plato's cave fifty seven (being a film journal)

3.5.2018
James Ivory - The White Countess - 2005

First time seeing this film. Was very happy Mr. Ivory won for Call Me by Your Name at the Oscars. Beautiful film by him, as was this The White Countess staring the lovely Natasha Richardson who died quite tragically, and Ralph Fiennes.

3.6.2018
Arthur Hiller - The In-Laws - 1979

Second time seeing this. Not surprised Criterion put it out, a really great film. Completely absurd, Falk and Arkin are a great comedy duo. James Hong and David Paymer really stand out. Headspinning nonsense.

3.7.2018
David Mackenzie - Starred-Up - 2013

Second time seeing this. Great fucking film! Ben Mendelsohn as always pushes it to 11, as does Jack O'Connell. One of the best prison films, just unrelenting.

3.8.2018
Stephen Frears - Prick Up Your Ears - 1987

Second time seeing this. Alfred Molino is just one hell of an actor. Compare this roll to Boogie Nights! As is Mr. Oldman. Some fantastic stuff in this film, from talking about buggering The Beatles to the final scene. Worth repeat viewings.

3.9.2018
Ryan Coogler - Creed - 2015

I really liked this film but I think the end fight scene was lacking. Too much abridgement rather than giving the match some space.  Grew up loving Rocky and seeing Stallone doing his thing was really rewarding, even though he has not been in many A list films, he is quite a subtle actor. Didn't recognize Tessa Thompson from Annihilation until my wife pointed it out, quite a different role for her. Enthusiastic about Ritchie Coster, a character actor that always commands your attention. One of those guys.

Sean Penn - Into the Wild - 2007

Didn't dig this film. I think the main actor and his character did not appeal to me. Sean Penn is practically god as actor though, I want to watch The Pledge again soon as it is a proper directorial effort by Mr. Penn.

Whit Stillman - Barcelona - 1994

Gave this a try even though I have not liked Mr. Stillman's films. Hard to comprehend what he is going after for this viewer, reminds me a bit of Hal Hartley films, but lacks the subtleties and idiosyncratic direction that Mr. Harley achieves. Not my rhythm.

3.10.2018
Jonathan Kaplan - The Accused - 1988

Third time seeing this, once around the time it came out (in high school) and then a year or so after. Besides the rotten music which plagues many films from this time period, it has some pretty shocking scenes. Was very surprised the rape scene was as intense as it was, if it was in a film now it would stand out. Made me want to watch Demme's The Silence of Lambs (for the billionth time), on the new Criterion version. Also other Demme films from that time period which PT Anderson brought up in his Fresh Air conversation. Jodie Foster is outstanding in the film.

3.11.2018
Alejandro G. Iñárritu - The Revenant - 2015

Third time seeing this. Breathtaking photography by Emmanuel Lubezki, every damn frame is so lush. The soundtrack by Alva Noto, Bryce Dessner, and Ryuichi Sakamoto is perfect. Also features Messiaen's Oraison in the post sleeping in a dead horse walk. Long virtuosic shots remind the viewer very much of Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. Nearly perfect film.

3.12.2018
Bruce Beresford - Tender Mercies - 1983

Second viewing, love this film. Tender Mercies fits in with the early nineteen eighties nihilism and anti-romanticism described in an earlier post.  Similar to 70s films but in a much plainer style, with an economy of means. Mentioned earlier, something magic about these films before the Hughes pack stunk up the joint. Watching it, I couldn't put my finger on where I saw Tess Harper, until I looked her up and saw her as Jesse's mother in Breaking Bad, Loretta Bell from No Country for Old Men, and an episode of True Detective. Always a pleasure to see Wilford Brimley, also has a small role with one of the less fortunate characters from the second season of Twin Peaks, Lenny von Dohlen. Photographed by Russell Boyd, who shot Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Also, the only thing better than a Robert Duvall film is a Robert Duvall film where he plays country music.

