The Best Vintage Films I Viewed in 2022

                       

1)  Actress aka Center Stage                                Stanley Kwan                                   1991

2)  Une Femme Douce                                           Robert Bresson                                 1969

3)  Les Bonnes Femmes                                       Claude Chabrol                                1960 

4)  By the Bluest of Seas                                        Boris Barnet                                     1936

5)  Spring Summer Fall Winter...                          Kim Ki-Duk                                      2003

6)  Vincere                                                             Marco Bellocchio                               2009

7)  The Mill and the Cross                                    Lech Majewski                                   2011

8)  Le Cercle Rouge                                            Jean-Pierre Melville                            1970

9)  Unknown Pleasures                                         Jia Zhangke                                        2002

10) Mandabi                                                         Ousmane Sembene                             1968

I also passionately recommend:

Black Tuesday , Has Anybody Seen My Gal , I Was Born, But , The Raid,

When A Woman Ascends the Stairs, Silver Lode , Japon , Pepe le Moko,

Les cousins, Kameradschaft, and Sister

Glass Onion

Daniel Craig

Rian Johnson's Glass Onion is the kind of well crafted entertainment that Hollywood is thought incapable of doing anymore. Whether they be products of Hollywood's heyday or of the current era's streaming behemoths, audience pleasing features like this one tend to be critically neglected, now as then, compared to films with a more socially conscious bent. Ultimately, art wins out. The contributions of Cary Grant in films like Holiday or Bringing Up Baby still entertain today while the concurrent performances of Paul Muni, much lauded at the time, seem artificial and period bound. Not that Glass Onion is devoid of social commentary, but Mr. Johnson's packaging of it within the murder mystery format is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. Furthermore, Johnson's lampooning of Elon Musk and social media influencers, some of the easiest targets for satire of our era, signal that he is making this film for the widest possible audience.

What most impressed me about Glass Onion was the precision of its storytelling. As David Bordwell has pointed out, the first Knives Out film boasted an intricate story structure that would have generated a lot more comment in serious film journals if they had been found in an art film. If anything, the structure of Glass Onion is even more complex, with Johnson utilizing multiple flashbacks as Chinese boxes; a trope underlined by the elaborate boxes the Musk-like tycoon played by Edward Norton sends out as invitations at the start of the film. Despite this, the nearly two and a half hour length of the film flies by without padding or self-consciousness. It remains playful and spritely from beginning to end. 

The cast is broadly fun without being cartoonish. Even such limited performers as Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista are expertly cast and directed. The costumes by Jenny Eagan are fittingly fun and flamboyant, as is the film's soundtrack and production design. I appreciated the tributes to Ricky Jay and The Last of Sheila, both cult favorites whose Kool-Aid I have long savored. Rian Johnson showed he appreciated the classic format of the detective story in his first feature, Brick, Glass Onion shows he can still revel with delight in what in most hands is a hackneyed genre. 

Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal

A terrific vehicle for Aubrey Plaza and a pretty good first feature, John Patton Ford's Emily the Criminal is an LA sunshine noir that chronicles career opportunities in credit card fraud. Plaza's Emily already has a record, so her job options vary little amongst the low hanging fruit of the gig economy ranging from Uber to DoorDash. A humiliating job interview at the film's opening puts the audience on her side even when she, on a tip from a co-worker, embraces criminality. She ends up romancing her criminal superior and causes his downfall. In an earlier era, Emily would have been the femme fatale in this scenario, A good point of comparison is Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat, a 1981 retro noir, in which Kathleen Turner's female lead also ends up abroad, beyond US justice. In Emily the Criminal, the woman is as much victim as complicit moll. In Body Heat she is the bitch supreme in a fever dream, a master criminal and ultimate ball breaker.

The change in emphasis is a sign of the times. Ford's directorial style is realistic. Kasdan's is a foray into expressionism. Each style has their plusses and minuses. I was more impressed with Ford's screenplay than his direction which serves the script, but does little more. The action sequences lack a visceral sense. I also have issues with some side orders on the menu. Emily's art background offers a clunky back story, a good example of what Manny Farber called the "Gimp". Similarly, Megalyn Echikurnwoke's character is so bland she seems to exist solely to provide Emily with a non-criminal friend. I did enjoy the contributions of Theo Rossi, Gina Gershon, Jonathan Avigdor, and John Billingsley. 

Most of all I enjoyed the film because Ms. Plaza has delivered the performance of the year. Mostly utilized in comedies, her talents include a flair for the sinister found in Legion, Ingrid Goes West,  Black Bear and, now Emily the Criminal. Even if her career goes to hell on a sled, which I doubt. this performance already caps an impressive career.
 

What Price Hollywood?

Lowell Sherman and Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood?

George Cukor's What Price Hollywood?, from 1932, is the best iteration of the numerous versions of A Star is Born. Judging by the results of the latest Sight and Sound Poll, the contributions of classic Hollywood are a bit underrated today, but these things wax and wane. Certainly, few films made today have this level of energy, craftmanship, and wit on display here. Enough vinegar remains from Edna St. John's original to make this a raucous Pre-Code delight. As Andrew Sarris has noted, Cukor thrived when focusing on show people and this look at the rise of a Hollywood star seems tailor made for the former Broadway phenom.

Constance Bennett stars as Mary Evans who we first meet mooning over Clark Gable as she reads a Hollywood fan magazine. By this time, the film industry had been established in Hollywood for two decades and this film offers a tart picture of the publicity machine generated by the industry and its stars. Evans' rise to stardom is pictured in headlines from both news and trade papers. When Evans is mired in scandal a pile of papers is shown laden with mud. Her wedding is disrupted by a mob of well-wishers and members of the press. She must abandon her home because it is constantly being besieged by paparazzi and flees to France. This is the price of fame the film implies, Yet, despite alcoholism, divorce, and suicide. What Price Hollywood? exudes a cockeyed optimism buoyed the sheer joy of the filmmaking process. The scenes on the RKO soundstages show off Cukor at his most youthfully energetic, not a description I would offer to any of his work after Sylvia Scarlett. 

