Twelve
in Twenty-Twelve
This is not a list of films
released in 2012, but more of a scrapbook of my experiences as a viewer during
the course of the last twelve months.
It's an idea that I've wanted to try out for every year of the blog's
existence, but for whatever reason, never committed to put pen to paper.
In all honesty, 2012 has
been a truly terrible year for me and I'll be glad to see the back of it. For related reasons, it's also been the year
that I watched more films than any other.
30 to 40 films a month was the average, including re-watches of old
favourites or just films that I hadn't seen for several years. As a result, a full breakdown of everything seen
would be impossible, so instead, I'd like to use this space to recommend to you
the twelve films that made life during the last twelve months just a little bit
more bearable.
The twelve films will be
broken down into three categories. The
bulk of this post will focus on 'Ten Masterpieces of the Supreme Kind', in
which I list the ten films first watched in 2012 that should stand,
shoulder-to-shoulder, with the likes of Battleship Potemkin (1925), L'Atalante
(1934), Ordet (1955), The Mother and the Whore (1973) and Notre Musique (2004)
; in other words, the greatest films ever made!
In the second category, 'Faraway, So Close', I write a short note on
just one film I saw in 2012 that came close to the absolute genius of the
previous ten, but for some reason known only to myself, fell slightly short of
such greatness. Finally, 'The
Resurrected', in which I talk about a film that has most benefited from a
recent re-watch and subsequent re-appraisal.
Really, I would have liked
to have extended this list to a full top-twenty. However, since the writing of the text
eventually needed a full week to compose, I've decided to leave it as it is. I may return to the other eight titles in a
future post, possibly titled: more from the year that was. But for now, and without further ado...
Ten
Masterpieces of the Supreme Kind
As
Bodas de Deus [João César Monteiro, 1999]:
I watched this film on the
28th of November, 2012. I first
discovered the work of João César Monteiro while browsing YouTube videos, circa
2010. There I found full-length versions
of his films Veredas (1978) and Silvestre (1982). The two films were unlike anything else I'd
ever seen, though one could perhaps perceive the influence of Rohmer's atypical
(for him) historical features, The Marquise of O... (1976) and Perceval le
Gallois (1978), with just a touch of the artifice and folklore of the fellow Portuguese
filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira. I was
immediately hooked on Monteiro's approach, his imagination and his character,
but it was only in the last year or so that I was finally able to experience
the full magnitude of his work.
Monteiro is, without question,
one of the great unsung masters of twentieth century cinema. His films, especially the later ones, in
which he adopts the provocative on-screen persona João de Deus (John of God) -
a mixture of Woody Allen's intellectual self-deprecation, Godard's wounded poet
and the tortured sexuality of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert - remain among the most
powerful and singular works in contemporary cinema. The best example of this is As Bodas de Deus
- also known as God's Wedding or The Spousals of God - which brings to a close
a loose trilogy of films that began with Recollections of the Yellow House
(1989) and continued with the controversial God's Comedy (1995).
Arguably one of the last
great masterworks of the twentieth century, the hysterically funny and ultimately
quite poignant As Bodas de Deus, is another contender for the title of 'the greatest
film ever made.' A sly, graceful,
sardonic burlesque, a witty satire and a moving lament, full of anger and
frustration, As Bodas de Deus, as ever with Monteiro, combines the poetic with
the provocative, the profound with the profane, the reverent with the
irreverent and again, those ever conflicting influences of tragedy and farce. It's also perhaps the ultimate demonstration
of the pure artistry and integrity of Monteiro, one of the finest filmmakers
who ever lived.
Bad
Day at Black Rock [John Sturges, 1955]:
I watched this film on the
27th of July, 2012. It's a film that I've
heard referred to as "a classic" for as long as I can remember. Described as a contemporary-set western, or a
film-noir in western clothing, Bad Day at Black Rock is not only a fine piece
of narrative cinema, but a film that delves headfirst into the dark-heart of
the American psyche, finding the unspoken pain and insecurities that had
festered there since the country's first involvement in the Second World
War. The war, as a shared event, brought
out the best in people, but also the worst, as the desire for conservation and
self-preservation gave in to chauvinism and genuine persecution.
