Pick Your Poison

Film: Requiem for a Dream
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

What is your addiction? Most people have one even if they don’t think they do. So what is it? Football? Food? Chocolate? Coffee? Sex? What is it that you have no control over? If you’re honest with yourself, you probably have several things that you can’t control yourself around. It’s a running joke where I work that I have no self control when it comes to Fig Newtons. When I open a sleeve of them, I walk around and offer them out to people because if I don’t, I’ll eat the whole thing.


Requiem for a Dream is a film about addiction. It would be easy to make the mistake on a first viewing to think that it’s specifically about drug addiction, but that’s the easy path to take here. Drug addiction is one of those things that we as a society look at and think of as a terrible problem that must be dealt with, but we ignore the fact that other addictions drive us and control us just as much and just as easily.

Requiem for a Dream is the story of four intertwined lives and the various addictions that move these people, drive them, and ultimately destroy them. Standing in the middle is Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), a widowed mother who lives on her own and who is slowly spiraling into loneliness and depression. Her world focuses around her television, specifically around an infomercial for something called “Juice by You” and hawked by a shill named Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald). Sara has a son named Harry (Jared Leto), who has big dreams of an easy life and a reality that focuses on providing himself with heroin. Similarly addicted is his best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), although she sometimes dabbles in a bit of cocaine as well. See? Easy slide into calling this a drug film.

Harry and Tyrone frequently pawn Sara’s television for smack money, a process she completes by getting the set out of hock the next day from the local pawnshop owner. The two of them have a plan, a typical junkie plan, of scoring a pile of heroin and reselling it, eventually working their way up to a full pound of pure smack that they can cut, recut, and live off of for years. The money will not only support them but will also help Marion open a boutique.

While these plans start up, Sara receives a call that she has been selected to appear on a television show. She’s thrilled at the prospect and simultaneously distraught by the fact that she no longer fits into the red dress she wore for Harry’s high school graduation. She confides in her friend Ada (Louise Lasser), who lends her a diet book consisting of a strict regimen involving grapefruit and hard boiled eggs. Another older woman who lives in their apartment building recommends a doctor who helped her daughter lose “50 pounds just like that” through the use of pharmacology. A few days later, Sara is well on her way to becoming a full-on speed freak.

Things, of course, become complicated quickly. Despite their addictions, Tyrone, Marion, and Harry manage to successfully cut a purchase of smack and sell it off for a tremendous profit. Well on their way to becoming successful, Harry buys his mother a new television to replace the one they frequently stole. At the same time, Tyrone is involved as a bystander in a hit on his supplier, and the rest of the cash is needed to bail him out of jail. Now strapped on cash, Harry manages to convince Marion to contact her shrink (Sean Gullette) for money, knowing that she’ll essentially have to prostitute herself for the money. It becomes critical for them, because only one dealer in town is still handing out the skag. Looking to score, a group of junkies gathers until one pulls out a gun and the smack supply in New York dries up completely, and Marion is forced to prostitute herself to another connection who gives out dope for sex. Buoyed by a score, Tyrone and Harry head to Florida, ignoring the large, growing spot of necrotic tissue on Harry’s left arm. This is also around the time that Sara begins hallucinating that the refrigerator is coming to get her, starts slamming pills like candy, and seeing herself on television and then seeing her television persona in her home.

It would be unfair to call Requiem for a Dream a rollercoaster, because it is not one. It’s merely the first, largest hill. We get a nice climb up as everyone’s life appears to be on the ups and going well, and then we peak, the car starts to drop, and it simply goes faster and faster as it heads to the bottom of the hill. But with this film, the coaster doesn’t zoom back up; it just bottoms out, killing everyone in the cars.

The story is a powerful one, and would be a powerful, challenging, and difficult movie if simply filmed as a straight narrative. Place this story in the hands of Darren Aronofsky, and it becomes a nightmare vision. In one sense, it’s difficult to believe that this is only Aronofsky’s second film. It’s a mature film, the sort of story that someone with more experience should have made. On the other hand, it’s also obviously the film of a youthful director. There are so many new and innovative ideas here that it’s impossible to cover them all. In one early scene, Aronofsky places Harry and Marion next to each other. They lie on a bed, possibly post-coital, and talk, delicately touching each other. Except that it’s soon evident that rather than simply giving us a shot of the two of them, it’s a split screen. There’s a division between them even as they lie together—and it’s the same division and same split screen used earlier in a scene with Harry and his mother.

The most impressive shot in the film happens just after Sara starts slamming speed. In a shot the runs about thirty seconds, we see the daily activity of Sara as she obsessively cleans her apartment, hopped up on amphetamines. She moves in a blur, folding her clothes, making and remaking her bed, vacuuming, cleaning out the fridge, and scrubbing the tile. The camera makes a slow track, filming about two frames per second rather than 24, and her dizzying motion is a realistic depiction of her budding addiction. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying.

