Ruhr - 10/1, Lincoln Center

Note: this essay originally included greater length discussion of the individual segments of this film, its aesthetic (including digital vs. celluloid), and its theme of "place", but I felt the need to streamline its focus to a single topic, at the cost of a balanced review. Since writing I have discovered pages that cover these areas in greater detail: please see here, here, and here (where I swiped the picture) for respective treatments of each of these aspects of Ruhr.

If you've ever tried meditating you'll know what I'm talking about. You sit in a comfortable position and at first everything is fine. But it doesn't take long for the mind to reveal itself as a raging tempest, a chaosphere of thoughts/etc. When you finally calm it down to the point where you can actually focus on keeping your body still, you see just how unstill it actually is. The amount of things you notice can be incredible, but it makes sense: all that once-stormy mental energy needs something to do, so it will work with what you give it. Your body wants to shift, rearrange its position. Your fingers tend to fiddle. Your eyelids flicker at animal speed. When you can get all that locked down, you realize that the whole time your tongue's been partying and you didn't even know it. Point is, there's a lot going on in your mind, and when focus is forced there's a lot you're able to notice about what's going on outside as well.

Perhaps that's also the point of movies like Ruhr, James Benning's most recent avant garde offering. Ruhr consists of seven segments shot in the Ruhr district of Germany. It is divided into two parts, the first of which is six scenes, each a static shot with some kind of observable repeating process (for instance: machines at a steel plant; planes passing by through the trees; a group of people going from standing to kneeling in a Muslim prayer ceremony). The second is a single hour-long shot of a building that periodically creates an explosion of billowing sepia smoke that's absolutely stunning. Active since the 1970s, Benning has made a great many acclaimed films based on this idea of the extremely long static shot.

Andy Warhol charted similar territory in the early '60s, but his films were so long (over 8 hours for Empire, a single static shot of a building in slow-motion) as to be considered objectively "unwatchable". It seems he had points about art and cinema at heart rather than the experience of the viewer. This type of shot, meant to call attention to the difference between "seeing" and "watching", has been used pretty frequently in what used to be called "arthouse" films since the '70s (Godard and Herzog both come to mind), and can be seen recently in the work of Michael Haneke, whose films usually include one or two of these lengthy repetition shots each.

This type of shot is easily-obtained: repeated processes are everywhere in the world. Then: would just any of these be beautiful or interesting? Well, these shots are often not beautiful, nor interesting at first, so the answer could be "yes". Forcing yourself to watch anything that lasts a long time with consistent non-action may generate the same (or very similar) effects. Could just anyone do it, then? In the plastic arts this question was made irrelevant after the advent of abstract expressionism in American painting, making it safe for formally-simple experiments of the "conceptual", "minimal", "postmodern" persuasion. But pointing a video camera at something is much easier even than silkscreening, and though Benning carefully planned the scenes, invisibly edited the footage, and meticulously mixed the soundtrack, it's not clear that the lack of these things would have resulted in a much different experience. I always wonder what the artists would say to this kind of thing, but you can't go to them- after all, they're the ones posing the questions in the first place. The fact that it continues to bring up questions is the reason that, after so long, the James Benning "thing" continues to be experimental. 

The most obvious thing that staring at almost-nothing will do is is to readjust the bar for what constitutes a "thing", the premise of John Cage's 4:33. As an example, let's discuss the first scene of Ruhr. The shot is of a road in a tunnel. At random intervals a car drives through. At first you begin to anticipate the next car with a kind of relish. Because of their regularity, though, and your elevation of the scenery you've been staring at to a higher level of interest, the passing cars become part of that scenery, of equal importance as the static details. So when a biker comes into the frame, it's such an exciting surprise I heard many audience members giggling. The scene ends with a dead leaf dragging itself (even now I endow the leaf with a will of its own, when of course it was the unperceivable wind) loudly across the street . This is the most interesting thing in the whole scene, due to a process of preparation that constituted the scene itself. I was even compelled to bring it up with my companions after the movie ("remember the part when the leaf moved?" I asked them. They did.).

As with early attempts at meditation mentioned above, there are a variety of places your mind is taken (whether by the film or by itself is a question with no clear answer). I was continually reminded of the limits of my vision. As much as I wanted to, it was impossible to watch the whole screen at once. We are limited to a narrow focus, and when you really start playing with it, you realize how little your peripheral vision gives you. Ruhr provides ample opportunity for such experiments, time for your eyes to alternately dart around or stare at one thing as long as you can then move on systematically to another. Either way you go, you'll find that you can only watch one thing at a time.

