So I am watching this film which is not quite coming together but I’m patient and think it may be tricky but it will all work out in the end. The actors are great, the scenes are good, the film is beautiful to watch. And then there comes this moment of dread where I turn and say “if it ends here I will be really pissed off” and of course it does.
Try as I might I could not get this narrative to make sense. And the annoyance was compounded by the fact that I liked everything else about it.
The basic idea is that a woman suggests to a man that he might be better off without his mustache. He shaves if off and then no one seems to notice, then he finds that everyone believes that he never had a mustache. And then its a case of him trying to prove it. (He does have proof in the form of earlier photographs and his last passport but for some reason this is never brought out - kind of the sitcom driver of there would be no plot if people had just exchanged the most logical sentence early on). Then we are tantalized with his world possibly crumbling, him going mad, and then possibly he’s fine but his wife is mad, and so forth, and even a jaunt off to Hong Kong.
Now I don’t mind ambiguity (loved Unbreakable) or complexity but it all has to come together. And this film just doesn’t.
So of course there are the extras: an interview with the director/writer, Emmanuel Carrere and editor, Camille Cotte. It becomes apparent that they removed essential scenes and deliberately made obscure certain elements. They then crowed about the fact that necessary information was missing and that this made the film have ghosts, and how wonderful was that? It reminded me most of what a friend once said about The Five Obstructions as a film in which, though enjoyable, two directors mentally jerk each other off…kind of an obscene mutual admiration society…and in this case listening to these two talk about how they had deliberately obfuscated a good story, how they trumpeted about their obvious failures as tellers and supposedly transforming their ludicrous choices into some sort of triumphant fog, I could only think they had their heads so far up each others asses that any mustache would have been arguable.
It all reminded me of the worst of those French experimental novels of a few decades ago.
Nonetheless, if you can contrive to be suddenly called away to some kind of emergency about five minutes before this film ends, you will think you missed the finish of a great movie.
I’m glad that Javier Bardem received recognition for No Country for Old Men even if I thought it was one of his weaker roles, and would go so far as to say he was miscast. That being said, after seeing a few more of his films, few actors could match his range. I say this on the basis of having seen not only his most recent Vicky Christina Barcelona but also Goya’s Ghosts, The Sea Inside and Before Night Falls.
(My appreciation comes late and was not particularly twigged with his role in Jamon Jamon: A Tale of Ham and Passion, though the title is almost worth the admission…had to see that having just come back from Madrid and various ham emporia, and the first hand knowledge of the Iberian love of the pig on the plate).
Goya’s Ghosts
In Goya’s Ghosts, Bardem plays a priest who under duress abandons the Spanish Inquisition, running off to France and returning with the French invaders. It gets much more complicated than that. He plays someone who comes to enlightment but attains amorality in the bargain. He’s good but a real pleasure here is the oddity of Stellan Skarsgaard as Goya (I think he does well but its kind of like Sean Connery where he is always Sean Connery; I do have a great deal of respect for Skarsgaard and found him to be astonishingly visceral and brutally charismatic in King Arthur). And Nathalie Portman.
The intriguing thing about Portman’s role as as a young girl taken by the Inquisition and imprisoned for years is that when she is finally out, wandering destitute, her family slaughtered by the same forces that liberated her, is that she remains somewhat disfigured by her time there.
In near any Hollywood film she would have been cleaned up, her teeth fixed, but she wanders the rest of the film, a slovenly shamble.
The Sea Inside
The Sea Inside is similar to Diving Bell and Butterfly with a bedridden main character. Bardem plays a man who has been paralyzed for decades and petitions the state for the right to die. Its a true story and the rendition is both moving and unsentimental. This is a man who was loved, who entertained those around him, who was essentially cheerful but never lost the desire to lose the burden of his life.
If you get the dvd, check the extras for interviews with Bardem on his preparation for the role, and the details of the filming process, the work to keep dynamic a film about someone lying around in bed. They succeeded in creating a lively film which did not shut out the world.
Before Night Falls
In Before Night Falls, Bardem plays the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. Its based on his memoir of the same title, and this film together with these others is what for me cemented my feeling that Bardem is one of the great actors of our time.
