Finding the words to say goodbye…

So to commemorate the passing of those monolithic, for-so-long-seemingly-immortal titans of 1960’s European cinema I pulled out my DVD of … Before Sunset. What? Okay, I did have the full intention of watching Antonioni’s early, lovely Cronaca di un amore, but somehow, it just didn’t seem quite right (admittedly, there were some other factors at work… as in my boyfriend and I were picking out a film to watch on the evening of our nine month anniversary), and Linklater’s film seemed to be a better choice overall.

Now anyone who is familiar with my long-standing love affair with Before Sunset is aware that each deliberately spaced viewing is always followed with a flurry of introspection and self-evaluation, and this viewing, which I calculate is my eighth, is no different. And since I somehow manage to make sure everything loops back to this film, should it come as a surprise that watching it this time around one (of many) things I was reflecting on was the remarkable cinema and art of Bergman and Antonioni? I realize it may sound absurd, but let me explain. Or at least attempt to.

One of the highlights of Before Sunset for me is the exchange between Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in the back of a taxi van, a sequence right around the hour mark that I dread (it’s so painful) as much as I anticipate (there’s always that simultaneous thrill of exhilaration). And it is in the back of that van, driving through Paris, that suddenly the film, which before has been a sweet but admittedly innocuous exchange between two people reuniting after an extended period of longing, suddenly takes this ferocious turn as rapture gives way to painful reality as Jesse and Celine confront their lives and unresolved connection to each other. When Celine launches into her outburst and breakdown the film breaks through into an entirely different, much higher and more poignant emotional level altogether, and the seemingly placid, semi-bourgeois surface of things are suddenly, unexpectedly stripped away and all the seething sensations of pain, fear, insecurity and god knows what else boil over into a flood of anger, hurt and resentment. And for me at least, at this moment there’s always this fleeting, unexplainable sensation as if the world itself is on the verge of breaking down entirely.

This time around, with the recent passing of Bergman haunting the edges of my mind, I couldn’t help but feel that this sequence demonstrates exactly what happens in many of Bergman’s best films—that is, that breathless moment where the whole film shifts and we’re confronted with a character’s jagged, naked emotions and almost more than the characters themselves, we as the viewers struggle to come to grips with the ramifications of this sudden outpouring of emotion. It’s rather beside the point that most of the time Bergman sets these scenes up in way that extremely indebted to theatrical conventions—certainly much less organic than the way Linklater does it—but somehow, it always manages to elicit a similar reaction in me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for art that depict obscured emotional landscapes and delves into hidden motives and masked reactions between people (in fact, I tend to prefer them), but in the case of Bergman and Before Sunset, there’s something both devastating and elating about being confronted head-on with the tempest of emotions that exist within each person—being dared, or more accurately defied to hold the stare and not turn away. I never cry—those that know me well laugh that I’m an “emotionless monster”—but it is during these brief moments that I feel tears welling up in the corner of my eyes, and even if they’re never shed (not yet, anyway) it only heightens a rare sensation for me: that something genuine is at stake.

This last viewing marked the first that I’ve ever watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset in tandem, and one of my favorite moments in the earlier film is when Jesse and Celine sit perched on some pallets in some anonymous Viennese back alley and Celine shares that she thinks the only thing that matters is the unseen space between people. Now if Sunrise can be seen as a film about filling this space with countless points of connection, Sunset depicts what happens during the scramble to bridge the empty spaces of disconnection. And that is always what Michelangelo Antonioni’s films struck me as—attempts at articulating and giving shape to the unglimpsed spaces that both connect and disconnect people. Just like Jesse and Celine, Antonioni’s characters circle endlessly around each other, they pose and posture and flail about with bits of expressions and conversation, all in the attempt to find a way bridge the emotional gaps that can sense but only barely begin to articulate.

Which is why I’ve never quite understood the (lamentably) widespread criticism that Antonioni’s cinematic vision is at its core emotionally empty; if the unseen areas of disconnect might indeed be more accurately characterized as “gaping chasms” rather then “empty spaces,” to me there’s always an underlying awareness of the sadness and profound emptiness of the situation that is simply heartbreaking. And I find a profound sadness in the fact that there always seems to be the potential that the pretty surfaces of Antonioni’s immaculately composed mise-en-scene will shatter and that finally something real and human will cut through the stifling boredom and ennui—but that is something Antonioni never allows for in his films, and I find it devastating.

