DVDs Out This Week

As it is in Heaven

(Guest post from myself at The Film Talk)

Hey there folks - starting today, we're going to try to post on Tuesdays about films new out on DVD, or available to stream over the coming week; so herewith the inaugural 'It's Tuesday, so it Must Be the TFT DVD/Blu-Ray and Miscellaneous Other Digital Media Report:

We like to think we're all friends round here at TFT Central - so if you can, and if you trust me, then stop what you’re doing. Watch ‘As it is in Heaven’, finally available on DVD in the US (and to watch instantly on Netflix). If you like it, there's a good chance you’ll adore it. If you don’t, please forgive me; it’s a source of real regret that this Swedish film, that does a far better job than ‘Chocolat’ of evoking ‘Babette’s Feast’ was never theatrically released in the US;hopefully it will get the audience it deserves.

After 'As it is in Heaven', you might want some comic relief in the form of new-to-watch-instantly Philip Kaufman’s half-insane, half-brilliant ‘Rising Sun’ (Kaufman has a career as uneven as the politics behind the Golden Globes – he flits from a masterpiece like ‘The Right Stuff’ to the brutish idiocy of ‘Twisted’); ‘Rising Sun’ comes out somewhere in the middle, a serio-comic adaptation of one of Michael Crichton’s more ridiculous (but nonetheless entertaining) techno-thrillers, with the to-die-for buddy/buddy schtick of everyone's favourite investigative duo, Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

Sean, trying to figure out what his excuse for the accent's going to be this time

The release of ‘Un Chien Andalou’ continues the recent apparently relentless efforts of Netflix to get its subscribers to learn all they can about ‘serious’ film history; Bunuel would, I think, like the fact that his sliced eyeball is now available for streaming.  (Ciprian Muresan's vision below, looks to be getting into the spirit of things.)

Un Shrek Andalou

‘Peter and Vandy’, which could be described as ‘(500) Days of Summer’ without the tricks, turns out to be a sweet and credible story about love and what passes for love among people who I’m supposed to identify with because they’re about the same age as me, although they have more changes of clothes than I have meals in a year, and live in the kind of apartment that already looked impossibly expensive when Jane Fonda woke up beside a dead guy in one 25 years ago in ‘The Morning After’. But it has the discipline to be short enough not to outstay its welcome, its characters don’t take the tedious route of citing pop cultural texts as substitutes for conversation, and I found myself wanting to know what would happen to the main characters after the movie was over, despite my worry that we’re about to have unleashed on us an epidemic of films about people born in the late 70s complaining.

Peter and Vandy.  And Someone Else.

‘A Serious Man’, one of best films of last year, featured a scene that expresses some of the best and worst of what religion can mean in about three minutes. We talked about it on the show, and it’s available on DVD and Blu-Ray today.  It's really something special.

Downhill Racer: Winning is Everything

Caught up with Criterion's characteristically excellent release of  'Downhill Racer', another film that reveals Michael Ritchie as an under-appreciated director (Honeslty, imdb-chatters, have you really nothing to say about the guy who made 'The Candidate', 'Fletch', and the deeply serious thriller 'Prime Cut'?), Robert Redford as a far more nuanced actor than his reputation permits, and sports movies as the genre that may reveal most about the US American male archetype.

It's a fascinating movie, inflected with a bit of Godard here, some Arthur Penn there, discordant cutting, unconventional sound, and a central character who can't really be seen as attractive, despite being played by beautiful Bob.  'How far must a man go to get from where he's at?' asks the portentous voiceover on the trailer (one of those great 60s Paramount previews that bears the weight of assumption that you won't go to see the feature length version of the film unless you know absolutely everything that's going to happen in it first).  The answer seems to be wherever there's snow, lycra, and hill gradients steep enough to propel a man faster than he should really be going.

'Downhill Racer's a smart little movie, among whose pleasures are the splendid, so often wonderfully slimy character actor Dabney Coleman with a full head of hair, reminders of why I wish Gene Hackman were still making movies, a little compromise between Eastern and Western United States by making the anti-hero from Colorado, and the most unmannerly use of a car horn in cinema.

