Csend és kiáltás (Silence and Cry)

I found this quite a bit harder to follow than either The Round-Up or The Red and the White.  As far as I can tell, it involves a Red Army freedom fighter named István (András Kozák) hiding out from counter-revolutionary forces in a farmhouse.  The commander in charge likes asserting his power and making the citizens do humiliating things.  But for some reason, even though he knows the farmer and his family are hiding István, he lets it slide.  Then István faces an ethical dilemma.

This one seems to require more familiarity with Hungarian history than Jancso’s more famous films, it has less universality.  But there is some compelling material about the abuse and arbitrary cruelty of power.  Even among those on the same side, there’s a power structure and people are always telling those “under” them what to do.  Jancso’s cinematography is impressive as always, very intricate choreography as the camera glides around the actors and the landscape.  Still, I was a little too perplexed by the situation and the character relationships for it to be very effective.  Rating: Fair (69)

IMDb

A Change of Pace

Lately, I have been somewhat preoccupied.  Between hunting for a job and now an impending divorce (congratulations please, not condolences… this is a Very Good Thing), among other distractions, I just don’t have enough time and energy for reviews.  So I’ve decided that after over 10 years of writing a review for every movie I watch, I am going to start being more selective.  90% of what I watch will probably still get reviewed.  But I’m not going to write up every rewatch, or every major film that’s already widely reviewed.

This change, coupled with the fact that despite all the free time on my hands lately I just haven’t had that much time for movies, means that this blog will be a bit less active than it has been in the past.  Also, I will frequently be posting just brief thoughts instead of the 4- or 5-paragraph reviews that I’ve been doing recently.  Perhaps when all the dust has settled this blog will return to normal.  But it shouldn’t be a huge difference, and I do hope to post thoughtful, lengthy reviews when I have something meaningful to say.

For the record, I just rewatched Herzog’s Signs of Life and it’s still really good.

Dealer

A former junkie (Felícián Keresztes) is off the stuff himself, but he continues to deal to make money.  Over the course of a day, he makes his deliveries riding around town on his bicycle.  He has a wide variety of customers.  One is a famous religious leader, painfully constipated from cocaine withdrawal.  One is a man severely burned, looking for a fix that will put him out of his misery for good.  One is an ex-girlfriend (Anikó Szigeti) with a daughter (Edina Balogh) who may or may not be the dealer’s child.  One is a man (Dusán Vitanovics) whose mother sets a trap for the dealer, threatening him never to sell to her son again.  One is a student on a bad mushroom trip, mechanically repeating “Mom, Dad, Mom, Dad” on an endless loop.  One is an old friend trying to kick, theorizing that the dealer’s watered down heroin will help him get off the really good stuff.  Along the way, the dealer also sees his girlfriend Barbara (Barbara Thurzó), who pressures him to give up the business, and his long-suffering father.

Four years ago, I saw my first film by Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf, Tejút.  It was a very static movie… literally, as it consists of 10 immobile shots.  It was a difficult viewing experience, but with some intriguing absurdist humor, fine compositional sense and an effective ambient soundtrack.  This earlier film has some of those same elements, and some very different.  There is certainly no absurdist humor, although a couple of moments did seem like an attempt at black comedy.  Far from immobile shots, here the camera is almost always wandering, gracefully and precisely circling around the characters, occasionally pausing for a close-up.  The soundtrack is an interesting situation.  Every minute or so, three even, mid-range electronic tones repeat, and this happens throughout the entire film (except during one key scene).  There’s little variation, they almost form the movie’s steady heartbeat.  With ambient drone mixed in, it’s an unusual soundscape… one that may annoy some viewers.

Stylistically there’s a lot to be impressed with.  The cold color tones evoke dead spaces, morgues disguised as apartments.  The somber, reflective mood has evoked more than one comparison to Tarr and Tarkovsky.  But as far as content goes, it’s a lot of the same drug movie clichés, just at half-speed.  The film gets more interesting the further it gets away from drugs, as the dealer interacts with his father or the child.  Just because Keresztes wears the same blank, stoic expression doesn’t make the same old drug scenes any deeper in meaning.  Some of it feels fresh (the burn victim) but much of it was too familiar, and I don’t know if any of it really says anything meaningful.

And I have some other quibbles.  The ending is unearned.  I just didn’t buy that this guy would do that.  There is some less-than-stellar acting… when Szigeti speaks English in a phone conversation, it doesn’t sound like broken English or heavily accented English.  It sounds like someone who learned her lines phonetically.  And I’m no expert on drug dealers, but my impression is it would be pretty unusual for the same person to dealing cocaine, heroin and mushrooms.  But the situation could be different in Hungary, and I could be dead wrong about that anyway.