The character played by Spencer
Tracy represents the country's lost morality.
Initially meek and humble in nature, he becomes the target of the town's
bullying influence as he attempts to get to the truth of the situation that
led, directly or indirectly, to the disappearance of his friend, Komoko. As the plot unravels and the seemingly docile
nature of the central character begins to erode when faced with the violence
and the bigotry of the town en masse, it becomes clear that the
script by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman is suggestive of the actual
mistreatment of real Japanese-American citizens following the devastating attack
on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent initiation of mandatory internment.
As the town begins to go
into retreat, the tension that Sturges creates becomes almost suffocating. The glare of the hot sun, ever-present, is
blinding (both literally and metaphorically), but at the same time leaves these
characters exposed to their own
atrocity. In the harsh light of
day, these thugs and bullies are unmasked to the moral outrage of Tracy's
one-armed crusader, unable to retreat. The
use of the cinemascope frame creates a palpable feeling of isolation, with Sturges
using the aspect ratio to illustrate the segregation of the central character
from the rest of the town, while also allowing the director to group his
antagonists together in a single shot, to draw attention to the solidarity of the
lynch-mob, but also to further emphasise their eventual disintegration as the
true facts of the disappearance begin to emerge.
However, it's the emotional
weight of the film that most impresses, as the conviction of Tracy's
protagonist, and his sense of indignation in the face of the arrogance and the
injustice of the town, allows these people to finally connect with their own sense
of shame and the ethical sacrifices that the war had compelled.
The
Curse of the Cat People [Gunther Von Fritsch & Robert Wise, 1944]:
I watched this film on the
27th of February, 2012. Originally
recorded during the Val Lewton season that played on BBC2 at the end of 2011, The
Curse of the Cat People is a film that I'd initially put-off watching for close
to two months because I'd heard, from various online "sources", that
it was a largely abortive sequel to the Jacques Tourneur directed
original. Well, as usual, the 'sources'
were wrong! The Curse of the Cat People
is only a sequel to Tourneur's film in the loosest possible sense, in that it
continues the story of Oliver Reed and Alice Moore - the now-married protagonists
of the 1942 original - who are forced to confront the ghosts of the past when
their own six year old daughter Amy begins communicating with the unearthly and
still potentially dangerous spectre of Irena, the antagonist of Tourneur's
film.
The stage is set for a kind
of supernatural retribution, but the tone of the film throughout is ethereal
and poetic; more like a fairy tale.
Instead of focusing on the spirit of Irena picking up where she left
off, terrorising Oliver and Alice for whatever perceived indiscretion they may
have committed, the script (by original Cat People writer DeWitt Bodeen)
focuses almost exclusively on the loneliness of Amy and her perspective as an
outsider. Though Amy is of no relation
to Irena, the two share a bond in their sense of familial isolation from Oliver;
the once unsupportive husband, now an equally unsupportive father.
In Tourneur's film, there
was the vague suggestion that Irena's problems were the result of mental
illness; that her affliction was psychological and not supernatural. In The Curse of the Cat People, it is once
again suggested that Irena's presence in the film is simply an emotional
trigger, as she is literally "imagined" by this child as an
acknowledgement of their shared isolation and of the apparent influence that
Irena, as a memory, still has over her otherwise oblivious dad. In this sense, the film becomes a precursor to
the likes of The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Paperhouse (1988) and I'm Not
Scared (2003), where a childhood adventure, rich in poetic-realism, becomes a
metaphor for the separation of the child from the family, and the child's own inability
to transition into the world, with its rules and responsibilities.
