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

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Rashomon
Kurosawa (1950)
“They can’t tell the truth, even to themselves.”

While three men wait out a rainstorm, one shares a tale of finding a dead man in the woods and a subsequent trial about who killed the man and why. What is the truth?

I wish I had something profound or insightful to add to not just the discussion here, but in general. Alas, I do not. It’s a great film and it more than stands the test of time. It’s a brilliant nested structure that still works every time I watch it — a story about people telling a story about people telling a story about something that happened. It expertly juggles multiple timelines and multiple point-of-views.

Significant not just for its art, but for its impact. Quite possibly one of the most consequential foreign films in history (at least through American/Western eyes). It remains a shorthand for conflicting perspectives and unreliable narrators to this day. Very few films can claim such as status.

One thing that stood out to me on this rewatch is Kurosawa’s shot composition. It’s not like I hadn’t noticed it or thought about it before, but so much of the Rashomon story is about its story and construction. He underlines all that expertly with shots that tier characters across the foreground and background. It’s a helpful visual timepiece as well to know where we are in the story telling.

Though I have to admit what @kihei said never occurred to me and has me intrigued about yet another rewatch. A few reviews back (Roger Rabbit I believe) I was blabbering about movies that comment or tweak a genre while also being a good representative of a genre. Perhaps Rashomon fits that bill as well — a film that functions both as social commentary of the time and a send-up of the same?

 

[Pink Mist]

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant / Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)

Petra von Kant is an arrogant and successful fashion designer who doesn't seem to do much designing other than barking orders and belittling her silent partner/maid/co-designer who she has an S&M relationship with. When a friend of hers comes to visit bringing the youthful Karin, she discovers a new muse and obsession.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is very theatrical in all aspects. With a small cast of only six actors, a one room setting, a dialogue heavy script and big emotions, the film is an adaptation of an early play by Fassbinder (that he allegedly franticly wrote on a trans-atlantic flight). Often I'm not big on very theatrical staged films like this, but the setting really captures von Kant's mindset as her world is enclosed in this one room of her apartment that becomes more twisted as she becomes more disturbed. The lengthy dialogue too is draining and overbearing to the viewer, matching the affect von Kant has on her friends and lovers. Her obsession and desires that she tries to sculpt onto her lovers only leads to disaster for her like a form of self-sabotage.

In the small cast like this where dialogue is the plot, it is imperative that the all-female cast is on their A game, and they do bring it. Margit Carstensen is fantastic as Petra, channeling her best Gloria Swanson as a larger than life character that leaves toxic traces on everything she touches. Hanna Schygulla is also great as her muse Karin, as is Irm Hermann who plays the wordless Marlene always looming in the background to be of service. A massive shoutout to the set, costume, and production design which is almost its own character as it subtly changes throughout the film absurdly matching Petra's mental state.

And that ending - one of the best punchlines to a joke I have seen in a film.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick will be Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory

 

[kihei]

Sincere apologies, but....

Imagine looking down at an ignored frying pan still sitting on an unlit stove top element maybe two or three days after it has been used to fry a medium ground beef hamburger. Imagine looking down at the congealed grease, the miscellaneous charred bits mixed in with a mixture of coagulated fibrous matter and clotted blood. Stare at it for a long time until the image blots out the rest of the world. With the exception of Despair, that's the way I view humanity for about a day after seeing a Werner Rainer Fassbinder movie. Don't get me wrong. I think he possesses a positive genius for gnarly, sweaty social commentary, but, man, I do not look forward to watching his movies. I saw Petra for the third time about a year ago. I can't quite bring myself to watching it again so soon. As my review still states my opinion perfectly, I see no reason to amend it beyond slight polishing here and there. I have only quoted my own earlier reviews a couple of times on this thread, amd I am going to take the liberty of doing so once again.


