Cinema Talk

Well, I really wanted to like this, but I just couldn’t. Sure, the photograph is nice and it is equally enjoyable to see Jean Seberg on screen for an extended amount of time, but unfortunately, this movie is a complete mess. I can’t say I hated it, because well, I really enjoyed it but only on an unintentional level. It is filled with some of the most stilted dialogue I’ve ever heard, and it is all delivered by performers that operate on completely different wavelengths. Seberg’s untrained charm is absent when she’s lined up next to Deborah Kerr, who I hate to say, is overwhelmingly terrible.

It starts out rather promising with little to no dialogue and wonderful black and white(ish) cinematography, but once Seberg’s voiceover starts, it is all downhill. The single most frustrating thing about this film is that it could have so easily been transformed into a masterpiece. The scene with Seberg looking into the camera with an obvious feeling of discontent would have been great, if we didn’t have an oddly upbeat voiceover from her explaining everything that happened. Had a Preminger just made the black and white sections (which only add up to about five minutes total) into a whole film than it would have been so much better. Instead, we get a candy-colored melodrama that is so fake and melodramatic that I have to assume that this film’s fans are viewing it through a subversive lens.

I think it is a bit ironic how this film so clearly wants to sell itself as a character study, when it is really just a completely Hollywood-approved story-driven type of drama. This is ironic because it comes from a time period where directors like Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann, and Nicholas Ray were making “genre” films that were profoundly moving character-driven masterpieces. It only made my hate for this film even more as it seemed like it was superficially more “highbrow” than those films, which it clearly isn’t. Preminger, to his credit, does have an eye for very nice visuals, but shooting in the French Riveira certainly doesn’t hurt.

Early on I thought it seemed a bit like an Antonioni film without any subtelty, which is true but it’s also a bit like an Antonioni film without any bit of interest in what the characters are actually feeling, beyond the very obvious image created by the film’s title. To make it all worse, there’s this completely laughable and  unneccessary thing about how Seberg’s character thinks three and seven are lucky numbers. A dumb touch that is suppose to hold together the film’s final “twist” or whatever. It’ll make me a target of much criticism, but this is a failure. A really enjoyable one, but still, barely respectable.

A problematic comeback for Patrick Tam, but also a beautifully photographed one. All the dramatic faults, of which there are many, can be overlooked simply by the overwhelming sense of visual power contributed by Mark Lee Ping Bing’s amazing photography. It’s not exactly a surprise, considering everything I’ve seen from him looks equally great, but I still wasn’t expecting it to look nearly as great as it does. It’s not a powerful yet subtle drama that Bing is familiar for photographing (with Hou Hsiao-Hsien, usually) but at the very least, it does give plenty of time for the characters to become much more than just exaggerated emotional pawns.

Actually, the story starts out as though it is being a far too simple, far too violent sort of melodrama. The best part about these earlier sequences is that they are wonderfully edited. Taking both elements into account, the first fifteen minutes or so do seem a little like a Hong Kong version of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Magnolia, in particular. Thankfully, it starts to calm down from there, but it does give the impression of being a bit too “emotionally eventful” so to speak. Thankfully, the performances save this from falling into PTA’s far too tragic type of vision, and put the film right up with the best “slower” modern Asian dramas.

Aaron Kwok, in particular, deserves a lot credit. His role is by far the one that calls for the most emoting. Even though he is far from being likable, he does seem believable in his own slightly pathetic way. Sure he beats his wife and son on occasion, but he always seems to lapse into a self-loathing mode. At first, his constant whining becomes a little grating, but I think he deserves a lot of credit for making his character seem very believable. He is the anti-thesis of the ideal father, but even then, he does sort of care for his son. Of course, he does so in a very bizarre and unhealthy way.

Kelly Lin has a small(er) part but she might deliver the best performance of the bunch. She essentially does the exact same thing as in Boarding Gate, but her character is just given much more time and space to be explored and fleshed out. The short, Roeg-esque affair she has with Kwok’s character represents the height of the film’s powers. It is gorgeously shot (like the rest of the film) with rapid-fire editing (hence the Roeg reference) and features the two best performers of the whole cast. Such sequences are what make this film so great, even though it does have a few narrative-related mishaps.

Despite some of the most visually stunning touches in Kurosawa’s career, this, unfortunately, doesn’t quite live up to its potential. For a story that sounds so plotless and natural, Kurosawa sure does go a long way to make it feel confined to some sort of theatrical structure. The concept of two poverty-stricken lovers running around and trying to make the most of the day is wonderful on paper, but when realized, at least by Kurosawa, it comes off as one of his most awkward films. Truth be told, maybe he couldn’t take control of something devoid of any dramatic turns. It feels like Kurosawa trying to be Hiroshi Shimizu, but anyone who watches at least one Shimizu film knows that his sensibility is nearly impossible to emulate.

