{"id":3855,"date":"2011-07-18T01:40:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T06:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/?p=3855"},"modified":"2011-07-24T14:06:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T19:06:27","slug":"two-films-on-july-17-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/2011\/07\/two-films-on-july-17-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Films on July 17, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nPyaasa<\/strong> [1957, Guru Dutt] (Inc.)<\/p>\n

‘Inc.’ because the promised screening format was 35mm, and what they were actually showing was a digital projection of what looked like a VHS bootleg (now that I look up screen captures to see how close in quality what they screened is to internet versions – and the quality is quite comparable – I’m also noticing that their aspect ratio (it was shown at 4:3) may have been off (the online version looks something like 1.66:1)). The bad quality isn’t the problem itself, but more that I was too enraged for the first half of the film to focus on anything else. I hate to carp on technical displays for a film of this stature (though, the only time I’ve ever written anything about perhaps my favorite film ever, Play Time<\/em>, was to complain about how the Harvard Film Archive projected it from the Criterion DVD instead of a film print), it really prevented me from connecting with the film. This is based on expectations, of course, as I’m pretty sure that if I’d sat down in my living room to watch the same crappy version, I wouldn’t have been fuming, and therefore probably would have been fine as usual. What I did<\/em> get, though, is that this film has beautiful music (looking for the soundtrack now), and it is beautifully photographed (from what I could gather), and that I’m not sure if Vijay’s transformation into a didactic Christ-figure, turning the end of the film into a sermon, will ever sit well with me. Here’s to a better screening scenario next time.<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nA Child is Waiting<\/strong> [1963, John Cassavetes] (5.5)<\/p>\n

Similar to David Lynch with The Elephant Man<\/em>, Cassavetes briefly went Hollywood early in his career for a very ‘un-him’ tearjerker, both coincidentally centered around life-crippling disabilities. This would really make a good companion to The Miracle Worker<\/em>, as they are both about a woman’s struggles to discipline a disabled child, only in the Penn film the disability is physical, where for Cassavetes’ it is mental. The cognition required to properly integrate into society, and to abide its rules, is inherent in our DNA, and I was anticipating how the script would approach the little hiccup that lead to all of the subjects in this case being ill-equipped for such integration. The resolution, apparently, is to get frustrated and give up, which is significantly less compelling than watching Annie Sullivan whip Helen Keller around a room for reels at a time. Cassavetes’ talent for actors comes through in the Thanksgiving ‘play’, as the Down Syndrome-afflicted kids give believably stilted line deliveries that had prior-to-then been naturalistic, which I’d assumed was a given since they probably weren’t completely aware that they were even acting. Plenty of lush B&W photography to glaze over the excessively cloying bits (i.e. most of it), but I’m pretty sure that this was really just a vehicle to build to a gratuitous scene of Judy Garland tearfully singing ‘See the Snow Fly’ at a piano to\/with a chorus of out-of-tune children. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Pyaasa [1957, Guru Dutt] (Inc.) ‘Inc.’ because the promised screening format was 35mm, and what they were actually showing was a digital projection of what looked like a VHS bootleg (now that I look up screen captures to see how close in quality what they screened is to internet versions – and the quality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3855"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3869,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions\/3869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}