Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread II

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Fun fact: the lyrics for "Suicide is Painless" were written by Altman's 14-year-old son. According to Wikipedia the kid made more money from the royalties than the old man got paid for directing!

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Regarding Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story...I did not realize that it had been withdrawn from circulation due to copyright infringement issues. I'd been listening to the Carpenters' hits compilation lately and the documentary sounded like an interesting watch, so I thought it would be worth a look. Unfortunately it seems that bootleg quality on Youtube is the only way to go. Apologies in advance.

 

[kihei]

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (2001?) Directed by Todd Haynes

As film biopicks go this is a decidedly odd one. While it purports to tell the story of Karen Carpenter and her middle-class Californian family, it touches greatly upon the illness, anorexia nervosa, that killed her. The film incorporates footage of Nixon and the war in Cambodia, provides explanatory medical definitions of Karen's condition, and throws in some miscellaneous bits and pieces as well, including brief flashes of an S&M spanking sequence. The kicker, of course, is that the entire Carpenter family is portrayed by Barbie and Ken dolls who are modified to look like the Carpenters whatever the situation and whatever the state of physical decline. The short 43 minute film is both disturbingly surreal and filled to overflowing with ideas that form a sort of a historical/social context for Karen Carpenter's suffering.

I have a dumb habit of getting Todd Haynes mixed up with Todd Solenz, and for the longest time before I came to my senses I thought I was watching a Solenz movie. In my defense, this film felt like Solenz territory, an examination of the hideousness of suburbia and the built-in hypocrisy of squeaky clean middle-class values and how those values contributed to warping Karen Carpenter's life. Haynes does explore some similar territory in his Douglas Sirk inspired potboilers such as Far from Heaven and Carol, but he does so in a much more refined, infinitely duller way than this film suggest he would be capable of.

All in all Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story comes across as an intriguing student film by a director with real ambition. Unless I missed it, and I could have as I am not a huge fan of the guy, Haynes hasn't taken such audacious risks any time since. I guess I'm Not There comes closest.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Though they are rarely seen on network TV these days there was a time when movies were a programming staple, so much so that networks bypassed Hollywood and began to produce their own. Much like HBO and other cable channels today, but with a crucial difference: whereas cable channels throw big budgets and big-name talent into their productions, the phrase "made-for-TV movie" was synonomous with low budget, bland generic entertainment for the couch potato...movies for people who don't particularly care for movies. ABC cranked them out so regularly they got their own timeslot and title: The Movie Of The Week (great name!). In the 80s TV movies fell into a predictable pattern of publicizing some little-known illness and the decent brave people it affected, sometimes celebrities, sometimes ordinary people. The genre became known cynically as the "disease of the week" but it inspired student filmmaker Todd Haynes' bid for the big time, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

Superstar focusses on the frazzled mental state behind a rich creamy vanilla voice, mainly Karen's struggle with aneroxia nervosa. But she was clearly fragile to begin with; even a career highlight like signing with A&M records…long before the infamous review that called her chubby...results in feelings of dread and anxiety, and her controlling parents and brother/musical partner more interested in their careers than her well-being don't help. Textual interludes present Karen as a case study of a marxist-feminist critique which illustrates how women driven by success come to regard their bodies as either assets or enemies.

The movie is ocassionally sloppy in execution…some factoid text is unreadable because it's superimposed over a dark background, for example…but it is what it is: a student film. But let's cut the kid some slack. It may be a student film, but at least it's the work of an "A" student, one whose vision perhaps exceeded his resources. Superstar displays a good narrative pace, attention to composition and lighting (as seen in the still in kihei's review) imaginative use of sound, and--a prerequisite for any student film seeking to make a big impression--a freak-out dream/hallucination sequence that allows the director to really show off. The masterstroke however is the casting. Barbie and Ken nail Karen and Richard's commodified wholesomeness perfectly. Maybe not what Mattel had in mind, but whatever. They were made for these roles.

 

[Jevo]

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) dir. Todd Haynes

Karen Carpenter was the female part of the popular duo The Carpenters. In 1983 she died just 32 years old as a consequence of her struggle with anorexia. This movie tells the story of the last half of her life, starting with her and her brother starting The Carpenters. Their rise to fame, meeting the president, over the increasing pressure she believed she faced to be thin, leading into her eventual death. The film reconstructs Karen's life by using Barbie dolls instead of real actors. The only live-action footage are documentary style footage featuring narration or captions about anorexia or events happening concurrent to the story. I'm not sure how much of the actual story is true. I guess the overall points are accurate, but for individual scenes I doubt they are true to life. They probably depict actual scenes from Karen's life, but in the way that Todd Haynes and Cynthia Schneider believed they happened. Or in a way that fits with how they wanted to present Karen's story.