Freedom
[Sharunas Bartas, 2000]:
I watched this film on the
19th of August, 2012. This was the
second Bartas film I saw and I loved it even more than the first; the
suffocating near-masterpiece Seven Invisible Men (2005). As with that subsequent film, Freedom is a
work defined by its rigorous observation of characters struggling against a
harsh and callous landscape. A film with
barely any dialogue or even interaction between its characters beyond the most
base and animalistic urges, the allure of Freedom, as an experience, can be found,
not in its plot or characterisation, but in the integrity of its performances,
the clarity of its images and the studied, precise intensity of the director's exacting
approach.
With Bartas, I always come
back to that word: "desolate."
Throughout the film, his camera lingers on these barren plains, the
jagged rocks, the sagging dunes and the ruined buildings, and places them, in
contrast, against the ragged and bitter faces of his life-scarred central characters. The physiognomy, as always, becoming a
reflection of where these people are, emotionally as well as physically. The despair of a situation marked as an
expression on the countenance of characters; their eyes wide open, optimistic,
but without hope. These are characters
in search of place, or in search of direction.
Three strangers, attempting to cross the border into a more prosperous
and welcoming country, but instead, finding themselves stranded on an endless beach
that becomes, through the course of the film, an onscreen depiction of their
own sense of displaced seclusion.
And yet, within this work of
austere observation, there remains one moment of true, overwhelming beauty. A scene that stands above the anguish of the
rest, giving context to those scenes of despair and alienation, and to the
title itself. As the young female
protagonist wakes by the side of her loveless companion, Bartas cuts to an
image of cranes moving slowly into frame.
The shot is held for what feels like an eternity. The music swells as a low, ambient murmur. One by one the cranes take flight. As they leave the frame, Bartas cuts back to
the girl, her eyes now moist with feeling, her spirit momentarily lifted. The scene, as a representation of the film as
a whole, becomes an expression of the perseverance of this character, and a
reflection of the human condition at its most fragile and remote.
Hands
Up! [Jerzy Skolimowski, 1981]:
I watched this film on the
3rd of October, 2012. Skolimowski is, in
my opinion, one of the great filmmakers to emerge from the Polish film industry
of the 1960s, and like his fellow countrymen, Roman Polanski and Andrzej
Żuławski, is a director with a unique and uncompromising voice. While Polanski is of course acclaimed as one
of the greatest filmmakers in the world, and Żuławski continues to develop a
passionate and knowing cult, the legacy of Skolimowski seems less certain,
perhaps because so many of his greatest films remain unseen. His films from the 1960s are equal to any of
the great masterworks of the period, including the peerless Barrier (1966) and the
equally mesmeric Identification Marks: None (1964), as well as his amusing and highly
imaginative riposte to the French New Wave, Le départ (1967).
Hands Up!, one of Skolimowski's
strangest and most mysterious films, is a relic of this period, though one not actually
completed until 1981. Like Żuławski's similarly
harrowing On the Silver Globe (1988), Hands Up! exists as an attempt to salvage
elements of an earlier film, censored by the Polish authorities, while also
creating a more relevant political commentary on the period depicted in the
film and the ramifications of certain events subsequent to its removal from
circulation, for instance, Skolimowski's professional exile. As such, the film is really four fragments of
a movie in one, where the assemblage of ideas, thought and recollections
eventually creates an impression of the director's own perspective as an artist
unable to return to his country, and in a sense, disconnected from the past.
The four fragments of the
film include a science-fiction drama dealing with an intended Orwellian
conspiracy against a backdrop of a potential civil war, a documentary on
worker's rights for Polish immigrants in late 1970s Britain, and an on-set
diary of Skolimowski's own experience as an actor in the Volker Schlöndorff
directed Circle of Deceit (1981).
However, the bulk of Hands Up! is dedicated to the remnants of Skolimowski's
censored film; a figurative, allegorical satire, shot in a sepia-tinted
monochrome in Poland in 1966, and featuring several disquieting references to
the occupation of Poland and the terror of the Holocaust. The four fragments create a single whole; a
film about suppression, censorship and the role of the artist. Even in its
fragmented form, the film is a pure, 'sensory' experience, haunting and
hypnotic, and another masterpiece by the ineffable Skolimowski.
