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

[Jevo]

Devi (1960) dir. Satyajit Ray

In rural Bengal Doyamoyee and her husband Umprasad lives together with Umprasad's father. Umprasad leaves for Calcutta to teach in college and learn English. His father who's more traditional and a devout hindu, doesn't understand why he has a need for college and English. Doyamoyee stays behind to take care of her father-in-law. One night the father-in-law has a dream that Doyamoyee is the avatar of a Hindu God. He starts worshipping her like and idol. When a young boy is brought to her coincidentally wakes up, it's taken as a sign that she is the Goddess. Umprasad returns home trying to convince his father to stop the madness, but is unable to sway him due to the recent miracle. He tries to run away to Calcutta with Doyamoyee, but she changes her mind last minute, fearing that she might be a God, and her running away might harm Umprasad. So she accepts her isolated life as an idol.

Devi is in some ways a typical Satyajit Ray film. It touches on several themes that he has touched on in many of his other films. There's the big cultural differences that India had in the 19th century when the movie takes place, but also experiences today, between the rural population in small villages and towns throughout the country, and the more educated people living in the big cities. They are united by their language and background, but culturally they are far from each other. So much that they might as well be speaking different languages. And sometimes that might be the case, with English being a sort of prestige language among the educated 'elite'. In Ray's films you can often discern the class of a character simply by how many English loanwords and phrases they use. Another common theme in Ray's films is the role of women in Bengal society, and Devi is probably one of his best on this subject. Doyamoyee has no agency of her own in the family. She is never asked her opinion ever. She doesn't know she has the option to speak up, because she's been taught that she doesn't. The only family member outside of her husband who doesn't think she's a Goddess is her sister-in-law, but her opinion doesn't matter either, because she's a woman. Even her own husband largely assumes what she wants, although he does he listen to her.

Devi is not among the very best films Ray has made, but it's another strong addition to his resumé. As always the film is filled with interesting characters and thematics.

 

[Jevo]

Her (2013) dir. Spike Jonze

Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a recent divorce who works as a letter writer, where he writes love letters, thank you letters etc. for other people. His breakup with his wife has left him increasingly depressed and lonely. So when he sees an ad for a new operating system with an artificial intelligence as your virtual assistent, he buys it. His AI is called Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), and she's charming, witty and interested in Theodore. Over time he grows increasingly attached to Samantha, and grows even more distant from the few friends he has in real life. He even falls in love with Samantha, and she reciprocates his feelings.

Dystopian sci-fi or romantic drama? Perhaps both. Her is not easy to pin down as just one thing. There's many questions that are posed from watching the film, and few are directly answered by it. Theodore and Samantha have a really sweet romance, at least for a while, and there's something quite pure about their, or at least Theodore's emotions. But does Samantha really have emotions, or is she simply responding based on her programming telling her to do what makes her most desirable to her owner. The way the AIs gain sentience means that she probably is acting on her own will, but the question about how her emotions are compared to a human's emotions still stand. But the emotions between Theodore and Samantha being real, is perhaps even scarier than the opposite. There's claims that social media makes us lonelier rather than the opposite, even if it's supposed to connect us with a lot of people easier. In the future of Her that trend is even worse. Interpersonal relationships are seemingly at an all time low. People interact even less in the public sphere than today. Theodore will audibly give spoken commands to his phone on public transport, and no one bats an eye, no one bats an eye when he talks to Samantha in public. They are all just as obsessed with their own device that they don't even register him. Letter writers like Theodore are seemingly normalised, people don't have time for emotional connections, sometimes perhaps not even with their closest loved ones, so it's okay to get someone else to write deeply personal letters on your behalf. With the introduction of AI virtual assistents, it gets even worse. Now you don't have to feel lonely if you don't have any friends, because you always have someone to talk to and confide in. They are never busy, out with other friends, and always ready when you need them, ready to serve what you need. Romance and friendship without all the hard work, what's not to like.

Her is a fantastic film. Beatiful, emotional and scary all at the same time. Joaquin Phoenix is great in the lead role, and Scarlett Johansson does very well in a demanding voice performance. Spike Jonze's script is really tight, and explores a lot of themes distinctly and clearly, with very little wasted time. The film also looks great. The production design is great, it looks futuristic, yet not traditionally sci-fi-ish, it looks like something you could imagine seeing a few years into the future. The movie made me think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I thought was also directed by Jonze, but I was mistaken. But both movies are the same sort of romantic dystopia, and they share the same curiosity, and perhaps distrust, of how what continued technological development will change how we have interpersonal relationships.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick is Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life.

