Senin, 31 Agustus 2009
Coming attractions
I'm not bothering with a theme for September, though. This month will pretty much be a grab bag of whatever takes my fancy. A cleansing of the palate prior to the Third Annual Dirk-Fest next in October and an entire month of all things Peckinpah in December.
December 28th is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the maverick maestro's passing and I'll be showing some serious love for Bloody Sam here on The Agitation of the Mind. There'll be a retrospective of all fourteen films, links, resources, an overview of the available literature on Peckinpah and a whole host of stills and screengrabs.
25 Years Gone: A Tribute to Sam Peckinpah is open to everyone. Feel free to swipe one of the banners, blog about your favourite Peckinpah film (the poll currently has 'Straw Dogs' in the lead) and send me the link. Thanks to everyone who's already showed interest. Let's see the year out in fine style with one of America's most influential directors.
Minggu, 30 Agustus 2009
PERSONAL FAVES: Spirited Away
The plot - or at least the mechanics that set the plot in motion - could be straight out of a horror film. 10-year-old Chihiro's parents make a wrong turn en route to their new home and end up in a strange deserted township. Victims of their own greed, a curse befalls her parents. Then darkness falls and insubstantial, ghost-like shapes appear in the streets. Chihiro flees. Sseeking refuge at a huge old bathhouse, she discovers that yet more spirits, some benign and some quite definitely malevolent, are waiting ... and that her destiny is inextricably bound up with theirs.
The visual style is that of an opulent fantasy, sometimes creepy, sometimes delightful.
The film itself is quite simply a love story. In the most explicit (and superficial) sense, it's a love story between Chihiro (or Sen as she becomes known, having been tricked into forfeiting her name) and Haku, half youth half dragon, the unwitting apprentice to despicable witch Yubaba. Like Sen/Chihiro, his true name has also been stolen.
It's a love story about the cameraderie of friendship. Chihiro's parents are self-centred and foolish. Nonetheless, her adventures in the spirit world are motivated by a desire to free them from Yubaba's curse; and during these adventures she benefits from the support of a makeshift family of friends: a multi-limbed old man in charge of heating the bathhouse who commands a fur-ball army of sprites lathered in coal dust to keep the furnace stoked; an older girl slaving away as a cleaner who takes her under her wing; a river god bloated with a human waste pumped into his realm whom Sen cleanses; and a mysterious spirit called No Face whose personality reconfigures according to the characters he meets. Faced with the greedier denizens of the bathhouse, No Face becomes ravenous, rapacious and repellent. In Sen/Chihiro's company, he is calm and accommodating.
Most of all, though, 'Spirited Away' is a love story about the power of imagination. Chihiro's parents are scornful of the world they find themselves in, take advantage of what's on offer, and pay the price. Chihiro, though initially scared, integrates with her new surroundings and finally, as Sen, embraces them, particularly in her alliance with Yubaba's considerably more humane sister Zeniba.
Miyazaki's realisation of the spirit world, of its infrastructure, of the trompe-l'oeil architecture of the bathhouse, is breathtaking. He creates a world as believable as it is fantastical, a world his characters live in, rather than just a backdrop against which a story takes place. A world with structure and protocols and systems of transport.
Jumat, 28 Agustus 2009
Satantango
'Satantango' is a seven-hour Hungarian film shot in austere black-and-white and made up of long takes. Very long takes. Tarr holds the average shot so long it makes Tarkovsky at his most soporific look like a director of MTV videos fired up on crack and a double espresso. Many of these long takes, moreover, contain little visual information beyond what the first few seconds of the shot communicate.
Sometimes Tarr's camera moves and he'll follow his characters through oppressive tracts of woodland, along muddy and rutted country lanes, or down streets lashed with rain and strewn with trash. Take the still below. Imagine the two men walking, the wind and rain battering them, the litter blowing around their feet. Imagine this lasting about five minutes.
Other times, Tarr has his actors arranged in tableaux, immobile and unspeaking as the camera slowly zooms in or out of the scene. During dialogue scenes, he'll often pan away or slowly zoom past the characters and focus on, say, the patterns of a grubby bit of net curtain. I've used the word "slowly" twice in as many sentences, and with reason. 'Satantango' is a slow movie. Sometimes it's slow in a hypnotic, almost mesmerising way. Sometimes it's slow in a watching-paint-dry kind of way. And sometimes it's downright patience-testing.
