Favorite (four), seventy-nine

Just like in my other seventy-eight posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only a very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jean-Pierre Limosin's Abbas Kiarostami - Verites et songes

For many years I have minimized the benefits of YouTube, preferring to criticize the quality of the works available there that could not be found anywhere else rather than revel in finally being able to see certain things.  The French series of documentaries, Cineastes de notre temps and  Cinema, de notre temps, refute anything I may have thought or felt all these years.  The documentaries are difficult to see in the states yet are some of the most powerful documents of some of the medium's greatest directors.  I believe there are more than 50 documentaries in all ranging from Renoir to Moretti, Lang to Cassavetes and many, many others.

What makes the series special is evident when watching the one on Kiarostami.  It is not a history of Kiarostami's life or cinema but rather an attempt to spend some time with the filmmaker.  We hear him talk and see him interact with different people he has worked with and different people he runs into on the streets.  By the end, we are no longer grappling to understand how a man could create such extraordinary work because we have just spent time in his shoes, sitting in his chair, seeing and feeling the world as he experiences it.

Jerzy Skolimowski's Walkover

Skolimowski continues to be a filmmaker that intrigues me.  This is the fourth of his features I have seen, after seeing Le Depart, Moonlighting and Essential Killing.  All four films are incredibly different in their style and subject matter although in each Skolimowski proves he possesses an unusually strong cinematic eye as well as exceptional feel for the effectiveness of a camera capturing movement on film.  Walkover exudes that very New Wave quality of youth meandering through a city trying to find purpose and place.  The final ten minutes, in particular, churn up heaps of cinematic energy and leave the viewer with an outlook on life that powerfully captures a new generation's desire to reject the ways of the past.   

Cy Endfield's Zulu

I've only seen three of his films but I feel completely confident in saying that Cy Endfield is a name that should be far more common and known in cinephile circles than it is.  Each of his films has a strong directorial presence and a position to the material that encourages contemplation without being distancing.  Although not my area of expertise, I can't think of a war film set up in remotely the same way as Zulu.  We remain in one location for the first two hours with very little in terms of plot advances as we get to know characters as they prepare for what is probably their final battle.   

 

Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider

A top shelf Eastwood western that impresses on numerous fronts.  It is mindful with its location work, its pacing, its framing.  It contains one of the most memorable performances in Eastwood's filmography with Michael Moriarty's work.  And it reminds one how effective Eastwood can be when he's offering the public certain mythologies like a God-like hero that will save us all from our fears and challenges.  

Favorite (four), seventy-eight

Just like in my other seventy-seven posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only a very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jean-Luc Godard's Hisoire(s) du cinema

Is it possible to praise a film in which you grasp less than 10% of what the filmmaker is saying?  I would argue that it is.  Particularly with someone like Godard who can send shockwaves through your brain with some of his insights and with the lyricism he sometimes finds as he works sound and image together.    

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

My first experience with the cinema of Hamaguchi and I am as excited about what he might do as I have been with any new filmmaker in a while.  Hamaguchi uses music like Hong Sang-soo and at first glance might simply seem like alt Sang-soo.  But Hamaguchi's world is not as distilled as the Korean filmmaker's.  Hamaguchi utilizes more locations, pushes deeper into more "taboo" places (sexuality, even homosexuality) and ultimately creates moments and cinema that because they feel less controlled feel more dangerous than the work of Hong Sang-soo.  Many people may call Hamaguchi the Japanese Rohmer but in his playfulness, even daring, he seems as close to Rivette as he does Rohmer. 

Jacques Becker's Edouard et Caroline

It's the ninth of his thirteen features I have seen and what impressed me more than anything is how modern the narrative construction still feels today.  The film consists of only two sets and bears more resemblance in its scope to many low-budget American indies than to the other films of Becker.  It seems to have lots to say about the importance of art in post WWII French society.  

 

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's Summer of Soul

One of these documentaries where the story is so great that it's astounding the footage has sat on the shelf for 50 years.  That in and of itself speaks volumes about the situation of race in this country.  Some of the performances are simply grand from Sly to Mavis Staples to The 5th Dimension. 

