Viewing Log #15: Risk recognition and open again [10/5/09 - 10/11/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

...wade into the deep end

• Julia [Eric Zonca, 2008] Worth it for any fan of Tilda Swinton, who's just as likely to be a Cassavetes fan, and I'm clearly both. That said, this is a rough one. "Unflinching," as they say, with more than its (un?)fair share of abuse. Don't really know why I chose to watch all 143minutes of it right now. I'm guessing it's got something to do with that voyeurist's masochism that Manohla nods at in her review; a review, as ever, that I respect and agree with, for the most part, in that Zonca's crueler than Johnny, and Tilda's colder than Gena, but Julia's just outlandish enough to make you believe in its/her sacrifice, in the cracks in that alabaster face. How her eyes widen! Always a messy frame for such an elegant-angular countenance, Tilda's hair loosens as the picture progresses, relaxing into waves, and Julia's mask (once literal) altogether disappears on that terminal meridian. She is, at last, truly naked: it's final fright at the liminal life; it's acknowledging the cost; it's gone all too quickly. Ultimately, she reminds us that aversion is compulsory: there's always a lie at work in the world.
  
• Transformers 2 [Michael Bay, 2009] # Yeah, so what. It's not like I watched the whole thing. Just wanted to see a few of the beautiful things Bay dreamed up alongside his idiotic things (sometimes these things are the same things), like watching the forest fight with the sound off. Earlier: me at fN! and Phelps at his joint. (Worth noting: the commercial-break realization that this junk's already ready and hocked for home consumption is plenty indication, among manifold blinking lights, that this thorny respite-or-rumpus needs to end, and shall, quite shortly.)
  
  
• Mary [Abel Ferrara, 2005] Brenez talks of the pleat, but this film is a coil. A slinky, even, falling down stairs: it picks up speed and gets looser, but its parts work together in the rush—or, at least, their tension produces kinetic energy, pulled by the earth, by gravity. It may be about Him, about a certain kind of transcendence ("to become fully human" she repeats), but, despite all those shots trained skyward through New York's caverns of glass, Mary, like Mary and her performer Marie (Binoche is a wall of will), aims down. As ever, Ferrara's after essence by way of archetype. And the coil winds tighter, impressionistic even, layer on layer, as it picks up speed. Then it cuts out, meeting the floor—or the shore—with a kiss, and the credits begin before you know it.
  
• The Addiction [Abel Ferrara, 1995] # Bits and pieces on youtube (start here), searching for the right clip to embed in this week's Video Sunday at The Auteurs. Seriously need to read the Brenez book (Google gives you plenty to tantalize). I'm meeting this dude, and his movies, again, at just the right time.
  
  
• The Exterminating Angels [Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2006] Troubling, to say the least, and almost too-easily erotic. Not sure where we sit with this, but, this heterosexual young man will cop to arousal. How not to? The images aren't soft-core gauzed but amber-bathed. —Except, aha!, for a camcorder playback played back in slow motion, as if step-printed, that's grainy and "poor" but less documentary, and more expressive, because of its consumer-grade manipulation. Or maybe that's just, um, my kind of thing? my kind of taboo?
  
• Port of Shadows [Michel Carné, 1938] A bit clunky, but the implication of Valhalla at the close is stirring. And Gabin cannot fail. Michel Simon, too, lends weight with his Bluebeard act; and I feel close to Michèle Morgan's Nelly with her plight for life, for finding life with both hands; but there's a little too much talk. At any rate, Martha wrote this generous missive back in April after a BAM screening on what she said was one of her best days—and it shows. She's got way more to offer the movie than me, so, you know, read it.
  
  
• Body Snatchers [Abel Ferrara, 1993] # Abel trades Bad Lieutenant's grime for emptiness, and some snot, and comes up with something almost entirely synthetic: a parade of masks and costumes apt for a feature about an adolescent, about adolescence's paranoia—its fears and its fantasies—made a reality. Crazy how hierarchical the picture is what with all those crane maneuvers to place (rank) people and things. That whole finger-pointing scream business is genuinely terrifying, so basic it's beneath the human. My own adolescent memories of Gabrielle Anwar clearly weren't giving me the full picture.
  