I also kept coming back to the differences between my experience as a viewer of this film in the theater vs. if I were actually there, watching in life the things depicted on the screen. We've all had experiences sitting somewhere idly and noticing something subtly interesting, which we watch for a long time either dazedly or with fascination. I came to the conlcusion that while that experience would be far more pleasant, the fact that I could change perspective, stop looking, or become distracted at any time means I would probably cut short my experience as soon as I was bored. The stasis, confinement, and fact-of-framing that the cinema experience provides forces the mind to a level of intellectual rigor that you just probably wouldn't have gotten to on your own. If you find yourself totally without a thought, you can always fall back on "why?", something you would not likely ask the trees in a forest.

That brings us to another major question (or rather a set of them): is it worth it? It was for me; despite half the theater walking out pell-mell up 'til nearly the end, I'd certainly recommend it. Well, having gone through the fire of extreme boredom and come out cleansed, so to speak, do I feel the need to do it again? Of course not. So would I? In other words, having seen one film of this variety, and learned what I did from it, would I subject myself to the same (or very similar) experience of a different film of this type? Yes I would, if only to see just how different the experience is (to say nothing of the striking beauty a few of the shots provided). Should people, should James Benning, keep making these movies that offer the same (or very similar) experiences, despite a proliferation of them already? Until all the questions are anwered...

One more thing to note is the fact that Benning usually works with 16mm film, but Ruhr was shot in HD. The two movies I've seen at the New York Film Festival are both the first digital works of major directors whose careers span decades (the other is Godard's Film Socialisme; see below). Despite how obvious video's inevitable replacing of film already is, this fact still seems significant to me.

Film Socialisme - 9/30, Lincoln Center

Jean-Luc Godard's latest feature is difficult to say the least and beyond my reach in so many ways that, despite thorough internet research*, conversations with French-speakers who saw the film with me, and the erudite post-screening discussion I had the opportunity to witness, all I can offer is a bit of journalism for those who don't have the chance to see it right away.

The whole movie is shot in digital video with a wide variety of qualities, from high-definition to cell phone. There's no "plot", or narrative in the classic sense (or any sense I can see), but there are three distinct parts. The opening titles include two frames full of names of intellectuals and film-makers who are supposedly quoted in one way or another in the film- two whole screens' worth of names, and they pass in a flash. From what I gather, much of the dialogue is actually just quotations from these people. The factor of greatest obfuscation is the English subtitles: poetic fragments, no more than three or four words on the screen at a time, often none at all, that may be key words or ideas from what is being said but are nonsensical by themselves. People fluent in both languages told me that the subtitles were funny because of the distorted counterpoint they provided, but they were meaningless to me. I assume Godard is responsible for this madness but that information is not available. "He is fucking with you," one of my sources suggested.

The three movements are:

1. "Things Like That"

This is the best part of the movie, which is always kind of a bummer to have first, presenting in a complicated and overwhelming barrage various things happening on a cruise ship. Between general shots of buffets, casinos, hallways, and decks, there are a small number of characters that return. I recall:

-A photographer and a woman (twentysomethings?) hanging out on the deck- he takes pictures and she says things about Europe and Africa (quotations?).

-A young girl (early teens?) who is seen sometimes walking and talking with an old man (father? grandfather? lover?), sometimes wandering alone (sleepwalking?), and sometimes close to a boy who appears even younger than her who is interested in her breasts (brother? little boyfriend?).

-Another old guy with a different young (not as young) girl.

-Patti Smith, which surprised the hell out of me. She just walks around with a guitar.

There were others, but the whole experience was so dizzying I can't remember them. The wikipedia page* for the film fills in a few details in regards to identities, but not much.

2. "Our Europe"

Two women, one in a Castro outfit with a camera, the other more professionally attired, apparently journalists of some kind, bother a family who are having some kind of inner drama I couldn't understand. I got the impression someone in the family was involved in politics at a high level. Wikipedia is slightly helpful here again, and in line with what my fellow audience members told me.

3. "Our Humanities"

Footage from various areas around the Mediterranean with text flashes. An abstract politico-philosophical travelogue.

