Film Comment - July 01 2019

A T W O - PA R T H B O C R I M E D O C U M E N TA R Y B Y E R I N L E E C A R R
Was she a predator or a pawn?
T H E C O M M O N W E A L T H V. M I C H E L L E C A R T E R
ABSTRACT PRODUCTION “I LOVE YOU, NOW DIE” PRODUCEDBY ANDREW ROSSI AND ERIN LEE CARR EDITINGBY ANDREW COFFMAN
PRESENTS AN
PRODUCERS ALISON BYRNE ANDREW COFFMAN MUSIC BY IAN HULTQUIST PHOTOGRAPHY BRYAN SARKINEN PRODUCER SARA BERNSTEIN PRODUCER SHEILA NEVINS BY ERIN LEE CARR
CO- ORIGINAL DIRECTOR OF SUPERVISING EXECUTIVE DIRECTED
Part 1: The Prosecution Part 2: The Defense

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FILM COMMENT
Published by
Film at
Lincoln Center
July-August 2019
LEONARDO
DiCAPRIO
BRAD PITT
AND
IN
QUENTIN
TARANTINO’S
ONCE UPON A TIME...

IN HOLLYWOOD
plus
JIM JARMUSCH
INTERVIEW
BY AMY TAUBIN
MATI DIOP
BY DENNIS LIM
CANNES: THE
ESSENTIALS
TERENCE
DAVIES’S ODE TO
DORIS DAY
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Summmer of Wyatt Cenacc and Tracey Heggins in
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M for Melanchol
oly
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Through September 11
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a : Free Weekly Double Fea
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July 19–311
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Another Countr y: Out sider Visions of A
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August 16-21
Scar y Movies XII
August 23 – September 3
Make My Day: American Movies in the Age of Reagan
Septembe er 6-8
The Cult of Sci-Fi Visionar kin
ar y Piotr Szulk
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Two Free Women:
om Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner
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CO N T E N T S Published by Film at Lincoln Center
July-August 2019, Volume 55, Number 4
FEATURES DEPARTMENTS
& COLUMNS
26 Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood by Nicolas Rapold
6 The Pre-Show
Quentin Tarantino turns the clock back 50 years to
News, Inspired: Ari Aster,
Los Angeles on the eve of the Manson murders in Release Me, Directions:
his tender, extended memory piece Corneliu Porumboiu,
Plus: Howard Hampton on the TV-actor universe of Restoration Row, and more
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters
12 Critics’ Choice
26
32 Jim Jarmusch interviewed by Amy Taubin Critics rate and comment
Deadpan comedy and melancholy existentialism on new releases
are strange bedfellows in The Dead Don’t Die and its
small-town, globally sourced zombie apocalypse 14 Make It Real
Painting as documentation in
two new Chinese films
36 Atlantics by Dennis Lim
With a poised love-turned-ghost-story set in Dakar, 16 Art and Craft
filmmaker Mati Diop makes her entrancing feature Makeup FX artist and creature
debut—and history at Cannes sculptor Norman Cabrera
40 Synonyms by Yonca Talu 18 Finest Hour

32
An Israeli man settles in Paris and experiences dislocation John Lone in M. Butterfly
and marginalization in Nadav Lapid’s latest visceral entry
in his cinema of ambivalent alienation 20 Off the Page
Mexican classic Pedro Páramo
44 United Artists at 100 by Nick Pinkerton
22 Playing Along
The centennial of the storied Hollywood studio is
Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff
occasion to ponder whether freedom is just another
word for nothing left to lose in American cinema 24 Inside Stories
Plus: Monica Castillo recalls a company that sought Laurie Anderson & Hsin-Chien
independence for film artists of color Huang’s VR project
36
50 Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee by Shonni Enelow 58 In Memoriam
The trailblazing partners in life, activism, and the Doris Day by Terence Davies
American stage brought their particular skills and & Nick Pinkerton
cultural legacy to bear on Spike Lee’s Do the Right
60 Festivals
Thing, celebrating its 30th anniversary this summer
Cannes
54 Nelly Kaplan by Nellie Killian 68 The Big Screen
One of the most overlooked French filmmakers of the Where'd You Go, Bernadette;
’60s and ’70s (and beyond) made mercurial, unapolo- The Nightingale; The Farewell;
getically screwball portraits of self-possessed women Aquarela; and more
40
that take no prisoners
74 Home Movies
DVD, streaming, and beyond
78 Readings
On Cinema by Glauber
Rocha, My Mother Laughs by
Chantal Akerman, and more
80 Graphic Detail
Tomi Ungerer
Cover: Photo by Andrew Cooper © 2019 CTMG, Inc.
54
2 | F I L M C O M M E N T | July-August 2019

EDITOR’S LET TER By Nicolas Rapold
T
he summertime blues can on one woman’s creative journey starring it may come from, with sharp writing and
strike when you least expect Cate Blanchett, and the handmade night- original ideas to match.
it—or actually, fairly reliably, if mares of makeup/creature FX artist Nor- There’s another, sometimes less appar-
you lock eyes on the numbing man Cabrera. Did I mention an original ent aspect to that work, which involves
parade of franchise product poem written by Terence Davies in tribute curating and recognizing a varied slate
that saturates movie theaters and market- to the dearly departed Doris Day? of film releases. Call it distributor bio-
ing airspace. It goes without saying that I don’t enumerate this issue’s articles diversity: the nine reviews in The Big
Film Comment continues to support a simply to hype the magazine you are Screen department of this issue span eight
film culture with greater horizons than already holding—though I am plenty different companies, with more repre-
those implied by the latest risk-minimizing proud of our outstanding writers. The sented in the rest of the magazine (not to
industrial output. (partial) roll call serves to underline Film mention the offerings in our Home Movies
Within this issue alone we are proud to Comment’s project of bringing to our curi- section). That’s not to exclude bigger players
feature the latest from Quentin Tarantino ous readers a critical and insightful eye on at all: Sony, of course, is responsible for
and Jim Jarmusch alongside sensational the many facets and precincts of cinema. bringing our cover film Once Upon
Cannes prizewinner Mati Diop, sui generis Far from just a hankering for
F I L M C O M M E N T a Time... in Hollywood to
poet of alienation Nadav Lapid, and glee- variety, we look at this as Published by
Film at
Lincoln Center
July-August 2019 screens, and omnivorous LEONARDO
fully anarchic satirist Nelly Kaplan. There absolutely necessary work— BRAD PITT
AND
Netflix picked up Diop’s DiCAPRIO
are also essays on the independent legacies fighting for a richly conceived Dakar-set story of migration
of United Artists (founded 100 years ago) cinema beyond monoculture and transmigration Atlantics.
and Third World Cinema Corporation (an or feel-good consensus, And there is yet more worthy
IN
QUENTIN
TARANTINO’S
artist-led effort to bring diversity to film including vital voices, and ONCE UPON A TIME... cinema to come (and to be
IN HOLLYWOOD
production), and on the beloved couple retaining the editorial duty of acquired), as our Cannes
plus
Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee and the entire selection (i.e., not “covering” 2019 reports can confirm.
JIM JARMUSCH
INTERVIEW
BY AMY TAUBIN
MATI DIOP
universe of performance and politics anything and everything). Perhaps some of this seems
BY DENNIS LIM
CANNES: THE
ESSENTIALS
within Do the Right Thing. Elsewhere we Left to marketing forces or self-evident or fundamental to
TERENCE
DAVIES'S ODE TO
DORIS DAY
shine a light on Hereditary director Ari the thriving but overwhelming many of our readers, but it
Aster’s much-anticipated Midsommar, two online arena (where hyperbolic me-first bears repeating. On a separate note, I would
recently restored films by Egyptian master blurbing seems ready-made for, and indis- also like to extend an overdue public wel-
Youssef Chahine, a new translation of a tinguishable from, publicity), so much come to our digital editor, Clinton Krute,
book by Chantal Akerman, a fascinating can get lost, including the perspective of who has already become an invaluable addi-
new record of contemporary Chinese film history. We aim to offer an implicit tion to the team. We’ll all continue to work
experience based on scroll paintings, (and explicit) guide to the good and great, tirelessly to bring the best in cinema to the
Richard Linklater’s so-far-unheralded film whatever form that may take and wherever pages and pixels of Film Comment.
Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold Publishers Eugene Hernandez & Lesli Klainberg To Order Back Issues:
Director of Marketing & Sales David Goldberg www.filmcomment.com/shop
Managing Editor Laura Kern Permissions and Reprint Requests:
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Editorial Assistant Steven Mears Vicki Robinson Write to Us: editor@filmlinc.org
Digital Editor Clinton Krute Special Distribution: contact Vicki Robinson,
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THE PRE-SHOW
News, views, conversations, and other things to get worked up about
1 5
2 3 4 6
1: The Wicker Man, 2: The Blood on Satan’s Claw, 3-4: Midsommar, 5: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 6: A Married Couple
I N S P I R E D / By Ari Aster as told to Nicolas Rapold
Community Building
MIDSOMMAR: PHOTO BY GABOR KOTSCHY, COURTESY OF A24; M C CABE & MRS. MILLER: WARNER BROS./KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
In Midsommar, the director of Hereditary sends a young couple
to a mysterious village festival in Sweden
W
hen i was approaching this village and building Midsommar, but we were only able to do one film: McCabe &
this community, I was doing a lot of research into Mrs. Miller, because even the most minor members of Altman’s
theosophy and anthroposophy. I was staying far away community ensemble could suddenly become as important as the
from paganism and thinking spiritually about this place. I was main characters. But also we were building a village from scratch,
looking at a lot of theosophical artists like Frantisek Kupka, Reme- and I thought it would be inspiring to watch that film, because
dios Varo, Hilma af Klint. And I was reading The Golden Bough [by that’s what [Altman’s characters] are doing. The very next movie
James George Frazer] while I was writing the script. I love that that I wanted to show was Albert Brooks’s Modern Romance.
book, and the first script I wrote was twice as long as what we ended I just can’t imagine making a breakup movie without going
up shooting—so much of it was just this anthropological tour back to that. It’s a perfect movie. And I wanted to show this
through the village. The first cut was three hours and 40 minutes. great Allan King documentary called A Married Couple. It’s
I really liked The Wicker Man and films like The Blood on Satan’s miraculous, the footage that they got—I still don’t know if it’s
Claw as a kid—but I had never felt the urge to be in dialogue with real, it becomes such a spectacle.
them. That said, the inherent trajectory of these [folk-horror] Midsommar is set in Sweden, we shot it in Hungary, and I was
narratives felt like a great fit for what I actually wanted to write: a also thinking about showing this György Palfi film called Hukkle—
breakup movie. I wanted to write a breakup movie because I this panoramic portrait of a Hungarian village that pays just as much
needed to write a breakup movie, because I was going through a attention to the insects as it does the people in the village. The
breakup. I was turning to relationship dramas, and I was almost person who was doing our prosthetics did Palfi’s Taxidermia.
looking at teen breakup movies, and the clichés inherent to those, I obviously understand the expectations [of a movie] when you
like “the girl who’s got the bad boyfriend, but the guy who’s good for have Americans entering a foreign land, and it’s in the horror genre. I
her is right under her nose,” as far as just the arc of the film [goes]. hope that it gets there in a way that isn’t expected, because in a way,
For Hereditary, I had screened several films for the crew in the movie is a perverse, wish-fulfillment fantasy. It’s a horror movie
preparation: Autumn Sonata, Don’t Look Now, The Innocents, about codependency, a fairy tale, but it is really a dark comedy.
Cronenberg’s Spider... I had a whole screening series planned for Closer Look: Midsommar opens on July 3.
COVETOUS COWBOY reign over a Montana valley the first time I’ve worked with a
Jane Campion sets her sights on sequestered from the moderniz- male lead, which is exciting.”
a study of (toxic?) masculinity in ing world. Benedict Cumber- Pre-production is slated to
the American Northwest with batch stars as Phil, and Elisabeth start at the end of the year.
The Power of the Dog, based on Moss is Rose, a widow subject
Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel. to his various cruelties when she CAN’T COPE
Phil and George Burbank, two marries George. Campion has For Wicked Games, his first fic-
wealthy, ranch-owning brothers, said of the project: “It will be tion feature since the Paradise
Few films make it clearer than Bacurau that whether you see beauty or ugliness depends on how you steer your
gaze. Beauty and strength emanate from the resilient roots of this mythologized land and its inhabitants, as the
filmmakers create a blistering portrait of resistance.
trilogy premiered across 2012

and 2013, Ulrich Seidl tells the
story of two brothers called
back to their childhood home
upon the death of their mother.
They then return to their respec-
tive lives in Romania and Italy,
but the past resurfaces in the
aftermath of their mourning.
Seidl reteams with frequent
co-writer and wife Veronika
Franz and cinematographer
Wolfgang Thaler.
R E L E A S E M E / By Ela Bittencourt
STATE LINES
A History of Violence Beach Rats director Eliza
Hittman wrapped shooting
Brazil’s explosive Bacurau portrays a people hunted but fighting back on Never Rarely Sometimes
Always, which is now in post-
K
leber mendonça filho and juliano a black matriarch. Race remains an important production. The film focuses
Dornelles’s new film has been likened to element in the drama and the region, as are the on two teenage girls in rural
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred local customs and folklore that sustain the people. Pennsylvania who travel to
Years of Solitude, and indeed both Bacurau and Among the larger-than-life characters is Domin- New York City when they are
Márquez’s Macondo—remote, isolated towns in gas (Sonia Braga), the brazen local surgeon, who faced with an unintended
Brazil—have histories marked by turmoil, cor- is also a reckless drunk and a bigmouth—a strik- pregnancy. It’s shot by Hélène
ruption, and political violence. Bacurau takes ing departure for Braga, whose past roles have Louvart, who frequently works
place in the country’s sertão, or backcountry, often traded on sensuality but who this time is with Alice Rohrwacher, most
which in fiction has been represented mostly as more shrew than muse. Braga’s role signals Men- recently on Happy as Lazzaro.
wild, bewildering, and parched. It is Brazil’s donça and Dornelles’s overall intent of creating
Wild West, if you will. characters who are striking yet elusive, including OUTWARD BOUND
In Mendonça and Dornelles’s film, the rural the outlandish but fiercely likable transsexual ARTE France Cinéma will fund
community is mysteriously targeted by heavily bandit, Lunga (Silvero Pereira). the next movie from Nadav
armed and murderous foreign white tourists. Few films make it clearer that whether you Lapid, the subject of this issue’s
The stunned Bacurauans have no choice but to see beauty or ugliness depends on how you feature on his upcoming
defend themselves—and this they do with gusto. steer your gaze. The deliberate and undeniable Synonyms (see pg. 40). With
Among the unforgettable scenes is one in which ugliness in Bacurau comes mostly from the the working title Le Genou
a vulnerable elderly black farmer shoots his white invaders’ assault. But the staggering beauty lies d’Ahed, its plot concerns a
assailant—a scene whose B-film gore elicited not just in the sertão environs, which Mendonça filmmaker foraying into the
gasps in Cannes, but also applause. Yet the dra- and Dornelles (and DP Pedro Sotero) filmed in desert and (according to one
matic scene echoes the ending of Mendonça’s first the midst of heavy rains and saw transformed, florid but somewhat enigmatic
narrative feature, Neighboring Sounds, in which a practically overnight, into a lush, green land- description) embroiling him-
gunshot triggers a series of oppressive actions scape. More importantly, beauty and strength self in “a fight against the
whose denouement runs across generations. emanate from the resilient roots of this mythol- death of freedom in his coun-
Though Bacurau takes place in a near future and ogized land and its inhabitants, as the filmmak- try [and] a fight against the
in a different mode, it too is very much about the ers create a blistering portrait of resistance. death of his mother.” Shoot-
past and its legacy, and just as perceptively so. ing begins in December. ARTE
At the outset of the film—which opens in Ela Bittencourt works as a critic and curator in will also fund the next film
Brazil in August but has no announced U.S. dis- the U.S. and Brazil and consults for international directed by Mathieu Amalric,
tributor—the Bacurauans unite at the funeral of film festivals. She also runs the film site Lyssaria. co-starring Vicky Krieps.
stck
Enough 4k and HD videos to make your head spin.
Visit shutterstock.com/footage
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“There were more [realistic] versions—the situation was more like those in my previous films. But I had this
idea to center on this character from Police, Adjective 10 years later—this guy who was very sure about every-
thing in life, but afterward is in a mess.”
D I R E C T I O N S / By Jordan Cronk
Cracking the Code

PEEVISH Romanian puzzler Corneliu Porumboiu delights in deceit
Ruination with the island crime yarn The Whistlers
On the eve of the Cannes pre-
miere of Once Upon a Time...
in Hollywood, Quentin Taran-
tino implored the press not
to give away the surprises of
his latest film. “I only ask that
everyone avoids revealing any-
thing that would prevent later
audiences from experiencing
the film in the same way,” he
wrote, in a statement that—
like most statements made by
T
anyone these days—seemed he whistlers follows a police inves- I saw noir films in the ’90s on TV and, after
perfectly reasonable to some tigator (Vlad Ivanov) who ships out to that, when I was in school. And when I decided
and monstrously presumptu- the Canary Islands and gets embroiled to do this film, I said, my characters are always
ous to others. The debate over in dirty business—which happens to involve a role-playing, double-crossing—I will watch
so-called spoilers is hardly long-distance language consisting entirely of [the older films] again. So I watched The Big
new, but what apparently ran- whistles. I talked with soft-spoken filmmaker Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, all
kled was the director intimat- Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective; Infinite the noirs—Notorious. I took a lot of pleasure in
ing that there’s no appropriate Football) in Cannes, where his feature was that, like when you play with toys when you are
or delicate way to delve into a appearing for the first time in Competition. a kid. And I said, okay, the next step is to get
film’s plot specifics with any this distance at the same time—to do it through
care or justification. But this is I understand that the idea for The Whistlers mise en scène, not to be realistic. I also watched
the kind of peevish situation came to you from a television show you saw The Man Who Wasn’t There and No Country for
where nobody really wins. shortly after completing Police, Adjective. Old Men, and I saw a few neo-noirs.
Some might argue that if a Yes. Right away I was attracted by the language.
movie doesn’t hold up on its I tried to read some things about it, and I even You credit Arantxa Etcheverria Porumboiu as
own once narrative elements wrote a draft of the script, but I didn’t like it, artistic director on the film.
have been divulged, perhaps so I did When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Yes! My wife. She’s a painter, and we also
there’s not much there—but Metabolism [2013]. I wrote another draft or worked together on The Treasure. She coordi-
doesn’t that view devalue the two before The Treasure [2015], and I came nates the costumes and the set design. She
centrality of plotting in classi- back to it after that. There were more realistic came up with this idea that each chapter
cal storytelling? It’s presump- [versions]—the situation was more like those would mark a character in another color,
tuous either way, really: to in my previous films. But I had this idea to because at the end of the day it’s a journey of
assume readers don’t mind center on this character from Police, Adjective the main character. She helped me a lot with
having plots “given away” is 10 years later—this guy who once was very doing this type of coordination, with the
the flip side of assuming that sure about everything in life but afterward is in dresses worn by Gilda [played by Catrinel
everyone holds the linearity a mess. I wanted to make a movie about a guy Marlon], for example. Anyway, Arantxa is
of narrative in sanctity. Per- who is learning this language for a specific rea- much better in image culture than me.
haps, though, in a moment son, and it turns against him and becomes a
when critical currency relies necessity. So, when I added all this up in my Is this film a new way forward for you? With
on a kind of social media– mind, I decided to do flashbacks. You want the Metabolism, you poked fun at your own
honed glibness and spoiler- structure to play upon this process, you know, style, and other Romanian filmmakers, and
averse fandom becomes the learning. I wrote seven or eight drafts [in this film is not in that style at all.
desperately aggressive, writ- all]. And even in the editing, I took out about a I don’t know, because this [style] comes with
ers of long-form essays don’t half hour. I had other scenes that I constructed the subject. Maybe I’ll make a musical. I wanted
necessarily like being asked in the editing room. to make one for a long time, after Police, Adjec-
to evasively skate around a tive, but I never got there. Next time!
film’s center. You can always This is your first full-blown genre film. What’s
read the article, you know, been your relationship with genre cinema, Jordan Cronk is a critic and programmer based
after seeing the movie. and what drew you to it now? in Los Angeles.
1 0 | F I L M C O M M E N T | July-August 2019
The train station was a fitting subject for Youssef Chahine, whose work ran so widely between urban and rural
settings, between period epics and movies steeped in contemporary life (he said he shot Central Station because
he “wanted to make a film in the streets”).
The Land Cairo Station
R E S T O R AT I O N R O W / By Max Nelson
Orchestral Work
Youssef Chahine brought the vast social history of Egypt to the screen
Cairo Station & The Land Alexandria to Christian parents with family roots in Lebanon,
Youssef Chahine, 1958 & 1969 Syria, and Greece, Chahine studied acting in the 1940s at the
Misr International Films Pasadena Playhouse. In his own Cairo Station (1958), he played a
disabled newspaper vendor who stalks a soft-drink peddler
L
ate in the 1960s, in the aftermath of egypt’s defeat in named Hanouma (Hind Rostom) and attempts murder when she
the Six-Day War, Youssef Chahine took up a long-planned turns down his marriage offer. But even that drama keeps getting
project: an adaptation of a novel by Abd al-Rahman al- diverted by the daily struggles pulsing through the train station
Sharqawi about a group of farmers in the 1930s who resist the that gives the movie its setting and title: Hanouma fleeing the
routing of a road through the land on which they’ve staked their cops after selling drinks without a license; her boyfriend trying to
lives. He had just finished a demoralizing and contentious Egyptian- unionize his fellow workers; the leader of a women’s rights protest
Soviet co-production, People and the Nile (1968); this next film, fielding a question about “the condition of the rural wife.”
The Land (1969), was a kind of showcase for his own expansive, The train station was a fitting subject for Chahine, whose
generous sensibility. Rather than concentrating on any one plot or work ran so widely between urban and rural settings, between
building to any one climax, he spun a vast web of episodes linked period epics and movies steeped in contemporary life (he said
by complicated lines of cause and effect: bursts of state-sanctioned he shot Central Station because he “wanted to make a film in
violence; imprisonments; tense negotiations; late betrayals by vil- the streets”). There were personal memory plays like his later
lagers with enough leverage to protect the land they have. autobiographical quartet and ambitious surveys of Egypt’s social
Chahine, who over nearly 60 years and 37 varied features and political transformations. He seemed driven by a need to
became Egypt’s most widely screened and debated filmmaker, miss as little as possible. Every so often, the camera in Central
liked dispersing his attention across figures in marginal positions Station comes across a young couple stealing time together
instead of focusing on a single sensational subject. Writing in before their looming separation. They sink into their private
these pages in 1996, Dave Kehr called his films “choral affairs, in tragedy and never notice what’s unfolding next to them. But the
which many voices and many characters are blended into grand, film nonetheless ends with the young woman standing by the
powerful, and not always orderly compositions.” Born in 1926 in train tracks, taking her turn in the spotlight.
NEW AND Holiday of St. The Horse Thief The Hour of Liber- Plogoff, des pierres Twin Peaks
FORTHCOMING Jorgen (Sound Tian Zhuangzhuang, ation Has Arrived contre des fusils Al Wong, 1977,
RESTORATIONS version) Jakov 1986, China Film Heiny Srour, 1974, Nicole Le Garrec, Pacific Film Archive
Protazanov, 1930/ Archive, presented Heiny Srour and the 1980, Hiventy labora-
1935, Austrian at Cannes by Xi’An Arane-Gulliver Lab- tory, Ciaofilm, CNC,
Film Museum Film Studio oratories with the Région Bretagne,
CNC and the Ciné- and the Cinémath-
mathèque française èque de Bretagne
July-August 2019 | F I L M C O M M E N T | 1 1
CRITICS’ CHOICE Five critics rate and reflect upon 10 films of the moment
Manohla Devika Manu Yáñez Nicolas Jonathan

Dargis Girish Murillo Rapold Romney
Booksmart Olivia Wilde

“Wilde’s teen comedy feels zeitgeisty in all the wrong
ways: hip to all the social-justice vocab, but scrubbed
clean of conflict, candor, and even wit.”—DG
The Dead Don’t Die Jim Jarmusch
“Beyond his blunt homage to Romero’s alienated zom-
bies, Jarmusch feels at home when celebrating rebel-
liousness as an antidote to today’s madness.”—MYM
The Farewell Lulu Wang

“Sensitively captures the wallop of diasporic grief—
of mourning across oceans and cultures. Emotionally
expansive in its minor-key specificity.”—DG
Give Me Liberty Kirill Mikhanovsky

“Relentless and altogether exhausting—but also a joy-
ous, tender blast. It is very Russian in its manic humor,
and very American in its mixing of cultures.”—JR
Late Night Nisha Ganatra

“Mindy Kaling delivers a genially purposeful work-
place comedy that mixes in its satiric barbs with reas-
suringly familiar beats.”—NR
The Mountain Rick Alverson

“A dreamlike, wintry '50s-set oddity that strives to
meld together ice skating, lobotomy, and a digressive
depth charge of a performance by Denis Lavant.”—JR
The Nightingale Jennifer Kent

“Kent pushes her film into unexpected, uncomfortable,
and often audacious places. She’s aided by her lead
actors’ layered and revelatory performances.”—DG
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood Quentin Tarantino
“At his most fetishistic and nostalgic, Tarantino builds
a freeze-frame replica of late-'60s Hollywood that only
abandons stasis to gorily tackle its monsters.”—MYM
Ray & Liz Richard Billingham

“British photographer Billingham re-creates his youth,
and his parents’ alcohol haze, in a fictionalized memoir
that’s by turns bleak, tender, and grimly comic.”—JR
Rolling Thunder Revue Martin Scorsese

“Not gonna lie that I worried about a boomer vic-
tory lap, even in the hands of Scorsese and Bob
Dylan, but it’s magic, the concerts galvanizing.”—NR
= Excellent = Very good = Good = Of interest = Mediocre = Bomb
Participants: Manohla Dargis of The New York Times; Devika Girish, freelance; Manu Yáñez Murillo of Otros Cines Europa; Nicolas Rapold of
Film Comment; Jonathan Romney of Film Comment
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MAKE IT REAL The wide, wide world of cinematic nonfiction
Up the Mountain (x 2)
Stretching Out the Canvas

