Pratidwandi (The Adversary)

Having now seen all three films in Ray’s “Calcutta trilogy”, I can say that it’s as good as, if not better than, the “Apu trilogy”.  The stories are not connected by common characters, but by similar characters in similar situations: young men trying to find a place for themselves in modern Calcutta.  This one is perhaps the most “European” of Ray’s movies, with a looser narrative, quick little flashbacks and fantasies, and sequences in negative.  And these are the most internationally aware of Ray’s characters — they discuss Vietnam, read Playboy, go to Swedish pornos, study Che Guevara and eat Chinese food (with utensils, even!).  There’s a great little moment where Ray makes fun of hippies, and another where the main character stops to ogle a girl crossing the street and flashes back to an anatomy lecture about breasts.  This movie isn’t as moralistic as Seemabaddha or Jana Aranya, but it does have a striking revolutionary spirit to it.  Will someone PLEASE give this man his due on DVD?  Rating: 10

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The Sound of Music

I’m not inherently against wholesome family films.  Granted, it’s not my favorite kind of movie, but if it’s entertaining enough (The Wizard of Oz), I’m all for it.  But this is just too much.  This precocious brood of rosy-cheeked little moppets is too sugar-sweet for my tastes.  I don’t even like the songs that much, which is unfortunate because just about all of them are sung twice.  The scenery and color is lovely, though, and at least it’s not too dull for a 3-hour picture.  Rating: 5

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Through the Olive Trees

This is the third film of a trilogy.  Although I’ve seen the first (Where Is My Friend’s House?), the second (And Life Goes On) is only available on VHS, and since I don’t have a VCR anymore, I had to make do.  Although I’m certain this DVD from the library is a bootleg — the cover is a badly printed replica of the European DVD, the picture looks very grainy and has improper anamorphic encoding, and the menu is the cheapest one I’ve ever seen.

And it’s a real shame about missing the second film, because the three films are intricately connected.  I’ve had to fill in the gaps with some online research.  The first film is a simple story of a young boy trying to return a notebook he borrowed from a friend.  I wasn’t impressed with it when I first saw it, but now that I’ve warmed up to Kiarostami, I owe it another look some day.  The second film (so I’ve read) features an actor playing a film director searching for the children he cast in a film called Where Is My Friend’s House? after an earthquake.  This film has a different actor playing a director making a film called And Life Goes On.   It’s an incredibly fascinating web of self-reference… actors from Where Is My Friend’s House play themselves, and I’m sure there are countless references to ALGO that I’m missing.  On one level, it’s a comic look at the process of filmmaking.  On another, it’s about people coping with a tragic disaster (the earthquake).  And on yet another, it’s the story of a sweet courtship.  And what makes it work is that none of these things are overplayed, all are done in a restrained documentary style.  They come together seamlessly in a cloud of cinema.  And the ending is truly magnificent.  The final scene (and the opening credits) is scored, I think the first time I’ve heard music in a Kiarostami film.  However, it’s appropriate for the scene and helps comment on the separation of reality and fiction.

As with any Kiarostami film, it’s slow going and I admit there were times when it tried my patience but overall it was really worth it.  Now I really need to chase down a copy of And Life Goes On.  Rating: 8

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8 1/2 Women

Not one of Greenaway’s high points, but not as bad as its reputation suggests, either.  It largely depends on how much you buy into the conceit.  At first I resisted it, after a while I started to get into it.  As a tribute to Fellini, the connections are rather fleeting, but I enjoyed the basic idea of the plot, and its resolution.  The dialogue, however, continued to bug me.  The absurdly frank sexual discussion just doesn’t work on any level, and by the 7th or 8th time I heard someone say “prick” I was bored with it.  Also, this one REALLY could have been livened up with a Nyman score to match the striking cinematography.  Rating: 6

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The Early Films of Peter Greenaway

Intervals - One of Peter Greenaway’s earliest shorts.  It’s an experiment in rhythmic editing, but unlike Vertical Features Remake, it doesn’t expand much on its concept.  As such, it ought to feel like a simple mathematical exercise.  And yet, it has a hypnotic poetry to it.  Fleeting, but appealing.  Rating: 6

 

H is for House - Now this feels empty.  There is a bit of intrigue in the way the narration (primarily a list of “H” words) is matched with the images, but there isn’t much rhyme or reason to it.  The synchronicities that are there are weakened by the ones that aren’t (kind of like that whole Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz phenomenon).  Perhaps that’s the point, but it didn’t resonate with me at all.  Rating: 5

 

Windows - This seems to be one of the launching points for Greenaway’s masterpiece The Falls.  In fact, some or all of it may even reappear in that film.  It definitely showcases his obsession with numbering and categorizing things.  There’s a very very dry sense of humor at work here.  Rating: 8

 

Water Wrackets - Here the Greenaway conceptual schtick wears thin.  I don’t even know what to say about this one, it was entirely tedious.  Rating: 2

