Don't Look Now

This is a psychological and moody thriller with a jarring and unpredictable end to it. Well, it's not unpredictable, at all, actually. But it's still incredibly shocking, which is quite a feat, if you think about it. But then, this isn't a film for lovers of narrative. It has sort of an interesting narrative formula--it begins and ends with a bang, with a lot of floating in between of prescient imagery and dialogue, as well as a famed sex scene.

I actually watched this on Valentine's day, solidifying my penchant for the macabre on holidays with expectations of familial and/or romantic affection. However, this movie was totally appropriate. First of all, check out the visual theme of blood red! Secondly, the story is centered on the loving, albeit strained relationship of a married couple, John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), following the death of their young daughter. This event takes place in the opening scene of the film. John has a sudden vision of the occurrence shortly following the ominous spill on the slide he is working with (see above). Throughout the rest of the film, we are revisited by images that recall the dead girl in his arms.

Following this calamitous event, the Baxters relocate to Venice, where John is restoring a church. Being constantly surrounded by water, much like the lake where their daughter met her demise, this is the perfect setting for the inevitable portentous reflection and imagery. Roeg also uses the setting to evoke a sense of isolation and even claustrophobia.

What really makes this film visually memorable is not only the many reflective shots and zooms, but the harshness of the parallel editing. Although it is often used to represent simultaneity of actions across a distance, the editing here sometimes has the effect of creating an overlay of present and future. The opening scene lays the groundwork for this editing style. As John and Laura lounge about in their living room, their daughter runs by the waterside. Though the daughter is an important character in the film, we never see her alive with either of her parents; she is, and will always be, separate. Probably the most famous montage in the film is the lengthy, graphic sex scene, which is inter-cut with images of the Baxters getting dressed afterward, in their separate spaces. I think this collapsing of time is interesting, since this is a movie where fate plays a big role. Time is out of sync, as if it doesn't matter. Of course these montages also highlight the separateness of the characters. Simultaneously, they are having incredibly separate experiences, each one alone.

I am a sucker for supernatural elements in fiction and film, particularly if they are used well. In Don't Look Now, Laura stumbles upon a pair of sisters, one of whom has the gift of "seeing". She is blind, but she can interact with the dead. There are hints that John has this capability as well, though he is suppressing it. This undercurrent of clairvoyance creates an interesting circularity in the plot. The film begins and ends with deaths that are inexorably linked. By the end, I wondered whether the imagery throughout the film was recalling John's daughter's death or (ahem, SPOILERS) predicting his own. In its final moments, this movie gets extremely dark, and as I said, shocking.

Also, if you're interested, I found this funny montage of the film, which is set to a Moby song. The internet makes great things, doesn't it?

And because I just can't help myself... the final moments of the film, which means, the part when all is revealed. And also a good demonstration of the montage technique used throughout to heighten the fatalistic aspects. I hate the term SPOILERS, since this blog isn't really about reviewing; it's about analysis (however basic). But I guess it's only polite to use it here.

Boom Boom Boom

Git Sum Strange Love




This is the first video I've tried to embed. I think I will do it more often.

... Don't watch this if you are expecting to be surprised by the end of this movie.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I didn't have time to screen cap this, because I borrowed it from a friend who was very specific about the time that he wanted it returned. That was probably smart of him, though. I tend to collect other people's belongings and absorb them like the Blob. As a result, unfortunately, I'm making do with borrowed images, as well. I really like the process of making screen captures because it allows me to revisit the film I just watched, which allows me to engage with it again. I also like being able to choose my images rather than being forced to rely on what is available.

For instance, Google fed me variations on this image over and over, which is just fine, but not terribly interesting, except as a demonstration of how delightfully creepy Dr. Strangelove is. Those teeth make me shudder:


So anyway, failing to use my own images degrades the quality of my writing. That being said, this isn't my most dedicated work. End disclaimer.

