by studioxadmin | May 28, 2014 | Capital Punishment, HD: Film Commentary
The movie I wish everyone to watch before reading this post begins with a man and woman in bed. It is impossible to experience today the same movies that American moviegoer’s saw in 1963. This is especially true in the opening scene of “Contempt.” First of all, it was risqué to introduce his leading lady in full-length nude. Godard raises visual parody to a high order, using the image to distract the audience from comprehending the critical turn in the heroine’s life that is transpiring before our eyes on onscreen. It’s intentionally and cleverly misleading. The director presents her posed like a sex pot, but she’s really more like a piece of stone sculpture. It’s the pivotal moment when Camille’s love for Paul begins to go cold.
Camille is played by Brigit Bardot. Under an assortment of candy flavored light temperatures, the naked secretary is tucked into a hairy chested hunk. Godard presents her, hind-end up, across a shaggy spread. There jiggles a perverse mix of raw materials for exploring the range human instincts. Camille’s body marks the crossroads between classic sculpture and pop pin-up. The man she is talking to is no less than her boss, her lover, a celebrated writer Paul. Because of Paul’s bland dialog and the fact that Camille’s naked body is taking up ninety percent of the frame, its an effort just to apportion even a little attention to Paul’s presence.
They’ve just had sex. That much is obvious. Why else would Paul be so sedate in the company of this naked goddess? It wasn’t until the third time I watched that I suspected the sex they had must not have done it for Camille. More to the point, the most audacious filmmaker of the French New Wave collaborated with the most identifiable international sex symbols of the early 1960’s to test the emotional IQ of their audience. “Do you like my nipples more or my breasts?” she asks. “I like them both the same,” Paul murmers like some satiated pussy cat.
Camille sounds like she’s trolling for compliments, but this is actually an interrogation. Paul soars on auto-pilot through the afterglow. The blatant way she feeds it to him would have woken me up, had I been he, I hope. See if you agree. Once you are privy to Camille’s inquisition, do you sense her contempt and how it changes the entire movie?
On the one hand, Godard jokes with us here about how sex short-circuits long range planning. With Bardot’s behind exposed in pin-up pose,we’re being played with too. Camille toys with her audience, when she twists her boyfriend in knots, exposing every infantile bone. The man she’s talking to is supposedly an artist. He only ever responds with a word or two and never gives away his thoughts. Even though he’s gazing at a golden goddess and she volleys one opportunity after another to demonstrate his powers, he responds without attaching the slightest personal touch. When she’s had enough of his limp flattery, she says, “So you love me totally?” He answers yes and its all downhill from there.
When this crucial turning point is missed, the movie seems erratic. It seemed sudden, at least to me, on first viewing, when Camille starts acting mean. I admit Paul’s not making much sense by then. In place of his feelings for her, he talks about their flat. The flat is where they hold up and argue for the entire second act.
That clash in “Contempt” became much more interesting when I realized that she was holding back, even before Paul urges her to get in the car with the crass movie producer. Their life and times together had been about Paul’s talent, Paul’s career, Paul’s priorities. The shift of power becomes clear in the crash of dishes, tugs of war and slamming of doors. Things remain unspoken that none-the-less ring loud and clear. Camille was just a mere typist before they became romantically involved and she turns out to be the one with the requisite drive, self-esteem and ear. She simply insists on being treated seriously, not just some dish. I’m such a clod, I confess, I saw it three times before I realized this.
In Act III they no sooner arrive in Capri then Paul flirts with some other kitty. Camille busts him in the act. She retaliates by undertaking an affair with the movie producer for whom Paul harbors some contempt. Then Paul strikes out completely by leaving it up to Camille to decide whether he should return to Rome immediately with her or remain in Capri and work for the great Fritz Lang.
As a writer of film reviews, the person that reviewed “Nymph()maniac, Part 1 & 2” in a local weekly that I read is like the character of Paul in Godard’s “Contempt”. As a reader of his reviews I am like Camille. Well get back to “Contempt” in another post, for now, proceed with me to where we left off in the last one.
