NEW
YORK FILM FESTIVAL
2015
– 53rd Festival
The 2015 NYFF
ended on 11 October. This Festival—the 53rd edition—again under the
brilliant leadership of Kent Jones
(Director of the NYFF) and Lesli Klainberg (Executor Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center) was a spectacular
success!
The Selection
Committee (chaired by Kent Jones,
and including Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Senior Programming
Advisor; Gavin Smith,
Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin,
Contributing Editor, Film Comment and
Sight & Sound) put together an
incredible Festival, with a Main Slate of
26 wonderful selections (including: our very favorite of the 20 we saw, our
friend Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days (Trois Souvenirs de ma jeunesse),
closely followed in our personal hierarchy by Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre,
Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong
Then, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Journey
to the Shore); an amazing series of Special Events
(including a fabulous 15th Anniversary screening of O
Brother Where Art Thou, and an exciting screening of PT Anderson’s Junun,
two of our favorite things in the whole Festival); a great Revivals
series (we could only see one, De Palma’s
Blow-Out);
Spotlight
on Documentary (a fabulous series, of which we were only able to see
one, but it was terrific: Immigration Battle/Reasons to Believe, by our friends Michael Camerini, Shari Robertson); a Dorsky/Hiler retrospective entitled “Luminous Intimacy: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky
and Jerome Hiler” (which we unfortunately were
unable to get to); [I review the films we saw in these three additional
segments of the Festival following my reviews of the Main Slate films]; and several other amazing series and events we were
just not able to avail ourselves of (due to our time constraints only)—Convergence
(“a variety of interactive experiences, panels, and presentations”), Projections (“a broad range of innovative modes and
techniques, including experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into
documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices”) and Talks. It was a
fabulous, fun 16 days—during which time Nancy and I saw 24 films (we were
supposed to see 26, but we ended up just not being to do one of the Revivals
and one of the of the documentaries).
As always, the range of films in the NYFF was
extremely wide—ranging from obscure and very unusual, art films (to use an old
expression) to major Hollywood adventure films.
Given that range, is rather impossible for a person to like everything
in the NYFF. The only thing that unites
this diversity, however, is that all the films are great examples of what they
are—they are all excellent, even though some of them I actually disliked.
Some of these films are already in release,
or are being released this week: Steve Jobs, The
Walk, The Forbidden Room, Bridge of Spies (16 October), The Assassin (16 October), and Junun is currently
available for streaming on MUBI—but only until 8 November, so act
quickly, as you won’t want to miss it; and Immigration Battle/Reasons to Believe.will be
aired on Frontline
on PBS on 20 October, and thereafter be available to stream on that website
Due to time pressures this year, I am going to
do briefer assessments this year of the 24 films we saw—including, along with
my personal reactions and evaluations, the Film
Society’s descriptions of the basic information about each film to save
time.
THE MAIN SLATE of FILMS IN THE FESTIVAL
My Golden Days (Trois
Souvenirs de ma jeunesse)
My Golden Days (Trois
Souvenirs de ma jeunesse). Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2015, DCP,
123m French with English subtitles
This latest film
from our friend Arnaud Desplechin is a true masterpiece. My first reaction to seeing it was to feel
extraordinarily satisfied and thrilled by its depth, complexity, beauty, and
the profound emotional experience of watching it; the second—after the joy of
the first subsided a bit—was to want to see it again as soon as I possibly
can. Arnaud explores human
psychology and the meaning of life and experience in a way that is as profound
as it is engaging, and it invites thinking about, re-watching, and thinking
more about. His entire body or work
seems to be an ever expanding, ever deepening journey into themes and
characters that move in and out of his films in various forms and versions. But all this contained in totally satisfying,
dramatic presentations, beautifully filmed and excellently acted (and
directed). Short story: don’t miss this
one!
Arnaud Desplechin’s alternately hilarious and
heartrending latest work is intimate yet expansive, a true autobiographical epic. Mathieu Amalric—Jean-Pierre
Léaud to Desplechin’s
François Truffaut—reprises the character of Paul Dédalus
from the director’s groundbreaking My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an
Argument (NYFF, 1996), now looking back on the mystery of his own identity from
the lofty vantage point of middle age. Desplechin
visits three varied but interlocking episodes in his hero’s life, each more
surprising and richly textured than the next, and at the core of his film is
the romance between the adolescent Paul (Quentin Dolmaire)
and Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). Most directors
trivialize young love by slotting it into a clichéd category, but here it is
ennobled and alive in all of its heartbreak, terror, and beauty. Le Monde
recently referred to Desplechin as “the most Shakespearean
of filmmakers,” and boy, did they ever get that right. My Golden Days
is a wonder to behold. A Magnolia Pictures release.
What an amazing must-see film from Nanni Manetti! It presents the complicated, emotionally
complex and intense story of a director’s dealing with her mother’s impending
death while directing a film.
Contraposed to this is the entrance onto the scene of her
extremely-flawed star, played brilliantly by John Turturro—already inexcusably late to
the filming—who provides both another dimension to the drama, and a fair amount
of comic relief. It is an extraordinary
a performance by a great actor. It is
also an amazing film as a whole. I can’t
wait for it to be released…which it will be.
Margherita (Margherita Buy) is a middle-aged filmmaker
who has to contend with an international co-production starring a
mercurial American actor (John Turturro) and
with the realization that her beloved mother (Giulia Lazzarini)
is mortally ill. Underrated as an actor, director Nanni
Moretti offers a fascinating portrayal as Margherita’s brother, a quietly
abrasive, intelligent man with a wonderfully tamped-down generosity and warmth.
The construction of the film is as simple as it is beautiful: the chaos of the
movie within the movie merges with the fear of disorder and feelings of pain
and loss brought about by impending death. Mia Madre is a sharp and continually
surprising work about the fragility of existence that is by turns moving,
hilarious, and subtly disquieting. An Alchemy release.
