Back to no country

The Coen series finally came to a conclusion yesterday with my second viewing of No Country For Old Men. And well… there is something I feel I should confess: I try mighty hard to come across as determined and opinionated and right, but the truth is I’m someone very prone to doubting her own thoughts and opinions. So after a number of friends told me they didn’t see the point of the Coens’ latest, and a rather vicious discussion in response to my review on filmtotaal, I started to question my dedication to this movie.

Who knew? Maybe it really wasn’t so great. Maybe I was influenced by writers I admire, maybe I was just practicing “intellectual masturbation”. Maybe I was just kidding myself, pretending that I “got” the movie, to feel superior and smart. Maybe I was simply too afraid to disagree with critical consensus. Maybe the emperor did, in fact, have no clothes on.

I needn’t have been scared: not only is the emperor fully dressed, but my, does he look handsome. ***SPOILERS WITHIN***

Wadley

I originally titled this post “Three From Rotterdam”. While writing, I realized I’d filled a whole poss talking about just the first movie. So I’ll keep the other two (Men’s Group and End of the Line) for another day. Why was it those three? Simple: people ended up on my site googling these three movies. For their trouble, they got only one line about each, which doesn’t seem fair. Anyway, for now, I’ll just talk about

Wadley (Matias Meyer)

Is it bad to like a director more than the movie he made? Or, to be more precise, to respect the intention more than the final product? Wadley, to me, was a hightly frustrating film, even if it lasts only 60 minutes. Why? Well, because for once, the three sentence description in the programma booklet was not just accurate, but complete. A guy goes into the desert. He walks around. He finds peyote, eats it. He wanders about some more.

The IFFR: quick round-up (final update 2/2)

Done. Over. Finished. 34 films in 10 days. I’ll post an overview tomorrow, and hopefully (if my editor allows it) some more in depth pieces in the near future. Further info on the films can be found here.

The Great, at last: Naissance Des Pieuvres/Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, 2007)

The Surprisingly, and Quite Stunningly, Good: Margot At The Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007)

The Fun & Touching: The Band’s Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2007)

The Quiet & Lovely: La Maison Jaune (Amor Hakkar, 2007)

The Should Be a Revered Classic: Der Verlorene (Peter Lorre, 1951)

The Reason I Love Older Movies: Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974), The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970)

The Simply Fun: Estomago (Marcos Jorge, 2007), Un Baiser, S’il Vous Plait (Emmanuel Mouret, 2007)

The Not Joining the Crowd, but not Joining the Dissenters either (aka the Fun, but Not Amazing): Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007)

The Fun & Well-Acted, but Somewhat Superficial: Tiramisu (Paula van der Oest, 200

The Entertaining Despite Flaws: True Stories (David Byrne, 1986), 3 Days to Forever (Riri Riza, 2007), End of The Line (Gustavo Steinberg, 2007), The King of Ping Pong (Jens Jonsson, 2007)

The Absolutely Nuts, but Impressive and Fun: the 1 take Still Orangutans (Gustavo Spolidoro, 2007)

The Truly Clumsy, but Not Entirely Without Charm: Pure Coolness (Ernest Abdyjaparov, 2007)

The Worth it For the Music and Atmosphere, if not the story: Burned Hearts (Ahmed El Maanouni, 2007)

The Competent & Well-Made, yet not exceptional: Cordero De Dios (Lucía Cedrón, 200

The Understandably Disliked, but Quite Enjoyable to Me: Les Amours D’Astrée et de Céladon (Eric Rohmer, 2007)

The Disappointing, but Still Pretty Good: Paranoid Park (Gus van Sant, 2007)

The Odd, but Oddly Charming: Die Stille Vor Bach (Pere Portabella, 2007)

The Demanding, not Necessarily Rewarding but B&W Beautiful: The Man From London (Béla Tarr, 2007)

The Not as Great as Rumored but B&W Beautiful: Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Perronaud, 2007)

The Fascinating Experiment in B&W Animation: Fear(s) of the Dark (various directors, 2007)

The Entertaining but not Quite Satisfying; Uno de los Dos no Puedo Estar Equivocado (Pablo Llorca, 2007)

The Interesting Experience: Wadley (Matias Meyer, 200

The Operatically Strange, Somewhat Intersting: The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (Peter Sellars, 1991)

