posts.)

 

17/02/13

Watched Lucky Star. It would seem third time's the charm for Borzage and me. It's perhaps it's a little languid, but it felt much more emotionally involving (believable?) than the others, and it won me over. The images and the performances are beautiful: a nice little story about perception and prejudice.  

 

18/02/13

Started the day with The Iron Horse, which I enjoyed, if without any sense of awe (it's a good solid film, but nothing exceptional). It felt novelisitc in its scope – at once epic and intimate. Consummate filmmaking. Later, I sat down for a Borzage double bill: The River (or what's left of it) and Liliom. It would seem that my enjoyment of Lucky Star wasn't a one off. Borzage was a great pictorialist – that's clear even from the films I wasn't taken with – and in The River the charm from the first half of 7^th Heaven is back. Sure, it may be a little slight, but it's a genuinely lovely film. Liliom, meanwhile, is even better. Farrell (the source of much of Borzage's charm) is good in the silents, but even better here. Borzage, meanwhile, directs with the same visual prowess, but manages to draw a much greater complexity to his characters. The tone is also different: there's less schmaltz. It's effective dramatic storytelling of the first order. The design and shadows of the train station set in which Liliom awaits his victim are superb, conspiring as they do to heighten the scene's dramatic impact. There's even something almost Dreyeresque about Liliom's death scene: its sparsity, the use of double exposure. (Actually, the imagery here might not be the only link between Borzage and Dreyer – the idea of love as transcendent of death, illness and disability which recurs in Borzage can surely be seen as a precursor to the resurrection in Ordet. Interestingly, by drawing a comparison with Ordet, it becomes clear that what some viewers, myself included, have interpreted as pious religiosity in Borzage can just as easily be seen as carnal love – 'Yes, but I loved her body too'. Whatever the truth of these two interpretations, here the religious elements are used in a much more interesting way, and reflect much more meaningfully on life and death). In fact, the only thing that undermines this beautifully realised piece is what appears to be an advocation of the dangerous sentiment that it's okay to beat up your wife and kid if you do it as an expression of your love. In his commentary on Lucky Star, Tom Gunning comments that violence is often necessary for the forming of relationships in Borzage… I think there's something quite disturbing about this trend in his work.

 

22/02/13

Went to see Mama. I thought it was an interesting take on the Wild Child / Kasper Hauser story, and very effective as a chiller, but the scares felt a little cheap (clichéd?) at times and, unless I missed something, it didn't seem to quite all add up. I thought the design of Mama herself was pretty haunting, if undermined slightly by too much CGI in the realisation (I can also see something of del Toro's love for monsters in her character – there was something (almost) sympathetic in her plight). Ultimately, though, the film lacked any real weight. I think added ambiguity as to Mama's existence would have made for a more interesting film. Enjoyable as it was, I suspect it will prove to be quite forgettable.

 

A wider shot of the station set in Liliom

 

Quote for the Week

Following on nicely from my last post, this:

 

'"If you know I am an unbeliever," [Pasolini] told a journalist in 1966, "then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief"'

 

Quoted in Divine Reality by Hannah McGill, Sight & Sound, March 2013.

Film as Faith

Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew

In her excellent piece on Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew in this month's Sight & Sound magazine, Hannah McGill writes the following:

Christ's miracles are rendered not with smart special effects or coy evasions, but with crude cuts; somehow the refusal to attempt to fool us emphasises rather than reduces the sense of magic. The sheer scale of what the Gospels ask a true believer to accept is rendered unavoidable.

This eloquent passage got me thinking about how, in a sense, filmmakers ask their audience – their true believers – to accept as true what's on the screen before them. If miracles, by definition, ask us to believe in the impossible, is then cinema itself a miracle? Or, to put it another way, is cinema an art (an act) of faith? Is it, in a sense, inherently a 'religious' medium?

Just as all these thoughts were flying through my mind, a friend posted this on Facebook:

'It is as though movies answered an ancient quest for the common unconscious. They fulfil a spiritual need that people have to share a common memory' – Martin Scorsese

The idea that films fulfil a spiritual need seemed to chime exactly with the point I was trying to grasp. I Googled the quote and found it to be from A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. Pulling the book off my shelf, I located the quote, and found this preceding it:

I don't really see a conflict between the church and the movies, the sacred and the profane. Obviously, there are major differences, but I can also see great similarities between a church and a movie house. Both are places for people to come together and share a common experience. I believe there is a spirituality in films, even if it's not one that can supplant faith. (page 166).

Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ

With this in mind, I wonder how much of a leap it is to see a love of cinema as a faith. If we can acknowledge that holy leaders and filmmakers alike ask us to believe in the impossible, that both film and religion fulfil a spiritual need, and that they are both practised in houses of worship, am I really going too far to posit cinephilia as a form of faith? Of religion?

Throughout all of this, there is but one image burnt into my mind: the resurrection in Ordet. Where else has the act of the dead returning to life been rendered with such heart-wrenching believability? With such straight-laced conviction that the figures on the screen seem more real than reality itself? We don't just believe in the miracle, we believe in miracles, the miracle of life – the life of those on screen, our life, life on earth. Cinema made flesh, flesh made spirit. Transcendence.
 

Dreyer's Ordet

 

Back in 2007, I wrote the following in my Director's Journal for Life Just Is:

Reading Kazantzakis, I think I've realised why I'm interested in religion: it's because religious people have blind faith. They believe unconditionally. To believe in anything that wholeheartedly must be comforting.

Six years later, I realise I do believe in something that wholeheartedly. I believe in cinema.