2000s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[GringoTex]

Gringo --

Have you seen Kozintsev and Trauberg's New Babylon (in proper form with Shostakovitch's original score)? A melodramatic but very impressive film about the Paris Commune.

I'll make sure to tap it for the 20s list.

[Gropius]

La Commune (Paris, 1871) - I'm not a Marxist. Normally, I wouldn't offer such a qualifier in commenting on a film, but this one demands it! I haven't seen any Watkins films between this and Edvard Munch, so it was a bit tragic to see that Watkins had completely lost interest in certain formal qualities of cinema. Rossellini also claimed to have lost interest in cinema when he began his own didactic telefilms, but he was a liar. Watkins is telling the truth.

Hmm... I felt that La Commune was still formally engaged in that pseudo-vérité tradition that he helped to create, or maybe one could call it a sort of lo-fi and austere 'arte povera' aesthetic, deliberately thin on 'beauty' (cf. the currently-much-feted, on different grounds, Pedro Costa). Actually found the whole thing very impressive, although it's been some years, and I am probably in the quasi-post-still-residually-attached-Marxist camp. Agree that Watkins's films - throughout his career - can often come off as naively or sentimentally idealistic, but then that is also one of their endearing qualities, presenting the audience with a variety of doomed utopias (from the Highland clan system of Culloden, to the persecuted hippies of Punishment Park, to the Communards - incidentally, Brownlow's Winstanley seems like a first cousin of this lineage).

[zedz]

I didn't find La Commune quite as uncinematic as Gringo did, but I must admit it was a much harder slog than any other Watkins I'd seen (except for The Journey, which I don't even think I've seen all of). The formal choices were still interesting, but not enough to sustain the length of the film or carry the weight of the speechifying. I found myself tuning out the content and, like Gringo, evaluating the performances. At any rate, that process of watching the film, and of watching myself watching the film, was unusual enough to make it a memorable experience.

Another weird marathon viewing experience, and a film I like much more overall but find very hard to evaluate for the purpose of this project, is Ken Jacobs' Star Spangled to Death. It's a colossal collage, and sometimes the juxtapositions are hair-raisingly compelling; sometimes banal; sometimes non-existent (as when Jacobs basically lets Busby Berkeley's notorious 'Going to Heaven on a Mule' number run uninterrupted). But what really make the viewing experience unique are Jacobs' subliminal text insertions, which can range from single words to screen-filling screeds. They're generally only up for a single frame, and there can be up to ten pages of them in quick succession, so you have to progress through such sections frame by frame, with lots of back and forth to get back to them once they flash past. Sometimes the texts work wonders, adding layers of irony or explanation to the visual material, sometimes they're just opportunities for Jacobs' to vent his spleen about contemporary political issues, but the most noticeable impact of reading them is that they stretch an already very long film way out. In some cases a ten minute stretch of film will take half an hour or more to process.

My great discovery of the day / night is Marc Isaacs' Lift, from the recent Second Run set. Jacobs stands inside (or occasionally outside) a lift in a London tower block, filming and interacting with the residents over a period of weeks. What starts out as regular observation, with the inevitable awkwardness of a stranger being in such close confines so close to home, quickly becomes social interaction of a more and more elaborate order. Some of this is intiiated by the residents (one guy regularly offers the filmmaker food), some by Isaacs, who starts asking them more and more penetrating questions (about childhood memories, about faith). The material is fascinating, but it's also very artfully assembled, with deft or witty juxtapositions, industrial punctuation of the lift's workings. A really great film that's definitely in consideration for my list. I'm looking forward to the other two.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

exts work wonders, adding layers of irony or explanation to the visual material, sometimes they're just opportunities for Jacobs' to vent his spleen about contemporary political issues, but the most noticeable impact of reading them is that they stretch an already very long film way out. In some cases a ten minute stretch of film will take half an hour or more to process.

My great discovery of the day / night is Marc Jacobs' Lift, from the recent Second Run set. Jacobs stands inside (or occasionally outside) a lift in a London tower block, filming and interacting with the residents over a period of weeks. What starts out as regular observation, with the inevitable awkwardness of a stranger being in such close confines so close to home, quickly becomes social interaction of a more and more elaborate order..... I'm looking forward to the other two.

