Red Psalm (Meg ker a nep)

Right to the people!

Miklos Jancso has two films on the List, and from what I gather, they are very similar, which doesn’t bode well for the other film of his I have left to get to after this one. Red Psalm’s original Hungarian title translates to “And the People Still Ask”, and if that sounds pretentious to you, you’re not alone. This is very much another of the type of film that seems to be of a one-man-show mentality, even though looking at the credits, it actually isn’t, but everyone involved with the production is so clearly in awe of Miklos Jancso and his creativity and vision that they will blindly do whatever he says, and thus we have Red Psalm, a film featuring a bunch of people literally going through the motions that the director has strung together in his absurdly long takes, pretty much for the sake of getting people to do them.

The film takes a page out of the same notebook Rope and Russian Ark do; it is constructed out of a series of long takes, meaning everything from the choreography to the cinematography to the acting has to be damn near perfect the whole way through, or the shot is ruined and they’d have to start it all over again. To make up for the lack of cuts in the film, there is a lot, a LOT of movement in the frame; people mill around, other people on horses constantly circle the main group of actors and trot around in the background, and the camera itself is rarely stationary for any brief moment of time. As for the plot, I wish I could tell you; it seems to be concerned with some sort of protest movement or revolt by a group of music-loving folk, as they spend the majority of the film frolicking in the fields to the various tunes and melodies played by the musicians, dancing and cavorting in various ways. There really seems to be no real plot here; to quote a review I found for this film, it all just seems to be for the benefit of the camera. There’s a pretty decent amount of political content to be had, which of course flew right over my head, as I am not Hungarian, but other than that, I really couldn’t tell you what this one was actually about.

This was another one that was very beautiful to look at, for differing reasons, but when you try and involve yourself in the film, in its plot or its message, you just come up empty handed. It’s like dipping your hands in a pot of beef stew, looking around for the chunks of good stuff for you to savor, but when you lift your hands up, you realize all that you’re holding is water; water that quickly seeps through your fingers and leaves your hands wet, but nonetheless empty. Really, this film was like a shiny bauble, or a toddler’s toy; there’s a lot of motion and sensual input to hold your interest, when there really isn’t actually anything going on, or anything of any real substance underneath. You can feel the actors not actually acting, but going through the choreographed motions and steps in their heads while they do them, to make sure they don’t screw anything up and have to do another take. This isn’t even really a film; it’s an interpretive dance, with lots of symbols and metaphors, but no actual entertainment value. Now, I won’t say that this doesn’t deserve to exist in its present state because of it; it is up to each artist to use the medium however they wish to use it, and to get across the message that they wish to get across, but to me, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference if there is no actual reason for anybody to see it, and I couldn’t find any real reason for anyone to see this one, aside from a brief lesson in choreography. That, however, isn’t why people go to the movies, and if this were playing at your local cineplex, I would more than likely advise you to steer clear.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

The Captive (La captive)

I….. I really….. I really like you.

Chantal Akerman. Hmm. Where have I heard that name before… Where, oh where, have I heard that name… Oh yeah. Jeanne Dielman. Having been essentially forced to sit through that, I was none too pleased to see that Akerman had another film on the list, even if it had been removed from later editions, so I guess I was pre-disposed to not like this one. This would also be the second adaptation of a Marcel Proust work to make the list, after Time Regained, and seeing how much I loved that one, I was just absolutely itching to see what this had to offer. Nevertheless, I gave The Captive a sporting chance, and what did it give me in return? A lot of head-scratching and befuddled narrative, that’s what.

