Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy tops my list of trilogies, followed by Pedro Costa's Fontainhas Trilogy.

Saddly haven't seen any... Thought a little about it, Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy is probably my favorite one. And if Night-Dawn-Day of the dead can be considered one (without the stuff that followed), it might be second.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Throwing in a vote for Linklater's Before movies ...

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

For me it's A Grand Day Out - The Wrong Trousers - A Close Shave.

Then Apu and Mad Max.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Blue is the story of Julie, who survives a car accident but loses her husband and young daughter. She spends time in hospital but even after her release its clear she has a long way to go to heal. Unable to properly grieve--she watches the funeral from her hospital bed via video link, it doesn't provide any kind of closure or comfort--Blue chronicles her journey from the edge of suicide, through denial, hostility and reclusiveness, back to embracing life. But it's not a tear-jerker; just the opposite. It's not asking for sympathy as much as understanding. Julie makes it clear she doesn't have any need for peoples' sympathy anyway (grief turns her into a bit of a jerk). It's a gutsy move to try to get an audience to sympathize with one so unsympathetic, but that's the challenge. And the harder the challenge, the greater the reward. Blue brings Julie--and us--to this point of understanding without the use of emotional manipulations but through observing her responses and reactions to a world that is carrying on whether she accepts it or not. Life goes on; it won't stop. It can't stop.

So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Maybe that's a simplification, but hey--I'm trying to keep it simple here. Blue is rich with visual and sonic symbolism; it tells its story through engaging our senses, sometimes dreamy but even when it isn't it still has a surreal quality. I don't have the time or coherence to describe it comprehensibly. I'll just say that although it's about coping with death, Blue is really about being reborn.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Some unfinished business...I still owe a pick.

So let's go with Jeremy Blake's Winchester.

and here it is:



Meant to be shown on a repeating loop, it's repeated twice in the video (it's actually only 18 minutes long.)

(Also part of a trilogy, followed by 1906 and Century 21.)

 

[kihei]

Some unfinished business...I still owe a pick.

So let's go with Jeremy Blake's Winchester.

and here it is:



Meant to be shown on a repeating loop, it's repeated twice in the video (it's actually only 18 minutes long.)

(Also part of a trilogy, followed by 1906 and Century 21.)

Just watched a chunk of it. Nothing like being totally unsettled before coffee. Great pick to write about.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Three Colours: Blue (1993) - A mistake-free film that did not deliver the gut punch that I tend to look for in my favorite films. I don't know why that was and it would be wrong of me to fault the director for that. There is nothing tasteless about the film and on paper, it does everything right. Binoche is perfect and does not rely on a writer's words to make for a great performance - as stated above, one could enjoy and resonate through this film without understanding a single word. Instead, her facial expressions and composure dominates. The structure of the stort was done with great artistry as well. While the movie is chronological, I appreciated that the scene order did not necessitate the following of a continuous thread to tell its story. A big chunk of the film presents itself as a collage of a grieving woman's aimless drifting. I thought that coordinated well with Julie's emotional state.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Some unfinished business...I still owe a pick.

So let's go with Jeremy Blake's Winchester.

and here it is:



Meant to be shown on a repeating loop, it's repeated twice in the video (it's actually only 18 minutes long.)

(Also part of a trilogy, followed by 1906 and Century 21.)

First, thank you for this. A lot younger version of myself used to write for a swiss movie mag and our main material was covering various festivals. Of the ones that were assigned to me was Montreal's International Festival of Films on Art and that short reminded me of these not-so-simpler times - I sure would have been thrilled to find such a gem there.

