Sorry, Frank.

Irany

New Animation Sky Report: STL made for Concrete Cinema at Pulitzer Foundation for the arts.

Fifth Element Flow Chart

2011 in Film: Epic Failures and Modest Successes

Culture is graded on the curve. Attention is a resource parceled out minute for minute and year for year. And, it's not always a hot minute. Each year will have it's winner, sure, but when you line up each year's winners you tend to see a pattern of the undeserved and the missing. That's not to say there weren't a few great movies this year, but a few, i think, is all we got.  That being said,  I didn't get around to seeing everything I wanted to, namely: Turin Horse, The Skin I Live In, We need to talk about Kevin, Young Adult, Troll Hunter, The Artist, Certified Copy, A Dangerous Method, and a few others.  So, my data set is far from complete.

For me 2011 is the year of "Epic" Failures. I'm talking about Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. While both films show just the kind of ambition that I love to see, neither of them meet that ambition at it's lofty height. Failures only by their own standards.

Tree of Life is the finest character work I've seen yet from Malick, perhaps due to it's autobiographical nature. His little post-war family is well drawn and acted to near perfection. With them, Malick says everything he needs to say about the dual nature of man. And, had the movie stopped there, it would have been flawless, however less ambitious. The human side of the story contains all the Malickesque touches we've come to expect and appreciate from the swooning sun bent cinematography to the heart felt existential voice-overs. But, despite lofty intentions, Malick's eye(and ear)-popping nature montage doesn't convey the raw wonder and epic feeling it reaches for.

In small doses in his other films a brief walk through nature seemed more an attempt to create atmosphere, suggest the pettiness of humanity, or was simply a nice poetic caesura.  Here he attempts to work a full blown abridged history of the universe directly in the psyche of his nuclear family in a single cut, or perhaps through osmosis.  It's stunning and beautiful at times, but falls short of the "sea contained within the fish" wisdom it portends as well as the Kubrickesque art/specticle it mimics. Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void is another film that attempts to unite the worlds of the avant garde and the traditional narrative to about as much success.

Melancholia takes some beautiful ideas about family, depression, apocalypse, and the process of art and sinks them into characters I couldn't make myself care about.. The depressed learn to deal with loss, art is a doomed process, beauty cannot function without pain and sadness. His themes are solid and provocative. We know Von Trier is a filmmaker capable of telling a captivating story with iconic characters. Yet, here he lets his ideas get the best of his story and the characters and dialogue are at times clumsy and forced.

Von Trier's assumption that the apocalypse is much more interesting when shown in the micro as opposed to the macro is dead on.  That's why it worked so well in John Hillcoat's The Road and Micheal Haneke's Time of the Wolf and a litany of other films before them.  What those movie's have that this one doesn't are characters worthy of empathy.  I really wanted a grasp on Justine and to lesser extant Clair, that I couldn't find.  I'm willing to take on sociopaths and depressives.  I think Anne Hathaway's Kym in Rachel Getting Married is one of the best characters in movies in the past ten years.  Is Justine a self-destructive infant, or a heroic savant?  Von Trier's wisdom seems to be that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and that when the shit hits the fan, it's the more cynical that can  keep it together.  I'm more than ready to believe this thesis, but Melancholia never really took the time to convince me. On the other hand, every bit of film containing his titular rogue planet Melancholia is haunting, beautiful, and conveys the emotional depth his characters don't. I loved the film for it's ideas before I had to sit through it's characters for 2 and 1/2 hours.

I was really expecting at least one of these films to rock my world.  Perhaps if one film had Malick's family and Von Trier's planet, 2011 would have had the masterpiece I'd hoped for.

In spite of their flaws, ambitious failures are still more interesting than a hedged bet. A few slightly less ambitious films, however, hit the nail right on the head and, more importantly, drove it all the way down.

First and foremost: Le Quattro Volte is a story told from the perspective of an old man, a goat, a tree, and a pile of ashes. Just how these four elements come together to tell the story of a sleepy mountain town is a wonder to behold. Much like the Hungarian masterpiece Hukkle the town goes about performing its well worn rituals while the vantage widens to a point where all is trivial, comic, and endearingly human.

The Future is the second feature from Miranda July. It's a film that will charm you in spite of whatever cynicism you may or may not have for it's twee director and her whimsical nature. Miranda July proves that she is not a fluke, that she is not going to bring the touchy-feely artsy shit down a notch, and that she is quite capable of expressing her real if peculiar genius through lovable fops and talking cats.  