Being a fan of Stanley Kubrick's and of black comedies in general, I had been meaning to see this film for a long time. I've always been drawn to the black comedy genre, since clearly the best way to make an already disturbing topic twice as disturbing is by turning it into a joke. It might be pointless to relay the narrative of this film, since it seems like pretty much everyone but me has already seen it. But what happens is that General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes a little FUBAR and singlehandedly unleashes the U.S. air force on Russia. Highlighting this in the war room is a "big board" with an enormous map of Russia and images of missiles closing in on it from all directions. There is only one code to pull them off; Ripper is the only one who knows it. The catch is that, unbeknownst to the world, Russia has created a "doomsday machine," which will bring about the end of the world if a bomb is dropped there. The film is mainly spent watching the buffoonish president and his advisers' fruitless attempts at restoring order.

Jack Ripper gives a rather infamous speech about the male essence, and how fluoridated water is a conspiracy to rid men of said essence. Notice the phallic cigar dangling from his lips. It is this fear of impotency that leads to his psychotic break, which leads to the launching of some phallic missiles. It's also notable that there is only one woman in this entire film, and she is in a bikini for her entire screen time. This is a testosterone circus, although few displays of traditional masculinity are actually portrayed, particularly not by Sellers' characters (Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove). Presumably, Ripper tires of the incessant cowardice of the Cold War and just decides to make a move. Or maybe the Cold War was never about cowardice at all; it was simply "a dick measuring contest," as a good friend of mine might say.

This movie is hysterical, and the naming is ingenious. Most people should know how this plays out, since the final moments of this film are pretty infamous. For good reason. There is no fighting in the war room. Yee-hah.

Only marginally related to anything

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Click on these to go to the animated gif. I like the second one better.

L'avventura

Form is content in Antonioni's L'avventura, which makes it a slow watch in this, the age of hyper-editing. But if you are willing to slow down for a moment, maybe boil water for tea, percolate the coffee, and take a deep breath; the slowest film is always worth the wait. That being said, I can't add much to the girth of criticism on this film, but I can add my own meager observations.

The plot is minimal. A group of friends embarks on a cruise. Anna (Lea Massari) is engaged to Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), but she has gotten used to the distance between them; she has become accustomed to being alone. When they land on an island to explore, Anna disappears without a trace. It is almost as if she never existed at all. And the existence of the other characters is equally nebulous.

Sandro and Claudia (Monica Vitti), Anna's best friend, spend the rest of the film hopelessly in pursuit of her. By the end, their journey is devoid of purpose, as they realize that they do not wish to find her anymore. Claudia says:

Just several days ago, the thought of Anna being dead would have made me sick.
And now, I don't even cry, I'm afraid she might be alive.

Sandro and Claudia have fallen in love, but their love is just as empty as the one previously shared by Sandro and Anna.

It is pretty well acknowledged that this film is a criticism of the idle upper class, a group of people who care so little about anything that they spend the entirety of the film wandering around, becoming engulfed by their surroundings and ricocheting off of each other without true connection. They are incapable of true connection. In one scene, Claudia and Sandro are on top of a church, playing with the ropes that set the bells ringing. When they begin to ring loudly, the lovers hear more ringing off in the distance, seeming to answer them. It is more likely though, that what they are hearing is simply an echo, and not a real communication at all.


Before this, the only Antonioni I had seen was Blow-Up, which I have now seen several times. What actually made me finally track down L'avventura was reading Vinyl is Heavy, and their obsession over there with Monica Vitti. Any obsession with this woman is well-founded. You can't take your eyes off of her, and considering that half of what she does in this film is wander aimlessly through streets and scenery, this is a pretty spectacular feat. Her graceful body language and her heavy-lidded eyes own the camera's gaze. Partly, this is Antonioni's doing, and this is one thing that makes me suspect that there is more going on here than bourgeoisie ennui. Over and over Claudia becomes objectified by the male gaze, as do many of the other women. In particular, Claudia is consistently trapped by the framing, making her seem caged.


The gaze is prominent here, in a scene showing Giulia's (Dominique Blancher) puerile romp with a young painter who depicts only the female body in his art.