I like the choice of dolls as opposed to real actors. It's interesting and makes the movie stand out. It also allows Haynes to cast Barbie in the role of Karen, a doll that has long been criticised for her rail thin appearance, which is more comparable to a coat hanger than a real person, which may give girls an unrealistic body image. A more fitting actor could probably not be found to portray a character who believe herself to be fat while in reality she's only skin and bones. Another advantage of the dolls are that no subtle facial expressions are lost due to the poor quality of the bootleg rips available of the movie.

Superstar is somewhat sympathetic to Karen. Mostly in the way that it isn't actively against Karen in the way it is for most of the rest of the characters. Karen's family in particular are portrayed in an unflattering light here, by being controlling, unsympathetic to her struggle, and caring more about her career than her as a person. This and alleging that Richard Carpenter is gay, could be a reason why Richard Carpenter was aggressive in trying to get the movie withdrawn from circulation, more so than the lack of rights to the music used. While the movie is sympathetic to Karen, it's not sympathetic to her illness or what it does her both physically and mentally. This is definitely a cautionary tale of anorexia.

I had heard of The Carpenters before I saw this film, but I wasn't familiar with their music. If I have listened to any of it before, it has been by accident and not on purpose. So I didn't know anything about Karen or her life. I didn't mean I liked the movie any less because of it. It tells the story of Karen and anorexia really well, and it does some interesting things style wise along the way that I liked. It's a shame it's not available in better quality than it is, but it's good that it hasn't disappeared from the face of the earth completely.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Apparently the last remaining "legit" copy is with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and even then they're not allowed to publicly screen it. Hopefully Haynes or someone will pony up for the music rights so we can see the movie the way it was meant to be seen. Sad if the real reason that Richard Carpenter wanted to bury the film is his unflattering portrayal. Seems to me the bigger thing would be to consider the educational value of raising awareness of a serious condition, one that took the life of a loved one.

My next pick...and it's been vetted by MOTW legal dept....is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep.

 

[kihei]

Nosferatu (1922) Directed by F. W. Murnau

When a real estate agent ventures to Eastern Europe to close a sale, he has no idea that he is, in effect, inviting a vampire not only into his city, but directly into his own neighbourhood. To make matters infinitely worse, the vampire carries the Plague with him wherever he goes.

For starters, I just think Nosferatu is a beautiful movie to watch. Yes, it is a classic horror story, truer to Bram Stoker's Dracula than the 1931 Bela Lugosi movie (a problem that, actually--Murnau never acquired copyright permission from the Stoker estate and lost the subsequent law suit). While there are intertitles and inserts galore, the movie owes its essential creepiness to images. The images come at you from a lot of different places. When I rewatch this film every decade or so, I'm always a little surprised by its symphonic sweep. It is shot in cities, in countryside, in dark spaces, at sea, and on beaches. That is a lot of locations and a lot of outdoor shooting for a film of this vintage. Murnau brings a consistent, visually engaging look to all these sequences by creating virtually an endless string of beautifully composed and orchestrated images that not infrequently seem almost too much for the eye to process in one viewing.

What the two early Dracula movies established was a template upon which other such movies have been measured. Other than the quality of the artistry on display favouring Nosferatu, the significant difference to me between the two, Nosferatu (1822) and Dracula (1931), is the emphasis that Nosferatu places on the notion of where Nosferatu goes, the plague follows. This dimension really ratchets up the horror is a way that the Lugosi version mostly lacked. While Nosferatu is richer in metaphor, it is also a metaphor that seems a bit on the dicey side. Especially given the time when the film was made, the metaphor's antisemitic subtext seems impossible to ignore. It is not a point that is especially belabored in the film, but it does open to scrutiny this aspect of the film.

Though you wouldn't know it from this version, Dracula is unique among monsters in that he can be portrayed as sexy. Here the metaphor works differently--the plague angle gets replaced by the sexual awakening angle. In these instances, the ostensible heroine is attracted to, not repelled by, the forbidden pleasures that Dracula represents. Max Schreck who creates such an amazing character to watch in this film, is no romantic icon--in fact, even by generous standards, he is repellent, ugly and super-creepy. Yet, look how the story ends. Ellen, the young maiden of the piece, tempts Nosferatu into seducing her so that he will be distracted when the sun rises. It is easy to see how this "sacrifice" can be easily played as "liberation" or even as "eager acquiescence" in more contemporary films. One thing for sure, Frankenstein never got laid.