Shame is the follow up to Steve McQueen's powerful debut Hunger.  And, like Hunger it earns it's stark moniker.  It's a deeply felt story of troubled characters in a flawed world on a path to redemption. McQueen seems to be on track to rival Kieslowski for dark, gritty parables.

A few great adaptations: Jane Eyre, Norwegian Wood, and The Descendants all get a proper cinematic treatment.  Some striking originals:  Drive, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives , and Meeks Cutoff  bring style and mood in spades.  The Interrupters and The Bully Project are a couple of powerful docs that attempt to take on violence in middle America.

Perhaps I saw all the right movies last year, 2010 seemed to me like another watershed year like 1999.  This year big audiences rightfully tried to embrace two films that were unabashedly artsy on the merits of previous directorial work, and in my opinion both films, while still definitely fine films worth seeing, missed their own mark.  I hope audiences are willing to take those big risks in the year to come.

Terry Gilliam's Do It Yourself Animation Show

Alfred Hitchcock- "Puns are the highest form of literature"

Tree of Life - An interpretation.

*Spoilers, obviously.

A lot has been said about the film's daring montage sequences. Many comparisons have been made to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 for the film's scope and ambition. Leaving the theater I was less impressed with the all the dazzling natural wonders and their breathtaking epic-ness than I was with the earnestness of the lives portrayed and the amazing performances all around.

At the center of the film is its working thesis. There are two ways of living. There is the way of nature, and the way of grace. Nature cares only for itself. It seeks pleasure, and in doing so it is a destructive force. Grace is meek. In the face of nature it takes insult and returns only composure.

In the film these two forces are personified by Jack's Father and Mother respectively. More importantly, though, they are embodied by Jack himself as he comes of age. In his innocence Jack is meek under the heavy thumb of his father. He offers him fear and respect in the face of impossible expectations and harsh reprimands. Jack cannot understand his father, only his permissive mother makes any sense to him.

But, as nature would have it, Jack cannot be innocent forever. As adolescence sets in Jack's grace fades in the wake of his nature. By the end of the film young Jack concedes that he is more like his father than his mother, implying his fall from the grace. His young brother, presumably the one who is dead at the film's outset, remains disarmingly gentle and compassionate last we see him.

Seen through the same thesis. The ambitious montage near the beginning of the film, which begins as Jack's grieving mother questions her faith in the wake of her sons death, takes the form of the nature which she cannot fully contain. She chafes under well meaning bromides as her friend attempts to help her cope, knowing the answer to her grief lies in some darker corner of herself. In this interpretation, the montage which is the films devisive centerpeice is both an earnest representation of the makings of life on earth, as well as an impressionistic representation of Jacks mother's emotional state, and by way of her, the viewer and anyone else faced with such a natural and unavoidable occurance.

In the film's Felliniesque resolution Jack imagines or perceives his mothers acceptance of his brother's death as she symbolically releases him. This final scene I believe attempts to finally unite the films two divergent approaches. If Mallick's stunning natural wonders are at first implied emotional states, here they are fully reconciled, as people from Jack's life(including his younger self) inhabit this seemingly imagined landscape where they make peace with their earthly struggles. This purely subjective setting, while it might be a place in the sky where Jack's mother says "That's where God lives", is most likely the workings of Jack's subconscious where the two forces that "wrestle inside", through his empathy, find some reconciliation as well.

Five little films that could...

5 of the best films this year were serious ventures with big ambitions but slight budgets. Don't let these indie gems fall under your radar.

Dogtooth

Dogtooth takes a simple and elegant premise and makes it believable and disturbing-- Can mom and dad keep the influence of the great big scary world out of their children's reach? Maybe all it takes is a really tall fence and lots and lots of absurd and bewildering lies. What about when the children begin to come into adulthood? Oh, What tangled webs we weave.




Blue Valentine

Much like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Valentine takes a relationship's sweet beginnings and juxtaposes them with it's painful and awkward disillusion. More like A Woman Under the Influence, it removes all barriers to its realism and plays the notes as earnestly as possible. What it amounts to is a powerful warts and all emotional experience that nearly won it an NC-17 rating for an "emotionally intense sex scene."





