Well, did we all watch our movies? It’s been a pleasant holiday season, and it’s Epiphany now, famous for being the day the Magi brought their gifts to the Baby Jesus and also the day we talk about what we thought of the movies we were gifted. Captain Nath/Ruck very kindly gifted me with The Favourite, a movie I’d been contemplated for some time but hadn’t watched due to my visceral distaste of Yorgos Lanthimos.
Well, it’s not Numberwang, I’ll tell you that. I’m actually rather fond of movies that are very slightly knowingly anachronistic; it’s a delicate balance, and it has to be a deliberate anachronism and not an accidental one. It probably helps that I’m not enormously familiar with the time period, to the extent that I had to look up what war they were fighting. (The War of Spanish Succession, which is the ultimate proof of why family trees need to branch.) Yes, I recognized the modern fabrics, but I found it more interesting that the women primarily dress in black and white.
Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is on the throne. She has had eighteen pregnancies and has no living child. The most consistent thing in her life is Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz). They have been friends since Sarah was fifteen and Anne was ten. Sarah, however, is controlling and forceful. Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), comes to court to ask for help because her father had wasted all the family’s money and burned the house down with himself in it. Eventually, Sarah uses Abigail as someone to deal with the Queen’s needs after Abigail gathers herbs to treat the wounds on the Queen’s leg.
So let’s go through this. Historians believe that Anne and her assorted favourites were Very Close Friends. Did they have more intimate relations? Impossible at this point to tell. Determining the sexuality of historical figures is difficult given the different standards for such things. It’s true that Sarah held a prominent position at court and influenced politics in the reign of Queen Anne. She lived a long life and died wealthy and mostly unmourned and, yes, Winston Churchill is descended from her. (The same daughter whose six-times-great grandson he is was also had a son who was created Earl Spencer.) It’s also true that Abigail took Sarah’s place at court and remained the Queen’s Very Close Friend.
Whether they were Very Close Friends or not, it’s definitely true that the power of the Whigs over Queen Anne faded when her relationship with Sarah did. Sarah was abrasive, blunt, and incapable of admitting she was wrong, which is a difficult thing in a royal advisor. It seems likely that she got used to a certain way of interacting with the Queen when they were children, given she was five years older, and had a hard time adjusting when Anne became the literal queen. She also, at least in the movie, is clearly one of those people who is proud of her honestly and never thinks, “Wait, maybe I’m just a jerk.”
It’s a beautiful movie. It’s mostly filmed using period light sources (you know, like the Sun), in part because apparently it was extremely hot at the time of filming. The location is Hatfield House, which is used a lot for filming but also, you know, an actual palace Queen Anne could have actually stayed at. (It’s not the one Elizabeth I lived at for a fair amount of her childhood; it’s one built in the reign of James I. But still, deeply historical.) It’s missing a lot of what really bothers me about Lanthimos movies, but it is an open issue as to whether or not Sarah or Abigail would have been capable of consenting to a relationship with, you know, the actual monarch of their country.
How about everyone else? What did you think of your movie?
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
Gillian Nelson’s ProfileTags for this article
More articles by Gillian Nelson
Attention Must Be Paid
Arnold Stang, who appeared in a movie with "Arnold Strong" once.
Intrusive Thoughts
There was a time when musicals were about having the biggest gimmick possible.
Camera Obscura
One woman does what she can to help foster kids until she kind of becomes Cary Grant.
The Rockford Files Files
In which Jim is not exactly a bad mother, but his client is.
Department of
Conversation
Posting of behalf of Simon DelMonte, who is travelling today, about his gift of Hester Street from nikmarov. All words after this are his:
You would think that I would have watched this movie ages ago. And I really should have, but it’s fair to say even now TV stations, cable outlets, and streamers (and before that Blockbuster outlets) haven’t tripped over themselves to make a story of Jewish immigrants in 1896 available. Thank God for Tubi!
But yes, this speaks to me, even if I am the grandchild of these immigrants, unable to speak two words of Yiddish (if still keeping the faith). Joan Micklin Silver grants the movie an air of nostalgia through shooting in black and white and copious amounts of dialogue in Yiddish. But she never papers over the truths of how women were treated and how Jewish immigrants struggled to get by and to figure out how much to keep and much to lose of the old country and the faith. Still, Silver is not afraid to show piety and tradition as things with value, and not many would see fit to let Carol Kane reject her modern (and unfaithful) husband for a Talmud scholar. (Plus I loved the scene where the scholar is teaching Kane’s son Hebrew. I been there, long ago.)
Kane, barely speaking English at first and looking utterly lose, is the core of this, and that Oscar nomination was well deserved. The rest of the cast is solid, especially Doris Roberts as Kane’s landlady and only friend. The costumes and re-creation of the old Lower East Side are spot on.
California Suite from Simon DelMonte – The film is taken from Neil Simon’s series of one act plays. It begins with Alan Alda and Jane Fonda as New Yorkers in L.A. where Alda is relocating and Fonda is a fish out of water bickering over custody of their daughter who hopped a flight to be in L.A. with her dad. Immediately we can see director Herbert Ross has no intention of making this feel like a stage. He moves the long conversation between several locations – a parking lot, the hotel room, a beach where Fonda looks amazing. The writing is the sharpest here. It’s so packed with snide comments and acidic barbs flying at a fast pace between the two actors. Their timing and delivery is in sync. Alda deftly excels in intelligent, witty repartee, maybe better than anyone, but because of the searing one-liners it also feels like he’s playing a more serious version of Hawkeye. Fonda shows depth from open hostility toward Alda to worry for her daughter. It felt like Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage as written by Simon.
The second story has Maggie Smith as an Academy Award nominated actress and Michael Caine as her formerly closeted husband who hides his flirtations less and less now that he’s out. Again some great tension with Smith going through a range of emotions from anticipation of winning despite hating the film to self pity after losing. She descends further into emotional distress and anxiety in the wee hours over her marriage of convenience wanting some emotional and physical connection from Caine. The storyline ends with Smith on a plane making withering comments about the film she was in. The twist is Smith really did win an Academy Award for her performance. As the film goes along you realize it belongs to the ladies in the cast. Also notable for having an uncredited James Coburn cameo acting in the film within the film.
Story three involves Walter Matthau and Elaine May together again. He’s in L.A. for his nephew’s bar mitzvah. He spends a wild night with his brother who sends a woman to Matthau’s room. Matthau wakes up the next morning with no memory of the night before and with the woman passed out next to him. He’s shocked he would do something so outside his vision of morality. May suddenly knocks at the door to the hotel room. Most of the comedy here stems from Matthau’s broad physical attempts to keep May from finding the body in his bed. Once she does find the woman the gear shifts to more dramedy focusing on May’s thought process on comprehending what has happened and what to do about it. It’s great seeing Matthau and May together again and the characters do recall those in A New Leaf to some degree.
