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

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Jevo

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Floating Clouds (1955) dir. Mikio Naruse

In post-war Japan, Yukiko wanders aimlessly around. She is looking for her place in the world. She doesn't have much family or friends from before the war, and no one she really wants to be with, or use as stabilizers in her life. This causes her to seek out Kengo, a man she had an affair with during the war. As they were both stationed on a forestry mission in Vietnam. Not that it meant a lot to Kengo, or perhaps even Yukiko. But Kengo is the only person she can think of seeking out for some comfort. Kengo is not against reigniting the affair. Only problem is he's married, and he's not about to leave his wife. Even if their marriage isn't exactly going swimmingly. So Yukiko floats around life some more, with Kengo coming in and out at times, as she tries to find a place for herself in the world. But she seems to never be able to find a nice landing spot.

If I could use one word to describe Floating Clouds it would probably be unelaborate, the very opposite of the movie we just watched. Dialogue is minimal and minimalistic. The camera work is very simple as well. Rarely does the camera move, and the camera positions and the framing are very simple as well. Somewhat unlike Ozu, who is otherwise quite like Naruse, who also often has a very static camera, but every camera position and framing seems to be very elaborate. Naruse's editing and mise-en-scene in general also seem very stripped down. This is not a critique, because Naruse has stripped the movie down to its emotional core, and he doesn't let anything obstruct that. This also means that the quite melodramatic story, is kept low key, and the melodrama doesn't become overbearing. Because on the surface, the movie is quite calm, but underneath there's a lot of emotions all the time.

The pace of the movie is slow and languid, somewhat like the life of Yukiko. Although Yukiko might wish life would slow down, so that she could catch up, and make something proper with her life. Because much of the movie, we and Yukiko seem terribly aware, that life is passing by, all her old relations and lovers are slowly fading away, and there's nothing new popping up for her, not something that we don't quickly realise is also just a passing thing. The movie is very somber in that way. Continuity of this story is not really something that Naruse has been too concerned with. At least not temporal continuity, as the story just around in time quite a bit. But rather there seem to an emotional continuity instead.

Sadly Mikio Naruse's films can be hard to come by in the west, so I'm sorry if some of you weren't able to get your hands on the film. I'm not really sure why, because his movies are usually brilliant, atleast the ones I've seen, he has more than 90 director credits on IMDB, so I doubt all of them are masterpieces. But my experience with him tells me that he should be talked about more in the west. Stylistically an thematically, I think Naruse has quite a bit of overlap with Ozu. And movies like this one and When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, are just as good as some of Ozu's best work. Although Ozu's peak is probably just that bit higher, but there are very few movies in the world as good as Tokyo Story.
 

Jevo

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Since my last cycling documentary seemed to be well liked. I'm gonna try with another one. If my calculations are correct, when my turn comes up again, it's the weekend of perhaps the greatest one day race in the world, Paris-Roubaix. In 1976 Jørgen Leth made a movie about that race called A Sunday In Hell, and that's going to be my next pick.

If all else fails, the movie is on youtube with English narration, although the quality isn't great:



It's also streaming for free here in with Danish narration and better quality:

En forårsdag i helvede | Filmcentralen / streaming af danske kortfilm og dokumentarfilm

I'm not sure if that site works outside of Denmark. But if it does, perhaps it's possible to sync up the two videos, and get the English narration and the better quality.
 
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kihei

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Since my last cycling documentary seemed to be well liked. I'm gonna try with another one. If my calculations are correct, when my turn comes up again, it's the weekend of perhaps the greatest one day race in the world, Paris-Roubaix. In 1976 Jørgen Leth made a movie about that race called A Sunday In Hell, and that's going to be my next pick.

If all else fails, the movie is on youtube with English narration, although the quality isn't great:



It's also streaming for free here in with Danish narration and better quality:

En forårsdag i helvede | Filmcentralen / streaming af danske kortfilm og dokumentarfilm

I'm not sure if that site works outside of Denmark. But if it does, perhaps it's possible to sync up the two videos, and get the English narration and the better quality.
Clever idea. That would never have occurred to me in a thousand years. :laugh:
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

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Floating Clouds
Naruse (1955)
“If you can’t live with me, let me go away.”

Yukiko and Tomioka were lovers in Indochina during WWII. Now post-war, Yukiko has returned to Japan in hopes of reigniting that relationship. Alas, Tomioka is married. His wife is sick and he is unwilling to leave her. This leaves her without a safety net she expected and forces her into a roving life of sorts. She extorts support from a man who once abused her and then is housed by a GI and living life as a prostitute. She eventually lands with a scam artist. All the while, Tomioka keeps returning to her life. He’s bitter and though he can’t let her go, he won’t be with her. He’s carried on other affairs though and cruelly tells Yukiko of it. Yukiko may have gotten the better end of the deal though since the other other women is murdered by her jealous husband. She aborts Tomioka’s baby. This is some heavy stuff. Tomioka comes around, eventually, of a sort, and the duo leave for an island. It feels like he might bail once again … alas, Yukiko dies and Tomioka FINALLY realizes his great mistake.