Landscape
in the Mist [Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1988]:
I watched this film on the
21st of February, 2012. By this point I
was already two months into the year and I was yet to see a film that really
moved me beyond the level of just pure entertainment. Without wishing to sound too pretentious, I
was looking for something unforgettable; something profound. I'd already watched several really good films
- even some great films! - but I was still looking for that 'total'
experience. Landscape in the Mist would
be my third Angelopoulos and the first to really evoke the same personal sensation
felt in the great works of Antonioni, Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Godard, Ozu, etc. It's hard to put this feeling into words, but
let's just say it's the sensation of having seen something that enriches, both emotionally
as well as intellectually; that makes the world feel somehow smaller, or
larger, depending on the type of film.
After my first viewing of
Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962) in 2008, I went outside for some fresh air and
suddenly felt as if all other human life had passed without a whimper. The silence of the garden was deafening. The spaces between the trees had become vast
and immeasurable. The experience of the
film had been so personal and so intense that time itself (or the notion of it)
had slowed to a crawl. I had a similar
feeling when watching the film in question.
The feeling of my own natural rhythms - the beat of my heart, the inhalation
of breath - slowing to meet the pace of the film. Perhaps it's significant that both L'eclisse
and Landscape in the Mist were co-written by Tonino Guerra, but I think more
than ever it's the mood of these films - the sombre, suspended feeling of scenes
drifting into scenes, like in a dream - that drew me in; that captivated me
with every slow movement of the camera and every impeccably composed frame.
What I loved about Landscape
in the Mist was the journey of the central characters; these two kids, brother
and sister, trying to make their way to Germany, to find their absent father. As ever with Angelopoulos, I didn't
understand every nuances of this allegory, which surely has some political
basis, but I understood the motivation and the idea of the pursuit of this
mythical setting that exists, as a goal, or as something to reach for. That this ideal place is captured on an old
strip of film carried by the central character seems significant (because for
me, everything is cinema). It's impossible
not to read elements of the film as a comment on the role of the fictional
character, having been made real by the reflections of an audience, now trying
to make their way back, or alternatively, these characters trying to pass into
the world of fiction, as an escape, or as an acknowledgement of their own end.
I can't quite do justice to
the film in such a short space. I'm too
terrible a writer! My words lack depth
and intelligence, and the experience of the film is beyond my grasp. However, the sensation of seeing how the
narrative transforms, how these protagonists engage with the various characters
they meet (including a nod to the most famous figures from Angelopoulos's work,
The Travelling Players) and how the sequences are developed through those long,
beautifully choreographed shots, will stay with me for the rest of my days.
Millennium
Actress [Satoshi Kon, 2001]:
I watched this film on the
25th of October, 2012. The first film I
ever saw by the late Satoshi Kon was Paprika (2006); a bold and imaginative
work that came close to actual genius, but lost it for me in its repetitive
third-act conflict and in the largely unnecessary scene of sexual violence,
which pushed the overall tone of the film towards genuine misogyny. Even so, the thing I liked best about Paprika
was not the action, but the emphasis on meta-fiction; the way 'cinephilia' was directly
woven into the narrative, defining its character and as such, defining his
dreams. This presentation created a
pertinent metaphor for the cinema itself; where the space between consciousness
and unconsciousness became the amphitheatre of dreams.
Satoshi's earlier film, Millennium
Actress, follows a similar thread, where the role between fiction and actuality
is explored in relation to memory. The
film tells the story of a television reporter researching the closure of a
famous film studio and the legend of one of its most prominent stars. Using
a vague facsimile of the real-life actress Setsuko Hara, Satoshi crafts an
endlessly complex and sophisticated film about the nature of memory and the
capability of film, as a recording, to draw a shadow around moments; to capture
recollections of places and people forever, in time. Throughout the film, the continual
interaction between the various elements of actuality and fiction, memories of
the past and the tangibility of the present, creates a drifting narrative,
where the protagonist Chiyoko Fujiwara - this actress in seclusion - becomes
the storyteller, and where the reporter and his cameraman sidekick, become a
surrogate for the viewing audience.