The plot of the film was hard to discern at first, and aside from a one sentence summary I couldn’t rely on the Wikipedia article in that regard, so I tried to pay extra close attention; even then, I wasn’t sure where I was most of the time. The film started, and it seemed like it would go the route of following a young man as he essentially stalks a young girl he is infatuated with, but then a bathroom scene begins, and the two are suddenly already in a relationship. It turns out, they are fiancees (I think…), and he is following her around the city for other reasons. Whatever really was going on, that’s how confused I was through the whole thing, which is never a good sign. It didn’t help that it seemed that the characters referred to each other by different names at times, and the names they did use were very similar to each other, but maybe that had just been the fault of the subtitles, or my own confusion. As for the style of the film, it was very classic; the film even used title cards to jump forward in time successively – a decision I found rather vintage, and not really in the good sense.

The more I watched this, the more antiquated it felt. This is a film for an era long since gone by; it’s not the type of film that should be made in today’s modern time and sense of moviemaking, even for a foreign drama. I could see Akerman getting away with this film if it were made in the 1970s or so, but not 2000. The whole thing just felt old-fashioned to me, and now that I’ve experienced it, I can say that it’s not something I would like to experience in my films. It might be asking a bit much, to some, but I would also like to watch a film, even in a foreign language, and know what is going on for at least half, if not all of the time. Maybe that’s asking too much from cinema, but that just might be the frowning mood this put me in speaking. Either way, it’s certainly not how I wanted to end up after watching The Captive, so I can only say, be hesitant towards this one, lest you end up like I did.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

Time Regained (Le temps retrouve)

In this work is all of your life, and the life of all men.

Time Regained is a complete oddity of a film, at least for me. For one, it’s a French film directed by a Chilean filmmaker, Raul Ruiz, and features an ensemble cast from several different countries. One would think, because of this, that it must have been quite the production for so many people from all over the globe to get involved with it, and it certainly is a production, all right. Just what kind of production or film it really is, is the question. It’s not just that the film seems to have no goal or intention of what kind of film it wants to be, but that the very chaotic nature of the finished product is what the film should’ve been. It might have been the filmmakers’ intent to make a film so variable it would take a quantum physicist to be able to put it all in order, but I’d be surprised if someone didn’t stop them at some point and say, “Hey, shouldn’t we be constructing the film so that, you know, people can actually watch the darn thing?” Because they clearly didn’t.

This is one of the most disjointed films I have ever seen. Dialogue is never specific, and never seems to have a starting or ending point; it is merely the finished cut of the film that contains the middle portion of whatever the dialogue is. Characters are introduced with no introduction; we simply cut in on them speaking, and have no idea who they are or what they’re talking about. It all makes for a very frustrating viewing; you don’t even know the story or what is happening, let alone why you should be caring, so you just don’t. What did jump out at me right from the start was the camerawork and choreography; the film contained a great number of cinematic techniques that you really don’t see in too many films. The camera was incredibly ambulatory, and in a strange choice, so was the set; characters and even set pieces would literally be moved within the frame, almost as if everything were floating, and while it was quite a novelty early on, it got more tiring as the film continued. Still, there were a number of times I caught myself admiring the visuals, though that was pretty much only because there was nothing else in the film for me to admire.

The film purports to be the mental rememberings of Marcel Proust on his deathbed, which would explain both the narrative core of the guy in his bed used throughout the film as well as the extremely chaotic nature and placement of said flashbacks. That still doesn’t excuse it, though. For a film over two and a half hours long, I don’t think I knew what was going on for twenty minutes of it, and no matter how innovative or progressive a film may be, either in storytelling or in the technicals, when you just can’t sit down and watch the film from start to finish, then it has failed in its purpose. That’s the bottom line, the bare minimum that any film needs to meet to be considered as a piece of entertainment media, and Time Regained failed in that regard for me. You might have better luck, but all I can say is, if you’re going to at least try, do your research beforehand. Hopefully that will help ease it somewhat, but maybe even that won’t be enough to save you.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

The Pillow Book

Use my body like the pages of a book. Of your book.