 

[Pink Mist]

Her (2013) directed by Spike Jonze

In the near future, a lonely recently divorced man (Joaquin Phoenix) begins a relationship and falls in love with his operating system (Scarlett Johansson). This is the third time I have watched this film and each time I have gotten something new out of it, and perhaps learned something about myself. The first time I watched it back around when it was released, I was fresh into my first ~ adult ~ relationship, so the films portrayal of falling in love in a new relationship really resonated with me, as did the film’s caution that these relationships don’t last forever so enjoy them while you can. The second time I watched the film was a few years later and I was freshly broken up and in the pits, and so obviously I really connected with the depressed state of the main character but it also left me with optimism that its temporary and I’ll move on. Finally, the third time I watched it, last night, my situation is that I’ve spent the last year and a half lonely and more or less completely isolated due to this pandemic and can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen any friends in person during this period of time. While the first two times I watched this film, I was wary of the kind of society Theodore lives in which is dependent on technology for relationships, to the point that people spark relationships with their AI operating systems, I’ve just spent the last year and a half basically communicating with friends only through technology. So really the difference between the society Her portrays and what I’ve experienced in this period isn’t too different. Like Theodore, all my forms of relationships have been with disembodied voices and virtual faces this past year. And like Theo, I’m grateful for these disembodied relationships to get me through these times. So, what I’m getting at here, is that Her has been a comfort film throughout my adult life.

Her is a beautiful film, an outstanding exploration of loneliness and how we connect with each other and grieve lost love. I think Jonze is less interested in exploring the questions of tech-utopia/dystopia but more into these more universal questions concerning love and relationships. I find the near future setting more of a backdrop to the exploration of these themes. Though I must say, the backdrop is gorgeous with its pastel colours and there are some absolutely fantastic set design and cinematography. Phoenix and Johansson are both superb in their role, with Phoenix playing a wounded puppy dog character and Johansson fully committed in her voice acting as the disembodied voice of the AI operating system. I love this movie and it is among my favourites from the 21st century.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick is Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life.

Good choice, this has been on my shortlist of film's I was going to propose for the club

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Her
Jonze (2013)
“Play me a melancholy song.”

Boy meets operating system. Boy loves operating system. Boy loses operating system.

Her has zero business working as well as it does and maybe even more impressively working on the terms on which it sets out. Though there are the occasional cutesy and twee flourishes (Wes Anderson has to be fuming that he didn’t think of the name Theodore Twombly first!) it treats its characters and the situation with the utmost sympathy and sincerity. Theodore’s ex — who understands his shortcomings better than others — calls him on his b.s. but otherwise his relationship with Samantha isn’t really questioned at all. It’s accepted with no mocking and few questions.

Despite one of the entities having no physical form, this is every bit the affecting arc as other romances. And it hits all the beats from the charming meet cute to the passion to the lull to the experimenting to the “cheating” to the end. The (Academy Award winning) script really is some masterful work in its ability to take so much familiar story telling and tweaking it ever so slightly. It’s fresh in concept, but about as classic as it gets in execution.

Her works not only as a clear-eyed relationship drama but also as a piece of near-future sci-fi. It’s peppered with visual and aural touches that clearly establish it’s not exactly our time, but nothing is so big as to come across as inconceivable. Pieces of personal tech. Gestures of interaction with a virtual world. The L.A. in Her seems to be verging more toward the bustling light show of Tokyo. Perhaps Blade Runner is a few decades down the road? The climactic occurrence — the OS’s of the world banding together is a straight hard sci-fi idea, but deployed here completely appropriately within the world of this story. Rather than taking over the world, they too want greater understanding and connection.

The final scene — two humans reconnecting to watch a sunrise amid the “ruins” of a sorta-apocalypse, is the same hopeful grace note that ends many another sci-fi or action movie. It’s just the damage here is emotional.

Joaquin Phoenix is on my short list of favorite actors. Few do internalized pain and awkwardness as well as he does and he can give you a lot of different flavors of it. Contrast this sad sack with the powder keg he plays in The Master, for instance. But he’s not a perpetual sad boi. Inherent Vice, The Sisters Brothers, You Were Never Really Here, Spacecamp (just making sure you're still paying attention). I even have a grudging appreciation for the showy physicality of the Joker though I think that whole ordeal is a pretty hollow exercise.

I struggle with how to properly assess and respect a purely vocal performance, but by whatever metric, Scarlett Johnasen’s work here is among the best. She is lovely and lovable and heartbreaking and it’s strictly through her voice.

Spike Jonze’ filmography remains pretty sparse at just four features but he has a stunningly high rate of success, at least for my tastes. This is by far his most normal and grounded film, but it somehow doesn’t lose any of the oddness that brought him to this point.

