He Wrote Me...

Film: Sans Soleil (Sunless)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various media.




















If you look up Sans Soleil (Sunless) on the Internet and start reading through the criticism or the reviews on IMDB.com, you’ll see the phrase “Sans Soleil is a unique meditation on [insert subject(s)]” over and over. Evidently, this is an art film geek’s way of telling people that this is an art geek film, one that can be appreciated only by those who wear berets, sip Chateau d’Something, and smoke clove cigarettes.

So let’s get this out of the way right away: Chris Marker’s film is absolutely a meditation on life, culture, art, time, and more. As for unique, I’m not entirely sure. There were large chunks of this film that reminded me pretty strongly of films like Mondo Cane, even down to the actual filmed deaths of wild creatures and some of the more disturbing parts of the circle of life—vultures pecking at the eyes of a dead giraffe, for instance.

The film is essentially a 100+ minute montage of images, primarily from Guinea-Bissau and Japan. There is no chronology or story; instead, the film is a series of short monologues delivered by a narrator, who is herself describing letters she has received from the filmmaker, Marker’s alter ego. Parts of the film act as history lesson on Guinea-Bissau and its rise to nation status from Portuguese colony and its bloody birth and early years. Other parts are commentary on Japanese television and culture, as well as the emerging culture of video games—still brand new in the film’s year of 1982.

Marker draws metaphors everywhere, linking Pac-Man to life, for instance, although not in the way that I would have. He comments through his narrator that the game symbolizes the relationship of individual and environment. To my mind the metaphor works better seeing the eponymous hero of the game as an endless consumer, pursued through an unending maze by little personalized demons that eventually trap and kill him…but then I’m not the filmmaker here, am I?

Regardless, Marker does not shy away from terrible images, seeking a sort of beauty in horror that he attributes is also a part of Japanese culture. Even pain must be exquisite, he says, and he gives us a taste of the horrific. It is a terrible moment to see a giraffe shot through the neck, blood fountaining in twin geysers from each side of the neck, terrible to see a man walk up and put a rifle bullet through the creatures head, terrible to see the giraffe’s fate as vultures plunge neck-deep into the eye socket. Terrible also are the images of death of the people of Guinea-Bissau plagued by war and revolution after revolution.

It is entirely possible that I am not the right person to truly comment on Marker’s work here. What I can say is that this film is special. It comes across not so much as a film with a cohesive or connected story, but as a meandering expression of ideals and philosophy. It comes almost as stream of consciousness as the narrator skips from topic to topic and back again, going where the images take her, or perhaps the images instead follow her train of thought through the letters received from Marker’s persona. It feels almost like reading someone’s private journal entries, provided the author majored in philosophy.

Is it unique? In some ways certainly, although Mondo Cane is its natural parent and Koyaanisqatsi is a direct sibling. I can say that while I probably didn’t understand all of it, I found it visually fascinating, even when it was also visually disturbing and terrible. I was never bored by it.

I feel like I need to watch it again, or perhaps again and again, to truly understand what Marker was trying to accomplish here. It’s a film that doesn’t seem to do well on a single viewing, only acquiring meaning and relevance through repeated exposure. It demands and deserves to be taken seriously and studied, and that may be its most defining character trait. It is important, almost certainly in ways that I only partially fathom.

This is not truly a documentary, because it documents nothing beyond our unseen and unheard author’s musings, but it does play and feel like a documentary. Also, I watched this film on several different media, so it’s difficult for me to pinpoint exactly where I watched it. I think, ultimately, Marker would approve of that.

A few last notes. I was tempted to watch Vertigo, since a lot of parallels are drawn to that film, but I simply didn't have time. Second, I can see where many would find the soundtrack here annoying or disturbing, but I really liked it, particularly at the end. Third, films like this don't bore me, but they do have a tendency to make me sleepy.

Why to watch Sans Soleil: Interesting and meditative.
Why not to watch: Disjointed and sometimes gruesome.

Where Your Eyes Don't Go

Film: Chelovek s Kinoapparatom (The Man with the Movie Camera)
Format: NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

Often, when I watch a film, particularly for this blog, I multi-task. I’ve made dinner while watching something on the laptop, for instance. I’ve also used a film to act as an excuse to fold laundry. Last night was a variation on that theme: I watched Chelovek s Kinoapparatom (The Man with the Movie Camera) while ironing. Ironing is new for me, which means it takes me awhile to get it done, and a movie seems like the right thing to do.

This is not a typical film, however. Director/producer/etc. Dziga Vertov (who started life as Dennis Kaufman) wanted to do something entirely new with film. Doing something new was, at least in terms of innovation, easier in 1929 when film was still a new medium. For his innovation, Vertov decided to essentially follow the path of a day in cities like Moscow and Kiev, and that is the extent of his story. There are no characters, no actors, no sets, no story, and no title cards. In fact, the only thing like a title card that appears here is the translation of written items that are filmed.

