Artsfest Film Festival: Stranger than Paradise (1984)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, and Richard Edson

Produced by Cinesthesia Productions

Willie ambles through life in New York City, hustling for money and barely existing in a small non-descript apartment.  So he's not pleased when he receives a phone call asking him to house his 16-year old cousin Eva from Hungary.  Willie is initially aggressive in his distaste for having to watch out for the young girl, but, over her 10-day stay, he warms up to her.  Or at least warms up to her as much as his ego will allow.  He buys her a dress that she is clearly not thrilled with.  At the end of the stay, Eva heads off to Cleveland to live with her aunt, disposing of the dress as she heads out of town.

A year later, Willie and his best friend Eddie have scored some cash cheating at cards and are looking to get out of town.  Soon, they are en route to Cleveland to drop in on Eva and Aunt Lotte.  They find Eva working at a hot dog stand and get a brief tour of barren Cleveland landscapes.  Willie and Eddie start back for New York, but soon decide to head to Florida instead.  So they stop and pick up Eva and head south. 

Will the trio's fortunes change in the tropical paradise?  Or will life continue to deal them more of the same?

Is it possible for a film to be meditative and funny?  Methodical and absurd?  In Stranger than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch succeeds in marrying those tones and feelings into a satisfying portrait of both people and America.

The approach he takes is fascinating.  For the first half of the film, the story plays out almost solely within Willie's apartment.  A pattern repeats itself over and over.  We get a scene in one take that gives a sense of his and Eva's existence.  It may be what they are eating, or what they are watching on television, or why Willie won't let Eva go someplace with him.  Then we fade to black.  Pause.  Then we open on another scene.  The effect provides a sense, not that the film is unspooling a narrative, but that we are dropping in periodically on the lives of these characters.  

The loose story itself provides an undercurrent of unsettling humor throughout as opposed to individual jokes.  To the extent there's any punch lines, they serve to break the uneasy tension the rest of the film is reveling in.  And the approach works.

The film also has some rather obvious things to say about American life that seem relevant today.  The crew travels from New York to Cleveland to "paradise" and the underlying joke of the travels is that the country looks the same no matter where you go.  More than that, life doesn't change much even when you pick up and move.  You can lose all your money betting on horses just as easily in Florida as New York.  

The bizarreness of the ending is both a punch in the gut and fits the film perfectly.  Eva accidentally falling into money and looking to get away, Willie bumbling into an accidental trip trying to catch up with her, and a dumbfounded Eddie standing in a parking lot observing it all makes sense and comes out of left field.

The actors here are all pretty good.  John Lurie's Willie and Richard Edson's Eddie almost look alike which is the point.  Lurie can both convey a tough exterior and the eventual cracks in that shell very well.  Edson is primarily comic relief and works well.  Eszter Balint's Eva is at times too much of a blank slate, but she is supposed to be a cipher in parts so it serves the film well.

Stranger in Paradise has gotten better in my mind's eye over the week since I have seen it.  My brain keeps going back to the film, filling in the gaps Jarmusch never shows us and pondering what happens to the characters next.  And that kind of ongoing deliberation is the highest compliment I can pay any movie.

***** out of *****

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Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

Directed by Fred Niblo
Starring Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman and May McAvoy
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

It is the time of Christ. Literally. We see the future messiah's birth in the opening scenes.  The inn, the star, the wise men, the shepherds: all here.  The film doesn't linger there.  It rockets years into the future where...

The Romans are oppressing the Jews.  Even under the iron fist of their rulers, the Jews have a hierarchical social structure and the House of Hur is right at the top.  The Hur family has a palatial estate and live well.  Still, the matriarch of the clan is getting nervous about their finances so she dispatches their servant Simonides to hide their fortune in Antioch.

The Hurs are visited by Messala, a Roman soldier who was the childhood friend of Judah, Ben-Hur, the son in the House of Hur.  Messala greets Judah, his mother and his sister warmly, but soon they are arguing about the state of affairs in Jerusalem.  Messala storms out.