Surfing between the figurative and abstract forms, the film achieves a little feat: featuring a "story" without a word or protagonist. I won't spoil what the "narrative" here is about - once you've spotted the ghost characters haunting the house, curiosity (and YouTube) should take any viewer through the same fascinating journey I went through (and if not, just click on the YouTube suggestion - Winchester Mistery House Documentary (1963) - that doc in itself is a small masterpiece, and the fact that it used a female narration over absence and abandonment 13 years before Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert makes it, to me, an automatic historic piece*). This discovery was even better than Blake's take on the same story, but it doesn't take away anything from the short. It is very modernist in its formal approach, reducing film characters to shadows, reducing cinematographic figuration to lights and colors, making it an interesting - even if somewhat conventional - reflection on and of the medium. The fact that it is meant to be seen as a loop certainly brings another - maybe postmodern - layer to it. What is more interesting is the way it chooses to present its "story" (it is not merely a theme here, there is something being told). The use of ink blots could both refer to Winchester's mental health or to her (and ours) interpretative effort when confronted to something eluding our normal understanding of things. The film proposes itself to the viewers as an interpretative challenge - a kind of "what do you see in here?" - a reminder that we often find what we are looking for (for some, ghost shadows).

*16 years before Duras' amazing absence triptych

 

[Kiwi]

I caught event horizon last night by pure chance

That movie has aged really well, the cast is excellent and it's well written, all the characters are sympathetic in some way

There's an air of menace and suspense, the special effects have aged extremely well

For a movie that didn't do well when it was released its bloody solid

8/10 for me

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

First, thank you for this. A lot younger version of myself used to write for a swiss movie mag and our main material was covering various festivals. Of the ones that were assigned to me was Montreal's International Festival of Films on Art and that short reminded me of these not-so-simpler times - I sure would have been thrilled to find such a gem there.

Surfing between the figurative and abstract forms, the film achieves a little feat: featuring a "story" without a word or protagonist. I won't spoil what the "narrative" here is about - once you've spotted the ghost characters haunting the house, curiosity (and YouTube) should take any viewer through the same fascinating journey I went through (and if not, just click on the YouTube suggestion - Winchester Mistery House Documentary (1963) - that doc in itself is a small masterpiece, and the fact that it used a female narration over absence and abandonment 13 years before Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert makes it, to me, an automatic historic piece*). This discovery was even better than Blake's take on the same story, but it doesn't take away anything from the short. It is very modernist in its formal approach, reducing film characters to shadows, reducing cinematographic figuration to lights and colors, making it an interesting - even if somewhat conventional - reflection on and of the medium. The fact that it is meant to be seen as a loop certainly brings another - maybe postmodern - layer to it. What is more interesting is the way it chooses to present its "story" (it is not merely a theme here, there is something being told). The use of ink blots could both refer to Winchester's mental health or to her (and ours) interpretative effort when confronted to something eluding our normal understanding of things. The film proposes itself to the viewers as an interpretative challenge - a kind of "what do you see in here?" - a reminder that we often find what we are looking for (for some, ghost shadows).

*16 years before Duras' amazing absence triptych

Woah, you're jumping the gun there (haha...get it?)

Your comments are greatly appreciated of course, but there's no hurry. Still a few other titles to get to first, beginning with the next MOTW, Adventures of Prince Achmed...a distant ancestor of Winchester?

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I caught event horizon last night by pure chance

That movie has aged really well, the cast is excellent and it's well written, all the characters are sympathetic in some way

There's an air of menace and suspense, the special effects have aged extremely well

For a movie that didn't do well when it was released its bloody solid

8/10 for me

Oh...I think you're looking for the Last Movie You Watched and Rate It thread. Just across the hall.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Woah, you're jumping the gun there (haha...get it?)

Your comments are greatly appreciated of course, but there's no hurry. Still a few other titles to get to first, beginning with the next MOTW, Adventures of Prince Achmed...a distant ancestor of Winchester?

Never been too good to follow the rules, and it was right there!! (sorry about that)

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Never been too good to follow the rules, and it was right there!! (sorry about that)

No biggie. Was really trying to promote some interest in next week's pick.

