Daily Projections, 1-3-2019: Your Name* (2016)

Title: Your Name
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Country of Origin: Japan
Year: 2016
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? yes

*This review is for the Japanese language version with English subtitles. I have not seen the English dub yet.

Where do I even start with Your Name. Makoto Shinkai returns to some of his favorite subjects, the flexibility of time, the meaning of memory, and the boundlessness of human connection. Is it really true that these two are communicating with each other through time and space? It’s no use asking what is and isn’t real in Makoto Shinkai film. Maybe none of it is real, but it is, nevertheless true. It’s hard to make any sort of analytical comment about the story structure of this or any of the Shinkai films I’ve seen. It would seem to do them a disservice to reduce it to a simple story when their most distinct characteristic is a nebulous ineffability. Even now, two hours after watching this for the first time, I almost feel as if I haven’t watched anything at all and yet I already feel a longing to be immersed in it again. Which is, in a way, precisely the world in which Your Name takes place: a world that isn’t there and yet is, a present that has not yet happen yet is already in the past. That’s time, I guess. And, of course, the animation, as always, is superb. There is a texture to the drawings in this that other animation lacks. The whole picture seems to glow almost, like a Rembrandt. Not since The Tale of Princess Kaguya have I been so awestruck by the look of animation.

Daily Projections, 12-29-2018: Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Title: Au Hasard Balthazar
Director: Robert Bresson
Country of Origin: France
Year: 1966
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

Another Bresson. A lot to unpack here. It’s tempting to look for a one-to-one correlation (“[Christ] made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” – and who embodies the very nature of a servant better than Balthazar, a donkey battered, beaten, and dragged around with no will of his own). But watching Au Hasard Balthazar, my thoughts continue to fall on Old Testament figures, namely Job and Hosea. After all, not all Biblical symbolism is Christological. And Balthazar is far from the only such figure. Gérard, perhaps a bit of Beelzebub in him, though I tend to look at him as Vice or Sin in general who has the run of the town and to whom the Prodigal Marie always comes when called, even if she puts up a brief, feeble fight at first. Marie, all of mankind, in possession of her own free will who twice rejects an offer of marriage from the only real Christ figure I see in Balthazar (the landowner’s son, Jacques—the landowner is God, by the way), first citing her inability to truly love him then her own checkered past as reasons not to choose him. Au Hasard Balthazar is not so much allegory, perhaps, as it is parable. But it is all masterpiece. And who (but perhaps Bresson) knew a donkey’s face could be so beautiful?

Daily Projections, 12-21-2018: Law Of The Border (1966)

Title: Law Of The Border
Director: Lütfi Ö. Akad
Country of Origin: Turkey
Year: 1966
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

Can a western be made outside the United States? Obviously, yes. The Italians did it. But Lütfi Ö. Akad’s Law Of The Border likewise falls along those lines, though it was produced and takes place in Turkey. Law Of The Border follows life in a small village on the border between Turkey and Syria where the local economy is driven primarily by sheep smuggling. The greatest smuggler of them all (or at least the most proficient) is Hidir (Yilmaz Güney, who also wrote the screenplay) who, though himself shoehorned by circumstance into the smuggler’s life, knows the best future for his own son lies in a formal education though the rest of the villagers are resistant to the idea of allowing a school in town. Law Of The Border highlights the way encroaching modernity (education, cars, fashionably dressed teachers) forces out and renders redundant traditional life and those who are not willing to adapt (and sometimes even those who are). There are plenty of barriers to progress in Law Of The Border – poverty, tradition, ignorance – and yet the present marches on into future. Güney looks perfectly at home with a rifle in his hand. No wonder he would become quite the action star before eventually becoming one of the most controversial filmmakers in the history of Turkish cinema and a literal outlaw.

Daily Projections, 12-20-2018: Pickpocket (1959)

Title: Pickpocket
Director: Robert Bresson
Country of Origin: France
Year: 1959
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

My first Bresson. Bresson, whose reputation for grace and economy precede him. Maybe Pickpocket is a strange place to start with Bresson. It’s admittedly hard to get a handle on what is going on here at first. Michel is a pickpocket, perhaps a kleptomaniac, stealing for the thrill of it. As he teams with accomplices, his exploits become more daring and yet, while Michel claims to be afraid of getting caught, it seems as if he almost invites his own downfall. After all, a thief who never locks his door when he leaves home even though there are stolen goods all over the place. Is he really that brazen? Or is there a part of him that wants to stop stealing but knows he could never chose a crime free life on his own but would have to be led to it by a power greater than he is? The pickpocketing scenes themselves are downright riveting. Tightly choreographed and elegant, they form a digital (as in fingers, not computers) ballet. Surely it is no accident, then, that the entire score of the film is comprised of works by Jean Baptiste Lully, a composer who revolutionized ballet and French dance music as a whole in the second half of the 17^th century.