The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) Directed by Werner Rainer Fassbinder 7B

I've always considered Werner Rainer Fassbinder to be the film director's equivalent of spinach: not fun to contemplate in advance nor to consume in the moment but somehow good for me in the long run if only because Fassbinder forces me to contemplate seriously the type of people I wouldn't walk across the street to meet if they paid me a thousand dollars. Petra is in a long-line of unappealing Fassbinder protagonists. She is a fashion designer who thinks she has achieved through experience some understanding of herself, that is, until she starts a new affair with a young female model after which we discover she's even more of an unlikable mess than she seemed in the first place. She has a daughter whom she doesn't really care about, an assistant who plays uncomplaining masochist to Petra's avid sadist, and a mother who when surveying the wreckage of her daughter's life can only bemoan the fact that Petra's new love interest is female. All this angst takes place in a single apartment in which Fassbinder finds interesting ways to shoot effectively in a confined space, ala Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, a movie which takes place almost entirely within the cabin of a small yacht. The mise-en-scene, all tacky designer clothes and huge Renaissance prints used as wall paper, is a lot of fun and, damn, it has to be because the characters are such a misery to be around. By the time the third act arrives I wondered if I were watching a comedy as feelings spiral more and more out of control to the point of self-parody. Minus the interesting visual style, though, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a radio play in a cinematic disguise. Give it this: true to much of Fassbinder's work, the movie gets better the further removed one actually is from seeing it. That's not a negligible accomplishment when you come to think about it.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Fassbinder (1972)
“Sorry I didn’t want to sound bitter…”

In a small bid to save paper (and thus the environment!) I use both sides of paper in the pad in which I take notes. I move forward in the pad, then flip it and go back on the backside of those pages. In a nice little bit of kismet my notes on Petra are the backside of the notes I took on Imitation of Life however many reviews ago. Appropriate, of course, because Fassbinder was an avowed fan of Douglas Sirk with the latter’s films echoing through many of the former’s (most obviously in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul).

You get that melodrama here particularly in the third act when family members are added to the drama, each with their own baggage (not to mention distinct and colorful dresses which felt like another Sirkian touch). Petra feels like a trio of plays — a meet-cute, a rift, a breakdown. Oh, it seems it was a play. Makes sense.

It plays like plays too. No one seems to sit or stand in natural ways. Everything is heighted, stagey. They’re at weird angles and sightlines that are striking to us viewers but don’t make sense in the actual room where the conversations are happening. Not a complaint. An observation. Style, baby.

Petra is mean and cutting. She’s exhausting and thus we get exhausted. There’s something to be said for the abuse we’d take to touch the hem of someone great (or once great). Karin, the object of affection, only takes so much before they split. Poor, passive Marlene takes the brunt of this and, on the surface, seems to win the day in the end though that pistol in the bag may portend a different outcome.

Adding to the overall affair, the story is allegedly somewhat autobiographical though gender swapped with Fassbinder in the Petra role in real life and a young man the subject of his interests. Certainly not a flattering portrait of oneself. It’s not quite All that Jazz, but it’s an interesting context that adds a little self-examination spice to this broth.

I haven't actually watched a ton of Fassbinder aside from his top few films. Always been curious to dive deeper. But this one tells me I definitely need to be in the right mood ....

 

[Jevo]

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Petra Von Kant is a succesful fashion designer. She has multiple divorces behind her, but now lives with her assistent Marlene, who she uses and abuses as she likes. Seemingly to mutual benefit. Things change however when an old friend comes to visit, and tells of a young woman who she met on the journey home from Australia. The young Karin meets the two women at Petra's house, and Petra is immediately attracted to Karin, and suggests she becomes a model. The two agree to meet the next day. Petra becomes deeply infatuated with Karin, while Karin seems to merely tolerate Petra because she gets taken care of and it can help her get a modelling career. When Karin's husband returns to Germany from Australia, she immediately leaves Petra, which throws Petra into deep despair.

