The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five

Delirium (aka Photos of Gioia) [Lamberto Bava, 1987]:

Watched: Jun 17, 2019

The film is tasteless, without question. An apparently shallow slasher movie full of the usual scenes of women in peril, knife-wielding assailants and over-the-top twists. However, it contains so many elements that I enjoy in movies that I couldn't help being held captive by the experience of it. The giallo sub-genre is one that I have a great affinity for. Even when the films are flawed or middling, I can usually find something in the subtext or execution that elevates the whole experience. In Delirium, the setting, the world of publishing and glamour photography, gives the film a context to explore ideas relating to voyeurism, objectification, desire, obsession and representation. Self-reflexive themes that have characterized the best giallo movies since Dario Argento's landmark debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), and its debts to both Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock and Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni. Delirium isn't as great as those earlier works, but it does at least attempt to provide a meta-commentary on the world of the film. Its emphasis on surfaces and appearance, its world of privilege and affluence and its luxury villas hidden behind the gated suburbs of Rome, make sense on a narrative and presentational level, but they also underpin what the genre is about; chiefly, style and excess. While not as cohesive or coherent as Bava's earlier film, the superior but controversial A Blade in the Dark (1983), nor as shamelessly pulpy as his no-less self-reflexive Demons (1985) and its sequel Demons 2 (1986), Delirium satisfied my expectations. The atmosphere throughout was redolent, the plot random but engaging, and the set-pieces genuinely thrilling.

The Blackout [Abel Ferrara, 1997]:

Watched: Jun 25, 2019

Like many of the films of Abel Ferrara, The Blackout is intentionally messy. Ferrara isn't a filmmaker looking for perfection. He doesn't want the edges to be neat, but frayed and disheveled, allowing the whole thing to unravel and leave the audience feeling confused and disoriented. His protagonists are frequently intoxicated, high on booze and pills, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, speeding on whizz, and the experience of the film becomes as dizzying for the audience as it is for the characters on screen. Scenes lurch and stumble into one another as if assembled at random, or as if significant events have been removed and reshuffled. Characters come and go in a haze, rambling, incoherent, revealing everything and nothing, becoming guides to a neon-lit underworld of drugs and illicit sex, or becoming victims, willing or otherwise. To the casual observer the experience can become alienating, as the audience is thrown into scenes without context, unable to relate to its characters, decadent, violent and unlikable as they often appear. However, there's a method to Ferrara's madness, as The Blackout is a film that's felt as much as it is viewed. Like the director's later film, the vaguely futurist and entirely prescient William Gibson cyberpunk adaptation New Rose Hotel (1999), The Blackout is a hermetic, claustrophobic film about a character effectively imprisoned by their own memories and attempting to piece together the wreckage of their own existence through an investigation into these memories. Ferrara again ties the psychology of the character into a dissertation on images; with Dennis Hopper's mad videographer becoming a kind of Mephisto figure, the devil's agent who calls in the debt owed by the central character's burnt-out Faust. That the protagonist is an actor is significant as the film becomes about the nature of cinema – acting and reacting, faking things that can't be felt – and where the nightclub central to the narrative becomes both a subconscious space and stand-in for hell; the Inferno, after Dante, as a video installation.

A Master Builder [Jonathan Demme, 2013]:

Watched: Jun 29, 2019

Having mastered the live concert film with the legendary Stop Making Sense (1985) and the spoken-word monologue with Swimming to Cambodia (1987), director Jonathan Demme turns his attention to another theatrical standard, the "filmed play." This is how many writers have categorized Demme's A Master Builder, though in truth the term is contentious and incorrect. While the film, a somewhat modernized adaptation, or interpretation, of Henrik Ibsen's 1892 play "The Master Builder", maintains the claustrophobic setting, the heightened or exaggerated performance style, and the feeling of unreality created by the engagement of intentional artificiality that defines the theatre-going experience, the film is not a recording of a live event, but a motion picture that has been shaped and directed for cinematic engagement. The composition of shots, the choice of lens, the use of close-ups and subtle effects work, the changes in lighting and the associations created by the cutting between scenes and images, are done with purpose and intent. That the film is defined by sequences of characters sitting or pacing around sparsely furnished rooms speaking in long, poetic but expositional dialogues doesn't make the film "uncinematic."  The notion that the first rule of cinema is "show don't tell" is horse shit, as in the cinema even the telling is shown. What is cinematic and brilliant about A Master Builder is the power of performance; actors expressing, reacting; telling a story with their voices and facial expressions writ large across the screen. Then merge with the power of the written word as translated into spoken dialog; invested with emotion and room enough for the things left unsaid. These virtues become the film's "special effects." The spectacle of human drama as presented here is more thrilling and innately cinematic than any gritty street drama or act of CGI exhibitionism currently seen at festivals or award shows.