Mark Robson - The Harder They Fall - 1956

Last Bogart film, third time seeing this. Great story, kind of an interesting contrast to In A Lonely Place where he has such high standards, here he is a sort of good guy just content to make some money as he just doesn't give a shit and wants to not struggle (until his consciousness has a reawakening). Both are such good Bogart films. I forgot which film it was from until it happened, and literally nearly had a heart attach from laughter, but I love the lady yelling "you yellow dog!" over and over after the main boxing match. Such crazy nonsense, really beautiful stuff! One thing many contemporary films lack is this "business" that can be so damn powerful. Great looking film with lots of extreme darks, shot by Burnett Guffey who also shot From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde, Birdman of Alcatraz, In a Lonely Place, Nightfall and many others. Also features Val Avery, the great character actor from films such as Minnie and Moskowitz, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Hud, Faces, and The Long, Hot Summer.

3.14.2018
Alan Parker - Mississippi Burning - 1988

Third viewing. Very interesting music by Trevor Jones, sort of post-kraut.... intense stuff, possibly overly used but gives a specific mood to the film. Watching this now one wonders if this country has progressed much since these practically medieval days? A good film to remind one of the continual presence of fascist swines in government : They Live. Watching just aesthetically: the cast really is strong - Gene Hackman and Willem Defoe, both at their best. Frances McDormand in a really wonderful early role. Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker, Pruitt Taylor Vince and R. Lee Ermey as some dirty cowardly mellon farmers. Great film!

3.15.2018
Stephen Frears - Philomena - 2013

Second viewing. Very nice film. Another one to get you angry about the poverty of integrity in this world.

3.16.2018
Gus Van Sant - Good Will Hunting - 1997

Fourth or fifth time with this film. Remember not liking it when it came out but gave it another chance a few years or so after it came out and have watched it quite a few times since then. Just one of those great 90s films with some really elegant acting : Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgård,  George Plimpton, Casey Affleck and of course Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Those songs by Elliott Smith are such gems. Photography by Jean-Yves Escoffier who shot Rounders right after this. Over the years have enjoyed many films by Mr. Van Sant including his Béla Tarr, and partially Alan Clarke inspired trilogy (Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days), My Own Private Idaho, and To Die For.

3.17.2018
Michael Mann - Heat - 1995

Probably one of my favorite films from the 90s, saw this in the theater with my father and have been religiously devoted to it ever since, have watched close to fifteen times, maybe more. De Niro really stands out in this, one of his best roles. I really can't say I like Val Kilmer much as an actor (probably after seeing The Doors) but he is so subtle and powerful in this role, as are Tom Sizemore, Ted "Put the fucking lotion in the basket" Levine, Wes Studi, Ashley Judd, Tom Noonan, Danny Trejo, Hank Azaria, William Fichtner, Dennis Haysbert (in Far From Heaven), and quite a few others. Guitar driven soundtrack really exemplifies the style of Mann (in the John Carpenter tradition?), with music by the heaviest of ECM guitarists Terje Rypdal, and also Moby (Joy Division cover New Dawn Fades and God moving over the face of the waters). Had in my mind that Moby was not of interest without listening to his music, but I really loved his contribution to the recent Twin Peaks and his work in this film. Also songs by Lisa Gerrard, Michael Brook, Brian Eno, Elliot Goldenthal, and Kronos Quartet and Einstürzende Neubauten (The song Armenia). Heat was shot by the great Dante Spinotti, photographer of Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, L.A. Confidential, The Insider, Wonder Boys, and a few others. The final shootout scene is so masterly constructed and a perfect example of how photography, editing, sound design, music, acting and direction can sometimes come together so perfectly. Starting with Brian Eno's song Force Marker keeping rhythm, basically a loop during the robbery and exit, the tension builds to a near breaking point. As soon as gun fire erupts the music stops dead and the volume of the firing just becomes defining. Still one of the most virtuosic and visceral action scenes ever in a film, after quite a few viewings I still look so forward to it, the power is like what I imagine a junky feels when shooting up..... reminds one of coitus as well.

plato's cave fifty four (being a film journal) : early nineteen eighties nihilism and anti-romanticism

Recently posted some criticism of the currently popular trend of paying hommage and/or to pastiche 1980s films and aesthetics. Many positive comments were received from people who have similar feelings about this and I decided to finally start an analysis of a side chapter in film history that occurred in the early 1980s and came to an end after about four years with the introduction of works by John Hughes, the brat pack, and the like of right proper bastards. This dreadful business came in and pretty much destroyed an even trajectory of film history that really culminated in the 1970s and a few years into the 1980s.

