SCREENING LOG - 5/30/2006-6/04/2006

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Ascent (1976, Larissa Shepitko)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075404/
TSPDT #861
The late great Soviet actor/director Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE is regarded by some as an essential war movie, but I prefer this earlier film, the last by Klimov's wife, an accomplished filmmaker in her own right. Two Soviet resistance soldiers in occupied territory are captured; under interrogation, they are confronted with ethical choices informed by differing degrees of guilt, patriotism, self-preservation and spiritual yearning (with enough Christian symbolism to make Tarkovsky sniffle with gratitude). Like COME AND SEE, this is an unflinching gaze into the brutal cost of WWII on humanity (more precisely Soviet humanity; the Nazis are treated conventionally as a demonic blight against which the damage inflicted on the Soviet soul is measured), where the relationships between soldiers and civilians lead to numerous morally compromising situations set on an all-effacing stage of snow. A great ensemble is led by Boris Plotnikov and Vladimir Gostyukhin as the soldiers, with Tarkovsky regular Anatoli Solonitsyn as a memorably sinister Soviet turncoat. The gallows pacing allows for ruminative dialogues behind which Shepitko throws heaps of emotional weight, enough to add layers of complexity to the ostensibly one-dimensional Christian redemption story lying underneath.
YES (#10 for 1976 between THE MARQUISE OF O and MR. KLEIN)

Hour of the Furnaces Part III: Violence and Liberation (1968, Octavio Gentino, Fernando Solanas, Santiago Alvarez)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063085/
TSPDT #862
One of the most awesome landmarks of political filmmaking, this 4-plus hour Marxist epic calling for violent revolutions in Argentina and around the world manages to be both exhaustive in its argumentation yet propulsive in its cinematic impact. Part I: Neocolonialism and Violence is the best in assembling a stunning array of images and sound clips to demonstrate the insidious effect that Western colonialism and capitalism have had on the rest of humanity, in robbing them of their natural resources, their economic and political power, and their own sense of community and culture. Part II: Acts in Favor of Liberation hones in on the specifc historical turn of events in Argentina that led to what the filmmakers consider a national state of crisis. Here I felt my own limited knowledge of the country holding me back from the film's unequivocal account of the country's coups and state-sponsored oppression; I felt like I was being led through a power point slide show where visuals were emphasized over facts. The last part, Violence and Liberation, regains some of the clairion call momentum of the first section, documenting vivid instances of revolt against the establishment, while allowing room for reconsideration of its arguments (the film actually has points where it asks to stop the film and hold a discussion among the audience). Throughout this epic documentary lies the vexing question: is mass violence necessary for social change? While I am queasy about the answer the film puts forth, I certainly was left with more to think about than I have in a long time, and presented in a way that is passionate, immediately impactful and hard to forget.
YES (YES for the entire 255 minute film - #5 FOR 1968 between 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and GOLDEN SWALLOW)

Dodeskaden (1970, Akira Kurosawa)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065649/
TSPDT #863
Kurosawa literally goes slumming in a fanciful but not entirely satisfying mosaic of fractured lives in a Japanese urban settlement. It's odd to see Kurosawa having a more level view of the poor after taking an imperially condescending, Rockefeller Republican approach to them seven years prior in HIGH AND LOW. If only these amiable charity cases could convert Kurosawa's steady stream of sentimentality into currency... Interesting to note that, this being Kurosawa's first color film, he came to color later than Mizoguchi, Ozu or even Naruse -- seems odd since Kurosawa struck me as being the most open to innovation among them.
mixed

Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao Hsien) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459666/
My second time traveling through Hou's tripartite exploration of Taiwanese history, society and sexual relations circa 1966, 1911 and 2005. I managed to write 14 pages of notes this time, trying to sort out why something about this film bugs me even though it is brilliant in many respects, not the least in its juxtaposing three historical periods of the same society such that each looks like it came from a different planet. Part I (1966) still strikes me as being much more fully realized than the other two, even though its story is the most threadbare -- there's just so much more deftness to the synchronization of camera, staging and action than in the other two, which feel flatter and less attentive to nuances in personal interaction. There's one moment in Part I where actress Shu Qi sees her crush for the first time in months and the way her body posture conveys her ecstasy resonates for miles. In Part II (1911) everyone is rigid and formal, which may be the point, but there's still not as much subtextual body language as in Part I. In Part III (2005) everyone is zonked out in their own self-absorption, which may be the point, but again there's a lack of subtextual or observational detail to make it seem like other than a one-dimensional tract on the malaise of 21st century life. Makes you wonder if Hou is privileging the generation of his own youth while looking with a less endearing distance at earlier and later times.

