My Joy

                         Viktor Nemets and Olga Shuvalova                     

Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy, released in 2010, is an inscrutable portrait of Russia as a paranoid wasteland. From its first shot, that of a cement mixer being used to help conceal a corpse, the mood of the film is that of unrelenting despair. The film could be dismissed as a Russophobic screed, but it is so teeming with vital storytelling that I was enthralled from start to finish. The film is ostensibly a road film, initially following Georgy (Viktor Nemets), a young trucker as he attempts to make a delivery in Western Russia. The film, however, is extremely discursive. It hurtles through time and space illustrating a host of fragmentary tales. When Georgy is joined temporarily by an old drifter, we view the reminiscences of his attempt to return home after World War 2 and come to learn why he is living a peripatetic life. After the drifter goes off on his own, Georgy is waylaid by three hooligans who assault him. The attack leaves Georgy mute and mad and he spends the rest of the film wandering aimlessly through a pitiless landscape.

The characters who populate My Joy are a murderer's row of ruffians, criminals, teenage prostitutes (an especially scary Olga Shuvalova), and sinister representatives of the government. Every government official in the film, from Soviet intelligence officers during the Great Patriotic war era to road traffic patrolmen in present day Russia, are portrayed as corrupt figures eager to prey on whoever falls into their clutches. Repeated requests to see one's papers become the film's harbingers of doom. If My Joy has a flaw, it is that its narrative is so scattered that it is hard to follow. Despite this caveat, I found the film to be an unflinching triumph.

Los Golfos

                          

Carlos Saura's Los Golfos (aka The Delinquents) is a corrosive and impressively assured first feature. Produced by Pere Portabella, the film debuted at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Its portrait of disaffected youth living in the seamy underbelly of Madrid did not meet the approval of Franco's censors. After extensive cuts, a truncated version had a cursory release in Spain in 1962. The uncut print has only recently been reassembled and is available on a handsome looking disc put out by Radiance Films.

The film centers on a group of six young urban miscreants who participate in petty crime to survive, sometimes with the help of their moll, Visi. The hooligans rob blind ladies, pilfer fruit, assault cab drivers, loot garages, and more. No mentors or father figures exist to steer the youth towards virtue, an unspoken legacy of the Spanish Civil War. Much of the film functions as a documentary about the more sordid side of Madrid. However, Saura never flattens the characterizations into a neorealist lump. Each of the six youths is given a vibrant and distinct personality. One of the youths, Juan, shows promise as a matador, so the others pledge to steal enough money in order to jump start his career. They succeed, though at a terrible cost, and the film concludes not with Juan's triumph, but with the most depressing and despairing bull fight ever captured on film; as opposed to all those jolly ones.

Saura combines bracing neorealism with the nihilistic despair of Buñuel's Los Olvidados. The images of slum life, like women gleaning what they can from the town dump, are worthy of that master. Saura's juxtapositions are continually inventive and provocative. Fado and flamenco are contrasted with a Latin dance band out of the 1930s or a hip jazz club where the necking clubgoers are digging Gerry Mulligan. Regardless of their diversions, this is a portrait of a lost generation.

Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet

Despite enjoying the director's previous work, I found Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme to be overblown, gaseous, and empty. It doesn't matter to me that the ping pong prodigy played by Timothée Chalamet is unlikeable, but I found the character to be fatally uninteresting. Chalamet has proven he can play a Jewish hustler with his impersonation of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, but Marty lacks the charisma and chutzpah of a Dylan or a Sidney Falco or Sammy Glick. I think that Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein wanted to capture the Jewish magical realism found in works like Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, but the results are neither magical nor realistic. Safdie shoots the material with lots of close-ups, trying to give this period film immediacy. In this he partially succeeds, but at the cost of giving his film a realistic framework. The use of circa 1980 pop songs indicates he wanted to conjure something more timeless and mythic, but the character of Marty is not interesting or heroic enough to support the stuff of legend.

