Elliot’s Reading and Watching

Part 2 - no longer posted on line

November 2023

Krzyszowski Kielski’s 1996  Three Colors : Red, the close of his “colors” trilogy has what seems to be the goofiest and most far-fetched premise as any of the above, notably that a retired judge sits in near isolation eavesdropping through a complex web of phone lines eh's created (way before the Internet) and recognizes through the intervention of a beautiful model who’s among the “victims” he renounces his godlike stance and confesses to police of his guilt - yet there seems to be some kind of magical or mystical going on as the foretells see future aspects of life for the model on whom hie has a n obvious attraction - and in their parting we see her pick up a thread of the judge’s younger life and making it part of her own life- unlikely, but still beautiful film to watch with its rich colors in the red hue and many unusual passages. 

Thomas Tancred’s 2023 documentary, Last Stop Larrimah, shows what it might be like to live in an outback village in Australia with only a dozen or so residents and no amusement other than fighting and drinking - murder, eventually - and everyones suspicious and no one will really talk or reveal anything - dark, funny at moments, mostly repulsive, the last place o earth I’d want to live. 

The Burial = 2023 - Maggie Betts

Prime

Co-writer Doug Wright, based on story by Jonathan Hart

Especially notable for a great performance by Jamie Foxx as lead lawyer in a case involving a vastly growing empire of funeral directors and services that apparently had been targeting Black, mostly Southern, families and over-charging for all aspects of funeral care; this must have been a hard one to pitch saw the dilemma for Foxx (as lawyer William E. Gary) is a flamboyant lawyer a la his idol, Johnnie Cochran, but here asked to take on a case of contact law, seemingly dull and probably unwindable, but the case turns out to be far more nuanced and complex that we’d (or he’d) at first discern - a fine story, with an important racial element, and two great courtroom arguments for Foxx bookending the narrative. 

Season 2 of Nick Walker’s Annika (2023), basically a star vehicle for the formidable star Nicola Walker, Scottish detective, which uses the device of having NW express her views on various matters directly to the viewer, but that’s not enough to carry this rather ordinary whodunit and why, as we never get to know any of the subsidiary characters and the various homicides the team pursues, one per episode, defy belief and involve no significant insight or impact - they’re just predictable and preposterous. 

Not to be undone, Christo Nikos’s genre-testing film Fingernails (2023) starts with some premise, as we’re in world clearly not contemporary (for ex., no cell phones) but not a period piece either - it’s a world unto itself that looks like ours from say 30 years ago but the residents have strange and strict courtship rules, most notably the to pledge love and to determine if the beloved is the right one for you one gets some kind of license to court, and do so involves instruction such as a survival class and most oddly the yanking of fingernails a bloody horror - all of which held my interest for a bit, wondering how thing will be resolved or revealed, but guess what!, they’re not, we’re just as puzzled and confused by the end as we were at the outset. 

21 Stories, by Graham Greene (1949 - though 3 added in a later edition - most published in the 30s and 40s) is clearly  not foundational to his work and in fact the final story is repulsive - but they show he knew how to play his hand for a few bucks from one of the magazines of his day - not the place to start in reading GG, as these can’t stand up against, say, Trevor - but if you’ve read a lot of GG you might want to look through these to track b=the brief appearances that give window to his greater works - notable here a story of a man living in Arica and trying to set up a trade operation, with it echos of Conrad and earlier GG.

Clinton Heylin’s The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 (2021) is, as its title (and its near 500-pp length and heft) suggest, is for true Dylanologists only - and them (us) it’s a must - and incredibly detailed life story with much about his childhood and his family (without becoming gossipy or speculative (the reds are amazingly detailed in various notes and indices for those who doubt veracity or likelihood, plus much about his life in the village and his post-electric tours across the world, leaving us (me) with even deeper respect BD’s work as a writer, how he works, his complete dedication to revisions and to matching music with lyric, and also it’s a sad story of his suffering through the years of touring and poor reception, leading to serious Rx issues that nearly led to early death - and the talent always there and amazing how he can transform seeming awkward or clumsy first drafts and knows when and how to develop song from a moment or single image, rarely makes a mistake (though i think “mirror” in Visions should be Vermeer, but that’s just me)and it’s never tabloid stuff, all straightforward no gossip - even where there could be 0- by hint and innuiendo we get a sense of Dylan’s private life and loves - ends just before the motorcycle accident, looking forward for more. 

