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NOTE: Cine-File contributors Ben Sachs and Mike King ponder Richard Kelly's most recent film THE BOX on our blog. View their exchange here.
CRUCIAL VIEWING Lisandro Alonso's LIVERPOOL (New
Argentinean)
Facets Cinémathèque - Saturday 1pm and Sunday, 1pm and 3pm
Distance. Space. Solitude. With a minimum
of dialog and obvious flair, Alonso explores these themes as both form
and content. When we drop in on our protagonist, Farrel (Juan Fernández),
he is aboard a shipping vessel. Although he interacts with his shipmates
and is not obtuse, conversations consist of few words and no sharing.
One gets the impression that he prefers spending his down time alone,
smoking cigarettes on the deck and starring at the endless ocean. When
he says that he is going on shore leave there is little emotion in his
voice, as if time and location are irrelevant to him. But time and location
are of utmost importance to Alonso and his film. As Farrel journeys
from an unnamed port city to his parent's home in a run-down logging
camp the camera keeps its distance, allowing the viewer to take in the
snow-covered mountains of Argentina's landscape. Though the landscape
is gorgeous, our character is not. The long takes show Farrel as he
packs his meager belongings, watches TV while he waits for a ride, and
walks the final distance to his home. Our attention is spent on perfunctory
actions, not moments of triumph or change. He does not show emotion,
and one feels pity for him, but not sorrow. We know he lacks connections
to this place--or to any other--and has long since stopped caring.
And ultimately so do we stop caring about him, as the film shifts to
follow Farrel's discarded daughter for the final fifteen minutes. Every
shot of LIVERPOOL is mundane yet precise, restrained and enunciated.
An economy of detail and drama are Alonso's tools here, and their power
is mighty. (2008, 84 min, 35mm) JH
---
More info at www.facets.org.
Claire Denis' 35 SHOTS OF RUM
(New International)
Music Box - Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Claire Denis is the greatest director
of our time. Every new film of hers provides sufficient evidence to
prove that statement. Let's take the case of 35 SHOTS OF RUM, which
isn't her newest film (that would be WHITE MATERIAL), but the newest
to screen in Chicago. 35 SHOTS is set, like her earlier NENETTE &
BONI, in a small world, one that consists largely of a handsome, quiet
train operator approaching 50 (Alex Descas, who gets better with every
gray hair) and his beautiful college student daughter (Mati Diop). Crossing
over their borders are three intruders: a neighbor (Grégoire Colin,
almost as familiar a face in Denis' films as Descas) threatening to
move away while playing out a sort of romance with the daughter; the
train operator's on-and-off girlfriend (Nicole Dogué), a cab driver
that he tries to keep at arm's length; and René (pensive Julieth Mars
Toussaint), the train operator's melancholic ex-colleague. There are
a few locations: two apartments in Paris, two bars, a balcony, a car,
a classroom, a locker room, a train, an apartment in Hamburg. What Denis
is able to make out of these elements isn't a lesson in economy, but
a story of how the most mundane things (a For Sale sign, a blue door,
two rice cookers, a cerulean table top, an iPod's white headphones,
a bar's asparagus-colored walls, The Commodores' post-Lionel Richie
hit "Nightshift") and gestures (half-hearted dancing, a kiss
on the cheek, a lean, a glance) acquire meaning in our lives, and how,
through that shared meaning, we come to understand one another. Denis'
previous non-documentary feature, THE INTRUDER, was arguably the most
revolutionary film since Tati's PLAYTIME (which screens next month at
the Film Center). It rediscovered of the world by divorcing itself from
consciousness. It wasn't concerned with who was experiencing what or
why, or the traditional delineations of character and time. 35 SHOTS
OF RUM rediscovers both character and time by showing us things that
seem to lie outside both. (2008, 100 min, 35mm) IV
---
More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Hollis Frampton's HAPAX LEGOMENA
and Fragments of Magellan
(Experimental Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday (Hapax) and Saturday (Magellan),
7pm
Euclid: "Given a straight line, and a point exterior to that line,
only one line may be drawn through the point that is parallel to the
line." This ancient theorem has long been taken as axiomatic, and