Vertov does more than just film what he sees, though. This is undoubtedly the most heavily edited and altered silent film ever made. Vertov uses every trick he can muster. Scenes appear in fast and slow motion, there is stop-motion animation, frames slow and speed up as we watch them, freezing for a moment and then running again. Parts of the film run backwards, allowing a pair of men to start with a jumble of chess pieces and end with a perfectly set board. Images are superimposed on each other, showing workers at the center of their machinery. Vertov also frequently uses a horizontal split screen, showing two crowd scenes or street scenes, one on top of the other.

As there is no story or plot here, what the audience is left with is the images, both individually and in series. Many of the images are beautiful while others (a woman giving birth, several women nude from the waist up) are mildly shocking for a 1929 audience. Others are used to extol the glories of the Soviet state. We get, for instance, many shots of workers and machinery, often sped to the extreme, demonstrating the great productivity of the Soviet worker. We also get a number of shots of attractive and fit Soviet youth participating in various track and field events—tossing a javelin, running hurdles, and more.

Or are we? It could possibly be argued that the factory scenes in particular aren’t extolling much virtue, but instead reducing the workers to the level of the machine, where only productivity matters and placing another label on another package is more important than the person him- or herself. In fact, one of the opening scenes shows a city coming to life in the morning. Many of those people coming to life appear to be street vagrants, sleeping on benches or on sidewalks—hardly the sort of image that speaks to a benevolent state.

The most impressive part of this film, at least the version that I watched, is the accompanying score. The version I watched uses a score created and performed by the Alloy Orchestra, in part using the notes and directions of the score Vertov wanted. This is a tremendous effort—the music is appropriate and fascinating, and performed here with such quality that I can’t imagine it being handled by another group. In fact, as I type this, some of that music is running through my head. It is impossible for me now to separate this film from this soundtrack—and I don’t think I’d want to if I could.

The film I am most reminded of here is Koyaanisqatsi. It would not surprise me if I learned that Godfrey Reggio studied Vertov’s work when creating his own film. The juxtaposition of images and ideas leads me to believe that the one is the natural son of the other.

Ultimately, Chelovek s Kinoapparatom is engaging and interesting, but not the sort of film I’d like to have as a steady diet. I’m pleased to have seen it, and would watch it again, but not for a long, long time.

Why to watch Chelovek s Kinoapparatom: Innovation and history
Why not to watch: No plot, no characters, no nothing.

Head Trips

Films: Manhunter, Naked Lunch
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library on middlin’-sized living room television

Sometimes plans don’t work out. My original plan for the night was to do a Hannibal Lector double feature—the original screen adaptation of the character as well as the most famous version of the character. Sadly, my VCR ate my tape of Silence of the Lambs immediately after I finished watching Manhunter. But we adapt, we change, we do something else instead. So rather than making today about Hannibal the Cannibal, I’ve decided instead to look at the weird and the offbeat.

Manhunter, as mentioned above, is the first film ever made featuring the character of Hannibal. This is not the character you are expecting if all you’ve seen is Silence of the Lambs. For starters, in this film, his name is spelled Lecktor. Second, and critical, is that in this film the bad doctor is played by noted actor Brian Cox, of whom I am a huge fan.

If you are a Hannibal fan, this is a story you’ve seen before, because it was remade as Red Dragon, which is also the name of the book the film is based on. It is, much like Silence, the story of an FBI agent trailing a serial killer and getting help from the depraved killer in prison. The agent here is William Graham (William Peterson), who is also the man who caught Lecktor in the first place. The case caused Graham to break with reality and retire from the Bureau. Graham’s specialty was (and to some extent still is) profiling. To profile killers, though, he needs to get deep inside their mind, essentially seeing what they see, and in some cases becoming what they become.

Graham is pulled from retirement by Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), who needs help with a new serial killer. The killer is known by the FBI as the Tooth Fairy because he bites his victims. His victims are entire families, always cut down in a group during the full moon. Based on two crime scenes, the FBI knows quite a bit about the man (who is disturbingly played by Tom Noonan). They know he is very tall and blonde; they know his shoe size and his fascination with the lunar phase. What they don’t know is how he chooses his victims or where he will strike next.

Enlisted in finding the killer is a reporter for a National Enquirer-style paper called the Tattler. The reporter, played by Stephen Lang, is a creep and willing to do anything for a story. More important for Graham, the FBI discovers that the Tooth Fairy has been corresponding with Lecktor through the Tattler’s personal ads. To get the killer into the open, Graham feeds Lang false information, which leads to a terrifying confrontation between the reporter and the killer—one of the great scenes in the film.

While Graham and team become frustrated by the lack of movement on their case, the Tooth Fairy’s real identity—Francis Dollarhyde—has a change in his own life. While on the one hand he believes himself to be becoming something more than he was through his killings, he also finds someone who he believes can make him happy. This is Reba McClane (Joan Allen), who works at the same film processing studio he does, despite her being blind. Francis connects with her, but also feels betrayed by her, and puts her into his sites just as Graham begins to understand precisely what motivates the man.

It’s a good story. The real selling point, though, is a very different take on the Hannibal character. Cox isn’t in the film much, but he casts a long shadow over it. We gain terrific insight into the man when he uses his one phone call a week to discover the home address of Graham and his family, and then sends an encrypted message to the Tooth Fairy telling him to find and destroy Graham’s wife and son. He is a very different take on the character than is Anthony Hopkins’s version. Cox’s Lecktor is cold and calculating. He is filled with equal parts feigned innocence and malice disguised by concern. It’s such a different take that his version was overwhelmed by that of Hopkins in later films.