All I Saw and Read in 2021

 I have posted this one or two other times in the past.  Here is all that I saw and read in 2021:

½ Betty Tells Her Story, Sylvie’s Love

1/3 Conversations With Friends

1/7 The Way Back

1/8 Richard Jewell

1/9 Rabbit, Run

1/10 Love Affair(s)

1/11 Before the coffee gets cold

1/13 Summer of 85

1/15 Wuthering Heights

1/18 Girl, Woman, Other

1/20 The Alchemist

1/23 The Outsiders

1/24 Tiger, Trivial Pursuits

1/31 One Hundred Years of Solitude

2/1 The Cost of Living

2/5 The Arbalest

2/6 Rounders

2/15 The Given Day, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

2/27 All The Light We Cannot See

3/1 Lovers Rock

3/3 The Society of the Crossed Keys

3/7 Corps a Coeur

3/13 David Bowie: The Last Five Years

3/14 The Gleaners and I

3/15 Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

4/4 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

4/10 The Midnight Library

4/11 Nothing but a Circus

4/15 Malice Aforethought

4/16 The Correspondence

4/18 I Am Not Your Negro

4/21 Giovanni’s Room

4/25 Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

5/1 Jim Brown: All-American, The Disciple

5/4 Ham on Rye

5/8 Thomasine & Bushrod

5/13 Home from the Hill

5/15 Me and My Gal

5/16 Nomadland

5/31 Dons of Disco

6/2 Hooligan Sparrow

6/6 About Some Meaningless Events, Songs My Brothers Taught Me

6/16 Uncanny Valley

6/18 Parasite

6/20 A Screaming Man

6/21 Sound of Metal

6/30 The French

7/7 The Painter of Modern Life

7/15 Joji

7/20 Whereabouts

8/5 Kitchen

8/16 Mistakes Were Made (some in French)

8/19 My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety

8/21 Exterminate All the Brutes

8/22 Little Wars

8/29 Adolescentes

9/26 The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz

10/7 A Scandal in Paris

10/21 The Velvet Underground

10/23 Crimson Gold

10/24 Hill of Freedom, Le caporal epingle

10/27 There’s Always Tomorrow

10/30 The Yards

10/31 First Case, Second Case

11/1 Taking Father Home

11/2 Luxor

11/6 Test Pattern

11/7 Juvenile Court

11/10 Central Park

11/12 Passing

11/14 Near Death

11/15 Orderly or Disorderly

11/21 Ode, Remember My Name

11/23 Remember the Night, Who Killed Who?

11/24 Manuel on the Island of Wonders

11/25 Lovers of the Arctic Circle

11/26 The Little Richard Story, Elf

11/27 US Go Home

11/28 Cops

12/2 God’s Comedy

12/5 In the Same Breath, Out of the Blue

12/8 Gang of Four

12/12 The Metaphor, A Perfect Couple

12/13 To Sleep with Anger

12/14 The Chorus, The Argyle Secrets

12/15 Le ciel est a vous, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

12/16 Sweetie, Our Sunhi

12/17 A Letter to Elia, Annette

12/18 France, Summer of Soul, The Sparks Brothers

12/19 The Terrorizers, Zola, The Grass Is Greener

12/21 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasty, Travolta et Moi

12/22 HHH: Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien

12/26 Scattered Clouds

12/27 Cry Macho, The Dead Zone, Scene of the Crime, Our Daily Bread

12/28 The Corporation, I Knew Her Well, Alive in France, The Projectionist, Micki & Maude, Victor/Victoria

12/29 Lianna, Rendez-vous, Memoria, Deep Cover

12/30 Designing Woman, Edouard et Caroline, Sleuth

12/31 Drive My Car

*Additionally, I watched perhaps more TV than ever watching in its entirety The Plot Against America, Unbelievable, Unorthodox, The Crown, This Is Us, Killing Eve, Mare of Easttown, Queen's Gambit, Succession, 100 Foot Wave and Hacks

My Top Films Seen in 2021

Here are the films, new and old, that I saw and most admired in 2021.

Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold

It is the first film by Panahi that fully grabbed me.  I have also seen Offside.  Aside from Panahi's remarkable restraint with respect to sound, or in other words the film's almost complete absence of music and use of only minimal sound, what impressed me most was the depth and presence of Hossain.  The narrative structure of the film is also quite unique as it flashes back from the opening scene.  But until the end it is unclear how the beginning relates exactly in a linear manner to the rest of the film's proceedings. 