Right Now, Wrong Then. Hong
Sangsoo, South Korea, 2015, DCP,
121m Korean
with English subtitles
I came out of this
magnificent film thinking it was the best thing I had ever seen by Hong,
who is a director whose work Nancy and I have come to love as a result of
seeing many of his films in NYFFs over the
years. (Hong somehow manages to
do what seems to be one film a year, and they are almost always great enough to
be included in this very selective event.) In fact, talking to Kent Jones that
evening (who also adored it, BTW), I was reminded that most of his works are similarly wonderful and I tend always to
think the current one is his best; and that it may be just that the intensity
of the wonderful experience of just seeing it makes it feel like it must be the
best, when there is actually a lot of competition for that in his oeuvre. In
some ways, all of his films are similar—almost all of them about a director
(sometimes successful, sometimes a failed one who has become an academic), all
about romantic relationships (often ones he shouldn’t be in; sometimes ones
that occurred before the current moment, sometimes during, and sometimes being
contemplated for the future); and often feeling like the extension of the same
story (although usually not). Yet each
is unique, different in ways that make each a novel experience that is totally
satisfying on its own. In a way, Right
Now, Wrong Then feels much that
way within itself: it is divided into two equal stories, each starting with the
same title screen, and each nearly recreating the same story line, with the
same characters, and the same visuals—nearly, but not completely; in fact, each
version is SO subtly but importantly different that they are totally different
experiences, with totally different emotional feels and meanings. For a while I
wondered at the beginning of the second story whether he was reusing some of
the same footage, only to realize in one long, continuous take, that while
virtually the same, it was not—the key being that the male lead, while leaning
against the same pillar in the same courtyard, in the first instance was
looking down (in a way that made enough of an impact that I remembered that
detail later), while in the second his face was turned upward toward the
sun. It is an incredibly wonderful
juxtaposition, and a totally fabulous film—poignant, funny, and completely
riveting. I can’t wait to watch this one
again.
Ham Chunsu (Jung Jaeyoung) is an art-film director who has come to Suwon for
a screening of one of his movies. He meets Yoon Heejung
(Kim Minhee), a fledgling artist. She’s never seen any
of his films but knows he’s famous; he’d like to see her paintings and then go
for sushi and soju. Every word, every pause, every facial expression and every
movement, is a negotiation between revelation and concealment: too far over the
line for Chunsu and he’s suddenly a middle-aged man
on the prowl who uses insights as tools of seduction; too far for Heejung and she’s suddenly acquiescing to a man who’s
leaving the next day. So they walk the fine line all the way to a tough and
mordantly funny end point, at which time… we begin again, but now with
different emotional dynamics. Hong Sangsoo,
represented many times in the NYFF, achieves a maximum of layered nuance with a
minimum of people, places, and incidents. He is, truly, a master.
Journey to the Shore. Kiyoshi
Kurosawa, Japan/France, 2015, DCP, 127m Japanese with English subtitles
Taken literally, this film would have given
me fits; but, in fact, I believe it is a magnificent metaphoric exploration of
the realities of loss and mourning—and therefore of living. It is beautiful, poignant, and
entertaining. And, as always in the
films of Kurosawa (not to be
confused with Akira), the film is subtle, meaningful, elegant, emotional, and
gorgeous. In short, a
terrific film.
Based on Kazumi Yumoto’s 2010
novel, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film begins with a young widow named Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu),
who has been emotionally flattened and muted by the disappearance of her
husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano). One day, from out of the blue or the black,
Yusuke’s ghost drops in, more like an exhausted and unexpected guest than a
wandering spirit. And then Journey to the Shore becomes a road movie: Mizuki and Yusuke pack their bags, leave Tokyo, and travel
by train through parts of Japan that we rarely see in movies, acclimating
themselves to their new circumstances and stopping for extended stays with
friends and fellow pilgrims that Yusuke has met on his way through the
afterworld, some living and some dead. The particular beauty of Journey to
the Shore lies in its flowing sense of life as balance between work and
love, existence and nonexistence, you and me.
·
The Assassin. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, DCP,
105 minutes Mandarin
with English subtitles. Screening beginning 16
October Friday at the Film Society’s Elinor Bunin Munroe
Film Center.
·
This is
without a doubt the most beautiful, most slow-paced “action film” ever
made. Of course, it really is not an
action film, but rather a gorgeous, languorous, visual symphony, punctuated
with occasional brief moments of action.
It has a quiet beauty that feels very much like gazing at traditional
Chinese landscape painting. There is a
plot, although three of the four of us watching it together were so involved in
relishing the visual richness that we were only vaguely aware of it. Even the
action scenes take place in breathtakingly beautiful settings. It is an enormously successful work of art on
so many levels. It is an exquisite film.
A wuxia like no other, The
Assassin is set in the waning years of the Tang Dynasty when provincial rulers
are challenging the power of the royal court. Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), who was exiled as a child so that her
betrothed could make a more politically advantageous match, has been trained as
an assassin for hire. Her mission is to destroy her former fiancé (Chang Chen).
But worry not about the plot, which is as old as the jagged mountains and deep
forests that bear witness to the cycles of power and as elusive as the mists
that surround them. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s
art is in the telling. The film is immersive and ephemeral, sensuous and spare,
and as gloriously beautiful in its candle-lit sumptuous red and gold decor as Hou’s 1998 masterpiece, Flowers of Shanghai. As for
the fight scenes, they’re over almost before you realize they’ve happened, but
they will stay in your mind’s eye forever. A Well Go USA
release.
Bridge of Spies. Steven
Spielberg, 2015, USA, DCP, 135 minutes
OK…I was not looking forward to this one (I
don’t like most of Spielberg’s work
since Jaws; and I haven’t much liked Tom Hanks in serious roles); but I
really enjoyed it! Hanks gives a
fantastic performance in this film—overshadowed only by the fabulous
performance by Mark Rylance; and the
film itself is a gripping, well-made movie that practically flies by despite
its 2 ¼ hour length. (Hmm…the Coen Brothers did have a big hand in
writing this one...) It gets a bit
cheesy in spots, especially toward the end (Spielberg can’t help himself); but it is a good and very entertaining film.
