Speaking of Egypt. The Yacobean Building (2006), directed by Marwan Hamed. The film shifts stunningly and beautifully between hard-core melodrama, sadness, and comedy. There are, eerily, some scenes that seem to predict the uprising against Mubarek.
If you missed Animal Kingdom (dir. David Michôd, 2010) last year in the theaters, it’s available now on DVD. I think it’s the best film from last year. Try to watch it on a big screen, with good sound. It’s engulfing. There is a stanza from a Larry Levis poem, “The Poet at Seventeen,” that is somehow linked to the movie in the imagination in ways that are impossible to account for, impossible to justify:
Then. I believed in no one. I had the kind
Of solitude the world usually allows
Only to kings & criminals who are extinct,
Who disdain this world, & who rot, corrupt & shallow
I’ve posted two clips on Youtube. Poor quality, but still. Check them out before they get taken down. The first shows the shooting that starts the whole dark drama in motion. The second shows one of the most quietly psychopathic characters (Andrew Cody, played by Ben Mendelsohn) ever to grace the screen as he watches his nephew’s girlfriend sleeping.
Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992) is bolder than Manhattan (1979), and almost as good as his richest film, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Its visual, handheld, improv style hearkens back to the great John Cassavetes movies of the 1950s and 60s, and anticipates Lars Von Trier’s Dogme 95 movement. In this opening scene, there are two great jump cuts, at 20 seconds and at 40 seconds. After Judy Davis and Sydney Pollock enter, at around 1:08, the rest of the scene is one long messy, glorious, unbroken take lasting over three minutes:
And finally, Christopher Nolan has only made a few missteps as a director, and one of them his remake of Insomnia (1997), a Norwegian detective film directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg. The original features Stellan Skarsgård as a detective so morally compromised that he reminds us of . . . ourselves. Here are three frames as the detective drives a high-school friend of the victim to the crime scene. He’s obviously distracted.
3 responses
I have to tell you, Nick, that I’ve come to almost rely on your episodic film writing. Another wonderful addition.
That’s an interesting observation about the connection between H&W and Dogme 95. I’d never thought of it that way. I wonder what your thoughts are on Dogme 95 as compared to the Italian neo-realists. It’s always seemed to be that the former is just a more formalized (you could say pretentious) version of the latter, which was maybe more organic and the product of necessity than intention. The highly dubious pursuit of the “real” in art.
Also, I would argue that Chris Nolan has made innumerable missteps as a director, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Thanks Larry–much appreciated. Good point you make about the dubious pursuit of the real. I’ve always thought von Trier labored so heavily under the anxiety of influence of not only the neo-realists but Bergman and so to make his voice heard he used the manifesto, the provocation as a means to bring attention to his work in the same way that the New Wavers used Cahiers, or that Jonas Mekas, Brakhage, etc. used the the journal Film Culture. But damn if some of his films–esp. The Element of Crime and Antichrist–don’t prove him to be a master. Those films are deeply felt, humanist in ways that go against his reputation as shocking for shock’s sake.
You’re right: Nolan is a whole other can of worms (I think I said that wrong). He’s not a can of worms. The topic of him is.) I’m going to 10/40/70 his film Following soon and maybe we can have at it then?
I look forward to the Nolan discussion. I haven’t seen that one, but I’ll be sure to have a look.
To me, there’s no question Von Trier is a master. He’s one of a handful of filmmakers whose movies I *must* see even though they invariably leave me furious and exhilarated equally (Aronofsky is another, though less so, and maybe some early Spike Lee). He takes real chances and does shit you’d never in a million years expect or foresee, but so often, when it matters most, he lets his provocative impulses call the shots no matter what damage they do to the larger work. I always come away feeling like he’s the world’s most talented, unpredictable and willful 8-year-old.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.