I have now seen “Nymph()maniac” Vol. 2, and read the same small town movie reviewer’s blithe dismissal. He called both Volumes of Lars Von Trier’s new movie shit. Lets talk about the subject of shit in motion pictures because, in a movie like, “Salo: 120 Days of Sodom,” there is a different variety of deviance on display but what’s worth mentioning about it is the relevance of excrement in the third act of “Salo” serves the same purpose as the whip in the third act of “Nymph()maniac” Vol 2. If anyone in the audience were, up to this point, able to surf around the unseemly circumstances of the characters in the movie and cling to some shred of erotic stimulus from the earlier setups, both filmmakers rake them out of your grasps, in the Act III climax, when human actions grossly escalate to defy common sense. Not surprisingly, those kinds of images stick in our heads more than any other. The reason why? Memory switches to long-term mode whenever it things venture out of bounds. Brain is caring for our survival by not letting us forget a threat. So I wonder if both films serve to heap more forbiddance upon the very taboos they examine.
Anyway, it is a curious mix of amazement and disgust that sticks with me after watching this new movie of Von Trier’s, “Nymph()maniac,” but that’s not a bad thing. The film is merely churning up some of what’s under the surface of this modern, media-mad culture. Contrary to the movie reviewer I read’s claim of misogyny, Von Trier’s clearly weaving a spell of sympathy for his protagonist and while she’s no role model, anyone that sticks with this movie is going to relate with Jo at some point.
Like Jo, we of the wired world would be wise to beware of becoming numb to ordinary stimulus. Jo’s premature and extreme exploits bleached her senses to such an extent that she could feel nothing without subjecting herself to extreme pain and degradation. Call it shit if you want. Anatomy of self-hate comes closer to it for me. Lots of folks suffer with it. Von Trier exposes this condition so sensitively, he’s practically admitting to be one of them.
to be continued…
by studioxadmin | Apr 1, 2014 | Capital Punishment, HD: Film Commentary
This post is a response to a movie review for “Nymph()maniac” Vol 1 that I came across in the local free press, I am writing, not to defend its director, as much as position legitimate film commentary out of reach of lazy reviewers such as himself. To pronounce the filmmaker a woman hater was the work of an inquisitor, not a critic. He is employed to increase the understanding of cinema and yet he rants as if he would condemn the film never to be seen. It’s not Lars Von Trier’s best film. I grew weary of watching it too. He’s repeating himself after so many outings. You notice fewer tricks and more ticks, but he’s still a master.
The film reviewer denounced Von Trier’s latest movie as lazy, contrived and boring then went on to write a review that I would characterize the same way. Anyway, lots of good movies are boring the first time I watch them. I have edged into boredom looking at hundreds of them and then was glad that I watched them again.
There was an 11am showing of the new Von Trier flick at “The Mayan,” a lovely, antique movie palace in old south Denver. I had been driving for hours and could have used a nap, but I still laughed all the way through the film. Von Trier’s most enduring quality is on display, his wit. I must admit, the dozen or so in the theater around me didn’t seem to laugh as much, so perhaps I’m a misfit. They were probably cringing, for which my response was just one alternative. We were all experiencing the same unease for the characters. Perhaps the only difference was, I enjoyed it because it was a movie and not real life.
The reviewer in question had one compliment for “Nymph()maniac”, praising Uma Thurman’s work, which was good but might have worked better before an audience, on a live stage. On the other hand, I was most amused by something the reviewer condemned as contrived. I suppose he’s right, but contriving the lighthearted obsessions of a fly fisherman with the world weary gripes of a courtesan past her prime sounds like something out of a Lubitch or Noel Coward play.
The reviewer’s accusation, of non-acting by the ingénue, is misguided as well I believe. An understated performance was the director’s call. I thought the actress modulate beautifully within the confines of her role. I’d dare to guess she was protected from waxing pornographic by stealthy direction. While the nude scenes were somewhat erotic, the screenplay is too multidimensional to be porn. Instead of exciting, it becomes interesting. It comments on porn.
As an interesting side note, my lady and I enjoyed a comedy starring Scarlett Johansson, involving porn addiction at the Sundance Kabuki in Japantown, San Francisco last fall. It’s directed by and also stars Joseph-Gorden-Levitt.
In direct contrast with mainstream internet adult content, in “Nymp()maniac” Vol 1 we are shown the dark side of a disease and acquire compassion. The maker of this film is depending on our social corrective instincts to kick in, not to sexually gratify his audience with one more exposé of skin.