Aronofsky uses camera tricks like this intelligently, not simply because he can or because it adds a visual wow to the way the movie looks, but because each one has purpose and meaning for the story as a whole. At the end, as Harry sits in a jail cell in Florida screaming about the gangrenous patch on his inside left elbow and Tyrone yells for help, the entire film jumps and stutters, reflecting exactly how far out of the normal way of doing things their life has become. The montage of the four characters at the very end, showing just how far they have fallen because of their addictions is tragic, horrifying, and brutal. That all four end up literally in the same physical position only underscores this reality.

Aronofsky is greatly assisted by a tremendous cast. The film belongs in many ways to Ellen Burstyn, who has never been better, but Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly are simimarly brilliant in their rapid decline from where they started to where they finish. It's Marlon Wayans who makes me the most angry, though. The man obviously has some real talent--he holds his own in this cast, and then he goes on to act in complete shite like White Chicks. Damn it, Marlon, go back to doing stuff like this because you're better than embarassingly stupid comedies.

Requiem for a Dream is the definition of “a hard watch.” It’s a film that should be watched, perhaps must be watched. It will be a long time before I decide to watch it again. The final shot is perhaps the most frightening thing I have ever seen. The most painful addiction, the one most impossible to give up, is our own delusion.

As a final note, even if you’ve never seen this film, you’ve heard the music, since virtually every movie since 2000 that has needed a dramatic score for the trailer has used Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna.

Why to watch Requiem for a Dream : A powerful realization of a powerful story and a unique visual style.
Why not to watch: In the words of a co-worker, “It made me want to commit suicide, because it made me feel that bad about the human condition.”

The City of Gold

Film: Aguirre: Der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre: The Wrath of God)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television.

Sometimes I wonder about the nature of cinematic muses. Some directors become almost impossible to separate from the actors they go back to time and time again. It’s difficult to think of Scorsese without conjuring up an image of DiNiro; Tarantino puts Uma Thurman in as many of his films as he can. Tim Burton appears to be lost if he isn’t working with Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter, preferably both. I believe Dominique Pinon has appeared in every one of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films. The actor most commonly and closely associated with Werner Herzog is Klaus Kinski.


The two made five films together, three of which appear on the 1001 List. Evidently, their relationship was relatively toxic, but it’s also evident that they brought out the best in each other. The rumor is that when Kinski threatened to leave the set of Aguirre: Der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre: The Wrath of God), Herzog threatened him with a pistol, claiming that he’d shoot the actor and then turn the gun on himself. Strangely, this film was not the end of their cinematic relationship, but the beginning.

I admit to an immediate disconnect with this film. It concerns a group of Spanish conquistadors exploring into the heart of the Amazon rain forest, but since Herzog and Kinski are German, it’s German that everyone is speaking. Somehow it doesn’t seem right. Regardless, as the film starts, we meet the conquistadors, led by Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles). The expedition has just crossed the Andes range and is now discovering the jungle. If you ever thought it would be cool or fun to live during those times, the first five minutes of this film will instruct you otherwise. Watching a group of men in heavy armor slog through knee-deep water while carrying a cannon looks to be a ripe slice of hell.

Regardless, the expedition, bent on finding El Dorado, the city of gold, is in trouble. Pizarro decides to send out a group to scout ahead for food, hostile natives, and a clue to the location of the legendary city. This group is headed by Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra) and seconded by Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski). They will be presumed killed if they don’t rejoin the main group in a week.

The new expedition heads off and immediately hits trouble on the Amazon. One of their rafts is caught in an eddy and can’t break free. Aguirre wants to push on without these men, but is overruled by Ursua. However, when rescue comes to the raft, it is discovered that the men who were on it are either dead or missing. Ursua wants to rescue the bodies to provide a Christian burial, but Aguirre takes things into his own hands. He hints to a comrade that the cannon should be cleaned, and the gun is fired, sinking the raft and allowing the expedition to move on without delay.

It’s evident at this point that Aguirre really wants to be in charge, and is chafing under the orders of Ursua. When Ursua wants to turn back and return to Pizarro, Aguirre stages a mutiny, shooting Ursua and killing one of his followers. He immediately determines that another of their group—Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling) should be made Emperor of El Dorado. He has their spiritual guide Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro) read aloud a screed that officially breaks the group off from Spain and Pizarro, declares themselves to be a new nation, and declares Guzman a king to rival that of Spain. From there, it is determined that the group will push on and look for El Dorado on their own, and that should they find it, they will all be wealthy and famous beyond measure.

