And so it goes again, with a lot of movies to watch and a lot to write about. This weeks had some pretty good movies to follow The Hand Grenade’s first full year in action, and so there were some much delayed classic viewings and some great discoveries of recent films and underseen jewels. It had birds. It had rats. It had bombs, Jewish nuns, coconuts and peaches. Here they go!
Memories of Murder / Salinui chueok (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)
It seems unfair to give such a privilege to a single director considering how many movies I watch (this is my third Bong Joon-ho film in a month, following his great thrills The Host and Snowpiercer) but Memories of Murder is yet another evidence of the mastery of this Korean director and another promising evidence that he’s getting better and better. Bong, with his delightfully clumsy character, strangely entrancing images, calculated long shots and intense sense of suspense and action, has created a body of work that transcends genre and manages to offer depth and entertainment at equal levels.
Memories of Murder tells the fictionalized version of the story of three South Korean detectives (including Bong favorite Song Kang-ho) and their painful investigation of the first serial murders in the country, which happened in the late 80’s and early 90’s and barely left any traces. As with Snowpiercer, the film seems to stand out much more in its depiction the human enigmas than in the story’s conceptualization, meaning here that this film is much more about the victims and the police officers than about the investigation and the mystery themselves, which is actually a great thing if you notice it and stick to it well enough.
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)
One of those strange “Surprise of the Year” films that you can’t quite sum up in words but know that, in time, it’ll take full form in your mind. Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s cold road movie, places its character 90% of the time near the edges of the screen, shoots them with a stark use of focus and a highly detailed black-and-white gracefulness, barely plays with sound and offers only a handful of camera movement amid its oppression of static camerawork. It’s so confidently minimalist and particular it also seems to boast it, but inside of its strangely beautiful structure lies a powerful film that fills the emptiness of its shots with great performances, and beautiful images. Ida, a young nun who’s about to take her vows, finds out about her unknown past through her aunt, who drives her into a quest for tying the loose ends of her background story; Ida’s inexperience and mysteriousness populates the screen and turns a simple road movie story of finding the truth about her family into an Ashes and Diamonds like reflection of 1960’s Poland. A strange film I’ll have to reward further viewings.
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
One of the great imperfects films, a quasi-masterpiece depressingly flawed but euphorically unforgettable thanks to an unbelievable chemistry between Joe Buck (pre-Baby Geniuses Jon Voight) and Enrico Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman in one of his greatest performances), two lost kids who find themselves in very similar positions when they first meet in New York (Rico is from the Bronx, Joe’s from Texas) and become friends. The friendship is timeless, but they both have small-town dreams and aspirations that lead them to the wrong place and the wrong time. But even more out of place is the great problem with the film, which is the man behind the camera: surrounding a beautiful story of friendship between two lost souls, there are strange, unnecessary “Schlesingerisms” (which also ruins the experience of watching his own Marathon Man), including flashbacks, flash-forwards, Freudian technobabble and arthouse exaggerations; none of them actually fit the story, and you’re locked inside a film that doesn’t decided whether it’s a conventional buddy movie or a psychological thriller. Nevertheless, it’s a must-see, because above all that Voight and Hoffman stand out in unspeakable greatness, and John Barry’s melancholy tune is a masterpiece of nostalgia.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Dr. Strangelove is based on the deadly serious Cold War thriller Red Alert and depicts the frightening emergence of a intelligence failure that leads to a full-blown American attack to Russia sent by mistake, unaware that such an attack will trigger the doomsday machine, a device recently created by the Russians to blow all life on Earth away. The idea of a doomsday machine, in the context of the Cold War, was a very real threat, and the film does everything right in order to turn its story into a thriller: the sets have a noirish sense of doom, every important information is laid down and seriously delivered to the audience, and there’s always the underlining impression that something’s very wrong in how everything’s going. And that’s how you make one of the greatest and most dynamic comedies of all time.