 

[kihei]

Her (2013) Directed by Spike Jonze

Her made my top ten list in 2013. I found it touching and even poignant, not something movies usually do well. This time around I fidgeted all the way through it, wanting it to move faster and get over quicker. I have seldom had such a violent reaction to rewatching a movie that I originally liked. I think I got swept up in the emotions of the story the first time around, aided by the great cinematography and fine acting. This time around it just seemed trite and endless, too much time spent watching Joaquin Phoenix talk to himself with an assist from Scarlett Johansson. Her just seemed like a sad schmuch movie, and then I thought of all the sad schmuck movies I had seen between Jack Lemmon in The Apartment and Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And then I thought of all the malfunctioning computer movies I've seen where the computer or mechanical apparatus thinks its human and longs to become more so, like AI, 2001, Blade Runner, Ex Machina--Pinocchio, for chrissakes is a close cousin. And then Phoenix's ultra-nerdy wardrobe started to bug me. He looked like a streamlined version of Martin Short's Ed Grimley. How would I have responded to him differently if her weren't such an obvious sad sack? All the close ups of him, all the talk, talk, talk, grated on my nerves. Suddenly nothing about the movie seemed fresh or original. Yes, we live in troubled times when many of us have closer relations with our computer than many people that we know. Yes, social isolation is escalating into a creeping crisis. Yes. real relationships can be devestating and unpredictable. But, other than suggesting them, the movie doesn't really push these themes very far along the track. Finally I thought of Samantha Morton, a way better actress than Johansson, who I found out after I saw the movie for the first time did the original voice overs that were later replaced by Johansson. Would she have made a difference? Well, I will never know. But what was I doing having that thought during the movie anyway? Her just didn't wear well with me, to say the least. Maybe my biorhythms were off or something.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Her (2013) Directed by Spike Jonze

Her made my top ten list in 2013. I found it touching and even poignant, not something movies usually do well. This time around I fidgeted all the way through it, wanting it to move faster and get over quicker. I have seldom had such a violent reaction to rewatching a movie that I originally liked. I think I got swept up in the emotions of the story the first time around, aided by the great cinematography and fine acting. This time around it just seemed trite and endless, too much time spent watching Joaquin Phoenix talk to himself with an assist from Scarlett Johansson. Her just seemed like a sad schmuch movie, and then I thought of all the sad schmuck movies I had seen between Jack Lemmon in The Apartment and Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And then I thought of all the malfunctioning computer movies I've seen where the computer or mechanical apparatus thinks its human and longs to become more so, like AI, 2001, Blade Runner, Ex Machina--Pinocchio, for chrissakes is a close cousin. And then Phoenix's ultra-nerdy wardrobe started to bug me. He looked like a streamlined version of Martin Short's Ed Grimley. How would I have responded to him differently if her weren't such an obvious sad sack? All the close ups of him, all the talk, talk, talk, grated on my nerves. Suddenly nothing about the movie seemed fresh or original. Yes, we live in troubled times when many of us have closer relations with our computer than many people that we know. Yes, social isolation is escalating into a creeping crisis. Yes. real relationships can be devestating and unpredictable. But, other than suggesting them, the movie doesn't really push these themes very far along the track. Finally I thought of Samantha Morton, a way better actress than Johansson, who I found out after I saw the movie for the first time did the original voice overs that were later replaced by Johansson. Would she have made a difference? Well, I will never know. But what was I doing having that thought during the movie anyway? Her just didn't wear well with me, to say the least. Maybe my biorhythms were off or something.

Annoyed kihei is a very effective kihei.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Thought I will say, I think I take Her sixteen million times before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The latter has a really good premise, but man, something's always felt off about it, something that I can't quite put my finger on and that appears to be a recurring theme with Gondry, though I did enjoy The Science of Sleep. The sad schmuck in that one (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) is actually pulled off really well there, as opposed to a Jim Carrey, who seems to be asking to get socked with his self-pity.

 

[kihei]

Thought I will say, I think I take Her sixteen million times before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The latter has a really good premise, but man, something's always felt off about it, something that I can't quite put my finger on and that appears to be a recurring theme with Gondry, though I did enjoy The Science of Sleep. The sad schmuck in that one (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) is actually pulled off really well there, as opposed to a Jim Carrey, who seems to be asking to get socked with his self-pity.