However, this trek is doomed from the beginning. They are surrounded on all sides by angry and ferocious natives who prove to be cannibals. Men are frequently picked off on the rafts by arrows from unseen attackers. Guzman turns into a spoiled child, complaining that his roasted fish and fruits lack salt while the rest of the men are counting individual grains of corn as their rations. Naturally, someone commits regicide when no one else is looking, leaving Aguirre now in charge.

And things go from bad to worse as Aguirre begins to lose his grip on his own sanity. Eventually, harassed by the natives and with doom closing in, the raft continues flowing down the Amazon, unable to reach land, with everyone wracked by fever and starvation. It’s pretty bleak.

It’s also gorgeous. The film was done on location in Peru, and the scenery is what really makes for a great deal of the appeal of this film. The rain forest is lush and beautiful, and also dangerous and filled with unseen horrors. It’s a seductive thing, that huge green canopy, both beautiful and terrible.

What is curious to me is looking at the role of Aguirre and knowing something about the history and temperament of Klaus Kinski. He was, by all accounts, the template of the sonnuvabitch, temperamental artiste. When Aguirre the character in the film begins pontificating that he is the embodied wrath of God and that any who cross him will be chopped to pieces and stomped on until all that is left is something that can be used to paint walls, it’s easy to think that only some of it is the character, and some of it is Kinski himself.

This film is, as I say, bleak. The men on the raft battle against an unbeatable, unseen foe and against the terrible realities of starvation and disease. Plagued on all sides and without any help at all, there is nothing for them to do but die, and go down with as much dignity as they can. The closing shots, featuring the ravings of Aguirre as his raft slowly meanders down the huge river and eventually to the Atlantic are terrifying not because of the words themselves, but because of the evident disconnect with anything like reality. It also serves as a reminder that while history may well be written by the victors, there are likely many stories like this one lost in time, lost because there were no survivors of something doomed to fail spectacularly.

Why to watch Aguirre: Der Zorn Gottes: Obsession, and the correlation between Kinski’s character and Kinski’s reality.
Why not to watch: Spanish conquistadors speaking German.

Get Thee to a Nunnery!

Film: Black Narcissus
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

While I haven’t reviewed it yet, I’m going to go on record now as saying that I really, really hate The Sound of Music. Imagine my displeasure when I discovered that there was another movie about nuns on the list. More nuns, and not the comical one from The Blues Brothers. I admit that I reacted poorly to this, even when I discovered it was a Powell and Pressburger film. I’ve learned to trust these two gentlemen. But still…nuns….

I needn’t have worried. Black Narcissus is a devastating film that, yes, is about a collection of nuns, but these aren’t the type who sing while dancing along Austrian hilltops. Instead, this is an intense film, one that goes right to the heart of the sort of thing that Powell and Pressburger seemed to love more than anything else: the darker parts of the human psyche and how those bad things are expressed in the real world.

We start with Sister Clodagh (pronounced KLO-da, and played by Deborah Kerr), who lives in a convent in Calcutta. She has been instructed to take another group of nuns into the Himalayas and start a new convent there. Going with her are Sister Briony (Judith Furse), Sister Blanche (better known as Sister Honey, played by Jenny Laird), Sister Philippa (Flora Robson), and the sickly and potentially unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron). Off they go, and they arrive at what used to be the home of a harem.

Here they are assisted by a trio of people. First is Angu Ayah (May Hallatt), the caretaker. She is a crusty old native woman who doesn’t much understand the reverend sisters. Second is Joseph Anthony (Eddie Whaley Jr.), a six-year-old child who speaks English, and thus can act as an interpreter for the sisters for the school they intend to set up. Third, and perhaps most important, is Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the local representative of the British government. He is unpleasant and cynical, and predicts the sisters will leave before the rains come.

Despite his unpleasantness, there appears to be a bit of attraction between Dean and Sister Clodagh. There’s also a significant one-way attraction between Sister Ruth and Dean. Things become more complicated when Dean drops off a young woman named Kanchi (Jean Simmons) who has been bothering him. When the new young general (Sabu) arrives for teaching, all manner of lusty thoughts are happening inside the convent, where they don’t belong.

The environment proves to be a hindrance to the women. The natives turn against them when Sister Honey attempts to treat an infant despite Briony’s warning not to. The baby dies and the people believe the sisters are responsible for the death. There is significant attraction between the young general and Kanchi despite her low status. Sister Philippa, who was to create a vegetable garden for the sisters plants flowers instead, and asks to be transferred.

Through all of this Clodagh is dealing with her reasons for joining the order in the first place. She loved a young man intently, and she (and the rest of the people in her Irish village) assumed that the two would be married some day. However, he had other plans that involved going to America and not taking her with him. Strung along and now dreadfully embarrassed, Clodagh joined the order as a way to leave first, and to hide her shame.

