Robby Müller

In Memoriam

In general, I tend not to make too many "R.I.P." posts. Other blogs that are more active than mine make such tributes a regular feature of their postings, but given that I'm not a very prolific writer here at Lights in the Dusk, I could imagine such posts becoming overwhelming given the general lack of other content. The sad fact is that too many great artists come and go and if I were to acknowledge each of them this blog would turn into an obituary.

However, Robby Müller, the great Dutch cinematographer famed for his collaborations with Wim Wenders, among other filmmakers, passed away this week, and it seems necessary to break from this tradition and share a few words (and images) about his extraordinary career.

To Live and Die in L.A. [William Friedkin, 1985]:

Müller was one of my absolute favourite cinematographers and was someone who seemed to gravitate towards projects and filmmakers that speak to me on a profoundly personal level.

It's difficult to choose a favourite film photographed by Müller. Throughout his career he brought a style, atmosphere and inventiveness that always seemed right for the specific project. In other words, he served the material. Whether he was working in 16mm black and white, as in Alice in the Cities (1974), 35mm colour, as in Barfly (1987), or pioneering the use of digital video, as in Dancer in the Dark (2000), My Brother Tom (2001) and 24 Hour Party People (2002), respectively, Müller was able to create lasting images that were bold, iconographic and always attuned to matters of light, space, character and location.

Whether collaborating with mainstream Hollywood directors, such as William Friedkin, John Schlesinger and Peter Bogdanovich, or more idiosyncratic, independent talents, such as Alex Cox, Jim Jarmusch and Raúl Ruiz, Müller always seemed to bring a level of craftsmanship that was even more remarkable given the limitations that he chose to embrace.

It's not an overstatement to suggest that Müller could have had the same career as Roger Deakins, Robert Richardson, or more recently Hoyte Van Hoytema; working exclusively on big budget Hollywood pictures for so-called "prestige" filmmakers. Instead, Müller chose to work with filmmakers that were unconventional, controversial and often at the start of their careers. In doing so, he nonetheless succeeded in creating a lifetime's worth of astounding images on small budgets, short schedules and against incredibly difficult filming conditions.

Robby Müller filming Kings of the Road [photo attributed to Wim Wenders]:

Just focusing on his early collaborations with Wenders already illustrates Müller's amazing versatility. Moving from the stylised and Hitchcokian The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972) to the almost documentary like travelogue of Alice in the Cities, we can appreciate both his mastery of different mediums and his ability to switch between works of unforced naturalism and painterly stylisation.

The subsequent films that Wenders and Müller made together would only broaden their creative pallet, as the emphasis on landscape, or 'place', became a central concern in a film like Kings of the Road (1976) or the early scenes of Paris, Texas (1984), while the use of colour would become increasingly more daring and expressive, as in the Edward Hopper influenced Patricia Highsmith adaptation The American Friend (1977).

The lasting legacy of Müller is perhaps best surmised by Wenders himself, who in a tribute to his former collaborator, states: "Like no other, you were able to seize moods and to describe situations in your imagery that revealed more about the characters than long dialogues or dramaturgical structures ever could. You knew how to create a distinctive atmosphere for each and every film, in which the respective actors were, in the truest sense of the phrase, "in good hands." For a handful of filmmakers, among whom I was one, you were their most important companion, like Hans W., Jim, Lars, Steve. And you were a role model for a whole generation of young directors of photography."

Below are some images taken from my absolute favourite films photographed by Robby Müller, which I hope illustrate many of the qualities discussed here, as well as providing a chronological record of his stylistic progression, trademarks, characteristics and key works.

