The 1986 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1986

VOTE THROUGH AUGUST 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add

My Case (Manoel de Oliveira)
Invaders From Mars (Tobe Hooper)
Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil (Lina Wertmüller)

[swo17]

Added, thanks!

[yoshimori]

Wiseman's Multi-handicapped is 1986. I'll vote for it.

[swo17]

Added, thanks!

[knives]

Could you add William Greaves amazing Black Power in America: Myth or Reality?. I’m just under an hour he tears down the whole concept of progress and rebuilds with different understandings of possibility.

[swo17]

Added, thanks

[knives]

Here is the list of eligible films for the year. I’m already beginning to tell this is an odd one.

[the preacher]

Missing darlings:
Legal Eagles, Sweet Liberty, Flodder, La gran fiesta (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122578/)

Since "Welcome to Vienna", third part of a trilogy, is eligible, please add "Santa Fé", the second part, less renowed but the one I prefer. While we're at it, John Korty's forgotten TVM "A Deadly Business" is more than worth watching.

I see you have "Mirch Masala" in 1987, which is okay with me. That said, it won the National Film Award for 1986...

[brundlefly]

I see you have "Mirch Masala" in 1987, which is okay with me. That said, it won the National Film Award for 1986...

From the years I've gone through them, National Film Awards don't necessarily align with release years/public screenings. (Not even counting those winners that never got public screenings.) Since it's a government award, it's based on the year of certification, not release. There are often winners there that don't see release until the following year, or even later, and you see them winning Filmfare etc. awards for those later years. And egregious examples like Sparsh, which won in 1980 with other films certified in 1979, but whose producer held up release until 1984, so it won a slew of Filmfare awards in 1985. (And in that case, I'd guess swo would err toward the 1980 date on imdb/tmdb, because putting it at the later date would awkwardly force it out of order in that director's filmography; she wound up winning a Filmfare Best Director Award for her first narrative feature three years after being nominated there for her second.)

[swo17]

I've added all of those suggestions, and thanks for that information, brundlefly

[knives]

Sorry for not posting anything of substance so far, but everything until today I’ve seen has been bubblegum pop. Even Rad manages to be lighter than the rest of Needham’s already frothy output resulting in a series of films I liked, but have nothing to say on.

That changed a little with Jarman’s Caravaggio. I say a little because in a lot of ways this is Jarman’s most plainly enjoyable film able to bounce around frothily. I think only Tempest tries anything similar and that still has a jagged Rocky Horror edge to it. So much of the film has this sweet working class meets intellectual vibe to it. There are other things to dig around here (in that sense as well as others I imagine Pasolini’s Life Trilogy played an inspiration), but I kind of want to meet it at this surface level which is a real fine trick in and of itself.

[TechnicolorAcid]

Sorry for not posting anything of substance so far, but everything until today I’ve seen has been bubblegum pop. Even Rad manages to be lighter than the rest of Needham’s already frothy output resulting in a series of films I liked, but have nothing to say on.

I'm planning on watching Dead Man's Letters this weekend as a personalized double bill but I'm fairly certain that has a tad bit less shine to it based off expectations so I'd say try that if you need something darker.

[knives]

Swo, here’s one I’d love to see added to the list: Anita Thatcher’s Loose Corner. It’s a pretty hilarious exercise in editing that I could see later say Michael Snow doing. It mostly follows these three people’s interaction with a corner that leaves the stasis of reality the more the camera plays with it and them.

[swo17]

Added, thanks!

[domino harvey]

Jean de Florette / Manon des sources (Claude Berri) I haven't seen Pagnol's original film treatment of this two-part film, but by virtue of being filmed in color and 'Scope this version already brings something that Pagnol couldn't: an aesthetic embodiment of the pastoral. I was sure I was seeing a masterpiece during the first film, but that surety left me during the disappointing second film, which more or less removed everything I found so interesting in the first one. One of the great strengths of the first film is that we are aligned with and see the film through two characters who in any other movie would be the "bad guys," but here their morality is rendered as indifferent, just like nature itself. This is a fantastic approach, and I was reminded of another great skeptical treatment of the French pastoral life, Villiers' L'eau vive (though the relations in that film are far more outwardly dastardly than those here). And the film entraps us under the same spell it casts on Depardieu's doomed city dweller: who wouldn't want to live their life in this countryside? Other than a brief example of the town's cold approach to foreigners (which seems out of place with Pagnol's generosity of spirit-- the extended glimpses we get of them in the second part are far more warm and complex, especially how the mayor is only mayor because he is the only one in town with a phone), the film doesn't go in for typical melodramatics as far as Depardieu's outsider status is concerned. Indeed, what makes the film so effective is how its the ones who are nicest to him who pose the biggest threat.