As for Naked Lunch, you tell me. The book it is loosely based on, or at least named after, was thought to be unfilmable until David Cronenberg attempted it. He evidently found it unfilmable as well and included several other books by Burroughs as well as aspects of Burroughs’s real life into something that is less a narrative and more an two-hour long fever dream of hallucination.

Bill Lee (Peter Weller) is an exterminator whose wife Joan (Judy Davis) has become addicted to the bug powder he uses to kill roaches. Bill himself is showing signs of addiction to the bug powder himself and begins to have significant hallucinations that center around gigantic bugs, many of which manifest themselves as bug-machine hybrids.

One day, Lee comes home to find his wife having sex with one of his friends while another friend reads droning poetry. Lee has been instructed by one of his hallucinatory giant bugs to kill his wife (and to make it…tasty…), so he shoots her in the head while playing “William Tell.” He flees, at least in his mind, to a place called Interzone, which is also the headquarters of an organization called Interzone Incorporated.

It seems that Lee is an agent for the bugs, and has been sent to Interzone to write reports on his typewriter, which is also a giant bug, and also his contact for the agency he works for. However, in the real world, it turns out that he has been mailing his “reports” to one of his friends, who has shown it to a publisher, who wants to publish it under the name of Naked Lunch. Along the way, Lee also encounters Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), who might be a doctor and might also be in charge of a drug running conspiracy, shipping a drug called “black meat” made from gigantic Brazilian aquatic centipedes. He encounters Joan Frost, who is a dead ringer (no pun intended) for his dead wife. This Joan is married to Tom Frost (Ian Holm), who might be an Interzone agent, or could be just a hallucination.

The film is both real and unreal, existing in the real world as well as the vaguely Arabic Interzone of Bill Lee’s subconscious mind. I don’t get it. I’m also not sure if I like it. This is the second time I’ve watched this film, and just like the first time, it gave me a headache that required multiple ibuprofen to conquer.

I can’t make it make sense. I defy anyone to—even Cronenberg.

Why to watch Manhunter: The original take on Hannibal Lec(k)t(o)r.
Why not to watch: Thirty minutes of Inna-Gadda-Da-Vita.

Why to watch Naked Lunch: I don’t know.
Why not to watch: I don’t know this, either.

Sex is Good

Films: L’Age D’Or (The Age of Gold), W.R.: Misterije Organizma (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism)
Format: DVD from New Lennox Public Library through interlibrary loan (Gold); DVD from Rockford Public Library (Organism), both on laptop.

I have a degree in linguistics. There are a few realities about linguists that non-linguists don’t know. First, we don’t tend to correct the way people talk. Linguists don’t tell people how they should talk; they study how people actually do talk. Second, all linguists love the art of Magritte. Just like engineers and mathematicians love Escher (I do, too), linguists love a guy who can create a painting of a pipe, write “this is not a pipe” under it, and get away with it.

Magritte was a surrealist, so it wouldn’t shock me if you thought I was really into surrealist art. You’d be wrong. I have an appreciation for some surrealism, but a lot of it leaves me cold. It reminds me a lot of a bunch of Monty Python routines where things will just appear for no reason. That’s surrealism I could get behind. I’m never sure with most surrealists, though, if they’re serious or if I should be laughing at it. I seriously can’t tell. This is especially true with surrealist film.

L’Age D’Or (The Age of Gold) is a perfect example of this. It’s an hour of virtually plotless weirdness that I’m not sure what to make of. Was Bunuel trying to make a statement? Was he just screwing around with his audience? Was the film banned because of something Bunuel did or was it banned because the powers that be assumed that he did something worth banning? It’s a legitimate question when it comes to surrealist film. Regardless of whether or not there is something troubling in L’Age D’Or, it didn’t receive its American debut until nearly fifty years after it was created.

I’d love to go into the plot, but it’s pretty much impossible. It starts as a documentary about scorpions, then becomes…well…I don’t really know. A guy walks down a mountain. There are bishops chanting on the seashore. Guys talk about people from Majorca. A group of people walk to the seashore and the bishops are now skeletons. A woman giggles and the crowd turns to see a man and a woman moments away from getting it on while rolling in the mud. They chase her away, and two guys handcuff our lothario and walk off with him. They turn up later in Rome.

Then there’s a party. A guy shoots his son in broad daylight. The lothario from earlier slaps a woman at the party and people take greater offense to this than the man shooting his child. The guy and the daughter (I think) of the woman he slapped go off to the garden and come moments away from humping each other. They’re interrupted by a phone call, and while he goes off to the phone, she fellates(!) the toes of a statue. Then she goes off with another guy, and our hero has a temper tantrum that involves tossing stuff out a window. Then there’s a reference to the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom involving a guy who looks like Jesus. And then it ends.

Of course, this doesn’t touch all of the bizarre imagery that shows up throughout. There’s a cow on a bed, for instance. The guy’s temper tantrum involves throwing a burning tree, a bishop, and a gigantic plow out a window. Seriously, I don’t know if I should be laughing at it or thoughtfully stroking my beard and commenting on the deep meaning that Bunuel obviously meant with his juxtaposition of elements.