Daily Projections, 12-19-2018: The Dumb Girl of Portici

Title: The Dumb Girl of Portici
Director: Lois Weber
Country of Origin: USA
Year: 1916
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

Lois Weber was a force in her time, cranking out landmark films at quite a clip for several years, though her fame has, unfortunately, waned over time. Anna Pavlova was a legend in her own time and remains one today. Lois Weber’s The Dumb Girl of Portici was her one and only screen performance. The film, a sweeping operatic epic (literally, it was based on an opera), is a significant departure from the smaller, socially conscious dramas that made Lois Weber’s legacy. It’s full of all the operatic clichés one would expect. But the joy of The Dumb Girl of Portici does not come from the overly melodramatic plot or from the acting itself which looks dated, even for 1916. It’s Pavlova’s presence alone, watching her move and be moved, which makes The Dumb Girl of Portici worth every minute. Pavlova is not a natural actress by any means, she can’t match contemporaries like Gish or Pickford or Florence La Badie. Her movements are meant for the concert hall, large enough to be seen from the back of the hall yet balletic and graceful. It’s a joy just to watch her move. The only real disappointment is that, in a movie with several dance scenes, hardly any of them involve the greatest dancer the world has ever seen.

Daily Projections, 12-18-2018: My Dear Enemy (2008)

Title: My Dear Enemy
Director: LEE Yoon-ki
Country of Origin: South Korea
Year: 2008
Screening Format: Blu-ray
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

IMDB classifies My Dear Enemy as a “road movie”, and it is. Sort of. My Dear Enemy is to road movies as a day spent running errands is to road trips. You spend a lot of time in the car without ever really going anywhere. The journey here is an emotional one. Hee-su (played by Korea’s Queen of Cannes JEON Do-yeon) tracks down her ex Byung-woon to collect on a debt he can’t pay. They spend the remainder of the day together, gathering a little money here and there to pay his debt. Byung-woon believes the best about people, while Hee-su has built a wall of cynicism around herself. This is masterfully translated into the look of the film. In social situations, Byung-woon gets stuck right in while Hee-su stands apart, rarely speaking. Visually, too, she is shot frequently in reflection, through glass, or partially obscured by a barrier. Throughout the day, those barriers are gradually worn down until she interacts with others of her own accord. Beautifully shot making often masterful use of the 2.35 aspect ratio while at other times intentionally refusing to use the entire frame (mirroring the editing: elegant long takes interspersed with series of quick, superfluous cuts), LEE Yoon-ki’s My Dear Enemy is a sensitive and subtle film worth a deeper look in the future.

Daily Projections, 12-12-2018: Monterey Pop (1968)

Title: Monterey Pop
Director: D.A. Pennebaker
Country of Origin: USA
Year: USA
Screening format: TV (TCM)
Setting: Home
First viewing? Yes

It’s hard to believe I’ve gotten this far without in life without having ever seen Monterey Pop all the way through. Sure, I’ve seen Hendrix and his flaming guitar, every minute of Otis Redding, and parts of Shankar, but never the whole thing. And the experience of seeing it all at once makes a few things more evident that are harder to notice in standalone clips. For one thing, it seems to me that the look of Monterey Pop owes a lot to Bert Stern’s Jazz On a Summer’s Day (1959): the camera work, the editing, the “plot” – it’s all right out of the 1958 Newport Jazz festival (though Aram Avakian’s editing in Jazz is more impressive, I think). Of course, Jazz On A Summer’s Day is the yardstick by which I measure all concert films, so maybe a bit of confirmation bias here. Monterey Pop certainly captures a moment in history, which I suppose should be the goal of a good concert film. And what a moment it was. There’s something truly special about watching “Mama” Cass Elliot, sitting in the audience, being blown away by the talent of a still young Janis Joplin. And where else can you watch the Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz rocking out to Ravi Shankar?