What is most staggering
about the film is the way Satoshi incorporates this "audience" into
the story. They're not just passive
observers there to hear the words of a fading star, but travelling companions, with
the reporter, Genya, physically interacting with the memories of Chiyoko (which
play like a montage of scenes from her films), while the cameraman, Kyoji Ida,
continues to document these recollections with his handheld video camera. As a presentation of the line between reality
and fiction, memories and dreams, the film is as complicated as anything directed
by Angelopoulos or Tarkovsky, with that movement between layers and the central
idea of characters becoming active observers to their own past, reminding me of
a lighter, more romantic take on the presentation of a film like The Hunters
(1977) or Nostalghia (1983).
Noroît
(une vengeance) [Jacques Rivette, 1976]:
I watched this film on the
22nd of October, 2012, as a double-bill with the loosely-related Duelle (une
quarantaine) (1976). For five years, Gang
of Four (1988) has been my favourite film by Rivette, and one of my favourite
films of all time. Noroît has finally
replaced it. The most magical and
mysterious of Rivette's work, Noroît blends elements of Treasure Island, The
Tempest and The Revenger's Tragedy into a baroque chamber film, where the usual
performances, rites and rituals that we expect from Rivette play out against a
backdrop of mythical mountains, crashing waves and a large medieval castle,
where the bulk of the story takes place.
Noroît is a film full of
symbols, mysteries and conspiracies, some leading towards a great epiphany, but
some just there for the fun of it, for the sense of adventure. It is a film that builds on the same air of
alchemic fascination that drifted through Rivette's previous film, Céline and
Julie Go Boating (1974), only with the lightness of that particular film and
its more playful commentary on the relationship between the audience and the
work replaced by a dark despair and an escalating intensity suggested by the
character's restless pursuit of revenge. To me, it recalls some elements of the pure
'fantastique' of the work of Jean Rollin, with the atmosphere of the film, the
colours and the coastal setting, reminding me perhaps of the more abstract sequences
of the enigmatic La Vampire Nue (1969) or even Rollin's masterpiece La Rose de
Fer (1972).
Rivette's film might lack
the exploitation trappings of Rollin's work, but it's no less powerful in its strange
visions, lingering ambience and captivating images. The feeling of the film is claustrophobic and
nocturnal, as these characters move through the castle, like somnambulists, or
entranced assassins, engaging in an elaborate performance (within a performance)
rich in mystery and suspense. However, the
dreamlike nature of the film is anchored throughout by the powerful lead performances
of Geraldine Chaplin and Bernadette Lafont, who carry this wandering narrative
towards a sort of elemental battle, much like that of Bulle Ogier and Juliet
Berto in the equally hypnotic but for me slightly less captivating Duelle.
Trust
[Hal Hartley, 1990]:
I watched this film on the
12th of November, 2012. Hartley's most
accessible work is also the best example of his brave and often idiosyncratic
approach. I've liked every Hartley film
I've seen, to some extent, but in Trust he manages to secure his sometimes distancing
formalist tendencies to characters that engage their audience on a personal and
emotional level, becoming more than just mouthpieces that speak in clever
aphorisms, or wander with an ironic detachment, engaging in sarcasm or succumbing
to that familiar expression of nihilism as a response to some unfulfilled sense
of hopeful longing. The existentialism
of The Unbelievable Truth (1989) no longer feels shop-bought or second-hand,
but is a genuine expression of the character's dreams and desires, or a result
of their own acknowledgement of their collective failures and disappointments.
The film is an excellent
showcase for Hartley's two greatest actors, Martin Donovan and Adrienne Shelly,
who take characters that are full of fears and insecurities, but somehow manage
to present them as likeable, even loveable, in their role as joint perpetual
outsiders. Their inability to make sense
of the world is never presented as the failure of these characters, but is
simply the failure of the world to provide adequate space for those unable or
unwilling to fall in line with the status-quo.