A recent article in the mainstream/conservative Christian magazine CT clearly articulates how the national obsession with sports-for-money has infected life to the extent of dividing families, bloating credit card debt, and even encouraging violence; 'Downhill Racer' imagined this future forty years ago, suggesting that not only is winning actually everything, but anything else will only leave you empty, de-masculinised, the meaning sucked out of your life.  It fits the time in which it was made perfectly - the sugarcoated movies of the earlier part of the decade were beginning to give way to the cynicism of the 70s; it's a perfect companion piece to Ritchie and Jeremy Larner's 'The Candidate', a film which Dan Quayle cited as an inspiration for his political career (to which Larner responded: 'Mr Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie.  And you are what we should be watching out for.')  'Downhill Racer' and 'The Candidate' [spoilers ahoy] both end in exactly the same way: with the temporary gloss of victory giving way to the dawning recognition that someone who is only satisfied with winning must live in perpetual competition.  It's a film about the perfection of a body at the expense of the entrenchment of a soul.

*Photos courtesy The Criterion Collection

Start the Week

Nic Cage in 'The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

Sorry for light posting recently - still trying to get back on top of things - for now there's a wee post over at TFT that may encourage a few DVD rentals this week.  One of the most honest (and therefore tragic) crime movies, and one of the most despairing stories about the current economy.  And a delightful little Chaplin bit.  Enjoy.

George, Vera, and Anna in The Tragedy of Our Time

Blue Light, Red Light: Paris, Texas and the Redemption of a Man

* Note: This post is so full of spoilers it’s almost ridiculous – so only read the first paragraph if you haven’t seen the film yet.  It's also more of a personal review than I might otherwise write, mostly because 'Paris, Texas' has been resonating deeply with me since I first saw it about 15 years ago.  And finally, the photo credit: some images below are courtesy of the fine folks at the Criterion Collection.

I used to think that Thomas Merton, that earthy paragon of real life mysticism, who left this world too soon, was too wise to have lived in the twentieth century. But then I saw his character pop up in Robert Redford’s excellent little horror film Quiz Show and realised my mistake – his was a profoundly modern spirituality, with the gift of connecting ancient truth claims with contemporary reality, just what we need in these troubled times. Merton says that no one can find true life ‘unless you have risked your mind in the desert’. There’s something about the truth of Sam Shepard’s writing in Paris, Texas, available now in a classy Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray edition that leads me to believe Shepard must be familiar with Merton, and not just because it’s about a man wandering in the kind of desert that has real sand and baking sun.

Thomas Merton

This movie is about that most common of modern malaises (and my soapbox) – community breakdown, but before we get to that, let’s have a moment’s silence in honour of great opening title sequences…This one is red on black, and somehow fits right in with the burning drama of one man’s broken heart, and the starkness of what happens when people break faith with each other.

Whoever coined the phrase ‘the desert of the real’ (and I’m pretty sure Morpheus got it from someone else) may have stolen it from this movie, which opens with exceptionally beautiful shots of a lonely man appearing out of nowhere in a barren landscape, watched by a hawk. The metaphor is not strained, as we’re gradually made aware that this man is troubled by how deep the talons of his past have sunk into his soul.

He almost looks like a cartoon character – evocative of the Road Runner’s nemesis, Wile E Coyote (after a nervous breakdown), then when we see his face in close up, we realise that it’s Harry Dean Stanton and know that his story must be even worse than that poor animated wolf’s repeated inglorious end. It isn’t long before he’s on a hospital gurney, looking like Jesus. Wile E Coyote, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jesus – Wim Wenders’ Holy Trinity. Stanton’s character Travis is mute, unlike the guy in real life (especially if you go to see him play with his jazz combo in L.A.’s Mint night club on a Saturday night – the illustrious man has what I might generously call an ‘interesting’ sense of what singing is, but he certainly runs a tight band). His face is heart-breaking for the audience, and his character – when he looks in a mirror he has to run away; and I wonder if that experience is closer to home for more of us than would like to admit. Something BAD has happened to him, as he says – ‘A lot can happen to a man in four years. All kinds of trouble’. And his experience has made him different – his shoes are ‘one size bigger’, but that’s just the tip of his iceberg; we’re watching a dead man walking, trying to find out if he can ever go home, staring into the long distance, searching for ‘her’, or freedom from the past. Which, I suppose, is what all of us, to some degree, at some points in our lives, are looking for.