Kubrick’s film lands on masterpiece ground here in each and every way, primarily because the seriousness of its characters is so convincing and absurd it’s almost deceitful. The situation they’re in, however, shake down that seriousness with powerful satire; for such an imminent threat, it’s sadly hilarious that in fact, no president, general or minister involved is quite prepared for it, and some of them are even unaware of the dimension of the problem. As a result, Dr. Strangelove is all about the failures between the ultimate doom: General Ripper’s machismo water fluoridation paranoia, Buck Turgidson’s almost innocent pride of his Air Force batallions, Merkin Muffleyand his incapacity to speak to a drunken Russian premier, and so forth. Everyone’s trying to be diplomatic and serious on the issue, but that never works out. And that itself works marvelously.
Man With a Movie Camera / Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
Man With a Movie Camera is not a very conventional film; in fact, it remains fresh and radical after 85 long years and still challenges even those who uncover its many secrets. While Vertov films life in three Soviet cities in a “single day”, the film leaves itself open to interpretations and goes back, forth and sideways while making important statements about the process of living in the city and, surprisingly, the process of filming it. We see trains rushing, children laughing, and women having fun at the beach, and then we see the cameraman as he sets the camera and gets his work done. By breaking conventional narrative and keeping the viewers aware that they’re watching a film, he creates new forms of storytelling and documenting.
Dawn and sunset, birth and death, work and leisure, anger and peace, haste and tranquiity: through this groundbreaking documentary masterpiece, Dziga Vertov created one of the most influential and fascinating films ever made, a city symphony that didn’t kill narrative and “illusionist” filmmaking but cast a spell of breathtaking documentation and self-reflection. This sweet, gentle grandfather of Koyaanisqatsi was a revolution of filmmaking, wildly and vividly exploring the power of filmmaking, the role of the filmmaker as an adventurer and life in the city through then groundbreaking techniques like slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, flash forwards, non-linear sequencing, split screens, Dutch angles and everything you can imagine present in a montage film. It still looks just as good and just as lively, and with my one and only score chosen for the film (2008’s Cinematic Orchestra jazzy score), I managed to see the masterpiece in it once again.
Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
Back to the Future, like Zemeckis’ own Forrest Gump, is a film that’s become a wild, unstoppable classic to audiences all around the world, but is far from perfect under its thrilling, marvelous surface. Like most Zemeckis films, it’s a technical marvel to watch, and it has several moments that deservedly make it a classic and reach a strange gracefulness. It also shows that Zemeckis has a true passion for the medium, through its construction of the story and its traces of the directions who inspired him: the film feels like a blend of Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg in its view of the 1950’s, the racist cantina owner is named after the protagonist of Cassavetes’ Shadows and there’s a Kubrick reference right in the first shots.
But altogether the film collapses: it doesn’t have any energy at the human level, and it fails to make truer efforts to create stronger and more definite characters, which would be essential when you’re dealing with the story of a teenager who has to ensure its survival by saving the love of his parents in time to return to the future in an almost impossible scientific breakthrough. Its 1985 setting, in both ends of the story, is absolutely cartoonish in its stereotypical vision of nerds and cool guys, and the acting is terrible and predictable; the 1950’s setting is far better (which is good, since it’s the center of the film), but it also has a series of compromising issues.
First, Marty seems to be unable to deal with the fact that he’s gone back in time even after he becomes sure of that. Second, he’s also unable to avoid his own mother by saying something like “I have a girlfriend back where I come from”, or “I’m interested in asking someone else to the dance”. Third, the Biff-George relationship, besides being too cliché, is also unlikely to have developed in such a way: we’re supposed to believe that they’re working to work at the exact same place and evolve into preposterous older versions of themselves (speaking of that, 3.5: the terrible old-age make-up) in the future, and we’re supposed to believe that in the parallel universe, George lets Biff consistently working for him and for his children after one punch in the face and a sugarcoated attempted rape of George’s own wife. Fourth, the story drives itself from one scene to the other like it was cut from any quieter moments, letting not true time for the viewer to absorb any of its good moments, even though the bad moments still resonate: it’s just as deceitfully fast-paced as any modern film. I’d go on to other points, but I’ve already used three paragraphs and it wouldn’t add much to everything.