Painting opens out other ways of seeing in a pair of panoramic Chinese films | BY ERIC HYNES
C
onflating nonfiction and realism in film may be understandable, Yang’s approach is to cinematically
but it’s as much of a historical and cultural conjoining as it is a formal echo this aesthetic, from a squared-off
or practical one. Before the advent of portable sync sound in the late aspect ratio matching these canvases to
1950s and early ’60s, recording spontaneous audio coterminous with color-timed images so ripe, so out-
observed imagery wasn’t possible. What that meant was that half the landishly spectral, that they’re basically
presentation of documentary was expressive or editorial in nature—not beyond compare outside of a Paradjanov
the domain of dramatic realism. But it hasn’t stopped us, in the decades since, from film. This is not raw, happened-upon
equating style with truth, from considering footage captured and presented in a realistic footage, but rather deliberately, painstak-
fashion as more legitimately nonfiction. Such assumptions don’t hold up when a longer ingly realized imagery. And yet it’s derived
history of art and documentation come into consideration. from observed reality. The film takes a
Painting provides one nonrealistic mode of observation and documentation, and two formal approach that allows us to recog-
new Chinese films approach painting not as a pure expression of an imaginary world but nize factual resonances between amateur-
as an adept mode for documenting the real world. One has been programmed as a docu- ish expressions and an observed natural
mentary, the other is destined not to be, but both draw their formal and aesthetic models landscape, and furthermore asserts,
from paintings, enriching the cinematographic enterprises while also implicitly reassert- through its own color-drunk scheme,
ing the medium’s notational value in new ways. that such expressions are loyal to the spec-
In Up the Mountain, which premiered at the International Documentary Festival of tacle that appears up the mountains. The
Amsterdam and was featured in this year’s Film Comment Selects (I caught it at True/False painters represent the landscape, and the
Film Fest), veteran hybrid filmmaker Yang Zhang collaborates with painter Shen Jianhua film represents the paintings and the land-
to represent his life and community in a remote village in Yunnan Province, where Shen scape, as well as the cultural and practical
instructs local artists in a particular style of painting. These paintings are largely pre- alchemy that brings the two together. We
occupied with the stunning mountain landscape, employing vibrant, often primary watch food as it is prepared for eating,
colors to match the natural spectacle therein. The results are expressive, leaning toward we listen to conversations develop, per-
primitivist, and yet are entirely concerned with representing the evident world. sonalities emerge, scenes play out both
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (x 2)
By taking as long to complete his shoot as Huang Gongwang took to complete
the painting of the same name—two full cycles of seasons—Gu ensured that life
as it elapsed, and space as it transformed, would be captured by his camera.
self-consciously and spontaneously, all By taking as long to complete his shoot as

within a frame and employing a palette Huang took to complete the painting—
that relates to a form beyond film, beyond two full cycles of seasons—Gu ensured
nonfiction, yet engaging in and with both. that life as it elapsed, and space as it
T
transformed, would be captured by his
he terms of Dwelling in the camera. Such change would be an essen-
Fuchun Mountains bespeak a work tial byproduct of his methodology with-
of hybrid nonfiction. In fact that’s out needing to be a constant overt sub-
what I expected from the closing ject. He accomplishes this granularly as
night film of this year’s Critics’ Week at well, via long takes that both allow
Cannes based on its description. Shot over enough time to pass for us to see tasks
two years in first-time filmmaker Gu Xiao- completed, and traverse terrain like
gang’s hometown in the Fuyang district Huang’s painting does, accumulating a
of Hangzhou during a time of extreme density of contiguous space that becomes
change—ambitious construction, mass its own microcosm and micro-narrative.
relocation—and starring members of the These shots bear a purposefulness that
director’s nuclear and extended family in never allows them to become acts of self-
spaces familiar to them, the film is ori- regarding virtuosity, even an elaborate one
ented toward documentation. And yet the that witnesses a character diving into a lake
aesthetics and form of Dwelling in the and swimming for several minutes along
Fuchun Mountains bear no resemblance to the shoreline, emerging to rejoin a conver-
a documentary film. It’s unambiguously sation he’d suspended, and then board a
scripted, plotted, choreographed, shot, ferry that we trail as it pulls away. During
and edited like a fictional narrative. And a shots like this, despite their obvious and
great one at that. Only the first of what Gu essential premeditation, it’s impossible to
promises will be a trilogy of films explor- deny that Gu’s strategy succeeds in thor-
ing the terrain, Dwelling in the Fuchun oughly representing a time and place. That
Mountains has a wide scope and ensemble he’s scripted a narrative that threads these
cast yet feels minutely observed, lived- shots together doesn’t work against this
in, life-sized, and unhurried by anything ambition. The story explores the various
beyond its own frame—a close cousin to challenges facing each member of the fam-
the work of Edward Yang. ily as they adjust to changes in Chinese
When I interviewed Gu at Cannes for society, from parents trying to enforce tra-
Film Comment, he volunteered that his ditional models on children emboldened
primary stimulus for making the film was by independence and modernity, to sudden
documenting the changes in the region. realities of dislocation and economic insta-
Why not make a documentary, then? bility. These are the issues facing the people
He replied that his model wasn’t docu- in his home region, and they’re being rep-
mentary but traditional Chinese scroll resented by people actually facing some
painting, explicitly a work by Huang version of them in their own lives.
Gongwang that shares the exact title of his There’s little need to assert that Gu’s
film, completed between 1348 and 1350. film is a work of nonfiction, at least not
A monumental, physically expansive work, the way we tend to define it today. But
the painting can be read laterally, or nar- when we look back at life along the
ratively, with visual information being Fuchun mountains during the second
processed as the eyes pass over it for as decade of the 21st century, at how the
long as it takes to scan its surface. Gu’s landscape and the people changed, at how
assertion is that this painting was, and winter became spring became summer
remains, analogous to a nonfictional work, became fall and then winter again, and
containing a record of how the region onward, we’ll have a peerless document in
appeared in the 14th century, filtered the movie Dwelling in the Fuchun Moun-
through Huang’s aesthetic sensibility. tains—akin to the one recorded in wash
Gu’s challenge was to eschew notions painting on paper, created in and repre-
of the contemporary documentary— senting the same place 670 years before.
though even that sounds more invested
in such notions than Gu ever was—and Eric Hynes is a journalist and critic, and
instead devise strategies for translating curator of film at Museum of the Moving
principles of scroll painting into cinema. Image in New York.
ART AND CRAFT Filmmaking according to the makers
I
grew up watching monster movies
and horror movies on TV and at the
cinema. When I was a little kid, there
was a show called Creature Features
that ran usually on Friday nights or
sometimes early Saturday mornings.
And I would just watch all the old Univer-
sal monster movies and the Hammer films
from England. There was also a magazine
called Famous Monsters of Filmland that
came out monthly, and it was all about
monster movies. That was the very first
thing that got me excited [about makeup
and special effects].
When I was a teenager in the ’80s, there
was a huge wave of really cool sci-fi horror
stuff. You had An American Werewolf in
London (1981), and The Howling (1981),
and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and
The Dark Crystal (1982), and The Hunger
(1983), and Blade Runner (1982). One after
another, it felt like all these amazing movies
were coming out, and by that point I was
really super absorbed by it all. In my mid-
teens I was so inspired by that kind of stuff.
I would see every horror/fantasy/sci-fi thing
I’ve Created a Monster that came out in the theaters.
TOP: COURTESY OF NORMAN CABRERA; BOTTOM: UNIVERSAL/DARK HORSE COMICS/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

I started drawing and painting very
young. I was artistically inclined, as they
Special makeup effects artist and creature FX sculptor say. The first thing that really made it for
Norman Cabrera casts your most beautiful nightmares me was probably the original Planet of the
Apes (1968). There was also Cinefantastique
BY NORMAN CABRERA | AS TOLD TO KELLI WESTON and Cinefex—magazines covering effects
movies—and one of the big names from
that time was Rick Baker, who had done An
American Werewolf in London and [Michael
Jackson’s] Thriller. He eventually became
my mentor, but initially I was just a huge
fan. For Star Wars, Rick Baker had done all
those cantina aliens, and I just loved those
masks. There was a lot of coverage in sci-fi
magazines, in Fangoria and Starlog. An arti-
cle on Rick Baker shows him holding these
masks he made for Star Wars, and that led
me to an obsession with making masks.
Another magazine called CineMagic that
was more fan-made had an article by Kirk
Brady about how to make a mask, with
really rudimentary steps, and I would later
find out that that information actually
came from Rick Baker. That opened up a
whole world to me.
I could tell the difference in quality of
the stuff that Baker did versus other artists.
I always thought his work was superior,
and I particularly liked his style: his
sculpting style, his painting style, and his
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
aesthetic sense. He was this younger guy,
1 6 | F I L M C O M M E N T | July-August 2019 Closer Look: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark opens on August 9.
You make these toys for the director, but it’s up to them to play with them.
It’s their job to deliver a great movie—it’s my job to deliver a great monster.
too. You know, a lot of the guys who did grim-reaper character that might have
special effects in Hollywood were these been in a film before, and don’t do that.
older guys in lab coats and stuff, and Rick He wanted a double set of wings and eyes
was this younger, upstart-type guy with on the wings too, so I looked for inspiration
long hair. He looked like a rebel. in my books. I found some really wild
When you’re an artist like me who works statues of angels that are seen in Byzantine
on a film, you’re always part of a team. And and Medieval Catholic churches. A mon-
you’re always executing something that’s ster or a creature is part of the cast in a
been written in the script. So it’s never 100 movie. So it has to be approached the
percent your baby. Whether it’s the writer or way you would approach an actor who’s
director, someone came up with a concept, performing as a human being.
and they put it in the script, and now it’s my People are fascinated by monsters and
job to interpret that. Some directors micro- they’re fascinated by scary, evil, sinister
manage and then there are other directors things. It’s part of how we’re wired; it’s part
that let you fly. Guillermo del Toro is a great of human nature. I think horror trends and
example of that. He’s a guy who has a strong monster trends change depending on the era.
vision and knows what he wants, but he’s In the ’30s and ’40s, you felt more sympathy
also really good about unchaining the artist. for the monster, like Frankenstein. He
I’ve worked with Guillermo on on three didn’t ask to be brought back to life by a
movies now [Hellboy, 2004; Hellboy II: The mad doctor. So there’s this pathos there.
Golden Army, 2008; and Scary Stories to Tell And then in the ’80s all of that was kind of
in the Dark]. He’s a number-one fan of this forgotten when the slashers came onto the
stuff, too. He loves creatures and makeup scene. The slasher is a cold-blooded killer
effects, and he grew up a monster kid like I you don’t feel sorry for in any way. He’s
did. I’ve worked with a lot of other really just out to kill. Now, you do see a lot of
great filmmakers, too, but those three blood and guts and gore, and things like
films with Guillermo have been some of that, because it’s harder to thrill people. I
the best movie experiences of my career. like atmospheric movies more than out-
T
and-out gore fests. Though stuff like that
here are half a dozen differ- can be done really artfully, if it’s presented
ent ways to approach a design. A in a really stylized and stylish way.
creature can either be a prosthetic I’ve been doing this for over 30 years
on the person—glued directly now. I started in 1984. Most of the people
to the face—or it could be a suit or a I work with on a daily basis are people
mechanical head or a mask, or sometimes I’ve known my entire career. But I love
it can be a full puppet. Most of the materi- seeing new blood come into the business.
als we use are specific to what we do, but I’m actually working with a guy right
then there are a lot of materials that come now, Arjen Tuiten, and his stuff is excel-
from either the medical field or the den- lent. When people are really, really good,
tistry field—prosthetics. We also use a lot that’s exciting because you know the craft
of plain old building material that you is going to keep going forward. The goal
would find at a Home Depot. There’s also when I take on a project is to deliver a
radio-controlled stuff, for puppets and kick-ass design and a kick-ass creature.
that sort of thing. Sometimes you can do You make these toys for the director, but
digital design, Photoshop or ZBrush. It’s it’s up to them to play with them. It’s their
completely dictated by what it has to do job to deliver a great movie—it’s my job
within the context of the script. to deliver a great monster.
A disturbing creature you’ll approach
differently than a creature you feel sympa- Norman Cabrera began his career in 1984
thy for, and that’s usually dictated in the as part of Rick Baker’s core team of artists,
script. Something can be beautiful but also working on Coming to America (1988),
kind of scary. I got to design the Angel of Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and later
Death for Hellboy II for del Toro, and it Men in Black 3 (2012), among others. His
was understood that it was a symbol of major works include Planet of the Apes
death but also had to have this elegance (2001), Cabin in the Woods (2011), and the
and this beauty to it. Guillermo had a Hellboy franchise. Kelli Weston is a film and
thumbnail sketch of the character and culture writer who has contributed to Sight &
specifically instructed me to think of every Sound, Little White Lies, and elsewhere.
FINEST HOUR One actor, one performance
W
hatever happened to john lone? be a model minority, though even this is another deception. Lone’s
Curtained by mystique since his days as a process of inverting racist stereotypes resembles what historian
youth member of the Peking Opera, Lone Arif Dirlik defines as “self-orientalism,” wherein the Asian partici-
has left behind few hints. Though he pates in the construction of Orientalism. For Lone, however, self-
receded from the public eye after appear- orientalism was also a gamble of indeterminable risk: to what
ing in Philip G. Atwell’s War (2007), he degree could the Asian subject voluntarily wear the stereotype
did not formally announce his retirement, nor did he provide any imposed upon him without losing ownership of his autonomy?
personal or professional reasons for vanishing. (Chinese news out- Through his work with the theater organization East West Play-
lets and fan-operated social- ers, Lone became a key per-
media accounts report that former in the plays of David
he has moved to Canada.) Henry Hwang. In these,
But the actor had never Lone took on the roles of
revealed much about him- men whose racial identities
self from the start, at times were in flux, though even
denying even his age and then he held onto his signa-
refusing to disclose where he ture haughtiness—as in
lived. These fastidious his portrayal of Steve in
efforts to maintain his pri- Hwang’s FOB (1980), a
vacy extended to a vehement “fresh-off-the-boat” immi-
refusal of any racial cate- grant who attracts the vitriol
gories projected upon him of Dale, an assimilated Chi-
as an Asian performer, nese-American who resents
whether Charlie Chan or Fu Chineseness. After collabo-
Manchu, Chinese-American rating on numerous plays—
(he asked in 1987, “Does such as 1981’s The Dance
anyone call Meryl Streep... and the Railroad, which
an English-American Lone had directed—Hwang
actress?”) or Chinese. and Lone’s professional rela-
Lone’s insistence that he tionship abruptly dissolved.
does not play racist arche- By then, Lone had already
types appears incongruous gained sizeable attention for
when one notes how often his role as an Inuit caveman
his characters were posi- in Fred Schepisi’s Iceman
tioned as agents of Yellow (1984), and he soon exited
Peril or decorated with the the stage for the screen.
trimmings of Orientalism.
L
The development of Lone’s one’s masks are
curious persona was grad- further multiplied
ual, a response to both the in David Cronen-
Hollywood racism and the berg’s M. Butterfly
identity politics of the
Asian-American theater
John
Mask in Place
Lone confronts a pained enigma of identity in
(1993), adapted from
Hwang’s play. Lone, who’d
scene that Lone encountered rejected the role from
after leaving Hong Kong at David Cronenberg’s maligned M. Butterfly Hwang when it went to
GEFFEN/WARNER BROS./KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
19. Early television and film Broadway, plays Song Lil-

parts (including a person BY KELLEY DONG ing, an opera singer and
named “Chinese” in 1979’s spy who disguises himself
Americathon) reduced him to a blur of the Orient. Within Holly- as a woman to seduce the French diplomat René Gallimard
wood, Lone’s flirtations with racist archetypes, such as in Michael (Jeremy Irons). Inspired by the espionage trials of Bernard
Cimino’s Year of the Dragon (1985), crossed a dangerous threshold. Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, Hwang’s play expands upon the
At once, he could be a fearful prop for Hollywood xenophobia and events’ oddities with acidic sarcasm. Cronenberg trims these
still exude a dignified charisma that belied the political wrongness excesses, retaining little else but the pair’s coded encounters.
latent in the narratives in which he partook. Year of the Dragon’s Song plants the seed of René’s fantasy when she sings a musi-
character Joey Tai, for instance, suggests that all supposedly Asian cal number from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. The opera, in
features, whether positive or negative, are false constructs that may which a Japanese woman ends her life because an American
be manipulated for self-advancement. Swarmed by a storm of jour- officer abandons her, sinks its teeth into René’s heart. Offstage,
nalists, Joey Tai declares that it is they who have chained him to a Song disparages the story. René, only recently stationed in
“sinister Charlie Chan image.” On the contrary, he’d rather claim to China as an embassy accountant, stammers—he’d found it
“The Oriental woman has always held a certain fascination for you Caucasian men,” John Lone purrs with
singsong intonation, and angles his face downward and away from the light. In the shadows, he is simultane-
ously concealed while simulating an intimate seduction. He refashions himself into a human riddle.
beautiful. In the following weeks, he cannot help but imagine And why else, except that her heart has turned tender toward the
Madame Butterfly behind Song’s feline eyes. She stimulates his Frenchman who refers to himself as Butterfly’s master?
asinine arousal even further, one night declaring: “The Orien- The extent of Song’s attachment to René only emerges when the
tal woman has always held a certain fascination for you Cau- French embassy finally discovers René’s wrongdoings and summons
casian men.” Lone purrs with singsong intonation, and angles Song to testify in court. Until then, Song evades honesty beneath
his face downward and away from the light. In the shadows, he Butterfly’s exaggerations. The camera dollies into the doorway as
is simultaneously concealed while simulating an intimate Song enters the room in a fitted suit, his hair cropped short. Here,
seduction. He refashions himself into a human riddle. Lone replaces his usual arrogance with stiff fatigue, shyly turning to
However, to those unin- look into René’s eyes. Cro-
volved in the delusion, nenberg cuts to a repulsed
Song’s manhood is indis- René, glaring. When asked
putably on conspicuous whether René knew he was a
display. Although John man, the spy responds: “I
Lone plucked his eyebrows never asked.” The collar
and removed the hairs on of his shirt tightens against
his hands in preparation for his tense neck. But he only
the role, the shadow of his removes his masculine garb
Adam’s apple curves along in private, when a van
the neck, and stubble can escorts the two away from
be seen across his upper lip. the court. Confined to a
He conceals his lower tone caged section of the car,
of voice with a creeping Song strips. In the play, this
nasal drawl (much like in is an act of cruel provoca-
the female roles played by tion, wherein Song mocks
men in the Peking Opera, René—how could you not
though René Gallimard is know? But Lone’s exposure is
not one to know this). It instead an invitation, asking,
is, however, not a botched would you like to know?
attempt at an authentic Lone unclenches his jaw and
Asian femininity, but a con- softens his stare. He kneels
scious mimicry of the arti- before the white man and
ficial object of René’s kisses his pallid hand. Song
desire, as synthetic as the can still play the game, if
computer-generated jade only René wishes. In Lone’s
coins and paper umbrellas voluntary vulnerability, we
that float about in the film’s witness the crossing of the
opening sequence. Clutch- self-orientalist line between
ing her silk gown whenever self-protection and self-
René demands she undress, destruction. Song’s faith that
Song explains, “Modesty is so important to the Chinese.” He the white man might love him, even as an ordinary Chinese male
relents. René so voraciously feeds upon these aphoristic assertions opera performer, is a futile effort. “You’re nothing,” René says,
about Chinese customs that he never questions Song’s reticence. reeling at the sight of him. This is the only moment at which
The two have sex only while clothed, Lone tensing his jaw as Song René sees Song for who he is—free from the fetish, fluid, a being
distances herself from proclaiming pleasure. as pure yet slippery as the shadowy figure of Lone himself.
In his afterword to M. Butterfly, Hwang describes his initial Because to be nothing is to be neither Butterfly nor Song Lil-
idea for the play, which would consist of a reversal of power: ing, the remark delivers a blow of devastation. Hunching over,
René Gallimard would “[realize] that it is he who has been But- Song digs his fingers into his naked flesh, which René had always
terfly, in that [he] has been duped by love.” But Lone’s reinter- wished to see, as if to tear it apart. But something—a flash of
pretation of Song is not nearly as resistant to the lie. Even when consciousness, perhaps—stops him from piercing through. And
GEFFEN PICTURES/PHOTOFEST
René is away, Song remains in costume. “Why do you have to act so unlike the disemboweled, imploding stomachs elsewhere in
this way when he is not even here?” a guard asks, while Song, the Cronenbergian oeuvre, Lone’s vessel remains tightly sealed.
firm shoulders narrowed, intently studies a photograph of Anna Song returns to China; he weeps on the plane, inhibited by
May Wong, another Eastern entertainer of Western dreams. To attachment but forced to leave love. But separation for Song is
avoid being discovered, Song rebuffs René’s sexual advances by liberation for Lone. He exits our field of vision with his mask
claiming to be pregnant. She then requests a baby from the Chi- still on, holding onto the “nothing” of his true self.
nese government. It is necessary for the state, she argues, pursing
her lips while the guard considers the idea. The plain implication Kelley Dong is a Toronto-based writer. Her work has been fea-
of the demand, of course, is that she’d like to prolong the affair. tured in The Village Voice, Reverse Shot, and MUBI Notebook.
O F F T H E PAG E The art of getting from book to screen
Raising the Dead

The Mexican classic Pedro Páramo looms over the country’s
movies and literature with its ghostly and carnal force
BY JOSÉ TEODORO
N L
o single work of literature—perhaps no single work of art—perme- ike luis buñuel, carlos velo was
ates the Mexican imagination like Pedro Páramo. While Juan Rulfo’s first born in early 20th-century Spain
and only novel did not make an immediate splash upon its publication but developed his directorial chops
in 1955, within a handful of years its reputation burgeoned, aided in part in Mexican cinema’s golden age.
by its profound influence on a generation of writers from across Latin Unlike Buñuel, Velo was no great innova-
America, Gabriel García Márquez among them, who would collectively tor, no mischief-maker, and bore only a
be credited with the development of magic realism. It also received plaudits from lumi- faint directorial signature. He’d directed
naries such as Jorge Luis Borges, whose stories, along with those of fellow Argentine many documentaries, including the
authors Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, could be regarded as precedents of the Oscar-nominated Torero (1956), before
style. Pedro Páramo is both universal in its core themes and, in its particulars, a mirror to making his debut fiction feature with
its native culture. Following a wayfarer named Juan Preciado, who travels to Comala, an Pedro Páramo in 1967. Velo developed the
arid village teeming with apparitions, to meet the infamous father who abandoned his script with his Torero collaborator Manuel
mother long ago, Rulfo’s fable-like narrative looms over a national identity pierced by Barbachano Ponce, a prolific producer
myriad forms of forsakenness, corruption, and fraught masculine codes. Pedro Páramo is whose credits include Buñuel’s Nazarín,
as entangled in the Mexican mythos as The Great Gatsby is in the American. and novelist Carlos Fuentes, who’d
Yet it is the beguiling fusion of clean, sculpted sen- already established himself as a major
tences, hallucinatory flow, and aural density that dis- voice in Mexican letters with Aura and
tinguishes Pedro Páramo as something far more artful The Death of Artemio Cruz, as well as a
and idiosyncratic than allegory. This slim, angular screenwriter (teaming up with García
novel is characterized by sudden shifts in narration, as Márquez on the script for Arturo Rip-
past and present blur, continuity collapses into a sin- stein’s 1966 debut, Time to Die). The
gle panoramic mural, and multiple voices intrude on film’s narrative hews surprisingly close to
what only begins as a first-person chronicle. Pedro that of the novel, straying significantly
Páramo is a listening experience. Even after multiple only at its dramatic climax, while gener-
readings, one could comb through their impressions to ating along the way a substantial degree
find that almost everything in there that isn’t voice is of suspense—not a quality one associates
sound: damp drumming of horses’ hooves, scraping with Rulfo’s coolly hypnotic prose and
ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
feet, gurgling drainpipes, creaking boards, and distant ambient phantasmagoria.

