Tag Archives: film review

Pickpocket [1959)

Writing about film makes you appreciate the film.

You think.

What will I say about this picture?

This succession of pictures.

Sounds.

And so silently you ponder the ways to express true genius.

And how lucky we are to witness true genius.

It’s true.

The Criterion Collection has brought us many films which otherwise might have been forgotten.

Film didn’t begin with The Godfather.

It doesn’t end with Citizen Kane.

And so we need to see the other stuff.

We need to hear voices from outside of America.

Hollywood is international, to be sure, yet everything which enters there leaves marked.

It is a sentiment which Godard expressed in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema.

And this is the other stuff.

Robert Bresson.

You might only know Henri-Cartier Bresson.  Don’t stop there.

Robert Bresson was the master of taking non-actors and capturing their vitality on film.

Pickpocket does justice to Uruguay as much as did Isidore Ducasse (which is to say, completely).

Martin LaSalle, a young Urugayan-French actor in his film debut, plays the lead role here of the pickpocket Michel.

LaSalle’s eggshell acting is essential to this masterpiece.

Yet, it is director Bresson who brings the ballet of crime to life.

Yes, it is like Orson Wells doing his magic tricks in F for Fake (his magnum opus).

Indeed, everything has an art.  Even crime.

And as paper currency disappears from the industrialized world we see the migration of subway thieves to the ether in an attempt to pilfer Apple Pay “money”.

Yes, I’m afraid that soon everything will need quotes around it.

Perhaps I just don’t understand.

But, there is an art to everything.

Take accounting, for instance:  the most boring subject invented by human beings.

And yet, there is an “art” to it…I’m sure…somewhere…deep, deep down inside.

But Pickpocket is of a different era.

Perhaps computer hacking and financial calculator operations require a certain finger dexterity, but nothing like the prestidigitation which Bresson brings to life in this film.

It is a noiseless ballet of lifts, drops, catches, exchanges, etc.  Buttons flicked.  Buckles finessed in one motion.

It reminds me of the one true line in Goldfinger…perhaps the only genuinely cinematic moment in that film (though I love the other 99% pulp)…

Delivered by the title character, as played by Gert Fröbe, it goes a little something like this:

“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor… except crime!”

Ahhh…the rolled Rrrrs of that final word.  Like H.W.’s brief year at Langley.  Like Kissinger at Iron Mountain.  Ah!  But here we run into a problem.

Hoaxes.  Like Sandy Hook.  Like Hani Hanjour.

And will Donald Trump have the balls to read a book?  Perhaps Webster Griffin Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror:  Made in USA?

I doubt it.

Is Trump a provocateur or merely provocative?

Because if he shot his mouth off a little more pointedly he’d have my vote.

And I would stand with my immigrant brothers and sisters every day to see Dick Cheney take the stand.  Under oath.

And Philip Zelikow.  Under oath.

And Donald Rumsfeld.  Under oath.

And Larry Silverstein.  And Rudy Giuliani.  And Richard Myers.

Somebody else did it?  Then you got nothing to worry about.

Unravel unravel unravel.

Because Trump is wrong about immigration.

And Bernie Sanders is right about Snowden.

And I don’t like Trump or Sanders.

But Trump is the only one even tangentially touching on the real issue:  truth.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Off the rails. Film review.

C’est la vie.

Conspiracy.

Don’t mind me.

I will just go back to watching films.

Go back to sleep.

Nothing to see here.

-PD

4 Comments

.سنگسار ثريا م‎‎ [2008)

[THE STONING OF SORAYA M. (2008)]

Every time I write a political post I take my life in my own hands.

Because I let everyone have it.

Out into the ether.

An equal opportunity whistle-blower.

And so I must let you know that this is almost a great movie.

Yet, I’m not even sure if it’s a good movie.

Let me explain.

The Stoning of Soraya M. was released at a very suspicious time.

By a very suspicious (and talented) director.

All through the George W. Bush presidency there was a pervasive itch…a green tide of bile just waiting to drown the country of Iran.

First we reduced one of the poorest countries on Earth (Afghanistan) to rubble.  It was mostly rubble to begin with.

Our military had trouble finding high-value targets to hit.  There were none.

Then our trumped-up intelligence hit the big stage:  the U.N. General Assembly.

Colin Powell knowingly lied.  The U.S. intelligence community was used as a pawn.

The intel was being propped beneath a faulty case like a gratis jack beneath a compact car.

Remember?  The Downing Street memo?

And so we knocked off another country.  Iraq.  The neo-con wargasm really kicked in.  No doubt the poet Ed Sanders was unsurprised.  He coined the phrase wargasm and had been documenting the demented drive of American bloodlust for decades.

And then the steamroller sputtered.

Iran was always next.

Always.  Always.  Next month.  This fall.  Imminent.

Praise be to God that the neo-con luck ran out.  Like the serial killers they are, their ability to trick and deceive abated.

And what the hell does any of this have to do with the film I’m reviewing?

Quite simply, the film I’m reviewing is perfect propaganda to bomb the hell out of Iran.

It was premiered in the final months of the Bush junta.