Though he’s made numerous hilarious films, High Anxiety (1977) is not one of them - in fact it may be the worst film in Mel Brooks’s career: the jokes are stale and overplayed, the whole concept - a Harvard-type analyst signs on to run a psychiatric hospital in California and he meets obstacles of every sort. Aside from the bad taste (by today’s standards) of all of the mental-illness humor the film itself is drab, a failed attempt to parody Vertigo, never gets off the ground - well I should exactly say that as I couldn’t watch more than 10-15 minutes. 

The Netflix series Bodies (2023), by Paul Tomalin, based on the graphic novel (read: comic book) by Si Spencer is smart and imaginative and full of powerful dramatic sequences - much more than we anticipate in this genre - but unfortunately the plot is so complex - 4 narratives each some 40 ? years apart about a dead body found in each of the same settings on the same spot and … well, if you can follow this good for you but as the story veered from crime/detective to speculative fiction much of which concerns the thinking about splitting atoms and time and space being reversible and, I don’t know, I just couldn’t stay with it for any longer than I think 4 seasons; some may find this great but in the end, or at least at my end, it just wasn’t worth the effort of trying to figure out exactly or even inexactly what I was watching. 

It’s hard to get your bearings on Alain Resnais’s La Guerre est finie (1966, written by Jorge Semprun), as we’re not sure, or I wasn’t anyway, what Guerre was in question. With a little research I could see that it was neither the Spanish War nor WWII but a “war” taking place at the time the film was made about dedicated, doctrinaire activists plotting in France to build a works’ uprising that will topple the Franco regime - a struggle we see through th eyes of “Diego” (Yves Montand), somewhat older and more experienced than most of his co-workers; he’s set up to go on a mission from France to Madrid to set about some kind of terrorist attack; he’s wiose and already stricken by the jargon and posturing of his leftists colleagues, and he’s torn between two women - one of whom is involved in the political cell, the other not - she just wants him to marry and sealed down w/ her - and he’s torn before these conflicting demands, desires, and ideologies - the plot and plating build as the movie moves along and enfin we see it as a portrayal of a man in existential crisis - in that way more straightforward and accessible than Renais’s later , more surreal and unconventional previous work. 

So many films recently about basketball stars (and other sports stars as well), buy notably recently brio pic about Magic, documentary about Jordan, and here’s another, Ben Affleck’s Air, another about MJ, sorta, because this one isn’t really about MJ, in fact as a character he hardly appears in this drama!, how can that be? - well it’s because this is more a film about the sports business, what agents do, and agencies, the effort to recruit a coming star - and in the particular case of MJ a huge risky investment by Nike that paid off a million times - so the star here isn’t MJ it’s the Nike staff, with Matt Damon in a terrific lead role fighting with other agents and reps and Nike execs (Jason Bateman) , convincing his team at the foundering Nike to go all in, and recruiting the potential star by befriending the family and meeting their surprising demands (Viola Davis strong in Mom’s role) wth lots of props to writer Alex Convery whose snappy dialog and cynical humor keep this film going. 

Edith Wharton’s novel Summer (weak title esp cf her excellent previous titles, e.g. House of Mirth,Custom of the Country - maybe that’s partly why this 1917  novel is little known?) is more in style of her Ethan Frome in that it’s not at all about the NY/European generously prosperous other works, this one about a young woman whois “rescued”from her abject family life in the decrepit, impoverished, “hillbilly” weight say today community living “on the Mountain - tho not explicitly named the novel is set among the pioneer range in central Mass; in early youth the young protagonist is more or less attacked by the guardian who “rescued” her from poverty - she pushes him off and later gets involved with a visiting artist, a much more appropriate match, but her trysts with this using man incite the wrath of her so-called benefactor. Overall a fine story with some really powerful scenes on the Mountain and in a small cabin that becomes her tryst site; the prose is clear and uncluttered, the plot is engaging and intense, the views of poverty striking and frightful, altogether out’s one of her better works and it’s too bad so few tea it today - a film would make the difference, right?