 

[Jevo]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) dir. Lotte Reininger

A sorcerer has conjured a magicical flying horse, which he presents to the Caliph. The sorcerer however is unwilling to sell it for gold, he wants the Caliphs daughter Dinarsade. Prince Achmed, Dinarsade's brother, objects to the proposition. But is convinced to try out the horse, which flies him away with him. He lands in the magical island realm of Wak Wak. There he meets Pari Banu the beautiful ruler of Wak Wak, and the two fall in love. However the sorcerer has pursued Achmed and arrives in Wak Wak and kidnaps Pari Banu and sells her to the Emperor of China. Achmed has to go rescue her, defeat the sorcerer and return home.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is notable for at least two reasons. It's the oldest surviving feature length animated film. Two older movies are known to have existed, but no surviving prints are known. So that makes it a historical movie. The other notable aspect is that the film isn't made by using any traditional animation technique. But instead made using silhouette animation. Which is essentially backlit cardboard cut outs, which makes characters, sets and props standout as pitch black against a lit background. It's a rarely using technique in animation, and a technique which Reininger more or less invented herself. I can understand why it's rarely used, because it must have been a painstakingly long process to make all these cut outs, and manipulate them from for frame. And it's not because the film is simplistic. It's incredibly detailed. The film really looks amazing. And I can't fathom how much work it must have been to make. As someone who struggles with cutting a square hole in a piece of paper, it feels unreal that it was made this way. The characters also feel life like. Despite having hardly any face, Reininger still makes them emote. And their movements have weight. Only rarely does it feel like the characters are floating while moving about. Something that I feel must be very hard to achieve with this type of animation. Technically I am in awe of this movie, and has been ever since the first time I saw it. In high definition it simply just looks amazing. You can see all the little details in the animation. I don't think I could get tired of watching that.

This movie isn't just well made. It also tells quite a good story. The story is a mix of two stories from One Thousand and One Nights. The first is the story of Prince Achmed from which it has gotten it's name, and the other is the more well known Aladdin. Folk tales have often proved to be good source material for animation films, and it is here as well. The story is of course simplistic in terms of good and evil, as these stories tend to be. The narrative also moves quite fast, but it often does that in folk tales. In a talkie that might have been a problem, but silent films allows the for a faster story telling structure due to intertitles, and as such the movie doesn't feel overly rushed. Of course you aren't going to have big sweeping revelations about life from this story. But if you take it for what it is, which is an entertaining tale about adventure, daring, and making a girl fall in love with you in two minutes because you are handsome. Then I think the movie does a very good job of telling that story.

The adventures of Prince Achmed is only a foot note in film history. It didn't leave a long trail of imitators, and the imitators that it did spawn are largely forgotten. But perhaps because it stands as such a singular work in film history, and because it is so well made, it really is well worth a watch. I am so fond of it, largely because I haven't seen anything else like it.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Reiniger (1926)
“Is the Prince aware of this?”

A series of stories from Arabian Nights involving sorcery, flying, princesses, princes, demons, genies, trickeration. Classic fairy tale/mythology/legendary stuff.

Watching this, I’m drawn into a hypothetical that has crossed my mind on occasion over the years as a film viewer. What would it be like to see this at that time? I think of the (possibly apocryphal) stories of screenings of The Great Train Robbery in the early 1900s where viewers reacted as if the train or the closing gunshot was going to hit them. I think of touchstones like Snow White, Psycho or 2001 which blew people’s minds in the moment. So too I wonder what it would have been like to see this in the 1920s. Seeing it today, I found it entertaining enough. Rudimentary but still rad. But then? I can’t conceive what it would have been like to see even these basic images come to life the way they do.

It’s basic, but therein lies its magic. Simple silhouettes set on backgrounds of varied colors (depending on the story/scene). I liked the Magician in particular and how his various illusions and tricks were depicted. The final shape-shifting fight between the Magician and the Witch has been redone (intentionally or otherwise) in countless fantasy/sci-fi stories since. Again, not sure if this is a direct reference for those that came after but given the date of this production, it could at least make a chronological claim.

