1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[zedz]

As to Hong's Kangwon Province, it is funnier and more intriguingly structured than the good but rough (and rather surprisingly dour, given all Hong's later works) Pig.

I agree completely. It's a film that's extremely different from Pig, and it formed the template for much of what followed with its bifurcated structure. Pig, on the other hand, remains a kind of lone wolf in his oeuvre. I like it a lot, but it's not like anything else he ever made. Kangwon Province, however, is a career-defining film: an out-and-out masterpiece, one of Hong's (and the 90s') subtlest and most mysteriously moving films, as well as being wryly funny, horrifying (if you're paying attention enough to follow the big story that unfolds entirely in the background) and arguably the best-looking film Hong ever shot.

[Michael Kerpan]

BTW -- I have heard that even the Blu-Ray version of Pig still has (pretty much) the same distressingly awful (and sometimes unintelligible) subtitles as the initial DVD. Anyone actually seen this yet?

[John Cope]

Thanks for alerting me to this film I never heard of before. What you didn't tell is that this is basically an extended rumination on the director's brother Frithjof Capra's book "The Turning Point", a classic of the late 80s/early 90s attempt at fusing the science of physics with so-called 'new age' thinking, so much so that in spite of the excellent actors and the wonderful Mont St. Michel settings - which work exactly the way you describe - this is basically not much more than an extended lecture in visual form which I think might work even better as an audio book, because this way one could concentrate even more on the important messages the two Capras have to deliver.

I'm really pleased that you enjoyed this Tommaso and got so much out of it. I agree with much of what you say but I'd disagree though on the film's merits as cinema. So much of what I get out of this has to do with, or is inextricably tied up in, the presentation of the ideas in visual form. This is not necessarily because that form renders it an object lesson but rather because I think it's so beautifully shot (by Karl Kases) and the images in this very specific location complement the text as well as providing an analogous, appropriate tone. There is indeed a real value to using this locale which remains in concentrated isolation, both out of time and in time, and has acted in so many different capacities over the shifting centuries (in a way that complements the whole idea of a world that can and does do this and which then acts as reflections of prevailing values at any given time)--from explicitly sacred site to military fortress to prison to tourist trap.

Don't get me wrong, in fact, I'm very much in favour of FC's thinking, but the film is basically an exercise of preaching to the converted (even though it puts across its messages so convincingly that I wonder how anyone could think otherwise; but in actual fact, about 95% - rough estimate of mine - of the world's population seem to disagree; why they don't agree is beyond me, but we have to face it).

FWIW, it may be encouraging to note that Capra's most recent book has gone over rather well. Also, in certain specific or fundamental respects his ideas actually do seem to have been incorporated, appropriated and/or out accepted by many working directly in the communities affected by his thinking. Ultimately, I suspect, that's because they're more grounded and less purely abstract than the work of someone like Niklas Luhmann, for instance.

And in this respect I can very much understand if one commentator on imdb says "This is not a film". No, it isn't, indeed. No character development (or even 'real characters', as the three protagonists are only chiffres for states of mind or approaches to the questions raised by FC), no dramatic tension apart from the very end where the Ullmann character is questioned about how 'humanity' figures into her theses. The film, all in all, much more reminds me of one those fascinating science documentaries one can occasionally see on BBC or other channels, and I basically mean this as a compliment.

I have heard these kind of criticisms before of course but I have to take issue with them. It may not be a "film" in the sort of conventional sense one expects or in providing satisfying examples of familiar structural tropes but then much the same can be said about experimental film or even extreme art cinema. In many ways it is indeed fair to say that it is as much a lecture as a conversation, though I don't know why there can't be a conversation about a lecture which seems to me more or less what this is (this guy took issue with the very idea of a Platonic dialogue structure as a valid and legitimate device--as far as I'm concerned finding that problematic depends in large part on what you're willing to receive from artifice to begin with and what you're willing to accept in terms of how ideas are presented to us). The Waterston character, for example, has often been taken to task in criticism for presenting the Ullmann character with "straw man arguments" but frankly I don't see them that way. Maybe on a first pass it comes off as that to the inattentive since the film's sympathies are clearly with Ullmann but upon closer consideration what he says throughout is often quite direct and penetrating and just as often unanswered.

The notion that the film is preaching to the converted is not altogether unfair but I think it's inadequate to describe what it does do, especially in these moments of complexity. Obviously it helps if you're already receptive to the notions presented and I am unsure as to how this would go over with someone who was unwilling to consider them at all (in that sense it's unlike Andre in which the push back to Gregory's ideas of the first half occupies most of the second and provides that film with more clear cut irony and displacement than the arc toward understanding and acceptance in this one). But I've always thought that there was a great value to be had in an accessible and rhetorically persuasive primer. I suppose in art such an approach is considered suspect but I just consider it a variance in the form. More blunt critique exists outside that form or in what we bring to it, though as I say I think the arguments of the Waterston character, representing as he does a certain clear pragmatism, are not inconsiderable. His position as less than purely adversarial complicates the issue for me but probably merely clouds or obscures it for many others. That final sequence you mention is not inconsiderable either in terms of how it seeks to shift our view of what we've been hearing to a larger and even more expansive one. It's here in what's said by the Heard character (who has been so circumspect and meditatively withdrawn throughout) that we are given clear ironic indicators. The acknowledgment of perspective and proportion is one of the reasons the film leaves such a satisfying, haunting aftertaste. Because while it acknowledges the limitations of its vision and the ways in which it can and should accommodate more, the veracity of that vision itself, and the fundamental implications of necessary paradigm shift, remains.