Petra Von Kant is a very interesting character. She's a selfmade success as a fashion designer. But perhaps her success has not turned into lasting monetary gain, and she seems to not be as well of as she wants to appear. At this stage in her career she doesn't seem to be doing much designing work herself anymore, with Marlene being seen doing all the work. And then perhaps not entirely selfmade, because she has an aristocratic name and rich parents. She was also able to start because she had a husband who was working and supporting their life style with his earnings, so she was free to pursue fashion design. Then she dumped him because he wanted part in her money, and she resented him for that change in dynamic. Later Petra and Karin undergoes a similar change in dynamic. With Petra starting out dominant due to her financial control over Karin. But as Karin gains success in her own career, she becomes less dependent on Petra and ends up resenting Petra's love. Petra's love however have made her completely emotionally dependent on Karin. Over the course of the film, most, if not all, of Petra's relations has a big change in dynamic.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a somewhat typical Fassbinder. It's a melodrama that uses someof his typical themes of loneliness and love. It's made very minimalistically with just one location for the whole film, and just five scenes in total, and each scene is basically an act in and of it self. Typically for Fassbinder the film also takes a very pessimistic view of love and relationships. But it's probably one of Fassbinder's greatest. The movie is constantly packed with subtext, so much that it's hard to absorb it all in just one viewing. There's a lot happening between the lines in the almost constant dialogue, meanwhile there's also a lot of stuff happening in the background with how Marlene reacts to the dialogue, most often in subtle ways, And just the set design and how that changes from scene to scene. The movie is densely packed with information, and Fassbinder quite perfectly orchestrates the whole thing. The actresses in the film also all gives great performances.

 

[Nakatomi]

Has the movie club ever done the ~5 hour cut of Until the End of the World from Wim Wenders?

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Has the movie club ever done the ~5 hour cut of Until the End of the World from Wim Wenders?

We haven't. Though we have done four other Wenders movies over the years.

Funny to bring this up, I've been staring at it on a watch list for a while. Was doing some international traveling this summer and actually planned to finally watch it on one of my long plane rides (just as Wim would have wanted!) but it wasn't available for download, only streaming ... so I still haven't seen it.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

One Week
Keaton (1920)
“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

One of my favorite scenes ever in The Simpsons is a Gremlins’ spoof where Homer buys a doll that turns out to be evil. The exchange with the shopkeeper is a series of statements from the man to which Homer alternates replies between “That’s good” or “That’s bad.” I feel like that’s the Buster Keaton experience.

Poor put-upon Buster just wants to do something simple and happy. And then a house falls on him. Ever the resilient hero, he gets up. And then a train runs through the house. Etc., etc., etc.

This all, of course, is hilarious. When he’s at this best (which is often and which is here) Keaton and his films are timeless wonders to behold. Brimming with visual and physical invention and a genuine how’d-he-do-that verve. And this one in particular is 103 years old! There are $100+ million movies that aren’t as sharp and real-looking as this. Computers and all the money in the world aren’t a replacement for the magic of watching the man do the thing.

Here Buster marries and is gifted a house. But the newlyweds have to build it from a kit. No worry! There are directions. But the romantic rival has tampered with the directions. They build it anyway off those erroneous specs. More problems ensue. Etc., etc., etc. Catastrophic escalation vs. Buster’s stone-face stick-to-itiveness. The perfect laugh line of an ending makes it crystal clear who wins.

One Week is a damn delight. But it’s also a clear test run on a few fronts. Buster would again use spinning walls, trap doors and other fun house contraptions in The High Sign and there’s a proto version of the famous falling house stunt from Steamboat Bill Jr. My favorite bit here though comes when they try to tow the house across the street and he decides to nail the back of the car to the house, but when drives rather than pulling the nails out, the bottom of the car drives off, leaving the top still nailed to the home. That’s real ahead-of-its-time Looney Tunes-level cartoon logic.

It’s a gag machine, but there’s real sweetness here too. I hope these kids made it.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My next pick is Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho

 

[kihei]

Math not a strong suit, eh.