  
• Ratatouille [Brad Bird, 2007] # Such a joy. Looked at it a couple times grabbing images for this piece at The House, which I doubled at VINYL IS IMAGES

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—Brooklyn goes hard

Ratatouille's sense of taste, of place

by Ryland Walker Knight

—It starts with a book.
I put together a little image-essay for Todd's Pixar Week over at The House on Brad Bird's Ratatouille as it's easily my favorite Pixar film. Click here to see-drink-eat it. (If that takes some time to load, click here for VINYL IS IMAGES.) Every viewing gives me good things, and its pathos really hits hard what with its ideas about creativity and finding a place in the world for that passion. It's no secret that writing is a dying profession—hell, a dying skill set—let alone art form. But I keep at it, and I take pride in my miniscule accomplishments. I'm having fun with this stuff, with things like this work. Besides, these image-essays are something different, I hope, than your usual film blogging. At any rate, another thing I was thinking about rewatching this great little film is the different in choreography between something like this and something like, say, Playtime (or Tati in general), though there's definitely some overlap/inspiration at play. The most obvious is that Tati is a scientist, kinda, while Bird runs in trenches. Tati refuses identification and, as with most "kids movies," you can't help but find yourself in Remy's paws, scuttling here and there avoiding ovens and broken bottles. This gets at Bird's fluid camera perspective: the image shrinks and expands in fun ways. And—I still don't know, exactly, outside a stab at the idea of focus-blur—you really get the sense of a camera's presence in this film. (I find this true of The Incredibles as well.) Definitely something to think about more here, because it's subtle, unlike with the ostentatious zooms and lens flares of everybody-but-me's favorite, Wall-E. (Oh, right, Coffeen wasn't a fan either.) Gotta be more to say about plasticity inside these Bird Pixar films. The image, here, is itself an aperture—but it's been explicitly made, or built, so what, then, are we seeing but pure expression?


—Let it fill you! Use every sense, use every-thing you've got.

Return to the movies, return to the world: Ratatouille and Paprika at The House and some notes about me, as if you cared.

by Ryland Walker Knight

[To read the essay, click here, and you will be forwarded to The House Next Door.]

02007: 110 minutes: written and directed by Brad Bird
02006: 90 minutes: dir. Satoshi Kon: written by Kon & Seishi Minakami, from a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui

[A large chunk of mostly unedited text from a late-night email to Keith about the essay, and my writing of late in general:]

I thought long and hard at certain points today about your advice about making sure this new authority I've assumed in my developing voice is all me and not simply a theory from elsewheres laid smack dab onto each new film I watch. I like to think it is all me. I'm just developing my skills to articulate myself better, to the point where I think I am comfortable with my work. I understand there's a certain strain of academia in my recent writings but I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. Also, I find it annoying that "academic" is a pejorative in the film criticism world, you know? I think I'm just trying to write thoughtful, engaged essays. I know it's a little more than what our developed audience at The House is looking for from time to time (ahem) but I also think my writing is pretty easy to follow -- pretty readable -- despite it's, uh, "headiness" as you put it.

This is also why I've basically stopped work on the "Ryland's Repertory Corner" column ideas: My whole approach to criticism has been evolving at a more and more rapid rate since returning to school and I think I've simply found what it is I find limiting and unsatisfying about some of my earlier works, and other critics I like, too. That is, what I want to avoid. And what I want to proffer in response.

As I've said elsewhere, I really didn't start thinking to write anything about movies -- anything critical period outside schoolwork -- until I moved to New York in Fall 05: after buying _The Life Aquatic_ and realizing there was more going on there than I'd given it credit for, I wrote about 1000 words in a document titled "why i paid full price for a dvd of the life aquatic". Then I started posting things on the film geek board where I met Steve and then I started to spill over onto my blogspot address with the _Superman_ thing. And from there I've only ever expanded my horizons. It's been a wild year since that _Superman_ thing. I've grown a lot in the writing and in my life. And I think I've only gotten better.

[Dr. Chiba is the missing ingredient. Make fun all you want, this shit is amazing.]