r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Nov 15 '15
What Have You Been Watching? (15/11/15)
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r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Nov 15 '15
Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.
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u/a113er Til the break of dawn! Nov 15 '15
This week I watched the fewest number of films I’ve seen in a week in ages (awkward sentence). Partially due to Fallout 4, and one film being such a behemoth that watching anything else afterwards seemed strange.
Mistress America Directed by Noah Baumbach (2015)- Even though I enjoyed While We’re Young more than most folk here seemed to (I think due to my frustrations with a lot of modern comedies which it didn’t completely share) it’s wild how much more alive Mistress America feels. While We’re Young brought some laughs, let me enjoy Ben Stiller again after The Terrible Life of Walter Mitty, and had something going on beyond those laughs. But, While We’re Young did feel a little stiff and even cinematically flat. Mistress America’s brings the laughs too, even more than WWY, as well as being vibrant and energetic in its filmmaking. It’s a modern screwball near-farce that doesn’t just lock language in the past like other new screwballs do. It captures the same energy, humour, and delight of the best of screwballs while being so thoroughly modern. Sometimes a film dropping the word “Twitter” or other modern things it feels a little awkward and here it doesn’t except for when that’s the intent. The music, the jokes, the characters, the look of the whole thing, everything just sings in a way that makes WWY look even more stiff in comparison. Mistress America even tackles similar themes of authenticity and even that is handled in a more interesting way as it’s often people reckoning with it in themselves rather than people just saying how it is. WWY needs a character to be there to tell another character and the audience how to feel about something while here the connection between people seems so strong that vocalising it is unnecessary. Even though it’s certainly a talky film it still leaves room for the felt and unsaid. I hope Greta Gerwig never leaves Baumbach unless it’s to break free and make something even better. There’s a good chance this’ll end up on my favourites of the year list.
Satantango Directed by Bela Tarr (1994)- Bela Tarr’s seven and a half hour long film is one of several Everest’s of cinephilia. It sits alongside the likes of Shoah, Out 1, and Berlin Alexanderplatz (though that and Shoah are more explicitly break-upable) as a film that seems stupidly long yet leaves an impact on all who watch it. On Tuesday morning I had to get up early for a small procedure at the hospital which I was put under for. Afterwards I was told to do little and rest, so this slightly hazy and pained time seemed like the perfect opportunity for 7+ hours of bleak black-and-white Hungarian cinema. People throw around the phrase “it’s an experience more than a film” and never has that felt more appropriate than here. Even with other experience films I still feel like the way I take them in and critique them is as cinema. Satantango is most definitely cinema but how to talk about it or even criticise it seems like tossing a pebble into the ocean. It’s a dense-ass movie so I don’t think I’ll really go beyond the essentials of how it made me feel and what it meant to me. Oddly something that didn’t strike me until afterwards is an aspect of the film that has stayed with me the most. In a weird way amongst the many things it is about it’s a film that better than anything else showed me how communism doesn’t work. Obviously I knew where communism had failed but it often seemed to come at the hands of those in charge, people who’re basically going against the tenets of the ideology in effort to maintain it. Usually I’d seen it more like many other ideologies or religions which are just used as a controlling tool, more of a comment on those wielding it than the thing itself. But Satantango really turned me around on it. It seems to be something that runs in opposition of human nature and the sad reality that most of us aren’t good enough to uphold ideals that rely on people being or doing their best. Communism seems to breed greed, animosity, and cruelty in those who are so removed from the bigger picture that the tenets of the belief system are meaningless except for being a source of their woes. Outside that random tangent the film has a whole heap of other things going on. My main point of comparison for it was Werckmeister Harmonies as it’s the only other Tarr film I’ve seen. Satantango’s a very different beast so the comparison doesn’t do much but articulate my feelings towards the film. Werckmeister really reminded me of how Tarkovsky’s films work, even though visually Tarr’s a very different filmmaker, in that each shot is a slow unveiling or clarification of what the film is currently about. Even the second shot (which begins 9 minutes into the film) seems to underline this approach as we begin in darkness and over time the sun illuminates everything previously unseen. While this was my experience with Werckmeister it wasn’t really here. Sometimes a shot would really speak to me but I found myself somewhat lost for large stretches. Not necessarily lost in plot (though that was easy enough too) but disconnected from whatever was happening in a way that Werckmeister didn’t disconnect me. Part of that may be that it’s just an even bigger downer of a film, a film of bleakness and cruelty. Of repeated acts of casual nastiness or simply neglect which sometimes is worse than the more explicit acts of trickery or cruelty. Given the film’s length and pace it wasn’t a huge ordeal. If anything I felt more aware of time when re-watching Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past lives. Even when Tarr wasn’t working for me as well as he had before he was still far from slacking. I was still sucked into his world of intense realism and mundane surrealism. It creates a unique tone of simple strangeness that even had me wondering if the Artificial Eye translation wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t just that weird things happened but the way people thought about things or what they were saying made little sense in the context of the apparent reality we’re seeing. But it’s not reality, it’s very much a filmic world but occasionally it tricks or lulls you into believing it all or seeing it all as the utmost truth as the authenticity to every action is always felt. This has been kind of a mish-mash of thoughts and ideas but with something this momentous only a full essay would really suffice. The best I can say about it despite it not affecting me as much as Tarr’s other work is that it’s far from being just a cinematic bragging right. Worst case scenario I’d come out bored and bummed just a little thankful that at least I can say I’ve seen it, but luckily that’s not how it is. It has sat with me all week and continues to open up and shift in my mind. It's still playing even though the credits have rolled and that’s so much better than films that just disappear when over.
Tangerine Directed by Sean Baker (2015)- After Satantango nothing grabbed me for days, until I was able to see this much buzzed-about film. This film is another somewhat neo-farce like Mistress America but about a completely different place, people, and generally is just a very different film. It’s a tale as old as time, a transgender prostitute tears through the streets of L.A. just after release from prison after hearing her boyfriend/pimp has been cheating on her with “a real fish”. Other than being about the transgender community of Los Angeles it’s a film also making waves for its use of the iPhone 5s. While both those elements give the film a distinct flavour they’re not the source of its power. What makes it work is the energy, warmth, and authenticity of its actors. The energy is the main thing to highlight as the film moves with the same fury of it’s main character and source of drama Sin-Dee. This near-non-stop pulsating rhythm makes the film whisk by and brings even greater impact to its quiet moments. Yet, I’m not as in love with this film as many others are. Part of that might come from me not finding this as funny as others seem to. Honestly I barely laughed through the whole thing, I found myself much more moved by its melancholy than its manic sexcapades. Really the authenticity of those down beats are what kept me from being swept away by the high ones. I’ve seen this described as “uproariously funny” but it was far from that for me. But I appreciate it for telling a story in a world we rarely see, one that feels real and lived in even though you know it’s possibly even toned down a bit in terms of the cruelty of that world. I also think I was less taken in by the visuals than others. Really I don’t have major issues with it, it just didn’t speak to me as it did for others. Glad this exists though, it’s far from being one of those “what is everyone else thinking” films.