it is, provided a number of unspoken, perhaps wrongly assumed conditions
are first met. Much like Grecian geometry, film theory has provided
for itself several of its own axioms which Hollis Frampton, cinema's
lonely mathematician, has attempted to either set the parameters of
or to disprove. From this work comes the seven-part series HAPAX LEGOMENA,
named after the literary phenomenon in which a word appears only once
within a text or written language. Such words must have their meaning
derived from context, and Frampton uses this notion conceptually to
frame his own definitions of cinematic axioms. Through the singularity
of these works, Frampton attempts a radical redefinition of what he
and other film theorists consider the essential qualities of cinema
by recontextualizing them. Narrative development (NOSTALGIA, 1973),
the camera's iris (TRAVELING MATTE, 1971), editing strategies (REMOTE
CONTROL, 1972), synchronicity between sound and image (CRITICAL MASS,
1971), the creation of spatial continuity (ORDINARY MATTER, 1972), the
film frame (SPECIAL EFFECTS, 1972), and even image composition (POETIC
JUSTICE, 1972) are all dissected and examined piece by piece, each redefined
through their absence or their overuse. Introduced by local film and
art critic and writer Fred Camper. (1971-1973), 202 min total, new 16mm
preservation prints)
---
Screening on Saturday night are films from Hollis Frampton's unfinished
MAGELLAN cycle. YELLOW SPRINGS (VANISHING POINT #1) (1972) is a short
portrait of filmmaker and fellow SUNY Buffalo professor Paul Sharits,
while QUARTERNION (1976) is a portrait of pop artist James Rosenquist.
GLORIA! (1979) marries early cinema with early video as a means of communicating
with Frampton's long-passed grandmother. The centerpiece of the evening
is STRAITS OF MAGELLAN: DRAFTS & FRAGMENTS (1974), a collection
of unedited pieces of what was yet to come in Frampton's epic cycle.
Also screening is the fantastic PAS DE TROIS (1975), along with OTHERWISE
UNEXPLAINED FIRES, (1976), NOT THE FIRST TIME (1976), FOR GEORGIA O'KEEFE
(1976), PROCESSION (1976), and MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE (1979). (1972-79,
111 min total, 16mm) DM
---
More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
John Ford's SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON
(American Revival)
Sharon McNight's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
A FLEA (Adult Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm (Ribbon) and 9:30pm
(Flea)
The ribald parody has one of the longest pedigrees in European letters,
having existed as a popular form for as long as the novel itself. A
young Henry Fielding, for instance, gained attention in 1741 with his
Samuel Richardson parody Shamela; and by the time The Autobiography
of a Flea was first published in the late 19th century, it was at
the bequest of a rare books publisher who often assigned such projects
to the best typographers in France. Like Shamela, Flea is both parody and model of the coming-of-age epistolary novel--a tactic
that lets the anonymous author describe even the worst transgressions
with pseudo-naïveté. This false innocence is integral to the story's
anti-authoritarian satire, since most of the sex involves the teenage
heroine willingly despoiled by priests and male guardians. (As in much
classic ribaldry, the obscenity of the sex acts reflects the more common
obscenity of institutional hypocrisy.) Sharon McNight's hardcore film
of AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FLEA is faithful to the source in worldview
as well as content--in fact, it's arguably more in tune with the politics
of ribaldry than most Jane Austen adaptations are with that author's
conservative despair. McNight recreates the Victorian setting as best
she can on a low budget, avoiding anachronism when possible, but the
film's authenticity doesn't come from decor. Like Manoel de Oliveira
in DOOMED LOVE (1978), McNight frequently clogs the action with narration
from the original novella, thus recreating the density of 19th century
prose. (1976, 92 min, archival 35mm print)
---
Does any John Ford title fit more nicely beside female-directed hardcore
than SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON? (TWO RODE TOGETHER, however evocative,
suggests a rather different double bill.) It's a fortuitous pairing,
but Ford's supreme masterpiece is more joyous than any on-screen orgasm.
Astonishing in its optimism yet deeply aware of humanity's shortcomings,
YELLOW RIBBON exudes centuries of wisdom in its modest 103 minutes.