In what could possibly have been the best pairing Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby’s segment falls flat with its attempt at humor. They play brothers in law who hate each other and are stuck together on vacation. The anxious Pryor becomes more and more annoyed with Cosby’s increasing condescension and pompousness. A simple tennis match between the men and their wives results in multiple injuries and a long physical altercation in the hotel room. All the arguing never becomes engaging and the whole segment is so annoying. There is also a tinge of a bad taste – They’re black doctors but they certainly can’t be written to act civil, have any self-respect or be given a nice hotel room. Where the other stories had some sort of understanding between deeply flawed individuals somehow working out a relationship seemingly despite themselves, these two leave the hotel still hating each other. It just felt a little strange. Also Gloria Gifford and Sheila Frazier are the most underwritten women in a film where every other woman has some range and strength. They aren’t given much to work with other than being the patient wives and voices of reason. But they come off better than Pryor and Cosby.
As with any anthology it’s a mixed bag. All the stories were consistent with me not being very heavily invested in any one. Apart from Pryor and Cosby the acting for the most part is excellent with Fonda, Smith and May giving some intelligent performances of deeply flawed women who can still get our sympathy. Ross’s attempt to ‘open up’ the stage play and intercut between stories still results in the film being episodic and spending long periods on each play.
I have to agree with Carrie Courogen (who wrote last year the essential Elaine May bio) that May “gets lost in one of the ensemble’s more forgettable storylines”
I was gifted Black Orpheus from Cornelius Thoroughgoode.
So the biggest surprise was the distinct lack of nuns. I don’t think I’m probably the first to confuse this with Black Narcissus based on the title alone. I was also surprised to discover it’s actually a retelling of the Orpheus legend, and the “Black” in the title is simply an indicator of the casting, like Blackula.
Having straightened out my expectations I was better positioned to drink in its two most relentless assets: rich, vivid color and samba music. Everything revolves around the celebration of Carnaval and no more than three minutes go by before we cut to extensive revelry, usually involving large crowds dancing to an endless beat. The lengthy scenes of cultural celebration put me in mind of Les Blank which is a mind I very like to be in.
There’s a lot of criticism both at the time of its release and now about the movie exoticizing Brazil and reinforcing Black stereotypes. I’m certainly in no position to refute these charges, and I think if you bring those prejudices to the movie it’s not going to do much to dispel them. Though I might suggest it’s as much a product of a lack of other representations in international culture of Brazil in general and Afro-Brazilians in particular, especially at the time. We are seeing a legend reenacted during a holiday, after all. If the only major film available about white Midwestern United States citizens was set at Christmas, maybe people would assume I have a predilection for siting around the fire and eating candy out of giant socks.
Like a lot of parties, it goes on a bit longer than it can sustain, and once the joyful dancing finally winds down and Orpheus enters “the underworld”, a large hospital/morgue, you may wish to have left early. Perhaps before a scene of religious fervor further pushes the exoticism angle. But there’s plenty to love before this feeling arrives. I love the effort put into staging the ongoing celebrations – even during relatively sedate scenes you’ll glimpse dancing through the windows. There’s a joyful abandon to the performances that’s much more infectious than the whirling extras of most modern musicals. Berno Mello, a soccer player apparently acting for the first time, is a magnetic performer. A late stunt with two stand-in dummies tumbling down a hillside is a fun(?) way to go out.
This was something that was on the edge of my awareness that I’m happy to have seen.
Thanks, Cornelius! Was this part of a “first time” theme for you?
Glad you liked it! I also feel like it goes on a little too long, but there’s cool stuff in there, for sure.
As for the “first time” theme, this only barely applies. It was the first movie I watched in 2024.
A good way to kick of a new year
Year of the Month update:
We’re starting 2024 by returning to 1947! That means you can be as cool as all these people:
TBD: John Anderson: T-Men
Tentative: John Anderson: Nightmare Alley
TBD: Cori Domschot: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Jan. 10th: Gillian Nelson: Straight Shooters
Jan 16th: Cori Domschot: The Farmer’s Daughter
Jan. 17th: Gillian Nelson: Sleepytime Donald
Jan. 23rd: Cori Domschot: Down to Earth
Jan. 27th: Cliffy73: Miracle on 34th Street
Jan. 31st: Pluto’s Blue Note
And coming in February, you can sign up to write about anything from 2016!
TBD: Bridgett Nelson: Rogue One
Feb 7th: Gillian Nelson: Queen of Katwe
Feb. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Milo Murphy’s Law
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Pete’s Dragon
Who’s Bridgett Nelson? 😀
I had Black Narcissus, but I can’t remember the date.
Well, I do like you better than one of my actual sisters and spend more time with you than either!
It was tomorrow, but I’m guessing that’s not the best idea right now?
It’s a good thing we made that master calendar!
The Black Stallion
Gifted by Cliffy73
When I was a kid, Carroll Ballard’s 1979 movie about the bond between a boy named Alec and an untamed Arabian horse (based on the first in a series of 20 novels for children by Walter Farley) had a reputation as one of the most beloved children’s movies of all time, but it never interested me. The movies I rewatched repeatedly on the VCR in the late ’80s and the year 1990 were rarely children’s movies. They were never G-rated movies. I was into things like Star Trek‘s Genesis Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the 1989 Batman, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (I remember watching that Steve Martin movie repeatedly in 1990), and a recording of an NBC broadcast of Airplane! that still cracked me up even though all the curse words and Kitten Natividad’s uncovered ta-tas were removed.
In the ’80s, I knew Kelly Reno from his guest spot as the title character in the 1985 Amazing Stories time travel episode “Alamo Jobe” (an episode I watched a few times because NBC reran it more than once), not from his role as Alec in the two Black Stallion movies. This gift exchange marks the first time I watched The Black Stallion. I came for Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography—I like his work in The Right Stuff and National Treasure, and the shots he captured of Alec and the horse on a desert island (actually Sardinia) and in Flushing, Queens (actually Toronto) look phenomenal—and I ended up admiring the work Carmine Coppola and a young, pre-Batman: The Animated Series Shirley Walker did on the original score and Ballard’s lyrical approach to a story that’s a tale of survival in the first half and a more conventional (but sumptuously shot) sports movie in the second half.
But the movie gets off to a rough start: The only Arab who speaks in the movie is the original owner of the horse (I’m not calling the horse “the Black” like everyone in the movie does because it makes my teeth feel racist), and he’s yet another one of Hollywood’s evil and sneaky Arabs. He abuses the horse, which he calls in unsubtitled Arabic a “shaitan” (the Arabic word for “devil”), and he threatens Alec’s life twice.
Alec first encounters the horse aboard an ocean liner while he’s traveling through the North African coast with his easygoing professional gambler father (played by Hoyt Axton). A storm destroys the ship, Alec’s dad and the Arab die off-screen, and Alec and the horse are the sole survivors of the shipwreck on an island. This is where The Black Stallion begins to soar as a cinematic experience. Alec and the horse save each other’s lives on the island and gradually build a friendship that’s wonderfully developed through visuals and score instead of dialogue. I’ve never seen Ballard’s work as a documentary filmmaker. He brought a documentarian’s eye for detail and naturalism to the wordless island scenes, and it kept them from becoming saccharine.