Gerry [Gus Van Sant, 2002]:

Watched: Jul 03, 2019

Every so often, director Gus Van Sant makes a movie that convinces me he's the best American filmmaker of his generation. Gerry is one such film. Dispensing with the conventions of plot, backstory and characterisation, Gerry is a work that finds drama in a changing landscape; the physiognomy of the rocks, the desert sands and the vast oceans of sky, each interceding on behalf of actors that are made small and insignificant by the world around them. In conventional terms, its plot can be surmised in a single sentence: having driven to a remote part of the desert, two friends set-off to explore a wilderness trail by foot, get lost, and attempting to find their way back to civilization, go off the rails. But the experience of the film goes much deeper than this brief summation would suggest. Taking influence from Chantal Akerman's "slow-cinema" masterwork Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and the then-recent films of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, such as Sátántangó (1994), Gerry is a masterpiece of mood and meditation. While actors and co-writers Matt Damon and Casey Affleck do well with their minimal performances, their blank state and restrained emotions suggesting the quiet resolve of two people facing but refusing to accept the hopelessness of their situation, it's nonetheless a film where the prolonged movement of actors wandering aimless towards oblivion, becomes more thrilling than an action set-piece. The trance-like nature of the actors on-screen is in synch with the endlessly drifting camera, the spare soundtrack with its repetitive rhythm of footsteps on dry sand, of deep breaths and the whistling wind. It creates the impression of something almost ambient; a figurative black mirror that the audience experiences but is then free to project onto it their own thoughts, feelings and motivations.

The Belly of an Architect [Peter Greenaway, 1987]:

Watched: Aug 04, 2019

The general perception of the work of Peter Greenaway is of something rigorous and academic; something that's devoid of the warmth and emotion that audiences anticipate when they sit down to watch a film. For many audiences and critics, the cinema, as a medium, has become synonymous with escapism and "storytelling." For Greenaway, who once said the avant-garde visual installations of filmmaker Bill Viola were "worth ten Martin Scorsese's", and who ranks the mysterious Last Year at Marienbad (1961) as his favourite film, the cinema is something else. Structured around lists and numerical strategies, with visual guides and puns woven into the ornate mise-en-scène, the films reduce characters to intellectual or political representations, and position them around a kind of heavily manipulative and deconstructive theatre of cruelty that makes the viewing audience complicit in events. While this can be challenging and even alienating for viewers, I've always felt Greenaway's best films do contain an element of human engagement and identification. They may be ironic in presentation and allergic to notions of melodrama, but they still engage with recognizable themes of guilt, grief, pride and failure. This is certainly true of the film in question, which strikes me as Greenaway's most human film, as well as his most moving. Anchoring his usual decorative stylisation to a genuine character study, the film is less engaged in his usual Brechtian distancing and ironic detachment. Instead, it becomes a study in contrasts between cultures, the past and the present, but more significantly the contrast between the permanence of art and architecture against the fragility and finality of the human body.

A Year in Film (Part Two)

A Viewing List for Twenty-Fifteen

Marie Antoinette [Sofia Coppola, 2006]:

Coppola transposes her own story - that of a spoiled little rich girl thrust into a position of public notoriety that she cannot comprehend - to that of the title character. In doing so, she exaggerates the naiveté of the real-life historical figure; creating in the process a more piercing feminist commentary on the way young women are often made to suffer for the sins of the husband/father/brother/patriarch; picked on and destroyed (in the case of Marie), not for her own inherently adolescent "decadence", but for the poor decisions of her husband and the generally restricting environment that she's forced to endure. In the title role, Dunst gives one of the great performances of the last decade; maybe even the current century. Unlike so many of the thankless roles she's chosen to play, Marie Antoinette sees her as both natural and radiant; her interpretation of the character arc both subtle and multifaceted; the implications of her final scenes - including the dreamlike moment in which she offers herself up to the braying mob - are haunting and emotionally distressing. Likewise, Coppola's filmmaking is sensitive, full of passion and energy; less a Merchant-Ivory chocolate box piece than a film infused with the influences of Derek Jarman and Sally Potter; specifically films like Edward II (1991) and Orlando (1992). An anarchic, post-modern, but also romantic and painterly approach that like Pasolini finds the past through a reflection of the present (and vice-versa) in order to humanise the central character and to create a political connection to the modern world.