The Interesting Concept that unfortunately peters out: Le Tueur (Cédric Anger, 2007)

The Interesting Concept that doesn’t really add up to anything besides crying men: Men’s Group (Michael Joy, 200

The Unfortunately Quite Dull (and Lacking in Film Clips): Un Lugar en el Cine (Alberto Morais, 2007)

The “I wish I liked this more than I did”: Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971)

The Not-For-Me: Hafez (Abolfazl Jalili, 2007)

The Simply Boring: Marrakesh Inshallah (Steffen Fisker Pierce & Christian Pierce, 2006)

The Highlight of Saturday:

The IFFR

The festival has begun. So far, I’ve seen 4 movies, slept barely 6 hours, and I’m preparing myself for today’s program. Tomorrow’s my most anticipated day already, with Juno, The Man From London, and Persepolis, but today I already get to see Paranoid Park. For those of you who can read Dutch, you can keep up with my adventures (and those of fellow iffr-visitors Kaj and Thijs) here. For the others, I’m afraid I can’t do more than post a snippet every once in a while, a stray observation, a tally. Right now, the only one that occurs to me is that is was really, really cold last night, and that I need to buy some deodorant because I forgot to pack it.

The tally so far? I disliked one film, liked two despite their obvious flaws, and liked one reasonably well. I’m hoping the truly good movies are just around the corner.

Coen Night #3: Fargo & The Big Lebowski

The Blurbs:

FARGO

When your father-in-law refuses to give you money, maybe the wisest way to respond is not to hire two thugs (Steve Buscemi & Peter Stormare) to kidnap her and ask for ransom. Because as can be seen in Fargo, that can end badly. Very badly, indeed. Still, it’s what Jerry Lundegaard (the male half of the celebrity power couple known as Filliam H. Muffman) does, and when bodies start cropping up, very pregnant Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is put on the case. That’s when blood really starts staining the snow-covered North-Dakota landscape. It’s gruesome, it’s funny, and it’s maybe the most Coen of movies. If you haven’t seen it, you should, and if you have, I have no doubt you’ll want to see it again.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI

Yet again, the Coens followed up a succesful thriller with a somewhat less succesful comedy. However, despite rather disappointing results at the box-office, the Big Lebowski went on to develop a huge cult following later on, and deservedly. The story of ‘the Dude’ is actually best when you don’t try to follow the story, and just let yourself be swept along by the absurdity: by the bowling-alley dreams, the nihilists, the kidnapping plot gone awry - yes, again. Filled with Coen regulars - John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro) and virtuoso camerawork, this is, above all, a film that’s still funny (if not funnier) the fifth time you see it. So join me for my sixth, and see if it still holds true.

The Reviews:

Coen night #2: Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink & The Hudsucker Proxy

Click here for the blurbs.

It’s funny what happens when you see so many (5) films by the same director(s) in such a short time (1.5 weeks). You start seeing patterns, recurring motifs. The movies stay separate, each in their own neatly defined little period of history, each built on the foundations of a different genre, but through them you start seeing the brains at work.

Miller’s Crossing takes place during prohibition. Barton Fink in 1941. The Hudsucker Proxy in 1958. The former is a pretty straightforward (at least for the Coens) variation on the lone-guy-playing-two-crime-syndicates-against-one-another story - as seen in Yojimbo & A Fistful of Dollars, but truly going on the way back to two Dashiell Hammett novels, Red Harvest & the Glass Key. Barton Fink is almost a horror film, creepy and with a grand apocalyptic finale, a tale about writing and pretension. The Hudsucker Proxy is kind of a screwball comedy. Still, I don’t really want to discuss them one by one as separate, free-standing entities. Instead, I want to talk about the echos and reflections I saw.

IFFR Preview #2: Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge

I should have loved this film. Let me count the ways:

• it takes place in Paris, and until the end doesn’t resort to the corny tourist shots of famous sights
• it stars Juliette Binoche
• it’s a quiet slice-of-life thing with beautiful piano music in the background
• it has some gorgeous shots of a balloon wandering over Paris
• etc.

