Viewing Log #14: Holy haunts are private [9/28/09 - 10/4/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

— Where do you heal? Where could he be?

• Elena and her men [Jean Renoir, 1956] It's Ingrid's show, no doubt, but I was more taken by the sly Mel Ferrer and his lanky-limber rogue. That said, it's a fine metaphor for the star system, and Ingrid's go-anywhere constitution; she's great at aloof twined with cunning. Renoir says he had to improvise the whole thing, for the most part, interpreting history into a comedy, and, I think, it works thanks largely to his cast and his cousin Claude behind the camera. Still, the weakest of this set, I'd wager.
  
• French Cancan [Jean Renoir, 1954] Vibrant, generous paean to a world of fun, to the joyful life we'd all like to lead rich with love and dancing and art and sex and (did I say?) fun. Gabin beams.
  
  
• Partie de campagne [Jean Renoir, 1936] # Wanted to see the transition, again, and the river recede from me.
  
• Loulou [Maurice Pialat, 1980] A wreck, stumbling on a wall (or laying in a bed, ahem). However: very exciting to see an earlier, softer Huppert still arriving at her powers to command a camera's attention. Her performance stings especially in this little man because she's able to unmask and mask so many multivalent, contradictory motivations-impulses-emotions in such close proximity, as can often be the case in life's mess. But what's intriguing about Pialat's interest in actors, and images, isn't any allegiance to "the document" (despite many long takes and the realist weight of a sudden slap) but to selection and contiguity, how one thing follows another—often in rhymes—while "hiding" his timing since, though the editing can pop and the ellipses alarm, you forget about the camera.
  
  
• Ne Touchez Pas La Hache [Jacques Rivette, 2007] # Games fail like words and we brand each other's souls—we maze traps like Waco, Texas! Balibar's a wraith and Depardieu's a blood-pumping prosthetic: each barely attached to their own life. The walls are curtains, or wrought iron; the limits ceaselessly solecistic. After all, it is but a poem.
  
  
• Bad Lieutenant [Abel Ferrara, 1992] # Guess I didn't wait so long again after all! But I only watched a few things, to get the feel and a few images. Really: maybe the best movie ever. "Where! Were! YOU?!" —Steve, via text: "Captures the fast-fading old new york with stunning fidelity. many great scenes caught in available light, ambient sound. jesus is in the details."
  
• The Brothers Bloom [Rian Johnson, 2008] It's all about Ruffalo, despite the allure of Brody and Weisz. The film says so, after all, giving him the director's chair (or Fellini hat) and, it seems, unlimited means to stage events in the world. It's a goof of a movie (a little simple and didactic, maybe), but it is winning. And Ruffalo, master wincer, sells every turn. His spot-lit farewell says it all: satisfied, resigned, and understanding his worth. A good actor is a miracle.
  
• Tall Enough [Barry Jenkins, 2009] Watch it here. I could make a crack about advertising really easily, but that'd undersell Barry's fine-line achievement. This is about as charming a short as I could imagine from a project such as this, and it proves, as ever, Barry knows what he's doing with a camera. G'head, get your Denis on, man: it looks great.
  
  
• Partie de campagne [Jean Renoir, 1936] Just amazing. Even in pieces, le maitre makes a whole natural world swing-swim into view, into action, falling away in time as our petty obligations web us into roles we don't want. Best? Jokes abound!
  
• Dogville [Lars Von Trier, 2003] # The first half. Started this because somebody I adore (and respect) loves this movie and I want to understand why; because back in 2003 it made me pretty mad in (I'm learning) pretty dumb ways. That said, I fell asleep.
  
  
• Bad Lieutenant [Abel Ferrara, 1992] # Cuz I'm an idiot masochist, apparently. Also, it'd been a few years. Maybe never can go long enough between viewings. But, hell, this is a fucking movie. Even more than Unforgiven, this is the H.W.-headache movie. Also, truly Catholic.

—Answer yourself

Quick Plug: Medicine for Melancholy

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last Thursday I had the pleasure, first, to finally see Barry Jenkins' debut feature, Medicine for Melancholy, and, second, to meet Barry briefly alongside the film's star (also a Daily Show correspondent), Wyatt Cenac. They proved as affable as their film and it came as no shock that Barry named three lady filmmakers as his favorites, whose influence one can trace in his work: VINYL-favorites Claire Denis and Lynne Ramsay as well as another we here would like to know more about (that is, we would like to see something), but have not yet encountered, Lucrecia Martel. And while I've not seen a Martel film, if pressed I would say that what ties these three filmmakers is their interest in the cinema of sensations, or impressions, built from oblique (yet discrete) moments. There is a delicious passage in Medicine for Melancholy where our leads, Cenac's Micah and Tracey Heggins' Jo, jump aboard a carrousel that can easily be seen (for all its yummy and tender singularity) as bearing a certain tradition's stamp. However, this film's image, made with digital cameras fronted by "old" SLR lenses and pushed in post towards a sepia hue, tends to bleed light in a way more akin to what Jia Zhang-Ke and Yu Lik-wai capture with their kino-eyes. And, like Jia's films, Barry's is definitely about witnessing a space (here San Francisco instead of, say, the World Park) and how its angles and complexities play out in both the private and public spheres, and what's available in both those arenas. Medicine builds into this project an often-angry portrait of how unwelcoming the upper-middle-class skew of San Francisco's demographic can be to its marginal residents, and specifically how one young black guy can't shake his anxieties during what has to be one of the most blissfully ignorant 24 hours of his young life.

It's a love story, see? Only, not so much one of those everlasting kind of things. More like one of those, "This is a one night stand," she says, kind of things. It's about naive assumptions, about willful ignorance to look beyond your lap, about youthful indiscretions many of us have indulged for better or (more likely) worse. It's a really lovely thing to watch. Especially since its vision of young San Francisco is shockingly similar to the one I recently left behind. For instance, Micah and Jo go dancing at the Knockout where we see the guys behind Elbo Room's Saturday Soul Night spinning 45's. (For the record: Barry confirmed in the post-screening Q'n'A that these dudes were spinning their usuals but for the sake of consistency he scored the dancing to "indie stuff"...)

The film opened yesterday at the IFC Center here in NYC with plans to roll out across the country, which you can check up with at this website. So go see it. It may not be earth-shattering but it's easily a lovely, thorny letter to a city I miss and a lot of its often-annoying problems, including but not limited to the consistent shunting of any people of color. I'd love to say more, and dig in, but plenty have already so for more reviews, consult the guru Hudson right here. I just felt good that night so, well, I thought I'd repay the favor and say, Thanks, one more time. I hope all you VINYL readers in the Bay who have yet to see the film (that is, I know Michael was hip before us all) will track it down. I'd love to hear what you have to say. If anything, it'll make you smile with pride that Micha's right: San Francisco is beautiful, and you shouldn't (in fact you do not) have to have money to enjoy that. Here's the tasty trailer: