Did you know arthouse movies are good for you? A study by UC Santa Barbara found this; subjects who watched experimental films performed better on creative tests than people who watched more immediately gratifying comedy videos. The idea is that the process of interpretation, however frustrating, creates an ability to exert the same muscle elsewhere. This is a thing I’ve noticed not only in myself, but in others who enjoy interpreting art – even art that isn’t, strictly speaking, experimental, where assumptions we made about other art bled its way into our work. The writing I’ve done here and elsewhere has improved my ability to create enormously.
Stalker is my first Tarkovsky after a lifetime of hearing about him, and the most shocking element is how accessible it seems. The action is incredibly simple, the philosophical observations aren’t particularly dense, and above all, the motivations seem screamingly obvious. My personal taste in fiction could best be described as ‘arthouse genre’, where a familiar genre is used to explore heady emotional or sociological questions, or the possibilities of a medium. Some of my favourite works – The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Metal Gear Solid – push the elements of genre to places that are genuinely alien and borderline incomprehensible, grounded only by familiar plot devices. Genre is often rightfully dismissed as cheap power fantasies, but the familiarity also gives structure for surreality and confusion.
By comparison, Stalker is comparatively straightforward. It doesn’t really exist for vivid emotional expression; it exists for those philosophical observations. Of course, cinema inherently expresses emotion; one could describe this movie’s emotion as ‘contemplation’, but I think I prefer the term ‘comfortable boredom’. That many sound like an insult – fans of arthouse works tend to bristle at the words ‘boredom’ or ‘pretention’, and understandably so, but one thing these smartphone-addicted constantly-thrilled times have taught me is that boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Tarkovsky’s camera is generally distant; a wide shot establishes geography and a close-up establishes emotion, and for the most part, we are detached from the three men wandering around the Zone. Hell, we don’t even really know their names! We soak up the land alongside them, struggling to see what they feel about their situation or each other except in the loosest terms, and the few times we do, we’re almost uncomfortably close; my favourite example of this is when we see the Writer and the Professor wake up and look up at us and the Stalker.
We’re left to infer most of their origins, motivations, and the origins and motivations of the Zone. Stalker has a video game adaptation/inspiration which leans far more heavily on genre elements like violence, mutants, and exposition; I haven’t played it, but I can assume it slides right next to Fallout or Gears of War or other violent genre games. I find myself wondering how much genre work would benefit from not explaining or even revealing itself to this level; one of the most popular video games of all time is Silent Hill 2, which easily fits in the style and approach of this film, right down to ‘having something to say’.
What puzzles me is why most people seem to dislike this approach – why it’s relatively niche despite being good for us and being pleasurable to engage in. That study from the start of the essay notes that people feel worse and more irritated after an experimental film than a comedy, although I personally enjoy the process of confusion and articulation of a thought. Confusion, admittedly, is connected to fear, and fear comes from lack of control, and lack of control is one of the most abhorrent experiences a human being can go through, apparently.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Year of the Month
We've seen this all before, and we'll see it all again.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Happy Endings, Season One, Episode Thirteen, “Shershow Redemption”
“Our bond is as inseparable as the Navi people’s hair penetration???”
“You’re gonna have change all the plans you made.”
“Damn it! They were such good plans, too!”
“It wasn’t as bad as the time he made smoothies in my apartment.”
[cut to the apartment on fire]
“So, should I get a condom?”
“What? No!”
“Great! I hate condoms too.”
“She’s Beautiful Minding it. Give her second to work through it.”
“I will find twenty bucks and use it as dental floss, coz I won’t need it that hard.”
“I realised that aluminum is a really important part of deodorant.”
“Who’s Jason?”
“Shershow’s first name. It’s so Shershow you don’t know that.”
“A wedding jinx? I’ve only ruined one wedding.”
“Yeah, and Yoko only ruined one Beatles.”
“Hello room. It’s going to be nice to have sex in you.”
“Okay, you don’t have to say that in every hotel room we stay in.”
“It’s just a courtesy.”
I may actually be too much like Brad.
“Our wedding went off without a hitch. Literally, nobody got hitched.”
“I’ve never felt so smart!”
“Can you come back later. I am about to have sex.”
“I’m the type of guy to get mustard on my shirt even though I’m not eating mustard!”
“You’re my gayftey. My gay safety.”
“I got it.”
Send Help
A pretty good time at the movies. My partner was expecting much more of a power fantasy than ‘she was half in love with him the whole time’; I did delight in how the action kept building and building, but I think it was undermined more by the cartoonishness than served; I deeply appreciated watching a very Nineties movie in how Raimi knows exactly how to sell an idea in a single image (and Rachel McAdams gleefully embraces being a cartoon character) and powered through story so much faster than I was expecting. But the borderline Gilligans Island nature of Linda’s abilities made any thematics hard to take completely seriously. To be honest, for each of us in different ways, we were frustrated that a story of female empowerment was written by two dudes.
The Mark of Zorro
I hereby declare it Swashbuckler Summer. Going to try to fit in a lot of fencing in these hot, hot days, since my recent plunge into Errol Flynn movies has left me with a lot of affection for the genre as a whole. This is the Tyrone Power Zorro, and it’s a lively good time with excellent fights, especially the climactic duel between Power and Basil Rathbone. Power is especially good at keeping up Diego’s foppish act and good humor while allowing the audience, but not the other characters, to see the dangerous edge beneath it all: it’s like you’re watching a panther goof around while no one’s taking it seriously.
Viewer beware: I watched this on Tubi and thought it was just an exceptionally bad print that needed restoring, but the reason it looked so muddy was that it was actually a bastardized colorized version. This is what I get for deliberately avoiding colorized versions all my life: when I unknowingly come across one, I mistakenly think it just looks like shit instead of immediately knowing there’d be a version out there that looked a thousand times better. Well, even with that caveat, this was a good way to kick off my Inaugural Swashbuckler Summer.
The Ballad of Narayama
For Movie Club. My pick this time, and I think this is my first choice that I hadn’t already written up in some capacity (and I hadn’t because I feel incoherent about it or like I can’t live up to it, which it was still true). Gorgeous–the kabuki inspirations add an incredible handmade artifice to it all that’s stunning to look at–and emotionally resonant film; we had a terrific discussion that led us in a lot of different directions. I’ve thought a lot about the cut to present-day and the brief glimpse of the train and placard at the end, and our talk still led me to new wrinkles of interpretation on that matter, which was very cool.
The Princess Bride
My wife and I had both watched this countless time but not for the last few years. Unsurprisingly, we still had to agree beforehand that we weren’t going to quote all the lines, though, also unsurprisingly, we had some exceptions: “MAWWIDGE.” A masterpiece with one of the most perfect casts of all time. Also a very good fit for Swashbuckler Summer, so I’m counting it.
Hud
Bleak but brilliant. More on Wednesday.
Bastards
I had always had the vague sense that I wouldn’t get on with Clarie Denis’s movies, and sure enough, I never got pulled in by this dark noir revenge drama even though “dark noir revenge drama” is right up my alley. After his beloved brother-in-law’s suicide, a man gives up his life–not only quitting his job but eventually having to pawn all his most treasured possessions and cash out his life insurance–to come home and help out his sister by getting revenge on the man she deems responsible for her husband’s death and her daughter’s sexual exploitation and eventual violent rape. There are flashes of humanity here, but mostly when people–especially women–are in the process of being ground into the dirt, their will to live snuffed out forever. Some great sequences. Horrific ending. I wish I didn’t feel at such a distance from all of it.
I’m sure I’ve told this here before. Years ago, when my daughter was little, we were at a kid’s birthday party and they put on Princess Bride. My wife, with whom I had been at that time for at least 20 years, leans over to me and whispers “I hate this movie.” I looked at her in shock. “You hate The Princess Bride? **I** hate The Princess Bride! Ah, Twue Wuv!”
To be fair to the movie, the movie itself we both like fine. It’s just how incessantly it was quoted when we were in high school. In my case in particular, by a girl I was seeing and the guy she left the party with.
This video about The Princess Bride just dropped last week. Unusually for this channel, the episode has a lot of interviews with the people involved, and shows just how much everyone involved loved and loves it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMqWRTaTl8w
I think you might like Beau Travail!
