I.
4-20 January: Alain Tanner
How do we recognize that a film is originally French-speaking Swiss? At this pressing issue, one possible answer given to me by the films of Alain Tanner: secondary characters all wear the beard, small round glasses, long hair and thick knits. Remains to be seen whether this hypothesis stands the test of time: after all, thirty years ago and that Tanner turned Charles Dead or Alive (1969) , The Return of Africa (1972) and The Middle of the World (1974), which does not younger (and me either way). Will it refresh all that I am typing in the upcoming films Swiss World Film Festival? Hope not: a movie, when it was leased to the weight, loses all sense of its origin. FFM: Wal-Mart International Film ... But back to Tanner -
Representative of a cinema and social distancing Brechtian tendencies - where he made his mark - Tanner seems to have the spirit left ... And heart in the most absolute wave. Charles died or alive shows initially a leftist fantasy: the boss of a company takes out his watch tape of platitudes before a team of journalists, bristled, reminders, and begins to tell the truth. He never wanted this job, inherited from his father. He's bored. He never really knew what he wanted, "he admits. Soon, he beats the countryside without leaving a forwarding address, leaving his son careerist care of business.
A germ of alternative society, social microstructure begins to form when it is adopted by a young couple who lives modestly on his return to earth. The husband is a kind of a gentle giant bit stupid, an idiot who candidly admits Dostoevsky his ignorance of everything (one might even assume that he is illiterate, and that Tanner is not skilled in the manufacture of allegorical characters). Little ability to handicrafts, the former boss becomes idle. It stays while two others work for him. Being stored in his host a proverb a day, he becomes arrogant, ironic ...
The observation is not made, but perhaps it just a simple life that recovers three hollow old power structures, in the group with the boss and workers. The best thing to do for Charles, is still to make itself the police who seek to enter quietly, resigned, in the paddy wagon to carry him back, presumably, to his place of factory boss, leaving his guests to their innocence, he Falli compromise the role it has played in this failed attempt at egalitarianism. The first feature-length fiction film Tanner has already established all the themes ...
A germ of alternative society, social microstructure begins to form when it is adopted by a young couple who lives modestly on his return to earth. The husband is a kind of a gentle giant bit stupid, an idiot who candidly admits Dostoevsky his ignorance of everything (one might even assume that he is illiterate, and that Tanner is not skilled in the manufacture of allegorical characters). Little ability to handicrafts, the former boss becomes idle. It stays while two others work for him. Being stored in his host a proverb a day, he becomes arrogant, ironic ...
The observation is not made, but perhaps it just a simple life that recovers three hollow old power structures, in the group with the boss and workers. The best thing to do for Charles, is still to make itself the police who seek to enter quietly, resigned, in the paddy wagon to carry him back, presumably, to his place of factory boss, leaving his guests to their innocence, he Falli compromise the role it has played in this failed attempt at egalitarianism. The first feature-length fiction film Tanner has already established all the themes ...
I find something about all this in my recollection of In the White City, as well as in The Return of Africa and The Middle of the World : the desire for freedom, to live otherwise, the discomfort existential one that feels cramped in its social role, and that drives him to break with the company, then found helpless before the great wasteland of potential. Default solution, or by blindness: the decline. The dream. As the couple's return from Africa who rushes home to fool him to his friends that he left on the continent, toward a life where they would finally be useful. something. As the politician who sabotages his election campaign becomes infatuated with an Italian bartender who becomes his mistress. There with her he feels truly himself, yet he does not "see", she says, with rightly so, in the midst of the world . Tanner's in movies, it is possible that only Jonah Who Will Be 25 in 2000 has managed to portray a real team effort, small-scale project to create a utopia of social equality, which failed not immediately crushed against the wall of the failure or isolation of sterile. Otherwise it may be, in Tanner, space for the performance of utopia in the drama of manners variable geometry: A witness flame in my heart (1987) and The Journal of Lady M (1993), and fascinated by belated efforts Libertarians loves Myriam Mezieres, their leading actress, which tells the drop in detail. Finally, should always check, though ... So much for my theory of fabrics: the rumor that suit is walking in these two films, mostly naked dressed up ...
II.
January 11-15: News of Orders , Michel Brault.
Quebecois films that claim a mythical dimension, it would now the Dozen, the remake of Dawn adaptation of Seraphin through Richard turnips and all who get excited about hockey or one of their best and dusty cadaveric our goodwill folklorico-literary (after The Stranger, why not a superprode inspired by Angeline de Montbrun ? Binamé we can energize it! It energizes everything, Belgium.) But, finally, no jokes, movies that really have access to this dimension - I count the Plouffe in there - and who, moreover, do so in dealing with recent events to them when they were made are still rare. Orders Michel Brault is, which is probably one of the few.
