Rhythms

My preference for American films and filmmakers is probably evident, even at this point. I love film and don't usually decide whether a movie is good or not based on the director's nationality, however there are certain "rhythms" to movies from parts of the world and this is what I want to write about in this post.

I preface the rest of my comments by saying that I’m speaking of films of an artistic nature, given that over 2,000 movies are made in the US each year.  Certainly, part of the explanation for this preference is that I’ve lived my life between North and South America (about 50/50 now).  I’m also just one more individual in the mass influenced by the aggressive, world-wide expansion of the American entertainment industry (film, television, music, Internet videos) which impacts film preferences by acclimatizing us to certain rhythms and narrative styles.  I’ve also already mentioned how my earliest movie exposure came from my father’s infatuation with Hollywood.

Of course I’ve rebelled along the way. A younger me would take a bus to the telephone workers union in downtown Lima, Peru, to see their film club screenings of Battleship Potemkin, October or Alexander Nevsky; with my fellow film buddy, now husband, we would drive long distances to pick up reels of precious films to show at our university film club, most particularly movies from great Italian masters like De Sicca, Visconti, Pasolini, Scola. And I’ve enjoyed such fascinating discussions over coffee or a gin tonic about the films by Buñuel, Bergman, Antonioni, Fellini, Bertolucci, Wertmuller, Cavani. More recently: von Trier, Herzog, Mungui, the Dardennes, Haneke and others.

I recognize and honor these, and many of my favorites pieces of film art come from these “foreign language” directors (I believe I’m lumping the UK directors with the Americans). However, I also confess that I am used to the rhythms and pace of American films. A movie lasts two or so hours, therefor part of the art of filmmaking is making each second count, not waste a scene or a shot. Even long, almost motionless, slow camera shots (like the snow scenes in Fargo or shots of the exterior of the house in Caché) should serve a purpose in the overall piece. American filmmakers are very atuned to this "impatience" from their audience. No judgement whether it's good or bad, it's just my preference.

Part of the narrative style of these American films is their straightforwardness in the story telling and also their simplicity and naturalness, especially in modern American filmmakers, something that I greatly prefer to the affected or pretentious style that a lot of foreign films suffer from (though this affectation is also present in some American filmmakers, like Woody Allen or Quentin Tarantino). I parallel this American style in movies to modern American literature. It’s a little like reading a Marilynne Robinson novel, where the ordinary, quotidian becomes explosive and leave us reeling in the depth of our feelings, wondering where they came from.

Film is such a fluid art, in any case. It is influenced by the other arts and by technology, so it is ever changing. I love this about this art form. It challenges us to keep an open mind (eye, ear, heart). It infuses us with new rhythms all the time. So maybe the list and my preferences will change as this blog develops, if it does. I’m just happy that I can look into my memory and realize the wealth of rhythms that I’ve already made mine

Movie Awards: A Love - Hate Relationship

 

 

Ben Affleck himself confessed to being stunned that his film Argo took home the big prize -Best Ensemble Cast- at the Screen Actor's Guild Award ceremony last night. He said: “I thought, ‘There’s no way we’d win this award.’ I agree completely. Totally baffling. Not one of the actors in Argo received nominations for acting in any of the categories by the SAG. They also haven't been nominated for the Globes or the Oscars. Lincoln  and Silver Linings Playbook (my favorite) both had three SAG nominations each in different acting categories, and both had winners. And while I truly enjoyed Argo, and agree with most critics that it will probably take home the Academy Award for Best Picture, it's not the acting that stands out in this film.

Rather disheartening. But not at all unusual for a movie award ceremony. I'm probably not alone in wishing that movie awards like the Oscars or the SAG were to movies what the Nobel, the Pulitzer or the National Book Award are to literature. Movies are art but unfortunately they are also an industry and so the influence of money is ever present; the campaigns, the box-office, pleasing the public and competing, so many external factors that influence the Academy or Guild voters.

 

So why care about these awards at all? I confess to feelings of  love/ hate towards them. Some movie fans will probably wonder what there's to love about them at all.  In my case it's not that I like them  because they have become so much a part of the pop culture that engulfs us today. It's more about how much a part of my culture they are.  And its not recent. I am taken back  to the Hollywood that my father adored and talked about, the one of the late 40s that I was introduced to at a very young age Leafing through his piles of Ecran and Cinemundo magazines, hearing him talk about the stars and the glamour that surrounded them, going to cinema art clubs as a child to see old movies and stars, as old as Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino. And, most pertinently, sitting in front of the black and white TV with the family to watch the Oscars ceremony. Some families bet on horses or cars, mine bet on Oscar winners. And so it is today, now with my husband and daughters.