Greenberg

Greenberg is smart, but not as smart as he thinks. Life continues to clue him into this and he keeps refusing to listen. He casts nervous aggression haphazardly in all directions scoring a few hits but mostly missing his aim. He's the defensive little egoist many of us know and many of us are. Director Noah Baumbach(Squid and the Whale) and Ben Stiller bring this little monster to life with uncanny precision.



Winter's Bone

In our little corner of the woods...perhaps a little further into the woods, a desperate young woman and her derelict uncle are forced to confront a cadre of grizzled drug runners in order to save the family homestead her meth cook father put up as bond before disappearing. Her heroic story is set against a stark Ozark winter that hits every dismal detail on it's rotten toothless head.




Exit Through the Gift Shop

Fiercely Anonymous street artist Banksy plays puppeteer with a terrible little protege and perhaps the audience as well to ask a well crafted question about art and authenticity.



Of course there's also that insufferable big budget success from the Memento guy that despite it's being completely uninteresting and unimportant, never the less, has sparked more controversy and debate than we've seen sense the original Matrix. But, alas, my tastes are too refined. A great film cannot be properly enjoyed unless only a few people can enjoy it.

Forty-four foreign favorites streaming on Netflix

Here are 44 of of my favorite foreign flicks, that you could watch right now, given you subscribe. Netflix allows you to view the movies you've rated in a handy best-to-worst list, so i skimmed these foreign gems off the top (4 and 5 star ratings), and whittled them down to stream-able play now titles.


Sanjuro


You the Living




Amarcord


The Sea Inside


Delicatessen


8 1/2


Let the Right One In


Irreversible


My Life as a Dog


Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance


Jules and Jim


4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days


Knife in the Water


Death of Mr. Lazarescu


Gomorrah


Satyricon


Hukkle


La Moustache

Watch the trailer here

Bicycle Thief


Nobody Knows


Rashomon


Code Unknown


Branded to Kill


Breathless


Three Extremes


Seventh Seal


Devil's Backbone


400 Blows


The Piano Teacher


The Orphanage


Solaris


Seven Samurai


Motorcycle Diaries


Battle of Algiers


Taxidermia


Svankmajer's Alice



Audition


Man Bites Dog


Hunger


49 Up


L'Avventurra


Distant


Thirst




Red Balloon

I like movies

these ones are my favorites

Excuses

No posts in many moons. I've been diverting many of my creative juices into a project forthcoming...


with its very own Blog.

also...ive done some tagging on this here blog and instituted a handy list on the bottom left there.

Hukkle

I've been reading a lot of critics lists recently and feeling abit overwhelmed. I've spent much of the past ten years taking in foriegn films. I'd be confident in saying it's nearly half of what I've watched which is no small sum. Come to find out, according to most international critics, I've somehow missed nearly all the best foreign films of the decade. I've more or less decided to try and become aquainted with much of what I've missed, which include the entire careers of a girl named Claire Denis and a guy named Apichatpong Weerasethakul, by many critics measure the best it had to offer. The first of these favorited flicks I've been able to find is a beautiful Hungarian thing called Hukkle.

With an extremely slight narrative and hardly a word of dialogue, Hukkle comes off as more a poem than a drama. The filming takes place in a small hungarian farming town, and captures in many ways the sublime banality of its inhabitants and the local wild-life. The camera wanders from scene to scene through odd and suprising little vignettes, visual analogies, and unimportant coincidences. The closest comparison that comes to mind is Harmony Korine's Gummo. Both take a similar approach employing local non-professionals to go through familiar ritual as the camera catches as best in can its own unique perspective. In Gummo the community seems to be decaying, there seems to be something sinister in each dying tree. It's a distinctly American poem.

Hukkle on the other hand takes place in a far quianter setting. The little village seems as if it's been there for a thousand years and will stand a thousand more. Everything seems healthy and utopian in a way that only little european towns can. Except people are dying unnaturally. A(the) local police officer is trying hard to figure it out, but is left just as baffled and we are. Those few sentences pretty much make up the "plot" of the film.

Resting upon this slender frame are poetic moments of death and rebirth somehow given both the reverence of a nature documentary and sly elements of comedy. A cat which seems to be rolling about playfully in the grass is actually dying in fits. A pig with comically large testicles is walked across town to be bred with a sow, the owners looking on together fondly. A frog sneaking up on a creek side investigation is suddenly devoured by a catfish. And throughout it all an old man seems to have an extreme case of the hiccups.