'Satantango' comprises twelve chapters (mirroring the six steps forward, six steps back of the tango), many of which contain overlapping scenes or events played out from different perspectives. The villagers' interrelationships and often gruellingly difficult lives are painstakingly established, from the doctor who spies on his patients and keeps the company of whores while he drinks himself insensate, to the mentally disturbed child whose deprivation of parental guidance and affection leads to a hard-to-watch scene where she mistreats and later kills a pet cat ... and a just-as-uncomfortable corollary, the implications of which the mephistophelean Irimias (Mihaly Vig) plays on when he persuades the villagers to join him in a collective.
Selasa, 25 Agustus 2009
Blind Chance
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s ‘Blind Chance’ opens with a sequence of fragmentary vignettes that may be memory, contemporaneously occurring events, or glimpses of what’s to come. The first shot is of a man screaming. By the end of the film, it’s fairly easy to place this in the chronology of events – in each of the three alternative chronologies, actually – but the other bits of visual information prove thornier, even with multiple viewings. Basically, though, this opening sequence establishes Witek (Boguslaw Linda) as a medical student doubting his vocation, unsure about a possible relationship with fellow student Olga (Monika Gozdzik), and trying to deal with his father’s death.
Obtaining Dean’s Leave to postpone his studies, he rushes to catch a train back home. The train is already pulling out of the station, gathering speed, and Witek is rapidly running out of platform as he goes pounding full-tilt after it.
Three alternative realities diverge at this point. Kieslowski follows them through individually and chronologically, but that’s his only concession to simplicity. What follows is a thinking-cap-on piece of filmmaking: deep, profound, thought-provoking and played out in scenes which alternate between Tarkovsky-like extended takes and elliptical brevity.
In the first scenario Witek catches the train by the narrowest of margins and meets Werner (Tadeusz Lomnicki), a hardline communist who introduces Witek to empire-building party member Adam (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz). Witek joins the party and is treated as something of a golden boy. His naivety about party politics is countered by his enthusiasm, and he acts effectively (though not necessarily by the book) when the dirty job of dealing with a hostage situation at a mental health facility is foisted on him. A chance meeting with old flame Czuszka (Boguslawa Pawelec) leads to a rekindled relationship. But things start to turn sour: Czuszka is arrested; Adam’s mentorship of Witek is revealed as having a darker aspect; an important trip abroad is cancelled at the last moment. Witek’s standing in the party is compromised, and both his relationship and his ideology are in tatters. This scenario ends with Witek, turned away from his flight, committing an act of vandalism at the airport.
The second scenario opens as Witek almost makes the train, before a jobsworth station master tackles him. Witek struggles with the man, striking him. Police arrive. Frustrated, Witek throws more punches. A magistrate gives him 30 days hard labour. While toiling with a shovel and counting off the days, he meets Marek (Jacek Borkowski) who involves him, on their release, in an underground political group. He channels his anger at the establishment in his work with a cell producing subversive literature. He mellows a little, though, when he meets old school friend Daniel (Jacek Sas-Uhrynowski) and begins a relationship with Daniel’s sister Werka (Marzena Trybala). Nonetheless, Witek’s ideologies are dealt a hammerblow just as brutally as in the first scenario when the cell is infiltrated, print equipment destroyed and members imprisoned. Witek is singled out in the fingerpointing and, as before, he finds himself persona non grata.
In the final scenario, Witek again misses the train but this time without getting into a brawl. He jogs to a stop and catches his breath. He lets it go. He sees Olga on the platform. They talk. Later they make love. Witek returns to his studies, the Dean encouraging his new-found commitment. Witek and Olga marry. They have a child. Satisfied with his life, Witek gives little thought to politics except to accept an invitation from the Dean to speak on his behalf at a foreign conference; the Dean’s ability to travel has been affected by the arrest of his son for producing subversive literature and the old man expects to be dismissed from the faculty at any time. Although Olga tries to convince Witek not to make the trip, he sets off for the airport. En route to the departure lounge, he walks past the communist party members from the first scenario who are being turned away from their flight; he walks past some of the cell members from the second scenario who are being scrutinised by airport security staff. He doesn’t give them a second glance.