 

[kihei]

My next pick is Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.

 

[Jevo]

Nosferatu (1922) dir. F.W. Murnau

The year 1938, Thomas Hutter gets send by his employer to meet with a wealthy client in Transylvania. The client, Count Orlok, is looking to buy a house in Wisborg, the town where Hutter lives. When Hutter arrives in Transylvania the local populace are weary of Orlok's castle, and none are willing to go near it. Hutter carries on and goes to the castle, where he meets Orlok, a strange man who lives by night and sleeps by day. At first Hutter enjoys his stay in the castle in the mountains, but soon he comes to realise that he can't leave, he's a prisoner there, and he realises that Orlok is a vampire. Meanwhile Orlok gets ready to leave and sets his destination for Wisborg. Hutter desperately makes his escape from castle and dashes home to try and save his wife and town from Orlok.

If the plot sounds familiar it's probably because it's lifted straight from Dracula, with some names and details altered to deter lawsuits, as the production company wasn't able to secure rights for Dracula. Their attempt wasn't enough, and Bram Stoker's estate won their case, and got all prints of Nosferatu ordered destroyed. Luckily the destruction was unsuccessful, and fans kept the film alive by copying and distributing prints. Ironically Nosferatu is probably the best film adaptation of Dracula.

Nosferatu is a horror film, but not particularly scary, not by 2017 standards, and perhaps not by 1922 standards either. At least wikipedia reports of criticism of it not being scary enough, and the technical perfection and clarity of the images did not fit a horror film. Perhaps the most German thing a horror film director could do is to make a movie that is too technically perfect to be a horror film. Not being scary doesn't mean Nosferatu isn't effective. Perhaps Roger Ebert put it best by saying that Nosferatu doesn't scare us, it haunts us. I really like Max Schrek as Nosferatu. His acting and the makeup gives me the chills when comes on screen, there's just something about him, the face, the intense eyes and the long fingers. Schrek is also always doing something with his body when he's on screen, he doesn't just stand or sit, he's always doing something that adds to how creepy his character is.

On release some criticised the movie for its imagery, which admittedly isn't traditionally horror. Often lightly lit, and with some beautiful nature shots as well. But Murnau knows when to use light and when to use dark. When darkness do fall over the movie, that is when you really do get a sense of dread from the movie. And it being contrasted with most of the movie being lightly coloured and in daylight makes the sensation stronger, also because you know the movie isn't trying to trick you, bad things are about to happen when the screen turns darker. The biggest strength of Nosferatu is in my opinion its imagery, and the atmosphere that Murnau creates with them. Sometimes it's flashy, like in the famous shot of Nosferatu's shadow ascending the stairs, and sometimes it's subtle and not even something that you notice, but it affects you.

Nosferatu turned 95 a month ago, and it's still an enjoyable movie to watch. Even if it is in many ways dated, it feels delightfully free of convention, either it doesn't know it supposed to do some specific things as a horror movie, or maybe it just doesn't care. It doesn't matter which it is, but it makes a 95 year old movie feel fresh compared to many modern horrors that are too bogged down by convention. Maybe unsurprisingly my favourite modern horrors are often those that break conventions, like What We Do In The Shadows, another vampire movie.

NB: Max Schrek, literally Max Fright, has to be the most perfect name for a horror actor, and it's even his real name.

 

[Jevo]

Talk To Her (2002) dir. Pedro Almodovar

The story of two men who sees their love fall into a coma. Marco is a journalist who gets inspired to do feature article on Lydia Gonzalez, the most famous female bullfighter in Spain. While she initially despises him, love quickly develops between them. After some time together, Lydia is brutally injured during a bullfight, leaving her in a deep coma, with uncertainty whether she'll ever wake up or not. She's admitted to a care facility for comatose patients. Marco spends a lot of time at the facility and befriends the nurse Benigno. Benigno is hired as a personal nurse for Alicia, a young woman who is daughter of a rich psychiatrist. Unknown to most Benigno is madly in love with Alicia, and believes them to have a special connection, something that Benigno tells Marco. Before being a nurse Benigno was a recluse who took care of his deadly sick mother for years until her death. From their apartment Benigno could spy at a dance studio across the street. A studio where Alicia trained as a dancer. Shortly after his mothers death Benigno gets the courage to seek out Alicia on the street and talk to her. A few days later she's hit by a car and sent into a coma.

