On a deeply personal level. Revisit HEARTBURN
http://youtu.be/c0A7jAVDPJU
God's Little Acre
Lord, make way for gold
the girlfriend experience
chelsea's work
Trash Humpers
broken, faked, MADE
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Friday, October 11, 2013
link in honor of TROUBLE EVERY DAY screening this week in a new 35mm restoration
http://web.archive.org/web/20130117023018/http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=649:sick-fulfillment&catid=25:rapporto-confidenziale&Itemid=27
Monday, September 30, 2013
NORTE: END OF LONG TAKES AS WE KNOW THEM
I wanted to have one specific moment that jumped from the screen and attached itself to me.
That one specific moment, the type that usually comes only after soaking myself in a world of long takes, slowed down scenes and conversations;ones that often emerge from the 7 hr plus sort of films one expects from Lav Diaz.
Seeing his latest film at NYFF yesterday, NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY, i wasnt left with any one or three moments that tore at my spirit and emerged bigger than time. This is something ive felt at other Diaz films, such as the the slow, temporally experiential black and white ones where character and setting bore at you until they become screamingly specific and touching. Such lessons are unhurriedly cultured in MELANCHOLIA, FLORENTINA HUBALDO,CTE as well as EVOLUTION OF A FILIPINO FAMILY.
All three of those films, all movies i strongly admire, were experiences, trials, and immersive oppurtunities.
NORTE, just as esteemable, accomplishes its ends in more specific and targeted ways.
Some level of poeticism has been razed, perhaps in honor of narrative cohesion. The narrative unspools over a group of people whose lives touch each other in the ways that the touch of a hand impact another in a film like Bresson's L'ARGENT or PICKPOCKET. The victims of the film are disparate yet connected, by way of a novelistic approach to form. One victim rises like a phoenix, imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, he has a chance to separate from Capitalistic struggles and nurse his Spirit. Another victim, depicted as a pig, is denied our pity. Later in the film an actual pig is separated from a farm family to be sold, and a child is distraught over losing him. Soon after , a third major vicitm is killed, and it is an innocent dog. Now the perception of the woman who was depicted as a pig is complicated. Diaz illustrates his points by elevating the spirtual content of people and denaturing the benefits of Capitalist community.
His other films speak to Capitalism and the cruetly and evil that is borne from money.
But they do so in more langorous and roundabout ways. NORTE seems to have the same aims but delivers them, still in long take, but in shorter , tighter long takes And in color.. A few minutes may be spent on a small urban studio apartment shot , complete with large dog picture on the wall and a japanese lantern and bed. But unlike Diaz' other films, this one is directly related to plot, although it may seem initially as uneventful as the many long shots that add up to the cumulative experience of his other films. This information in this shot informs us later when the character who lives here is reunited with the dog in the photo.
There is less odd mannerism and character observation; Diaz seemingly more in favor of direct political renderings of history. To be both crude and accurate this is Bresson meets Dostoyevsky meets Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD. Coming out in between the birth of the new terrorism in 2001 and the major american recession of 2008, THE ROAD always spoke to me as a novel about...the end of history. But specifically the end of American history, that story of a cowboy and his son, who could no longer expect to fulfill a dream of a better world and a capitalist climb.
There is a moment in THE ROAD, a book i read several years ago, that still vibrates bracingly with me. The man and his son are walking along and come upon a campsite where everything, as it is at the end of the world where only cannibals and a few 'good' men remain, is covered with ash and embers. There is something that had been cooked that is charred over coals. As the young son realizes what it is the father suddenly sees it is a small human infant, headless, who had been charred and eaten.
I recalled this moment a couple of weeks ago when I read a novel called THE BALLAD OF WEST TENTH STREET. i was not too fond of this book, but there is one notable strand of the story that deals with a nice homeless man who has picked up and touchingly cares for a small cat who becomes his best friend.
