Defining "Lynchian"

Film: Mulholland Drive
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Oh, my poor, naïve brain. Here I thought I’d go through life with Southland Tales being the weirdest, most unexplainable film I’d ever seen. No, leave it to David Lynch to concoct something more convoluted, more twisted in upon itself. Mulholland Drive is possibly a fever dream, possibly an endless loop of repeating time, and possibly both. Okay, I’m overstating my confusion a bit, but Mulholland Drive is not an easy thing to work through.

I don’t know where to begin in terms of synopsis of this film, which is precisely why I compared it with Southland Tales. Rather than going chronologically, it’s probably a better idea to do this in terms of story line. Hell, the film isn’t chronological, so I may as well not be. There are a lot of things going on here, and rarely is anything what it seems.

The Most Apt Title I've Seen

Film: Vidas Secas (Barren Lives)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

It’s not often that I find a film that makes me long for the fun and pleasant pastures of El Norte, but Vidas Secas (Barren Lives) is just such a film. A prime example of the Brazilian Cinema Novo style, which was itself influenced almost exclusively by Italian Neo-Realism, this is a film in which very little that is good happens. More specifically, it seems like everything bad that can happen does, and everything bad is focused on one family group. It’s one step forward, two steps back without the step forward. It’s The Grapes of Wrath with even less hope and joy.

In fact, that’s the biggest issue I have with the film. It’s not that bad things happen, it’s that bad things appear to happen exclusively to the family that is the center of the film. For one very long stretch of film, there’s a celebration going on while one of the characters sits in jail after receiving a beating for a crime he didn’t commit. I hate watching films like this. They seriously make me question why I’m doing what I’m doing.

One Man Alone

Film: Ride Lonesome; Shane
Format: DVD from NetFlix (Ride Lonesome) and personal collection (Shane) on Sue’s Mother’s Day present.

There is no genre of film more quintessentially American than the Western. Not even film noir is so American, and yes, I’m including spaghetti Westerns in this; they’re American, too, in their own way. The American myth is all about the one many alone who stands up against overwhelming odds and still triumphs. In a large part, the concept of the American Dream comes from this basic Western story. With a classic Western, you know that the white hats are going to win and the black hats are going to lose. Most importantly for that myth, there are many Westerns in which one man stands alone against those who wish to cause him harm.

Ride Lonesome is pretty good at squeezing all of those Western tropes into a single film. Like many Westerns, it’s incredibly straightforward. There’s not a lot of subtlety in the plot, which makes sense with the film’s almost disturbingly short running time. A man with the awesome Western name of Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) captures a wanted outlaw named Billy John (James Best). There’s a ransom out on Billy, and Brigade plans to bring him to Santa Cruz to collect, and to make sure that Billy meets his appointment at the end of a hangman’s rope.

Behind the Mask

Film: Onibaba (The Demon)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

I’ve had Onibaba on my queue for months, and it’s been sitting there on Hulu since about the time I first got a Hulu account. There it sat, unwatched until today. Why? Why did I wait this long? I don’t know; I just did. Onibaba is a film I wish I had seen a few months or a few years earlier, though. It’s strange and compelling, and while not particularly scary in the traditional horror sense, it is nonetheless an effective horror film. It even comes (as all good horror stories and fairy tales do) with something like a moral.

In medieval Japan, two women live in a massive plain of tall grasses. The older woman (Nobuko Otowa) is waiting for the return of her son from the wars currently being waged by a number of different warlords. In the world of the warlords, peasants don’t matter, so entire groups of population are scooped up and conscripted, and this is what has happened to her son. Also waiting is the woman’s daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura).

Bird is the Word

Film: S’en Fout la Mort (No Fear No Die)
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.

Ever get one of those films that pulls you strongly in two completely opposite directions? S’en Fout la Mort (No Fear No Die) was like that for me. There’s a lot here to like and a lot here that borders on the stomach-turning, especially for anyone concerned even a little with the rights and well-being of animals, since one of the main plot threads concerns an illegal cockfighting ring. It’s difficult to watch despite the film being completely compelling in all other ways.

Dah (Isaach De Bankole) and Jocelyn (Alex Descas) have signed a deal with a man named Ardennes (Jean-Claude Brialy). The deal is that they will train roosters to fight in an illegal cockfighting ring for a small percentage of the take. Ardennes, for his part, will maintain them, give them a place to live and work, and do everything necessary to ensure a constant flood of bloodthirsty bettors on the fights. Dah has more of a head for business while Jocelyn trains the birds to fight. He has a way with birds, and he soon attaches himself to one he names S’en Fout la Mort.

With Friends Like These...

Film: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Momentous anniversaries and milestones often are a cause for reflection or something special. I’d love to say that I have something special planned for this; as it turns out, this is the 1,000th review to be posted on this site. I’ve (after this) written 952 from The List and put up another 48 of one type or another. But there’s no retrospective here, nor a film that I love especially much. Instead, it’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which just happened to be what came in from NetFlix today. Nothing particularly meaningful to me. I guess the momentous thing will happen when I hit this number from The List or 1,000 posts. Or maybe not.

This film was directed by Sam Peckinpah, and that means a few things. It means slow-motion violence for one thing. It means that when someone gets shot (and someone gets shot a lot in this film), the bullet tends to go through the person and out the other side. It means a lot of blood spray. It’s what made Peckinpah who he was, and especially with Westerns, it’s not that easy to step away from what made you a great director in the eyes of the viewing public.

Death in Sweden

Film: Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal); Viskingar och Rop (Cries and Whispers)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

The idea of death as a chess player probably first appeared about twenty minutes after the rules of chess were solidified and codified. The most enduring image of death as a chess player comes from Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal). I’d seen bits and pieces of this in the past, but I’m not sure I’d seen the whole thing until today. Of all Bergman’s films, this is the most well known, and the one people seem to know. At the very least, people know the image of Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot playing chess near the sea (as in the picture above).

As I say, I’d seen bits of this, and it would appear that the bits I had seen were those of the chess game. I expected Det Sjunde Inseglet to be a sort of My Dinner with Andre where the two play chess and have deep existential discussions about the meanings of life and death. I’m not sure why I thought that, and I’m pleased to have been wrong. I’m not sure that this would have become the classic it is had it just been a literal chess game instead of the much more figurative chess game it is.