- Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre)
- Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Anthony Fabian)
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (The Daniels)
- Women Talking (Sarah Polley)
- The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch (Michael Steiner)
- Shanghai Express (Joseph von Sternberg)
- The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski)
- Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami)
- Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel)
- All I Desire (Douglas Sirk)
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1- Watching Argentina, 1985, I was reminded of All The President’s Men. Both films deal with a significant political event which most adults living at the time would know very well. I remember being glued to the radio during Watergate, so watching All the President’s Men was like a recap of recent history. I was only vaguely aware of the military coup and ‘dirty war’ that happened in Argentina, but I am sure my counterparts in that country viewed Argentina, 1985 as a recap of their recent history. The horrors that the Fascists wrought on the Leftists in Argentina is terrifyingly close to the rhetoric that the hard-right conservatives are spouting in the US today. The film is a good history lesson for someone like me who only knew the general facts about la guerra sucia. But it also gives hope that no matter how frightening the extreme politics get, there is always the hope and possibility that justice will win out. And, by the way, I am sure that Argentina considers Ricardo Darin a national living treasure. An extraordinary actor!
2- It does my old-fashioned heart good to know that movies like Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris are still being made. unapologetically sweet and charming, happy ends all around. And Lesley Manville can do anything.
3- Where do I begin in discussing Everything Everywhere All At Once? I feel the need to recuse myself from judgement because I am so baffled by its TikTok aesthetic. For me watching more than two TikToks in a row begins to anesthetize my brain. After the first hour of this film I was exhausted by the cascade of disjointed images and ‘clever’ meta-story telling. I had to stick with it because I made a pact with myself to watch every film that won Best Picture. I can’t say it is a bad film, because I do not have the tools to watch such a video-game-like film. People are crazy for it and chacun a son gout. But I can say it is a bad film because of the puerile Capraesque ‘moral’ that is tacked on to the last part of the film. I audibly groaned when it dawned on me that the message was to be nice to people, especially your family. It occurred to me that this awkward shoehorning of a ‘message’ at the end of two hours of violent chaos was perhaps a sop to the audience to let them think they hadn’t wasted their time on exhausting special effect. Definitely my most unsatisfying Best Picture watch since the awful The Shape of Water
4- What joy to watch Women Talking after the grinding experience of Everything Everywhere All At One. The title describes this film perfectly, but also deceptively. These women talk and talk, but they are fascinating. Sarah Polley’s script is so masterful in the way it slowly gives the audience the details of the horrors these women have endured at the hands of monstrous men. Rooney Mara is amazing, as is Claire Foy. But my heart leaped for joy seeing Sheila McCarthy, my beloved Polly of I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. She needs to be in EVERY movie.
5- The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch is a silly but fun German film about the trials of a young, Orthodox man who so far has succeeding in dodging the superhuman efforts of everyone around him to find a shidduch for him. Yes, there are the cliches of the overbearing Jewish mother and the monolithic Hasidic community, but it is all portrayed cartoonishly, so it doesn’t hurt to much. The ending is quite unexpected. No reconciliation in sight.
6- It is interesting to look at how women are portrayed in Pre-code Hollywood. The freer sexuality often gives us depicitons of very strong women who don’t need a man to be all they can be, but at the same time are still overwhelmingly sexual. Of course one things of Mae West in this sense, but there is also Jean Harlow, Garbo and early Barbara Stanwyck. Mightly women all, who somehow outshine any of their male costars, often with strong sexuality, with a side order of waspish humor. Shanghai Express stars another of these celestial women, Marlene Dietrich. Under the guidance of her mentor, Von Sternberg. Every camera angle, every lighting setup is in place to offset the magic of Dietrich. Her costumes, ludicrous for a grueling train ride from Beijing to Shanghai, are perfect in setting her apart as something different from her fellow travelers. Every man in this film is insufferable with embarrasingly easily bruised male egos. This is pointedly contrasted with the complex emotions of Dietrich and Anna May Wong. They are both so strong and so effective that they male presence is laughable when viewed next to them.
To hear Dietrich deliver the immortal line, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily’ is to wonder how her character could ever been besotted with the lunkhead played by Clive Brooks. A more interesting angle would have been the relationship between her and the great Anna May Wong, soon to be on a US Quarter near you.
7- The Ninth Gate is just the kind of slightly incoherent occult movie I love and usually watch around Halloween It has all the classic tropes of Roman Polanski’s paranoia and a super-seedy but still attractive Johnny Depp. Fun
8- I was glad to revisit Belle de Jour. I saw it years ago and I’ll admit that I just didn’t get it. Now I see that sly wit that Bunuel is so famous for and was struck by the super sophisticated use of meta-fictional techniques. I guess I need to watch Viridiana, another of his films that left me baffled in my callow movie viewing days
9- All I Desire is far from a great film. My sister-in-law aptly described it as a little sappy. Unlike the titanic soap operas that Sirk was going to direct a few years later, I don’t see much of the middle-class subversion we see in masterpieces such as All The Heaven Allows or my candidate for the wackiest film of the Fifties, Written on the Wind. But this film does give us a chance to enjoy my fellow Brooklynite, Barbara Stanwyck, and that is always a good thing.
The Discreet Bourgeois 