So if part of me thinks that it may be silly to link these late, great auteurs rather superficially to my favorite film, when it comes down to it I think I’m just trying to articulate the fact that like Before Sunset, the films that Bergman and Antonioni made are among the few that touch me on an emotional level that few others reach. And even if I won’t say I’m heartbroken or even aghast by the news their respective passing—for both filmmakers had lived long, full, creative lives—I will take a moment to say thank you… and breath a sigh of relief that even if their creators are no longer here with us, the movies themselves will always live on. And for that I am grateful.

recent reading adventures

It’s been a good while since I’ve read something that has delighted me quite so thoroughly as Jane Austen’s Emma— I was surprised how deeply satisfying it was to simply be strung along through multiple messy tangents, knowing full well from page one that by the closing paragraph all the major characters would be matched in matrimony with a tidy, symmetrical inevitableness. But if in retrospect the overarching storylines seem remarkably contrived, Austen has a remarkable, perhaps unparalleled gift for fleshing out her narrative skeleton with an insatiable eye for the subtle nuances of places, faces, social habits and posturings, obscured motives and emotions… and assembling all these things and endlessly embroidering them with unexpected little details she conjures up something remarkable, something that shouldn’t remotely resemble “real life,” but somehow, amazingly, does.

I’m not sure if Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty has the “air of the classic” that some of the quoted reviewers on the back cover trumpet, but it’s an engrossing read, if never quite as sexy as it constantly promises to be. The comparisons to Henry James are certainly apt (he is certainly invoked and quoted enough), with a striking similarity to the master’s broad expanse and meticulously analyzed social observation, and the tragic denouement, while certainly expected, still manages to pack quite a punch.

Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes is certainly as romantic and wistfully nostalgic as a great “remembering lost adolescence” novel should be, but I’ll admit I’m just a tad baffled by its reputation as one of the the great French novels. For books in a similar vein, I vastly prefer Hartley’s The Go-Between.

“…and then one day, you kissed me.”

It was only minutes into Paris Je t’aime (2007) when I realized that my mind had subconsciously set up a resolute framework in which I subsequently evaluated the rest of the film, and more of less the question proved to be something along the lines of: “when given a few minutes can a world-famous director distinguish her/himself from a talented film student?” Perhaps it was because I found the film’s first segment to be nearly unwatchable (I echo Michael Sicinski’s ‘s statement that “I never, ever want to watch a feature film by Bruno Podalydes”), but thankfully the film gamely recovers from the opening low point. I was in a generous mood the day I watched it, and found most of the contributions ranking somewhere between good to very good, with the inevitable clunkers mercifully kept to a minimum. Many of the shorts do indeed display many of the themes, topics and general tone we associate with a given filmmaker—East/West clash from Gurinder Chadha, entrancing, slightly eccentric, patently-French humor from Sylvian Chomet, an overwhelming Asian influence on Christopher Doyle, etc, etc.—and “the successful ones” probably has more to do with individual tastes than anything else (do you prefer the social realism, or the whimsy?). For my part, I thought Gus Van Sant nails the restless, vaguely uneasy energy of a could-be homosexual encounter, while Oliver Assayas’s brooding, chic bleakness carries more resonance than I originally accredited to it, and there’s a kinetic thrill in Tom Tykwer’s fractured fairytale. And as somebody who had pretty much given up on Alexander Payne, the perfectly-modulated catharsis that cuts through the initial condescension took me completely by surprise, ending the film on an unexpected high note. My personal favorite segment was also the biggest surprise—I wasn’t expecting something so literate, funny and slyly sexy from Wes Craven (and Emily Mortimer is quickly becoming an actress I’d watch in anything). I suppose it’s inevitable that the mosaic approach never builds to a unified vision of any kind, though I think the film’s chief beauty arises from all the messy contradictions found in all the individual little epiphanies and moments and slices of subjective reality.

“the best night of the summer, man!”

I know of few recent films that have proved as polarizing as Funny Ha Ha (2005), but somehow I’ve managed to find myself in a place suspended between what seems to be the typical “love it” or “loathe it” reactions. There is much to certainly admire in the film, chief among them the relentlessly realism-based dialogue peppered with the inevitable “yeahs” and “likes” and “umms” of everyday speech, as well as a striking lead performance by non-professional Kate Dollenmayer and a particularly mature presence behind the camera in writer/director Andrew Bujalski who seems confident enough in his vision to give the film space enough to meander into its own awkward rhythm that as the film progresses begins to feel surprisingly lyrical.