 

So at home we bet on what the Foreign Press, the Academy or the SAG will vote and then we bet on who and what we think should really win. They occasionally coincide. But we sit there as a family  in front of the flat, HD screen now and are so very gleeful when we do agree ("Yes! Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad!") and quite angry when they don't ("Whaaat? Argo for Best Ensemble Cast?"). We love to prepare for the award shows, make our bets, cook up a special dish, drinks and dessert for the occasion, make comments all through the show, cheer and scream..and love and hate them.

 

The Politics of Film

 

 

Even within my closest circle of fellow movie lovers we have been arguing over Zero Dark Thirty. It pains me to no end that there is so much controversy surrounding  Kathryn Bigelow's film. She is a director  whose movies I adore and who I am proud of as a woman cinephile. She has not only joined the thankfully growing list of women movie directors (which now includes the likes of  Jane Campion, Liliana Cavani, Lina Wertmuller, Debra Granik, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, Agnieszka Holland, Gurinder Chadha, Claudia Llosa, Nora Ephron, and many others), but she has enriched it tremendously with a unique cinematic style.

 

I found Zero Dark Thirty to be an impeccably made film and very true to Bigelow's style of direct,  detail-rich, quasi-documentary filmmaking, where she apparently lets the audience add their emotions and judgment, almost not leading with her own. Almost. It is a tribute to her filmmaking that the  Senate Intelligence Committee has written a letter to the public about this movie and a Senate panel has been set up to examine aspects of the film, when it isn't a documentary film.

 

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the Chairwoman of the Committee.

 

I would not take it to the injurious level of criticism that, for example, Matt Taibbi has made of the film in the January 16th Rolling Stone article, but it's hard not to leave the movie with a sinking feeling of disenchantment that comes from realizing someone whose work you admired (and admire, for Zero Dark is still admirable filmmaking) has made a film that while showing how torture helped in this man hunt, omits to show the inhumanity and moral indefensability of torture. As Taibbi states well:

 

"Here's my question: if it would have been dishonest to leave torture out of the film entirely, how is it not dishonest to leave out how generally ineffective it was, how morally corrupting, how totally it enraged the entire Arab world, how often we used it on people we knew little to nothing about, how often it resulted in deaths, or a hundred other facts? Bigelow put it in, which was "honest," but it seems an eerie coincidence that she was "honest" about torture in pretty much exactly the way a CIA interrogator would have told the story, without including much else."

 The film is a thriller, a spy movie, a war movie, a political movie. There are scenes that are made with such reality and strength, that we hold our breath and clench our fists as if we didn't know the outcome or were standing right there, among the seal team. The night raid scene is truly awe inspiring. The various bomb attacks. So many sequences that are worthy of taking them apart bit by bit in any film class. Not the Maya scenes, however. I  found her the weakest part of the movie and maybe her "centrality" one of the questionable aspects, at the core of the controversy in many ways.

 

Bigelow is one of the best directors around now. It is my hope that this controversy doesn't impair her filmmaking. In her interview with Stephen Colbert, it was clear that it is already taking its toll.

Every Cloud

If there is a cast ensemble that should be a shoe-in to win the Screen Actor's Guild Award tomorrow night it is the cast of The Silver Linings Playbook. Breathtaking acting.  Bradley Cooper is a fabulouos surprise, acting through his eyes (and what  baby blues they are!); De Niro like we haven't seen since...Casino?; Weaver amazing as the loving, suffering mother and wife of men battling their disorders, her character a 360 degree from Janine 'Smurf' Cody, the mother in Animal Kingdom, showing what tremendous range she has; Jennifer Lawrence great (still more amazing in Winter's Bone though); even Chris Tucker, John Ortiz... all mesmerizing to watch.

 

The highlight scene?: with Led Zeppelin's What is and What Should Never Be blaring in the background, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper and Jacki Weaver act out a family drama scene in which  all the pain and tragedy of a mental health breakdown is portrayed with such realism, that the character's anxiety almost becomes our own. It's violence like what people really live, not Hollywood style. The type that leaves the real, long-lasting wounds. David O. Russell knows what he's showing.

The ending may be a little too movie classic, borderline sappy, but overall necessary. In life we all need a little of that hope; we need to know that even those who suffer things like bi-polar disorder will find love, stability, peace of mind and a second or third chance. That every cloud has its silver lining.

 

Surviving by Film

I'm staring at this blinking cursor line wondering how to ensnare my first reader. Finding our commong ground: surviving by film. This beautiful, passionate, mind/body escapist love of film that has kept us going through thick and thin. Living lives we have not lived, feeling the intensity of foreign experiences that we've made our own. This is what leads me to this blog. Sharing a common passion is what this post is about. Finding other survivors by film.