cries that seem to penetrate a room like refracted light. This tonal discrepancy is strangely in
Reading Pedro Páramo, it’s easy to imagine a radio play, keeping with Rulfo’s use of temporal slip-
yet this seemingly unfilmable novel has prompted sev- page. Cinematic modernism would appear
eral cinematic adaptations—the first of which remains to have elided Velo, whose handling of
a flawed, fascinating, and deeply strange work. elements such as musical scoring, sound
Carlos Velo’s Pedro Páramo accentuates its source material’s woozy,
suspended liminality by cultivating an air of chronological confusion.
effects, exposition, and emphatic reaction film’s monochromatic imagery, fusing the
shots feel more aligned with the stylistic traits of the Western with film noir, con-
norms of the 1930s than those of the stitutes a sophisticated interpretation of
post–New Wave 1960s, while the film’s Rulfo’s spectral landscapes. Figueroa’s
sexual frankness and disarming deploy- obsessive attention to cloud forms, his
ment of hard cuts (by editor Gloria eerie day-for-night shots, his visions of
Schoemann) instead of dreamy dissolves rolling fog seeping into doorways, his
place it firmly at the forefront of contem- penchant for sleeping figures in the throes
poraneous cultural ruptures. While the of some oneiric torment, combined with
effect is surely not intentional, Velo’s certain straightforwardly lit exterior
Pedro Páramo accentuates its source scenes of barbarity, elegantly adhere to
material’s woozy, suspended liminality the sense of Pedro Páramo as an extended
by fostering an air of chronological con- fever dream in which the sins of the
fusion. You’d be hard-pressed to guess father engulf the son.
the film’s vintage were you to watch it The juxtaposition of hard and soft
without knowing its release date or rec- light is key to Pedro Páramo’s spell: it’s no
ognizing its stars. great spoiler to note that most, perhaps
Those stars include the great Ignacio all, of the inhabitants of Comala encoun-
López Tarso, who has also appeared in tered by Juan Preciado (Carlos Fernán-
Nazarín, The Paper Man, and the Oscar- dez) are phantoms—this is quite literally
nominated—and similarly ghost-addled— a ghost town—but what makes their pres-
Macario; Pilar Pellicer, who would later ence so poignant is the fact that while
inhabit the title role in Emilio Fernández’s their bodies may be immaterial, their
La choca; and, as Señor Páramo, John anxieties are uniformly concerned with
Gavin, born Juan Vincent Apablasa to a matters of flesh and earth: sexual lust,
Mexican mother, in case you wince at the
notion of a handsome mid-level American
corporeal violence, natural resources, and
punishing labor. Thus the bridge that
DIG INTO THE
star being cast in this most Mexican of
Mexican tales. Rather the opposite of the
links the comparatively pedestrian Pedro
Páramo to the mid-period Mexican work
FILM COMMENT
AR CHIVE
ineffectual hardware-hawking hunk he of Buñuel—those many films on which
portrayed in Psycho, Gavin’s Páramo is a Figueroa collaborated—is built on a deep
single-minded tyrant with bracing sex understanding of the unique visual tropes
appeal, resolute in his determination to of Mexican melodrama, a vast, fertile,
monopolize local mining operations, bend playfully hysterical province that Velo,
the church to his will, dominate every Buñuel, and countless others tread en EXPLORE
50
woman who stimulates his considerable route to their disparate destinations.
appetites, and even co-opt a revolution. While Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo has, to my OVER
Gavin’s performance accrues texture as the knowledge, never been out of print either
film progresses and Páramo’s ambitions in its original Spanish or in its English
and desires begin to surpass his ability to translation—the Grove edition, translated
fulfill them, often via López Tarso’s Fulgor by Margaret Sayers Peden, features a
Sedano, Páramo’s chief enforcer. Pellicer short, informative foreword by Susan
plays Susana San Juan, a victim of incest Sontag—Velo’s Pedro Páramo has receded
whose fatally wounded allure is part of a into relative obscurity, as though it too
mosaic of elements collectively stoking were a sort of fading phantom echo. The
Páramo’s rapacity. Mexican DVD in my possession is ser- YEARS
The most enduring star in Pedro viceable but features a soft, smudgy image
Páramo’s credits, however, at least for
cinephiles, is Gabriel Figueroa, the leg-
and muffled soundtrack. Like the vast
majority of important works from Mex-
OF AMAZING
endary cinematographer whose dizzying
filmography includes The Pearl, Under the
ico’s cinematic history, it is in dire need of
restoration. One can only hope that the
BACK ISSUE S
Volcano, Los olvidados, and The Extermi- great acclaim directed at today’s most cel-
nating Angel—his contribution to Pedro ebrated Mexican filmmakers might some-
Páramo marks another incidental connec- how lead to a little nurturing of the
tion between Velo and Buñuel. While country’s singular legacy. FILMCOMMENT
T.COM/SH
HOP
the clumsy handling of sound in Pedro
Páramo, with its frequent, corny use of José Teodoro is a freelance critic and
reverb, feels like a missed opportunity, the playwright.
P L AY I N G A L O N G Music and the movies
Same Old Song

In Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff a woman’s iffy singing yields unexpected depths
BY CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD
I
’m a singer,” susan says to stevie, shortly after they on talented protagonists in need of a break, while the genre of
meet-cute in Ken Loach’s 1991 labor comedy, Riff-Raff. genius-gone-off-the-rails, which has rarely been put more power-
Stevie, an ex-thief played by a fresh-faced Robert Carlyle in fully or subversively on screen than in Alex Ross Perry’s recent
his breakthrough role, has found Susan’s handbag on the tour-de-force Her Smell, must show us true greatness in order to
construction site where he works, and gone round to her make its demise believable. In Riff-Raff, the thrillingly unsenti-
house to return it. It’s not love at first sight, exactly—more mental Loach chooses instead to tell a story about unequal distri-
F I N E L I N E F E AT U R E S / E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N
like a hopeful bet. Susan, played with sweet sympathy by a daffy, bution: the ordinary, workaday tragedy that talent is aligned with
rabbit-eyed Emer McCourt, explains, after much halting self-dep- ambition no more frequently than it is aligned with opportunity.
recation, that she has a gig coming up at a pub. The glass beads in And whereas old Hollywood comedies and romances used poor
her hair tinkle musically against her earrings, live accompaniment singing to show that a character was silly or a bad match—think
to her habit of pushing back her bangs. Everything about Susan is of Ralph Bellamy braying “Home on the Range” in The Awful
nervy and New Age. She drinks green tea (“caffeine makes me Truth—Loach has a more compassionate approach.
nervous”), consults an astrological book, and does the I Ching Like Raining Stones, the drama Loach made two years later
daily. When Stevie explains his dream—he wants to merchandise about a man on the dole trying to scrape together the quid for
boxer shorts and colored socks—she bursts out laughing. Soon his daughter’s communion dress, Riff-Raff is grounded in an
after, Stevie brings his mates to the pub to hear Susan sing. Her unhurried realism. It revels in charming, raucous scenes on the
voice is thin; jeers from the crowd drive her off the stage in tears. building site where black and white workers build apartments
Susan may be a singer, but she’s no star. for London’s luxury class while talking politics, ripping each
Show-business stories like A Star Is Born or Begin Again hinge other off, taking the piss, and killing the rats that nest under the
In Riff-Raff, Susan’s style of mediocre singing is wholly ignorable. You can turn away from it as easily as
the upper classes turn away from the working classes. That’s what makes it so moving on screen.
floorboards. Loach once said that music enhances a film “by its recording studio in Boogie Nights to assert, unconvincingly,
absence,” by which he meant that whatever emotion a viewer “You got the touch,” he has completely lost his touch—with
feels should come out of the character and events, the situation reality. Rock bottom is nothing other than the aspiration to be a
itself, and not from music added to the mix. In Riff-Raff, rock star. But Susan isn’t a terrible singer. She’s not Florence
Susan’s singing is one such event, and Loach chooses musical Foster Jenkins, portrayed by Meryl Streep in the 2016 biopic as
numbers that both yank the viewer’s heartstrings and inch the a caterwauling, feather-clad squawker who maintains her dig-
story forward: “With a Little Help from My Friends” when she nity with an indomitable presence of self. Florence Foster Jenkins
is getting by with just that; the folk song “Carrickfergus” by is the story of an extremely wealthy woman whose enablers and
The Dubliners when she is farther down on her luck (“I’ll sing adorers go to great and expensive lengths to allow her to live in
no more now ’til I get a drink”). On the soundtrack, Stewart her fantasy. Susan is deluded, but the extent of her delusion,
Copeland’s spare, jazzy piano melodies are alternately zany much like her socioeconomic position, is marginal. She’s no
and mournful. They act as bridges in a soundscape that is other- better or worse than any other average girl giving it her best at
wise diegetic: chainsaws buzzing, hammers banging, a worker karaoke. No one lies to her and tells her otherwise. Riff-Raff
off screen somewhere whistling the snake-charmer song. thus avoids making Susan into a spectacle, as much as it avoids
(Copeland, best known as the drummer for The Police, has giving her the boldness, ego, and charisma of Jenkins. Susan
made many film and television soundtracks; he also provided would never say, as Jenkins does, “People may say I couldn’t
synthier, more apprehensive beats for Raining Stones.) At Riff- sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.” She’s far too inse-
Raff’s fiery climax, when Stevie and his friend burn down a cure for that. Her singing isn’t a way of seizing life—life slips
building in a glorious expression of rage and destructiveness, out of her grasp. She tries and tries, and gets nowhere. The
piano, strings, and drum mingle with the crackle of flames, voice only strains.
while shattered glass bursts from the windowpanes like cym- Jenkins’s musical failure, like Dirk Diggler’s, has something to
bals, and the score melts into the whine of sirens. do with entitlement—the feeling that if you want something you
I
should have it, and that other people should be made to listen,
t’s easy to see that riff-raff is a study of class, race, and and applaud your efforts. Susan doesn’t approach music that
social injustice, but what makes it a riveting work of art rather way. She never explains why she wants to sing or what she likes
than a manifesto is how fully realized its ensemble is. Each about it, though it seems to have something to do with losing
worker on the site is a complete person with his own goals herself, with the feeling of the music coming through her. Still,
and way of being, and Susan, who in less adept hands would be a there’s a meekness to her spirit, some essentially self-abnegating
delicate songbird crushed by fate, is something far more interest- quality to her performance. She lacks the passion, for example, of
ing—a dime-a-dozen mediocrity whose artistic delusions exist in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character Sadie in the 1995 film Georgia—
tandem with poverty and addiction. On the night of the pub gig the hard-living, raccoon-eyed, less talented sister of a famous
she returns to the stage after Stevie’s friend Larry, a shambling, folk singer. Leigh’s Sadie is pathetic, exposed, and riveting. Her
politically engaged motormouth played with sloppy charm by eight-minute rendition of a Van Morrison number onstage at an
Ricky Tomlinson, shames the crowd, and wins them over with a AIDS benefit is at once uninspired and achingly raw. By contrast,
cover of, appropriately, “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Susan’s big moment is being mocked by casting directors as she
Afterward she is exuberant, telling Stevie she could “feel the music belts out a dismal version of “Every Time We Say Goodbye.”
comin’ out,” and speculating about a man in the crowd who might They tell her to “really sell the number,” that they want to see her
have been a member of the press. Susan toggles between depres- “living and dying at the same time”—as if that’s not already
sion and fantasy, telling Stevie that she can’t commit to him what she’s doing. The last time we see Susan singing, she’s busk-
because she “could be going on the road anytime soon.” ing in the subway, and gathering the loose change to buy heroin.
Bad singing is often easy cinematic shorthand for decadence, She and Stevie break up soon after.
ego, and hubris. You know that when Dirk Diggler steps into the A beautiful voice carries you away from the singer and toward
something else—reflection, reverie. It transports. Bad singing, on
the other hand, calls attention only to itself. It returns you to the
singer, to either the limits of her instrument or the emotional
need compelling her performance. It exerts a gross fascination,
pulling you in. You can’t turn away from it. But in Riff-Raff,
Susan’s style of mediocre singing is wholly ignorable. You can
turn away from it as easily as the upper classes turn away from
the working classes. That’s what makes it so moving on screen.
It’s an example of thwarted ambition that is both more common
than we’ll ever know and highly particular. By making Susan’s
failure nothing special, Loach makes it something far worthier of
our attention—he makes it human.
Christine Smallwood has written reviews and essays in The New

Yorker, Bookforum, and Harper’s Magazine. Her fiction has been
published in The Paris Review, n+1, and Vice.
INSIDE STORIES Redefining the boundaries of the new-media age
Above: Chalkroom Hsin-Chien Huang

Laurie Anderson Opposite page:
Chalkroom (VR)
L A U R I E A N D E R S O N : © E B R U Y I L D I Z ; B O T H C O U R T E S Y O F Q U I N Z A I N E D E S R É A L I S AT E U R S
Space Odyssey
At Cannes, Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang sent us flying with their bewildering virtual-reality trio
BY JONATHAN ROMNEY
L
aurie anderson is nothing if not a mercurial propo- Brave in 1987). Experiencing the show—installed at the Suquet
sition. In her multiple careers, she has been a musician, des Art(iste)s, an arts center built in a former morgue—offered a
a visual artist, a filmmaker (most recently in her 2015 vivid reminder of some of the qualities that make VR so unlike
essay film Heart of a Dog), a raconteur, an exponent cinema. Above all, there’s the sense of being alone in an imaginary
of Buddhist practice, and an organizer of concerts for space that you seem to inhabit physically—a space not bounded
dogs. Perhaps what her work essentially consists of is by the parameters of a screen, and whose rules of engagement
simply wondering, on an enviably regular and fertile basis, “What you only start to learn once you abandon yourself to it.
if…?” and then working out the best—and often the most techno- All three works, each lasting 15 minutes and experienced sit-
logically resonant—method for pursuing that possibility further. ting on a swivel chair, simulate the feel of flight. In Aloft, you’re
Anderson boldly goes, and then some, in her current explo- the sole passenger on a plane that disintegrates around you, leav-
rations of virtual reality, through a trilogy of works made in col- ing you suspended while objects float toward you that you can
laboration with Taiwanese new-media artist Hsin-Chien Huang. grab with your hands (this is the only piece that doesn’t require
Formerly shown separately in various festival and gallery contexts you to use handsets). Among them: a rock, a typewriter, a copy
including the Venice Film Festival, their three pieces featured in of Crime and Punishment. Strange things happen too when you
Cannes this year under the collective title Go Where You Look! look at the digital image of your hands, which move like your
Falling Off Snow Mountain as a sidebar to the Directors’ Fortnight own, but sprout horse hooves or burst into spots.
selection (which screened Anderson’s concert feature Home of the The more elaborately trippy To the Moon (a digital-age
As Anderson tells me [about virtual reality], “We’re kind of the creepy cousin to cinema. In Venice, we
were on the Lazzaretto Vecchio, for lepers and plague victims. Here we’re showing in a morgue!”
recalibration of Méliès?) allows you to soar over the lunar surface, To develop these works, Anderson says, “I don’t write a screen-
your space-suited shadow projected below you; at one point it play, I write something else that’s a series of possibilities.” How
places you on the back of a trotting donkey. The moonscape is var- exactly do you start to create a space like Chalkroom? Does it involve
iously furnished with reflecting objects; a huge dinosaur made of drawings and models as well as work on computer? “All kinds of
numbers (these works are overtly composed of digits, underlining things. First of all, everything is created—there are no cameras
the sense of a world made from code); and stylized outlines of involved, no lenses, which is a wild thing already. You’re not limited
national flags, a reference to international disputes about owner- by that. I love watching people come out of this, because our lives
ship of the moon. Hallucinatory objects float in the dark sky: a vast are geared to rectangles—our phones, our films, everything. When
stone flower that you can perch on (scale becomes mysteriously people come out, I see them looking around, because suddenly
elastic), a mountain with its mirror image suspended beneath it. they realize we’re in an ocean of space—we forget that.”
Both of these works invoke a degree of realist illusion. By con- As Anderson says in her notes on the installation, VR “can
trast, Chalkroom is a work of pure imagination that constructs a confuse and confound the sense of proprioception and safety . . .
potentially infinite labyrinthine space—together with the anxiety Your feet tell you, ‘I’m standing in a room in a museum, com-
that entails. Don your headset in one of the venue’s small, vaulted pletely safe.’ But your eyes tell you, ‘I’m standing on a 300-foot-
chambers, and a miraculous effect kicks in: everyone else in the tall column and it’s only two by two feet,’ and you start to sway.”
room (visitors, technicians) vanishes but the room remains, its That’s not the only strange effect of these pieces, she says. “One
walls etched with Anderson’s white-on-black drawings and graf- of my assistants has a condition where he can’t open his hands—
fiti in English and French. Snowflakes that turn out to be tiny he was a bass player, and when that started happening, it was a
white letters glimmer in the air. Then the walls peel away—all disaster. He was testing Aloft, and while he was doing it, his hands
three pieces use this raising-the-curtain effect, introducing you
into open space—and you point your handsets to fly through a
narrow door into the space of the “Chalkroom.”
This is the most alien environment on display, the most alluring
and the most expansive. Constructed of black surfaces overlaid with
chalk, it’s like a child’s reimagining of the vast palaces and prisons
drawn by the 18th-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. It is a
space of vertiginous heights and depths in which you can fly in any
direction, a network of chambers each containing its own surprises:
seemingly flat etchings that turn into 3-D clouds of letters as you
approach; a conga line of moving figures on the walls; a space where
the sounds you make become free-floating musical instruments that
you can strike to make gong-like resonances.
Flying through Chalkroom can be destabilizing. Sometimes,
descending from mid-air too fast, I was unnerved to hit solid
ground, although it was with a soft thud and accompanying opened. I said, ‘Did you see what happened to your hands?’ and he
“clunk” sound. I felt genuinely unanchored here, worried that didn’t know that was happening. I thought, we don’t know any-
I’d wander into realms I might not find my way out of. It helps, thing about the brain and the body and how they’re relating . . .
though, to hear snatches of Anderson’s familiar, calm voice as a The function of language and body is key to all of these pieces—
guide (imagine how terrifying it would have been if that voice and identity, of course, because there you are alone, and alone in
had belonged to, say, Werner Herzog). the way you are when you’re identifying with a character in a
A
Russian novel. You’re there but you’re not there.”
s anderson tells me when we talk later in a beach- What Anderson misses in VR, however, is “the social experience—
G U I L L A U M E L U T Z F O R Q U I N Z A I N E D E S R É A L I S AT E U R S
front interview space, it’s a pleasure to be invited to show I love people listening to music together on the same sound system,
this work in a film festival, in a context where VR is still in the same room. So our next VR thing”—a “VR opera,” she calls
viewed with suspicion. “We’re kind of the creepy cousin it—“will use that and be part of that, and probably be much more
to cinema. In Venice, we were on the Lazzaretto Vecchio, for lepers about creating virtual objects in sound and consciousness-jumping.
and plague victims. Here we’re showing in a morgue!” So you’ll be able to jump literally into somebody else’s mind.”
She and Huang have been working together since the mid- Anderson and Huang’s three pieces are informed by a childlike
’90s. Their first collaboration, a CD-ROM called Puppet Motel, spirit of play—yet also by a serious, not to say spiritual, exploration
eventually became an illustration of the transience of new-media of what it might mean to be in two places at once, your mind
formats. “You can’t see it anymore because the platform has gone. projected outside your familiar bodily parameters. Behind it all is
All the work we did is now a bunch of arrows pointing nowhere. Anderson’s longstanding fascination with the “Nature of Mind,” the
It’s evaporated.” That’s why when Huang suggested a VR collabo- term used by her Buddhist teacher Mingyur Rinpoche. His think-
ration, her initial reaction was, “Another format that’s going to ing, Anderson says, “is at the center of how I see things in terms
just disappear—no thanks!” She laughs. “Not that I’m working of illusion and what he calls ‘consensus reality.’”
for posterity. I’m working for my own sense of fun, trying to “Which is a beautiful way of saying we’re making this up,” she
problem-solve. Like, what is narrative? You have to start over says. “We both agree that we’re sitting at a table in Cannes—but
when there’s no beginning, middle, or end.” we’re not really.”
LONESOME TRAILS
Quentin Tarantino’s
Once Upon a Time... in
Hollywood yearns for
the liberating powers
of storytelling and
finds flickers of life
in painted sunsets
and broken dreams
BY NICOLAS RAPOLD
M
ore than any fairy tale, or a sergio leone video-store-educated
film, the title of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth
The particular way in savant—a notion that
stand-alone feature suggests an elaborate yarn which Tarantino lives in would meet with blank
that might take a while to tell. Not so very elabo- and through movies stares from a generation
rate but indeed a tall tale of sorts, Once Upon a seems to have receded weaned on the firehose of
Time... in Hollywood is set in a familiar fantasy- streaming, YouTube, and
land and era—the perennially mythologized late ’60s, with its
from pop-cultural torrents. Likewise, Taran-
dashing of hopes, fall from grace, bummer wake-up from a beau- prominence, much less tino’s upending of high-low
tiful dream. Or, as focused through the lens of Tarantino’s charac- the mythos of a video- hierarchies and his secret-
ters: at the apparent end of the road for a TV actor named Rick store-educated savant— handshake references
Dalton, and by extension his stunt double Cliff Booth. Beginning quicken fewer pulses amid a
its timeline in February 1969, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood a notion that would general sense of cultural
introduces us to Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) side by side with Cliff meet with blank stares amnesia (or indifference)—
(Brad Pitt), the two explaining their trade in a black-and-white from a generation not to mention a landscape
behind-the-scenes interview on an anonymous Western set. Rick where burgeoning televi-
plays cowboys, Cliff plays Rick on horses and in mid-air; both
weaned on the fire- sion offerings elicit wild
enjoy making up fun stuff for our entertainment. hose of streaming. critical praise and loving
What follows surprised many at the ballyhooed premiere in scrutiny for supercharging
Cannes this past May, and not because somebody then blows and elaborating within
someone’s head off (which, just to clarify, does not occur). Some- assorted genres. And most fundamentally, Tarantino’s penchant for
thing stranger, in fact: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood settles grisly-glorious revisionism has become a non-starter for some in an
into a loose-limbed, sunny buddy routine with an undercurrent era demanding more enlightened approaches to history, very nearly
of nerves, before paths begin to diverge. Rick anxiously takes a gig across the board. In the case of his latest, the filmmaker has already
playing a Western villain, with Cliff as his rock-steady support been put on the spot for the gender distribution of his dialogue.
system but also wandering off on his own as whatever you call That last criticism must have befuddled Tarantino, because
the laid-back stand-in to a potential has-been. And for a third Robbie’s Tate is so affectionately written and, with Pitt’s Cliff, surely
and vital strand (as ever in Tarantino’s long-game loop-back story- shares the heart of the film, Rick’s hapless antics notwithstanding.
telling), there’s the “real” figure of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) Despite the apocalypse we all associate with Tate, in Hollywood’s
and her husband, shit-hot director Roman Polanski (Rafal Hollywood she is simply an actress with her life ahead of her who
Zawierucha), zooming around town, hanging out, being desir- takes pleasure in her own work. A standout sequence, at first seem-
able. That despite the small matter of the gruesome Manson ingly set up for disappointment and a cheap laugh, sees Tate stop-
Family murders somewhere in there on the historical record... ping at a cinema where the farcical comedy The Wrecking Crew is
Even with that on everyone’s minds, Tarantino does not drive the playing, co-starring her in a klutz role. She has to introduce herself
film forward with the hand-rubbing glee over narrative tension that to the theater staff, but then is welcomed in; kicking up her bare
has been his stock-in-trade (and that failed him utterly in his most feet on the chairs, she soaks in the laughter of the audience.
recent, turgid feature, The Hateful Eight, which intriguingly Nick She’s enjoying herself, in every sense; the movie’s not Tess of the
Pinkerton has described as “a stubbornly, defiantly misanthropic d’Urbervilles—the book she buys for Polanski, in another affecting
movie, a film that brings back the spirit of Hollywood in the mid- scene—but she’s making her way (as Cliff, for one, is not). Taran-
’60s”). Far from it: Rick embraces his new role as a saloon heavy and tino’s professional admiration is just as palpable here as it is with
boyishly gets his groove back; Cliff tries to mind his own business with Rick when he finally gets going, the joy of moviemaking being
(an even more Western-like) manly charisma and code of decency; another well-established aspect of the Tarantino mood.
and the apparently doomed Tate takes unabashed pleasure in being on In the eyes of DiCaprio’s Rick, of course, Tate’s already made it,
the brink of making it—through all of which, Tarantino nurtures into by virtue of Polanski’s post–Rosemary’s Baby cool-kid status; the
being something unexpectedly touching, even sweet. The filmmaker young couple tools around in a sports car, free as can be. Mean-
remains invested in the outsider or struggling criminal—a transmuta- while, Rick on his first shoot in a while spends his downtime read-
tion of 1970s antiheroes into the language of movie types—and his ing a Western pulp fiction about a breaker of horses, whom he
heart here lies with these underdogs, the TV actor who was barely describes thus before tearing up: “He’s not the best anymore. He’s
making do and the talented stunt double who might fade away. coming to terms with what it’s like to become slightly more useless
A glib formula might describe Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood each day.” Rick says this to Tate’s formidable next-gen successor—
as combining the middle-ager last-chance gambit of Jackie Brown an utterly self-possessed child actor (Julia Butters) he’s performing
and the lurid revisionist urge to punch up history in Inglourious with, who’s busy reading a biography of Disney and taking no guff.
Basterds. But it’s something at once mature and madly, deeply, and Tarantino’s sympathies have always rested with working profession-
now less collector-ishly in love with Hollywoodland and, even als, whom he has delighted in holding up for glory, whether it’s
more, its far-flung margins—and here, in the most artificial of set- directing German TV actor Christoph Waltz to two Oscars or
tings, Tarantino achieves something genuine and heartfelt. putting stuntwoman Zoë Bell in a leading role. And sure enough,
A
in Rick, he sets up a scenario whereby this TV actor whose worth
s anticipated and speculated upon as rests on entertaining folks with daring deeds could accomplish
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood has been, isn’t another spectacular one before the film is through.
this also a filmmaker who is in many ways deeply Speaking of spectacle, the director’s usual sense of buildup and
unfashionable for what we call our times? For one whiplash surprise is not where the force of this film lies. Instead it
thing, the particular way in which Tarantino lives takes the unusual Tarantino tack of feeling out this moment in no
in and through movies seems to have receded great hurry, at one point skipping ahead six months—from Febru-
from pop-cultural prominence, much less the mythos of a ary to the fabled August of 1969—and not hanging on Rick a
2 8 | F I L M C O M M E N T | July-August 2019 Closer Look: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood opens on July 26.
dramatic arc of the falling/ access. (The same frustration lights one fuse in Mary Harron’s
rising actor (though, spoiler
With DiCaprio encour- Charlie Says: a visit by an unimpressed music agent leaves Manson
alert, he gets to work with aged (or not needing unrecognized, and seething.) Cliff has to lay down some law at the
Sergio Corbucci, on the much encouragement) ranch and leave, but the wishful simplicity of the heroism doesn’t
advice of an agent played by to stick to the confines detract from the strength of a film shaped and scaled and paced
Al Pacino). Once Upon a with largely unostentatious aplomb (and hopefully not to be
Time... in Hollywood sets the
of playing the insecure adversely altered by the rumored potential of a pre-release edit). In
scene for historical events to actor, Pitt as his loyal its knitting together of Rick/Cliff/Tate and letting Cliff come into
step in, but the constant second is allowed to his own as a character, Tarantino works at a high level of pure nar-
oddly enough becomes shine with a positive rative satisfaction, patient craft over showmanship, recalling the
Pitt’s Cliff, once a hothead confident and moving achievement of Jackie Brown.
trailed by horrible rumors, sunset glow to match Where then does that leave the so far unspoiled ending? And is
and now an affably resigned the warm colors of the there a touch of Rick-like anxiety in Tarantino’s public hand-
guy who shares his home photography. wringing over fellow movie-lovers ruining his creative mojo? The
with a cuddly pitbull he injunction turns critics into Tarantino characters, talking around
lingers over feeding chunks and around to delay the next twist, and in so doing building it up.
of canned food. With DiCaprio encouraged (or not needing Well, by way of beginning... it’s usually said that history repeats
much encouragement) to stick to the confines of playing the itself. And certainly in our current so-called reality, it feels that
ALL PHOTOS BY ANDREW COOPER © 2019 CTMG, INC.
insecure actor, Pitt as his loyal second is allowed to shine with a way, with the country locked in a political time warp replaying the
positive sunset glow to match the warm colors of the photogra- cynical antagonisms of (newly inaugurated in 1969) Nixon’s
phy (less lurid than its key art). Not seeming to mind his cir- revanchist runs, not to mention the Hobermanian nightmare of
cumstances, the star, at his best in years and hitting a wondrous having a bad actor for a president (another one). And frankly, the
stride, settles so comfortably into the role of a supportive more I’ve thought about the world Tarantino creates—and re-cre-
shadow that you do believe Cliff might prefer it. ates—in the first two hours of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,
It’s Cliff who walks into the lion’s den, the almost too-ready- the less significant the knowledge of the film’s ending has felt, even
for-essayizing Spahn Ranch: the former location for some down- with its true-to-Tarantino cage match of fact and fiction.
at-heel shoots, and home to the most lurid B-movie of them all, After all, the spirit behind the film is that the spoiler already
that of Charles Manson and his followers. It’s a curdled alternate happened—out there. And the irony is that the expected Manson
world where Cliff discovers owner and past acquaintance George reckoning and how it affects our good buddies on screen neither
Spahn (an ornery, apparently immortal Bruce Dern), blind but ruins the film nor surpasses the warmth that came before. The
living in a state of contentment and denial about his tenants. inevitable climax has nothing on the wistful feeling that lingers
Cliff’s visit is a refraction of the high-profile intersections that when the dust clears. And within minutes, it’s just another story
Manson would indeed have with a starry milieu he could not to tell the neighbors.
SLOW DEATH
A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE TV LAND (AND AFTER LIVES) TRAVERSED
IN ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD
BY HOWARD HAMPTON
Many of these shows had a long afterlife in syndication. As a

