? It's rare for me to watch a movie and immediately go online to research its symbolism and themes, but The Tin Drum, which is adapted from the 1959 Nobel Prize winning novel by Gunter Grass, is just the kind of sprawling, literary, and complex movie that prompts me to recall terminology from my high school English classes and actually put it to use.

David Bennet (you might recognize him from Legend) is brilliantly cast as Oskar. In fact, he's so brilliantly cast that I cannot imagine the film working at all without him. Oskar, a strange boy with the ability to shatter glass with his screams, is a child of three when he decides to stop growing, finding the world of adults unappealing. With his constant companion, a tin drum, he grows older–through not taller–as an outsider in the increasingly dangerous world of increasingly Nazi dominated independent city of Danzig (which was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, now it's a a part of Poland called Gdansk).

While in some ways this child represents the will of the individual and the potential of one person to change the tune of the world–quite literally: in one scene he manages to transform a Nazi rally into a jazzy dance party by drumming to his own beat–Oskar is far from a hero, or even an anti-hero. Like many artists during the Nazi regime, he never really uses his powers to change anything; he wanders through the horrors of the war with little more than his own needs and wants in mind.

The film, which is far from boring, is frequently surreal and humorous, but definitely not for the squeamish. Frightening and disturbing images abound, particularly in one scene involving eels and a dead horse head. It's also an extremely controversial movie, especially in conservative Canada and America (possesing a copy in Oklahoma City would actually land you in jail for 20 years) where the sex scenes between the twelve year old star and various women (which are implied, but still pretty unsettling to watch) were considered child pornography by some law makers; a high profile hearing followed wherein the film was vindicated.

I haven't read the novel, but it seems like the adaptation omits big parts of the book (post war fame as a jazz drummer, false admission of nun-slaying), which isn't too surprising considering the film is already bursting at the seams (at a 140 minute run time) with stuff to make you think, and it makes a good case for picking up the novel, which is part of Grass's Danzig trilogy. Director Volker Schl?ndorff has created an unforgettable cinematic experience that is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Criterion has released the 1980 Best Foriegn Laungage Film winner with a disc that includes a documentary about the controversy, the screenplay's original un-filmed ending, a rare recording of Gunter Grass reading from the novel, and other Criterion Collection-y goodies.

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Posted on September 22, 2008

I love Whit Stillman's other two movies, Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, but only recently did I finally see his most political work, Barcelona. In many ways it's utterly perplexing that Stillman's filmography is so very brief; he was nominated for an Academy Award for the Metropolitan screenplay (Ghost won) and touted, not without good reason, as a Woody Allen of a new generation. At the same time, his work is certainly an acquired taste; the dialogue is always cerebral, frequently becoming rigorously intellectual, and there's something odd about his style of direction, it's almost stilted (no pun intended) and play-like, but somehow the scenes still manage to feel very realistic.

In fact, after watching any of his three films, I end up loving him even more thinking abut just how unwatchable they should be. Despite his use of all the talky, early 90's independent film tropes, these are incredibly smart, very funny, and totally unique entries in the romantic comedy pantheon and I love re-watching them. After ten years of silence, I do hope he starts making new movies soon.

Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols (who played Nick and Charlie in Metropolitan) portray Fred and Ted Boynton, cousins who find themselves living together in Barcelona. They wax lyrical about theories of beauty and business, relive their childhood differences, discuss politics, and meet a bevy of exotic Spanish women including Mira Sorvino and Tushka Bergen. All the signature Stillman wit is here, beyond the casting, and the film compares very well to Metropolitan.

Instead of college freshmen, these are older characters set, to some degree, on their own paths in life, only to find themselves still lonely and longing. It's a love story at its heart, not only between women and men but the familial love between two very different “only” cousins.

No longer UHBs in NYC, Ted and Fred are alienated and frequently reviled foreigners in a country that, at the very least, doesn't understand them and, at the most extreme, wants them dead. Set in the early 1980's, it's a fantastic document of the anti-American sentiment that existed at in western Europe at the time, which lends the film incredible relevance today. Much of the film is semi-autobiographical: Stillman spent time working in Barcelona in the early 80's and his own wife is Spanish.

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Posted on September 8, 2008

Sunset Boulevard may just be, with stiff competition from Double Indemnity, the ultimate American film noir. And even if that is debatable, I think very few people could argue its perfection.

Directed by Billy Wilder in 1950, it was daring in its cynical view of Hollywood and the way that the studio system built up stars only to tear them down. In fact, many real-life former superstars came back from the abyss to star in this film: Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner make surprising cameos as a group of has-beens that the film's narrator refers to as “the waxworks”. Erich von Stroheim, whose own rise to fame, infamous suspected orgies and eventual decline can be read about in the pages of Hollywood Babylon, nearly plays himself as a former movie director turned butler.