Almodovar is one of my favourite directors and Talk To Her is my favourite of his. Talk To Her is in many ways a quite classical Almodovar as well. It has the aggressively coloured one could say, set design that he always employs. It's a treat to the eyes and makes his movies standout visually. Not many others dare to be so bold in their set design as Almodovar. It also employs Almodovars usually brand of comedy at times, and it has characters with sexual deviance. But in one area it stands out a bit from many of his other movies, because the two leads are men, not women. Almodovar appears often utterly fascinated by women, but he also has a strange love-hate relationship with them, or at least with most of his lead characters. But this time he has opted for men instead, and he can make just as good male characters as he can female.

I think characters are one of the big treats when watching Almodovars films. I don't think there's anyone who writes characters quite like he does, and he seems to care a lot about his characters, which means he doesn't blame them no matter what despicable things they do. Benigno rapes a girl in a coma, but the film doesn't change it's approach to Benigno because of it, it still shows the sympathies to him that it has showed for him since the beginning. That leaves the viewer in an awkward position where we are disgusted by Benigno's behaviour, but we also can't really hate him, we might even still care a little bit for him. In that way Marco somewhat takes on the role of the viewer, where he knows that Benigno did it, but there's still some love between the two and he can't let go of that. It's interesting that in a movie about two men who love women in a coma, the most pure love is between the two men, even if the love isn't romantic.

Back to Benigno, I really love the way that Almodovar films Benigno. From the first time we see him with Alicia there's something off about it, the way he behaves, the way it is filmed. But you can't really put your finger on it at first. I won't go as far as to say it's filmed in a sexual way, but maybe in a sensual way. Too sensual for the situation. Javier Camara also plays Benigno really well, and makes the character seem a bit eerie. With everything being off about Benigno and the way he acts around Alicia, I don't think I ever suspected he'd go as far as raping her the first time I saw the film. Because Benigno also seems utterly harmless, he doesn't look like a man who could harm anyone. And I guess in his mind he never did, in his mind it was consensual.

With Benigno dead and Alicia out of a coma, the movie could have ended on a 'happy' note, but Almodovar throws one last spanner in the works, by ending the movie with implying the start of a relationship between Marco and Alicia, an Alicia that doesn't know Marco has met her before, nor that he was best friends with her rapist. From Marco's point of view I can't help but feel that the relationship is strangely fetishistic, the beautiful young women who he saw partially naked while she was in a coma, and who has miraculously recovered. The relationship also feels like it would be a weirdly manipulative one. I can't imagine a scenario where it doesn't end if Marco discloses his past experiences with Alicia and Benigno, which I think gives the relationship an unhealthy power dynamic. I'm glad Almodovar chose this ending, it leaves me with even more to think about after the movie ends than I already had. It's a small moment, but it's something I feel helps elevate the movie just about many of his other great movies.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick will be Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002)
“Nothing is simple.”

Almodovar is a director I’ve long had an odd relationship to. I don’t list him among my favorites and my immediate reaction when I think about seeing one of his is most often — nah, not interested. Case in point, every time I have seen the preview for his new Julieta. And yet when I think about every film of his I actually have seen (about five or so), I’ve liked every single one. I can’t explain it. My theory at the moment for this disconnect is that any trailer or brief synopsis of one of his films never really intrigue me, but the actual work itself is interesting and well-worth the time. Also, I don’t tend to be a fan of melodrama and Almodovar certainly travels in that.

Talk to Her, which despite its acclaim and awards including a best screenplay Oscar for Almodovar, was very much the same experience for me. I entered with a bit of reluctance and yet found myself pretty captivated by the end. It’s the story of two men, Benigno the nurse (Javier Camara) and Marco the journalist (Dario Grandinetti), both in love with comatose women, which in Benigno’s case is dancer he barely knows and in Marco’s is a bullfighter he’s just struck a new relationship with. From this predicament springs a friendship between the two men with Benigno trying to give Marco tips about how to care for his comatose love.

It’s a tough juxtaposition at times — the devotion of the men to these inanimate women, Benigno especially. The sensuality of Benigno’s care for Alicia was a bit stunning to me at first. It’s filmed and executed in quite an erotic manner, almost uncomfortably so. He’s a lonely man and lies (or does he?) about his sexuality to Alicia’s father so he can continue to care for her. This all builds to a bizarre silent movie sequence and an eventual reveal that Alicia, despite the coma, is now pregnant. All the signs point to Benigno. It’s a testament to Camara’s performance and that soft, innocent face of his that I kept thinking another explanation for the pregnancy would come. It never does. As off-putting as his actions are, the pregnancy ultimately leads to her awakening. His love conquers death. It’s a tragic end for Benigno, but a bright one for Alicia. The film closes with her meeting Marco and the seeds of a new love sprouting, which on one level is sweet, but also could make for a thorny future given Marco’s connections to Benigno.