Peter Greenaway is another director that the list seemed to want to have a requisite number of their films to represent him, in his case two. In adding one of his earlier works, Drowning by Numbers (which I haven’t gotten to yet), they removed the latter of his, The Pillow Book. Now, having not seen Drowning by Numbers, I can’t attest as to why that was added and this removed, but as for this one’s removal, I can perfectly agree with it. This is certainly a unique film to experience; it’s just making out what you’re experiencing that’s the problem.

Pretty much as soon as the opening titles ended, from then on I wasn’t sure what to think. Clips superimposed in boxes on the screen, often in the middle of other clips, semi-transparent images layered on top of each other, cutaways to the written text of the Pillow Book itself, with accompanying narration in both Japanese and English; this is what served as the main plot of the film, or rather, the way in which the film presented whatever the plot was. I was reminded often of the book House of Leaves, and its unconventional approach to telling the text of the narrative; if ever House of Leaves should be made into a film, I’d want Peter Greenaway to make it, because he’s essentially got the presentation style down with this film. Now, that comparison aside, it didn’t make for a simple watch, to put it mildly; I was a half hour in when I almost gave up and resorted to the Wikipedia entry just to find out what the hell was going on, but I decided to remain stalwart, wanting to experience the film as it is, and hoping things would clear up somewhat by the end. They didn’t; the film merely swayed from one side to the other, before coming round full circle in its confusing presentation and lack of common storytelling techniques. Now, having a lack of storytelling techniques can be a positive thing, but Greenaway is not the exception that proves the rule (to use that phrase incorrectly); such storytelling techniques are in place because they work, dammit, and if you’re going to go deliberately outside the box, you can’t be concerned with actually telling a story, like this one was. Now, for what I did get; the film, for lack of a better word, fetishizes the concept of writing and body painting; probably 80% of the actual action in the film consists of people writing calligraphy on each other, and most of the other 20% is people trying to relay their feelings and reactions towards writing on each other. An odd concept for a film, but odder concepts have existed, so I’ll let that slide. It was also a surprise to see Ewan McGregor in this; he was pretty good, and this must’ve been one of his earlier roles, before Trainspotting catapulted him into prominence.

As soon as the film ended, I immediately went to the Wikipedia article, which cleared up a good amount of the fogginess, but the fact that I had to in the first place was inexcusable. If a film is so caught up in the style of the presentation, rather than actually conveying the story it wants to tell, then nobody is going to receive said story, and the whole point of making the film is rendered moot. The Pillow Book is the prime example of this folly; that’s all there is to be said. Watch this, if anything, for the unique presentation style it gives, which is truly one-of-a-kind, but if you’re watching hoping to get a story or narrative or plot or anything else out of it, you’ll wind up too confuddled to ascertain anything of relevance, aside from bits and fleeting scraps, which are essentially worthless without the core of the story. I don’t know what to expect from Drowning by Numbers, but I can only hope it doesn’t fall into the same pitfalls at this.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man.

Second in my Blaxploitation-a-thon is actually the first of the genre to be released theatrically (before Shaft), and thus is largely viewed as the progenitor of the genre as a whole. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was made for a piddling budget, and even needed a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to finish production. Melvin Van Peebles directed, wrote, scored, and starred in the film, which given the often gratuitous and risque subject matter and images on the screen, is quite the achievement (and risk) indeed. Nevertheless, for all that Van Peebles put himself through to make this film, it paid off: Sweetback became, at that time, the most profitable independent picture in history.

I mentioned the gratuitous nature of some of the scenes… I probably should’ve been more explicit in my descriptions. This film supposedly contains many unsimulated sex scenes (Van Peebles contracted gonorrhea from making the film, and successfully filed for worker’s comp because of it), and the opening scene alone may rub some people the wrong way, to put it lightly, so major disclaimer with this one.