The film is constructed as a series of anecdotes about a U.S. cavalry
fort in the late 1800s: If Ford's previous film FORT APACHE was among
his most Shakespearean in its tale of opposing value systems, this one
is more Chekhovian in its cosmic appreciation of the mundane. (In Chekhovian
fashion, the film's big cavalry march leads nowhere, the impending battle
with the Indians never occurs, and the film's most elaborate set piece
is a banquet.) John Wayne delivers his best performance as Captain Nathan
Brittles, a stoic man musing quietly on widower-hood and professional
disappointment in the weeks before his retirement. But Ford is no less
interested in the younger officers, military wives, neglected employees,
dogs, and visiting relatives who populate the fort. The cumulative effect
is akin to seeing all of civilization in miniature. The color photography--some
of the most beautiful in cinema--only adds to the sense of awe, with
sunrises so fiery they seem to have been painted directly on the celluloid.
(1949, 103 min, archival 35mm print) BS
---
More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Eric Rohmer's THE ROMANCE OF ASTREE
AND CELADON
(Contemporary French Revival)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) - Friday, 7pm
The recent passing of Eric Rohmer is no cause for despair. Here
was a man who lived, worked, and retired on exactly his own terms, an
artist who never sought greatness but appeared to stumble upon it with
nearly every film. He also enjoyed an exceedingly long life: If his
last film, THE ROMANCE OF ASTREE AND CELADON, is to be believed, Rohmer
inhabited this planet for roughly 1500 years, so casually could he visualize
life in pre-Christian France. A common misconception of Rohmer's work
is that it can be divided neatly between contemporary tales and period
pieces. In actuality, Rohmer's style was a marriage of modernity and
antiquity, a manipulation of cinema's documentary qualities to convey
the pre-Freudian idea that people are essentially unknowable. This sense
of doubt amidst transparency can make a comic film like THE AVIATOR'S
WIFE or A TALE OF SPRINGTIME trouble the mind long after it ends; in
the case of ASTREE AND CELADON, Rohmer's refusal to presume too much
gives the distant past an integrity typically reserved for the present.
Despite complications involving mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and
lost characters presumed dead, Rohmer directs his actors to behave as
simply as possible. The effect is one of distilling human interaction
to its essence, mapping common ground between pre-modern and modern
experience. Or as J. Hoberman put it in the Village Voice, "Rohmer
suggests that throughout human history attractive young people and the
occasional interested elder have discussed at length the nature of love,
truth, and fidelity." As in much of Rohmer, ASTREE AND CELADON
denies "readable" frames in favor of a relaxed naturalism:
The film abounds with mid-day sunlight and unhurried streams. A scrupulously
worded introduction reminds us that these images would come off as benign
if the planet didn't face ecological disaster--evidence that Rohmer's
career ended with as much subtle foreboding as it began. The film will
be preceded by one of Rohmer's early shorts, PRESENTATION, OR CHARLOTTE
AND HER STEAK (1960), which stars Jean-Luc Godard. Introduced by Mireille
Dobrzynski, PhD Candidate, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
(U of C). (2007, 106 min, 35mm) BS
---
More info at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
HC Potter's HELLZAPOPPIN' (American
Revival)
Bank of America Cinema - Saturday, 8pm
This is what happens when a Broadway
show that was basically vaudeville gets made into a film. Disconnected
and thin on plot, this is nevertheless a cinematic plum. Our hosts for
the evening are Olson and Johnson, a comedy duo made up of two straight
men who can't help but talk to the audience and yell at the projectionist.
There's some funny gags, a song or two from "the Big Mouth," Martha
Raye, and a great Lindy Hop dance scene featuring Frankie Manning, but
the shining moments are when the characters get to play with the fourth
wall. In what can only be the inspiration for MST3K, the opening sequence
takes place on a soundstage where Olson and Johnson argue with a director
and screenwriter about how to turn their show into a movie. They sit
down to watch some footage covering the tacked-on love story, and make
up their own dialog for the on screen action before seamlessly becoming
part of it. Despite failing to capture the mythic energy of the stage
show with which it shares a name, HELLZAPOPPIN' still pleases almost
70 years later. (1941, 84 min, 35mm) JH
---
More info at www.bankofamericacinema.blogspot.com.
