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Pumpkin [2002)
This is almost a perfect film.
Because it’s better than perfect.
Like Napoleon Dynamite, what should have been a larf was generally a sobfest for me throughout.
If you’re having problems in life, you need to see this movie.
Hollywood is so denigrated these days because the vast majority of popular cinema is utter shite.
From the very beginning, Pumpkin is different.
We should thank American Zoetrope.
And for that we have to thank Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Do you even know what a zoetrope is?
Well, I do.
And they did.
And it was le mot juste.
A zoetrope is special.
Let’s call it retarded cinema.
A more pure form. Slowed down.
Pumpkin grossed $308,552 at the box office.
No, I didn’t forget a comma and an additional three digits.
But the Bureau of Labor Statistics has no way of predicting the sort of inflation Pumpkin will experience in the annals of cinema history.
For any who have ever doubted Christina Ricci: this is her masterpiece.
As lead actress and coproducer, she gives a performance which goes deeper than even the esteemed Thora Birch in Ghost World.
Yes, this is that sort of film.
Indispensable.
I have overused it of late.
But there is no other word. Pumpkin and Ghost World and Napoleon Dynamite are not second-class films to such as I fidanzati. No. They are equals with Ermanno Olmi’s masterpiece.
But don’t get confused.
Pumpkin goes in a direction completely “other” than any film I’ve ever seen.
Sure…it starts out tongue-in-cheek.
It is perhaps a dystopia which is best summed up by the saccharine mise-en-scène of The Truman Show. But where The Truman Show fails (and that is in many places), Pumpkin succeeds at telling a timeless story.
The story is the cast.
[Thank you Marshall McLuhan.]
Ricci is a thespian goddess here. Real skill. Real goddamn skill!
But neck-and-neck is Hank Harris.
I can’t nail it.
It’s something I saw long ago.
At my college orientation.
A bit of Sam Shepard and some other playwrights.
Sure. It is Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men.
But it’s more.
Sweeter. More optimistic. More frothing with disgust.
All three.
A concoction.
Frozen yogurt and 1400 on the SAT.
Harry Lennix is indispensable to the story. [start counting]
He is the angry poet. Not a college professor. And this is not a class.
This is a poetry workshop, motherfucker!
Even Julio Oscar Mechoso is indispensable in his short role as Dr. Frederico Cruz. [where we at?]
But let’s talk about some buttresses.
Melissa McCarthy is indispensable (truly) as Julie.
It’s not an easy role.
And yet, she’s not as bad off as Pumpkin.
Who’s Pumpkin?
Is it Christina Ricci with her jack-o’-lantern-perfect bob–her Chantal Goya -meets- David Bowie Low surf perm? That one little curl…so perfect…all the way ’round?
No.
It’s Hank Harris.
He’s Pumpkin. Napoleon. Lothario.
But Sam Ball is especially indispensable here. [Ugh…]
He is Ken (actually Kent) to Ricci’s Barbie.
Tennis pro.
Spitting image of Ryan Reynolds.
Or Whitney Houston…
Anyway.
This cast brings it together.
Bringing it all back home are directors Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder (neither of whom have a Wikipedia page).
BLOODY HELL, HOLLYWOOD! HOW COULD YOU CHURN OUT SO MANY FILMS AND NOT SEE THE BRILLIANCE OF THESE TWO BLOKES!?!?!?!?!
But in the end it’s just Ricci and Hank Harris.
The brilliance of a duo.
A truly timeless film.
I’m inclined to agree with many (including Dr. Steve Pieczenik) that Adam Lanza did not exist.
But Pumpkin Romanoff (a nod to Michael Romanoff, the storied Lithuanian restaurateur of 1940s/50s Hollywood?) most certainly did exist. For me. Tonight. When I needed him most.
This is immortality.
-PD
Popiół i diament [1958)
The words don’t come easily.
In the old crypt.
He has to toss her the matches.
His trusty matches.
Twice he has lit the cigarette of Commissar Szczuka.
As for her. Her.
Ewa Krzyżewska.
Krystyna. I saw you in a magazyna. (GZM)
But Zbigniew Cybulski knows the author.
Cyprian Norwid.
All he wanted to do was go to school.
He had done well. A smart kid.
The assassin poet. Maciek.
A bit like the gunrunning Rimbaud.
Ashes and diamonds. Violets in the dustbin.
Adam Pawlikowski couldn’t help but inhale the fleeting perfume of love.
A little love turns an assassin straight.
It is like James Bond.
Daniel Craig.
Skyfall, perhaps.
Simple word association.
And for “assassination”? “Employment.”
This is Ashes and Diamonds by Andrzej Wajda.
The precursor to Bruno Forestier in Le Petit Soldat.
And in many (many) ways, the precursor to Michel in À Bout de souffle.
So much of Jean-Paul Belmondo seems to come from Zbigniew Cybulski.
It makes sense.
The sunglasses.
Living in the sewers during the uprising in Warsaw.
Godard. So underground that he wore his sunglasses at night.
Yes, they are a way to hide.
For The Velvet Underground they would become a way to survive the strobe-light insanity of Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
For Lou Reed they would become immortalized as a way to deal with the harsh light of the day (or night) when on heroin.
This was no doubt from Hubert Selby, Jr. From William S. Burroughs.
Perhaps even Nelson Algren.
But let’s not get too far afield.
This is a “review” of a Polish film called Popiół i diament.
It is an achingly-beautiful film. There. I said it.
I don’t begrudge this film.
She is my first love within Polish cinema.
There is something so special about this film.
Little moments. The flowers dropped in the trash.
The “what-could-have-been”. The employment by way of death.
The pull and tug of war. The futility of taking sides.
Wajda was making a bold statement here.
There are no winners in Ashes and Diamonds.
The only winner is the viewer.
The viewer who sees the film-poetry and loses themselves for a moment upon the ash heap…the midden pile…the city dump which is modern life.
For a moment…stumbling across the wasteland…there is a girl…and a little bouquet of violets.
-PD
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