 

[kihei]

One Week (1923) Directed by Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton must be one of the surest bets in film history. His deadpan humour, often involving amazing physical gags, many of them perilous in the extreme, I think should qualify as a universal. He's funny in any country which in a way shows the advantage gained when words literally don't come into the picture. His narratives may not have the complexities of Chaplin, but his invention and comic timing take a back seat to no one. One Week is one of his many shorts, and it certainly among his best though it has a whole lot of company on that score. He puts himself in jeopardy and, it seems, that he puts his leading lady in jeopardy in a couple of the scenes as well. Every time I see his films I wonder how he and Harold Lloyd survived some of the funny but dangerous stunts that they pulled off. I always love the sense of expectation that I have in a Keaton short or feature, the sense of not having the slightest clue of what comes next but knowing that I will be entertained by it. What a gift for an artist to possess.

 

[Jevo]

One Week (1920) dir. Buster Keaton

A man and a woman gets married. She had another suiter who isn't happy about the arrangement. The happy couple gets gifted a new house as a wedding gift, although they need to assemble it first on a vacant lot. The rejected suiter in an act of revenge switches the numbers on some of the boxes with materials. Much hilarity ensues.

One Week is a classic Buster Keaton film. A narrative exists, but the narrative mostly exists to give the gags a theme and something to revolve around. In someway the narrative is almost an intentional obstruction to Keaton. How many gags can I get out of a badly built house being built? Turns out it's a lot. He even incorporates the face of the house falling over, with him narrowly escaping unharmed by being in the exact spot of a window gag, which he used multiple times in his career. Although the one from Steamboat Bill Jr. was better. Keaton has made movies with better gags than in One Week, he has also made movies with better narratives than in One Week. But One Week still remains as a great example of Keaton at his best, where there's a seemingly neverending stream of gags, which show off his comedic timing and acrobatic skills.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Math not a strong suit, eh.

Just caught this. OVER crediting Buster by about two decades.

 

[Pink Mist]

One Week (Buster Keaton and Edward F Cline, 1920)

I've been watching a lot of 2+ hour films with heavy subjects lately (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, California Dreamin', The Human Condition trilogy), so watching this Buster Keaton short was a breath of fresh air. The set-up is simple - a newly wed couple have to build their new dream home together that came in a box - but the gags are complex. Keaton is up to a lot of tricks here in One Week utilizing trap doors, spinning floors, and outrageous stunts that makes you ask yourself 100+ years later: 1) How did they film that? and 2) How did they survive that?! There's a couple of stunts in particular that seemed very dangerous, including the frame of the house nearly falling on Keaton (a stunt he would repeat to a larger degree in Steamboat Bill Jr). The comedic gags are also superb, I loved that cheeky scene in the bathtub where they obscure her reaching for the soap with a hand over the camera - the meta wink to the camera felt decades ahead of its time. One Week is just a ton of fun and the best Keaton short that I have seen - I would easily recommend it to someone who finds silent films boring because this is easily accessible and much more entertaining than many films released in 2023.

 

[kihei]

Heaven's Gate (1980) Directed by Michael Cimino

The advance word on Heaven's Gate was not only did it single-handedly sink a studio, but that it was possibly, indeed, quite likely, the worst movie ever made. Critics everywhere really piled on. Here is the second paragraph from Roger Ebert's review at the time, penned right after he complained about how ugly looking the movie was (???) in the first paragraph:

"But Cimino’s in deeper trouble still. “Heaven’s Gate” has, of course, become a notorious picture, a boondoggle that cost something like $36 million and was yanked out of its New York opening run after the critics ran gagging from the theater. Its running time, at that point, was more than four hours. Perhaps length was the problem? Cimino went back to the editing room, while a United Artists executive complained that the film had been “destroyed” by an unfairly negative review by New York Times critic Vincent Canby. Brother Canby was only doing his job. If the film was formless at four hors, it is insipid at 140 minutes. At either length it is so incompletely photographed and edited that there are times when we are not even sure which character we are looking at. Christopher Walken is in several of the Western scenes before he finally gets a close-up and we see who he is. John Hurt wanders through various scenes to no avail. Kris Kristofferson is the star of the movie, and is never allowed to generate enough character for us to miss, should he disappear."