If you put a gun (or, if the surrealist in you prefers, a bright purple socket wrench) to my head, I’d tell you that I think this film is about sex. It’s about the fact that society tends to have a negative view of sex publically but has the opposite opinion privately, and this disparity between our natural desire for it and the societal pressure against it leads to problems and often to violence. That’s a guess, of course. It could just be that Bunuel is screwing with us all.

Is it good? Is it meaningful? Is it worth watching? Hard to say, honestly. I think I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t know that I’d call it good or meaningful, or really anything other than valuable because of what it is. Sorry if that’s a cop-out. I’m entitled every once in awhile.

We’re staying in weird territory with W.R.: Misterije Organizma (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism).While I don’t have any proof at this point in my lengthy countdown, my guess is that this is about as close to pornography as exists here, considering that the opening ten minutes includes footage of people having sex, albeit in sepia tone and in a strange, hexagonal format.

This film is about half a documentary on the work of William Reich. Reich was a psychoanalyst who worked with Freud, attempting to rationalize Freud’s work with communism. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, Reich fled, eventually winding up in the States. Here is where things started to get really bizarre. Reich claimed that he had discovered a form of energy he called “orgone” that was released during sex. He built a variety of devices that were supposed to harness this orgone and transfer it to patients. Eventually, the Food and Drug Administration got an injunction against Reich, preventing the manufacture and sale of these devices. When Reich refused to comply, he was sentenced to two years in prison, and died before he was released. In an event uncommon for the U.S. government, Reich’s works were burned by the FDA.

Frankly, it’s beyond the scope of this blog and my education to discuss Reich’s theories or the possible existence of cosmic sex energy. I’m not even going to try. The video of people going through Reich’s techniques are some of the damnedest things I’ve seen on a screen.

So what’s the other half? I dunno. A lot of it feels like filmed performance art. The guy wearing the orange jumpsuit and the metal helmet, for instance, feels very much like this.

The rest is a film with an actual story that acts as a metaphor for Yugoslavia’s struggle under Russian communism. Yugoslavia here is represented by Milena (Milena Dravic), a communist revolutionary who preaches that free love needs to be a part of the socialist state—that without sex, the sex instinct gets sublimated into other things that eventually led to social problems and, more importantly, the problems of the world. Her roommate, Jagoda (Jagoda Kaloper) is, for lack of a better term, the local slut, and thus obviously another believer in free love.

Milena’s argument at its heart is the opposite end of Orwell’s argument in 1984 for the existence of the Anti-Sex League. In Orwell’s world, the Anti-Sex League existed as a group that avoided all sexual contact, turning any sexual fervor into love and enthusiasm for the party. Milena essentially argues that without sex, the human race becomes something willingly led into anything.

Much of this story is intercut with the other pieces—discussions of artists, sessions of Reich’s work, and large groups of people screaming, shaking, and engaging in vaguely sexual non-sex. It’s plenty damn disturbing—primal scream therapy is not a pretty thing to look at, and a lot of Reich’s sessions look quite a bit like this. It’s nearly impossible to tell if the people in this footage are at the height of passion or the absolute pinnacle of horrendous pain.

Milena’s story revolves around a Russian ice skater, whom she seduces. It would spoil the film to reveal the ending of this particular affair, but it’s safe to say that filmmaker Dusan Makavejev wasn’t attempting to hide the metaphor; he named his Russian ice skater Vladamir Illyich, which was Lenin’s given name.

Is it good? I don’t really know. I feel almost unable to judge it. It’s not something I’ll watch again. It’s not the kind of thing I would normally watch. Controversial, certainly, but more bizarre than I’m comfortable with. I can’t think of a single person I’d recommend it to.

Why to watch L’Age D’or: Few movies swing this kind of influence.
Why not to watch: It makes no sense.

Why to watch W.R.: Misterije Organizma: Weird ideas never killed anyone.
Why not to watch: Weird ideas can give you a whanging headache.

Return to Spain

Film: Viridiana
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

First, sorry for the late post. I had some minor computer problems that prevented posting until now.

I understand why many people have problems with a lot of foreign films, and with art films in the specific. Watching a bunch of random, unconnected events and being told by someone smoking a clove cigarette that it is filled with meaning that only the most uncomprehending boob would not be moved by is frustrating. I tend to dislike things like this as well. I have no problem with movies I have to think about to understand, but I also want something more than just what someone tells me is art. For me, there has to be a story to connect with in addition to that artistic statement.

There are few filmmakers who made stronger artistic statements than Luis Bunuel. A film like Viridiana, filmed in his native Spain after a self-imposed exile of years, contains any number of symbolic statements and artistic ideas. However, it also contains a compelling story.

The title character, Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is more precisely Sister Viridiana, or soon will be. She stands on the brink of taking her vows to make her a nun. In the days before this, her Mother Superior suggests she take a few days and visit her uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey). Jaime has paid for her education and upkeep, but despite this, she has no affection for him, and considers him to be a man of low moral character. She goes, under orders, and discovers that she was both right and wrong.