There is a character in the book who is described as the Angry One..he is another homeless man, but not one who is able to connect with people and animals as the nice one does. All he can do is compare and look at others and see what he himself does not have, so all he can do is destroy things for others.
In one elongated sequence of the book he attacks the cat until he is drowned in a well. I recall reading how despite his clawing at the walls and trying so hard to live and to survive, eventually the cat felt the wet fill its lungs, and then it died.
This is a beautiful moment in the book, and it is also so desperately sad because it is so true. we are all destroyed by our wants and our needs not being met. We are destroyed by the greed and destruction of our culture.
The same moment reminds me of many moments in THE ROAD and the way that amazing book is written.
I had the oppurtunity to be reminded of both of these books in the third quarter of NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY. That beloved dog in the bedroom photo who is lovingly reunited with...he is murdered in a wordless, extended scene where anger, comparison, mania and guilt culminate in violent psychosis.
There is a more pivotal (plot wise) murder earlier in the film, but the murder of the dog is that one thing that jumped off the screen to me. The emotion of this scene is so much more confusing and hopeless.
The first murder screams politics, because the woman killed is a Capitalist pig who lives a privliged bourgeois existence. She is perceived as less of a victim because of her financial status, but after the murder of the dog her role of victim is clarified . The slaughtered woman, the dog, and the man wrongly imprisoned for her crime, are all buried in the ashes of Capitalism; their fate caught by the look of The Angry One.
That one specific moment, the type that usually comes only after soaking myself in a world of long takes, slowed down scenes and conversations;ones that often emerge from the 7 hr plus sort of films one expects from Lav Diaz.
Seeing his latest film at NYFF yesterday, NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY, i wasnt left with any one or three moments that tore at my spirit and emerged bigger than time. This is something ive felt at other Diaz films, such as the the slow, temporally experiential black and white ones where character and setting bore at you until they become screamingly specific and touching. Such lessons are unhurriedly cultured in MELANCHOLIA, FLORENTINA HUBALDO,CTE as well as EVOLUTION OF A FILIPINO FAMILY.
All three of those films, all movies i strongly admire, were experiences, trials, and immersive oppurtunities.
NORTE, just as esteemable, accomplishes its ends in more specific and targeted ways.
Some level of poeticism has been razed, perhaps in honor of narrative cohesion. The narrative unspools over a group of people whose lives touch each other in the ways that the touch of a hand impact another in a film like Bresson's L'ARGENT or PICKPOCKET. The victims of the film are disparate yet connected, by way of a novelistic approach to form. One victim rises like a phoenix, imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, he has a chance to separate from Capitalistic struggles and nurse his Spirit. Another victim, depicted as a pig, is denied our pity. Later in the film an actual pig is separated from a farm family to be sold, and a child is distraught over losing him. Soon after , a third major vicitm is killed, and it is an innocent dog. Now the perception of the woman who was depicted as a pig is complicated. Diaz illustrates his points by elevating the spirtual content of people and denaturing the benefits of Capitalist community.
His other films speak to Capitalism and the cruetly and evil that is borne from money.
But they do so in more langorous and roundabout ways. NORTE seems to have the same aims but delivers them, still in long take, but in shorter , tighter long takes And in color.. A few minutes may be spent on a small urban studio apartment shot , complete with large dog picture on the wall and a japanese lantern and bed. But unlike Diaz' other films, this one is directly related to plot, although it may seem initially as uneventful as the many long shots that add up to the cumulative experience of his other films. This information in this shot informs us later when the character who lives here is reunited with the dog in the photo.
There is less odd mannerism and character observation; Diaz seemingly more in favor of direct political renderings of history. To be both crude and accurate this is Bresson meets Dostoyevsky meets Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD. Coming out in between the birth of the new terrorism in 2001 and the major american recession of 2008, THE ROAD always spoke to me as a novel about...the end of history. But specifically the end of American history, that story of a cowboy and his son, who could no longer expect to fulfill a dream of a better world and a capitalist climb.