Soon the new local dignitary is paraded through the city.  Judah, watching from his balcony,accidentally knocks a tile off.  It falls killing a Roman.  Messala storms into the Hur's home and accuses Judah of throwing the tile.  All of the Hur's are arrested.

The women are shuttled off to a secret prison underground.  As for Judah, he is sentenced to life rowing in the galleys of a ship.  There, he is more the firebrand than ever, driven by his desire for vengeance against Messala.  Will Ben-Hur escape and take his revenge?  On a chariot perhaps?  And how will Judah's life intersect with Jesus?  And I thought Chuck Heston was in this?

The obvious place to begin a review is with a comparison with a comparison with the 1959 version of Ben-Hur starring Heston.  It's been a long time since I saw the more well-known version, but all the storybeats are here: the initial arrest, the attack on the seas, the chariot race.  Jesus is here as well, though as with the 1959 version, he's a presence, existing just off camera.  We see a hand here and there, but that's it.

My memory of the specific moments of 1959 is hazy, so I won't try to compare the merits of the two (I'll get there in 34 years).  But I liked this movie.  A lot.  In fact, I think my lack of much memory or feeling about the Heston one really helped me appreciate this version.

The characters are well-realized and acted.  Roman Novarro's Ben-Hur is in almost every frame of the film and he carries off the complex emotions of the character perfectly.  Ben-Hur has to be both driven by revenge, but keep the inherent goodness that will propel him to save Arrius on the boat.  There are moments of over-the-top acting, but, particularly in these epics, that's not uncommon.

Ben-Hur is an epic with some impressive sets and locations.  The chariot race here is exactly as it should be.  It is just perfect.  The lack of sound doesn't diminish the feel of every whip, the grunt of every horse and the sheer brutality of a three-chariot-pileup.  Fred Niblo's camera gets right into the action and the actors sell what's at stake. The whole movie has been building to this and it doesn't disappoint.  In fact, it soars.  The race is one of my favorite silent movie moments.  Ever.

The other big set piece is a naval battle between the Romans and a pirate fleet and it works less well.  There are simply too many people on these boats to follow any of the action coherently.  Moment to moment, I had no idea who was attack whom.

There's a love interest introduced late in the movie, but you never really feel like there's a connection between Ben-Hur and Esther.  That aspect of the film feels more like the writers are checking off the romance check box than anything else.


The portrayal of Jesus in the film is amongst my favorite on celluloid.  My preference is for the more human portrayals of the messiah (think Willem DaFoe in The Last Temptation of Christ).  It's hard the resist a holier-than-thou portrayal of someone who is most definitely holier-than-thou, so I love the decision to keep Christ off-screen and simply see and feel how he is seen by others.

Oh, and by the way: color!  Whole sections of the movie are in color!  I was not expecting that at all.  At first I thought it was scenes with Christ, but then there is a colorized scene with only Ben-Hur halfway through the film, so I am unsure why the stylistic choice was made. It's that oversaturated technicolor you used to see on Turner Classic restorations, but it is still gorgeous.

Ben-Hur is highly recommended.  It's well-acted, has a great story and an epic feel. 

****1/2 out of *****

NOTE: It cost MGM $3.9 million to make Ben-Hur and the film made $9 million, the third highest gross for a silent film. Despite that, MGM lost money because of the deals they had to make to bring the book and play to the screen.

On the color, I had to look it up, but apparently the color was included in the original and was not some restoration house's work.  Again, just awesome.

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Artsfest Film Festival: Film as Personal Art

The Garden

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

In "Film as Personal Art" session, filmmakers use the medium to turn the camera and found footage into a megaphone for larger points about life. The Garden by Ann Steuernagel is a brilliant montage that describes the perils of climate change using found footage and juxtaposition to make her points. The first and most effective part follows news coverage of a glacier falling into the sea set against children running to observe from a hill and a hammer breaking a block of ice. It's not subtle, but it's effective.