The style works pretty well visually. A little surprised I haven't seen more films emulate it, but I suppose the technology and technique moves fast and once animators were able to do newer, more detailed things, they didn't see the need to go backwards.

 

[kihei]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) Directed by Lotte Reiniger

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is allegedly the oldest surviving piece of animation, though it is unlike any extended piece of animation that I have seen. The approach, called silhouette animation, sounds simple--an Arabian Nights-type story told with backlit images made from cardboard cutouts or thin pieces of lead. At 24 frames per second, the execution of this film must have been incredibly time consuming and probably rather boring. That's a lot of cut-outs and minute manipulations. Many of the images are surprising detailed, even beautiful. The overall result is rather pleasing, not to mention surprising The various characters have a degree of personality that I wasn't expecting and the story moves right along and is easy enough to follow. Taken as an art object the work is pretty damn impressive.

While one can see why this form of animation didn't catch on, it is always a curious event to catch the first of anything. It is something a lot easier to do with film art as the medium has only been around for about a century and a half and so its beginnings are more accessible to us. To start with nothing but an idea and to create something new under the sun is quite an act of creation. I am impressed with the imagination and care that went into the construction of this film. The movie may have become an oddity and a footnote, but The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a remarkable achievement nonetheless.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - Folks who balk at old movies because they believe that more technology automatically makes for better films can go kick rocks. I think this movie proves them otherwise and is a pretty strong argument in favor of the timelessness of good art. This movie was released almost a 100 years ago and I think it holds up extremely well on its own. I really enjoyed it. Its got fabulous style. The story was alright but nothing that's particularly more engaging than most stories of its type. It's all in the presentation. The shape-shifting figures. Rising and sinking stars in the blue sky. Pulsating bright colors contrasting with the pitch black characters. Goofy, wandering eyes. A cheeky and emotional score that accentuates the sublime choreography. Quaint (drawn?) backgrounds. A blurry genie who twirls to rescue. I'm genuinely surprised this film doesn't have more of a reputation. I thought it was accessible and the only struggle I had with it was because I was watching a German film with Spanish subtitles, two languages I do not speak. So sometimes, particularly during the first decisive action, I was somewhat lost, but I made sense of it quickly.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Industrial light and magic, 1920s style: The Adventures of Prince Achmed evokes a trip through time to an exotic place. Although its restored print still shows some wear and tear we can imagine how a fresh celluloid nitrate print may have dazzled on a big screen in an opulent theater in 1926 with a live orchestra performing the equally enchanting score. Wow...I envy those who witnessed this dazzling fantasy firsthand, and film audiences of the 20s in general who saw the evolution of a new art form in one of its most innovative and creatively fertile periods.

Animating a film by manipulating cut-out figures must have been a laborious process, but still easier than hand-drawing the figures one frame at at time. Walt Disney would soon find a solution to that challenge: simply form a small army of animators and draw the damn frames one by one. If they can build the pyramids, they can make Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. But back to The Adventures of Prince Achmed, whose creators didn't have that kind of manpower at their dsiposal. Not that they needed it. The shadow figures add another layer of mystery and imagination, and since the technique had been abandoned since the rise of the Disney style of animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed managed to retain to this day the novelty that charmed audience nearly a century ago. Pretty sexy for a puppet show too.

And even then I wonder if some cranky old-timer like D.W. Griffith grumbled about The Adventures of Prince Achmed turning cinema into an amusement park ride.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

And even then I wonder if some cranky old-timer like D.W. Griffith grumbled about The Adventures of Prince Achmed turning cinema into an amusement park ride.