Isabelle Huppert was also singled-out by many critics, primarily for having a French accent, like somehow that was out of keeping in a movie about immigrants. The level of animosity toward a film was not revisited until the utterly pointless Ishtar came out seven years later. Because of all the negative press I decided to just skip the movie and didn't pick it up until it played in a review theatre three or four years later.

I was surprised by what I saw. I didn't think the movie was a masterpiece, but I thought it was a very good Western with an interesting menage a trois consisting of a very attractive and complex hooker and two friends who didn't seem to like one another at all. That was certainly different. I liked how the movie shifted between the relationships and the sections dealing with immigrants lives in the new land, a land that was harsh and made more so by the cruelty of the people who had arrived there before them. This theme was treated like it was something as predictable as the sun coming up in the east: Immigrants are treated like hell until they settle in and then they give hell to the next generation of immigrants. There are a lot of Westerns that play off the natural conflict between land owners and settlers, but this one seemed to make its immigrants seem more realistic, more vulnerable and more powerless. I would say that this theme has only gotten more profound and pointed with time, and speaks directly to the exclusionary populist movements of today. But, of course, that didn't occur to me until I saw Heaven's Gate again last week.

Unlike Ebert, I didn't think the movie was ugly to look at; in fact, it seemed quite beautiful. Sure, maybe something could be cut, but not the dance sequence on roller skates, which seemed to irritate critics no end. And not the relationship stuff, either. I thought Huppert was superb; I thought she created a very believable, complex character. I thought Walken was fascinating to watch. His line deliveries have a rhythm all their own and he shamelessly uses his eyes to reveal what he is really thinking. Huppert is good at that, too. There is a scene where she visits his cabin in which all the communication is through their eyes which replaces dialogue for a minute or so. Fascinating. I liked John Hurt who was obviously there to provide a type--the utterly useless intellectual who sees the evils of the world clearly, articulates his disgust with caustic wit, and then has another drink. I think all this material was needed to get at the larger political implications that the movie is trying to tie into the story.

Well, then there is Kristofferson. He gives it the old college try, I guess. Though the bar is awfully low, one could argue this is among his best performances. He succeeds in showing some emotional range. But the highest praise I would be willing to offer is that he is adequate. He can't act with his eyes at all, maybe because he is too busy trying to get his lines right. He is at his worst when he doesn't have lines, and just sort of stands there looking lost. He makes David Bowie look like Laurence Olivier. Oh, and on the lack of action criticism.The movie is not about action until the end when it is used to show the futile extremes people must go to in order to hang on to a life that is too hard to begin with. All in all, I think Heaven's Gate is a very good Western, one with way more thematic meat on its bones than most. Over the years the movie has undergone some significant reappraisals which I think it fully deserves.

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. I think it is still available to view on MUBI.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick will be Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. I think it is still available to view on MUBI.

Good choice, I hated it when I saw it at TIFF last year and the praise by critics and audiences was a mystery to me. So will be good to revisit and see if it clicks this time

 

[kihei]

Good choice, I hated it when I saw it at TIFF last year and the praise by critics and audiences was a mystery to me. So will be good to revisit and see if it clicks this time

Made my top three last year. It will be interesting to compare notes.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My next pick will be Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. I think it is still available to view on MUBI.

Just listened to a podcast talking about this (and Park overall). Got a lot of Park on the brain at the moment. Primed to discuss.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Heaven’s Gate
Cimino (1980)
“Is this Heaven’s Gate?
No, it’s Wyoming!”

Few movies have the infamy of Michael Cimino’s epic western. Its very name for decades became shorthand for disaster. It is credibly credited with driving the studio owner out of the film business and the power shift from the creator-driven 1970s to the corporate-and-producer driven 1980s.

But a funny thing happened between its initial release and today. It was reassembled, recut, rereleased, reassessed and the result is … it’s remarkably fine.

While the version today is certainly not the disaster of the film’s long-held reputation, I’m not committing to the misunderstood masterpiece take some of the reclaimers have proclaimed. I’d be curious to watch the original, shorter, butchered version for comparison. I have no doubts the current iteration is better, but the side-by-side would be interesting.