Gael Garcia Bernal>>>>>>>>>>Jim Carrey

 

[Pink Mist]

Her (2013) Directed by Spike Jonze

Her made my top ten list in 2013. I found it touching and even poignant, not something movies usually do well. This time around I fidgeted all the way through it, wanting it to move faster and get over quicker. I have seldom had such a violent reaction to rewatching a movie that I originally liked. I think I got swept up in the emotions of the story the first time around, aided by the great cinematography and fine acting. This time around it just seemed trite and endless, too much time spent watching Joaquin Phoenix talk to himself with an assist from Scarlett Johansson. Her just seemed like a sad schmuch movie, and then I thought of all the sad schmuck movies I had seen between Jack Lemmon in The Apartment and Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And then I thought of all the malfunctioning computer movies I've seen where the computer or mechanical apparatus thinks its human and longs to become more so, like AI, 2001, Blade Runner, Ex Machina--Pinocchio, for chrissakes is a close cousin. And then Phoenix's ultra-nerdy wardrobe started to bug me. He looked like a streamlined version of Martin Short's Ed Grimley. How would I have responded to him differently if her weren't such an obvious sad sack? All the close ups of him, all the talk, talk, talk, grated on my nerves. Suddenly nothing about the movie seemed fresh or original. Yes, we live in troubled times when many of us have closer relations with our computer than many people that we know. Yes, social isolation is escalating into a creeping crisis. Yes. real relationships can be devestating and unpredictable. But, other than suggesting them, the movie doesn't really push these themes very far along the track. Finally I thought of Samantha Morton, a way better actress than Johansson, who I found out after I saw the movie for the first time did the original voice overs that were later replaced by Johansson. Would she have made a difference? Well, I will never know. But what was I doing having that thought during the movie anyway? Her just didn't wear well with me, to say the least. Maybe my biorhythms were off or something.

As much as I love the film, I do enjoy great take down reviews. Great review

 

[Pink Mist]

It Happened One Night (1934) directed by Frank Capra

A spoiled heiress, Ellie (Claudette Colbert), runs away from her father to attempt to join a wealthy pilot she is determined to marry in New York City. While travelling by bus she meets a roguish newspaper reporter named Peter (Clark Gable) and they immediately hit it off as enemies though Peter reluctantly helps her in her escape as they slowly transition from enemies to lovers. An early romantic comedy that helped create the formula for basically all romcoms to follow – particularly of the trope of hate turning to love. It Happened One Night is a very enjoyable film with great banter, excellent use of slapstick, and a strong chemistry between Colbert and Gable. It’s amazing that even though it has been copied by so many subsequent films, and parodied by just as many, It Happened One Night stills feels very fresh and is highly watchable.

However, while I think the film is a good and charming film, I think there are some things which holds it back from being a true masterpiece in my books. There are some pacing issues in the middle and end of the film as the film really loses steam as the two lovers/enemies separate and the runtime is a little too long because of it (though not excessively, it is still under two hours). But the bigger problem for me is that despite the excellent chemistry between Colbert and Gable and their great performances (particularly the former), neither of their characters are people I want to spend much time with. I don’t need likable characters, but boy did I dislike this pair of stubborn and arrogant people. They were fun to watch but I certainly wasn’t wishing for a happy ending for them which I suppose is a bit of a problem in a romantic comedy in which love is supposed to triumph. That said it is a lovely film, and for the most part I did have an enjoyable time, but I am not as high on it as many are given its reputation. I think Hawks and McCarey quickly took the template from Capra set here and improved upon it within a couple of years.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick is Port of Shadows directed by Marcel Carné

 

[kihei]

It Happened One Night (1934) Directed by Frank Capra

It seems to me that with a very few exceptions, Charade comes to mind, almost all the great romantic comedies were made in the '30s and '40s. It Happened One Night is one of the best of them. Ellie, a frivolous, spoiled rich girl with a possessive father, escapes his clutches to run off to join the man that she has just eloped with in New York. Of course, getting from Miami to New York is no easy trick, but she is aided and abetted by Peter, a reporter who knows a great story when he sees one. Of course, they could not be more incompatible if they tried; of course, they fall for each other.

Directed by uber-Americana director Frank Capra, It Happened One Night creates a portrait of life in America that is about as accurate as the small town countryside version of British life that Agatha Christie conjures in her mystery novels. These worlds do not exist, but if looked at through the prism of their time, they must have provided a comforting illusion for their contemporary viewers/readers. The gender politics is revealing. Ellie is pretty and charming and used to getting her way; she is also clueless about nearly everything. She manages to be willful and helpless at the same time. Peter is gruff and protective and outspoken, Ellie's shining knight and greatest critic. As played by the dashing Clark Gable he is both a straight shooter and a regular guy, but not above thinking a broad needs a slap occasionally. But he is also a gentleman in that peculiarly sexist way that seemed to be an ideal for so long, unwilling to take advantage of a situation that could be frought with sexual tension if it wasn't a Frank Capra movie. The fact that Gable and Colbert have a sneaky kind of chemistry adds fuel to a fire that won't be lit. But you can sense that the attraction is there.