We are already inundated with porn in the media. Responsible members of society need to undertake more and more of these kinds of debates. The moving image in “Nymph()maniac,” Vol 1 makes a forced entry into that frame, imposes on its cheap set-ups with talented actors instead of porn stars, then surrounds them with the very consequences which are customarily omitted in porn. Von Trier is not glorifying Jo’s exploits. He is coming out against the subjugation of women. So, hurray for Mother Nature if we feel obliged to stand up for the victims of sexual predation after watching his movie. Many a movie maker has inspired less noble sentiments in an audience.
Another worthy inquiry embedded in the script, which the reviewer I read never bother to address, is how we rationalize our denials to sooth our egos, like Von Trier’s protagonist. You can’t lie to yourself forever. It’s a universal theme, one that might as well be taken away, even if you didn’t care for the rest. That’s the kind of attitude I prefer, from journalists at free weekly newspapers when writing about films by accomplished filmmakers. The future of many crucial social debates is in the hands of filmmakers. They can have a massive, positive impact on society if they are allowed.
With regard to my own film commentary, I have decided that a person that sits at a desk for hours writing about movies after sitting at the movies for hours thinking about writing about them is engaged in a considerably more lightweight enterprise compared to the dedicated filmmaker that gets out there and gets their films made. We should show some respect.
If the reviewer thinks the Von Trier derived prurient pleasure making this or any of his films, why doesn’t he ask the actors. I’ve never heard anyone accuse this director of rubbing their noses in it. Von Trier just might be aiming his light to penetrate shades of ignorance and denial where we all wallow from time to time.
Lars Von Trier’s movies have, for the most part, compassionately portrayed the ordeals of women. In the meantime, I don’t know of another director that has helped advance the careers of so many female artists.
He’s a trickster, just as his countryman Carl Theodor Dreyer was. If you’re bored, maybe he’s not the one that’s lazy. The man’s fighting for our survival, using everything he’s got to make us think and in one limp, clichéd phrase a careless reporter sinks the boat? That stinks.
by studioxadmin | Mar 31, 2014 | Capital Punishment, HD: Film Commentary
Catholics put together the first Bible and with what we know about how corrupt the Popes were, I doubt the infallibility of its texts. Its been a tool for manipulating the masses ever since. It’s not a bad book. It’s still a good book to me. It may be my favorite read of all time, but it’s been stepped on and tinkered with a zillion times. People abuse it everyday. Its not perfect, but I don’t reject any story that’s been around for this long.
Every storyteller rewrites as they go along, adding and subtracting, incorporating fresh wisdom and prejudice, conforming it to their own limited comprehension and agenda. Stories loose definition and accumulate baggage as they age. The older the story, the larger the blocks with which they are built. They expand and contract over time but their foundations are surprisingly well preserved.
Case in point, the new “Noah,” flick released last week. An ancient tale of humanity faced with cataclysm is given a vivid updating in the hands of Darren Aronovsky. The director had a hit with his “Black Swan” in 2010. His latest outing is even more daring. With quite decent performances from his cast and a bit of deft swapping of story elements and special effects, it is quite easily the best Hollywood bible epic in decades. The characters’ arty haircuts, costumes, make-up, porcelain teeth and British accents all lend romantic splendor to the gathering gloom. Stylistically, there are some brilliant mash ups, embedded quotes of ground breaking films ever so worthy of quoting, such as “Breaking the Waves, (1996), for example, in the way the light and color is applied, like a Thomas Kinkade postcard, to highlight the already deeply enshrined associations we harbor from certain stories and songs. The specific sequence in “Noah” starts out face-to-face with a snake in the grass, proceeds to a ripe fruit being plucked by hand and concludes on with a fist and stone as Cain caves his brother’s head in. This device grounds a very post modern movie in the very old story of its namesake, repeating the sequence through all three acts like a major chord anchoring a symphony, increasing its resonance each time. Reaching into Aronovsky’s distant past, it recalls the dope fix ritual sequence in his second feature, “Requiem For a Dream” (1990), which I wrote about here last month.