Beyond that, I have to say that for me personally it comes down to the whole experiential nature of this film. I would appreciate the ideas laid out here wherever they may be found but presented here, in this intentionally concentrated fashion, there is an enormous satisfaction to be had. As I indicated above, I am quite genuinely deeply melancholy every time I see this and it comes to an end because the whole concept of an enlivened, rich dialogue is elevated here and so fully realized in a way we rarely ever get to see in film. You don't expect anything quite this sustained and concentrated in your daily life but in being exposed to it here you recognize what you're missing and you come to wish you could have it, that such dialogues were the common de facto reality of our lives. There has been some good writing done on the film (though also much that I take to be glibly dismissive of it). I plan to do an extended piece myself in the none too distant future for Offscreen or somewhere like that and whenever that happens I'll link to it here. The Keith Uhlich piece in Senses of Cinema is probably the best one I know of for taking the film seriously on its own merits as a film. Rosenbaum's piece is generally positive and decent, though I think he misses a lot of what it accomplishes and therefore fundamentally underrates it.

[OnOnt]

BTW -- I have heard that even the Blu-Ray version of Pig still has (pretty much) the same distressingly awful (and sometimes unintelligible) subtitles as the initial DVD. Anyone actually seen this yet?

I have and it's unfortunate, but they are the same poor subtitles on the Blu-ray. The KFA actually has it uploaded on YouTube with far more intelligible subtitles. Partly due its anomalous tone, I like Pig a lot and it's probably my favourite of his early works alongside Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors.

[Michael Kerpan]

Nice that a better-subbed version of Hong's Pig is available on youtube, but I don't find that an especially appealing venue for film watching. ;-{

Virgin is my favorite Hong (albeit now pretty much in a tie with Woman on the Beach).

[domino harvey]

Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen 1997) Years before Hollywood brought it back in vogue, Harrison Ford was the original ass-kicking President of the United States in this wholly unlikely actioner. Gary Oldman is suitably over the top as the central villain, but when is he not in a role like this? The film's basic conceit, that a world leader calls out making deals with terrorists only to find his family held hostage aboard the titular carrier, is not as dramatically satisfying as I'd hoped, and the shoot outs and covert fights do little to counter that this is not only "Die Hard On a Plane," but Die Hard 2 was already "Die Hard on a Plane" and did it about a hundred times better.

Ernest Goes to Jail (John Cherry 1990) / Ernest Scared Stupid (John Cherry 1991) Jim Varney's Ernest P Worrell character is one of the more inexplicable film juggernauts in the late 80s and early 90s. Created to hawk wares for hire to any company who wished his services, this advertising creation found a home in a string of seemingly unstoppable comedic features, most seemingly aimed at kids responsive to rubber faced silliness. Varney's Ernest is an interesting character, in that his childlike enthusiasm and empathic relations with children and the occasional good-hearted women put him squarely in the Jerry Lewis camp, but without the vision or mad genius of Lewis at his best. His barrage of do-it-yourself gadgets and general childlike optimism also rings the Pee Wee Herman bell pretty loud, but without Ruebens' madcap zaniness or full-on commitment to infantilism. Also, while Ernest is typically pitched as an admirable protagonist, he's also kind of lazy and not particularly good at whatever job he finds himself occupying in each adventure. If the audience is kids, it's a weird message being sent: try, but not too hard, and just wish or will your goals into existence without having the skills or exerting the effort needed to change. Yikes!

I don't have much interest in revisiting any Ernest films beyond these two, which I remembered as my favorites from childhood, but I have to admit I enjoyed both of these more than I expected. It helps that every Ernest movie was directed by the same man, John Cherry, one of the marketing gurus who invented the "Hey Vern" character, so there's something of a unifying vision and look to these films. Actually, what more pleasantly surprised me was how visually fluid and occasionally inventive the films turned out. This is especially prevalent in Ernest Goes to Jail, where interior scenes of the prison are bathed in neon pink and green lightning, and the costuming accentuates the MGM musical version of hell by dressing the guards in hot pink military uniforms with exaggerated shoulderblads like a Grace Jones backup singer. It's a weird choice, but it works. Jail is definitely the better of the two Ernest films I watched, namely because I could not figure out its target audience-- the behaviors and jokes are all juvenile, but the plot has little to no relevance to a child (Varney wants to move from bank janitor to bank clerk-- it's one of the film's better unspoken jokes that his lifelong aspirational dream is just to do menial entry-level work) and there's a chaste and somewhat unlikely romance between Varney and one of the bank employees (which kept reminding me of how unnatural romances in Lewis films always come across-- they always call to mind that bizarre scene in Blank Check where Karen Duffy goes out on a date with a twelve year old). I guess the rampant silliness appeals to children, but the film seems strangely adult and the disconnect makes things interesting even when they're not funny. But the film elicited quite a few big laughs from me, and I especially admired the finale, which is so colossally go-for-broke stupid that it's kind of genius-- Ernest keeps gaining and losing magnetic powers every time he's electrocuted (something which happens here so often this could double as one of those free tapes Blockbuster used to rent out on safety in the home), and so in the finale he's finally zapped so hard that, as a supporting character helpfully explains, "His polarity is shot and gravity no longer effects him." In a film with only a tenuous relation to reality as it is, it's a bold choice that works.