Ty Hardin
5-to-10-year-old child circa 1969, like Tarantino (or myself), if
you turned on any local station in the afternoons or evenings,
there were 5-to-10-year-old reruns of The Rifleman (Chuck
Connors as the single dad who racked up a notable body count:
“Father Kills Best”); Bat Masterson (clipped, forceful Gene
Barry); Wagon Train (Ward Bond, via the namesake John Ford
movie); Have Gun – Will Travel (Richard Boone as the natty,
knightly Paladin); Rawhide (Eastwood as the indefatigable
Rowdy Yates, though second-billed to Eric Fleming for most of
its eight-season run); Maverick (the endlessly adroit James Gar-
ner, eventually replaced by Jack Kelly and then Roger Moore);
Wanted: Dead or Alive (McQueen, obviously bound for greater
things). Not to mention the legacy westerns still in production:
the eternal Gunsmoke (James Arness, a decent enough Gary
Cooper clone); the dire Bonanza (Lorne Greene and TV sons);
and The Virginian (James Drury, stalwart and forgettable). And
also the kid-friendly likes of The Lone Ranger and The Roy Rogers
Show, The Cisco Kid and Zorro...
Hardin’s Bronco popped up from time to time between the
tumbleweeds, rubber rattlesnakes, and trail cooks called Wish-
bone, but never found footing to set himself apart. That said, Hol-
lywood gave him a fair enough shake: solid parts in PT 109 (1963)
and Merrill’s Mauraders (1962), and a star turn sandwiched
between Suzanne Pleshette and Dorothy Provine in the wonder-
fully titled Wall of Noise (1963). After another Warners program-
mer (Palm Springs Weekend, 1963), the bottom fell out: the glut of
O
Westerns coupled with the overpopulation of Troys and Tabs
nly quentin tarantino would model a major made him expendable. Aside from getting third-billed in the big-
character on Ty Hardin: a prototypical square- ticket, Cinerama-produced, Madrid-filmed flop Custer of the West
jawed, barely mid-level actor who went from (1967), there was a part in the Argentine-Spanish Savage Pampas
minor TV cowboy heartthrob to unimpressive (1966); a lead in the lesser Sergio Corbucci heist flick Death on the
movie roles to flat-out obsolescence in the span Run (1967); and an Australian TV series (Riptide, 1969). When
of a decade. An inspiration for DiCaprio’s Rick Hardin died recently, his obits brought an unsettling twist: after
Dalton in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (though Dalton’s fate Hollywood (though he did parts here and there for many more
doesn’t seem anywhere near as clear-cut), Hardin’s career carried years), he’d gone and become a rabidly right-wing evangelical
the emblematic shape of every almost-famous hotshot who imag- preacher. The road to Trump rather than Manson...
ined they were one break away from following Steve McQueen or Tarantino may use Hardin as a general template, but naturally
Clint Eastwood into the Big Leagues. he diverges not only in Dal-
He’d arrived in the hurly-burly stampede of westerns that ton’s personal and profes-
overran American television from the late ’50s through the early Ty Hardin’s career sional specifics but also in
’60s. Despite having the given name of a comic-relief aristocrat carried the emblematic the cardinal presence of
(Orison-with-an-i Whipple Hungerford Jr.), there was an shape of every almost- Brad Pitt as his best pal and
earnest, boyish-manly charm to go with his pin-up looks. famous hotshot who stunt double Cliff Booth. So
Rechristened by the infamous agent/predator Henry Willson, while Tarantino’s film is
Hardin joined a client list as long as a DNA strand in a backlot imagined they were one rooted in Hollywood actual-
petri dish: Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donohue. Rory Cal- break away from follow- ity, it also has one foot in an
houn, John Saxon, Dack Rambo, and Clint Walker. His big break ing Steve McQueen or alternate reality where Dal-
brought home their basic interchangeability: in 1958, Clint ton does imaginary Cor-
Walker got in contract dispute on his show Cheyenne, Hardin
Clint Eastwood into bucci flicks and guest stars
was brought in as his potential replacement, and then the char- the Big Leagues. on the real series Lancer.
acter was spun off into the series Bronco when Walker settled. (And as Inglourious Basterds
has already attested, Tarantino is not above revising history out- psychos, noble half-breeds, or shell-shocked Civil War vets. TV
landishly when it will make for a dy-no-mite third act.) managed to keep the ’60s at bay, but series refugees McQueen and
Setting Hardin aside for a moment, take Burt Reynolds as Eastwood were each avatars of something different—a cipher-like
another slightly more puzzling case study/partial inspiration. He cool or a nihilistic shrug. Signs of life, or at least of not giving a shit.
had a higher profile but still toiled doggedly for years in canceled Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is one mythopoetic way of
series and useless B-movies. Finally the yin-yang synergy of contextualizing how Hollywood cracked up (or cracked open) over
Deliverance and his snarky talk-show appearances made him an these fault lines, like a glass house with a gas leak. Instead of the
icon almost in spite of himself. Yet the singular, crushing lack of usual catalysts—’Nam, Civil Rights, Assassinations, Bad Karma—I
glamour to ’60s series television—show business at its most delib- might suggest one tiny personal moment to stand in for the historic
erately unimaginative and diabolically monotonous—was so single- upheavals and aesthetic discontents. Around 1970, as a 12-year-old I
minded as to bury someone as vital as Reynolds alive. Television was taken to a double feature consisting of two western “spoofs.”
had turned the idea of the proverbial Dream Factory on its head, Meaning the broadest, most inane western burlesques draped in
and driven it into the ground like a spike, hostile to the idea of self, smuttier-than-TV-allowed innuendo—dumbed-down versions of
let alone expression. The absence of mystique became television’s Playboy’s Party Jokes, if such can even be imagined. Dirty Dingus
most distinguishing feature, every facet converted into unyieldingly Magee starred Frank Sinatra and George Kennedy, at once so self-
formulaic premises, rote performances, sexual denial, and sanitized infantilized and male-menopausal, so gratingly unhip and boorish,
violence. The networks had finally found a way to eliminate all as to make even a kid want to crawl into a hole and die of embar-
those pesky human variables and idiosyncrasies from the entertain- rassment. Waterhole # 3 was the second feature, starring the hipper
ment equation, with the Westerns like so much discount furniture: Coburn, here smirking all the way to a paycheck big enough to erase
sofas and love seats, leatherette recliners and dinette sets. this debacle from his mental résumé. Pure movie mortification—a
Sidelined behind this grim stasis, there was another gravita- formative enough trauma to turn an impressionable viewer into
tional-generational force waiting to assert itself: all those then- a critic or a madman. Or, who knows—a film director exorcising,
peripheral actors from Jack Nicholson to Bruce Dern (who is also castigating, and venerating his ghosts.
in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, as George Spahn—ironically
the part meant for Reynolds before he died), James Coburn, War- Howard Hampton frequently writes about organized chaos for
ren Oates, and even Robert Redford, who kicked around playing Film Comment.
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IN JIM JARMUSCH’S WISTFULLY COMIC
THE DEAD DON’T DIE, ZOMBIES RISE UP
AS OUR WORLD WINDS DOWN
BY AMY TAUBIN
the premise of jim jarmusch’s zombie

movie The Dead Don’t Die is that fracking
at the polar ice caps has destabilized the
Earth’s magnetic field so that time is out of
joint and bad things happen—such as the
dead arising from their graves. The setting
is Centerville, a very small town in upstate
New York with a three-person police force
(Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloë
Sevigny); a bunch of oddball residents
(Tom Waits, Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi,
Larry Fessenden, RZA, Caleb Landry Jones,
and Eszter Balint among them); some visi-
tors, including hipsters played by Selena
Gomez, Luka Sabbat, and Austin Butler; a
Scottish samurai swordswoman moonlight-
ing as the town’s mortician (Tilda Swinton);
and a few very hungry zombies (Iggy Pop,
Sara Driver, Carol Kane), who get the party
started. One of the pleasures of the film
(which opened Cannes this year) is the cast,
but above all, it is Jarmusch’s vision of an
apocalypse we have collectively brought
upon ourselves—nice people though we
may be—that makes the film wryly amusing
until it becomes overwhelmingly tragic.
3 2 | F I L M C O M M E N T | July-August 2019 Closer Look: The Dead Don’t Die is in theaters now.
Did you play zombies when you were a kid?
Jim Jarmusch
Not very often, and I’m not a zombie aficionado. I like the classic
on location
things, but [George] Romero is my postmodern zombie hero.
Pre-Romero, zombies were outside the social order. Haitian
voodoo zombies—you could get a zombie to control, and have
them do your bidding, and a “white zombie” was a girl they
zombified. Monsters always came from outside the social
order—Frankenstein, Dracula, Godzilla—but when Romero
made Night of the Living Dead, he had the zombies come from
inside of a social order that was malignant. It’s from the inside
that everything is falling apart, and he’s the first to do that. So I
love Night of the Living Dead, and also Dawn of the Dead and Day
of the Dead. And I like extreme zombification. The Korean movie
Train to Busan has thousands of zombies, and they move really
fast. That was some pretty badass zombification. But I don’t care
about The Walking Dead. I’m a vampire guy, I like vampires.
They’re sophisticated, they’re shapeshifters, they’re survivalists, “Zombies don’t have souls; they don’t have
and they’re not really undead, they’re not reanimated, they’re identities. They’re drifting from identity into
just immortal by their situation. non-identity. Zombies are a metaphor for
So what made you decide to do The Dead Don’t Die? people who are not conscious of having
I don’t know. I don’t know why I decide anything. I guess just for lost their consciousness.”
the inherent metaphorical potency of zombies, especially now.
And people behaving like sheep. Romero also focuses on con-
sumerism, as a malignancy. So it’s a good metaphor for now. get to work with them. What do I want? I don’t even know what
Zombies are part of our modern mythology. I think the film means! Not that I ever really do—it’s not really
my job. I wanted to make something entertaining, that had a
I didn’t think of your zombies as coming from within or from little bite to it somehow, and some sadness. One thing that I was
THIS PAGE AND TOM WAITS AND OPENING IMAGE: ABBOT GENSER/FOCUS FEATURES; © IMAGE ELEVEN PRODUCTIONS, INC.
without, but that they’re called into being because we’ve very conscious of is that the only survivors that aren’t zombified,
destroyed the planet! or killed to prevent them from becoming zombies, are the Tom
Which is true of Night of the Living Dead. But even that cause of their Waits character, Hermit Bob, who divorced himself from any
reanimation is from within. It’s not like aliens from space invading kind of social structure decades ago, and the teenagers, who
us—it’s like we messed up, you know? As Hermit Bob [Tom Waits] escape from the detention center. They didn’t function well in
says at the end, “What a fucked-up world.” We fucked it up. the social order either because they are teenagers with problems.
Speaking of metaphors, for the first half of the movie I was What happens to them? They say something about a safe house.
totally suspending my disbelief, buying into this dark fairy tale And we don’t see them as zombies in the end, so my heart is with
of zombies taking over this sleepy town, and the actors also them—that they will somehow survive. I love teenagers. They form
were perfectly balanced between being inside the story and our aesthetics about style and music and fashion. If you think of the
their characters and being a little bit outside it too. But then great teenagers through history that have given us things, from Mary
Cliff (Bill Murray) asks Peterson (Adam Driver) why he keeps Shelley to Carole King, who wrote most of her greatest songs as a
repeating “This is all gonna end badly,” and Peterson answers teenager... I made a list at one point: [Thomas] Chatterton, Mozart,
that he read the script. And I thought, oh no, this is too bald, Joan of Arc, Bobby Fischer was chess grandmaster at the age of
Jim blew it. But later I saw that you needed to do that to get 15, S.E. Hinton, Anne Frank, King Tut [laughs]. Emily Dickinson
to the next level, so that by the end we realize that it’s not just wrote as a teen as well. But I love teenagers, and they have so many
the fictional characters, but everyone—the actors themselves problems. Everyone tells them, “Well, you’re not an adult, stop acting
and the audience—for whom it’s gonna end badly. like a child,” but they’re not an adult exactly, and they’re not a child,
There are early hints to the meta thing about it being a film. We you know? And they have all kinds of hormonal things going on,
hear the theme song “The Dead Don’t Die” over the opening and everyone’s telling them, “You’ve got to behave like this!” [Now]
credits, and then it’s playing on the police car radio, where we we have this incredible pop star Billie Eilish. Her lyrics are super
see Bill and Adam for the first time. And Bill’s character says, dark. She wrote a song called “Bellyache” at the age of 15. And I love
“Why is this so familiar?” and Adam’s character says, “It’s the the actors who play the teenagers in our film. And we have Selena
theme song.” There are little hints to it, but you won’t get them, Gomez, who started as a teenage pop star and actor. She plays one
hopefully, until you’ve already seen the whole movie. of the out-of-town hipsters. They’re on a road trip in a vintage car
that’s the exact model of the car in Night of the Living Dead.
One of the most delirious moments for me was Tilda Swin-
ton’s character saying “Excellent fiction” when she sees the When you say you wrote roles for these specific actors, do
Star Wars keychain, because you understand how much the you hear them speaking the dialogue as you write? I love the
actor and the character are from a different universe. But if dialogue in this movie. It’s like songs with choruses, like when
you don’t want people to notice the meta thing, what do you Adam repeats, “I’m thinking zombies, ghouls, the undead.”
want them to pay attention to? Often I get in a certain zone where I’m not writing dialogue:
I love the performances. I wrote for Tilda, Bill, Adam, Chloë, they’re talking to me and I’m just transcribing what I hear. And
Steve Buscemi, for a lot of these people, and I was very happy to especially, hearing Adam and Bill together, which was a kind of
dream for me. And I love writing for Chloë. But I do that often: I they’re controlled, and so they are kind of zombified. They just
write for main actors, and hope I can trick them into being in follow like sheep. Most people aren’t inherently bad, but the
the film. But not just the main actors. I could make a whole film people that want power are bad. That’s not new, it’s the history of
about any of the characters. I had a great cast, getting Carol humans. And it’s also about the loss of soul. Zombies don’t have
Kane in there, and Steve Buscemi. Steve is a very old friend. We souls; they don’t have identities. They’re drifting from identity into
go back to the late ’70s, and Steve is the least racist and most non-identity. Zombies are a metaphor for people who are not
generous, nice, open person that I know, so from the start I’m conscious of having lost their consciousness. We have a little
like, “Make Steve a real racist because he’ll do it.” [Laughs] And reference to “phone zombies.” That’s what I call people on the
Tom Waits. I haven’t worked with him in a long time and I just street who are looking at their phone as they walk along. They
loved having the chance to hang out with him. aren’t even here. I find it so annoying. But the phone thing is
insane... It’s amazing—if you just told me in 1989 that in 2019
And then almost all of them die. Most of them are nice people, you’ll have a thing that’s got movies and music and a camera and
and they die because we’ve messed up the planet so badly. your phone, and you can look up anything in the library, you can
The problem is that the world is full of good people who don’t listen to the radio all over the world—it’s incredible. But it’s a drag
want this broken operating system, but they’re also oblivious and when people are so sucked into it. So I don’t know what to do! I
keep trying to keep in mind this quote of John Cage, who was a
Buddhist: don’t try to change things, you’ll only make them worse.
[Laughs] I don’t want to talk about politics. We’re in the middle of
the sixth mass extinction. Everyone should be concerned with try-
ing to instigate a Green New Deal immediately, but instead it’s all
about “what did Trump tweet today?” It’s a soap opera and it’s just
to distract, but it’s successful. I’m more interested in the Sunrise
Movement, these young people on the West Coast, or the Extinc-
tion Rebellion in London, England, where there’s civil disobedi-
ence to draw attention to the climate crisis.
You’ve made this apocalyptic movie about the demise of the

planet. And one of the strangest things about the entire
THIS PAGE AND ZOMBIE AND IGGY POP IMAGE: FREDERICK ELMES/FOCUS FEATURES; © IMAGE ELEVEN PRODUCTIONS, INC.
movie is the light. How did you do it and why?

To go back to Night of the Living Dead, what Romero did was to
allow the constraints of his low budget to create a kind of deliberate
awkwardness, that somehow is engrained in the message of the film.
He did really interesting things through crude acting and cheap
effects. We also were limited in our budget and in our time—seven
weeks, and only three weeks with Adam. We were shooting in
summer when nights are really short, so we knew right away that we
had to shoot day for night. So we designed for that. The other real
artifice was that all the car interiors were shot in a warehouse
in Kingston, New York. The actors are just sitting in a car in a
warehouse, acting to nothing, and then we put in the plates later.
That’s called poor man’s process. So that was very artificial, and it
affects how the film looks. And Fred Elmes [the cinematographer]
did a beautiful thing of using the artifice so that it doesn’t look like
artifice—it’s the look of the entire film. So a lot of the look comes
from collaborating with people I’ve worked with before: Fred, and
also Alex DiGerlando, who is our production designer, and
Catherine George, our wardrobe person, and not to forget Affonso
Gonçalves, the editor. Even though I’m the editor and in the room
with him every day, he’s got these beautiful, kind of liquid hands. It
was also the first time I worked with a lot of visual effects. We had
these remarkable people from Chimney. They’re in New York and
Sweden [and elsewhere]. They’ve done some interesting films. One
of my favorites is Atomic Blonde, the Charlize Theron action film.
Charlize Theron is my feminist action hero, you know. I couldn’t
stand Wonder Woman, but Atomic Blonde is fantastic.
I like, when I work in genres, to put something in that no one
else has put in that genre before. So in Only Lovers Left Alive, the
vampires wore gloves and when [Swinton’s character] touched
things, she knew how old they were. And with The Dead Don’t
Die, I don’t know any other zombie films where the zombies are
dust. I wanted them desiccated for two reasons: I didn’t want to
make a splatter film, and I didn’t want blood coming from the
zombies. They’re dried up—they’re soulless.
A PRIZE-WINNING TRIUMPH AT CANNES, MATI DIOP’S DAKAR-SET DEBUT FEATURE
ATLANTICS CONFIRMS AN OEUVRE OF ELEMENTAL IMMEDIACY AND DREAMLIKE EXILE
BY DENNIS LIM
C R OS S I N G OV E R
Atlantics (x 2)
T
he appearance of mati diop’s first feature, Diop gets across the stark underlying socioeconomic facts.
Atlantics, in the rarefied atmosphere of the Cannes Around a nighttime fire on the beach, an unseen ocean roaring
competition brought with it a sense of occasion and behind him, a young man named Serigne tells his friends about
history. It has lately not gone unnoticed that the gate- his experiences on a pirogue (a wooden fishing boat): the physical
keepers of many major festivals have not exactly pain of being pummeled by winds and waves; the dreams of home
rushed to include women or filmmakers of color, or and the hallucinations of fish-men; the absolute certainty that he
for that matter, emerging voices—it is rare for a young director would do it again. Cut to day and a shot of tombstones, which
(Diop is 37) to vault immediately into the Cannes pantheon. For reveals Serigne’s date of death. Is this a flash forward or was his tes-
anyone paying attention, though, the unusual degree of anticipa- timony—to which we later return—from beyond the grave? Diop
tion surrounding this long-awaited debut was not about what Diop further scrambles our sense of time with on-screen text about a
represents but what she has accomplished: this is a filmmaker who “nightly invader” that strikes “during deep sleep,” inducing “the
has, in no uncertain terms, announced herself as a major talent, most burning desire to flow into the ocean.” This account turns out
with a series of short and medium-length films—Atlantiques to be by survivors of the 1816 Méduse shipwreck off the Mauritan-
(2009), Snow Canon (2011), Big in Vietnam (2012), A Thousand ian coast, the aftermath of which inspired the famous Théodore
Suns (Mille soleils, 2013)—that add up to a distinctive and already Géricault painting The Raft of the Medusa. Despite the availability
formidable body of work. of high-resolution formats, Diop shot Atlantiques on low-def video
Atlantics, a deserving winner of the runner-up Grand Prix at that hovers on the threshold of visibility and the verge of disinte-
Cannes, synthesizes the intoxicating moods of Diop’s previous gration, matching the precarity that Serigne is describing. The final
work into an oneiric fable of migration and transmigration—sus- images are close-ups of a rotating Fresnel lens, its cyclical move-
pended between realism and fantasy, the living and the dead, here ments and refracted light mirroring the film’s sly formal operations.
C
and elsewhere. If there is one constant in Diop’s otherwise restless
cinema, it is the notion of the in-between: the paradoxical condi- o-written with judith lou lévy, who would
tions of exile and displacement as experienced physically and go on to be a producer of Diop’s feature, Snow
psychically; the push-pull tension of being in one place while pre- Canon attempts something like a conventional
occupied with “the life far away,” as a character’s tattoo in Big in narrative, detailing an encounter between Vanina
Vietnam reads. In-betweenness also describes the formal qualities (Nilaya Bal), a moody teenager left alone in the
of Diop’s films, which mingle unpredictable ratios of documen- French Alps while her parents attend a funeral,
tary and fiction, resulting in hybrid narratives where, as she has and her new American babysitter, Mary Jane (Nour Mobarak). As
put it, “nothing is true and nothing is false.” Vanina’s boredom shades into curiosity and desire, the girls’ inter-
Many first noticed Diop as an actor in Claire Denis’s 35 Shots actions take on elements of role-play. This quintessential rite of
of Rum (she has also appeared passage is all the more intense for unfolding within a sealed-off
in Antonio Campos’s Simon environment, a chalet with its blinds perpetually lowered, its rooms
Killer and Matías Piñeiro’s Her- occasionally flooded with colored light. Diop juxtaposes this inti-
mia & Helena), and there is in mate, temporally bound drama with a timeless, indeed geological,
her work an unmistakable kin- one, cutting repeatedly to the spectacular mountain terrain outside,
ship with Denis’s cinema: its a physical landscape that comes to stand in for an interior space.
sensuality, its ease with bodies, With Big in Vietnam, co-written with the filmmaker Thierry de
its openness to desire. But Peretti, Diop investigates not just the dream but also the physicality
Diop could be just as usefully of movement and escape. She returns here to the theme of exile,
grouped with a loose cohort of this time from the perspective of a French-Vietnamese filmmaker,
filmmakers in their thirties— Henriette (Henriette Nhung), who is in the middle of shooting an
among them Eduardo adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses in a
Williams and Gabriel Provençal forest. When her Valmont abruptly walks off the set,
Abrantes—who also attended Henriette follows suit. Wandering the streets of Marseille, she’s
the French art school Le Fres- drawn by the strains of familiar music to a Vietnamese restaurant,
noy and have redefined the tra- where she discovers an ad hoc community and joins a countryman
ditional limitations of Mati Diop in an impromptu karaoke duet. The characters remain in perpet-
short-form filmmaking as ual, vaguely somnambulist motion: the missing actor continues his
opportunities for freedom. As different as they are from one progress through the woods, and Henriette and her new friend
another, Diop’s shorts all explore the possibilities of truncation keep walking—observed from a Ferris wheel as they thread
and reduction, revel in ellipsis and enigma, seek out new struc- through sunbathers on the beach, as if compelled by a larger force
tures and shapes for storytelling. toward the infinity of the horizon.
The 15-minute Atlantiques, which Diop made at Le Fresnoy, A less confident director would have shied from tackling a
inaugurates the biracial filmmaker’s inquiry into the reality and the weighty family legacy so early in her career, but with A Thousand
idea of Senegal, her father’s ancestral home. Born and raised in Suns, Diop confronts her uncle’s masterpiece Touki Bouki (1973)
Paris, Diop is the niece of the filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty; her head on. The action unfolds before and after an outdoor Dakar
father is the jazz musician Wasis Diop. Atlantiques emerged in the screening of Touki Bouki, held in the presence of that film’s lead
wake of the so-called pirogue phenomenon of 2005 and 2006, actor Magaye Niang—still herding cattle, clad in cowboy boots and
which saw thousands of young Senegalese men braving the haz- head-to-toe denim, and given proper movie-star treatment by
ardous sea journey to Europe, their mission summed up by a Wolof Diop, who introduces him to the strains of Tex Ritter’s High Noon
slogan, Barca mba barzakh, that translates as “Barcelona or death.” theme. The day nonetheless brings indignities and regrets: On his
The “migrant crisis,” subject of countless films in the past decade, way to the event, Magaye gets into a squabble with a young cab dri-
emerges here not as a political issue but a state of mind, even as ver, who demonstrated against then-President Abdoulaye Wade
Closer Look: Atlantics has been acquired by Netflix. July-August 2019 | F I L M C O M M E N T | 3 7