On paper, this is a type of film I don’t often cotton to. Not a fan of melodrama generally speaking. I have to admit I was moved by this. Yukiko is an interesting creation. She is put upon again and again and again and yet there’s a strength there (misguided though it may be). She’s tough. Maybe a bit foolish. But definitely tough. My mind kept wandering back to Letter from an Unknown Woman. Not quite the same scenario here since Tomioka is absolutely aware and involved with Yukiko, but the association was there. If there is a fault for me it’s Tomioka – who not only seems nothing special, but also is a bit of an a-hole on top of that. What does she see in this man that lets her wreck her life so thoroughly? At the same time, that’s a strikingly human fault. Bad choices in partners.

Naruse doesn’t have a lot of flair to him. Everything is fairly staid, static. Not a lot of formal flashes. Very steady. The flashbacks threw me at first, but I like how the time jumps are employed.
 

Ralph Spoilsport

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A vampire movie set in a ghost town, Only Lovers Left Alive isn't a typical halloween movie, In fact it's more of a vampire valentine, a romantic tale of undying love (hehe). Not really frightening, although it's scary how human degradation of the environment is contaminating the vampires' food supply (i.e our blood). Plus Detroit's deserted industrial parklands look like a spooky place to cruise but I wouldn't want to leave the safety of my car either.

Adam and Eve make a lovely couple. Adam isn't your typical goth rock poser, he's the real thing, a cult hero of the underground music scene. Eve is a nurturer and an endangered species. They complete each other, a blonde and brunette, tech junkie and nature lover, he's into music, she literature. But despite their personal preferences they each have a deep appreciation for the other's interests. They'd be soulmates if they had souls.

It is always interesting how a revisionist picture either incorporates or veers from the traditional conventions of its genre. Turns out all that stuff about garlic and crossing a threshold uninvited is just vampire superstition. But like most movie vampires Adam has his Renfield--a devoted human underling who will do whatever is required to please his master. But Ian isn't under any vampire spell, he's just a starstruck kid who feels privileged to simply be allowed into the inner sanctum of his idol. Still, they only come out at night. Feast on human blood? Check, but they sip the good stuff like Kentucky bourbon, they don't suck it unless it's in popsicle form. Oh, they could suck it the traditional way, straight from the victim's neck, but that's so 15th century.

The focus here is not the task of finding new sources of human blood while avoiding detection, though this plays its part--that's the day to day reality of vampire life after all. The focus here is living on vampire time. Which is somewhat like human time, only longer ("You're still mad about Paris? That was 87 years ago!") and more elastic...there's no such thing as outdated technology, Adam can take a call from Eve's iphone and transfer it to the tube. I'm not quite sure about the significance of Tangier as Eve's home base--it's a place teeming with life and activity so again maybe it just provides a counterpoint--but Detroit provides a perfect backdrop for Adam's world. Its abandoned factories and dilapidated theatres are monuments to a city's former glory and the urban decay--already being reclaimed by wildlife--suits Adam's morose sensibilities just fine; whereas Eve sees the tall grass growing in the vacant lots and sees the future city blooming again, when fresh water replaces oil as the most precious natural resource. Past, present and future may all be relative concepts for them, but in a way it's comforting to know they're still bound by the same natural laws. The rotating overhead shots which begin the film, and which pop up again a couple of times later as a kind of visual motif, only go one way: clockwise.
 

Ralph Spoilsport

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I have had no luck finding Floating Clouds, but will keep searching.

Ditto. Not a single municipal library in this tiny country has it and only two academic libraries do, but they won't share. Nothing online.

Fingers crossed for a showing on Turner Classic Movies, free preview weekend.
 

kihei

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Tokyo Olympiad
(1965) Directed by Kon Ichikawa

Tokyo Olympiad is a remarkable document on several levels. It is a great sports documentary, a gesture of good will, and a vast technical achievement. Never has a director seemed more like an orchestra conductor as Ichikawa does here. He has a lot of competing interests to satisfy and a virtual army of film technicians and crew whose work he must patch together into some kind of coherent narrative that both reflects the historical event that he is covering and also puts forward a positive image of the new Japan. The latter he does subtly. Outside of a brilliant opening montage that last several minutes, one would hardly know that this event was directed by a Japanese director. While Ichikawa in the opening montage presents beautifully not one but two rising sons, the second one arising out of darkness, the main purpose is to set the stage for what is to follow with an emphasis on the friendliness of the Japanese people (along with an emblematic shot of Mount Fuji).

Once the actual contests begin, Ichikawa shows strict neutrality and an eye for narrative. A pretty English runner wins the 1500 meters and then, rather than grab the ubiquitous flag and run around the track, falls into the arms of not one but two doting boyfriends (it looks a lot like smooching to me. Does anybody smooch anymore? Didn't think so.). As is the case in every Olympics, some narratives need little help from a director. First Nations runner Billy Mills first falls behind near the end of the 10,000 meters and then miraculously makes one of the great comebacks for the ages to win the event. I remember watching this happen live with (I think) Jim McKay (Wide World of Sports) making the call. It still stands as maybe the single greatest call by a sports announcer that I ever heard in my life (Foster Hewitt forgive me). I wish Ichikawa had used McKay rather than the rather staid call that he employs. But that's a minor quibble.