You may follow along with the cop, the films only intellectual element, trying to solve the mystery at hand but the film doesn't cater to this impulse over any other. It's a relief to be offered such engaging audio/visual poems, and not be overburdened with the facts and the circumstances, or with one character's particular emotional point of view. The film knows how generous its being. In one interlude we observe an older woman watching a soap opera. The sounds of the program off camera fill the small room with melodramatic dialogue and a cheesy score. Your happy to be enjoying a film that leaves room for your own experiences and doesn't attempt to cheapen your emotions. In this way, it comes and goes with less form and ego having, like good poetry, said something less direct but more meaningful.

Stray Dog

Before Kurasawa made Yojimbo, before Seven Samurai, even before Roshoman, he made a nail biter of a detective story called Stray dog. It's the story of a young rookie detective who gets his gun stolen on a crowded bus. To his horror the gun ends up in the wrong hands and becomes the instrument of a string of crimes.

Detective Murakami, our protaginist, played by Kurosawa's golden child Toshiro Mifune goes on a rabid search for his lost pistol through post WWII Japan, combing the desperate and depraved ally ways in a city full of strays to get a lead on his sidearm. His ham fisted detective skills are presided over by veteran Detective Sato , Roshoman's Takashi Shimura who teaches Murakami the subtle ways of a successful gumshoe.

The dynamic between these 2 is very reminiescent of David Fincher's film Seven. In fact its impossible to watch Stray Dog without quite a few modern refereces coming to mind. And, we have the story of the cop who loses is gun in P.T. Anderson's Magnolia.

At the films center though is a story much like Scorsese's film The Departed. Murikami finds out hes on the hunt for a stray not unlike himself. Both hero and villian are just off the fronts of a lost war, and in a highly moral turn both of them have had thier knapsacks stolen along with all their money and belongings. On one side of the coin we have Murakami who joins the force, on the other Yusa who joins the underworld.

But, unlike Seven the film never goes for nihilism. Though they may be two sides of the same coin, Kurasawa makes it clear that the difference is not merely the chance of the toss. And, like The Departed Kurosawa uses every chance to compare the two, a comparison that isn't lost on the protagonist and his own nagging questions of accountability and the dark forces of desperation.

In contrast to many of Kurosawa's more popular later films, Stray Dog keeps the suspense wound tight making this 1940s film a breeze to watch even by todays standards. And like anything he's done, there's plenty of tough questions to chew on once the lights come back up.

Irreversible

Dan gave me a copy of Irreversible and asked me to watch it and let him know what I thought. He said "if you can make it though the first 15 minutes, then you should be able to make it through the rest." He also said that I would probably hate myself for watching it, but that I might want to watch it again.

So here I am having just watched it, and for the most part he was right. I do have a desire to watch it again(mostly to catch a few things I missed the first time) but don't know if I'm ever going to. It would be hard to overstate the violent nature of Irreversible and aside from being hard to stomach emotionally the films merry-go-round aesthetic will have you running for the dramamine before you get past the title menu.

I'm generally pretty thick skinned when it comes to movie violence, I don't get offended too easily in fact I don't see much of a point to. Most movie violence can be chalked up to bad decision making on the part of the director, where graphic violence is a stand-in for content and craft, where the ability to make people squirm turns a b-movie hack into a member of the avant garde, this movie might easily be thrown into that pile were it not for a few saving graces.

Its not the first movie to play its scenes in reverse order. Everyone going into this movie will be familiar with Memento and its effectiveness in toying with the narrative to achieve something greater than the sum (or difference) of its parts. Irreversible plays a similar game but goes much darker than Memento's small town noir and sinks you right out of the gates into the filthiest pits of city's bowels(at a gay night club called "rectum" no less) the camera swirling around as if hung by a chain.

There will be spoilers ahead so, if you plan on watching it and you can find it, stop reading here, and make sure no women, children, small animals, or the elderly are around.

Irreversible's achievement is not in that it shows some sort of brutal uncensored violence, a man getting his head smashed in by a fire extinguisher, or a rape scene which lasts a good 8-10 minutes. Though these scenes work toward the movie's overall effect which is a sort of inverted tragic levity that makes it's subjects senslessly violent story all the more tragic for it's sequencing. It does this I think by offering the story in a way which forces the viewer to consider the plot a little harder, where we might more easily block ourselves from the violence were it edited more traditionally or chronologically, here the bath water is drained deliberately to reveal the drowned baby if you will.