Jevo mentioned Almodovar’s penchant for female leads and how this one stands out for being centered around two men. I thought about that too as I watched. I think his experience writing female characters shows here in Benigno and Marco as they’re written with a soft hand and sensitivity I’m not sure others could have pulled off (as if others could do what Almodovar does, that is).

The visual pallet, as is expected from Almodovar, is bright and gorgeous.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Kal, welcome back! Does this mean I can go now? Just kidding…I keep falling behind. For me this is becoming the "Movie of Last Week" club…hence my comments (review is too strong a word) on Nosferatu:

The creepiest of midnight creepers, Max Schrek's portrayal of the country squire vampire Count Orlock in Nosferatu is the polar opposite of the suave and elegant Lugosi-style vampire. If Orlock has a female counterpart in filmdom it is La Saraghina in 8 1/2, probably the most repulsive screen prostitute, yet she had an undeniably strong sexual charisma. Animal magnetism. Both represent forces of nature. But even then, where Saraghini exudes a sultry strength, Orlock exudes slime. He looks and acts like he just crawled out from under a rock, kindred to spiders, rats and bloodsucking plants. He is a supernatural being, yet there's nothing at all unnatural about what he symbolizes...icky sex, lust, desire, the animal instincts that civilized man tries to keep repressed.

On the other hand is Hutter, virtuous young husband and townsman who hasn't quite figured out how to please his woman. He announces that he's heading off to the land of thieves and phantoms then can't understand why she's in a mood. She doesn't want his fresh cut flowers, they are just dead things to her. She wants something with blood in its veins (something she has in common with Orlock). He ignores every harbinger, and there are many. He doesn't have a clue, but the little girl understands. While Orlock is attacking Hutter, Ellen reacts hundreds of miles away. This may prove their “true love†but it also means that while Hutter is succumbing to Orlock, so is Ellen. Thus while Hutter sets out on horseback, she awaits his return by the sea...or is it Orlock that she's really waiting for?

Nosferatu is subtitled “A Symphony of Horrorâ€, a title which I thought was a pretentious attempt to add sophistication to a low-brow genre. I'd seen Nosferatu before and if I recall it had a solo organ accompaniment which, while suitably sinister, was no symphony. Having now seen the Criterion release with the original score restored (once believed to be lost) the subtitle fits. This version is not only great to look at, it is great to listen to. The right score can make or break a silent film. Watching one without it can be like homework, but when the music, story and images work together, there's nothing better. It's practically a lost art, and Nosferatu is one of the best. A rich sensual experience. Props to Criterion, Murnau, Schrek and the otherwise little-known composer Hans Erdmann.

 

[kihei]

Welcome back indeed.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Thanks gents. Good to be back. Please continue to hang, Ralph.

 

[kihei]

Talk to Her (2002) Directed by Pedro Almodovar

Benigno, a gay male nurse, and Marco, a heterosexual freelance writer, discover they share something in common. Each man loves and helps to take care of a woman in a vegetative coma, Alicia in Benigno’s case and Lydia in Marco’s. Eventually these two very different men develop a friendship, one that becomes especially important when Benigno goes a step too far in caring for Alicia. Almodovar is a great director who shares an affinity for exploring the vagaries of the human heart, usually from a feminine perspective. Here, however, the focus is on a male friendship, but one that is defined by a mutual love and concern for two different women, each in a deep coma. In a way this is a wonderfully playful metaphor about heterosexual relationships, one that allows Almodovar to explore a whole range of complexities that are connected to the strange bond of love that can form between men and women. It is easy to say that Talk to Her, like so many of his movies, is about the self-delusions and desires of seemingly normal people. Yet, Aldomar keeps challenging the audience, pushing us out of our comfort zones as if to test our tolerance for what we might be tempted to see as beyond the pale, outside of acceptable behaviour.