and who faults the older man’s generation for complacency. The kids a construction worker,
at the square refuse to believe he’s the guy up on screen. He reunites
The tricky feat that Souleiman (Ibrahima
with his friends, among them Diop’s father, who wonder why Mag- Mati Diop carries off to Traoré). Days before the
aye—whose Touki Bouki character longs for an idealized France— perfection in Atlantics wedding, Ada learns that
never left Dakar (“Touki means to travel and you’re stuck!”). is to balance the richly Souleiman and his friends—
The confrontation with the past prompts Magaye to phone his all owed months of back
long-lost co-star, Mareme Niang, who now lives in Alaska. Diop suggestive ambiguity pay—have left by sea for
facilitates their reunion with a brilliant sleight of hand, transport- of her shorts—their Spain. On the night of the
ing Magaye to a snowy landscape of the mind. As Magaye and preference for atmos- ceremony, just as a friend
Mareme’s conversation turns more ruminative, Diop weaves in phere and oblique tells Ada that Souleiman has
these immortal lines from James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room: “You been spotted back on land, a
don’t have a home until you leave it, and then, when you have left incident—with the nar- fire mysteriously breaks out
it, you never can go back.” At once tribute and sequel, A Thousand rative requirements at Omar’s apartment, leav-
Suns engages in a time-traveling conversation with Touki Bouki, of a feature film. ing a smoldering hole in
revisiting and expanding the universe of Mambéty’s landmark film. the marital bed...
T
Given the dichotomy of
he tricky feat that diop carries off to perfection presence and absence running through her work, it makes sense that
in Atlantics is to balance the richly suggestive ambigu- Diop’s first feature would be a ghost story. Already in Atlantiques the
ity of her shorts—their preference for atmosphere short, the boys around the fire seem like spectral figures: “I’m here
and oblique incident—with the narrative require- talking, but my mind is elsewhere,” Serigne says. A fever spreads
ments of a feature film. (Somewhat confusingly, the through the Dakar of Atlantics, infecting Ada’s female friends as well
original French title is Atlantique, though perhaps as the police inspector, Issa (Amadou Mbow), who has been tasked
the multiplicitous names, suggestive of shifting subjectivities, are with investigating the arson. The boys, lost presumably to a watery
appropriate.) Diop’s feature returns to the scenario of her short grave, have returned to possess the ones they love and to settle old
from 10 years ago, but this time assumes the perspective of those scores—or in Issa’s case, to give Ada a chance to bid farewell to
left behind. Her young heroine, Ada (Mama Sané), about to enter Souleiman, a necessary step toward self-determination. Diop han-
an arranged marriage with the wealthy, aloof Omar, is in love with dles the supernatural turn with matter-of-fact understatement, aided
by Fatima Al Qadiri’s otherworldly electronic score, and nodding
Atlantiques to the local belief in djinn, spirits that can take human form.
For all the fantastical flourishes, Diop and her excellent cine-
matographer Claire Mathon (who also shot Alain Guiraudie’s
Stranger by the Lake and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
retain a documentary specificity in their depiction of contemporary
Dakar. The heat, dust, and clamor of the city, palpable in A Thousand
Suns, is even more pronounced in Atlantics, which finds much tex-
ture and life in its variegated settings: abandoned buildings, beach
clubs, brand-new constructions, modest teenage bedrooms. The one
digitally composited invention on Diop’s part is a futuristic sky-
scraper, a hulking intrusion on the shore and skyline inspired by a
project known as the Gaddafi Tower, a proposed collaboration with
A Thousand Suns the former Libyan leader that never came to pass. Diop is also atten-
tive to the tensions of class and religion as they play out among con-
temporary Senegalese youth, touching on the conflicts between Ada’s
more traditional friends, like the hijab-wearing Mariama, and the
more liberated and materialistic ones, like Dior, a barmaid at the
oceanside nightclub that proves to be a pivotal location.
Fire and water loom large in Diop’s cinema of the elements, but
there is no force stronger than the inexorable pull of the ocean.
“Beware, the sea has no friends,” someone tells Mayage in A
Thousand Suns as he ventures too close to the water (his character
in Touki Bouki, we recall, was forever looking over the cliffs and out
to sea). Although repeatedly invoked, the ocean is seen only once
Snow Canon in Atlantiques, the short. In Atlantics, the feature, it is inescapable,
with much of the action transpiring on the water’s edge, and
screen-filling shots of the Atlantic serving as frequent punctuation,
as the jagged Alps did in Snow Canon. The ocean appears at various
times of day, by turns becalmed and roiling, a pathway and a grave-
yard. In a recurring visual motif, it swallows up the sun, as the
moon rises to exert its own influence on the tides. Alert to the
cosmic cycle governing the film—and us all—we are reminded
of Serigne’s cry in Atlantiques: “Look at the ocean, it has no
borders.” The words are both caution and promise, speaking at
once of death and of the life far away.
Atlantics (x 2)
STRANGER IN A
Nadav Lapid’s fiercely compelling Synonyms keeps the pace with an Israeli in
I
n the opening sequence of nadav lapid’s third feature, Yet Israel provides the setting for all his stories, and its legacy is
Synonyms, a young traveler faints from cold inside the bath- seared into the very flesh of his sculpted warrior’s body. As quin-
tub of a bare apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés after tessentially French as his words may sound, Yoav’s body—a site
having his belongings stolen. Suspended in a pose recalling of trauma, violence, and sexual objectification—betrays his oth-
Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat, his naked body erness as an Israeli man shaped by his army experience.
is discovered the next morning by a bourgeois bohemian A leading figure of contemporary Israeli cinema, Lapid is known
couple residing in the building, Emile (Quentin Dolmaire) and for his sensitive and idiosyncratic explorations of that nation’s col-
Caroline (Louise Chevillotte), who carry him onto their bed and lective psyche. From the insurrectionary tale of his debut Policeman
revive his pulse by rubbing him vigorously. “Is this death?” Yoav (2011) to his 2014 follow-up The Kindergarten Teacher’s semiautobi-
(Tom Mercier) asks in accented French when he wakes up in ographical portrait of a child poet, his work pays tribute to the lib-
Paris a day after leaving Tel Aviv with no plans to return. Drap- erating power of language and art in the face of militarism and
ing him in a yellow wool coat and furnishing him with money materialism. With Synonyms—which won the Golden Bear at this
and supplies, Emile, the son of a rich industrialist and an aspir- year’s Berlinale—Lapid brings his subversive vision to France, the
ing writer, launches the ex-soldier into his new identity as a country that once gave him shelter from Israel’s troubles and
Frenchman in the city of his dreams. prompted his love of cinema. But rather than purvey a nostalgic
Based on the 44-year-old Lapid’s own memories of living in evocation of youth, the director’s latest offers a critical outlook on
Paris following his military service, Synonyms is an alternately satir- the circumstances leading to his avatar’s disillusionment with his
ical and sobering meditation on the impossibility of escaping one’s surrogate home—an intellectual’s haven as much as a variation on
roots. Desperate to break away from his country, Yoav vows never the nationalistic nightmare from which he fled.
to speak Hebrew again and devotes himself to mastering French by “No country can be all of those things at the same time,”
memorizing synonyms from a portable dictionary and recounting Emile replies to Yoav’s breathless litany of pejoratives describing
his life to Caroline and Emile, with whom he forms a love triangle. Israel. At once whimsical and sophisticated, Yoav’s performative
monologues invoke a spoken-word tradition ranging from
Closer Look: Synonyms will be released this fall by Kino Lorber. ancient troubadours to modern-day slam poets. Drawing on the
| B Y YO N C A TA L U
STRANGE LAND
Paris caught somewhere between misfit struggle and revolutionary profundity
musicality of the French language, Yoav vividly conjures up raw immediacy to re-create the phenomenological experience of
images from his past, whether an army anecdote about blasting warfare, the traumatic shadow lurking behind Yoav’s efforts to fit in.
P
his machine gun to the jazzy beat of Pink Martini’s “Sympa-
thique” or his childhood fascination with the Trojan War’s mythi- erpetually out of place, yoav leads a double life
cal heroes. An idealistic drifter with larger-than-life aspirations, split between his French and Israeli selves. Despite
he identifies with Napoleon Bonaparte, a famous orator himself, rejecting his homeland, he gets a security guard job
and fantasizes about being buried at the historic Père Lachaise at the Israeli Embassy, bonds with Yaron (Uria
Cemetery alongside France’s most prominent thinkers and artists. Hayik), a patriotic colleague who addresses him in
The gap between Yoav’s dream world and his daily struggles their native tongue, and continues to be attracted to
with poverty and marginalization as an unemployed foreigner primitive rituals of manhood: he revels in watching an improvised
finds an unsettling embodiment in his walks around the capital fight between Yaron and Michel (Olivier Loustau), the belligerent
that punctuate the narrative. In these visceral updates on the leader of the Zionist Betar movement’s Paris branch who recruits
French New Wave’s iconic scenes of flânerie, the subjective hand- Yaron for slaying local neo-Nazis. The tension between Yoav’s mind
held camera pans back and forth between the ground and the sky and body culminates when he takes a gig posing for a pornographic
as the character represses the impulse to gaze at the city’s land- shoot after being fired from the embassy for misconduct. An
marks by frantically enumerating synonyms in voiceover. Con- increasingly humiliating experience, the session begins with a naked
trasting with stereotypical romantic depictions of Paris, the film’s Yoav being asked to talk dirty into the camera. He stutters ner-
urban interludes unfold in a detached mental space where lan- vously and forgets his lines, causing the director (Christophe Paou)
guage becomes an abstract and rhythmic expression of the protag- to snap and order him to switch to Hebrew. Yoav fights to keep his
onist’s breakdown, as when a hungry Yoav raps about food using oath of silence, but his employer insists. What follows is a trance-
onomatopoeia and interjections. Reminiscent of 20th-century like outburst of vulnerability and rage wherein Yoav repeatedly
avant-garde experiments with sound poetry, Yoav’s irrational curses in Hebrew while masturbating on the floor. Divorced from
stream-of-consciousness flow conveys Paris’s chaos on a sensory their meaning, his words build up to a rebellious roar against the
level. The fragmentary speech also combines with the camerawork’s dehumanizing consumerist society he navigates.
Yoav’s battle against conformity represents a recurrent theme France. Determined to spend his life in Paris, Yoav enters into a
in Lapid’s cinema, marking Synonyms as the final installment of sham marriage with Caroline, but finds his idealized views shat-
an unofficial trilogy alongside Policeman and The Kindergarten tered by the citizenship course he is required to attend. There, he
Teacher. Apart from their semiautobiographical origins, all three encounters French nationalism as personified by a condescending
films share a narrative of uprising, whether armed or symbolic. teacher (Léa Drucker), who extols her country’s virtues and treats
In Policeman, a young anarchist group takes a billionaire busi- students as proxies for their homelands. Yoav’s response to his
nessman hostage at a wedding reception to denounce the class teacher’s alienating methods is theatrical rather than rhetorical.
inequality perpetrated by those in power. A less directly political When asked to sing “La Marseillaise,” he engages in a performance
but equally radical figure, The Kindergarten Teacher’s protagonist by confidently walking around the room and urging his class-
kidnaps her 5-year-old wunderkind student to rescue him from mates, all immigrants like himself, to rise to their feet and sing
the materialistic contemporary world that threatens to inhibit his along to the anthem’s militant chorus—a metaphorical call to
poetic sensibility. Transforming language into a weapon of resis- action that blurs the frontiers between transgression and madness.
tance, the dissidents of Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher The film’s descent into radicalization is inscribed in the lineage
find a brazen successor in Synonyms’s Yoav. The grandson of a of Paul Schrader’s existential stories of extremism, from his
Palestinian Jewish terrorist and a Lithuanian political refugee, Yoav screenplay for Taxi Driver to his late-career masterpiece, 2017’s
is a born rebel following in the footsteps of his ancestors. (His First Reformed. Like Schrader’s portrayals of pathological loneli-
rejection of Hebrew turns out to be a tribute to his paternal ness, Synonyms devotes considerable screen time to Yoav’s solitary
grandfather’s refusal to speak his native Yiddish after migrating to existence in his room, immersing us in his cooking and exercising
Mandatory Palestine.) Depicted more elliptically than in Lapid’s rituals. In vignettes that evince a nightmarish aura, we watch him
previous films, Yoav’s revolt is aimed as much at Israel as at eat the same cheap dish—spaghetti with ready-made tomato sauce
fashionable magazine in Tel Aviv. In the evenings I’d grab a beer

with a friend, and it was strange because it was as if nothing had
ever happened. It had been super intense for three years in the
military, moving to live somewhere else, on the border, in the
belly of a mountain, in a life that has nothing to do with the one
you’ve previously led. And then it’s over and you go back to your
normal life and you have to reinvent yourself, because when you
started you were in high school and you were a different person.
So I did: I studied philosophy at university, and I began writing
novels, and I started working for a newspaper, sometimes writing
reviews––but not film reviews. At that time I knew nothing about
cinema. I didn’t know that films had directors. Like most people
in Israel, I’d seen some American movies, but I thought that cin-
ema was a thing for people who don’t have a capacity for abstrac-
tion. I felt more connected to literature.
But at some point, about a year and a half later, I had an
epiphany, this feeling that I must run away and never come back.
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH It was like a vision, like that tale of Plato’s cave, where if some-
NADAV LAPID LOOKS WITHIN TO PORTRAY one gets out and sees the light, they’re unable to go back, because
when they go back, they are killed. I knew I needed to leave
THE ESSENCE OF THE OUTLIER Israel, but I hesitated about where I should go. And it was a big
BY JORDAN CRONK decision, because it’s as if this new place was where I was going
to live or die. I chose Paris, well, mainly because of my childish
admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte. I landed at Charles de
S eemingly incapable of filming a visually uninteresting

scene, Nadav Lapid continues to refine his highly muscular
compositional sense, which can turn even the most mundane
Gaulle [Airport] with no practical plans for the future, but with
a clear idea that I was going to leave everything behind and
become French. So I stopped talking in Hebrew, and that was
encounter into a moment fraught with energy and tension. I strange. For a month or two, I talked with my parents in English,
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
spoke with Lapid two days before Synonyms won the Golden but then I stopped talking in anything but French.
Bear at the 69th Berlinale in February.
Did you consider that a political decision? Does Yoav?
Can you tell me a bit about the personal experiences that It depends how you define political. I don’t think that it’s politi-
inspired Synonyms? cal in the narrow sense of Yoav simply opposing Israeli politics. I
The film is based on personal experience in the sense that more or think Yoav has a problem with what he feels is the Israeli collec-
less all the things that occur in it have really happened. Some- tive soul, the DNA of the place, the melody, the existential music
times in different versions, sometimes closer to my experience. of the state. He ran away from Israel as someone running away
For example, like everyone in Israel, I served three or three and a from a demon, as if he saw the worst demon. And in that sense
half years in the military. When I completed my service, on one of there’s a logic in refusing to speak in Hebrew, because the words
my first days out, I colored my hair platinum as a way of telling contain the same sickness. Israel drove me crazy and I asked
myself it was over. And that same day I had a job interview at a myself, “What does it help if you run away but keep on speaking
and crème fraîche—every single day, and listen to his hypnotic of Emile and Caroline’s apartment epitomizes the film’s devastat-
diary-like narration that teeters between nihilism and transcen- ing blend of cruelty and innocence, and likens Yoav’s journey to
dence. The film’s identification with Yoav’s point of view takes on an infinite loop. A cri de cœur as much as a political essay, Syn-
a disturbing connotation when he fires an imaginary assault rifle onyms manages to be deeply affecting without ever resorting to
at the Notre Dame Cathedral (whose major fire in April coincided pathos, creating a simultaneously intimate and cerebral viewing
with this film’s French release) while humming the tune of “Sym- experience through an alternately mobile and static mise en scène.
pathique.” A reenactment of his time in the army, it also reflects While minutely attuned to its protagonist’s heightened interior
his schizophrenic disconnect from reality and imbues the narrative world, it offers a space of projection for everyone torn between
with a sense of impending doom. But unlike Travis Bickle’s, Yoav’s embracing and renouncing their national belonging.
extremist tendencies do not yield a massacre. His is an ideological Although bitterly parting ways with Yoav, Synonyms leaves us
rebellion against hypocrisy and shallowness, such as when he with the hope that he will find salvation through writing. With
attends a classical music concert featuring Caroline as an oboist an impulse of purification, Yoav donates his stories to Emile for
and criticizes the ensemble for not standing up for their work. inclusion in his book, but ends up taking them back, realizing
Convinced that he was chosen to save their crumbling Republic, that they make up the core of his identity. It is the implication
Yoav angrily confronts the musicians with the values of the that Paris’s hardships have unleashed Yoav’s creative soul and
French Revolution. But they vanquish his voice with their instru- sparked his desire to become an artist—a vocation of which
ments and resume their show, leaving him helplessly subdued. Lapid himself is living proof.
Like all of Lapid’s movies, Synonyms concludes on a tragic note
of defeat as Yoav finds himself compelled to return to Israel. The Yonca Talu is a filmmaker living in Paris. She grew up in Istanbul
bookend image of him bumping his torso against the closed door and graduated from NYU Tisch.
the language of the devil?” So [the film is] very personal. It’s life more I focused on the film, the more I felt that it’s a film about
material, only served in order to create something. a certain existential condition, an existential music, a kind of
mood, a state of mind—which is at the same time intellectual,
Where did you find Tom Mercier, who plays Yoav, and what emotional, physical, and verbal. So I told myself that I should do
was the process of working with him on the character? whatever I could do to emphasize this state of mind or create
I think when you do a movie that’s based on your own life, even contradictions that could stress this theme even more. And
20 years later, you kind of feel like it should have been you [on whatever doesn’t should be left behind.
screen], even though it’s impossible. You feel as if you give up
something––like somehow, if it were me, it would be even better. How do you prepare or map out the film’s setpieces, like
So you need someone really different, marvelous, almost leg- Yoav dancing on the bar?
endary, in order to make you give away your conception of your For me these are the most moving moments of filmmaking, and
younger self, to abandon it, to a totally different version. And Tom the moments when you start to understand what the camera will
is a different version––I was not like this when I was his age. have to say about all this. In preparation, I need to fill my head
People say that we look a bit alike, but otherwise, no, this is with cinematic images and cinematic movements, so I watch
not me. He had never acted in a film before. I cast him from an around 12 or 13 films a day. But I don’t watch them from begin-
audition––the first scene of the movie was the first time he had ning to end. I fast-forward until I see something that interests
ever faced a camera. And it was marvelous because he was totally me. It’s unfair of course, but in a way, when you do it like this, at
naïve and ignorant––he didn’t know anything about anything. a certain point it becomes like a radiography of cinema. You
He didn’t know that the camera had a lens. At one point he was throw away the plot, and then you deconstruct the cinematic
behind the camera thinking that we were shooting him. But structure and you understand that 99 percent of the films look
when he came to the audition, the casting director and I were more or less like the same movie. Suddenly it’s like looking at the
amazed, because of his strange obsession for details, for the details nuances between Perrier and Evian, and it becomes very clear
in the script. He knows every letter, he analyzes––he’s a little bit like which films are in the 1 percent. Not that it’s your duty to do
religious people in Israel who only read the Bible because they something special, but I think that if you try to grasp the truth of
believe if you read the Bible enough, if you get deeper and deeper, the moment then something special can transpire. In my head
all the wisdom you’ll ever need will be revealed. He’s not one of the truth of the moment is connected to its chaotic aspect.
those actors that suggests other things that aren’t in the script. For
him, everything’s in there, and if you dig deep enough you’ll find it. You mentioned that you came to cinema somewhat late.
And at the same time, it’s inside this obsession that he finds total I never touched a camera until I arrived at film school, when
liberty. The places he takes the script are so extreme that in the end I was already 26 years old. The professional aspects of cinema
it becomes a form of total liberation. never seduced me, never attracted me. And this relates to
If having a soul or mind is to see things differently, I’ve never Synonyms, because it was in Paris where I discovered cinema. It’s
seen someone who sees the way he does, in the most instinctive where my friend Emile introduced me to cinema. We went to see
way. I think that at all times he’s inside truth, rooted inside the films together, and I couldn’t wait for the film to end so we could
truth. But then he gets so near to the truth that you have to ask talk about it. And he explained to me basic terms and techniques
yourself how is he not burned by this fire. like shot, sequence shot, cut, mise en scène. I was so isolated that
I thought the main thing that people do in their lives is to talk
Is it also in the editing where some of the more unresolved about mise en scène! So it was a strange process of discovery, but
plot or character elements are found? for me, from the very beginning, cinema was simply a wonderful
That is also something that existed in the script already, but the option to express something.
AND LIBERTY FOR ALL
ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF UNITED ARTISTS, A REFLECTION ON
INDEPENDENCE (AND OTHER EVERLASTING DECLARATIONS)
BY NICK PINKERTON
INTERGLORIA/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
D.W. Griffith, John Barrymore, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and Joseph M. Schenck
T
he mouse has roared. the success story of the Pickford, who had first been hired at 17 by Griffith as a $5-a-day
last few years in American popular picture-making utility player and shortly became a fan favorite as “The Girl with
has been the triumph of the Walt Disney Company the Curls,” petitioned her Biograph bosses for a publicity build-up
under the stewardship of Bob Iger, the conspicuous to the public announcement of her name, she was turned down,
financial windfall of which all competitors have getting her wish only when she hopped over to Carl Laemmle’s
sought to imitate. It was Iger, CEO of the company Independent Moving Pictures Company in December 1910.
since Michael Eisner’s departure in 2005, who more than any The concept of United Artists belonged to this moment of ascen-
other single individual reoriented Disney toward investment in dant stars flexing their muscle just as surely as Iger’s Disney business
intellectual properties (IP), guiding the company’s film division model is founded on the chastening of the star, to be returned to the
to a policy of producing fewer and more extrav- status of contracted employee. Whereas the Tramp
agant movies based on recognizable franchises only existed so long as Chaplin deigned to play
and characters, ensuring an infinitely renewable him, the Disney model assumes the existence of
store of such properties through the acquisition deathless IP that can be handed from generation to
of Pixar in 2006, Marvel Entertainment in generation as a Jedi lightsaber or Captain America
2009, and Lucasfilm in 2012, as well as through shield is passed from one standard bearer to
cannibalizing Disney’s own back catalog of IP. another. When Harrison Ford, on a recent Today
There is a sense that Iger, a onetime Ithaca Show appearance, scoffed at the prospect of pass-
weatherman turned television executive turned ing the character of Indiana Jones off to another
mega-mogul, has finally cracked the long- actor (“When I’m gone, he’s gone; it’s easy”), this
believed-insoluble problem of the movie busi- was an assertion of the existence of such an ineffa-
ness’s volatility and precariousness, as Disney’s ble quality as “star power” against a system predi-
success under his tenure has prompted a land cated on the idea of actors as replaceable parts.
rush on IP, and rival studios scurry to construct their own cine- When Bradley Cooper, a male A-lister of spandex age who has thus
matic universes while they still have the autonomy to do so. far stayed free of cape-and-mask duty, chose to remake A Star Is
It is the nature of things that today’s monolithic, Goliath-like Born for his directorial debut, the title took on an almost plaintive air
megacorporation must spring from yesteryear’s plucky upstart of wish fulfillment, as if to say that stars can still be born.
T
David. The Disney brothers, Walt and Roy, had once upon a time
been the prototypical long-shot outsiders, beginning their new Hol- he history of american movies has to a significant
lywood cartooning concern in 1923, following the bankruptcy of degree been defined by two opposing impulses, those
Walt’s short-lived Laugh-O-Gram Studios back in Kansas City. As of organization and independence, the latter often a
independent operators, they were beholden to established distribu- reaction to the former. It was the Motion Picture
tors to put their product in front of audiences, and by 1932, when Patents Company’s monopolistic grip on the industry
their ambitions for their enormously lucrative Silly Symphonies from 1908 to 1912 that had driven early cinema’s out-
series far surpassed what was possible with the production advances law pioneers to remote southern California, and it was fear of a
being provided by current partner Columbia Pictures, it made too- merger that might create a comparable superpower that catalyzed
perfect sense to turn to an organization that had become a bastion the creation of United Artists. A convention off the First National
to independent producers, United Artists. Exhibitors’ Circuit at the Alexandria Hotel in downtown Los Ange-
A hundred years old this year, United Artists had been con- les in January 1919 spurred speculation that a union was being bro-
ceived as both a business venture and a utopian artistic endeavor, kered between the two mightiest forces in the American picture
formed in 1919 by a consortium made up of some of the most business: Famous Players-Lasky, which under Adolph Zukor had
commercially dependable, publicly venerated, and critically lauded delivered a coup de grace to the MPPC and become the largest pro-
figures then at work in motion pictures: Douglas Fairbanks and ducer and distributor of feature films in the world, and First
Mary Pickford, soon to be married, D.W. Griffith, and Charlie National Exhibitors’ Circuit, formed by a consortium of influential
Chaplin. (Cowboy star William S. Hart had been attached at one theater owners with the specific intention of creating a bulwark
point but, getting cold feet, moseyed back into the protective against the rapidly expanding power of Famous Players-Lasky and
embrace of Famous Players-Lasky.) its policy of block booking, which asked exhibitors to book an
The idea behind the endeavor was that movie people who had entire season of studio output sight unseen, fobbing off second-rate
their rapport with ticket buyers could do their work just fine, thank product in the package along with premium pictures. First National
you very much, without the studios interfering and keeping a dis- had picked Zukor’s pocket, signing both Chaplin and Pickford to $1
proportionate slice of the profits. International fame on the level million contracts in 1917-18, but the prospect of a merger meant
that the UA principals enjoyed was then a relatively recent phe- they would be left with no competition to go to in order to leverage
nomenon, resultant from the development and synergistic interlac- bargaining power. Facing such a possibility, which in fact never
ing of new mass media at the turn of the last century—motion came to pass, they decided to create the new competition.
pictures, newspapers addressing an increasingly literate population, United Artists was conceived not as an integrated studio opera-
and the soon-to-arrive radio. These developments would elevate tion but as a low-overhead boutique distributor servicing indepen-
UNITED ARTISTS/PHOTOFEST
celebrities to a heretofore unknown strata of recognition: star dent producers, exercising strict quality control over its releases,
sportsmen like Dempsey and Ruth; star tenors like Enrico Caruso; and eschewing block booking policies. After a turbulent early
star politicians like the Woodrow Wilson who attended the Paris period, United Artists attained a reasonable level of financial stabil-
Peace Conference; star directors, like Griffith, and movie stars, like ity under the oversight of Joseph M. Schenck, brought on as presi-
Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Pickford. It was a development that the dent in November 1924, bringing with him considerable business
early studio owners had been loath to see transpire, fearing that if acumen and his wife, the star Norma Talmadge, who would hence-
screen actors were to become known brand names, those actors forth be delivering her pictures to UA.
would enjoy greater bargaining power in negotiations. So when Tino Balio’s two-volume history of UA as a corporate entity is
much the best work on the studio of its type, covering the com- of United Artists, now
pany’s profits, deficits, and boardroom decision-making in enor-
United Artists was marked in its logo as “A
mous detail. The Introduction of Balio’s study, which recalls a conceived not as an Transamerica Company.”
meeting in Vevey, Switzerland, with an elderly Chaplin, suggests integrated studio Financial reversals notwith-
however an avenue for further study, as Chaplin, in Balio’s words, operation but as a standing, UA was a power
advises the author to “focus the story of United Artists on the pur- player in the era of New
poses of the owners rather than on the business of the company.” low-overhead bou- Hollywood, so-called. They
Balio would opt to scan the legible ledgers left behind rather than tique distributor ser- inked a three-picture deal
such intangibles, but it can reasonably be assumed that the “pur- vicing independent with Robert Altman. They
poses” that Chaplin refers to had something to do with art—per producers, exercising distributed the Mirisches’
the press release that went out following UA’s formation, pursuing The Landlord (1970), the
the “furtherance of the artistic welfare of the moving picture indus- strict quality control directorial debut of Hal
try” and protecting their public from “mediocre productions and over its releases, and Ashby, who’d cut the 1967
machine-made entertainment.” eschewing block Academy Award–winner In
So how did they make out? Well, success as determined by profit the Heat of the Night, and
margins is a clear-cut matter; success as determined in the currency
booking policies. later Ashby’s lousy, lauded
of culture, less so. Notwithstanding, one can understand something Coming Home (1978). They
of UA’s priorities in its release schedule. Broken Blossoms (1919), the helped to establish two of
first film that Griffith delivered to UA, had in fact been made under the decade’s key star personas, distributing Woody Allen’s Annie
the auspices of Famous Players-Lasky, but was off-loaded as Zukor Hall (1977) and the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Rocky (1976), whose
doubted the commercial prospects of a film about the relationship producer, Irwin Winkler, leveraged that film’s success to ensure the
between much-misused white waif Lillian Gish and a gentle Chinese completion of its evil twin, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980).
man set against a Dickensian background of squalor and poverty— And as the decade wound down, they seemed to have a hand in
UA took it over, and the acclaim that came with it. If Chaplin would every extravagant auteurist folly out there: Scorsese’s New York, New
have been Chaplin in any case, would he have had quite so easy a York (1977), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), and,
time making a silent film like City Lights four years after The Jazz finally, fatally, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980).
Singer (1927) if he hadn’t owned the shop? Aside from movies pro- Initially budgeted at $7.5M, delivered at $44 million with P&A,
duced by its founders, UA became a destination for independent and bringing in only $3.5M domestic, Heaven’s Gate was a financial
producers and their films, among them The Salvation Hunters debacle of impressive proportions, but almost at the moment of its
(1925), a proto-neorealist work shot around the drabber districts of desultory release Cimino’s film would come to stand for something
San Pedro by a 30-year-old unknown named Josef von Sternberg. more than bad box office. It would become a cautionary tale, an
O
object lesson in what happens when creative ambition is allowed to
f united artists’ famous founders, only go unchecked by front-office pragmatism, foundering UA and
Chaplin’s fame was undiminished through the making it, per Peter Biskind, “the symbol of a discredited, director-
1930s, and so new independent producers, like centric system.” This would be the ultimate fulfillment of the
Samuel Goldwyn, would become essential to the much-quoted apercu issued by the head of Metro Pictures, Richard
studio’s continued health. After those of its A. Rowland, upon hearing of the formation of United Artists back
framers and Goldwyn’s, the most important in 1919: “The inmates are taking over the asylum.”
names in the history of UA are those of partners Robert Benjamin It was Rowland who, at the fateful Alexandria Hotel convention,
and Arthur B. Krim, the latter a former chairman of Poverty Row had been quoted as saying that “motion pictures must cease to be a
mainstay Eagle-Lion Films, who in 1951 came to Pickford and game and become a business.” This was wishful thinking, for the
Chaplin with a proposition for the stalled company, stating that movie business has always, when considered purely as a business,
given a free hand they could make UA profitable within a decade, been a bad one, subject to the unpredictable whims of a fickle public
and asking for half of the company if delivered. whose shifting enthusiasms generally prove impossible to accurately
Krim and Benjamin’s intervention happened to coincide with gauge in advance. After Heaven’s Gate, Transamerica decided they’d
the dissolution of the studio system and the rise of the independent seen enough of show business and sold UA to Tracinda Corp., also
producer, and they had a knack for picking winners: producer- then MGM’s owner, who effected a merger. In 1983 the company’s
directors like Stanley Kramer and Otto Preminger, or producers
like Joseph E. Levine and the Mirisch brothers. As “Hollywood”
became a decentralized phenomenon, UA’s operations became
international in scope, importing the Mirisch-underwritten Pink
Panther films that Blake Edwards made in his Swiss exile and the
Italian Westerns that Clint Eastwood made with Sergio Leone, dis-
tributing several landmarks of European mid-century modernism
through Lopert Pictures Corporation, cashing in on Beatlemania
via Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965)
and doing still better with Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli’s
KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
adaptations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, an early “cine-

