in the mood for love

In the Mood for Love
d. Wong Kar-wai, 2000

Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is, above all, a beautifully conceived film. Not many recent films would be able to match its amazing compositions (I'm thinking of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, andHou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times). The film follows two people, beautifully played by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, who live in adjacent apartments in China circa 1962. They both realize that their partners are cheating on them with one another, and they try to see how to approach the situation. Though not too heavy on plot, In the Mood for Love observes the lives of these people with such artistry that I don't really care. The main undercurrents of the film are repressed love and missed opportunities. The two main characters fall in love, but decide not to act on it because of what people might say ("We can't be like them," she tells him, referring to their spouses), but the film never elevates to the heights of a melodrama like All That Heaven Allows. Instead, the ethereal In the Mood for Love is a nostalgic, elegiac portrait of a love that never was.

gertrud

Gertrud
d. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964

Gertrud, Carl Theodor Dreyer's final film, is something very rare. There's never been a film like it, and there probably won't be another. Mostly composed of long takes of conversations, Dreyer creates an unnervingly poignant observation on memory and free will, among other things.

The title character, Gertrud, is an ex-opera singer now living with her attorney husband, Gustav, who plans to become a politician. In the astonishing opening scene, we hear them discuss her plans for the night, his mother shows up to pick up her weekly check, and Gerturd finally announces that she wants to leave him. Gustav's indifference towards her is her focus during her monologue.

In the next scene, we see Gertrud talking to her musician lover, Erland, in the park (in the first scene, she told Gustav she was spending her aftrenoon at the opera). Erland tells Gertrud he must go to a party tonight, to which she responds, rather surprisingly, by telling him that he is runining himself and his art by going to parties. This is shocking, not because of its nature, but because in the scene just before it she was condemning Gustav for focusing too much on his work and not on whether she was happy or sad.

There is a scene, following the one in the park, which shows Gustav going to the opera to be with Gertrud, only to realize she has lied to him. This gives way to the centerpiece of the film, a ceremony for renowned poet Gabriel Lidman, who was also once Gertrud's lover. Gustav will be speaking at the ceremony and Erland is scheduled to play. By now we realize the main characters are her and the three men. But Dreyer takes the oppurtunity to introduce a fourth man, a gentle doctor that converses with Gertrud when she walks out on Gustav's speech because of a headache. The doctor, Axel, tells her that he has come back from Paris, he tells her he has written a book on free will.

When Axel leaves, the second scene with Gustav takes place. They argue about their relationship; about Gertrud's reasons for leaving him and of her previous lovers. Then comes the first encounter with Gabriel, the poet, who confesses to have longed for her and speaks of his dissolusioned state, despite all of his success.

There is a second scene with Erland, where he announces that he has a girlfriend who is pregnant, and his relationship with Gertrud ends on a sour note. Not very happy, she goes back home to find that Gabriel is there to visit Gustav. As a final plead, Gabriel asks Gertrud to leave with him, and she remembers a time when she loved him and the exact moment when she stopped - she found a drawing of her on his desk, it read "a man's work and a woman's love are mortal enemies."

After bidding farewell to Gustav and Gabriel comes the final hallucinatory scene, which appears to take place 30-40 years after most of the action in the film. We see Gertrud being visited by her old friend Axel, they speak of the times they had in Paris (though not shown in the film, the viewer assumes she left for Paris after her talk with Gabriel). In the last heartbreaking moment, she reads to him a poem she wrote when she was 16:

"Just look at me
Am I beautiful?
No, but I have loved

Just look at me
Am I young?
No, but I have loved

Just look at me
Do I live?
No, but I have loved."

scarface, bringing up baby, only angels have wings

To celebrate Howard Hawks' birthday, Turner Classic Movies played several of his movies today. I managed to catch three I hadn't seen (I didn't stick around to rewatch The Big Sleep), and the more I discover of Hawks', the more evident it becomes that he is one of the key American directors of the 20th century. The man could do anything; gangster films (Scarface), screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday), film-noir (The Big Sleep), western (Red River and Rio Bravo), musical (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), adventure (Only Angels Have Wings). Here are some thoughts on the films I saw today.