Parts of this movie made me uncomfortable, and yet I never doubted the humanity of the characters for a minute. Almodovar sometimes seems like a provacateur, sometimes at his worst even like a cheap sensationalist, and yet in the end, for the vast majority of his works anyway, he views human behaviour with great compassion and tolerance. His essential optimism and verve for life perhaps allows him the luxury to see things unflinchingly, honestly. Whatever the case might be, ultimately he invariably opts for compassion and empathy over rejection and intolerance. Talk to Her is simultaneously an unnerving and challenging experience and a celebration of humanity, a celebration that shows great respect for love, warts and all. There are few films that take the emotional risks that this one does. It is a movie that seems intent on broadening perspectives, and ultimately it does exactly that.

subtitles

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

There's a scene in Talk To Her that slides on by before its full impact is felt. It's not exactly pivotal to the plot, but an indication of the film's irreal approach. Caetano Veloso, an international superstar in the world of Latin music, is performing for a small private party. An unlikely event in the first place and that should be a tip-off. Marco wanders away from the party, Lydia follows, and he tells her about his ex. They kiss. Next thing, Marco wakes up in Lydia's hospital room. It's all been a dream. It could also be a flashback, the plot flashes back and forth quite a bit. But unlike the flashback scenes there are no titles to set up the time for us--no "four months earlier", that sort of thing. And as far as dream sequences go it's pretty straight, there are no visual or audio cues to let us know we're leaving the real world behind and entering a dream world. No "Twilight Zone" music, no slow dissolves or optical effects like blurry lines or fish-eye lenses. No melting watches or dancing dwarves. In Talk To Her the surreal appears seamlessly integrated with the real because the real isn't really real. The scene is like a dream within a dream. Benigno has a more obviously "surreal" moment of his own and it is presented to us as a movie.

Talk To Her is the story of two men who become friends while caring for their comatose women. Their bond deepens and ends up as some kind of fusion. It appears dense with symbolism and multilayered in its message, and disentangling its meaning can be a challenge, one that may be best not bothered with. Maybe better to leave it as is for what it is, sublime and subliminal, enlightening but fluid, like a lava lamp.

The title is worth considering, to scratch the surface, as it works on several levels. It is first the advice that Benigno gives Marco when he is a newbie in the coma ward. Benigno believes in maintaining communication with Alicia. Marco is skeptical but comes around, albeit too late: he knows it's over between him and Lydia when he enters her hospital room one day to find her ex at her bedside, talking to her (something he never did). The therapeutic value may be debatable, but a truth is revealed: they were never meant to be soulmates. "Talk to her" is also a phrase to encourage initiation of communication, for Benigno as he gets up the nerve to first approach Alicia after watching her from afar, it echoes through the minds of the audience when Marco meets Alicia in the theatre in the movie's final scene, closing a loop in a way.

Could the title also refer to prayer? Benigno hopes for a miracle and he gets one, though he has to take the rap for it. Almodovar presents all sorts of reversals of traditional gender roles...male nurse, female bullfighter, man weeping at ballet, female boasting to a friend about the size of her latest dump... all to soften us up for the big one: God is a woman, one who sends a stillborn child as a wakeup call. Immaculate conception is a plausible explanation in this context.

 

[kihei]

Killer of Sheep (1978) Directed by Charles Burnett

Made in the late '70s but ignored for nearly thirty years, Killer of Sheep is a masterpiece of observation that takes its realistic approach from great humanist directors such as Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Satyajit Ray. Stan lives in the Watts section of LA some time after the riots and works in a slaughterhouse, a grueling job that leaves him empty and miserable. He has a lovely wife and two children, but things aren't good. Life is not so much hell as purgatory--an endless string of hopeless days that never get any better.

There is no real narrative here. Director Charles Burnett just strings together a series of minor incidents in the life of his protagonist, Stan, and his family. His kids play in rubble, unsavoury friends drop by to seek Stan's assistance in a murder (he indignantly declines), buying a car engine comes a cropper, taking a ride out of the neighbourhood provides occasion for another foul-up, even Stan's pretty wife has little effect on his feelings. These scenes are punctuated by scenes at the slaughter house as we watch an endless parade of sheep headed for an annihilation that they don't even sense.Still, Stan is better off than most of his neighbours. He has a steady job, soul destroying though it may be. He has a family that loves him. But the sheer drudgery of existence is made worst by the realization that for Stan this is as good as it gets. The color of his skin combined with the limited chances that he has been offered excludes him from the American Dream. He has no real place in a society that doesn't even want to know that he exists

Killer of Sheep is a tremendous social indictment which works primarily because it doesn't belabour its central points. The movie does not play to our emotions; it just records Stan's everyday existence and allows the audience to come to its own conclusions. The overall effect for me was "So, what would you do in his place? What could you do?" I found the film fascinating to watch--a movie about lives of quiet desperation that wasn't itself depressing. It was like an insight into another world, one I know is out there, but don't think about too much. Though few have seen it, Killer of Sheep is one of the most impressive US films of the past fifty years.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Killer of Sheep opens with a kid getting chewed out by his parents for not coming to his brother's aid in a street fight. It's a hard life lesson, bracing and eye-opening as a slap in the face. The characters are anonymous--I was thinking the kid could be our main man Stan in a flashback, though there's really no resemblance; or, knowing the way this movie was patched together over a period of years, they could be characters from an abandoned subplot. It doesn't matter, the scene sets a captivating tone that keeps a tight grip throughout. "You better start learning what life is about now, son."