Elia Kazan's BABY DOLL and A FACE
IN THE CROWD (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Showtimes noted below
Proposition: Method acting was to Hollywood in the 1950s what CGI
has been to Hollywood for the past two decades. Both of these technical
breakthroughs create minor detail with astonishing precision, yet too
often they distract viewers from what--if anything--a movie may communicate
on the whole. The Film Center's ongoing retrospective of Elia Kazan, easily
the most famous Method director, allows us to ponder whether he was
the James Cameron of his generation or the Roland Emmerich. When Kazan
could click with an actor (which was remarkably often), he crafted moments
of psychological intensity comparable to the heights of Ingmar Bermgan. And
yet no single production has done more to advance the misconception
of Tennessee Williams as psychological realist than Kazan's film of
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Had that play been filmed by, say, Robert
Aldrich or Alexander Mackendrick (who responded to the language of Clifford
Odets with instinctive stylization), perhaps Williams would be remembered
more often as the great baroque poet he was. Those movies may exist
in a parallel universe, but at least ours still has BABY DOLL (1956, 114 min, archival 35mm; Saturday, 3pm and Thursday, 6pm). An
allegory penned with righteous anger, Williams' black comedy invokes
rape, pedophilia, and arson to mirror the economic degradation of the
American South; it remains a film that must be seen to be believed.
Karl Malden plays a white-trash cotton gin owner driven mad by two things:
the persistent virginity of his child bride (He can't consummate the
marriage until she turns 20) and the economic ascendancy of his rival,
a Sicilian immigrant played by Eli Wallach. The film was famously condemned
by the Legion of Decency, but as Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote of Billy Wilder's
KISS ME, STUPID, "its undisguised contempt for the American hinterlands
and the success ethic makes the sexual element seem dirtier than it
actually is." Kazan's masterful use of real locations (perhaps
his most consistent strength as a filmmaker) heightens rather than detracts
from the writer's poetics; the neglected landscapes make a perfect backdrop
for Williams' lost souls. Malden and Wallach are great enough to imbue
their caricatures with human qualities, but caricatures they remain,
and it's fascinating to watch their outsized performances clash with
Kazan's realistic tendencies. Also playing this week is A FACE IN
THE CROWD (1957, 128 min, archival 35mm; Saturday, 5:15pm and Tuesday,
8pm), another allegory built around an outsized performance. Here, Andy
Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes, a folk-singing drifter whose overnight
success on the radio begins a rapid transformation into TV demagoguery.
Griffith exudes a strong musk of charisma in the early passages, but
the film is ultimately defined by the cynicism of Budd Schulberg's script.
Schulberg had gotten in trouble in 1941 when he published his anti-Hollywood
novel What Makes Sammy Run, but the television age seemed to
have opened even deeper wells of bitterness. For this reason, FACE IN
THE CROWD was unpopular on first release; but as J. Hoberman notes in
his cultural history The Dream Life, the film anticipated 60s
disillusionment so well that it became a hit several years later.
BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Frederick Wiseman's HIGH SCHOOL
(Documentary Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University)
- Friday, 7pm
HIGH SCHOOL, Frederick Wiseman's second
film, has been found heavy-handed and didactic by some critics in comparison
to his later productions, which can strain for an unattainable impartiality.
But the hoi polloi subjectivity-thermometer of IMDB's user reviews
suggests that, if anything, it has retained its multiplicity of interpretations:
for the radical anti-authoritarian, it is a concise proof-of-concept
of Ivan Illich's 1971 classic text Deschooling Society; and for
the less critically minded, it is a series of captivating snapshots
of an urban generation-gap long past. It's unclear which meaning the
film might have for Block Cinema's local audience--the students of
prestigious Northwestern, who have played the game depicted here and
won. This generation beyond the draft, granted the possibility of an
intellectual freedom unknown to the 1968 Northeast-suburban Philly students
here portrayed: what can it mean for them, for this film to say--with
directness, honesty, all the clichés that make up the notion of verité--that the primary purpose of schooling is to produce obedient
soldiers for a rationalist war machine? (1968, 75 min, 16mm) MC
---
More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
Rob Reiner's THE PRINCESS BRIDE
(Contemporary American Revival)
Jean-Luc Godard's BAND OF OUTSIDERS
(French Revival)
Music Box - Fri. & Sat., Midnight (Princess) & Sat. / Sun.,
11:30am (Band)
While Block Cinema screens HIGH SCHOOL
for peacenik college kids, the
Music Box caters to today's wartime
high schoolers--specifically, the culturally oppressed teens of the
North Shore--who are to cut out of their extracurriculars and ride
down to Lakeview in order to ritually sublimate their fantasies in extragenerational
classics of the genre: Rob Reiner's failsafe Errol Flynn-pastiche date
flick THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987, 98min, 35mm), and Godard's matinee
gateway drug to cinephilia, BAND OF OUTSIDERS (1964, 95min, 35mm).