There is a moment in THE ROAD, a book i read several years ago, that still vibrates bracingly with me. The man and his son are walking along and come upon a campsite where everything, as it is at the end of the world where only cannibals and a few 'good' men remain, is covered with ash and embers. There is something that had been cooked that is charred over coals. As the young son realizes what it is the father suddenly sees it is a small human infant, headless, who had been charred and eaten.
I recalled this moment a couple of weeks ago when I read a novel called THE BALLAD OF WEST TENTH STREET. i was not too fond of this book, but there is one notable strand of the story that deals with a nice homeless man who has picked up and touchingly cares for a small cat who becomes his best friend.
There is a character in the book who is described as the Angry One..he is another homeless man, but not one who is able to connect with people and animals as the nice one does. All he can do is compare and look at others and see what he himself does not have, so all he can do is destroy things for others.
In one elongated sequence of the book he attacks the cat until he is drowned in a well. I recall reading how despite his clawing at the walls and trying so hard to live and to survive, eventually the cat felt the wet fill its lungs, and then it died.
This is a beautiful moment in the book, and it is also so desperately sad because it is so true. we are all destroyed by our wants and our needs not being met. We are destroyed by the greed and destruction of our culture.
The same moment reminds me of many moments in THE ROAD and the way that amazing book is written.
I had the oppurtunity to be reminded of both of these books in the third quarter of NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY. That beloved dog in the bedroom photo who is lovingly reunited with...he is murdered in a wordless, extended scene where anger, comparison, mania and guilt culminate in violent psychosis.
There is a more pivotal (plot wise) murder earlier in the film, but the murder of the dog is that one thing that jumped off the screen to me. The emotion of this scene is so much more confusing and hopeless.
The first murder screams politics, because the woman killed is a Capitalist pig who lives a privliged bourgeois existence. She is perceived as less of a victim because of her financial status, but after the murder of the dog her role of victim is clarified . The slaughtered woman, the dog, and the man wrongly imprisoned for her crime, are all buried in the ashes of Capitalism; their fate caught by the look of The Angry One.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
timeless, jobless, loveless: TIME OUT (L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS)
I'm thinking of Laurent Cantet's TIME OUT, (2001) and how it stole unexpected tears from me when i went to see it one uncrowded early morning at Angelika Film Center (if memory serves me right.) The film was about a man who escapes from his life of responsibility, all the while keeping up the fraudulent sense that he is a normal person who has somewhere to work and someplace to go.
The time that he spends away from his responsibilites (work) soon broadens to the world of love and family, where he becomes less and less present, living in a free space and time that are seemingly safe from the consequences of the real world.
The joy exhibited early in his time away soon becomes sadder as his world closes in around him.
The loneliness and lies, like the false world of a using addict in denial, are what impacted me like a mac truck.
Cantet's film progresses , as does the disease of addiction, and the isolation of this world he 's remained in too long becomes more difficult to leave.
I'm reading a passage written by James McGahern, in an introduction to John Williams novel STONER (1965.) The following passage pushed me erect in my seat, startled, as I reflected back to TIME OUT, a film that had been percolating in my mind in recent weeks.
"STONER is also a novel about work, the hard unyielding work of the farms; the work of living within a destructive marriage and bringing up a daughter with patient mutability in a poisoned household; the work of teaching literature to mostly unresponsive students. How Williams manages to dramatize this almost impossible material is itself a small miracle. In a rare interview given late in life, John Williams says of Stoner:
'I think he's a real hero...He was a witness to values that are important...The important thing in the novel to me is Stoner's sense of a job. Teaching to him is a job -- a job in hte good and honorable sense of the word. His job gave him a particular kind of identity and also made him what he was...It's the love of something, the thing that's essential."
Reading this made me realize, more than ever, how connected the escape of responsibility in adulthood/work and the escape of responsibility in love are intertwined in Cantet's film.
