reappearance

Not back, not really.  I haven’t really missed Memories of the Future in my time since I gave it up, though occasionally I do puzzle over its ultimate fate.  The thing is, I have kept up with my writing, and now I have an unwieldy backlog of capsule reviews accumulated over the last year that are increasingly difficult to access in a Word document (and I dearly need them, given my lamentably awful ability to retain details or even impressions over an extended period of time).  That and the slight shock I received recently when I took a look at my blog stats and realized I’m still receiving nearly as many hits per day as I was when I was posting original content (and I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to feel about that, actually). 

So anyway, I’ve decided for the time being I’m going to start posting my little capsule reviews, mostly for myself, but also for whoever it is that’s out there still reading (because the stats show that the Review Index is still being accessed on a regular basis)—hello, whoever you are!  My approach to writing these has grown increasingly inward and memory-oriented—more often than not I regard them as attempts to capture my particular memories of a film than as any particular attempt at analysis—so if they’re a bit incomprehensible or meaningless outside of myself, well, I apologize, but often that is rather the point. 

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One of my great pleasures is introducing Before Sunset (2004) to unsuspecting individuals… I always worry that its extreme talkiness will bore, but it has always worked its magic and everyone I’ve yet shared it with has been enchanted.  This time around was no different.  I’ve reached the point now where I can anticipate every sequence, even every word as it unfolds—and while the film never changes I certainly do, and I look forward to what my reaction each time around will be; the film doesn’t necessarily reveal new nuances upon each revisit, but instead triggers unexpected revelations in myself.  I’ve just finished Jonathan Rosenbaum’s autobiography “Moving Places: A Life at the Movies” where he uses the (justly?) forgotten Doris Day vehicle On Moonlight Bay as a springboard for extended Proustian reveries… Before Sunset functions for me much the same way.  Still the greatest film I’ve ever seen, or the most special one (if there’s any difference between the two at all).

 

Watching Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence (2005) dovetailed nicely with my reading of Umberto Eco’s excellent “The Name of the Rose,” even if both are completely different beasts: where Eco’s religious murder mystery piles on the concepts and endless words, Gröning sticks solely with his images (originally about 100 hours worth). A documentary in the sense that it records directly from life, it lacks any kind of storyline to latch onto, no voiceovers, no interviews (with one notable exception) and no kind of outside analysis, instead depicting the band of Carthusian monks inhabiting the ancient, magnificent Grand Chartreuse monastery simply going about their day. Or should I say days, which is more or less unchanging, and provides one of the film’s overarching themes that serves as the string that ties it all together—the cyclicality of the Brothers’s strictly ordered days, that accumulate into seasons which accumulate into years and decades and lifetimes and finally a whole 1,000 year old religious tradition (as the bonus features notes, little has changed for the Carthusians since their founding in 1080). Considered the Church’s strictest order, complete with vows of silence, Gröning patiently observes the brothers going about their day, often in solitude, praying, reading, writing, or performing their tasks, be it cooking, gardening, managing the finances, chopping wood or cutting hair. But the literal great silence of the title, while certainly solemn in an imposing Northern European fashion, isn’t in the least sad—it’s exceedingly peaceful, and to the film’s credit, its grueling, somewhat exasperating structure (nearly three hours of unobtrusive observation where very little “happens”) gives a sense of how this state of mind develops without ever trying to get the brothers to explain it or translate their experiences into words. There is never any attempt to establish some kind of enlightening interiority in the brothers depicted, but the humanity inevitably bubbles through the austerity, particularly in two all-too-brief sequences: one where a group of brothers trek through snowy mountain slopes and slide down a mountainside, laughing at each other as they slip and tumble, and one of the rare occasions when the vow of silence is lifted for a few hours and they sit in a circle and simply converse with one another. And what do they talk about? Why, the value of the tradition of washing hands before meals, of course. How utterly trivial, and yet, one can’t help but feel, how extremely appropriate. This is a different world, indeed, almost a completely different universe, before now virtually unglimpsed, a mystery in the end much more beautiful than anything in Eco’s fiction.

 

Dans Paris (2007), Christophe Honoré’s loose, Nouvelle Vague-inspired riff on J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” was my most anticipated film of 2007—and the powers that be sure made me wait long enough to finally see it (a drawn out, almost nonexistent theatrical release, then a delayed DVD release, etc, etc).  Happily, it didn’t disappoint despite my endlessly growing anticipation; indeed, far from it: in many ways it’s much more than I dared let myself hope for.  Split into two very distinct but intertwined storylines embodied by two brothers, we have Roman Duris as “Franny,” heart-sick and pitifully bundled up in his private, somewhat silly miseries, and Louis Garrel as “Zooey,” irresistibly, almost obnoxiously gregarious, prone to spouting ill-timed but well-meaning advice and insight.  Like in Salinger’s story, family dynamics drive the film, as does the familial interplay within the cramped family apartment, a much lived-in space perpetually echoing with memories and now-past moments and the ghosts of the past that hover in forgotten corners.  Perhaps it was because I was just starting Bachelard’s seminal “The Poetics of Space” when I watched this film that I was particularly attuned to the matter, but I can’t think of another film that comes near to Honoré’s precise depiction of how people act and interact within their most intimate spaces—particularly their homes—unashamedly lounging about in various states of undress, blissfully unaware of how any “objective analysis” would quickly reveal the ridiculousness of the little soap operas that unfold behind closed doors and drawn curtains.  It’s rather miraculous to behold, in a low-key way.  But Honoré never allows the proceedings to get too insular—something which could be considered both the strength and the weakness of Salinger’s novella—using Garrel’s youthful antics (que Demy) out and about in Paris (que Bande a part) to counterbalance the dark pathos of Duris’s emotional breakdown.  A lovely film which seems so slight, so ephemeral at first glance but which I have a haunch might be an impressive, maybe even important achievement.  With another viewing I fully expect it to leap near the top of my favorites list: for now I’ll just allow myself to rather self-consciously gush over it.

 

~ by jataide on 19 January 2009.