End Of The Week Shorts #97
Affecting and precise, If Beale Street Could Talk is a solid film. What it does above all else is capture a feeling of alienation and despair, of insurmountable injustice, by putting you in the place of someone who is not free to live their life the way they desire. Such a fact resounds outwardly from the final frames of the film.
If I were to be honest, however, I couldn't watch this film with utmost seriousness as a part of my mind latched on to the fact that Stephan James (not generally, but certainly in this film) looks and sounds quite a bit like Jon Jones. This effected the characterisation of Fonny far more than necessary; I didn't much like his character from the word go. With such silliness put aside, I can say If Beale Street Could Talk is a good film.
Second watch. Second watch...
Plot driven thrillers and second watches don't go well together in my books. I very much so enjoyed The Handmaiden when I first saw it in the cinema, but I found myself simply remembering all the twists and turns on this watch. I could not see much depth in characterisation and thematic exploration, nor could I really enjoy the narrative and its dark comedy. I have grown very tired recently of stories that hold sex as a final and all encompassing goal; the structure and writing just feels lazy, and never do I see much meaning emerge from films like this. Confrontation though they may be, the likes of The Handmaiden shocks and plays with its audience more than anything else. For that, I have to say that it has depreciated quite significantly between now and my trip to a cinema more than 2 years ago.
A social structure so rigid that it destroys humanity; love so persistent that it transcends it. The Crucified Lovers slowly builds an existential romance out of a strict system of social exchange. Quite far from an expressionist melodrama, this has patience of a rather remarkable character. Without building character, without developing much more than a plot driven by ironically functioning themes of the inevitable, Mizoguchi generates a great evil in the abstract. On one level, this then manifests as a fundamentally humanist expression of a debilitating transgression of freedom too common to the human social system trying to come to grips with sexual, social and romantic fidelity. On another, more affecting and personally perturbing level, The Crucified Loves examines both the limiting and unfathomable characteristics of love. The difficult question that this then poses is of love being something worth dying for or love giving one the will to die. How does love bond us in this respect? A question I'll leave open.
A great example of high concept cinema, Legally Blonde's narrative premise is amusing. It plays with conceptions of beauty and brains, advocating that the two are not in counterpoint in a (for the times) politically relevant manner. Interesting this may then be to some as a cultural document, as a convention-questioning exploration of the female coming-of-age and romance. Personally, however, I find this to be little more than amusing. Leaning on its melodramatic expressionist kitschyness as a means of comedic commentary, Legally Blonde is dumb like it is smart and smart like it is dumb. This is somewhat charming, but only to a certain extent. In the end, I can't suggest this is terrible; it is just not brilliant.
How did Meryl Streep's brilliance, mastery and iconicism become an axiom of contemporary cinema? Is she really so great? What has she done to deserve this?
This is my second time watching It's Complicated, and whilst I have a basic respect for this - as I do all of Nancy Meyer's films - it is a highly limited film whose characters have surface level complications and a psychology that doesn't fall too far below the skin. As Alec Baldwin acts out his schlumpy, self-satisfying role, I can't help but reel away, fearing I'll smell his bad breath as he exhales his lines with incredible slime. And have tears on young faces ever been more shamefully naive? It's Complicated is what it is: not great, though sure it is special.
Lanthimos' cinema has now moved into the fringes of the mainstream whilst retaining some of its edge. But, where Lanthimos' cinema evolved between Kinetta and The Killing of a Sacred Dear - each film a new formal investigation of isolation in an uncannily brutal world - it takes a step to the side and backwards with The Favourite in my view.
The themes here are too available and the characters too transparent. In no way does this make for a poor filmic experience, but it strips Lanthimos' cinema of its unique ingeniousness. Alas, the key problem I see here is the absence of Efthymis Filippou. I hope the two team up again for Lanthimos' next project.
So Blue, So Calm is something of an experimental documentary, one that explores the lives of inmates in a French prison. It does so primarily with photographs. The image is not allowed to move where men are incarcerated for impressionistic effect; we are trapped in time much like they are. This is an effective choice made by de Latour, though, admittedly, it makes for a tough watch. Maybe too effective it is to trap us in time whilst inmates enact personal stories and voice interior soliloquies. I was put to sleep. So, despite the intricate work put into the cultivation of sound and still-image language, I have to say I couldn't give this much appreciation.
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End Of The Week Shorts #98
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