Safdie continues to be interesting in his handling of his players. I especially enjoyed the efforts of Odessa A'zion, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jillette, and Pico Iyer. However, a number of talented performers are stuck in cliched roles or ones that barely register, such as Fran Drescher, Kevin O'Leary, and Sandra Bernhard. Gwyneth Paltrow is promisingly cast as a Grace Kelly type figure, but has little to do except act bemused by Marty. I did enjoy the Tennessee Williams take-off, but too much of Marty Supreme, like the Moses the dog subplot, is overly convoluted and arbitrary. Marty's actions are rarely consistent with his character. While Marty Supreme has some interesting moments sprinkled throughout its two and a half hours, overall I found it to be a disappointment. 

Backrooms

Whatever their artistic merits, the commercial success of Kane Parsons' Backrooms and Curry Barker's Obsession is a truly heartening sign of life for the American film industry. Before the summer onslaught of sequels, retreads, and video game adaptations, it was very pleasing to film buff Biff that two original films from newcomers are runaway box office successes. After viewing Backrooms, I was particularly chuffed that such an abstract and avant leaning film has been embraced by the US public, particularly by those 35 and under. It is A24's biggest hit to date, already outgrossing Marty Supreme. Backrooms has a plot, but its chief attribute, which commences once Chiwetel Ejiofor discovers a portal to a parallel world in the basement of his furniture store, is Parsons' camera prowling the negative space of a world redolent of corporate offices and strip malls. This conveys a sense of dread that lingers despite the narrative seeming like a distended Twilight Zone episode. 

Ejofor plays Clark, a frustrated architect living in a mythical city in 1990 who manages a pathetic furniture store for his daily bread. He has recently undergone a painful divorce and attends therapy session with his doc, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). After Clark discovers the portal, he enlists two collegiate videographers to document what he has discovered. Unsurprisingly, the duo become the film's sacrificial lambs for a monster lurks in the maze of this mysterious kingdom. Mary Kline becomes concerned about Clark and stumbles upon the portal. Flashbacks of her childhood, when she was a prisoner in the house of her mad mother, illuminate her struggle to metaphorically and literally walk through windows. A single survivor is left at film's end. A high tech firm has been monitoring the parallel world and is able to make an extraction. A company pooh-bah (deftly played by Mark Duplass) debriefs the survivor, functioning much like Simon Oakland's character in Psycho. As in Psycho, the explanation given mystifies rather than clarifies.

The visual landscape of Backrooms is a picture of suburban desolation and anomie. Indeed, the suburban strip malls of America in 2026 are even more empty after the rise of internet retailers. As the musical group Priests put it:

                           I was jogging to a strip mall

                           I felt nothing at all

                          Nothing I can recall

                          Besides Dollar Tree, Sears and Thai Bistro

Even before we enter the film's Interzone, the portrait of 1990 America is depressing. The colors of the costumes and decor are subdued and ugly. The film is a symphony in taupe and off white. Even when a color like blue is used it is a subdued blue rather than a vivid one. This fits the emotional tenor of the film. Clark and Mary both live a lonely existence, each haunted by the demons of the past. Ejiofor and Reinsve limn their characters' stress and isolation superbly. I was somewhat distracted by Reinsve's Norwegian accent, but that is a very minor complaint.  

Master Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik have extrapolated Backrooms from Parsons' YouTube series of the same name. However, the idea for this project did not just emerge full blown like an Athena from the cheesypastaverse. There are antecedents. Mark Z. Danielewski's 2000 horror novel House of Leaves has a similar premise. While Parsons' characters travel horizontally into an alternative multiverse, Danielewski's descend vertically into darkness. With its labyrinthine tracking shots, Backrooms reminded me of Michael Snow's Wavelength and Kubrick's The Shining. Indeed, the labyrinth is the one of the central motifs in Kubrick's oeuvre. Regardless, I feel Backrooms can stand on its own. I don't think it is a great film, but it is a startling debut. 