Don Jaime is a recluse, living on a virtually deserted farm that grows nothing. He asks Viridiana to stay with him and she refuses. To compel her to stay, he drugs her with the assistance of his servant, Ramona (Margarita Lozano). Jaime is extremely conflicted. His wife died on their wedding night in her wedding dress, and Viridiana evidently looks quite a bit like her. In the years that have passed since his failed wedding, Jaime has made an extreme fetish of his late wife’s wedding clothes. He convinces Viridiana to wear the wedding dress before he drugs her, and then attempts to rape her inert body. Conscience overrides him, though. He confesses everything to her, then hangs himself.

What’s left then is the estate, which is to be decided between Viridiana and Jorge (Francisco Rabal), Don Jaime’s son from a pre-marital affair. Viridiana wishes to use her new wealth to help the poor and begins taking care of the beggars in the area, who abuse her largesse as the more cynical of us might well expect them to. And so, the film is in many ways about the real life education of the title character, who learns that the real world is not simply the good-evil, black-white dichotomy she may have envisioned from her convent education.

Throughout, Bunuel injects any number of references, symbols, and allusions, which is to be expected from a director so attuned to his art. For instance, early in the film, Viridiana sleepwalks into her uncle’s room. She throws her knitting into the fire (casting away from her the simple realities and comforts of life, or perhaps throwing away something that connects her to the convent), scoops up a basket of ashes from his fire, and dumps these on his bed. Ashes on his bed—his marriage was destroyed before it could start, and since then, his life in bed has been nothing more than ashes. Additionally, she apologizes for her somnambulism and says that ashes represent penitence and death. Shortly afterwards, Jaime repents of his own actions and kills himself.

Later in the film, the beggars take advantage of Viridiana’s hospitality, conducting an orgy of food and sex in the dining room. Unable to resist this temptation, Bunuel places them all on the same side of a long table, enacting a sinful, beggars’ version of The Last Supper. What’s the message here? That all people are both filled with sin and degradation and can simultaneously be uplifted and holy? Perhaps. That religion itself is filled with nothing more than low grade criminals and the dregs of society? Perhaps. Pick the one that works for you. However, upon its release, the film was banned in Spain and denounced by the Vatican. Use this to guide you in the meaning you select.

There are some politics here as well, which is probably why the film was banned in Franco’s Spain. The film takes place in the present, or at least the present of 1961, roughly 20 years after the fascist revolution of Franco. Early in the film, Don Jaime comments that in his fields, the weeds have taken over for the last 20 years, and that spiders have infested the top floor of his house. It’s not a difficult conclusion to reach that Bunuel was speaking about Spain itself with these lines.

What makes a film like Viridiana worth watching is not the artistic elements or Bunuel’s statements throughout. What makes it worthwhile is that, like any great artist, Bunuel’s message is personal both in the sense that it comes directly from him, and that it can be interpreted in many different ways according to the thoughts, ideas, and predilections of the viewer. What makes it truly great, however, is that even without the symbolism, artistic points, and attempts at deep meaning that extends beyond the short running time, the story is good enough to carry itself. Viridiana can be enjoyed for its own sake without worrying at every turn or in every shot what mood, thought, or artistic ideal Bunuel was trying to portray.

Why to watch Viridiana: Story and art hand in hand.
Why not to watch: Bunuel loved to shock, no less here than anywhere.

Music Makes a Difference

Film: Koyaanisqatsi
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on big ol’ television.


I first watched Koyaanisqatsi either at the end of my tenure in high school or shortly thereafter. At any rate it was more than 20 years ago. The second time I watched it was tonight. I’d love to say there are specific scenes and things I remember from this film over 20+ years, but that wouldn’t be precisely true. It would be precisely true, however, to suggest that I do remember it and tonight recalled much of it nearly intact from all those years ago.

Koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance,” is a film of surprising beauty and power, or at least I find it so. I can see how many would find this film either dreadfully dull (see: Jeanne Dielman) or nearly unwatchable. There is no plot as such, and no dialogue. Instead, we are presented with constant images of landscapes, nature, clouds and then a subtle shift into technology, industry, and masses of humanity. Some of these images rush by at a frenetic pace while others are shown in slow motion, unfolding before our eyes. Time-lapse photography makes up a great deal of this film, which runs at an increasing and increasingly disturbing pace through its near 90 minutes.

Most of what sticks is not one image flowing into the next or a particular sequence, but snapshots. A mushroom cloud unfolding and growing, shot over the outstretched arms of a cactus. Airplanes doing a balletic dance in preparation for take off. The moon, huge and almost artificial looking, rising and being eclipsed by an office building. Banks of clouds reflected in the glass and steel of massive high rise structures. Oceans of people fighting their way onto an escalator. Lines of cars driving endlessly into the night, mere streaks of headlights with the speeded up camera.

It is dizzying in its effect, and challenging to watch. Very little is shown at its regular speed. We pause languidly over mountain passes, deserts, mesas standing against too-blue skies. We rush headlong through factories, watching cars and computers being built at breakneck speed. Almost all of the human motion is shown at near-blinding pace, and that which isn’t is slowly and inexorably speeded up as the film progresses, pushing the pace of human life ever faster, ever onward.