Cukor's skill with actors was perhaps unrivalled in Hollywood and he guides the cast to some of their best work. Bennett is waitressing at The Brown Derby at the opening of the film, the biggest stretch in the film for this sophisticated actress who belonged to an acting clan that rivalled the Barrymore's. Bennett is entertaining and convincing throughout, even in the potentially sticky domestic scenes with a small child and Louis Beavers as "The Maid". Her Garbo imitation was funny enough to be reprised and expanded upon by Janet Gaynor in the 1937 A Star is Born. What Price Hollywood? is the high water mark of her career with 1937's Topper being a sort of last hurrah. 

One change that the subsequent ...Star is Born films all share is that they combined the drunken mentor (Lowell Sherman) and romantic lead (Neil Hamilton) characters into one person, the doomed Norman Maine. I think this is a flaw that bedevils all the subsequent versions. The character of Maine makes the story overly lugubrious whether he is portrayed as in the film or music industry. Neil Hamilton is more than adequate as Lonny Borden, a polo playing heir who literally sweeps Evans off her feet. Hamilton's career dates back to the silent era, where he was a leading man for D. W. Griffith, but he is best known today as Commissioner Gordon on television's Batman. Hamilton didn't have much range, but is well cast as a patrician swain who looks down upon Mary's fellow film folk. Cukor gets an unusually animated performance from Hamilton. One of his two best. The other being a B horror turn in the little scene 1961 feature, The Devil's Hand.

Lowell Sherman portrays Max Carey, a noted director who meets Mary at The Brown Derby and launches her meteoric rise. Sherman, a longtime veteran of stage and screen (he plays the cad who jilts Lillian Gish in Way Down East), is delightful in an outmoded role that was then a convention, that of the good natured drunk who revels in his perpetual pixilation. A canard perhaps, but a lot more fun than hanging out with hangdog Norman Maine. Sherman not only handles well the insouciant quips of his character, but also his decline and eventual suicide. The suicide scene hits a little close to home, since Sherman was to die prematurely, at age 46, a few years later. In the film, Carey is shocked at his dissipated visage in a mirror which is next to a studio glamor portrait of himself. Sherman truly does look like shit in the reflection and, thanks to Cukor's visceral handling, we can see why he grabs a handy pistol and offs himself. What Price Hollywood? was Sherman last role in a film that he did not direct. Apparently, Sherman was finding playing an endless litany of playboys and cads "monotonous" and took to directing to allay his boredom. He was more than a fine actor and director (the most famous film he helmed was the Mae West vehicle, She Done Him Wrong) whose output is now relatively neglected. 

Quick Takes, December 2022

Florence Pugh in The Wonder

Sebastian Lelio's The Wonder is a good, but not great, adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel. Set in 19th century Ireland, the film tells the tale of an English nurse (Florence Pugh) assigned to monitor a rural girl who, allegedly, has survived for months without food. The film does a good job depicting the age old conflict between faith and reason, but the traumatic backstory of the nurse feels sketchy. Also, the distancing techniques of the prelude and coda adds little. Still, the performances are first rate, particularly Pugh, the best actress to emerge from the UK in this century. Currently streaming on Netflix.

Halina Reijn's Bodies Bodies Bodies is a Generation Z variation on And Then There Were None. Reijn handles her ensemble well, but this comedy horror film is neither funny nor scary enough. If you are going to have an ensemble films with no sympathetic characters, the satire needs to be sharper. Instead, we get endless shots of the beleaguered ensemble stumbling down cellphone lit corridors.

Charlotte Colbert's She Will is a run of the mill feminist horror film from England. Alice Krige stars as a faded film star recovering from a mastectomy. She ventures to a rural retreat to recuperate with the aid of a nurse. There she encounters the pantheistic spirits of burned witches or something, confronts past trauma, and drinks the milk of feminist empowerment. Colbert is so busy hammering away at her themes that she fails to establish a narrative or characters. The character of the nurse, in particular, is woefully underdrawn. Krige does her best and I enjoyed the contributions of Rupert Everett, Malcom McDowell, and Olwen Fouere. This is Ms. Colbert's first feature and she shows herself to be visually gifted, so her future shows some promise. 

Kevin Lewis' Willy's Wonderland features Nicolas Cage and a band of  'teens' battling possessed animatronic creatures in a Chuck E. Cheese type entertainment center. That is about it.  The characterizations, back story, and subtext are so superficial that the film runs out of steam after the first act. Cage himself described the film as a cross between Pale Rider and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, so it is no surprise that the film gives the sense that it was constructed out of spare parts to be a future cult item rather than a movie that  stands on its own.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, also on Netflix, is a technical marvel and, largely, a delight. I wasn't knocked out by the songs and thought David Bradley wasn't warm enough as Geppetto, but was ultimately moved. The director's setting the story in fascist Italy jibes with themes already found in his films such as The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. A black shirt bootcamp is just as horrifying as Pleasure Island and the whole project fits Del Toro's gift for the grotesque. If anything, Collodi's original is darker than either this or the classic Disney version. Ewan McGregor is perfect as the talking and singing cricket who is the film's heart.

A pint-sized Persona, Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman might seem like a throat clearing exercise after Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but it contains just as many formal pleasures and thematic quandaries in its scant 72 minutes. Formally an ouroboros, the film is a musing on loss and trauma. Sciamma shows she can find the uncanny amidst the commonplace. The film's exteriors are beautifully unsettling, the interiors exude a foreboding emptiness. Unlike many art films, Petite Maman boasts expertly directed performances.

Gabrielle and Josephine Sanz in Petite Maman

Blood Father

                   

Jean-Francois Richet's Blood Father, an adaptation of the Peter Craig novel, is the B movie sleeper of the year. The daughter in peril trope that hit a chord with the popularity of the Taken series is a snug fit for Mel Gibson who is a suitably mad dad. Gibson plays an ex-con who makes a living inking tattoos in his decrepit trailer. Gibson is at his most soulful and unhinged, reveling in the surrounding scuzz. Richet also gets wonderful turns from old pros like William H. Macy, Michael Parks, Diego Luna, and Miguel Sandoval. What is most impressive is the strong performances he gets from his newcomers, Erin Moriarty is sturdy in the wobbly role of the daughter and Thomas Mann stands out in his few scenes as a sympathetic desk clerk.

