2002: Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski)

2002: Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski) 

"It's so easy to laugh.  It's so easy to hate.  It takes strength to be gentle and kind."
- The Smiths

I first heard about Bujalski after reading a great Amy Taubin piece in Film Comment.  I soon tracked down Funny Ha Ha, and when I did, it really took me by surprise.  It was so different from anything else I'd seen coming out of the indy scene.  

Bujalski's film is natural and real but not at all in the way that someone like Harmony Korine might take on naturalism.  There's very little irony here, and the style is unabrasive, observational, and remarkably restrained.  The camera is often handheld but always in a fluid rather than in a shaky, aggressive manner.  Korine and many of his generation wanted to bring the Dogma aesthetic to the states.  Bujalski, meanwhile, seems to be channeling more Rohmer and Jean Eustache.  

Bujalski's casualness can be deceiving, sometimes creating the impression that his cinema is unambitious.  However, I think the way that his writing and direction of actors strips away most of what we think of as "actorly" is not only incredibly ambitious, but also incredibly successful.  Bujalski inspires and excites me, and this is my favorite of his films so far.

Other contenders for 2002:  From this year, I still have some titles to see.  These include: Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow, Niki Caro's Whale Rider, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, Rob Marshall's Chicago, and Hong Sang Soo's Turning Gate.  From this year, I really like Spike Lee's 25th Hour, Claire Denis' Vendredi Soir, and Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's The Son.  I love Jim Sheridan's In America, Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven, and Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her.  And my closest runner-up is Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale. 

4/17/11 I watched David Lynch's The Short Films of David Lynch.  This collection compiles six Lynch short films, Six Figures Getting Sick, The Alphabet, The Grandmother, The Amputee, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, and Lumiere: Premonitions Following an Evil Deed.  I was most partial to The Cowboy, which had the largest dose of Lynch's vintage humor.  But it was interesting to see the early work, and how quickly into his film career, Lynch already demonstrated a great interest and skill with sound and color. 

5/25/11 I watched Niki Caro's Whale Rider.  A bit overwrought and overly sentimental for my own tastes.  But Keisha Castle-Hughes has a great face that Caro uses to very good effect.  

7/6/11 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's Ten.  Kiarostami is one of the medium's all-time great humanists.  But the format here grows old after awhile, and keeps Kiarostami's extraordinary sensitivity and observations a bit too hemmed in. 

12/14/13 I watched Nicolas Philibert's Etre et avoir.  Less disciplined and rigorous than Wiseman, Philibert still impresses with the unique moments he is able to capture.  Watching for instance a young boy realize there are numbers beyond those he already knows feels like something the cinema has never quite captured before, the awakening of a young mind.  Overall the film is a very warm, patient look at an extremely gifted and giving teacher.  

5/1/21 I watched Spike Lee's Jim Brown: All-American.  What I would have thought would be an impassioned look at Brown seems fairly detached and disengaged.

3/9/22 I watched Frederick Wiseman's The Last Letter.  Wiseman's great strength is observing life as it is unfolding, holding up a mirror so we can hopefully see better, feel deeper and think more effectively.  There are some powerful elements in this work but heavy stylization and artifice work against the master's most special gifts and talents.

3/11/24 I watched Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen.  Although I am far from a Loach completist, I have seen several of his films through the years and long been a great admirer of his early film Kes.  Here, Loach seems to be inhabiting some of the same world of Kes while also channeling 400 Blows, a touch of Dardenne rawness and the inescapable doom of Mean Streets.  It's never entirely clear where it's all going.  Loach keeps the danger ratcheted up by keeping the story grounded and the emotions plausible.