Part of me wishes the movie ended with the rescue of Alec and the horse, but the talkier sports movie half (with Mickey Rooney, who plays a compassionate horse trainer who befriends both Alec and the stallion and notices the latter’s potential as a race horse, and the recently deceased Teri Garr as Alec’s widowed mom) isn’t so bad. In fact, the racing scenes in the sports movie half landed The Black Stallion a sound editing Oscar because sound designer Alan Splet figured out a way to put microphones on the horses to capture their noises and make the audience feel like they’re right in the saddle with Alec. (I’m glad I watched this movie with headphones.)
The Black Stallion is truly one of the most compellingly shot G-rated movies ever made. You just have to suffer through some anti-Arab bullshit first before you’re off to the races. Thanks for The Black Stallion, Cliffy!
Glad you found it worthwhile. This is not the first film I saw in a theater, but it’ the first time (that I can remember) that I saw a movie without my parents. The local theater at that time had a Saturday matinee program where you could drop your kids for a few hours and they would screen a movie appropriate for children, and I went with a friend. I was a precocious reader and had already read the book. I must have been about seven, because we moved to a different state soon after.
This was the first movie we saw on VHS!
Didn’t realize someone else was gifted this! I had no idea about the sound innovation with the horse mics, but yeah, I was impressed by how sound-heavy the sports half was. It’s only talky in comparison to the first half of the movie, and for a sports yarn, I thought the whole thing was pretty lovely and subdued and relied on a lot of non-verbal storytelling. Didn’t work at all in concert with the first half of the movie, imo, but in isolation, lovely. And yeah, to your point, free from the racism of the boat sequence.
A Boy and His Dog, gifted to me by Dave Shutton
Ah, 2024 A.D., exactly how I remember it!
A lot of this is like the distilled, shoot-it-into-my-veins essence of ‘70s genre filmmaking: lean, dusty, exuberant, weird, and bracingly mean. That last part is a compliment, as far as this mode goes. Too many cruelty-as-provocation movies are either too obvious—like someone opening their mouth to show you their chewed-up food—or too solemnly dull—like someone clubbing you over the head. A Boy and His Dog knows that asshole filmmaking needs energy and swiftness above all else—it aims for, and mostly achieves, the sensation of getting sliced by someone who walks away before the blood even wells up. A big part of that is its comedic instincts. The film’s ending is famously dark—and, to many, famously misogynistic—and director L. Q. Jones knows that once the movie hits its last, cruelest, most jaw-dropping line, the only thing to do is to get the fuck out of there. No joke hangs around after its punchline.
I can see why a lot of people wouldn’t like this (see above, re: famously misogynistic!), but I honestly found it a (flawed) blast. Thanks, Dave!
(And now this will now go ultra-long because I have to talk about not only the movie but its controversial ending, which takes a while to break down. But the above works as a tl;dr.)
None of it would work without Don Johnson as Vic*—horny, aggressive, impulsive, amoral, and emotional, capable of both loyalty and atrocity**—and Tim McIntire as the (telepathic) voice of his dog, partner, and mentor, Blood—smart, condescending, manipulative, easily offended, and (despite himself) genuinely attached. I’ve heard Harlan Ellison’s story cycle leans more into their dynamic—and focuses on the emotional impact of the story’s ending, not its pitch-black comedy—and that alone makes me want to check it out. Their rapport here is great, and someone should have instantly greenlit a bunch of other movies about Don Johnson emoting at dogs. I’ve long held that Johnson is one of the most easily charismatic actors around, and as raw as he is here, that quality is already in evidence.
And they really are “a boy and his dog,” even if the dog delivers sarcastic lessons on world history when the boy wants him to focus on sniffing out “females.” They have a great mutual testiness, and their relationship is lopsided and full of power plays but also undergirded with real feeling. Vic’s more obvious about it—fast to cave, conciliate, and console when Blood seems hurt by their usual snark, but Blood is also distressed by Vic going into the dangerous underground society, and since his sad “Goodbye … partner” comes after Vic can no longer hear him, we know it’s sincere.
The worldbuilding around the intelligent dogs can get confusing, but “Downunder” resident Quilla June (Susanne Benton) suggests that even in a post-apocalyptic world with intelligent dogs, telepathic conversations like this are rare. Vic’s explanation is all the foreshadowing we need for the ending:
“He said something one time. It’s ‘cause we had a feeling for each other or something.”
“What do you mean, like love?”
“I guess. I don’t know. He said we thought alike. I don’t know.”
It’s love—or as close to it, and all of it, as the semi-feral Vic has ever experienced—but more than that, it’s kinship. They think alike.
And the way they think—and feel, outside of each other—is terrible. Vic is an unrepentant rapist; Blood, who facilitates him by sniffing out victims, views both sex and women with weary contempt and disgust, even calling Quilla June “it.” The movie brutally establishes all this at the start, when Vic rushes to a screaming, imperiled woman … and dashes any hope the audience might have that he’s a hero coming to rescue her. He’s actually just forlorn and aggravated that her last round of rapists left her bleeding out: “Hell, they didn’t have to cut her. She could have been used two or three more times.”
Quilla June threatens to alter Vic’s patterns, at least for a little while. He’s ready to rape her, but she throws a wrench into the works by enthusiastically consenting—and Vic is surprised (Don Johnson’s expression practically says PROCESSING) but intrigued. But after a wild night together, Quilla June is talking about them having a future together, one that would both exclude Blood—who’d be demoted from partner to occasional guest room tenant—and absorb Vic, ostensibly bringing him into a domesticity and romantic partnership that he thinks would be too feminine and too civilized.
Major SPOILERS will follow.
I knew going in that this movie, much to a lot of vocalized disgust, featured a boy killing his love interest to feed her to his intelligent dog—and if anything, that prepared me for the movie to be a lot worse on that front than it was. I’d assumed, for example, that Quilla June would be genuinely in love with Vic, and that the misogyny would come from justifying his decision on the grounds that she was annoying or clingy or inferior. But 1) the movie doesn’t attempt to justify his decision thematically at all, which is the right move, and 2) Quilla June is an actual character, neither a harpy to be sneered at nor a loving innocent to be sacrificed to tell us how shitty Vic is.
Quilla June is actually the bait in a trap, luring Vic to the bizarre “Downunder” society, an organized and squeaky-clean underground dystopia, half-1950s and half-pioneer days, where everyone wears dolly makeup and people are routinely killed for “lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority.” Quilla June is a pawn in her world, but she’s a pawn maneuvering to get promoted; she’s willing to exploit others, and she only seethes when that exploitation isn’t properly rewarded.
The Committee plans to use Vic as a source of fresh, uncontaminated sperm, and when procuring him as breeding material doesn’t get Quilla June the boost she wanted, she pivots, freeing him so he can kill the Committee for her. (The only problem is that this goes about as well as half-assed revolutions usually do: Vic’s apathetic to her cause, and the only person he succeeds in killing is a labor force android the Committee wanted to replace anyway. There are some nice, stinging bits of satire here—like the intro evoking WWIV, not WWIII—but that’s one of my favorites.)
