From _Celine_ to _I have loved you so long_ 3.
sept...@millenicom.com
Not long ago, when Andrew Sarris "retired" (or was
forced) from the NY Observer, there was a lot of
eulogy about his titanic fights with Pauline Kael.
This is before my time obviously, and I'm never a
big fan of food fights; they all too often become
all-consuming ego trips with neither side willing
to admit the opponent's valid points. But perhaps
one problem with the current art-house film criticism
is that everyone is so polite and accommodating,
perhaps even to the point of conformism. That can't
be so healthy either. One advantage of posting stuff
on a message board where there is one exactly other
person talking about movies is that I get to write
whatever I think. Hopefully this excuses some of
the excess expressed below (and in other posts).
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A while ago I saw three disaster films in a row. The first,
_Heartbeat Detector_, is the decade's prototype foreign
film that gives art-house cinema a bad name and drives
moviegoers away in droves. I have long suspected that
certain academics (let's not sully the term "liberal")
regard mulitnational corporations with as much superstition
and paranoia as the religious right---the "Left Behind"
crowd---fantasize about the United Nation. French academic
Nicholas Klotz's film is the final proof.
No one can defend corporate greed, but Humanities
academics need to know thy enemy. They think of the
interior of corporations as a surgery wing, anti-sepic
and barren. If they step foot inside a real company,
they'd know that offices are decked out with petty
employee awards, self-congratulatory charts boasting of
achievements, and sloganeering that would make Stalin's
propagandists blush. Modern incorporated businesses
did not invent exploiting workers; Egyptian Pharoahs
already knew how to do that. The "pacific" Belgians
operated Congo slave farms that led to Conrad's _Heart of
Darkness_. Post-slavery, the immigrant workers who built
the Northwest rail tracks in the U.S. died by the hundreds.
Exploitation of workers is hardly worthy of a "theoretical"
revelation, but _Heartbeat Detector_ soon gets more
batty, in fact goes off the deep end by simply equating
laying off workers who are old or alcoholics to Nazi
Germany's death trains and extermination of Jews. I'm
not making this up. And this is done with most
excruciating, drawn-out, self-important pacing possible;
even at 4x speed on the DVD player, some sequences are
interminable. (It shares this bizarredistinction with
only one other film I know, de Olivier's _Abraham's
Valley_.) By the way, the DVD box claims that Andrew
Sarris praised _Heartbeat Detector_ as "haunting,"
I'm relieved to find that Sarris only did that in the
last line of the review which sensibly criticized the
languid pace. (So did the NYT review.)
But the real dead horse this semanticist want to beat is
neither corporations or Nazism; it is "language." The
euphemisms that make firing workers possible/palatable
is the "same" as Nazi Germany euphemism describing Jews
being transported to death camps. As usual, Language
did it. Note to Klotz: please stay in school and
continue to poison young minds, which you are doing
anyway, and leave cinema alone.
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I do think it can be fairly said that Michael Haneke
uses alienating, dehumanizing tactics familiar to
Fascists, KGBs, and Mao's Red Guards. He assigns guilt
by association. If Autueil in _Cache_ has wronged an
African immigrant in his youth, his wife (Binoche) must
pay. She deserves to be terrorized, has her privacy
violated, warrants home invasion. Haneke peddles envy
and discord among different classes and races,
simultaneously manipulating the audience's liberal
guilt and resentment of those even more privileged
than they are. If Carlyle and Watts in _Funny Games_
are filthy rich, own a summer house and a yacht, have a
child and a dog, and listen to opera in their SUV, they
must deserve home invasion and torture. In keeping
with the most misguided art-house trends, Hanake uses
distancing devices which dehumanize the victims and
prevent the audience from empathizing and identifying
with them. They are whiny, stupid, devoid of agency
(that infamous "video-rewind" scene in _Funny Games_),
dignity, and volition, until they are reduced to zombies
willingly led to their slaughter. They may as well
be cattle, or teenagers in _Hostel II_. Too bad
Haneke is born 60 years late. These days all he
qualifies for is the title "terrorist."