matic universe” model replete with revolving-door lead actor.
In 1967, still holding a hot hand, Krim and Benjamin sold out to
Transamerica Corporation, a holding company moving into con-
glomerate diversification. This wasn’t the end of their involvement
with the company, but it was the beginning of the final act in the life From left: Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin, and Griffith
longtime headquarters at 729 Seventh Ave. in Manhattan went on Chaplin averred, that desire for artistic control, remains one of the
the market; in ’86 a new boss, Ted Turner, rechristened MGM/UA as animating impulses of not only American cinema but of most any
MGM Entertainment Co., effectively ending the company’s nearly cinematic endeavor aspiring to a commercial existence, with all the
70-year continuous run. Since the UA name has passed between dif- compromises that implies.
A
ferent hands, some variation of the logo has cropped up in various
circumstances—here before Showgirls (1995), there as a temporary nd yet, filmmakers slog on. one possible solution
home for Tom Cruise, the nearest thing to a modern-day Fairbanks, is to have access to a sympathetic ear and a massive
and his production partner Paula Wagner. personal fortune, like that of Annapurna Pictures’
Such reversals are not unheard of, for nothing is certain in the Megan Ellison, daughter of the fourth-wealthiest per-
movie racket but uncertainty. While sex and glamor have consis- son in the United States, whose company identity is
tently brought in money, those looking for a safe return on their based on nurturing talent rather than IP (though
investment would do better to look elsewhere, for when the hits recent developments suggest there are limits even to her liberty).
and misses are all tallied up, profit margins in the modern film Another is to have an enormous amount of moxie, as did Coppola,
game tend to top out around 10 percent. As Disney under Iger has whose American Zoetrope headquarters at the Sentinel Building in
begun in recent years to routinely pull in 30 percent, however, there San Francisco stood in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid dur-
is a sense that they’ve beaten the house. Ben Fritz, in his 2018 book ing the years when it housed the parent company of United Artists,
The Big Picture, which narrates the downfall of the star-friendly an organization that Coppola periodically imagined himself taking
Sony Pictures under Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton and the rise control of, and even took a run at acquiring in 1999. The same strug-
of the new-look IP-oriented Disney under Iger, describes the situa- gle evident in Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream—talent pit-
tion thusly: “Though Disney still has flops, it has fewer than any ted against money and management—defined this year’s Netflix
other studio—fewer than anyone ever dreamed was possible in a production High Flying Bird, directed by Coppola acolyte Steven
business that has for decades seen more failures than successes and Soderbergh, who has thought long and hard and in public about
has been compared to riding a roller coaster. Disney has, in short, how to operate as an independent, and put those ideas into practice.
taken a huge chunk of the risk out of a risky business.” Rather than the total takeover perhaps envisaged by the UA
And they’ve taken a huge chunk of the business, too. On breakaways or Coppola and the New Hollywood vandals, Soder-
12:02 a.m. of Wednesday, March 20, 2019, a consolidation of bergh seems focused on living to film again on his own terms,
assets that comes as near to a stab at entertainment industry hege- picture by picture. “The idea of cinema as I’m defining it is not
mony as anything seen since United States v. Paramount Pictures, on the radar in the studios,” he stated in a 2013 keynote at the
Inc. gave the death knell to the vertically integrated studio system, 56th San Francisco International Film Festival, which found him
as Disney acquired the film and television assets belonging to 21st resigned to accept that inasmuch as there will henceforth be
Century Fox for a cool $71.3 billion. Beneath fanboys’ hosannas artistry in American movies it will largely be found in small films
over the inevitability of an Avengers/X-Men crossover, faint mur- that live and die on the festival circuit and curated streaming ser-
murs could be heard regarding the 3,000 Fox employees laid off; the vices, as the multiplex will exclusively come to resemble a Dave &
uncertain future for projects begun under the pre-merger adminis- Buster’s–esque cacophony of dumb sensation, the endgame of a
tration; and the fate of the Fox back catalog in the hands of Disney, system geared to produce, as the UA founders stated a century
whose draconian hold on their IP is well-known to repertory ago, mediocre productions and machine-made entertainment.
programmers the world over. Will seeing most of John Ford Resistance may not quite be futile, but few who have the clout to
projected on celluloid be going the way of the Old Frontier? undertake it seem to have the will to do so; while Chaplin went
As negotiations pertaining to this latest expansion of the it almost alone, Robert Downey Jr., who played the Tramp in a
entertainment industrial complex massing in Burbank carried on ponderous 1992 biopic, is content to let his Marvel Studios
this February, the centennial of United Artists rolled by, marked checks clear. Meanwhile Joe and Anthony Russo, dependable
by an announcement that a joint distribution venture pooling the Marvel house directors who were mentored by Soderbergh after
resources of Annapurna Pictures, MGM, and Orion Pictures was he wandered into a screening of their still-unreleased 1997 debut
to be called United Artists Releasing. Thus spoke MGM World- Pieces at a Slamdance screening, have begun construction on
wide Motion Picture Group president Jonathan Glickman on the AGBO, announced as an independent, artist-run movie studio.
occasion: “The United Artists brand is a natural fit, as our joint The idea, Joe told Esquire in a recent profile, was “to try to pay
venture was founded around the same principle as its namesake: back our karma of debt to the universe that we owed Soderbergh
to help filmmakers main- for what he did for us,” adding that “the closest model to what
tain financial and artistic The movie business we’re trying to accomplish is United Artists.”
control over the marketing United Artists remains both a touchstone and a warning, to
and distribution of their
has always, when con- be invoked at the onset of any such venture as that which the
diverse slate of films.” sidered purely as a Russos propose—a DreamWorks SKG, for example, another tale
It’s a nice gesture, if business, been a bad of vaulting ambition brought low. It remains to be seen if the
hardly one to set the world one, subject to the stated intentions for AGBO will go the way of George Lucas’s
on fire, but we are a long long-threatened ventures into experimental films, and even with
way removed from the unpredictable whims of the best of intentions, the distrust of any enterprise handled
entertainment industry that a fickle public whose by creatures as quixotic as show folk runs deep, as though
Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pick- shifting enthusiasms Voltaire’s jibe about the Holy Roman Empire (“neither Holy,
ford, and Griffith stood nor Roman...”) might apply just as well to the idea of “United
astride, both larger and
generally prove impos- Artists.” But UA is as much an idea as a business interest—a con-
smaller than our own. All sible to accurately cept that, once named, cannot be forgotten. It has haunted Hol-
the same—the “purposes” of gauge in advance. lywood for a hundred years now—and it will continue to do so
the UA founders to which after Anaheim has fallen into the sea.
Claudine (x 2)
DIVIDED WE FALL
FOR THIRD WORLD CINEMA CORPORATION, SURVIVING AS AN INDEPENDENT
CREATIVE FORCE WAS ONLY ONE OF MANY CHALLENGES
BY MONICA CASTILLO
T
he story of third world cinema corporation—a heartwarming story or Carroll and Jones’s impressive perfor-
fledgling production house founded by Black and mances; it also includes a pointed critique of a welfare system
Latino artists in 1971—is at once inspirational and that seems designed to thwart the couple’s happiness.
heartbreaking. An earnest “for us, by us” effort to Claudine was a preview of the kinds of movies that might have
tell stories the studios would have never picked up, come from Third World Corporation had it survived: heartfelt
the company staffed its productions with people stories that ditched stereotypes for complex characters. And in
who had been or would have been systemically kept outside stu- terms of representation off screen, fully 28 of the 37 production
dio gates. Throughout most of Hollywood’s first century, few jobs on the film’s set had been filled by Black or Latino talent.
studios had produced Black- and Latino-centric movies, claim- That level of inclusivity didn’t come from a studio mandate—the
ing they were risky or not of interest to general audiences. From push came from Third World Cinema Corporation, which set up a
the silent era through the 1950s, segregated theaters created an training program, struck deals with unions to get their students
independent market for movies by Black filmmakers for Black membership, and helped place many of their first alums into job
audiences, and later, new independent filmmaking efforts arose opportunities once thought to be closed off to them. On its release
with the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, followed by the rise of in 1974, Claudine went on to find a sizable audience, earning $6
blaxploitation, the L.A. Rebellion, and Chicano Cinema. But the million at the box office, or roughly $31 million today.
problem of representation persisted within the studios, and at a Third World Cinema Corporation had been founded by Davis
more fundamental level, little was done to promote talent from with Hannah Weinstein, a producer who had fled the States because
underrepresented backgrounds. of McCarthyism. Davis became the company’s President, and Fra-
Then there was Third World Cinema Corporation, an unusual zier—an actor turned activist after the death of Dr. Martin Luther
20TH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP./EVERETT COLLECTION
presence even in the much-mythologized annals of independent King Jr.—was appointed to be the Administrator over the training
studios—the rare film company where the board would be led by program. When Davis announced his new initiative to establish a
people of color: actors Ossie Davis, Rita Moreno, Cliff Frazier, production and training studio, the news of a “minority-run” film
Brock Peters; and writers Piri Thomas and John O. Killens. At the company with a distribution deal through a major studio earned
height of the blaxploitation era, Black intellectuals and activists headlines in The New York Times, The New York Post, and Variety.
had worried that the defining narratives of their communities Frazier, one of the last surviving board members of TWC,
would center on street violence, prostitution, and drugs. Movies recalled the significance of the commercial and critical apprecia-
from Third World Cinema (TWC) were to serve as antidotes to tion in a recent interview: “It gave us a prominence that we had
those narratives. And Claudine was its success story. never achieved before. Whites collaborating [on] a Black film
Distributed by 20th Century Fox but produced by the Third and not controlling it.” Carroll earned Oscar and Golden Globe
World Cinema Corporation, Claudine follows a struggling nominations for her performance; Jones also picked up a Golden
mother (Diahann Carroll) of six as she hides her income as a Globe nomination, as did Curtis Mayfield’s song “On and On.” A
domestic worker from a nosy welfare worker. She’s more or less handful of the first TWC training graduates worked on Claudine,
given up on love until a friendly garbageman, Roop (James Earl like assistant cameraman Audley Simpson and assistant editors
Jones), takes an interest. The movie is remarkable not just for its Sharon Brown and Carey Beth Cryor.
W
hen third world cinema productions Various factors led TWC to cease production, the most popularly
was first announced, Davis said he antici- cited reason being that the city’s political winds had shifted, cutting
pated producing five feature films in the off grant money and stifling union jobs. Not enough private funds
next two years. One was to be a biopic came forward to keep operations going. “Money ran out,” said
of Billie Holiday starring Diana Sands, Frazier, who today runs the Harlem arts nonprofit Dwyer Cultural
although the untimely death of the actress Center, much of which is dedicated to the legacy of Davis and Ruby
(also originally cast as Claudine) and the 1972 Diana Ross vehi- Dee, his partner. According to Frazier, the TWC isn’t quite dead,
cle Lady Sings the Blues essentially nixed the idea. The June 1972 only absorbed under the umbrella of the International Communi-
issue of Black World anticipated TWC screen adaptations of cations Association, which was established in 1986 to also include
Puerto Rican writer Thomas’s Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand the Community Film Workshop Council and Institute of New
starring Rita Moreno, with Davis slated to direct, and Killens’s Cinema Artists, a training organization. It has since taken decades
And Then We Heard the Thunder. A 1974 dispatch in The New for Hollywood to adopt or adapt TWC’s training program model.
York Post claimed that an adaptation of Thomas’s Seven Long Not long after the end of TWC’s run, a new wave of indepen-
Times would be directed by fellow Puerto Rican Jose Garcia. At dent Black and Latino filmmakers arrived—Spike Lee, John
one point, there was also talk of TWC purchasing the Filmways Singleton, Julie Dash, Luis Valdez, and Gregory Nava, to name
studios in Harlem. but a few. However, by the end of the ’90s, progress once again
The company’s eventual follow-up to Claudine was the biopic waned until the recent push for diversity and inclusion reignited
Greased Lighting, about one of the first Black stock car drivers in calls for Hollywood to open up its studio gates. Some filmmakers
NASCAR, Wendell Scott, starring Richard Pryor and Pam Grier. are taking a more active hand in mentoring or independently
But reviews were middling and the 1977 film did not earn much producing their own projects, with Lee employing NYU students
of a following. Weinstein produced both Claudine and Greased on his sets and Ava DuVernay seeking out women directors on
Lightning—but the next Pryor film she produced, Stir Crazy, was Queen Sugar. TWC’s plan to create a studio just as invested in
not made for TWC. In 1975, an article in the Amsterdam News was training and empowering underrepresented filmmakers as it was
wondering if the wheels were coming off the once-promising in independently producing their stories may have petered out,
company. Third World Cinema produced one last film in 1980, a but the core ethos of its mission has yet to fade.
documentary on painter Romare Bearden for PBS called Bearden
Plays Bearden. James Earl Jones returned to narrate Nelson E. Monica Castillo is a film critic and features editor for CherryPicks.
Breen’s film, which also involved the participation of James Bald- Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wash-
win, Alvin Ailey, and Ntozake Shange. ington Post, NPR, RogerEbert.com, and elsewhere.
Criterion Collection Edition #97: Do the R