The “bridge of spies” of the title refers to Glienicke Bridge, which crosses what was once the
borderline between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. In the time
from the building of the Berlin Wall to its destruction in 1989, there were
three prisoner exchanges between East and West. The first and most famous spy
swap occurred on February 10, 1962, when Soviet agent Rudolph Abel was traded
for American pilot Francis Gary Powers, captured by the Soviets when his U-2
reconnaissance plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk. The exchange was negotiated
by Abel’s lawyer, James B. Donovan, who also arranged for the simultaneous
release of American student Frederic Pryor at Checkpoint Charlie. Working from
a script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen,
Steven Spielberg has brought every strange turn in this complex Cold War story
to vividly tactile life. With a brilliant cast, headed by Tom Hanks as Donovan
and Mark Rylance as Abel—two men who strike up an improbable friendship based
on a shared belief in public service. A Touchstone Pictures
release.
Microbe & Gasoline. Michel
Gondry, France, 2015, DCP, 103m French with
English subtitles
This was a
completely lovely film! Funny, clever,
touching—and much with a much lighter, more subtle touch than I expected from Michel
Gondry. It
is an adolescent voyage of growth, discovery, and developing self-expression
well-worth going along for the ride with.
The new
handmade-SFX comedy from Michel Gondry
(Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) is
set in an autobiographical key. Teenage misfits Microbe (Ange Dargent) and Gasoline (Théophile Baquet), one nicknamed for his size and the other for his
love of all things mechanical and fuel-powered, become fast friends. Unloved in
school and misunderstood at home—Microbe is overprotected, Gasoline is by turns
ignored and abused—they decide to build a house on wheels (complete with a
collapsible flower window box) and sputter, push, and coast their way to the
camp where Gasoline went as a child, with a stop along the way to visit
Microbe’s crush (Diane Besnier). Gondry’s visual
imagination is prodigious, and so is his cultivation of spontaneously generated
fun and off-angled lyricism, his absolute irreverence, and his emotional
frankness. This is one of his freshest and loveliest films. With
Audrey Tatou as Microbe’s mom.
·
·
Steve Jobs.
Centerpiece. Danny Boyle, 2015,
USA, DCP. In theaters 23 October
·
I did not expect to like this one, but I did. I don’t know anything about Steve Jobs as a
person, and I don’t really want to
know anything about him as a person. But
Aaron Sorkin threw me a curve ball,
and it got me: the film is structured in three parts, each centered on one of
three major product launches Jobs did, each shot in progressively high-tech
techniques (16mm for the Macintosh launch in 1984, 35mm for his NeXT in 1988,
and high-definition digital for the iMac
launch in 1998); and throughout it essentially focuses on his relationship with
his out-of-wedlock daughter—with all the stuff that people usually focus on
about Jobs happening instead around the edges (not insignificantly, of course,
but off-center). Wonderfully
directed by Danny Boyle, great
performance by Michael Fassbender in the title role, and a great supporting
cast (including Kate Winslet, Katherine Waterston, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, and Michael Stuhlbarg).
I don’t buy the emotional growth that is suggested, but a nice place to end
with it being a possibility—although the implied likelihood I suspect is more
imaginary than realistic.
Anyone going to
this provocative and wildly entertaining film expecting a straight biopic of
Steve Jobs is in for a shock. Working from Walter Isaacson’s biography, writer
Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War) and director Danny
Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) joined forces to create this dynamically
character-driven portrait of the brilliant man at the epicenter of the digital
revolution, weaving the multiple threads of their protagonist’s life into three
daringly extended backstage scenes, as he prepares to launch the first
Macintosh, the NeXT work station and the iMac. We get a dazzlingly executed
cross-hatched portrait of a complex and contradictory man, set against the
changing fortunes and circumstances of the home-computer industry and the
ascendancy of branding, of products, and of oneself. The stellar cast includes
Michael Fassbender in the title role, Kate Winslet as
Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, Katherine Waterston as Chrisann
Brennan and Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld. A Universal Pictures release.
·
Where to Invade Next. Michael
Moore, 2015,
USA, DCP, 110 minutes
English, French, Portuguese, Italian, and German with English subtitles
I have not liked Michael Moore’s films. It
has something to do with someone having vaguely similar positions that are not
presented in a way I like or find completely reasonable. But I liked this one! Don’t misunderstand: it contains all of the
worst of the purposeful (I think) naiveté and even deceptive misrepresentation
he is prone to. But the film is funny
and entertaining! It also serves as an
appropriately powerful (albeit not always accurate) critique of some of the
worst problems in the US—even if it simplifies and distorts some of them to the
point of absurdity. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff—bereft because they have lost every war since the big ones (WWI &
WWII), and not knowing what else to try—invite Moore’s help to deal with the
problems of the world. (Fun, absurdist comic premise!) He “invades” various countries, primarily in
Europe, “conquers” them, and brings back the “spoils of war” in the form of
ideas he feels it would be good to adopt.
Be forewarned: the observations he makes about the good things in these
other countries are unrealistically distorted, and some downright wrong (to the
point of being deceptive). Nevertheless,
they do shine a spotlight on real problems in the US (although the observations
upon which they are based will be easily dismissed by anyone moved to object,
since they are so flawed); and even
here, his conspiracy theories are just wrong in a disturbing way. His deepest insight (SPOILER ALERT): the
things we need are values we invented
but have lost sight of.
Where are we, as Americans? Where are we going as a country? And is it
where we want to go, or where we
think we have to go? Since Roger & Me in 1989, Michael Moore
has been examining these questions and coming up with answers that are several
worlds away from the ones we are used to seeing and hearing and reading in
mainstream media, or from our elected officials. In his previous films, Moore has
taken on one issue at a time, from the hemorrhaging of American jobs to the
response to 9/11 to the precariousness of our healthcare system. In his new
film, he shifts his focus to the whole shebang and ponders the current state of
the nation from a very different perspective: that is, from the outside looking
in. Where To
Invade Next is provocative, very funny, and impassioned—just like all of
Moore’s work. But it’s also pretty surprising.