‘Blind Chance’ lives up to its title. Not only does it examine the life-changing implications of such a trivial event as a man running for a train, and how just a slight variation can produce - chaos theory-like - such differences in outcome; but there are also any number of "blind chances" scattered throughout the individual scenarios, notably Witek’s renewed acquaintanceships with Czuszka in the first and Daniel in the second. The story that Werner tells Witek about a life-changing event in his and Adam’s past also hinges on chance. And it’s chance that puts the contented Witek on the plane at the end while Witek the politico and Witek the reactionary are prevented from taking it in their story strands.
Kieslowski, already a couple of dozen films into his decades-spanning career, made ‘Blind Chance’ in 1980. Due to state censorship it didn’t see the light of day until 1987, when Kieslowski was gearing up to make a succession of world cinema masterpieces that would define the last decade and a half of his life and cement his reputation as one of European’s most important directors: ‘A Short Film About Killing’, ‘A Short Film About Love’, the ‘Dekalog’ sequence, the poetic and mysterious ‘Double Life of Veronique’ and the critically and commercially popular ‘Three Colours’ trilogy. Stunningly assured and intelligent, ‘Blind Chance’ is the equal of any of these.
Minggu, 23 Agustus 2009
Inglourious Basterds (a review in five chapters)
Once upon a time ... in the New York Times
There's a review of 'Inglourious Basterds' in the New York Times - an organ normally dependable for its film criticism - which not only misses the point by a country mile, but in its last line writes off the very concept of the anti-hero as a valid fictive creation. This is what reviewer Manohla Dargis has to say:
"The film's most egregrious failure [is] its giddy, at times gleeful embrace and narrative elevation of the seductive Nazi villain ... Unlike those in 'Schindler's List', Mr Tarantino's Nazis exist in an insistently fictional cinematic space where heroes and villains converge amid a welter of movie allusions ... 'Inglourious Basterds' is simply another testament to his movie love. The problem is that by making the star attraction of his latest film a most delightful Nazi, one whose smooth talk is presented as lovingly as his murderous violence, Mr Tarantino has polluted that love."
Firstly, 'Schindler's List' exists in a cinematic space every bit as "insistently fictional" as that of 'Inglourious Basterds' - it's in black and white; much of its visual style is non-naturalistic; ash from crematorium chimneys falls as gently and lovingly as snow - so the comparison doesn't hold water. Secondly, Dargis argues that Christoph Waltz's SS Colonel Hans Landa is the best thing about the film simply because he gives the best performance. Ralph Fiennes's is similarly the best performance in 'Schindler's List'; Dargis's argument is further weakened. Thirdly, why does a "gleeful embrace and narrative elevation" of a Nazi character perforce constitute a flaw in a film's aesthetic? I've always found Paul Scofield's erudite von Waldheim far more appealing than Burt Lancaster's monosyllabic Labiche in John Frankenheimer's 'The Train' - and this dynamic, if anything, makes the film even more interesting. (See also: 'Cross of Iron': German protagonist, excellent film. And where does Dargis's argument leave the "good German" in, say, Powell and Pressburger's '49th Parallel' or 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'?) Fourthly, criticising Tarantino for creating his vision of cinema within a deliberately fictive space is as facile as slating a Bollywood film for being three hours long and containing a bunch of song and dance numbers. It's little more than an admission that Dargis doesn't like a certain style of film-making, only dressed up in the kind of cheap point-scoring that there should be no place for in the New York Times.
Also, Dargis seems to imply that premeditated empathy with a villainous character - ie. the writer and/or director specifically setting out to make an anti-hero not only palatable but laudable to the audience - is reprehensible. Excuse me? Some of the greatest characters in both classical literature and pop culture and at all points inbetween are anti-heroes. From Hamlet to Hannibal Lecter, from King Lear to Freddy Krueger. Everyone loves an anti-hero. It's the thrill of a character doing and saying the things we could never do or say - things, frankly, that we wouldn't want to do or say. It's the delightful frisson of a character whose moral disconnect imbues them with a fascinating unpredictability; a character who could quite literally do anything.
Chapter two:
Glorious basterds
And while I'm kicking against mainstream film critics, can I just say that I don't understand why so many critics still carp about violence in Tarantino's work. Sure, everything he's done contains scenes of violence, but I'd argue no more so than most tentpole summer blockbusters. While, say, your average Michael Bay film doesn't feature scalpings (how would Transformers scalp each other? "each one of you Autobots owes me one hundred Decepticon pistons ... and I want my pistons!") it buys wholly into an aesthetic of violence - explosions, shoot outs, cars flipping over and smashing into other cars at high speeds - which leaves you in no doubt that sheer, unmitigated destruction is Bay's raison d'etre. Tarantino, however, is more interested in the build up, the tension, the dialogue and character dynamics.