Pigsty [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969]:

Pasolini's most impenetrable film is also his most beguiling. The work of a true visionary, Pigsty is a film that blends hallucinatory scenes of prehistoric violence with the extended monologues of the bourgeoisie; creating a juxtaposition that suggests parallels between the past and the present, where the relationship between the two posit the idea of history - and more specifically, persecution, exploitation and corruption, essentially referring to issues of class and entitlement - repeating itself endlessly until oblivion. While difficult to know the true intentions of the filmmaker, the suggestion "a story about pigs to tell a story about Jews" - combined with the overlapping of the two conflicting stories and their different presentations of violence and brutality (physical vs. psychological) - hints at the same anti-fascist polemic of the author's later, more infamous provocation piece, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).

Force Majeure [Ruben Östlund, 2014]:

Östlund direction of the film suggests a genial, less hectoring Michael Haneke; the approach falling somewhere between The Seventh Continent (1989) and Caché (2005) by way of a European sitcom. Like Haneke, the filmmaking style is studied and controlled; rigid, but not inflexible. Colour, composition, editing and sound are impeccable, establishing a feeling of antiseptic middle-class anxiety; an empty "going-through-the-motions" depiction of modern life comparable to a film like Archipelago (2010) by Joanna Hogg. Here, the popular and often contentious "comedy of embarrassment" trope beloved by European filmmakers - from Bertrand Blier to Mike Leigh, etc - merges with the spirit of Buñuel; eviscerating the bumbling immaturity of its characters and their self-created problems of first-world malaise, without becoming too nasty or nihilistic.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya [Isao Takahata, 2013]:

  

For the first time since Michael Mann's derided but exhilarating Public Enemies (2009), the experience of a film and its filmmaking suggested an almost reinvention of the very language of cinema. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but the purely sensory experience of seeing these images explode within the rich cavernous blackness of the cinema space was like moving towards something almost elemental; the imagery seemingly transforming itself from frame to frame, at once ancient and yet entirely modern. It is a style that falls somewhere between an image of a primitive cave painting brought to life by the light of a flickering flame, the 'late' formalist works of Pablo Picasso that embraced unfinished naiveté and the most current and sophisticated style of contemporary animation, which is beyond anything I've ever seen. Although the fantasy plotline is nothing remarkable (and nitpickers might note that the ending is an almost shot-for-shot copy of the final scene from Shyamalan's despised Lady in the Water, repeated here to great acclaim), the actual presentation of the image is beyond words! The moments where the film seemingly breaks free from reality, becomes entwined with the emotions of its central character and seems to soar or disintegrate before our very eyes, is both astounding and unique.

Ex Machina [Alex Garland, 2015]:

1. Part throwback to "mad-scientist" monster movies; with James Whale's classic 1931 variation on the Frankenstein story providing an obvious template. 2. Part 'Bergmanesque' psychodrama; where the intense scenes of two characters enacting a private crisis of existentialism on a secluded island could bring to mind everything from the Hour of the Wolf (1968) to The Passion (1969). Part 'Soderberghian' meditation on style and mood; the cold and clinical design, modernist spacing, intimacy of its performances and minimalist composition of actors and objects within a 2.35:1 frame is as much reminiscent in its filmmaking as the underrated Solaris (2002) as anything by the more frequently associated Stanley Kubrick. As contemplation of the line between man and machine, between consciousness and unconsciousness, Garland's film is up there with the best of Mamoru Oshii, such as Avalon (2001) and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (2004), as well as standards of the genre, such as Blade Runner (1982) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). A work connected to the concerns of the modern world, but propelled by themes that are timeless and emotionally germane.

Accattone [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961]:

At the time I couldn't find the words for this one; I'm not sure I can find them now! Suffice to say that a whole sphere of world cinema begins (and ends) with the film in question; more so perhaps than the supposed year zero of Godard's endlessly lauded new wave defining À bout de souffle (1960) (though JLG is still eternal). So many of the scenes, images, aesthetics, preoccupations and concerns presented in Pasolini's film can be found in the work of cinema's great modern masters; everyone from Coppola to Scorsese, Fassbinder to Jarman, Monteiro to Denis, Farrara to Haynes, etc have borrowed from Accattone and its singular approach to character, theme and setting As a first-time filmmaker, Pasolini emerged full formed; his whole notion of cinema as a means of reflecting the past by way of the present (and vice versa) finds an expression in the way he depicts the central character as both lout and loser, but at the same time imbuing him with the kind of spiritual conviction, sympathy and vainglorious nobility of a martyred saint. As such, the methodology of Pasolini, which so often is defined, misleadingly, as "neo-realism", places the author far closer to the spirit of a man like Caravaggio than any of his cinematic peers; an artist who found in the bodies and faces of his local thugs, destitute crones and harlots the most sacred of religious (and later historical) icons.