But then my dubiousness found justification in the Q&A that followed the screening I attended, facilitated by Apple's iChat technology (which I heartily endorse for when you and your loved one are pining in your respective homes in the evening). Through murky video transmitted from halfway across the world, Hou disclosed that each part of the triptych was to be directed by a different director, and when the two other directors backed out he had to fill in with less than two months of total prep time. This to me explains the undercooked quality of the last two installments (I suspect that the first part was his). But despite my suspicions of a compromised great work being confirmed, I took heart in his acccount for his philosophy of filmmaking: "I do my best to explore creative possiblities within the inevitable limitations of the situation" -- to identify the problems of a given scenario and exercise creativity in solving them -- such as turning the 1911 sequence into a silent movie with intertitles, when his actors couldn't speak the archaic dialect properly. Unexpected brilliant discoveries like that may very well be what makes filmmaking a fulfilling venture.
still a firm yes

Black God, White Devil (1964, Glauber Rocha)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058006/
TSPDT #864
A blisteringly butt-kicking dose of Brazilian Cinema Novo, this landmark film by badass-of-the-people Rocha seems directly inspired by Godard's BREATHLESS but is a wholly unique work -- sort of a sub-equatorial cross between BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. A livestock herder kills his boss in a rage, then flees cross-country with his wife to join a wandering Christian cult, which leads to the unforgettable scene where the cult leader topples over his tabernacle with a knife plunged in his back right after he slays a newborn infant as an unholy sacrifice. Pursuing them all is Antonio das Mortes, a professional mercenary paid by the fatcats, and who in an alternate history of cinema would go down as that year's most ruthless onscreen mofo (the same year, mind you, that Leone made Eastwood into an icon). It's often brilliantly unclear who one should be rooting for in all of this; the characters seem to serve as Brechtian stand-ins for the different social factions clashing across the impoverished Brazilian northland: bandits and religious charismatics, capitalist hoarders and the working poor. As far as I'm concerned there's no other film out there in sorer need of a DVD release.
YES (3 for 1964 between GERTRUD and THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW)

National Velvet (1944, Clarence Brown)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037120/
I admit I had my preconceptions, that this was light kiddie fare. But at the same time there was the name Clarence Brown below the title -- the same man who helmed INTRUDER IN THE DUST which I really enjoyed. And I must say that I noticed certain stylistic consistencies between that film and this one. There's a genuine buzz infused in many of the dialogue scenes, especially among groups, that is more striking than your average Hollywood banter. There are a couple of dinner scenes where Brown really shows his ability to cut from shot to shot to keep things lively and create interesting cross-looks between family members and you feel like you have a seat at the table. It does default into commonplace sentimentality at times, esp. near the end I think (I didn't like how the Rooney subplot was resolved, and it seemed anticlimactic after the stirring race -- really one of the very best horse race sequences ever, if not the best I've ever seen). Overall this picture has a lively energy to it, and a genuine, almost musical sense of small town life and family chemistry that's up there with Minnelli and Ford.

Of course I can't leave out mention of Elizabeth Taylor, since this movie made her into an overnight star. I was a tad sketchy at first because she seemed to inhabit the role of ingenue child actress a bit too cannily, like she's aware of being watched - even young Judy Garland could accomplish a certain un-self-consciousness now and then. There's an interesting early scene in the girl's bedroom where little Liz is practicing horse riding in bed while lying on her back. I know that Lee groaned at the Chicago Reader review making cheap inferences that the film had a Freudian subtext beneath it, and maybe that set me up to look for it, but the way Liz is "riding the horse" on the bed was a tad suggestive, if only for the eagerness in which she performed that activity. Her performance can't help but give the impression that she's too eager to please, to hit her marks, like when she's clutching her raffle ticket to win the pony with fists clenched and eyes closed, or crying over her sick horse in the stable.

But what turned me around was seeing her disguised as a boy -- shorn of her long tresses and dressed in an improbable motley jockey outfit of violet and yellow that practically screams out her gender while no one seems to notice, she's no longer a darling child star, but another creature the likes of which I'd never seen before. She's neither boy, girl or woman, but a pint-sized vessel of pure determination, her violet gaze beaming intently from her disguised porcelain visage, no longer counterbalanced by her raven locks. It is in that sequence where she overcomes the actor's standard disability of acting and places her stamp with sheer Presence.

yes (#10 for 1944 between LAURA and HETS/TORMENT)

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