The Year in Film 2019 - Part Eight

 

Apologies to the three or four readers waiting for me to wrap this up. In short, I took too much time away from it, lost momentum, and now it's nearly a year since I watched most of these films and the experience is no longer fresh enough to extrapolate anything of real interest. I'm still committed to finishing the series, however, please be mindful that the blurbs will be shorter and less specific.
 
 

Belle de Jour [Luis Buñuel, 1967]:

 

Watched: Oct 06, 2019

 

Throughout the film, the character Séverine – the bored housewife who, in the absence of genuine excitement, turns to a world of high-class prostitution, becoming the "belle de jour" of the title – finds herself navigating a labyrinth of dreams. But are they her dreams, born of her own desires, fears, even perversions, or are they someone else's? In the films of Luis Buñuel, the dreamer never questions who's dreaming who. They move passively, as a sleepwalker does, through the reveries that become like the rooms of a haunted house, each suggestive of a story or a history that might be there beneath the surface of the subconscious. Buñuel was a bit of a blindspot for me, but in 2019 I was able to watch several of the director's later films, all great in their own specific way, however Belle de Jour struck me as something of a masterpiece. It's an accessible film for the director, combining elements of melodrama, soap-opera, social commentary and even crime thriller, uniting each element of the plot in a mesmerizing and thought-provoking final act, as well as in the film's continual exploration of dreamers and the dreamed.
 
 

Lisa and the Devil [Mario Bava, 1973]:

 

Watched: Oct 08, 2019

 

To misquote Dante Alighieri, the credo of the film could very well be: Abandon logic, all ye who enter here. The most lyrical and poetic film by horror maestro Mario Bava, Lisa and the Devil is an absolute marvel of mood and emotion. The slim plot functions more as a dream-play than conventional narrative, as repetitions of time and vague elements of genre – specifically gothic horror – weave in and out of what is essentially a kind of bizarre fairy-tale, heavily indebted to the otherworldly influences of Jean Cocteau's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (1945) and the writings of Lewis Carroll. In keeping with this, the title character becomes a kind of Alice surrogate; albeit, one in adult form. Like her earlier counterpart, she is led down the metaphysical rabbit hole into a strange otherworld, where time stands-still and nothing is as it appears. It's less fantastical than Carroll's work, but can nonetheless be read as a similar exploration of the psyche, where the more surreal flourishes are as much born out of the character's fears and anxieties as they are by the possible supernatural power of the place. I'm not as fond of the ending, which, without wishing to offer spoilers, feels forced and tries to tie down the film's more unconscious projections to a strict psychological interpretation. Nonetheless, the film remains a strange, enchanting, even unsettling work for Bava, and is more than worthy of acclaim alongside the director's more accessible features, such as Black Sunday (1960), The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Black Sabbath (also 1963) and Blood & Black Lace (1964) to name a few.
 
 

Chi-Raq [Spike Lee, 2015]:

 

Watched: Oct 12, 2019

 

That Spike Lee wields his social commentary with all the grace of a sledgehammer is a fair criticism at this point. While some filmmakers approach their message with a sniper-like precision, Lee comes at his subject matter like a wrecking ball, knocking down targets and leveling the discussion with every technique and device available in his directorial arsenal. It's an approach that can rub a lot of audiences the wrong way. However, this approach to political filmmaking is not always a detriment and has benefited absolute masterworks, such as Do the Right Thing (1989), 4 Little Girls (1997), Bamboozled (2000) and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006). Here, the filmmaker was able to apply his virtuoso technical abilities to stories that were urgent and relevant. Often, Lee's approach can be overwhelming. There are moments in Chi-Raq where the film threatens to collapse under the weight of the filmmaker's heavy-handedness; the frequent contrast between the didactic and the melodramatic creating an odd push/pull disparity between engagement and disaffection, excitement, and inertia. However, the experiment is so different and exciting, and the political commentary so bracing and necessary, that the film succeeds, overall, as much as the films aforementioned. As an audience, we stick with these films because the aesthetics and the actual filmmaking are frequently revelatory and always ambitious. It's this element of Lee's work that makes him so essential. At a time when the majority of films are safe and designed to appease the largest possible audience without challenging attitudes or preconceptions, a film like Chi-Raq is uncompromising in both its message and delivery. It commits fully to its conceptual melding of Greek myth, hip-hop music and political commentary, taking the vagaries of Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata", first performed in the year 411bc, and melding it with contemporary protests about the rise of inner-city gun violence, collective mourning and the struggles of power between men and women.
 
 

Open Your Eyes [Alejandro Amenábar, 1997]:

 

Watched: Oct 20, 2019

 

The opening sequence of the film is iconic and has been frequently imitated since its initial release. However, the image of the world abandoned, and the presence of the central character César as the only person seemingly left alive to wander the empty streets, introduces several of the film's signature themes. Primarily, it reflects the loneliness of César, both before and after the terrible accident that robs him of his face, but it also introduces themes of perception and reality. It might be a slight spoiler to reveal that this opening sequence is essentially a dream (or is it a premonition) but it's part of Amenábar's focus on the illusion of reality and the way life can be seen as a construct or a projection triggered by emotion. There are echoes here to what the filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski would later explore in The Matrix (1999). However, while their film employed cyber-punk and Hong Kong action movie influences, Open Your Eyes blends the influences of film noir and classic monster movies. The film has a confessional structure, employing dreams and flashbacks as César tells his story to a prison psychiatrist. The psychiatrist becomes a surrogate for the audience, prompting César for answers as we attempt to find out what happened to him, and in the process become an active participant in our own understanding of the story and its twists and turns. Though produced on a low budget, the film is always compelling. The combination of genre elements is creative and intelligently done, and there's a genuine commitment to following through on themes of trauma, PTSD, loss of identity and the way guilt corrupts the psyche.
 
 

Princess Cyd [Stephen Cone, 2017]:

 

Watched: Oct 21, 2019

 

The film too often rushes into significant plot developments, undercutting emotional beats and denying the audience a necessary catharsis. However, I'm in love with its naturalism, the sympathy with which it presents its characters and the relaxed nature of its filmmaking. If anything, it reminded me of a very good if not great film by Éric Rohmer; not quite on a par with works like Pauline at the Beach (1983) or A Tale of Summer (1996), but maybe closer to My Night at Maud's (1969) or A Good Marriage (1982). The end of summer setting is perfectly evoked in the film's languid tone and shots of gardens bathed in golden sun, while the season itself, and its image of nature turning from green to gold, the death and rebirth of an encroaching autumn, and the contrasts between those at the beginning of youth and those approaching the end of it, seems tied into the film's themes of loneliness, new love, sexuality and grief. The performances throughout are humanist, believable and deeply felt.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Year in Film 2019 - Part One [6 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Two [9 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Three [21 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Four [24 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five [22 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Six [28 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Seven [10 May 2020]