·
The Mountains
May Depart. Jia Zhangke, China/France/Japan, 2015, DCP,
131m Mandarin and English with English subtitles
This
is a good film, from a great director; but it is flawed: some bad casting; some
awkward discontinuities of style—which are partly due
to the fact that part of it really was
filmed decades earlier, but still function awkwardly; and something quite dated
about the whole thing—feeling slightly like an old Soviet propaganda-tainted
drama. Nevertheless, Jia Zhangke’s
brilliance shows through in enough of the film to make it mostly entrancing
The plot of Jia Zhangke’s new film is simplicity itself. Fenyang 1999, on
the cusp of the capitalist explosion in China. Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) has
two suitors—Zhang (Zhang Yi), an entrepreneur-to-be, and his best friend Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong), who
makes his living in the local coal mine. Shen Tao decides, with a note of
regret, to marry Zhang, a man with a future. Flash-forward 15 years: the
couple’s son Dollar is paying a visit to his now-estranged mother, and everyone
and everything seems to have grown more distant in time and space… and then
further ahead in time, to even greater distances. Jia
is modern cinema’s greatest poet of drift and the uncanny, slow-motion feeling
of massive and inexorable change. Like his 2013 A Touch of Sin,
Mountains May Depart is an epically scaled canvas. But where the
former was angry and quietly terrifying, the latter is a heartbreaking
prayer for the restoration of what has been lost in the name of progress. A Kino Lorber release.
The Forbidden Room. Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, Canada, 2015, DCP, 120m. In theaters now
The visual montage
of the opening credits is one of the best things I’ve seen in years—and it is
without a doubt the most amazing set of opening credits ever. Hard to describe this film (and the Film
Society’s description won’t begin to give you a hint about anything other than
the fabulous actors that play roles in it—and their list is only a tiny
fragment): it is an early 20th century submarine thriller meets The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
Bergman meets Brecht, Dali meets Monty Python (and especially Terry
Gilliam). It is insane and it is
wonderful. The problem is that it should
have been a short. Although every piece
of this mad film is wonderfully worth seeing, trying to watch two hours of it
simply doesn’t work—for me it was at least three times as long as it should
have been, and that turned something terrific into something unsustainably
tedious.
The
four-man crew of a submarine are trapped underwater,
running out of air. A classic scenario of claustrophobic suspense—at least
until a hatch opens and out steps… a lumberjack? As this newcomer’s backstory
unfolds (and unfolds and unfolds in over a dozen outlandish tales), Guy Maddin, cinema’s reigning master of feverish filmic
fetishism, embarks on a phantasmagoric narrative adventure of stories within
stories within dreams within flashbacks in a delirious globe-trotting mise en abyme the equals of any
by the late Raúl Ruiz. Collaborating with poet John Ashbery and featuring sublime contributions from the likes
of Jacques Nolot, Charlotte Rampling,
Mathieu Amalric, legendary cult electro-pop duo
Sparks, and not forgetting muses Louis Negin and Udo
Kier, Maddin dives deeper than ever: only the
lovechild of Josef von Sternberg and Jack Smith could be responsible for this
insane magnum opus. A Kino Lorber
release.
Miles Ahead. Closing
Night.
Don
Cheadle, 2015, USA, DCP, 100 minutes
I went into this with trepidation,
and I came out unfortunately feeling my fears were confirmed. I am devoted to the music Miles
created—particularly from the late 40s through the early 60s, and this film is centered
in the late 70s—a period when I actually did not like his music. Although the film attempts to move back and
forth in time over various eras of his career, it gives extremely short shrift
to the end I love. Don Cheadle did an
excellent job acting the role of Miles, a far less good job directing the film,
and, to me, an extremely disappointing job of conceiving and writing the
film. It asserts the genius of Miles’s
music—and attempts to use some of it to convey that genius—but it does nothing
to explore it. (It is also annoying to
me to watch a film about a great musician where the
actors are not actually playing the music you are hearing. It is somewhat unavoidable, particularly with
jazz, where virtuosity is a prerequisite for performing it.) It is far more an exploration of his sickness
than of his creativity; and Miles was, indeed, a sick, twisted character—and
not only in his later years, although then it got
particularly crazy. [I also have another
prejudice here that I should make explicit: perhaps oddly for a psychoanalyst
(who is totally mesmerized and riveted by the exploration of personal history
and how it shapes a person’s personality and creative expression), I am not
interested in the psychobiography of artists or theorist; I want to learn about
them through their creative expression, letting that stand on its own in my
understanding of them. I’m sure it has
to do with my sense of the difference between knowing someone directly, first
hand in an actual relationship, and the inferential knowledge one learns from
their biographical facts. At least when
I know someone through his or her creative expression (whether it be painting,
music, literature, or even theoretical writings), I feel the relationship is
more first hand and personal, albeit only implicit.] The beginning of the film was pretty
gripping, but it progressively lost me…and I felt it was a bit all over the
place. Would I have liked it if it were
more about the period I love in Miles’s work? Perhaps; but even then I know I
would have resented the focus on the aspects of his life around his music
rather than on the music itself. So,
once again, here is one you may enjoy, although it was not particularly
enjoyable for me.
Miles Davis was one of the greatest artists of the 20th
century. And how do you make a movie about him? You get to know the man inside
and out and then you reveal him in full, which is exactly what Don Cheadle does
as a director, a writer, and an actor with this remarkable portrait of Davis,
refracted through his crazy days in the late-70s. Holed up in his Manhattan
apartment, wracked with pain from a variety of ailments and sweating for the
next check from his record company, dodging sycophants and industry executives,
he is haunted by memories of old glories and humiliations and of his years with
his great love Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). Every second of Cheadle’s
cinematic mosaic is passionately engaged with its subject: this is, truly, one
of the finest films ever made about the life of an artist. With
Ewan McGregor as Dave Brill, the “reporter” who cons his way into Miles’
apartment. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Carol. Todd
Haynes. 2015, USA, DCP, 118
minutes
Todd Haynes has directed a well-done, beautifully realized
adaptation of a novel by Patricia
Highsmith about a Lesbian relationship in mid-20th century
America between two very different women (played wonderfully by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara). It was
gorgeously filmed by Ed Lachman. Most of the people I know who viewed it
completely loved it. I wanted to—and
expected to—both because of its thematic importance and my admiration for Cate Blanchett; but, unfortunately, I
did not. It was paced too slowly for me
(I find it interesting that I have no problem with the far more slowly paced The Assassin
[q.v., above], but very much did with
this; I hypothesize it is something about the difference of the aesthetic and
my sense of the meaningfulness of the pacing, but IDK); and I also just
couldn’t fully believe some aspects of it.