But it is Sister Ruth who takes up the last part of the story. She is completely infatuated with the sometimes-drunken, always rude, but still dashing Mr. Dean. She accuses Clodagh of the same infatuation, although Clodagh denies this. It’s in this scene (which actually happens before a number of the events mentioned above) that Black Narcissus takes its first hard left turn into something very dark. It’s evident in this scene that Ruth isn’t all there. She’s bordering on madness and obsession, although she hasn’t slipped into it completely.

The culmination of the film is Ruth’s departure from the convent, her confession of love to Dean, and his rejection of her. Ruth, naturally, puts all of the blame where it doesn’t belong, and acts as you might expect someone paddling with both oars a foot above the waves. I’ll say this—if nothing else, when Sister Ruth brings the crazy, she brings it in spades and with little bells a-ringing. She becomes something possessed by the end of the film, and is actually terrifying enough to send a small jolt down the spine.

Beyond this being a surprisingly gripping drama for being about cloistered nuns, the cinematography is truly something special. None of this was filmed on location, and the glorious mountain peaks the loom in the background of most outdoor shots were simply expertly created matte paintings. Most of the time, it’s impossible to tell.

Like any great drama, this film is less about the situation of the plot and more about the characters who act through it. As such, as a tale of loss, obsession, and guilt, it still manages to resonate despite its age. I expected very little here, and got far more back from a film about nuns high up in the mountains. I really should learn to trust great directors with their story rather than doubting them because of it.

It’s worth discussing the rather odd name of this film as well. “Black Narcissus” is the name of a perfume that the young general wears. Narcissus, according to mythology, was a beautiful youth who became enamored of his own reflection in a pool of water. That’s a level of introspection and self-study that both Clodagh and Ruth could understand.

Why to watch Black Narcissus: A realistic depiction of madness, passion and isolation.
Why not to watch: Well, it is set in a convent.

What the Fu...Hell?

Film: Archangel
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University on kick-ass portable DVD player.


I frequently like to think of myself as the smartest guy in the room, a bit of ego and mental narcissism I freely admit to. I know that more often than not, I’m not the smartest guy in the room. A film like Guy Maddin’s Archangel is all it really takes to prove to me that I am often a novice when it comes to deciphering some of the more obtuse films that exist in this world. As a viewer and critic, this is the most difficult thing I’ve had to write in a number of months, perhaps since I started this project.

Archangel certainly has a plot of sorts, and characters and all that, but it also feels completely random. It’s surrealist cinema, which always strikes me sideways. I never know if I’m supposed to take it seriously or if I should be laughing at it.

So let’s talk about plot, shall we? It’s 1919 and World War I is over, but no one has told the people living in and around the city of Archangel. One of those people is John Boles (Kyle McCulloch) who is mourning the death of his love, Iris far more than he is mourning the fact that he has only one leg. He has promised to sanctify her cremains in the White Sea, but he loses the urn overboard a ship. This causes him no end of mental anguish that manifests itself into something like amnesia.

He is billeted in the house of a family that consists of the elderly Baba (Margaret Anne MacLeod), the obese and cowardly Jannings (Michael Gottli), his wife Danchuk (Sarah Neville), their son Geza (David Falkenburg), and an infant. Also evidently living in the house is Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca), who might or might not be married to Philbin (Ari Cohen). Philbin is also suffering from something like amnesia and believes that every night is his wedding night. Boles believes that Veronkha is actually Iris and pursues her, and Danchuk pursues him.

And then there’s lots of revelations and battle scenes and Veronkha decides she loves Boles and suffers her own amnesia, turning into Iris. Boles decides that the infant is his. Everyone goes off to war except for Jannings, who stays home and is gutted by the terrifying, semi-human Bolsheviks. He overcomes his cowardice, though, fighting back and killing one with his own intestines before calmly going back to where he was, lying down, and dying.

And then Veronkha runs away and Boles chases her and she remarries Philbin despite having annulled their first marriage and they fly away in a biplane while Boles stays on the ground and rides in a cart. Whatever.

Throughout this movie, particular moments struck me with the overriding thought of “What the fu…hell?” Not much of it makes sense. Geza complains to Philbin that his father died a coward and Philbin responds by saying that everything happens for a reason—someone shaved off his mustache in the night. Seriously, what the fu…hell? Should I be taking notes on this and trying to figure out what it means or should I look at a piece of dialog like that and laugh?

It’s evident that Maddin is paying a great deal of homage to the silents with this film. Everything oozes silent film heritage from the costuming, lighting, make up, sets, and title cards. This is a modern take on German expressionism without question. It’s also an homage to David Lynch. The first thing I thought of in terms of comparison while watching this was Eraserhead and it’s an opinion that never left me.