The story is about a gay artist in revolutionary Cuba who finally makes his way to New York City. Its a film about the losing and gaining of liberties, of life under oppression, of unfairness yet interwoven with moments of true joy. But Bardem does seem to get more than his share of death scenes; there are more than a few correspondences between this and Sea Inside. I wouldn’t recommend watching them on the same night.
Julian Schnabel who also directed Diving Bell and Butterfly helmed this film and its incredible that an American director could have made that film and this. This film, which is one of the most beautiful and authentic films I have ever seen, is also utterly Latin American. It has occasional elements of the documentary, and just seems to revel in the scenes of Cuba in a way that feels indigenous. This film is, as they say, a revelation.
Now I have to go back and see Bardem in Collateral again (and I do not mind that at all), as well as hunting down the Schnabels I haven’t seen yet.
And finally, I had the sudden thought that Bardem would be perfect to play Buster Keaton. Why has there not been a biopic of this man?
I would also like to put in my vote for Bardem to play the next Bond villain. Now that Bond has become the rational and cold part of the equation, the villains can be the lively ones, ergo Bardem. (My first choice was Juan Valdez but I understand that he has retired from acting).
Lives of Others is one of the best if not one of the most affecting films I’ve seen in some time. It takes place in East Germany before the fall of the wall, at the time when the Stasi (the East German internal surveillance agency, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or roughly the Ministry for State Security, spied on much of the population. As many as one out of every 50 Germans was a collaborator (this does not mean willingly) or one informer to every seven citizens (sourced from Wikipedia).
Its the sort of film that makes me sad and angry, like when I’ve read other accounts where governments declare war or unreasonably repress their own citizens such as in Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. It also touches on that theme which crops up from time to time of the interrogation of the true believer, and the turning of the believer into a dissident when they see the professed ideals of the state being treated as garbage by the state itself. Or recently in Goya’s Ghosts with the Spanish Inquisition. The oppressors do not believe their own demands of belief.
The performances, the plot, the writing and the production are close to perfect. Beautifully photographed and narratively nuanced. And a great ending.
It has one moment that really separated it from the usual where after the fall, where one of our protagonists bumps into one of the major villains which in near every other film would have resulted in a deserved execution, or at the very least a pummelling of the man, and though we long for the just desserts to be delivered, the film stays true to how life works, and it just doesn’t happen. He walks on to the rest of his life and the bill is never paid. Frustrating but realistically satisfying.
Dexter is back. And once again, it is his sister played by Jennifer Carpenter, that is the reason to watch this show. I have already gone on at length about her (see here) so I won’t repeat myself. Suffice to say, right now there isn’t another woman on television who can hold a candle to her.
Much has been made of the opening credit sequence to Dexter but True Blood has the better one. Even if the song is very Chris Isaak derivative, (a poor version of Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing) the images of a seepingly decadent Southern snake charmer of a show, which unfortunately don’t really describe the show, are a joy to watch. I’d love to see the show the sequence would mirror but I’m happy enough with True Blood.
And here’s the Isaac (a lesser man would sue over this)…
My favourite opening credits have got to be those of Homicide and Oz, both Tom Fontana shows, and both having the most remarkable casts and least cliche ridden characters on television. Actors from these shows have made their way through the business. Homicide’s Michelle Forbes started the trend of the hot coroners but apart from that, the show was all meat and little salad….great speeches, a tendency toward monologues and very stagey scenes but without seeming false. It just seemed more like a not toward dramatic language, toward oratory.
And as far as Oz goes, it was one of the few shows with a full range of good black roles. On Youtube there are many Shillinger Beecher and Keller Beecher love duets not unlike the slash fiction typical of fantasy shows (except in this case they are already being gay). Shillinger, the neo Nazi was played by J.K.Simmons who was the best thing in Burn After Reading. But everyone in Oz was amazing. The roll call of established names that checked themselves behind bars was long and included Luiz Guzman and Luke Perry. Though Dean Winters is getting work on Sarah Connor Chronicles, he was never so good as the devious and deadly Irish charmer on Oz, and Eamonn Walker too has never been quite as powerful as he was on Oz. It was certainly the best prison show ever, and ranks as one of the finest television dramas of all time.