Downstairs

Virginia Bruce, Paul Lukas, and John Gilbert form a triangle in Downstairs

Monta Bell's Downstairs is a fitfully entertaining 1932 drama released by MGM. Leading man John Gilbert has penned the screenplay in the silent era and then dusted it off in the hopes of reviving his flagging career. Gilbert plays the part of an unscrupulous chauffeur newly hired by a German Baron (Reginald Owen). Gilbert arrives on the wedding day of two members of the Baron's staff, Paul Lukas' butler and Virginia Bruce's parlor maid, and promptly establishes himself as a total cad by hitting on the bride. Bruce initially is able to resist Gilbert's advances, but comes to realize that he floats her boat more than the upright Lukas. Gilbert's chauffeur is such a total rotter that while he is making time with Bruce (soon to be the fourth Mrs. Gilbert), he is also coming onto the households' aged cook. The cook's appeal to him lies not in her feminine charms, but in the bankroll secreted in her stockings. Amidst these shifting and shifty alliances, the Baroness (Olga Baclanova) has a lover on the side. A situation the chauffeur exploits for blackmail.

Downstairs is an weird film that wizzes by at 77 minutes utilizing odd juxtapositions and iris dissolves. It is handsomely appointed with cinematography by Harold Rosson and art direction by the ubiquitous Cedric Gibbons. However, Monta Bell's direction never finds a consistent tone. The film veers from comedy to near tragedy without ever finding its footing. What makes the film palatable is its superior cast. Owen and Baclanova are one of the most hilariously mismatched couples in the history of cinema. Bruce and Gilbert generate a scent of eros. Bodil Rosing, best known as the maid in Sunrise, is affecting as the cook. Best of all is Paul Lukas who makes the stock role of the cuckolded husband believable. Downstairs also features Hedda Hopper as a former employer/lover of Gilbert's, Otto Hoffman, Lucian Littlefield,  and an uncredited Karen Morley in the final scene.

On a personal note, I can attest that the notion that the chauffeur was the great god Pan of the 1920s and 30s was not pure fancy. My wife and I were gifted a box of linens by my mother. They had lain in a closet in my parents' house since the death of my mother's aunt a decade earlier. When I opened the box I spied a selection of monogrammed hand towels. They bore an initial I did not recognize. Apparently, my great aunt had had a first husband who was not mentioned in my presence. When I queried mom about it: "Oh, yes", she replied, "she ran off with her chauffeur."

Beyond the Clouds

Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli

Michelangelo Antonioni's Beyond the Clouds, released in late 1995, is a film about interlocking sexual entanglements set in four different European locales. The picture was based on a book of short stories Antonioni published in 1983 entitled That Bowling Alley on the Tiber. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed till the end of his days. He was only able to make Beyond the Clouds with the assistance of Wim Wenders, though their relationship was somewhat contentious. Wenders added binding episodes and narration featuring John Malkovich as a traveling director musing on love and life. Antonioni was able to jettison some of the scenes featuring Malkovich, but not all of them. Similarly, sequences featuring Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau were shot by Wenders, but only a single scene remains. The scene offers a self-reflexive take on artistry invoking Cézanne. The question raised is whether an artist repeats himself. Wenders, the auteur, admits that it is inevitable.

The other element that smacks more of Wenders than Antonioni is the soundtrack, the presence of U2 being the tell. It didn't work for me, especially the instrumental Van Morrison numbers used as love motifs. They are too sentimental for an Antonioni picture, even an autumnal one, and I count myself a Van Morrison fan. Wenders was able to prevail upon Antonioni to trim some of the sex scenes, particularly one of Peter Weller going down on Chiara Caselli. Even so, some observers, like Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice, found the amount of young female flesh on display to be gratuitous. It does seem like every female actress under forty gets totally nekkid in this flick. I am a little more tolerant of this than Mr. Atkinson. Seniors should be indulged their erotic reveries since some of them can only dream rather than do.