Ernest Scared Stupid shares similar boldness in premise at least, combining a proto-Goosebumps childrens' horror movie with an Ernest film, for no discernible reason. So we alternate between an Ernest movie and a decent flick about an evil troll stealing the souls of children (which manifest in creepy wooden dolls resembling the kids) in order to summon his trollish brethren. And wouldn't you know it, the only one who can stop him is a descendant of the holy man who first banished the troll, Ernest. This leads to the great reveal of Ernest in the film, as one of our child protagonists reads a report to her class helpfully explaining the backstory and she reveals that the troll put a curse on the family of the man who condemned him that his descendants would get "Dumber and dumber and dumber"-- cut to Ernest getting compacted inside a trash truck! This is a goofy movie, but I vividly recall some of the scares in the film (which are laughably mild to me now as a jaded adult) freaking me out as a kid, especially the scene involving the aforementioned protagonist checking under her bed for a monster. As in other Ernest movies, Varney frequently trots out impressions and does silly quick-cuts to characters ranging from an old woman in a neck brace to Walter Brennan (!), often with no explanation or narrative function. But, like the two weirdo brothers who also crop up in different roles in these films, this is a running gag that is part of the seres' charm (or not, depending on your tolerance/interest level). The film's finale, alternating heroics with wisecracks with tonal whiplash, leaves no question as to the intended audience, and I had one final chuckle at how this film doesn't end with romantic promise between Ernest and some sweet girl, but rather with the reunion between Ernest and his dog, who he subsequently kisses on the lips with romantic flourish. No one who didn't grow up with these is ever going to watch these films, either again or for the first time, but you could do worse, and I've added these to the mental list of films I wouldn't mind my kids watching 50 million times when that part of my life happens. So, if that's a recommendation, so be it.

Turbulence (Robert Butler 1997) I remembered this as one of Colin's favorites and carrying on the trend of airplane peril movies from above, I gave it a shot. More of a horror movie than an action film, this one is about as ludicrous a plot as films come, with a prisoner killing all of his guards and freeing another inmate, all en route across the country on a mostly empty airliner on Christmas Eve. There's some "Is he or isn't he" dramatics concerning Ray Liotta's smooth-talking serial killer, who is such a nice guy that we're supposed to start second guessing whether Hector Elizondo's overzealous detective (Wait, did Garry Marshall direct this?) isn't the real villain here, railroading an innocent man and now placing him in this perilous situation. I don't think it counts as a spoiler to point out that you don't cast Ray Liotta in a film like this to be an innocent third party watching from the sidelines. The movie's equal parts mean-spirited and silly, and once all the slasher-ish shenanigans have dissipated the whole thing ends with a redux of Julie, though the premise here hasn't gotten any fresher in the subsequent forty years. This is a thoroughly dumb movie, and yet I kind of half enjoyed its absurdity and I was never bored. I'm not sure it's better or worse than the more outwardly classy Air Force One-- they both get internet gold "You Tried" stars-- but at least this one has the virtue of embracing its silliness.

[TMDaines]

Has there been any discussion as to whether Prime Suspect (and its subsequent sequels) are eligible for The Lists Project? I did a search but could not find anything. They appear to meet much of the criteria for being mini-series, being self-contained works with a single director and writer.

[swo17]

IMDb calls them miniseries. I think it makes sense to treat each one as a single film.

[zedz]

Has there been any discussion as to whether Prime Suspect (and its subsequent sequels) are eligible for The Lists Project? I did a search but could not find anything. They appear to meet much of the criteria for being mini-series, being self-contained works with a single director and writer.

And as far as I know, the first Prime Suspect was only ever expected to be a one-off until it proved so phenomenally successful. I guess after the third it would have become pretty clear that it was an ongoing thing. Each mini-series would need to be its own voting entity (except the fourth 'series', which comprised three standalone TV movies, each of which I would assume would be individually eligible), however, so if you're planning to vote for one of them I'd recommend advocating why you choose that particular one and get some discussion happening in the thread before the vote to bring people on board / build consensus and minimise vote-splitting.

[swo17]

Spotlight: Frost (Fred Kelemen, 1997)
I don't know how much of this has to do with my age vs. the times we're living in, but several of the women in my life right now are just recently getting out of bad marriages with children. The world can be cold and cruel to such (though hopefully it's not nearly as bad for them as this film lets on!) Kelemen, who is probably most well-known for shooting Béla Tarr's final two films, has a great eye for bleak landscapes (which is where the protagonists of this film—an escaping mother and son—often find themselves) but he has a few other tricks up his sleeve as well.

Two of the most memorable sequences from the film come when the mother allows herself a brief respite from her woes, getting carried away by the small thrills of a carnival ride or a techno song. Both of these moments are visceral and electric—we feel how they momentarily liberate her, just as we feel the hard crash back to reality as the buzz begins to wear off. There are also two memorable moments where a somewhat grating noise gradually intrudes on the film's soundtrack only to eventually be revealed as having been produced by a petulant child. Is the film suggesting that the woman would be more free if she weren't tied down with this responsibility?

While the son does occasionally prove to be more of a hindrance than a mere travel companion, if the film posits an enemy for the mother, it's really more like every single person with whom she comes in contact. Time after time she seeks refuge from a promising stranger, and time after time they eventually reveal themselves to have dishonorable intentions. At a certain point, you might be tempted to take a step back and observe that this is all so much poetic bleakness in place of the even more sobering truths of reality. But I shouldn't have to remind anyone that this is also often the stuff of great cinema.

Speaking of bleak, also highly recommended is the Hungarian film Twilight (György Fehér, 1990), an adaptation of the same story on which It Happened in Broad Daylight was based. The comparison I'm about to make feels incredibly lazy and yet also too accurate to ignore: Imagine the first season of True Detective as directed by Béla Tarr. Here we have a detective investigating the trail left by a child murderer, though there are just enough plot ellipses and superficial character similarities that it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether it is the detective or the murderer approaching some unsuspecting child, especially when the detective's methods begin to cross a certain line. Above all, the film seems to be about small-town psychology, vividly captured by the languorous B&W cinematography and inspired repurposing of the score from Herzog's Nosferatu.