Scarface
d. Howard Hawks, 1932

A typical gangster-type story as told by a master. People who enjoy crime films should have plenty to like here: a lot of shooting, betrayal, accents, dark alleys, and Hawks' direction to guide the audience through. I still would say this is not one of his best, but that's like saying Boudu Saved from Drowning isn't one of Renoir's best, it doesn't mean anything.

Bringing Up Baby d. Howard Hawks, 1938

A key screwball-comedy that I hadn't seen yet, and I wasn't disappointed at all. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are both amazing. The film foreshadows what Preston Sturges would be doing in the 1940s with films like Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve. Not to be missed.

Only Angels Have Wings
d. Howard Hawks, 1939

Only Angels Have Wings is perhaps the complete opposite of Hawks' comedies, but it is also one of his best. The film is filled with difficult themes, and the set-up itself is quite fascinating. Here are a bunch of men who work at delivering mail through plane under horrible circumstances, death is always present, how can they perform their job without letting their emotions take over? The film is made all the more complicated because all of the main characters are basically outsiders to the small South American country where all the action takes place. This is Cary Grant in one of his great roles, and it's also an oppurtunity to see a pre-Gilda Rita Hayworth.

in a year of 13 moons

In a Year of 13 Moons
d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978

In a Year of 13 Moons may just be Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most emotional film. To anyone who has seen any of his work, this is saying a lot. It certainly is one of his most personal; at age 33, he wrote, directed, produced, photographed, and edited this wonderful film.

Erwin (an amazing Volker Spengler) is at the center of the film. By the time the movie begins, he is known as Elvira, for he has undergone a sex change as a rather compulsive action. We see him beaten by male prostitutes when he tries to hire one, "he says he's a woman," one of them says. Erwin/Elvira walks back home to discover that his boyfriend, Christoph, is leaving him.

As he stands in his empty apartment, the loneliness is so overwhelming that from that point on we care deeply for this character, and, we can assume, so does Fassbinder. In a Year of 13 Moons plays like an amazing collection of set pieces that, when looked at from a distance, make up the story of Erwin's life. This is what he himself is trying to do, and by the last reel of the film (one of the most heartbreaking ever filmed), he has come to terms with his life.

Through monologues, reapperances, searches, and many other devices, we learn that Erwin has a daughter, that he had a sex change due to a rich businessman named Anton Saitz, and that Erwin no longer knows where he fits on. After tracking down Saitz and finding that he has no answers for him, Erwin puts on a suit and goes to visit his daughter and her mother. They are having lunch and he comments on how happy it would make him to live with them; but both of them now know that it is much too late. In an act of final desparation, Erwin finds the man who interviewed him for a magazine article to try to talk to him again.

The end of In a Year of 13 Moons is inevitable, but that makes it no less heartbreaking. We see the people Erwin has encountered throughout the film coming to his apartment to find that he has killed himself, meanwhile the revealing tape of his interview plays in the background.

In a Year of 13 Moons is many things: an examination of sexual identity, a poignant portrayal of loneliness and desperation, further proof that Fassbinder is a genius, and also, and perhaps most importantly, personal filmmaking at its finest.

trash

Trash
d. Paul Morrissey, 1970

Not really sure what I can say about Paul Morrissey's Trash, so I'll just list out a bunch of things:

• Though more accesible than the films actually directed by Andy Warhol, this film is still not really what would appeal to mainstream audiences, which is fine by me.
• The people in the film can be particularly disturbing if one is not familiar with the work Warhol did in the 60s. Having seen his Vinyl and The Chelsea Girls, I can safely say that Trash is more explicit and thematically challenging than those works.
• It's hard to critique the "performances" in the film, for I don't really know how drug addicts behave. But the people in the film, particularly Joe Dallesandro in the lead and Holly Woodland's drag queen, are quite convincing in that they seem to either not be acting or to be so familiar with the stuff they are saying (some shots are rather long) that they take over the screen.
• Morrissey's framing (he also shot and wrote the film) is quite reminiscent of Warhol's films, particularly in the long takes and the obvious zooming in on the actors' faces.
• Enjoy.
  