 

[kihei]

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) Directed by Robert Bresson

I know we have a tradition of letting whoever picked the film go first, but as the rest of you guys will probably have intelligent things to say about Au hasard Balthazar, I wanted to get my review out of the way because it is a rant, pure and simple. I think Au hasard Balthazar is a self-serving and silly film. I find it frustrating to sit through because I want to strangle virtually every character in it besides the donkey. Yes, it is well directed and artful. So what? It is a movie by a French director who focuses on how his countrymen and women are a collection of cruel and stupid yokels who do cruel and stupid things to one another. Through no fault of his own a donkey gets mixed into the equation and we watch his wretched life unfold as he goes from one cruel and stupid situation to another. The movie is such a stacked deck. Which brings us to Robert Bresson. I don't require movies to be fun, much less light, but this mopey cakes of a film maker is in a league of his own when it comes to being a sour puss of the first order. Does Bresson make well-directed films? Yes, he does. Is he one of France's greatest directors? Likely so. Despite these concessions on my part, in his movies that I have seen, I always go into them like a dentist's patient waiting for a root canal to take place. His work has been variously described as austere, disciplined, exacting, cold, and rigorous. These are virtues sometimes obviously, but I find them more affectations in this director's case. I never look forward to the experience of seeing one of his films. And Au hasard Balthazar is unquestionably a misanthrope's delight. While the movie is a clever way to say "I don't like people," it seems to me that Bresson keeps beating a dead horse throughout the film. Actually in the movie, it ends up being a dead donkey surrounded by (and how obvious is this?) sheep. By the end I was just tired of having to spend time with these dumb, selfish, imbecilic people, but even more I resented the man who inflicted them upon me. (I have problems with the equally ascetic Dreyer, too, though of a different nature; in his case, I always feel like I should genuflect upon entering the theatre). I realized that usually when I dislike directors immensely (Alejandro Jodorowsky, Darren Aronofsky, Ken Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson), it usually is because I think that they are tasteless. I certainly don't accuse Bresson of tastelessness. Rather I find him glumly pretentious and egotistically self-indulgent and for me that is a real bad combination to tolerate.

subtitles

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) Directed by Robert Bresson

but even more I resented the man who inflicted them upon me.

Aw, dude...

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Well, I haven't watched the film yet, but my curiosity has been raised through the roof. My reason for picking this film was Godard's gorgeous '' because this film is really the world in an hour and a half. "

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

In Au Hasard Balthazar a donkey looks at life in a backward border town in France (or maybe it’s a typical border town), and what does he see? Cruelty and suffering, mostly. Maybe that's just donkey bias, but I think Au Hasard Balthazar is trying to show how much the human condition has in common with the donkey condition.

In the very first shot the newborn donkey Balthazar is snatched from his mother's breast and it's all downhill from there. As a foal he's cute and cuddly like a living plush doll and is used as the children's toy. But his destiny is to be a beast of burden and life only gets harder for him. At the same time life for Marie, the little girl who adopted him, follows a downward spiral as the happiness of her innocent childhood days gives way to the abuse she endures at the hands of her boyfriend, a local thug. In the meantime Balthazar contemplates life's many mysteries. Why is there pain and misery in the world? Why do good girls like bad boys? He witnesses all the brutality but keeps whatever insight he has to himself. You'll see no trace of emotion in his expression--Balthazar has the Bressonian poker face down pat. He's not good at articulating and besides, math is his strong suit. But in Balthasar we have a surrogate onto which we, the audience, can project our own feelings.

It is poignant and while it sounds depressing Au Hasard Balthazar holds back the tears by maintaining some distance between us and its characters. For one thing, the story is not so much told as suggested. There's a lawsuit, there's a murder case, but a lot of details are missing. The particulars aren't important anyway, so there's really no plot to get caught up in. The actors don't show much emotion, they go through their motions and we, like Balthasard, don't completely understand their motivations. All we see is the result of their actions and choices. How we respond as neutral observers is a measure of our compassion. And our hero is a donkey. By making him the sympathetic figure Au Hasard Balthasar is making asses of us all, while at the same time testing our humanity.