Bombs away!: on 2 novels from the greatCriterion selection, the first the debut film . The Element of  Crime (1984) which tries so hard for shock and originality that the film pushes us away rather than drawing us in; the lighting and camera movement are vivid and intense but beyond that, who could possibly make sense of the absurd plot involving a retired (I think) cop pursuing clues to solve the murders of young women working in Lotto stores. Couldn’t finish. Same for Peggy Sue Got Married (1986): - man Coppola must have been hard up for$ as this comedy about an attractive middle ager goes to her h.s. reunion and suddenly finds herself back in her school days: hasn’t this been done before? The plot is so insipid that I couldn’t go more than 20 minutes. The music soundtrack (of the era) was good at least. 

Martin Scorsese’s film 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s TheAge of Innocence (1920), screenplay co-authored by Jay Cocks, is a fantastically beautiful film in every sense - the period detail (upper upper social class in the Anglo-white world of Manhattan ca 1920), costumery, the vehicles, the street life in winter, the beautiful panning shots and loving closeups, the moving score with some beautiful arias included - you could watch the whole film and not think about a word of the plot and still appreciate every nuance in this no-expense-spared production (actually filmed in the various locations, Magome of;,omg him Paris, which could so easily (and is so often) depicted by moody shots of Central Park and along w/ all that the movie is faithful to the original classic and heart-breaking in its depiction of essentially good people making ruinous decisions about the love, marriage, and fate. I thought Daniel Day Lewis was great in th e leading-man role but critics at the time seemed to pass him over and nominate the young Winona Ryder for various awards (which she did not win); no mattere- it’s a film that should rank among the classics and is worth anyone’s two hours. 

The new Icelandic film (2022), Godland, written & directed by Hlynur Palmason is, from a cinematic standpoint, absolutely stunningly beautiful, such a sharp and varied view of a nearly uninhabited Icelandic landscape that seems to dare the visitors - a team led by a young Danish priest on a mission to build a new church in a somewhat less isolated region in Iceland - to lose their will on this forbidding land (reminds a little of the million films of Western settlements and covered-wagon treks, though no native  populations are present - the land itself is the antagonist). I’m glad to have watched it but can only tentatively recommend the film - despite a few dramatic moments of violence and threat, the narrative itself is exceedingly slow and often repetitious, without any clear delineation of character accept for that of the young priest - it’s a plus 2-hour production and would have been sharper if more lean, say 2 hours tops - by the end my enthusiasm waned and I was somewhat puzzled by the questions that the plot raises but passes by, e.g., how did the settlement that we encounter toward the end of the film come about, why was did the priest and his group take such an indirect and dangerous route to their destination, and what would we see or learn from the 7 photographs mentions at the outset teasingly but that the film never reveals? Some sort of broader concept and setting would have been helpful, and perhaps some followup into the 20th or 21st century? 

The 2023 German-language film Afire, by Christian Petzold. is a beautiful and understated film best described as what it isn’t” met absit the valiant efforts of firefights to knock down a dangerous and expanding forest fire that threatens the lives of those who blithely ignore orders to evacuate, nor is it a story of mixed-up love and anguish as a woman and two guys (plus a later-met friend) put up for what they think will be a quite working getaway all messed tip by a Jules and Jim like switching bout of alliances, nor is it the story of a frustrated writer who is working supposedly on his 2nd novel and he can’t match the quality or success of his first and he’s all too aware of that failing, not quite a love story, not quite a take on the frustrations and ago of a young writer, not eh mix-ups and jealousies among a foursome, nor a story buffoonery in which the protagonist’s get themselves into a comic trap that shows the bumbling inadequacy of artists and mechanical failures (car breaks down in remote area n first scene, for ex.) but it’s all these things, some familiar to us from many other films but here treated with a delicacy and a credibility that make this low-key, thoughtful movie all the more engaging, disturbing, and credible, right down to the final moments. 