Notes on a personal history with the cinema of the 1980s : This viewer was born in '74, and was a latchkey kid who had cable and later a VHS player. Starting in the late 70s, I started watching a ton of film, mostly on TV and often times at the theater with my mother.  My father would invite me to sit in on a lot of films he would get on VHS a little later on. I started with watching 70s films and inevitably moved into 80s films through my teens. By the time my late teens hit, a pretty strong dislike for the majority of 1980s cinema was in full swing, with the exception of works like They Live and Repo Man, which presented a clear criticism of the decade. Through my twenties, the 80s represented a decade in film to stay the hell away from and it was not until my thirties that I started to see hints of nihilism, darkness, dystopianism, and anti-romanticism in some slightly obscure works of the early 1980s. One of the first film that comes to mind is Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting from 1982, and the first one that will be analyzed at a certain level. The question remains after years of watching these... what are the qualities that make these films so distinct? Why are these films so obscure now even with youngsters that live and breath the 80s (and now 90s) culture? These early 80s films actually seem more relevant to contemporary film and the world in general. The world of Hughes is like some kind of escape, why does a highly sophisticated culture of young people, in terms of political awareness, choose escapism in film? Now in my 40s, I can't completely deny the pull of the typical 80s film, I have rewatched many over the last few years, but in all honestly, the majority of them just leave me feeling nothing, whereas a film like Moonlighting is just so alive and relevant.

To give a little more context, some other classic films of interest in this early 80s would include Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way from 1981, Sidney J. Furie's The Entity from 1982, Ken Russell's Altered States from 1980, Andrzej Żuławski's Possession from 1981, Alan Clarke's Made in Britain from 1982, Barry Levinson's Diner from 1982, Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf from 1983, Robert Bresson's L'Argent from 1983 (The fucking master!), James Cameron's The Terminator from 1984, John Carpenter's The Thing from 1982, and many more.

Some notes on style and structure in Moonlighting :

The film starts with unsettling electronic music by Hans Zimmer played over credits followed by some distorted speaking from a Polish airline announcer (pictured above). Immediately the viewer feels unbalanced. A slow audio dissolve follows to an electronic pulsing heard over a close up of Jeremy Irons (pulsing light out of focus in the distance, image above). All very strange with brilliant sound design, cinematography and editing. The story begins with Irons (Nowak) and his Walserian dialogue which becomes the dominant element in the film. His inner voice stumbles between mumbling, indistinct nonsense, worries and caper-like planning.  Nowak is our anti-hero, an outsider in the Colin Wilson sense. There are not too many films that can pull off 2 hours of picture and sound with a story that you can describe in less than 20 seconds and that really has almost nothing of interest to the quotidian viewer. Perhaps similar to the stories of Beckett... like Molloy and his sucking-stones, moving the stones from pocket to pocket.

The story in this film is so wonderfully absurd: Polish men under the leadership of Nowak, smuggle tools and money into London to work on a rich Pole's flat. They have a time line and budget, and have trouble meeting both. They run out of money and Nowak must resort to thieving, using some truly headscratching methods that are actually quite brilliant. Luck has much to do with his success.

The film was shot by Tony Pierce-Roberts, who photographed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV Mini-Series), A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day.

The sound design (by David Stephenson) is so lush in this film. One early scene when the Poles enter the dwelling begins with a doorbell ringing and slowly disintegrated to footsteps, distant drones and vague electronic sounds, followed by pigeon wings flapping with slight reverb.

Part of what makes these films so uniquely strange is that they have the rawness of 70s cinema, but through the magic of cinema (sound design, editing, cinematography) this rawness is brought to a surreal-like level. The more well-known films of the 80s seem to be a bastardization of this magic. Post Star Wars bullshit, films that push your buttons and make attempts to take away your ability to be an intelligent viewer, these facile experiences are what Duchamp called "retinal pleasure." Early 80s films have a hyper-realism related more to Kafka and Walser than the rotgut of typical 80s film.

Humor, absurdity and isolationism. The world seen through the eyes of the outsider.

Thanks to TW and TM for discussions on this early 80s strangeness. Any readers know of writings on this subject, I would be interested.