So why didn’t I, and did I even start twitching in my seat, anxious for the end? Part of it might be that I have a cold and just in general didn’t feel too good. But mostly, I think I blame it on the length (almost two hours), and on the lack of an arc. It just goes and goes until it stops, without any modulations. And the balloon, which I found one of the most, if not the most, interesting character, is barely in the film. After a wonderful initial sequence, it leaves for about an hour, and it’s sorely missed.

I haven’t seen the short this is based on. But if it’s anything like the shots featuring the balloon in this film, well, then I think that I could love. This, alas, I cannot.

IFFR Preview #1

Note: this started out as just me taking notes, making sure I had something to refer to once I needed to really write about these films. Then I figured, I might as well post what I wrote here. Regular updates and all. Some of these films (Du Levande & Mio Fratello è figlio unico) are even going to get small releases in the Netherlands.

Wonderful Town (Aditya Assarat, 2008, Thailand, Tiger Awards Competition) is about the tsunami, I suppose, in some vague way, like pretty much everything in this movie is vague, from the attraction between the two main characters to the motive behind the act of violence that suddenly, incomprehensibly, ends it. There’s beautiful images here, sure, but I can barely remember anything specific. Unless you really, really enjoy Asian flicks in which nothing much happens, I’d skip this one.

Du Levande/You the Living (Roy Andersson, 2007, Sweden) on the other hand, I can heartily recommend, even if I couldn’t possibly give a summary. It consists of fifty or so vignettes, sometimes loosely connected to each other, more often not. It’s about “the Living” in the greatest sense of the world: the happy, the sad, the kind, the mean, the dreamers and the desperate ones. It’s poignant, it’s funny, and even if I don’t remember half the scenes, I wasn’t bored for a second. The music is great, and the ending is perfect. It’s the perfect proof that a movie can be artsy and experimental without being inaccessible.

It’s too bad The Best of Times (Svetlana Proskurina, 2008, Russia) wants to be so deep. Or maybe it’s not deep enough, I’m not sure. Theme’s battle with each other to get noticed, with many images of industrialization, many shots and references to water, an obsession with aging, the different people we are during our life, and so on. Unfortunately, all the posturing takes away from the poorly motivated and illustrated story about two girls in love with the same guy. It managed to get under my skin, even giving me half a panic attack about growing old and being alone, but at the same time I didn’t care about what happened to the characters. Proskurina (a “filmmaker in focus” this year) obviously knows the craft of directing and there are some memorable shots, but this is one of the most unpleasant films I’ve seen in a while.

Mio fratello è figlio unico/My Brother is an Only Child (Luchetti, 2007, Italy) is rather the opposite: it pulls you in with its characters, and even gives a bit of historical perspective and insight on the sly. Accio (which apparently is a nasty nickname) is our narrator, a very serious, intense boy. He goes to seminary first. Then, finding them not strict enough, he becomes a fascist. His brother, older, more charismatic, and much more fun-loving, is an active communist. They fall for the same girl, of course. It’s familiar territory for the writers, who also wrote La Meglio Gioventù (which I’m afraid I still haven’t caught up with). But after the stark, anguish-filled The Best of Times, I loved how light it treaded, and that it manage to make you feel for all the characters, despite some broad characterizations. It’s a movie where an older brother gives a picture of a movie star to his younger brother to corrupt him - and it works.

I also saw some shorts. Most of them I can’t recommend. One of them wasn’t just non-narrative, but it wasn’t even figurative: just head-ache (and probably epilepsy) inducing quickly moving flecks. For 19 friggin’ minutes. Good thing I needed a nap around that time. The one short that stayed with me was actually not short at all (41 minutes), and called Hemel Boven Holland (Rolf van Eijk, 2008, Holland). It’s about the murder of Theo van Gogh, focusing on his killer, Mohammed Bouyeri. A la Memento, it’s about 20 uncut scenes in reverse order, starting with shots in the dark and ending much earlier, back when Mohammed didn’t have a beard yet and was just a slightly strange young guy, hanging with his friends. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s interesting, and refreshingly lacking in sensationalism.

10 days to kick-off now. I’m really looking forward to it.

