Week in Film #4: 1/18/16-1/24/16

Week in Film #4: 1/18/16-1/24/16

Film of the Week: Floating Weeds
   Year: 1959
   Director: Yasujiro Ozu

       Yasujiro Ozu is one of the truly unique voices in the movies. He's the kind of filmmaker who's individuality is in a different realm than others. Yes, many directors, from Kurosawa to Scorsese have a very distinct voice, but you can see influences and similarities connected to others. Ozu seems to have approached film almost as if he had never seen a movie before. That may seem like hyperbole, but there is something so incredibly original in the way he directs: his framing, his style, his tempo, his control. You might mistake the right samurai film for a Kurosawa, or a certain stylish gangster film for a Scorsese, but you wouldn't ever be confused over whether a film is an Ozu. It's a special kind of originality that is somewhat rare in cinema. Where you look at something and can be certain no one else could have made it.

       Every single shot, every single frame is perfect. With his distinct style, Ozu is able to capture the beauty and intimacy of life, and doing it with such laid back ease and patience that it seems natural and real. Real on an emotional level, not necessarily an aesthetic one, as the compositions are too meticulously perfected and the performances very restrained. It's not really in visual or the story that gives it a feeling of life, but what bleeds through in the craft of it's delivery. It's hard to explain, but it's as if Ozu has taken something that is made with artificial precision and very careful composure, and somehow made it warm and human, even nostalgic. It's power lies in it's restraint, where other directors would go for climax. By centering his characters directly in a frame he is able to create a sort of intimacy by having the characters talking directly to the camera when speaking to each other, something that feels like it shouldn't work, but somehow does.

       Using simple and uncluttered filmmaking well suits the basic theme of Ozu's filmography: family. An admirable aspect of the film is it's refusal to take sides. It simply portrays it's characters as they are, and it lets all sides of the story be brought into view. It is able to sympathize with it's young characters and its old, its men and its women, and this gives at a well rounded, multilayered, but fundamentally basic feeling. It's simple, but in an elegant, beautiful way. For the most part big drama is put to the side and the players act how they would, giving honest responses and actions. Ozu has been known to liken himself to a tofu maker, but I see him as much as a painter of films. He paints pictures of family and often times homeliness and comfortability, with deep compassion and understaning.

   Rating: A-

The Rest:

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues

   Year: 1962

   Director: Kazuo Mori

       This is pretty disappointing after the excellence of the first in the series. It is odd when a movie simultaneously does very little and tries to do too much. For some reason, Zatoichi feels an enormous debt to a samurai he met twice or so and then killed, so a year after their final confrontation he revisits his apparent great friends grave to pay his respects. This is, again, miraculously, of great emotional strain to him. Also a billion other things happened since the last film, including him falling in love, being dumped, dismembering the guy his ex left him for, and the beginning of a strong resentment that pays off in this film. Except it isn't a pay off because we have no relation what-so-ever to any of these events, and therefore have no reason to care about any of it.

   Rating: D+

The Ice Storm

   Year: 1997

   Director: Ang Lee

       It's more than just the winter that's cold, it's the distance between people, and the disconnect that happens in families and homes. But warm hearts and warm desires glow from within, giving brief spots of humanity and wonder to an otherwise frozen over world. And these things run deep throughout this movie. With subtleness and a delicate hand, Lee fashions a growing up tale for some, and a growing old tale for others. 

   Rating: B

Every Man for Himself
   Year: 1980
   Director: Jean-Luc Godard

       Theres an air about this film of a director who is, essentially, throwing whatever he can together into some incomprehensible and unnecessary collage of pretentious fabrication, hoping that his "profound" meditations on something or rather pull together into some sort of cohesive whole. But god dammit if Godard doesn't do it with hypnotic, cinematic style. It may be grasping for straws in it's attempt at finding a meaning, and one is decipherable I'm sure, it just seems so ostentatious. There is no doubt however that Godard knows what he's doing cinematically, and I can't say I was ever bored during this.