So, anyway, his brother comes to pick him up, showing both real grace (he’d rather have him confess to horrible misdeeds than to say nothing) and an aptitude for making Travis feel worse about himself (he has the perfect wife and work and wealth, while Travis has nothing but the past). In the early scenes between them, we see how brothers – whether biological or spiritual – can unwittingly bring both love, and a sense of competition. Travis joins his movie namesake on a journey inward, into his own heart of darkness. And we’re privileged to join him. We follow him to where he meets and bonds with the son who is too young to remember him, and we discover that Something Bad happened to break their relationship. It’s mysterious, but not a mystery film; it’s set in the west, but it’s not a western; it’s funny in places, but it’s not a comedy – Paris, Texas is well nigh uncategorisable, if indeed such a word exists.

We see that Travis owns a piece of land, but he says he can’t remember why he bought it. This made me think of how we sometimes get to the stage of forgetting why we did certain things that were important in the past, but not anymore, lost in the mists of time. Of course, buying fields is an honourable biblical activity, whether those that host pearls of great price, or hold the dead bodies of broken traitors. Maybe Sam Shepard was thinking of such plots of land when he wrote this. There’s something about land in the history of religion and identity that resonates with the deeper emotions of the human spirit, so it’s easy to understand how Travis’ plot gives him dignity, in spite of it being little more than a small patch of dust bowl. Aside from the land, we discover that Travis has also lost the love of his life, who – thanks be to God! – is played by Nastassja Kinski at her most realistically beautiful. The film paints the depth of their love by screening an old home movie, the camera dancing round them as they play on the beach with their son. This is one of the great cinematic scenes of what true love is really like – the audience may resonate with, or feel envious toward the way the characters touch each other’s faces and lips. The son says ‘Is that my mom?’, and Travis replies, ‘It’s not really her, it’s only her in a movie’, probably the most appropriate answer, for in a sense this scene, this film, is about the power of cinema to touch us. Travis and the boy travel to meet the mother, who is working in a kind of brothel for people who don’t touch each other. Travis talks to her through a screen, like a bank teller to a customer. A long scene ensues where Travis breaks our hearts with the story of their love and how it broke; he retells how their affair ended:

He just lay there in bed and listened to her scream…he didn’t feel anything anymore, all he wanted to do was sleep. He wished he were far away in a deep vast country where nobody knew him. The two lovers are relating through a screen, which is not unlike how this generation uses computers to relate – this reminds me that we need to take care that we don’t stop touching each other. Travis is letting her go by telling her of his love, but that he realises he cannot be an adequate father to their child; the regret for things past, and how dependent love can trap is palpable. They have to turn away from each other to communicate the deepest thoughts, and the scene is so uncomfortable that I wanted to turn away from the screen, too. And we, the audience, become so caught up in the story of their love that we want the closure of them ending up together – which I suppose represents our desire to forgive them both for their failures, for being too much like us, really.

There are so many riches in this film, from the evocation of fatherhood with a dad having fun with his kid by walking backwards down the street, to Ry Cooder’s music which is so good it should be allowed to speak for itself, to the drive in bank that somehow looks like a spaceship, to Robby Muller’s poetic use of colour (red for lifeblood, which eventually moves from the background to consuming everything at the moment of redemption), to the lifetime of pain that is etched onto Harry Dean Stanton’s face. As we travel along with Travis, the film provokes us to think about the injustice of the US healthcare system, how owing a little bit of land can grant dignity, and it manages to evoke how small-town America actually feels. This is not a film to escape into, but one that is more real than most about brokenness and suffering – just like family life. It speaks of the resurrection of a dormant soul, and is a good model of what I might call ‘holistic non-closure’; by which I mean it is honest about the loose ends that we often find ourselves with.

The strangest moment in Paris, Texas has Travis pass by a man on a bridge, shouting shibboleths at the interstate traffic below, like the war veterans we have all seen in urban USA: ‘There will be no safety zone’, rhymes his portent of doom, and Travis quickly passes by, perhaps so as not to be ‘infected’ by whatever demon has possessed this brother. But there is a look of recognition between them.  Earlier, Travis tries to drive in the right direction after getting lost, and indicates the antidote to such meta-pessimism, and this may be Paris, Texas’ greatest gift to us, the somewhat broken, somewhat fixed, work-in-progress audience:

‘I don’t know where I turned off, it didn’t have a name…but I can find our way out again’

The prophet on the bridge may sound too close to home when he says ‘there will be no safety zone’; maybe that’s where you or I feel ourselves to be right now, or where we will be by the end of any particular day. We may not know where we turned off the road, but we can find our way out again. There is a safety zone for the broken.  The film ends with mother and son reunited, and Travis bathed in a green light – almost like he’s going to be taken to space. It’s a fresh beginning, and he allows himself a satisfied smile – he has forgiven himself, done something right, and perhaps will again. Surely this is the meaning of redemption – not what we’ve done, but how we respond to it when we experience the grace of another chance? If so, Wenders and Sheperd’s film is worth our time and attention. It’s a slow journey, but it might just change your direction.