The amazingly expressive Blanchett
clearly chose—or was directed to choose—to play her role with an extremely
restricted range of emotional expression, her face and posture almost frozen
throughout all but certain crucial moments.
I imagine the decision was to convey the contrast between her usually
repressed—albeit hardly constrained—mode and the emotionality she experienced
at key moments. That makes sense to me
in theory, but did not work for me in the actual experience of the film. This film did not work for me, although
clearly it has great merit.
Todd
Haynes’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel stars Cate Blanchett as
the titular Carol, a wealthy suburban wife and mother, and Rooney Mara as an
aspiring photographer who meet by chance, fall in love almost at first sight,
and defy the closet of the early 1950s to be together. Working with his
longtime cinematographer Ed Lachman and shooting on the Super-16 film he favors
for the way it echoes the movie history of 20th-century America, Haynes charts
subtle shifts of power and desire in images that are alternately luminous and
oppressive. Blanchett and Mara are both splendid; the erotic connection between
their characters is palpable from beginning to end, as much in its repression
as in eagerly claimed moments of expressive freedom. Originally published under
a pseudonym, Carol is Highsmith’s most affirmative work; Haynes has more
than done justice to the multilayered emotions evoked by it source material. A Weinstein Company release.
Experimenter. Michael Almereyda,
2015, USA, DCP, 98 minutes
This movie started out to be terrific: a
rather gripping presentation of the famous research done by Stanley Milgram, in
which subjects were willing to administer what they believed were painful,
damaging, and potentially fatal levels of electric shocks to what they thought
were other subjects (actually a staff member on the experiment), simply because
they were directed to do so by a staff member—even though it had been made
clear to them at the outset that they could stop anytime they wanted. The film was done cleverly, and effectively:
Milgram (portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard) at times narrates the film, looking at the
audience while speaking to us; some of the scenes, particularly the flashbacks,
are filmed against static, grainy photographic backgrounds—often in black and
white, in contrast to the actors being in color. Nevertheless, it took an unfortunate turn and
ended up going somewhere very strange—and unsuccessful for me—in its last half
hour: moving into the making of a cheesy television dramatization of Milgram’s
work (the actual TV show having starred William Shatner and Ossie Davis!) and
the sudden, somehow related decline of Milgram’s marriage, and the film then
became melodramatic and shallow—in sharp contrast to how powerful and deep it
had seemed at the beginning.
Michael
Almereyda’s brilliant portrait of Stanley Milgram,
the social scientist whose 1961, Yale-based “obedience study” reflected back on
the Holocaust and anticipated Abu Ghraib and other atrocities carried out by
ordinary people who were just following orders, places its subject in an
appropriately experimental cinema framework. The proverbial elephant in the
room materializes on screen; Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard)
sometimes addresses the camera directly as if to implicate us in his studies
and the unpleasant truths they reveal. Remarkably, the film evokes great
compassion for this uncompromising, difficult man, in part because we often see
him through the eyes of his wife (Winona Ryder, in a wonderfully grounded
performance), who fully believed in his work and its profoundly moral purpose. Almereyda creates the bohemian-tinged academic world of the
1960s through the 1980s with an economy that Stanley Kubrick might have envied.
A Magnolia Pictures release.
Don’t Blink: Robert Frank. Laura Israel, USA/Canada, 2015, DCP, 82m
I love
Robert Frank’s photography: The Americans is a treasured and beloved
volume on my bookshelf. I enjoyed and
appreciated his film about The Rolling Stones’, Cocksucker Blues, although its aesthetic was nowhere as dear to me
as that of his photography. But I did not really appreciate this documentary
about him and his work. I felt it didn’t
present the early photography adequately (a series of fleeting images, rather
than lingering on their power and beauty); and it felt disjointed and frenetic
to me. I was surprised, because Laura Israel was his long-time editor
and collaborator. I spoke with a couple
of knowledgeable friends after the screening, and it was separately the opinion
of both of them (who really liked the film, BTW), that it was probably because I
loved his early work and, they both suspected—correctly, it turns out—I am not
really a fan of his later work. They
both felt this documentary rather beautifully was done in a way that captured
his later style—and that it virtually was an extension of it. So I present you with both takes.
The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a
filmmaker—are so intertwined that they’re one in the same, and the vast amount
of territory he’s covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present,
is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From
the early ’90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the
brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and
preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera
and people/places. Don’t Blink is Israel’s like-minded portrait of her
friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and
recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a
fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented
himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at
the age of 90.
The Lobster. Yorgos Lanthimos, France/Netherlands/Greece/UK,
2015, DCP, 118m
The conceit of this film, while totally
far-fetched, was clever in a comic way—and the first segments of the film used
it to create some wonderfully funny moments.
But it does not have the substance to support the layering it attempts
or the darkness it goes to periodically; and I fear it ends up taking itself
too seriously for what it is. Colin Farrell is quite good, but the
film has trouble supporting the flat affect he maintains through most of it. Just too heavy-handed.
In
the very near future, society demands that we live as couples. Single people
are rounded up and sent to a seaside compound—part resort and part
minimum-security prison—where they are given a finite number of days to find a
match. If they don’t succeed, they will be “altered” and turned into an animal.
The recently divorced David (Colin Farrell) arrives at The Hotel with his
brother, now a dog; in the event of failure, David has chosen to become a
lobster… because they live so long. When David falls in love, he’s up against a
new set of rules established by another, rebellious order: for romantics,
there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Welcome to the latest dark, dark comedy
from Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), creator of absurdist societies not so very different
from our own. With Léa Seydoux as the leader of the
Loners, Rachel Weisz as David’s true love, John C. Reilly, and Ben Whishaw. An Alchemy release.