Michael Cimino is masterful with a set piece. Give him a big room and dozens of people who want to dance and damned if he won’t give you minutes upon minutes of people hoofin’ it. But while The Deer Hunter’s famously long wedding sequence has clear purpose, I thought the comparable prolonged and repeated shaking of legs here shuffled into tedium. Compelling filmmaking, but only to a point.

The odder thing to me is at 3.5 hours I assumed there would be a depth and richness to the story and characters, but all that connective tissue and development was lackluster, especially given that big runtime. Where did all the time go? More dancing, I think.

The big scenes are good. I am being genuine when I say I think he is a legit skilled hand with a big set piece. The climax is compelling chaos in many ways, but similar to the movie as a whole I found myself distracted by the little things. I don’t like that my brain kept wrestling with nit picks — like How did they find the time to build siege wagons? Why did it take them so long to use dynamite? — but it did and I think that actually sums up my Heaven’s Gate feelings accurately. It does a lot of big things right and a lot of little things wrong (if at all).

Kris Kristofferson is a miss for me, which unfortunately is part of what drags the film. There’s a rare and nicely less twitchy Christopher Walken here. Wasn’t prepared for evil Sam Waterston, who otherwise made a career playing walking talking decency, but he pulled it off well. A career path not fully explored by him.

Boy the topic of insurrection and themes of government overreach sure resonate a lot louder these days …

Lots of trivia and stories about this troubled production, but I think my favorite is that it took so long to film that John Hurt filmed part of his role, left production, filmed the entirety of David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and then returned to finish his work on Heaven’s Gate.

 

[Jevo]

Heaven's Gate (1980) dir. Michael Cimino

Telling a story loosely based on the Johnson County War between wealthy land owners and poor immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The film focuses on Jim Averill the marshall is Johnson County. Poor immigrants in the county are accused by the wealthy land owners in the Wyoming Stock Growers Association of stealing cattle and other things from them. The association led by Frank Canton hire a bunch of hired guns, and hands them a list of 125 names which are to be killed without trial. Averill resists the Stock Growers Association, and thus gets himself in the sights.

Heaven's Gate is perhaps best known for being called one of the worst films ever made, and for the lengthy and controversial production. I've never watched the theatrical release, I've only watched it now, and I watched the Director's Cut version, which adds 70 minutes of runtime. So I can't really say whether the movie released in cinemas was as bad as claimed. But the directors cut is certainly not. But it's also a far cry from The Deer Hunter. I think it's clear Cimino is trying to build up the story in the same as he did in The Deer Hunter. There's an early party scene of innocence. Then a long introduction before the conflict only starts to really form and take hold late in the film. But it doesn't work as well here as in The Deer Hunter for me. Perhaps because I find the characters less compelling. I think the principal characters Averill, Champion and Ella aren't very interesting to follow. They are very well acted, but I struggle to take interest in the characters. And that obviously hurts the film for me. The thematically most interesting part of the film for me is the struggle between the poor immigrants and the wealthy landowners. A classic struggle, especially also with the landowners being helped by the government, despite the government pretending to punish them. But the immigrants seem to lack agency of their own in the film. They only act as a result of Averill and Ella, and otherwise they seem to mostly serve as being part of the environment of the film, rather than an active part of the story. And that's a shame I think.

There's moments of great filmmaking in Heaven's Gate, but it seems to get lost in the shuffle, and far too often the movie gets lost in itself instead of trying to tell the story it has at hand.

 

[Pink Mist]

Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)

Heaven's Gate infamously had a big hand at contributing to the downfall of United Artists studio and tanked critically and in the box office. A lot of harsh words were written about the film and the film swept the Razzies with wins for Worst Picture, Worst Direction, a nomination for Worst Screenplay, and Worst Actor (Kris Kristofferson). Now, I realize the film has been recut multiple times since its release in 1980 and I'm watching the 216 minute version, but based on the version I saw, it is certifiably insane that it did so well (poorly?) at the Razzies. I don't even think Kristofferson's performance was that great by any means but it wasn't Razzie worthy. Was there something in the water in the early 80s?