 

Dear Phone - The problem with a lot of Greenaway stuff, especially the shorts, is that to have it described it to you is as good as seeing it.  Here we have several shots of those distinctive London red phone booths, intercut with stories about various misadventures involving telephones.  As the stories are read by the narrator, they appear onscreen as hand-written notes, complete with scratch-outs and corrections.  There are some of the common Greenaway tics here, in particular categorizing (the shots of phone booths are often grouped by theme… phone booths at dusk, phone booths with buses passing in front of them, et cetera), obsession with names (all of the stories have a central character with the initials H.C. and usually involve someone named Zelda), and repeating patterns.  The stories are only slightly amusing, however, and this is really all concept and not much fun.  The last story has a nice twist of reflexiveness to it, but it’s not worth sitting through the previous 15 minutes.  Rating: 5

  

A Walk Through H - This one is the longest, and the best, of the set.  All the familiar elements of Greenaway’s early work come together — precision editing, oddball names, ornithology, convoluted stories, the number 92, “Tulse Luper”, cataloging, repeating themes, Michael Nyman score, dry wit.  It’s kind of a warm-up to The Falls (and also contains a significant link to A Zed and Two Noughts), and would satisfy in a pinch if one wanted a taste of that film without the intimidating running time.  Greenaway’s artistic sensibility shines though, not only from the intricate “maps”, but also in the gestalt of the film as a whole.  Very intriguing.  Rating: 9

 

Goyokin

Does this sound familiar?  Lone, honorable samurai embarks on vengeful mission to stop the evil plans of corrupt rival samurai.  He stoically rejects the love of his faithful woman, picks up a good-natured sidekick and a couple of comic tagalongs, and slices through hordes of minions (arterial spray galore) to get to the stark, lonely final showdown.  Goyokin doesn’t do a lot to distinguish itself from dozens of similar stories, but it’s done well.  Entertaining (despite some slow pacing) with some really nice images along the way.  I’m still not a big Tatsuya Nakadai fan, though.  Rating: 7 

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The Graduate (rewatch)

And the second half of the double-header is an old favorite.  I manage to watch The Graduate every few years or so and I always enjoy the hell out of it.  The choices Nichols makes are so bold and exciting (it’s a far more cinematic work than Woolf), in the long takes, the clever editing, the use of montage, and of course the music.  Few non-musicals have such an iconic marriage of music and image.  I love how there’s one stretch where you basically hear “Scarborough Fair” five times in a row (although in different variations).  And so many great shots.  Just to name one that I rarely see mentioned: Mrs. Robinson, drenched from rain and looking tiny, nearly cowering in a corner, but in her own way victorious.  It’s a killer shot.  Rating: 10

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (rewatch)

I’m getting a little burnt out on movies right now.  After a string of subtitled dramas, I needed something that I didn’t have to concentrate on too much.  So I decided to go for the Mike Nichols’ first two movies double-header.  First up is one I haven’t seen for a while.  Not exactly light entertainment — this is a brutal, intense adaptation of Albee’s brilliant play.  Where Scenes from a Marriage is a slow burn, this is more like a tempest in a teacup.  Of course, Scenes is more grounded in reality whereas Woolf takes it a little over the top, but not into the realm of implausibility.  When the film reaches its climax, we are as devastated by the events as the characters are.  It’s a terribly cynical look at marriage, and yet there’s still a small ray of ambiguous hope at the end.  Burton and Taylor are absolutely magnificent, George Segal is pretty good, unfortunately Sandy Dennis isn’t that hot.  Perhaps it’s just because her character is meant to be annoying, but her drunk acting (and this entire movie is drunk acting) doesn’t ring true.  Rating: 9

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Shakha Proshakha (The Branches of the Tree)

Satyajit Ray’s second-to-last film touches on themes common to his later work: issues of integrity and corruption, the disintegration of the family, finding one’s path in life.  Three brothers return home to cope with their father’s recent heart attack, their senile grandfather, and the fourth brother (Soumitra Chatterjee, once again) who has been mentally unhinged by a head injury.  It’s an intelligent film, but one that is too talky, stiff and dry.  The production value sometimes looks cheap, in that made-for-TV way that often plagues Ray’s color films, although the picnic scene is lovely.  What really shocked me was Chatterjee’s performance.  It’s dreadful, but to be fair he did have lousy material to work with.  [As a sidenote, I have to say that one cultural barrier I find impossible to overcome is the way Indians eat with their fingers.  Not just picking food up and eating it, but slopping their fingers around on the plate, sticking them in their mouths and slurping the food off them, licking them clean.  It's really disgusting to me.]  Rating: 6

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Rabbits

This mini-series works better as snippets within Inland Empire.  On its own, it starts out creepy and unusual, but soon grows tedious as you wait for the monotony to be broken up with the occasional curveball.  There are probably mysteries to be explored here, but unlike most Lynch films, I feel no desire to pursue them.  Rating: 4

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