Three guests offered very brief commentary after the show. Godard biographer Richard Brody, often the most interesting interviewee in nouvelle vague-related DVD featurettes, pointed out that the film was a perfect example of Godard's idea of montage, which he defined as any juxtaposition of two or more things ("des choses", a phrase appearing in huge letters many times in the film) and also mentioned that the film offers "a four-part political framework" for the Mediterranean but did not elaborate. Annette Michelson, Professor Emeritus at Tisch, read an excerpt from a New Yorker review by John Updike* of an Edward Said book about artists' late works, not hard to connect to what may well be the 80-year old master's final film. "The power of subjectivity in the late works of art is the irascible gesture with which it takes leave of the works themselves," she told us, quoting Updike (quoting Said [quoting Adorno]). Jean-Michel Frodon, former editor of Cahiers du cinéma, brought up the idea of a "binary code" in the work. The other two raised their eyebrows but I wasn't totally following it.

I know this film says something about European dependence on America. I know it says something about Spanish history and Greek current events. I know it says something about cinema. But I have no idea what it's saying. The way it's shot, edited, and intertitled is kind of amazing, holding interest until the long scenes of dialogue which are painfully boring. Because if you don't speak French, you're screwed. When Film Socialisme comes around again, you can take that or leave it.

DeMille Double Feature - 9/27, MOMA

Kindling

The Golden Chance

The first two Cecil B. DeMille films I've had the opportunity to see both sucked. There's no doubt the man in charge possessed great craft (well-designed sets, effective framing), but the stories were so dull more than one fellow audience member fell asleep. I'm no expert on movies from this period (1915), but I've seen enough Griffith, Feuillade, and early German expressionist films to know that the medium was not confined to such primitive narrative as this. Even though these minor works weren't billed as anything more, I couldn't help being a little disappointed. Ben Model's live piano accompaniment was a plus.

Kings of Pastry - 9/26, Film Forum

This movie is as cute and charming as you'd expect, which makes me self-conscious of being overly critical, as though I were appraising a child's artwork. Of course this is a film by respected artists, not a kid's picture, nor a reality TV show or a commercial (which it also resembles) so I'll try to get over that and just be honest.

Kings of Pastry is a documentary about the Meilleurs Ouvrier de France*; more particularly, one Chicago-based pastry chef's experience in that illustrious competition. Two other contestants are also interviewed/followed, but get far less screen-time. This confuses the narrative and causes one to wonder why our chef was chosen among the three to be the protagonist of the film. The only reason I can think of is that he's located in America, and he's also the only one of them to speak English in the film. As can be expected, the skeleton provided by the classic "going for the goal" structure is filled out with people making cakes and talking about making cakes.

Aesthetically everything about the movie runs opposite to my tastes: it uses the most cliché French music imaginable; its subjects visibly try not to act awkward in front of the camera but, inundated with reality TV etc, are better at that than people were in the past and are consequently less interesting, inhabiting a middle-zone of dull simulacrum; it's punctuated by quotes about being the best, having the drive, and that kind of crap. The video quality is terrible: my assumption that the big screen is the best place to see any film was called into question, and given the incredible leaps in quality DV has made in the past ten years as well as the high profile of the filmmakers, I was definitely taken aback. Even the font of the captions gives it a cheap made-on-my-PC feel.

Poor image quality is never too hard to adjust to. What's worse is that all the information presented in the film comes from interview footage and text on the screen, two things I find irritating (particularly the latter) and surprising from director D. A. Pennebaker, whose Dont Look Back is very much concerned with building a kind of narrative out of action-footage fragments alone. By "information" I don't just mean facts about the contest, the chefs, or France; the very story itself is spelled out through captions and expository dialogue like a bad comic book.

As far as I can tell, most of the enjoyment in the film comes from two things:

     1. quirkiness of French people, particularly how much they love food and the way they speak English
     2. delight in looking at elaborate, fragile, and hideous post-nouveau things sitting, breaking, and being eaten
  Both of these have their limits, and for me those limits are low.

Having been subjected to many hours' worth of the Food Network by various girls throughout my life, I can say that this movie is almost identical to the ever-popular pastry programs on that channel. The Kings of Pastry trailer*, which I've seen four times (every time I've come to Film Forum, in fact), contains all the charm and humor of the film itself, as well as the best lines and none of the boring narrative, so unless you have a hardcore interest in cakes/pastries I'd recommend just sticking to that.

Bram Stoker's Dracula - 9/19, BAM

Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula: over the top, vivid, Brechtian, crafty, hilarious, definitely not "Bram Stoker's".

