Red Desert
Italy, 1964
Italy, 1964
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Cf. Tati’s Playtime, though this one’s objections are more insistent, to the point of being as neurotic as its protagonist. Both films criticize galloping modernism and excessive industrialization (bureaucratization, dehumanization), but the modernist and industrial material, and the modernist manner in which they capture and distribute it, kind of undercuts the message. It’s so bad/it’s so beautiful! The whole of Antonioni's film is an awesome visual treat, including the most blasted parts. (That grey fruit stand! That polluted waterside!)
Cf. Tati’s Playtime, though this one’s objections are more insistent, to the point of being as neurotic as its protagonist. Both films criticize galloping modernism and excessive industrialization (bureaucratization, dehumanization), but the modernist and industrial material, and the modernist manner in which they capture and distribute it, kind of undercuts the message. It’s so bad/it’s so beautiful! The whole of Antonioni's film is an awesome visual treat, including the most blasted parts. (That grey fruit stand! That polluted waterside!)
So, we have a terrible
beauty, and this tremblingly flinching character perishing in the midst. Vitti is stunning. It seems that her director more or less left
her hanging in the end—her character gets to feeling strident or, worse, simply
symbolic. She not only gets punished, narratively, but even blamed thematically. How is all of this caddishness (the last exchange w' the R. Harris character, the conduct/comportment of the writer/director himself) her fault? (This is also about how L'Eclisse ended...) But there’s powerful,
creditable stuff on the way to that indeterminate, possibly inadequate conclusion.
Her store, and those paint swatches! The long houseboat sequence is very impressive. It's unbecoming behaviour—it's nearly an orgy—paradoxically provides a real, nearly healthy contrast to the techno-ennui that surrounds it. Here's a hint of hope, of authenticity, a bit of analogue in the midst of all of this digital, as it were. (The visual design is just as brilliant here, and it feels so much healthier!) But in the end, or even by the middle it becomes clear that this is no solution either. Old ways or new, industrialization or la bête humaine—we’re damned either way. At the end of the sequence the figures just disappear into the fog.
Her store, and those paint swatches! The long houseboat sequence is very impressive. It's unbecoming behaviour—it's nearly an orgy—paradoxically provides a real, nearly healthy contrast to the techno-ennui that surrounds it. Here's a hint of hope, of authenticity, a bit of analogue in the midst of all of this digital, as it were. (The visual design is just as brilliant here, and it feels so much healthier!) But in the end, or even by the middle it becomes clear that this is no solution either. Old ways or new, industrialization or la bête humaine—we’re damned either way. At the end of the sequence the figures just disappear into the fog.
Modesty Blaise
UK, 1966
Directed by Joseph Losey
Some flops are ill-conceived messes. Some are badly promoted. They can be ahead of their time, or maybe just victims of bad timing, of a restive audience. They can be an unwelcome subversion of blockbusting, or a jerky biting of the hands that are investing. This is a whole ‘nother blithe variation on the big bomb, and it’s a very appealing one. Thanks for the money—now let's do whatever the hell we want. There’s a nod at the James Bond films, of course, maybe some geo-political spoofing. But mostly this is both wonderfully indulgent and deeply artful. Design, photography, direction are not only extremely well executed and integrated, they’re also practically abstract. What exactly is going on here? The Big Sleep has nothing on this gleefully incoherent concoction. You’re not sure the perpetrators care very much. But their film isn’t scornful or empty, but rather a terrific example of straightforward formalism. And, also, a study in fabulousness. It’s a credit to Vitti/Stamp/Bogarde that they look engaged and interested, even interesting.
Some flops are ill-conceived messes. Some are badly promoted. They can be ahead of their time, or maybe just victims of bad timing, of a restive audience. They can be an unwelcome subversion of blockbusting, or a jerky biting of the hands that are investing. This is a whole ‘nother blithe variation on the big bomb, and it’s a very appealing one. Thanks for the money—now let's do whatever the hell we want. There’s a nod at the James Bond films, of course, maybe some geo-political spoofing. But mostly this is both wonderfully indulgent and deeply artful. Design, photography, direction are not only extremely well executed and integrated, they’re also practically abstract. What exactly is going on here? The Big Sleep has nothing on this gleefully incoherent concoction. You’re not sure the perpetrators care very much. But their film isn’t scornful or empty, but rather a terrific example of straightforward formalism. And, also, a study in fabulousness. It’s a credit to Vitti/Stamp/Bogarde that they look engaged and interested, even interesting.
