Category Archives: film

8 Women (2002) – François Ozon

8 Women (2002) – François Ozon
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I saw this on Belgian TV yesterday evening, for about 20 minutes before I fell asleep (not out of boredom). I liked what I saw (but I like nearly everything by Ozon) and it reminded me of Agatha Christie (see quote below) and Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven (the clothes and general fifties styling).

As for the influences of the movie, they are numerous. Of course, this film is an adaptation from a play that evokes the Agatha Christie universe but Ozon felt like scattering his movie with all kinds of allusions: Vincente Minelli, Douglas Sirk (the deer in the garden). These allusions are especially linked to French culture: the French TV program “au théâtre ce soir” but also Jacques Demy (the bright colors, the songs) and French cinema before the “new wave”. More than allusions, they are tributes from a director who once said “I don’t care about new-wave”. –dbdumonteil via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283832/usercomments [Oct 2006]

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_femmes

See also: Ozon – film – 2002 films – French cinema

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) – Chan-wook Park

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) – Chan-wook Park
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I saw this on MTV Europe (an Asian cinema feature) yesterday evening. Impressive, but not as good as for example Alex van Warmerdam. All in all a surreal, film noirish, arty affair.

The previous Korean film I had seen was the 1999 Lies, which I had chosen because of its subject matter (although the respresentation of which disappointed me). What I liked best about Lies was its breaking of the fourth wall: excerpts from interviews with the author and cast are sometimes inserted between scenes and we see a girl filmed after the ‘cut’ signal of a particularly emotional scene (she continues crying).

After having seen these two films it appears to me that these two Korean filmmakers take the art of art film as seriously as European filmmakers did in the sixties.

Wikipedia: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

See also: revenge – film – 2002 – Korea

In search of cinematic realism

While Kracauer and Bazin located cinematic realism in distraction and plotlessness, which they saw as structurally analogous to the unscripted, indeterminate, ‘underplotted’ nature of reality, many recent films dilute even further the modality or intensity of narrative, spatializing time into disconnected and, through editing, treated as parallel narrative strands. This kind of indeterminacy proceeds from overplotting, from an excess of disconnected, reversible (i.e. meaningless) phenomena, events, and characters which acquire a minimal, purely formal kind of significance by virtue of being placed alongside one another: their only ‘meaning’ consists in their allegedly simultaneous existence with other phenomena, events and characters. –Realism in European Film Theory and Cinema (3/1/06; collection) by Trifonova, Temenuga via http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/archive/2006-02/0017.html [Oct 2006]

Theories of Film (1974) – Andrew Tudor
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The next chapter [of Theories of Film, Andrew Tudor.(NY: Viking, Cinema One Series, 1974)] is called “The Aesthetics of Realism: Bazin and Kracauer.” Tudor is sympathetic to Kracauer’s desire to formulate a consistent aesthetic system, but argues that Kracauer is hopelessly confused and in any case perpetually hedging his bets (seesawing on the question of whether “realism” involves being real in a certain sense or only appearing real). Among Kracauer’s assumptions which Tudor cannot accept is one that Kracauer shares with Bazin. An essentialist approach posits that a medium has a “nature”—in film’s case, a photographic nature which determines its “natural affinity” with recording and revealing reality. Tudor cannot accept this non-social aesthetic of the “real.” He sees in both Kracauer and Bazin a combination of positivism and romantic faith in nature, which is in any case ultimately anti-cinematic. –William Rothman via http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC09folder/TheoriesofFilm.html [Oct 2006]

I must mention a final slender point of disagreement. By including Murnau and Dreyer as realists Bazin is falling into the same trap that Siegfried Kracauer does when he accepts certain fantastical/formalistic scenes when they are in the proper “realist” context, such as a dream or a specific point of view (Tudor 94). Bazin is on shaky ground when he removes Nosferatu and The Passion of Joan of Arc from the expressionistic mode on the frail basis of Nosferatu‘s on-location photography and Dreyer’s refrain from the use of make-up for his actors (Bazin, What is Cinema Vol.1 109-110). What then becomes of Nosferatu‘s sinister shadows, fast motion and negative photography, and expressionistic acting, and The Passion of Joan of Arc‘s abstraction of space and extreme reliance on close-ups? In neither case do the slim realist tendencies compensate for the overwhelming artistic intervention, as does Welles’ spatial realism for example. Both films fail to completely qualify for either of Bazin’s realistic camps –the documentary- like “pure” realism or the spatial realism. Although one can argue that Nosferatu is ‘more realist’ than other expressionist films of the time, and that The Passion of Joan of Arc is so unique and iconoclastic in style, that the affect on the spectator is one of realism. –Donato Totaro via http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/bazin_intro.html [Oct 2006]