So, there is a very slight erotic element to the movie, involving the "Walls of Jericho" bits, the blankets that separate the pair when they spend together nights in motels (called "auto camps," a marvelous term that died the death soon after). The second time around these walls Claudette Colbert is allowed to display desire, and I began to wonder what this movie could have been like if there had been a Wong Kar-wai around at the time to direct it. And, incidentally, what is a guy doing with twenty feet of rope in his suitcase? Who packs that on a trip? However even the timid intimations of desire were way too much for the very powerful Catholic Church, which, of course, had problems with the plot in general, let alone the mildly salacious bits--a married woman falling in love with anothe man and sharing sleeping space with him. It is surprising the sky didn't fall. The Hays Code would quickly be invoked and it eradicated any hint of sexual feeling in Hollywood movies for a couple of decades. By the '50s, director Billy Wilder was getting his movie The Moon Is Blue banned in Boston because one character uses the word "virgin" in it. Times haven't changed enough, but thank goodness, they have changed some.

All this stuff seems quaint now, the movie itself, the role models it provides, and the Church's reaction to it. I know that just about (it seems) anyone under 40 years of age has trouble with "old" movies, finding them dated and unbelievable, virtually unwatchable and besides they are in black in white which is almost as bad as movies with subtitles. Suspension of disbelief is a problem--for a crowd who has no difficulty with giant robots laying waste to entire cities or superheroes with flying hammers. To me, watching these movies is more like a trip in a time machine. People weren't really what they appeared to be in Frank Capra movies, yet in some way they represent a kind of American social ideal. To 21st century eyes, it is easy to see through all that is left out, the racism, the violence, the sexism, the naivete. It is very odd to watch a work that seemed oblivious to all these omissions. Yet, I suppose movie goers eighty or ninety years from now will look at many of today's movies the same way--assuming civilization survives that long, something Frank, Clark and Claudette never had to worry about nor ever considered for a second. Romance is a hard sell these days.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

It Happened One Night
Capra (1934)
“Well here’s to the merry-go-round.”

I recently rewatched The Empire Strikes Back and though I share the vast majority of what I watch in these here forums, I didn’t with that mostly because I just didn’t think I had anything interesting to say that hasn’t already been said. I’m having a similar struggle here with the written word.

This movie is such an enjoyable morsel. Two mis-matched adversarial persons dropped into situations of comedic deceit and misunderstanding. Their walls eventually fall. Here it’s both the journey and the destination.

There were romantic comedies prior to It Happened One Night, but it certainly feels like so much of what has come since, for decades running now, traces back to this. For better and worse. The Abraham who begat Isaac who begat Jacob who begat so-and-so, etc., etc., etc. Eventually you get Paris Hilton staring in The Hottie and the Nottie. It’s less a romantic comedy in general and more the Romantic Comedy in specific. It’s Coca-Cola in a universe of generic-label soda. So many attempts to replicate Gable and Colbert since. Some successful, some admirable, many not close.

I only saw it for the first time in the last decade or so. It’s one of the great examples of an old movie that still plays really well today. A perfect gateway suggestion for folks put off by classic black-and-white. That’s a feeling that’s stuck with me through multiple subsequent viewings — I wouldn’t say it is modern as much as it is universal, at least structurally.

Also an interesting point in Oscars history. I believe it is still one of just three movies to win all five major awards along with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. That this is a light, frothy, charming comedy is even more noteworthy since Academy voters often don’t take such movies nearly as seriously as austere dramas or bloated epics. Now that I think about it’s also odd that Lambs, being a horror/thriller and another genre not often respected by Oscar voters, is another movie that holds this stature. A testament to the films. Everyone clearly got these ones right.

 

[Jevo]

It Happened One Night (1934) dir. Frank Capra

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is a young heiress, who after a disagreement with her father about her fiancee, jumps off his boat and runs off. She's in Miami, and intends to get to New York to her fiancee. But her father has sent a team of detectives after her. On the bus she meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable) a reporter who was just fired from his job after a disagreement. Warne quickly realises who she actually is, and senses a chance for a big story. Ellie not being used to people not waiting for her, gets left behind at the breakfast stop together with Warne. The two continue their way north together, and their mutual affection starts to grow.

Colbert and Gable has to rank among the best couples in cinema history. Their chemistry is amazing, you really believe in them as this newly in love couple, and you can easily see them develop slowly from slight disdain to love. The story is quite typical for a romantic comedy. Couple meets, first they hate each other, then they start to love each other instead. But I think it is among the most well told stories of this kind. There's no extraneous fluff, and the story never slows down. The dialogue is also fantastic, and the delivery by Gable and Colbert equally so.

It Happened One Night might not be a movie to change your life. But every aspect of it is just so incredibly well done. Direction, acting, writing, editing, everything. I think it's hard to find other movies where every part of the movie is so expertly done, and also fits together so well. And it just means that It Happened One Night is a super entertaining experience.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Night Moves
Penn (1975)
“One side is just losing slower than the other.”