Quilla June is well-characterized—ambitious and clever and manipulative, but young enough that she hasn’t honed her skills that well yet. She can seduce Vic and then antagonize him as a backup plan, but when she’s forced to improvise at a rapid pace, she winds up just wildly swinging between those two extremes. He’s a “stupid animal” she was only ever manipulating! That’s not working? Okay, she loves him! Still, in the long run, maybe she could learn to manage him as effectively (if maybe less honestly) than Blood does.
But she doesn’t get a long run. When Vic is faced with a dying, starving Blood, it’s obvious what he’s going to do. The movie forces him into that choice for the sake of an extreme action—or you could make a pretty good case that Blood forces him into it, deliberately playing up his need to rid himself of a threat—and I think that’s part of why people feel so much contempt for it. The problem doesn’t exist until it does, and it’s clumsily exposition-loaded into the narrative to justify what’s about to happen. But the motivations, at least, are consistent with everything we’ve seen before.
I love the way the camera holds on Johnson’s face as he silently makes his decision, and then we just fade to black and fade in on a still-smoking campfire spit. It’s haunting and horrifically funny at the same time. And it means something to Vic, who—as we find out—couldn’t bring himself to eat, and who pets Blood and tries to take care of him. He’s grappling with a nascent sense of shame, naïve enough to almost believe Quilla June’s confession of love and awful enough to try to shrug off any responsibility for his response to it: “She said she loved me. Oh, hell, it wasn’t my fault she picked me to get all wet-brained over.”
It’s a dramatic moment of a young man struggling with recognizing himself and his actions and not quite getting there—but Blood, who was always more callous and who has a vested interest in Vic not thinking about this too much, swoops in with a brutal final laugh-line and a final objectification of the girl he despised. Laughter, freeze-frame, touching song about a boy and his dog. It’s horrible, and it’s spot on, because we always knew this was exactly who they were.
Ellison’s story ends with the emphasis on their love; the movie ends with the emphasis on them thinking alike, locked in a close but externally horrifying partnership. I think both work in their own way, and although I can see why that last line is a dealbreaker for some people—it’s one thing to eat a girl, and it’s another thing to be an absolute dick about it—it feels completely in-character for Blood. This is the character Vic saved, and we end by understanding exactly why he did it and getting a freshly awful reminder of what that decision means. That, for me, makes it worth more than pure shock value. It draws real blood, and the impact lasts even after the credits have rolled.
* Blood repeatedly calls Vic Albert, which annoys him. Wikipedia tells me that this is meant to be a reference to dog story author Albert Payson Terhune, but since this is never explained in the film, it comes across as Vic having changed his name to sound cooler and Blood using his old name to irritate him. Which seems 100% plausible, honestly.
** i.e., in obligatory Shieldian terms, actually much more of Shane, but very definitely a pre-Mara Shane. I had to point this out after typing “Vic” this many times.
What a write-up — this is not a movie I would gift to most people but I knew you could roll with it and this is a great analysis. This is exactly the kind of movie you’d expect the gutter trash of The Wild Bunch to make — the ending points to the magnificent “relationship” exchange/rejection in Repo Man but goes a hell of a lot farther and nastier. The story’s final line is accepting and plain, Ellison’s story has a throwaway line indicating the first psychic dog was Ellison’s own beloved pooch (who he would write about in a Jurassic Bark-level essay that appears in “The Deathbird”) and I think that (and perhaps Ellison’s own issues with women) inform the tone. The movie’s joke is so fucking mean — but it’s superfluous in more than one way, right? The action has already happened, being a dick about it doesn’t affect the whole “murdering your girlfriend to feed her to your dog” bit. And Vic is the guy who abandoned Blood for the whole Downunder bullshit town, one of the side effects of the extremely weird makeup and vibes is a sense that above all this is so STUPID, and this is what you left your dog for? Buddy, you owe him some Kibbles and Quilla June.
And Blood warned him about Downunder! He even pointed out that everything with Quilla June had gone suspiciously easily! In a hard, survival-based world, you can see how that’s the kind of insight that would get rewarded with people chow. (There’s another good bit at the “movies,” where it’s implied that Vic can read in a society where literacy is rare, and the sense of superiority he basks in about that is another thing he owes to Blood.)
This is exactly the kind of movie you’d expect the gutter trash of The Wild Bunch to make
That should absolutely be on the poster as a warning to many and an advertisement to me. Thanks again, and I’m really glad you recced this.
Good write-up. Christ, I hate this movie, though.
The Novice, gifted by Chris/The Ploughman — There’s a great song by The Mendoza Line called “Where You’ll Land” I thought of while watching this, the song’s narrator addresses a friend (likely lover) that’s moving on: “Although you know where you stand, you’re never moving farther / Although you know where you’ll land, you’re always pushing harder.” And: “You’re like a puzzle missing the final piece / Almost perfection, never quite complete.” It’s off their album titled We’re All In This Alone.
Alex, the determined-make-that-obsessive rower of The Novice, is constantly chasing perfection in academics and in training, refusing to use her titular status as an excuse for being anything less than the best despite it literally being why she does not know as much or have as much skill as those older than her. She pushes harder and farther because pushing is how she defines herself — she uses people performing better than her as goalposts for a perpetually overclocked motivation. “You cannot compete with yourself and win; there is no endpoint satisfying enough for this mindset,” Patrick Redford writes in a blog about injuring himself while climbing, Alex seems to know this down deep but that’s why she is flinging herself into a sport she doesn’t know and doesn’t need — without an endpoint, the only next step is more competition. Alex is played with a gamine, hawkish ferocity by Isabelle Furhman, who as the killer in Orphan knows from pathological intensity coupled with the need for acceptance.
And Alex was conceived by writer/director Lauren Hadaway, who mixes the intensity of Alex practicing until she can’t move, quick cuts and close-ups in grim dank gyms, with the intensity of Alex on the margins — riding quietly with her more outgoing frenemy novice, making a pass at her TA at a club and getting lost in the music. The depictions of bodies breaking down in pursuit of excellence, the sports movie as self-flagellation, suggests the secret sports movie Whiplash as a comparison point. But Whiplash emphasizes the conjoined madness of player and coach rather than Alex’s isolation, and more damningly pretentious fraud Damien Chazelle focuses on the mania of two dingbats at the expense of the collaborative nature of their medium. Hadaway is far more attuned to the rituals of team construction, of rowing as a sport of people in sync. Crucially, her coaches are largely supportive if occasionally still authority figures making decisions their charges don’t like — the head coach lets Alex take a single scull out on the water to practice and this seems to be where she finds the most peace, competing with only herself, her body exhausting itself on a row to nowhere that still takes her outside of herself.
