Sometimes you need to be at the right time of your life to really appreciate a certain artist. Those times vary from person to person. An example: For most people, The Catcher in the Rye should be read in high school. For me, though, it was good that I didn't read it until later in life, when I was a little more comfortable with rebellion and the idea that adults weren't always (or even usually) right. But I would be sad if I'd never had the chance to appreciate The Catcher in the Rye.
My main point here, though, is to make sure that you're watching yourself, and staying vigilant to recognize just when it is that you should dive into the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. If you care about film at all, and what it can do to you, that time will come. His films move at their own rhythm, and in this case I don't (necessarily) mean slowly. But scenes move with a different beat. The camera lingers after characters leave the frame, or arrives on the scene well before them. We follow a character off one side of the screen, and when they reappear in the view of another character... it's not quite where we expected them. He uses sound, architecture, and unusual framing to accomplish fascinating psychological effects. (Why are we looking at the back of her head during this key emotional scene? Why, because we should be reflecting, looking into ourselves to find what emotions it might be that she is experiencing.) This is cinema that looks into you, expects you to bring your intellect and emotions both to the screen with you. And it is cinema that will reward you for the effort.
L'Avventura: In the course of just a few days last month, this film became one of my all-time favorites. The plot follows Claudia as she accompanies her friend Anna and Anna's boyfriend Sandro on an idle tour among the idle rich. It's all very idle, until Anna goes missing on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean. Claudia and Sandro commit themselves to the search, but must also struggle with the complexities of their own emotions. No plot summary could ever do justice to the subtlety and complexity of what's going on here. Sandro and Claudia are wondrously embodied by Gabriele Ferzetti and the luminous Monica Vitti respectively. Watch it twice.
La Notte: Second in a loose trilogy begun by L'Avventura, this film follows a writer and his wife through 22 or 23 pivotal hours in their relationship. This time it is Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in the lead roles. (Antonioni didn't have trouble getting good acting talent in his films.) It begins in a hospital with their dying friend, and ends at an all-night party thrown by a wealthy industrialist with designs on the writer's skills (and also perhaps his integrity?). This film is less oblique than its predecessor, with fewer pregnant pauses for the viewer to work to fill in, but it remains very rich, and the leads are marvelous. (As is Monica Vitti, again, in a key supporting role.) A warning: after you watch films like this, it can sometimes be a bit jarring (or even annoying) to go back to American films that bang you over the head with the point of each conversation and scene.
Blowup: The first time I saw this film, I was utterly mystified, and a little angry. The ending of this film has an effect on a lot of people. The second time I saw it (yes, I watched it again a few years later) I loved it. Yes, I understood the ending a little more. Not completely, but a little more. But I was better able to take the ride earlier in the film. It follows a photographer who seems utterly bored with life, glamorous though it may be. He wanders around trying to find... what? Even he seems unsure. Then he takes some pictures of a couple arguing in a park. The woman asks him to give her the film, and he refuses. Later she comes to his studio to try to get the film again. Now he (and we) begin to get curious. As with L'Avventura we should prepare ourselves for... well, something less than full-on American-style resolution.
So, in the end, what I'm saying is this: don't force it. It may not be your time for Antonioni yet. But someday, it probably will be. Pop in La Notte, or maybe L'Avventura, and see where he takes you. Bring your A game, don't passively consume (I know, I know, so difficult for us Americans!) and you'll be rewarded.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
We need another New World...
Terrence Malick, in his moving film The New World, spares us many things. But he spares us only so the full impacts can strike home more powerfully. This is a film graced with moments of overwhelming beauty, yet it leaves us with a profound and desperate sense of loss. Malick argues that these beautiful moments, these shards of perfection, these emanations from a time before our innocence was lost, can somehow dampen the defeats that overwhelm us as life proceeds.
Does this film speak of romantic love in the face of responsibility and obstacles? Or is it rather the Edenic harmony with nature that we have shattered with modern life? What is it exactly that we have lost? Everything?
Like any great artist, Malick resists easy conclusions, and refuses to dictate to the audience. Some particularly beautiful moments occur as the three European ships arrive in the waters off Virginia. We see them first on the water, resplendent, beautiful, then we see them from the shore, over the shoulders of the Naturals (as the Native Americans are called in this film), through the trees. We watch them watch the ships in wonder, these huge masted canoes beyond their ken, we share their mix of wonder and fear, we notice how they must, must look at the ships, but also how they linger still behind the leaves of the trees. We feel their childlike innocence and note the clean lines of their lean bodies. When we cut to the ship we (if we are of European descent) recognize ourselves in these hairier, smellier and more stern fellows. (Much time could be spent on Malick's idealization of the Naturals' life, and to be sure at first it smacks of the facile "Native Americans good, Europeans bad" over-correction of modern multicultural education, but Malick's hunting bigger game here. This isn't about such small things, it's about the promise of humanity and the ways it always, always falls short. So be offended if you must, but be offended at turning everyone into metaphors (or metonyms) not at some hippie/boomer-type 6th grade history teacher revisionism.) Indeed, the Naturals sniff at the Europeans once they're ashore and the two groups mingle to inspect one another. Again, Malick captures a fresh view of this moment, portraying neither hostility nor open-armed welcome on either side, instead letting us balance at the knife-edge of exhilaration and caution on each side. (Note he takes care to move the camera as well, now over a European shoulder, now over a Natural's shoulder, again emphasizing that this time the camera (and by extension the film) will take no sides. Or, perhaps better, will take all sides.)