Perhaps the director and producers had dragged their heels a bit.

Perhaps they realized they were being used?

Perhaps…

But the story goes deeper.

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh is best known for directing a two-part ABC miniseries called The Path to 9/11.  It is “controversial”…which is to say, it is critical of the U.S. government…but only in the most kid-gloves, “oh they should have killed more Muslims” kind of way.  To reframe my argument, Cyrus Nowrasteh was already a propagandist whether he knew it or not.

And that’s where this film comes in.

Let me start by saying that the acting in this film is fantastic.  The direction is stellar (yes, the guy I was just insulting has world-class talent).

What we must ask ourselves is this:  was this film merely meant to pull on the heartstrings like a flippant Laura Bush quote about the Taliban or was Nowrasteh sincere in this unfortunately-timed release?

I believe the director was sincere.

In fact, I believe the director is the parallel of the character Ebrahim in this film.

Ebrahim is the mayor of a small town in Iran.

Ebrahim wants to do the right thing, but he is tricked.

Even so, Ebrahim is a victim of dogma.  Ebrahim’s a dumb-ass.

And yet, we respect him somewhat.

The same goes for Nowrasteh.

If my reading of The Path to 9/11 is correct, then Nowrasteh has never considered the possibility that the United States attacked itself on 9/11.  Adding further color to that false-flag would be the involvement of Israel.

One thing is certain:  it seems that Nowrasteh showed a shocking lack of curiosity when making The Path to 9/11.

Fool me once, Cyrus…shame on…

And so then Nowrasteh gets to direct this piece of cinema.  It is cinema.  But how much can we invest our hearts in a story told by a facilitator of untruths?

It pains me to discount the amazing acting of Mozhan Marnò.

And I do not discount it.

She is one of the most talented actresses I have witnessed in a long time.

The same goes for Shohreh Aghdashloo.  Tremendous thespian skills!

And Nowrasteh (whom I’ve spent “paragraphs” berating)…what a talent!

But is that talent misdirected?  [no pun intended]

I’m not cowing to Iran.

I have nothing to gain.  I have everything to lose.

This film, on its own merits, is extremely remarkable.

But taken in the context of Hollywood propaganda, it becomes suspect.

The Mullah in the film is a scumbag.

The husband is a scumbag.

The town mayor is essentially a scumbag (dupe).

There are very few subtle shadings of character here.

We end up with an unfortunate equation.

Iran = bad.

Islam = bad.

Islamic men = bad.

Islamic women = good.

The equation is begging for some stealth bombers to fill the gap and vaporize those Muslim men.  “Liberate” those Muslim women.

Come on:  we’re pros at it!  Look at our resume!!  Afghanistan?  Check.  Iraq?  Check.  This is our line of work!

We’ll give it a snappy name like Enduring Freedom (how much of our “freedom” can they endure?) and it’ll be over in a few weeks.

We’ll be greeted as saviors.

Let me point out one final detail.

There are some sub-equations here.

Shah = good/bad.

Ayatollah = bad.

And so, mathematicians of ethics, how does the SAVAK compute?

What was Mosaddegh’s good/bad rating?

All we ask in cinema is for a real story.  If you don’t pimp yourself out to the bomb boys, then the Palme d’Or is yours.

Perhaps I am wrong.

I am willing to admit that I may be wrong.

If you can’t tell by the title of this film how it ends (don’t see Titanic), Soraya gets stoned.  As in murdered. As in disgusting.

But what is most disgusting?

Hypocrisy.  The film starts with a quote by Hafez.

The corrupt Mullah is no worse than the military-industrial director.

And for those of immense talent (like Nowrasteh), there is always redemption in the next film.

Tell the real story.  Read a book.

The path to 9/11 almost certainly started in Langley and Herzliya.

One or the other.

Perhaps both.

Or was it the old boys network of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Poppy Bush?

Somebody better get it straight or this world ain’t going nowhere good.

Help us out Cyrus!  The truth will free both our countries.

-PD

11 Comments

Johnny English Reborn [2011)

With film reviews, a critic either reviews the film or reviews themselves.  Selves?  Self.

Continuing…  There are two major modes of writing about art.

If I tell you that film was designated the seventh art by Ricciotto Canudo, am I telling you more about film or more about myself?

I would argue that I am trying to flaunt my intellect.

Every once in awhile my brain serves me well.  At other times I am painfully aware of my shortcomings.

And so, Johnny English…not exactly King Lear by Godard.

Nay…  ,,but a near piss-perfect spy spoof.

Piss-perfect?

Now there’s an odd turn of phrase.  Can’t say I’ve thought of that one in awhile.

Really, it makes little sense…unless…drug test?

Who knows…

It’s certainly not timoxeline barbebutenol.  No.  I’m assured by my ever faithful companion Wikipedia that that (2) is a fictional drug.

It does, however, share a molecular formula with two actual drugs:  amobarbital and pentobarbital (respectively).

C11H18N2O3

Yes…

Now<>  If I followed this particular tangent I would be indirectly commenting on the film at hand.