stroszek

Stroszek
d. Werner Herzog, 1977

Stroszek is a very strange but infinitely fascinating film. It's as absurd as the best of Buñuel, but I wouldn't consider it a comedy. It's an oddity, for sure, but it's not trying to create comedic situations. Instead, it treats its unconventional story with dignity. It follows Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.), a recently released mental patient. At the heart of the film is the performance by Bruno S., which is quite disturbing in its sincerity. From what I've learned, Bruno was a prostitute's son, and he was beaten so badly that he lost his hearing for a while. He went to a mental institution until he was 26, and at some point he met Werner Herzog. Stroszek is also about Bruno's friends, a prostitute and an old man. The three of them decide to move to Wisconsin and live the "American Dream." Needless to say, it doesn't turn out as they had wanted. However, it seems rather pointless to describe any more of the plot. But I'll say this: the last sequence in Stroszek is the best out of the three Herzog films I've seen (this, Aguirre, and Lessons of Darkness).

the last laugh

The Last Laugh
d. F.W. Murnau, 1924

Murnau's The Last Laugh is a very interesting film. Not only are Murnau's compositions quite interesting but this film could be one of the most "silent" of all of silent films; Murnau does not really use any title cards. Instead, he develops his story through striking images. The Last Laugh is about an aging doorman who takes pride in his work, and is devastated when the hotel has to let him go because of his old age. The film follows the doorman (a billiant Emil Jannings) as he tries to come to terms with his life. But, indeed, the man does have the last laugh.

the red shoes

The Red Shoes
d. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948

I will begin this review with a warning. I just got home from watching Powell and Pressburger's masterpiece The Red Shoes in a luminous 35-mm transfer at the Museum of Fine Arts; meaning that perhaps part of what I loved so much about the movie (I had seen it before at home) has to do with the very experience of watching it in a theatre.

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the film are its lush colors, from the opening sequence to the heartbreaking final reel. Technicolor doesn't get much better or more vibrant than in The Red Shoes, and it doesn't hurt that Powell and Pressburger are wonderful filmmakers not relying on style over substance (as a lot of directors of the time did).

The Red Shoes tells the story of a ballerina, Victoria Page (the charming Moira Shearer); it follows her as she becomes famous with her performane in the title ballet, and as she must choose between her love of dance (and her loyalty to the producer that made her famous, Lermontov [Anton Walbrook]) and the love of her life, young composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). Though the story of the film is pretty straightforward - basically what I described above - The Red Shoes never feels like anything less than extraodinary, it carries the audience from one breathtaking scene to the next. It is certainly more exhilarating than most movies I have seen.

As hard as it would be for me to nail down what I love most about The Red Shoes so much, it is probably the way the title ballet (which itself takes up a brilliant 17-minute scene) then becomes the story of the movie in microcosm. For those not familiar with Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes," it follows a girl who comes across the red shoes and finds that they can make her dance. At first, everything is great, but the shoes themselves never tire, and she dances herself to death.

The Red Shoes has a lot to say about the relation between the artist and his art, it seems to suggest that the very passion that drives Vicky to be such a great dancer is ultimately what destroys her; that and the pressure of Lermontov and Julian. As a life-affirming examination on the very reason we go to the movies, The Red Shoes is fantastic; as a beautiful movie and a brilliant piece of filmmaking, it's nearly unparalleled.

mccabe & mrs. miller

McCabe & Mrs. Miller
d. Robert Altman, 1971

Original review here.

Additional notes on a fifth viewing: Altman's anti-western masterpice McCabe & Mrs. Miller is still one of my favorite films, though I don't think I've yet to find a good reason to explain it. Repeated viewings really highlight how well Altman composed his film and how truly beautiful the photography and art direction are. The songs of Leonard Cohen become more poignant, and the dialogue now carries more weight. In short, watch this film.

In honor of my recent viewing of the best western ever made, here are my 5 favorite ones (including McCabe):

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
2. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
3. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
4. The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1952)
5. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)

all that heaven allows

All That Heaven Allows
d. Douglas Sirk, 1955

Sirk's melodramas, including All That Heaven Allows, hold a special place in the landscape of American movies. Not so revered upon their release, they gained acclaim as time went by. Directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes payed tribute to him in Fear Eats the Soul, a variation on this film set in Germany, and Far From Heaven (which I have not seen), respectively.