It follows the novel no less closely than all the other adaptations I've seen, but its deviation is highlighted by the use of voiced-over text directly from the novel and many authentic details which contrast with a sense of style that seems rather out of place in a Victorian setting- but maybe it isn't all that much. For example, Gary Oldman as our favorite Count appears on the London scene with a decadent lavender suit and top hat with matching sunglasses. It turns out, sunglasses did exist in the 1890s, and some historians believe that doctors would commonly prescribe them to victims of syphilis due to sensitive eyes the disease supposedly incurred. The thought of syphilis is bound to sex: a sex-disease, not hard to connect to vampirism  (as a Ms. Chou does here), another famous cause of sensitivity to light. This amounts to just one of many little detail loops that create this translucent curtain of sexual nightmare, tying together the perceived excesses in the final decade of two different centuries.

The extravagance of Dracula's costumes and decor is matched by the acting, especially Oldman's classic Romanian accent (complete with dramatic pauses as jolting as some people's impersonations of William Shatner) and Anthony Hopkins' cackling portrayal of Dr. Van Helsing. Tom Waits gets a surprising amount of screen time as Renfield, Drac's insane servant. Some people dislike highly theatrical acting in films, but  I enjoy seeing a strong actor really go "out there".  Also, it's hard to take issue with a lack of realism in a movie so expressionist in technique (not to mention the plot), and none of the weird performances have the dull ring of poor quality except for Keanu Reaves', who always sucks. Old-fashioned cinematic tricks with mirrors, autonomous shadows, and superimposed eyes add to the playful intensity.

While for most of the movie, at least, the narration is directly from the novel, much of the accompanying dialogue is not. This sometimes makes for humorous counterpoint, like when Mina(Winona Ryder)'s voice explains that "Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl" as Lucy fondles a man's bowie knife and exclaims "oh it's sooo big" etc., all this after the two girls giggle over illustrations of intercourse from Burton's 1001 Nights. The sexuality that the novel so obviously drips with is made beyond explicit by new inventions/interpretations:  the girls' garden frolic in a storm becomes a make-out session (ambiguously under Dracula's influence); victims of the bite moan and convulse in orgasmic seizures; Dracula in some kind of batfaced gorilla monster form fucks Lucy on a stone alter before Mina's eyes; we are treated to an excerpt from a humorous Van Helsing lecture on venereal disease; and a passionate love scene between the villain and heroine wherein she hungrily licks and suckles a cut on his chest to become one with him, one like him. This last item is the culmination of an entire romance between Drac' and Mina (where the narrated text veers sharply from the original), perhaps long divined between the lines by close readers and deviant fans, which along with the origin story is the most significant departure from the novel. This original concoction has Vlad the Impaler's wife commit suicide during the Crusades, for which he curses God and is thus consigned to his demonic fate. Hundreds of years later he believes Mina is his wife's reincarnation or something (details here are vague), and certain aspects of the film seem to confirm this. But Dracula is highly hypnotic, and with the shadow of his claws and outline of his eyes plastered ubiquitously across the screen comes the constant suggestion that all of this is somehow under his control, the extent of which even he may not be aware. Whether or not Mina truly loves him or is just under his spell, they both believe it's genuine-- even in the end when she cuts off his head.

The Mina of the novel is an incorruptible paragon of virtue whose purity mobilizes and strengthens the small group of men who battle Dracula, her opposite, who is not portrayed as nearly so alluring or seductive as he is here. Simply put, she would not want to sleep with him. Hence my biggest qualm with the movie: its title. Bram Stoker, in his puritan angst that so informed the dark visions of the novel (which, mostly because of all this purity and virtue, goes downhill from roughly the same point the movie begins to turn away from its source) would have been disgusted. It's wonderful that the same myth can be told so often with such variety, and I believe top-billing should go to the storyteller: this is Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.

On Dangerous Ground - 9/17, MOMA

Written by Buzz Bezzerides (Kiss Me Deadly), Nicholas Ray's cop classic begins at a simmer and accelerates to a kind of explosion not quite midway, when it comes almost to a full stop. It's hard to adjust to the changes: the scenery goes from black to white; the narrative goes from a straight line to a meandering stagger; the cast of characters, save for the protagonist, is exchanged entirely for another of a very different sort. The division into two acts is as striking as in, say, Kurosawa's High and Low, but where that film takes a suspenseful closet drama as far as it can go and replaces it with a welcome foray into an action-packed noir underworld, On Dangerous Ground disappointed my interest in the original storyline and my excitement about its setting by going the other direction.