Coldness and seriousness in Kubrick’s films

Stanley Kubrick – A Life in Pictures (2001) – Jan Harlan
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Saturday evening the Belgian TV station Canvas aired Stanley Kubrick – A Life in Pictures, a 2001 documentary film by Jan Harlan (Kubrick’s executive producer and brother-in-law) on the life of Stanley Kubrick. The documentary made me realize why I like Kubrick only moderately.

Stanley Kubrick is a universally acclaimed director. His filmography includes Eyes Wide Shut (1999), The Shining (1980), Barry Lyndon (1975), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Lolita (1962). Of these my favourites are A Clockwork Orange (because of the subject matter), The Shining (because it’s a horror film), Eyes Wide Shut (because its slowness teased me and because of its erotic subject matter) and Barry Lyndon (I don’t know why, I saw it when I was in my teens and I have fond memories of it since). Kubrick liked classical music. A lot. He used works from composers such as Strauss, Ligeti, Khatchaturian, Beethoven, Shostakovich and many others.

Are Kubrick’s films cold and unemotional?

“This is perhaps the most often-stated criticism of Kubrick’s work. … While, ironically, Kubrick’s films abound with scenes of emotional extremity and “outrageous” performances, such as: Jack Nicholson in The Shining; George C. Scott in Dr Strangelove; Patrick Magee in A Clockwork Orange, etc. it’s much more common for critics to cite Kubrick’s “icy distance” from his “cold, unemotional characters” as the defining characteristic of his work.” —http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/index4.html [Oct 2006]

Are Kubrick’s films playful or serious?

Serious, dead serious. And that and their coldness and unemotionalism are the two main reasons that I like Kubrick only a moderately. He is just as serious and unemotional as most high modernists. If I compare his work to two other directors born in 1928, the other two win: Nicolas Roeg and Marco Ferreri; although I must say that towards the end of the documentary I grew increasingly curious about who Kubrick actually was, what made him choose the subjects he chose, why this interest in human sordidness and why did he abhor the feelgood feeling we all sometimes enjoy in film.

Stanley Kubrick eschews sentimentalism and the “feelgood”. He favors image over discourse or narrative, and his images have the immediacy and crispness and autonomy one associates with an Imagist aesthetic. —http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0092.html [Oct 2006]

It was mentioned in the documentary that Kubrick made films about things (machines, bombs, space ships, etc…) not about humans.

It was also mentioned that Kubrick had the final cut or director’s cut to the extent that he was able to withdraw A Clockwork Orange from distribution after a wave of copycat crimes. No other director had that control over his films.

Of boredom and interestingness

In defense of interestingness.

A week ago I reported on Harry’s ironically titled ‘Boring Art Films’ blog-a-thon. Harry specifies ironically because he does not believe that the type of contemplative cinema he refers to is indeed boring. Others may find these films boring, we think they are interesting.

While my favourite director of contemplative cinema or essay films (as Doug Dilliman has called them) is probably Catherine Breillat, I want to take this opportunity to write about a category of films which are boring if viewed from a to z – films which may not be worth to spend the 90 to 120 minutes to watch them – but that are all the more interesting to read about. These are the kind of films I wrote about on my page anti-film. The introduction went as follows:

Anti-film is film that does not respect the rules of film. For example, Andy Warhol, who forces us to watch a sleeping man during five hours, Chris Marker, who makes a film out of filmed photographs, with no moving images and Guy Debord’s Howlings in Favor of de Sade which dispenses with images and narrative altogether. [Jul 2006]

Claiming the aesthetic value of the category anti-film is a further defense of my mini-essays in praise of secondary literature and in praise of the paratext, which takes a meta-approach to the arts stating that films that actually ought to be viewed, books that actually ought to be read are just as interesting to read about.

I mean if you take the title of the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die seriously, you have to exclude the wealth of films which are extremely interesting but boring to watch in their entirety. That’s why I call my filmography 199 films you could read about before you die (2006), replacing the word should by could and see by read about.

Which brings me to my contribution to this blog-a-thon, the 1952 film Howlings in Favor of de Sade[Youtube] by Guy Debord (the man who published a book with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next to it):

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) (1952) – Guy Debord
image sourced here.