Richet conjures a vision of white, blue-collar America struggling for survival at the dawn of the Trump administration, a vision that captures the feelings of hopelessness and orneriness that led this group to form a posse comitatus that rescued Trump's campaign. Out of the scraps of a genre project, Richet has fashioned not only a solid action film, but, also, genuine termite art reminiscent of a Fuller or Siegel B from the 50s. (1/20/17)

10 Cloverfield Lane

John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Dan Trachtenberg's 10 Cloverfield Lane is an efficient enough suspense film that lacks the personal vision to enable it to transcend a rather routine script. If there is a true auteur behind the project it is J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production team. Bits and pieces from previous Abrams projects (Lost. Super 8, Star Trek and Wars, and obviously, Cloverfield) are cobbled together here in a fashion that reflects commercial rather than artistic intent. 

That the film functions well enough is testament to Trachtenberg's and his lead actors' craft. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are always assets and both perform with aplomb. John Gallagher Jr. lends able support even when saddled with the lamest backstory monologue I've encountered in some years. The script is Swiss cheese, not fatal to a genre flick like this, but clunky all the same. The film is OK fast food fare, digestible, but not memorable or nourishing. (6/22/16)     

Murina

Gracija Filipovic in Marina

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic's Murina, the winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2021, seems to me the most assured cinematic debut since Panah Panahi's Hit the Road. Gracija Filipovic stars as Julija, a Croatian teen living with her parents on an isolated island in the Adriatic. On the surface, it seems as if they live in a sun-kissed paradise, but we soon learn that the family, especially Julija, feel frustrated and stunted there.

The visit to the island by Javier, a titan of business, brings things to a head. Javier is a lifelong friend of Julija's parents, but there are tensions between the three. Julija's father used to work for Javier, but there was a falling out between the two. Embers of a romance exist between Javier and Julija's mother. We learn that the family is financially strapped and the possibility that Javier will turn their land into a resort seems to be a last chance for them to escape the island. The father is envious of Javier's success and he takes out his resentment and anger upon Julija. His ogre like behavior culminates in him locking Julija in a dank basement as if she were a beleaguered heroine in a fairy tale.

Julija hopes Javier will rescue her and her mother and take them along with him to his seemingly magical life. This is also a dark reflection of the wish fulfillment of fairy tales in which downtrodden children find their long-lost parents to be royalty. Julija's wish turns out to be as much of a pipe dream as her father's desire to turn their property into a resort. An ambivalent ending stresses the resiliency needed for an individual to free themselves from the tyranny of their parental legacies.

I often diss films that foreground criticism of the patriarchy or capitalism or whatever at the expense of narrative and character. Ms. Kusijanovic does not fall into that trap. Because she takes the time to develop her characters, such themes emerge naturally and not heavy-handedly from her scenario. She is greatly help by the cinematography of Helene Louvart (The Lost Daughter, Happy as Lazzaro). Her work, particularly in the underwater sequences, suggest the unconscious impulses at work upon the characters of which they are only dimly aware of.

Elvis

Austin Butler in Elvis

Baz Luhrmann's artistic credo seems to drive him to turn all of his projects into glitzy musicals. His ostentatious, life is a carnival style reminds me of what Pauline Kael (I think) wrote about Alan Parker: he has style to burn and that is exactly what he should do with it. That said, Elvis provides Luhrmann with a suitable project containing good music, and it is his best film since Moulin Rouge. Yet, I was more exhausted by it than exhilarated.

Part of the reason is the scope of the film. Instead of focusing on a narrow slice of Presley's career, Luhrmann and his numerous screenwriters try to tackle the whole enchilada. Events whirr by and characterization, something often lost in the stars in Luhrmann's films, is meagre. Only Helen Thompson as Elvis' beloved mother is able to project a character and she goes to meet her maker far too soon. This is a problem for any author or auteur addressing what Greil Marcus called the Presliad. Elvis' life went pretty much downhill after the death of Gladys Presley. Even Pete Guralnick's outstanding biography becomes a litany of bad movies and prescription drugs after her death.

Luhrmann does himself proud in his presentation of the musical performances in the film. Glimpses of Little Richard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Arthur Crudup give a good background sketch of the musical influences that helped form Elvis. The influence of country music on Elvis is downplayed. The film's caricature of Hank Snow is overly broad and reductive. Luhrmann gives him a Southern accent despite Snow being from Canada.

Snow is in the film because Colonel Tom Parker was his manager before Parker glommed onto Presley. Elvis is presented from the point of view of a dying Parker, played by Tom Hanks. The failure of his performance is fatal to the film. An icon of decency, like Jimmy Stewart before him, Hanks is unable to exude greed, malice or even a hint of evil from beneath his prosthetics. Luhrmann wants the relationship between Elvis and Parker to resemble that of Faust and Mephistopheles. Instead, we get a waxworks Elvis and Mr. Rogers in a fat suit.

Austin Butler does reasonably well as Elvis. He does not embody Elvis with the ease of a Kurt Russell, but he is a more than reasonable facsimile of the real thing. In the cinematic oeuvre of Baz Luhrmann, one devoid of thematic depth and ambiguity, presenting a comprehensible façade of a character is the best a thespian can do. Still, Elvis could have been a lot worse. The kinetic drive of Presley's story and music is better suited to Luhrmann's sensibilities than the challenges of Australia or The Great Gatsby. While not a good or satisfying movie, Elvis has enough love and respect for its subject to satisfy fans of the King.

Quick Takes, January 2017

Journey to the West

Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons is a cartoonish, yet ultimately winning adaptation of one of the great pillars of Chinese literature. A dumbed down prequel, the flick is an action comedy with enough CGI demons and monsters to compete with the Harry Potters and Avengers of the film kingdom. What makes the film click is the assured handling of the cast. Bo Huang is especially outstanding as the Monkey King. The movie is suitable for children, the violence is not gory and the romance between the leads, a meek monk and a kick-ass demon slayer, is chaste and droll. It is just weird enough to exert the uncanny unconscious pull at the heart of fantasy and folk tales.

Edgar Wright's The World's End is tired and unfunny. What starts too slowly as a male menopause movie proceeds to then try to inspire guffaws with a pub crawl and an alien invasion. Titters were not even elicited. This recycling of Wright's better film Shaun of the Dead made me glad I skipped Wright's Hot Fuzz, also with Simon Pegg.

My wife and I tried to watch the much lauded documentary, The Act of Killing, but gave up halfway through. Joshua Oppenheimer directs former Indonesian death squad members in the reenactment of their various atrocities, which occurred some forty years ago during the overthrow of Sukarno. I found the film captured the unusual jumble that is Indonesian culture, but also found it manipulative and repetitive. The thugs interviewed have a rascally charm, but I suppose some members of the SS did, too. Unsettling in the wrong way, The Act of Killing is intellectually and ethically deficient. As my wife put it, "I already know how to garrote people."

Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special is a slightly above average fantasy film enlivened by a touching performance by Michael Shannon. Typically typecast as monsters or thugs, Shannon gives a nuanced performance as a caring father whose son, imbued with 'special powers', is on the run from stock villains: in this case, government officials and religious fanatics. There is a predictable Spielbergian feel to the film's fantasy sequences, particularly when ET gets to go home at the climax. Nichols' script doesn't flesh out his supporting characters enough, so talented performers like Joel Edgerton, Bill Camp (so good in The Night of...), Adam Driver, and Kirsten Dunst are left with little to do. Sam Shepard sinks his teeth into the role of a cult leader, but disappears after the first twenty minutes. Ultimately, Midnight Special is a well made, but pointless retread.

A slightly better film is Adam Wingard's The Guest, an exploitation film that rises above the norm. Dan Stevens, most famous for batting his baby blues on Downton Abbey, is the titular character who embeds himself with a New Mexico family after convincing them that he was best buds with their dead son in Afghanistan. Things are not what they seem, of course, and the final act devolves into a routine shootout. However, Simon Barrett's script is better at fleshing out the secondary actors than most films of this ilk and Wingard's mise en scene looks lived in instead of generic. Stevens and Brendan Meyer, are quite effective, the woman playing the dead son's Mom less so. Like Midnight Special, this is essentially a retread: Teorema transposed to the American Southwest with kegs and guns. Wingard is able to invest his material with the sense of disquietude haunting American life in the 21st Century.

Joe Angio's Revenge of the Mekons is as cheeky and delightful as the band it documents. Wisely eschewing an album by album breakdown, Angio offers loving portraits of the personalities in this disparate and dissolute aggregation. It has the right mix of talking heads and live performances.

Mike Flanagan's Hush is a retool of Wait Until Dark in which the victim (female natch) is deaf and dumb. Flanagan's previous work as an editor is evident in the lean and economical  construction of the film. The first third of Hush is meticulously constructed. However, the script's machinations quickly become repetitive and Flanagan lacks the brio for crossbow foo. Kate Siegel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Flanagan and eventually married him, is good as the resourceful victim as is John Gallagher as her psycho nemesis. 

The Mekons

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell in Lady Chatterley's Lover

Laure de Clermont-Tonnere's Lady Chatterley's Lover, currently streaming on Netflix, is a slightly above average adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's final novel that ultimately fails to capture the complexities of the original. Ms. Clermont-Tonnere's does a good job contrasting the stultifying interiors of the manor house with the liberating splendor of the English countryside. The film is handsome without being ostentatious and the costumes by Emma Fryer, whether they are worn or cast about, are an asset. There are good performances in supporting roles by Joely Richardson, Faye Marsay, and Ella Hunt. 

However, the lead performances are all wan and underdrawn, resulting in a film that never ignites. Matthew Duckett is forgettable in the role of Clifford Chatterley. Now the role is a thankless one, but this cuckolded laird seems impotent even before he leaves for the Great War. Jack O'Connell is a more felt presence as the gamekeeper. Depth of character is hinted at, he reads Joyce fer chrissakes, but he functions as little more than a primeval stud. Emma Corrin nails her character's boredom and sense of entitlement. Still, something is missing. There is little sense of the intellectual and spiritual growth of their character. At times, the Lady comes off as a bored and spoiled housewife who just needs a good boff.

David Magee's adaptation of the novel overly simplifies Lawrence's ideas for present day consumption. One could easily surmise from this film that Lawrence was a socialist. There are certainly socialist themes in Lawrence's writing, but he had more issues with industrialization than capitalism per se. He was not doctrinaire in any fashion. Socialist Bertrand Russell thought he was a proto-fascist. Lawrence rejected the mind/body dualism of Western thought and yearned for individual liberation rather than a collective one. As he put it in his poem A Sane Revolution, "If you make a revolution,/ make it for fun." Connie Chatterley's liberation in this film seems more a product of good sex than a raised consciousness whereas, in the novel, both are equally important. As George Clinton sang, "Free your mind and your ass will follow."

Ms. Richardson's presence hearkened me back to the miniseries derived from this book that she starred in with Sean Bean under Ken Russell's direction. The long form of the series helped in adding character development and Ms. Richardson and Mr. Bean gave their characters more oomph than is found in Ms. Clermont-Tonnere's version. Mr. Russell is responsible for the best adaptation of Lawrence thus far, not the highly praised film of Women in Love, but his little seen adaptation of The Rainbow from 1989.

Pearl

Mia Goth armed and ready in Pearl

What I had to say about Ti West's X  also applies to its prequel, Pearl. The film provides the back story to the murderous old crone in X. The bright surface beauty of Pearl, which promises the comfort and joy of a technicolor heartland, is undercut by West before the opening credits are done. The year is 1918 and Pearl is living with her German born mother and invalid father on an isolated farm in Texas. Besides Pearl, the only other holdover from the first film is a sizeable gator named Theda; a name which is an anagram of death.

Pearl, whose husband is away fighting in the war, is lonely and frustrated. She loses herself in reveries of dance and dreams of a career in show business while visiting the local movie palace. There she meets a handsome projectionist and is attracted to his kind manner and worldliness. A dance audition seemingly provides an escape hatch for Pearl, but her dreams turn out to be delusions of grandeur masking psychosis. A metaphor, perhaps. for all art and show biz. 

The boredom and alienation experienced by Americans living on the plains in the 19th and early 20th century is a historical fact (check out Otto Bettmann's wonderful The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible for examples) usually elided by manifestations of the American mythos, like movies. Pearl turns the prairie sequences of The Wizard of Oz upside down by rendering rural America into a nightmare world that drives its inhabitants mad. Ms. Goth who concocted the script with Mr. West, triumphs in a role that showcases her range. Her seven minute monologue near Pearl's conclusion is a signal achievement. The contributions of supporting players David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, and Emma Jenkins-Purro are also vivid. Pearl is Ti West's strongest film thus far and the first one I would recommend to viewers in general and not just horror aficionados. 