The ostensible “meaning” would be that this film is so devoid of substance that I had been reduced to concocting literary small talk in its absence.

But that is not the case.

And so in the great literary tradition of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, I shall forego the pharmacological flourish and focus on what’s really important.

Johnny English Reborn, while not a masterpiece in the Palme d’Or sense, smashes both the first two Austin Powers films (and indeed its own predecessor) to infinitesimal bits.

[If I allowed myself the indulgence of an aside involving quantum computing and its version of bits (qubits) I would really be showing my arse.]

Because I don’t know quantum computing from linear regressions.  [Figuratively speaking.]

And so I will be plain as day ->  I identify with this film

I know.  It’s sad in a certain way…

“The Great Pretender”…I sometimes think.  I think of Richard Manuel crooning that song with such pain in his heart.

Yes, Levon Helm was right:  the moments that Richard took the spotlight for ballads…those were the real highlights.

“Georgia On My Mind”…

A guy with a great big beard.  As weird and wistful as Brian Wilson in a giant sandbox.

Uhhh…yes.  Where were we?

Johnny English.

Reborn no less…

Indeed, a few things are different here.

First we must thank director Oliver Parker.

This film really holds together.

Lucky for him he had Rowan Atkinson in top form as the title character.

But there are two supporting players who deserve special mention.

The first is Daniel Kaluuya.

Mr. Kaluuya, himself of Ugandan ancestry, fills some very big shoes left vacant by his predecessor Ben Miller.

I really did Miller a disservice by failing to mention his fine performance in the first Johnny English film.

But Kaluuya takes a somewhat different tack.

I may be imagining things, but I get the feeling that Kaluuya was playing this role for all it’s worth (like an athlete or musician with a make-or-break chance).

Sure…films employ multiple takes.  Drop a line?  No problem.  Let’s take it again.

And yet, Kaluuya adds a gentle urgency to this farce by way of truly accomplished thespian abilities.

I certainly hope someone in the film world was paying attention as his filmography does not reflect an appreciation for his immense talents.

And finally, I must mention the redemption of Rosamund Pike (reborn, if you will).

I last left her on my site as a rather tragic villain figure in the actual Bond film Die Another Day.  Mercifully, she does not exit this film with a volume of Sun Tzu shishkababbed flush to bosom.  [What?]

Quite the contrary…for here she is the good guy (girl)…and her acting is as impeccable as her true beauty.

But poor Johnny…poor Rowan Atkinson.

I’ve hardly mentioned him at all.

Must I tell you again what a genius this fellow is?

Perhaps so.

I haven’t been effusive enough regarding a man whose talents are of the most rare kind.

True, born-to-yuck talents.  Born-to-ham.  I would only put him in a race with Roberto Benigni.

Those two.

They are of another era.

Like Peter Sellers.

Like Jacques Tati.

And, of course, back to the fondateur Charlie Chaplin.

The modern world does not embrace this visual sort of humor.

Every once in awhile it reappears.  Benigni wins Best Actor.

And then it’s gone again.

Atkinson, dear boy, if you’re out there on the brainwave wavelengths…

You’ve still got it, old chap!

-PD

7 Comments

Detective [1985)

How do you get that much emotion into a film review?  In order to start saying things again, we must stop saying things as we have been saying them.

Year zero.

As much as I might like to find fault with this film, I cannot.  Not really.

What for some directors would be their masterpiece is for Godard merely another step in the journey.

We get used to genius.

We expect perfection.

But let us descend from the cosmos to discuss the film at hand.

No…on second thought.

It is the prolongation of the opening titles.  Not like James Bond.  It is not a formulaic gun-barrel sequence.

It is merely (merely?) the opposite of diminution.  Augmentation.  A fugue.

There are too many words to remember.

And so Godard takes his sweet ass time telling us about the players.

Quite a cast.

If we come in blind (and cold), each addition piques our interest further.

Was it Alain Sarde who put together this troupe?

Perhaps he only wrote the checks?

No no…it is better to discuss how Godard used this extensive cast.

A cast of thousands.  Mahler Symphony #8.

Wikipedia.  Poor pathetic Wikipedia.

But maybe not.

If you are accustomed to mainstream fare, this picture may appear to have no plot.

It is the pacing.  The cuts.  Montage?

No.  No diatribe.

On to the cast.

Jean-Pierre Léaud.  How long had it been?

And Claude Brasseur!  Christ!!

But we really start moving with Johnny Hallyday.

Once upon a time…

(should start)

I (me)…I was in some city…I believe it was Quebec.  Quebec City.  Québec.

I had a room at the top of the world for the night.  I believe it was the 22nd floor.

Enough to make you shit yourself…

And in the morning, there we were…a band apart.  Bleary eyed, perhaps.

And out comes Monsieur Hallyday.

And the press clicked away.  The hands went up to shield the bright lights.

And all I was impressed with was that he’d been in a Godard movie.

This one.

But let us not forget Nathalie Baye.

She is extraordinary here.

Brasseur is very strong.

Hallyday is surprisingly perfect.

All of these pop stars in films by the former nouvelle vague…

But let us really focus on the viscera.

Emmanuelle Seigner.