Contra el Cine

Contra el Cine is a montage of characters in other films with their back turned to the camera. It's something you don't see much, and at first when you realize what is happening, it's amusing. Then it becomes unsettling. By the end, every time the film cuts away just as someone is about to turn around, you just want the release of a human face. And release comes by the end, though not in the manner you may expect.

The rest of the session cannot be recommended. When My Eyes are Closed by Jon Perez does a good job of evoking a mood, but with the voiceover and soft lighting, it has a feeling of pretentiousness to it. Winter's Veil by Eva Lee is eight minutes of computer-generated spheres and lines that would have looked state of the art a decade ago. And Don't Look Directly into the Sun by Kathleen Rugh... I didn't get. At all. It's about sunlight abstracted, but the images are so processed and obscured, you only get a fleeting glimpse on any one object. And that goes on for nine minutes.

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LAMMYs

I just voted in the LAMMYs.  Sadly, I was not nominated this year, but I did vote so...

If ewe are a LAMB and have not voted, what are ewe waiting for?

http://largeassmovieblogs.blogspot.com/2011/06/reminder-vote-in-lammys.html

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Battleship Potemkin (1925)

The Odessa Staircase

Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein

Starring Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky and Grigori Aleksandrov 

Produced by Goskino

Aboard the battleship Potemkin, there is a clear division between the ship's leadership and the working class men.  The lower ranks are hearing about uprisings throughout Russia and can feel that change is in the air.  The ship is a tinderbox of revolutionary angst.  All it needs is the match.

The spark igniting the blaze comes from rotten meat rations being served to the crew.  The men gather around a maggot-infested carcass and complain.  The ship's doctor declares the beef to be perfectly safe.  The ship's captain has the men who refused to eat lined up to be shot for their treason.  

The working men appeal to the firing squad to rise up against the ship's captain and soon a full-scale mutiny is underway.  The men take the ship, but one of the revolutionary leaders is gunned down.  They take the fallen hero to shore and display his body in a tent.  Soon, thousands of men, women and children are paying their respects to the martyr, delivering food and supplies to the crew and building up the ship to legendary status.  But what will the people do when the tsar's army shows up and begins firing?  And can the Potemkin withstand an assault by the entire Russian navy?

It's tough to view a film like Battleship Potemkin objectively.  As you watch and evaluate it,  critics whisper "This is important!" and the staircase sequence from The Untouchables (directly inspired by the film) plays on a loop in your brain.

And that staircase sequence of Battleship Potemkin is THE reason to watch this film.  The Odessa Staircase segment legitimately provided something I had not seen in any of the previous 100 Years movies.  Other movies use edits, but Eisenstein doesn't just cut between long, medium and close-up shots.  His camera moves down the stairs with the people as they flee.  He juxtaposes images and cuts between subjects in a scene.  He uses the edits to show the results of violence.  And most of all, he uses it to build tension.  

There are amazing moments here.  The woman shot through the eye.  The woman going back for her dead child.  But most of all, the baby carriage.  A woman stands frozen on a landing of the staircase with the carriage unsure what to do.  She is shot and starts falling.  The carriage's wheels rock precariously close to the edge of the step.  Then her body sends it careening down the stairs.  Eisenstein's camera floats above the baby as the carriage rolls amongst the violence on the staircase.  It's unlike anything seen in the other films from this era.  

Even during this bravura sequence though, I see the baby carriage start going down the staircase and my mind goes to that shootout with Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia.  I can't unwatch the contemporary movie so it's creeping into my viewing of Battleship Potemkin.  I can feel that influence and I try to ignore it, but it's there all the same.  I admire the cinematic achievement of the Odessa staircase sequence with the cold detachment of a cinephile, not with any connection to the characters.  There's tension to be sure, but I'm never invested in the fate of the characters (well, except that baby).