Maggie’s Plan. Rebecca
Miller, 2015,
USA, DCP, 92 minutes
This is one of those times a film probably
suffered from my going in with high expectations: I came out very much not
liking it. There was something in its
humor that I felt uncomfortable about; and it was only in talking to a friend
after the screening who said she found it “mean,” that I understood my
discomfort—there was a kind of meanness to the humor and unpleasantness in the
naiveté of its world view. But please
understand this in the context of my preferences and prejudices: it is connected to the fact that, while I
found Seinfeld at times hilariously
funny, I never got into watching it, because I so disliked the characters; and
I cannot tolerate the humor of Larry David, although, similarly (of course), he
can be very funny. I point that out, because
I want to let you know you may really
like it. (Some I went with did.) I
always have some problems, too, with what Greta
Gerwig conveys in her performances in most of the
films I’ve seen her in. I sometimes like
Julianne Moore very much, sometimes not
at all; and this performance unfortunately fell into the second category.
Rebecca Miller’s new film is as wise, funny, and
suspenseful as a Jane Austen novel. Greta Gerwig
shines brightly in the role of Maggie, a New School administrator on the verge of
completing her life plan with a donor-fathered baby when she meets John (Ethan
Hawke), a soulful but unfulfilled adjunct professor. John is unhappily married
to a Columbia-tenured academic superstar wound tighter than a coiled spring
(Julianne Moore). Maggie and the professor commiserate, share confidences, and
fall in love. And where most contemporary romantic comedies end, Miller’s film
is just getting started. In the tradition of Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky,
Miller approaches the genre of the New York romantic comedy with relish and
loving energy. With Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph as Maggie’s
married-with-children friends, drawn to defensive sarcasm like moths to a
flame, and Travis Fimmel as Maggie’s
donor-in-waiting.
The Walk. Opening
Night. Robert Zemeckis, 2015, USA, 3-D DCP,
124 minutes. In theaters now.
I was dreading
this. It turned out that it wasn’t as
bad as I was expecting; it was actually mildly entertaining. Zemeckis is the
master of action and special effects…and 3-D adds to this. There were 20 minutes or so of terrific
action—and he does that better than anyone. But the
hour leading up to it was slow, and nothing special at all—and when I learned
that Philippe Petit is revered by street performers as having
been, in his early years, the consummate practitioner of their art, I felt that
this hours was particularly wasted, as there was no sense of what could have been in it. And the several final minutes were filled
with the mindless, maudlin, sentimentality that ruins a Zemeckis film if it is allowed
to enter in. If you watch it, however,
make sure to do it in 3-D, and on the biggest screen you can find (perfect for
IMAX); but, I’d suggest instead that you watch the wonderful documentary, James
Marsh’s 2008 documentary, Man on Wire.
Robert Zemeckis’s magical and
enthralling new film, the story of Philippe Petit (winningly played by Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) and his walk between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, plays
like a heist movie in the grand tradition of Rififi
and Bob le flambeur. Zemeckis
takes us through every detail—the stakeouts, the acquisition of equipment, the
elaborate planning and rehearsing that it took to get Petit, his crew of raucous
cohorts, and hundreds of pounds of rigging to the top of what was then the
world’s tallest building. When Petit steps out on his wire, The Walk, a
technical marvel and perfect 3-D re-creation of Lower Manhattan in the 1970s,
shifts into another heart-stopping gear, and Zemeckis
and his hero transport us into pure sublimity. With Ben
Kingsley as Petit’s mentor. A
Sony Pictures release.
Brooklyn. John
Crowley, UK/Ireland/Canada, 2015, 35mm/DCP, 112m
This is a beautifully
filmed movie, and many really liked it.
It was just far, far too
romantic for my taste; and it was not helped by the fact that I saw it
telegraphing exactly what its (to me) predictable
ending was going to be very early in the story.
It was completely ruined for me, however, by the sappy, romantic
hyper-emotionality of the music (the worst kind of mawkish stuff—more strings
than ought to have been heard in the whole festival), which turned a beautiful
if overly romantic visual film into what for me was a painfully maudlin
experience of excess sentimentality. But
this is a direction that is, at best, problematic for me; there were those who
loved this film.
In
the middle of the last century, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) takes the boat from
Ireland to America in search of a better life. She endures the loneliness of
the exile, boarding with an insular and catty collection of Irish girls in
Brooklyn. Gradually, her American dream materializes: she studies bookkeeping
and meets a handsome, sweet Italian boy (Emory Cohen). But then bad news
brings her back home, where she finds a good job and another handsome boy (Domhnall Gleeson), this time from a prosperous family. On
which side of the Atlantic does Eilis’s future live, and with whom? Director
John Crowley (Boy A) and writer Nick Hornby haven’t just fashioned a
great adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s
novel, but a beautiful movie, a sensitively textured re-creation of the
look and emotional climate of mid-century America and Ireland, with Ronan, as
quietly and vibrantly alive as a silent-screen heroine, at its heart. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
Les Cowboys. Thomas
Bidegain, 2015, France, DCP,
114m French and
English with English subtitles
This is a very well-made, creative first film
by Thomas Bidegain, which I almost liked very much, but ended up disliking. It was just too full of hatred, bigotry, and
anger—without anything to make all that worth sitting through the experience
of. Moreover, despite the couple of
clear attempts to distance from the anti-Muslim prejudice it was portraying, I
could not remained convinced that the film itself really was free from it. Of course, there were some ugly realities to
present; but I did not feel that point of view of the film had enough distance
from the bigoted views and actions of many of its characters—at least, the disowning was not nearly as convincing as the
dramatic presentation of it.
Country and Western enthusiast Alain (François Damiens) is enjoying an outdoor gathering of fellow
devotees with his wife and teenage children when his daughter abruptly
vanishes. Learning that she’s eloped with her Muslim boyfriend, he embarks on
increasingly obsessive quest to track her down. As the years pass and the trail
grows cold, Alain sacrifices everything, while drafting his son into his
efforts. The echoes of The Searchers are unmistakable, but the story
departs from John Ford’s film in unexpected ways, escaping its confining
European milieu as the pursuit assumes near-epic proportions in post-9/11
Afghanistan. This muscular debut, worthy of director Thomas Bidegain’s
screenwriting collaborations with Jacques Audiard,
yields a sweeping vision of a world in which the codes of the Old West no
longer seem to hold. A Cohen Media Group release.