He Walked by Night – Radio technician turned crook Richard Basehart kills a cop in cold blood, and of course the LAPD are soon on his tail. But our guy is cunning and cold and soon has the cops back-footed as he conducts a crime spree to confuse them, shooting and paralyzing another cop in the process. It’s only weeks of dogged pursuit and hard work to lead to a final chase through the storm drains under LA. The stuff involving the police is pretty routine, though a scene where everyone Basehart robbed during his spree work together to generate a composite is oddly gripping. (And one scene where the LAPD pretty much round up every man between 20 and 60 who was in the vicinity of the first crime is unintentionally chilling. The police state mentality of the police is hardly new.) What makes this work is Basehart’s cold energy as the bad guy, and the combination of an uncredited Anthony Mann’s direction (most film historians agree he took over quickly from Alfred Werker) and John Alton’s remarkable noir cinematography. The scenes shot in the storm drains are utterly stellar. (Fun fact: this was made in a semi-documentary style – it was based on a true crime – and a bit player in the cast named Jack Webb struck up a friendship with the LAPD consultant on the film about all the potential stories in Parker Center’s files. The next year, Dragnet the radio show debuted.)
Spider-Noir, “Step into My Office” – Once Ben Reilly was The Spider, Depression Era NYC’s hero and its defense against the Mob. Then tragedy struck, and five years later Ben is just a down and out PI. But things are changing. My wife and I decided to go with the color version over the black and white version since it’s clear that it was filmed in color (and besides, there is color noir), but I suspect it works the same either way. Thus far, it’s sort of a mess, as we are in a somewhat anachronistic 1930s, more racially diverse than NYC was at the time, and with a very contemporary interpretation of “Dream a Little Dream.” My wife frankly found a lot of this confused and poorly thought out (if you are going to posit a less racist pre-WWII America, she wants you to think about what that means beyond non-whites having jobs only whites did then). But the story itself is quite intriguing, and Nicholas Cage, maybe a bit too old to be a superhero but still never, ever phoning it in, is having a ball, and the mix of noir and superpowered people shows a lot of promise. The cast also includes Emmy winner LaMorne Morris, Li Jun Li (Sinners), Jack Huston, and Brendan Gleeson as Silvermane.
Elementary, “The One That Got Away” – While Sherlock and Joan try to prove that Joan’s new boss is Kitty’s rapist (and that he hired Joan only so he could set things up a certain way), Kitty is less interested in seeing him arrested and more interested in revenge. The plot is generally good, though it has to veer in a somewhat unlikely direction to find evidence to arrest the bad guy. But this is not about solving a mystery, it’s about Kitty and Sherlock and what she decides to do, and how having her in his life saved him. One of the better episodes so far, relying less on being a procedural and more on being about broken people. Ophelia Lovibond really nails it in her last regular appearance.
Honorable mention: NOR-BRA – Erlind Haaland is now our king. Or at least our new Norse god. And it didn’t take a phone call from the Norwegian government for his team to win.,
NOR-BRA sounds like a He-Man toy.
And the Mann/Alton combo is responsible for T-Men, which also looks absolutely astonishing, so I need to get on Walked.
Just be warned that Walked fell into the public domain long ago and even the version on Prime is of poor quality. Though maybe b-movie noir should always look like it did when it was airing on the local independent station between a kung fu movie and a hockey game in 1979.
Veronica Mars — this show was made in 2004. I believe that is the year I first got a cell phone; I don’t really remember much about it and that was a different time (see the now-incomprehensible Office plot about Andy costing Daryl a bunch of money via constant texting) but I am pretty sure cell phone use was a known quantity at this point. As were texts! Anyway, Veronica is trying to exonerate pervert history teacher Adam Scott, who has been accused of fucking a student; during the PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS A TEACHER ALLEGEDLY FUCKING A STUDENT IN WHICH BOTH STUDENT AND TEACHER GIVE OPEN TESTIMONY WERE YOU ACTUALLY DROPPED ON THE HEAD AS A CHILD ROB THOMAS the student shows her phone with creepy texts from Scott. Looks like he’s toast! But then Veronica borrows the vice principal’s phone* and does some texting. She whispers to Scott and he tells the administrator holding the hearing to check her phone and … there are new messages there! From the vice principal’s phone! This shows you can’t assume a text actually came from the person who owns the phone, Scott says triumphantly, and what in the fuck is going on here? Veronica obviously just did this! It isn’t a fucking magic trick! Just say someone swiped your phone! The demonstration here is insane, even more insane than the whole public nature of the hearing (which has the excuse of being necessary as a setting), was “a person who is not another person can use a phone” something that needed to be explained in 2004? Just baffling, baffling shit. Anyway, Scott actually fucked another teen and Veronica should’ve listened to her woke dad who believes women instead of defending a child predator, as morals go there are worse.
*I love vice principal Clemons so much, he’s at this hearing presumably for administrative reasons but also looks like he’s just sort of bored and in need of whatever entertainment this will provide
I remember that episode of VM being kind of difficult to watch. (I was a big fan of the show at the time, and am still a Bell booster, but reading these gives a good sense it’s very much of the moment.)