A recent NewScientist reported that contemplating art could allay pain.
The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with contemplating the ugly paintings or the blank panel. (Link here).
Recently I’ve been spending more and more time taking photographs and I’ve noticed that when I am looking for shots my mind seems to move into a realm where worries do not intrude. I’ve found this with very few other things. Because I shoot for composition rather than content, there is some kind of a mathematical aesthetic processing going on; the search for balance and beauty seems to push everything else aside. This only happens when I am actually looking for the shot.
After taking pictures the common concerns come back, like the one where I realize that I am developing another skill just to the level before you can actually make any money from it.
On another note, just watched True Romance again and caught the brilliant quote:
I’ve lived in America all my life; I’d like to see what TV in other countries is like. (See here).
And finally: I’ve already mentioned the loss of David Foster Wallace but among the many accolades and remembrances perhaps the most fitting was the Onion one on the cancellation of Nascar in his honour (Link here). Its seems rude but I suspect it really was a homage by someone who read him. It is exactly the sort of piece he would have written.
Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse who saves a vampire from being drained by a lowlife couple and like many around her are simply pleased as bunch to come up against one of the undead.
In this refreshing take on the vampire narrative, the creatures are as potentially deadly as always but there is an available commercial product Trueblood (kind of light beer) on the market for them and many want to have sex with them just once. The show isn’t perfect; some of the characters are a little too television but Paquin is good as a spunky and tough but kind of sheltered waitress who can hear what everyone is thinking (except for vampires). There’s some story behind that power but we have not been made privy to that yet.
Stephen Moyer plays Bill the Vampire (actually Bill Compton) with a restrained menace and someone who just wants to move into town and not make trouble. Sookie gets all excited because he’s the first vampire in the bar where she works. When she tells her grandma, the grandma wants to get him to talk to her library group, if he was alive during the Civil War that is. We are in rural Louisiana for the setting.
The show itself is tonally a little like Dexter in the way it veers between graphic violence and light humour, and a bit like Rome in its frank sexuality and nudity. Actually, it may be just a little ahead of Rome on that score.
On the strength of the first episode True Blood just might be worth watching…and yes, great opening credit sequence. Created by Alan Ball who was behind Six Feet Under and wrote the script for American Beauty.
Above are two shots from a television commercial that seemed to be on just about every time we turned on the television in the flat in Barcelona. The product consists of vibrating pads which will melt off the pounds even if you are absolutely sedentary. Another set of commercials, which I did not manage to get any pictures of, were for corsets for young women. This coupled with the lack of any visible exercisers in this town seemed to be a clue as to why the old people tended to look pretty run down, and an indicator that some of the many many hot young women around might in fact not be so much fit as fit to burst.
I’ve always liked watching television in countries not my own, and in languages I don’t understand. In Warsaw, there was a very strange voice over version of CSI (see here), and in Prague a dubbed soapy Western (see here), and I’ve already mentioned a little big about the mountain of psychics on Spanish television (see here).
A few years ago I was with my daughter in Kawaii. It was just her and I so I was bound back at the place at nights and ended up watching more television than I would have expected. There were a few rerun channels which convinced me once again that most television shows should have had stakes punched through their artless hearts and forever silenced. Now, thanks to digital technology, we will have to live with the low points of our culture forever.
The best thing though were the religious channels (not just shows but whole channels). Watching the small brained make sense of existence is always amusing (I will admit that this shows Christians at their very worst) but saw something absolutely amazing…imagine a Jim Morrison of Christianity…free-form charismatic rock n roll type extorting to Jesus….not quite up to the Lizard King but pretty good. Watched that for almost an hour. And then ended up tuning into the channel every day…it was mesmerizing. Saw other preachers, sweat flying, rapping, speaking in tongues and laying hands, and all these people were quite aggressive…no platitudes here….the theme was taking it back, getting back control of the culture…it was like watching Martians but being a little scared that they might be invading some day.