Right Thing
THIRTY YEARS AFTER DO THE RIGHT THING, THE REVOLUTIONARY ACTING LEGACY
OF OSSIE DAVIS AND RUBY DEE STILL YIELDS LESSONS TO LEARN BEYOND REALISM
BY SHONNI ENELOW
FEEL
THE
LOVE PHOTOFEST
A Raisin in the Sun
A
t the end of spike lee’s do the right thing, in 1967, Davis spoke at the famous meeting of the Clergy and
after the murder of Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) by Laity Concerned about Vietnam, where Martin Luther King Jr.
the police and the fire that destroys Sal’s Pizzeria, came out against the war; in 1968, Davis spoke at his memorial.
we see morning return to the neighborhood In between, they campaigned, wrote letters, made speeches,
through the eyes of its elders, Da Mayor and published articles and responses––and performed, wrote, and
Mother Sister, whose roles in the film depend produced theater and film. As a couple who frequently worked
on audiences’ intimate familiarity with the actors playing them: together, they are among the rare successful married artists who
Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. The conclusion finds them in Mother have become iconic as paragons of marriage itself; as performers
Sister’s bedroom where Da Mayor wakes up: “Hope the neighbor- equal in stature and lauded as both artists and public figures, they
hood is still standing,” he says; “we’re still standing,” she replies. remain unmatched in American culture.
They move toward the window, which frames them as they peer Today, in 2019, 30 years after Do the Right Thing’s release, as
out, surveying the wounded block, as the camera spins to more and more mid-century icons recede through natural or
Mookie (Spike Lee) below. unnatural attrition (people die;
So powerful is the symbolic histories get rewritten), it’s a good time
presence of Dee and Davis in Do the to reassess the film vis-à-vis Dee and
Right Thing that their performances Davis, and think more deeply about
almost demand to be read allegorically. what it means that Lee presents these
And they have been, since the film’s two as ancestors and antecedents. It
1989 release: reviewing in The New also feels important, as mid-century
York Times, Vincent Canby wrote performance styles themselves recede,
that Dee and Davis “preside over it, to reassess how the film’s questioning
as if ushering in a new era of black of the politics of representation
filmmaking.” When their shared archive extends to acting. If the question at the
was acquired by the Schomburg Center heart of Do the Right Thing is how to
for Research in Black Culture last year, conceive post–“Martin and Malcolm”
Jennifer Schuessler implicitly cast the black political action, what does the
film as the culmination of their lives’ film present as post–“Ruby and Ossie”
work as the first couple of African- black political acting?
I
American acting, tracing their paths
from Harlem theater in the 1940s, t’s rarely observed that so
through many years of lauded perfor- many of Lee’s movies are ex-
mances and political activism, to plicitly about acting, despite
the crowning cinematic moment of the attention given to the film-
Do the Right Thing. maker’s broader critique of
Lee’s film directly invites this cinematic representation. But just
reading, but the focus on this one think about the emphasis on acting––
particular allegory––the generational crucially, vocal acting, a distinction I’ll
allegory––has obscured something return to––in 2018’s BlacKkKlansman,
important about the way these a film whose narrative follows the
performances function in the film. On the set of Do the Right Thing creation of a character for perfor-
Dee and Davis are not there simply to mance. Or think about Bamboozled,
stand in for their generation; they are, So powerful is the symbolic another film that is not just about
more specifically, representatives of a presence of Dee and Davis in representative images but about
performance culture that was directly embodiment. Looking at Do the Right
connected to the politics of a historical
Do the Right Thing that their Thing through this lens, we can start
moment. Ossie Davis and Ruby performances almost demand to rethink its own critique of
Dee, actors, writers, organizers, and to be read allegorically. representation, which, again, is not
activists widely referred to as the “first only about images of identification––
couple of the Civil Rights Movement,” though the conflict at the center of the
and credited by Oprah Winfrey as narrative begins when Buggin’ Out
forerunners to her own “crossover” success as an African- (Giancarlo Esposito) objects to the exclusion of black celebrities
American public figure, were everywhere in the 1960s. Already from Sal’s “Wall of Fame”––but also about portrayals of character.
famous for their theater work, particularly their performances in Do the Right Thing is an anthology of performance styles:
UNIVERSAL/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in 1959 (Dee originated from the music-video dance number of Tina (Rosie Perez),
the role of Ruth; Davis took over the role of Walter Lee from framed by theatrical lighting, that opens the credits, to the Greek
Sidney Poitier), and for their support of blacklistee Paul Robeson chorus of ML (Paul Benjamin), Coconut Sid (Frankie Faison),
(for which they were subpoenaed by the House Un-American and Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris), the film presents a collage
Activities Committee), they boast a dual biography that reads like of theatrical genres, each character or group of characters with
a timeline of progressive politics: in 1963, they were emcees at the their distinct theatrical mode. Running through the episodes that
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and formed the open the film, we move from the smooth radio-voice tones of
Association of Artists for Freedom with James Baldwin, Odetta, Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), the deejay; to the
and others; in 1965, Davis gave the eulogy for Malcolm X; in evangelical street hawking of Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith); to
1966, they both participated in the Read-In for Peace in Vietnam; the mid-century realism of Sal (Danny Aiello) and his sons Pino
(John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson), limits of psychological acting. Davis’s
with their Arthur Miller–esque drama of white,
As a couple who performance throughout the film oscillates
ethnic, lower-middle-class disillusionment; to frequently worked between sweetness and abasement, and
the old-fashioned, vaudeville-like conflict of Da together, Dee and sometimes the two combine, like when he
Mayor and Mother Sister, who play out their Davis are among the saves the child Eddie from being hit by a car,
sparring to a scoring of antebellum strings. gently chides his mother for spanking him,
These last two genres are worth thinking rare successful married then immediately withdraws from her
about together, because if the film proposes artists who have indignation. Here, as usual, he’s shot from
that the acting style of Dee and Davis is the become iconic as above, as he sits on a stoop, staring up at the
ancestor of Lee, Esposito, and Nunn’s, then paragons of marriage teenagers from a position of weakness, and
that of Aiello and Turturro is its antithesis. his gaze is vague, even as he defends himself.
Theirs is the still-dominant aesthetic of itself; as performers He’s emotional, but ineffectual, subdued; his
American performance: psychological realism, equal in stature and voice wavers, but his diction is a little too
colloquially known as “method acting,” which lauded as both artists self-justifying, a little too pat. It’s both
is not just a technique for creating a character, moving and pathetic, both sincerely felt and a
but also a narrative form. When Aiello
and public figures, shade too much. The camera slowly moves
suggested to Lee that he include an extra they remain unmatched toward his face, but as the monologue goes
scene between Sal and Pino and improvised in American culture. on, we hear Ahmad and his friends laughing
its dialogue with Turturro––as the highly in the background. His story comes off as a
publicized story goes––it was a scene that free-floating plea for sympathy that is too
carefully delineated these characters’ feelings, psychology, and easy to wave off––the only sympathetic ear comes from Ella
backstory: how long Sal has owned the restaurant, how his son (Christa Rivers), the lone girl in the group, who sets her jaw
feels about it, why he holds onto it, with each element of context against Ahmad’s aggression and stares at Da Mayor in silent
demonstrating Sal’s psychological motivations. Aiello was support. Left with the contempt of children ringing out around
nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor him, Da Mayor watches the boys go with shaky despair. (Lest we
that year, not insignificantly because of the character depth think, though, that this rejection of backstory spells a rejection
communicated by this scene, and its role in drawing sympathy of realism tout court, it’s worth remembering that the realism
for his character from the Academy’s presumed audience, a white of Lorraine Hansberry, interpersonally nuanced as it might
audience. The story of Aiello’s creative role reveals not just his be, was also critical of investing too much explanatory weight
importance as an actor in shaping the film, but also the ways in in psychological history.)
B
which actors in general rely on particular understandings of the
content of dramatic character, and how those ideas affect the ut the most telling way lee interrupts psycho-
meanings of the performances they produce. logical realism is through sound. To return to the
And this particular understanding of character is entirely episodes that open the film: in each, Lee shows
related to race. Aiello is part of a lineage of American acting that characters and scenes that are both recognizable
not only developed concurrently with but also played a role in and, more or less directly, aurally estranged. The
the assimilation of European ethnic groups––Jews and Italians, Southern fiddle that underscores Mother Sister and
most centrally––into whiteness. The black actors who succeeded Da Mayor’s gendered schtick ambivalently frames it as a scene
within this system (as James Baldwin, at one point close with from the slave-owning South; Señor Love Daddy’s inverted
Elia Kazan, discovered) did so by conforming to a set of grammar creates linguistic friction within his smooth tones, in a
performance standards that many black artists came to reject. poetic frustration of easy comprehension; Smiley’s severe stutter
In fact, what seems to have been missed by the audience from similarly breaks up and reconstructs his commercial pitch. And
whom this performance style garnered so much praise is the way throughout the film, sound interrupts the characteristic rhythms
in which Lee subtly critiques it throughout the film. When of psychological realism—as when a scene between Pino and Vito,
Radio Raheem derisively asks of Sal, “Who the fuck he think he sweatily fighting in the pantry of the restaurant, cuts abruptly to
is, Don Corleone and shit?” naming the character’s behavior as the up-tempo saxophone from Radio Raheem’s boombox.
an inauthentic and unsuccessful performance, his reference Consider the role of Radio Raheem in general, who (as his
encompasses both the ethnic content of Coppola’s film and the name suggests) is wholly identified with sound. When, at the
acting style associated with it. And the priority of psychological beginning of the film’s dramatic climax in Sal’s restaurant that
backstory––another key feature of psychological realism––is leads to Radio Raheem’s murder, Sal destroys his boombox,
called into question when Da Mayor is insulted by Ahmad it’s the cessation of sound rather than a release of sound that
(Steve White), one of four teenagers bouncing around the spells violence. To understand the significance of this gesture,
neighborhood. “What you know about me?” Da Mayor sputters. contrast it with the typical rhythm of method acting: the build
“Unless you done stood in the door and listened to your five to sonic release in the form of a yell. Yelling in method acting
hungry children crying for bread . . . unless you done done that, comes at the dramatic climax of an (Aristotelian) rising action.
you don’t know me, my pain, my hurt, my feelings...” “I hope you Here, it’s the opposite. The climactic scene has been layered
finished your little soliloquy, man,” Ahmad spits back. “You’re with noise throughout, starting with the entrance of Ahmad,
right, I don’t want to know your pain, I don’t care to know your Ella, and cohorts Punchy and Cee––whose cacophonous,
pain, you’re the one who put yourself in this situation, man!” friendly-hostile chatter is its own kind of boombox, filling each
Like Radio Raheem’s put-down, Ahmad frames Da Mayor’s scene they’re in. The entrance of Radio Raheem, blaring Public
confession as an unconvincing and bankrupt performance. Enemy’s “Fight the Power” with Buggin’ Out and Smiley in tow,
The way Davis plays this scene, and the way Lee constructs it, shifts the center of the noise and instigates the conflict between
reveal a good deal about the film’s investment in marking the the sound of the radio (which Sal objects to) and the images on
Do the Right Thing
the wall (which Buggin’ Out does). Soon, black performances of Do the Right Thing:
everyone is yelling over the music; the release
Da Mayor and Mother offer an alternative to visual representation,
of Sal’s anger, as he smashes the radio, is the Sister’s final actions, instilling a mode of performance that evades
end of the music and the end of the yelling. taken as tableaux, geographic capture.
As the camera pulls back to watch the fight form a response—not The scream, the embrace, the move
that follows, we see a billboard on the side toward the window: Da Mayor and Mother
of Sal’s building: “Maximum Performance a resolution—to racist Sister’s final actions, taken as tableaux, form
for Audio Devices.” violence and black a response––not a resolution––to racist
Sound, separated from dialogue or oppression, one that violence and black oppression, one that
linear action—the aural interruption of symbolically holds not symbolically holds not only the continuously
what performance theorist and Black resonating core of Lee’s film but also the
Studies scholar Fred Moten, in his poetic- only the continuously resonance of Dee and Davis’s own politics.
philosophical trilogy consent not to be a resonating core of The words many used to describe Davis after
single being, calls a “political radiophonics”— Lee’s film but also the his death in 2005 were “a bridge,” someone
is also the content of Mother Sister’s key who brought people of great differences
moment in the film: her scream. After the
resonance of Dee and in political and social outlook together.
police arrive at the scene of the fire and Davis’s own politics. The metaphor is apt for Dee and Davis’s
begin beating and arresting people, we hear portrayals in Do the Right Thing as well: a
the sound of a woman screaming “No!” over bridge between performance styles, from
and over again, and watch Da Mayor discover Mother Sister the nostalgic routine of their banter at the beginning of the
keening, her arms raised in anguish. The scream goes on for film, to the ambivalent psychology of Da Mayor’s soliloquy,
close to a minute, and for more than half of that time we hear and finally to the screaming embrace. This is to say that the
but don’t see her; the discovery of her body as the origin of her work their performances do formally is what enables Lee as
voice is the beginning of its subduing, as Da Mayor encases her Mookie to do what he does narratively: engaging with all but
UNIVERSAL/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
in an embrace. It’s an ambivalent moment, a bookend with Da not absorbing any single perspective of the neighborhood,
Mayor’s earlier efforts to diffuse the rising conflict after Radio moving between and (to borrow a phrase from Moten) not-in-
Raheem’s death: comforting her, but muffling her expression. between differences while maintaining the limitless potential
Moten writes about the famous scream of Frederick Douglass’s that the film calls love. And that, in fact, might be the most
Aunt Hester, described in his autobiography, as “diffused in profound symbolic work that Dee and Davis do in Do the Right
but not diluted by black music in particular and black art in Thing––theirs is the love we can both hear and see.
general”; for him, black performance “seeks after what the
scream contains (and pours out),” a resistance of the object––of Shonni Enelow is the author of Method Acting and Its Discon-
the black person as object––that constitutes an alternative to a tents: On American Psycho-drama (Northwestern University Press).
visually defined representation. This is what sound does in the She is an associate professor of English at Fordham University.
NELLY KAPLAN: CYTHERE/PARIS FILM/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK; CHARLES AND LUCIE & THE PLEASURE OF LOVE: © LOBSTER
| BY NELLIE KILLIAN
BURN IT ALL DOWN

I
t could be the premise of one of nelly kaplan’s films: women’s liberation was ever conceived of . . . very conscious of her
a young woman arrives in France with little to her name beauty and charisma.” Consciousness of beauty and charisma is
beyond $50, a letter of introduction to Henri Langlois, great the central currency in Kaplan’s work, where sexual relationships
beauty, and extreme magnetism. She has affairs with titans of are often brutally transactional and the women are never passive
film and literature; begins her own career as an artist; debuts in their own affairs. Kaplan writes of her early relationships, “the
with an incendiary, widely admired film; and yet remains a encounters with Gance-Breton-Soupault were of capital importance.
resolute outsider for the next 50 years. We brought each other an intense intellectual exaltation.” To cast
Kaplan was born in Buenos Aires in 1931 to a Russian-Jewish Kaplan as a naïf, mentored by great men, seems like the type of trap
family. Growing bored of her bourgeois life, she set sail for Le Havre a man would fall into in one her films. Critic Joan Dupont describes
to represent the Argentine Cinémathèque in France in 1953. Shortly the director’s presence in terms worthy of one of Kaplan’s heroines:
after arriving in Paris, a 22-year-old Kaplan caught the eye of a 64- at the Argentine Cinémathèque, “she was a regular there, and she
year-old Abel Gance at the Cinémathèque Française. She became his was smashing”; she “conquered Gance.” In Kaplan’s world, men
mistress and collaborator. While it wasn’t an official apprenticeship, underestimate self-possessed women at their own peril.
he agreed to teach her to direct and she was an essential personal In her screwball kidnapping-gone-wrong farce, Papa, the Lil’
and professional right-hand: assistant and second unit director, Boats (1971), Sheila White plays Vénus “Cookie” de Palma, the
confidante, promoter, actress, and muse. She wrote a set diary of ditzy, bon vivant daughter of a shipping magnate (Sydney
the making of Austerlitz and remained a loyal disciple long after Chaplin). Abducted by a bumbling crew of low-level hoods,
their tempestuous relationship ended, paying homage to Napoleon, Cookie works the angles available to her: seducing the oafish
Gance’s magnum opus, with both a monograph and documentary. Hippolyte (played by Michel Lonsdale, styled like Meat Loaf) and
At the same time, Kaplan became involved with the surrealists, cocky Luc, stoking suspicion in the canny Marylène, stroking the
having affairs with both André Breton and Philippe Soupault. ego of the outmatched ringleader Marc (Michel Bouquet), and
She began to work as a columnist and television commentator in playing the odds on her father’s affection. Kaplan takes full
France, holding forth on film, art, and literature. She wrote a advantage of White’s doe eyes, hammy mug, and penchant for
collection of surrealist short stories under the pen name Belen, slapstick physical comedy. Her cons aren’t particularly convincing
which she would later use for an erotic novel. As her relation- to anyone but her marks, but that’s all it takes. One by one, she
ship with Gance waned, she began directing her own short maneuvers Luc to kill Hippolyte, Marylène to kill Luc, and so on,
documentaries about artists, culminating in Le regard Picasso until she’s the last one standing, with her father’s ransom safely
(The Picasso Look, 1967). All before making her acclaimed first buried for later retrieval. Cookie ends the film driving off with
feature, 1969’s A Very Curious Girl. father, whose relief at her return is mixed with pride that his
Laura Mulvey began a recent introduction to A Very Curious daughter has likely foxed him out of a ransom. His little party girl
Girl at Light Industry by noting that Kaplan was a “larger than might make a cunning capitalist after all.
life character, very conscious of herself as a liberated woman before In A Very Curious Girl, Bernadette Lafont’s Marie adopts a
NELLY KAPLAN’S FEARLESS FILMS LAY WASTE TO THE BATTLEGROUND OF THE SEXES
WITH REMORSELESS SATIRE THAT HASN’T ALWAYS BEEN GREETED WITH A SMILE
Clockwise from top left:

Charles and Lucie,
Néa, Nelly Kaplan,
The Pleasure of Love,
Papa, the Lil’ Boats
diametrically opposed type. Kaplan has an open window (along with an earlier
described the film as the story of “a witch who
Nelly Kaplan’s known masturbation scene, it’s one of the few warm,
doesn’t let herself be burned; she sets fire to the for her interest in sensual depictions of sex in Kaplan’s body of
others.” A gypsy, Marie begins the film as an eroticism, but her films work). Sibylle’s investigation is often clinical,
isolated maid to a cruel mistress, groped and stymie titillation. Her at one point inviting a hopeful teen suitor
degraded at every turn. When her mother is hit that she calls “Zits” into her writing sanctuary
by a car and left for dead on the road and her
films were heralded to have his genitals probed with a pen and
beloved goat is murdered, she takes up residence for their radicality, but inspected with a magnifying glass.
in her mother’s remote shed. Soon Marie has she worked in main- Axel takes an interest in Sibylle, reading her
transformed her new home into a one-woman stream generic forms. pages and contracting her into a shady, secret
whorehouse/pagan temple/collaged art project. arrangement where he’ll publish her novel
Unlike Cookie, she doesn’t need a complicated under an assumed name. Sibylle begins taking
con; she is simply beautiful and willing to accept her boat, L’Atalante, to his nearby chateau to
money for sex. Just about every man in the village takes the bait. spy on his rendezvous. A typical easily flattered Kaplan man, Axel
There is no moralizing or sentimentalizing her chosen attributes the verisimilitude of Sibylle’s prose to uncanny insight
profession—it’s a customer service job and she performs the rather than simple voyeurism. She enlists Axel to consummate her
minimum level of physical and emotional labor to get through erotic interest, and these scenes, central to the conventions of the
each transaction. The men try to control her rates, shame her, genre, are hard to stomach. Zacharias was 19 when the film was
rape her without payment, but she remains ice-cold, buying a shot, but reads even younger than the character’s 16. Supposedly on
tape recorder and using the pillow-talk confessions of her despised a school trip for the weekend, Sibylle shows up on Axel’s doorstep
johns to get her revenge. Marie absorbs it all, registering their costumed much younger than we’ve seen her thus far, a glint in her
physical and psychological abuse with the same cool detachment eye belying the deliberateness of the choice. Kaplan continues to
as she does their foolishness. She barely conceals her disgust, but frustrate the eroticism of the interlude, at one point having Sibylle
the men never notice the hatred behind her eyes. It may be difficult take a clandestine trip into a closed area of Axel’s home, only to find
to discern from this description, but A Very Curious Girl is a a room preserved Manderlay-style in memory of his dead mother.
comedy—a brutal one. Kaplan allows the humorous spectacle of Like A Very Curious Girl’s Marie, Sibylle has an unwavering sense
overconfident men to exist alongside their violence. of self, a quality far beyond her years, but Kaplan never allows the
L
viewer to lose sight of the fact that she is still a child. Fortified by her
ike so many of kaplan’s works, a very curious girl now firsthand sexual knowledge, Sibylle finishes her book, which
is a deeply unerotic film about sex. Neither a scold nor a Axel publishes to great acclaim. Excluded from her own success and
sensationalist, Kaplan made films where the majority of largely powerless against Axel’s increasingly self-aggrandizing
sex ranges from buffoonish to indifferent, often with machinations, Sibylle is returned to her teen existence: forbidden
partners playing at different ends of the spectrum. It’s from reading her own writing, under the thumb of her tyrannical
one of many ways Kaplan complicates classification. Her father, and naïvely true to her promise to avoid Axel until their
clearest influence is Luis Buñuel, a fellow surrealist and satirist of forbidden love can be revealed. She gets her revenge by elaborately
bourgeois absurdity. Her movies borrow some of the trappings of framing Axel for rape, adding yet another layer of discomfort to a
pre-Code madcap comedies, but only if the Gold Diggers ended thoroughly disquieting film. Néa ends as many of Kaplan’s films
up robbing their men and burning the theater to the ground. An do, with our protagonist scorching the earth and heading toward
individualist to the core, she celebrated her ability to alienate and the horizon, but the ending is uncharacteristically downbeat.
disrupt, writing: “Films made by women should be interesting, Sibylle’s adult counterparts are permitted to leave as free women,
even disturbing, to everyone . . . Poetesses, to your broomsticks! with their vengeance satisfied. Sibylle leaves beaten and bound to
For an androgynous creation, sweet or bitter but violent!” She’s a repulsive, pathetic Axel.
known for her interest in eroticism, but her films stymie titillation. “Néa was a flop. Mustn’t be paranoid, but I think it was in
She was a Parisian critic turned director in the ’60s, with a deep revenge for [A Very Curious Girl], a kick in the pants. It’s a free
antipathy for her New Wave brethren. She is a Francophone movie and that doesn’t please men. The reviews were ugly: Néa
woman director coming to prominence concurrently with Chantal Néant [‘Nea Nothing’],” Kaplan said. Néa is certainly something,
Akerman, Marguerite Duras, and Agnès Varda—and rejecting but the “Néa Néant” barb is telling. Kaplan’s films are full of
feminism. Her films were heralded for their radicalism, but she small-scale female utopias, where the vanities of the patriarchy
worked in mainstream generic forms. are patently absurd and adherence to a rotten society’s rules makes
Kaplan’s Emmanuelle adaptation Néa (A Young Emmanuelle)
(1976) brought these tensions into stark relief and was met with a
cruel critical reception and an indifferent public one. The film
follows the softcore beats of its cinematic universe, but undermines
them at every turn. Ann Zacharias play Sibylle, a precocious high-
school student who gets caught shoplifting erotic fiction from Axel,
a local bookseller/publisher, played with appropriately off-putting
smarm by Sami Frey. Young Sibylle is not merely a smut consumer;
she’s also an aspiring author, conducting extensive research in her
family home. She’s created a room of her own, like Marie’s shed,
where she pens imagined sexual escapades, often externalized by her
© LOBSTER
doting cat, Cumes. At first, the obligatory sex scenes are shot from
Sibylle’s studious gaze: she swoops up Cumes, dons her horn- A Very
Curious Girl
rimmed glasses, and watches her mother and aunt get it on through
A Very Curious Girl
you an ideal patsy. Her movies can be a bit silly and a bit stilted by so many other Kaplan heroines, Jacinthe and Iris find themselves
overplotting, but her satire is sharp and personal. To say that there’s laughing down the road, dismaying the maimed and blinded
nothing there is to be one of Kaplan’s hapless marks, unable to see Poltergeist and Quid one last time with their joyful destitution.
that the woman right in front of you knows better. In A Very Curious Girl, Marie torches her lair and skips town
Kaplan’s lack of regard for the psychodrama of the male con- as a broadcast of her recorded secrets blares from the church
dition provides endless comic fodder for her riff on Vertigo, The loudspeaker, leaving her tormentors to torment each other.
Pleasure of Love (1991). Hired to travel to a remote tropical island Maybe the matriarchy saves the women in The Pleasure of Love.
to tutor a young student named Flo, the strapping, if slightly long- It’s the rare case in Kaplan’s work where women are allowed to
in-the-tooth, Willy (Pierre Arditi) finds instead three generations of remain in their provisional utopia, and they promptly send a
unusually accomplished, beautiful women inhabiting a paradisiacal telegram for a new tutor to shake things up.
compound. The women—Do (Françoise Fabian), Clo (Dominique Kaplan’s only film to provide a measure of hope for hetero-
Blanc), and Jo (Cécile San de Alba)—each seduce a tragically sexual relations, Charles and Lucie (1979), primarily concerns
overconfident Willy as they wait for their ever delayed Flo to return. itself with what happens after paradise is lost. The film begins
Willy, bless his heart, begins to fancy himself the man of the house. with a married couple at each other’s throats, Lucie guarding the
Stunned by the lack of influence he holds over his matriarchal triad mementos that enliven their apartment from Charlie’s scheming.
of lovers, he becomes obsessed by Flo’s absence. The women News of an inheritance leads them to sell all their belongings and
ghostwrite increasingly absurd letters from the erstwhile Flo, but head south to their promised château. Their unbelievable good
as the stories become more outlandish, Willy’s idealization only fortune immediately unravels. They’ve been conned and are
grows. Tales of shit-smeared priest chaperones on the Camino de soon on the run. As they are stripped of everything, they become
Santiago and an arranged marriage with the pope’s nephew are loving partners. Eventually they wake up naked under a roadside
easier to believe than the simple fact that he’s been had. apple tree: Eden has come to them.
Like the bric-a-brac personal spaces in A Very Curious Girl and With the possible exception of Charles and Lucie, Kaplan’s is
Néa, the women’s compound in The Pleasure of Love offers a space a bracingly individualistic vision of female empowerment, in
where women can re-create society to their own liking. Even poor which men are inept and a woman’s path to independence is funda-
Cookie of Papa, the Lil’ Boats colonizes her prison room by room. By mentally anarchic. Kaplan had a complicated relationship to
the last act she’s scarfing down her captors’ celebratory champagne feminism and the women’s critical and programming circles
and lobster feast in front of them while they unwittingly do her that (sometimes) embraced her work. In an era of communal
bidding. And in Velvet Paws (1987), Jacinthe (Lafont) and Iris consciousness, she was never a joiner: “the feminists are Kaplanian. It
(Caroline Silhol) enslave their bigamist husband—the evocatively is not I who is a feminist.” Of course, the goal of feminism is equality
named Poltergeist (Arditi)—in a walled villa. We first see Poltergeist for all women, not just the ones that remind you of yourself. Kaplan’s
full of campy brio, calling to Jacinthe with a Tarzan howl and worldview is relentlessly nihilistic: the only way to survive is to not
prancing through the garden with a Pan flute, unaware that his wives be another sucker in a world full of chumps. It’s a fundamentally
have teamed up to exact revenge. Throwing parties and taking lovers, pessimistic view, but there is hope in the spaces Kaplan’s women
the women turn the villa into their pleasure garden, to the pain of carve out for themselves. The world may always be a brutal place,
Poltergeist and the horror of their male lodger Quid (Bouquet). and every good thing might eventually be corrupted. All you can
The villa in Velvet Paws is burned in a Pyrrhic victory, and like do is try to build a utopia, burn it down, and start again.
IN MEMORIAM Remembering cinéastes who have passed on
ounce of her willpower against sleep once

he’s broken the news, before finally sink-
ing into an unquiet unconsciousness. No
“Que Será, Será” complacency here—
Day’s character is established as having
surrendered a promising stage career in
order to play housewife in Indianapolis,
and so to lose her son is to lose what little
she has left of herself. That she later shows
at least as much competence as Stewart in
securing the boy’s recovery is Hitchcock’s
sly joke, a goof on the film’s title.
Day, who died in Carmel Valley, Cali-
fornia, in May at age 97, was famous for
her beaming, cloudless cheer and bound-
ing energy, but she had also an immense
capacity for exasperation, embarrassment,
and even, yes, despair. Though she was
often discussed as an icon of wide-eyed
all-American innocence, a key component
of her persona was in fact circumspection,
self-preservation. She was only too happy
to do low, even cornpone comedy, as she
had no mystique of the eternal feminine
to uphold, but even when playing a
woman named Calamity, she wasn’t reck-
less, exactly. Her women kept an eye on
themselves because they could be hurt ter-
ribly, and because furthermore themselves
was all they had.
She had been born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1922 as Doris Mary Kappelhoff,
her family part of that city’s then-vast
ethnically German middle class. She
went to movies with her mother at the
RKO Albee downtown, took ballet and
tap at Hessler’s Dance Studios where a
fellow student was future On the Town
(1949) star Vera-Ellen, and aspired to
be a dancer, forming a duo with one
Jerry Doherty that performed around
town. That dream was shattered along
with her right leg in a 1937 car accident
that left her laid up in bed with little to
Clear as Sunshine do but sing along to the radio, imitating
the clean, nuanced phrasing of Ella
WA R N E R B R O S / K O B A L / S H U T T E R S T O C K
Beyond the pristine persona, Doris Day excelled as a realist Fitzgerald, and discover her backup plan.
At this time Cincinnati was a recording
BY NICK PINKERTON and broadcasting center, home to the
T
country’s only 500,000-watt radio sta-
o get something of the measure of the emotional investment that tion, the superpower WLW, which broke
Doris Day was capable of as a screen actress, just look at one particular acts like the Clooney Sisters, the Mills
scene she plays in a Marrakech hotel room in The Man Who Knew Too Brothers, and, eventually, Day. Her regu-
Much (1956). Her character’s husband, a physician played by James Stewart, lar appearances on the amateur program
is preparing to break the news of their young son’s kidnapping to her, but Carlin’s Carnival brought her to the
only after he has administered, without asking her permission, a knockout attention of bandleader Barney Rapp,
dose of sedative. It’s a wrenching exchange, with Day first holding out against taking who began her on a career as a big-
the pills before giving into Stewart’s paternalistic browbeating, then fighting with every band vocalist.
Michael Curtiz was impressed enough to proclaim Doris Day “the most everything dame I have ever seen.”
H
er first #1, recorded with Molly Haskell to redeem this favorite of
Les Brown and His Band of female viewers, as she did in the pages
Renown, was 1945’s smooth- of 1974’s From Reverence to Rape, noting
riding “Sentimental Journey,” that the “comic obstacle course of Doris
and many more followed. The leap into Day’s life, her lack of instinctive knowl-
pictures came when she impressed edge about ‘being a woman,’ and the con-
Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, who’d comitant drive, ambition, and energy”
written the score for a project at Warner spoke more to a lived American reality
Brothers titled Romance on the High than did the postures projected by many
Seas (1948), and who convinced her to a critical darling.
audition for the role of gum-smacking Day was beloved for her shine, but she
honky-tonk singer Georgia Garrett for was not naïve in her happiness; it was her
the picture’s director, Michael Curtiz. gift to make the optimism that marked
He was impressed enough to proclaim her characters understood as a choice, one
Day “the most everything dame I of the many choices with which they
have ever seen,” and once she’d signed negotiated the rocky shoals of a woman’s
a Warner contract went on to direct her existence. That this can ring deeper and
in My Dream Is Yours (1949), Young truer than blasé postures of sophistication
Man with a Horn (1950), and I’ll See is something that Day’s fans have always
You in My Dreams (1951). The highlight known, and that new ones will continue
of Day’s Warner years, which ended to discover.
with 1954’s Young at Heart opposite
Frank Sinatra, is the riotous Calamity
Jane (1953), a gender-bending Wild
West musical that gives Day free rein I cannot weep for all her charm
to practice her knack for knockabout
laffs as the tall-tale-telling frontier scout
Beaming I cannot weep for all her wit
I will not cry for what she gave
Martha Jane Canary.
Her best roles came through Hitchcock
and in George Abbott and Stanley Donen’s
Bright I will not cry for all her joy.
But gone the laugh, gone the sun

film of the Broadway hit The Pajama Game The British master pays Gone the passion few can match
(1957), in which Day joined most of the tribute to a beloved star Gone the face as round as joy
original cast, taking over from Janis Paige Gone the fire, gone the heart.
the spitfire role of union leader “Babe” BY TERENCE DAVIES
W
Williams, her revved-up energy matched to It’s just as if our sun went out
the dynamo pace of the film’s factory-floor hen he was 9, filmmaker The solar warmth returned to ice
setting. The peak of Day’s celebrity came Terence Davies went to the And polar is the grief we feel,
in a series of romantic comedies variously movies to see Doris Day in The sense of loss, Antarctic woe.
produced by Stanley Shapiro, Ross Hunter, Young at Heart; “That’s
and her husband Martin Melcher, among when I first fell in love with her,” he says. I bade you not to weep or cry
them the Rock Hudson trilogy of Pillow It’s a love that would last a lifetime. When I chid you not to give up hope
Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and offered a chance to meet her later in life, But now I can no longer try
Send Me No Flowers (1964). Her box-office however, he declined. He told The Criterion To stifle tears and try to cope.
dominance was as complete as that of any Collection in an interview, “Gena Rowlands
actress in the history of American pictures, once said to me, ‘I can get you an introduc- What wastes we see, how desolate the world
but didn’t live out the ’60s. Day fit not tion,’ and I said, ‘I don’t want one. I want Whither her soul, without her kind
at all into the emerging counterculture to remember her as I saw her in those How empty now the life unfurled
youthquake with her sculpted pop-art bob wonderful musicals when I was growing The shuttered room, the drawn down blind.
and official air of guarded propriety—offi- up,’ because I do love her, I really do love
cial I say, for she was once a touring musi- her.” Upon her passing, we asked Davies So if your hearts can take the weight
cian, of whom Oscar Levant quipped, “I if he would like to write something. His Of grief, of loss, of silent tears,
KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” response was the following poem, a Film If we can count her one of stars
She might’ve pivoted to serve the new, Comment exclusive.—Michael Koresky Then perhaps we’ll not forget
“adult” Hollywood by taking the proffered To think of her at quiet times
Mrs. Robinson part in The Graduate (1967), Terence Davies is the director of eight And let our memories unreel
but didn’t budge to the times, and so features, including Distant Voices, Still Down all the years yet to come
would be pegged a cultural reactionary. Lives; The Long Day Closes; and A Quiet And hold—if only for the briefest time—
As so often was the case, it was left to Passion; as well as his Trilogy. Our love of her who now is gone.
F E S T I VA L S Cannes
For Sama
The Highest Stakes