Love is the only thing, in the end, that can slap Cantet's protag in the face, waking him up to his illness of isolation and falsehood.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Lost In Emotion by Lisa Lisa or BEHIND THE CANDELABRA - The Cinema of Disappointment by Steven Soderbergh
Mired more in disappointment than in desire, Steven Soderbergh's reportedly final film is also thick with intense emotion.
BEHIND THE CANDELABRA opens with explosions of hope. Summer and Moroder throb as a disco styled HBO logo brights the screen. Action commences with an expectation of pleasure: Bob (Scott Bakula) and Scott (Matt Damon) exchange gazes across a (gay) bar, Summer and Moroder still feeling love in the background. Bob approaches and first names are shared; the synth pop phantasm faded, the quick scene already over, intensity of expectations deflated.
The promise of passion and adoration is renewed when Bob introduces Scott to his newest fan, Liberace (Michael Douglas.)
As Scott and Lee become enmeshed, the story is revealed in a series of physical and emotional changes unleashed in Scott. He pursues plastic surgery, he stops actively working in his field, he develops a drug problem and he is emotionally all over the fucking map.
Lee, on the other hand, is unchanged gloss. We learn little about him besides a few calmly revealed anecdotes. His mother (Debbie Reynolds) is present yet unknowable under a thick Polish accent and a preoccupation with being given money.
Scott and Lee remain together while Lee is protected and Scott descends into a loss of identity.
Watching their relationship on film is like watching a bird fly into a mirror. Time and time again the bird thinks it is looking at a possible mate, unable to understand there is only a glass that can not be entered.
The love of Liberace is studied less for homosexuality than as a love of co dependency.
These lacks are measures of unmet expectations; of images that lie, and surfaces that can't be permeated.
Scott seeks in Lee a promise of love, personal beauty and protection, and he is disappointed on all fronts.
Perhaps Soderbergh is evoking, by way of heightened emotions and sexy disco soap opera, the failures he sees reflected back in his own creations.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
FOOL ME TWICE
I'm thinking about Rabbit Angstrom and how luck and desperation convened on this unimpressive prick.
He could cheat, disappear and run out on Janice, but she would fall in love with him each time, and she would take him back.
He is written as a bit of a louse, a crotchety, bitter yet unflappable guy. Modern sensibilities tinged with a vaguely racist and reactionary worldview. He is likeable because he is authentic and he is terribly flawed, and it is reasonable to accept that women love and forgive and fall for him, and that this is a pattern that repeats itself.
It is less believable to see the women who refuse to fall.
That is why PRETTY WOMAN is as realistic as the RABBIT books. Only the movie hides some of the humiliation, though it is directly inferred, since the relationship begins as transactional.
In MS. 45 the trauma of repeated male to female harm (rape by a street attacker) is tempered by the revenge murders the victim begins to carry out; once transformed, fantastically, into a super sexualized killer.
In reality women are no strangers to repeated humiliation.
They are disgusting yet recognizable and they have no one to blame but themselves.
He could cheat, disappear and run out on Janice, but she would fall in love with him each time, and she would take him back.
He is written as a bit of a louse, a crotchety, bitter yet unflappable guy. Modern sensibilities tinged with a vaguely racist and reactionary worldview. He is likeable because he is authentic and he is terribly flawed, and it is reasonable to accept that women love and forgive and fall for him, and that this is a pattern that repeats itself.
It is less believable to see the women who refuse to fall.
That is why PRETTY WOMAN is as realistic as the RABBIT books. Only the movie hides some of the humiliation, though it is directly inferred, since the relationship begins as transactional.
In MS. 45 the trauma of repeated male to female harm (rape by a street attacker) is tempered by the revenge murders the victim begins to carry out; once transformed, fantastically, into a super sexualized killer.
In reality women are no strangers to repeated humiliation.
They are disgusting yet recognizable and they have no one to blame but themselves.
 |
| MS. 45 |
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Lorna's Silence
spirit interrupts
the girlfriend experience
chelsea managing the business
l'Interieur
cutting through the walls