A larger theme of the episode (and to some degree the season) is that Veronica is a teenager, she is going to make bad or at least not-well-thought-out decisions. Her immediate support of a favorite “cool” teacher makes sense in this regard, especially because the accuser is a mean girl who has fucked Veronica over in the past (and the twist involved here is actually quite good) — she can’t see beyond her preconceptions, believable for a teen but not good for a detective. It’s the execution that falls down, some of this is structural where this beloved guy is being introduced for the first time so the audience has no real reason to give a shit about him and some of this is conceptual where the teacher is introduced doing horrible dorko cringe shit in class (Scott is actually perfect in this mode but it’s so lame and yet presented as cool) so we want him to be arrested if not executed immediately. And then there’s all the shit above. What really makes things weird is Veronica trying to hook up with Deputy Leo, who is 20 years old and an adult and yet a guy who crashes a high school dance to date her, Max Greenfield is also very good in his role but absolutely nothing overcomes “20-year-old going to junior prom.” Veronica, what the hell are you doing here!
I am not going to fault Veronica as much as I will Leo. Teens are sometimes going to think it’s cool and also hot to have dates with adults, like it means they too are adults now. (A friend who had that experience talked to my wife and I about, and it was in retrospect harrowing and horrifying to her, but not at the time.)
Though I should really blame Rob Thomas.
Thomas came up with a killer idea, “teen girl noir,” and he runs into problems where the last third of that formula is incompatible with the first two-thirds and yet he tries to mix them anyway (an adult female private detective hooking up with a sympathetic cop is just fine). Rian Johnson avoided this in Brick by keeping everything on the teen level; the second season of VM does better work in this regard.
Mighty Aphrodite — Woody Allen is a conceptual, high-concept filmmaker. People just forget this because his most renowned pictures are about New York relationship drama. And those movies (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives) are excellent movies (and not exactly quotidian in structure). But the significant majority of his work is more daring and strange than that.
Much of this film does fall into the New York relationship drama mold. Allen and Helena Bonham Carter are somewhat newly marrieds who decide to adopt a kid before the bloom goes off the rose in their marriage. Allen is reluctant but absolutely adores the kid when he shows up. The main action of the picture is five years later when Allen uses chicanery to track down his son’s birth mother, who turns out to be prostitute and occasional porn star Mira Sorvino. Sorvino won an Oscar for this role, richly deserved. Her ridiculous voice makes you think she’s going to be a ridiculous character, and in some ways she is. But while she’s a classic movie dumb blonde, she’s not naïve or foolish, and she doesn’t need saving. She’s a working girl, in both senses of the word.
She assumes Allen is there as a john, but he just wants to understand the origins of his son, and they strike up a friendship. These are the best parts of the movie (well, of the story anyway, see below), grounded in Sorvino’s sweetness as a character but showing some steel when he is upset with her career, which see sees correctly as attempts to control her. Eventually Allen fixes her up with a boxer he knows (Michael Rappaport, playing even dumber than Sorvino, in what might be the best performance of his career).
These absolute best thing in this movie, though, and what makes this fit as one of Allen’s high-concept oeuvre, is the Greek chorus Shot in the ruins of an ancient Sicilian amphitheater, this is a true Greek chorus, wearing robes and stylized robes and chanting in unison about the themes of the story and adding exposition. Also there are jokes. F. Murray Abraham is the chorus leader, with appearances by David Ogden Stiers and Olympia Dukakis as Laius and Jocasta, Danielle Ferland as Cassandra, and Jack Abel as Tiresias. Allen starts the film on the Chorus, but he doesn’t overuse it, and every time he jumps back to Sicily its juxtaposition with the thoroughly modern narrative is always a surprise.
All of that said, however, the ending sort of lets this one down, as it just kind of peters out — and this actually is a misuse of the Chorus device, as Allen and Carter appear in Sicily for one scene near the end which would have been better played in New York. I remember the critical assessment of this one being very positive. And it’s understandable due to Sorvino’s fantastic performance at the center of the film. But I didn’t like it as much as I remembered (I think I only ever saw this once, when it came out), or as much as the next one.