In “Noah,” the way the story is updated becomes part of the story itself. There are visual passages in this movie that convey the march of time and the influence of the elements upon a landscape as successfully as anything else I’ve seen. The filmmaker’s out on his edge as an artist, with a huge budget, an outstanding line-up of talent, entrusted by investors and audiences alike to seize the zeitgeist.
It’s a bit of a high-wire act the way Aronovsky takes liberty with the tradition, then inserts Hallmark card-like chapter headings in between, accepting memes that are most sacrosanct and inviolable to the Christian way of seeing, while hopefully entertaining believer and unbeliever alike with something thought provoking on the screen.
Coming attractions that we watched before the movie began made abundantly clear that movies this summer will be dominated by another heaping helping of ecological apocalypse for blockbuster season. Aronosvsky anticipates this and doesn’t weigh us down with too much battlefield angst. The future is in the boat. Noah’s demons are driven inward under the pressure of his immense task. As the occupants are closed inside the ark, it becomes a cannonball that knows not where it flies.
Life in the ark is presented like going under anesthesia for a high-risk surgery, Noah’s determination is tested, to bring its occupants through God’s wrath, and reboot the ecosystem and reintroduce nothing evil. The timing of the boat’s landfall is so perfect that it suggests God’s not dead. Good thing too. By then Noah’s stubborn resolve has made him ruthless and obsessed, but compassion gets the best of him again.
In so doing, he succumbs to selfish love and loyalty to his own, letting in something unpredictable and therefore dangerous to earth’s re-creation. Noah reaches that far shore convinced that he has let God down. The first thing he does, after disembarking, is retreat to a cave, make wine and drown his sorrows. His sons discover him passed-out, naked. They put some covers on him. This detail from the Bible is set up brilliantly in the preceding acts, by repeating the image of a snake coming out of his skin. This accomplishes as much as any other scene in the film to bring the famous floating fortress builder down to the scale where we can relate to him as a human being. While the rain beat down and the rest of the world was shedding its skin, the hero remained vigilant and duty bound. Not until they reach dry land was he able to slough off his own.
Stories chosen for wide release on the big screen are selected by the filmmakers with ultimate care and consideration, so lets’ examine why they gambled on an adaptation of Noah’s flood for movie audiences of 2014. How does Noah’s dilemma reflect our current existential landscape? Might Noah’s spirit reside in every person alive today that assists in protecting nature and humanity from obliteration? Noah charts a path to where no one has ever been before and leaves behind a world that will never exist again. We as humans are faced with precisely this turn of events t0day. Through the old stories, this latest motion picture and a lot of other fine arts and media endeavor to help us prepare.
by studioxadmin | Feb 14, 2014 | Capital Punishment, HD: Film Commentary
While the surveillance state inserts its proboscis into our psychic circulation systems, I will attempt to look on the bright side. It’s an audience. I am accustomed to revealing my most private thoughts and wrestling with my demons in public and listeners are listeners, after all. It’s not for me to pick and choose. I should be glad for the company but seldom has anyone from the public hung in there past the first act. Does this mean at least someone might get through the entire output? What if it sucks? What if it’s so great, they come out of the woodwork as fans? Then, by their word of mouth, my public expands and expands. Pretty soon everybody’s sending me salutations and money. Is that worse than toiling away in obscurity?
It’s not for me to judge you personally. I include myself in the surveillance community. The variety of voyeurism practiced at the multiplex is non-intrusive. Those that subscribe to the golden rule won’t take advantage of their neighbors the same way as films do characters. There is a kind of vigilance about the world around us that is rewarded through natural selection and we can develop that through movie watching. We don’t have to pry into real people’s private lives. Filmmakers have tamed and civilized the act of eavesdropping for us. Movies provide an outlet for our nosy, curious nature without anyone’s privacy actually being disturbed.
Whereas its obvious that the vast majority minds their our own business pretty well, the preponderance of audio/video and other recording technology all around us begs to be turned on. Still, it tickles me to think how far behind the curve the intelligence gathering agencies are. No one keeps tabs on his or her fellow citizens as well as movie watchers. In our society, you can learn more about human beings in a two-hour movie than by living next to them on the same street for years. Anyway, the information we seek most diligently, by scrutinizing the actions of others, should be whatever teaches us most about ourselves and that’s how the movies work.
