One for you and one for me: Everlasting Moments. UPDATED.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Some of you may remember our friend Martha's glowing essay about Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments from a little while back. Well, I've seen the film now, too, and I threw together a little review for Spout Blog. Knowing how much the film means to my friend makes it resound that much more with me but I do think, independent of that association, that it is a refined film: gentle, curious and quite lovely. I'm told Troell was something of a to-do in the 1970s, when his film, The Emigrants, was nominated for Best Picture despite its foreign tongue (cough, subtitles). Given all the "he's back!" profiles (such as this one in the Times) leading up to this new film's release, perhaps we can expect it to rightfully garner an audience and earn some money away from the latest so-called "film adaptation" of a comic book that happens to open today as well. Because, for all its easily dismissable "prestige" qualities (and one goofy icicle gleam), Troell's work is so careful and so loving that his film develops into the exact opposite: something filled with wonder, brimming past hurt and swinging into life with open eyes.

UPDATE: Martha's new piece on this film can be found at The Auteurs' Notebook.

Breadlines & Champagne! UPDATED. TWICE.

by Ryland Walker Knight

To counter our chill with a laugh (and a hug?), Film Forum has programmed the Breadlines and Champagne series, a month-long celebration of Great Depression cinema. The fun begins this weekend with an opening night screening of Wesley Ruggles' 1933 film, I'm No Angel, which stars Mae West and Cary Grant and costs a mere 35 cents (or a quarter for members). The weekend continues with two Franks: Borzage's Hooverville classic, Man's Castle, and Capra's punchy American Madness. I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the new print of the Borzage and wrote up some quick thoughts for The Auteurs' Notebook, which you will be able to read shortly in that webspace by clicking here. The short of it goes something like this: Borzage smears the frame with light to point beyond it, back at the world, and beyond that, too, to the skies we see and seek, where we are free to dream and project our wishes. (Shhh: at bottom, the film is interested in the freedom the cinema can offer, the uplift possible, and our capacities as agents even in the dark!)

But don't stop there. Scroll down that page and you'll see all kinds of fun double bills, all at a 2-for-1 discount, including one helluva Valentine's Day, programmed by Bruce Goldstein to pair My Man Godfrey (service would save the day, wouldn't it) with Easy Living (perhaps most famous now for its early Sturges screenplay). If that kind of night out (complimented by a meal and drinks, if not flowers, I trust) does not warm the soul, I cannot imagine what will. Of course, two days earlier there's a new print of Young Mister Lincoln screening with The Tall Target, if your soul needs that kind of uplift. Night Nurse plays Feb 17, Hawks' Scarface on the 21st and King Kong helps close the month before five more double bills to start March. I'm going to try to enjoy as many as my meager wallet and my stuffed social calendar will allow. (And if that's not enough for you, there's something called The Human Condition coming back by popular demand April 8th. That one might tell you some things.) [x-posted at the curator corner]

UPDATE: My piece on Man's Castle is available over here, and I've left a comment below the "essay" that furthers my thought a bit, or questions what I've written, in an inviting way (I hope).

UPDATE THE SECOND: My first piece published at SpoutBlog can be found through this link. It's called "Valentine's and Breadlines: Love in the Depression" and it concerns a few of the romantic comedies I've seen in the past week at the Film Forum. Please, read it. Please, tell me things. Please, enjoy your Saturday.

In defense of Ballast

by Steven Boone

I suspect it was the story that had some of the folks in the Film Forum audience sighing, whispering and even snickering uncontrollably. Story-wise, Ballast can be easily mistaken for an entry in the Why We Be Black genre—films which depict underclass African-Americans scratching and surviving and tearing each other apart. Such films are said to exist mainly for the delectation of white liberals who like to think of poor blacks as lovable to the degree that they are irrational, impulsive and self-destructive. Mighty Joe Young in a do-rag. The fallacy of placing Ballast in this genre is as tragic as the critical backlash against Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple adaptation, which reduced that film’s towering humanism to Song of the South T-N-T.

The first time I saw Ballast, knowing nothing about its maker, I spent no more than a cumulative total of five minutes thinking about the race of its characters or creator. Whenever little Lawrence wielded a gun that weighed more than him; when early on, James sat brooding, an inscrutable black hulk; when Marlee fumed and fretted over a tragic turn of events with the all the negro histrionics of Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder — yeah, I thought about race. But that was it. Otherwise, the ethnicity of Marlee, James, and Lawrence rarely factored into my appreciation of their loss, desperation, insecurities, hopes and contradictions. These were Americans, these were human beings. I expect a white upper middle class author on a black working class subject to get some things “wrong”—that’s the way it is. What I hope for in such a film is an honest effort to capture something true.

[A note from RWK: Idiot me missed Lance Hammer's film when it played at the luxurious Sundance Cinema last week. Click here to see if/when it will be playing near you. Hopefully the film will find its way to my eyes and ears soon. With all the love Steve's given this film, it's hard not to kick myself in my butt. But, then again, I've been busy with other cine-stars I'm more than happy to have encountered.]

Saluting is like pointing, kinda. Steven Boone on SpoutBlog.

by Ryland Walker Knight

So my buddy Steven Boone has been writing for Spout Blog every Friday for a little more than a month, in case you had yet to see. You can check his archive here. But last week's "Felon Fest: Notes on Camp" is my favorite so far. And not just because he references a favorite film at the close of the piece but for Steve's careful, yet lively, prose. I told him via email that I want to read more of this kind of writing from him, that incorporates narrative into the criticism; if you can call this criticism. I guess this is closer to the Phillip Lopate personal essay. Which, I guess, is where Steve is going with his work for this column (and beyond; but I'll leave that to him to disclose). In any event -- not that it needs my recommendation -- I simply want to salute my friend. And point anybody who visits this blog (if there are some who still check in here) towards his recent output.

I also wanted to say that, like Steve, I'm always blown away by the encounters between Jim Caviezel and Sean Penn in The Thin Red Line. Those scenes are the heart of the picture. Trying to see what spark is left in the light of the world. Or how we may rekindle.