While the film itself is an achievement artistically, it would be very little without the tremendous and gripping soundtrack by Phillip Glass. This I do remember specifically. The chanting beginning, low and slow voices repeating the name of the film, the voices and music sounding somehow like the Hopi from which the film name comes. The music changing and becoming more and more wild and uncontrolled as the footage becomes similarly speeded up and relentless. I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Glass, but this music makes the film what it is. Without it, it’s striking, juxtaposed images. With the music, it’s a real statement. Glass knows what we are expecting—we need musical resolution of themes and we are waiting for particular chords or notes to be struck to resolve the theme that has played, and he keeps this from us, continuously building tension as the images go faster and faster in front of us. We need the release of those notes, and he keeps them from us for a painfully long time.

This, of course, is intentional. It is, after all, “life out of balance,” and to give us the resolution would work against that idea. The fact that we can’t have the resolution is what keeps us out of balance, keeps us waiting and waiting for that thing that we need and cannot get. For a film without plot or dialogue, this is riveting stuff, and the images wouldn’t convey nearly the same power without this additional tension pulling on us.

A few years after this film came out, David Byrne of Talking Heads fame released a film called True Stories. It’s a personal favorite of mine, a film I dearly love every time I watch it, and one that does not get spoiled in the retelling. Much of Koyaanisqatsi reminded me of True Stories, but that isn’t surprising. Byrne certainly watched this film, and duplicated both the music in places as well as much of the style of camera-moving-across-buildings visual look. It’s either parody or homage, and I’m prone to think that it’s homage rather than poking fun.

Koyaanisqatsi is not a film for everyone. It is not completely accessible and requires a great deal from its audience for it to be appreciated. It’s worth the effort. When this whole thing is done, I’m going to seek out the other two films of this trilogy: Powaqqatsi (life in transformation) and Naqoyqatsi (life as war).

Why to watch Koyaanisqatsi: Difficult and compelling
Why not to watch: Landscape, landscape, explosion, landscape, people walking, factory, ad astra, ad infinitum.

If You've Seen One Gay Nazi Biker Film...

Film: Scorpio Rising
Format: Internet video on desktop PC


If you’ve seen on gay Nazi biker film, you’ve seen them all. Or really not, because there really isn’t much like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, or at least there wasn’t before Anger made this film. This is a difficult film to follow and even more difficult to understand. I’m honestly not sure that I really get it, but I’m going to try.

Scorpio Rising is more or less a homoerotic short film about bikers. There’s a lot of leather, some religious iconography, some Nazi images, and a lot of homoeroticism. Additionally, there’s no dialogue in the film. Instead, Anger uses popular songs from the '50s and early ‘60s to highlight what is happening on the screen. Guys work on their bikes, get dressed in a lot of leather, smoke, take some drugs, read the Sunday comics, ride on their bikes, and initiate a new member. That’s pretty much it.

But that’s not the reason to watch Scorpio Rising. This is not a film to pay attention to because of the gripping plot or the scintillating dialogue. The real reason to watch this film is because of the tremendous influence it has had on film in general.

Yes, you read that right: a gay Nazi biker film has had a tremendous effect on much of what was made since its debut in 1964. Kenneth Anger is not only one of the first (if not the first) to use actual known songs in his film rather than music created specifically for the movie (at least the first who didn’t use old songs for a musical), and quick cuts, including pieces of other films just to make things interesting.

The cuts get progressively faster and more difficult to follow as the film goes on, and this makes Scorpio Rising progressively more difficult to watch. There’s no question that Anger was intending this to be something like softcore pornography, as that covers the bulk of what he made in his career. The scenes of men getting dressed, the initiation of the new biker involving dumping mustard on his genitalia, all of these are there because, per the legend, Anger used this film as masturbatory fuel.

And yet, whether true or a legend, those scenes of bikers putting on their leathers continue to resonate today. Every time you see a hero or a gang of heroes gearing up to get ready for battle, from Army of Darkness to the campiest of the Joel Schumacher Batman films, the director is paying homage to Kenneth Anger. In their own world, the director may claim to be paying homage to someone else, but ultimately, it goes back to here. Anger, for whatever reason he did so, essentially created the gearing up for war montage.

This is a difficult film to watch, not because of particular images or anything disturbing, but because it’s difficult to follow. I can’t say that I loved the film, but it certainly was a worthy challenge. I’m also certain that there’s a lot here that I’ve missed. Someone much smarter than I am can do it better justice.

Why to watch Scorpio Rising: Influence.
Why not to watch: You have issues with homoeroticism.

Fellini's Fabulous Flashback

Film: Amarcord
Format: DVD from Davenport Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.



















If you love film, at some point you’re going to run up against the catalog of Federico Fellini. Love him or hate him, you have to know him. You can’t know the novel as a form without some familiarity with Dickens, you can’t discuss Cubism without having a vocabulary that includes Picasso. And you can’t pretend to know anything about film if you haven’t spent at least a little time in the magical (and sometimes not so magical) worlds of Fellini.