I have written about her before in relation to Berlin:  Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Yes.  She is indispensable here.

And Julie Delpy.  With the licorice stick.

(that would be, clarinet)

Poorly documented.

Actresses age.  They become harder to distinguish from their former selves.

A stage of facial age.

But really the star (STAR)…(STAR) is Aurelle Doazan.

Sometimes it is her legs.  We study every shot in every Godard film.

The market for films.  The clearing prices.  For rare cinephilia.  Paraphernalia.  Saturnalia.

Alea iacta est.

Les jeux sont faits.

The sound.

All bets are in.  The die is cast.

The games are done.

Have been.

Godard here makes an art of either A.) saying nothing at all, or B.) saying everything that can possibly be said.

We happen to know he improved.

This experiment.  AGFA.  Audio Cassettes……….Video Cassettes.

Making an entire movie in a hotel.

Just deliver the equipment.

Arriflex.  Mitchell.  Panavision.

Schubert.  Liszt.  Honegger.

François Musy.

The engine is rattling.  Abandon ship.

-PD

1 Comment

Passion [1982)

All you need is the first word.  The first sentence to get you going.

You can meditate.  Think too hard.

And now that it’s started it is gloriously ruined.  Like Kind of Blue.

Miles Davis would tell his players…one take.

Perhaps there were caveats.  But Bill Evans was ready.  Coltrane…

It is the same with “Sister Ray” by The Velvet Underground.

One take.  Make it count.

Everything proceeds from the first word.  But don’t take it too seriously.

It is like many other first words.  “Once upon a time…”

From a mist rises Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.  Bruckner would use the same device many times (no doubt in honor of Ludwig van).

Yes.  We say Ludwig Van in honor of Mauricio Kagel.  And the entire spirit of everything here might be compared to Joseph Beuys.

And just like that <bam> we go over-budget.

Jerzy Radziwilowicz plays the Jean-Luc Godard character here (with the wardrobe ostensibly taken right off the back of Jacques Dutronc).  Thus Godard still creates a distance between his story and THE story.  The whole bit about Poland is made to throw us off the scent (a bit like the glorious obfuscation of Joyce in Finnegans Wake).

We find Godard to be right.  The available forms are too mundane.  The audience stops thinking when they are comfortable.  So we must disorient them a bit–prod like a brainiac Hitchcock.

You see, the most important thing is not who acted in this film.  Rather, the crucial component is the juxtaposition which allows for revelation.

We see the most perfectly-placed tableaux of human paintings.  Come to life.  The proper term is tableau vivant.  Maybe you see them at Christmas.  Perhaps a manger and the Christian genesis.

Ah, but with Godard it is Delacroix and Rubens and Rembrandt etc.  I assume Ingmar Bergman missed this Godard film because the former had already made up his mind regarding the latter.  And thus the admiration flowed in one direction alone.  We see the delicacy of Bergman–that technique of the long shot (temporally speaking).  You can almost imagine Godard telling his cast of thousands in this mini-epic to have no expression at all.

There is a connection to Stravinsky.  Neoclassicism, but really a radical belief in the purity of music.  To paraphrase Igor, “Music doesn’t have meaning.  A note is a note.”  Perhaps I have done the great composer an injustice with my memory.  Yet, a paraphrase is a paraphrase.

We humans are not computers.  No matter how many books we have.  No matter how steel-trap our memory.  No matter how fast our Internet.

And thus, that which is juxtaposed against the meticulous composition of the tableaux vivants?  Everyday life.  Careless shots.  The beauty of the sky.  The natural sway of a handheld camera.  The sun as it burns up the lens upon peeking through the bare trees.  Hanna Schygulla running through the snow with a lavender umbrella.

Real life.  Labor.  A factory.  And who is the real star?  Isabelle Huppert.  Her character in Sauve qui peut (la vie) was not a sympathetic one.  Can we say?  WE had no sympathy for her.  Very little.  Not none.

Yet here…she is the lamb of God (of which she speaks).  Huppert is the labor element.  Workers’ rights.  It is intimated that her monotonous job has caused her to stutter.  Why?  Because it is not easy to talk about the factory.

And why, she asks, are people in films never shown working?  It is not allowed.  Filming in factories.  Indeed, I believe there is a specifically French meaning here.  [And Swiss, as the film is shot in Switzerland.]  But the real shocker?  Work and sex (“pornography”) are equally prohibited on the screen.

Only Godard would find this fascinating link.  And that is why we love him.

But mostly it is another thing.

Life is so much richer in the films of Godard.  Sure, there are some exceptions, but the exceptions themselves are merely the process being revealed.  It is “the thinking life” to paraphrase Henry Miller.

Once you have been there, you don’t want to go back.  Or you can’t go back.  But we do go back.  Thinking is hard work.

And as the world bemoans what havoc Europe has wrought, let it be noted…the Beethovens, Mozarts, Dvoraks…

This is the humanism which little by little comes to occupy the mature films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Most importantly, he never stopped being a critic.

And his film reviews?  They are his films themselves.

