Author name: Blake Williams

As visceral an experience as I could have hoped for, this film has lingered with me more than any of the other Antonioni films I’ve seen (I admit that I have some catching up to do, as I’ve so far limited myself to L’Eclisse, Blowup, and now Red Desert). I’m finding that most of the films that get lodged in my mind are films that are made up of good stretches of material that are spread out with segments that completely go off my radar. The opening 15 minutes and the gathering in the hut in the red room are separated in my memory by hazy recollections of Giuliana being pursued by Corrado. I can clearly remember scenes like the foggy disease scare, the ‘ill’ son, the story of the girl on the beach (perhaps my favorite scene in any Antonioni I’ve seen yet), the lovemaking scene, and the yellow finale, while what comes between them is completely missing. Like many of my favorite films, I get the sense that it was created intuitively, perhaps built simultaneously to its conception.

The acting in the film is strange, but I was taken in by the spastic and paranoid Monica Vitti much more than her wistful and languid role in L’Eclisse. Here she seems to be on the verge of a seizure for most of the time, and I got the sense that she was possessed by something that I couldn’t identify. It could be the ghostly ships, the factory fumes, or mother nature herself. Her character must have been some sort of inspiration for Todd Haynes’s Safe, featuring a role that left Julianne Moore comparably displaced by her environment and sickly. Vitti stumbles around for most of the film, giggles at nothing, and refuses to answer questions. Her psychological state, and the oft placement of her figure into an out-of-focus landscape also brought to mind Lucrecia Martel’s recent The Headless Woman, which shows a woman who could be out of touch with her environment, but could also just be attuned to a completely alien psychological structure. I’ve been meaning to watch Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for months, but I don’t see how I can’t watch that next.

The acting in this film is indeed excellent (with the exception of Evan Rachel Wood, whose character is terribly written and poorly acted), which really elevates the film above a simple, weepy nostalgia piece. The fact that Darren Aronofsky is behind this, whose only good film before this was Pi, which I still have reservations about, is impressive, and puts him back as someone that I will pay attention to. I just wish that he could find a really good writer, because the writing is what brings his films down, and almost brings this one down. The ‘broken down piece of meat’ monologue was weak, forced, and cliched, but Mickey Rourke made it tolerable. Rourke couldn’t save, though, the scenes with his daughter Stephanie, an entire mistake of a character in this film. This film didn’t need a screaming brat crying about her father missing her birthdays and shouting that she never wants to see him again because he forgot that they were to supposed to have dinner together after they have a tender, loving moment a couple of days before. There are certainly more creative ways that the writer could have come up with to make Stephanie get pulled in by ‘The Ram’ again and then have her hopes shattered, but instead he shows this in the most boring and embarrassing way possible.

But, there are plenty of good things to say about the film, even besides the great job by Rourke and Tomei. The film made me think of professional wrestling as something entertaining and watchable for the first time in my life. The wrestling scenes are well shot and often brutal (though maybe a little over the top with the staples). I also liked how gentle all of the wrestlers seemed outside of the ring. One would expect macho men making fag jokes in the locker room, but they are presented as a well-knit community of guys who look out for each other and aren’t afraid to hug after a match. The ending of the film is a tearjerker, and it works, I was choked up. Seeing The Ram make his last Ram Jam is supremely sad.

This is definitely more accessible than Colossal Youth, with its shorter length and hints of a plot, while still feeling like it is part of the same universe. Pedro Costa certainly gives it his all in showing these individuals who are real, but still live in an ominous, cave-live community. Clotilde and her sisters, with the exception of Tina (pictured in the poster) all look like variations of Bob from Twin Peaks; very masculine and straggly. The door motif is very present here, like in Colossal Youth, where the viewer can learn everything he needs to know about a character or a location based on the style or quality of a door in the frame. The poor lurk around in grimy dwellings that are either doorless or are hinged with doors that have been cut into pieces. Many of the women earn money as maids, and when they walk through metallic elevator doors to visit the homes that they are to clean, and that are sealed with fully intact doors with peep holes and doorbells and knocking devices, the women couldn’t feel more out of place.