I watched the latest version of _Funny Games_ because
of Naomi Watts, who fought valiantly against Haneke's
dehumanization. (She produced the film -- not a smart
career choice.) Not that I'd be willing to rewatched
the original but I don't remember there being drastic
differences between the versions. George W. Bush was
infamous for not admitting to single a mistake. And
then there is Michael Haneke and his funny games. I
did notice one change. When the two killer-clowns are
making fun of movie conventions about sociopaths and
psychobabble explanations for their depravity, the
television screen behind them gives the lie to Hanake's
indifference to motives. The new version shows NASCAR
racing, no doubt Haneke's way of sticking it to the
"red-neck" American and thus flatter his masochistic
target audience. Well, I watch NASCAR too. Maybe
that's why I am feeling sociopathic right now. Maybe
I should invade Haneke's home, torture his wife and
child (assuming she hasn't left this pathetic bastard
a long time ago), and see how much fun he finds in the
experience.
When a filmmaker obsessesively depicts torture
(physical and psychological) in film after film, the
ineluctable reason is that he *likes* torture. And
he rides it all the way to the bank and the Palm d'Or.
(To paraphrase Ophelia --- we are the more deceived.)
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I didn't intentionally watch _There will be Blood_.
I was in a motel and turned on the TV and there it
was, at the oil-fire scene, an almost frame-by-frame
copy of the hell fire-and-locust sequence in Terrence
Malick's _Days of Heaven_. I was dumbfounded by
the tone-deaf plagarism, although I should have
expected that by now. I went out to dinner and
came back and it was still running, now at the
very end where Daniel Day Lewis throws bowling
balls at his son in a bowling alley and has him
decapitated. (Aping a campy death scene in _Final
Destination X_, no doubt?) I almost laughed my head
off. But my amusement was short-lived; soon the
credit rolls, misappropriating (and sullying) the
Rondo movement of Brahms' violin concerto. I was so
depressed. It is said that a monkey randomly jumping
on the typewriter will take longer than the age of
the universe to come up with _Hamlet_. As a
counter argument, let me present Paul Thomas
Anderson, so tone-deaf, vulgar, and tasteless that
the pieces he steals from the greatest work in our
heritage are unerringly assembled into the worst
possible mes He is the Leatherface of cinematic
auteurs. I had to take a shower after my brief
exposure to his cannibalistic odor.
--------------------------------------------------
Speaking of Daniel Day Lewis and better films he's
been in: the Woodstock anniversary came and went, and
with it another (no doubt) mediocre Ang Lee film I
won't see, but I'm glad I rewatched a film about aging
hippies living in communes, namely Rebecca Miller's
_The Ballad of Jack and Rose_. Coming on the heels
of her highly acclaimed, zero budget _Personal Velocity_,
I (and probably most others) regarded _Ballad_ as inferior.
Watching it again, _Ballad_ is obviously meant to be a
maximal effort, with expensive sets (compared to her
previous film anyway) that got burnt down and large
scale camera motions that do not hesitate to call
attention to themselves. Daniel Day Lewis is reliably
interesting, but Camilla Belle is also memorable as
the holy terror Rose, the daughter who has grown up
without any social life apart from her close ties with
the father. I don't know that Belle is such a great
actress -- she doesn't seem to have done much of
interest except the faux-mute in _Quiet_ -- but she
sure has the exotic looks (part Brazillian I think) to
anchor the exotic flower that is _Ballad of Jack and
Rose_. In many ways, I now think this film has surpassed
_Personal Velocity_. Look forward to Miller's next
film, which is sadly being drowned out by other,
more readily pigeon-holed indie films coming out in
film festivals.
---------------------------------------------------------
Going back to movie critics being too accommodating:
the New York Press crowd cleary have misplaced the
memo about being nice and playing well with others.
A while ago the French thriller _Tell No One_ got an
exceptionally negative review there. Now that I've
watched it I know why -- it basically a French
transplant of a latter day Clint Eastwood film, the
kind that wallows in unnecessarily sordidness. (This
is the impulse which drives network TV to jump on
the story of the abducted girl in Antoich who was
imprisoned for 20+ years.) I have had no desire to
see an Eastwood picture after _Mystic River_. I
guess I have little desire to think more about _Tell
No One_, either.
--------------------------------------------------------
And finally, _I've loved you so much_, also starring
Kristen Scott Thomas. I was led to believe it is a
film like _Blue_, with a performance like Binoche's
in that film. I was surprised (pleasantly in a sense,
we don't need a reboot) that Kristen plays it her usual
cool, aristocratic way, even when she is being abused
by her self-righteous employers. But the story makes no
sense, the emotion scene at the end is totally uncalled
for; the filmmaker should have learned from the powerful
ending of Kieslowski's film.
Adam
Nice going, Septimus. Somewhat in take no prisoners
mode. Interesting thoughts to read. Thanks for writing.
sept...@millenicom.com
> Nice going, Septimus. Somewhat in take no prisoners
> mode. Interesting thoughts to read. Thanks for writing.