[domino harvey]

Darkman (Sam Raimi 1990) Stylized to death by Raimi, this expensive looking Samuel Fuller apery is occasionally diverting but mostly exhausting. Not from excitement but from having its cinematographic virtuosity and wacko angles and camera placements pummeled over the viewer's head. The film moves too quickly and is far too silly to be taken seriously and yet too portentous to be as much of a lark as it wishes. I am susceptible to Raimi's charms when he reins them into a holistic experience, as in the first Evil Dead film or the Quick and the Dead, but this just gets so unwatchable so quickly. Bonus points for having its most ludicrous elements ripped off wholesale by Mission Impossible II, though.

Richie Rich (Donal Petrie 1994) A comic adaptation literally no one was asking for, this material concerning the titular world's richest child could only really work as satire, but the film is enamored with and feels sorry for Macauly Culkin's Richie, and the result is mawkish poor little rich boy adventures, all of which play out about as you could expect. There are occasional bright spots-- Richie's classroom is a giant oak-paneled office with every student having large hardwood CEO desks, which is probably the twentieth best joke in a better film but is the best thing here-- but mostly one can see how bored Culkin is and it was not a surprise to learn he retired (at least until adulthood) after the film was made. That said, I recall thinking this one was "okay" as a kid. I mostly just remembered how cool it was that he had his own McDonalds in his mansion.

the Rocketeer (Joe Johnston 1991) A film I know I saw at least twice as a child, once theatrically, and yet I could not remember anything about it before revisiting it. Turns out that's probably because I was asleep-- dear God this movie's dull, with its phony period trappings and silly old-school Hollywood references that are both too easy for adults and yet meaningless for kids. Timothy Dalton's faux-Errol Flynn-as-Nazi Spy is a tiresome boor(e), Alan Arkin's just cashing a paycheck, Jennifer Connelly's at the tail-end of the "Only capable of looking pretty while reading cue cards" stage of her career, and Billy Campbell as the pilot turned superhero is a negligible screen presence. After nearly a hundred minutes of zzzzzzzzz, however, to the film's credit it does go out with a bang via a totally bonkers finale set about a zeppelin that's both tasteless and impressive in its execution. Maybe a sequel would have started there and found more creative ways to exploit the premise of a flying rocket suit, but alas no one else wanted to see this either and it bombed. Small wonder.

[domino harvey]

Coyote Summer (Matias Alvarez 1996) Appropriately workhorse-like kids' entertainment about a bratty city gal forced to spend time on a horse ranch. Will she change her ways? Will she make a connection with the horse that no one else can tame? Will this sentence also end with a question mark? This is passable family entertainment with no lasting effect afterwards. Frankly, the best part of the whole experience was the "family friendly" DVD release, which contains hilariously random discussion questions on the back of the case which focus on the stupidest, least-significant aspects of the film (probably because whoever wrote and/or commissioned these questions wouldn't want to focus on any of the real messages of the film, like independence, disobeying authority, stealing, and agency of the central female character). Ex: "Why was Callie expected to do chores around the ranch? What jobs do you help with at home?" Wow, what a riveting discussion that will inspirezzzzzzzzzzz

Pleasantville (Gary Ross 1998) In which writer/director Gary Ross proves all he knows about the 1950s comes from half-remembered TV reruns. The gimmick here is strong and could have worked with almost any other follow-through: bratty 90s kids find themselves transported into the world of the titular 1958 B&W TV sitcom and first they try to play along with the square nature of the settings but inevitably their modern morals invade and transform the town, as indicated by the gradual appearance of color in the black and white world. Okay, this film gets and does so much wrong in its two hours of running time that it was literally like I was transported back to 1958 myself and was witnessing the latest Stanley Kramer film. Ross vacillates between the film's depiction of the 50s as being a parody of family sitcoms of the era or the 50s themselves, and frankly neither tack is well-observed but the reliance on the latter is what kills this thing. This film is ostensibly liberal in its aims and yet functions under a fundamentally conservative vantage in assuming and then furthering the fiction that the fifties were a time of great innocence and lack of practical knowledge or independence. Certainly the decade found a greater desire for conformity (this is the era of "the lonely crowd" after all), but those conforming weren't the idiots on display here, who are so hapless in the face of anything resembling "the real world" that they might as well be aliens. There are so many ways to criticize and skew the era, but it would take observant knowledge of the era itself and a refusal to infantalize the film's satiric subjects, neither of which occur here.*

It gets worse when Ross makes pains to point out the setting is 1958. 1958 is a year after the Peyton Place film adaptation came out. No society that could produce and then make financially solvent Peyton Place as a film or book is all that square or unknowning with regards to the ways of the world. Again, Ross makes pains to show how victimized the denizens of the fifties were, with lots of woe-be-us moments and that's before he, incredibly, draws parallels to the black experience in America by having the shopkeepers in Pleasantville start to put up "No Coloreds" signs (directed at Caucasian characters who've stopped being black and white). One of the antagonistic characters is also named Whitey, in case this is all too subtle for us. This movie is a phony, pandering, smarmy piece of moral superiority, made by and for people who apparently did glean their knowledge of the era from only the most sanitized of period sources, and while it could have worked as an SNL skit focused solely on the confines of appearing in a TV show, as a jumping off place for a Serious Message, this film is a piece of shit. Of course, there were no swears in the 1950s either, right


* And a great film has been made criticizing the new middle class experience in the 50s. It's called No Down Payment and :gasp: it was actually released by Hollywood in 1957! BUT I THOUGHT THOSE WERE THE INNOCENT YEARS OF NO SELF-REFLECTION OR AWARENESS!!!!!!!