But the sport is crew, a crew is a group, and Alex’s competitive instincts might be able to be turned toward maintaining an individual relationship (although that ultimately falls apart) she cannot find a way to improve her team spirit — this could be honesty, it is also a rejection of place in a sport defined by being in a specific spot and doing a specific thing there along with everyone else. And everyone else can sense and reject her rejection; what comes to mind is another person despised on a boat, the doomed midshipman Hollom in Master & Commander. Alex is only there for herself and yet she is there, in the middle of everyone’s business. Competition within the crew is a way of life, it is how rowers move up in the world at the expense of others, but moving up in this world means playing by its rules. Hadaway understands Alex’s anger at how the others sandbag her and push her away but she doesn’t deny why they do it, and why the revelation that she doesn’t need to do this for scholarship reasons or even jock vanity pisses the crew off so much. Competition with yourself denies the others you are competing with.
Chazelle ends his movie with a burst of athletic prowess and cuts away at the moment of completion, this is “ambiguous.” Hadaway provides a denouement. The climax has Alex taking over an allegedly “friendly” race on those individual sculls, knocking others out of the water and riding into lightning in an effort to set a new record for a team-only event. She is the only one on the water at the end. And when she walks into the stunned clubhouse, she writes her presumably record-breaking time on the board before erasing it and heading outside, where Hadaway pans around her unreadable face. “It’s a lonely road you’re choosing to go,” The Mendoza Line sing. “And though it’s exciting, you’ll always end up alone.” Where Alex will land is also ambiguous but Hadaway is clear about the choice she has made, to finally relinquish her claim as part of a team and reject her own rejection of it via showing up her detractors. A novice is new to the ways of their chosen path, if nothing else Alex has understood why she has to go her own way. This was a great gift and Hadaway and Fuhrman are now people I’m keeping an eye out for, thanks Chris!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chLBCt25YC8
Ah, yeah, The Novice is great, and this is an excellent appreciation of it. It makes me wonder if Alex chooses crew in the same way she chooses her major, deliberately picking something she has no natural aptitude for in a way we only really understand as the film goes on. Because like you said, as much as she beats her body into compliance, she can’t make herself into part of a team–and on some level she must know that, but she deliberately chose this anyway, because it makes an even more unyielding surface for her to batter herself against.
Thanks! And yeah, right from the start she isn’t just interested in rowing, she’s hauling ass to get to the first session — she has already decided “this will be me” in a locked-in way that is very different from the typical freshman “let’s see how this goes” attitude. I wonder if the team is in part a self-defense mechanism, we see what happens when she gets too deep into herself with her cutting and perhaps an Alex who gets heavily into a solo sport (weightlifting? long-distance running?) is an Alex who will have nowhere to go but herself and ultimately disintegrate.
Hell yeah, great stuff. Hadaway’s own origins as a filmmaker give some context of her only feature working right out of the gate. She worked her way up in post production sound departments, which makes all the sonic storytelling make a lot of sense in a first-time feature, and one of her big jobs was sound editing for – surprise! – Whiplash. It’s easy to imagine the (more) novice Hadaway clicking with that material right away (she claims it’s the only film she worked on that she recognized was good before the sound done). I loved this movie and it’s confusing and infuriating that Hadaway has no other directing credits or even upcoming projects near as I can tell. I can only assume she walked into to a boardroom of stunned studio douchebags, wrote the absolute perfect movie idea on the whiteboard, erased it and walked away.
I’m also now freshly aghast she doesn’t seem to have anything in the pipeline. We should all collaborate on a roundtable of “Wikipedia page-less directors who deserve your attention, because Hadaway belongs on there, as does No Exit‘s Damien Power.
That is a great idea!
Man that is stupid that she has nothing else going on, I don’t really like the term “calling card” movie but this is the best version of what that is, a work that stands by itself but is also an advertisement for more work. And ha, the Whiplash connection is real! This movie uses sound well in some regards, as environment and in the music, but either I am getting old and deaf or many movies today are mixing their dialogue too low.
The Sicilian Clan (Le Clan des Siciliens)
Dir: Henri Verneui
Given by Carl Something
This is a Franco-Italian gangster film starring Alain Delon. As the film commences, Sartret (Delon), a murderous jewel thief, is in French custody and soon to be executed, but he performs an elaborate escape with the help of several accomplices of the Manalese family. Safe at the Manalese home/pinball factory, patriarch Jean Gabin introduces his clan, consisting of his two sons, his daughter, her husband, and the wife of his eldest son (Irina Demick as Jeanne). As soon as Gabin introduces Jeanne and is compelled to dismissively add “She’s French,” the entire structure of the film becomes clear.
In recompense for the clan’s efforts on his behalf, Sartet brings them a job, the burglary of a jewelry exhibit. Sartet believes he can bring it off because one of the security designers for the exhibit had been arrested, and Sartet befriended him in stir. But when Gabin and a friend (Amodeo Nazzari) case the place, they notice several additional security measures of which Sartet was unaware, rendering his plans useless. Gabin and Nazzari part, promising to noodle on the problem. Eventually, they hatch an entirely different and more elaborate scheme to snatch the jewels.
This is my first experience of Alain Delon, and he’s certainly charismatic and compelling. But Sartet is such a fuck-up that you can’t help but root against him, at least after the initial escape sequence. Wanted for murder, he casually leaves the hideout the Manaleses have set up for him to get laid and almost gets pinched instead. His heist plans are pointless and futile. And he keeps putting the moves on Gabin’s daughter-in-law Jeanne. (Or more precisely, when she throws herself at him, he’s willing to catch.) It doesn’t rise to the level of a plot hole, but one does wonder why the Manaleses don’t cut him loose much earlier given all the trouble he brings.
The real pleasure of this movie, though, is watching Gabin’s character work. The film was criticized upon release, not unreasonably, for being surprisingly languid for a gangster picture. But the central two thirds of the movie presents Gabin with one obstacle after another which he calmly, sometimes even jovially, observes, appreciates, and dismantles. Not generally through violence, but through ingenuity and honest hard work. (You know, for a given value of “honest.”) In particular I enjoyed the sequence where he goes with Nazzari to observe the security measures for the jewels. He is frustrated in his plans, sure, but mostly he’s happy to have a nice day out with an old friend he hasn’t seen in many years. Eventually this clan of jewel thieves gets around to thieving some jewels, and that part is pretty cool too, and eventually leads to a happy ending. You know, for a given value of “happy.”
Oh, one other thing — the Morricone score adds these weird “boing boing” noises in dramatic moments that are awfully goofy. You get used to them in that you get used to ignoring them. But it’s the one part I could really do without.
Perhaps relevant:
https://x.com/ZeroSuitCamus/status/1353878294177968128
It’s a divisive score. I think it’s great. It’s simple and very cool. But then the jew’s harp on top of the coolness takes the piss out of it undermining everything. Like when Gabin makes his otherwise cool entrance and “boinoinoing”. It underscores some plot turns and adds some humor in an otherwise serious film. Maybe it’s a cheap way for laughs.
