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Saturday, December 8th, 2007
We watched this movie tonight and I gotta say, I'm starting to think biopics based on the lives of musicians are not the genre for me. I mean the music was great and all; but no dramatic structure was to be found. Characters came and went without contributing anything to the movie, and ultimately no character (with the arguable exception of Piaf herself) was developed with any real depth. Beautiful actors and scenery.
posted evening of December 8th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, December third, 2007
My brother asks in e-mail, "Really, did you actually love 'Aguirre, etc.' or did you just understand that it's a Great Film?" by way of saying that he understood it to be Great Film but did not find anything to enjoy in the film itself. This is interesting to me because (a) I did actually, authentically enjoy this film and (b) I worry, when I am liking something that I know is Great, about whether my enjoyment is real. In "On Reading: Words or Images", Pamuk says,
When we notice [our surroundings while reading], we are at the same time savoring our solitude and the workings of our imagination and congratulating ourselves on possessing greater depth than those who do not read. I understand how a reader might, without going too far, wish to congratulate himself, though I have little patience for those who take pride in boasting.
So that is the worry when I tell myself I loved Aguirre, the Wrath of God or My Name Is Red or whatever -- how do I distinguish between the externally-directed pleasure of fancying myself a connoisseur of fine film or literature, and the internal, actual pleasure of understanding and appreciating the work in question? I have an unexamined prejudice that the former pleasure is in bad faith, is boastful and something to be ashamed of.
Herzog's (and Kinski's) genius is certainly front and center in Aguirre -- it seems to me like it would be difficult to watch the movie without having the thought that it is the work of a genius, that it is Great Film. But, I'm not quite sure how to put this, the movie itself is so powerful and moving, the second-hand attributes of the movie are not primary in my mind while I'm watching it.
posted evening of December third, 2007: Respond
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Riff Raff is the author of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
posted afternoon of December third, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, December first, 2007
When I am watching Aguirre, the Wrath of God I notice that I am not thinking at all about what might be going on off-camera -- the focus is so sharply on whichever characters are on screen at any moment, they are obviously the most important thing in the movie.
posted evening of December first, 2007: Respond
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...and random thoughts while watching Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
- I wonder if anyone has made note of how strongly (if memory serves) Richard O'Brian's character in The Rocky Horror Picture Show resembles Klaus Kinski. Wonder if that was a conscious choice by the Rocky Horror people. Seriously, when the camera came in close on Aguirre standing next to the river, I thought Oh my God, it's Riff Raff!
- Aguirre's first appearance in the movie, talking to (I think?) Pizarro, they reminded me of Tintin and Captain Haddock a little bit, which was amusing.
- This movie has the dreamlike atmosphere that pervades some of my very favorite works of art, like e.g. Gravity's Rainbow -- indeed I think this is a movie that could have been very competently produced by some of Pynchon's characters.
- The brilliant, brilliant title sequence makes me think of nothing so much as Escher's paintings. I keep thinking Wow, I didn't know you could do that with film.
- The soundtrack might be the best movie soundtrack ever. At least the best in some subcategory of motion picture soundtracks. From the church music at the beginning, to the piper, to Perucho's threatening hums and hisses... It is in the substance of the film, it complements and enhances the imagery. Perfect.
'Minimalist' is, it seems to me, the best category of foreign language film, the most fun for me to watch because there is some chance I will catch the dialogue. And indeed, here I find I am getting a lot of it (with help from the subtitles). One thing that really turned me on about this movie was the mix of different influences and realities -- like the characters were Spanish but speaking German, they were dressed in period costume but their makeup and hair and general bearing seemed much more contemporary. Etcetera.
posted afternoon of December first, 2007: 3 responses
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Friday, November 30th, 2007
This is a fantastic movie that anyone whose æsthetic tastes are similar to mine should hurry down to the video shop and take a look at it. This movie is exquisitely good like an elegant meal. I'll try to write more about it later when I've had a little more time to reflect upon it.
posted evening of November 30th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, November 25th, 2007
I was watching (the fantastically good) Bad Education the other night and saw a preview for the 2004 movie of The Merchant of Venice, and it looked pretty good. So I have added it to my Netflix queue, and today I bought the book to keep me company in the meantime, and this brought to mind my post a few days ago about embarrassment -- because Shakespeare is always a source of worry for me, that I will be found out as insufficiently literate, because I have not read or seen enough of his plays, or do not recognize quotations from them quickly enough. Silly (it goes without saying) but there it is. Reading the play this afternoon, and getting into the rhythm of the meter more than I can remember having done in the past -- my memory is that when I was reading Shakespeare in high school and college, I was always trying to figure out what the meter should sound like, without much luck.
posted evening of November 25th, 2007: Respond
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We saw I'm Not There this afternoon. My reaction to it was similar in a funny way to my reaction to The Nutcracker (though in the final analysis I way prefer this movie to that ballet) -- it was a beautiful series of music videos, each of them a valid work of art in its own right; but the combination left me a little cold. I want to see Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid now, which the Richard Gere portion of this movie is billed as an homage to. The scene of the group on the bandstand playing "Goin' to Acapulco" may have been the most beautiful imagery in the whole film -- although the sequence of Cate Blanchett's character singing "Ballad of a Thin Man" was well worth while as well. One thing that really struck me was "Alice Fabian" (I guess a stand-in for Joan Baez?) saying of "Jack Rollins", (approximately) "It seemed as if he was singing what I meant to say but could not figure out how to express" -- this struck me as very similar to my own reaction to some of my very favorite stuff, e.g. Orhan Pamuk's writing or Dylan's music.
posted evening of November 25th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, November 17th, 2007
Continuing our Almodóvar festival -- we watched The Flower of my Secret tonight. A really beautiful, sensual movie. I guess I don't think it's on the level of Volver and All About my Mother, quite, though it does anticipate both of them.
posted evening of November 17th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
If I had it in me (if I were better versed in film criticism, if I were a better writer), I would write an essay about how the common thread running through Hitchcock's films is one of satire. I would first spend some paragraphs or pages writing about the quality which prompts me to describe a story as "corny" and then write about how Hitchcock builds his fictional world around that quality and then spends his movies poking fun at it, and at his characters and his plots and his direction. If I were able to hold more than a couple of his films in my mind at once, I would illustrate this thesis with examples from throughout his work, say that to my way of thinking, his movies were best early on when the satire was subtle and not the main point of the movie, and fell off slightly when they became more cartoonish; would paint an arc of his career and show how the trend moved, which movies exemplified it and which were exceptions to the rule. Unfortunately (or perhaps not!), I am not that kind of a writer. Instead I will merely assert the thesis as true; and the next time I watch one of his movies try to write about it as seen from this viewpoint.
posted evening of November 14th, 2007: Respond
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