But the eventual comeuppance and revenge plot of the second film is an error in the material, because it's more conventional than the complex treatment of first film. And the second film, despite surely being filmed at the same time as the first, doesn't even feel or look like the first. The switch in focus from Montand and Auteuil to Beart is also a mistake. Emmanuelle Beart is beautiful, obviously, but that remains her only contribution to the film, and it is not enough to sustain the weight she must now carry as the focal point. Hippolyte Girardot is also a total non-entity as her boring love interest. By the time the film winded down into moral justice being handed down in the grand style of a Greek tragedy, I was fully checked out. The first film resisted all maudlin emotional responses and arrived at something far more interesting. The second reveals this is because all of those impulses were scurried away for the second film.

That said, I'd still recommend the films, but I think I would have liked it more if I'd only watched the first one. Also, you'll learn where the Simpsons got these two from:

[knives]

That’s rough to hear. I saw the first before heading off in a holiday, my own adventure in a rural setting this time eyeing the Potomac, and am really in love. It’s striking to me how different from Pagnol it feels with its economy of character. I was reminded more of Renoir to be honest. All the things you mentioned added to my pleasure. It’s a really brilliant film that will surely be on my list. Still excited for Manon even if tempered to a greater conventional approach.

[swo17]

I might mention that people are welcome to vote for either the first film alone, the second film alone, or the two combined, with each option competing against the other two

[domino harvey]

I’ll be voting for the first only, if anyone’s getting strategic

knives, the second film will probably play better for you because you’re giving a gap between watching it and the first, so you may have stumbled into a way to reduce expectations a little going in

[knives]

Even with the delay it’s clear to me the superiority of the first part of Manon to the second although I still think the second part is excellent in its own way. The main thing holding it back, I believe, is the central three here are just not as interesting as before. Looking through the perspective of villains during their comeuppance isn’t as novel as during their villainy. This is especially true of how sympathetic they are rendered. I’ve seen and read hundreds of stories where the target of revenge has aged into something pathetic so even though it is well done here it doesn’t offer any surprises in feeling.

Much more strongly, Manon just isn’t as good a character as Jean. He was a complicated figure in the model of Job whereas Manon is an enigmatic spirit of revenge. I’m not even sure if she speaks more than a dozen words. She’s there to act and take the ghost out of the machine.

[swo17]

Mammame
Richard III (Raúl Ruiz)

Here's Ruiz, just continually spinning visual cotton candy all decade long. My two picks here only represent half his output for the year, wild adaptations of a modern dance piece (here's a rave from Jonathan Rosenbaum) and then Shakespeare

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life (Jonas Mekas)

Using the same inimitable style as his diary films, Mekas here turns the camera on his very famous friends (whether well known to the general public or just film geeks) yielding such priceless moments as John Lennon (pictured) playing a game of pick-up with Miles Davis

Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah)

If I tell you this treatise on UK racial tensions was simply a made-for-TV documentary you may wonder how it's stood the test of time, but somewhat like Adam Curtis today, Akomfrah, as part of the Black Audio Film Collective, imbues a timeless quality with experimental touches and the use of sometimes surreal found footage

Magdalena Viraga (Nina Menkes)

I praised this low energy brainworm back when it was more obscure but hopefully it finds new life on Arbelos' lovely little Blu-ray set

The Pied Piper (Jiří Barta)

Probably Barta's crowning achievement, which honors the story's German roots by emulating a stunning expressionist style

Rear Window (Ernie Gehr)

I love the boldness of attaching the name of such an iconic film to this incredibly small-scale experiment, which literally captures the view from Gehr's apartment window as he laments his father's death, with the image occasionally seeming to morph from an object into a feeling

Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)

The bizarro version of Stop Making Sense, which was already somewhat out there to begin with

And these music videos probably need little introduction:

Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer (Stephen R. Johnson)
Easterhouse: Whistling in the Dark (Derek Jarman)
The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead (Derek Jarman)

[knives]

I went into Parting Glances expecting to have a fun time with a film were Buscemi’s role is exaggerated by the poster. There is some of that, but what I got was so much more. This is an amazing portrait of New York’s gay culture in flux. It brings forth these four generations with two on either side of aids which is forgrounded to the point of being ordinary like the cold in winter. The film is sarcastic and sincere and just beautiful without trying.

Just one of the best movies of the year which I’m extra thankful for as a lot of what else I’ve been watching has been total stinkers (a word of advice in don’t watch the two Lumet films from this year which are illustrations of his worst tendencies)

[swo17]

Anita Thatcher’s Loose Corner. It’s a pretty hilarious exercise in editing that I could see later say Michael Snow doing. It mostly follows these three people’s interaction with a corner that leaves the stasis of reality the more the camera plays with it and them.

This was awesome! Also worth noting that you can currently stream it on Criterion Channel

[TechnicolorAcid]

Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer (Stephen R. Johnson)

Real quickly want to say that not only is this maybe my favorite music video of all time but this is probably going to be my only chance to mention the fact that some sick mind combined this and Limp Bisket’s Nookie here and I need to know I’m not the only person here who knows about this.

[swo17]

That was...pretty well done!