This works brilliantly for the narrative as well, for when violence erupts (as we know and dread it must) we feel the horror of it twice, once for the frightened dislocated Europeans, and once more for the once-friendly, now-threatened Naturals. We feel visceral disgust at the waste of violence and war. Someone once said it's impossible to make an anti-war film because the inherent drama and kinetic nature of filmed violence sweeps the viewer into it in a gripping way. I've never quite agreed with the statement, but understand the sentiment. Here Malick films and edits his action skillfully, yet it remains horrifying rather than exhilarating.
So, yes, the Naturals are idealized. Yes, the grimy smelly Europeans stand in for corruption and rot entering into the New World. But they are not demonized. It is more nuanced. The Europeans seek nonviolent interaction (though primarily so they’ll have someone to trade with if their crops don’t succeed). Of course, Malick is also setting up the natives as more in touch with nature.
Early on, John Smith’s voice-over speaks of this new land being a place where no one need suffer want, where no man need fall under the control of another. Pynchon worked some of this same ground in Mason & Dixon, though in far jokier ways. But it doesn’t matter. It strikes home. It hits you in the gut.
This film is littered with beautiful images and striking juxtapositions, but it would be wrong to finish this meditation upon it without mentioning the fine performances found within. No review went without lauding Q'orianka Kilcher, and rightfully so. She captures the innocence and slow maturation of Pocahontas with grace and subtlety. The wonder of young love as she falls for John Smith is convincing and heartbreaking. Colin Farrell is well-cast as John Smith. He's not an actor that I find generally impressive, but he's excellent here. Similarly solid are Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer. Sometimes in meditative, shot-to-the-hilt films like this the performances are overwhelmed or forgotten, but this time they keep it anchored. Malick understands his ideas will strike home more forcefully if we're given humanity to which they can be attached.
Does this film speak of romantic love in the face of responsibility and obstacles? Or is it rather the Edenic harmony with nature that we have shattered with modern life? What is it exactly that we have lost? Everything?
Like any great artist, Malick resists easy conclusions, and refuses to dictate to the audience. Some particularly beautiful moments occur as the three European ships arrive in the waters off Virginia. We see them first on the water, resplendent, beautiful, then we see them from the shore, over the shoulders of the Naturals (as the Native Americans are called in this film), through the trees. We watch them watch the ships in wonder, these huge masted canoes beyond their ken, we share their mix of wonder and fear, we notice how they must, must look at the ships, but also how they linger still behind the leaves of the trees. We feel their childlike innocence and note the clean lines of their lean bodies. When we cut to the ship we (if we are of European descent) recognize ourselves in these hairier, smellier and more stern fellows. (Much time could be spent on Malick's idealization of the Naturals' life, and to be sure at first it smacks of the facile "Native Americans good, Europeans bad" over-correction of modern multicultural education, but Malick's hunting bigger game here. This isn't about such small things, it's about the promise of humanity and the ways it always, always falls short. So be offended if you must, but be offended at turning everyone into metaphors (or metonyms) not at some hippie/boomer-type 6th grade history teacher revisionism.) Indeed, the Naturals sniff at the Europeans once they're ashore and the two groups mingle to inspect one another. Again, Malick captures a fresh view of this moment, portraying neither hostility nor open-armed welcome on either side, instead letting us balance at the knife-edge of exhilaration and caution on each side. (Note he takes care to move the camera as well, now over a European shoulder, now over a Natural's shoulder, again emphasizing that this time the camera (and by extension the film) will take no sides. Or, perhaps better, will take all sides.)
This works brilliantly for the narrative as well, for when violence erupts (as we know and dread it must) we feel the horror of it twice, once for the frightened dislocated Europeans, and once more for the once-friendly, now-threatened Naturals. We feel visceral disgust at the waste of violence and war. Someone once said it's impossible to make an anti-war film because the inherent drama and kinetic nature of filmed violence sweeps the viewer into it in a gripping way. I've never quite agreed with the statement, but understand the sentiment. Here Malick films and edits his action skillfully, yet it remains horrifying rather than exhilarating.
So, yes, the Naturals are idealized. Yes, the grimy smelly Europeans stand in for corruption and rot entering into the New World. But they are not demonized. It is more nuanced. The Europeans seek nonviolent interaction (though primarily so they’ll have someone to trade with if their crops don’t succeed). Of course, Malick is also setting up the natives as more in touch with nature.
Early on, John Smith’s voice-over speaks of this new land being a place where no one need suffer want, where no man need fall under the control of another. Pynchon worked some of this same ground in Mason & Dixon, though in far jokier ways. But it doesn’t matter. It strikes home. It hits you in the gut.
This film is littered with beautiful images and striking juxtapositions, but it would be wrong to finish this meditation upon it without mentioning the fine performances found within. No review went without lauding Q'orianka Kilcher, and rightfully so. She captures the innocence and slow maturation of Pocahontas with grace and subtlety. The wonder of young love as she falls for John Smith is convincing and heartbreaking. Colin Farrell is well-cast as John Smith. He's not an actor that I find generally impressive, but he's excellent here. Similarly solid are Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer. Sometimes in meditative, shot-to-the-hilt films like this the performances are overwhelmed or forgotten, but this time they keep it anchored. Malick understands his ideas will strike home more forcefully if we're given humanity to which they can be attached.
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