Consisting of slices of life in the mean streets (and mean kitchens, playgrounds, etc.) of Watts, a little piece of the third world in the heart of Los Angeles, Killer of Sheep is the story of one man's struggle to hold on to his sanity and dignity in the face of crushing oppression, poverty and despair. It's semblence of plot revolves around a slaughterhouse worker's quest to find peace of mind in a world hostile to values of decency. Stan can't sleep, he can't smile...what's it going to take for this man to just chill?

It sounds bleak, but there are children singing throughout and kids playing everywhere, though usually in the jaws of danger…in traffic, on rooftops, in railyards and abandoned and half-demolished buildings that look like they're about to collapse any second. They don't have so much as a ball to pick up and play with, so they pick up rocks and stones and throw them at whatever they can, sometimes each other. It can be a death-defying challenge just to survive the boredom.

Nate's daughter is adorable, about four years old, and witnesses futility and failure all around her. No wonder she hides behind a Droopy mask. Like "This Bitter Earth", the Dinah Washington tune that serves as its theme song, Killer of Sheep is sad but beautiful and doesn't give up hope. It reflects an alternate to Hollywood's vision of ghetto life. There are no drug gangs or get even with the man revenge plots, just an affirmation of the importance of family bonds.

One of the many highlights…Stan is approached by some criminal friends plotting a murder, his wife fights for his soul like a dog fending off predators over a piece of meat...

 

[Jevo]

Killer of Sheep (1978) dir. Charles Burnett

A slaughterhouse worker struggles to get through the drudgery of his everyday life. The monotony of his work at the slaughterhouse extends to his home life with wife and kids. Nothing excites him in life, and he seems to exist just to exist, things aren't helped by the fact that there's no sign that things should ever get better for him. And why should it, he's an uneducated black man in a poor inner city neighbourhood, he's quite literally on the bottom of the social food chain, and once you end up there, it's almost impossible to get away again. The movie doesn't contain a conventional story arc, instead showing a collection of different scenes showing Stan's life. There's not story and no character development. Nothing really changes between these scenes, mirroring Stan's life.

A quite un-American American movie. Charles Burnett has a great eye for personal struggle and human misery, and he slows the movie right down and shows this in a way that few American directors can, or have even tried. Burnetts style in Killer of Sheep is more akin to that of Italian neo-realists, both visually with his black and white cinematography and close quarters filming close to the characters, and thematically as well. Killer of Sheep can even be considered to be something as strange a borderline socialist movie made during the cold war, as it showcases how terrible life as a working class man with no prospects can be. Maybe Stan's life isn't even that terrible, he has a job and a family. There's just nothing that makes waking up tomorrow seem any more exciting than not waking up, but yet he does every day.

I'm not entirely sure how Burnett has done this, but he has managed to make a movie where I can feel how Stan feels about his life, yet the movie isn't boring. The movie is engaging, not for it's story because there isn't really one, but for how the different scenes show more and more of Stan's life, and not just his life but the life of everyone in his neighbourhood, and how the movie makes us feel the situations that all these people are in. And one of them are really in a good situation at the end of the day. Killer of Sheep is a small masterpiece that is finally getting the circulation it deserves, slowly and steadily. Thematically the movie hasn't aged very much despite being 40 years old, it still seems very relevant. More importantly for me personally, I am yet to have a great experience with Italian neo-realist films, and thus tend to stay away from them. But this being a derivative of italian neo-realism, I think I had a great experience with, and that has to count for something I suppose.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Killer of Sheep
Burnett (1978)
"Man, I ain't poor. Look, I give away things to the Salvation Army; you can't give away nothin' to Salvation Army if you poor."

This one has been on my “to watch†wishlist for quite some time, so kudos Ralph for picking it and getting me off my ass to watch it (metaphorically, of course, I was seated during the entire viewing experience). I know it’s been a long-heralded movie with an impressive list of admirers, including Steven Soderbergh, who I believe helped shepherd its DVD release.