The film feels like a much more roughshod version of Shaft, but with even more to either be offended about, or cheer about, depending on your mentality. This is a far more exploitative film than Shaft; while Shaft was mostly about the strong, take-no-shit persona, Sweetback takes that persona and cultivates it into an expose on everything the black community lives through and deems their “culture”, while infusing it into the blood of the production itself. It creeps into the story, the script, and even the technical quality of the production, which was extremely rough, to put it mildly. While I was very unforgiving with the technicals in Shaft, since it was largely a studio production, I was far more forgiving with the poor technicals in Sweetback, since it barely made the qualifications for an independent feature; that’s how low the budget and how amateur the production was. Still, it was mostly because of the poor quality of the audio and visuals that the film was practically indecipherable; confusing would be a mild term for it – you can barely tell what is happening. The storytelling follows along the same lines, being very muddled and discrepant; this is another one where I pretty much needed the Wikipedia summary of the film to clear things up for me, so for a film to be so inconsistent in every way, to the point where you can’t even follow the story; I don’t know if I can be so forgiving toward that.

There are so many stories to be told about this film, and especially about the making of it, that I couldn’t possibly fit them all in this review; the film’s Wikipedia page covers a lot more of it than I have, and I suggest giving it a read if you’re interested; it’s a good one. Either that, or watch the very good documentary his son Mario Van Peebles made about the film. Regardless, I tried to be more lenient toward this film than I was for Shaft, but I really couldn’t, since I could barely follow along with the plot, and could barely make out the film itself. I understand how important and influential it was for black filmmakers (I now understand where the freeze-framing that got so under my skin in Precious spawned from), but for someone to watch this in order to be entertained, they’ll be so confused by the halfway mark and so repulsed by all the gratuitous sexual content that I’d be surprised if they’d make it through the whole thing, and it’s only an hour and a half long. I’d advise against seeing this, unless you want to be into the whole blaxploitation aspect or want to support independent film, like I did, but aside from checking this off the list, this was just way too difficult to make out to warrant a recommendation.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

Salt of the Earth

How shall I begin my story that has no beginning?

Lines like the one up there are all throughout this film, so bear with me as I put up a few warning signs. Salt of the Earth would probably be an unremarkable film in any other setting than the one it was made in. Of course, anyone even moderately knowledgeable in film lore knows about the 1950′s Blacklist era, where supposed Communist sympathizers in Hollywood were barred from making movies with any studio ever again. So what were these pariahs to do, now that they couldn’t make movies? Easy; they made their own movie. Salt of the Earth is the result of a bunch of blacklisted filmmakers, cast and crew, getting together to make a film outside the Hollywood system that shunned them so. This alone is probably enough historical merit to add it to the list, which is a good thing for it, as this one doesn’t have too many decent qualities about it.

Salt of the Earth deals with a small town of Mexican-American miners who, after getting fed up with their working conditions, decide to go on strike to pressure the American management into change. Of course, the management is less than receptive, and a bit of a checkers game between the two factions begins to see who will come out on top. This might be a good premise, and one that would make for a fine film, if not for three things: the storytelling, the production quality, and the social metaphor that the film embodies. I mentioned the film was sort of like a checkers game, and I deliberately did not use the analogy “chess game”, as this film takes an extremely simplistic and unengaging approach to what would, in any other film, be a tactful battle of wits. This is helped none by the rather atrocious production value, such as the ill-placed editing cuts and the listless direction of the plot; when you can audibly hear the difference in the white noise between two shots in a film as it cuts back and forth, as I did, you know there was no proofreading or quality check done on this film at all. As for the social metaphor, as it turns out, these supposed Communist sympathizers, when forced to band together to make a film on their own, come up with a very Communist-sympathizing product. Maybe these men could have been a little less blunt and open about where their loyalties really lied, rather than making a film that embodies everything that Hollywood was afraid would happen to their films if they were allowed to stay.

All in all, if this was what all the blacklisted filmmakers could join together and come up with, maybe they should’ve just stayed blacklisted, as this film is inept in almost every regard. That’s a rather mean thing to say, but it is warranted, in my opinion; almost everything about this film is amateur and sloppily put together. The only saving grace is that it’s short, and despite being so amateur and shoddy, this actually isn’t so hard to get through the whole thing. But still, after watching it myself, I can speak for the majority of the people who haven’t seen this by asking; who would want to?

