CINEMATIC Review

SÁTÁNTANGÓ   ***

Béla Tarr

1994

IDEA:  The citizens of a small, crumbling Hungarian agricultural town struggle with their seemingly hopeless existences until the allegedly deceased Irimias returns, purporting to cure them of their woes.

BLURB:  Ashy, murky gray halftones paint the morose and muddy drabness of a poor rural Hungarian town. Slowly shifting tableaux further reveal spaces where human misery smolders. Rain is constant, sorrow is a fact of life. Moving along, molasses-like, on beats of unrelenting gloominess, Sátántangó can be a trying experience. Watching the alternately hypnotic and drearily plodding 7-hour film may render you in a somewhat similar state of sedation to its often slumbering – or otherwise inert – characters; for every astonishing gliding tracking shot and masterfully minimalist, long-held composition is another that seems to serve no other purpose than to stress its own languorous tediousness. Tarr is adamant in showing us every waking (and not-so-waking) second of his characters’ lives, and while the effect can be uniquely captivating, akin to an ever-rolling voyeur’s camera, it often feels merely indulgent. But there’s something to be said for a film of this length that’s able to sustain such an intensely atmospheric mood for so long. The sheer artistry and technical virtuosity on display in many scenes is enough to keep Sátántangó’s bruised images lingering.

     Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich, 1999

ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO   ***

Louis Malle

1960

IDEA:  Zazie, a young and precocious girl under the care of her uncle, is visiting Paris for the first time. When she gets there, the city turns into a surreal jungle gym of misadventures.

BLURB:  If the French New Wave was all about obliterating boundaries, giddily breaking rules, and redefining the elements that constitute a film, then Zazie dans le Métro is perhaps the defining French New Wave movie. Ironically so, then, as its hyperactive hall-of-mirrors absurdity primarily serves to mock the experimental craziness of the movement rather than follow it. Still, Malle’s film indefatigably commits to all the outré editing and camera tricks the New Wave was so fond of – and does it ever commit: not a second of Zazie’s candy-colored romp through Paris isn’t completely bonkers, peppered by a fire-juggling polar bear here, or by a cross-dressing uncle there. Scenes jump erratically, cuts violate continuity or coherency all together, and chase scenes unravel in fast motion, as if the Looney Tunes gathered up with Benny Hill and the Monty Python crew to take buckets of LSD. Though only around 95 minutes, this can all be exhausting, irritating even. But lunacy like this, full-fledged, unabashed, audacious nonsense of this flabbergasting magnitude, is not easy to come by. Zazie dans le Métro is many things, and at the top of the list is unique.

C.R.A.Z.Y.   ***1/2

Jean-Marc Vallée

2005

IDEA:  A man recounts his tumultuous young life growing up as a sexually confused adolescent, dealing with religion, family values, and troubled siblings.

BLURB:  For the first hour or so of this invigorating, exuberant growing up fable, everything seems to work like magic. The images are electrifying, composed of methodical suburban snapshots that flow into each other like gravy, suspended in an immortal glass capsule, unfolding against the music of Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones. Smoke curls through the air; bodies and faces shuffle sensually about each other, finding in themselves years of unspoken emotion; and time, miraculously manipulated, slows down and speeds up in intoxicating rhythms. The surrealistic flourishes feel organically conceived and executed, the grounded human episodes moving and true. But then somewhere in the second half the narrative seems to lose its focus, attempting to extend its reach beyond what it’s actually capable of. Our protagonist becomes more distant, the stunning imagery takes a backseat to perfunctory resolutions and a rushed coda. If not for said unfortunate downturn, this would be a knockout. Still, the technique here pops like little else – and the story is pretty good, too.

TEN   **

Abbas Kiarostami

2002

IDEA:  Comprised of ten segments that all take place within the interior of a car, an Iranian woman drives around having various conversations with passengers both familiar and strange.

BLURB:  An intriguing concept – an Iranian woman has ten conversations with various passengers she picks up, the whole thing shot within the confines of a single car – is an experiment ultimately more tedious than it is absorbing. Watch small portions of the film in isolation, and you’ll likely be drawn into the intense conversational patterns of Kiarostami’s non-actor participants, finding select bits and pieces of their dialogue and inflections revealing, even potent. But watch the film in whole, as it was intended, and the staggered structure grows wearingly thin, any initial rumblings of enjoyment gained from the unorthodox style fading rather quickly into indifference and boredom. There are good ideas at work here, some genuinely insightful moments that cast an eye on gender issues in modern Iran, but they deserved something far more cinematically compelling than this.

     Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath, 1943

SEVEN CHANCES   ****

Buster Keaton

1925

IDEA:  A man will inherit his grandfather's $7 million fortune if he marries by 7 p.m. tonight.

BLURB:  Nobody in history has been able to milk more honest-to-goodness hilarity out of the act of being chased. In Seven Chances, the pursuit of Keaton’s limber, quick-legged bachelor rests at the top of his distinguished list: tailed by literally thousands of women in prospective wedding garb who flood the streets like some kind of massive Exodus, the scale of this rowdy piece couldn’t be greater or more hysterically conceived. And then just when you think it’s reached its zenith, along comes a rockslide, and then more obstacles, popping up in the most inopportune places but surmounted by Keaton in the most ingenious and opportune ways. All 56-odd minutes of this film manage to sustain that extraordinary, zany brilliance. The smile will never leave your face.

FATA MORGANA   **

Werner Herzog

1971

IDEA:  An abstract series of long panning shots over the Sahara desert is accompanied by mythological narration and music.

BLURB:  Fascinating if only because it is so bizarrely, entrancingly soporific, enjoyable (if you could even call it that) only because its few Leonard Cohen songs add an elegiac tangibility to Herzog’s wasteland milieu, Fata Morgana is an eccentric bit of Dadaist filmmaking that feels at once completely useless and weirdly addictive. Cameras pan tirelessly and endlessly over vast barren landscapes, peering out of a car as if you were a part of the most awfully uneventful road trip ever, observing abandoned storage units, animal carcasses, and occasionally roving African locals. The images are strung together tenuously, united by arcane pieces of a creation myth and other motifs, notably horizons obscured by the nebulous haze of the title. The whole thing would be a curiosity, but that would suggest it’s interesting enough to warrant our inquisition.

  Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone's Our Hospitality, 1923