 

[Jevo]

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) dir. Robert Bresson

Balthazar is a donkey. Not the Disney kind that talks and emotes. Balthazar is just a donkey, and as such he does whatever it is donkeys do. He doesn't have the life he probably wished he had standing around on a field with a few friends, grazing without a care in the world. Instead Balthazar spends his life being pushed, shoved, kicked and beaten by various people who happen to take ownership over him. There is one person who shows Balthazar love, Marie, a girl who adopted him as a pet when she was just a child, but who has to give him up as a teenager. Marie comes in and out of Balthazars life over the course of the movie, or is it the other way around? She is loving and kind, not just to Balthazar, but in general. And for that she is punished, and like Balthazar she is pushed, shoved, kicked and beaten.

Where's the fun in being christian if all you do is wait for the slow release of death to take you from this dreary excuse for a life? Sounds more like depression to me. I don't mind depressing movies, I don't mind if things are sad. I mind that things aren't going anywhere. This is just an hour and a half of watching a donkey get tortured by 1-dimensional characters while nothing changes. Bresson claims this movie was build over the seven deadly sins. Those who suffers from these sins being committed are Balthazar and Marie, both of whom have nothing good ever happen to them during the whole film. While the sinners go on living as well as they ever have. I suppose we are supposed to be happy to see Balthazar go to heaven in the end, and with the knowledge that sinners won't get that fate. I almost wish Bresson was a nihilist, not caring about life seems like a step up from actively despising it.

I don't dislike everything Bresson has made. I really like some of his films, and there's no doubt he's a great director. I'm not even going to claim this movie isn't very well directed. But this is just a collection of all the things that I dislike about Bresson, with very little of what makes me like some of his other work. This movie just bores me, and the only emotion I feel is anger at how dreary and depressing everything is inside Bresson's mind. Why doesn't he look out the window and see that the world is beautiful? The Dardenne brothers routinely sets films in the most depressing industrial looking cities in all of Europe, with people in terrible situations, who live a life where the universe seems to continuously bang them further and further into the ground. Still they are able to see the beauty in people and in life. If Bresson had a percentage of the humanity that those two have, maybe he could have made this into something that I would have liked.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Au Hasard Balthazar
Bresson (1966)
“Besides, he’s a saint.”

The young donkey is loved, played with as a youngling, loved by young Marie. But that isn’t his lot in life. Balthazar is born to serve, to labor. It isn’t long before he’s at work — shoes, beaten, hauling, plowing. The proverbial beast of burden. He escapes and finds his lost Marie. He bares witness to the human world. Jacques loves Marie but it cannot be. Along comes Gerard, a cruel boy. Marie ends up forming a relationship with him. She becomes a whore. Arnold, a drifter and drunk eventually takes the donkey on. There’s a circus. Then back to the grind. Meanwhile Marie’s life isn’t much better. She’s on a parallel path. Every bit as used and abused. Nothing ends well. Balthazar eventually is shot as Gerard uses him in a smuggling scheme. The donkey wanders into a field and there, surrounded by sheep, he meets a quiet and peaceful demise.

There’s something Dickensian about the whole story. Balthazar as Oliver Twist or Pip or some equivalent. Sometimes benefiting from the kindness of a benefactor. Sometimes beaten by the inherent cruelty of the world. The catch is — I never liked Dickens much. The Christian ties and built toward sainthood were nearly fully lost on me so I didn’t connect with it much on that front.

I appreciate the commitment to the bit, if you’ll allow the pun. The film remains mostly rooted in Balthazar’s experience. Most of what we’re privy to is what he’s privy to, save a few necessary parallel tales from Marie’s equally sad life. The soundscape is one of the big things that sticks with me. Bugs, footsteps, hooves, The POV as well. Lots of shots of feet, midsections. Animal eye views. The moments where I was moved I feel occurred due to me being a big softie on animals. Maybe it was also Anne Wiazemsky’s big ol’ Shelley Duvall eyes.