The version of this film that I found promised glorious black and white photography, which is much nicer than what I actually did get. What I got was a lot of muddy scenery, scenes that were difficult to see from any angle, and even title cards that were so faded at times that I had to pause the film and get an inch away to see what they said.

Also on this DVD were a couple other Maddin films. I watched the short called The Heart of the World, and I recommend it highly. I certainly recommend it far more than I do Archangel.

Why to watch Archangel: A true artistic vision of film.
Why not to watch: It’s the damnedest 80 minutes or so you’ll spend in front of a screen.

Same Colors, Different Flag

Films: Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors: Blue, Blue); Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red, Red)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library (Blue); DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan (Red), both on kick-ass portable DVD player.

If you had asked me a year ago what I knew about Krzysztof Kieslowski, I’d have said that he had at least one too many “z’s” in his first name and I’d have been done at that. Ask me that same question now, and I’ll tell you that he’s a director that more people should know about and that his use of camera, light, and color is some of the best in cinematic history. After watching all of Dekalog last year and being suitably impressed by it, I was excited to take another spin through Kieslowski’s world with two-thirds of his “Three Colors” trilogy.

The concept behind the trilogy is an interesting one. Using the three colors of the French flag (blue, white, and red from left to right) and the three words of the French revolution (liberte (liberty), egalite (equality), fraternite (brotherhood), Kieslowski made three films, two of which appear on the 1001 Movies list. These are Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors: Blue, or more commonly Blue), the first of the trilogy and Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red, or Red to its friends), the third.


Blue starts in a way that I find disturbing. A family of three are driving happily down a road when the car goes out of control, hits a tree, and kills both the father and the daughter. Julie (Juliette Binoche) survives the crash, but attempts suicide in the hospital when she realizes her family is gone. Unable to go through with it (she can’t swallow the pills), she decides to take apart her life and not start over, but drop out completely.

This becomes impossible right from the start, though. Her husband was a well-known composer and was working on a symphony to celebrate the European Union. The work was unfinished, and a friend and musician named Olivier (Benoit Regent) wants to finish the score. Julie won’t let him. She takes the work from her husband’s conservatory and destroys it completely. She also removes all of her and her family’s belongings from the large house, closes it up, deeds all of her husband’s money to take care of her own mother, and moves to Paris.

In Paris, Julie attempts to cloister herself from humanity completely. She reverts to her maiden name and tells no one where she is. Even in this situation she is unable to completely avoid being a part of the world, though. She becomes involved in the affairs of one of her neighbors (Charlotte Very), a sex performer who the other building tenants attempt to oust because of her job. She also discovers that Olivier has another copy of her husband’s last score and is attempting to complete it. More significantly, she discovers that her husband had a mistress named Sandrine (Florence Pernel), and that the woman is pregnant with his child.

As the title of the film implies, this movie is awash in tones of blue. The one thing Julie saves is her daughter’s lamp of blue beads. She also swims frequently in a pool suffused in blue light. The film is equally suffused with her husband’s unfinished symphony, a piece of surprising strength and beauty, particularly as it jumps out in places when Julie is confronted by a piece of her past. Over and over she is reminded that while she may have her freedom, there are always things that tie her to who she was and who she will become.

The story of Blue is engaging as are the characters, but it is not this that causes me to recommend the film. What does is the almost surreal moments of the film when Julie realizes that she has not gotten completely rid of her old life and finds it intruding on her once again. These are regularly accompanied by the sudden orchestral hit of the unfinished symphony and most of the time by a suddenly black screen as if she herself is blacking out for a moment. The first of these, however, sees her suddenly lit by an intense blue light. The moment is a startling one, and extremely powerful. I’m man enough to admit that Julie’s sudden shock accompanied by almost painful blue light and the driving symphonic score literally made me gasp and sent a full-on chill down my back, even when watching on a little 8” screen. I went back to that scene several times after I finished the film, and it had the same effect on me each time.

There’s real magic in something that can elicit that powerful of an emotional and physical reaction time after time, even when it’s expected. Trois Couleurs: Bleu is demanding and powerful, and not to be missed.


The completion of the “Three Colors” trilogy and Kieslowski’s last film is Red. Like Blue, this film’s dominant color scheme is the color of its title. Here, it appears everywhere—in furniture, on billboards, as the colors of food and cars and clothing. Just as we have moved along the flag in terms of colors, we have also moved along the French motto in terms of theme. Here, rather than liberty, the dominant message is one of fraternity.

Our heroine is Valentine (Irene Jacob), a part-time model and student in Geneva. Her boyfriend Michel, who appears only as a voice on the telephone, is in England and calls her frequently as if keeping tabs on her. It’s evident early on that Michel is either wildly jealous or incredibly insecure, or possibly both. He suspects her constantly of infidelity, assuming that if she isn’t at home and answering the phone when he calls that she is off with another man.