The Criterion Collection edition of ‘Paris, Texas’ features a very strong new transfer, which does full justice to the unusual colour scheme; there’s a genuinely fascinating and endearing audio commentary from Wenders, whose gravelly, meditative voice produces sounds like those of a happily mellowed philosopher, and is willing to make admissions of the kind ‘before ‘Paris, Texas’, I wasn’t all that confident as a storyteller, and all my films were too long’. Wenders says that the film’s imagery is rooted in ‘the overall effect of the American cinema worldwide’, but the interviews on the disc suggest it works both ways – this was a US-German co-production, and the use of German and French actors lends a degree of authenticity to the otherworldly story. A couple of interviews with Wenders and collaborators Allison Anders and Claire Denis make him appear to be the most magnanimous team player you could ever hope to work with; and a typically elegant booklet of essays. It’s a quietly beautiful edition of a magnificent film.

Films of the Year: The 'B' List

I posted a Top Ten/Eleven the other day, but last year was such a rich one at the movies that I knew you, Dear Reader, would ask for more.  So, herewith: Films of 09 that I liked, but only just not enough:

The Girlfriend Experience (above): The first of two films Soderbergh made this year about the love of money, and the human as commodity.

Observe and Report: Vastly misunderstood, very serious story of the cruelty of consumer culture and insensitivity to mental illness that characterizes our age.

Star Trek: A wonderful adventure story, knowing in its humour, and let down only by the villain-for-hire/scriptbot nature of the central conflict between imperfect bully Kirk and understandably grieving villain.

Avatar: The evocation of an entire world on Pandora is undeniable, and while the means used to challenge imperialism are predictably violent, there’s a real film trying to get out from behind the tech-spectacle

Youssou N’Dour I Bring What I Love: A film about music and politics, and the politics of music, and the inspiration to dance that made me think about the first two and enact the second.

Up: The first ten minutes constitute the best short film Pixar never made; the rest is magnificent – beautifully written and paced; although regrettably, as usual, with a villain that can only be defeated through killing him, as far as the film is concerned.

Humpday: A delirious entertainment that turns out also to be a sanguine and prickly assessment of where we are now; or at least of where guys my age are now. The fact that am both older than the two lead actors, and apparently less financially stable made this a candidate for what Jett might call the feelgood comedy thrill ride of the year…

Funny People: But that would mean that I couldn’t say this of ‘Funny People’, which I do happen to consider to be the feelgood comedy thrill ride of the year. Why? Because it tells a certain kind of truth about life and work, and does it with a knowing eye to the audience’s pre-conceptions of both Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen.

Sita Sings the Blues: An astonishing animated film made over five years by Nina Paley, and given away for free on-line. One vision of the future of cinema.

Hunger: Hard to detach my personal history in Northern Ireland from my experience of the film, but then again, that’s true for every film. This one took life and death in my home town more seriously than any I’ve ever seen.

Two Lovers: James Gray hasn’t put a foot wrong in re-locating 19th century Russian novels to contemporary New York; the spirit of Kubrick haunts ‘Two Lovers’, and that’s a good thing.

Tetro: Coppola returns again, and no happier way to have him back than in the form of a gorgeous black and white family drama set in Argentina, with Klaus Maria Brandaeur as a Don Corleone stand-in, and Vincent Gallo as the genius he says he is in real life.

Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky: A brilliant documentary with a genuine sense of discovery, as a young man seeks to encounter his cinematic mentor through interactions with those who knew and loved him.

Eddie Adams An Unlikely Weapon: A little clunky in its approach, nonetheless this is an amazing, moving, and entertaining portrait of a man whose most famous work is the most notorious photograph of the Vietnam War, and one of the most horrifying ever recorded.

Summer Hours: A film whose high concept charts the journey of a reasonably well-off French family deciding how to donate their late mother’s art to the Musee D’Orsay as a tax write-off. Far more compelling than that synopsis allows; and one of the truest representations of what life in the globalised/glocalised world is now like.