Amarcord is perhaps Fellini’s most accessible work. It’s also virtually plotless, following a year of life in Italy around the rise of fascism. And while the fascist movement does make an appearance, and is at the center of one of the only really unpleasant moments in the film, it essentially doesn’t mean much in the final analysis. The movie is based on Fellini’s childhood at least in part, although he denied that it was truly autobiographical. It takes place in a small seaside town based loosely on Rimini, the town of Fellini’s childhood.

The film opens with the appearance of the puffballs, evidently a seed of some type, similar to the springtime appearance of dandelion fluff. The townspeople say that when the puffballs appear, winter is soon at an end, and the town celebrates with a massive bonfire and the effigy burning of the old witch winter. We then follow a year of life in the town, focusing primarily on the life of Titta, a young man; his parents; a few of his other relatives; several of the townsfolk; and a number of his schoolmates. The film follows Titta, et al. through a year, ending with the return of the puffballs the next year.

Amarcord reminds me very much of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Essentially, it is less a coherent, complete story than it is a loose collection of vignettes with a common group of characters. These characters, certainly drawn at least in part from Fellini’s life, are nonetheless caricatures. For instance, Volpina, either the town prostitute or simply the town slut, is so greedy for sex that she’s all but pleasuring herself walking down the street. The blind accordion player does his best Ray Charles whenever the music strikes him. Gradesca (roughly translated as “appreciation”) is the town’s beauty, and she knows it, appearing in most scenes in a red coat and dress, and always at least partly in red in every scene. She is the woman the boys, Titta especially, moon over.

While some of the events of the film are unpleasant or sad, this is a time that is viewed not so much with a nod toward realism, but through the hazy warm glow of nostalgia. There is a magic here, a sense of unreality, as Titta and his friends attempt to come of age in a time that is remembered only indistinctly. There is a wistfulness even in the sadness, and a carnival-like feel to everything.

This is perhaps most evident in the scene in which virtually the entire town rows out a few miles to witness the passing of a massive luxury liner. As the boat passes, the people cheer. Some cry, overcome by the majestic size and power of the Italian ship. But it is obviously a fake, a prop, a piece of scenery and stagecraft. It is, essentially, the same as this film—something that stands in for the real thing, and even looks at times like the real thing, but is not.

"Amarcord" translates as “I remember” in the dialect of Fellini’s hometown of Rimini. It is a lovely, heartfelt remembrance, if one not so concerned with telling literal truth.

Why to watch Amarcord: It’s joyously Fellini-tastic.
Why not to watch: No plot = big problem for you.

Salo, or the 116 Minutes of Covering My Face

Film: Salo, o le Centoventi Gio di Sodoma (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.


When I decided to create this blog a little more than a month ago, I knew there would be bumps in the road. There are movies that are difficult to locate, and others I can locate but that I have little interest in watching. I know I will find films that inspire me with nothing to say. I knew it wouldn’t always be smooth sailing regardless of how many truly magnificent films I was able to watch.

There are also the films I genuinely fear. I’m not so much of a Philistine that I think art must be beautiful to be meaningful or important. Picasso’s “Guernica” is a terrible thing to behold in the original sense of the word, and it is magnificent because it is so terrible. In fact, much of greatest art in the world is of this variety, great because it causes such intense feelings and responses, and art because it has something to say. Like a vaccination, these works of art are painful, but useful and healthy. They help us draw out the poison of our daily lives, hurting us in the process, but making us stronger in the end.

And then there are things like Salo. It’s difficult for me to know where to start here. One does not respond to Salo; one reacts to it. This is not ugly art, hurting to heal or revealing the ugly side of society to the unwitting sheep-like masses. Salo has all the therapeutic qualities of a punch to the kidneys. This is, no matter what the ivory tower intellectuals have to say, not art. This is a baby step away from a snuff film in its aggressive dislike for its actors, its subject, and its audience. I am convinced the director of this film, Pier Paolo Pasolini, wanted to hurt me in a real way. His goal was not to enlighten or to celebrate, but to damage and destroy. Normally, when a filmmaker wants to cause me pain, I can understand. If I can’t, my reaction is to want to hit back. Here, my reaction is to flee.

Salo does not have much of a plot; it has scenes and episodes. We have a group of four Italian fascists who, with a group of four aging prostitutes, kidnap nine young women and nine young men. These degraded leaders take their captives to a large estate where, over the course of the next four months, they subject these poor young people to every conceivable form of degradation possible. Then they kill them all off and the movie ends.

Often, the movies that shocked audiences when they were made lose their potency over time. Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, for instance, while still a fantastic film, is not nearly so shocking as it was to the rioting critics who panned it. Much of Salo still shocks as much as it ever did.

However, not all of it is still shocking. Salo is almost entirely about sex, and depraved sex, or at least depraved sex for 1975. There is a tremendous amount of nudity, but very little of this is erotic at all. The women, most of whom are completely nude all of the time, exist not as sexual objects but as things to be degraded as much as possible, reduced by pain and humiliation. The majority of the sex is male-male, certainly beyond what the average person was comfortable with in the mid-1970s. Today, in a world where Brokeback Mountain was a critical and commercial success, homosexual scenes can do little to shock us as an audience.