Obsession – Got a bunch of wisecracks for this movie – Xander’s Buffy episode where everyone’s in love with him played for pure horror, a misogynist trying to grapple with his misogyny – but for all it’s flaws (we spend way too much time with an uninteresting guy) and lack of originality, it’s a damned effective horror movie and dissection of a person’s weakness.* Bear is not just clueless, selfish, and loveless – he has no real interest in what his wish has done to Nikki, and he never tries to help her once – the boy has no heart. The relatively inert protagonist is made up for by Inde Navarette’s terrifying Other Nikki/Nikki, entities fighting to gain control of a body (“NOT ME!”), one single-minded in the horrific things she will do for her Bear. Will this hold up on rewatch? Dunno. It’s too long and the script can be weak, but Navarette is incredible and there’s real power in the nightmare of the clingy girlfriend gone truly wrong, the nice guy so devoid of personality that disaster strikes. (Plus it’s bleakly hilarious; the call scene has some amusing “guy has heard this all before” chuckles until the laugh gets stuck in your throat at the end.)
*Something this has in common with Barbarian.
Few scrappy things as I was out of town for most of the weekend.
Widow’s Bay, episode 1 – friend that I was staying with suggested putting this on and I thought it would be a good taster to see if I can be bothered to pay for Apple TV to watch the rest of it. But alas, I’m not really sure. I thought this was… fine. Some good, funny writing but I wasn’t immediately sucked into the general vibe.
World Cup, Norway vs Brazil – really impressive performance by Norway, they had a gameplan and it totally paid off. Annoyingly missed the England match because it started at 2am here and I could not handle that level of exhaustion / sleep disruption. Caught the highlights this morning and it looked like a really thrilling match.
Seinfeld, S8 “The Comeback” – absolutely top-tier George plot in this one but the rest of it wasn’t on the same level. Jerry’s tennis-centric plot was terrible and Elaine’s movie-rental love interest also felt a little undercooked. But George getting completely obsessed by his “perfect comeback” that nobody else thought was funny, chef’s kiss.
George’s comeback is so great, because the comeback to the comeback is so obvious in retrospect (especially because the dude is a naturally good zing guy, George’s real problem is that he has no game in this regard and it drives him nuts). So George immediately goes for the nuclear option and as a kid I don’t think I fully appreciated how dark that was.
If you ever wanted to rob a bank, today is the day. Everyone will be asleep. (I have a recent friend in London who said they haven’t been into soccer in twenty years, and even they got up for the game.)
Actually got to watch something good:
The Third Man, on a 35mm print. Very exciting. I’ve rewatched this many times, but this is the first time in a theater and in film. Nothing beats film for contrast and depth of field. Watching this in a theater and everything and those deep shadows really come to life. The setting feels positively post-apocalyptic.
I’ve really grown to appreciate Holly’s and Anna’s ambivalence. It’s pretty tough when someone you love also clearly deserves whatever he has coming to him. The final scene, and the scope of Holly’s delusion, is even better on the big screen. You can really feel the zither swell romantically as she approaches. (The sound track throughout, and the way the zither drops out and leaves the diegetic sound, and the echoing footsteps of leather soles slapping on cobblestone alleys, is so good in a theater.) It’s a 10/10 experience.
Project Hail Mary. There are a few things from the book they glossed too quickly, and you lose some of the process stuff, but over all it’s great. Great puppet work. I wish jim henson was alive for this.
What did we play?
I’m still occasionally dipping into Isles of Sea & Sky but I’ve reached the stage where the remaining puzzles are brutally difficult so I’m attempting short bursts of progress rather than bashing my head against it too consistently. It’s a really great puzzly adventure though, I am impressed.
Year of the Month update!
This July, we’re opening up submissions for your writing on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1979.
Jul. 4th: Bridgett Taylor: Apocalypse Now
Jul. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Stalker
Jul. 14th: Lauren James: Flowers in the Attic
Jul. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Guards! Guards!
Jul. 28th: John Bruni: All That Jazz
Jul. 29th: Lauren James: Ghost Story
And for August, send us your pieces on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 2001!
I can’t believe I’d never realized that the video game, which I know is very highly regarded, was adapted from the Tarkovsky film. What a wild revelation to start the day with. Can’t wait for the Andrei Rublev game!
I gave it a try once and it definitely doesn’t feel like playing a Tarkovsky film! Which is probably for the best. I think it has more in common with Roadside Picnic and general Chernobyl exclusion zone creepiness, but it does have more of a haunted, survival-horror vibe than pure action as far as I recall. It’s always REALLY cheap so I might give it another go sometime, I think previously I got it in a Steam deal and realised my laptop wasn’t really up to it.