What strikes me to see him again 15 years after the first is how, unlike remembered what my memory is faulty, Orders does not so much the story of detention, than the arrest that led to it. The situation is almost Kafkaesque. In the aftermath of the vote unanyme who will enforce the War Measures Act, citizens have woken up, shoved in their homes by agents of the Act. "We had to slander Josef K., for without it nothing would hurt, he was arrested one morning ... "
Why are they arrested? No need to say. They serve the typical bureaucratic response: "A special law ... not need a warrant ... not need explanation. We receive orders. We are running them. "There you go. Enough said. Parents are torn from their office responsibilities: work, family, and are expeditiously carried who knows where or for how long or why, without further ado.
Why are they arrested? No need to say. They serve the typical bureaucratic response: "A special law ... not need a warrant ... not need explanation. We receive orders. We are running them. "There you go. Enough said. Parents are torn from their office responsibilities: work, family, and are expeditiously carried who knows where or for how long or why, without further ado.
"My name is John Smith, in the movie I'm Clermont Boudreault, unionist ..." - the distance is to represent the viewer that the film makes the artifice of the stage. But the grammar of distancing what would it be in Orders , took over the old? If the movie, I think, is as topical as ever, not by his methods into abyss. It is, however, because despite these, the story tells us that absorbs and grabs us. It is no identification with the characters, not by the intensity (relative residing in) the interpretation, the situation is itself . Inspired by the events of October Orders accomplishes the feat to make us momentarily forget history, we better back then. Meanwhile, we feel the unworthiness of the views of the victim - the entire film is told from the perspective of victims - who must undergo to be arrested without knowing why, to be held in ignorance, to be thank you the arbitrariness of the guards and the Act, any fear of losing or have lost everything, be deported to a foreign place, repressive. It is reduced to this state of stupor in which no one knew, knew nothing of what was happening. Not surprisingly, the movie spends almost an hour to recount how his five protagonists were conducted in prison rather than talk, over time, their stay in a cell.
Despite the narrative-off, despite the use of alternating black and white and color, the film preserves a immersive dimension - against which it appears to stop fighting. Between this force and immersive processes distancing orders has something of a cinematic oxymoron, bringing together in a single work of elements opposed to a figure: black sun narrative scope of visceral sauce served Brechtian . He knows too, bit by bit, accountable environment. The decoration of Saint-Henri (which has not changed too much) and the Plateau Mont-Royal (the time when it was still a poor neighborhood) are captured in such a way that makes the entire distance between film Quebec today's reality of the places he claims to invest. There is the decor and there is the place. orders eastern side of place.
But where does this need for distance ? Arguably, in fact, that the aesthetic choices of Brault like to remind us what it shows on the screen is still below the crushing reality. It is no secret - a heading in that faith - the five main characters (played by Jean Lapointe, Guy Provost, Claude Gauthier, Louise Forestier and Hélène Loiselle) are condensations of fifty testimonies gathered from to former prisoners. Their trajectory is involved in a dimension typed more or less felt, I think particularly strong with regard to the fate of Clément Boudreault (Jean Lapointe) that learns the death of his father during his detention, and especially the character Richard Lavoie (Claude Gauthier) who reveals the favorite target of police cruelty.
after the home caught by police when he changes the diapers of her baby, unemployed, threatened by a (fake) killing, loving (apparently, during a scene) to clean the floor corridor of the prison, the film has the place of Richard Lavoie attributes that are the opposite of masculinity. At least for the staff of guards that make it stand all the insults, if not tell him "squeal like a pig ! "or treating" feufi. In veiled terms, so below , the fate of Richard Lavoie probably symbolizes, Orders in , Calvary particular qu'auront been subjected to homosexual inmates in October.
after the home caught by police when he changes the diapers of her baby, unemployed, threatened by a (fake) killing, loving (apparently, during a scene) to clean the floor corridor of the prison, the film has the place of Richard Lavoie attributes that are the opposite of masculinity. At least for the staff of guards that make it stand all the insults, if not tell him "squeal like a pig ! "or treating" feufi. In veiled terms, so below , the fate of Richard Lavoie probably symbolizes, Orders in , Calvary particular qu'auront been subjected to homosexual inmates in October.
Now, why talk about the News of Orders?