What a massive undertaking this most have been. Because not only is it a logistical achievement of the highest order, someone has to figure out all those lenses and camera angles. Some sports--swimming, field hockey, soccer, basketball--seem dryly anonymous, but others--weight lifting, the marathon, the sprints, gymnastics--practically radiate human interest. I kept comparing this Olympic film to Leni Riefenstahl's Olympic film of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, aesthetically a superior work but with a rather dicey aftertaste. Her black-and-white footage was often a celebration of all things Aryan. For instance, high-board divers would leap into space but you would never see them come down. The effect was Wagnerian. Impressive in its way for sure, but lacking the homey touch. A couple of pictures of floating clouds and some sequences of the gymnastics competition seem as close as Ichikawa comes to an homage.

Conversely, Ichikawa definitely wants to create a good vibe. I wonder if partly that is because Japan was still seen as a mysterious and, to some, evil force in 1964. Before the world became a village joined together by gossip, Japan in 1964 was still an unknown quantity for many, if not most, North Americans, though one that, unlike Germany, directly attacked the United States and obviously had very different cultural values. Kamikaze pilots, what the hell? Nineteen years had passed since the end of the war, but a lot of people were surprised when the Olympics went to Tokyo. This documentary shows Japan as part of a common brotherhood, with a distinct culture, true, but with people who were friendly and who enjoyed the Olympics just as fervently as their visitors from other countries.

One final note: it was kind of refreshing to see so many athletes that looked more or less like normal human beings, not state of the art creations. To be sure, there were many exceptions, too. But not like today. Athletes have gotten bigger, stronger, faster and fitter to the extent that we now watch an ultra-elite compete at the summer Olympics. The Tokyo Olympics seemed a little more human in comparison.
 
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Jevo

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Tokyo Olympiad (1965) dir. Kon Ichikawa

A documentary chronologing the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, from the torch relay and the opening ceremony all the way to the closing ceremony. I'm not entirely sure what I expected before watching this. Perhaps a little bit of Japanese exceptionalism. Nothing extreme, just something about the beauty of Japan and the games, and more focus on the Japanese winners. The games were in part to showcase Japan's re-emergence after World War II, and the movie was probably supposed to be a part of that. Ichikawa had other plans though. At least not in the way that envisioned by the financiers I would think. The movie isn't a journalistic exercise at all. It's aim is not to tell an A-B story of the games, with a listing of all the winners. Rather it seems that Ichikawa is more interested in the athletes and their stories and performances rather than the games themselves. This means that Ichikawa can take a very artistic approach to the games, and the highlight of the film has to the way it is filmed. Ichikawa seems very interested in the form and performance of the athletes. Somewhat reminiscent of ancient Greek portrayals athletes in their olympics. With a big focus on the physicality of the athletes, and the actions of their sport. Of course Ichikawa doesn't do sculptures in bronze or marble, instead he sculpts on film. And Ichikawa seems to go for every trick in the book as far as slow motion and different angles go. For me in particular a rain soaked hammer throw competition and the final marathon were particularly beautiful.

The Olympics are a big event, and it takes a long time to cover it, and I don't even think Ichikawa covered close to all the events there in the three hours the movie lasts, and it needs to do justice to what it covers, and I think it does that. But the movie does feel long. After a while, the events do start to feel the same to me. It's more beautiful shots, but it doesn't really feel that different from what came before it. It feels weird to complain about the movie just continuing to be beautiful. And it's even worse, because I'm not entirely sure what I wanted it to have done differently. I don't think the scope of the movie needs to be cut down. I also like that it doesn't have any big narratives going through it, either with the games or specific athletes. Because I think that's some of what makes the movie timeless. So maybe I'm the problem, more than the movie. Because I get bored at times throughout the film, even when the movie is doing what I want it to be doing.
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

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Tokyo Olympiad
Ichikawa (1965)
“Faster, Bigger, Stonger.”

It’s 1964 and the first ever Olympic games in Asia. Tokyo was set to host in 1940 and then a little thing called WWII happened and scuttled the event. So, the 1964 games was significant and symbolic on a few levels. It was a major reintroduction of Japan to the world. To document this, the country tapped Kon Ichikawa. The result is a groundbreaking sports documentary that deploys a collage of styles and techniques. I know this because I read that about it, though truth be told, watching it, I didn’t feel that as much, but I suppose that’s because so many of its touches have become so common place in the modern world of sports documentaries.

Other than the set-up of the opening ceremonies which makes clear the importance to the country, there isn’t much of a story or narrative thread to follow. It’s more of little slice of sporting life here, a little sporting life there. Save a runner from Chad who gets a segment dedicated to him (it was the first Olympics for that African nation), Ichikawa doesn’t put a lot of focus on the individuals. His eye is mostly on the competition itself. He pulls out every trick in the book (I don’t mean that in a derogatory way). There is dramatic music alongside prolonged silences. There are optical effects as gymnasts twist and tumble in front of a black background. Drawings illustrate the weight lifting. Not too long after the prolonged featurette on the runner from Chad there is a quick-cut montage bounding from football to basketball to water polo to field hockey — a few moments spent on each. There are still pictures, freeze frames, zooms, multiple angles, replays and lots and lots of slow motion. The speed-walking is borderline pornographic. Some of the more striking things were the changes in actual competitions — the old-school style of high jumping, for example.