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

Buffalo 66

You adore me, you love me, you cherish me; Jesus Christ, you can’t live without me.

I don’t know what it is about Vincent Gallo that makes me dislike the man as much as I do; it’s inexplicable. I really don’t have a reason why; he just rubs me the wrong way. This mindset is helped little by the character he plays in his debut feature, Buffalo ’66, one of the most morally and ethically repugnant screen characters I’ve encountered in a while. This man treats everyone like shit, including himself at times, and there just doesn’t seem to be a single redeeming factor to him. This makes for a very unpleasant viewing experience, not liking the main character at all, but since I can only assume this was Gallo’s intention, I can’t fault the film itself for it. At least not at first…

From the opening credits, this comes across as a very American version of a French New Wave film; I realize it’s an independent feature, but the little touches like skipping a few frames of film every now and then make it definitely come across as a wannabe French independent film. As for the tone, there’s a lot of unpleasantness throughout, and not in any good way. It was halfway during the initial scene with the parents that I finally reached my threshold and turned the film off. It was nothing but a self-indulgent vehicle for Gallo to do whatever he wanted, as long as it was what HE wanted, and it all went HIS way. Maybe the detestable quality of the main character had seeped over that line between fiction and reality, but I could just feel Gallo’s will imposing itself on every single shot and scene, and it became too much to bear.

I did eventually finish the film, but it took a good deal of mental preparation to sit through the rest of it. I think what I disliked the most was how Gallo used the film as either a wish fulfillment or an autobiographical dumping pot; the main character is embittered towards his parents, but Christina Ricci’s character is inexplicably attracted to him for no reason, he has plenty of friends who love him and would do anything for him, and everything that is wrong or goes wrong in his life is never his fault, and I mean all of that literally. This film serves no purpose other than to provide Vincent Gallo with a centerpiece to mold all his desires and fantasies into, and I couldn’t have cared less for it if I tried, and I was trying the opposite. You might have a differing opinion than mine, but at the very least, understand why I ended up in the position I did.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

I’m gonna break through, or someone’s gonna break through to me.

Okay, first off, it took a long, long time for me to get over the deliberate “uniqueness” of the names of the characters, specifically that the main character’s middle name was actually Precious. This isn’t a human thing, this was a specific decision on the part of the author, though seeing as the author goes by the equally “unique” name Sapphire I can see where this comes from, even if I don’t condone it. Really, there was a lot about this film that I couldn’t condone, mostly the stylistic choices on the part of the director, Lee Daniels. The film seemed like it would often make the correct decision, but right before it would, something else would happen that would take me out of the movie entirely.

Everything, from the editing style to the camerawork to the shot composition to even the visual effects used in the film was just… wrong. That’s all I felt about it. The camera was always wavering, always awkwardly zooming in at weird moments, and this got really annoying and intrusive at times. The film would often stop and freeze frame at completely random points, and would use effects shots as transitions when they only made the movie feel cheap. Even the audio is over-stylized to the point of absurdity; the voiceover would often interrupt and talk over the dialogue of the film, as if the whole thing just went unplanned. It was all just so… annoying, everything the film did. The one thing I did enjoy was the acting; the acting all around was stellar, from just about everyone involved. More has been said about the acting than I have time to say here, but I just wanted to mention that as the one thing I found exemplary across the board, from all the named actors and actresses.