The Lone Ranger [Gore Verbinski, 2013]:

Pitched somewhere between the pure cinematic spectacle of The General (1926) and the political 'kill your heroes' cynicism of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Verbinski's film wrestle with complex themes, from genocide and corruption, to betrayal and unrequited love, all the while fashioning a big-budget action adventure extravaganza that far eclipses the simple pleasures of his earlier, more successful Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Placing his scenes of wily escapism within a context of inglorious American history (brought to life for a child who knows only of its "heroes" while the reality is something far more cruel) the results are both thrilling and affecting. A rare but perfect example of a Hollywood blockbuster committed to taking risks.

Clouds of Sils Maria [Olivier Assayas, 2014]:

Throughout the film, several layers of interpretation become intertwined. First, a deconstruction of the psychosexual politics of Fassbinder's early masterpiece The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972); second, a Persona (1966)-like meta-drama about the difficult relationship between women (a stricken actress and her aide); third, a reiteration of Irma Vep (1996) and its playful "anti-Hollywood" rhetoric (replete with faux comic book style blockbuster-sequence occurring during the second act); fourth, a film about the "old wave" being replaced by the new (and through this a personal commentary on Assayas's own cinema); fifth, a film about filmmaking (with several personifications of the director); and finally, a documentation of a natural phenomenon (in this instance 'the maloja snake') that becomes an onscreen miracle analogous to the flickering flame of Tarkovsky's Nostalgia (1983) or the final sequence of Eric Rohmer's The Green Ray (1986). A masterpiece.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company [Peter Greenaway, 2012]:

This dizzying mix of multi-media phantasmagoria - à la Prospero's Books (1991) - and Brechtian dissertation on the nature of voyeurism - recalling remnants of The Baby of Mâcon (1993) - is also Greenaway's clearest and perhaps most personal statement on the nature of cinema and its roots in both picture-making and performance. With this in mind, the character of Hendrik Goltzius, the German-born Dutch painter, printmaker and engraver at the heart of this tale of intrigue and expression, becomes a prototypical-filmmaker, in much the same way that Rembrandt did in the earlier and no less fascinating Nightwatching (2007). He's also a potential surrogate for Greenaway himself, reinforcing the film's personal, crypto-autobiographical elements, wherein the character is presented as an artist struggling against financiers, critics and the scourge of censorship to achieve a vision every bit as daring, creative and revelatory as the film itself.

Medea [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969]:

In the title role, Maria Callas becomes a full force gale; her performance ably demonstrating a level of passion and pain that seems beyond conviction. As she stands rebellious in the flames of her wounded love, she defies the deceitful Jason (and by extension, the apathy of the viewing audience): "it's useless; nothing is possible now!" As a final epitaph, it captures both the sadness of a woman broken and betrayed by circumstances beyond her own control, as well as the overwhelming disappointment of the filmmaker when confronted by the corruption of a modern world closed off to the magic of myth and legend. As ever, Pasolini's depiction of pre-history is never about ornamentation or simply providing a backdrop to a dramatisation; his presentation of the past is more a reflection of the present. The vibrancy, the atmosphere, the jarring culture shock, each evoke a feeling of authenticity; it's as if Pasolini and his crew had actually ventured back in time to a particular period to record it with their handheld camera. However, this feeling of immersion is to ignore the intentional discrepancies, anachronisms and stylisations, all of which are intended to bring the story of Medea out of the world of Greek myth and into the Europe of the 1960s and beyond. The sad tale of Medea's exploitation and destruction by love, jealousy, political deceit and the cruel patriarchy (either as a character, or as a surrogate for something else), is one that continues to reverberate throughout history and in countless different guises. A powerful experience.

A Year in Film (Part Four)

A Viewing List for Twenty-Fifteen

The Visit [M. Night Shyamalan, 2015]:

1. A scatological lampoon of dysfunctional domesticity; the gross-out depiction of a rural Americana as seen through the demented eyes of Nana and Pop-Pop recalling the uncomfortable suburban nightmares of Todd Solondz and (occasionally) David Lynch. 2. A mock-documentary fairy story that deconstructs its own conventions through the interaction between characters, further draped in the guise of a Joe Dante style children's survival drama, where serious things are stated without the need to become serious. 3. A semi-autobiographical 'film about filmmaking', in which the director splits his auteurist "id" between his two adolescent characters; the quiet and sensitive Becca, who sees poetry in the landscape and aims to make a film that will heal parental wounds, and the brash and narcissistic Tyler, who only hopes to see his name trending through social media. 5. A film about forgiveness of the "self" and Shyamalan's first masterpiece in (nearly) a decade.