Alice in the Cities [Wim Wenders, 1974]:

Kings of the Road [Wim Wenders, 1976]:

The Left-Handed Woman [Peter Handke, 1978]:

The American Friend [Wim Wenders, 1977]:

They All Laughed [Peter Bogdanovich, 1981]:

Repo Man [Alex Cox, 1984]:

Paris, Texas [Wim Wenders, 1984]:

To Live and Die in L.A. [William Friedkin, 1985]:

Down by Law [Jim Jarmusch, 1986]:

Mystery Train [Jim Jarmusch, 1989]:

Korczak [Andrzej Wajda, 1990]:

Until the End of the World [Wim Wenders, 1991]:

Dead Man [Jim Jarmusch, 1995]:

Breaking the Waves [Lars von Trier, 1996]:

The Tango Lesson [Sally Potter, 1997]:

Dancer in the Dark [Lars von Trier, 2000]:

Ashes [Steve McQueen, 2014]:

A Year in Film (Part One)

A Viewing List for Twenty-Fifteen

Goodbye to Language [Jean-Luc Godard, 2014]: 

The title is non-judgmental.  "Goodbye" in the sense that technology is changing the way we live, but "goodbye" also to the thing that has failed to define us.  The shackles of language that keep us tethered to ideas, forms, thoughts and feelings; a liberation from expectation or the need to understand.  3D shots and the fragmentation of the image (from one into two) again relate to the typically 'Godardian' theme of disparity.  The disparity of ideas, politics, love, etc.  The inability of couples to co-exist.  The filmmaker remarks: we can film a landscape and an empty room, but not the landscape at the back of an empty room.  Yet here he achieves just that, and beautifully so.  At various points throughout, Godard frames his dog with the same zealous heroism of John Wayne, circa Stagecoach (1939), the same quiet stoicism of a van Gogh self-portrait and the same wounded dignity of Falconetti's St. Joan. The dog is at once a surrogate for the viewer, on the outside looking in, attempting to make sense, to understand, but also a surrogate for Godard, the eyes and ears at the centre of things.  Remarkable.

Kagemusha [Akira Kurosawa, 1980]: 

The political implications of the scenario are enthralling.  Throughout the film, themes of power, corruption, leadership and the suppression of the 'self' (in the purely psychological sense of the term), are each carefully woven into the fabric of the film.  However, so much of the subtext can be seen as an extension on the idea of performance; the character compelled to put on a costume, to adopt a persona, to play a part.  As such, it's not only Kurosawa's definitive political statement, but also his most self-reflexive/self-referential commentary on the psychology of the "warrior as performer", and vice versa.  The film is a testament to the talent of Kurosawa and his lead actor, Tatsuya Nakadai, however it is the delirious, near-psychedelic 'nightmare sequence' occurring midway through the film that not only draws a line of influence from the similarly personal Dodes'ka-den (1970) to the richly-autobiographical Dreams (1990) but remains one of the most dazzling, imaginative and purely cinematic moments of Kurosawa's entire career.

Los Angeles Plays Itself [Thom Andersen, 2003]: 

The story of a city on film, both literally and figuratively.  Like many of the films on this particular portion of the list, too much time has passed for me to give an accurate clarification of the film's "objective" merits, but the memory of the work still lingers.  Los Angeles Plays Itself is at once and simultaneously an astounding documentary, a travelogue of a city, a narrative history of that same city on film and above all else a defining work of actual film criticism that offers a quantum leap in the evolution of the genre.  Watching Andersen's visual interpretation of his own text - less a compilation of "clips" than a genuine adaptation, where each image or scene, each cut or juxtaposition, presents a theoretical, geographical, historical or emotional association - can only seem to shame all other forms of contemporary film criticism.

Sound and Fury [Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1988]: 

Arguably the great masterpiece of Brisseau's career and a film to file alongside Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Pialat's The Naked Childhood (1968) as one of the most brutal and affecting works on the subject of adolescent alienation in French cinema.  Refining and re-establishing what would eventually become his trademark style through later and no less controversial features, such as Céline (1992), The Exterminating Angels (2006) and The Girl from Nowhere (2012), Brisseau incorporates a milieu of gritty social-drama against a more alarming series of scenes and images that seem to extend from an un-tethered perspective of magical realism.  The result is a film in which discussions on socialism, unemployment and educational-reform are punctuated by scenes of uncompromising violence, brutality and an atmosphere of near-dreamlike surrealism that features revenants, spirits and phantoms conjured from the past.  An astounding and unforgettable work.