Daily Projections, 12-08-2018; Listen (2017)

Title: Listen
Director: Philippe Aractingi
Country of Origin: Lebanon
Year: 2017
Screening format: Streaming
Setting: Home
First viewing: Yes

Notes: Joud is a young recording engineer whose ears are his life until girlfriend Rana falls into a coma as a result of a hit and run accident, then his ears become hers. Inspired by the knowledge that coma patients can still hear sound, Joud is intent on coaxing Rana back to the waking world (which provides ample opportunity for the film’s sound editor, Rana Eid, to really strut her stuff). On its surface, perhaps, Listen is a film about love and commitment, but there’s more to it. Maybe it’s really about obsession or lost causes. Every major character is somehow lost within themselves: Rana within her own unconsciousness, Joud in his single-minded quest for a cure,and Rana’s sister Marwa with her pending marriage and desire for independence. The topic of fidelity (of men, of family, of Beirut itself) is broached many times while the questions of clinging to the past, living in the present, and planning for the future continually pull at each other. Is the fool the man who clings to the past or the one who forges full steam into the future? Or is it anyone who fails to embrace the two? There are issues at play here that I, having never actually lived in Lebanon, have only partial access to through the filter of my own relatives. Perhaps the woman in the coma is Lebanon itself, yet to truly awaken from its war-induced slumber. I don’t know. But that’s another question for another time. One I may never be fully equipped to answer.

Daily Projections, 12-06-2018: Footlight Parade (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Title: Footlight Parade
Director: Busby Berkeley, Lloyd Bacon
Country of Origin: USA
Year: 1933
Screening format: TV (TCM)
Setting: Home
First viewing? Goodness, no

Notes: I must have seen Footlight Parade at least a dozen times by now, but I still find it completely irresistible. A lot of that has to do with James Cagney and Joan Blondell, one of the greatest pairings of the 1930s. Watching this today in particular has led me perhaps to an even greater appreciation of the genius of Busby Berkeley. As entertaining as it was, a film like Tanned Legs,which I watched earlier today, so static and stagey as dictated by 1929 movie making technology feels like little mere than a curiosity compared to the elaborate stagings, intricate choreography, and fluid camera work on display in this (and all) Busby Berkeley musicals. I do have to say, I always feel a distant sense of melancholy any time I watch Footlight Parade. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it always leaves me wondering what might have been. James Cagney, who always wanted to be a song and dance man, is such a smooth, relaxed, effortless dancer. One can’t help but wonder what kind of wonderful films he might have made if he’d been allowed to pursue his true love rather than being stuck in the gangster roles he made so famous.

Title: Gold Diggers of 1933
Director: Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley
Country of Origin: USA
Year: 1933
Screening format: TV (TCM)
Setting: Home
First viewing? No

Notes: Busby Berkeley cranked out a lot of pictures in 1933. But with all of their elaborate sets and glitzy costumes, none of them sparkles quite as brightly as Gold Diggers of 1933 and that’s down to more than just the silver dollar dresses spin round the “We’re In The Money” number. The speed of the dialog throughout Gold Diggers is downright blistering with some of the most glistening barbs emanating from Aline McMahon’s Trixie Lorraine while Joan Blondell gets a fair few shots in herself. Ruby Keeler is, of course, as sweet and innocent as ever. Playing somewhat against type (though that type had yet to be too firmly established) Ginger Rogers is a sharp-tongued rival of the main trio. Watching Gold Diggers, one gets the impression that good old Dick Powell is relishing the opportunity to play the merry prankster as he pulls one over on his snooty family. Gold Diggers features several memorable numbers (as all Berkeley pictures do) including the aforementioned “We’re in the money” (complete with pig Latin verse, the exceptionally racy “Pettin’ in the Park” and the unforgettable homage to the Depression era suffering of WWI vets,“Remember My Forgotten Man”.

Daily Projection, 12-6-2018: Tanned Legs (1929)

Title: Tanned Legs
Director: Marshall Neilan
Country of Origin: USA
Year: 1929
Screening format: Streaming
Setting: Home
First viewing: Yes

Notes: Early musical in a Broadway review style, the first half or so is mostly musical numbers tied together loosely by plot, though story does begin to dominate as the picture progresses and what starts as a carefree summer holiday becomes increasingly high stakes, culminating in a memorable (for the attendees, anyway) charity show. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds are shameless flirts each aiming to make the other jealous, yet only succeeding in getting swindled and embarrassing their two daughters, the eldest enthralled with the smooth talking Clinton Darrow, while the youngest, Peggy, is nearly engaged to sweet, bumbling Bill (a young Arthur Lake). Much of the dialog, particularly the comedic elements peppered with double entendre, is straight outta Vaudeville (Mrs.Reynolds: “Well, I do it all by myself – just as I have to do everything so far as you’re concerned.”). More than anything else,the real highlight of Tanned Legs is the presence of Follies and Scandals veteran Ann Pennington in the fittingly small (Pennington was only 4’10”) role of Tootie. Pennington sings twice (“Your Responsible”and “Tanned Legs”) and dances a few numbers, though none of her trademark routines appear in this, one of her few recorded performances. Also, a possible Dorothy McNulty sighting in the chorus line of the first number, hard to say for sure, though.