all over the place
Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:07AM It may not be obvious while it's happening, but after the fact we can always make some justification for our behavior. In this case it's merely what cinematic experiences have been consummed of late. That is, maybe there's more of a connection than random happenstance, or the quioxotic passion of the moment.
Upon Joe Reifer's advice, over the course of a couple of sittings I've watched Errol Morris' Pet Cemetary, his first film for which he and DP Ned Burgess generated some rather striking compositions.
Also not to be missed as a stream from Netflix is Richard Linklater's first film, Slacker, a 24 hour tour through the back streets of Austin, Texas, surely a film that is a dérive if ever there was one. Only Luis Bunuel's Le Fantome de la Liberte has a similar non structured flow. Linklater's collection of misfits and polemecists don't necessarily engage anything but the mind, but they do entertain.
"we've been on the moon since the 50's"
"you should stop traumatizing women"
"I can't watch it on slo mo"
On disc came an "imaginative biography" of Diane Arbus, Fur, from the period when she left her successful photographer husband and began to photograph her own subjects. The film isn't much about her photography, as few American films ever have anything whatsoever to do with the thing that occupies most of our waking hours: work. Not exactly a Hollywood film, since it was filmed in studios in Jersey City, N.J., but since it's got Nicole Kidman playing Arbus, and Robert Downey Jr. as her new friend upstairs, it's not far from that dominant aesthetic. The compositions - by DP Bill Pope (he did all the Matrix films), and production designer Amy Danger - are gorgeous, as one would expect from a big budget production. It's full of ideas obvious and not so obvious, and probably deserves better attention than it received.
(Sorry, no screen shots.)
Also streamed from Netflix was Le fils, by the Belgian brothers Luc and Jeanne-Pierre Dardenne. Interestingly enough, their production company is called Dérive (see above) Films. The brothers Dardenne are much awarded flim makers who work in the area of Belgium where they grew up, having gone on to their minimalist ficitional films that feel much like a documentary. The characters barely speak, but the camera follows them constantly in its long take examinations of their lives of labor and work. The technique is as much a contributor to the perception of the film as the writing and acting, with elements of the Dogme 95 movement exerting their influence. Image quality in the Netflix stream is not particularly high, the original apparently being Super 16mm. It is the fluidity and intensity of the framing that reveals the authenticity of the material.
What's the connection amongst these varied viewings? Mostly, I think it's my infinite curiosity about the methodology that film makers use to present the lives of others in a fictional or documentarian manner.
world cinema
Reader Comments (3)
I still haven't watched Fur -- gotta bump that up the list. Have you seen either of Linklater's rotoscoped films -- Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly?
Yeah, both of them are pretty interesting. Waking Life is pretty much a fun thing, whereas A Scanner Darkly is a rather heavy duty weird out paranoia trip: Phillip K. Dick original. Unfortunately, I don't think anything by Linklater other than Slacker is available on the Instaview.
I should also say about Fur that I think the best moment in the film comes when a still photo of RD Jr. is shown, as one that is supposed to have been taken by Arbus. Some fine acting from the principals.