I like Fliegauf’s craftsmanship, and I feel there’s probably a winner somewhere in his filmography.  But two so far have been misses.  Not huge misses, but flawed enough to give me pause.  Rating: Fair (66)

IMDb

Dynamic:01 : The Best of DavidLynch.com

In the absence of any feature work in the past 7 years, the best way to see what David Lynch has been doing with himself lately (not much these days besides music) is to be a member of his website.  Unfortunately, membership costs money and even though I love his work, there are very few websites I would pay for.  However, he did release this DVD collecting some of the “best” material previously available only to paying members.

The Darkened Room – A Japanese woman shows us the view from her apartment, tells us some facts about bananas, and then pleads with us to look at her friend, sitting alone in a darkened room.  A drama unfolds.  With ties directly to Inland Empire, this is Lynch taking the mundane, making it silly, then taking us somewhere chilling.  He really makes the directness of the “cheap” digital video work for him.  8

Boat – The problem with Lynch’s shorts is that they often feel like mere whims.  Undeveloped ideas half-heartedly fleshed out in the editing suite.  The rumbling soundtrack that is usually so effective in his work didn’t do anything for me here, but I did get a chuckle when the boat pulls out of the dock and there’s David in it.  4

Lamp – Lynch mixes colors and applies a plaster substitute called “Fix-All” (actually “Fix-It-All” according to the bag) to an “organic lamp” home project he’s been working on.  There’s no artistic value to this, and it’s virtually indistinguishable from any ordinary YouTube DIY video.  But I just love listening to the guy talk.  His casual, Midwestern-y drawl just puts me at ease, and I love how down-to-earth he is.  Put him and Herzog in a room together, and I could watch them talk about anything for hours.  7

Out Yonder: The Neighbor Boy – Oh lord.  I’ve already seen a couple of these and they were excruciating.  Lynch and his son hang out on lawn chairs, and with pitched-high voices, discuss some bizarre situation while using the words “beez”, “bein’” and “beez bein’” about a billion times.  Almost as painful as the “Dumbland” series.  2

Industrial Soundscape – A 5-second loop of computer animation repeats over a 10-minute drone of ambient/industrial music.  The music is not bad and that object in the foreground is intriguingly indecipherable (looks like a partially melted sundae without the dish).  But pretty worthless overall.  3

The Bug Crawls – Another animation, in which a giant insect approaches a house (or a normal insect approaches a tiny house) and climbs up it.  This one works better than the previous one due to its sense of progression and some small amount of “narrative” tension.  The sound of the bug’s legs is really icky and unnerving too.  6

Intervalometer Experiments – Three time-lapse photography shorts.  Two of them are utter snoozefests and not even worth describing.  The other shows a stone staircase and as the sun changes position, shadows from a nearby tree start to creep up on it and eventually overwhelm it.  It’s a fairly neat effect, especially in conjunction with the soundtrack, but nothing to get too excited about.  3

Q&A – Eight segments where Lynch answers questions from subscribers.  There’s nothing hugely revelatory here (“What was it like working with Marilyn Manson?”) but as I said, I enjoy listening to the dude talk about stuff.  7

As a whole this is a pretty weak package, except for seriously hardcore Lynch fans.  I would have been disappointed if I’d bought this, but there are a few good bits if you can find it for rental somewhere.  Rating: Fair (60)

IMDb

I Fidanzati (rewatch)

Giovanni (Carlo Cabrini) and Liliana (Anna Canzi) have been sweethearts for a long time.  The passion is fading in their relationship, they seem to be driven more by habit than romance.  The factory Giovanni works at has offered him a promotion if he will spend 18 months in Sicily to help with a new plant.  He takes the offer, and as he goes about his solitary life, his mind continually drifts back to Liliana.

This is such a lovely film.  Olmi employs truly masterful editing, as memories and reality blur into each other, sound from one spilling into the other.  It’s such an impressionistic view, these resonant fragments of thought floating around, drifting in and out of Giovanni’s mind and heart.  His loneliness and isolation — even at a wild street party, he’s in his own world — are both a symptom of his yearning for Liliana and a cause of it.

The two amateur actors are both splendid in their body language, and their eyes speak volumes.  Despite Cabrini’s rugged Jack Palance-esque looks, there’s a sad vulnerability to his demeanor.  One of the most poignant moments is his thwarted attempt to join in the late-night antics at the factory’s residential hostel.  We see less of Canzi, but as the film reaches its romantic crescendo and she reads her letters to the camera, her own vulnerability and humanity is laid bare.