With each scene the colors get brighter, the contrast is softened, and most importantly the camera gets more grounded and steady. Indeed those first 15-30 are pretty hard to watch in fact all we really get to see are colors and textures of a gritty euro-trash red light district the camera occasionally panning to reveal a harshly lit glimpse of violent sex as the character searches the corridors of "rectum" to find the man responsible for putting his girlfriend in a coma.

The first half unvenges? us back to the the rape/beating and it is this scene where we see the victim for the first time aside from a bloody mess we see being hoisted into an ambulance a scene or 2 earlier. Nothing that might take place in the second half could redeem what happens to her. There are moments in this scene where I found myself covering my mouth in disgust/shock one especially heart breaking moment when we see a figure enter the underpass where she is being raped and surveys the scene from a distance and promptly decides to ignore it and go back the way he came unnoticed.

Now that we got all that messy business out of the way we can get down to meeting our characters which are a young couple and their good friend who has come to visit them. The friend is the woman's ex-lover which might make for a some touchy dialogue were this not a story set in modern France where people are above getting upset by all that. The dialogue in this second half is another gem which redeems the film from just being shock fodder.

The story winds itself back up until we're in the room of the 2 lovers naked, gratified, just waking up, exchanging playful affections all is fuzy, warm, safe, and diffused, the characters are likable enough that you really don't need what seems like a tacked on bit about the girl potentially being pregnant. The camera pans out the windows and it's blue skies and infinite possibilities. A final shot shows our girl reading a book on blanket in the park as sunbathers and children enjoy the beautiful day, save for one last bit where the screen flickers and buzzes a bit to evoke the films violent beginning.

Played in chronological order it wouldn't be the same movie at all, and while the story isn't quite as nuanced as Memento, i think it deserves its own special place into the world of non-traditional narratives. While its reverse approach might originally be merely stylistic in nature it does achieve something original and thought provoking.

Once the senseless violence of the world swallows you up there's little left but to be shot out the other side bearing hardly a resemblance to the ripe fruit you may have been going in. A process which is Irreversible.

UP!.......series

I've just finished watching Michael Apted's series of documentaries entitled The Up Series.
This ongoing series began in 1963 when a group of British 7-year-olds were interviewed on their opinions about love, money, education, and --probably most enlightening---their ambitions. The series featured children from diverse backgrounds, some coming from wealthy families and boarding schools, others from orphanages, or farming communities.

Apted has directed American documentaries and critically acclaimed films, most notably Coal Miners Daughter, Sissy Spacek's portrayal of Loretta Lynn growing up tough in Appalacia or Nell which starred Jodie Foster as a modern feminine version of Tarzan or Jungle Book's Mogli. Why I hadn't heard of this till just recently is beyond me, it's an Ebert top 10 and has apparently been mimicked in several other countries, including the US and was the subject of a Simpsons episode. I imagine the success of the newest pixar film will inadvertently lend it some light.

The idea sort of draws upon an old jesuit saying "give me a child until he is seven and will give you the man", which is sort of ambiguous but, what I think it was intended to mean is that looking at the factors of social class, personality, ambition of a seven year old certain predictions can be made about how they will grow up. Every seven years Apted seeks to find as many of the 14 original participants as possible and checks in on their current lives, ambitions, failures, struggles, achievements. What he achieves are several character studies in the broadest sense, 14 distinctly different biographies that are made even more interesting by the fact that his subjects lead more or less normal everyday lives.

Some of the kids change most drastically from 7 to 14 others from 14 to 21, others and perhaps the most interesting remain in a sort arrested development till well into their 30s. This was the case for one participant Neil who at 7 was intelligent, joyful, and some what naive when asked what he thought about colored people he responded that it was hard to imagine a "purple person with red eyes and yellow feet". He wanted--as many children with strong imaginations -- to be an astronaut. His plan b was to become a coach driver. After seven years there was already definite signs of disillusionment about him and his cheerful demeanor gave way to a more measured, realistic tone. By 21 he was homeless and angry. In his bitterness one could sense a sort of forlornness or existential dread, when coupled with his nervous instability it made him seem hopeless. Over the next 2 series living in extremely modest abodes, hitch-hiking all over Great Britain, and collecting social security his anger begins to give way to tolerance and he becomes more capable of stomaching society eventually moving back to London to pursue politics.