·
O Brother, Where Art Thou. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000, USA, DCP,
107 minutes
15th Anniversary Screening ∙ Coen brothers, cast, and musical guests
in person! Presented by New Wave
One of my three Coen Brothers
films, it was great to see this great film on the big screen. George
Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Turturro are
fabulous in this masterful spin on the Odyssey. This one is always a pure joy to watch…but,
if you’ve seen it, you know that; and if you haven’t, go see it! It was one of those special evenings, with
Joel and Ethan Coen there with the cast—on stage to introduce the film and for
a fun Q&A after it.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of
Joel and Ethan Coen’s beloved roots-musical fantasia, “based upon The
Odyssey, by Homer,” about three escaped convicts (George Clooney, Tim Blake
Nelson, and John Turturro) trying to get back home in
the rural South of the 1930s. Bigger than life, endlessly surprising,
eye-popping (“they wanted it to look like an old hand-tinted picture,” said DP
Roger Deakins), and as giddily and defiantly
unclassifiable as all other Coen films, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is, among many other things, a celebration of American
music. With a score curated and produced by T-Bone Burnett, the movie sings
with voices and sounds of some of the best musicians in the country, including
Ralph Stanley, the Fairfield Four, Alison Krauss, John Hartford, Emmylou
Harris, and Gillian Welch, and the melodies of classics like “Big Rock Candy
Mountain,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and the film’s touchstone, “Man of Constant
Sorrow.” Cast members, musical guests, and Joel and Ethan Coen will be on hand.
Bring your instrument! A Touchstone Pictures and Universal Pictures release.
·
Junun.
Paul Thomas Anderson, 2015, USA, DCP,
54 minutes English,
Hindi, Hebrew, and Urdu with English subtitles. Available
for streaming for the next 30 days on the MUBI
streaming service
This intensely wonderful 54 minute film
by PT Anderson was shot in February of this year in the Mehrangarh fort (a mere
4 months after I myself visited that magnificent piece of architecture, looming
high above the “Blue City” of Jodhpur in Rajasthan in India). Jonny
Greenwood, an PT Anderson collaborator, famous from his role in Radiohead,
along with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, are recording an album by Israeli
composer/guitarist Shye ben Tzur in the fort, with an outstanding group of
musicians (listed below)—including a qawalli chorus,
some Hindu vocalists, and a brass section.
I had no idea what was going on—it was only halfway through the film
that I realized much of the singing was in Hebrew! But I was thoroughly absorbed, entranced and
thrilled by the music, and totally captivated by the visuals—and particularly
by the shots of and from this 15th century fort I so like. This was one of the most intense, wonderful
things in the whole festival…I cannot wait to see it again.
Earlier this year, Paul Thomas Anderson
joined his close friend and collaborator Jonny Greenwood on a trip to Rajasthan
in northwest India, where they were hosted by the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and he
brought his camera with him. Their destination was the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort, where Greenwood (with the help of longtime
friend and producer Nigel Godrich) was recording an
album by Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and an
amazing group of musicians: Aamir Bhiyani,
Soheb Bhiyani, Ajaj Damami, Sabir Damami, Hazmat, and Bhanwaru Khan
on brass; Ehtisham Khan Ajmeri,
Nihal Khan, Nathu Lal
Solanki, Narsi Lal Solanki, and Chugge
Khan on percussion; Zaki Ali Qawwal,
Zakir Ali Qawwal, Afshana Khan, Razia Sultan, Gufran Ali, and Shazib Ali on
vocals; and Dara Khan and Asin Khan on strings. The
finished film, just under an hour, is pure magic. Junun
lives and breathes music, music-making, and the close camaraderie of artistic
collaboration. It’s a lovely impressionistic mosaic and a one-of-a-kind sonic
experience: the music will blow your mind.
·
De Palma Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow
2015, USA, DCP, 107 minutes
Oy! This documentary needs work: it is skillfully
done in places, except for the fact that it cannot support anywhere near its two hour length, which
essentially makes it untenable. Also, I
have never liked Brian De Palma. In part, this can be attributable to my
dislike for violence in films—and that is a major part of many of what are
considered his better films; but there are other problems, as well. His later films all have high production
values, but that actually I find a detriment to a mediocre picture. I did feel that I got to know him better
through this documentary—but that made me end up liking him even less. To me, the infuriating nadir of the story was
De Palma’s incessant comparisons to himself as being like Alfred Hitchcock! Sure, he admires Hitchcock, and certainly he
even lifts themes and even scenes straight out of that master’s work; but he
has nothing of the elegance,
creativity, subtlety, or depth of Hitchcock—and that is probably most evident
in the heavy-handed and excessive way he uses violence. (One of our guests actually expressed the
fantasy that he’d stay for the Q&A and get up and paraphrase Jack Bentsen’s
response to Dan Quayle in the 1988 Vice-presidential debate: “Senator, I served
with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator,
you're no Jack Kennedy.” Mr. De Palma,
you’re no Alfred Hitchcock!) Now being
Alfred Hitchcock is too high a criterion to require of a filmmaker; but making
that comparison for oneself is still the height of arrogance…and I feel
arrogance is one of the problems in De Palma’s filmmaking. I all fairness, however, I should say that—on
Kent Jones’s specific urging—I went to a revival screening of De Palma’s Blow-Out, and it was
actually quite good! (q.v., below in
REVIVALS)
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s fleet and
bountiful portrait covers the career of the number one iconoclast of American
cinema, the man who gave us Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out,
and Carlito’s Way. Their film moves at the
speed of De Palma’s thought (and sometimes works in subtle, witty counterpoint)
as he goes title by title, covering his life from science nerd to New Hollywood
bad boy to grand old man, and describes his ever-shifting position in this
thing we call the movie business. Deceptively simple, De Palma is
finally many things at once. It is a film about the craft of filmmaking—how
it’s practiced and how it can be so easily distorted and debased. It’s an
insightful and often hilarious tour through American moviemaking from the 1960s
to the present, and a primer on how movies are made and unmade. And it’s a
surprising, lively, and unexpectedly moving portrait of a great, irascible,
unapologetic, and uncompromising New York artist. In conjunction with this
film, we will also be showing De Palma’s masterpiece Blow Out. An A24 release.