Like zedz I was deeply impressed by 'Lift' and thought that its rigorous formalism was repaid in spades and reminded me sometimes of Wiseman's subjects' soul baring moments like in 'Welfare.'
Unfortunately the other two were for me more standard fare, probably as a result of them being Channel 4 commissions.The mantras of 'clarification', demands on 'developing' character strands and trying to tie up those unanswered questions weigh them down rather than haunt the viewer's imagination as in 'Lift'. Isaacs is in Edinburgh ECA later this month giving a talk to the SDI.
If anyone (Finchie? Peacock?) goes along maybe this might be fleshed out more. There is an interview segment on the disc that does go someway to disabusing the spontaneity of Lift but might also confirm its artfulness. However on same supplement the issue of sponsorship versus the fierce independence of Lift is not really examined.

[zedz]

I see what you mean about the other films. I found Traveller to be the most compromised by conventional form. The interviews at its core remained very strong, but the linking sections between them were overegged: slow motion, 'sensitive' score, repeated snatches of dialogue (potentially an interesting technique, but it seemed leaden in execution in this instance). This stuff flattened out the film and made it harder to get into.

Calais: The Last Border was much more successful, I thought, even with its very traditional 'intercut interviews' form. The film seems to set up some obvious dichotomies, but Isaacs delves deep enough into the lives of his subjects (except for the passing parade of bigots at the fish and chip stand, who really get what they deserve) to short circuit the expected poses. In the second half, the film might as well have been subtitled 'Portraits in Despair', and I was quite unprepared for the emotional whallop it delivered.

[Peacock]

Marc Jacobs

Yes Zazou, i'll definitely be attending the masterclass and hope to ask a few questions.

Lift, to me, was frequently hilarious, like the guy offering food:
Isaacs: a banana please
Guy with food, stares, then rushes in bag and brings out an orange and holds it out
there's this uncomfortable silence whilst the guy keeps eye contact with isaacs while holding out this orange
Isaacs: erm.... a banana...
Guy with food proceeds to rush into bag and find a banana

I really liked the way Isaacs builds up a rapport slowly with these people, but in roughly 15 second intervals, culimnating in some very poignant confessions such as the depressed guy who's parents had both died in the space of 2 weeks/months(?) which had resulted in him having a nervous breakdown.

I know some people have a problem with his aggressive tone of voice, but I think he manages to get people to open up a great deal more due to that. Still i'm not sure i agree with zedz that the filler shots of lift mechanics were necessary...

[zedz]

Marc Jacobs

Hah! Jacob, Isaac - all those Old Testament guys look the same to me. Much have been Isaacs' sharp outfits that distracted me.

As for the 'filler' shots, I liked the way they made the human interaction components of the film simply one part of a network of imagery, and brought us continually back to the physical context of the interactions and the filming (as when Isaacs' blurred reflection is visible in the closing door). They also gave the film an interesting science fiction vibe that reminded me of similar shots in early Akerman like Hotel Monterey or Jeanne Dielman.

So for me a large part of the charm of Lift was how the emotional and human content emerged from a formalist aesthetic, rather than being as bluntly foregrounded as it is in the later films.

[Phil]

Ken Jacobs' Star Spangled to Death.

This will almost certainly be in the top 10 on my list; I'd imagine Razzle Dazzle will make it on there somewhere as well.

And while we're on the longer end of the spectrum, as of now at least, my #1 would be Jonas Mekas' impossibly sublime As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which runs the better part of five and a half hours, each second more enchanting than the last.

[domino harvey]

After having it checked out from Netflix for like two months, I finally slogged through Resnais' Pas sur la bouche. This total disaster is a musical made by someone with no understanding of how a musical works and indeed seems fairly contemptuous of the medium. Displays the worst kind of cold academic detachment, which is utterly deadly with this material. I'd say its bad reputation was even too generous!

[Gropius]

Displays the worst kind of cold academic detachment, which is utterly deadly with this material

Hah - cf. my defence of it on the previous page on almost exactly those grounds. I'm not sure I agree with your argument, actually. I think what distinguishes the classic 40s/50s musicals (Minnelli and Donen esp.) from the 60s and later ones is exactly this form of ironic detachment (although it's not necessarily 'academic'). Granted, Resnais here has added a layer of conscious historical anachronism (one might say 'dustiness'), bringing it closer to the universe of anti-naturalists like Greenaway, also widely reviled.

