WEEK 17

17. SUSANA, dir. LUIS BUNUEL, 1951

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mondo cane made me feel like i was reading a
painfully outdated anthropology text
full of absurd exoticization
that makes you roll your eyes
feel sick
and want to cover yourself
in horror and shame.
i hated it.
ridiculous scenes of "crazed natives"
juxtaposed with the absurd but harmlessly painted
customs of white people in "civil society" --
the drunk germans didn't look their best,
but they were also not
breastfeeding pigs, missing limbs, or torturing whales.
it is one thing to show things as they are, without interruption or judgement, another to articulate this as the intention like a disclaimer to then be circumvented in order to shock and awe.
the turtle dying on the beach while the camera idly recorded was probably the only time this dual goal was actually accomplished, and probably the only moment i felt i was watching something perhaps worth my time, even as i wanted to sheild my eyes.
it's often painful to watch the truth,
but even more painful to watch the truth be manipulated
into disgusting lies.
this movie did nothing
for me.

i have high hopes, however, for susana.

WEEK 16

16. MONDO CANE, dir. PAOLO CAVARA, GUALTIERO JACOPETTI, FRANCO PROSPERI, 1962

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you've had the universe explained to you, and you're bored with it. you've had the human body explained to you, and you're bored with it. you can call me a lot of things, but i am not bored.

let's talk about dialogue: so many brilliant things come out of johnny's mouth in naked that i wish i had taken the time to write them all down. this is a dark, funny, spare movie, my first mike leigh, and one that i don't feel totally equipped to analyze just yet. its attitude towards sex and violence? i'm not sure. but i do know, overall, that i really enjoyed it.

after seeing romance and naked in quick succession, i joked that i was done with "squalor pictures" for awhile. and then mondo cane caught my eye. the italian progenitor of the aim-to-shock "mondo" movement of filmmaking, i am drawn to see it, though i am uncertain of its quality and suspicious of its aim. one more squalor picture to close out the month. happy february!

WEEK 15

15. NAKED, dir. MIKE LEIGH, 1993

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i saw two catherine breillat pictures last week, THE LAST MISTRESS and then, ROMANCE, for our blog. i now want to see everything breillat has touched.
i loved, loved romance. in a certain sense it seems perhaps a strange film to love, or at least not really a film you could blindly recommend to a passerby as a good one to watch. you'd probably have to really know someone before telling them to rent it. or, maybe going in cold is the only way. i loved the sterility of the scenes in her apartment with her untouchable mate, an early scene in her bathroom and shades of white and the only sound some sort of appliance humming.
let's try this again.
sometimes i feel i could write and write nonsensically about a film i have loved, without ever really being able to get to the heart of why i loved it. i rarely ever know anything about a film before i watch it, so i do not have background information at my disposal in the after-thought write. i half wish i had more to compare my response to, i have no idea if this was a well or poorly received film. however, although i love the idea of criticism, ideas and opinions on paper, i am terrified of reading reviews, i am terrified of my immediate response being shattered. the feeling of pure response (whether or not such a thing really exists) means everything to me, probably / certainly to a fault. i suppose we love things in relation to who and what we are, and to some degree it is impossible to criticize or applaud a film exactly because of this: it means something to us only to the degree in which it resonates with something about 'me', just 'me'. and of course, somehow great films are able to get inside us, all of us, grab something that in some way we all must share. this is getting sappy, and it is not my intent.
romance was sexually explicit, yeah. but the explicitness and the jarringness and what made me feel like i was watching something new and old -- a new expression of an old idea, the best thing -- was not the blatant sexuality but the blatantness of thought, of emotion and presence and detachment. the way the lead character expressed who she was, what it was to want what she wanted. why she did it, why she sought what she sought. the voice over, often only a few words, was for me, probably the most gripping part of the film.
i am still knocked over in thought after only one viewing, and at this point i think i could go on and on and ultimately say not much. proving further breillat's great feat in saying so much, with so few words, only hairs longer than an hour and a half. maybe that was really my intent. poor and ill-conceived written thought to prove the importance of a film. i'll take it.

i've seen naked years ago. i want to see it again. i think romance made me think of it once more.

WEEK 14

14. ROMANCE, dir. CATHERINE BREILLAT, 1999

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i loved i fidanzati. it was slow, quiet and sweet, and it reminded me (in the best way) of milos forman's czech films of the same era--loves of a blonde or the firemen's ball. it is honest about love. it is beautifully filmed. it is worth seeing more than once. we rented il posto, olmi's precursor to i fidanzati, but we ran out of time to see it before it was due back. no matter. next time we'll enjoy an olmi double feature.

onto this week: ROMANCE. i haven't been able to get breillat's fat girl out of my head since i saw it last month, and i'm curious about this earlier film, a watershed in her career. i anticipate a shock to the system.

WEEK 13

13. I FIDANZATI, dir. ERMANNO OLMI, 1963

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from what i gather,
a film about
absence,
longing,
and desire.

a film i really want to see
and also
a film of convenience:
it is already at the top
of the netflix queue.

WEEK 12

12. WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO? dir. WILLIAM KLEIN, 1966

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two things about broken blossoms: (1) i am very glad to have seen it, and (2) i didn't like it at all. i expected a certain amount of racist ugliness in this film, and was prepared for it, but ultimately i found little else--visually, narratively--that overwhelmed or redeemed that ugliness. i wasn't so much offended as i was bored. the first film orgy film i've had trouble with. the only!

it is, however, as instructive to think about why you didn't like a movie as it is to figure out why you did, and thinking about movies is the basis of our whole enterprise here. so this is all good. i have a lot to learn about early film. i have a lot to learn about griffith. how did you feel about this one?

for this week, a film i know next to nothing about, a romp, a satire. i think it sounds fun.

WEEK 11

11. BROKEN BLOSSOMS, dir. D.W. GRIFFITH, 1919

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it has been a hectic week.
let's go back in time.
let's go far back.
to black and white.
and voicelessness.
90 minutes of silence, and noise.
hopefully the potential racial sterotypes
i've heard are in here
can be processed,
and in remembering
llian gish's participation in this and birth of a nation (1915)
one does not forget how amazing she is in night of the hunter (1955),
one of my favorite films.
sorry the post came so late,
i hope this one is worth the watch.