Frederick Wiseman's Near Death

A film that makes the case that it is Wiseman's fearlessness that could be his greatest asset, even more than his intelligence, rigor or his patience.  Once again, because of Wiseman's approach, the impact often hinges greatly on the ability of the subjects he selects to speak clearly and articulate in a manner that is compelling and engaging.  These speeches are the music of his films and the doctors and nurses in particular are responsible for some amazing passages.  This work also examines the staff's feelings about their profession in a way I have not seen before in a Wiseman film.

Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple

While the style of the film is cohesive and fairly rigorous, it is not the aspect of the film that gets to you.  What gets to you is the subject matter.  I can't recall a film that spends as much time or goes as far into the question of what it looks and feels like to be an artist in today's world - an artist that reveres the past and the loneliness of refusing to adapt or change with the times.  It is a tormented film that feels truthful in so many ways.   

Shatara Michelle Ford's Test Pattern

A highly effective indy.  I know nothing about the filmmaker but the two actors are strong and the direction is patient and efficient.  It is difficult material but the way the filmmaker sets it up in the beginning adds a sense of danger to the first 30 minutes.  Once we are caught up with the narrative Ford is still able to maintain the suspense by focusing on the couple and whether their relationship will survive the horrific events of the night before.  It reminds me of Sciamma's Tomboy in the way it successfully incorporates suspense elements of thrillers or mystery films in material that generally does not contain such characteristics. 

Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger

It only makes sense that because African-Americans have their own history and culture their story should be told using a style that is different and unique.  Burnett might be the first African-American filmmaker to bring that style to cinema.  I do not claim to have seen work by all of the African-American directors, but I can say that neither Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks Jr., Spike Lee, John Singleton, Carl Franklin, Antoine Fuqua, Barry Jenkins nor any of the other films directed by African-American filmmakers that I have seen to date bear a style as tailored and seemingly conceived to fit African-American stories as the work of Burnett.  

A broad statement but it can be seen in the way the sets look and the way the characters move, sweat and speak.  Burnett's style is naturalistic but mannered and accented in ways that make it feel even more capable of capturing the plight of the black experience in America.

Vincente Minnelli's Home from the Hill

A film that really would not even be on my radar if it weren't for Richard Brody and his Twitter feed that I follow.  Aside from Some Came Running, I have been lukewarm about every other Minnelli film I have ever seen (probably ten or so others).  And I can completely see why this one might miss for many, from the heavy presence of its score to George Hamilton's acting to the Sirk-like histrionics.  If you can get past those elements, it makes a strong case for Minnelli's greatness.  Look at the grace with which the camera moves around the scenes, Minnelli's careful, emotive framing and the space and time he allows himself (150+ minutes) to explore the characters, the story, the setting. 

Alan Rudolph's Remember My Name

Only the third film of Rudolph's I have seen so far and my favorite.  It meanders and never feels like it needs to make itself more conventional, comfortable or easy for those watching.  It inverts a story we have seen often and makes us realize how foreign a simple swap for a female in this type of story can make us feel.  Often I have read how Altmanesque Rudolph is as a filmmaker but this film seems to have influenced Altman (Short Cuts and The Player) rather than the other way around.

Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow

It's incredible to see Sirk working in black-and-white the same year he'd make one of the most color-forward films in history (Written on the Wind).  Sirk takes the leads from Double Indemnity and substitutes extramarital romance for murder.  In doing so, he is able to create the same level of suspense found in the best noirs and achieve something even more emotionally damaging as it all feels more rooted in reality - kids, family, profession.

Mitchell Leisen's Remember the Night

The first of what I believe were three films that Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray made together, all of which are excellent.  Preston Sturges wrote the script for this one.  Leisen impresses with the amount of emotional depth he is able to create, producing greater feeling by repeatedly choosing complex character moments over entertaining turns of plot.  He shows such restraint, and willingness to defy typical Hollywood narratives, that by the end he is able to deliver a final moment of Bressonian gravity and weight.  

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

My first experience with the cinema of Hamaguchi and I am as excited about what he might do as I have been with any new filmmaker in a while.  Hamaguchi uses music like Hong Sang-soo and at first glance his filmmaking might simply seem like alt Sang-soo.  But Hamaguchi's world is not as distilled as the Korean filmmaker's.  Hamaguchi utilizes more locations, pushes deeper into more "taboo" places (sexuality, even homosexuality) and ultimately creates moments and cinema that because they feel less controlled feel more dangerous than the work of Hong Sang-soo.  Many people may call Hamaguchi the Japanese Rohmer but in his playfulness, even daring, he seems as close to Rivette as he does Rohmer.  