You get a sense with Neil that hes always struggling to bring the truth out, a trait by which in my opinion, he becomes the star of the show. Indeed, the whole cast seem to be collectively bad at self delusion and justifications and most of them allow the cameras back in every seven years. A few though don't which casts a sort of darkness upon their character, perhaps undeserved as they weren't fully capable of agreeing at 7 to do the show in the first place.

Though the show originally intended to make comparisons between classes, colors, and creeds, after the first 2 or 3 the tone becomes more personal than political and takes on a character that that the originators might not have imagined(Apted having been only a researcher, not director of the first installment). The basic questions don't change, class, money, love, work, dreams, but the subject in large part care very little about the politics and desire to talk more about personal goals achievements, children, marriage and so forth.

One conclusion that might be drawn from this, and one that probably my other favorite character Nick comes to at 42 is that the class barriers are so subtle and pervasive that as a fish in water, one cannot see them at work. This could be exemplified by the fact that the privileged seem to be thankful and dutiful, a bit close lipped, and in a couple cases absent altogether. The less fortunate in their turn seem to look at the world as though they were given ample option to do as they pleased and wouldn't want the burden of the privileged.

Nick ,perhaps the most successful and self-made of them all, knew from a very early age he wanted to move from his provincial setting and get on in the world as an important and useful mind. Each installment shows him further actualizing this dream. He moves to the United States in his twenties to pursue a career in teaching nuclear physics whether or not his distance from England harms or helps his opinion is tough to say.

Tony, one of the most interesting, is a hyperactive kid from the wrong side of the tracks who is adamant even at 7 that his dream is to be a jockey. He realizes this dream if only briefly and as it ends he wastes no time moving on to his next choice--cab driver. In one of the series best moments he is asked about dropping out of school...he explains that he only knows a few things "girls, dogs, horses,bets, cars, mom, dad, and love," he fires these out in rapid succession "that's all I care about, that's all I want to care about" simply and genuinely.

The rest of the characters are interesting in their own right, some more than others, but in the end all are indispensable. Watching the series no doubt induced serious self-reflection on my part as I imagine it would have a similar effect on all. In an age where reality television is king and where character driven dramas, no matter how unrealistic and mundane, seem to be as addicting as meth to urban 20-somethings, it baffles me how long this has remained under the collective radar. I still have yet to see the 49 installment and the 56 is set to come out in a couple years. While it may or may not be that genesis of reality television it was/is likely the zenith.

My Winnipeg

After having seen Tales from Gimli Hospital I was intrigued but thoroughly confused. Having chanced upon Cowards bend the Knee I decided to watch it. My confusion fell away as I was taken in completely by its beauty. Like David Lynch , Guy Maddin has the surrealistic ability to finesse as much depth and neuroses into a black and white silent film as you'll find anywhere in films which have the advantage of color and dialogue. Having realized that the Saddest Music in the World was his work, a film who's look and title attracted me but had somehow fallen through the cracks, I made for it as soon as possible, eager to see how he'd be able to improve his craft with a bigger budget.

I turned the film off nearly 15 minutes in. Maddin had in his revivalist spirit suffered the same folley as the greats of the silent era by allowing dialogue into the film. Chaplin and Keaton were marvelous so long as they allowed their bodies to do the talking and the music to carry the tone. When they started talking something was undeniably lost, especially with Keaton who's weird little voice directly antithesized his stubbornly heroic characters.

But, obviously I didn't give up on Maddin and I hoped My Winnipeg would be a return to form. Maddin calls the film a "docufantasia". Its an autobiography where Maddin and his family share the spotlight with the films other most important character the city itself, a city characterized by its nostalgia, it's frosty clime, and most of all by its sleepiness.

Maddins voice over met with my immediate disapproval, but over time I settled into it and began to trust him as a tour guide through this place I had little knowledge of, trying to forgive some of the more purple prose, in order or open myself up to his dream-like wave-lengh. It was easy to identify with the protagonist a man fed up with "home" and eager to set his heels to a less frustrating landscape.

So what's keeping him here?