Michael Collins

Liam Neeson as Michael Collins

Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, from 1996, is a good biopic of the Irish revolutionary leader. Jordan's script wisely condenses his film by limiting the time frame, beginning in 1916 with the Easter Rising and concluding with Collins' assassination in 1922. The machinations of the IRA in waging a guerrilla and, some would say, terroristic war against the British are presented in a crisp, but detailed fashion. The recreation of historical events, such as Bloody Sunday and the Croke Park Massacre, is impressive. Collins was the de facto Irish military commander of the war, its Trotsky if you will, while Eamon de Valera was its political chief. The film does a good job of detailing the rivalry between the two men and its subsequent effect upon Irish history. Of course, given its title, it is not a surprise that the film tilts its favor towards Collins and away from de Valera. Alan Rickman's anal retentive performance as de Valera perhaps makes him more diabolical than he actually was. With a couple of exceptions, though, the film is largely accurate in its presentation of history.

Liam Neeson was a good pick to perform the larger than life persona of Collins. A large slab of a man, he physically dominates the movie, even the crowd scenes. The film is at its shakiest in its portrayal of the love triangle of Collins, Harry Boland and Kitty Kiernan, Collins' eventual fiancé. Aidan Quinn is quite good as Boland giving the character the quiet yearning that is his trademark. It seems that Quinn fell from grace with the Hollywood Gods at some point, he has not had any plum roles in A pictures in the 21st Century, and it is hard to say why. He has a nice rapport with Neeson here. Unfortunately, Quinn and Neeson's chemistry is much better than Neeson's with Julia Roberts who plays Kitty. Roberts is by no means dreadful, simply miscast. When we first see Roberts, trying to sing the wonderful Irish ballad "She Moved Through the Fair", one can't help but think that any capable Irish or UK actress, say Kelly Macdonald, would have been a better fit.

Jordan goes back to "She Moved Through the Fair" at the conclusion of Michael Collins. The song plays as shots of Kitty trying on dresses for a wedding that will never occur are contrasted with that of Collins meeting his demise. The gist of the song, tragic lovers reuniting in the afterlife, mirrors the plot well and works visually: the dress turning into a funeral shroud. However, the emotional juice has never been evident between Roberts and Neeson and this robs the moment of any chance of greatness. It does place the film firmly within Jordan's corpus where star-crossed outsiders romantically love in vain. The theme of his best films: Byzantium, Breakfast on Pluto, The End of the Affair, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa. 

Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Gigi Perreau and Charles Coburn cut the rug in Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Douglas Sirk's Has Anybody Seen My Gal, from 1952, is more fun than a copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. A celebration of 1920s Americana, there lurks beneath its glittering surface (as in most Sirk films) a denunciation of American materialism and intolerance. Yet, the film also functions superbly as light entertainment. I think it is the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas.

Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie, rising newcomers at Universal Pictures, are the nominal stars of the film, but Charles Coburn is the film's cynosure and chief asset. A millionaire without an heir, Coburn tracks down the family of a lost love and becomes their anonymous benefactor. He moves to the Vermont town where they live and ingratiates himself with the family in order to surmise if their newfound wealth has changed them. Coburn's beloved's granddaughter (Laurie) is going steady with soda jerk Hudson, but her family's newfound fortune causes them to pooh pooh the impoverished suitor. Coburn helps steer the couple through troubled waters towards a happy ending. The mysterious benefactor who helps unite star-crossed lovers was a familiar trope of Victorian literature and spawned many variations in Hollywood. particularly George Arliss' starring vehicles in the twenties and thirties. 

With five or so small scale musical numbers, Has Anybody Seen My Gal often feels like a poor man's Singin' in the Rain. Yet, there are a few Sirkian moments that even that splendid musical does not approach. Especially one in which Laurie's character and her younger sister watch a Christmas snowfall through a picture window. Laurie's character has had a quarrel with her lover and, in contrast to her sister's holiday joy, throws herself on her bed for a good cry. The shot anticipates the use of a picture window at Rock Hudson's cabin in All That Heaven Allows. In both cases, nature's peaceful splendor is contrasted with a character's inner turmoil.

Yet, one does not have to have even heard of Douglas Sirk to appreciate this joyous film. Coburn's performance is one of his most entertaining and ebullient. The signifiers of the roaring twenties, speakeasies, racoon coats and flappers doing the Charleston, are all in evidence. The sparkling Technicolor surfaces of the film belie its message that all that glitters is not gold. As with Sirk's later Universal melodramas starring Hudson, the luxe recreation of American life masks a cautionary theme. Film buffs will relish the memorable cameo by James Dean as a demanding soda fountain customer. Has Anybody Seen My Gal is a film for all but the most intransigent cynic. 

James Dean

Playground

Sister and Brother in Playground

Laura Wandel's Playground, the Belgian entry for this year's Oscars, is a drama about elementary school bullying. The almost universal praise for the film seems to me a response to its message rather than its aesthetic merit. Critics have praised the film for its harrowing realism and its sensitivity, but I found the film to be manipulative, boring, and overwrought.

The Belgian title of the film is Un Monde (A World) which gives a better sense of Wandel's intent. The world of the film is a self contained one which Wandel reinforces by keeping a tight frame around his pint sized heroine. The protagonist, Nora, is entering first grade at an elementary school her brother already attends with much trepidation. Wandel ably portrays Nora's first day jitters and her subsequent feelings of frustration and helplessness when she witnesses her brother being bullied. However, the film soon becomes overladen with intimations of racism, classism and sexism. Wandel wants to show how the sins of the parents are visited upon their children, but, by doing so, she makes her schoolchildren resemble surly adolescents. I was grateful the film was only 72 minutes long. 

3000 Years of Longing

Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton in 3000 Years of Longing

I liked 3000 Years of Longing, George Miller's adaptation of a A. S. Byatt short story, a bit more than most folks. If anything. Miller's timing was off. This was not the cultural moment to be doing a story that opened itself up to accusations of Orientalism ( a pejorative criticism since the 1978 publication of Edward Said's book of that name) and usage of the magical negro trope. Me, I saw a colorful update of Michael Powell type fantasia set in the Levant. 