Valentine appears as the focus of a gum advertisement that appears in the middle of the film and also walks on a catwalk at a fashion show. While driving home, she hits a German shepherd and drives it to its owner, a reclusive former judge named Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He seems uninterested in the dog and tells her that now it’s her dog. She takes the dog to the vet to discover that it will be fine and that it’s pregnant.

The dog causes her to take a certain interest in the judge, but this interest turns to disgust when she finds that the judge is in the habit of listening in to the phone conversations of his neighbors with a huge surveillance set. Almost as Michel is doing to her, the judge is doing to the neighbors. He knows all of their secrets, knows who is having an affair with whom, but he also refuses to act on the vast amount of knowledge he has.

While all of this is going on, we discover another story tied up in this one. Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) is a law student having a romantic fling with Karin (Frederique Feder). According to the judge, she isn’t the right woman for him, though, and the affair will soon be over. His prediction proves true. He admits his surveillance to the neighbors and they press a case against him. In the course of the case, Karin meets another man, and Auguste catches them in flagrante.

It’s not until the very end that Valentine and Auguste meet despite a number of near misses (shades of Chungking Express from the same year), which is another dominant idea in the film—this idea of connection and missed connection to couple with the theme of brotherhood.

The ending, though, is beyond my ken. I’m not sure I understand exactly why the event that happens does, except that it serves as a way to not only get these two characters to finally stand in the same shot, but also to connect this film to the previous two of the trilogy. One nice touch is that our final shot of the film, of Valentine, is an almost exact duplicate of the shot we see of her throughout the film: the billboard for the gum.

Red may well be a better movie than Blue, but I liked Blue better. As a final comment, one aspect of both films that is absolutely worth paying attention to is the beautiful and butter-smooth camera work. Piotr Sobocinski earns as much of the credit for the overall look of these films as Kieslowski, and much of the power of them comes from his beautiful camera movements and shots.

Why to watch Trois Couleurs: Bleu: Startlingly beautiful.
Why not to watch: It’s over too soon.

Why to watch Trois Couleurs: Red: A new and interesting take on voyeurism.
Why not to watch: A strange resolution that sums up more than it needs to.

Ethnography

Films: Louisiana Story, High School
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Louisiana Story); VHS from Northern Illinois University library on big ol’ television (High School).

There are certainly films on this list that I think shouldn’t be there. When I come across one of these, I really try my best to understand the rationale behind the film’s inclusion. Even if I don’t like the film or don’t find much of value in it, I want to try to remain open minded enough that I can spot someone else’s reasons for finding the film important.


However, there are also times when I get a film like Louisiana Story. I watch, I watch more, and when the film ends, I look at the screen with the expression my dog makes when it hears a noise it doesn’t understand.

Robert Flaherty specialized in ethnographic, documentary-style films. In fact, it was Flaherty who essentially created the documentary genre with Nanook of the North. Louisiana Story was his last film, and he never really strayed too far from where he started. While this film is fiction, it’s also very much done in the documentary style (enough so that it’s usually recorded as a documentary) and used local actors instead of experienced thespians.

He also never strayed too far from his silent film roots. Louisiana Story plays very much like a silent film throughout despite the sound effects, occasional dialogue, and the tremendous score, of which I will speak in a few minutes. Frequently we are treated to panoramas of the Louisiana bayou country, swamps, alligators, birds, trees, and as the film goes on, a large oil derrick.

We follow a young boy with the hellaciously awesome name of Alexander Napoleon Ulysses LaTour (Joseph Boudreaux), called officially “the Boy,” and his pet raccoon as they live an idyllic life in the middle of a swamp. The Boy fishes, avoids gators, and believes in a variety of mystical creatures inhabiting his world, like mermaids that swim up from the ocean and werewolves that hunt among the trees. The Boy keeps a small sack of salt tied to his belt as a method of protection, and catches massive catfish by baiting his hook with his own saliva.

At the start of the film, the Boy’s father (Lionel Le Blanc) deeds over a part of the swamp to an oil company so they can wildcat a drill rig to see if there’s anything under the swamp worth getting. The boy is fascinated by the oil well and frequently spends his time there, becoming a sort of informal mascot of the drillers. As the drill bores deeper and deeper into the swamp, it hits a gas pocket, which threatens to stop the drilling. The Boy, looking to help his friends on the rig, pours his salt down the shaft and hocks a lung cookie into it as well, and suddenly, the drill works fine and the well starts producing the crude. The moral of the story is, essentially, don’t mock the magical spit of a Cajun.