The plot centers around a new born baby. It took me a while to figure out whose baby it is. I’m pretty sure that I know who the father is, as well as the mother, but I have doubts. The baby adds tension and plays a similar role as the baby in L’Enfant. There are pathetic attempts at feeding the baby, and nursing him, and selling him, and I always have the feeling that when he is not in the frame that he is lost rotting in a sewer somewhere. This film is plagued with just as much grief and hopelessness as Colossal Youth, but feels less monumental, granted it has much smaller goals. Ossos feels like a small movie in the vain of Battle in Heaven or Maria Full of Grace that shows the details of an unfortunate circumstance hounding a collection of unfortunate people. There is much less to digest here than Colossal Youth, but the roots of that film are clearly forming in this one.

Beginning my month of attempting to familiarize myself with the films of Werner Herzog, I think it is good that I’ve gotten his arguably most acclaimed film out of the way. Instead of viewing his other work and expecting this to be superior to all of them, I was able to watch it with a minimized sample of comparison, and was therefore not disappointed. This is the first fiction film that I have seen by Herzog. Prior to Aguirre, I saw Grizzly Man, Lessons of Darkness, and Encounters at the End of the World. Of those three, only Lessons of Darkness really blew me away. I had known before seeing any of them that Herzog was interested in nature, insanity, and culture, and I thought that Lessons was able to address all three of these themes in very fresh, interesting, and often terrifying ways. With Aguirre, all three of these themes clearly make a huge presence.

I couldn’t help but be reminded by Terrence Malick’s two most recent films, The Thin Red Line and The New World, while watching this. I knew about a few things that Malick was influenced by from Herzog, and I also know that his use of the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold in The New World was, seemingly, an hommage to Herzog’s several uses of the piece in his work. But I wasn’t aware of the strong cinematographic similarities, notably the long, languid takes of swamps, jungles, and rivers as well as the interludes of small creatures. The presence of something new runs through both of their works, contrasting the dying subjects. With Herzog, though, what is dying is often the characters’ minds in preparation for their bodiies’ deaths. The last shot of this was so effective because I saw Aguirre functioning on the last thread of his sanity, and I knew the only logical next step for him.

I was a little wobbly in my reception to Kinski’s Aguirre. He has a strange, mousy voice made him sound more whiny than intimidating sometimes. But as he descended into complete absurdity with his mission, his mannerisms and speech had a sad and destined tone that I was very captivated by. I thought that the entire final act was moving, thrilling, and strange in a well arranged way. In all, the acting, photography, and setting are all very good, and I don’t think it is surprising this is his classic. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if there are several of his other films that I enjoy more.

I have seen Martel’s La Cienaga, which I think is incredible, but I have yet to watch her Nina Santa, which I am hoping to get to in the next few weeks. Based on La Cienaga and The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel is one of the more consistent filmmakers that I have recently encountered. Both films begin with an accident involving middle-aged women which spiral their family into an odd psychological trip with bizarre, incestuous sexual tensions. While La Cienaga feels broad and epic, The Headless Woman feels more intimate and specific to the mental state of one character: Vero, the aforementioned middle-aged woman.

One of the more interesting things in the film is that the viewer is shown, subtley but precisely, what happens in Vero’s car accident. We know what caused the accident, and in a last second glimpse of the roadkill as Vero drives away, we see what it is that she hit with her car, and we know that she didn’t look back to see what it was. From this point on, I was assuming that the film would take advantage of dramatic irony, as I watch to see the characters come to learn what it is that I already know. However, despite what I saw and what other characters continue to prove to Vero, she moves in the opposite direction, and believes that she has hit something far worse and more consequential than what I and the other character thinkt she hit. The great thing is that Martel moves right along with Vero, and I begin to question my own perspective. Did I see what I thought I saw? Is Martel showing things inaccurately to decieve me, and if so, how many other shots were inaccurate? This put me in a very unbalanced state of viewing, because, with the film becoming somewhat of a murder mystery, I cannot trust the characters, the filmmaker, nor myself to put all of the pieces together.