-PD

7 Comments

Sauve qui peut /la vie/ [1980)

12 seconds.  5 minutes.  2 fortnights.  a jiffy.

Really, I shouldn’t have to comment on the commodification of time.  Is that not the essence of capitalism?

Into your busy lives cram another blog post.  Another sloppy film review.  A film.

A more professional critic would start by alluding to the copious literature which points to this film as Godard’s return to form.

A strange phrase.  Which form?

Because really, for me, Godard begins here.  The known Godard is Parisian Godard…la nouvelle vague.

The unknown Godard is everything else.  As an American consumer it is rather inconvenient to obtain all but the classic films from our auteur.  After Week-end (1967), the DVDs become exponentially harder to come by.

But, as a rule, I digress.  Liberally.  Often.  Without fail.

This, then, would seem to be Godard emerging from the black forest of political filmmaking and ethical soul-searching to find the inklings of his mature style.

It is not an original thought.  The English-language biographies cover this thoroughly.  The device in question is (for lack of a more exact term) slow-motion.

It is the playful wonder of a man who still has the curiosity of a boy.

Technology changing.  New idiosyncrasies to each bit of gear on the market.

It is the same now.  Stash your camera on the top shelf and soon you will not know how to make films.

Your equipment will be obsolete and your knowledge outdated.

But that is all tertiary (tertiary?) in importance.

To our film.

We have characters; plot.  A walk in the wilderness and Godard (with the indispensable Anne-Marie Miéville) returned to a somewhat recognizable form.  As always, however, the form is highly subverted.  One might even say perverted in this particular instance.  It is a strange beauty.  Incomparable.  A triumph.  A mere glimpse of things to come.

Always playing on archetypes, Godard casts singer Jacques Dutronc as Paul Godard.  There can be little doubt that this character is meant to represent the filmmaker himself.  Every marker is there:  the ubiquitous cigar, the glasses, the mannerisms, the disheveled college professor sartorial ensembles…

The stunning Nathalie Baye plays Denise Rimbaud.  Here is where the ark types.  Arc-en-ciel.  A panorama of wispy clouds.  Yes, Arthur is never far…nor Baudelaire…nor Sartre and Duras.  And Marguerite?  Faust.  Your soul for a job.

Yes, prostitution returns.  The grand Godardian theme.  Isabelle Huppert plays the role of the sex worker Isabelle Rivière.

The setting?  Switzerland.  We see the signs at the station.  Nyon.  Not Lyon, Nyon.  It brings us back to that area we visited in Godard’s second film (though it was banned and thus delayed in release) Le Petit Soldat.

The famous scenes are of Baye on a bicycle–of Dutronc in a classroom before a chalkboard reading “Cain et Abel” and “Film et video.”

Yes, the sexual aspects of this film are heavy.  This perhaps proves that Godard’s return to mainstream filmmaking was not the end of his rebellious period.

Though there is a plot and there are discernible characters, it is not always clear what is going on.  What cannot be disputed is the sadness which Godard brings to light with yet another exposé of whoring.  Likewise, it might be gathered that the filmmaker is commenting on the perception of rural Switzerland as pristine and bucolic.  The perverse element of our film echoes previous erotic episodes of Pasolini and Buñuel.

Finally, one can’t help wondering whether the film in question had a formative effect on the Iranian director Kiarostami.  As in the later Taste of Cherry, Godard has one last trick up his sleeve to end out Sauve qui peut (la vie).

Indeed, Jean-Luc Godard was starting to find his magic touch again with this film…and its traces attested to a talent which was richer and better than ever before.

-PD

5 Comments

Tout va bien [1972)

This might be the most important film ever made.

You can’t start like that.

This whole “internal monolog” gets boring…

Illiterate Joyce fanatic.

After fucking around for four years, Godard and Gorin (like Marx and Engels) finally got the funding needed to deal a deathblow to bourgeois capitalism.  Bourgeois?  Monopoly.  Monopoly?

I feel film review coming on…itching like a well-known wool blanket.

Jane Fonda is devastatingly good in this.

Yves Montand nails it.

Godard and Gorin fling a manifesto at the world.  Hollywood has failed miserably in mustering a riposte.

Over 40 years ago.

Who speaks for Hollywood?

And who speaks for not Hollywood?

A state of mind more than a place.

New forms for new content.

Not Hollywood.

You know Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis.

We get a hilarious choking performance from Vittorio Caprioli.

It’s not a thing to hide…the fact that one is marked for death.

But hidden it is.

A loudmouthed agitator who learned to unlearn.  Through books.

A conundrum.  No, there is no stopping being an intellectual.

If you don’t know the Dziga-Vertov Group’s work, you won’t realize that Tout va bien is actually reflective.

It is a perfect gentle art bomb.

No box office data.

Not what we meant anyway.

Must be a pain in the ass to parse these “reviews” on behalf of the control freaks.

A good psychologist would tell you to buy a mirror.  Buy some time.  Reflect.

But there are no good psychs…seems.

No, surely there are.

A lot (two words) of professions seem glutted with criminals.

And the psychs are there to define criminality.

Judges by the benison of nepotism.