[colinr0380]

Pleasantville is a little difficult to judge, as in the end it is just a heightened Leave It To Beaver-style TV sitcom that our characters beam into and 'liberate' before beaming back out of for some reason (however that helps to make domino's damning point about Peyton Place more rather than less valid). But yes any real-world parallels come across as a little too facile and cringeworthy in the racial politics aspect, playing a little bit like "Ladybird's First Book of Racial and Sexual Politics". However I remember at the time being slightly more incensed that our 'real world' teen characters themselves still ended up needing to 'learn a lesson' about moderating their selfish modern behaviours too, which seemed to take the form of Reese Witherspoon ending up in some nice gowns and meeting a nice young man. It worryingly can feel as if the film's message is more about how young people with their modern sensibilities end up ruining 'innocent classics' rather than about the (arguably) necessary importance of liberating these fictional characters from their stereotypical straightjackets.

I also seem to remember that Pleasantville involves Joan Allen's mother-figure learning to masturbate and for some reason the tree on the front lawn of the family home explodes into a colour burning bush at her climax! (Even if you don't like Far From Heaven, at least it never went quite that far with the metaphors! But I seem to remember there was quite an amusing shot of a bemused fire department hosing it down in the next scene!) I mostly remember that sequence because I showed it to my grandma having forgotten about the sexual liberation stuff (I had been thinking more about the fun for older family members racism metaphor) and blushed my way through that sequence!

I did like that Fiona Apple music video with her modernised version of Across The Universe though!

[thirtyframesasecond]

Marco Bechis's 'Garage Olimpo' (1999) isn't a barrel of laughs but it's a terrific film. Maria's a young student who lives with her mum, teaches the illiterate in her Buenos Aires neighbourhood, she's politically active. Only this is the late 70s and the Dirty War is raging. So when the military turn up at her house, you can guess what happens. Bechis himself was exiled from Argentina at the time so knows this inside out. People are rounded up on the flimsiest of charges, taken away and their families kept in the dark. Even if the police know anything, they don't say. It's powerful stuff. I found this on iTunes in the UK, so might be much easier than finding a DVD.

[Tommaso]

A few more which most likely will all make my list:

Journey to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira 1997): Of the handful of films by the director I've seen so far, this is my favourite. Marcello Mastroianni in his very last film plays a film director (easily a stand-in for Oliveira himself) who travels with three of his cast members to the Portuguese countryside, remembering his own past and the history of Portugal in the 20th century. Similarly, one of his actors is looking for his old aunt whom he has never seen before, and when they finally meet, the old woman doesn't believe he's her nephew because he doesn't speak her language (his father, significantly called Manoel, did leave for France during the dictatorship and never taught his son Portuguese). A film about trying to come to terms with the past, and most importantly, of reconciliation. Extremely beautifully filmed and directed, this is a quiet, meditative and immersive film which I can't recommend enough.

The Bloody Child (Nina Menkes 1996): this might be even more disturbing than Menkes' "Magdalena Viraga" in some respects. Based on a real life event, the film in a decidedly non-linear manner basically tells the story of a soldier returned from the Gulf War who murders his wife, but is mostly concerned with exposing the boredom and underlying machismo (those scenes in an army bar are among the most repelling I've seen, though it's hard to pin down what these people actually do that makes them so unlikeable) , misogyny and violence of the army life. Events are often depicted from afar, camera hardly moving, in a slow-paced, documentary fashion. Other scenes however have a surreal, hallucinatory quality: a horse suddenly appearing in the desert, an exotic garden with a naked woman (Eden?) suggesting a (feminine/feminist) alternative to the destructive world the film mainly depicts. Difficult stuff for sure, but with images that simply stay in your head. Almost everyone at imdb hates it, though, so you don't necessarily have to believe me.

The White Viking (Hrafn Gunnlaugsson 1991): the third part of Hrafn's informal 'Raven' trilogy, and probably the most accomplished one. Set on Iceland in medieval times, the film tells about the political machinations and fights in order to Christianize the island, but is also a story of doomed love. This often feels like a Western by Leone set 1000 years in the past, though some of the staging definitely reminded me of Eisenstein's "Nevsky" as well. A totally unromanticized depiction of the Viking age, visually striking, compelling and uncompromising. And for once among my choices, actually pretty great entertainment, too.

And finally, I really have to second swo's recommendation for Kelemen's Frost. Germany rarely looked as bleak and deserted as in this film, but in spite of the film's dark ending there's certainly an aspect of spirituality in the protagonist's search for her origins which is reflected in the strange beauty that many of the scenes possess. Of course the Bela Tarr comparison is hardly avoidable, especially in the way that Kelemen also draws on very slow pacing and empty landscapes, but Kelemen's people are drawn in a less 'absurdist' manner and for me, much more believable and 'connectable'. If you have a way to see it, see it.

[John Cope]

Journey to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira 1997): Of the handful of films by the director I've seen so far, this is my favourite. Marcello Mastroianni in his very last film plays a film director (easily a stand-in for Oliveira himself) who travels with three of his cast members to the Portuguese countryside, remembering his own past and the history of Portugal in the 20th century. Similarly, one of his actors is looking for his old aunt whom he has never seen before, and when they finally meet, the old woman doesn't believe he's her nephew because he doesn't speak her language (his father, significantly called Manoel, did leave for France during the dictatorship and never taught his son Portuguese). A film about trying to come to terms with the past, and most importantly, of reconciliation. Extremely beautifully filmed and directed, this is a quiet, meditative and immersive film which I can't recommend enough.

I love the film too, of course, Tommaso, though I have to confess that it's not among my favorites of his work, even from that decade. I think the reason for that has to do with the way in which my interest in it drops off a lot about mid-way through as it goes from a focus upon Mastroianni to his actor and extended family int he village. That stuff is very good too and sensitively handled, even very moving by the end which is not something I generally tend to associate with Oliveira, but I was just never as interested in that or as engaged by it as I was by the road trip first half before we reach that destination. I think much of that has to with the typically supreme elegance of that first half whereas the second half is all about emphasizing the impediments to such elegance (i.e. the language barrier). Still, it is a great film to be sure. I'll write a bit more about it whenever I eventually get to the director's overview for the decade which I was supposed to do and regret not having done yet (it's intimidating with Oliveira though as the 90's was his most prolific decade with a full feature a year and it's also my favorite overall decade for his work).

The Bloody Child (Nina Menkes 1996): this might be even more disturbing than Menkes' "Magdalena Viraga" in some respects. Based on a real life event, the film in a decidedly non-linear manner basically tells the story of a soldier returned from the Gulf War who murders his wife, but is mostly concerned with exposing the boredom and underlying machismo (those scenes in an army bar are among the most repelling I've seen, though it's hard to pin down what these people actually do that makes them so unlikeable) , misogyny and violence of the army life. Events are often depicted from afar, camera hardly moving, in a slow-paced, documentary fashion. Other scenes however have a surreal, hallucinatory quality: a horse suddenly appearing in the desert, an exotic garden with a naked woman (Eden?) suggesting a (feminine/feminist) alternative to the destructive world the film mainly depicts. Difficult stuff for sure, but with images that simply stay in your head. Almost everyone at imdb hates it, though, so you don't necessarily have to believe me.

I agree with you completely on this one. A film I've long admired for many of the reasons you've set forth so well here. I may actually prefer Menkes's Queen of Diamonds ('91) to this one, though it doesn't emphasize physical violence but rather the psychic variety. If I remember correctly the footage here that isn't directly about the desert military base narrative was from another project of Menkes's which she integrated into this one. It does work beautifully though as you say as a profitable contrasting counterpoint providing an expansive set of accents toward possible meanings.

[Tommaso]

I think the reason for that has to do with the way in which my interest in it drops off a lot about mid-way through as it goes from a focus upon Mastroianni to his actor and extended family int he village. That stuff is very good too and sensitively handled, even very moving by the end which is not something I generally tend to associate with Oliveira, but I was just never as interested in that or as engaged by it as I was by the road trip first half before we reach that destination. I think much of that has to with the typically supreme elegance of that first half whereas the second half is all about emphasizing the impediments to such elegance (i.e. the language barrier).

The shift of focus in the middle of the film was slightly irritating for me, too, but quickly I began to see the two stories as complementary. Both the director in the film and Afonso's father are called Manoel, and while the Mastroianni character more clearly seems to represent Oliveira himself, the other, unseen Manoel might be an example for what 'might have been' if Oliveira indeed had left the country during the dictatorship (Oliviera of course stayed in Portugal, although he wasn't allowed to make any films after "Aniki Bobó" for about 30 years). And as you say, the film is unusually moving for Oliveira and engaged me on a quite different level than such Bunuel-inspired films like "The Cannibals" or "The Divine Comedy", for instance, which I found intellectually interesting but ultimately left me cold.

I may actually prefer Menkes's Queen of Diamonds ('91) to this one, though it doesn't emphasize physical violence but rather the psychic variety.

Yes, Queen of Diamonds is also great but can be something of an endurance test with its seemingly endless scenes of card dealing and even sparser dialogue. As a depiction of alienation it's even more hopeless than The Bloody Child, but perhaps on a slightly more individual level, whereas The Bloody Child is showing us more clearly that the violence is 'structural'.

[colinr0380]

Welcome II The Terrordome (Ngozi Onwurah, 1995)

Spoilers:

A flawed, contrived but fascinating polemical curio. I'm not entirely sure that the premise entirely works, but the anger in the film is pretty intensely felt (albeit much of the political element is second hand, taken from Malcolm X speeches!), and it feels weirdly disturbing to watch in the wake of Ferguson et al.

The film begins with a group of West African slaves on a beach in the 17th century coming face to face with a group of white slave owners (including Saffron Burrows in one of her earliest film roles). This is presumably meant to be America given the dodgy Southern accents. An escaped slave is dragged back to the beach and branded, which inspires the rest of the slaves to turn right around and walk into the sea to drown.

Then the film begins again, in a sort of dystopian sci-fi purgatory known colloquially as the Terrordome. It is basically an inner city ghetto patrolled by armed white guards. All the characters from the period prologue get recontextualised, in particular the pregnant Saffron Burrows character who exchanged a curious glance at one of the slaves while her white boyfriend glowered at them, now is actually a woman in a relationship with the black guy, Spike, still pregnant though this time with a mixed race baby. Unfortunately the white boyfriend has been recontextualised too, into a jealous stalker, and the mixed race relationship is the aspect that causes a whole tragic sequence of events to unfold, eventually encompassing a young boy getting killed due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the mother of the boy going on a revenge shooting spree (played brilliantly by Suzette Llewellyn, an actress who would later turn up in a similarly powerful role in Lars von Trier's Manderlay), which turns into a cop killing sequence, which turns into a brutalisation at the hands of the police sequence, which turns into an execution scene.

I'm not really sure if the setting of this film entirely works, (though it is a novel one!), in the way that it is mashing up Britain and the US (especially in the Malcolm X speeches peppered throughout the film) with sci-fi setting. It feels rather divorced from any form of reality and therefore a little contrived in setting up its polemic about racism. There is also the issue that all but one of the white characters are frothing at the mouth racists, so there's not that much nuance there! The final call to arms speech is disturbingly straight faced and legimitately angry, but also rather hollow. As hollow as the mother getting hung while a bunch of burly martial arts fighters just stand in a room solemnly doing martial arts manoeuvres rather than actually getting out there and doing anything to save her!

