#6 - Seven Samurai

I crossed some sort of invisible line when I was 16. I had moved to a new town about two weeks before school started and didn't really know anyone, so I had to wait a little while before I really made new friends. High school was kind of a joke, so I had a ton of time after school to kill. I spent that first winter clearing out the local video store 3 tapes at a time. You know that person in your building that has too many cats and wears cat sweaters that you see lugging 50 pound bags of meow mix into the elevator. Well I was that person except, you know, movies instead of cats. Things turned around for me of course, even though I had shoulder length hair that flipped out like Judy Jetson, but the video store in town was always a comfortable place for me. And it was there, when I was feeling a little adventurous, that I picked up Seven Samurai. 3.5 hours long, in Japanese with English subtitles. I was skeptical. I just figured that movies made in different countries would be unintelligible, that there would be other barriers besides language. I was wrong. I was also lucky. I imagine if I had picked up Solaris I wouldn't have fallen in love with foreign films so quickly. Sometimes the right film comes to you at the right time.

This was the perfect gateway drug for sixteen year old Don Jacobson. I loved how it took its time to introduce me to the characters. I laughed my ass off at Kikuchiyo's introduction and the way he was slowly introduced into the group. I marveled at the way the action and the tension built once we finally came to the village the samurai were sent to protect. I was blown away.

The twenty-nine year old Don Jacobson is still blown away. Film classes and books have allowed me to further appreciate how carefully constructed it is, and how different it is from other Japanese features at the same time. How the action is all about precise camera movement and editing. At the same time it transports me back to being that sixteen year old in the basement, smiling and marveling at something he'd never seen before. From that day on, it was rare to see me leave the video store without some kind of foreign film under my arm. Many of them were as stupid as their American counterparts, but they laid the groundwork for my discovery of countless others, three of which are on this list.

I have a sixteen year old brother now. I think I'll bring Seven Samurai next time I see him.

R.I.P. DFW

A friend of mine jokes occasionally that I only really like 5 novels. If that were really true, it would only be because Infinite Jest ruined my expectations forever. It taught me that I didn't need to fully understand a novel to engage with it. It challenged me to become smarter, it made me look up words and re-read sentences. I feel like to some degree the experience taught me how to read. His other novel, his short fiction, and his journalistic work are all similarly rewarding.

A great loss.

11/25/2008

Also available in Blu-Ray
http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=453

Ugh I've been lazy about this blog, expect more soon.

Wave of Mutilation

Richard Kelly may be cinema's first accidental genius. Donnie Darko is a genuinely mysterious film with some haunting visuals. It's brilliance lies in its mystery-- you can't really tell what's going on, but you're given just enough to put theories together. So what does Kelly do? He creates a director's cut that explains more, and ruins the pace and the mystery that made the film magical in the first place.

This prologue explains the main problem I have with Southland Tales. It's ambitious, inspired, and genuinely funny. The film quotes T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Philip K. Dick, but its main influence lies in metafiction, namely Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. References pile on top of each other, authors are misquoted, characters break into song and dance, the world is familiar and alien at the same time. But the difficulty with metafiction is that the audience is going to get lost, they're not going to catch all the references, and they're going to be confused and frustrated. This is unavoidable. An audience is only willing to go as far as it trusts that the author knows what's going on and is going to be able to pull it all together. Richard Kelly hasn't earned that trust from me, and he doesn't change that in this film.

So does Richard Kelly know what he's making when he makes a film? Are the parts that I love about Southland Tales merely accidents? Was Donnie Darko's success more a result of limited time and budget, and less the result of a confident new voice in cinema? Unfortunately, that's my suspicion.

That being said, there are a lot of things to like about Southland Tales. I think the decision to use actors with a lot of baggage is an inspired one, and I love The Rock as an anti-action hero. The addition of former SNL cast members makes the world feel a little off, a little alien. I admire the way the film refuses to explain too much. In a way it feels like Buckaroo Banzai-- like the second film in a trilogy where the first and the third were never made. It reminds me a lot of David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Terry Gilliam. And it successfully creates a kind of Pynchonian world where Karl Marx or the Marx Brothers could be around the next corner.