Instead of using pictures, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) consists of black and white film leader in alternation for some 75 minutes. Debord’s voice is heard during the white sequences, while the black sections, often lasting minutes, are silent.

On April 9, 2002, Guy Debord’s films were screened in Paris in the Magic Cinema. Although I stated earlier that my purpose is to showcase films which I wouldn’t dream of seeing in their entirety, I would have been tempted to go to this screening (If I had lived in Paris and if I had known about the event). Not for the qualities of these films but from a tribal/sociological point of view: to see who attends this type of screenings.

The Fly (1986) – David Cronenberg

The Fly (1986) – David Cronenberg
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A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong. A celebration of biological horror, body horror, metamorphoses and the theme of the beauty and the beast. One of David Cronenberg’s mainstream films.

See also: metamorphoses – David Cronenberg – 1986

Persona (1966) – Ingmar Bergman

Persona (1966) – Ingmar Bergman [Amazon.com]

The first time an erect penis appeared in a non-pornographic film was in 1966, when Ingmar Bergman included a brief image of an erection in Persona, though the offending image was censored from all British prints of the film for over thirty years. –Matthew Hunt

Regarding Matthew Hunt’s comments, I was looking for the erect penis in this Youtube footage, but could not spot it, maybe this is the censored version. Anyone? I dislike Bergman instinctively (but have only seen maybe two or three of his films) but I liked this opening sequence. I wonder who did the music.

Boring art films blog-a-thon, on the nature of contemplative cinema

Via Girish comes Harry’s ironically titled ‘Boring Art Films’ blog-a-thon.

 

contemplative cinema, the kind that rejects conventional narration to develop almost essentially through minimalistic visual language and atmosphere, without the help of music, dialogue, melodrama, action-montage, and star system.

Particularly interesting was the list of references with regards to the boring art films:

    • Des films Gueule de bois – notes sur le mutisme dans le cinéma contemporain (Antony Fiant in Trafic #50)

    • Boring Art Films (Darren Hughes at Long Pauses)

      • “Why do I love Boring Art Films?”

    • Hello: Boredom and Teaching Film (Zach Campbell)

      • “Two points: the first is that ‘boredom‘ itself may be a substantive or even productive part of an art work/text.”

    • Pedro Costa (Girish)

      • Bones is both documentary (‘real’ people living in ‘real’ settings) and fiction (it’s carefully scripted and rehearsed).

    • The Holy Girl (Michael at CultureSpace)

    • The Holy Girl, Cafe Lumière (Doug Cummings at FilmJourney)

      • “I was worried that Hou’s placid, contemplative style might have turned them off, but the film’s ultimate admiration for tranquility in a changing world entirely won them over.”

    • Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Sang-soo, Aleksandr Sokurov (acquarello at Strictly Film School)

      • “Dust in the Wind is an understated, contemplative, and elegiac portrait on the ephemeral nature of time, youth, love, and existence.”

    • The Future of a Luminescent Cloud – Recent Developments in a Pan-Asian Style (James Udden at Panoptique)

    • Is Ozu Slow? (Jonathan Rosenbaum at Senses of Cinema)

    • “Ozu’s acknowledgment that we watch films while sitting seems to me a fundamental aspect of his style, and a great deal that is considered difficult or problematical or simply “slow” in his style derives from this essential fact.”

The keywords in these posts seem to be contemplative, difficult complex, plot, plotless, plotlessness, narration (as a synonym for plot), demanding, boring, boredom and realism.

Let us focus on narrative.

When I first read Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” the title started me thinking whether there was such a thing as non-narrative cinema, and I guess non-narrative films are the ones described in the posts above. I’ve given an entry to non-narrative since, which connects to other contemplative genres such as the anti-novel, all art which is described as abstract, experimental.

Another key text within this paradigm is Amos Vogel’s chapter 4 in his Film as a Subversive Art, titled the destruction of plot and narrative, in which he mentions writers Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, Burroughs, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, Ionesco, and filmmakers Bresson, Godard, Skolimowski, Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Eistenstein, Man Ray, Richter, Epstein, Brakhage, Peterson, Bartlett, and dadaists and surrealists Tzara, Breton, Buñuel. At the end of this chapter, Vogel adds that the commercially successful films are still the ones that employ 19th century plot structures such as Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music and Love Story.

See also: plotlessness – boredom