Tilda Swinton plays a lonely scholar who purchases an old bottle while attending a conference in Istanbul. Out pops a djinn, played by Idris Elba, who regales the scholar with tales of his adventures through the ages. The djinn's colorful stories are the highlight of the film. Less successful is the love story between the two. When Swinton confesses her love for the big lug, it seems to come from nowhere. Elba's role is a snug fit for him, but Swinton is miscast. Her character is meek and humble, but her strengths as an actor are projecting arrogance and imperiousness. A better fit would have been Deborah Kerr, if she wasn't otherwise engaged for the rest of eternity. 

Frontier Marshal

Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero in Frontier Marshal

Alan Dwan's Frontier Marshal, from 1939, is one of the many Hollywood renditions of Wyatt Earp coming to Tombstone, becoming a lawman, and participating in the gunfight at the OK Corral. A good B picture that clock in at a brisk 71 minutes, Frontier Marshal is a testament to Dwan's solid craftmanship.

Taken from the book that inspired the 1934 film of the same name and John Ford's My Darling Clementine, Frontier Marshal drops many of the familiar elements of the saga. Ike Clanton and his brood are absent as are Earp's brothers. The dichotomy between the two main female characters, a virtuous maiden from the East versus a vampish dancehall girl, found in My Darling Clementine is also present in Frontier Marshal. Nancy Kelly, as the lady, and Binnie Barnes, as the tramp, are both pretty good at enlivening rote roles. 

Randolph Scott is adequate as Earp. He is called upon to do little more than embody moral rectitude with his ramrod posture. It was only later in his career, working with such directors as Budd Boetticher and Sam Peckinpah, that Scott was able to add additional shades to his portrayals of chivalric heroism. One of my favorite reaction shots in all of cinema is that of Scott at the conclusion of Boetticher's Comanche Station. Part of the reason for the potency of the shot is that Boetticher is playing off Scott's usual stoicism. 

Best of all is Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday. To viewers who know him primarily as the Cisco Kid,  umpteen Latin lovers or the Joker on television's Batman, this might seem to be strange casting, but Romero is good at expressing the romantic fatalism of the character. His effective turns in such films as disparate as Frontier Marshal, The Devil is a Woman, and Wee Willie Winkie display that he was not fully utilized by Hollywood.

Eddie Foy Jr. appears, as he often did, as his father, a noted vaudevillian. His antics and Barnes' dancehall number add to the period flavor of the film. Foy Sr.'s life story was turned into a film in 1955, the mediocre Bob Hope vehicle, The Seven Little Foys.

Frontier Marshal is nothing earth shaking, but it will appeal to film aficionados and Western fans. I was knocked out by the film's opening montage which shows the finding of silver near Tombstone and its subsequent growth into a boom town. Fred Allen or Robert Bischoff's efforts, the credit for this is unclear, rivals that of Don Siegel's concurrent and justly lauded montage sequences that he concocted for Warner Brothers. 

The Nice Guys, Irrational Man, Embrace of the Serpent

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in The Nice Guys

Shane Black's The Nice Guys is, like his previous Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a buddy film disguised as a comic mystery. Black's big break in Hollywood was his script for Lethal Weapon, along with Top Gun the ultimate 80s bromance, in which narrative drive was sacrificed to the bonding rituals of Messrs. Gibson and Glover. 

Not much has changed in thirty years. Here, the leads are Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling and there is no wife or girlfriend to distract us from the burgeoning relationship between the two. They meet cute on opposite sides of a case and when the older dick breaks the ice by breaking the Goose's hymen, er arm, then they can bond while solving the shaggy dog mystery that Black has concocted.

The jokes are stale, the plot nonexistent and the gunplay rote. Still, the leads are charming and Angourie Rice, as Gosling's daughter, is a find. Black has a flair for funky ephemera and has an obvious affection for his LA locales. As a visual stylist, Black is fairly slack, but I'll take him over Richard Donner any day. The Nice Guys is cinematically underwhelming, yet it is a pleasant enough diversion.

Incrementally better is Woody Allan's Irrational Man. Middling Woody, the film is competently shot and acted with lots of walking and talking shots of the leading man and his ladies as has been Allen's wont since Sleeper. Joaquin Phoenix, one of our best leading men, is an uneasy fit as a troubled (he has a paunch and drinks from a flask while driving his Volvo) Philosophy professor. I'm not sure Phoenix would ever be right for the relatively Apollonian oeuvre of Allen. He is best amidst the Dionysian unease of a Paul Thomas Anderson. Allen is unable to unleash the sexual charisma that Anderson did in Inherent Vice despite the stalwart assistance of Parker Posey and Emma Stone.  

Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix in Irrational Man

This is fatal to the climax of the film. Phoenix has carried out the "perfect crime", poisoning a, perhaps, corrupt judge who he has no personal connection to. Stone, his student and lover, is onto him and has threatened to expose him if he does not turn himself in. Phoenix tries to throw her down an elevator shaft, but trips on a flashlight (symbol!) that is a memento of one of their trysts and falls to his deserved demise. Because Allen has not let Phoenix's performance breathe, his character lacks the charm to make him seem a tempting devil rather than an intellectual creep. There is no surprise for the audience in his perfidy, just confusion that Stone's character did not earlier discern his villainy.

Phoenix is adept at spouting philosophical jargon, but, as soon as he says he is working on a book on Heidegger, the mindful reader knows something is wrong with his moral compass. Some critics have branded the philosophical nature of the film as facile, but I am inclined to give the Woodman a break on this because it is obvious that he is fascinated by the presence of evil in everyday life: the portraits of bourgeois men getting away with murder in Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point are among his most resonant. 

Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent is an interesting look at the clash between modern and so called primitive perspectives as a shaman encounters two different German scholars forty years apart in the Amazonian forest. Guerra shoots in black and white which heightens the harshness and danger of the rain forest instead of its lush beauty.

Nilbio Torres in Embrace of the Serpent

The message of the film is rather predictable, that we have as much to learn from indigenous people as they do from us, but the skill of the direction and performers raises what could have been a hackneyed art flick into a generally compelling film. Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar are both superb as the young and old iterations of the shaman, Karamakate. The three dimensionality of their portrayals helps Embrace of the Serpent skirt a romanticization of the 'noble savage" that has plagued the Western canon since, at least, The Last of the Mohicans.