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
Hitchcock’s The Birds introduced viewers to his late filmmaking period, marked by a quieter, more gentle and mostly different tone and different approach towards suspense. And although his pre-Psycho masterpieces are much more popular and critically acclaimed, The Birds is just as good, and even more terrifying than (blasphemy alert) Psycho; its predecessor is a better film and its jump scares are frightening, but there’s nothing quite like the quasi-apocalyptic doom of Hitchcock’s bird attacks. It has more than enough human depth, which takes a large fraction of the film’s length, and everything flips into a hell hole after it gets nasty halfway through the film, leading to one of the purest sensations of perdition and vulnerability ever put to film. There’s no pratical music other than the chirps of crows and gulls, the cast is all powerful – especially for Tippi Hedren’s mysterious performance -, the script is sharp and the effects are outdated but smoothly fit the film. There are a few things I question about the story – why Melanie Daniels decided to explore the house at night for herself, or why does the film reduce its human component so drastically after the first act -, but when I watch the film, I don’t actually care much about it. Pure gold.
Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007)
A rather offbeat entry in the Pixar artistic rampage, Ratatouille is delightfully detached from other recent classics from the company (both the superior and the lesser ones) by relying on a specifically selected theme and universe without making it almost entirely about the parallel universe it creates: it’s about rats and humans in the same way that Toy Story deals with toys and humans, The Incredibles deals with superheroes and humans and Finding Nemo deals with fish and humans, but there’s a unique, almost exclusive balance in this movie. And it’s just as sweet, technically inventive (Remy’s labyrinthine race to ground-level Paris is one great treat) and magically painted. It has some ordinary moments among its many great ones, and it’s still behind other Pixar great movies, but this is a runner-up among equals, and it has the unique advantage of having a scene that’s so nostalgic and homey (like most food should be) it gives you the opportunity of listening to Peter O’Toole being awesome, super-mega-evil and ultimately sweet.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)
Life of Brian is, as any Monty Python product, obligatory viewing for any fan of British comedy: it’s biting, poignant, bold, and explosively silly. What’s most notorious about Life of Brian in comparison with the other three Monty Python features is that it actually cares about its production values, which are remarkably impressive here. Also, note how it manages to not insult faith and religion, but how people misinterpret it and use it as a tool for maneuvers, speculation and cultural persecution.
The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
The General isn’t as inventive as Sherlock Jr. and doesn’t offer a display of physical comedy as explosive as that of Steamboat Bill, Jr. or Our Hospitality, but has the best story, the most active leading lady and the greatest sense of thrill. This masterpiece about an engineer who loses both loves of his life – a girl and his train – to the Civil War is just as influential and thrilling action film as King Kong and stands out as an even superior pioneer in the genre. Like in any other Keaton film, the stunts are almost unbelievable, the comedy is naturally powerful and the train chases are the best train chases one could ever think of. After decades of film history, Keaton is still the only director who can rival Chaplin at comedy.
The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998)
Misunderstood by many, deeply loved by some, worshiped by a few, The Big Lebowski is a cult classic that permeates the mind with its absurd images and hilarious plot development. It’s a story about the lifestyle of Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, an unemployed dude wandering through life (and bowling) who gets involved in the lousiest special mission story ever made. Lebowski, like many of the supporting characters, is a man stuck in the past, but while the others don’t realize that they’re the right men at the wrong time and that things have changed, The Dude seems to fit very well in his own simple, stationary world. Everyone else is the complete opposite of Lebowski: an ultrafeminist artist, a bankrupt millionaire, a group of German technopop nihilists a Vietnam veteran who never got out of it. The more complex things get for him, the harder and the more unwanted too.
The Big Lebowski is yet another masterpiece from the Coen Brothers, who have always been making great films without being truly acknowledged as great directors. It’s sharp, crazy, intricate and mysteriously surreal. It also has some pretty deep things to say, in a Dudeist way that can’t be ignored.
The Hand Grenade 