Beyond the staircase sequence, there are moments and images that stand out.  We see a line that stretches to the horizon of people waiting to pay their respects to the fallen hero.  The film provides excruciating detail of how various elements of the battleship work, from its engine to its dining tables.  And don't sit down for a meal while watching as you'll be treated to an extreme close up of maggot-infested meat.

As far as the story, it's a propaganda piece.  There are no stars or individual heroes.  Instead, we get a ship full of people rising up.  A nameless Tsarist enemy.  A mob of people.  I can understand why the story unfolds this way (after all, when your propaganda piece is focused on the people rising up, you don't want to make it about any one person).  However, without it being any one individual story, there's nothing to ground the story emotionally.  It's technically incredible, but, as a narrative, it's not timeless.

The ending is a big bit of anti-climax.  As the Potemkin steams toward the rest of the fleet, we sit with bated breath as the ship's crew prepares for battle.  They signal to the other boats to join them in their revolutionary cause.  And...they do.  Immediately.  Without any sense that there was any struggle amongst people on the other ships.  It's just everybody on deck waving.  The end.

I liked Battleship Potemkin.  I can appreciate it the way one can appreciate the Rosetta stone.  The stone allowed for an understanding of languages, cultures and stories that were previously inaccessible.  The film provides an important point on the timeline of cinema on why images get juxtaposed the way they do.  It allows for an understanding of how film has evolved and has a breathtaking sequence, but it never really works as a story.  Still, having watched Battleship Potemkin, I know I will watch movies with a different, sharper eye.  

Oh, and everyone should watch the Odessa staircase sequence at least once.   

*** out of *****

NOTES:  Battleship Potemkin was initially banned in West Germany, Great Britain and France out of fear it would incite a revolution.

In 2010, Empire magazine ranked Battleship Potemkin as third in "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema".  It was also included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Jay Schneider.

In 2004, the Pet Shop Boys composed a new score for the movie.  Because when I think black-and-white, Russian propaganda, landmark film, I think "West End Girls".

The film inspired the name of one of my favorite film-related podcasts: Battleship Pretension.

How big a deal is this movie?  "Potemkin" doesn't trigger spellcheck in Microsoft.

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Artsfest Film Festival: Dark Narrative Explorations

Image from Carny

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

The "Dark Narrative Exploration" session screened four films deal with horror and violence. I found things to recommend about each of them, but my favorite was the first short, The Grave by Alexander Monelli. A lone gravedigger works to create a space for another coffin when a bell in front of one of the tombstones starts ringing. The bell is tied to a rope that goes into a coffin buried ten years earlier. The digger flees in horror, but must decide if he can face his fears.

Monelli makes effective use of a creepy location and conceit and rings everything he can from it. The camera is always in just the right place and the ending is both perfect and stays with you. The movie's only real failing is its lack of budget and crew. The costumes are a little too neat and the overall feel is that of a really well done student film (which is what it is). I would love to see this film redone with more money and people.

Where The Grave's violence is primarily imagined, Matthew Garrett's Beating Hearts is the goriest entry of the four, but it uses its violence well. The film follows the violent consequences of a too-close-for-comfort relationship between a man and his granddaughter. It's subject matter is very disturbing, more so because of just how well made and acted the film is. Seeing it once was enough for me, which is a statement on how effective it is. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Giuseppe Capasso's 108.1 FM Radio

If The Grave is "Tales from the Darkside" and Beating Hearts is "Masters of Horror," the Giuseppe Capasso's 108.1 FM Radio is the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" of the bunch. The setup is simple: A man picks up a hitchhiker just as the radio is reporting a story about a hitcher who killed a family earlier that evening. Each man is suspicious of the other. But just who is the murderer?

My appreciation for this short has faded a bit since I saw it. There are plot elements that only serve to manipulate the audience. Still, it's atmospheric and creepy in the best possible way.  And, it has an ending I did not see coming.