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Zabriskie Point
US, 1970
US, 1970
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Frederick Wiseman's contemporaneous Law and Order makes me skeptical about this one’s cops-are-pigs thesis. There is another side or two to this situation. On the other hand J. Hoberman’s account of Antonioni’s production does suggest not only that times were tough, but that villainy was afoot. Probably LA wasn’t quite like Kansas City, Missouri, and vice versa. Maybe it was all the pressure. Times were certainly crazy. Whatever the cause, this movie is quite a muddle. It's pretty good, too—emblematic, and with much that still resonates, or works really well. Have you only and always heard that Zabriskie Point is a failure? Reputation isn’t always very helpful, and sometimes it isn't even very useful.
Frederick Wiseman's contemporaneous Law and Order makes me skeptical about this one’s cops-are-pigs thesis. There is another side or two to this situation. On the other hand J. Hoberman’s account of Antonioni’s production does suggest not only that times were tough, but that villainy was afoot. Probably LA wasn’t quite like Kansas City, Missouri, and vice versa. Maybe it was all the pressure. Times were certainly crazy. Whatever the cause, this movie is quite a muddle. It's pretty good, too—emblematic, and with much that still resonates, or works really well. Have you only and always heard that Zabriskie Point is a failure? Reputation isn’t always very helpful, and sometimes it isn't even very useful.
There’s a Challenge-for-Change vividness (http://www.nfb.ca/playlists/michael-brendan-thomas-waugh-ezra-winton/challenge-for-change/) to the ideological debate that opens this picture. The unrest/confrontation that follows has an effective Blow-Up uncertainty to it. Something’s going on, and the sense of foreboding is not only palpable but extra-cinematic. Something, but what, exactly? Uncertainty and ambiguity continue throughout. Not all of it is intentional, or productive. For instance, the Mark/Daria relationship is implausible, and it strains especially under the symbolic weight it has to carry. On the other hand, their roles as social actors (not professionals, but actual people actually named "Mark" and "Daria") require and deserve that we suspend some of our disbelief.
Conceptual muddles? I'm reminded of Tim Burton, actually. The stories in his films are often pretty perfunctory. Some of those films are still quite good, though, since Burton is much more a designer than he is a storyteller. A very good designer, too. So, since Antonioni is an architect and an image-maker, maybe the viewer would do better to key on what he does best. The pictures here are amazing. They’ve got that Vilmos Zsigmond thing going, where the play of light and lens make story almost superfluous. They’re also M.A.-specific—beautiful alienation and all. Zabriskie Point is a primordial, elemental, irreducible space, and it’s superbly rendered.
Speaking of which: this film's notorious desert orgy raises that old sex-scene conundrum.
There's something basically inappropriate and inadmissible about them. Is this just joyless prudery? Lots more to it. In Triumph of the Will (Germany, 1934) Leni Riefenstahl gathered and grouped individual human beings into architectural masses, into faceless, soulless blocks and columns. Her case is complicated, but the argument has been persuasively made that she subordinated their subjectivity and even, eventually, effaced their humanity, all for the sake of a Nazi propaganda film. Leni R. aside, it's easy to see that the regime did this exact same thing in the realm of actual relations, for the whole duration of its existence. What an awful sacrifice, what an awful loss, and all for so awfully little.
Does Antonioni, in the sequence presently under review, act similarly? Is this the status of sex scenes entire? It can be argued that they reduce actual people, with their various vulnerabilities and particularities, to mere erotical props. (For a knowing illustration consult the heartbreaking, strip-teasing conclusion to R. Altman's Nashville.) Wait—gotta be fair. First, the proportions are way different in this particular film. So is the ideology. Again, is this just joyless prudery? No! Chastity cannot countenance this kind of thing, and Chastity cannot be simply dismissed. But intent and perspective are also important. Whatever impropriety may have attended or followed the shooting (or viewing!) of this sequence, it is clearly—remember what the dictionary says—neither pornographic nor obscene. Let's shift that question. Did Antonioni reduce these sentient beings into mere symbolical props? Either way, there's a lesson. Even more, there's a moral imperative: don't objectify!
But is that it? Can't one (mustn't one?) take instruction from the unseemly things that are going on anyway? There is tremendous aesthetic and symbolic substance here: sexual congress as having tectonic parallels, resonance, significance. That certainly seems healthier than the poles of frivolousness and frigidity that so often prevail. Are young people being corrupted in the production of this material? (Were they already there?) A (huge!) problem. But "corrupt" might not be the right word. I.e.—Jules Ffeiffer wrote the scorchingly adult Carnal Knowledge. He also illustrated the properly kid-canonical The Phantom Tollbooth, besides creating that profound piece of kid advocacy Munro, and the practically celestial A Barrel of Laughter, A Vale of Tears.