Yikes, Adam, if you are actually reading I would have to
tone this down in the future!
Adam
Heavens, no. Bang on.
Well put in your introductory note.
Hard-core esthetics, and we urgently need
more (expressed).
sept...@millenicom.com
I doubt anything said there would not have been better expressed
without all that anger. But if I weren't being mean-spirited I
probably
wouldbn't have raised the Leatherface comparison ... it must have
taken a spectacular deformity of sense of aesthetics to think he
can tear pieces from others and drape them on his skin to make
himself look pretty. Why does P.T. Anderson gets all his acclaim?
_Boogie Nights_ was almost watchable (even if the commentary
track made me want to puke). _Magnolia_ not only had confessional
segments that were degrading to watch, they were fit together in the
most awkward and anti-poetic way possible. I tuned off _Punchdrunk
Love_ quickly -- it is another fake-art, one-note stunt that passes
for art house cinema these days. From the little I've seen, _There
will be Blood_ is the absolute worst yet.
Adam
I haven't seen anything else by him. So when I
watched TWBB last night, my heart sank as soon as
I saw the Miramax logo sign on. Felt it signalled
a commercial entertainment rather than the art
of a film in the proud tradition. Am not seeing
many films these days.
TWBB is a story of an egomaniac, no character arc,
no charm whatsoever, done in a flat documentary style.
Who on earth is the market for such an expensive
mono-dimensional production?
Incredible sound by Lucas' Skywalker people. Some of
Arvo Part's Fratres. Much early-Xenakis-like fooling
around. 3rd mvmt of Brahms' Violin Concerto op 77
under H.v.Karajan. A pastiche.
So here are two curious pairs. Michael Moore on
Capitalism, and Godard on Socialism. I notice the
Godard, as yet unfinished, features Alain Badiou
who (new to me, and interesting) I struggled to
understand when interviewed by Steven Sackur on
the BBC's Hardtalk only last week. Some lovely stuff
by Sackur during that interview, ".. its all well
and good, you French socialists smoking your
Gauloises and spouting this stuff ..".
The other is the US remake of Straw Dogs. The original
noteworthy for many things, but Fielding's re-working
of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, is truly very beautiful
work. The ugliest of stories done then as real poetry.
Always enjoy and appreciate hearing your thoughts, Septimus.
sept...@millenicom.com
> Well, PTA did Hard Eight, which was quite nice.
> I haven't seen anything else by him. So when I
> watched TWBB last night, my heart sank as soon as
> I saw the Miramax logo sign on. Felt it signalled
> a commercial entertainment rather than the art
> of a film in the proud tradition. Am not seeing
> many films these days.
How interesting -- and so many critics swear by PT Anderson,
I guess ever since Kent Jones' piece on _Magnolia_, if not
earlier. I saw that on the big screen and thankfully remembers
little of it, apart from disgust. The main point of the film is to
humiliate the actors and the characters they play, thoroughly.
The emblematic image is that of a boy urinating in his pants
while competing in some talent show. Anderson could have
shot the same film in 5 minutes by having all the actors show
up one by one, urinating in their pants, and be done with it.
That would actually be a better film -- avoiding most of the
ugly transitions between scenes. Poor Julianne Moore!
>
> TWBB is a story of an egomaniac, no character arc,
> no charm whatsoever, done in a flat documentary style.
> Who on earth is the market for such an expensive
> mono-dimensional production?
The production design is by Jack Fisk, Malick's guy,
so the cinematographer is to blame. I just rewatched
Lou Ye's _Summer Palace_. I'm convinced he is
a Malick fan! _Summer Palace_ has the structure
of TTRL and _Days of Heaven_, with the paradisial
first half and a purgatory-like ending split by hellfires
in the middle. Now _Summer Palace_ is the right
(and unexpected) way to pay tribute to Malick!
>
> Incredible sound by Lucas' Skywalker people. Some of
> Arvo Part's Fratres. Much early-Xenakis-like fooling
> around. 3rd mvmt of Brahms' Violin Concerto op 77
> under H.v.Karajan. A pastiche.
>
I didn't stick around for the credits but I thought that
sounded like von Karajan (nice documentary on him
on PBS recently), with the Goddess of violin, Anne-
Sophie Mutter herself, playing soloist. What a
travesty!