They All Laughed [Peter Bogdanovich, 1981]: 

Too much time has passed since my initial viewing of the film back in February 2015 to offer any kind of definitive statement; an unfortunately consequence of my inability to put down in words any initial thoughts and feelings that circulated at the time.  However, my prevailing impression of the film is one of complete enjoyment!  Though the narrative of Bogdanovich's career is that of the talented "wunderkind" who created back-to-back masterworks with his first four features, Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up Doc (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), only to burn out and lose it following the hostile reception of the films Daisy Miller (1974), At Long Last Love (1975) and Nickelodeon (1976), the existence of a film like They All Laughed seems to contradict the critical consensus and shows a filmmaker creating what might possibly be  the greatest work of his career.  Working with Wim Wenders' then cinematographer of choice Robby Müller, Bogdanovich is able to do for New York what Jacques Rivette often did for his beloved Paris; turning the city into a fully fledged character, part melancholy labyrinth, part eternal playground, where characters left on the fringes of society can come together to share in their anxieties, eccentricities, passions and woes.

Talking Head [Mamoru Oshii, 1992]: 

Many directors of the post new-wave era of personal "auteurist" expression have tackled at least one semi-autobiographical work on the perils of filmmaking.  From Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Passion (1982) respectively, to Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) Wenders' The State of Things (1982) and Antonioni's Identification of a Woman (1982), through to a vast gamut of eclectic works, including (but not limited to) Day For Night (1973) by François Truffaut, Ed Wood (1994) by Tim Burton, A Moment of Innocence (1996) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Art History (2011) by Joe Swanberg, the very subject of filmmaking has itself proven to be a fascinating resource for writers and directors to explore what the cinema means to them.  However, for all the variety and individuality found the films aforementioned, no other filmmaker to the best of my knowledge has explored the subject with the same gonzo eccentricity and abandon as Mamoru Oshii, who envisions his film-about-filmmaking™ as a bizarre psychodrama cum murder mystery with elements of almost Three Stooges inspired slapstick comedy, intentionally "bad" B-movie special effects, Godardian inter-titles and poetic rumination (reminiscent of something like Soigne ta droite, 1987), fourth-wall breaking and a heavy influence of Brecht.  The result is one of the great works of auteur cinema; as playful, baffling and self-deprecating as von Trier's less abstract but no less "meta" deconstruction of the role of the filmmaker, The Boss of it All (2006).

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid [Sam Peckinpah, 1973]: 

The usual superlatives hold true; this is Peckinpah's final statement on the end of the "west", on violence, masculinity and the passing of tradition.  When supposed lawman Pay Garrett shoots out his own reflection following his pitiless assassination of 'the Kid', the act itself communicates so much about the character's own loss of identity; the self-hated and the disillusionment felt not just by the lawman corrupted by a need to save face but by any and all who saw their own country slip away from them as one generation gave in to the next.  Throughout the film the landscape becomes symbolic, the journey into history expressing something about the need for heroes, myths and legends against the often brutal and unflinching reality, as the mournful, world-weary soundtrack of Bob Dylan becomes a disembodied chorus reflecting on the sense of inevitable destruction, as idealism, trust, hope and even goodness are very gradually corrupted by the bitterness of time.