Far from the Madding Crowd [John Schlesinger, 1967]:

Much of what makes the film astounding is not its translation of Hardy's text into cinematic narrative, but the depiction of a rural lifestyle that throbs with a pastoral, primal beauty. Scenes on the farm and the interactions between characters - either eating, drinking or enjoying the simple pleasures of life, the daily grind - anticipates something along the lines of Pasolini and his bucolic trilogy of life; more specifically, his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales (1972). Far greater than any conventional literary melodrama adapted from a similar source, Schlesinger's film becomes a hymn to the splendour of nature, colour and the drama of the changing light.

The Steel Helmet [Samuel Fuller, 1951]:

Few films on the subject of war are so brazen in their condemnation of the futility of conflict and all of its inherent prejudices, while still managing to pay tribute to the heroism of those that take part. Fuller's film might not compete with the spectacle of more recent efforts, like Saving Private Ryan (1998), nor the subversive satirical bite of a masterpiece like the Vietnam-eta Full Metal Jacket (1987), but the depth of its ideas and the sensitivity of its intentions are well beyond the level of contemporary example.

Cover Girl [Charles Vidor, 1944]:

A film about objectification, desire, ambition, regret, jealousy, the thrill of performance; about doing something for the love of it and not just for the fame. On-stage drama spills out behind the scenes; a sense of joie de vivre envelopes both audience and protagonists, finding hope in the hopelessness, beauty in tragedy; traces of Cocteau (as Kelly breaks the mirrored illusion of the surrogate screen to free himself of the "id") and pure romanticism lead to a visual spectacle far greater than anything in today's computer generated blockbusters. If nothing else, Cover Girl illustrates the lost art of "performance" as its own special effect.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story [Peter Greenaway, 2003]:

Every sound and image is presented as a series of layered reflections; depicting the surface (the conventional narrative, which is enthralling throughout) but also the subtext, and a deconstruction of the form. Actual history is interwoven with fact and fiction, fantasy and autobiography, as well as Greenaway's continual obsession with the various ephemera of lists and numerical miscellanea, all adding up to a vast but never alienating compendium of sights, sounds and cinematic textures all working in service of a funny and fascinating tale. The film, even without the benefit of its concluding chapters, Vaux to the Sea (2004) and From Sark to the Finish (2004), is nothing less than a total reinvention of the language of cinema.

Hard to Be a God [Aleksey German, 2013]:

Falling somewhere between the immersive, mystical meditations of filmmakers like Tarkovsky and Tarr and the surreal, allegorical weirdness of Boorman's similarly satirical Zardoz (1974), German's long in production passion project is a film effectively about the nature of existence. More specifically, about the propensity of the species to find new and ever more cruel ways of decimating itself throughout the course history, only to then reassemble itself and repeat the same mistakes. Unsurprisingly, this is a unique, one of a kind film. At once frustrating, disorienting, profound, silly, revolting, even sublime! As director, German denies the audience everything one might find necessary to understanding his drama or identifying with his central characters; forgoing even the most basic of exposition and even allowing important narrative developments occur off-screen. Conventional ratings seem irrelevant here; love it or hate it, this is a truly immersive and original work; once seen, never forgotten.

Walker [Alex Cox, 1987]:

Anchored by a powerful performance from Ed Harris in the title role, director Cox's anarchic and imaginative political commentary on U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua has lost none of its satirical significance or relevance in the era directly following the Iraq war. Much of the film's blending of slow-mo Peckinpah inspired carnage and in-depth social discourse could be seen as precursor to a film like Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), where post-modern lifts from cult genre cinema are used to create a self-reflexive parallel between the past and the present/fiction and reality/etc, but all delivered with a far greater level of intelligence, integrity and scope.

Grizzly Man [Werner Herzog, 2005]:

In the tragic tale of Timothy Treadwell, Herzog finds his archetypical "hero"; a man like Aguirre, Woyzeck or Kaspar Hauser driven mad by the modern world; losing himself a fabled landscape that seems as if disconnected from time; his insanity propelling him on a fated journey towards self-destruction. Herzog's innate respect for Treadwell and his refusal to condemn the man's actions or the course of events ensure that the film works more as a found-footage variant on the filmmaker's usual themes of man's place in the wilderness, survival and the nature of the "outsider" within society (as illustrated in the titles above) and less as conventional documentary intended to educate, critique or surmise. A fascinating and frequently heart-breaking look into the fragility of the human psyche and the mysteries of the natural world.