When action or violence happens in a Tarantino movie, it erupts suddenly and is over quickly. There is, per capita, very little onscreen violence in his work. The first chapter of 'Inglourious Basterds' is a clammily tense interrogation by Landa of a French farmer harbouring a Jewish family. It quickly becomes apparent that Landa knows full well the family are there and where they are hidden; he's simply toying with the man. The scene is intense and gripping, punctuated by an inspired mine's-bigger-than-yours visual joke, and what makes it work is not the thirty seconds of gunfire it culminates in but the twenty minutes of dialogue that build up to it. Landa arranging his pen and pot of ink on a table carries far more weight than the machine guns slung over his men's shoulders.
It follows, then, that any director who places more importance on words than action - and how refreshing is that in contemporary American cinema? - must needs be an actor's director. And this is where I still don't think Tarantino gets his dues. Love or loathe the deliberate movieness of his movies, the man gets fucking great performances from his actors. 'Pulp Fiction' made Samuel L Jackson and resurrected John Travolta. Pam Grier and Robert Forster in 'Jackie Brown' - we're talking about finest hours. Uma Thurman's never been as good outside Tarantino's cinema. And now in 'Inglourious Basterds' we have a bravura, multi-faceted performance from Christoph Waltz, vacillating between charm, cruelty and - daringly in the finale - a touch of high camp. It's full-throttle and hugely memorable. But so is Diane Kruger's irresistible diva-like turn as Brigitte von Hammersmarck, the dahling of the German film industry.
Melanie Laurent's character Shoshanna (the only survivor of Landa's first chapter massacre) is almost overwhelmed by Waltz and Kruger, but she's never less than the true main character of the film, and evinces a quiet determination underscored by a melancholic sense of vulnerability. That she understates just emphasises the importance of her character. Michael Fassbender comes within a plummy vowel of stealing the show as Lt Archie Hickox, a British officer despatched to assist the Basterds and make contact with Brigitte (a double agent) in a mission to assassinate the Nazi chiefs of staff. Bouncing off an audaciously cast Mike Myers (as fellow Brit, General Ed Fenech), Fassbender takes up the mantle of George Sanders and gives us a smooth, unpeturbable Brit (his staring-death-in-the-face speech about there being "a special place in hell reserved for people who waste good Scotch whisky" is priceless).
Elsewhere, as the Basterds, Brad Pitt is a scream as hillbilly platoon leader Lt Aldo Raine, drawling his cod-philosophical down-home dialogue with relish; Til Schweiger as the only German member of the outfit, officer-hating Hugo Stiglitz, gives a breakout performance comparable to Waltz's; B.J. Novak makes the most of a bit of comic relief when Landa taunts him that his nickname amongst German soldiers is "the Little Man"; and only Eli Roth seems ill-at-ease as baseball bat wielding Sgt Donowitz.
Chapter three:
European night in Tarantino-land
Because Tarantino's movies are movie movies, references to other films come thick and fast. Since the 'Kill Bill' opuses, his soundtracks have been culled from existing movie music. Character names reference favourite actors (Aldo Raine is a nod to Aldo Ray; Hugo Stiglitz to ... well, Hugo Stiglitz). Movie posters, characters talking about movies, and clips from movies are part of the fabric of a Tarantino film. Prior to 'Inglourious Basterds', he revealed a very '70s aesthetic, culminating in his and Robert Rodriguez's homage to the era of exploitation movie drive-in double bills, 'Grindhouse'.
'Inglourious Basterds' throws open the doors of Tarantino's movie love wider than ever before - and none of it, as Manohla Dargis would have you believe, is polluted. Tarantino - knowledgably and contextually - incorporates the work of Leni Riefenstahl, G.W. Pabst and Paul Martin. The latter's 'Gluckskinder', a loose 1936 remake of 'It Happened One Night', is referenced during the first meeting between Shoshanna, now running a cinema under an assumed identity, and Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi sniper heralded as a hero of the nation. Smitten by Shoshanna, he wants her cinema to host the premiere of a propagandist film based on his exploits in which he plays himself.