For Your Eyes Only [John Glen, 1981]: 

The standard nonsensical Bond conventions are here elevated by a sense of genuine spectacle.  From the helicopter hi-jack of the pre-title sequence to later scenes, such as the Olympic pursuit, underwater exploration and literal mountain top cliff-hanger, the film doesn't just provide the usual action and suspense that one expects from the genre, it's a genuinely jaw-dropping affair!  Maybe this sentiment is simply an expression of nostalgia for a type of pre-CGI extravagance, but some of the images here are genuinely astounding; where the thrill of "actuality" - real cars, real locations, real jumps and hits - becomes as much a selling point as the narrative and its wider commitment to the requirements of the Bond "brand."  Kudos then to director John Glen, whose muscular action sequences and injection of gritty violence, often at odds with the lighter tone of this particular era, would find their truest expression several years later in the most brutal Bond film, The Living Daylights (1987).

Dodes'ka-den [Akira Kurosawa, 1970]: 

The onomatopoeic title, which suggests an imitation of the sound a tram-car would make as it moves along a track, plays into the film's notion of artifice, of a reflection of life that's not quite the real thing but an abstraction of it, while also suggesting the idea of the journey, of characters moving towards a definite (emotional or psychological) destination.  In terms of style, it is a film that feels almost like a collaboration between Walt Disney and Samuel Beckett, but with an undeniable streak of social commentary that ties it to the filmmaker's earlier movie, The Lower Depths (1957).  In its structure, it lurches from moments of burlesque humour, its scenes presenting a pantomime of larger than life characterisations amid flights of fantasy and child-like sentiment, to moments that show the brutal reality of the world suggested with a blunt, emotional honesty.  The effect can be odd and disengaging but is nonetheless unique.  An explosion of colour and stylisation; the approach offering a staggering counterpoint to the squalor and misery of the characters lives and this reflection of the modern world (circa 1970) re-imagined as a junkyard microcosm.  The only thing more dazzling than Kurosawa's experiments with colour, light and composition is the sensitivity he shows to his central characters.

Magic in the Moonlight [Woody Allen, 2014]: 

Relaxed and conversational in the best possible way, with the sun-kissed locations, lovingly photographed, and pristine period detail only adding to the charm.  It is a film full of rich and illustrative discussions on issues of nature and the cosmos; a mediation on the universe analogous to a film by Jean-Claude Brisseau - such as À L'Aventure (2008), only minus the soft-core lesbian erotica - wherein the relationship between two people becomes the fore-grounded focal point to a grander philosophical or theoretical discussion on the foundation of life itself.  Overflowing with incredible subtext, the film's smaller crisis of faith, love and loyalty becomes a reflection on greater themes, such as the nature of illusion, performance and identity; of characters as impostors, posing as something they're not; of cinema as the grand illusion, a sleight of hand; of love as the ultimate magic act, conquering cynicism; weaving its way through the elements of frothy romantic farce and bitter atheistic lament like a leitmotif.  Though many found it flawed, the film for me was a little masterpiece and one of Allen's greatest works.

Viewing Log / 2013 / Week Five

 

28/01/2013 - 03/02/2013

 

 

Lorraine! [Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1994]:  Like the masterpiece Sicilia! (1999), Lorraine! is a film about place.  About the power of a place, its histories (because "history" should always have a plural, denoting more than one) and the recollections of its people.  The emphasis on place has always been important to the films of Straub-Huillet, whether in the setting of Père Lachaise in Every Revolution is a Throw of Dice (1977) (where the film becomes a clear attempt to bring dead forms back to life) or in the imagined America of Class Relations (1984) (a stylistic effort to capture the European "Amerika" of Kafka's novel from the author's own perspective of having never visited the U.S.).  Here, the region of Lorraine, and in particular its capital, Metz, becomes the subject of the film, beginning with a slow panoramic shot that ends on an image of the Moselle, as symbol of its separation.  As with the work of John Ford, the landscape in Straub-Huillet's film becomes like a central character; as expressive as the actors who speak the words that give weight to these images of the city, where the contours of the landscape evoke the march of time, or where the presentation of its roads and rivers not only create figurative barriers (both natural and artificial) but illustrate the movement of people as shorthand for communication.  The river in the opening scene becomes an obvious representation of the divide that exists at the centre of the film and of the city itself.  Metz, not only a city divided, geographically - existing adjacent to the tripoint alongside the junctions of France, Germany and Luxembourg - but historically too; calling into question the idea of heritage, especially in relation to the Siege of Metz in 1870, after which the previously French region was briefly annexed into the newly created German Empire.  Again, like Sicilia!, the filmmakers capture this divided landscape with a slow panning of the camera, from side-to-side and back again, suggesting the progression of history; where the past becomes a metaphysical "revenant" that intrudes upon the present in the form of the young Collette; this vessel for the haunted words of Maurice Barrès. 