In some odd way, this actually seems like some sort of reaction against Shimizu’s work, though if it is than it is also a great misinterpretation of his work. Masako, played by the wonderful Chieko Nakakita (who would go on to work frequently with Naruse), represents the relentlessly optimistic side of the young couple’s relationship. Her husband to be, Yuzo, is sort of the opposite. Early on, the couples dynamic creates more than a few funny sequences, one of the most notable being the one where they inspect an apartment far outside of their price range. Their dialogue does begin to sound like Kurosawa’s mouthpieces, but they do prompt plenty of thinking – “How can one dream in such a world?” wonders Yuzo, which Masako responds with “In such a world, one has to have dreams.” Simple, not particularly insightful, but it does address how the public should respond to a postwar world.

Kurosawa does brilliantly shift his film’s tone from ponderous and downbeat to happy and hopeful rather quickly, but he does so in a very believable manner. Masako is stumped on how to cheer Yuzo up, but then they walk right in the middle of a baseball game taking place on the streets. Yuzo is excited, even if others observe that he’s a bit too old. Somehow, I think that is exactly the point. It is sort of implied that Yuzo sees baseball as a sign of his childhood and he attempts to escape the harsh reality of adult life by participating in a game inhabited exclusively by youngsters.

There seems to be a similar pattern (downbeat then hopeful) echoing through the first hour and a half of the film, but it takes a very crude turn to the end in which Masako talks directly to the audience and Yuzo imagines orchestrating Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. The sequence before it, featuring the couple mentally designing their imaginary cafe exists on a similar ground. It is the Schubert sequence, which seems fairly long, that marks the film “shark jumping” moment, when a well-intended social drama tries to become some sort of experimental and grand statement about humanity. I understand why Kurosawa wanted to physically involve the audience, but even the overwhelming sense of earnestness can’t cancel out the slightly gimmicky feel. Kurosawa’s heart (and head) is in the right place here, but it just doesn’t gel that well with his aesthetic.

This is, by a fairly decent margin, the most impressive Abbas Kiarostami film I’ve seen. I probably need to revisit Close-Up and Taste of Cherry sometime in the future, but I still don’t remember them being as simple and straight-forward as this film is. I mean this in a positive way, of course. Kiarostami takes a really setup: a little boy must return a notebook back to its owner, one of his classmates. If said classmate does not do his homework in this notebook, then he will be expelled. It’s the sort of thing that could have easily been dramatic and silly in the hands of someone less capable, but in Kiarostami’s, it is a gorgeous examination of life in rural Iran.

The protagonist, a quiet wide-eyed eight year named Ahmed, is an ideal student. The boy who sits next to him, Mohamed, isn’t. The teacher makes a mockery of him when he forgets to do his homework in a notebook for the third time, something that is seen as unacceptable. On their way out, Ahmed accidentally takes Mohamed’s notebook and doesn’t realize it until school has long since concluded. Ahmed skillfully dodges his own responsibilities at home to look for his friend’s home.

Kiarostami’s influences seem very obvious here, but it’s not really a problem. The whole way in which the drama unfolds is very Antonioni-esque. In other words, it’s just a little boy wandering around town stumbling into some very poignant and moving moments. The music, which is actually really great, definitely seems to be a nod to Satyajit Ray, especially considering that it is put up against scenes like a little boy chasing a donkey.

Oddly enough, the scene towards the end where Ahmed is befriended by an elderly man sort of reminds me of Mike Leigh’s Naked, specifically the scene in which Johnny has that philosophical conversation with the secuirty guard. The conversation has a much different tone here, it definitely relies on the same innocence found in Linda Manz character in Days of Heaven (a performance which inadvertently shaped the way younger children are depicted) but it has the same sort of dynamic as Leigh’s film. It’s fitting, though, since both Leigh and Kiarostami tend to be seen as “socially-concious” directors but both offer much more.

Honestly, I’ve never been all that enamored by the story of Joan of Arc and I find it pretty difficult to believe that there are other cinephiles out there that think differently. Yet, there seems to be about a thousand different cinematic adaptation of the tragedy. Rivette’s adaptation, made in 1994 and starring the always lovely Sandrine Bonnaire is the sort of film I have to make exceptions for. Certainly, the narrative isn’t all intriguing, but Rivette with all of his minimalistic powers, makes the story feel so free and open, which corresponds perfectly with the type of landscapes that the amazing William Lubtchansky captures. Not one of Rivette’s best films, but certainly one of his best-looking.

I doubt anyone could argue against the claim that Carl Dreyer’s The Trial of Joan of Arc is the most famous cinematic adaptation of the story. Inevitably, every subsequent “Joan” film has been compared to this standard and yet, Rivette’s film has so little in common with Dreyer’s that one gets the feeling that it was Rivette’s intention to take the opposite approach. While Dreyer’s film is claustrophobic and emotionally violent, Rivette’s is calm and open – something that can apply to most of Rivette’s best work. It may be blasphemy (no pun intended) but Rivette does more for me. On the other hand, they are completely different films, and probably shouldn’t be compared in the first place.

Again, I must stress that I have very little interest in such history, which of course, makes even Rivette’s best technical work a little bit dry. Had it not been for the fact that the film features one of the greatest actresses of all-time, photographed by one of the greatest cinematographers of all-time, all composed by one of the greatest directors of …all-time, then there would have been no chance. I wouldn’t have even bothered. As it stands, the film is a great example of Rivette’s mastery but without any interesting content to make the film one of his best. Enjoyable to watch, but there’s about ten other Rivette films I’d rather see instead.