   Rating: C

Sullivan's Travels
   Year: 1941
   Director: Preston Sturges

       What this does is something very unexpected and very honest about things such as privilege, and works as a fine moral as well. Sturges has the sense and self awareness to mock himself at others like him who try to make "serious" pictures, as if they truly know a thing about suffering. And he goes further by proving how phony this is by having his stand in try to understand this, and come back with a false sense of empathy for people who have felt a hundred times the pain he thinks he's endured in his very brief venture into poverty. That is until he is mistaken for someone else and put to work on a chain gang. Then all he can say is "this isn't supposed to happen to people like me". It ends on an uplifting message of laughter is the best medicine, but it still finishes it's story with a hint of irony in the end.

   Rating: B+

Anomalisa
   Year: 2015
   Director: Charlie Kaufman

       Charlie Kaufman is such a unique voice in the world of film, that pretty much anything he puts out is destined, for me, to be at the very least greatly admired, much like the works of Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson. This is no exception. While this isn't perfect, this is definitely an achievement is originality and individualistic artistic expression. This is only something Kaufman could have made. That deeply depressed, hopeless yet hopeful, painful sense of humor, and a very human heart to go along with that sensibility,

   Rating: B

Rome, Open City
   Year: 1945
   Director: Roberto Rossellini

       Stark is how I would describe this. Stark and emotionally uncompromising. It doesn't pull its punches and it's more shocking instances don't feel dated, and still feel as much like a blow as I'm sure they did more than half a century ago. That being said the overall film isn't as fresh and revelatory as it was back then, and it ends up being to me very good, but not great, which is probably due to how much it has influenced what I've already seen.

   Rating: B

Europa
   Year: 1991
   Director: Lars von Trier

       Some may argue that this is style without substance, but that hardly seems to matter when the style is so fantastic. Using black and white, color, back projection, virtuoso camera shots, and a host of other impressive techniques to build a nightmarish, kafka-esque world of steel and smoke, von Trier makes a piece of cinema that seems to be simply pure cinema. This is a beautifully dark (both tonally and visually) odyssey into the horrors of war, and into the possibilities of film.

   Rating: B

Certified Copy
   Year: 2010
   Director: Abbas Kiarostami

       Like the other works from Kiarostami I've seen, this loves playing with the medium, and asking important questions about society and art, as well as love and life itself. Like an odd cross between Before Sunrise and Before Midnight, it focuses on first the possibility of romance, and then makes a startling switch too the possible outcome of a romance. It's overarching theme for me is perception. How do we see the world around us, and is it always what it seems to be to us, like different people having different interpretations of a piece of artwork.

   Rating: A-

Mulholland Drive
   Year: 2001
   Director: David Lynch

       An important tip for viewing Mulholland Drive: do not watch this over more than one night. In fact, if possible, refrain from pausing at all during this movie. This is something that is unique in it's abilities to lull you into an inescapable trance state of astonishment, captivation, and pervading, entrancing mystery. After a while you forget everything around you, and are completely transfixed onto, no rather into the screen. Unfortunately, this affect is greatly reduced when you watch it in parts. This demands your attention. Demand isn't even the right word. It's more of a seduction, one that isn't resisted, or can't be.

   Rating: A

Beasts of the Southern Wild
   Year: 2012
   Director: Benh Zeitlin

       Having seen this in class and been prompted to write about this film, as well as look at other writings on it, I've come to the conclusion that this is a very misunderstood piece of work. I don't believe it's about Katrina as much as it is about nature and the universe, and our place in that universe. Like Herzog and Malick, Zeitlin has grand and ambitious ideas about the natural world and the cosmos and life itself. Where Herzog sees nature as a cruel and merciless machine that is unconquerable, Malick sees it as the great mystery and ethereal majesty that flows through our lives, this director sees it as a big community and something to be cherished and held close to ourselves. As Hushpuppy says, we are all just little pieces in a big, big universe.

   Rating: B+

Pi
   Year: 1998
   Director: Darren Aronofsky

       Obsession is the subject of many films for a reason. That reason being that artistic drive is often very obsessive desire for perfection. And obtaining perfection is arguably an impossible task. That doesn't stop the obsessed with trying however, and in this film is does drive the person in question insane. Frantic and fearful, as well as engrossing and mysterious.

   Rating: B+

Sweet Smell of Success
   Year: 1957
   Director: Alexander Mackendrick

       Hustle and street wit in New York cities columnist atmosphere. The grimy jazz of the film is exciting and entertaining in its sleaze and moral decay. It follows immoral men and the consequences of their actions. Great performances and gorgeous black and white photography. A seminal picture about news culture.

   Rating: B