Doghouse [Jake West, 2009]:  I was surprised by the accusations of misogyny that some online pundits had brought against the film.  If anything, Doghouse is a work that employs the recognisable tropes of "ladsploitation" (right down to the casting of the controversial Danny Dyer; the sub-genre's wide-boy archetype) only to subvert them through a kind of comic exaggeration.  Each of the characters is in some way an over-the-top personification of a certain masculine tendency, from the womaniser, to the geek, to the "new-age" male.  These characters (or caricatures) are placed in an absurd and largely incongruous situation (it didn't necessarily have to be zombies), which provides them an opportunity - in their own minds, at least - to reinforce their individual masculinity and reclaim dominance over this murderous female horde.  As a concept, the machinations of the story might have proved problematic had the male characters not turned out to be quite so inept; diving head-first into this difficult situation without even thinking, and generally acting like a group of football hooligans on a Friday night brawl.  I wouldn't go so far as to call the film "satirical", in the more sophisticated sense, but I do think the writer and director have knowingly exaggerated the traits of their protagonists to such an outlandish degree that the film becomes a rather obvious (and largely tongue-in-cheek) parody of inherent male stupidity.  In Doghouse, the humour of the film continually derives from the hapless nature of the central characters, who instead of acting like rational or intelligent human beings, almost immediately descend into a kind of posturing male chauvinism or cocksure bravado, viewing the threat as nothing more than an excuse to act out the part of John Rambo (or even The Terminator), as opposed to taking charge of the situation, with any kind of perspective or genuine common-sense. 

 

 

Roselyne and the Lions [Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1989]:  Beineix uses the spectacle of lion taming as a metaphor for the often destructive impulses that drive the majority of relationships, where anger, jealousy, passion and pain threaten to obliterate the bond that exists between two people, driven close to insanity by their obsessions and insecurities.  The spectacle of the film, where the 'tamer' and 'trainer' attempt to control these wild beasts that stalk and prowl the barred perimeter of the cage, works as a visual representation of their love for one another; all-powerful and all-consuming; dangerous and destructive; volatile enough to spill out into violence or blossom, flower-like, into something beautiful; a display of pure emotion, which, in its graceful theatricality, becomes art.  The art of living or the art of ardour?  This presentation of the film could also be viewed as a sort-of commentary on the cinema itself, from its production to its distribution.  For instance, the relationship between the actress and her director is reflected in the central relationship between the two protagonists, where the young trainer, Thierry, works tirelessly behind the scenes preparing for the show, before the beautiful tamer Roselyne (the public face of their affiliation) wows the audience with her commitment to the routine.  There is also the obvious cinematic suggestion of the final "performance" (or literally, "the last act"), where the routine and the reactions of an audience that Beineix intercuts with the caged exhibition on-screen, presents a clear acknowledgement of our own role as spectators, and the performance itself as something closer to theatre (albeit, a theatre abstracted by the use of shots and cuts into the purity of cinematic expression).  Viewed in its complete, three-hour form, the experience of Beineix's film is absolutely exhilarating.  The technicality of the film and the work of the actors when face-to-face with these ferocious lions that respond (and perform) to their every command is thrilling in its authenticity, but more than that, it's the combination of this reckless, dazzling demonstration of technique, in contrast with the more intimate, character-driven story, that moves as much as it enthrals. 