“Requiem for a Dream,” (2000) is a story of addiction, a gorgeously grimy picture that cuts to the bone. Each time I’ve watched it, it has stayed with me for days. Opening act scenes of the budding romance between pretty addicts make their risk-taking appear glamorous, but love gets mixed-up with getting off, pushing them over the edge. If you’re inquisitive, like me, you’ll hop on the danger train with them while director Aronosvsky examines the tragic spiral from feel good scratch to fetal clutch.
In the same story, there is an elderly woman that lives by herself. She spends her lonely hours watching television. She becomes obsessed with trying to make herself look better and fancies appearing on television as a substitute for a more meaningful connection with her son. What would be considered a softer addiction proves to be equally devastating.
“I wanted to show how addiction is about repetition and obsession.’ Listening to Aronovski’s comments while re-watching the film was informative. “When we were amoebas in the primordial soup we were looking for carbon molecules to get high off of.”
The mix of fantasy and denial that allows addicts to plunge themselves into the abyss is blatantly familiar to us all, at this juncture in history. Unhealthy habits assail us from all directions and none is more potently self-destructive than our dependence on fast, cheap, easy fixes for our complex, long-term, critical challenges.
“It’s about the lengths that people will go to escape reality and when you escape your reality, you create a hole in your present, because you’re not there, you’re off chasing a pipe dream in the future and you’ll use anything to fill that vacuum, coffee, TV, tobacco, heroin to feed the hole. The hole grows and grows until eventually it will devour you. This film is about how you can use anything to get high off of, anything to fill that hole.”
He’s saying everyone wants safety, security and connection. When we feel powerless to get it, we settle for a substitute, but there is no substitute. He said that back in the year 2000, before everything changed. We’re going to follow this filmmaker into next month to review his latest film entitled “Noah,” made 14 years later. The story of the great flood appeals to the part of us that longs for a clean slate. It’s a metaphor for “cold turkey.” Civilization must go through withdrawal, if we’re going to survive, but we’re so badly hooked that we convince ourselves the correction will come from God, or in other words, don’t count on us to do anything but what addicts do.
Aronovsky is fascinated with excess and that works well in a movie that is literally about addiction, such as of “Requiem for a Dream,” but not so swell in his movie about death and dying, “The Fountain” (2006). He achieves mixed results in his films about performers, “The Wrestler” (2008) and “Black Swan” (2010). The work is always daring and visionary, but his stories, with the exception of “Requiem,” tend to collapse under the weight of their own excess. If you’re not up on The Theater of Cruelty, this director will school you with his moves.
The problem often lies with where Aronovsky choses to begin. To my own sense of correct proportion, the third acts of his last three films overshoot the mark by a power of ten. Imagine if Beethoven started his Ninth symphony in the middle. There would practically have to be bombs exploding at the finale.
So we will see if an apocalyptic deluge will be a subject that lends its self to Aronovsky’s predilections. I hope it doesn’t fly off the rails. All concessions to the Theater of Cruelty considered, at one point does one begin pushing back at the screen?
by studioxadmin | Jan 1, 2014 | Capital Punishment, HD: Film Commentary
It’s gone down in the history books that “Dancer in the Dark” director Lars Von Trier was an author of the Dogme 95 Manifesto. I look on it as a publicity stunt, much like the New Wave employed to pull audiences away from Europe’s classical, old school directors in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Neither Von Von Trier nor his pal Vintnerburg took much time setting out the regulations for their “vow of chastity,” and like the patriarchs of many a holy order, they never observed the rules themselves. The guys were undoubtedly high when they wrote it. Not that it wasn’t a good plan. Doors were opened for independent filmmakers that could do more with less thanks to them.
“The Ascent” was made long before Dogme 95, or anything like it. Yet it is a predecessor by default. There was no budget for modern FX shots in Shapitko’s film, so it conforms to that Dogme regulation. The killings are about as low-tech as you can get. Death by rope. While it is a period piece with guns and costumes, I will argue that Shepitko’s choice of time and place was meant strictly to comment on the “here and now” staying true in spirit to the Dogme protocol. It’s scenes were shot on location so, in that way, it conforms as well. The film is not in color but neither is the Russian winter, so the color rule is irrelevant here. It all costs money and so Sheptiko didn’t apply much of a score. She kept music spare using some where it counted most, abandoning it wherever the wailing wind on location could provide more.