But while homosexuality no longer holds the taboo it once did, every other form of sexual expression here is as disturbing today as ever. I’ll put it this way; the entire middle of the film deals with coprophagia. If you know this word, you can understand why the middle of the film is difficult to watch. If you don’t know the word, look it up. I can say with all honesty that for the first time in 40+ years of watching movies, I gagged. For a few moments, I thought I was going to vomit into my own lap.

This film is one of the most controversial ever made. Many people consider this film to be nothing more than an exercise in awfulness, the vilest thing ever placed on celluloid. Others defend it, calling it Pasolini’s masterpiece worthy of study and discussion. I agree with the first crowd. If this is art, so is Eli Roth’s Hostel. If this is art, so is Caligula. I can see no difference here. This is degradation for the sake of it and nothing more, a gross-out artist doing the most perverse and perverted thing imaginable simple to freak people out. There’s no merit in this that I can see.

If nothing else, I never have to watch this thing again, and I never will. If anyone tells you that you should watch this, look suspiciously at that person. If someone tells you that they like this film or, God forbid, that it’s one of his or her favorites, leave. Never talk to that person again. Really.

Now, if I could find some bleach to wash the memory of this thing out of my brain and to scour it from my eyes, I’d be happy. Some things can’t be unseen after they’ve been witnessed. Salo is like that, damn it all. Pasolini was murdered shortly after this film was made, and having seen this film, I’m trying to convince myself that his murder was a bad thing; I’m failing at that.

Why to watch Salo, o le Centoventi Gio di Sodoma: You need to brag that you’ve seen the most depraved thing ever distributed in a cinema.
Why not to watch: You still have a modicum of sanity and enjoy things like food, your family, and not plucking your own eyeballs from your skull.

Time After Time After Time After Time

Films: La Jetee
Format: Online video on laptop.

While it’s only been a week since I started this blog for real, I thought it was time to get myself out of my comfort zone and do something new. Up until now, everything I’ve watched has been in English with only one exception (M), and I’d already seen everything at least once before. So, it was time to move into uncharted territory. Thus, I decided to not only look at something in a different language—French in this case—but that was also completely new to me.

Of course, that’s not entirely true in the case of La Jetee. While I haven’t seen this film before, I have seen the film that came from it, and it’s a movie I love very much. Terry Gilliam used this film as an inspiration for 12 Monkeys to the point where a special notice on his film was included to give Chris Marker at least some credit for inspiring Gilliam.

La Jetee cannot be considered as anything other than an art film. In fact, the only real thing it has in common with a traditional film is a narrator. It is not a moving picture as most of us are used to in that it doesn’t actually move. Instead, it is a series of black and white stills linked into a cohesive story by a narrator.

With its short running time, there isn’t a lot of room for exposition in the film; instead, things just kind of happen without much explanation given to us. We start at Orly in Paris as a young boy and his family watch the planes take off and land. The young boy is struck by a particular image, a combination of the sun, the jetty, and a woman’s face. Later, the boy realizes that he has just witnessed a man being killed on the jetty, and this may well be why the image stays with him.

Later (and yes, this is essentially the plot device used here), World War III starts. Paris, and presumably the rest of the world is completely destroyed and people are forced to live underground. With the world uninhabitable, the scientists who live underground are forced to try a variety of experiments. The only way to find what they need to survive—food, medicine—is to travel through time, back to the past. But surviving in the past is impossible for most men. Waking up in an old time as an adult would drive most men mad. The only way for this experiment to work is to find a man who can truly imagine the past.

The most successful at this is the boy from the jetty years before, mostly because of the strength of the vision he has of the jetty at Orly and the woman’s face. Subjected to experiment after experiment, he calls up images from a past time, essentially travelling back through time, where he meets the girl he remembers from the jetty years before. But this time, he is an adult and not a boy.

***HERE THERE BE SPOILERS***

The point of the film is that the boy at the beginning, the man killed on the jetty, and the man traveling back into time are all the same person. The boy, essentially, witnesses his own death. It is an existential moment that will, in one way, continue to repeat itself ad infinitum. The boy grows up to become the man who is killed in front of the boy who grows up to be the man who is killed in front of the boy, ad nauseum. There is a beauty here, though, of a life so perfectly created and contained that its beginning contains the seeds of its own end, and that its end creates its beginning.

***THUS ENDETH THE SPOILERS***

Because of the path this film takes, I don’t think it could possibly be anything but French. It is a truly existential experiment, one that could not come from a different culture or time. While Gilliam used this film to inspire 12 Monkeys, I don’t think that film would have happened without this one first. It is without question a French invention, and a set piece of French sensibilities.

La Jetee is tragic and sad, and yet filled with its own beauty and wonder. It is a film that I believe will stay with me for a long time, if only because of the way that it works and the way that the story unfolds. It is not a fantastic example of storytelling, nor narration at its best, but it is a wonder of imagination and inventiveness.

Incidentally, if you have already seen 12 Monkeys, the ending of this film is quite similar, and you should go up and read the spoilers. If you’ve seen the one, there are no surprises here in the other.

Why to watch La Jetee: A quiet, tragic beauty and an inventive story.
Why not to watch: 26 minutes of still photography and existential angst.