Except for a part in the middle where the kid watches gator eggs hatch, believes his pet raccoon is eaten by a gator, and then catches the gator for revenge, that’s really all there is here. Guys dig into the ground, the kid spits in the hole, and everyone gets rich. We’re treated at the end to a scene of the “riches” the poor bayou family gets as a result of the well—it consists of some cookware, a rifle, and a bag of sugar. Happy days are here again, evidently.

If the film has one redeeming quality, it is the score that plays through most of it. Virgil Thompson’s music is incredibly good, and the score won a freakin’ Pulitzer. Somehow, this film was also nominated for an Oscar for, of all things, Best Writing. Go figure that. The cinematography is also pretty.

But seriously, this isn’t a movie. There isn’t really a plot or a story, or anything beyond the scenery and the music to hold anyone’s attention. It would have been better without the dialogue and the oil well. At one point, I was actually hoping that a slowly approaching ‘gator might take a bite out of the kid.

It comes as no surprise in retrospect that this film was financed by Standard Oil, but it does raise an interesting question. What did Standard want from this film? On what planet did this film make any sense at all? Is this a promotional piece to show that the oil derricks bring little ecological damage and greater prosperity to the locals? Are they trying to assure us that every tank of gas from Standard is blessed with magical Cajun loogies? I’m completely flummoxed. I actually went back to the tome of reference here to make sure I was watching the right film, so confused was I that this made the list. Seriously, if it’s the soundtrack that does it, I’ll happily listen to it, but don’t force me to watch a kid paddling a canoe and spitting into a well.


Frederick Wiseman’s High School is a chilling portrayal of a fairly typical school in Pennsylvania during the late 1960s. Essentially a piece of direct cinema, this short documentary shows a typical day in the life of this high school and all of the soul crushing events that happen in the name of conformity, unity, and social cohesiveness. I remember my own high school years with a good deal of distaste in general; the environment was fairly oppressive and I didn’t like being there very much. I don’t have a bundle of happy memories. Is there a reason I haven’t attended any of my high school reunions but one? Yep. I can’t really be arsed to go. There’s no real reason for me to dredge up a bunch of memories that I find unpleasant or reopen issues and events from my past that have been buried since the mid-1980s and belong buried. My high school years were oppressive and painful, stupid, pointless, aggravating, and ultimately best left in the past.

Essentially, this film is a sequence of events that happen during the day. We see classes in progress, students being disciplined, and meetings between the school administration and parents. I’m not sure how many days the film was created over, but it plays like a single day in general, even if it did go over the course of a week, a month, or a semester.

Wiseman does the right thing here by offering these scenes of the high school environment without comment, voice over, or narration of any kind. We’re not instructed on what is happening at any time, but are instead allowed to draw our own conclusions on the events of the day.

And some of these events are, with a little thought, really disturbing. A young man, for instance, is given a detention when he claims he didn’t deserve one. He’s told that rather than stand up for himself and fight for himself, that a real man takes the punishment he’s given and (essentially) knuckles under to authority. Girls are shown in short gym shorts and are then one is taken to task for wearing a skirt too short for the prom. Other girls walk on stage showing off outfits that they created and are rather painfully criticized by their instructor (“You can see this girl has a weight problem.”) We are “treated” along with a class to a complete reading of “Casey at the Bat,” a poem that isn’t nearly as great as it’s assumed to be. No one in the room (or really, the audience) wants to hear that whole thing—which is exactly the point here. As the audience, we at least have the choice to turn the film off or walk away; the students can’t.

It’s almost impossible not to feel the waves of both oppression and repression coming off the screen as the film plays. Naturally, the high school itself would claim that it is functioning as a way to mold students into proper ladies and gentlemen. The reality appears to be much more severe though—the kids aren’t so much being molded as being crushed into new shapes by forces beyond their control and comprehension. There seems to be, at least to the minds of the kids, no reason for the many things they are told—they are merely told that they must comply, and that essentially, complying is its own reward.

The final scene is perhaps the most interesting, and also the most darkly comic. A teacher from the school reads a letter she has received from a former student who is now serving in Vietnam and about to be dropped behind the DMZ. He mentions that he has willed his insurance money to the school if he is killed in action so that they can benefit other people the way he benefitted from the school. More tellingly, he also comments that he no longer thinks of himself as a person, but merely as something there to obey orders. This segment concludes with the teacher congratulating herself and the rest of the staff for doing “a good job.”

Ultimately, Wiseman’s High School shows how contrary, arbitrary, and ultimately dehumanizing the high school environment is. That it does so without comment makes the statement all the stronger.

As a final note, it’s worth mentioning that in one way at least the high schools in Pennsylvania in 1968 were more enlightened than many today is in terms of discussion of birth control. In one scene, a gentleman addressing a group of boys specifically tells them that “proper protection” should always be used, a phrase and concept that is being protested by far too many people in this day and age.