Guerra is adept at portraying the myriad hazards of the rain forest and Karamakate's adroit calm. The requisite trippy sequence is botched, as they almost always are. How a film artist can portray a subjective ecstatic experience in a narrative is always a conundrum though I did like how Jane Campion portrayed Kate Winslet's epiphany in Holy Smoke. (7/29/16)

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone

                       
Adam Curtis' Russia 1985 - 1999: TraumaZone is a seven part, seven hour documentary on the fall of first communism and then democracy in the former Soviet Union. Curtis eschews narration, talking heads, and a musical score. Combing through hundred of hours of footage from BBC sources, Curtis creates an epic and varied bricolage of Russia that gives us the compelling sweep of history and a view of the people on the streets.

Some have missed the puckish sense of Curtis' personality that permeates his other documentaries, but I think he was wise to stay out of the way of a massive story that needs little editorial comment. He does provide titles that tell the where and when of the footage plus pertinent background information. Curtis stresses the vastness of the country in these titles by listing each location's distance from Moscow. This, in turn, shows the folly of central planning in such a vast and far-flung empire.

The variety of footage is stunning. Its length is daunting, but I doubt I will watch a more rewarding and enlightening film this year. Viewers of  TraumaZone won't soon forget the little girl pictured below. One of this year's few must see films. 

Manderlay

Bryce Dallas Howard and Isaach De Bankole in Manderlay

Lars von Trier's Manderlay, from 2005, is a slightly less successful sequel to the director's 2003 masterpiece, Dogville. Grace Mulligan (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her gangster father are touring the American South after vamoosing Dogville. They happen upon the titular plantation where the black population still, in 1933, suffers under the yoke of slavery. Grace sets about rectifying the situation by enrolling a number of her father's goons to free the slaves and set up, under her guidance, a communitarian democracy to run the place. Despite Grace's good intentions, her plans go awry and von Trier is able to close his drama with a note of delicious irony

Like Dogville, Manderlay's single setting is portrayed on a minimally decorated soundstage. The element of surprise at this strategy is diminished this time out, but it is still an effective way of presenting what is essentially an allegory about America rather than a realistic drama. Von Trier's grasp of Americana is tenuous at best, dust storms don't occur in Alabama, for in stance, but one cannot deny the palpability of his negative feelings towards our country. 

The spartan settings and von Trier's hand-held Dogme technique places a great burden on his cast, most of whom deliver here. Nicole Kidman's performance as Grace in Dogville was a towering one, a Mother Courage for our times. Bryce Dallas Howard steps into the role here and is, unfortunately, the film's main flaw. Howard is good at evoking the do-gooding, schoolmarm side of Grace, but lacks the ability to project the steeliness and sensuality that Kidman did so expertly. On the other hand, Danny Glover is superb as Manderlay's house Negro. 

Lars von Trier's anti-Americanism no doubt rankles some. James Caan was so disturbed by it that he opted out of Manderlay after appearing in Dogville. His role, that of Grace's gangster father, is capably filled by Willem Defoe. I certainly don't share any of the director's batty politics, but respect the depth of his feelings on display in Dogville and Manderlay. It is unimportant to me what a director's politics are or whether he is sufficiently woke or anti-woke. What matters to me whether the director effectively transfers his ideas and feelings into a coherent and well crafted film. In Manderlay, von Trier is able to conjure the legacy of trauma that American slavery bequeathed to African Americans and that is more than enough to help the film transcend his blinkered view of the USA. 

Vengeance

Ashton Kutcher and B.J. Novak in Vengeance

B.J. Novak's Vengeance, his feature film directorial debut, is an assured and well written comic thriller. Novak plays a New York based writer and podcaster, Ben, who travels to West Texas to attend the funeral of a young woman named Abilene Shaw. Though only a fitful acquaintance of the woman, Ben is embraced by her family who were led to believe by Abilene that Ben was her steady boyfriend. Abilene died from an overdose of opiates and her family feels that some skullduggery was involved. Ben is dubious of this, but thinks a profile of Abilene and her family would make a good podcast. Eventually, Ben realizes that there is more to the story than meets the eye and finds that he has come to share the family's need for, yes, vengeance.

Most of the comedy in the film arises from the fish out of water nature of the narrative. Ben gradually comes to realize that the West Texas natives he meets are not quite the aimless bumblefucks he assumed they would be. Furthermore, they show him the empathy he lacks under his culturally sophisticated façade. The people he meets are all balancing their vulnerability with toughness. A local drug lord who is the chief suspect turns out to have had a soft spot for Abilene because she read him Harry Potter novels over the phone. A music impresario, played by Aston Kutcher, shows incredible sensitivity in the recording studio, but we learn that this is a mask hiding a monstrous callousness. 

Novak's achievement here is that he is able to imbue nearly all his characters with shades of gray. Only the local constabulary are pictured as outright bozos. The cultural rites of West Texas are, on the whole, treated with affection and respect, though a rodeo sequence is overdrawn. Novak's handling of his large cast is exemplary with Boyd Holbrook's turn as Abilene's brother being the standout. Kutcher is merely adequate, lacking the Zen master implacability his role demands.

Vengeance is more than a promising debut. The rooftop opening sequence set in New York shows Novak could easily do a cosmopolitan comedy of manners, but he set his sights on something more expansive and he has largely succeeded. Even his choices that explore the meta level of his film, particularly his usage of John Mayer and Lana Del Rey, are provocative and effective. Whatever the future holds for Novak, Vengeance is intelligent and enjoyable film. 

Thor: Love and Thunder

                    

Lightning did not strike twice for Taika Waititi and the Thor franchise. Thor: Love and Thunder lacks the impish spark that elevated Ragnarok above nearly all of the Marvel movies. When the biggest laughs come from the celebrity cameos, you know something is rotten in Asgard. The direction is spritely enough, but the script has a few insurmountable problems. One of those is the children in peril motif. The villain of the piece, Christian Bale's Gorr, kidnaps Asgard's junior set so he can lure Thor into a trap. The kids are innocent victims and not all that interesting. Waititi has continually utilized children in his scenarios, probably because he is just a big kid himself, but they have previously been scamps. That sense of mischief is missing in this film, as are the sorely missed Tom Hiddleston and Jeff Goldblum. Even Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie seems less joyously anarchic this time around.