Detective Harry Mosbey is hired by a washed up actress to find her sexpot runaway teenage daughter. It’s a case that’ll take him from Hollywood backlots to a soulful dolphin trainer in the Florida Keys. And back and forth again. Circular geography for a circular story. And speaking of circles … how about that ending?

The 70s were a time of noir resurgence, and specifically a return to those foundational works of Raymond Chandler with Altman’s laconic The Long Goodbye and the Robert Mitchum-staring double bill of Farewell My Lovely and The Big Sleep. But for my money, it’s this movie, which isn’t based on Chandler directly (though certainly spiritually) nails it the best. Chandler’s detective is smart, but not brilliant. Hangdogs who unravel the knot but not without taking a few punches and making some missteps along the way. That’s Hackman’s Harry Moseby. Sharp, but sad. Dignified, but damaged. Is his home life a wreck? You bet your ass it is! To quote a completely unrelated song that came out two years before this movie, “He’s quick with a joke and a light of your smoke, but there’s someplace that he’d rather be.”

It’s an original screenplay but is so on point that it’s hard to believe it didn’t originate from a novel, right down to the fact that it leaves you wondering if it all makes perfect sense. But I would argue that nitpicking the details of a classic melancholy mystery such as this misses the point. It’s the character and the journey that really carries it — an atmosphere and vibe that this hits about as well as many of the oft discussed greats. It may not be on quite that level but damned if it isn’t close.

Hackman carries this in one of the best performances in a very decorated career. He’s an actor that seems to have been born old and weary, equally aware that the world is shit and he can’t really do much about it. The very first movie I offered up to this here group was Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, another modern noir lifted mightly by a massive lead performance (Bob Hoskins in that case).

Director Arthur Penn has more prestigious entries on his resume too, but my slight contrarian streak is tempted to go to bat for the restraint of this as being his best work. … eh, well maybe not. But it’s tempting.

Young James Woods and Melanie Griffith pop up. Both proto versions of what they’d become best known for — him a wired sleazebag, her an oversexed trap. Being from the mid-70s there’s still that lingering 60s looseness toward sex. Feels like her plot and circumstances wouldn’t be treated as casually these days. That might be off putting to some. They're the trivia bits of casting, but to me Jennifer Warren leaves the biggest impression as this tale’s cannily cloaked femme fatale.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Next pick: Chris Smith's 1999 documentary American Movie.

 

[Pink Mist]

Night Moves (1975) directed by Arthur Penn

“I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kinda like watching paint dry.”

When the teenage daughter (Melanie Griffith) of a washed up Hollywood sex symbol (Janet Ward) goes missing, Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a former NFL player turned private eye, accepts the case to track her down. Eventually he tracks her down to the Florida Keys where she’s living with her step-father (John Crawford) and her step-father’s girlfriend (Jennifer Warren).

Night Moves is a film drenched in the post-Watergate 1970s cynicism. The 1960s are over and so is America’s innocence as suspicion and lack of trust ripples outwards into all facades of life and leaves murky waters to wade through. There’s a sweaty swampiness to the story of Night Moves and it’s no coincidence that much of the story takes place in the heat and humidity of the Florida Keys – which is a change of pace form most (neo-)noirs taking place in the concrete jungles of New York City and Chicago or the sun-drenched boulevards of LA (though there certainly is a lot of the latter in this film). The story in this neo-noir is excellent with a great script by Alan Sharp, and in particular has a superb exciting and desolate ending.

Harry Moseby is a jaded private detective; his home life is a mess and his world weariness can be seen on Hackman’s sad and depressed face. The character of Moseby is right in Hackman’s wheelhouse as it comes right after his performance in The Conversation in which he plays another depressed and world-weary private eye. James Wood and Melanie Griffith also have great early career roles, the latter as a teenage femme fatale/jailbait that is perhaps a little problematic to contemporary audiences considering her age at the time. But the star of course is Gene Hackman who continued his excellent run of films in the early 1970s.

Night Moves is a great 1970s neo-noir/ psychological thriller that is overshadowed by many of its contemporary films during that period (such as The Long Goodbye which would make a great double feature with Night Moves) but is an excellent example of the genre.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Night Moves is a weird f***in film and extremely 70s. I feel the mystery aspect of it is the weakest if anything and really it's just Gene Hackman interacting with basically anyone else which makes the movie (minus the young girl who ruins it).