This Way of Life: Magnificent documentary illustration of the lives of a family seeking to live sustainably from the New Zealand/Aotearoa land.

Where the Wild Things Are: Not a children’s movie, but a movie about childhood, and dreams, and the cinematic nature of the imagination.

(500) Days of Summer: I know you’re not supposed to like it, (something about effortless cool/hipster sensibilities being the root of all evil, apparently) but I couldn’t resist.

The Informant!: Classy 70-s mimicry in Soderbergh’s kitsch money-makes-the-world-go-round comedy. With a Marvin Hamlisch score!

Moon: A homage to 2001 that earns the right, because it doesn’t pretend not to be one; Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey make the most believable couple you’d expect to spend years together in space.

The Invention of Lying: If the last Hollywood cop-out third matched the moral vision of the first two-thirds, it would be one of the greatest comedies ever made.

Zombieland: Ridiculously funny, smart little satire on consumerism and getting by.

A Christmas Carol: Magnificently designed, and elegantly performed.

Cold Souls: If the 80s-era Woody Allen and Andrei Tarkovsky made a film together, this would be the deleted scenes.

Taking Woodstock: More serious than its marketing would imply.

Fantastic Mr Fox: An almost mystical tale, gorgeously mounted.

The Box: A not entirely successful, but profoundly serious, and ultimately hopeful, treatment of the moral weakness of privatized capitalism and colonial guilt. Honest.

2012: A post-colonial disaster epic with a young black man who works in the White House as its hero, salvation made in China, and the future of humanity resting in Africa. Best of all, it knows it’s a comedy.

That Evening Sun: A glorious twilight performance from Hal Holbrook in a film about the recognition, sorrow over, and eventual acceptance of one’s own death. Ray McKinnon and Walton Goggins produce superb little movies that unfold in the US Southeast – (their comedy ‘Randy and the Mob’ is delirious, smart fun) – and Scott Teems is a classy new talent.

(Dis)honourable mention:

Watchmen: A gratuitously violent, shallow re-tread of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ serious political epic that forwent the philosophical depth and moral challenge of the book in exchange for throwing burning oil in a man's face to get a laugh.

Knowing: A disaster movie which squanders its premise: angels are watching us so that they can nominate the new Adam and Eve when the world ends.

Wolverine: A complete waste of time after extraordinary opening titles.

Terminator: Salvation: Makes the parts of the original film that didn’t make sense seem as clear as the largest letters on an eye test. And that’s a bad thing.

Special Award for Vampire Story as Analogy for Mormon Abstinence and Fidelity that Turned Out to be Nowhere Near as Bad as I Expected, in Fact it was Almost a Real Movie, OK Then Maybe That’s An Overstatement But Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged: Twilight New Moon, a film-by-corporation if ever there was one, but also a film by the real director Chris Weitz, who wanted to do something that conveyed real teenage emotions, and managed to achieve it.

Special Award for Being the Films I was Most Pretentiously Wrong About the First Time I Saw But About Which I’ve Now Changed My Mind:

Jointly awarded to:

The Hangover, which I initially couldn’t stand for being a homophobic and racist lionization of immaturity. On a second viewing it seemed like one of the smartest and funniest representations of male identity and the value of friendship.

The Cove, which seemed like an ideal candidate for the best film of the year first time round, for the compelling way in which it presents the courage of its protagonist, Ric O’Barry’s work to save dolphins from cruel deaths. But Jett convinced me that I’d missed the troubling echoes of something approaching colonialist xenophobia in its approach to the Japanese fishermen who are its target.

Public Enemies: I came late to the view that Michael Mann made the most meticulously detailed vision of 1930s gangster life, and one in which the relationship of cinema to our individual and communal dreams is as well portrayed as anywhere; but he did, and I was wrong about this film the first time I saw it.

Up in the Air, which felt a little, how should I say it? Meh?, on first viewing; but a week later was still unfolding in my memory, a visually beautiful and thoughtful portrayal of the moral damage of privatized capitalism, the breakdown of community, and the lack of purpose derived from life-as-a-transaction.

And now, to the year we find ourselves, whose first new release I paid to see was 'The Book of Eli', which we'll review on next week's episode.  A preview?  I'm tiring of the God's-lonely-man-as-violent-avenger tropes, but everything else about this film was deliriously entertaining.  Especially Ned Beatty's skinny younger brother.