The above scene is interesting, because it is one of the several examples in this film of the revelation of an "establishing shot" following the entrance to the scene, rather than at the beginning. Here you see Claudia leaning against a stone wall, then the camera provides a wider shot, showing her as the center of a captive male audience. Perhaps we are being implicated in this gaze as well. Maybe Claudia, like Anna, exists solely as an object of the gaze. Anna disappears when she decides that she does not want this gaze to define her. Much later, Claudia despairs when she fears she has lost Sandro's attention. The woman are surfaces, and not much more. They are figments struggling against their tenuous relationship to reality.


When the film ends, one senses that it is beginning all over again.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This movie was even better than I expected it might be. I shouldn't have really been surprised though, given that Fantastic Mr. Fox is a Wes Anderson adaptation of excellent source material from Roald Dahl, the master alchemist of childhood sadism and whimsy. Though, like many good adaptations, the movie takes some liberties with its source. It also features some ace voice talent, including many Wes Anderson regulars like Jason Schwarzman and Owen Wilson, as well as George Clooney and Meryl Streep.

If there was every any doubt of Anderson's status as an auteur (was there any doubt?) this should put it to rest. Even when working with stop action animation, every frame and every faltering voice is saturated with his influence. This film would be a great one for the argumentation of auteur theory in general. That's for all of my friends who are still in school.

In the story, Mr. Fox gives up a dangerous life of crime (the chicken-stealing variety) in order to become a family man. Of course, for foxes, theft is a more normative way of life than journalism, the position that Mr. Fox takes on for his wife's sake. In doing so, he apparently compromises both his foxhood and his masculinity, which is why he pulls the one last job that causes the calamitous events of the film to take place. Foxes are purportedly sly and underhanded, but the farmers are no less so as each group tries to upend the other. It is true, though, that the humans seem to favor the more offensive approach, bringing in the heavy artillery, like backhoes and bombs. They are not subtle. The foxes are content in their subversion, sneakily tunneling their way into the farmers' food stores.


The composition of each frame in this film is impeccably detailed, making the little world that Anderson creates as lush as it is idiosyncratic. One thing he injects in his version, which I don't believe is in Dahl's, is a heightened dichotomy between animal instincts and anthropomorphic qualities. These animals are fully civilized, but will erupt into sudden fits of animal behavior in the most jarring of moments. Though the foxes sit at a table to eat, and seem to be schooled in culinary arts, they have a proclivity to tear into their baked chicken as if it was an antelope felled on the savannah. The critters live in detailed human-like establishments, but when the roof is torn off of their abodes, they quickly join forces to dig themselves into safety.

At the very end of the film, the foxes solve their hunger problem by digging into a grocery store, where they can steal food to their heart's content. The only problem is that the food is canned imitations of the real foods they formerly enjoyed. Perhaps they are becoming too human for their own good. Or they are adapting, like animals do. In another, more mysterious scene, Mr. Fox and the kids encounter a distant, lone wolf, but are unable to communicate with him; he will not respond to English or French, but he does respond to a fist pumped in the air. They wish him luck as he scampers into the woods on all fours. Is this distant figure what the foxes, so enmeshed in human life, aspire to be?

Other notable quirks are the demarcation of time in both fox and human time, and Mrs. Fox's doom-laden landscape paintings, each one spiked with lightning. Not to mention that the unique animation style is a nice break from smooth and immaculate Pixar creations. Its palette is washed out, its movement jerky and uncomfortable. The proportions of human to fox are totally off. It's pretty awesome, in short.



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Sonic Youth Picks Criterion Films

One of the things I love about surfing around Criterion is that they have a list of top ten films from such illustrious folks as Jonathan Lethem, Diablo Cody, and Steve Buschemi. Now they have a listing for Sonic Youth, as well!

Go an' see!

I always find it interesting to see what various artists cite amongst their favorites, especially people who aren't directly associated with the biz, like Lethem and Sonic Youth. I would be especially interested in other authors who are obviously heavily influenced by film, like Don DeLillo. With all of the references in his songs, I'm sure Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal would come up with a good one as well.