Zoller proves one of the most slippery characters in the film, charming to the point of being self-effacing, almost sickened by the cinematic representation of his prowess as a marksman, yet still capable of ruthlessness and a threat to Shoshanna despite his feelings for her. Bruhl, impressive in everything I've seen him in since 'Good Bye Lenin!', does more good work here.
An interview with Tarantino at Sunset Gun goes into fascinating detail on the power Goebbels wielded in German film production during the Third Reich. Tarantino pertinently makes the point that many of the propaganda films produced (a staggering 800 titles during Goebbels' tenure) were comedies or historical epics. Parallels can be made, messages got across, without hammering the audience over the head in a blunt and obvious fashion. America and Britain made their fair share of propaganda films, too, many of them - including Powell and Pressburger's first eight collaborations - emerging as bona fide works of art.
Jumat, 21 Agustus 2009
Inglourious Basterds (first thoughts)
(We're out for a meal shortly, so I've only got a few minutes to blog a quick hit-and-run immediate thoughts type review. Expect a more considered article in the next few days. Oh, and I know I said August was foreign movies month on The Agitation of the Mind, but half of 'Inglourious Basterds' is in French or German and subtitled, so it kind of counts.)
*Broadly speaking, "I need me eight men ... we're gonna kill Nazis" doesn't really constitute a mission. It's more like, you know, a mission statement.
Kamis, 20 Agustus 2009
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
which translates as 'Every Man for Himself and God Against All'. I prefer this original title. It's apposite for a study in social hypocrisy and exploitation, even if it does make the film a harder sell!
'The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser' is based on historical events. In 1828, a young man was found on the streets of Nuremberg carrying a letter addressed to the captain of the city's cavalry regiment. The letter, unsigned, stated that Kaspar had been instructed in reading and writing and wanted to join the cavalry. It transpired he could write nothing beyond his name and his vocabulary was limited. What little he could explain indicated he'd spent his life chained up in a cellar. The council initially housed him in a gate tower under the care of a jailer; later, he took up residence with schoolteacher Friedrich Daumer. Public interest in Kaspar turned him into a celebrity-cum-sideshow freak. A much-debated conspiracy theory had him as the hereditary prince of Baden, swapped at birth with a dying baby so the Countess von Hochberg could ensure her son Leopold's ascension to the throne. (Historians have deemed this nonsensical.) Rumours continued to fly when Kaspar was the victim of an apparent attack with a razor in 1829. He died of a stab wound in 1833. His epitaph fuelled the legend: "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious."
Even the most cursory research on Kaspar Hauser (Wikipedia provides a good overview) reveals inconsistencies in his story of a lifetime's incarceration. Historical accounts show him as vain and quarrelsome. It has been suggested, plausibly, that the wounds he sustained from the "attacks" were self-inflicted. A film approaching the Kaspar Hauser story from the perspective that he was a fraud would be a fascinating project.
Herzog approaches the material not as the enigma of the English title - no speculation is given to Kaspar's identity or that of his guardian (an eerily shadowy figure in the early scenes) - but as a study of how society behaves towards Kaspar. The authorities question him (his non-response to stimuli is tested by feigned sword parries and a candle flame). The church tries to convert him (when it's established that he has no concept of God, the curt response is "he'll just have to have faith"). Children treat him almost as a plaything, encouraging him to recite nursery rhymes. Labourers mock him, deriving much hilarity from his fear of a chicken. The town council, concerned at how much he's costing them, happily exploit him. A visiting nobleman considers "adopting" him.
Herzog's Kasper Hauser is a metaphor for honest, unpretentious simplicity in a world defined by social strictures and scientific enquiry (the closing scenes have a group of surgeons remove and probe Kaspar's brain while a clerk chortles over the potential importance of his report on the autopsy). The Kaspar Hauser of Herzog's film may be the legend, but there's not a trace of hagiography or 19th century conspiracy theory in sight; instead, by eschewing mere facts, Herzog posits some probing questions about the human condition.
Selasa, 18 Agustus 2009
Whisper of the Heart
The opening credits of ‘Whisper of the Heart’ play out to "Country Roads", an incongruous choice given that the song is all about the rural idyll – fields, mountains, open spaces – and the film is set in the bustling sprawl of Toyko.
Shizuku, a 14-year old girl with a talent for writing, spoofs the song as "Concrete Roads". A copy of her lyric falls into the hands of self-assured 15-year old Seiji who passes judgement: "It’s just as corny as the original."