By which we mean judges.  [new subject]

By this time they broke the fourth wall so efficiently and effortlessly.  With Jane Fonda.

The wrong woman.

Diegesis or die a Jesus?

Opacity of performance?

I think what they mean is, by being weird it causes the audience to ask, “Why are they being weird?”

Who cares.

Too beautiful to end there.

The most important.  Perhaps.

Can’t this motherfucker complete a goddamned sentence?

New forms for new content. (2)

Seriously, the boss has to piss!

And is that the cock from Persona?

Cock.  I never would’ve said it that way.

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

She told me.

Double-spacing was an antiquated technique.  Something about a journalism degree.  I tried.

Obviously, people are watching.

Route me out of the main stream.  Rout.

I know my true brothers and sisters, but they remain invisible.

Little signals over the ether and we take the helm.

Rub your jade.

Yes.  Look look look.

Doesn’t matter.  They want you to know that clearly.

The movies where the hero is a shitbag who finally does the right thing at the end…and utters one last dying quotable.

Karate for life.  For instance.

Capitalize the first noun, and then shut the fuck up.  It’s just a title.

What’s in a goddamned name?

Shaky sphere at the globe.  On the shore.  Of a ditch.

The borr(o)wed.  Borr()wed.

Barred.

If there’s a right way to write about film, this ain’t it.

Unremitting self-referential showmanship.

Serves to defuse…de fuse.

Someday.  Someday.  A couple of holy grails will roll down the hill.

Goddamn.

-PD

6 Comments

Pravda [1969)

There are few things more difficult.  More difficult.  Than divining the truth as it is happening.

Happening?  The truth happens.  Or is.

We don’t know.  Prague Spring.  PRAHA.

Did you know that Ceaușescu condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia?  Really.

Fascinating.  We hear that name and we think bad guy.  Maybe.  We do.

Youthful errors.  I can only affirm the brilliance of this film in absence of French comprehension.

In absence of Italian comprehension.

In absence of Czech comprehension.

In absence of Marxist comprehension.

You will notice the monolithic structures as a Western capitalist on the outside looking in.

On the inside perhaps some saw provisions for all.

Heat in winter.  Food on the table.  Poverty squelched or shared.

Socialism.

It explains why this film is barely in print.  You must remember how radical the Dziga-Vertov Group was.

You either find it brave or you find it disgusting…like the Aden Arabie cell from La Chinoise.  Juliet Berto chanting

Revisionist!

Revisionist!

Revisionist!

…as if brainwashed.

Skoda.  Now owned by Volkswagen.  How ironic?

Skoda.  Founded by two Vaclavs.

There is a 20-year gap in Skoda’s history on Wikipedia.  Škoda Auto.  My guess is we can thank Volkswagen for “cleaning up” the history a bit.  They cleaned a little too well.  Now there’s a hole.  And it’s noticeable.

Two shirtless fat men.  Two Vaclavs?  I have no idea.  But these gents make it all worthwhile…shoveling dirt in front of a post office.  One of the two so impressively hirsute (back and front) as to have a pseudo-shirt.

Socialism was a belief in something.  The U.S. lost the Vietnam war.  Little debating that.  And now Vietnam is socialist (at least in name).  Did the globe stop spinning?  Of course not.

These are not brave details.  I have been much more bold before.

Yet reason.

She was so beautiful as to make us cry.

We stood no chance.

She never smiled.

Not like the first one..

To understand Marx.  To understand European socialism.  To understand Russia riddle enigma matryoshka.  Through the lens of Dostoyevsky.  Karamazov.  Religion.  Culture.  Vast expanses of land…

I may be at the end of the world.  It may be necessary for me to take a step back.

Mmmm…to be intoxicated by something so bizarre, so rare, so taboo, and so unknowable…for now.

It is why Alex Jones’ films fail.  They are artless.  Had he channeled Godard there would have been no stopping his cinema.

But the spectacle is where James Clapper, much to his own chagrin, realizes that “deceit deceives itself” (to quote Debord).

TPTB have never grasped the coded messages in Shostakovich.  Stylometry can only undermine a Snowden email.  If that.

Like Dylan I have no big answers.

You will be punished for thinking.  That.

Thought crime.

Guillotine.

Guileless in Seattle.

We are getting closer to the truth.  Dangerously close.

You will know knowledge hack.  Coined term.  Here.  Like 4’33” Cage.

Life hack.  Kryptos.

Somebody forgot to take their medicine.

We can joke.

Did Ezra Pound’s punishment befit his crime?  His crime?  [DHS] [[VHS]]

Kino Pravda.

Should keep several good intelligence analysts busy for a week.

Several petaflops of drivel occupied.

To not be fucked with.

Moloch in Bohemia.

Practically free.

Just keep the angles which predate Orson Welles.  Dziga.  Vertov.

The Académie française will never accept.  Their loss.

Propaganda will always show blood dripping from fangs…even if blood is dripping from fangs.

We could make a deal.  He says.

Petaflops.

Liquidated.

Rights reserved, wrongs reversed.

Elision says stylometry.

Experimental literature.

This is not a film review.

Think on your sins.