It's hard to be truly positive about the former, as it re-inscribes
a chauvinist false-marriage myth in an inexpensive, if droll, postmodern
frame (a frame set nonetheless in Chicago Bears country, as evinced
by the young Fred Savage's apparel). The latter--a celebrated sort
of filmic Situationism 101--vividly teaches that to love cinema is
to both run through museums and dance in cafés: ecstatic, symbolic
rites of passage for a lifelong battle with public authority. But first,
you've got to get out of school. And do take your winsome,
disaffected classmates with you: that bourgeois coffee shop on the corner
of Addison? Well, it's just waiting for someone to do the Madison.
MC
---
More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Lars von Trier's ANTICHRIST (New
International)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Reader Movies for showtimes
A cabin in the woods, a man and a woman,
some fog: that's really all you need to make a horror film, right? The
rest will come out of you--if not naturally, then it can be forced,
vomited out, by sticking a finger down your throat. "The sleep
of reason produces monsters," wrote Goya into a table above which
he drew a picture of himself, surrounded by a cloud of bats and owls.
We suppress the nightmares, and they only come back in greater numbers.
ANTICHRIST, Lars von Trier's little monster, has the barest, though
certainly not the humblest, of beginnings. A horror film, a scaffolding
built out of twigs and bones, on to which von Trier can hang animal
skins, human limbs, and the sickest jokes his head can brew up. The
man is Willem Dafoe and the woman is Charlotte Gainsbourg. There's no
monster; only the two of them, alone, with hammers, scissors and a few
centuries worth of nightmares. This is a film made out of glistening
bile. (2009, 109 min, 35mm) IV
---
More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS:
Also at Facets Cinémathèque this week, for a week long run, is Adrián Biniez's critically acclaimed
drama from Uruguay, GIGANTE.
Also at the Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) this week (Saturday, 6pm) is HAROLD TEEN,
a rare 1928 comedy directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Showing from an archival
35mm print, with live piano accompaniment by David Drazin. Introduced
by Christina Petersen, PhD Candidate, Cinema and Media Studies (U of
C).
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week is Woody
Allen's BANANAS on Thursday.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: On Sunday,
it's Howard Hawks' 1932 crime film SCARFACE; Bryan Forbes
1964 British drama SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON screens Monday;
experimental shorts by Curtis Harrington and Sidney Peterson show Tuesday; and David Cronenberg's THE FLY is on Wednesday.
Also at the Music Box this week: Terry Gilliam's THE IMAGINARIUM
OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS continues; Stephane
Aubier and Vincent Patar's A TOWN CALLED PANIC continues at
the midnight film on Friday and as the matinee on Saturday and Sunday;
also in the midnight slot on Saturday is REPO! THE GENETIC MUSICAL.
On Thursday at 7:30pm, the "Sundance Film Festival USA" touring
series presents a sneak of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial
debut JACK GOES BOATING.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: WILLIAM KUNSTLER:
DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE is playing for a week in the "Stranger
Than Fiction" documentary series, with directors Emily Kunstler and
Sarah Kunstler in person at the 7:45pm screenings on Friday and Saturday;
also in the documentary series is Stephanie Soechtig's TAPPED,
an exposé on bottled water, showing Sunday and Monday.
On Friday at 8pm Chicago Filmmakers is showing the female hip-hop
artist documentary SAY MY NAME, directed by Nirit Peled.
The Museum of Contemporary Art continues its Italian film series with Michelangelo Antonioni's
THE PASSENGER on Saturday and Sunday at 3pm; Enzo G. Castellari's
1978 film THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (why does that sound familiar?
Mr. Tarantino?) on Saturday and Sunday at 1pm; and Federico Fellini's
1976 FELLINI'S CASANOVA on Thursday at 6pm (repeats next week).
VILNIUS: Lithuanian Film Festival
in Chicago began on Thursday and continues at different locations
through Tuesday. See here for more information. |