Cette maison (2022) from Miryam Charles is the film you want if you like dreamy, mysterious, ghost tales in which the ghost is the returned spirit of a young Haitian woman reflecting on the death of her sister. I think. Anyway, the film is hard to follow and I would have watched the whole thing had it been told in a straightforward manner instead of with dreamy pretentious camera work and no clear idea of what’s going on. Life is too short for me to finish this one. Though I did enjoy a return viewing of Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic, Au Hasard Balthazar, the source/inspiration of the recent popular film Oe; Bresson’s original is a peripatetic tale of a donkey who undergoes a lifetime of abuse while enduring life as property to be beaten, traded, stolen, abused - a terrible life for the poor animal, and the people of the village a uniformly nasty and self-centered - still, a powerful film that tugs the heartstrings, so to speak, and to that extent it’s an analogy for human suffering in a cruel world it’s a noir classic but hardly a sympathetic or for that matter even credible analogy for the worst of humankind. Is the film really “about” the Nazi atrocities? The sins of man? Random abuse? Don’t really know, but Bresson’s careful, deliberate style of direction, a series of segments, each almost a separate short play of darkness, award actions, stagy pronunciations, all to a background of many repetitions of a dark lyric passion from a Schubert piano concerto. 

The Sting, now some 50 years old (1973), is a landmark fil, still a lot of fun to watch and a challenge to follow and figure out, at least up to the final segment that shows how the Sting actually works. Not to give anything away, but what we gradually realize its that these contemporary Chicago gangsters have made their killings by setting up a fake off-track bettering operation in which all of the gangsters and hired guns willl play a part, which I won’t disclose own case you’re one of the 5 or 6 people in the world who’d neve scene this film - except I will note that the process of creating an entire fake course race wagering system (the goal being to get suckers to bet on horses that have already won their races - and then a switch) is much like the process of getting a large group of actors, narrators, operators, et al much like filming a complex scene for a movie - a double sting! The director, George Roy Hill, deserves big props for bringing this off and the writers, David S. Ward, draws props for pulling these strands together with much tension and humor. We know the good guys, such as they are, will win, such as they do - and it’s kind of funny to see these blue-eyed gangsters, Redford and Newman, not what or whom we would suspect for these roles. And let’s not forget the Scott Joplin score, which put him on the map of 20th-C composers. First segment aside, it’s an all-white film, which does make if feel somewhat dated - but otherwise it rings true as one of the best Hollywood comic/gangster productions. 

On the one hand, Carson McCullers’s novel Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) is a great novel, based on the quality of the writing alone: CMc is a great crafter, and none of her contemporaries could establish a mood and a sense of place and an atmosphere often of gloom with her level of skill; I’m going to open a page at random and find an example: “And after that the plans she had made any night when she was sick and restless, schemes that as soon as the sun came up would seem so foolish.” Or: “In his heart the Captain knew that this hared, passionate as love, would be with him all the remaining days of his life.” The problem is that the thin plan is just an instrument through which we gaze to get a glimpse off the lives of the characters. It’s a murder novel at base, but not with any true comprehension of how a killer thinks and acts, before and after: cf as the best ex., C&P. She’s a master of mood and of the oblique, not so great on the mechanisms of writing a great work, a great novel. Her earlier works, if my chronology is correct, have the guiding viewpoint of a young woman, which makes them much more effective and memorable; this novel has great moments and shows great skill but feels as if it’s on unfamiliar ground ad that the author has little confidence in where the story line leads us. 

Less said the better about You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which had neither credibility nor likability, a cruel sendup of wealthy and extravagant Jewish community w/ a younger get just emulating the worst traits of their parents - couldn’t finish, sorry. A much more appealing though far from perfect is the Argentine film The Substitute (2022, dir Diego Lerman and written by him, Maria Meira, and Luciana De Mello) about a young intellectual/poet played well by Juan Minujin who takes on a job a a substitute English teacher in a low-income school infested w/ Rx problems - this is not a rich comedy or a Goodbye Mr Chips - in which one of the students gets involved in the drug trade and into skirmishes and worse with a rival drug-dealing gang - and the teacher tries to save the kid’s life and straighten him out. Many of the local references will be obscure to most American viewers but I got the general drift - it’s not as sharply delineated as most movies or shows on similar themes - perhaps it would work better as a series? - but still an honest film with its heart in the right place.