Not Coming to a Theater Near You | 2005 in review
by Jenny Jediny
The Fire Within
Louis Malle
Louis Malle’s eclectic choices as a director may have caused his minor league status in the ranks of the French New Wave. With a list of films that range from The Silent World, the first Cousteau documentary to his infamous Murmur of the Heart, Malle has earned respect but not the wild child status of Godard or even the cinephilic prestige of Truffaut. Not available on DVD, The Fire Within was featured in a Malle retrospective this past summer at the Walter Reade Theater. In conjunction with The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Le Samouraï, The Fire Within centers on an isolated and emotionally distanced man whose life has reached a pivotal point; for Alain Leroy, he is re-entering his social life after a period of clinical alcoholic rehabilitation but it is not an attempt to restore the past or even begin anew. Within the span of the film’s running time, Alain will revisit old friends in a last attempt to convince himself not to commit suicide.
Alain offers no monologue, no clues into his disappointment, disconnection and loss of will to live, rendering a film that is an observational bubble. We know Alain is an alcoholic, and there is a particularly significant moment as he chooses to take up old habits. Malle chooses to film this with an utter lack of drama or urgency, but instead with acceptance, the same restraint and resignation that Alain emotes throughout his journey. Yet the film is tender and often painful—Alain cannot connect with any of his old friends, any advice or comfort they offer cannot dissuade him, and he only accepts his chosen fate more readily as he moves within circles of bourgeois friends and past lovers whose lives are as hollow as suspected. Reminiscent of Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 9-5 for its heightened sense of time and mortality and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita with Paris rather than Rome as the background for emotional emptiness and loneliness, The Fire Within is an unsentimental expression of human desolation.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Jacques Audiard
Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped enjoyed a strong art house run this summer and is one of the better films I have seen of late portraying a dysfunctional father/son relationship (also see The Squid & The Whale later in this list), as well as the first French remake of an American film that I believe I have ever seen. The film, while sharing some of the acidic feelings of The Fire Within, has youth, energy, and recklessness embedded in Thomas, real estate agent by day, hired thug by night as he threatens the homeless and lets loose rats in squatter’s buildings. While Thomas has money and a gorgeous, Belmondo-esque visage, he is wound up tightly with dissatisfaction and disgust, feelings that break wide open after he runs into an old acquaintance, his deceased Mother’s music manager; we learn that Thomas once had musical promise with the piano, and the manager offers him a standing opportunity to audition.
If we simplify the conflict weighing in on Thomas we could go as black and white as maternal versus paternal, but more specifically the family ties that bind; Thomas’s dreams of not only music, but of escaping his Father were practically non-existent until this chance reunion with his Mother’s past. While his Father is an ugly, suffocating man orchestrating his son’s illegal activities as well as most of his life, Thomas’ Mother, even in her absence, suggests an entirely different side of her son, and what his life might be like without his Father’s shadow. The connections between Father and Son are beyond responsibility and loyalty however, as there is an emotional connection that Thomas may not even be able to escape even with his Father’s physical demise.
Le Samouraï
Jean-Pierre Melville
The notion of pulp is infused with ancient tradition and the Western in Melville’s Le Samouraï, released under the Criterion DVD label this autumn. Unlike the previously mentioned French anti-heroes, there is no disorderliness, no emotional angst in Alain Delon’s lone assassin, Costello. Living in a small and uncluttered Paris apartment Costello is incredibly calm under pressure, whether carrying out a contracted hit or under hours of interrogation by the police. Under contract he fails to kill an unexpected witness, setting off a chain of events that will end in Costello’s self-orchestrated death.