This makes it even more disappointing when Kelly fails to bring it all together in a satisfying way. What passes for satire seems really facile, and every time the film tries to make a political point it falls flat. The ending disintegrates into an underwhelming mess of Christ figures. I think the biggest misstep is the lack of a theme tying it all together. Gravity's Rainbow has cold war paranoia, Infinite Jest has addiction, Southland Tales has no discernible theme and that's why it doesn't work as metafiction.

Still it's fun to watch, and I've spent two weeks unpacking it in my head after one viewing. That's more than most films give me, even it if may not be on purpose.

#7 - Bringing Up Baby

If you think classic hollywood comedies are simple, you need to see Bringing Up Baby. The first time you see it you won't notice how complicated the whole thing is because it moves so fast. Jokes, pratfalls, and visual gags hit and combine and overlap and never let up, so much so that you're likely to miss a few because you laugh over them. This is the signature style of the comedies of director Howard Hawks. The secret ingredient that sets Bringing Up Baby apart from Hawks' other comedies is the combination of two of the most charismatic actors of all time, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Not only do they have chemistry and comedic timing to spare, they also sell every line, every fall and every joke. Their charisma brings likeability to two characters that could have been very tiresome otherwise.

Any kind of plot synopsis would give everything away and sound crazy anyway, so suffice it to say that there is a leopard named Baby, a dog named George, a missing intercostal clavicle from a brontosaurus, a trip to Connecticut, a drunk Irish gardener, and everybody ends up in jail at the end. Got it? It won't matter if you don't. What does matter is that you see it because I am convinced there isn't a funnier movie in existence.

If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

Charlie Bartlett is really, really good. I was expecting a kind of precious faux-Rushmore, but instead I got something more like Ferris Bueller. I'm sure if I was in a more critical mood I'd find a bunch of faults with it, but a lot like Lars and the Real Girl it generated such a good feeling that I didn't really want to find things that didn't work in it. It's a little Hollywood, but it makes you feel good. Go see it, and hurry because it won't be in theaters long. Seriously, I'll go with you.

#8 - Viridiana

A man holds a small, ornate cross in his hand, then slowly pulls it open, revealing the pocketknife it contains. A little girl plays with a crown of thorns, but it pricks her so she throws it in a fire. Anyone who loves seeing religious imagery being subverted can find a lot to like in Viridiana. But if it was only a collection of irreverent anti-religious images it wouldn't stand a chance of making this list. Bunuel made that film earlier in his career with L'age D'or. But L'age D'or is a film that's rotten on the surface, a slideshow of funny images that subvert religious icons. Viridiana is rotten to the core, subverting not only through the images, but through the story as well.

Viridiana is the story of a woman who is just about to take her vows to become a nun. Before she joins the convent for good she is ordered to pay one last visit to her patron, her uncle. During the visit her faith is shaken and she decides to stay at the farmhouse, choosing to take care of poor and crippled beggars from the nearby village. This being a Bunuel film, her plan backfires horribly. Her idealism is destroyed, and the film ends by suggesting that she hooks up with her worldly cousin. But a plot synopsis can't convey how deranged the journey is. The uncle dresses Viridiana up in his dead wife's wedding dress, and drugs her after she refuses to marry him. The beggars she tries desperately to help take terrible advantage of her and bicker with each other constantly. The beggars enter the farmhouse when she's away and destroy it, leading to the climax where Viridiana is attacked by the very people she tried to help. Finally she is not saved by heroism, faith or strength, but by the greed of one of the attackers who turns on the other. How could anyone maintain their faith after that ordeal?

And that's the terrible, wonderful question that the film ultimately asks. How can idealism exist at all in this world? It's conveyed best in my favorite scene. Viridiana's cousin notices a dog tied to a cart. He asks the man why the dog can't ride in the cart, and the man tells him the cart is for people to ride in. So the cousin buys the dog from the man. Sweet, right? But this is Bunuel so as the cart rolls away it passes another cart travelling in a different direction. And tied to that cart is another dog. It's this mastery of summing up an idea in an image that makes me love this film, and love Bunuel.

See also: Deranged foreign masterpieces- L'age d'or, Exterminating Angel, Week/End