... Because in doing as he does - at a distance cons immersion, nature and typed "representative" of the characters, exclusive adoption of the perspective of the victim - Orders we speak, we always talked about, and discuss Again, the situation of October as a non-episode past, gone, liquidated, but as an event that hovers, something that could come back. It represents the legacy of human Measures Act as a war situation reactivatable , always present, the condition of Quebec. One need only imagine how those in power respond to an internal political crisis in nature "separatist". His threat still hangs over us. Similarly, too - we can still hope - that remains the resilience of a people that has defined and constructed in response to persecution that do not belong to any of the episodes in its history that would now "archaic." This, at least my version.
III.
And all that is longer than I thought and I'm starting to tire,
... I pass rapidly over the immense pleasure that I had to review the Mean Streets Scorsese, perhaps the first of his films (1974) where we discovered a whole, or almost every obsession in his place, articulated finally.
What difference, indeed, is there between these Vitelloni of Little Italy in New York, and gangsters of Goodfellas or Casino ? A difference of scale, at most (in immorality in the quantities of hemoglobin paid too). But what is to be boosted by a film camera movements and a stunning soundtrack that puts tubes with these characters that unpredictability, or the mixture of ambition (reduced) and scruples (religious, sentimental), and total lack of taste (in Scorsese, the Underworld is still small despite its means because it remains vulgaris) bears to the edges of psychosis; these shots, finally, which are a signature effect - when you enter, following a character, seen from behind in those places where "it happens" and we take in the breathtaking atmosphere yet saturated characters infréquentables: here: here it is in Mean Streets Small portable the Scorsese , the film that take him on a desert island, would not do to remember what Scorsese has also repeated on a larger scale, but that does not add to this portrait in microcosm , probably also more human, because in Mean Streets, it still passes the entire length of the film wondering if someone has skin Robert de Niro, or if Robert de Niro eventually (foolishly) have on their skin, whereas in subsequent films, it kills everything-goes, it was shot without a second thought is uninhibited -: dehumanization is heavier and more frightening too; the most savage violence. Mean Streets, or the world of gangsterism scorsésien reproduced scale (yet) human. And the accession of a filmmaker in full control of its turbulence - which is definitely not synonymous with restraint, the contrary. Taxi Driver was nice to receive his medals, but in terms of "personal film", he belongs Nor his screenwriter, Paul Schrader? I thought it between these two major works, it is in Mean Streets Scorsese that engages fully.
What difference, indeed, is there between these Vitelloni of Little Italy in New York, and gangsters of Goodfellas or Casino ? A difference of scale, at most (in immorality in the quantities of hemoglobin paid too). But what is to be boosted by a film camera movements and a stunning soundtrack that puts tubes with these characters that unpredictability, or the mixture of ambition (reduced) and scruples (religious, sentimental), and total lack of taste (in Scorsese, the Underworld is still small despite its means because it remains vulgaris) bears to the edges of psychosis; these shots, finally, which are a signature effect - when you enter, following a character, seen from behind in those places where "it happens" and we take in the breathtaking atmosphere yet saturated characters infréquentables: here: here it is in Mean Streets Small portable the Scorsese , the film that take him on a desert island, would not do to remember what Scorsese has also repeated on a larger scale, but that does not add to this portrait in microcosm , probably also more human, because in Mean Streets, it still passes the entire length of the film wondering if someone has skin Robert de Niro, or if Robert de Niro eventually (foolishly) have on their skin, whereas in subsequent films, it kills everything-goes, it was shot without a second thought is uninhibited -: dehumanization is heavier and more frightening too; the most savage violence. Mean Streets, or the world of gangsterism scorsésien reproduced scale (yet) human. And the accession of a filmmaker in full control of its turbulence - which is definitely not synonymous with restraint, the contrary. Taxi Driver was nice to receive his medals, but in terms of "personal film", he belongs Nor his screenwriter, Paul Schrader? I thought it between these two major works, it is in Mean Streets Scorsese that engages fully.
IV
say I have also seen, without talking now:
... of Caesar and Rosalie (1972) by Claude Sautet, change the canvas hollow (modernized) of Jules and Jim but Chuis not sure we will see, and the infatuation of ego for me to see Sami Frey a kind of double morphological then Gulag, white square on white background, with Iosif Pasternak and Hélène Chatelain, a damn great film despite its inaccessibility and its reputation as confidential (an insert of Andre Roy 24 Images , long time ago), and I was lucky to hand over a few years ago. Need to honor ç'ui there, somewhere where it can leave traces, next time.
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