These religious networks or channels have born again comics, religious extreme sports, game shows, the whole spectrum of typical channels. (To be continued…)
Worth repeating this video which I saw just now on Scanners; those voices you hear on the movie trailers. The article at Scanners is about the passing of one of those, Don La Fontaine.
On my note about Vicky Christina Barcelona, I mentioned how it had reminded me of a film I had not seen in years but fondly remembered, Jules and Jim. It turns out my girlfriend, despite having taken film studies had somehow missed this one over the years. A good excuse then to find a copy and become reacquainted with a film which I remembered as whimsical yet moving.
Though she found it less tedious than I, I now saw a film which though it had small moments of brilliance (Truffaut had these great little stop motion bits that somehow just encapsulated moments, literally), was an almost unbearably ludicrous tale of absurdly limited characters (possibly Oskar Werner manages to attain a little dignity near the end). Jeanne Moreau plays an absurdly self possessed woman who is the lamp to the fireflies of the two men who are really not men at all but children.
I still enjoyed the literary quality of the film, having always had some affection for a good voiceover narration. But the character dynamics made no sense to me anymore. All I can say is that I first encountered this film as a teenager, my knowledge of gender relations and my own place in them still unsettled, and the men living to this mercurial woman’s whim seemed somehow desperately romantic to me. Now it seems insane and foolish.
Francois Truffaut had never been one of my favourites; I never found his films to be profound in any way but this I had thought was an exception. Of his compatriots in the French new Wave, I now find Claude Chabrol to be the standout, someone I had previously ignored. See previous notes on his La Ceremonie and Comedy of Power.)
Jean-Luc Godard seemed for the most part too involved in experimentation to ever be able to tell a story, and the others as well still had difficulties moving from being critics to being filmmakers. Chabrol was one of the most genre bound and least radical, and he has emerged as the authentic artist.
Its always a little scary going back to pleasures of earlier times. How many will stand the test of time? Though I feel a little bereaved with examples like Jules and Jim, it is more than made up for by those films or books or cds, that only seem to get better.
Afternote (a day later):
what comes on to the television but Y Tu Mama Tambien. Voice over, two guys one girl and the whole package just leaves Jules and Jim in the dust. The older film just seems lifeless in comparison. Viva la Mexico!!
Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona is a very good film. It reminded me a little of Manhattan and even more of Jules and Jim. The latter because of the voice over throughout; the telling of a story of three people, within a European sensibility, and the former because it also was about the conflict between the heart and the head.
Two good friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson), are in Barcelona for the summer. Whereas Christina is a self described free spirit, Vicky is more of a life planner and is engaged to be married (known as the sensible one). There they run up against the romantic painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) and eventually his tempestuous ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).
Both of the friends end up involved with the painter, and both find their world’s in some disarray. Like the people in Manhattan, these people find themselves confronting their ideas of who they thought they were and the place of passion in their lives.
I’ll leave the rest for you to see for yourselves because this is a film that should be seen. It is a triumphant return of the erratic genius of Allen; the writing ranks with his best, and every actor in it perfect. It is his perfect European film and though on the surface it plays like a romantic holiday comedy it is a little melancholy at its core.
Rebecca Hall is a true discovery and Bardem is acting miles above his sombre take in No Country for Old Men. Much more than that, this deserves recognition. Johansson too is wonderful and Cruz note perfect. And while many films shot in interesting places only hint at them, this incredible city is no small part of this film.
After the cheap thrills of the Dark Knight, this brought back to me what movies were really about. It is deceptively light but does what those even accomplished superhero movies don’t - make you actually think about your own life. Its a feel good and a feel deep movie.
Slight conflict of interest here in the sense that I may have enjoyed the film a little more than I might have was I not already enthralled with Barcelona and did I not have a good friend who seemed to me very like Vicky.
And in other media, and perhaps to be expanded later:
Just saw Memories of Murder - a phenomenal Korean murder mystery, beautifully shot with uncharacteristically subtle performances (the best Korean movie I have seen I think); and just read Karin Fossum’s Broken - continues her unbroken string of great books, this time slightly postmodern.