Stan (Henry G. Sanders) works at a slaughterhouse and lives a fairly straightforward and simple existence. Work, family, home (which includes more work). Everyone is tired. He’s tired. His wife is tired. It’s hardscrabble, but he isn’t poor, he insists. Not much really happens. There’s talk of a crime that gets shoed away easily. Stan picks up a used engine. It’s a peek at a man and a family at a very specific time and eventhough Los Angeles in the 1970s is a topic that’s been dealt with on film before, I have to say I’ve never seen it quite like this. It’s snapshot, a slice of life. It feels borderline documentary at times. The metaphor of the slaughtered sheep and the dead-end life is clear, but there is a dignity to Stan. Not a theatrical sort, a very human and natural sort. Felt very European, neo-realist in its tone.

I was taken by the soundtrack which for such a small film had several notable musical pieces including from Earth, Wind & Fire and Etta James, among others. After watching Killer of Sheep, I did some reading up on it and it seems the soundtrack is one reason it remained relatively unseen for years. I also went through a lot of the accolades for Burnett, which are numerous and glowing. It makes me wonder why he hasn’t worked more. I could guess as to some reasons for that, but he seems beloved.

This one is still lingering with me a bit.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I'm sure that I read some damn where that Quincy Jones foot the bill for the clearance of the music rights, which paved the way for Killer of Sheep to resurface, but for the life of me I can't find where I saw that, so don't quote me.

Still owing you guys a pick, so I'm choosing Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. I've never seen the director's cut, so I'm going for that version. It adds almost an hour to an already lengthy run time, so pick whatever version suits your schedule. Time can be especially tight during the playoffs.

Kal, you owe a pick too…been a long time since LA Confidential...

 

[kihei]

The 400 Blows (1959) Directed by Francois Truffaut

13-year-old Antoine (Jean Pierre Leaud) lives in Paris with his mom and step-dad, but he can't seem to stay out of trouble. Nothing malicious or violent, he just has a tendency to screw up and to be his own worst enemy. Still he is likeable, resourceful, and in some way mature beyond his years. However, his situation goes from bad to worse when he is cut adrift by his family and sent to reform school. He finally gets his chance to see the sea, but he really has nowhere else to go. The 400 Blows didn't mark the beginning of the French New Wave, but it did signal the potential of the movement and the arrival of a brilliant new director, Francois Truffauft. It also marked the introduction of one of Truffaut's most endearing and enduring characters, Antoine Doinel, often considered an alter-ego of the director himself. All grown up, Doinel would later be the subject of a romantic trilogy by Truffaut. In The 400 Blows, his tale is a sad one--he is, after all, abandoned by his family. But his situation is not played for pathos; rather it is brimming with life, humour and energy. Although this is probably the granddaddy of coming-of-age movies, few since then have done such a good job of capturing their young protagonist's point of view. Truffaut seems to know this character inside out, lending credence that the role is largely autobiographical. What sets the movie apart from other coming-of-age movies is the rapport that Truffaut seems to share with his central character and with Jean Pierre Leaud, the young boy who plays him.

The movie is noteworthy for its many grace notes, often humourous ones, a characteristic of Truffaut movies. Antoine is a city kid and Paris is his oyster. Shots of Antoine bopping around various parts of the city ground the film in a particular time and place and provide a context. Brief throwaway scenes--two women discussing childbirth; a couple chasing after a dog; the rapt faces of small children watching a Punch and Judy show--pop up vividly for merely an instant or two never to be seen again. A friend counsels Antoine that if forced to lie to a teacher, tell a whopper. But Antoine goes overboard: when a teacher questions why Antoine missed class, the boy answers that his mother died. When she appears shortly after at the school, he is suddenly in big trouble. On another occasion we look from high overhead as an overzealous phys ed teacher leads his class in a jog around the city. He's so busy keeping the pace he doesn't notice that little by little nearly his whole class has pealed off to parts unknown along the way. The inclusion of such whimsical and witty scenes and moments is what often sets off Truffaut movies from other films. And then there is the final freeze frame of the movie, a shot of Antoine turning away from the sea that he has just seen for the first time and looking into the camera with nowhere else to go. It's not the first use of freeze frame to end a movie, but it remains the most memorable one. In short, The 400 Blows is both a great story about an iconic character and a celebration of the pure joy of film making.

subtitles

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

A bit of a riff on a past pick of mine and a director I don't believe has been represented yet (though this choice isn't one of the two classics he is best known for).

I pick: Sorcerer (1977), William Friedkin.

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar (The Big City).