As beautiful as the images were, however, I sadly grew numb to the experience over the course of the nearly three hour run time. It might have been a product of overexposing myself to a few too many Olympic documentaries. I watched two others over the week and all in put down about eight hours of footage (not even counting the actual Olympics, which were airing during the period I watched this). The other two I watched (one pre this, one post), coincidentally also were free of talking heads and context, simply an assemblage of athletic feats and footage. That’s good for a stretch, but a little grueling by the end. Unfortunately I think Tokyo Olympiad’s advances and charms didn’t fully land with me because of this.
 

Jevo

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The Gleaners and I (2000) dir. Agnes Varda

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops, after the harvest has finished. A legally protected practice in France, which is still practised to this day. Armed with not much more than a small digital camera, Agnes Varda sets out to explore this practice in a contemporary setting. She visits traditional gleaners on various fields, waiting for the farm equipment to run by, so they can grab what potatoes weren't picked, or they wait for their opportunity to go in and pick up the apples on the ground in the orchard. She also visits mussel pickers on the seaside, and urban gleaners in Paris, who collect food and other stuff from bins. These urban gleaners run closer to the ethical boundaries of gleaning, as their hunt sometimes results in damages as they enter the bins. We also meet an artist who creates artwork out of whatever pieces of scraps he can find.

No one seems to really know the exact laws regarding gleaning, only that the law protects their right to do it. We receive many proclamations about what is and isn't allowed, many of them contradictory. To set the letter straight, Varda has lawyers in robes standing around in fields, reading the letter of the law. Not that anyone really seems to care too much though.

For some gleaning is a way to get food on the table each night. But for other it's just as much a way of life. Making sure that everything is produced, also get used, that nothing gets thrown away unnecessarily. That also rings true for Varda, although she doesn't glean for sustenance, she gleans pictures. Her role as an active gleaner is much apparent in the original French title, more appropriately translated to The Gleaners and the Gleaneress. Varda isn't picking apples of mussles, she's picking imagery, emotions and moments. Random moments become some of the most memorable images of the film. Like when a heart shaped potato becomes the focus of the film for 30 seconds. Or the dance of the lens cap, as Varda forgets to turn off the camera and put on the lens cap while she hangs the camera from her hand. Or like when Varda "catches" trucks on the highway with her hand.

Varda seems to have a childlike curiosity in this film. Not just for the subject, but also for the the filmmaking process, and the way she approaches what imagery she comes across while filming. She also seems to relish the freedom that she gets from just using small digital cameras instead of traditional ones. Something quite new at the time. It's quite fun to see her like this in a movie, where she also dedicates considerable time to exploring her own ageing body.
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

Hey! We won!
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The Gleaners and I
Varda (2002)
“We’re not afraid to get our hands dirty.”

Agnes Varda takes a look at the French’s practice of gleaning (or foraging or trash picking). She provides a little historical context and points toward several pieces of art depicting the habit, though the focus is primarily on modern day (circa early 2000s). She starts on food, finding people who learned the practice from their parents or grandparents, some of whom learned to live off scraps during WWII. Some comb over fields for unpicked produce. Large companies make gleaning a little easier by, say, dumping 700 lbs of perfectly fine (though not visually up to snuff) potatoes in a field, drawing masses, including both normal folks and gypsies, to pick up those discards. We meet a chef who picks his own herbs for his restaurant. The focus shifts to more urban trash. There’s a man who turns trash into art, one who takes and rehabs appliances for those in need and a brickmason who built a castle (of sorts) from picked trash with an unsettling affinity for dolls. On the flipside we get some legal context too. Gleaning is legal in daytime hours, after the harvest, so the old laws say. But there is modern dispute over some details. How many oysters can one glean again? Not all like the practice. One business bleaches its trash as a deterrent to youths, a case that actually goes to court. A vineyard prohibits the practice. The doc travels throughout France, locations both rural and urban. Some live this life by circumstance. Some live this life by choice. All have the same pride in the practice. To a person, none feel bad or ashamed.

It’s a very dense film. A lot of anecdotes and information is packed into its 80 minutes. It’s hard not to be a little taken with the conviction of the practitioners while being angered by the clear waste in some cases (soooo many potatoes). If someone else doesn’t want it or isn’t going to use it, what’s the harm in allowing someone who cares about that piece of food or metal put it to use? Though a serious topic, Varda is having fun and it’s hard not to get caught up in her spirit. There’s a playfulness about the whole venture. The visual quality was a little off putting to me. It was the early days of digital video and it just comes across a little cheap. It’s got a PBS/TV feel to it. But again, Varda’s excitement over the new technology is hard to deny.
 

Ralph Spoilsport

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Actor/comedian/artist Martin Mull once said the writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Right…whatever that means. I think he's referring to the attempt to grasp the essence of one means of expression with another but whether he sees it as a challenge or futile exercise is unclear. Somewhat like making a movie out of a sporting event like the Olympics. Tokyo Olympiad is a worthwhile challenge, for in sports we see the reach of human aspirations, ingenuity, the gamut of emotions--"the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat"--pure, abstract conflict without the frills of plot or character development.

Slow motion is director's best friend in sports films. Leni Reifenstahl best captured the "poetry in motion" essence of athletes in competition in Olympiad and Kon Ichikawa makes good use of the effect here as well. There were times when watching bodies in motion paired with the music was like watching Fantasia, the gymnastics sequence for example. Ichikawa also makes good use of sound to let the audience intimately share the athletes' experience...blocking out all sound while magnifying the occasional grunt or footsteps brings out the competitor's intense focus. I wondered if the sound was recorded live or if it was foley sound dubbed in afterwards, which might be seen as cheating by documentary purists. But hey, whatever works.