Instead, they find a kind of acceptance in the arms of each other, where
this man without a mother and this woman without a father can find a place of
their own, until real-life inevitably intervenes. Shelly's presence in particular gives the film
much of its appeal. She finds a sympathy
for this character; a sadness, not just for herself - as she progresses from
materialistic teen floozy into a sensible but no less uncertain young woman -
but also a kind-hearted compassion for those in situations more desperate than
her own.
The image of Shelly is of
course greatly missed. On a personal
level, she looks so much like a girl I once loved (no, still do) that seeing
her on-screen, hearing her voice and observing her mannerisms, is beyond
heartbreaking for me, because to see one is to see the other, and to be moved
by the endless possibilities and the things that could've been. The film now exists as both a masterpiece of
American cinema and as a testament to Shelly's underrated ability as a
performer, working against the constraints of Hartley's form, but still
managing to express the thoughts and feelings of a character that exists as more
than just a representation of a particular idea. If the image of Anna Karina in Godard's Vivre
Sa Vie (1962) endures as the unofficial symbol of the French New Wave, then the
image of Shelly, beautiful and bespectacled in Trust, must, in some small way,
represent the confidence, intelligence and naiveté that once typified the
American independent cinema, at its peak.
The
Wishing Tree [Tengiz Abuladze, 1976]:
I watched this film on the
10th of September, 2012. I went into it "blind",
knowing almost nothing about it. The
only frame of reference I had was the title and the vague allusion to it in
Neil Jordan's directorial debut, Angel (1982).
There, the on-screen quotation of the title is used to suggest the loss
of innocence, or the destruction of it; the main themes of Abuladze's film. In approaching, little did I suspect I was
about to see one of the greatest works in the history of all cinema, but The
Wishing Tree really is a film to place alongside L'Atalante (1934), Ordet
(1955), L'eclisse (1962), The Mirror (1975), etc, etc, as one of those
staggering works of art; powerful enough to alter the perspective of those who
see it; rich enough to transform the soul (whatever that means) of the
individual, if only for the duration of the film.
The images of Abuladze's
work are nothing less than striking and will remain with me, in the heart and
mind, for as long as I can believe.
Certain moments, like the dying horse in the poppy field - the film's
first acknowledgement of the ruthless cruelty of nature and a prelude to the
horrors of the final act - resound like echoes in my subconscious, or like
scenes from an all-too vivid dream. The
characters, larger-than-life and yet possessing a spirit and integrity that is
recognisably human, are captivating, even when presented at their most fierce. The beautiful princess; the lusty priest and
his buxom mistress; the painted grotesque, in mourning for the greatest of lost
loves; the anarchist with his pronouncements, listening with an ear to the
ground for a story in the soil... These
characters are endlessly fascinating; full of personality, but also expressive
of a genuine feeling, of life, tragedy, uncertainty. They create a depth, a texture, so that the cruel
movement of the final act is not one-sided, but a reflection of the
restlessness of nature when faced with the inevitability of change.
Here, the accumulative
weight of the film, the beauty of it - and the rich tapestry of stories that
suggest a spirit of grand adventure, or a compassion for all of life's
creatures, the hum of nature and the beauty of the landscape - transforms what
could have been a fairly bleak and bludgeoning attack - similar to von Trier's
Breaking the Waves (1996) - into a profoundly moving, profoundly inspirational
moral parable. Though the film is about
the destruction of beauty, the loss of tradition and in many ways the loss of
innocence, the sensitivity of the film and the compassion the filmmakers have
for these characters, no matter how flawed or misguided they might be, means
that the simple fact that the film exists - as a work, or as an object -
becomes, in its own way, an affirmation of the true beauty of existence.
Faraway,
So Close
Mister
Lonely [Harmony Korine, 2007]:
I watched this film on the
11th of November, 2012. As a filmmaker, Korine
strikes me as a genius, but a tricky genius.