Gets to feeling like a powerful shit.  Ripe for manipulation.

A lot of things can happen to dog shit.

Flash tits change world.

Sure, you know what’s going on…but you don’t REALLY know.

Two-way mirror of social media.  Instant fame.

We’ve been trained to utter scumbag.

” ”

Twice.  de Chirico.

Yep.  Someone else has caught the scent.  Freud cerebral.  Marx visceral.

The angles converge.  Méliès.  Rampling, Charlotte.  Trampoline.

I need a love to keep me happy.  Keith Richards said that.

It is the most fertile field of Godard study.

This key-logging software is really slowing me down.

Doesn’t matter.  We take the stairs.

AIPAC, Carole King, Black Maria?!?

Now you know the key.  Of a different sort.

-PD

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Cine-tracts [1968)

A beginning, middle, and end.  Not necessarily in that order.

I skipped ahead because I forgot about the Internet.

I disappeared.

And now to write on the sad, hopeful history of change.

To write about the slums of Paris.  There will be slums.

I am not making much sense unless you have read me before.

I can assure you that it is not a put-on.

No, I cannot string together two sentences.

Does that make me stupid?

Of course not.

It’s negotiable.  Relative.  Subjective [ahh…].

This, then, is a film review.  All articles on this site take advantage of this form in one way or another.

Adherence is a matter of self-calibration.

I have found the form for me.  Which is to say, it depends on the film.

And so what is Cine-tracts?

Try the purge function.  Check the deletion log.

Not a very straightforward answer.

Well, these were some short, silent films made by various directors in response to the events of May 1968 in Paris.

The reason I didn’t review this “film” earlier is that I forgot to check the ether for free content.

It’s a bit dodgy.  You never quite know what you’re getting.

On any account, I found about 75 minutes of these cine-tracts and watched the whole, soundless lot.

Jean-Luc Godard’s touch was apparent.  Whether or not Jean-Pierre Gorin was involved at this early stage, I am too lazy to check.  Chris Marker is said to have participated.  That certainly seems plausible given that the mode of creation involves still photos rather than moving pictures.

Ah, but the pictures do move.  Or rather, the camera’s motion creates an illusion that the still pictures are moving.  Indeed, their relationship to the camera is changing.  Distance.  Perspective.  Renaissance.  Light.  Shadow.

These cine-tracts play like what they likely were:  short, encouraging films for the students and workers who were rebelling against the times.

There are some ingenious directorial devices here and there, but generally the message (both literal and symbolic) takes precedence over imagination and invention.  To be sure, the filmmakers involved were politically engaged and apparently zealous in their dedication.

And so now it is hard to recall that Spring of ’68.  I was not there.  I have tried to put myself there.  Because many important currents converge in Paris 1968.

Is it inappropriate to called Cine-tracts a Godard film?  Perhaps.  But the opposite end of the spectrum would deprive us of this diary-like glimpse into the auteur’s mind.  You want to understand Adieu au langage?  Start here.  Or continue here.  Even end here.

There is no shame in being poor.  Scarcity has made it difficult.  A small concern.  Not definitively growing.

The key to understanding Cine-tracts is to be found in everyday life.  Poor, sad routine.  Run-down dross of capitalism.  The ass of capitalism looks strikingly like the ass of communism.

Donkey.  Camel.  BMW.

Yes, the world markets are sensitive to bullshit.  And each magnified ramification comes home to the poor Joe.  Average Joe.  And Jane.

Joe and John Doe and Jane Smith can’t seem to escape the high school algebra problem in which they are frozen like insects.

Joe Schmoe.  A very prestigious family.

And therein lies the problem.  A bunch of nobodies.  All they can offer is a peach.  Or a glass of water.  Or a near-worthless coin.

There’s no movement to join.  Will you start a movement?  In real politics (not the pap which passes for such in the houses of congresses) the only victory is death.  Man does not want to hear an uncomfortable message.  Your type has already, long ago, been profiled.  You don’t fit in this world.  There is no future for you.  As even Orwell seemed to intimate in 1984, a Winston Smith who lives must compromise.

And so what happened to Godard?  What happened to the fire of May 1968–that zeal which seemed inextinguishable?  What happened to the hippies?  What happened to the revolutionary socialists of the ’60s?  Did they merely switch drugs?

To conflate the participants of May 1968 in Paris with American hippies is problematic.  Are there similarities and commonalities?  Sure!  But the cultural backgrounds of the two groups were quite different.  This difference persists.  France and the U.S.A. are further than opposite sides of a common coin.

From the standpoint of language, I am probably more qualified to comment on American hippies (though I am much too young to have first-hand knowledge).  A gross simplification would seem to indicate that the idealism of the American counter-culture gave way to a nihilism (and finally to assimilation and general diametric abandonment of youthful principles).

But history is always open.  That spark…that archetype of socialism…that magical motif can be applied to any political movement…in that history may be all but written, yet it is never more than a pathetic extension of the actuarial tables.  The only insurance of life is to live while alive.

-PD

7 Comments

British Sounds/See You at Mao [1969)

Bloody fucking bollocks!