Dreamcatcher [Lawrence Kasdan, 2003]:  When browsing the "Bad Movies We Love" series at the blog 'Rupert Pupkin Speaks', I was genuinely surprised to see how many of its contributors considered this to be amongst the very worst films ever made.  I saw it on DVD not long after it was first released and only remembered finding it fairly boring, as the early promise of a creepy supernatural mystery eventually became entangled within a mess of extraterrestrial subplots, inexplicable character developments and the usual hokum that we've come to expect from any adaptation of a work by Stephen King.  The plot of Dreamcatcher recycles the most well-worn elements of Stand By Me, The Shining, It and The Tommyknockers, but also adds more bizarre ideas, like a parasitic alien virus that erupts from the sphincter of its host, an on-screen representation of a character's memory rendered as a dusty old library, and a last minute appearance by the actor Donnie Wahlberg playing a character that's been described, rather unsympathetically, as a "magical retard" (not my words).  I didn't find these elements to be as embarrassing as many of the film's more vocal detractors (though the scene where Thomas Jane's character literally uses his gun as a telephone did cause my eyes to roll) but the film still feels overlong and unfocused, as if the writers were throwing every possibly idea they could at the screen in the hope that something might stick.  For me, the film would have worked better as a more intimate story, focusing on the characters and how they deal with the situation, and not necessarily going the way it did, with Morgan Freeman's crazed army Colonel and his scenes of extraterrestrial genocide.  Interestingly, for a film with so much in it, the end result still felt somewhat empty.

 

 

Dream House [Jim Sheridan, 2011]:  Remember what I said about Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999); that the ending was a cheap twist that turned a thought-provoking psychological drama into a senseless supernatural one?  Well, this is the opposite.  The twist here turns what is initially a senseless supernatural drama into a thought-provoking psychological one.  I'm not going to suggest that the film is in any way a misunderstood masterpiece - especially since there are several things here that don't necessarily work - but I do think the story is a lot more interesting than the majority of (so-called) professional reviewers might suggest.  Even discounting the psychological aspect of the film, which to my mind was beautifully developed, there is also a rather interesting "meta" element (again, see In Dreams) in which the central character is writing a novel, which when completed, turns out to share its title with the finished film.  This, to me, seems significant, and ties in nicely with an earlier exchange in which the protagonist sits down to tell his children a bedtime story that contains echoes of several scenes and developments explained in the final act.  Once again, there is the suggestion - albeit, a muted one - that much of what we've seen here might be taking place within the realm of creative fiction, or possibly even as an invention of its central characters.  Given the film's rather torturous production process - which has led to director Jim Sheridan and the actors Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz effectively disowning the film - it's difficult to know (with any great certainty) what the original intention might've been.  Since I'm very much a believer in evaluating the film for what it is, rather than what it isn't, I think it's best to try and look beyond the fairly implausible plot developments of the third act and focus instead on the psychological unravelling of the central character; the way the use of the plot-twist gives new layers to the presentation of events and creates a context for the initial feeling of artificiality, which is most obvious in its earlier scenes, prior to the big reveal. 