Pistol Opera [Seijun Suzuki, 2001]:

Suzuki is one of the cinema's preeminent formalists; a filmmaker capable of elevating even the most hackneyed of B-movie narratives to a level of audio-visual art. Here he turns in a psychedelic Rorschach test that could have been described as "modern Godard remaking '60s Godard" (to establish a prevailing if limiting cinematic shorthand), if only for the fact that the film itself is pure Suzuki; in short, a loose remake of the filmmaker's own new wave masterpiece Branded to Kill (1967). However, like late-period Godard, Pistol Opera is a work of genuine modern art; a movie where light, colour, sound, editing, design and composition are as essential to the expression as its baffling and labyrinthine plot.

Unforgiven [Clint Eastwood, 1992]:

The final statement of Eastwood as orator of the American west. His character here is like a cross-section of all his past protagonists, creating a sense of the concluding chapter of a career-long journey, from innocence into the abyss. From Rowdy Yates to "the man with no name", from Josey Wales to the Pale Rider, this is a man who has committed the worst violence and atrocity and found himself transformed by it; a man striving to find peace but gradually being pulled back into the brutality and the blood-shed. At its core, the film is a meditation on violence and revenge; the morality of murder as a cold-blooded act committed by cold-blooded people, regardless of how valiantly one might attempt to justify it as an act of vengeance. The morality of trying to maintain a semblance of "life" in the face of a death, and violence that leaves scars, both physical and mental. A monumental film.

Top Ten: 1996

Ranking the Decades

A Year in Film List + Image Gallery

A Moment of Innocence [Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996]:

A Summer's Tale [Éric Rohmer, 1996]:

Irma Vep [Olivier Assayas, 1996]:

Brigands-Chapter VII [Otar Iosseliani, 1996]:

Drifting Clouds [Aki Kaurismäki, 1996]:

Mission: Impossible [Brian De Palma, 1996]:

Don't Look Up (aka Ghost Actress) [Hideo Nakata, 1996]:

Karaoke / Cold Lazarus [Renny Rye, 1996]:

For Ever Mozart [Jean-Luc Godard, 1996]:

The Pillow Book [Peter Greenaway, 1996]:

Above, arranged in order of preference, my personal top-ten best films of the year (from what I've seen), accurate at the time of writing.

Intervals

A film nervous with the anticipation of something?

Though the something never arrives, at least not the something one might expect from the grating, almost metronome-like soundtrack, or the framing of shots, which imply The Third Man (1949) via shades of early Godard, or some similar tale of espionage suggested by these street level observations and the European locale. The amplification of the 'dubbed' sounds, at least initially, seem to play against a natural expectation for a certain kind of drama, or 'pay-off', in the dramatic sense. The ticking sound, like a ticking clock, counting the minutes, or a time bomb, like with Hitchcock, from Sabotage (1936) to Saboteur (1942). However, the dramatic reveal that we're anticipating turns out to be something else, unrelated, but no less remarkable! An explosion, not in the sense of a terrorist attack, but as an actual emotional revelation felt within the experimentation of the form.

The creative associations that are forced upon the work by this juxtaposition of sound and image create a sense of drama that would otherwise be nonexistent, and this, effectively, is the point.

Like Greenaway's later film, The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), this is a film about the relationship between the viewer and the work itself. While the later film would employ a dramatic device made famous by Antonioni in his masterpiece Blow-Up (1966) - in which an artist creates a work that reveals, on closer inspection, the clues to a terrible crime - the approach to this particular film is less narrative, more subjective. Here the audience adopts the role of the Draughtsman, or the unnamed photographer of Antonioni's film. However, unlike the two characters there, we (the individual spectator) haven't created this work, but are being invited by the filmmaker to look at it, to study these shots, these recurring moments in time, with the same restlessness, the same obsessive curiosity. At first it all seems fairly mundane; geriatrics and hesitant children shuffling through near-vacant streets. Without the soundtrack in place, these images would seem uneventful, perhaps even routine.

Intervals directed by Peter Greenaway, 1968-1973:

In the act of closely examining these shots, the audience begins to project their own ideas and interpretations onto them, drawing consciously or unconsciously on a familiarity with the machinations of a genre (or the general conventional presentation of cinema) to invent their own scenarios, to justify Greenaway's experiment in an attempt to anchor it to some kind of recognisable context or theme. This, as an experiment, is directly related to the specific way that we, as audiences, experience films; an experiment in the art of looking and seeing, but also in allowing the film (and the filmmaker) to manipulate the way we receive information through the combination of sound and image.