The film has since been reassessed by many critics to be a masterpiece, and while I don't think I personally would go quite as far to drop the M word, I think it flirts with it at times. The first half especially is a powerful portrayal of the American immigrant experience, capitalism and imperialism with fantastic set pieces and an astounding visual feast. Cimino loves a dance scene and he even incorporates roller blading! I didn't know that a roller rink was an essential feature of frontier towns. The film quickly sets itself up to be truly epic in all sense of the word.

I do think it runs out of steam a bit in the second half as it shifts into long chaotic gunfights (that at times were confusing such as how the setters had so much time overnight to build their siege equipment? or why they waited until then to use dynamite?). But nothing that made me reevaluate it as anything less than a good film.

Something I really liked in this film were the performances. A lot of actors in Heaven's Gate are playing against type a bit (or rather the types they would later be famous for) and they all knock it out of the park. The cold-blooded Ice Queen Isabelle Huppert plays a warm and affectionate brothel manager, Christopher Walken plays a reserved and sensitive character, Sam Waterson plays a villain. Kris Kristofferson plays a serviceable actor.

Fully deserving of its critical reappraisal.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)

Something I really liked in this film were the performances. A lot of actors in Heaven's Gate are playing against type a bit (or rather the types they would later be famous for) and they all knock it out of the park. The cold-blooded Ice Queen Isabelle Huppert plays a warm and affectionate brothel manager, Christopher Walken plays a reserved and sensitive character, Sam Waterson plays a villain. Kris Kristofferson plays a serviceable actor.

I choose to believe it was such a bad experience for all the actors that they dedicated the rest of their careers to playing the exact opposite.

 

[Jevo]

Strangers On A Train (1951) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Tennis star Guy Haines meets a man called Bruno Anthony on a train. Bruno is a fan and very talkative. Guy Haines is in the middle of a divorce and has a new girl he wants to marry, but his wife is stalling things. Bruno really wants to be rid of his father, so he proposes a scheme where they switch murders. Guy dismisses Bruno as a weird man on the train. But Bruno goes through with the plan as he imagines it, and kills Guy's wife. Then he seeks out Guy to try and blackmail him to do his part of the deal.

I'm not actually sure if the whole swapping murders trope started with Strangers On A Train (or rather the novel it's based on), but now it's become iconic and is often referenced in various movies and TV shows due to this movie. And it's easy to see why. It's a great setup. How do you solve a seemingly random murder done by someone with no connection to the victim? Basically impossible, especially before the age of DNA evidence. The question is though, why did Bruno not keep away from Guy? The two being seen together and interacting would link them to eachothers murders. Of course Guy doesn't want to do his murder, and Bruno has to try and get him to do his part. But the bigger reason is probably different. First of all Bruno is a psychopath who dreams about murders with delight. Actually doing one was probably exhilarating for him. He enjoyed it. Also Bruno appears to have a romantic or sexual interest in Guy, and this gives him a reason to stalk and persue Guy. Guy is too stupid and weak to fully reject Bruno, instead he gets folded further and further into Bruno's web. Guy and Bruno are in many ways opposites to each other, but Hitchcock also paints a connection between them through editing and lighting.

While I really like the setup of the film, what really makes it is Hitchcock's direction, but also the two leads. Farley Granger is great as the meek Guy caught way out of his depth. You can feel sorry for him, but also feel frustrated with how he seems ever unlikely to be have the capacity to escape Bruno's web. Robert Walker steals the show though. He makes Bruno intriguing, but not likeable. Charming but no wholesome. Scary but not fearsome. The best scenes in the movie are by far the ones that he is in. He gives so many layers to the character which are not said out loud. Truly a great performance.

If I have on gripe with the film, it's that Guy doesn't actually murder Bruno's father. It was possibly not possible due to censorship at the time. But would have given another dimension to Guy getting dragged into Bruno's web and finally succombing to him. But the film is still super entertaining and thrilling, so I'm not complaining too much.