Depicting Marnie (Dollenmayer), a young woman who finds herself stuck in a period of particularly acute post-graduation malaise, the film has found a particularly devoted following in young people who assert that the film is a dead-on depiction of their own struggles with post-college ennui and insecurities. The thing is, as a recent college graduate myself lingering in a job that is simply allowing me to buy time before I return back to school, it began occurring to me how dissimilar my own experiences feel in compared to the characters in this own film. Namely, I was shocked when I realized how completely absent from the film is any sense of what is probably the defining element of my generation: technology. Indeed, there’s nary a glimpse of a TV or even a computer in Funny Ha Ha, let alone now-ubiquitous “essentials” like cell phones and iPods, to say nothing of the internet, pop culture or even current world events (curious, considering how soon the film was made after 9/11).

Not only do all of these things seem to possess no influence on the film’s characters, but they seem to have no presence in their living whatsoever. In that way, Funny Ha Ha comes off as a surprisingly antiquated film, or at least one not nearly as grounded in the realities of modern living as it seems at first glance. It seems many of my peers have had no problems in enthusiastically proclaiming Bujalski “the voice of our generation,” but like Jonathan Rosenbaum finally admits in his review of Regular Lovers (another film about young people coming to grips with the banalities of everyday living), I can recognize what it is that may give the impression that this film is capturing the essence of my particular generation at this particular moment in time, but when it comes down to it, as much as I like the film itself, I just don’t really recognize the portrait.

New Review

My review of the Spanish film El Calentito went up at DVD Verdict on Monday.

“…when i get really lonely… i think of you smiling…”

I found myself resisting Once (2007) for the first half hour or so—it might have been the comparisons to the Before Sunrise/Sunset films, or the fact that there was something that seemed vaguely coy and manipulative about the initial introduction and interaction of the two primary characters. But by the time the impromptu guitar/piano duet unfolds between Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová in the back of a local music store I had given myself over completely to the film’s undeniable charms, for at that point the film seems to have found its footing (quickly banished, thankfully, is the vacuum cleaner seeming to foretell an overkill of indie-fare quirkiness), establishing an unassuming low-key rhythm that carries the film to its wistful conclusion.

The film holds up because of the chemistry of the two leads and the undeniable rapport they share when music wipes away their differences and pasts and fuses them temporarily together; Markéta, however, is particularly entrancing— her delicately wrought performance and ethereal singing voice mask what a catastrophe the character could have been if played wrong (how easy it would have been to veer into the territory of foreign-accented gamine or paper-pursuing femme-fatale!). To my mind, the best moment of the film is all hers—in search of batteries for a dead walkman in the late hours of the night, wrapped awkwardly in a tatty old robe, she mentally applies verses to a beat Hansard has written as she walks home. The camera, capturing every second without daring to cut away, watches and listens as the tentative hummed words slowly give way to an implausible crescendo of a fully produced song—it’s a bit of magic only possible in the movies, of course, but it brought instantly to mind my own long walks around Europe, headphones in my ears, the notes seeming to provide the backdrop of what felt like my own little movie that only I knew I was starring in. And perhaps that’s the main appeal of the film for me—it feels like a brief glimpse into somebody else’s treasured, half-remembered memories, and I’m just grateful to be given a chance to take a quick peek.

“my mother told me to be wary of Fauns…”

Going into Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) I expected something more or less along the lines of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, an unfortunate misconception on my part. Most seemed to be rather awed and quite moved by the film’s emphasis on the sadistic “reality” as opposed to the whimsical “fantasy,” but for me it felt like Ofelia’s supernatural journal was ever allowed enough time to really develop into any kind of truly vivid or meaningful experience. It would be like a film of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that kept cutting from her experiences in fantastic fantasy world to the banal realities of what was going on with her family and cat back home. That said, I can recognize its seductive qualities, but was turned off by what I found it to be one of the most uncomfortable theater experiences I’ve had since—well, a long time. I’ve read the arguments that the relentless depiction of the brutalities of Fascist Spain serves as a perfect counterbalance to Ofelia’s whimsical otherworldy adventures, but the escapes were far too infrequent for me as an audience member—the sadistic violence had me cringing for too long and too often to find much enjoyment in anything else. I suppose I was just disappointed that there never seemed enough time allotted for Ofelia, let alone audience members to explore this mystical realm, and certainly no room for it achieving any kind emotional relevance—it just becomes more or less a means of playing connect the dots between Ofelia’s two realities. By the end it seems to be little more than a depiction of a test (the pacing suggests an “another one down—next!” attitude) rather than a thoughtful exploration of what happens when the realms of fantasy and reality bleed into each other.