The cinematography is also remarkably deliberate. Throughout the first half of the film, I had trouble visualizing what Vero actually looks like because almost every shot of her (and there are many, she’s in almost every scene) has her either out of focus, in front of a bright light source which silhouettes her features, hidden behind another character or object, or, this one kind of funny Ha Ha, her head cut off by the top of the frame. One function of this is to have a distanced relationship with Vero, and it prolongs the amount of time that I spend studying her physical traits just to get to know her. But most importantly, especially as a psychological study of Vero, it keeps me distanced from what she is feeling. What also keeps me distanced from what is going on in her head is that she doesn’t really answer any questions about anything. Whether a character asks her about the accident or about something completely trivial to the plot, Vero often answers with blank stares or very brief responses.

All of this cumulates to a very frustrating viewing for a film, and I will have to watch it a second time before I can actually say that I enjoy it (will also have to do this because I was watching this in the dead of night and could barely keep my eyes open toward the end). It isn’t as instantly satisfying as La Cienaga is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it has a huge load of hidden rewards that will impress me when I watch it again, which would have been the first thing I wanted to do when it ended if I wasn’t so damn tired.

Over time, each new viewing of this film has me thinking that it is less funny, but an all-around better movie. The music is and has always been beautiful, and there are certain scenes that I always want to come back to. I think this film most resembles Altman’s Nashville (outside of any other Coen Brothers film) with the music and backdrop of an election, and just how genuinely American it is. Nashville is the better film at pretty much every angle, but I think O Brother will be regarded on a similar level one day. I still have problems with the first 20 minutes. I remember when I first saw this that I felt like I had wasted 6 dollars because the opening scenes were so hokey and lame. I think that George Clooney shows some of his worst acting in these 20 minutes, but later shows some of his best.

I was more distracted by the overall look of the film this time than I ever have been before. Most of it felt like those tacky black and white photos that have a single colored object (like a red rose). The yellow leaves light up the background in O Brother while all of the actors are close to completely desaturated. It gave the film a slightly false feeling that I don’t think I would have sensed if they had just left the colors alone. I’m working on a video right now, though, that needs a similar procedure done, so I think I’m very sensitive to this kind of look. Anyway, great film, I’ll continue coming back to it in the future, I’m sure.

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2008 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

For some reason, I was starting to think that I overrated this. I was getting annoyed with people who compared every new, good science fiction film as being the greatest one since 2001. I was annoyed that it was topping so many Greatest Ever lists, and that certain parts of it kept showing up as homages in so many movies, like Wall-E and Magnolia, among hundreds of others. Now, while I think everyone does need to leave it alone already, seeing it with my mother of all people (she had never seen it before), I am reconvinced of its brilliance.

Watching my mother, reclined in a loveseat for the entire film, close the recliner and sit up to the edge of her seat when Dave enters the white bedroom at the end, made me notice that no matter how much one favors Hollywood blockbusters, and no matter how many science fictions films that one has seen, this film is still new and captivating to anyone seeing it for the first time, because it is so inimitable. Granted, when the star shild faded away into the credits, she looked at me and said “Thanks for showing me…that…honey” and then “Now explain the whole thing.” She didn’t get any of it, and asked me after I explained what I think happens how I ever got that from it, but I didn’t get it either after I saw it for the first time, either.

There were shots that I never questioned before and now finally noticed as being almost impossible, and the pacing felt as brisk as it ever has. I even used to sympathize with people who thought it was boring. I was reading a review by critic Armond White of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in which he compares the ending of that film to the appearance of the star child. I read the review before seeing the film, and when I saw it I thought ok, I can see it maybe. It’s an interesting comparison because it made me think about the idea of the universe aging backwards. I don’t know, but either way, this film makes me feel tiny.