The film also provides commentary on how work in the modern, industrialized society takes its toll on family and romance.  The people are not used to this high-pressure, fast-paced world where you go to work even when it rains.  Where the only shot at getting a little bit ahead is to separate yourself from your loved ones.

It’s lovingly photographed with elegant tracking shots, emphasis on detail and variations in focus.  Olmi makes those imposing factories look beautiful yet cold.  I really adore Gianni Ferrio’s score as well, at times lyrical and at times with a casual bubbliness that recalls M. Hulot’s Holiday.  This is a movie that doesn’t sound like much at all when you describe it, but the experience is deeply affecting and bittersweet.  As a storm approaches, the future of Giovanni and Liliana is uncertain.  But the longing is palpable.  Rating: Great (95)

IMDb

Dastforoush (The Peddler)

A film in three parts.  In the first, a couple is living in a ramshackle old bus, with their three children.  Their kids are all crippled and infirm from malnutrition, inbreeding, or both.  The woman gives birth to another child, and the couple tries to find a suitable place to abandon it where it will have a better life.  In the second, an obviously mentally disturbed man takes care of his near-catatonic mother.  He vacillates between doting on her and threatening to get married and leave her.  In the third, a man is selling stolen clothing for a gangster.  He’s hauled off to the boss, and fears for his life because he knows too much.  He keeps visualizing himself trying to escape and getting killed in the process.

Each short has its own style and cinematographer.  The first is the most straightforward… I’m tempted to say “neorealist” but that isn’t quite right.  The second has a Terry Gilliam vibe to it, very in-your-face and over-the-top.  The last is heavily noir-influenced, feeling like a classic Hollywood crime drama.  The three parts form the stages of birth, life and death.

All the dialogue appears to be dubbed, which results in some performances that feel sloppy.  The first segment has some particularly bad crying scenes.  And some of the visual metaphors are pretty clunky and/or tired.  But overall, this is a compelling, gritty film from Makhmalbaf, albeit one that’s very very bleak.  Moments connecting the stories indicate these social issues persist from birth until death.  Poverty, lack of adequate social services and crime all stem from man’s natural cruelty, greed and indifference.

Visually dynamic but quite depressing, it works well despite some flaws.  I wish I could have seen a print that wasn’t so washed out.  Rating: Good (76)

IMDb

Wisconsin Death Trip

Michael Lesy’s 1973 book of the same name collects photographs and news items from the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in the 1890′s.  It tells the tale of a community driven to murder, suicide, arson, vandalism, and fraud by a vanishing mining industry, poverty and harsh conditions.  James Marsh’s 1999 adaptation of the book reprints some of the photographs with narration of the stories by Ian Holm (and Jeffrey Golden as the newspaper editor), while also reenacting the scenes.  The film is broken into four sections — named for the four seasons — each ending with current footage of the town, and accompanying stories that suggest some of these problems still persist.

I have a morbid fascination with this sort of material.  I’m currently reading Bestial, a true crime book about Earle Leonard Nelson, a very odd man who was a serial killer in the 1920′s.  Earlier this year I read a book about the notorious ghoul Ed Gein.  In yesterday’s review of Drugs Are Nice I mentioned the band Caroliner, who sang about similar tales of bizarre 1800′s Americana.  So this is right in my wheelhouse.  I’m surprised I never heard of the book, apparently it was a cult hit.  I intend to check it out for myself.

The movie features absolutely stunning black & white photography (color for the modern day portions) with heaps of striking and haunting imagery.  The tone is melancholy but bemused, with Holm’s narration having a sardonic deadpan tinge to it.  I was quickly entranced with these weird and disturbing stories.  And I quickly grew tired of them as well.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how much better this must work in book format, where you can browse it on a whim, picking out a tidbit here and there.  Presented over and over again like this for 75 minutes, it gets wearisome, the same melancholy but bemused tone.

The structure reminded me of Peter Greenaway’s The Falls, little snippets of bizarre stories with a deadpan narrator.  But while that film is more than 2.5 times longer than this one (though it wasn’t really intended to be watched all the way through in one sitting) it holds up better due to its fantastic whimsy, greater variation in the tales, and intricate conceptual backbone.  That film can be wearying too, but the effect isn’t as cumulative as it is in Marsh’s film… stick around a few minutes, and something different will happen.  Here there isn’t enough variety in either tone or content to hold one’s attention.  I found myself looking forward to the contemporary segments just for a change of pace and scenery, even though the tone of them is a bit too ironic for my tastes.