In the majority of films this is hidden; part of the great magic act that filmmakers use to dazzle their audience, creating moments of comedy and drama, terror and suspense from a seemingly simple cutting between scenes, characters and situations. With Intervals, Greenaway wants to expose the lie, expose the tricks that these storytellers use to manipulate the emotions of an audience. Here these cyclical street-scenes (presented as the 'Intervals' of the title) that repeat several times, each time with subtle variations on the soundtrack, are intended to push the viewer into analysing their own subjective interpretation of the images, and what these images might suggest.

While the earlier experiments with sound create an atmosphere of tension or suspense - something slightly ominous or threatening, again, like a ticking clock, counting down the seconds to some actual devastation - the wave of orchestration that breaks and pulls the images back from the brink of catastrophe (and back towards something more conventionally cinematic, in the Hollywood sense), creates a feeling in the viewer of our senses or perceptions being altered, subtly or not so subtly, by the experimentation with the form. Here we have the same images, the same streets and people appearing again and again, and yet our interpretation of these events is transformed, significantly, by the specific choice of soundtrack. This, in a very Greenaway stroke, is the essence of cinema at its most creative and unashamedly deceptive.

A Zed & Two Noughts

An obsession with symmetry - of repetition and mirror images; of a creation and creativity suggested by the continual contrast between the theories of Charles Darwin and the artistic expressions of Johannes Vermeer - and in the recurring juxtapositions between light and dark, loss and longing, composition (visual) and decomposition (physical), to tell an engaging and often curiously appealing story about the mindset of bereavement and the ultimate unification that resonates on a level far more personal and emotionally rewarding than many viewers might expect given the director's sometimes justifiable reputation for cold, intellectual dissertation.

On the surface, the film presents its "two noughts" of the title as Oswald and Oliver Deuce (played by the real-life siblings Brian and Eric Deacon) - a literal expression of the "double-oh two" as alluded to in the reverse shot of the film's title, "OO2" (OOZ/e), etc - who offer yet another representation of the theme of twinship that will reoccur throughout. We also have the theme of anthropological study, as we examine these characters as one single facet of a much larger tapestry of ideas and ruminations that Greenaway is using in order to explore the various themes behind the film; while the characters themselves, in turn, examine the objects within the film - such as the various decomposing organisms that hold the secrets to life after death - as well as their own thoughts and feelings brought on by the deaths of their respective wives in a horribly macabre road accident.

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

From this, the actual presentation of the film, including its title, A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), works on several levels of interpretation; as Greenaway cleverly explores elements of meta-fiction, self-reference and intertextuality to continually construct, deconstruct and eventually reconstruct the film in a deliberate approach that seems designed to take apart the very basic thematic components of the narrative in order to draw a greater attention to their own manufactured artificiality. This involves the natural juxtaposition between his flat, tableau vivant compositions, and the bounding, highly intricate score by the always inventive Michael Nyman, which here, as indeed in the majority of these early Nyman-Greenaway collaborations, enlivens the film in a rhythmic sense, without losing that notion of the repetitive, highly formal approach to experimentation.

This particular combination, or contrast, as one contradictory element is placed against the other, can also be found in the director's bold use of narration (or the appropriation of such). In a brilliant stroke, Greenaway rejects the spoken text as literary mode as it is most often used in the cinema - brilliantly, for instance in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) or Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) - and instead takes the audio directly from the groundbreaking television series Life on Earth (first broadcast, 16th January, 1979) - in which the famed naturalist and documentary-maker Sir David Attenborough travelled the globe in order to trace the evolution of life on this planet. As a result, the use of narration, particularly in such a knowingly ironic way, seems designed to turn the events of the film into some kind of postmodernist post-mortem study; in which the characters become subjects, watched with a detached scientific curiosity, in a clear attempt to place them within a much larger and more intricate sphere of existence beyond our natural comprehension.

This dry, scientific investigatory device is again contrasted by the opulent production design of the film and the lush cinematography of Alain Resnais's frequent collaborator Sacha Vierny; as he and Greenaway experiment (primarily) with various film-lighting sources, including (but not limited to) bright fluorescents, flashlights, car headlamps, sodium bulbs, television monitors and, in one particular sequence, the reflections of an artificial rainbow.

