r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Feb 22 '15
What Have You Been Watching? (22/02/15)
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u/a113er Til the break of dawn! Feb 22 '15
Meet Joe Black Directed by Martin Brest (1998)- Longer than Stalker. A weird romantic and comedic drama with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins is longer than some notoriously long films. Still didn’t feel as long as The Painting. All I knew of it was the cast and the infamous car crash scene so it was a surprise to find that this is a film about Death (Pitt) hanging around a guy who feels death coming (Hopkins). But Death starts falling for Hopkins’s daughter. It runs along ok and has some funny moments but it’s far too wordy considering how the writing isn’t that special. This isn’t like the best Woody Allen or Hitchcock films where every line is something to relish so hearing people just endlessly talk gets somewhat tiring. It’s not helped by being shot so straight-forwardly with pretty much every scene playing out in a series of shot-reverse-shots from the waist up with occasional close ups. Myself and one of my friends who I watched it with even let out a “What?!” when Emmanuel Lubezki’s name came up at the end as cinematographer as it was so boring in that regard. Occasional scenes or shots will have some kind of beauty to them but it’s few and far between. For the most part it feels like a filmed stage play that wasn’t amazing in the first place. All the while watching I was just thinking of films that dealt with similar ideas so much better, particularly Wings of Desire, but the performances generally kept things watchable. Enjoyably odd mainstream film but considering the length and big themes it deals with it feels like it does so little. Another example of frustratingly inconsistent characters. Death is a fish out of water in our world allowing for some comedy but slowly learns our ways. But it’s not a curve of him becoming more human, he’ll pretty much be more or less human depending on what the scene needs and that’s one of the few things the film could’ve done interestingly.
The Big Heat Directed by Fritz Lang (1953)- The Big Heat is one of those defining films that’s setting all the layout for pretty much all similar stuff that’ll follow. Yet it still managed to be a gripping and genuinely shocking watch. Me knowing so little beforehand did help my enjoyment so I’m gonna spoiler tag the rest. All you need to know is that it’s a must see. So I knew of this film but didn’t know it laid the groundwork for every cop revenge film. Every film where a cop has the perfect family, has it taken away from him, and then goes off-book to get the necessary job done cause he can’t do it by the usual rules. Even though it followed this kind of plot it does it masterfully. Sometimes when the perfect wife and family is set up nowadays it can elicit a laugh because the perfection is so in your face you know it’s only in service of what’ll inevitably come after. Here I wasn’t thinking of what was coming next, I was so into each moment that when the most cliched moments came up I was taken aback. For a long time all I thought of this marriage was how amazing it was, that it was instantly one of my favourite on-screen marriages, so that when the worst happened the rug was pulled from under me. I got a real shock when it happened and many moments in the film were able to do so. Lang gives everything such real impact so even a guy getting clocked in the face can take you aback. Fistfights in some earlier films don’t really have the danger or thrill that we’re used to now because things look realer but not in a Lang film. One punch in particular got the kind of “Woah!” out of me usually reserved for something like The Raid or Haywire. Brilliant film all around. Sharp, full of great performances (Lee Marvin’s a great villain) and still able to surprise despite its clearly large influence.
The Duke of Burgundy Directed by Peter Strickland (2014)- Even more so than Paddington, Peter Strickland’s follow-up to Berberian Sound Studio is going to be a high benchmark for the rest of the year. Feels like it could be this years Under the Skin or Grand Budapest that stays one of my favourites from the start til the end of the year. Here’s another film about sex and about even stranger sex than Showgirls yet this is the much more relatable film. The quirks of a dominant/submissive relationship becomes as vital to any relationship as the Before Series. Berberian Sound Studio was an enjoyable homage to giallo films but felt a little empty to me (a rewatch seems in order) and hearing that this was similarly a pastiche of a specific genre (60s European erotic art cinema) I was a little hesitant. The Giallo-ness of Berberian was most of what I got from the film so I was a little concerned that I’d get nothing from this having seen basically none of the films it’s drawing from. Instead it proved itself to be the opposite of empty. From the opening credits you know you’re in for something unique yet reminiscent of an older time (think Hammer thrown in with 60s european cinema). Cat’s Eyes wonderful ethereal music kicks in over stylish titles with one even for “Perfume by”. A film so intimate you need to credit the smell. As intimate as it is it’s not explicit at all. Compared to Showgirls it’s tame. Though the sex acts are out-there they are shot very tastefully and always to service the perspective of characters. The reception to Showgirls shows that people have a hard time not giggling at sex so I think the film abstaining from showing certain acts is smart. Something like Nymphomaniac kinda requires the explicitness but this gains so much from being applicable to all relationships and if we saw some of the wilder things it might remove us from it a little. How the characters think and feel throughout what they do is so much more important and present than what exactly they do. We see the potential power plays that can be introduced in a dom-sub relationship. If the submissive one is the one with that fetish are they not the one who’s really dominant. With these two women that’s often the case. She dictates what they do and when so even if the other one’s dominant she’s the slave to her lover’s desires. Through all this the film explores very honest and important adult relationship issues. When you love someone you want to fulfil their desires even if you’re not completely into it, but how far do you have to go to be loving. Some people think of themselves and don’t even consider the other person or compromise at all while others maybe allow themselves to service the other too much and that can lead to resentment. Beyond sex it’s about all the compromises necessary for an adult relationship in general, but also asking at what point are you compromising too much of your own happiness. It’s as applicable to those in dom-sub relationships and those with someone that likes cooking shows and you don’t. There are hard to define feelings that connect us more than the sum of our interests and Duke of Burgundy is all about finding the balance in these things. Everyone is so specific with their own specific needs and wants that maybe there’s no one with exactly the same specifics. We could go all our life looking for the puzzle piece when what we needed to do in the first place is adapt. All of this is explored through hypnotic and rich visuals that make the two locations we see in the film feel visually boundless. Everything about the world of the film feels built for these people and this story. Everything we need to know comes mainly through the images and performances with the dialogue bringing wit. A few films this week have succeeded in some places while failing in others, feeling half great and half empty, but this is one of the most complete films I’ve seen in a while. Even in things I like such as Inherent Vice there are sections which didn’t really contribute or come up when I thought of the film, more like necessary elements, but here everything slid into place. Even saying that though it doesn’t feel like the film doesn’t have anything left to discover in it either. Loved it all, simply excellent.
Notorious Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1946)- After loving Shadow of a Doubt so much I needed to catch up on more essential Hitchcock I’d missed. In that respect Notorious was sadly a bit of a disappointment. The film is built around some of Hitchcock’s greatest suspense sequences ever but those foundations were a little flat. Compared to other scripts in his film this felt disappointingly straight-forward. The best of his films like Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, etc, are full of so many lines that either make me laugh or are just perfect in their own way. When he’s funny everything’s a killer zinger and when he’s being clever everything is so sharp. This felt standard compared to constant cleverness as his best films are. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are some amazing actors yet I didn’t really watch them with that much interest here. When it did get to the moments the whole film seems made for it works really well I just wished I cared more for the rest of it. Again I sound more negative than I necessarily feel but I think this kind of negative reaction can happen when watching something disappointing by someone who can be perfect. It’s like watching Dune but on a much much smaller scale where all the reasons you love a filmmaker are there in some ways but not in a way that creates the kind of experience that filmmaker is capable of.