The late Morricone is my favorite film composer. He could do no wrong. Your points about his score in The Sicilian Clan make me want to gift The Burglars, another intriguing Henri Verneuil caper flick with an enjoyable Morricone score, in another gift exchange. Sony’s CineStream YouTube channel has posted The Burglars in its entirety. I stumbled into The Burglars on TCM one night in a hotel, and Jean-Paul Belmondo’s stunt work without a double kept me riveted. The Burglars has minimal dialogue—just like The Black Stallion, the movie I was gifted.
Duel from Vaudeville
My first time watching this, the first movie from Steven Spielberg which has to be bullshit. This is not how a TV movie from a first-time, 24 year old(!) director should look like. The mastery of blocking and knowing how to play with in-camera space and out-of-camera elements are closer to a long-time suspense veteran like Hitchcock, though he hardly ever had subject matter as Western and close to the ground as the emasculated Dennis Weaver or the rust and grime of the truck antagonist here. And while Hitchcock and previous suspense directors often worked with closed and dark spaces, Spielberg here impresses with the vast, open spaces of inland California, finding multiple configurations of small car, big truck and camera to create suspense and distinct action scenarios on the road. The script smartly provides him with all manner of obstacles and variables, like the curious snake musuem in the middle of nowhere, the school bus episode that becomes a test of Weaver’s state of mind that he flatly doesn’t pass (those kids pestering for no reason don’t help), or the train that the truck threatens to kill Weaver with.
Spielberg doesn’t just excel at the execution but he’s quite deft at the setup as well. In case you don’t know, the crux of the movie is Weaver going on a road trip, inadvertedly angering a truck driver, then being chased by the truck for the rest of the movie, gradually becoming a death chase as the truck singlemindedly teases and pushes Weaver for no known reason. This is all set up with no dialogue and exposition, just Weaver and the truck meeting on the road and passing each other a few times, a simple setup that Spielberg gets across economically and with great clarity. I don’t know how big or fast that truck actually was but through camera placing and careful editing it looms as large an unstoppable as the rigs in George Miller’s Mad Max movies. Spielberg does make one significant stop at a dinner after Weaver nearly crashes, but the suspense doesn’t let up, with the bus parked outside being enough to get Weaver’s mental wheels spinning about who else might be sitting in this dinner. The bits of voiceover we get from him here are a point of contention for certain critics I’ve read since, but it largely worked for me. I saw the theatrical cut, which adds a few scenes that are not to everyone’s liking, but I was never not intrigued or engaged by any of them.
It really is astounding to see how much of Spielberg’s action directing style is already in place here. Not just the impeccable framing but the way he gets the most out of on-set elements (the big “FLAMMABLE” sign on the side of the truck might as well read “BRUCE”), the understated humour and penchant for physical gags, and the seamless cutting from macro action to intimate closeups and just being in there with his characters as they work their way out their predicament. I hadn’t ever looked into watching this particular movie despite watching most of Spielberg’s other movies, so it is quite serendipitous to see it now, right after the last first-time Spielberg movie I’ve seen is <em>The Fabelmans. It’s so curious how his first and last (to date) movies connect with each other, most crucially in the figure of Weaver, who shares a lot of flaws with the Fabelman father, but who all get sublimated by the action here, only let on by an early phone talk with his wife and a subtle, very interesting choice of radio broadcast at the start. There’s also the potent idea of the kid directing Escape to Nowhere being just a few years removed from taking those early DIY strategies, sublimated WWII nightmares and big shots of the Arizona desert and taking them a little further West and making it big with this one.
I’d also like to point out the moment where, to me, this turns from a sadistic chase with no reason until the proper, titular duel: That late shot of Weaver’s car at the top of a hill from a low vantage point where he slowly moves forward to the point where it turns into a medium shot of only his eyes, crazed and determined. Just incredible work here.
Thanks to Vaudeville, as I would have gotten around to this one eventually but I can’t think of better circumstances to watch it than right about now, and I’m glad I did. I had a great time.
Duel is such a masterpiece, just some of the clearest, most economical, and most adrenaline-boosting suspense Spielberg would ever do, and right out of the gate. And the sense of place is sublime. I remember liking the original Richard Matheson story, but the movie is way more indelible.
I was gifted Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams by Bridgett, and for extra thematic points I made it my first movie of the year, on the first day of the first month, hehe. I’d only seen one colour-era Kurosawa prior to this (Ran) and I suspected I was in for a visual treat but this exceeded my expectations – it’s absolutely gorgeous, with some of the most beautiful use of colour I think I’ve ever seen. The film itself is an anthology of segments apparently based on Kurosawa’s actual dreams, many of which have a slightly heavy-handed environmental message – not sure if he was intentionally dialling up this element to give the film more of a coherent throughline or if he was just extremely focused on the environment to the extent that it dominated his subconscious!
As per most anthology films I found this a little uneven, but the sheer beauty of it meant that even the dreams that didn’t personally resonate with me were a joy to experience. My favourites were the first couple, in which the Kurosawa surrogate character is portrayed as a child, and the later one in which he meets Vincent Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorsese!) – these are maybe the most vibrant ones but also there’s a magic to them that felt fitting for the fresh start of a new year. Some of the darker segments hit me pretty hard too, there’s one which revolves around survivor’s guilt in which the protagonist is followed out of a dark tunnel by the members of his squadron who didn’t survive the war that really packs a punch.
It’s a film where I can imagine different segments hitting very differently depending what the viewer has going on in their life at the time of viewing so I’m curious to revisit this in future! It was a great way to start the year, thanks Bridgett!
Dreams by the Allman Brothers – : (
Dreams by Akira Kurosawa – 🙂
Man, I should check this out. Sounds right up my alley.
Oh, I hope you do!
That tunnel short has haunted me since the 90s. I remember all of us wanting to talk about it after the movie ended. I love that first short with the foxes and the Van Gogh one as well.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it. It’s really stunning, start to finish. The environmental stuff seems even more prescient now.
Son of Griff gifted me The Prowler, a film noir from 1951, directed by Joseph Losey and written by an uncredited Dalton Trumbo. The film tells the story of Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), a police officer who becomes obsessed with Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes), the wife of a radio personality.
Right away we know we’re in a film noir by the stark black and white cinematography. The use of light and shadow is effective in the scenes where Webb is stalking Susan. The stalking and being an overall creep pays off because soon Webb and Susan are engaged in a torrid affair.
I had never heard of Van Heflin before this movie, but he delivers a compelling performance as the troubled, amoral, cop who will do anything to get his little piece of the American dream. Even murder? Oh yes. Webb murders Susan’s husband, somehow gets away with it and then marries Susan. I know what you’re thinking, and they lived happily ever after out in the desert, right?
No. That’s not how film noir works. Eventually Webb’s crimes catch up to him and he is ultimately brought to justice, the three words he shouted at Susan’s husband (“Halt! Halt! Halt!”) still ringing in his ears.
Thanks, Son of Griff, this was a well-made little film noir that went down easy. It’s free on Tubi if anyone is interested.
Making Webb a cop here puts such a clever, cynical spin on his murder scheme. I think this one’s aged really well.