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

These techniques are mostly used in an attempt to add a separate layer of interpretation to the compositions; which naturally, given the secondary themes explored within the film, draw on the presentation of the twenty-six featured paintings of the aforementioned Vermeer. It also ties in nicely with Greenaway's own interests in visual symmetry, twin ship and the interplay between light and dark (all of which relates explicitly to the themes and ideas developed within the script itself). There are also further obsessions with the number 26 and how it relates to the (English-language) Alphabet - which is recited throughout by a character as part of a game that is used to list the names of various zoo animals - as well as the twenty-six ways of lighting a scene, as previously alluded to.

As a result of this onslaught of onscreen information, it could be beneficial (either before or after seeing the film) to read up on the working life of the Dutch-born Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer; one of the central influences on the film and its aesthetic presentation. Throughout the film, Greenaway makes cryptic references to Vermeer's life and work, including his marriage to Catherina Bolenes and the existence of the infamous art-forger Han van Meegeren, as well as designing aspects of the film to match the actual interiors of Vermeer's own studio in Delft (or at least as it appears in his work). In fact, so fastidious was Greenaway in his attention to detail that he even made sure that the floor-tiling was smudged and slightly skewed in order to perfectly match the floors in Vermeer's own work - case in point, The Concert (Musicerend trio, 1664); one particularly good example of the "x-marks the spot" type effect.

The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, 1664:


A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

[The two brothers, identified by their positioning beneath the Vermeer paintings, The Geographer and The Astronomer (1668/69), discuss their plans with the film's own faker (and a possible model for the director), Van Meegeren]

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

[A facsimile of Vermeer's masterpiece The Art of Painting (1666), with the physical model taken from his later piece, The Girl with a Red Hat (1668) being brought in to portray Catherina Bolenes, though here exposing her pubic hair in one of Greenaway's many audacious examples of artistic deconstruction]

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

The film also explores various ideas lifted from the theories of Desmond Morris, the author of the books The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (1967) and The Human Zoo (1969); the particular adaptation of which can be seen in the character of Venus de Milo (Frances Barber) - who's eroticised nature and bestial urges find expression behind the barred gates of the Rotterdam Zoo - and in the odd relationship between Alba Bewick (Andréa Ferréol) and Felipe Arc-en-Ciel (Wold Kahler), who find themselves both without legs (symmetry/two noughts/e-t-c) and considering a romantic liaison, given the fact that they've essentially become an equivalent species.

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

["In the land of the legless the one-legged woman is queen" - Alba Bewick]

Naturally, there are the usual abstractions and games that Greenaway weaves into the drama, as well as the somewhat unconventional approach to the casting of the film; with the classically trained Joss Ackland appearing alongside the vulgar comedian Jim Davidson; the untrained child-actor Agnés Brulet alongside familiar television actor Geoffrey Palmer; and the lead casting of brothers Brian and Eric Deacon, playing twins, but actually born a few years apart. All of these devises are further examples of Greenaway's deconstruction of the preconceptions that many viewers might have in approaching a film that toys with the themes of loss and dislocation.

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

[Presentations of twinship: Oswald and Oliver bind themselves together using the tape that littered the crash-site where the car, driven by Alba, containing their wives, careened off the road and into a striped black and white lamppost; while below, the mise-en-scene of Greenaway and Vierny conspires to tear them apart]

A Zed & Two Noughts directed by Peter Greenaway, 1985:

As ever with Greenaway's work, there will be many who see it as an empty self-indulgence, or worse, pretentious self-satisfaction - as the allusions to art and creation are woven into a storyline with numerous references to science and evolution, all of which is used to foreground a very modest, almost melodramatic narrative about these two brothers reunited through grief. However, even if you cannot accept the idiosyncratic twists or deliberately deconstructive moments that are often at the forefront of Greenaway's creative intentions, there is simply no denying the enormous filmmaking ability that is demonstrated by the use of location and production design, the masterful shot compositions, the extraordinary use of sound and music and the sheer weight of ideas that the filmmaker is able to seamlessly layer into the proceedings; offering the usual esoteric, essayist predilections as the characters ponder and pontificate, and yet still managing to anchor the film to the obsessions and desires at the heart of these characters lives.

All of these various factors and ideas are brought together to tell the central story of the film, which in a precursor to the later film 8 ½ Women (1999), deals with the notions of grief and bereavement and how these various characters deal with such devastation; retreating into themselves and into one another to reclaim that connection to the world that has since been severed. Again, if we disregard Greenaway's intellectual experiments and visual eccentricities, the film can easily be approached as a tragic if somewhat reserved story about the collapse of these two related characters following the loss of their beloved partners, and of the eventual descent into both regression and obsession that is perfectly accompanied by the stunning mise-en-scene.