There are plenty of "storylines" to pick out here…the cold war for example: the American team enters the stadium in the opening ceremonies immediately followed by the USSR and that seemed to set up a recurring theme. The USA were often the front runners with the Russians right there nipping at their heels. The Olympic games is also a spectacle as well as a sporting event, an expression of the host nation's identity and organizational prowess. Japan is famous for state of the art technology and in the spirit of "higher, faster, stronger" we see their monstrous electronic scoreboard which must have been cutting edge at the time; your local high school gym probably has already upgraded from a smaller version. The Japanese are also known for their humility, so not surprising the focus is as often on sportsmanship as it is on victory: we see many shots of athletes congratulating one another after the event, we don't wrap up the 10K event until the last competitor has crossed the finish line, the Japanese announcer hopes that Mexico's Olympics will be even better than theirs. The Japanese athletes in the first half are mainly there to represent...we see them at the starting line but not on the podium afterwards. In the second half however they begin to step up when gymnastics, judo and volleyball come up. Only then does Tokyo Olympiad show off a little national pride. But they're entitled, it's their party.
 

kihei

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The Gleaners and I
(2001) Directed by Agnes Varda

For some time now original French New Wave director Agnes Varda has been abandoning traditional narrative approaches to cinema and pioneering her own distinctive brand of documentary hybrid. Like most documentary film makers, one of her aims is to share information about things she finds interesting or important. But she adds a number of different dimensions to that basic template. Her docs are often like essays that explore ethical, moral, philosophical, political and social issues while at the same time functioning as personal memoirs about herself and her feelings about memory, aging, self-perception, and so on. When done well as in The Beaches of Agnes, Faces Places and here, these works are engaging and far reaching, as there are usually no shortage of implications to work through on various levels after watching a Varda hybrid.

The Gleaners and I seems to catch Varda's attention because of the antiquity of the activity and the fact that it is still going on today in various formats. She wants to inform us about what gleaning is (basically picking up after the harvest the fruit, vegetables and grains that have been left behind), while looking at some of its modern day implications as gleaning is still very much a fact of existence for many people in France. The way Varda shapes her film forces the audience to confront our own attitudes about this activity in terms of our own ethical and moral standards, our sense of private property, and our attitude toward the harsh realities that others may face on a daily basis. She seems deeply attuned to the needs of others; in short, she likes people and remains curious about them. But she is also compelled by necessity to examine her own process of aging, and though she is willing to do so without a trace of vanity, the connection to gleaning can seem a bit abstract. To give her the benefit of a doubt, though, aging is partly a process that forces people to pick out what is important and what doesn't really merit attention anymore, so perhaps one could argue that in growing older, we glean from our own past that which really matters to us going forward. Whatever the case, Varda's cinematic explorations are a prime example of what a valuable asset a lively and curious mind is regardless of age.

subtitles
 

kihei

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Four Lions
(2010) Directed by Chris Morris

Four Lions is an absolutely scathing satire that focuses on four UK Muslims from Sheffield, England, who are determined to become radical jihadists, even suicide bombers, though collectively they may be just too stupid to accomplish even that. Omar (Riz Ahmed) is their leader, the only one with smarts. He also would seem to be the least likely one to be radicalized, at least on paper. He has a very nice home, a comely (and weirdly supportive) wife, and a young son who he dotes on. His comrades in this endeavour could be the new Three Stooges. Faisal and Waj are as dumb as dish clothes, though Faisal is sweet and rather charming. Barry, a convert to Islam, is the most fanatical, though, oddly enough, he is also the funniest, using his scathing wit to lay waste to any shirkers in the crowd. Together these four have a terrific chemistry and an undeniable British-ness that contrasts strongly with the madness that they are planning. The movie begins with the quartet trying to put together a terrorist You Tube video, a task which does not go well but which is nonetheless hilarious. After the opening scene my impression was "Whew! They got the tone just right." This was British satire with one foot in Monty Python and another foot in Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci's scathing depiction of British and American diplomats, In the Loop: acidic, appalled, perceptive, and laugh-out-loud funny.

The comic brilliance just keeps coming and coming in this movie, at least until we get to the brief but impactful ending. But up until that time, Four Lions is almost continuously funny. From the screw up of the video, to Barry's insane plan to blow up a Mosque, to the attempt to train crows to be suicide bombers, to the trip to a training camp in Afghanistan from which they are quickly expelled, to Omar transforming a Lion King bedtime story into a jihadist fairy tale, to plotting on a children's internet site disguised as cartoon puffins, to their choice of costumes with which to infiltrate the London marathon--from virtually the beginning of the film to the end, the movie is filmed with brilliant comic invention. I don't know when I have laughed so much in a movie.