Wrong (2012), gifted by JustJeremyNow [Johnny Smith]
The title of Wrong, to be granted, makes for a too-easy review, whether positive (“Wrong is right!”) or negative (“What an appropriate title!”).
What the film actually does do is explore a couple of counter-intuitive pairings. First, it’s a shaggy dog story, yet with a tight running time. Second, for a film pledging allegiance to a postmodern ethos, there are few acrobatic camera gestures (these gestures now having become the annoying equivalent of hearing a tennis player grunt while hitting the ball).
That said, I understand why Wrong has flown under my radar. It adeptly sends up certain dippy platitudes (everything is connected, so like, what if these totally unrelated events were happening at the same time? Woah, must be a sign of cosmic harmony, man!). But, unlike a film, such as The New Age, the satire of Wrong never settles on a specific target.
The overall loopiness of Wrong, arguably, might feel too compressed as a film. Although it glides along effortlessly to a surprisingly effective conclusion, it might be even more fun to let it ride out over several TV seasons – here, I’m thinking of the lamentably short-lived Lodge 49 (and those who know, know).
On the other hand, to quote Minutemen, Wrong “jams econo.” Which reminds me, the only thing that keeps me from being ecstatic about the film is that the soundtrack lacks imagination. But that’s, really, the only aspect of the film that does.
That’s great that you liked it. I haven’t laughed so hard during a movie in a long time.
silverwheel gifted me For All Mankind, a documentary made up primarily of direct footage from the Apollo space program. (We do get some very nice voiceovers from some of the astronauts.) The documentary stitches together mission footage from Apollo 7-17, and is edited to make it feel like one single Moon mission.
I honestly struggle with what to say about this movie because my emotional experience won over my analytical mind. (I probably should have watched it twice, I only realize now.) Director Al Reinert, who would later co-write the script for Apollo 13, approaches his subject with what I can only describe as a sense of awe. You, the viewer, go on liftoff, look at the Earth from above, deal with the sillier aspects of space travel (food, toilets) and listen to music recorded just for you for the trip.
I was young enough to be in school when the Challenger exploded, which meant I grew up in an era of space travel, when kids wanted to be astronauts when they grow up in a way they don’t seem to now. For All Mankind reminded me why. It made me feel like a kid again, watching a Shuttle liftoff on my TV in the living room, thinking about that marvelous Moon above us and all the mysteries and discoveries of space.
It was wonderful.
Amazing doc. And the soundtrack! Wonderful.
It all just pulled you into the experience so effortlessly!
I’ve heard “An Ending (Ascent)” pop up in so many other places that it’s almost disarming to hear it in its original context!
I feel like it would be hard to watch this and not have emotions win out. Beautiful write-up, and yeah, this movie perfectly puts me back in the “dying to go to space camp” phase of my childhood.
My rational brain says ‘y0u’d probably get motion sick,’ and my heat goes THE SKY, I WANT TO GO IN THE SKY.
As I learned in adulthood, there was a significant “the moon race is a waste of government resources that could go to more pressing needs” pushback at the time and I feel that sentiment present in current day thinking about it. But I grew up with the residual high of that achievement in the air, so while I can logically see that argument, there’s a big part of me that thinks doing something so huge and previously thought impossible is essential to humanity alongside the daily grind of survival.
I got kind of sad at parts watching this because I feel like we’ve lost that ‘let’s do something amazing because we can’ spirit. Now we just want the AI machine to think for us.
I found this because I was already getting bigly into Brian Eno and had the soundtrack album; the movie did not disappoint. Your reaction is a lot like mine, this movie sails past analytical and goes right for emotional. I’ve watched it a lot over the years, and I always feel melancholic when it’s time to leave the moon and take the trip back home. The sudden appearance of blue skies and water fills me with…I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s a lot.
Yeah, it is. It’s home but it’s also letting something go.
I used to be a kid who wanted to be an astronaut! I (obviously) didn’t end up pursuing that, and I’m now a lot more cynical about the political realities fueling the Apollo program. But when I saw this movie as an adult a few years ago, I was just sobbing by the end. I’m not a super nostalgic person, but this movie shot me right back into the idealistic mindset I used to have about space travel, and I felt a lot of nostalgia for the purity I used to see in the moonshot.
My feeling has long been that the motivations may have been more cynical than anyone wanted to admit, but that doesn’t change the science and the magnificence.
I think having the astronauts do so much narration helps – they were certainly aware of the poltical realities around them, but they also clearly love flying and loved the journey.
I watched The Black Stallion, gifted to me by Gillian. I thought the component parts of this were lovely! I don’t think I’ve seen an ostensible children’s movie with such strong arthouse vibes: the long periods of silence, the painterly abstraction of some of the imagery–very cool stuff. Unbelievably beautiful cinematography by Caleb Deschanel, wonderful score by Carmine Coppola (good movie for semi-famous dads of more famous children), and a great cast–maybe my favorite Mickey Rooney performance I’ve seen (definitely his most subtle). Teri Garr gives a nuanced turn at the mother, too. You can really see the fingerprints of Melissa Matheson on the screenplay, and both Garr’s character as well as the child (Kelly Reno is really good in this, too!) have that single-parent/child loneliness dynamic that would be more developed in E.T.. That said, speaking of the screenplay, but that’s where this kind of falls apart for me, as good as some of the pieces of the film are. I just don’t think the two halves of the film are reconcilable as written, and what’s more, it doesn’t feel like the movie is even particularly interested in reconciling them; the first half of the movie is a survival story, and the second half of the movie is a horserace story. There was probably a way to make the bifurcation literary, but it just feels like a grinding gear-shift to me here. Good movie, but I think there’s probably a revision of this that could have been a great movie. I’m very glad to have seen it! Thanks, Gillian!
It’s fascinating to me that it was gifted twice this season.
Oh wow, I didn’t even realize. Big year for G-rated art films!
I didn’t even notice. I got really nervous when I saw this that I had made a copy/paste error on the list.
I didn’t think much of Rooney in this the first time I watched it, but he was a revelation on revisit after I’d seen a bunch of his ’30s and ’40s films, being mightily annoyed by him much of the time. This is just a deeply felt, soulful performance that doesn’t force anything.
And on that note, I do like how the film itself doesn’t force a reconciliation between its two halves either. It’s just like, why don’t we go in this direction now? Sure, why not. Even as the narrative changes, the style doesn’t, staying light and graceful.
Curious if I’d be a little more willing to just go with the two-half structure on rewatch once I know it’s what’s going on.
Glad you enjoyed The Favourite, Gillian. I actually haven’t seen any other Lanthimos-es, so I have no idea whether or not I would like his whole Deal.
Whereas a huge part of what makes the movie work for me is the script. Tony McNamara isn’t just very funny with this kind of historical fiction, but he has a really strong sense of dramatic structure. Even admist all the court trappings and intrigue, I find The Favourite holds to two important dramatic rules: Every scene advances the plot or raises the stakes, and every character in every scene wants something.