The film revolves around a widow, Cary (Jane Wyman), and the love affair that she begins with her young gardener, Ron (Rock Hudson, who was in real life 11 years younger than Wyman). With Cary being an upper class woman, her neighbors and kids suggest, her relationship with Ron is impossible.

After certain incidents, Cary is convinced that nothing could ever work between her and Ron, although it is more than obvious that they love one another. That's about all I'll say about the plot, but suffice it to say All That Heaven Allows ends on a superlative note. Usually, I would not like that in a film, but Sirk's is so lush and wonderful that I'm glad he uses the heightened emotions to close his movie.

All That Heaven Allows is truly a great movie; the Technicolor is vibrant, the music is mood, Hudson and Wyman are both great, and Sirk's mastery is in top form here.

lancelot du lac

Lancelot du Lac
d. Robert Bresson, 1974

Robert Bresson's take on the Holy Grail, Lancelot du Lac, is nothing revolutionary to fans of Bresson; though I imagine people not familiar with his work will have the same kind of reaction to this as they would to his other masterpieces Pickpocket and Au hasard Balthazar. This is essentially a medieval story stripped down to its bare essentials: no heightened emotions, the tournaments are shot from the waist down, and the violence (the film itself starts with a decapitation) is disturbingly distant.

Lancelot du Lac transcends its source and becomes a transcendent viewing experience to rank alongside Bresson's best works. Also, the tournament scene I spoke of earlier could very well be the single best scene in all of Bresson.

elephant

Elephant
d. Gus Van Sant, 2003

Through a series of long and intricate tracking shots, Gus Van Sant crafts a masterful film and a nearly unparalleled visceral experience. Elephant borrows from directors like Bela Tarr (the long takes and overlapping time-frames), Chantal Akerman (the rigorous, modular framing), and even Stanley Kubrick (the hallways from The Shining); Van Sant takes these lessons and makes a film that is undeniably his.

Within the context of the film, the visual style fits perfectly. Elephant is about a high school shooting much like one that happened in Columbine; and possibly the best thing about the film is that it doesn't try to explain the shootings, as any other mindless media outlet did at the time. Instead, Van Sant tells us, through the use of timelines where we can't see everything at once, that events like this are actually unexplainable, or so obscure that not one single person could understand it from his own subjective perspective. Throughout the film, the audience receives more information when the camera comes back and revisits certain scenes.

Harris Savides' photography and Van Sant's direction are reasons alone to watch this dense, 80 minute masterpiece.

the world

The World
d. Jia Zhang-ke, 2004

An epic film by any counts, Jia Zhang-ke's The World is a wonderful achievement. The film revolves around a theme park in China named, if I'm not mistaken, "The World" (one of its taglines is "see the world without ever leaving Beijing). Zhang-ke has made a film about the backstage life of the people that work at the park, focusing on a performer, Tao, and her security guard boyfriend, Taisheng. Though the film is long, running at about 140 minutes, and to some people it is quite slow, the beauty of its images more than makes up for that. I can't wait to watch The World again.

nanook of the north

Nanook of the North
d. Robert Flaherty

Nanook of the North is one of the most fascinating documentaries I've seen; it follows an eskimo, Nanook, and his family as they struggle to survive in the artic. We see them fishing, hunting, building igloos, and I sat absolutely dazzled for its brief 80 minutes. Truly one of the great portrayals of family ever put on film.

il posto

Il Posto
d. Ermanno Olmi, 1961

Both sad and funny at once, Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto is a wonderfully imaginative coming-of-age story. It follows a teenager, Dominico, as he travels to Milan from his town in order to find a job. He doesn't seem too thrilled about the prospect, but becomes interested when he meets a girl, Antonietta. There are a lot of lovely scenes in the film, mostly the ones that involve the encounters between Dominico and Antonietta. Overall, Il Posto is a great movie about growing up.

the river

The River
d. Jean Renoir, 1951

I was really looking forward to watching Renoir's The River (mostly because it was his first film in color), and though I wasn't exactly disappointed by it, it wasn't the great film I'd been hoping for. Needless to say, however, the film is astonishingly beautiful and it makes me miss the glorious days of Technicolor. And if story is not as captivating as I was expecting, and Renoir's compositions have been more breathtaking (see The Rules of the Game), the colors in The River are themselves enough reason to watch it.

ace in the hole

Ace in the Hole
d. Billy Wilder, 1951

Wilder's Ace in the Hole is about as cynical as movies get. If you think Wilder's other works like Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity were tough, then this film will no doubt move you with its raw power. It tells the story of a down and out reporter, Charles Tatum, (brilliant played by a pre-Paths of Glory Kirk Douglas) who can't get any more work; he stumbles onto a small town paper and announces that he will work for cheap, he's waiting for a big story to get him back in the big leagues.