Previously written-about films that will also play at the festival

• No Country for Old Men (and here be spoilers)(Coen bros., 2007)
• The Darjeeling Limited (Anderson, 2007)
• Nothing To Lose/TBS (Kuijpers, 200
• I’m Not There (Haynes, 2007)
  

Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing & Hudsucker Proxy: the blurbs

Coen movie night #2 is upon us! We won’t actually be watching Barton Fink, but I really wanted to write a blurb anyway. I think I’m gonna try to stick to the thriller+comedy rythm, meaning next time (which will probably be after the film festival) will bring us Fargo & The Big Lebowski, and the time after that The Man Who Wasn’t There & O’ Brother Where Art Thou.

Miller’s Crossing
You could easily write a dozen essays about this movie. You could write at length about its noir influences, about the use of language, about the themes loyalty, death, chance, you could even see a political allegory of some kind in there. To the Coens, however, Miller’s Crossing is just a movie about a hat. It’s also, like Blood Simple, a movie about crime, adultery, murder, but this time it’s set during prohibition, and the protagonists are gangsters. Leo’s the boss, Velma is his wife, and Tom is his right hand, and that’s all I’m going to reveal about the plot.
Barton Fink
The first Coen bros. movie made with their new DP Roger Deakins is about Barton Fink (John Turtutto), who writes plays about the common man. Or so he thinks. When he gets drafted by Hollywood to write a script “with that Barton Fink feeling”. He’s put up into a big hotel where he meets only creepy clerk Chet (played by Coen regular Steve Buscemi) and his neighbor Charlie (another regular: John Goodman), and promptly develops writer’s block - the Coens in fact wrote this film when they were suffering from the same condition on Miller’s Crossing. Stuck in the claustrophobia-inducing hotel, with nothing but a picture to look at and the wallpaper peeling off the walls, Barton Fink slowly goes crazy. As an audience, you think you might be, too. The crazy, out-there, apocalyptic finale doesn’t exactly lift the spirits, either, but you’ll never forget it.

The Hudsucker Proxy (blurb courtesy of Kaj)
The Hudsucker Proxy bombed upon release and was largely dismissed by the critics, but has since then gained a following and well deserved respect. Another great comedy by the Coens, a satire of the American Dream in which an innocent young man from the countryside arrives in New York and is soon placed at the top of a large company by cynical board members who want the company to go bankrupt, so they can by up it’s stock cheap. They didn’t count on him inventing the Hula Hoop. The meticulously scripted film is one of the Coens’ visually most arresting ones, and also one of their funniest. No Coen regulars were cast as main characters, but Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and especially Paul Newman are all wonderful, and enough Coen cronies turn up in small supporting roles. Works great as a homage to old screwball comedies in some parts and to Capraesque drama in others, and is delightful in all.

Blood Simple/Raising Arizona

In anticipation of the official release of No Country For Old Men, I decided to have my own, semi-chronological, Coen bros. retrospective. To my great surprise, no less than 5 people came to join me on the first night, featuring the Coens’ debut, Blood Simple, and their follow-up comedy Raising Arizona. I’d seen the former once, about, I’d say, six or seven years ago. I’d seen various fragment of the second one, but I don’t think I ever had from start to finish. To entice people to come, I wrote the following blurbs:

Blood Simple

It takes most directors a few films to find their footing. Not the Coens: Blood Simple emerged fully formed from their combined brains. It’s a neat little neo-noir about a woman (Frances McDormand, who later married one of the brothers and frequently collaborates with them), her lover, her husband, and the PI the husband hires. The story is full of noire tropes: not just adultery but blackmail, murder, and lots of things that just don’t go as planned. The title is even derived from a Dashiel Hamett novel. I will be watching the Director’s Cut, which is one of the few director’s cuts that’s shorter than the theatrically released film. Ever since this great debut, the Coens have had final cut.

Raizing Arizona

Blood Simple has some funny moments, sure, but it’s essentially a pretty grim undertaking. Raizing Arizona, on the other hand, is a raucous comedy (albeit with some grim undertones). It’s about Hi, a former criminal, and his loving wife Ed, a former policewoman. They desperately want to have a baby, but can’t. Then they hear a rich man in the state just had quintuplets, and figure that with this bounty, he won’t miss one. They kidnap one of the babies, and since they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs in the tanning bed, hijinks ensue. Add scary biker & bounty hunter Leonard Smalls to the mix, and you have a very crazy, but also very funny film on your hands, full of typical Coen touches.