Daisy Miller [Peter Bogdanovich, 1974]:  A film about first love or love at first sight; as much about the relationship between producer/director Bogdanovich and his actress Cybill Shepherd as about the characters on-screen.  The implicit jealousy and insecurity - where the director must watch as his leading lady falls hopelessly into the arms of another man - finds some expression in this story of the upstanding gentleman Frederick Winterbourne, destroyed by love (or for love) through his unrequited courtship with the titular Daisy Miller.  In Bogdanovich's film, the character of Daisy is less a protagonist in the conventional sense than a symbol that haunts the young Winterbourne, whose unfilled passion for Miller and his concern over her reputation following the character's scandalous encounters with the suave Mr. Giovanelli, not only anchors the film, emotionally as well as narratively, but also defines it's atmosphere and approach.  Watching the film, I was strangely reminded of another work of the same era (which incidentally also featured Cybill Shepherd as the object of a character's fixation), the Scorsese- Schrader collaboration Taxi Driver (1976).  The two films couldn't be any more different in terms of their genre and sensibility, but both are nonetheless carried by the intense and very much internal performances of their respective male protagonists, where the inability to express or receive love inevitably turns to obsession and, eventually, resentment.  Looking at the film in light of its various criticisms, I can perhaps understand why Daisy Miller failed to connect with audiences at the time.  Bogdanovich's vision of the film is classical (almost old-fashioned) in its observational (and conversational) approach, while the emotional development of the film is simply too subtle (or too gentle) to create the kind of drama necessary for the viewer to feel involved in the proceedings.  It's a film as staid and as reserved as its central character, always looking, rarely engaging, which for me, wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Viewing Log / 2013 / Week Four

 

21/01/2013 - 27/01/2013

 

Celia [Ann Turner, 1989]:  With the significance of its white rabbit, precocious child protagonist and world of imagined fantasy as possible evidence of potential mental illness, the film is suggestive of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  Not so much in its storytelling approach - which is much more simple and yet somehow more complex than Carroll (as the "wonderland" of Turner's film is based very much in the actual reality of the period, making the character's movement between worlds purely psychological) - but in the tone of the film; that spirit of childhood adventure as metaphor for discovery, full of horror and imagination.  It reminded me very much of a film like The Curse of the Cat People (1944), where an evocation of a seemingly idyllic childhood is off-set by the loneliness and alienation of its central character, and where the subtle references to the horror genre are used to disguise what is effectively a sad and depressing story of a child's inability to connect with the world.  The punctuation of loss and the often disquieting tone, especially in the film's second half, are not necessarily intended to scare or disturb the audience (as in a conventional horror movie), but illustrate the impact that the world (with its prejudice and hostility) can have on a character with an over-active imagination, already left somewhat disconnected (or disenchanted) by the death of her grandmother in the very first scene.  In some respects, it's impossible not to be reminded of one of my favourite films, Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy (1997), with both of these stories sharing a similar emphasis on childhood alienation, the turbulence of the late 1950s (or early '60s for Jordan) and the intrusion of disturbing fantasy sequences that illustrate the tenuous grip on reality held by these young protagonists as their lives are slowly beset by heartache and despair.  While Jordan's film is unequivocally one of the great Irish films, Turner's captivating and emotionally complex debut must surely rank as one of the great Australian films, finding a perfect balance between sensitive character study, childhood adventure story, horror movie and social parable, where the history of the country, in particular the anti-communist sentiment of the time and the outbreak of Myxomatosis - which leads to one of the film's most heartbreaking sub-plots - both prove to be disastrous to the emotional development of this loveless little girl. 

Cars [John Lasseter & Joe Ranft, 2006]:  I suspect one of the main reasons why this film was treated with some suspicion on its initial release is not because it takes place in a world entirely populated by cars with human characteristics, but because it exposes many of the more glaring imperfections that exist at the core of even Pixar's most celebrated works.  The almost oppressive yearning for the innocence of yesteryear seems especially hollow when we take into consideration the company's continued use of new technologies.  After all, it was the peerless computer generated animation of Pixar's first success, the still hugely popular Toy Story (1995), that arguably killed off any interest contemporary audiences might have had in traditional, hand-drawn animation.  In Lasseter's world (or his ideal of it), the technology used to create these films would be seen as a distraction from the simple pleasures that make life, to him, worth living.  In Cars, the message - to slow-down and appreciate what we have while we have it; to reclaim that innocence of a bygone age when people lived for the joy of living and took pleasure, not from machines or materialistic pursuits, but from social interaction - is nullified by the existence of the film, which is itself a kind of distraction (unless we assume Lasseter is trying to have his cake and eat it too?)  Other problems, like the film's cheap stereotypes and the all-to-neat 'building block' approach to storytelling are self-evident, while the endless self-references and the cutesy in-jokes to previous Pixar projects only gives the film a feeling of over-familiarity.  Still, Cars is entertaining, for what it is, but a lot of the film feels self-consciously manufactured, almost as if the entire thing has been created to fit into a particular idea of what a Pixar movie should be.