As I’ve mentioned before, McNamara also created The Great, which might be even better and funnier than The Favourite. Three seasons, all well worth your time.
Yes, I liked it a great deal and will give The Great a go.
It really is a crackerjack script, and the three women at its core are phenomenal. I haven’t seen anything else by Lanthimos either!
Cori has asked me to post hers, which I was totally going to do this morning and didn’t.
This is a film that takes place in France on the kindness of strangers. Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) is an immigrant who has entered the country illegally. He was trying to get to England where his mother has a job. He first encounter with kindness is as Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) stops an armed officer from shooting him as he flees the area where the immigrants were found. The second kindness is when Marcel Marx (André Wilms) finds him while working and leaves food for him. He continues to meet people who show him nothing but kindness as they help him try to reach his goals.
Vomas said they gave me this film because it was a “first movie I saw that introduced me to a new favourite director.” The director of Le Havre is Aki Kaurismäki, who is also the writer. He is finnish and Le Havre was his second French language-based film. I did find it interesting how the director used light in his scenes. If there is no natural light they could angle to certain brightnesses there are a few instances where obvious spotlighting was occurring. I would like to watch more of this director to see if I could see themes throughout his films.
I enjoyed watching this movie. I was touched by the ending. I feel everything was wrapped up very nicely by the end of the film. I did get the sense that Monet might be a repeat character. Sometimes it felt like he was supposed to be already established in the narrative.
Glad you enjoyed it, Cori! Kaurismaki does have a lot of recurring themes and characters in his films and has a wonderful stock company of actors who pop up throughout his career – I’ve now seen pretty much everything he ever did, which all spiraled out of seeing this one. This is one of his more sentimental films, but it still has plenty of deadpan humour. It does have some specific links to his previous French film, La Vie de Boheme, but I think Marx is the recurring character rather than Monet – really need to revisit both!
I would definitely recommend checking out more of his films if you liked the general vibe of this one because he’s incredibly consistent. I wrote up my favourite, “The Man Without a Past” back over at the Solute and his recent comeback film after a brief retirement, “Fallen Leaves”, was my favourite of 2023, but hard to go wrong if any of them catch your eye!
Eyes Without A Face, gifted by Lauren
I wasn’t expecting the movie to open up with music that sounds like a knock-off of the theme song to Curb Your Enthusiasm.
This is a work of pure atmosphere. The plot, while functional, seems less about generating thrills than it does about generating these intense atmospheric sequences; the sound of the dogs in particular is a brilliant move. Pierre Brasseur as father in the picture is one of the Frenchmanniest Frenchmen I’ve ever seen – not just arrogant but unthinking in his entitlement to do whatever he wants, with a melancholic air as he accepts what must be done without quite realising how evil he is. Meanwhile, Edith Scob is a revelation here; I love that her one scene without either the mask or the gore is presented totally casually, but she operates magnificently within the confines of it, moving around in total fear of being noticed despite being totally alone.
Glad you liked it! Yeah, Scob is incredible here: she does so much with her body to compensate for not being able to make any facial expressions for most of the movie, and it makes her such a striking presence.
The transplant scene is always agonizing for me to watch. Some exquisite tension there.
Scob is incredible.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) gifted by Jim Aquino
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) has been adapted for the screen several times. I have seen the 1981 version previously, but as it must have been some 40 years ago I can’t say that I have any memories of it.
The 1946 version (directed by Tay Garnett) has all the classic features of a film noir. Cora (Lana Turner) plays the men like a maestro plays the violin, although I sometimes felt that her appearance was a little too posh to match her character. When the film develops into a court room drama in the final third it lost me a bit. It turned into a melodrama so to speak.
When at it, I also saw Luchino Visconti’s 1943 adaption Ossessone. It is a grittier and more straight forward story that I appreciate little bit more. Still this was a nice gift that quite gilded my holiday season. Thanks a lot!
I was gifted Whisper of the Heart by Cori, who noted that it was the first time she was introduced to anime as fine art; I came at it from another direction – while I’m no expert, this was e.g. among the last Ghibli films I still hadn’t seen, and probably the most acclaimed one – which perhaps accounts, in part, for why I did not find it revelatory. Knew going in that it was a grounded drama, not a fantasy adventure, which theoretically is no problem – I’m always down for a just-watching-characters-grow movie, especially one set in a lightly idealized environment as lovingly and vibrantly drawn as this.
But this might have done more for me if I’d first encountered it when I was around the age of its lead, Shizuku, a middle-school bookworm who juggles schoolwork, family life, crushing and being crushed on by different boys, her discovery of an antique shop that becomes an object of fascination, her emerging writing aspirations, and her obsession with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” that seems inexplicable until I remember that when I was a kid I, too, could get attached to pieces of foreign pop culture floating into my field of vision that would have seemed completely random to anyone else. Seems like more than enough for a movie – but the various elements don’t really feed into each other (except when they do so very explicitly), and a momentum never builds even as Shizuku gradually becomes overwhelmed by her discoveries and ambitions.
She is also a very earnest heroine – exclaiming “What a find! A place where stories start!” after she first visits the antique shop, even reproaching a cat (!) with, “Teasing dogs isn’t nice!” – in a way that makes you long for a counterpoint, and I felt some relief when her crush object Seiji, who has made his own violin, responds to her cry of “You made this? It’s like magic!” with “How can you talk like that with a straight face?” Except that this scene then… ends with her performing “Country Roads” at full length while backed on the violin not only by Seiji, but also by the shop’s grandfatherly owner and his friends. No sooner is a hint of conflict introduced than it is set aside for wish-fulfillment fantasy; even as Shizuku grows anxious about her writing and contemplates not going to high school, the film indulges and protects her (going as far as having a character directly compare her to an unpolished diamond) to an extent that e.g. Miyazaki’s directorial efforts centered on kids never do, to my eyes. (I was genuinely surprised to find out, the day after watching this, that he wrote the screenplay. Would not have guessed.)
The bigger example of the film walking back on its own resonance concerns the scene that I found by far the most powerful, in which Seiji reveals he’s going to Italy to be a violin maker’s apprentice, and Shizuku has to immediately process what she’d figured would happen (“I was hoping we’d go to the same high school…”) before gracefully allowing him his personal journey and realizing she shouldn’t be complacent, either. Obviously this needn’t preclude them maintaining their connection, but it does seem to set up a beautifully open-ended resolution where Life can go on a bunch of different ways; in place of that, however, is a truly wtf conclusion that nullifies all that ambiguity and light melancholy, and left me trying not to loudly blurt out, “You two are middle schoolers” at my TV. Like Takahata’s Only Yesterday, which I’m also not very keen on, this is a movie that emphasizes a grounded, realistic sensibility, then gives its characters everything they want anyway, which actually feels less satisfying than a less happy ending would be. This is a pleasant, likable film; wish I could be more enthusiastic than that, but I do appreciate you sharing it with me.
I will watch my gift posthaste, I’ve been pretty sick and completely forgot about it until now, guh!