I’ve wanted to say that for a long time.  I’ve said it before.  But it looks better in writing.

It has a sort of permanence to it.  Yet we never know.

Why the non sequitur expletive?  Because this film is a brilliant expletive deleted.

Long ago…in a galaxy…in OUR galaxy, as a matter of fact,

there were some clever blokes (?) who called themselves the Dziga-Vertov Group.

Chief among them, of course, was Jean-Luc Godard.

But it is telling that he wanted his celebrity subsumed by something greater than himself.

Ach, Gott!  Fuck this.  I have caught myself slipping into a routine voice.

A routine voice will tell you nothing about this film.

And so we come to the crux of this experiment:  struggle.

Film is a struggle between images and sounds.

In a Godard film, even images struggle amongst themselves in a feeding frenzy.

It is a manifestation of a mind trying to process the unfathomable complexity of the world.

In the film under review, it is especially the sounds which cannibalize one another.

But this is not new in Godard films.  Always, ALWAYS…there is a plethora of content.

Like a honey ant ready to explode.

[                                                      ] Space left intentionally blank.

Analogous to paragraph.

If you are thinking poetry,

you are not far off.

We miss the mark daily.  It is not a Christian confession.

There is not a way to look over the summary to this film on Wikipedia.

In that sense, I am offering a service.

Yet, I am giving you a very subjective, personal impression of this film.

I write film criticism which strives to harmonize with each individual film under consideration.

In other words, each film must be reviewed differently.

There really isn’t, despite a tendency to the contrary towards generalization, such thing as

a film like all the rest.

Yet I have my patois.  My schtick.

Take it or leave it.

Only know that the message is under continually scrutiny.

Self-criticism of film criticism in a controlled system seeking to explain it all.

If you are looking for the answer to the question,

“Who’s in control?,”

the answer is,

“No one’s in control.”

I’m sure my friends at the CIA will agree with me on this.

To clarify, I have no friends at the CIA (that I know of).

Speaking sequentially and descriptively with deference to “plot” is useless here.

We have lost the plot.  [Thank God!]

And so a guitar can change he world.

And some extremely-advanced students can change some Beatles lyrics (months after The White Album was released).

You must struggle in the mud.  Mud and blood.  Le sable et le sang.  Rimbaud.

I failed miserably.

And she was hoisted into the air on a Panavision boom.

Nude ascending a staircase.

This just in…THREE LEVELLERS SHOT BY CROMWELL IN BURFORD…

ORIOLES DEFEAT WHITE SOX IN BOURGEOIS VACUUM

Ah,…now I am weeping for the revolution…or for the auteur.

But the auteur has given us a lasting oeuvre.

Was Truffaut’s only English-language film Fahrenheit 451?

It matters.  Here.  …et ailleurs.

I am weeping for the old auteur…before he’s even gone.

And next I will view but not review.

Solely my own experience.  To remember where I started.  (which is basically where I am at this very second)

I have not moved an inch.

It is essential to see British Sounds.  To hear British Sounds.

As an English speaker.  In April 2015.  You won’t even need the Italian subtitles.

They are telling us we are losers.  THEY they.

I have no message.  “Too many messages.”  –Harry Partch

I am just floating on the waves of free association.

Go on:  call me an amateur.

A lover , not a fighter…who didn’t claw his way up to gargle in the rat-race choir.

He lives.  Let me check.

He lives.

Regardless.

And we have no way of communicating with our fellow man.  The life sucked out of the 21st century.

This is by design.

“Separation is the alpha and the omega of the spectacle.”  –Guy Debord

I present the conspiratorial view of history applied to cinema.

Paranoid nonfiction.  I have never read Dick.

Quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.  The difficulties.

Such a quintessentially British euphemism.

The Troubles.  Northern Ireland.

We know nothing.  It’s not as easy as shot/reverse/shot.

It’s like the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ).

KGB calling it a CIA false flag.

Need we remind the perceptive reader of world history that Dr. Ewen Cameron was being paid by the CIA to carry out hideous psychiatric experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute on the grounds of McGill University in Montreal as part of Project MKUltra over a period of time which overlapped with the activities of the FLQ? That is established fact and not a conjecture with which the KGB had any connection.

And so the question becomes, as Godard and co-director Jean-Henri Roger ask, [to paraphrase] “Is Marx the best weapon with which to confront the situation before us?”

Baltimore is haunted by the past (capitalism).  China is haunted by the present (vestigial communism).  In America there is no present moment (minus the times when reality erupts within the spectacle).  In China there is no past.  Not really.  It is forbidden.  Communism requires the primacy of the present moment.  History is history.  Gone.  Capitalism requires the continuation of the past.  Inheritance.  Both suffer from the status quo.  Capitalism is no longer capitalism…and communism is no longer communism.  The great irony is that monopoly capitalism and totalitarian socialism are no longer easily distinguishable (if they ever were).  Why more people don’t seek out the power elite of this two-sided conspiracy coin is beyond me.

Fear.  Fear prevents us.  Only the dispossessed have what is called courage.  Rage.  Courage.

-PD

2 Comments