But it's Gloria Swanson's show as the deluded Norma Desmond, a woman deranged into a monster of sorts after a life of fame and fortune followed by a slow decline into madness and oblivion which she can't comprehend or accept. With her wraith-like claws, wicked teeth, pointy eyebrows, and deranged plans for a comeback, she's surely one of the most intriguing women ever put on film, though she's not the only curious character.

William Holden plays Joe Gillis, a dashing young up-and-coming writer who has a real possible future ahead of him. His career isn't soaring yet, but he's working and he's even met a nice girl he could love (the two of them share one of my favorite romantic scenes ever when he says, “May I say that you smell really special?”) Yet through circumstances he ends up in the claws of Miss Desmond and, rather than running the other way, he somewhat happily stays put.

Like many young people before and after him in Hollywood, he decides to take the easy way, in essence working as Desmond's whore rather than struggle through life on his own dime. Ingeniously, he narrates the tale of his ultimate demise posthumously and with a had boiled edge. In the opening scene we see his corpse floating face down in a swanky mansion pool. From the very beginning, we're assured of a very unhappy ending.

Turned into an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in 1992, the original film version lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to another jab at stardom, All About Eve. While both are worth a watching, Sunset Boulevard is a true masterpiece. The Academy Award winning art and set direction, the Edith Head costumes, the cinematography by John F. Seitz, are all representative of the best of the best.

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Posted on August 25, 2008

Night Moves is a great crime drama Arthur Penn directed nearly a full decade after the hugely successful Bonnie and Clyde and, despite a similarly realistic tone, it's a very different piece of work. Penn wisely chose to re-team with master thespian Gene Hackman, casting him as the lead in this unsettlingly honest private eye yarn. Mysteries lead nowhere, predictable deaths go un-prevented; spiritual dissatisfaction ensues.

The scenery and the characters are on display warts and all. The cast delivers complex performances, among the best are two femme fatales one of whom, a former hooker and Key West weirdo, is played to perfection by Jennifer Warren with lightning fast mood swings, hawk eyes, and predatory teeth; the other is a sixteen-year-old Melanie Griffith, not portrayed as a typical Hollywood teen vamp, but as a desperate and lost child who never had a chance thanks to her horrible mother and a parade of rotten men behaving the only way they know how.

Even the sets have a lived in realism, the boats looks grimy and old, the porches sag under years of heavy burdens as do the shoulders of the mostly broken characters. Gene Hackman is a lovable but damaged private eye, in the business to avoid the problems in his life he can't solve: a failed football career and a crumbling marriage, for starters.

It's a forgotten classic worth a look if you love film noir or Gene Hackman–which should pretty much cover everybody because I can't think of anyone that doesn't love Gene Hackman.

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Posted on August 11, 2008

How do I describe Valerie and Her Week of Wonders? Well, it's part 70's art house, part vampire erotica, part surreal fairytale of sexual awakening, and all weird. Which is, of course, the allure. You're highly unlikely to see anything else quite like it, largely because it only bears a vague resemblance to a typical movie–it's more like a parade of entrancing images that are as easy to look at as they are difficult to make sense out of. This trailer really only hints at what you can expect.

Czech new wave director Jaromil Jires seems to be half pervert–he's got a huge soft spot for young ladies (including thirteen year old star Jaroslava Schallerova) barely contained within their gauzy lace frocks–and half aesthetic genius. No one can compose frames of nudity and nature, blood and wildflowers, lace curtains and breasts, and over-saturated fields of wheat traversed by nuns like this guy can–these are images that could be framed on a wall and this odd and controversial film is at times elevated to high surreal art. I can imagine W Magazine doing an editorial based on this film, if only anyone on staff was film nerdy enough to seek it out.

But what do all the pretty pictures add up to? Well, on one hand, not much more than an oddly paced, head scratching “it was all a dream?” type fantasy; but, on the other, it's hard to deny that there's some indescribable and creepily intriguing (like an ominous abstract painting) that you can't quite put your finger on–and you don't even want to, really, because it's just so profoundly weird that it's pretty much impenetrable to analysis.

Aside from the visuals, the plot too (as much of it as you can piece together), has some neat elements. The cast of characters is pretty wild, there's The Weasel, the town's ghostly and David Lynchian eerie vampire master; Eagle his frequently tortured (both physically and emotionally) son with incestuous longings for Valerie; Granny, who is willing to trade her granddaughter for eternal youth and is always dressed amazingly in white stiff collared dresses, black net fingerless gloves, black jodhopers, and severe complex up-dos; and, of course, there's Valerie, the nubile teen who imagines all this nonsense (which includes a burning at the stakes and a chicken plague) with the aide of a pair of magical earrings.

We found it mind blowing that this oddity was actually based on a novel (written in 1935 by Vitezslav Nezval) and can't begin to imagine how it could work on the written page. Long lost, the film was finally released by Facets Video in 2004. It has been an inspiration for writer Angela Carter (The Company of Wolves) and its re-release has inspired a new group of artists: a team of Philadelphian musicians called The Valerie Project who play along to the cult classic film at museums and film festivals.

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Posted on July 28, 2008