Shizuku, a typical young teenager for whom this minor slight is the end of the world as she knows it, storms off muttering "Stupid jerk, stupid jerk, stupid jerk."
The scene is funny, true to life, and beautifully animated – it’s the point at which, only a short while into the two-hour running time, ‘Whisper of the Heart’ completely won me over and remains one of my all-time favourite Studio Ghibli productions.
Although not directed by Hayao Miyazaki – it was made by his protégé Yoshifumi Kondo, who tragically died aged just 47 a few years after ‘Whisper of the Heart’ was released – it certainly has the look and feel of a Miyazaki film, owing in no small amount to the master himself having storyboarded it. More than that, though, I think it’s a case of ‘Whisper of the Heart’ being a Studio Ghibli film. A Ghibli is a Ghibli the way a Pixar is a Pixar and that in itself is a guarantee of quality. You don’t really have to worry about who directed it.
‘Whisper of the Heart’ defies easy synopsis – it’s more about family interrelationships, friendship and first love than an actual clearly-defined narrative – but two wonderfully random plot devices set things in motion. The first is voracious reader Shizuku’s realisation that every book she checks out of the library has already been borrowed by the same person. She’s intrigued; it fires her imagination.
Sabtu, 15 Agustus 2009
PERSONAL FAVES: Matador
Diego (Nacho Martinez) gets his jollies masturbating over video nasties; instructing his fashion model girlfriend Eva (Eva Cobo) to play dead during lovemaking; and committing the occasional sexually motivated murder.
Maria (Assumpta Serna) gets her jollies picking up men for sex and killing them, by the application of a stiletto-length hairpin to the back of the neck, at the point of orgasm.
Elsewhere, Eusebio Poncela does good work as the world-weary and moderately confused cop trying to make sense of it all, Carmen Maura makes the most of a slightly underwritten role as a case worker sympathetic to Angel, and Chus Lampreave is a hoot as Eva's cluckingly disapproving mother.
Alongside 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down', 'Matador' is Almodovar's most sexually charged film; like that slightly less successful work, what could easily have been an another anonymous title in the "top shelf" section of the rental shop (what a mate of mine would call "a trouser arouser from the erection section") comes to life through the director's provocative humour.
Kamis, 13 Agustus 2009
Rabu, 12 Agustus 2009
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Plotwise, it offers a peculiar melange of crime movie, social drama, sex comedy and small town surrealism a la David Lynch. In a nutshell: shortly before his death, vagrant philosopher Taro (Kazuo Kitamura) recounts to his friend Yosuke (Yakusho Koji) an episode from his younger days involving the theft of a golden buddha and the hiding of same in a house overlooking a red bridge in a small village. Taro's getting old; wannabe entrepreneur Yosuke's business has gone bankrupt and he can't even land the poorest paying office job.
When Taro passes on, Yosuke - pressured by his ex-wife to continue maintenance payments - decides to follow up his story. He finds the village and the red bridge in short order, and loses no time insinuating himself into the house in question, whose current owner is the eccentric but captivating Saeko (Shimizu Misa). The first time Yosuke meets Saeko, she's shoplifting a piece of cheese from a local convenience store. She also appears to be peeing herself. Intrigued, Yosuke soon discovers that Saeko suffers from water retention and can only "vent" as a result of kleptomania or orgasm.
So far, so quirky. Then things begin to take a darker turn. One of Taro's fellow vagrant's shows up, also looking for the golden buddha, a reminder of Yosuke's erstwhile motives. There are revelations about Taro. Yosuke picks up on local gossip regarding Saeko and discovers he bears a strong resemblance to a former lover of hers who came to a bad end. Saeko's orgasmic deluges ebb to a trickle and Yosuke suspects infidelity.
Senin, 10 Agustus 2009
Fata Morgana
'Fata Morgana' is hypnotic and, appropriately for a film whose very title means "mirage", hallucinatory. There's no adequate way of writing about it. More than any other film I think I've seen, 'Fata Morgana' exists on its own terms, refuses to define itself, and is its own achievement.
Here are some images, punctuated with Herzog's own words:
The first scene of the film is made up of eight shots of eight different airplanes landing one after the other. I had the feeling that audiences who were still watching by the sixth or seventh landing would stay to the end.
All the machinery ... was part of an abandoned Algerian army depot. I liked the desolation and the remains of civilization that were out there.