A genius willing to go to the extremes; to tap into the same madness and
intensity of a Jarman, Carax or Herzog, but then throw it all away at the last
minute with a stoner's smile and a scornful snigger. There are ideas in this film that are far beyond
anything I've ever seen. Images that are
pure and unaffected. If only the
presentation of these ideas and images didn't feel like a series of
"wouldn't it be funny if..." set-pieces, then the heart and soul of the
thing might have really shone through.
This could have been a film to rank alongside the warped poetry of The
Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Jubilee (1977) or Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), but the end
result, for some strange reason, doesn't quite connect.
What holds the film back for
me is the occasional feeling that everything we've seen is an elaborate stunt;
a put-on, intended to "troll" the sensitivity of the audience. Throughout the film, Korine asks the viewer to
make a leap of faith, to invest our own hopes and dreams in the film and in the
lives of his strange and exotic characters, but he himself never really
embraces them as anything more than a sideshow distraction. Too often it seems as if he's smirking at the
struggle of these characters or finding humour at their expense. As a result, even the most seemingly moving
or sincere of scenes has the feel of a practical joke. In some sense, I would compare the experience
to Shyamalan's Lady in the Water (2006); another unconventional work of genius
that asks the audience to make a leap of faith, to buy into its strange,
fantastical, possibly even ridiculous concept, in the hope of being rewarded
with an expression of pure cinema and an emotional epiphany that plays on the
idea of faith as a means of engaging with narrative fiction.
With Lady in the Water, Shyamalan
"meant it", and while his belief in the material may have destroyed his
reputation, our leap of faith was respected and embraced. With Mister Lonely, there's a cruel cynicism
to the latter half of the film (which is brilliant, in its own way) that
detracts from the purity of the images and the weight of genuine feeling that
his characters create. As such, I can
admit that the film floored me with its imagination. I can also say that it thrilled me with its
spectacle (by the end, I felt as if I'd witnessed a miraculous occurrence;
something that was genuinely profound). Even
so, I can't shake the feeling that Korine, for all his genius, is laughing at
me. Laughing at any one of us who takes
his work and its message as anything more than a stunt or a skit or an empty
provocation. As ever, we embrace the
film at our peril...
The
Resurrected
Gremlins
2: The New Batch [Joe Dante, 1990]:
I re-watched this film on
the 11th of March, 2012. I saw this as a child on video. Over the years the film had
faded from memory. In my mind, I perhaps
considered it no more than a fun but forgettable relic. A decent sequel and nothing else. Re-watching the film for the first time in
over two decades proved something of a minor revelation. The film is rich in a way that my
childhood self would never have appreciated. The 'mogwai' is still cute, and the film
still has that feel of a comic-strip brought to life, but what really surprised
me about the film, twenty years later, was the sophistication of the humour,
the play of references and the effortless corporate satire that Dante and his
screenwriter Charlie Haas weave into the narrative.
Here, the deconstruction of
the genre is as sophisticated as Tarantino's in a film like Inglourious
Basterds (2009), where every element of the plot, the casting, the music, the
look and the thematic approach, is measured with a specific intent. Not just as "homage", but actually
using these references (in a self-aware, self-deprecating acknowledgement of
the film's limitations) as an attempt to satirise certain elements of the plot. Employing a barrage of quotations (from Chuck
Jones and Frank Tashlin, to Roger Corman and Richard Lester), Dante and his
collaborators create a pin-sharp lampoon of Hollywood
"razzle-dazzle", merchandising, big business and cable television, as
well as ripping into the conventional role of the sequel and even the more
overt "Spielbergian" influences of Dante's original film.
As a director, Dante is perhaps
one of the forgotten mavericks of 80s American cinema and his approach, a
subversive take on Spielberg's the wonder of childhood/suburbia, filtered
through a shameless love of B-movie innocence, Hammer Horror excess and pure
exploitation, is perfectly suited to this, his most audacious and experimental
film. Visually, Gremlins 2 is a dazzling
tour-de-force of fourth-wall breaking sight-gags, genre references and pure Looney
Tunes insanity, all captured with a comic-book style onslaught of canted
angles, expressionist shadows and bold, almost psychedelic, 'Bava' like colours.