New Review

My review of Philippe Garrel’s masterful Regular Lovers (Les amants réguliers)  is up at DVD Verdict.  I’m still not sure if I’m entirely happy with it… but it is what it is.

reflections on endless reflections…

So a long time ago (or what seems a long time ago) in my reflectionary post on Adrian Martin’s Cinemascope interview “Responsibility and Criticism” and an Italo Calvino book I had recently read, I stated that I had been inspired with an idea that I’d like to take a stab at when in my reviewing.

Despite appearances of the opposite, I never forgot about it, and have been working on this idea on and off since that time. It was an idea inspired by something else I had been reading at that time—the work of academic/poet/essayist Anne Carson (which I in turn wrote about here). Needless to say, I had been quite intrigued by a technique Carson employs—that is, an academically-minded essay or reflection followed by a poetic interpretation of the main themes and concepts that had been discussed. Taking to heart Martin’s comment that “criticism can take an infinite number of forms: it can be soliloquy, meditation, dialogue, polemical rant, patient description, a work of fiction, a text running ‘parallel’ to a film… etc” I thought I would attempt this technique myself.

Now mind you, I am not a poet. I love poetry and seem to surround myself with people who write poetry, but have always felt my occasionally-indulged creative talents lie in prose and reviewing/analysis. But I made the attempt, and came up with the poem found below. It went over well in the writers group I participate in, which gives me the confidence to post it here (in other words… be nice).

Anyway…

…

Reflections on Varda’s Reflections in Cléo de 5 à 7

I’m as guilty as anybody of indulging in hyperbole far too often than should be permitted, but I mean what I say that a recent revisit of Agnés Varda’s Cleo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7) was a rather rapturous experience, if not actually teetering towards the miraculous. The first time I saw it, years ago, the Novelle Vague was something just entering my cinematic consciousness—and I’ll admit, Cléo left me more than a bit disoriented (that was it? That is all?) But it was undeniable there was something about it… and it stuck with me. Vaguely.

As far as I can tell, most commentary on Cléo tends to run along similar lines: “is or isn’t the ending a feminist statement?” or otherwise an analysis of how the female perspective of the director manifests itself in the film (Pauline Kael declared that it was one of the few examples of a women directing where one can actually detect a difference). And while all of these topics and issues are of great interest to me, what I found myself most intrigued by during this viewing was the preoccupation with mirrors and reflections, and how Varda uses them throughout the film to demonstrate the growing internal and emotional fragmentation of the title character.

Which makes sense, of course, as the film is all about an afternoon where a beautiful young woman finds her world—and herself—falling to pieces. But the narcissistic function that the mirror serves in the beginning sections of the film—reflecting back reassuring images of health, beauty and vitality—is slowly transformed into a means for Varda to depict Cléo’s fracturing sense of herself and the world around her. By end of the film, the function of the mirror is shifted from a means of reflecting an external reality to giving a glimpse into a much more subjective, rapidly-shifting internal state.

Witness the early, extended sequence in the hat shop, surely one of the most famous in the film, and how Cléo moves in circles around the shop, openly admiring her reflection in the multiple mirrors (and windows) set before her.

Surely, Cléo seems most at ease among her own reflection, and she clearly revels in gazing at herself (which is in itself makes for an interesting counterpoint to the equally famous scene shortly thereafter where the gaze—albeit the gaze of others—takes on a highly sinister quality).

And as if to emphasize the use of mirrors as a reflector of an external reality, Varda uses a mirror in the hat shop scene to briefly reflect the a world beyond Cléo through a glimpse of two policemen on horses somewhere outside the shop. Further emphasizing the mirror’s function as a reflector of external reality, it importantly stands as a glimpse of the world beyond Cléo’s own frame of vision.

But soon mirrors, glimpsed just as frequently, though not as overtly given pride of place, take on a more internalized quality, mirroring Cléo’s increasingly introvertedness, and her growing awareness that her world is cracking before her very eyes. This is made explicit in the café scene where Cléo, recently stripped of her costume-like hairpiece, turns on one of her songs on the jukebox and waits to be recognized (they don’t, wrapped up in their own little unseen lives and stories). Taking a look at the column Cléo is sitting next to. her reflection literally has gone to pieces—a much different situation that the countless mirrors she stared into not long before in the hat shop. It’s a remarkably simple visual metaphor (as Cléo emotionally begins to fall to pieces, so does her reflection) but one that is tremendously effective.