Vincent Perez and Irène Jacob

What is best about Beyond the Clouds and most distinctively Antonionian is its mise-en-scène. The film is otherworldly gorgeous. Lovers tease each other as they walk down ancient streets and foggy corridors pitched on the edge of oblivion. The eternal recurrence of romance, its ebb and flow, is evoked through water imagery. Parting and its sweet ache are memorably evoked. What is most uneven about the film is the acting. It is as if the players hit their marks and then could do what they want. Malkovich is fine and Irène Jacob is sublime. Jean Reno is wasted as are Mastroianni and Moreau. Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli show great charm. Kim Rossi Stuart and Inés Sastre are as charmless and at sea as Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin in Zabriskie Point. Sophie Marceau looks great, but her performance is deplorable. I broke out laughing when her character claimed to have stabbed her father twelve times. I was not convinced. Similarly, Fanny Ardant muffs her drunk scene. Lovers of Mr. Antonioni's work should see Beyond the Clouds, others may be baffled.

Resurrection

         

Bi Gan's Resurrection demonstrates that the mechanism of cinema still has a pulse. I find that my previous remarks on Bi Gan still hold, but that Resurrection represents a wholehearted dive into the unconscious realms of surrealism. Some have accused the film of oneiric onanism, but I find the film contains pointed insights into both film and Chinese history. Titles trumpet the film's theme at the onset. The world is split into two, Yin and Yang, those who eschew dreams to live eternally and those rebels who live to dream; monikered here "the Deliriants". The film's one constant is the Deliriant figure embodied by Chinese boy bander Jackson Yee in a remarkable performance. The Deliriant's travails are shown in five discrete episodes. Each episode represents both a period in the history of cinema and modern China. The cinematic style used in each episode mimics that of the period. Thus, the opening section, set in the 1920s, is silent and filmed like the magic lantern visions of Méliès. The following episode, set during China's conflict with Japan, is shot using the conventions of expressionistic noir. And so on.

In each episode, the Deliriant lives on the fringes of society, a criminal, mongrel or monster. Throughout, there is a consistent aura of paranoia. The Deliriant is always ensnared or trapped by some aspect of society. In this respect, Resurrection stands as a veiled rebuke to Chinese authoritarianism. Bi Gan eschews the lengthy tracking shots of Long Day's Journey into Night enhancing the sense of the Deliriant's entrapment. That is until the last segment set on the eve of Y2K. In this section, the Deliriant is a young gang banger whose girl is under the control of a mobster. The camera follows the young lovers as they seek escape through the labyrinthian streets of the city. Only when they commandeer a barge and head out to sea, a recurring symbol of freedom in the film, do they seem at liberty.

Resurrection is chock full of film allusions. Now this can be a boon or a curse. The Bride has a host of references, not only Mary Shelley, but Bonnie and Clyde and Bartleby the Scrivener. Unfortunately, these allusion add little to the film. They merely serve to prop up a flimsy dramatic framework. Squeal, with its allusions to Barry Lyndon, is an example of a picture in which the film references add to its complexity and resonance. I feel much the same about Resurrection. The shout outs to Day of Wrath, The Lady From Shanghai, and Kiss Me Deadly add to the mood of mistrust and treachery. The China portrayed in Resurrection is the hall of mirrors of the modern totalitarian surveillance state.

Those seeking an overarching narrative in Resurrection are grasping at straws. The film is a set of variations on a theme. It is a movie designed to excite the mind's eye, as the continued use of the motif of the iris attests to. The episodes, as Tom Verlaine once put it, alternately dissolve and reveal. Actually Verlaine called it Dissolve/Reveal, a more cinematic version of the psychedelic pivot where the fire of everyday existence melts into the pool of the collective unconscious. The circularity of Resurrection's form, beginning and ending in a movie theater reflects the film's presentation of eternal recurrence. Same as it ever was through modern Chinese history. Deliriants of all stripes will find much to assay and treasure in this film.