Hypocrisy? No, at least not only. To assume otherwise is just another form of objectification. People are multiple. And this is part of that multiplicity. Your aged and profoundly circumspect grandparents also produced offspring, and they probably/hopefully did it joyfully. Intertextuality and epic similes aside, people are much more than the mistakes they make, or the trouble they get into. Movies too! (Wayne Booth, 1988) Finally there's the seeming, probable meaning of this exchange in the context of the film. Are they looking for permanency beneath all that uncertainty and unrest? Well, they're not wrong. Here it is. I submit: with my brain and eye and my awareness of all of the possible roots and branches all operating together, this ends up being a stunning sequence.
(Gregor Mendel's garden. It seemed relevant:)
Does Antonioni, in the sequence presently under review, act similarly? Is this the status of sex scenes entire? It can be argued that they reduce actual people, with their various vulnerabilities and particularities, to mere erotical props. (For a knowing illustration consult the heartbreaking, strip-teasing conclusion to R. Altman's Nashville.) Wait—gotta be fair. First, the proportions are way different in this particular film. So is the ideology. Again, is this just joyless prudery? No! Chastity cannot countenance this kind of thing, and Chastity cannot be simply dismissed. But intent and perspective are also important. Whatever impropriety may have attended or followed the shooting (or viewing!) of this sequence, it is clearly—remember what the dictionary says—neither pornographic nor obscene. Let's shift that question. Did Antonioni reduce these sentient beings into mere symbolical props? Either way, there's a lesson. Even more, there's a moral imperative: don't objectify!
But is that it? Can't one (mustn't one?) take instruction from the unseemly things that are going on anyway? There is tremendous aesthetic and symbolic substance here: sexual congress as having tectonic parallels, resonance, significance. That certainly seems healthier than the poles of frivolousness and frigidity that so often prevail. Are young people being corrupted in the production of this material? (Were they already there?) A (huge!) problem. But "corrupt" might not be the right word. I.e.—Jules Ffeiffer wrote the scorchingly adult Carnal Knowledge. He also illustrated the properly kid-canonical The Phantom Tollbooth, besides creating that profound piece of kid advocacy Munro, and the practically celestial A Barrel of Laughter, A Vale of Tears.
Hypocrisy? No, at least not only. To assume otherwise is just another form of objectification. People are multiple. And this is part of that multiplicity. Your aged and profoundly circumspect grandparents also produced offspring, and they probably/hopefully did it joyfully. Intertextuality and epic similes aside, people are much more than the mistakes they make, or the trouble they get into. Movies too! (Wayne Booth, 1988) Finally there's the seeming, probable meaning of this exchange in the context of the film. Are they looking for permanency beneath all that uncertainty and unrest? Well, they're not wrong. Here it is. I submit: with my brain and eye and my awareness of all of the possible roots and branches all operating together, this ends up being a stunning sequence.
(Gregor Mendel's garden. It seemed relevant:)
Maybe not as stunning as that final explosion, though. It’s very well led-up-to,
narratively and emotionally. The conclusion of
the kids’ tryst is sweet, making "Mark"/Mark’s subsequent murder all the more awful. Rod Taylor’s old-guard movie star
handsomeness is thus effectively transformed into exactly what’s wrong with the
world. Look at his beautiful retreat,
which not only ignores but causes all of this unrest. And so—Boom!
The repetitions and slow-motions are gorgeous, portentous. Pink Floyd goes perfectly—trippy and more. Gorgeous and portentous, but not as much as
Roy Orbison’s closing number. Did MGM go behind the genius's back? Yes, but this is Roy Orbison! Two whole
minutes over black! Young and free is
(complicatedly and ultimately) right!
Once again—boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGHu--6UzUk
Did we mention it? Roy Orbison is the greatest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZwdTkBJxcU
Susan Sontag, writing very convincingly about the mutual implication of fascist ideology, spectacular aesthetics, and dehumanizing erotics:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm).
Brewster McCloud
US, 1970
Directed by Robert Altman
Directed by Robert Altman
You
shouldn’t put Eugene Ionesco (Aberjonois) and Bertolt Brecht
(alienation!), Alfred Jarry (lots of excrement) and John Bunyan (when is
an Astrodome not just an Astrodome?) together, should you? Well I
guess you can do anything you want, but the results are going to be
messy. On the other hand maybe unholy and interesting messes like this
serve to put the onus on the viewer. You can throw up your hands, you
can fetishize the unseemly parts, or you can start looking under the
hood and figuring it out. If there’s substance and sincerity—and there
is here, along with a lot of bunk—the reward might be sufficient. Plus
which Robert Altman, in this period, is a major figure. Some stuff you
should see.