Riz Ahmed deserves a lot of credit for making all this work. His reactions to his comrades, a mixture of affection, horror and disbelief, are priceless, and what is even more important, we like him. One of the genius moves of the writers of this film--Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Simon Blackwell--is to not give the audience too much information about Ahmed's Omar. Why is the guy a suicide bomber; what makes him so radicalized when he seems sane and sympathetic in every other way, when he obviously has a nice middle-class existence and a lovely family? And why does that family seem so supportive of what he intends to do? I think it was a smart move leaving these questions open--what we are left with is the fact that whatever the reasons, here is a sane guy that is frustrated enough to kill himself and who knows how many others in support of a cause he has come to accept as his own. Though the movie is funny throughout, there is this undercurrent that is serious. The Barrys of the world are one thing, but what makes the Omars of the world so angry and so distraught that they feel the necessity to take revenge by any means possible. The ending of the film is perfectly suited to this underlying theme. His plans gone completely awry, his buddies killed, Omar has nothing left to do but what he believes is necessary. In a state of despondence he follows out his plan, almost like he doesn't want to think about it anymore, just get it over with. How many people are there in that little pharmacy? We never find out, but certainly there are at least some.

So in the end, the movie accomplishes two things (besides being one of the all-time great British comedies}. It effectively satirizes suicide bombers and it poses the important question of what brings otherwise sane people like Omar to assume that extreme violence and the slaughter of innocents is the only effective means of protest left open to them. Yes, Four Lions is a funny movie, but like many great comedies it has a little more on its agenda than just laughs.
 

kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
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My next pick will be a recent documentary Last Men at Aleppo which is also available on Netflix.
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

Hey! We won!
May 30, 2003
15,504
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Four Lions
Morris (2010)
“He’s not a hero, he’s a dickhead and so are all of you.”

Omar (a pre-fame Riz Ahmed), an angry Muslim mad about the state of the world, is plotting his own jihad with a handful of colleagues in tow for reasons we never truly learn. His desire for action, however, doesn’t match his choice in partners who range from the aggro-moron Barry to the never fully committed Hassan to the duo of Waj and Faisal, neither of whom are all there up top. Omar and Waj travel to Afgahanastan but their bumbling results in both the accidental death of their more committed and experienced brethren and them fleeing back to England. While Barry (a white man, worth noting) argues they should bomb a mosque to help ignite moderate Muslim anger. Omar eventually decides the London Marathon makes a better target. Through circumstances both tragic and sad, all the would-be terrorists meet their end. The last moments pack a surprising dramatic punch -- equal parts tragic and haunting. Lives wasted and for what?

Oh, and this is a comedy. And a wildly, at times uncomfortably, funny one at that. From the hands of some folks who were involved with the Brit political satires The Thick of It and In the Loop and the U.S. cousin, VEEP, it’s pointed, cutting stuff. And consistently hilarious.

Safe to say I haven’t seen a movie like Four Lions before. It’s an effective satire. Tough to swallow, but that’s a bit of the point right? These aren’t “bad” people. Just misguided and misinformed at worst and straight daft at best. These are the tools of destruction and that message feels like a universal one that just happens to be trained here on Muslims, rather than a statement about Islam. The absurdity of it all is evident. It isn’t a leap to apply their blind (and hypocritical – Omar seems to have a nice, comfortable life) beliefs to any number of extreme groups.

There is balance. Omar, if not for his desire to blow up those unlike him, actually seems ok. He’s a good, loving father and husband. His family supports him. It’s a bit stunning to hear his son gleefully back his mission. His brother is a moderate who encourages Omar to come study with him and his friends. Save for Barry, the other would-be terrorists are more daffy innocents than fire breathers. Law enforcement isn’t spared either – the brother, in an effective (if sad) joke is mistaken as the real threat, while another innocent is killed by authorities, mistaken for one of the bombers. Ah, and that poor, poor goat.

It’s a big thumbs up from me, but I’m not sure how many people would find it funny.
 

Ralph Spoilsport

Registered User
Jun 4, 2011
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It's funny the connections that come up between the movies in this thread. I was thinking about Agnes Varda describing herself as a gleaner, but thought the analogy didn't exactly fit. To do so she would have to be making films made out of other filmmaker's leftover scraps. I wondered if anything like that had ever been done before, then cast my MOTW memory back a whole three months to realize this was pretty much what Cameraperson did. My pick too, how did I not see that sooner?

Anyway, to The Gleaners and I. This documentary displays garbage picking as not only a Frenchman’s right but his patriotic duty, like storming the Bastille. Storm the potato fields. You have a right to the produce that is left behind after the harvest. The law protects gleaners' rights, giving common sense statutory preference over the demands of economics, asserts the rights of the starving over of the rights of the landowners. It is clearly a hangover from a time when the threat of famine was a genuine concern, but the fact that is continues to be relevant today says a lot about progress. Modern urban gleaners forage through curbside trash, ripping out the copper wire from obsolete TV sets, eating grocery products discarded because of their expiry date. See how far we've come.

A subject matter like this could easily be treated with solemn pathos or self-righteous anger. But it's a sly protest film that gets its point across without any lecture, without shaming anyone. It's a diary film with Agnes as our congenial host/companion. Agnes Varda's style is very laid-back, very casual. Viewer-friendly. Like Michael Moore, she's not claiming to be any kind of expert here, just an interested and concerned everyman/woman. Unlike Michael Moore, she does not seem to be promoting an agenda. She has one, but it gently promotes itself.

Surprised she doesn't have a youtube channel!
 