After the scene in the café pieces of mirror begin to appear frequently, perhaps most prominently when Varda’s camera lingers on the splinters of a small mirror that has shattered after Cléo clumsily drops her purse. Cléo and her friend crouch down over the purses’s scattered contents, and as her friend gathers items together, Varda camera watches as Cléo stops and silently stares into one of the mirror fragments. Only an eye (which is often labeled as the window of the soul) can be glimpsed in the tiny piece of glass. For one following the use of reflection in the film, it’s an extremely moving moment to recognize Cléo’s futile search for a full reflection, and indeed, a former sense of wholeness.

During the last section of the film, taking place in the Bois du Boulogne (and depicting what appears to be a budding, if unexpected prelude to courtship) the previous preoccupation with mirrors and reflections on both the character and director’s part is abandoned entirely. It appears as if Cléo is finally beginning to move beyond her narcissistic self-absorption, and that the tentative, rather awkward but completely genuine human interaction will help pull together the pieces of a damaged, fragmented self into something once again resembling a Whole.

…

[last ballad de la chanteuse]

Today is the beginning of the end of life (my life)
So I banish from mind
The sympathetic stare obscured behind thick skins of empty hospital white,
(they feed me lies)
“Cléo, Cléo, you’ll be all right.” I leave
and once reentering the land of the living
Motion sweeps me aside but I still hear beneath the clamor
That quiet whisper:
(death death)

But no! I pick up the pieces of the self
And fashion them into hats
And songs to sing
Some kind of imitation of the reckless living
Abandoned to the day before yesterday

 Spinning frantically around shops
Unable to stop, I wrap myself in reflections
Of mirrors and glass, a desperate attempt
To grasp youth that’s fleeting Sunglasses slipped over my eyes transform the sunlight into a refraction of night
I wander the shadow-strewn wasteland Paris has become
Drowning in the sounds of the city and eyes that glare
Curiously
Unable, uncomprehending the ugly truth
Behind the beauty
Behind the bob of blonde hair and confident stride.Alas! Pieces of self slip
out of hand
Scattered across concrete sidewalks, down narrow stairs.
Gather them quickly
Without thinking.
Without appearing that I care.
(But I do. I do.)

Car horns toll, toll for me
A cacophony of busy lives, of life—
Surrounds, swallows what pieces are left of me.
And through it all I hear, quietly, incessantly:
(death death)

And from somewhere, a heartbeat.

-jesse ataide

reviews! at last!

It’s been a while, I know. Trying to get back into the swing of things…

As an introduction to Bruce LaBruce’s filmography, Super 8-1/2 (1993) poses an interesting dilemma—it’s obviously a systematic breakdown of the mythology that has sprung up around its creator, but being largely unfamiliar with that mythology, the film proved to be rather bewildering at times. As a film it’s all over the place—at once serious experimentation and playful, ironic parody—and the blonde-haired, fetal-like LaBruce displays no qualms in making obvious parallels between him and Andy Warhol (in all capacities—as an filmmaker, art icon, celebrity, even detached social philosopher). One way or the other, LaBruce plays it as a queer’s take on Norma Desmond, all self-aware tragedy, complete with countless close-ups. But despite how disorienting it can be, it’s disorienting in an interesting way—both outrageous and reflexive, and extremely erotic. A film I look forward to revisiting at some point.

The power of Juste une question d’amour (Just a Question of Love) (2000) is derived from the deep satisfaction of a straightforward, rather simple story told extremely well. Certainly its economy in terms of both its narrative and in the visual style is derived from its made-for-television origins (a rather shocking after-the-fact realization on my part), but there’s a distinct richness derived from its details, particularly in regards to its supporting characters. While the central boy-meets-boy and subsequently triumph over all hardships that come their way is certainly affecting, I found myself particularly intrigued (and impressed) by the cluster of characters that surround them—the supportive but weary mother of one of the boys, the other boy’s disgusted parents who feel guilty and betrayed, and the lovely Caroline Veyt as the girl who is fully aware of her unhealthy attachment to her gay best friend, but tirelessly plays his games anyway. It’s not hard to detect an admirable fairness, even sympathy in the script’s approach to these characters that are usually rendered as mere caricatures, as each in their own way are forced to come to grips with their views of homosexuality. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, and countless times at that, but that still doesn’t mean it’s not very, very good. I was quite moved, anyway.