Emmanuel Mouret's Love Affair(s)

Mouret proves himself very adept at tackling the romantic comedy genre while finding ways to make it feel updated and modern.  His most interesting contributions to the genre come by way of his parallel narrators and the way he continually subverts our expectations all the way until the final seconds.  While I wish his use of music a bit more restrained, this is a strong new entry for French cinema, in the footsteps of Desplechin and Assayas and akin to Civeyrac.    

Jacques Becker's Edouard et Caroline

It's the ninth of his thirteen features I have seen and what impressed me more than anything is how modern the narrative construction still feels today.  The film consists of only two sets and bears more resemblance in its scope to many low-budget American indies than to the other films of Becker.  This film that seems Nouvelle Vague seven or eight years before the commonly recognized beginning of the movement also seems to have lots to say about the importance of art in post WWII French society.   

William Klein's The French

A fascinating look at The French Open and tennis in the early eighties.  I have certainly never gotten this kind of look into professional tennis, particularly from inside the locker room.  Klein takes a patient, unobtrusive, Wiseman-like approach, producing a gem of a "sports movie". 

Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue

I should have seen this way before now.  It is a key film in the American New Wave and makes a case for being the final film of the cycle as much as any.  I never thought of Easy Rider, Hopper's first feature as director, as being much from an aesthetic point of view.  But this film possesses an incredible style - specifically its location work,  its graceful movements of the camera, its complex editing rhythms, and its sensitive use of sound.  Dark and disturbing like a David Lynch film but also with echoes of some of the seventies' stronger character work like Five Easy Pieces.    

Frederick Wiseman's Juvenile Court

Because Wiseman likes to leave his films unadorned - long takes, zero non-diegetic music and mostly a static camera - one of the main factors determining a work's impact is the quality of speeches (or conversations) his subjects deliver.  In his works, these speeches tend to be long and his subjects range from being highly intellectual and articulate to having difficulty putting forward coherent sentences.  The interactions Wiseman captures in his exploration of the juvenile court system are powerful and emotionally affecting, and the "speeches" in this work rate alongside his most effective films.

Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

One of the strongest qualities of Lee's work is the way he repeatedly uses the medium to talk about his anger with the treatment of African-American people in this country.  He sometimes finds dramatic ways to do it and he also often does it by having a strong comedic voice.  And regardless of the type of story Lee is telling, he gives it a flashy cinematic style that makes it all go down a little more easily.  

They say the flip side of anger is sadness.  This doc made for HBO might be the first Lee film I have seen (there are many and I can't claim to have seen them all) that embraces the sadness rather than the anger.  It is also the first Lee film that seems to background style and let the people and events stand for themselves.  As a result, it packs a weighty punch and stands up there with the greatest achievements of his career so far.  

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's Summer of Soul

One of those documentaries where the story is so great that it's astounding the footage has sat on the shelf for 50 years.  That in and of itself speaks volumes about the situation of race in this country.  Some of the performances are simply grand from Sly to Mavis Staples to The 5th Dimension.

Leos Carax's Annette

There is real exuberance and a supercharge in Carax's last two fims.  Partly I attribute it to the fact that I cannot think of anyone else in film right now where the work feels as much in an ongoing discourse with the history of cinema.  In the latest, David Lynch looms large.  You feel his influence on the way the young girl Annette looks, who can't help but make you think about the baby in Eraserhead.  You also see it in the way Carax stutters the lights in the beginning and the stylistic device he uses several times that is pure Lynch - the visual separation of body shots that I know you find in Twin Peaks but that I also seem to recall in Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr.  

Carax's cinema could always be looked at as a love letter to the medium and its endless beauty and possibilities.  So it only makes sense that Carax is channeling Lynch, one of the most liberated of filmmakers who continues to defy any claims of cinema's boundaries or imminent death.  

I settled on the phrase above "an ongoing discourse with the history of cinema" because Carax's rear view has always gone farther back than most of his peers who have a hard time citing anything film-wise released before Kubrick's 2001.  Carax in his latest is in a dialogue with the musical, the early Disney films, and as much with the first 50 years of cinema as the last 76.