 

Cars 2 [John Lasseter & Brad Lewis, 2011]:  Call me absurd, but not only do I consider Cars 2 superior to its less maligned (but still somewhat maligned) predecessor, I also think it's a far more imaginative and ultimately more satisfying film than Pixar's previous hit, the almost universally acclaimed Toy Story 3 (2010).  Personally, I liked the idea of framing the return of these characters as a throwback to old spy movies, with the race used simply to provide a context for its espionage-themed plot.  The filmmakers have  dropped the preachy message of the first film and embraced a full-on action/adventure story that reminded me of the best aspects of Pixar's earlier hit, The Incredibles (2004).  Like that particular film, Cars 2 is enlivened by its allusions to other movies of the same genre and a lot of the fun comes from spotting the occasional references to things like James Bond, Harry Palmer, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission: Impossible.  There are still several flaws consistent with the first film, with the appalling use of "ethnic" stereotypes unsurprisingly exacerbated by the globetrotting nature of the plot, which also isn't helped by the film's continual emphasis on the character of 'Mater' the tow-truck, probably the most grating caricature from the original film.  In the first Cars (2006), 'Mater' was presented as the worst kind of stereotypical "bumpkin" and his flaws and failings were used to derive easy laughs from an audience almost encouraged to see his simple-minded homespun "philosophising"  as typical of the innocence of people who live in smaller, isolated communities, that move too slowly for the modern world.  There's a lot of this same patronising attitude presented here, but interestingly the filmmakers also turn the joke against the characters (and in turn against the audience) by having 'Mater' eventually become conscious of these particular criticisms of his character and express an obvious sadness and disappointment at having been reduced to the butt of the joke.  This kind of complexity isn't rare for Pixar, but it is an idea that works against the breathless action and adventure of the main plot, turning the film into something more than just an entertaining spy-movie pastiche, but something almost self-aware. 

 

By Bogdanovich [Adam Hulin, 2011]:  As a career retrospective, Adam Hulin's By Bogdanovich is almost as essential as its subject's own 1971 study of the work of John Ford.  Bogdanovich, as interviewee, is simply a great raconteur, full of stories and insights into Hollywood and the business of making films.  As a subject, he's candid, reflective, not afraid to namedrop and just about loquacious enough to hold the interest of the viewer for the entirety of this feature-length work.  He is also refreshingly self-deprecating, acknowledging his failings on a personal as well as professional level, and generally shedding some light onto his process as a filmmaker, his influences and the often tragic circumstances that have defined the course of his career.  For someone of my age, born in the 1980s, it's perhaps difficult to remember a time when Bogdanovich was one of the leaders of a generation of filmmakers that came to prominence during the 1970s.  While the names of his contemporaries, such as Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese have endured, Bogdanovich seems to have been forgotten by the culture that once accepted him as a legitimate talent, despite the remarkable back-to-back successes of films like The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973).  I suppose, to put it into a modern-day perspective, we might think of someone like M. Night Shyamalan (though both filmmakers would reject the comparison); a director initially celebrated for a particular kind of film, only to be denigrated for the same kind of film only a few years later.  Watching this two-hour-plus interview conducted by Hulin, I found myself growing ever more sympathetic towards Bogdanovich, who seems to have been a victim of his early success and the subsequent weight of critical expectation.  The reflections here have definitely led me to re-evaluate the classics, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, while also inspiring me to track down some of Bogdanovich's other, less popular films, such as Daisy Miller (1974), Nickelodeon (1976), Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981).