Immigration
Battle/Reasons to Believe. Michael Camerini, Shari Robertson, 2015, USA, DCP, 111 minutes. Screening on Frontline on PBS starting 20 October and
online thereafter
As
with all of Michael and Shari’s films about the legislative
politics of immigration, this latest is a totally entertaining, absorbing,
informative, and important piece of filmmaking.
I learn more from their films about the inner workings of our government
and the nuances of immigration politics than I can from all my serious reading
on these issues…and I have much more
fun doing so. [Side light: the boxed set
of 10 DVDs of their early 12 series of feature length documentaries on the
movement of the immigration legislation through the Senate is available at the
moment on its website (www.howdemocracyworksnow.com)
for $20, although it usually sells for $200.]
This film, centered on the fight in the House following the passage of a
Senate Immigration bill, looks at how partisan politics scuttled the
process—and led to Obama’s intervention via Executive Order, still being
legally contested. It focuses on the
efforts of Illinois Democratic Congressman Luis Gutiérrez; but includes
positive inputs from Republicans you might not have expected it from. It is a gripping drama…and a brilliant piece
of filmmaking.
Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson have been chronicling the protracted
struggle for American immigration reform over the past 16 years, crossing the
country numerous times to film politicians and activists on both sides of this
great and divisive issue. They gained unprecedented fly-on-the-wall access to
the key players in Washington as they rode the momentum toward the passage of a
bipartisan bill, only to see it shot down, which meant that they had to begin
pushing the boulder back up the hill all over again. Two years ago, NYFF51
screened Camerini and Robertson’s series of immigration films, How Democracy
Works, and now we present Immigration Battle, their final film on
the subject. The key player this time is Democrat Luis Gutiérrez, the charismatic
U.S. Representative for the 4th congressional district of Illinois, who
negotiates his way through this political minefield—past an obstructionist
majority playing to an anti-immigrant base and a President who has just been
dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief” by the pro-reform
community—while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the prize. A
FRONTLINE (PBS) release.
Jia Zangke:
A Guy from Fenyang. Hou
Hsiao-hsien, 1983, Taiwan, DCP, 101 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
I love Hou Hsiao-hsien, and I really like Jia Zangke, but in the end we just
couldn’t get to see this one.
This “group portrait of four laddish adolescents on the razzle in Kaohsiung
as they approach the onset of adult life” (Tony Rayns)
is Hou Hsiao-hsien’s fourth
film, but he has long considered it to be the real beginning of his career as a
moviemaker. “I had very intense feelings at the time,” Hou
told Sam Ho, “and I think the film has an intense energy. An artist’s early
work might be lacking in craft but, at the same time, be very powerful, very
direct. Later, when I wanted to return to that initial intensity, I no longer
could.” In the tradition of Fellini’s I Vitelloni,
The Boys from Fengkuei is a deeply personal
look back at the director’s own adolescence—at the boredom of living in the
middle of nowhere and the overwhelming need to get up and move, and get
out and away to the big city. A glorious young-man’s film,
and the first great work of the Taiwanese New Wave. Restored by the Cinémathèque
Royale de Belgique in collaboration with Hou Hsiao-hsien and The Film
Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
Blow Out. Brian De Palma, 1981, USA, DCP, 107 minutes
This
one was a surprise: I do not like De
Palma (q.v., above in SPECIAL
EVENTS), and I have never liked any of his films—and I have thoroughly detested
some. But this one was good! Not great, and
probably benefited from my exceedingly low expectations of it; but we all
enjoyed it thoroughly. A good mystery,
with major pieces lifted from/and homage to Antonioni’s Blow-Up (a far better
film, of course), and a comic direct lifting of a scene ripped out of
Hitchcock’s Pyscho;
but it worked. And it was undoubtedly
the best performance by John Travolta ever.
One of Brian De Palma’s greatest films and one of the great American films
of the 1980s, Blow Out is such a hallucinatory, emotionally and visually
commanding experience that the term “thriller” seems insufficient. De Palma takes
a variety of elements—the Kennedy assassination; Chappaquiddick; Antonioni’s Blow-Up;
the slasher genre that was then in full flower; elements of Detective Bob Leuci’s experiences working undercover for the Knapp
Commission; the harshness and sadness of American life; and, as ever,
Hitchcock’s Vertigo—and swirls and mixes them into a film that builds to
a truly shattering conclusion. With John Travolta, in what is undoubtedly his
greatest performance, as the sound man for low-budget movies who accidentally
records a murder; Nancy Allen, absolutely heartbreaking, as the girl caught in
the middle; John Lithgow as the hired killer; and De Palma stalwart Dennis
Franz as the world’s biggest sleaze. This was the second of three
collaborations between De Palma and the master DP Vilmos
Zsigmond. An MGM/Park Circus
release.
Ran. Akira Kurosawa, 1985, Japan/France, DCP, 160 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
We also
ended up not being able to see this one, one of the masterpieces of this great
filmmaker. (Although,
to be honest, I know it to be far too
violent for my tastes.)
The 1985 New York Film Festival opened with Akira Kurosawa’s astonishing
medieval epic, inspired by the life of Mori Motonari,
a 16th-century warlord with three sons. It was only after he began writing that
the filmmaker started to see parallels with King Lear. It took a decade
for Kurosawa to bring his grand conception to the screen—he actually painted
storyboards of every shot along the way, and made another great film, Kagemusha, as a dry run. The finished work he
eventually gave us is, to put it mildly, a mind-blowing experience. Tatsuya Nakadai is the warlord, Akira Terao,
Jinpachi Nezu, and Daisuke Ryu are his sons, Mieko Harada is the terrifying Lady Kaede, the score is by Toru Takemitsu,
but the dominant force looming over every single element of this film, down to
the smallest detail, is Kurosawa himself. The color palette of Ran is
unlike that of any other movie made before or since, as you’ll see in this
newly restored version. Restoration by StudioCanal
with the participation of Kadokawa Pictures.
A Rialto Pictures release.
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