Jevo

Registered User
Oct 3, 2010
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Four Lions (2010) dir. Chris Morris

A small group of British jihadists are sitting around making jihadist videos in their basement, and planning terrorist attacks. They are not the smartest nor the brightest around. Omar is the leader of the group, and probably the only one with a bit of common sense in the group. Waj is Omar's cousin, far from bright, and you wonder if he really grasps what it is that they are doing. Barry is an aggressive convert with a high temper radical ideas. He is renowned for his hiding in plain sight tactics in regards to intelligence services. Having among other things, planted a twin tower cake on the stairs of a synagogue following 9/11. Faisal is a complete pillock, and tries to train crows as bomb carriers. Hassan, a fifth member, is later recruited after Barry watches him blow up a mock bomb at a community meeting about radicalised islam. Omar and Waj gets the opportunity to go to an Al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, with help from Omars uncle in the country. Barry thinks he should go, but his lack of proficiency in Farsi means he can't go. Omar and Waj aren't exactly great terrorists-to-be, and have to flee Pakistan after the accidentally blow up the rest of the training camp with a rocket launcher, as they try to take down a spy drone. Later it is revealed that Osama Bin-Laden was among the casualties in the accident. Back in Britain there's in fighting in the group about where to strike. Barry believes the local mosque is the ideal place to strike, since it will radicalise the moderates. Omar thinks this is a stupid plan, and instead suggests the bomb the London Marathon.

Terrorism is a touchy subject, especially if you are going to make a comedy about it. You have to watch your step, and Morris does this, but he isn't overly cautious and he goes for the laughs as much as he can. I don't there's anything offensive in the movie at all. Because I don't think the movie ever really is about Islam in any way. The main characters are islamists, but it's debatable how islamic they are. Barry doesn't go to the mosque, because it's full of people who doesn't share his view on islam. Omar's conservative but harmless brother, doesn't approve of Omars radical plans and ideals, even though the brother is the kind of guy who follows the book by the letter. He won't step into a Omar's living room while Omar's wife is there. On the other hand, Omar and his wife are both radicals and very critical of western society. But their home life is very western and progressive, with what appears to be an equal partnersship. Neither of them wants to give into the brothers demands about no women in the room either. Waj probably doesn't even know what the Quran says. Their radical and terrorist tendencies doesn't appear to be a result of their religion, their religion only functions as an excuse to outlive those tendencies. Someone like Barry would just have found another marginalised group to follow if he hadn't converted. Maybe in another life he'd have been Tottenham fan.

There are very few comedies which makes me laugh as much as Four Lions does. Basically every scene there's a laugh. Sometimes you have to really pay attention, because there's some gold hidden in the script. But often things are happening so fast, that it's hard to catch it all. You also have to give credit to the actors, they are doing a really good job making these crazy characters believable. Nigel Lindsay as Barry and Kayvan Novak as Waj in particular are great. They probably have to two wackiest characters, and they keep them at just the right place. Waj is stupid as a brick wall, he looks stupid and he sounds stupid. Everything about him screams stupid. But they still build a character out of that, and he still feels like a real person, and just a caricature. They same is true for Barry, who basically is a caricature, but he doesn't really feel like one. It's one of the things that makes this movie work so well, that as out there as the characters are, they feel like real characters.

I think Four Lions is a rare kind of comedy, that you can watch again and again and still enjoy just as much. I've only watched it twice, but it was just as fun now as it was years ago when I watched it the first time. Some of my biggest laughs were things I knew were coming. Like Faisal blowing himself up in the field of sheep, and Omar pointing the rocket launcher the wrong way. As I said earlier there's a lot of jokes hidden in the script. In that way I think it's somewhat comparable to Dr. Strangelove, where I can watch that again and again, and find new little jokes I hadn't caught before.
 

Jevo

Registered User
Oct 3, 2010
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363
A Sunday in Hell (1977) dir. Jørgen Leth

The movie opens with a three minute scene of a mechanic meticulously preparing a bicycle in complete silence, no narration, no comments, just the sounds of the bike. It's the day before the 1976 Paris-Roubaix, perhaps the hardest and most prestigious one day race in cycling. What makes the race hard is not the geography, since north eastern France is almost entirely flat. The difficulty of the race has always come from the weather and the rough roads between Paris and Roubaix. Back in the day even the main roads were cobbled, but over time more and more were asphalted, and in the mid 60s, most of the route was on regular roads. This forced the organisers to seek out minor roads, and already in 76, most of the cobbled roads used, were only used by cattle, tractors and on one day of the year, cyclists, and the state of the roads reflect this usage. And that's still how it is today.

Leth takes his time getting to these roads though. It's a full 30 minutes before the race gets under way. First he presents the expected main actors. Roger de Vlaeminck, the best Paris-Roubaix rider ever, of the Brooklyn team, not named after the New York borough but an Italian chewing gum brand. Eddy Merckx, the best cyclist ever, who arrives looking as much like a 70s rock star as a Belgian possibly can. And Freddy Maertens, the young upcoming star, who is here to challenge his older rivals. Not that these or any other riders gets their say in any way in the film. We only hear them speak merely as a part of the sound landscape, such as when de Vlaeminck is being massaged and checked by the team doctor the day before the race. No quotes or talking heads here.

