My first movie was Swedish Tango at the Film Archive with Jenni, following the same couple as in Paradise. I don't think it's quite as good as Paradise; you get to know a bit more of the couple's history, and it's kinda fun to see the husband dealing with the driving of someone he can't boss around, but I think that they're a more sympathetic couple when they're in a situation that they're comfortable with.
It was interesting to see how they dealt with the language barrier in Argentina, especially with the character that was taking them around; I doubt I could have done as well. And there were plenty of telling moments - the husband asking why the wife dances so well with everyone else, but pushes and pulls when she dances with him? And near the beginning, he gets very grumpy when she comes home at 5pm instead of 1pm, since he got lunch ready and has been sitting around getting more and more cross while he's been waiting; but he also apologises for being grumpy, and says that it's just because he feels more comfortable when she's around.
The cinematography didn't feel as contrived in Paradise, in that I didn't have any times where I thought, "Well, how did they get that shot?" or "Oh, they're doing some music so we can look at the subjects faces without dialogue." I think I liked how they came across in Paradise more, too; maybe having the friend there as a sounding board helped? That said, it was a fun film, and I'm glad I saw it.
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My next film was at the Paramount. Crazy Love was the story of a New York lawyer who swept a beautiful young woman off her feet; but then it turned out that he was already married. She demanded that he divorce; he faked the papers. She left him and became engaged to another man; he hired goons to throw a caustic liquid into her face, scarring and partially blinding her. He went to jail for fifteen years, continuing to write professing his love; he also overturned the convictions of many of the people he was in jail with, which earned him solitary confinement for a time. He started to charge fees to the convicts he was helping, and sending the money to her; this helped get him parole. He then appeared on TV, asking for her to forgive him, and marry him. She eventually agrees, and goes on a bunch of talk shows with him.
Then some time later the woman he is having an affair with refuses to see him, and he tells this mistress that she had to have dinner and sex with him, or he'd blind her like he blinded his wife. His wife stands by him at trial, and he gets off everything but a minor charge. They've now been married for 25 years.
It's a weird situation. The man comes across as a bit of a shady dealer - an ambulance chaser, a philanderer, someone that might be amusing to have a drink with, but who you wouldn't want to rely on. In both cases he conducted his own defence; in the first trial, he tried more and more outrageous stunts, trying to perform a citizen's arrest on the prosecutor, accusing the judge of being mentally ill, and finally breaking his glasses and trying to slash his wrists. The woman comes across as slightly shallow, and perhaps choosing to marry him more from loneliness than love. But they don't appear to be unhappy with their marriage, despite the bizarre circumstances.
I think that it's interesting to compare this to Donkey in Lahore. There's similar themes of obsession, but the guy in Donkey eventually starts to question what he's doing, and in many ways seemed to be following through because of a feeling of obligation rather than passion; but in Crazy Love, there's no hint that the guy ever doubts his obsession. However - if he was so in love, it's hard to see why he didn't leave his wife, which would have short-circuited the whole thing, instead of stringing the woman along.
An interesting documentary; I don't think I'd need to see it again.
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The Escapist was good, and I liked it a lot. Basically a prison escape movie, we're dropped into the moment when the escape starts, and once the first phase is complete, we go back to see why and how the escape is taking place. We then bounce back and forth between the escape as it unfolds, and the story that happens before the escape; I really liked how they ended up using this.
I seem to be seeing a lot of movies set in and around prisons this year. I don't think I'm really cut out for prison life. :)
In some ways, it's interesting to note what we don't see - we never find out what people did to be sent to prison, though hints of their former lives come through because of some people's skills. It presents prison as a hermetic world, sealed into itself, and the only relationships and rules that matter are the ones inside the bars. I don't think anyone could convincingly argue that these sorts of prisons are anything to do with rehabilitation; they're punishment, pure and simple. And while I'd like to think that the people who stole stuff out of my car while I was on holiday many moons ago would be punished one day, I think I'd forego that if I knew that they wouldn't steal again, or worse.
The film might be a bit violent for some people, and it's a straight-up prison drama without any leavening of humour, but I will certainly watch this movie again, and may well buy it.
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C couldn't make it to Garbage Warrior, so I dragged my sister and her husband along. This was a documentary about an architect who builds what he calls "Earth-ships", homes designed to be off the grid, generating their own power, food and water. He made a bunch of experimental homes in New Mexico, and then got shut down the state for not doing all the things that new subdivisions have to do (like provide roads, archaeological surveys, topographical maps, links to the grid, water and sewage systems, etc). They also frowned upon the fact that many of the houses were experimental, and therefore potentially dangerous - he talked about a house he built that got so hot inside that it melted the plastic case of a typewriter, and laughed as he said that it was lucky that he didn't kill a baby.
So he laid low for a while, then brought the sections into line with the state regulations, and tried to introduce a bill that would allow experimental sites to be set up, where people could try out new and untested ways of building their own homes, without the restrictions of regulations that weren't drafted with these sorts of buildings in mind. During the three years it took for the bill to pass, he and his team went and helped some of the islanders affected by the tsunami that hit Indonesia (we only saw them build one house directly, but they did also pass on their techniques to local builders and architects). He got very frustrated with the legislative process, especially because the first time that the bill was presented, Republicans fillibustered it as part of some larger bargaining strategy; he firmly believes that the law-makers are going to be too slow to deal with the burgeoning crisis.
As you may have guessed, he didn't win me over completely. As my sister pointed out, saying that he was making the first houses that let you live independently was ridiculous, since most houses a hundred years ago were independent for sewage and water, and to a large extent for power as well. And she also pointed out that the houses that they were building were "Mc-Garbage-Mansions", not houses that typical Americans could afford, if only because the land that would be suitable for building them would be limited. And we discussed the fact that you were replacing one set of worries with another; instead of having to earn money to buy food from the supermarket, you had to spend time tending these indoor gardens, for example.
However, she did agree that there was a lot of interesting stuff in the documentary, and I am glad I watched it.
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The Man From London was slow. I mean, really slow. Like - really, really, really slow.
There were only 25 shots in the entire movie. I counted, so I could have something to do.
I was in the front row, so I couldn't easily see how many people were leaving; but I heard an awful lot of seats being put up. In fact, as the opening shot tracked slowly up the boat, taking a good two or three minutes to get to the top, I seriously thought about leaving myself, and asking Jenni whether it was any good the next day. But it had Tilda Swinton in the credits, I thought! She's an excellent actress, how bad can it be?
And she is an excellent actress - in fact, I thought all the actors were very good. They had to be, when the camera was just sitting on the faces, so that they took up a third of the screen, for around thirty or forty seconds. And there were very nicely composed shots, and the technical aspect was very well done, although the dialogue of many of the actors was so stilted and badly lip-synched that it must have been a stylistic choice. And unlike that terrible Thai film that I saw (my high-watermark of terribly slopw and pointless films), there was actually a plot, though some of the actions seemed mysterious and/or overwrought.
However, I heard some of the people who stayed until the end saying that they liked it immensely. I think that perhaps I am not the intended audience; and I'm okay with that.
I don't think I'd watch it again, and I'll probably avoid other films by the same director.
Posted by svend at July 31, 2008 1:43 AM