The first act is the smoldering story of three NYC cops trying to find a gang of killers. It slowly dawns on Robert Ryan's character that his job is thankless, lonely, and hard, and he takes his frustration out on the stoolies and minor crooks he encounters along the line. Packed with incredible details (too-good-to-be-true "Chandleresque" noiralogue; handheld shots to simulate confusion and adrenaline; torrents of sexual tension; every glance, gesture, facial expression, and object is significant and conveys the pathetic horror of this man's life), it all ends too soon when our man goes too far (moving toward us slowly, exasperated, teeth grit, these words drop gruffly then explode from Ryan in a voice like frustrated Kirk Douglas': "Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna talk... I'm gonna make you talk. I always make you punks talk! Why do you do it?! Why?!!" -beating commences-) and is relocated to a murder case upstate, in a snowy small town.

Every Nicholas Ray film I've seen deals on some level with force. The boiling anger of Ryan's justice-meting motherfucker brings up some basic questions about morals, specifically those of the inheritors of the monopoly of violence, a difficult duty that is apparently necessary for the survival of society. The other major Ray theme is the psychological confinement to a certain path or way of life that his characters experience, often symbolized by physical entrapment like Ryan's narrow city beat, and it's obvious how nicely the two themes fit together.  But after crashing his car in the woods in pursuit of the small-town killer (accompanied by the bloodthirsty father of the victim), Ryan's character is suddenly free of any social or physical barriers, and is alone in the snow with his task and his tendencies. Free will is measured as ability to defy fate- will he cross the line, let his anger dictate his decision, or will he manage to overcome his own psychology and follow through with the case based on a system of ethics?

Unfortunately this discussion becomes only more and more obfuscated until by the end it seems to be abandoned entirely. First there is the shotgun-wielding hillbilly dad, who continues to announce his intention to execute the murderer immediately upon apprehension. It's unclear whether he is meant to represent the bad side of Ryan's character or act as a sort of foil- perhaps both, but the protagonists' position is inconsistent when not totally vague. It isn't long before they come to the house of a young blind woman, played by Ida Lupino, who of course happens to be the killer's brother. While her performance is sublime and the attention to detail that makes the first act so wonderful still provides much interest, the now-meandering story falls apart completely with her introduction and the rest of the movie is a slow resolution of the pursuit, punctuated by monologues and culminating in Ryan's out-of-nowhere conviction to become less of a hardass.

For all that, the second half isn't bad, and while sometimes boring it offers its own pastoral splendor. The first half, taken separately, could be the best film noir I've ever seen-- highly recommended.

Renoir Double-Feature - 9/17, MOMA

Boudu, Saved from Drowning     deserves its classic status

I always forget how aggressive Renoir can be with his satire. I was troubled by the problem-solving violence of Carne's Port of Shadows (still an excellent film!), so I couldn't help but smile a little bit when I read that Renoir was telling people it justified fascism- a man so hardcore in his humanism he wages his own kind of war with the other side. The "other side" is a long shore that encompasses cynicism, hopelessness, and all kinds of chauvinism.

If you want to see a film about people who are insipid, lustful, self-centered, and bigoted that still manages to affirm the spirit of mankind and ultimate beauty of the world Boudu, Saved from Drowning is just the thing. The print they showed at the MOMA was badly damaged, but the story pulled me in so much I quickly got used to it. The wall-to-wall comedy includes slapstick, mismatched sex pairings, and a wonderfully out-there performance by Michel Simon as a retarded drifter. Sex (including an affair and a gray rape) is dealt with pretty frankly, and there is a certain ominousness that lurks behind the joyful farce the film has become by its conclusion.

A Day in the Country     minor and great

This pretty, nostalgic 40-minute film was cobbled together from fragments of an unfinished project Renoir shot in 1936. A Parisian bourgeois middle-aged couple take their daughter and her fiance on a trip to "the country" where two young fishermen jocularly conspire to "make love" to the mother and daughter. They manage to distract the men with fishing poles and row the ladies down the river in little boats. The Hemingway lookalike who courts the daughter gets her in some bushes and pounces - she resists strongly but once he has his lips on hers, her mind seems to have changed. A similar scene occurs in Boudu, and the coincidence certainly raised my eyebrow. We fade back on the couple lying together, the girl upset and the man uncomfortable. A very brief scene tacked on at the end shows her return years later with her husband. The one-time lovers re encounter each other and proclaim their everlasting love, then she reluctantly leaves again and the film ends abruptly. Lightly-scathing satire on the clueless city folk and a gruff cameo from the director add to the joy created by the images: gorgeous shots of natural scenery fill out the bare narrative, and there are some particularly fine examples of Renoir's noted affection for the movement of water- inherited from his father, perhaps?

While in no way a masterpiece, its beauty and conciseness have me rate it just a little higher than "worth seeing".