After covering the preparation for the race both the day prior and the morning of, we are ready to go. Only not really. Because typists at one of the organising newspapers are engaging in the French national sport of strikes and protests. Once a common way for protesters to get attention to their cause. Eventually the riders are being led through the blockade in single file, although some protesters see this more as an opportunity to touch, shake hands, or give encouraging words to their personal favourites. For Leth this protest and the protesters are just as much a part of the race, and the story about the race, as the race itself. He knows that the race is much more than just the 270 km on the bike, even for the riders. It's also the days of preparation prior to the race, with the setting up of the bikes, the massages, the medical checks, the breakfast before the race etc. But the race is also everything that happens around the race. It's the fans in café along the route who follows this race and many others year after year. The fans who are in there listening to the radio or watching the television every Sunday when there's a cycling race on, and also the fans who are only there on that Sunday to watch a bunch of young men in tights. It's the families who go for a Sunday picnic on a distant farm road waiting for the race to pass by them. It's also the men who prepare the finishing area with sponsorship logos and banners on the day of the race, and the television producers for the international broadcast of the last hour of the race. These parts are all just as important as the riders on the bikes, and Leth gives them due attention, and he isn't afraid to cut away from the race action, to show these parts. Even towards the end of the film, as the riders nears the finish line, Leth is not afraid to risk the tension of the race, by cutting to TV producers at the finish line instead. Probably because he realises the tension of who wins isn't important to the movie. Anyone interested in the winner will already know who it is. The important part of the movie is how and why of the race, both of the race it self and of the all the things surrounding the race.

A Sunday in Hell is a massive achievement in logistics and editing. Every camera location has been meticulously chosen ahead of time. You can see how almost every shot of the race from static cameras, has the race going from right to left. Giving the race a direction, from Paris to Roubaix, from right to left. Only once or twice does this not hold true. There was of course no cell phones at the time, and production had been banned from using short wave radio to communicate during the race, so everything was filmed in the blind so to speak. With the director having to rely on the cameramen following their instructions carefully, and allowing their own intuition about what will make a good shot reign. A fun fact about the filming process is that at the start of the film Longines is shown as a sponsor of the film. That's because the company supplied watches to the whole production, and every time a camera was started during the race, the cameraman started by showing his watch. Allowing every shot to be categorised by time during the editing phase. I wonder how much Longines got for their money, since not a single watch of theirs is actually shown during the film itself. This movie was apparently the first time a helicopter was used to film a cycling race. Since then it has been a staple of every TV production of cycling races.

A Sunday in Hell is my favourite documentary ever made. I think Leth captures the race and the spirit of cycling perfectly in this race. The way it is filmed makes cycling look just as beautiful as it is, and Leth is not afraid to let the pictures speak for themselves when necessary. It's not for nothing that the movie is a cult classic among cycling fans. It's such a big classic, that a book has just been published about the film.

Yesterday I watched the movie. Just now as I finish this post the 2018 edition is about to start. Perfect timing. In 1976 1 hour of the race was shown on TV. Now the whole race is broadcast live, all 6 hours of it. Times have changed.
 

kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
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4d2142349199bf170f1ca94d51db801e.jpg


Sunday in Hell (1977) Directed by Jorgen Leth

I struggled through the early stages of this documentary as Leth presents the race as a multi-contextual event. It wasn't really until the last 45 minutes or so, when the focus is most directly on the competition itself that I finally got invested in the outcome. I'm not a bicycle racing fan, and normally I would pay no or little attention (if it's the Tour de France, and only because that's usually during Wimbledon) to the competition. The only racer with whom I was remotely familiar was Merckx whose reputation as a great racer and enigmatic figure exceeded the boundaries of his sport. So it took a while, but interest did finally click in.

As a film, though I struggled part of the way, I have to respect Leth's attempt to see the event in a much larger social context. We never think of what went into an event--we just usually observe the event itself. Leth shows how many different factors and players are involved in shaping and creating the final product--the bicyclists just being the royalty supported by a vast army of worker ants, some professionals, some volunteers. I like how messy this process was. In some ways, the disorganization was the most striking thing about sections of the race. For long parts of the race, the competitors have a narrow channel in which they are forced to compete because of all kinds of crazy traffic all around them--fans lining the sidewalks and streets on one side, police cars, support cars, media trucks, miscellaneous motorcyclists on the road beside them crowding around in what looks like a shark feeding frenzy. That must be hell to navigate and very stressful for the racers. At one point on a sharp turn, this whole menagerie of vehicles closes in on itself bringing the race to a halt for what seems like hours, though it was probably only a minute or so. One lone rider manages to maneuver his bike through the chaos. I also like the unglamourous post-race footage of defeated, exhausted drivers coming back to earth, in good spirits or bad, after their grueling ordeal.

I don't know any other sports documentary quite as gritty and risk-taking as this one. While it took me a long time to engage in the work, in retrospect Sunday in Hell certainly should be in any serious discussion of the great sports documentaries.

Note: Sadly a racer died participating in the race this year, suffering cardiac arrest. In a tragic manner that underscores in the most extreme way possible the ordeal that competitors must acquiesce to in this competition.
 
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Ralph Spoilsport

Registered User
Jun 4, 2011
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Cripes, I still owe a pick! Plus a couple of reviews... Anywho, let's go with Josef von Sternberg's The Saga of Anatahan. Originally released in 1953, there's also a 1958 re-released version which is the "director's cut". It expresses more fully the underlying erotic theme. (In other words...scenes contain nudity :naughty:)
 
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