Going 2 for 2, with this film I think that Kelly Reichardt joins Claire Denis, Lucrecia Martel, and Chantal Akerman as the most important working female directors on the planet, though their work all holds up against any male director. With Old Joy and now Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt creates impossibly moving films out of some of the simplest, sparsest plots in cinema. These two films affect me in ways that I had always hoped and expected Robert Bresson’s oeuvre would, but didn’t. Especially Au Hasard Balthazar, which I think has many things in common with Reichardt’s latest, drawing deep and complex pathos toward a female’s relationship with an animal that she loves; there are tons of subtle parallels between Wendy and Lucy’s respective states. Based on the films plot there is nothing all that impressive about it, but, like in Old Joy, the acting and direction elevates the film so much that you feel like you’ve witnessed some sort of dense study on human suffering that cannot do anything but move you.

The film also captures small town mediocrity perfectly, reminding me of Alexander Payne, but more authentic and less plasticky. I’ve seen a lot of reviews that call this a really great indie film, and I think that putting this in the ‘indie’ genre is misleading and irresponsible. Yes, it has a low budget and seemingly modest aspirations, but this is no more an indie film than a Bela Tarr film is. When i think of seeing an indie film, I think of pseudo indie films like those made by Steven Soderberg or Wes Anderson. This film was simply made in the exact way that it should have been, regardless of the budget that Reichardt was given or the stars or no-names it could cast.

Michelles Williams is spectacular and I cannot believe that the girl from Dawson’s Creek pulled this role off so well. All of the supporting cast is great two, especially the punks around the camp fire and the sleazy, bastard car mechanic. I cannot wait for whatever Reichardt makes next.

A pretty disappointing film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had every right to be one of the best American films of the year, but instead settled for throwaway dreamy, inspirational life story, lost love trash. The only impressive thing in this film is the digital transformation of Brad Pitt into a lifetime’s range of ages, which is really impressive. I knew beforehand that the screenwriter for this film was the same as the one for Forest Gump. This doesn’t mean much to me, because I’ve never seen that film all the way through, but of what I’ve seen, it’s not the best association.

Some Spoilers

A big problem with this film for me isn’t that it didn’t address things that it should have with such an interesting premise, but that it does address these things in such an insignificant way. The idea that Benjamin Button would fall in love with someone who looks the same age as himself for a brief period of time before they diverge into complimentary stages of life is great, but they the tension in that idea off the hook when Button simply gives up and says, paraphrasing, ‘I can’t live with the idea that you (Blanchett) would have to raise me and our child’ and then leaves her pregnant. This is the confrontation that I had been waiting for for the entire film! I wanted to see an old woman going on dates with a teenage boy and then has to defend why this is okay. I also wanted to see Benjamin Button as a young boy get questioned about why he isn’t going to school, or if he goes to school, why he is more mature than the other kids in school. I wanted to see a young boy playing with other young boys, yet while his friends are excited and carefree, Button knows, precisely, the amount of time that he has left.

And I’m not just upset about a bunch of things that I hoped would be in the film but weren’t there, I’m also upset about the things that I did want to see, were shown, but were poorly done. Like Benjamin’s early life. It is basically defined by his infatuation with a young, pretty red-headed girl. The relationship between the importance of learning and swallowing knowledge as an adolescent versus his dementia ridden, mushy brain should have been an essential part of this story. Instead, the film shows him getting a job, liking a girl, loving his mom, having some friends, with consequence and without anyone questioning his condition after becoming aware of it. They would just nonchalantly say something like, ‘oh, you’re aging backwards, how unusual.’

Not only this, but it is trying very hard to be a movie about everything and ends up as an overpolished Oscar-push. It has tons of great themes: lost love, death, birth, war, battles, time: but all of these appear in such cliched forms. I loved Fincher’s Zodiac and it probably has a lot of the blame for my harsh reaction to this one.