Finally, there was Carny, a film by Kevin Lonano which has impressive production design and establishes a great tone, but which has a confusing and slight story. Stay for the characters and the creepy Tim Burtonesque costumes and makeup, but don't think too hard about the plot which follows a magician's assistant in danger of being replaced for her age.

All four films were well-crafted so, if they screen at a festival near you (and you like your films a bit dark and twisted), they are worth a look.

The Grave trailer:

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Artsfest Film Festival: Experimental Short Films

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

The experimental short session included films ranging from 2 to 13 minutes long. My favorite was easily Slow Fall by Neil Ira Needleman. Using the color palette of autumn as well as some sparse imaginings of branches, Needleman evokes a season that looks ablaze one moment and barren the next. The film brings a sensation of floating and the reflection of colors against the water. It's beautiful to look at and paced well.

Memento Mori by Scott Klinger is the longest of the bunch and follows a woman through a burned out landscape while she reflects on times before some unseen catastrophe. The images of the woman are rendered in a very cinematic black and white which contrasts starkly with the home video quality of her memories. The thoughts themselves seem to bid her farewell as she heads for the ocean and her end. The film makes you think about as you reach the end of your life. Haunting and beautiful.

Christine Lucy Latimer brought three shorts to the festival. The only one I enjoyed was Focus. In it, Latimer takes frames of Super 8 and places them individually on frames of 16mm. The resulting 2 minute film requires the audience to concentrate in order to follow the jumping image at the center of the screen. For me the effect both made me aware I was watching a piece of celluloid, breaking the illusion we experience in most trips to the multiplex. It also made the audience work to understand the images, providing a potent counterpoint on how simple and easy the typical moviegoing experience has become.

Memento Mori

The first film shown was Format, where Latimer shows a Super 8 film on a wall and then films that before pulling the camera back to film the LCD screen on another video camera. It's 4 minutes, but feels like it's twice as long and is too on-the-nose to have an impact. In her third film, Fruit Flies, she mounted a collection of dead fruit flies from her kitchen on film and unspooled that for two minutes. It's better than Format, but it feels like more of an exercise than a film. That said, it's the best film featuring fruit fly carcasses I have ever seen.

Fever Dream by Kevin Vogrin follows a woman through a vaguely winter cityscape. It evokes the disorientation the main character's feeling and keeps the audience unsettled. The swirling camera makes it hard to focus on anything except the occasional random shot of Santa Claus. That said, at seven minutes, it feels a little too long.

Winged by Jennifer Hardacker views two young boys through the eyes of their mother. The film juxtaposes images of young birds with the children. We see predators whose shadow threatens them. It's beautifully realized, but inclusion of text from a horoscope took me out of the imagery of the film.

VAN GOGH'S GARDEN by Warren Bass is a fun distillation of Van Gogh's color palette set to a bouncy score. For the three minutes it's on, it washes over you. The mood dissipates as quickly as it arrives.

Cloud and Bird and Birds at Night (Might Fall) are animations by American animator Bridget Riversmith. The first is a (primarily) black and white film that uses images of a rabbit in a meadow and a bird soaring amongst the clouds to evoke a Japanese haiku. The second follows a couple who fall asleep while driving and turn into birds as their car plummets over a cliff. I liked Birds at Night (Might Fall) more, particularly the way it was animated (the subtle change that turns arms into wings for example).

The session ended with Deux Petits Bateaux a cut out animation that follows a couple as they dance to phonograph on their boat. When the record player goes overboard, the sea life joins in the dance party. There was a whimsy and imagination to the film, particularly with little touches like the musical notes constructed from sea shells. It's a light, fun short and the perfect sorbet before heading into another round of movies.

Below are embedded versions of some of the films:

Fruit Flies:


Format:

Format from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Focus:

Focus from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Fever Dream:



Cloud and Bird Trailer:


Birds at Night (Might Fall) Trailer:


Deux Petits Bateaux

Deux Petits Bateaux from Kate Raney on Vimeo.

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