Le Samouraï is engrossing in its stillness, moments that are often close to tedium; it is an interesting contrast between Delon’s aura of cool, with his sleek suits and composure, and the rather lackluster tasks he endures in his line of employment, moving with patience and control whether trying to cover his tracks from the police or maintaining a look of ambivalence in a police line-up. Even the intricate metro chase, rather thrilling, is a controlled experiment, with Costello as a rat in a maze, his movements pinpointed by agents in disguise. However, Costello cannot control all aspects of his job, including the female witness he chooses not to kill, and later acknowledges for too long, catching the attention of the police inspector who will not let him go. One of the first films to successfully combine three popular film genres, and now a source of inspiration for directors including Jim Jarmusch, Le Samouraï feels incredibly fresh and inventive amid its imitators.
The Squid & The Whale
Noah Baumbach
Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical tale of divorced childhood in Brooklyn is a raw and painful experience for not only those with divorced parents, but almost any form of family dysfunction. The Squid & The Whale is a series of fragments, snapshots from a family album where happier memories have been replaced with bitter fighting, resentment and infidelity. Avoiding sentimentality in leaps and bounds, Baumbach instead explores the first chapter in young Jesse’s adolescence with an unblinking and often unflattering camera that captures his parents’ marriage crumbling and its effects on both Jesse and his younger brother. Neither parent is allowed much sympathy; while his Mother has committed multiple acts of adultery, Jesse’s father is manipulative and arrogant, qualities Jesse emulates at first with his family and his first girlfriend, but only begins to comprehend by the conclusion of the film. Divorce and its effects on children is a popular topic in film, notably in the kid-friendly The Parent Trap as well as the slightly heavy-handed Kramer vs. Kramer, but Baumbach’s take is one of the most touching and distressing I have seen; watching Jesse as he faces his childhood fears in the Museum of Natural History diorama responsible for the film’s title, it is evident that a long road of pain and understanding is only beginning to unravel before him.
Mouchette
Robert Bresson
Viewing Mouchette for the first time at a reparatory screening this October, I was reminded of The Squid & The Whale in that Bresson’s Mouchette, very much in a different time and place, let alone living situation, is still an adolescent girl experiencing social humiliation and familial indifference. Bresson is nihilistic in his approach, demonstrated in the opening hunting sequence where we witness small furry creatures at the mercy of hunters and their traps, a prelude to the fate of Mouchette and the film’s bleak conclusion. Mouchette falls prey to her surroundings, suffering at the hands of everyone from her teachers’ mocking condescension to rape by a local drunk. However, it is possible that the isolation and indifference of Mouchette’s family, her neighbors, and the town itself may have been far more traumatizing and damaging than any of the direct actions taken against her, raising debate on the film’s ending. While inarguably desolate, it can be argued as transcendent for a person in such agony.
M*A*S*H
Robert Altman
War satire and critique in film is entirely relevant right now and while I have viewed newly released films exploring the topic, such as Syriana, Altman’s sharp and surreal take on war was my favorite this year, both highly intelligent and delightfully underhanded. I watched the film on DVD for the first time this year while on a Donald Sutherland fixation and have picked up on Hawkeye’s whistle permanently. M*A*S*H succeeds not only as an incredible ensemble piece but also in its brazen attack on the ridiculous nature of war, as well as the media’s ability to brush off body count in favor of exaggerated and beefed up heroism. Far from the heroes or even respectable officers, the individual doctors in the M*A*S*H crew could not be a bigger band of misfits as they play juvenile jokes on their superiors, drink Martinis like water, and rig football games. It is evident that the dissident and rebel behavior was key during the time of the film’s release, as audiences (as well as those who had served during wartime) viewed a film that for the first time expressed the purposelessness and lack of nobility in war.