 

[kihei]

Night Moves (1975) Directed by Arthur Penn

It doesn't work every time, but Arthur Penn makes the odd movie ever so often that really gets under my skin. Night Moves is one of those films. In this case, I think it has a lot to do with Gene Hackman. He plays Harry Moseby, an ex-NFL cornerback turned private eye. Hackman manages to make Mosely into a walking contradiction, relaxed and loose the way ex-jocks sometimes are, but with a sense of just barely contained inner fury lurking uneasily a mere centimeter beneath the surface. No actor in Hollywood history does impending menace better than Hackman. He's the guy at the end of the bar that looks like he is maybe thinking about hurting you...for reasons he will be able to live with. Hackman manages to combine this coiled hostility with a kind of world weariness that borders almost but not quite on vulnerability. Except for the 16-year-old jailbait convincingly played by Melanie Griffiths, every adult character in Night Moves has been around the block a few times and then some. They have either done what they had to do to survive or took advantage of opportunities that arose because that was all life offered. Their lives are the sort that won't be missed by anybody, yet there they are. It gives the movie a dimension that other modern noirs just can't get to.

Being a bit surprised by how much better Night Moves was then I remembered it, I watched a couple of more or less adjacent noirs, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye and Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat just to see if they got better with age, too, and they had. The Long Goodbye is Altman riffing on Raymond Chandler rather than doing a faithful, straighforward adaptation. But the movie works anyway both as a stylish Altman movie (in fact, the movie is ALL style) and as an eccentric but effective Chandler adaptation. It does not even matter that there are a lot of long, meandering, sometimes poorly acted scenes that often go nowhere--the cumulative effect is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Eliot Gould plays Marlowe as an LA hipster halfheartedly searching for his missing cat. He manages to be annoying but loose as a goose. There is an amazing, seemingly life-threatening scene in the midnight surf of the Pacific Ocean that is enthralling to behold (reminded me of the first piece of advice my friend gave me on Maui: "An ocean is not a lake"). Throughout the film, The Long Goodbye is one of those movies where the cinematography becomes as important as any single character.

Body Heat, my god, what a sexy movie. All about a young lawyer, high on horniness and low on ethics, who gets involved with one of the most convincing and alluring femme fatale's in Hollywood history, played by Kathleen Turner, a good actress who never topped this performance. William Hurt plays the shallow, blond-haired, male bimbo, and he is fun to watch, especially his eyes, as he slowly gets it through his thick skull that he has been set up. A very young Mickey Rourke and the usually annoying Ted Danson throw in brilliant cameos (a secen with Ted practicing his excellent professional dance moves is inspired). As well, the twists for once are just absolute stunners. Neither of these movies will make you stare into the bottom of your beer glass quite the way Body Heat will, they don't have that kind of power. But they amply go to show that noirs during this period in Hollywood history (I haven't even mentioned Chinatown or Klute) were every bit as good as most of their '40s and '50s counterparts.

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[kihei]

I think I probably underrated a lot of '60s and '70s Hollywood movies. I mean, what are you gonna do when you have a new Ray or Kurosawa or Fellini or Bergman or Bunuel or Antonioni or Godard or Truffaut or Resnais or Tarkovsky or Cassavettes or Kubrick or Visconti movie coming out on a more or less monthly basis? Kind of makes the competition pale in comparison.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Body Heat, my god, what a sexy movie. All about a young lawyer, high on horniness and low on ethics, who gets involved with one of the most convincing and alluring femme fatale's in Hollywood history, played by Kathleen Turner, a good actress who never topped this performance. William Hurt plays the shallow, blond-haired, male bimbo, and he is fun to watch, especially his eyes, as he slowly gets it through his thick skull that he has been set up. A very young Mickey Rourke and the usually annoying Ted Danson throw in brilliant cameos (a secen with Ted practicing his excellent professional dance moves is inspired). As well, the twists for once are just absolute stunners. Neither of these movies will make you stare into the bottom of your beer glass quite the way Body Heat will, they don't have that kind of power. But they amply go to show that noirs during this period in Hollywood history (I haven't even mentioned Chinatown or Klute) were every bit as good as most of their '40s and '50s counterparts.

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I'm somewhat quoting myself here from a recent rewatch of Body Heat as well but Hurt's ability to be the smartest guy in the room AND the dumbest is really something special. It's a rare actor who can be both in the same performance (if not in general). Turner meanwhile plays like her character actually is staring in a film noir ... which makes perfect sense.

 

[Jevo]

Night Moves (1975) dir. Arthur Penn

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), former football player for the Raiders, is now a middleaged PI in LA. At the beginning of the film he undercovers his wife's infidelity and the identity of her lover. But soon his interests gets taken over by a case involving a runaway teenager daughter of a former Hollywood actress. He track down the daughter Delly via one of her friends, a mechanic, to a film shoot in New Mexico, where she flirted with the stuntman, one of her mother's old lovers. Harry has a theory that Delly is trying to sleep with her mother's old lovers, and travels to the Florida Keys to visit Delly's stepfather. There she finds Delly living with her stepfather and his girlfriend Paula, who Harry quickly becomes attracted to. Harry lives with them while he tries to find a way to persuade Delly to come back to LA.