Sure, the story is raw, emotional, and inspiring, but no more so than hundreds of other raw and emotional and inspiring stories that have been told in other films that are way more held together than this one was. Aside from the acting, there was just nothing this did that seemed to be in any way right for me; even the way the movie ended rubbed me the wrong way, though the final scene in Ms. Weiss’s office was by far the best in the whole thing, mostly thanks to Mo’Nique, who well deserved her Oscar for this. But I digress; I don’t know why or how this got nominated for Best Picture, and especially for Best Director – this was just a mess, plain and simple, under the guise of being ingeniously stylish. I gave it points for the acting, but little else; this film was barely a finished product to me, and I just couldn’t get over it no matter how hard I tried.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10*

*I was really torn about whether to give this a 6 or a 5; it’s a 5 regardless, but I didn’t want to discount the acting that much, so extra note here.

A Hard Day’s Night

Money can’t buy me love.

A Hard Day’s Night strikes me as an odd selection for the list. I suspect it is there as merely as representation for the Beatles, probably the greatest rock group of all time, in much the same way Report is there as a representation of the Kennedy assassination (though again, why the Zapruder film wouldn’t have been ideal I don’t know). Well, I’m not too sure that being one of the biggest music groups means that you automatically get a spot on a must-see film list, as aside from the songs, there’s little reason to subject yourself to this one.

The film opens with a crowd of girls running after the fleeing Beatles, who engage in various shenanigans to escape the mob. Indeed, the name of the game in this film is “shenanigans”; the film essentially follows the Beatles as they go to various places, perform various songs, and well… shenaaaaaningans. Even the dialogue is filled with it, serving for little other purpose than to give the boys and their various supporting players reasons to bounce off each other like ping-pong balls. The group can hardly be called actors, not that they were expected much to be, especially poor Ringo who is often given the flub lines and acts like a fish out of water. For a film detailing a musical group, the audio could’ve been a spot better; it often rang tinny and reverberated against itself. The one good aspect was of course the music, but even that was taken from the studio release and overdubbed over the boys performing it on screen, which created a huge disconnect between the songs and the visuals.

I get it; I get that this was hugely important for the scene of music’s influence in film and video and television and all that, but this just skipped right by me. Maybe I’m too young to appreciate it, having been disillusioned by all the runoff this generated growing up, but even looking at the technical aspects of the film I could tell that it did not hold up well at all. This film was so obviously created as a cash grab for Beatlemania that it just screams and dazzles off the screen and leaves little room for anything else. I did enjoy some of the bits with Paul’s supposed grandfather, who was a vaudeville character of the highest order. Really, the whole thing is just a series of vaudeville encounters and snappy dialogue that lacks much snap, aside from being distinctly British. Even as a fan of the Beatles, even their early work, this was a huge pain to watch. Take it from me, just stick to the records.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10

High Society

There’s a dark horse in this here race, and my boy’s running a slow third.

High Society is probably one of the rare examples in classic cinema of a reboot, or reimagining, a term that has become quite prevalent in today’s modern movie vocabulary. The film is a musical adaptation of 1940′s The Philadelphia Story, a film that I personally found fairly decent. Why they decided to remake this film as a musical is beyond me, as aside from the fact that it’s in color, there’s almost no other redeeming qualities that make this worth the time put into it.

If anything, the trio of big names will put a smile on your face; Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra are the love triangle this time, joined by a third man played by John Lund. The affable female (Kelly) falls for each man in turn, and must choose between them by movie’s end. Naturally, as a musical, everything turns out pretty much happy for everyone; not that I could have been arsed to care about anyone except for the fact that I simply was required to to invest myself in the film. Well, this must have caught me on a bad day, or maybe I just don’t like reboots (mainly because they rarely can hold a candle to the original; there are a few exceptions, and this wasn’t one of them), but I just couldn’t invest myself into this at any rate of effort.

All in all, what I ended up with from this film was that it really didn’t need to be made at all. Everything that the film has to offer can be found elsewhere and in better form, and that goes right down to the plot. This is just an unnecessary film; both in how it was made and in how it should be watched, which I can’t really give any significant reasons to do so. If you don’t like musicals, this will rub you the wrong way, and if you’re in it for the story, The Philadelphia Story is nearly the same and better. I’ll give it points for effort, but I don’t really know why this one even made the list.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10