My Own Private Idaho
Gus Van Sant
Although the skewed interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry V is not core to the success of Van Sant’s film, it is one of a number of distinctive elements I found extraordinarily executed in this bizarre and lovely film. My Own Private Idaho was released on Criterion DVD this year and I loved watching this film that flows and ebbs across the screen, as we follow two hustlers with very different visions of life; Mike, the narcoleptic, fuzzy, and lovelorn soul, and Scott, son of a wealthy politician whose days of wandering seem to merely fill the time before he inherits his father’s money. Van Sant has glorious visions of the Pacific Northwest, with a camera that soaks up the sky and vast fields, creating an aura of simultaneous serenity and loneliness. These hustlers have rejected society’s norms, earning money through prostitution and theft, living in squatters’ warehouses but a feigned battle seems to go on in Scott’s mind, as he rattles off lines about hating his father’s lifestyle and values while preparing for a time of unknown change and acceptance of responsibility. However, Scott’s return to his family is seen as betrayal, and perhaps the more absurd choice, as Van Sant cleverly puts a twist on what we deem worth worrying about, what is worth striving for, and what may be learned though the more strange trips and detours that occur in life.
Howard’s End
James Ivory
Merchant & Ivory’s characteristic critique of the English class system was released on DVD this year and I was finally able to check it off a long list of films I had nearly forgotten to watch. This lush and intricately detailed film is carried by its female leads, a trio that includes Margaret and Helen Schlegel, a pair of independent (i.e. unmarried) sisters, and the elderly Ruth Wilcox (the luminous Vanessa Regrave) whose friendship with Margaret alters both sisters’ lives as they are connected to her heritage and her home at Howard’s End. The film’s intelligent adaptation and take on loss of tradition, as well as the economic and intellectual battles of Edwardian England are astute and embedded in various characters; while the Schlegel sisters embody the bourgeois class, open to culture and impassioned in nature, the Wilcox family is entirely of tradition and the aristocracy, slowly being weeded out during the period and losing control of what was their England. The intertwining of these families through chance and marriage sets up the allegorical challenge that beyond class and other trappings, we should only connect. Set in an era new to women’s suffrage, both sisters are radicals of their time, women consciously seeking their role in life as well as their own happiness.
My Brilliant Career
Gillian Armstrong
My Brilliant Carrier is comprised of several stereotypical elements; a rambunctious young woman causing chaos within her conservative surroundings while simultaneously falling in love and embarking on the road to success. However, Armstrong’s film rises above cliché with its performances and its unusual ending, which struck me strongly the first time I viewed the film years ago, and still resounds now that it has been released on DVD. A member of the Australian New Wave of the 1970s, Armstrong broke into global cinema along with figures such as Peter Weir after completing several shorts and documentary pieces in a national film school. Watching it again, our protagonist Sybylla is certainly the free spirited female for 1890s Australia but also unpredictable and often unlikable, rejecting the man she is genuinely in love with (and who would most likely support her career aspirations) for a stronger passion—writing. Like many of Armstrong’s later films, there is a strong debate over a woman’s choice in career, love, and creativity, with a rejection of the storybook ending, or certainly an avoidance of tying up loose ends for her female characters. Sybylla’s decisions are not foolproof, there is even regret as she makes her choices, but the film is ultimately inspired in its sense of self worth and ideas of independence.
Innocence
Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Hadzihalilovic’s feature film debut is enigmatic and remarkably conceived. Innocence seems to have fallen out of Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole, portraying a secluded girls’ boarding school where all outside contact is entirely cut off and the girls wear color coded hair ribbons, creating a hierarchy according to their age. The film is not entirely successful, but what I found most intriguing was its portrayal of pre-pubescent girls and sexuality; while a number of films, including Les Mistons and Zero for Conduct portray young boys’ sexual awakenings as matter of fact or at the very least playful, Hadzihalilovic has tapped into some of the secret, almost ritualistic attitudes toward girls and sex. The surreal setting of the woods surrounding the school, as well as the older girls’ nighttime walks to an unspecified meeting place all add to the inverted fairytale atmosphere. The film falters when the veil is lifted and we surmise what these girls are being schooled for, an inevitable role that can be read as indicative of non-progressive attitudes toward female sexuality, although the concluding scene contradicts much of what has already occurred. Even with missteps Innocence is still an intriguing exploration of sexuality often entirely ignored or trivialized in cinema.