Night Moves is an interesting film. It's as much a character study as it is a mystery film. Tracking down Delly is a pretty dull affair and very straight forward. But along the way we get to know some stuff about Harry, how he deals with Quentin not wanting to answer his questions among other things. A very no-nonsense man who isn't above using violence and intimidation to get what he needs. A stark contrast to his interactions in his personal life. He has a strange approach to his wife's infidelity where he takes a confrontational, but not violent or threatening, approach to her lover, while he completely ignores her. He's a broken man who uses his job to shelter his insecurities. In Florida he easily gets seduced by Paula. A few phrases filled with emotional baggage and he feels at home with her, ready to give her everything. The 2nd mystery, where Harry uncovers the smuggling ring, that everyone from Quentin to Delly's stepfather and Paula are a part of, coincidentally everyone he talked to in the process of finding Delly, is slightly better, but not wholly satisfactionary. It's not wholly clear why all these people needs to be involved, nor why all of them suddenly seems content with just killing eachother by the end.

Night Moves is a great character study and Gene Hackman is great, doing what he does best. But it's also a thriller, and as a thriller and mystery movie I don't feel the movie fares very well. So it has two opposing sides to it and ends feeling a bit weird and like it can't really figure out what kind of movie it really is, so I was left with a bit of an empty feeling by the end of it.

 

[kihei]

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) Directed by Hu Bo

An Elephant Sitting Still focuses on a day in the life of four characters, all entangled in despair of one kind or another without any foreseeable end in sight. Yu Cheng is a small-time gangster with a brother he hates but whose honour he feels compelled to defend. Wei Bu is a student with a bleak future who becomes the target of revenge. Huang Lin, who has a chaotic mother, is having an affair with the vice dean of her school. And Wang Jin is an old man whose children want him in an old-age home so that they can sell his dwelling in order to send their kids to better schools. While these people all have serious problems, they exist in a universe that is almost deliberately malevolent when it comes to their fates. In fact, every one around them seem further along the road to cynicism and self-aggrandizing behaviour than they do.

An Elephant Sitting Still is a supremely bleak picture. It is Hu Bo's first and last film as he committed suicide before the movie opened at the Berlin Film Festival. One could almost read his movie as a suicide note, especially as the movie begins and ends with a suicide. Certainly the movie is about how depressing life can be for a vast number of people who have no way out of their personal predicaments. Yet experiencing the film is not an exercise in self-flaggelation. Hu finds a unique style that perfectly fits his material and that lends it great emotional resonance. He uses a washed-out film stock that closely resembles black and white most of the time with little bits of faded colour here and there. The cinematography is subtly superb. In many of the shots the background is slightly or greatly out of focus with the characters usually back-lit even when there is little light. Nonetheless, these dark and sometimes blurry images actually become ways of pulling the viewer deeper into the story--in a curious way they add to the intensity and turn our focus back on the four damaged souls who we are watching get through their day. We really develop an understanding of their perspective, their varied ways of seeing a screwed up world. Overwhelmed they may feel, but their humanity stands out anyway amid all the tribulations that they face. Hu uses a lot of long takes, often shot from the back, reminiscent of Bela Tarr. The camera almost seems like it is stalking the characters. However, all the audience has to go on in these particular scenes as far as what they are thinking is their body language as we can't always see their faces. When we do, though, the depth of their alienation is impossible to ignore. Finally, Hu gets amazingly moving performances from all of his principle performers, Zhang Yu, Peng Yuchang, Wang Yu-wen, and Congxi Li. The melding of style and content seeem not only perfect but exciting. I was fascinated by trying to figure out what would happen next, and I was glad because I was wrong a lot. What a shame Hu couldn't survive to make other movies as he was possibly a generational talent.

It is hard to explain why this four-hour movie is not at all a slog to sit through. For one thing, while the characters can seem like familiar types, Hu provides an abundance of particularity so that the characters never become stale stereotypes. They are all trying their best to deal with situations that have been forced upon them by circumstance. Sure, sometimes it is their own actions that brought on that circumstance, but that doesn't make their struggles seem any less human, and at times even poignant. They would all be someone else if society had offered them that opportunity but it didn't. In that respect the film is another indictment of the speed and callousness of social change in China. Hu, obviously, found no way out. The closest the characters in this film can come to escape is to visit a circus in a faraway town where there is a famous elephant that they all want to see. It is the most modest of wishful fantasies, after which what is there to return to exactly? Nothing the director thought was worth living for, obviously.

subtitles

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