It’s an excellent exercise in style with gorgeous cinematography.  Some of the stories told were really something, and it made me eager to check out Lesy’s book.  But as a filmic experience, it can be too tedious and repetitive.  Rating: Fair (68)

IMDb

Drugs Are Nice: A Suckumentary

When I was in my early 20′s one of my favorite albums was “Drugs Are Nice” by Suckdog.  Suckdog was a noise band/performance art group founded by Lisa Crystal Carver (also creator of Rollerderby, one of the best zines ever published) and her husband (now ex-) Jean-Louis Costes.  There was a rotating crew of other members, including comic book writer/Renaissance gal Dame Darcy.  Suckdog’s music was extreme on the ears, a lot of sludgy noise and screeching vocals.  The subject matter was equally extreme, dealing with sexual perversity, bodily functions, violence, raging hostility and operatic desperation.  Think G.G. Allin meets John Waters and you’re in the ballpark.

This DVD-only release is not exactly a documentary, but a collection of interviews, performance footage, music videos and short films.  It’s about what you’d expect the Suckdog experience to be, and the performances feature excessive nudity, simulated sex/rape, screaming, fluids, fights that may or may not be real, and strange soap opera acts existing on the very fringes of society.  It was interesting to put some visuals to the Suckdog phenomenon that I was primarily familiar with only by audio.  But I wish there had been more interview segments, as I’m certain there are tons of bizarre stories to be told.  I’m also curious to know exactly how much drugs actually did play a part, and what kinds (I’m guessing LSD).  But probably a lot of that is covered in Carver’s writings.

I’m not a fan of Suckdog (or Happy Flowers, or Caroliner, both similar in their unlistenability) any more but the video — most of it exceptionally grainy, dark and shaky — made for a fun trip down memory lane.  I might even listen to that album again.  I wish I still had all those old issues of Rollerderby.  Rating: Fair (68)

no IMDb page, but you can buy the DVD here if for some reason you want to own this crazy thing

All About My Mother (rewatch)

I don’t know if I actually have a whole lot to say about this movie.  I simply love everything about it.  It’s such a warm and accepting movie.  Almodóvar knows how to work the dramatic angles so that they form an endlessly engaging web of relationships and circumstance.  There isn’t a moment of the story that I would call “dull” or “pointless”.   Each piece builds on this marvelous surrogate family.  You couldn’t ask for a better support system than Manuela, Huma, Rosa, and especially Agrado.  Antonia San Juan gives such an endearing performance.

I’ve kind of got a lot going on in my life at the moment, so I’ll leave it at that.  Supplemented by always interesting art direction, cinematography that highlights the wonderful color schemes, and fantastic scoring by Alberto Iglesias, it’s Almodóvar’s most fulfilling, flawless work.  The script is absolutely brilliant and the performances are perfection.  It will be rising higher up my top 100 the next time I revise the list.  Rating: Masterpiece (98)

IMDb

Chaalchitra (The Kaleidoscope)

Dipu (Anjan Dutt) is an aspiring writer.  He meets with a newspaper editor (Utpal Dutt), who tells Dipu to bring him a story about the “middle-class milieu” within two days.  Dipu starts scrounging around for a story worth telling, but encounters one problem after another in finding something to write about.  He tries to prod his mother (Gita Sen), but she’s not taking the bait.

This is a pretty amusing little film by Mrinal Sen.  Anjan Dutt (who would later appear in Sen’s Antareen) makes his debut appearance here.  He’s very enjoyable as he tries to uncover drama in his community, but finds mostly just a lot of petty squabbling and passive-aggressive snubbing.  At one point he literally fans the flames, to predictably disappointing results.  Gita Sen makes a terrific foil for him as well, obstinate and sassy.

There’s some political/social commentary at play too, of course.  One lengthy scene shows Dipu having a devil of a time trying to catch a taxi in the insane bustle of rush hour (by the time he finally gets one, the moment he needed it for has already passed, just like one of his stories).  When he returns to the editor, they have a discussion about Calcutta’s pollution problem — coal stoves are a running motif throughout the film — and when Dipu protests that the citizenry can’t afford the solution, the editor calls him a communist.

Unfortunately, the transfer I saw was godawful but I could tell there was some fine camerawork going on, particularly during the odd dream sequence.  There are a number of New Wave-style flourishes, and I was reminded of Ray’s “Calcutta Trilogy”.  In fact, as in Pratidwandi, there’s a scene that pokes fun at clueless visiting hippies trying to absorb some of the region’s spirituality.

Not entirely sure what to make of the ending, but it’ll give me something to chew on.  Rating: Good (74)

IMDb