Part of my ambivalence about the film comes from the final section in which the mixed race relationship is consistently shown, by the main characters of both races and the film itself, to be the thing that was beyond the pale and caused all the trouble with both lovers deserving to be punished. The scene of the funeral for the young boy with the call to arms speech intercut with Saffron Burrows's character miscarrying her baby all alone is the key scene in this (strangely the scene mostly reminded me of the funeral-birthing scene from Alien 3!). Its sort of problematic in its rhetoric yet I wonder if the, righteous yet callous, cruelty of even the black characters is meant to play purely as celebratory. Perhaps the film is just as much about the way that individually tragic events get folded into crusades and causes, with the victim becoming less a person and more a symbol to be opportunistically used? (The funeral involves laying the boy out and then tracing round him with chalk to leave a body imprint on the ground). If so it is a subtext that is only really teased out by the attention it provides to Spike and Jodie, while all the other characters punish them for their 'trangression'.

It is a difficult film to judge in that the two lead performances by Suzette Llewellyn and Saffron Burrows are the key ones of this film. They're both playing characters whose potential for continued life and escape represented by their children get completely destroyed by petty, intractable racial divisions. With their characters as the fulcrum all of the other characters around them, whatever their race, seem set in their ways and just looking to kill each other (with death in this sci-fi Terrordome appearing to be the only way out of purgatory and back to the fabled shores of West Africa?). If there had not been as much time provided to at least acknowledging the grief of both Anjela and Jodie as there was then this film wouldn't have been very good at all! As it is, I think that the film is problematic but at least has a couple of (brutalised and systematically destroyed) characters that can at least be empathised with, even if I'm left wondering if the film wants me to or not!

[John Cope]

The shift of focus in the middle of the film was slightly irritating for me, too, but quickly I began to see the two stories as complementary. Both the director in the film and Afonso's father are called Manoel, and while the Mastroianni character more clearly seems to represent Oliveira himself, the other, unseen Manoel might be an example for what 'might have been' if Oliveira indeed had left the country during the dictatorship (Oliviera of course stayed in Portugal, although he wasn't allowed to make any films after "Aniki Bobó" for about 30 years). And as you say, the film is unusually moving for Oliveira and engaged me on a quite different level than such Bunuel-inspired films like "The Cannibals" or "The Divine Comedy", for instance, which I found intellectually interesting but ultimately left me cold.

This is a really great reading of the film actually and one I had not considered before. I think the reason I hadn't considered it has to do with the class difference between Oliveira himself and that of Afonso's rural village family (Oliveira, after all, had the opportunity to ride out the dictatorship by taking over the family business for the duration). But you're right that it can be read as analogous for a kind of artistic exile. That really does enrich the work for me and I thank you for that. FWIW, I prefer this to both Cannibals and Divine Comedy as well (and A Caixa too). I don't like his comedies nearly as much as his more purely meditative work partly because I just don't find them funny enough though Divine Comedy at least is, as you say, a hefty intellectual workout as well.

[Satori]

Welcome II The Terrordome (Ngozi Onwurah, 1995) Spoilers:
A flawed, contrived but fascinating polemical curio. I'm not entirely sure that the premise entirely works, but the anger in the film is pretty intensely felt (albeit much of the political element is second hand, taken from Malcolm X speeches!), and it feels weirdly disturbing to watch in the wake of Ferguson et al.

Coincidentally, I just finished teaching this film in a class about race and science fiction. I agree that it is a bit odd- I see it as a feminist rewriting of both the near-future dystopia genre (Escape from New York, etc) and the early-90s ghetto-set films like Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society , with a little bit of Sankofa thrown in for good measure. With all those genres floating around, it is bound to feel a bit strange. It is immensely affecting, though, especially given how current all the issues that it raises still are. The odd mash-up of Britain and the U.S. doesn't really bother me, either: by opening the film with the slave trade, it suggests that it is about global racial violence and colonialism more than the specific situation in a single country. Indeed, by taking its title from a song on Fear of a Black Planet, the film suggests that whatever revolutionary action takes place must necessarily be global. I think Fanon is as big of an influence to the film's politics's as Malcolm X.

Part of my ambivalence about the film comes from the final section in which the mixed race relationship is consistently shown, by the main characters of both races and the film itself, to be the thing that was beyond the pale and caused all the trouble with both lovers deserving to be punished. The scene of the funeral for the young boy with the call to arms speech intercut with Saffron Burrows's character miscarrying her baby all alone is the key scene in this (strangely the scene mostly reminded me of the funeral-birthing scene from Alien 3!). Its sort of problematic in its rhetoric yet I wonder if the, righteous yet callous, cruelty of even the black characters is meant to play purely as celebratory. Perhaps the film is just as much about the way that individually tragic events get folded into crusades and causes, with the victim becoming less a person and more a symbol to be opportunistically used? (The funeral involves laying the boy out and then tracing round him with chalk to leave a body imprint on the ground). If so it is a subtext that is only really teased out by the attention it provides to Spike and Jodie, while all the other characters punish them for their 'trangression'.

I definitely don't think that the film itself is suggesting that the mixed race couple deserved to be punished, for many of the reasons that you list here. As you point out later, the female characters are the key ones in the film and I think we are absolutely meant to sympathize with Burrow's character. The resolution to the film is unsatisfying, but I think that this reflects Onwurah's sense that these problems cannot be easily resolved. A bit of biographical context is helpful here, too: Onwurah is herself the daughter of a mixed race couple and many of her early documentary shorts address issues relating to being of mixed race descent.

[colinr0380]

I would agree entirely Satori, although the film being in the trend of Menace II Society and Boyz n The Hood in a British context sort of suggests a cultural interchangability that I'm not too sure that I would subscribe to. That Black-British and Black-American experience is identical, when presumably there would have to be certain cultural differences there. Though if I'm being cynical it allows the film to include guns and execution scenes and comments about emancipation that are rather American! Though I say this as someone who has not really considered these issues too deeply yet, maybe they are equivalent in ways that I had never previously guessed! I do wonder if the aim of the film was more to emphasise a shared "West African" cultural origin taking primacy over everything that has happened since being removed from that environment through the slave trade. That is a fascinating idea, though in a way I find that approach a little difficult too, in problematically implying that black experience in Britain/America has not involved cultural integration and new experiences since that time that has changed both the black community and the wider one too. In some ways this is a film that could only exist within its sci-fi aconextuality in order to make its points, whereas something like Boyz n The Hood, while of course fiction, is trying to situate itself within an existing millieu.