A bigger problem is Thor's love interest, Jane Foster, who has been give stage four cancer for this opus. Now maybe Natalie Portman put her foot down and said, dudes, this is my last go round in the Thor saga and Waititi and company thought the big C was a good way to build up sympathy for the character before they offed her. Instead, it just puts a damper on the proceedings. The film is nowhere near as stodgy as Branagh's Thor, but Waititi has similar problems building romantic chemistry between Ms. Portman and Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth is a bit of a lost cause as an actor. Like Channing Tatum, he exists in film to drop trou, a dorsal view here of course, but, unlike Tatum, he is not enough of an actor to make it seem like he is in on the joke. The jokes aimed at his metal dimness seem tired in ...Love and Thunder. Portman is a more frustrating case. In her youth, she seemed promising, but her mature work after Black Swan has been disappointing. In her juvenilia, she exhibited interesting chemistry with Jean Reno in The Professional and Timothy Hutton in Beautiful Girls, but her scenes with Hemsworth are as flat as her ones with Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars films. 

Official Competition

Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in Official Competition

Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn's Official Competition is that rarity, an intelligent and genuinely funny comedy. A farce about the backstage antics behind a movie, Official Competition mostly focuses on its three leads. Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz) is an avant garde film director who has the backing to produce an adaptation of a best-selling novel about two feuding brothers. She casts two actors with oppositional approaches as her leads. The roughhewn brother is played by Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a top tier movie star who is an instinctual artist. The more restrained brother is played by Ivan Torres (Oliver Martinez), a polymath who takes a more academic approach. 

Naturally, these talented egoists clash. Torres honors study and preparation, Rivero lives for the moment, and Cuevas searches for a new artistic paradigms. The results are as heady as they are amusing. The two actors argue whether art is for the elite or the masses with Banderas and Martinez playing overinflated versions of themselves. Cruz has to do most of the heavy lifting as a square peg in a red wig of epic proportions. The boys gang up on Cuevas after each has been ritually humiliated by her. Allegiances are in perpetual flux, but, eventually, a film is created.

Significantly, Mr. Martinez, like the directorial duo, is from Argentina, a nuance lost on most North Americans, but one that has some bearing on the proceedings in Official Competition. Messrs. Duprat and Cohn have been artistic partners for over thirty years. They started out in the avant garde, have created numerous television programs, documentaries, and even founded a cultural TV channel in Buenos Aires. Official Competition is their third fictional feature and I will be chuffed to investigate their back catalogue. 

Quick Takes, November 2022

Lee Purcell in Summer of Fear

Wes Craven's Summer of Fear, a TV movie from 1978, was his first true Hollywood effort. He seems to be learning the ropes and there are only a few uncanny moments. Craven neutered for televised consumption. Lois Duncan's source novel provides possibilities, but the cast is generally woeful as are the costumes and hair. This was the last of a slew of exploitive TV films that starred Linda Blair in the wake of The Exorcist. Fortunately, the plum role of the witch who bedevils Blair and her family is in the capable hands of Lee Purcell. MacDonald Carey is well utilized and Fran Drescher shows she had her schtick down pat at this early stage. For Craven completists and lovers of 70s cheese.

Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers, from 2016, is as funny as a crutch. Despite an impressive cast (Johnny Depp, Lily-Rose Depp, Vanessa Paradis, Natasha Lyonne, Justin Long, Austin Butler, Haley Joel Osment), the results are dire. 

Li Yuhe's Absurd Accident, his debut film from 2017, is, yes, an absurdist black comedy set in the hinterlands of northern China. The film takes leaps back and forth in time as it tells the tale of ten intersecting characters. Li has a solid sense of place and knows where to plant his camera. The tone is similar to the yahoo comedies of the Cohen brothers. Like their lesser comedies, the humor is more of the peculiar rather than laugh out loud funny. If anything, Li tries to cram too much in one feature: the black and white sequences which mimic speeded up silent films are an egregious example. Still, Mr. Li shows promise. Streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Tsui Hark's The Taking of Tiger Mountain, from 2014, is an old fashioned action film, at once pleasing and anonymous. Hark has churned out fifty or so of these and reminds me of Henry Hathaway; competent, yet relatively colorless. The film has a rich feel to it: the set decoration, costuming, and hair styling are all eye popping. Initially, a historical novel, then a Maoist opera, this is, at least, the second film adaptation of the yarn. The film has a cobbled together feel with bits of The Seven Samurai and Mad Max attached to it.

Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet is a wigged out satire of the art world. With a narrative that defies description, Flux Gourmet once again displays Strickland's gift for arch humor and Bunuelian satire. As in his recent In Fabric, Strickland shows sighs of artistic growth, particularly in his ability to create three dimensional characters. In this he is greatly helped by a fine cast, especially Asa Butterfield and Strickland regular, Fatma Mohamed.

Chloe Okuno's Watcher is an underwhelming woman in peril film set in Bucharest. Okuno gets a sense of menace out of the apartment corridors and streets of Romania, but the characters of this thriller are wan and underdrawn. Part of the problem are the nondescript leads. Based on the interesting bits and pieces in Watcher, Slut, and her short in the anthology V/H/S, Ms. Okuno seems a talent to watch for the future. 

Fatma Mohamed in Flux Gourmet

A Brighter Summer Day

             

Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day, from 1991, is a tragic epic of one teen's descent into criminality in Cold War era Taiwan. Yang portrays New Frontier Taiwan as a repressive militaristic society in constant preparedness for an invasion from China. Corridors, grid like classrooms and offices are emphasized to show how the Taiwanese youth and their even more alienated elders are confined by their culture. The teens in the film are all enraptured with American culture to such an extent that it heightens their alienation as displaced Chinese. They end up resembling the disaffected youths in Nicholas Ray's Rebels Without a Cause, albeit without jalopies. They form gangs, listen to and perform Elvis, and have shifting romantic allegiances just like Ray's misfits. Yang is not as hysterical a director as Ray, and that has its pluses and minuses. The young actors were tightly controlled by Yang and, thus, there aren't the seismic tremors that Ray elicited from James Dean and his cohorts. However, Yang's reserve fits his perspective on his culture and his exploration of the theme of the sins of the father being visited on the sons is more controlled and powerful than in Ray's film. A scene where the protagonist sees his father beating his brother is much more effective than a demasculinized Jim Backus wearing a frilly apron in Rebel....

A Brighter Summer Day is, perhaps, a little lengthy, but it is out of the love for his characters that Yang indulges his muse. The beauty of a tracking shot that follows two juveniles dashing away after harassing trysting teens displays Yang's affection for the fleeting moments that are largely lost upon youths themselves.