A year goes by and nothing comes along; the exciting story that starts off his second year is a coverage of a rattlesnake hunt a couple of towns away. As he drives there (along with a young assistant), the owner of a gas station tells him that her husband was just in a cave-in and has been for about six hours. Thinking there's a better story there, he decides to stop there and find out as much as he can.

From then on, Ace in the Hole is a showcase of Tatum's manipulation. He turns one man's grief into his way to get out of the small town paper. Throughout the film, he does everything he can to extend the story, even if it means putting poor Leo in danger. When the man in charge of getting him out tells Tatum that it can take 16 hours to do it the standard way, Tatum suggests an alternative that would take 5-6 days. He also makes deals with the man's wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), who doesn't love Leo anymore and is looking for a way to leave him; and with the corrupy sheriff who wants to come out as a hero so he could get re-elected, all he has to do is make sure no other reporters can cash in on Tatum's story.

Ace in the Hole is Billy Wilder's most uncompromising and brilliant film; it's the most potent observation on our media-driven culture that I've seen, and it was made more than 50 years ago. I imagine people who take film seriously will be praising this film 50 years from now.

love me tonight

Love Me Tonight
d. Robert Mamoulian, 1932

Hilarious. Love Me Tonight is everything I would want in a musical, except funnier, more technically astonishing, and much more overwhelming. In essence, this is Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise with music (both films were released in 1932), except that instead of a jewel thief, the lead in this film is a Parisian tailor.

Love Me Tonight's musical numbers are not done as they are in most Hollywood musicals; Robert Mamoulian does not interrupt his story in order to throw in some music, but instead sees the songs as extensions of the same thematic groundwork. This same technique would later be used brilliantly by French director Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrells of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort share the same dreamy mood with this film.

The two lead roles are played by Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald; with Chevalier playing a tailor who rides out to MacDonald's chateau in order to charge her cousin for some of the suits he purchased. Their relationship, much like the one between Madame Colet and Gaston in Lubitsch's movie, is based around the man's actual identity not being known, he plays the role of the stranger invading the woman's boring world. However, this only becomes a problem in the last 10 minutes of Love Me Tonight, with the rest of the film playing as a wonderful celebration of why movie musicals are the most magical of genres.

Even more astonishing than the film's humor and wonderful songs are Mamoulian's compositions. Usually, the direction of a musical is centered around the choreography of the actors. This film, on the other hand, contains really no choreography, which allowed the director to use more complicated compositions. The scenes in the chateau call to mind later films like Renoir's The Rules of the Game (with its use of large open spaces) and even Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad and its symmetrical framing.

Love Me Tonight is a musical for the ages that I will be watching for years to come.

vinyl

Vinyl
d. Andy Warhol, 1965

Vinyl is the Warhol film I'd been waiting for. The Chelsea Girls had its charms (with it's long, rambling segments), but this is the real deal. As perhaps the quintessential Warhol film, Vinyl has his rigorous visual style; the film itself only has three shots (all from stationary positions), it all takes place in the same room, and it was made for a very small "budget" and shot on 16mm bw film stock. This is also one of the most overworked surfaces that I've seen; there are people standing on the edge of the frame just to take up space (particularly Edie Sedgwick, who obviously serves no purpose to the film and is there solely to take up space, and I guess to dance at the end).

The film is a loose adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, with an emphasis on loose, because even though the film covers major aspects of the book (crime, the treatment), it does take liberty in the way it presents them.

Though I guess I can't exactly call Vinyl "good" by normal standards, I have no problem ranking it above "better" movies because of how much I enjoyed the film. This is probably the same reason why I would prefer something like Godard's audacious Band of Outsiders to, say, Dreyer's Gertrud (also from 64), which is the greater movie by cinematic means.

Oh well, I still love Vinyl.