My point is that if Dogme 95 was a return to purity of story, superiority of performance and economy of production, “The Ascent” was the kind of movie that Dogme was meant to be a return to. The seal of authenticity in Dogme’s chastity vow will never be more sacrosanct than in Shepitko’s films. We are talking about the anonymous attribution rule. Even though her name was attached, Shapitko was an artist in a socialist country. Ideologically speaking, at least, the films she made were property of the state. The State as Auteur sounds like a great topic for film scholarship, by the way. If someone will commission it, I’d be interested in contributing a piece.
Larissa Shepitko succeeded in convincingly capturing her character’s transformations in long takes. Lars Von Trier goes to the extreme opposite, cutting together Selma’s song and dance routines from a thousand different clips. Every time his blind heroine comes to an emotional turning point, the filmmaker speed shifts into overdrive, covering the action with no less than 100 cameras at the same time. That’s what he claims, anyway. I find the prospect of looking with that many eyes intriguing. Not only is this daring filmmaker spiking his fine tuned drama with good, old-fashioned, mid-20th century song and dance, but all these scenes, featuring Selma’s psychological shape-shifts, are virtually hosed-down. There are cameras concealed everywhere.
“Dancer” is not Dogme. Dogme 95 rhapsodizes ironically over the virtues of chastity which, in this case, was a rejection of superfluous technology of any kind. Even things like props were considered too contrived unless they happened to be found in the place where the scene is filmed. Such constraints appeal to all kinds of artists, not just Dogme directors, for economic considerations if none other. “Dancer” is not a Dogme film anyway. Lars Von Trier has never made one. Anyway, almost everything the man says and does turns into something for him to contradict later on.
When I poled my movie loving friends about “Dancer in the Dark,” a couple of them said they were put-off by Bjork repeatedly breaking into song. Was it because it was Bjork doing it and they don’t like her? Or is that they just don’t like musicals? You know who you are. I’m asking you now.
I’m not fond of many musicals myself, but, by sheer coincidence, I just got home from a screening of Footlight Parade (1933) with James Cagney and Joan Blondell. What a lot of fun that was. If you don’t like musicals, try that one. It sports just the kind of numbers Selma concocts her emotional eclipses with in “Dancer.” My favorite motion picture musical is “Cabaret.” Both “Cabaret” and “Dancer in the Dark” portray single women seeking refuge in the song and dance.
“Dancer,” is an anatomy of hope, an autopsy on denial and a kind of primer on going blind. The project was an experiment with hybrid filming techniques and on the cutting edge in other ways besides. It won the Palme dé Or at Cannes. Bjork won the best actress prize. Von Trier’s gamble allows us to watch a 1950’s American melodrama and a 1930’s Busby Berkley musical, simultaneously, through 21st century eyes.
Bjork wrote the songs for “Dancer in the Dark,” with an assist on lyrics from Von Trier and Sjøn. For the most part they come across. Only the first and the last numbers left me unmoved. I wonder if it’s because Bjork sings with her tongue sticking out that some non-fans can’t take her. She’s too quirky for some, a shaman to others. In any case, the bulk of her musical contributions to this film work wonders.
Art film veteran, Catherine Deneuve makes every line count in her supporting role. She’s a real friend. There are a handful of actors from Europe in the film. All of them except Bjork and Deneuve are playing rural Washingtonians. Deneuve’s character Kathy plays an immigrant and the only actor with a credible accent, I might ad.
With Von Trier, the use of foreigners to play Americans becomes part of the text and works especially well, in the case of character Jeff, played by Swedish actor Peter Stormare. His inconsistent intonations and ninety mile stare contribute to the intended impression that Jeff’s not quite all there.
There are lapses in craft, when it gets right down to it, on both sides of this film. The handheld camerawork, for instance, must have made thousands of more skilled handlers curse Lars Von Trier.
The French New Wave fetishized such accidents, in each other’s work to popularize a new, fast and loose aesthetic. When a movie sweeps me up as profoundly as this one does, to be honest, I don’t really care.
…to be continued next month.