He begins to describe with the same importance both the historic idiosyncracies of Winnipeg as well has his own living biography, which he tells as a sort of self-referential docu-experiment that blends perfectly with the rest of the film, which includes a workers revolution, the demise of professional hockey in Winnipeg, and probably the most shocking a stable fire which ends with the heads of several anguished horses coming frozen up out of a lake like tortured stumps, a spectacle which attracts the city's romantics and is apparently responsible for a baby-boom.

Maddin himself is most romantic though. Winnipeg seem to flow through his veins on the same scale and Fellini's Rome or Scorcese's New York. He knows the city intimately. One get the sense that like a disproportionate amount of it's citizens he could sleepwalk through it, and with My Winnipeg he takes us along with him on that dream walk.

A Woman Under the Influence

I know very little about the director John Cassavetes, except that Martin Scorcese holds him in the highest regard. And since I hold Scorcese in the highest regard it's high time I see one of his films.

I got the sense from the Criterion packaging that the film might be out on the fashionable or artistic edge the 60-70s, something with high aspirations, but perhaps in the hands of a director with a too stylistic an agenda. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The film makes good on its promise to be edgy, challenging, different, but more than that it takes the viewer on a highly rewarding emotional journey on the level of character studies from the era like Five Easy Pieces, or Cool Hand Luke.

The woman in question is Mable, a wife and mother who may or may not be suffering from a mental illness. Her husband is domineering and manipulative yet we get the impression that he has all the best intentions. After we get this set-up down in the first 30 mins or so, we are treated to nearly an hour of Mable(Gena Rowlands) giving what must have been one of the most emotionally taxing performances in film history. In this hour we get to know Mable well which is to say we get to know her condition well and how it drives just about everyone around her to the brink.

The film is in 2 parts. Nearing the end of the first part the film reaches it's emotional climax as Mable comes more unhinged and is sent away. An interview with the director reveals that he feels her character to be more symptomatic of her social situation that of any mental problem, a revelation that is hard to swallow considering Mable's paranioa and muttering. Her dialogue though is at once damning and canonizing as while she seems to be cracking under the emotion strain of her family she nevertheless voices personal emotional epiphanies about her marriage that would make anyone go...huh. Her husband while having hit her on one occasion and yelled at her in front of friends, rises to a level approaching herioc in this unscored iconic scene that ends with an abrupt cut to the husband at work a soft country song playing in the background. Work is emotionally easy. It's home-life that requires real energy.

The second half of the film is Mable's return home. She struggles to keep her excitement in check, which makes her seem profoundly sad and pathetic. Incapable of seeing her this way, her husband takes her aside, from their family guests, to re-establish his control over her and snap her out of the sadness spell. By measures it works, until Mable is up on the sofa twirling about and humming a song. Their guests leave and the family returns to chaos, until right near the end when Mable, putting her children to bed becomes sweet and soft spoken.

"I'm worried about you" her son says to her has she tucks him into bed.

"Don't worry about me, I'm a grown up" is her reply. Which, when taken in context is the punchline to this 2 1/2 hour love story.

Ok, maybe not the best movie mash-up on You-tube.

It's no Curious Case of Forrest Gump

or Brokeback to the Future
But heres the point, As it says, both of these films came out in 1999.

American Beauty also came out that year which is essentially the same film.

I'm only beginning to realize the impact this concentration of films had upon my impressionable 17 year old mind.

They all focus on a central character, an every-man, who has been offering his life to the machine and finds a convenient exit in order to live out his true existential calling.

These were my heros, and in many ways still are, as the movies themselves are representations of the ideas of those who would soon become my literary heroes Sartre, Thoreau, Vonnegut, Orwell, Huxley and the like, though lately I find myself reading things far less confrontational....so it goes.

Any way you want to slice it though, 1999 was a great year for movies .It was the year of Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Titus, Payback, Dogma, and Eyes Wide Shut...though I can't say I watched that one until a few years later And, it was also the year of Office Space which is strikingly similar in theme to the big 3 above.

But if you were 17, an outsider, and had seen The Faculty, and Disturbing Behavior the year before, then you knew that the status quo were all sheep pulling their wool over your eyes anyhow. 1999 was the nail in the coffin.

Collectively we let our stubble grow, started appreciating bed-head, got familiar with eastern-thought, wore dark colors, and tried to find the back door. Our great war , tyler told us, was a spiritual war, our great depression our lives.

Those of us who didn't stay home voted for Nader.

The rest is an inconvenient history.