So
this is a terrific 1970 time capsule, with all of its modernist
boldness and countercultural fury, all its clear criticism and muddled
alternatives. The plot's various murder victims are a terrific expressionist assembly
of horrible squares, hinting at the corrupted and corrupting
institutions that are ruining everyone's lives. Each one really registers. Margaret
Hamilton! Kellerman and S. Duvall (!) split the expressionists’
transcendental female into a confusing, interesting thing. The film
seems to be sort of for sexual revolution, or at least it understands
the impulses behind it. But its feelings on the subject are mixed,
since it is that first fall that leads to our protagonist’s final, fatal
one. Maybe it’s a more articulate, ideological expressionism: the
groovy chick is finally as enmeshed in and as comfortable with the
materialist status quo as anyone. Plus there are car chases. (Bullitt, I guess. Note the Steve McQueen contact lenses.)
It
is here, in the way it adds a dimly apprehended sense of its own moral
shortcoming and even hypocrisy to the aforementioned boldness and fury,
that Brewster McCloud becomes a laudably honest thing. It looks forward to Shampoo, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the
book) in realizing that the critics/progressives are ultimately as bad as the
fascists are. Maybe that’s why the glancing bits of multi-tracked,
multi-planed straight material jump out. McCabe and Mrs. Miller,
and most especially its method, might be the better way to address all
this. After all, we’ve still got Godard to make brain-bursting mash-ups for us. But muzzle not the ox! Maybe the right way to respond to brilliant missteps is to key on the "brilliant" part of that equation.
Is that a real guy, or the actual Bud Cort, flying in an actual contraption? The apparatus is pretty astounding, whatever it means.
Is that a real guy, or the actual Bud Cort, flying in an actual contraption? The apparatus is pretty astounding, whatever it means.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080
Bruxelles
Belgium, 1975
Belgium, 1975
Directed by Chantal Akerman
This is very provocative stuff. It's a really glacial type of provocation, mind you, vast for all of the enclosed space, barely moving to the naked, commercially inclined eye. Challenges! Fun ones too, believe it or not. As with most provocations Jeanne Dielman... demands a reaction, or maybe it offers us a number of optional reactions. You could run out screaming. The auteuse might not even mind. Forbear though. Why not start with some film appreciation, noting the practically awesome exactitude with which plot and process are enacted and covered. You could take the next logical step and notice how that exactitude corresponds to these processes, to the duties of domesticity. Note our protagonist's almost terrifying efficiency. Martha! See what you think of Akerman's thesis—more clearly stated in the literature than in the film, I think—which has it that domesticity is servile, mind numbing, demeaning unto degradation. It's a gender burden, and its oppressiveness leads inevitably to that final, hours-down-the-road outbreak of violence. That would be fair to consider, and important.
For my part, though, I find a few productive tensions here, a few counter-provocative counter-options. This servility also looks, from another angle, like an absolute autonomy. Look at the world this woman has made, and how beautifully! Look at this comprehensive design (engineering, aesthetics, everything). The protagonist, so impressively essayed (modeled? walked through?) by Ms. Seyrig, seems to have a great deal of Fritz Lang about her. Subjugated by patriarchy, or control freakily oppressive in her own right? But totalitarian matriarchy is only one option among many. What would a Renoirian method result in? Or, more gender-specifically/gender-appropriately, what would become of a method like Cynthia Scott's? (This!!: http://www.nfb.ca/film/company_of_strangers/). All the richer: this viewer finds in Akerman's film a withering critique and all sorts of bright alternatives.
Well there you are, and it just goes to show; here's another thing you could do as you watch and watch this really long movie. You can think and think! Really productively too. Static art can be paradoxically ideal of for mental dynamics. It sure has me thinking. It's interesting where I end up. The final fireworks, even the elephant-in-the-room extra/domestic commerce, seems a little too emphatic for me. The stabbing may provide the climax—ahem— that we’ve been longing for, but I regret it. It makes this into a bit of a Polanski film. The Dardennes, or Robert Bresson, are more to my taste. Their sensibilities certainly serve the notion that domesticity, or domestic femininity, are both difficult and divine. These hard things require that we interrogate our practices and attitudes, but they also, equally, deserve respect. More, they carry and contain a portentous, immanent weight. (Cf. Hans Christian Andersen, "Thumbelina", "The Wild Swans", "The Snow Queen". Cf. Marian theology and iconography!) That's pretty valid, I think. Not very feminist, I think. Do I protest too much? The dialogue continues! Probably I should make my own movie. Even better, I should just be more and more consistently useful at home. Much obliged, Ms. Akerman...