In some ways though I like the way that the characters have the political speeches imposed over them in voiceover. I don't think that the film has much hope that any of the characters in the film are going to be able to change, or revolutionise on their own. Instead they are trapped in an almost archetypal cycle of love, sacrifice and righteous anger that itself is as rigidly defined as the prison gates enclosing the ghetto. Even the call to arms speech feels layered on top of the action from outside as a stance that has to be taken, rather than arising from within the characters themselves.

In some ways I bracket Welcome II The Terrordome in with the other apocalyptic 'sci-fi social issues' film inspired by the decaying state of 90s Britain (which, like Mike Leigh's Naked, are just as much about working through the legacy of the social upheavals of the 1970s and 80s): Paul W.S. Anderson's joy riding Shopping. Although Shopping kind of problematically lionises its anti-hero more than any of the vengefully murderous characters in Welcome II The Terrordome!

Having suggested my ambivalence though, this is exactly the kind of film that raises extremely difficult and complex issues that put the recent Django Unchained and 12 Years A Slave somewhat in the shade. At least it is daring to mix historical issues with contemporary ones and suggest some sort of through line legacy of anger at injustice!

Now Sankofa on the other hand, I haven't seen that in a few decades but remember it being fantastic, with a number of extremely striking images. Isn't that the film in which a Naomi Campbell-style supermodel goes on a location shoot in the West Indies and somehow gets transported back in time (or has a reverie based on the locations that she is moving through) to the era of slavery?

[Satori]

I would agree entirely Satori, although the film being in the trend of Menace II Society and Boyz n The Hood in a British context sort of suggests a cultural interchangability that I'm not too sure that I would subscribe to. That Black-British and Black-American experience is identical, when presumably there would have to be certain cultural differences there. Though if I'm being cynical it allows the film to include guns and execution scenes and comments about emancipation that are rather American! Though I say this as someone who has not really considered these issues too deeply yet, maybe they are equivalent in ways that I had never previously guessed! I do wonder if the aim of the film was more to emphasise a shared "West African" cultural origin taking primacy over everything that has happened since being removed from that environment through the slave trade. That is a fascinating idea, though in a way I find that approach a little difficult too, in problematically implying that black experience in Britain/America has not involved cultural integration and new experiences since that time that has changed both the black community and the wider one too. In some ways this is a film that could only exist within its sci-fi aconextuality in order to make its points, whereas something like Boyz n The Hood, while of course fiction, is trying to situate itself within an existing millieu.

Yeah, I agree with all of this. I think the film tries to emphasize the shared experiences of all afrodiasporic peoples in that they have all experienced slavery and colonialism from Britain, the U.S., and the other imperialist powers. There is a famous Toni Morrison interview where she argues that we should rewrite the history of modernity to make the importation of slaves from Africa its founding moment, which emphasizes this shared history from below. I think this film is very much trying to do something similar with its opening and closing scenes of the slaves and slave traders (the fact they are played by actors who reappear in the future part of the film strengthens this connection). With that said, you make a great point about the film flattening the current differences between British peoples of African descent and American people of African descent. One of the great things about films like Boyz in the Hood is how they burrow into a specific, relatively small geographical location and explore its complex cultural makeup. Terrordome's vision of the "terrordome" is going to necessarily be a bit more abstract.

Now Sankofa on the other hand, I haven't seen that in a few decades but remember it being fantastic, with a number of extremely striking images. Isn't that the film in which a Naomi Campbell-style supermodel goes on a location shoot in the West Indies and somehow gets transported back in time (or has a reverie based on the locations that she is moving through) to the era of slavery?

That is the one. Like Terrordome, it links the present and the past through the experience of slavery. The aesthetics of the opening and closing sequences of Terrordome on the beach are also very close to certain sequences in Sankofa . It is also a powerful, intense experience.

[colinr0380]

Do you think that a film like Derek Jarman's Jubilee might also have an influence on Welcome II The Terrordome? The trip from a tipping point, bucolic past into a ravaged, very contemporary looking, future. Perhaps Terrordome is as unsure about the power of hip hop to change the world (given that the young boy is killed after sneaking into the gang's generator room hangout to dance along to the music) as Jubilee was of punk! We even get the forces of authority storming the party to rough everyone up, and earlier on Anjela dancing to music being interrupted by being shouted at by a neighbour to turn her music down as it is disturbing a crying baby!

[Satori]

I had never considered the connection, but I'm convinced! Terrordome's use of hip hop is intriguing- It's worth pointing out that in the scene you mention, the kid raps a few lines from Public Enemy's "9-11 is a Joke," which is also from Fear of a Black Planet. Unlike most hip-hop inspired films from the era, Terrrordome fully integrates its music into the world of the film: most of the rap lyrics are from the point of view of specific characters, narrating their experience. The most disturbing variation of this is when we get lyrics from the point of view of the Saffron Burrows character's racist brother. Maybe the film sees hip hop as more of a way of expressing the contemporary condition rather than necessarily as a tool of liberation.

[copen]

can anyone point me in the direction of where i can find this. i've been looking for several years.

Navodneniye (1994 Igor Minaiev) aka "The Flood" aka "L'inondation"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107661/reference" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Russian film with Isabelle Huppert.
this aired on cable, i assume in the u.s.

thank you

edit:
please email/message me, because this 90's topic topic is too big to keep track of responses.
thanks