Ghost Nursing

Shirley Yim consults a seer in Ghost Nursing

Wilson Tong's Ghost Nursing is the best exploitation film I've seen in some time. The folks at Vinegar Syndrome have issued a splendid looking Blu-ray of this 1982 supernatural horror flick. Shirley Yim stars as Jackie, a working gal who we witness fleeing Hong Kong and some large gambling debts for Thailand in the first reel. There she shares a crash pad with a cousin who cajoles her into selling her wares at a local dive. After being brutalized by a wealthy client, Jackie visits a local seer to gain insight into how she can change her run of bad luck. The seer gifts her a misshapen "child" to nourish who will, in turn, protect Jackie. Things start out promisingly for Jackie, she wins the attention of a hunky and kind suitor, but she does not completely fulfill her part of the bargain and harsh consequences result. 

Ghost Nursing resembles a graphic novel or comic book, as we used to call them, in the best possible way. Visually lurid with bold primary colors, the Vinegar Syndrome disc does justice to the palette of the film. The camera set-ups are outstanding, especially for a film made for such a low budget. The exploitive bits of the film are somewhat undercut by the seamy treatment Jackie experiences. The film editing jumps rapidly through scenes, particularly during the film's gonzo final third. This disguises the brilliantly schlocky practical effects and causes the viewer to get swept up in Ghost Nursing's WTF rush.

Hell's Highway

Tom Brown and Richard Dix

Rowland Brown's Hell's Highway is a vital and nervy B feature from Radio Pictures. This David O. Selznick production beat I Was a Fugitive on the Chain Gang to the punch in the prison exposé sweepstakes of 1932 by opening two months before the more remembered Warner Brothers feature. Hell's Highway stars Richard Dix as an inveterate bank robber facing a lifetime behind bars. He languishes in a shambolic prison camp presided over by a cruel commandant (perpetual baddie C. Henry Gordon). The conditions are medieval in their cruelty as the shackled prisoners break rocks in the hot sun in a penal system built on graft and greed. All the prisoners' wear targets on their backs in a picture that is extremely grungy and deglamorized for a Hollywood flick. Dix's character yearns to break free, but when his kid brother (Tom Brown) joins him in stir, his perspective changes. If you've seen one prison picture you might think you've seen them all, however Hell's Highway wizzes by in 65 minutes of feverish intensity that includes two prison breaks, murder, adultery, intimations of homosexuality, institutional racism, blackmail, torture, and arson.

The film's editing is swift and ironic. A prisoner's drawings spring to animated life. Popular tunes, mostly sung by the black prisoners, serve as aural transitions for this procession of carnage. Sultry blues concerning adultery (Frankie and Johnny) and dope (Willie the Weeper) create an aura of doom. Brown captures the gloomy delirium of the prisoners' plight in sweaty close-ups. The only note of hope in the picture is embodied by Whiteside (Stanley Fields, omnipresent in 1930s Hollywood), a reformer heralding the change coming with the New Deal. William K. Everson has noted how Gordon's character prefigures Hume Cronyn's fascistic prison warden in Brute Force. Similarly, Charles Middleton's mystic convict presages John Steinbeck's defrocked preacher, Jim Casy, in 1939's The Grapes of Wrath. The picture originally had Dix die after being pursued by hound dogs in a swamp, but reshoots directed by John Cromwell give us a slightly less tragic ending. Brown is credited with over twenty screenplays, but his credits as a director are few owing to his alcoholism, communism, and irascibility. Alexander Korda famously fired him on the set of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Nevertheless, on Hell's Highway he creates memorable vignettes with over twenty memorable supporting performers. Dix, who I find oafish in most of his other pictures, is at his brawny best under Brown's direction.