[domino harvey]

Minnelli and Donen operating on the same level as Resnais is here? Don't make me laugh once, which would be one more time than I did throughout Pas sur la bouche. Donen and Minnelli loved the Hollywood musical and that love shows in their films' innate playfulness. Resnais is trying to comprehend an intentionally antiquated stage operetta via filmed laboratory conditions, with the results being sterile and the textbook opposite of fun.

[GringoTex]

Innocence - A sublime tone of mystery and danger in the first half of the film gives way to hammered symbolism in the second.

Spoiler

I was really hoping the film would wind up a genre piece whereby the girls were being stolen and farmed for nefarious aims- instead it embraced a bland, overcooked surrealism.

[puxzkkx]

I was disappointed by the way Innocence ended up asserting itself on only one level, especially after the intrigue and suspense of the first half. However, I still quite like the end, even if paring down the possible readings of the film in the third act leaves the rest of the flick a bit one-note.

[Lemmy Caution]

Minnelli and Donen operating on the same level as Resnais is here? Don't make me laugh once, which would be one more time than I did throughout Pas sur la bouche... Resnais is trying to comprehend an intentionally antiquated stage operetta via filmed laboratory conditions, with the results being sterile and the textbook opposite of fun.

Just the idea of Resnais making a musical got a laugh from me.

[Michael Kerpan]

Just the idea of Resnais making a musical got a laugh from me.

Well, at least Rivette's (sort of) musical, Haut bas fragile, is rather nice. ;~}

[domino harvey]

Sunshine Cleaning Inoffensive way to pass an hour and a half, but the film is pretty much disposable. The most featherweight of plots and minimal characterization floating around a big vat of independent film cliches. Even the always reliable Amy Adams is adrift here. If nothing else, it put me in mind of the couple years I subscribed to IFC, where every day's schedule was just four or five films exactly like this back to back.

[GringoTex]

Inland Empire - So my dvd from Netflix concked out in the 50th minute. Still trying to decide if this was a blessing or not.

[zedz]

After having it checked out from Netflix for like two months, I finally slogged through Resnais' Pas sur la bouche. This total disaster is a musical made by someone with no understanding of how a musical works and indeed seems fairly contemptuous of the medium. Displays the worst kind of cold academic detachment, which is utterly deadly with this material. I'd say its bad reputation was even too generous!

This film left so little impression on me I had to do a google search for some details to confirm I'd actually seen it, so ditto. Resnais' previous On connait le chanson has marginally more interest as a variant musical, but only if you're completely ignorant of Dennis Potter's much more effective, extensive and radical exploration of the same ideas in Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective. When I saw that film I was shocked that Resnais wasn't dragged over the critical coals for his bald plagiarism - or worse, the reductive conservatism of it.

[Gropius]

Hmm... take it I'm going to be the only person actually to include Pas sur la bouche on my list, then (albeit in the lower reaches)?

[Sloper]

Inland Empire - So my dvd from Netflix concked out in the 50th minute. Still trying to decide if this was a blessing or not.

It took me longer than that to get into it, but it was worth it - scariest film I've ever seen.

[bearcuborg]

^One of the greatest too.

[colinr0380]

I'd keep with it for now - on my first viewing for the first half hour I had a handle on the narrative and still thought I could keep up with it, from the half hour to two hour mark I was completely lost and frustrated, and when things began to obliquely come together in the final hour I was, like Sloper, terrified and exhilarated at the same time.

That makes me wonder whether More Things That Happened is eligible to vote for in its own right? In some ways I think it is as great as Inland Empire simply because it doesn't have to carry the weight of expectations of narrative pay off that the official film does.

[GringoTex]

Thanks for the feedback- I suppose I'm giving Inland Empire another try. Very frustrating, though, because I had to schedule an expensive day vacation for the family to get them out of the house- being it was David Lynch and three hours long and all.

[Sloper]

And since there are no chapter stops (or at least there weren't on the edition I saw) you'll have to do some fast-forwarding... I guess this one's going to have to work pretty hard now to win you over!

[flyonthewall2983]

Is there any chance that the list that will be compiled in January be revised at a later date? I'm asking because I'm planning in 2010, to Netflix every film of interest of me from the decade that I've not seen yet and review them. With those, I'm also planning on reviewing and re-watching my favorites from the decade thus far. I hope to have by the end of the year, a definitive list of 50 films, complete with reviews. I'll be sure to post it here, whether or not there will be a revision of the final list.