Why to watch Louisiana Story: The closest thing “commercial” film got to ethnographic video was Flaherty’s work.
Why not to watch: Because nothing happens.

Why to watch High School: A reminder that “the best years of your life” actually sucked, were mind-numbingly boring, and probably smelled like vomit, sawdust, and chalk dust.
Why not to watch: Flashbacks to gym class.

Judging the Judge

Film: Judge Priest
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Like many of the great personalities of yesteryear, the star of Will Rogers has faded in the modern day. His movies don’t get shown much, and his populist, homespun wisdom, laconic delivery, and self-effacing brand of humor has little traction in today’s world. Judge Priest offers an interesting look at the man. It’s evident that in many respects in this film, Rogers is playing himself rather than a character.

The other reality of Judge Priest is that it takes place in the Deep South in the years following that War of Northern Aggression, and it is filled with the sort of pro-Dixie propaganda that certainly pervaded that part of the country (and still does in some places). Those non-white folks are still the backwards servants that they had been for generations before, and that antebellum view of the slave as childlike and needing to be cared for is never far from the thoughts of the characters or the words in the script.

In no place is this more apparent than in the two characters of Jeff (Stepin Fetchit) and Aunt Dilsey (Hattie McDaniel). Jeff is the town layabout, the laziest man around. He’s accused of stealing chickens at the start of the film, which is our introduction to him, to Judge Billy Priest (Rogers), and to Priest’s nemesis Senator Horace Maydew (Berton Churchill). Judge Priest takes the trial on something of a roundabout course, ends up exonerating Jeff, and turns him into his own flunky and gofer.

Shortly after this, we’re introduced to Aunt Dilsey, who is Judge Priest’s maid, cook, and general servant. Aunt Dilsey sings constantly, essentially narrating her daily duties (belting out, “I got to take down de judge’s clothes/Got to take dem in de house, yes Lord/Got to get out dat old ironin’ board” as she removes clothes from the washline). Aunt Dilsey is a menial servant, and just benighted enough to be happy in her work.

The big event of the day is the return of Jerome “Rome” Priest (Tom Brown) from a Yankee law school. He’s come home to set up practice in town, one that will no doubt benefit greatly from the fact that his Uncle Billy is the town judge. Back home, Rome courts the neighbor girl, Ellie May Gillespie (Anita Louise), although she pushes him off, and we don’t know why. We discover soon enough that Rome’s mother (Brenda Fowler) has her own thoughts on the matter. Ellie May’s parentage is suspect, and that will not do for the Priest name. She’s got her mind set on the boy marrying Virginia Maydew (Rochelle Hudson).

Ellie May seems to know this, and is being paid court by the town barber and local idiot Flem Talley (Frank Melton), who has a laugh the eventually turned into the laugh of the father on the old Hillbilly Bears cartoons. Billy Priest does everything he can to get Rome and Ellie May together, and that’s pretty much the whole start of the film.

Flem Talley speaks loosely of Ellie May in his barbershop, which brings down the ire of the local pariah, Bob Gillis (David Landau). Later, Talley and a couple of his friends lay in wait for Gillis with pool cues, and when it’s Gillis who lays waste to them, they decide to take legal action against him. Gillis turns to Rome Priest for help, and Judge Priest’s enemy Horace Maydew forces the judge to recuse himself from sitting on the bench. And it’s in this court case that all of our story’s threads come together in a flashback sequence that involves the glory of the South, the justification for the Civil War, and pushing the idea that Dixie was justified in everything it did. ‘Scuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little at the thought, and then put the end under a spoiler tag.

*** HIDING UNDER THE PETTICOATS ***

Of course, Bob Gillis is Ellie May’s father. More importantly to all concerned, evidence comes to light that Bob Gillis fought bravely for the Confederacy in the Civil War, risking his life for the glory of Dixie and all for which she stood. And on the basis of that alone, Bob Gillis is exonerated and Rome’s mom is filled with approval of Ellie May.

*** BACK OUT FOR MORE ***

A film like this is difficult to judge from a modern perspective. Certainly the character of Judge Priest is inching slowly toward tolerance, although he’s still a long way away from today’s sensibilities. More concerning to modern eyes is the fact that the racism that is evident throughout the film, either explicitly toward characters like Jeff or implicitly in the support of the ideals of the Confederacy, is seen is just, natural, and good. It’s hard to overcome.

And so I’m torn on this film. On the one hand, it’s a rare and real pleasure to see and hear Will Rogers. On the other hand, the film is so completely mired in the sensibilities of the “Lazy Negro” and happy servant that it’s difficult to watch without wincing.

Why to watch Judge Priest: The homespun wisdom and downhome-y goodness of Will Rogers.
Why not to watch: Tacit racism throughout.