> So here are two curious pairs. Michael Moore on
> Capitalism, and Godard on Socialism. I notice the
> Godard, as yet unfinished, features Alain Badiou
> who (new to me, and interesting) I struggled to
> understand when interviewed by Steven Sackur on
> the BBC's Hardtalk only last week. Some lovely stuff
> by Sackur during that interview, ".. its all well
> and good, you French socialists smoking your
> Gauloises and spouting this stuff ..".
I'm not up to such recent events. I really don't
Godard has earned his mettle as far as *politics*
is concerned (as opposed to art). Hope this film
will be more like _In Praise of Love_ than _Notre
Music_. These old masters have proven they
have masterpieces left in them yet!
I haven't seen the last 2 Michael Moores either,
to be honest.
>
> The other is the US remake of Straw Dogs. The original
> noteworthy for many things, but Fielding's re-working
> of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, is truly very beautiful
> work. The ugliest of stories done then as real poetry.
>
_Stray Dogs_ is being remade again, as you probably know!
Let's see what music they use this time.
You're too kind -- good to hear from you too!
sept...@millenicom.com
>
I just rewatched
> Lou Ye's _Summer Palace_. I'm convinced he is
> a Malick fan! _Summer Palace_ has the structure
> of TTRL and _Days of Heaven_, with the paradisial
> first half and a purgatory-like ending split by hellfires
> in the middle. Now _Summer Palace_ is the right
> (and unexpected) way to pay tribute to Malick!
>
film, which I mentioned a while ago. And the sense
that the entire universe -- the moon and the stars,
and the fate of the nation -- are completely attuned
to the mood of the heroine, seems to coincide with
the fortunes of her love affair. The heroine is both
Linda Manz (voice-over) and Brooke Adams (tragically
unfaithful). And her obsession with her first romance
is like memory of the June 4 massacre in Beijing, which
split the film in half. It is a deeply personal milestone,
idealistic and idealized, magical, unattainable. When
she saw the lover in the flesh many years later,
they ultimately ran from each other.
What a passionate, wise, amazing film.
Adam
[ ... ]
Thanks, S. Will keep an eye out for Summer Palace.
>The production design is by Jack Fisk, Malick's guy,
>so the cinematographer is to blame.
Certainly hard to go wrong shooting those glorious
skies and landscapes in Texas and elsewhere. Just
those dark interiors. Don't look under the rock.
re: Godard & Moore, and the Straw Dogs remake, I was
simply presenting some polar contrasts and sure you
got that. How they will pan out, who knows. JLG
doing at least one or two projects a year, simply
incredible when each is completely diverse from the
next, and that's quite an art or strength. Any remake
I believe, should be quite special in some way, and
there hasn't really been a good record so far.
Of art and politics and philosophy, its a struggle
for understanding, perhaps the vain attempt to put it
all together, East and West, but its compelling and
quite fascinating me. I'll promise to catch up with
the Kieslowski films and not to bore people.
Just back-tracking over some Scriabin, and trying
to keep out of trouble. Those opus 11 preludes really
seem quite special.
sept...@millenicom.com
>
> re: Godard & Moore, and the Straw Dogs remake, I was
> simply presenting some polar contrasts and sure you
> got that. How they will pan out, who knows. JLG
> doing at least one or two projects a year, simply
> incredible when each is completely diverse from the
> next, and that's quite an art or strength. Any remake
> I believe, should be quite special in some way, and
> there hasn't really been a good record so far.
I probably misunderstood you ... I thought you meant
that Peckinpath's _Straw Dogs_ was a remake, and
not knowing either way I assumed that was what you
meant. Sorry!
>
> Of art and politics and philosophy, its a struggle
> for understanding, perhaps the vain attempt to put it
> all together, East and West, but its compelling and
> quite fascinating me.
It all seems so vain at times doesn't it. There is a
recent article in "Harper's" about how liberal education
saves us from evil. I used to believe that, but so many
of the most profound writers and artists turn out to be
the worst egoists and megalomanics. Even my humanities
TAs in college were difficult people. (And why shouldn't
they, with the bleak employment prospects. It is all
about putting up a front and play-acting the genius.)
The same article decries the focus of our education on
"science-and-math." Actually, 99% of the scientists
and mathematicians I know are the Obama democrats
and art-loving creatures that the author would have
endorsed. Maybe if we only teach scienceandmath we
will be really saved! (A really long and boring digression ...)
> Just back-tracking over some Scriabin, and trying
> to keep out of trouble. Those opus 11 preludes really
> seem quite special.
I have to catch up with that some time too. I have
stopped listening to classical music these days --
too much noise in my head. Looking forward to the
day I retire ...