Matters of love and war fueled a beguiling and trenchant selection this year at Cannes
BY AMY TAUBIN
A
couple of days after parasite premiered at cannes 2019, and two story, won the Grand Prix (the runner-up
days before it won the Palme d’Or, I sat down for a brief interview with to the Palme). Diop, the first black woman
the film’s director, Bong Joon-ho. Parasite is the film I most wanted to director to be chosen for the competition,
see on the big screens of the festival’s main theaters, the Lumière and the is best known as the star of Claire Denis’s
Debussy, with a combined international audience of nearly 3,400. There 35 Shots of Rum (2008), but she has made
are no truly comparable theaters in New York in terms of size, luminous several shorts, one of them a kind of
projection, and clarity of sound. While movie palaces are not a necessity for art films, prelude to this feature. Set in a coastal sub-
Bong is one of the only contemporary filmmakers whose movies appeal to both art urb of Dakar, Atlantics is a coming-of-age
and mass film audiences. A scathing social satire that fuses raucous comedy with deep story in which several versions of truth
despair, Parasite is set in contemporary Seoul, where the enormous gap between the compete for the heart, mind, and soul of
very rich and the very poor has become as untenable as it is in many countries includ- Ada (Mama Sané), a teenage girl who is
ing our own. The indifference of the former to the desperation of the latter has horrific engaged to a member of the town’s ruling
consequences. Bong, who seemed pleased with the film’s reception, said that for the first class but is in love with Souleiman, a poor
time he felt that he was not simply working in established genres but that he had found construction worker. Ripped off by Ada’s
his own form. I agree, and so must have the jury. The decision to award the Palme to fiancé and other exploitative Muslim busi-
Parasite was unanimous. (Parasite will be released in the U.S. on October 11.) nessmen, Souleiman has no choice but to
The festival opened with Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (currently in theaters), attempt the dangerous voyage to Spain
which is as funny and bleak as Parasite but more laid-back, until it’s not. It was both too where he hopes to find work. Although
subtle and too tough for an opening-night audience that expects straightforward cues some of Ada’s girlfriends tell her Souleiman
about whether to laugh or cry—i.e., something more mainstream—and that certainly has been lost at sea, others claim to have
doesn’t want to be held responsible for the destruction of the planet. Jarmusch refuses to seen him on Ada’s aborted wedding
let anyone off the hook. Misplaced as it was, Jarmusch’s zombie movie set up one of the night, when a mysterious fire erupts in
festival’s main themes—the presence of the undead, whether zombies or ghosts, in a what would have been the marital bed
world where late capitalism is the engine of Freud’s death drive. Atlantics, the debut fea- and destroys the house. Is Souleiman
ture of the French-Senegalese filmmaker and actor Mati Diop and a more lyrical ghost the arsonist or is it a djinn who has taken
Bong Joon-ho said that for the first time he felt that he was not simply working in established genres but
that he had found his own form. I agree, and so must have the jury.
his form, as other djinns have possessed Syrian and Russian forces destroyed the city attacking the daily press for giving such an
the bodies of women killed by sex traffickers and killed tens of thousands. By then, al- inspiring film anything less than the high-
in order to exact revenge for their deaths? Kateab’s commitment to bearing witness est possible rating. For all its branding as a
Diop plays Ada’s belief in the power of love with her camera was as strong as her hus- showcase for stars and a temple of art cin-
against the investigations of an earnest band’s to the wounded and dying, and even ema, Cannes is a market. There is an actual
detective looking for a rational explana- after the birth of their child, to whom the market that takes place largely in the base-
tion of these inexplicable happenings. film is dedicated, they stayed for months, at ment below the big Palais theaters and in
Atlantics has an oneiric beauty, punctu- last fleeing to London where the film was their shadow on the beachfront just
ated throughout with realistic details of a completed. (For Sama has already aired on behind them, where films at all stages of
postcolonial, patriarchal Senegalese soci- PBS and opens in theaters July 26.) production from mere fantasy to fully fin-
ety. In interviews, Diop invoked “the Mus- In Un Certain Regard, the percentage of ished work vie for financing and distribu-
lim imaginary,” which involves not only women directors was higher—close to 40 tion. But every film shown in every public
the power of ghosts but of the natural percent. Among the standouts was Mounia section of the festival is also being mar-
world: the sun, the moon, the wind, and Meddour’s more than promising first fea- keted by publicists and sales agents, and
the tides. The attention paid to them ture Papicha, which brings fierce energy to sadly, the reception of the thousands of
accounts for the film’s seductive beauty. the depiction of an 18-year-old Algerian critics and journalists who watch four
Atlantics was the only film at Cannes student’s struggle to hold onto the freedom or more films per day and write under
that I saw twice, and I look forward to she once experienced despite the Islamic extreme deadline pressure has an undue
seeing it yet again. fundamentalist takeover during the civil effect on whether a film, a director, or an
L
war of the 1990s. Nedjma (Lyna Khoudri) actor will have a future or not. This year,
ast year, women demanded that wants to be a fashion designer, and she the tendency to magnify flaws in reviewing
half the festival’s competition slots doesn’t want to go abroad to fulfill her films was epidemic. This is pure specula-
be filled by women directors by dream. As the Islamists tighten their grip tion, but perhaps the critics who dismissed
2020. It looks unlikely that “50/50 x on the city and their deadly violence strikes Papicha because its director veered into
20/20” will be achieved, given that of the 21 home, Nedjma refuses to give up, unable to action movie–style violence at the end were
competition films this year, only four were believe that her defiant staging of a fashion simply not interested in the film because
directed by women. (That’s only one show inside the walls of her school could they will never fear being imprisoned or
more than in 2018.) But women were out threaten her life or the lives of her friends. shot for not wearing an abaya or a hijab.
in force, organizing a demonstration on Meddour makes great cinematic choices, An even more egregious carping over
the red carpet before Let It Be Law, Juan particularly the use of clothing design to details was directed against one of the
Solanas’s documentary about the current specify the profound effect that the strug- strongest and most moving competition
struggle for abortion rights in Argentina. It gle between liberal and fundamentalist films, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady
screened out of competition, as did Waad forces within Islam has on women. Women on Fire. Set in 18th-century France, it is
al-Kateab and Edward Watts’s For Sama, were killed during the civil war for not the story of two women who fall in love,
one of the most powerful films in the festi- covering up, and it is quite possible that make love, and are changed forever by this
val. Their first-person documentary depicts they could be again. But Meddour amps brief experience. One woman is a painter
al-Kateab’s experience of living in Aleppo up the violence at the climax of the film, (Noémie Merlant), the other is the woman
from 2012 to 2016, beginning with her abandoning both character and narrative she has been commissioned to paint (the
excited participation in protests against the logic. That Papicha is imperfect doesn’t great Adèle Haenel). One of the most
Bashar regime and continuing through her negate Meddour’s talent or the potential extraordinary aspects of the film is how the
marriage to a young doctor who refused to audience for the film. The day after the passionate romance between these two
leave his hospital even as the bombings by screening I overheard two young women characters differs from those in the many
Papicha Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Beanpole
movies we’ve seen about male artists and (Balagov’s inspiration was Nobel Prize win-
their female subjects or muses. In those ner Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly
films, almost all about heterosexual Face of War.) Also in Un Certain Regard,
liaisons, passion is always a function of and its Grand Prize winner, was Brazilian
unequal power; in Sciamma’s film, power director Karim Aïnouz’s sprawling melo-
(the power of the director, or the power of drama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gus-
one or another character) is not an erotic mão, which traces the emotional journey of
lubricant, and that could be the reason that a woman who searches for the sister from
the depiction of sex in Portrait of a Lady on whom she has been mysteriously separated.
Fire is devoid of exploitation. But instead Cannes is rife with contradictions
of focusing on the remarkable aspects of around gender, as is covering the festival,
the film, there was a barrage of criticism where in order to give women directors
among the cognoscenti based on the fact and actors their due, I’ve reinforced the
that the brushstroke technique in the binary and also neglected films I value.
painting was not correct for the 18th cen- Thus Tommaso, the sixth collaboration
tury. I don’t know why Sciamma made this between director Abel Ferrara and actor
mistake, but frankly, I just don’t care. Por- Willem Dafoe, was fascinating—no, rivet-
trait of a Lady on Fire won the screenplay ing—because of the multiple male sexual
award and opens in the U.S. in December. anxiety and wish fulfillment subtexts
I
dancing around the screen as Dafoe played
f the festival didn’t come close to a character too close to Ferrara for com-
the 50/50 goal, it offered an usually fort, and the actors playing his wife and
high number of films, by both women child were Ferrara’s actual wife and child.
and men directors, which (like Portrait I was reminded of David Fincher’s remark
of a Lady on Fire) centered on women. In years back about how he would love to be
the badly titled Beanpole (it’s the slang Brad Pitt, perhaps also because Pitt was
association with the English translation easily the most magnetic star to walk the
that is the problem, not the Russian title, red carpet, and his scenes in Quentin
Dylda), the second feature by the 27-year- Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in
old Russian director Kantemir Balagov Hollywood brought an otherwise draggy
(who won the directing award in Un Cer- and depressing evocation of 1969 joltingly
tain Regard), two young women survive the to life. There was also a certain amount of
siege of Leningrad and the immediate after- wish fulfillment in Pedro Almodóvar’s
math of World War II because they hang casting of Antonio Banderas to star in
onto their unlikely friendship even when it his “autofiction” Pain and Glory. It’s the
has tragic consequences. Balagov has an director’s most moving film in years, and
amazing rapport with his two nearly Banderas rightfully won the male acting
novice actors, Viktoria Miroshnichenko award. But it was Elia Suleiman, the direc-
and Vasilisa Perelygina, and the beauty of tor and star of the gravely comic It Must
his mise en scène does not diminish our Be Heaven, who delivered the saddest line
comprehension of the traumas that, surely, of the festival: “Palestine will be free, but
will permanently scar his characters. not in my lifetime.”
Bacurau The Lighthouse
Vim and Vigor

Cannes found a swing in its step this year, with the help of genre’s liberties
BY NICOLAS RAPOLD
I
t was an unfamiliar feeling for many critics at cannes: was that contentment, The director duo won the Jury Prize for
or perhaps even... pleasure? Yes, there it was, a lingering smile around one week Bacurau, shared with French filmmaker
into the festival—in the immediate afterglow of Parasite and Once Upon a Time... Ladj Ly for his debut feature Les Misérables,
in Hollywood, and in the longer wake of Bacurau, Pain and Glory, Atlantics, The itself a tale of uprising. Mendonça said this
Whistlers, Portrait of a Lady on Fire... I could go on, and I will. Sometimes Cannes was his twentieth time at Cannes (his first
can be a question of rhythm—whether it’s the luck of several promising film- attendance being as a critic—a progression
makers being in sync with the festival, or the well-timed landing of crowd-pleasers and that he called, you guessed it, a “mind-
provocations alike at the beginning and middle—and the 72nd edition hit the sweet fuck”). A word about those awards: these
spot. Certainly one factor was how many auteurs steered into the pulpy appeals of genre too were well-received, for a change, most
narratives, their vividness, and their rejuvenating inborn energies. For Corneliu Porumboiu, especially the Palme d’Or to Bong Joon-ho
a crime drama; for Arnaud Desplechin, a police procedural; for Quentin Tarantino, a for Parasite, following lackluster committee-
buddy-movie groove, for a while; and for several others—Mati Diop, Jim Jarmusch, esque choices over the past decade. But
Bertrand Bonello—the undying metaphor of possession (whether zombie or djinn). there was also a faintly amusing, mildly
I’ll leave behind the site-specific variable of timing in a second, but Bacurau did ironic, or absurd strain to some of the
give the festival a vital kick in the pantalon early on. Directors Kleber Mendonça selections: rewarding director-screenwriter
Filho and Juliano Dornelles (the latter previously credited as Mendonça’s production Céline Sciamma’s strongest directing
designer) tear into their dystopian story of a rural community that is being literally effort yet, Portrait of a Lady on Fire,
hunted by leisure-seeking tourists. Putting a snap within and between scenes, they with a prize for screenwriting; giving
keep raising the temperature of tension under the hot sun of their backcountry always-a-bridesmaid Almodóvar a nod
Brazilian setting, until the lurid suspense and dynamic anamorphic frames of their by rewarding the actor who plays him in
Most Dangerous Game–esque tale are (finally) surpassed by the torturous struggle of his movie; or having the second-highest
the realistically beleaguered inhabitants, as they embrace collective action. To a certain honor be presented to Mati Diop by an
extent Bacurau simply draws out the question of our time: how bad will things get, incongruent Sylvester Stallone (who,
or put another way, was any previous progress an illusion? But the centuries-old it must be said, comported himself
inequities of its rural settings also earn the film a place as another inheritor to the gallantly, having been honored with an
fearless cinematic and sociopolitical brio of Cinema Novo, without feeling like onstage conversation the day before).
some modish attempt at same. All that plus Aquarius idol Sonia Braga and trans Even presenter Catherine Deneuve was
performer Silvero Pereira as an indelible cangaceiro bandit. With Aquarius and before there to cock an eyebrow when Bong
it Neighboring Sounds, Mendonça with Dornelles has achieved a truly formidable run. proclaimed Clouzot and Chabrol as the
Their latest inspires an urge to rebellion—the final line being, if my scrawled notes tell greatest. Odd details aside, the proof lay in
me true, “This is only the beginning”—but it’s conjoined with the terrifying epiphany the work, and Bong’s film was undeniable
that, really, there may not be any option for survival other than uprising. and, like Bacurau, trenchant and scarifying
The centuries-old inequities of Bacurau’s rural settings earn the film a
place as another inheritor to the fearless cinematic and sociopolitical
brio of cinema novo, without feeling like some modish attempt at same.
in its portrayal of class warfare (not to realized abortion subplot that is sometimes
mention eminently saleable: bought in overlooked in writings about the film (in
nearly 200 countries, it’s been described as fact, one of the painter’s most radical acts
the most exported Korean film ever). is in staging and then painting a midwife’s
I
abortion procedure). Sciamma’s thought-
’d never say that The Lighthouse fully, at times wickedly, written feature
“By far the best American
(showing in Directors’ Fortnight) was marked her first appearance in the Compe- film magazine, and the only
undeniable, but still, it was diverting tition, where her film appeared alongside one I read consistently..”
to watch Willem Dafoe (in full Pirate those of longtime regulars like the Dardenne
Day/Daniel Plainview line-delivery Brothers (with Young Ahmed and its full- —Jim Jarmusch
mode) cooped up by the seaside with forward-momentum story of a Muslim
Robert Pattinson as his petulant appren- extremist student falling smack into mater-
tice. Shot on black-and-white 35mm in ial reality) and Ken Loach (whose Sorry We
1:1.33 and meticulously designed and Missed You, also partly at a sprint, simply
outfitted with mustaches, Robert Eggers’s and effectively captures the nonstop hustle
two-hander feels more like a playacting, and zero margin of error for working-class
neo–period piece than his seamless infer- families). Another new face in competition
nal-Puritan debut The Witch. The Light- was Diao Yinan, whose The Wild Goose
house’s picture of cheek-by-jowl living Lake was less spectacular than his prior,
may well be accurate down to the palpa- Berlinale-winning Black Coal, Thin Ice,
ble stink of chamber pots, the plague of partly by virtue of a questionably cast lead,
seagulls and perilous rocks of its coastal but it nonetheless featured a few galvanizing
setting, and the clattering sea-shanty sequences (and attracted Quentin Taran-
sing-alongs. But its ramp-up to dark fan- tino’s attendance). (For more on these and
tasy—something about Dafoe being con- other films, check out our daily podcasts
jugally bound to the lighthouse’s from Cannes, all available online.)
light-beam, and the temptation of an A quick word for French comedies, of all
anatomically correct mermaid—grows things: Benoit Forgeard’s All About Yves
monotonous. Eggers and his actors do raised another chuckle or two with its
delight, somewhat contagiously, in the absurdist story of a smart-refrigerator and
archaic language (drawn, per the credits, its effect on the life and career of an aspiring
from coastal New England writer Sarah rapper, and Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin,
Orne Jewett, godhead Herman Melville, starring a repressed Jean Dujardin and
and “lighthouse journals”), although Adèle Haenel as a bartender/editor, turns
Dafoe and Pattinson’s zeal at playing two into an odd thought experiment about film-
“wickies” (lighthousefolk) cuts both ways. making. Other things you might be
It’s a bit like a film caught uneasily wondering about, or not: there were at least
between stage and screen, but a couple of obnoxious American indies (The
I admired the devotion to a lost 19th- Climb, Port Authority); the latest Asif
century world rooted in superstition, Kapadia film Diego Maradona makes his
wherein febrile mysticism springs natu- endeavor of archival and personal
rally from deadening routine and dwin- recording compilation begin to feel as
dling rations. (Also: genuine chuckles for hooky and hokey as paint-by-numbers
the Dafoe character’s hurt reaction on biopics, and not very illuminating; and Un
learning that his home-cooked dinners Certain Regard winner The Invisible Life of “I love Film Comment!”
are not sufficiently appreciated.) Eurídice Gusmão from Karim Aïnouz may
In one of the festival’s curious coinci- have been an often plodding, long-winded —Claire Denis
dences, The Lighthouse launched an entire melodrama, but it did include a number
day of costume dramas, followed by of quietly radical scenes. Finally, some
Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (set mostly mention must be made of prior Palme
in a li’l Austrian hamlet, sometime in the honoree Abdellatif Kechiche’s much-
1940s) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, publicized Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo S UB S CR IB
BE
TO DAY
Sciamma’s bohemian island paradise for —but I can’t really join the choruses against
two. Or, really, for three: in addition to the (or for) this repetitive experiment, simply
film’s painter-subject dyad, there was also because when one character said “Stop
the unassumingly wry servant who attends staring. Live your life” about two hours in, I F ILM C OM ME NT. C OM/ SUB S C RIB E
on the household, and who yields both a took the hint and left. Wait, was this year
larger sense of sisterhood and a boldly actually... less good?
daughter). Bonello’s movies act equally on

Zombi Child
the head and on the gut, combining cerebral
gambits with electrifying filmmaking. They
develop meaning and implication though
dialectical friction, playing with dichotomies
of then and now, inside and outside, the real
and the mythic. The historian Patrick
Boucheron shows up in an early scene of
Zombi Child, delivering a lecture to Fanny’s
class in which he rejects a linear narrative of
historical progress and proposes a view of
history as “discontinuous, sputtering, hesi-
tant,” its currents forever disappearing and
reemerging. This describes equally well the
torque of Bonello’s singular films: the
increasingly feverish cross-cutting of Zombi
Child builds, as in House of Tolerance and
Nocturama, to a collapse of time and space,
Dreams Never End a dissolution of selves, a rearrangement of

hierarchies and assumptions.
T
The undead were not the only things to take on he croisette this year was thick
new life at a resilient Cannes not just with zombies, as many
observers noted, but also with
BY DENNIS LIM numerous examples of cinema as
T
an instrument of mummification and rean-
his year’s cannes opened with a zombie comedy by jim jarmusch; the rest imation, none more vivid than Quentin
of the festival reminded us that there are multiple ways in which the dead Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Holly-
don’t die. A highlight of the Directors’ Fortnight section, Bertrand Bonello’s wood, among the most anticipated titles in
Zombi Child is, among other things, an intervention: a vigorous attempt to the Competition. The film’s premise is one
complicate the position that the zombie figure has long occupied in Western that will apparently never die, namely that
pop culture, from Bela Lugosi through George Romero to the continuing the ’60s—or to be precise, the end of the
onslaught of living-dead narratives. Like almost all such stories, Zombi Child capitalizes ’60s—changed everything. With typically
on the zombie’s semiotic adaptability, his suggestive capacity for metaphor. But unlike fetishistic attention to world-building
most of them, it takes seriously the historical origins of the zombie myth in the brutal period detail, Tarantino conjures up the cos-
conditions of slavery in French-ruled Haiti. The zombi—as first understood and as tumes, cars, mansions, backlots, and pop
spelled in the original Creole—was a deceased field hand who was condemned to an paraphernalia of 1969 Hollywood, a prelap-
afterlife of eternal labor, a fate worse than death. sarian idyll that he imbues with a deep
Zombi Child begins in 1962, in Haiti, where in a series of brisk, clipped scenes, a man longing. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rick Dal-
is subject to a process of zombification: poisoned, buried, revived, and sent to the sugar- ton, a television star on the wane, with Brad
cane plantations. Mindful that this story, with its roots in vodou traditions, is not neces- Pitt as Cliff Booth, his stunt double and loyal
sarily his to tell—or at least to tell from just any perspective—Bonello frames the movie sidekick. Rick’s new neighbors on Cielo Drive
from the present-day vantage of a Parisian girls’ boarding school reserved for the off- happen to be Roman Polanski and Sharon
spring of Legion of Honor recipients. It is within these privileged confines that teenage Tate—an intrusion of the real that casts a pall
Fanny (Louise Labèque) develops an interest in the school’s one black student, Mélissa over what is for long stretches a supremely
(Wislanda Louimat), orphaned in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. As the girls bond over their easygoing buddy movie, turning Rick and
shared love of horror movies and the controversial rapper Damso (whose music plays a Cliff into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
key role), and as Fanny begins to wonder if aspects of her new friend’s ancestry might be figures of a sort, obliviously waiting in the
of use in solving some personal problems, the film cuts repeatedly to the zombie roaming wings of an impending tragedy.
the Haitian countryside, who turns out to be Clairvius Narcisse. A rare instance of a doc- The ending that Tarantino implored crit-
umented zombie case, Narcisse was the subject of a study by the anthropologist Wade ics not to spoil is hardly a surprise—it’s
Davis, which in turn inspired Wes Craven’s 1988 The Serpent and the Rainbow. simply another expression of his crazy
As befits a film about syncretic beliefs, Zombi Child is a sometimes disorienting, often faith in cinema to create a parallel uni-
thrilling conflation of genres: a horror-tinged fantasy built on documentary specificity and verse, although this particular salvo of
haunted by the specter of history. Written, shot, and edited in the space of a year, it is a more counterfactual violence feels more personal
straightforward endeavor than his last two features, Nocturama and Saint Laurent, but than the ones in Inglourious Basterds and
Bonello has clearly taken pains to get the details just right, from the use of vodou terminol- Django Unchained. As the film progresses,
ogy (like loa and Bizango) to the precise cadences of sardonic teenspeak (he credits his the potentially off-putting nostalgia built
The increasingly feverish cross-cutting of Zombi Child builds, as in House
of Tolerance and Nocturama, to a collapse of time and space, a dissolution
of selves, a rearrangement of hierarchies and assumptions.
into the enterprise shades into a sorrow that called Liberté) and then presented as a two-
is genuinely moving. This nearly three-hour screen video installation, Personalien, at the
movie takes place over three drifting days Reina Sofia in Madrid. Of the three, the
that seem to stretch time itself—an effect play contains the most narrative informa-
crucial to its emotional impact. The dread tion, situating the action on the eve of the
that descends over Once Upon a Time con- French Revolution and incorporating a plot
cerns what lies ahead: Rick reckons with his that involves converting the novices at a
fading relevance as the industry changes nearby convent into courtesans—all of
around him, Cliff confronts the souring of which is barely mentioned in the film.
the summer of love, and Sharon watches Personalien, which puts the spectator
herself on the big screen, blissfully unaware between two facing screens, effectively
of the mayhem to come. As for Tarantino, he induces an experience of watching while
insists on keeping this impossible California being watched, as in a cruising ground—a
dream alive just a while longer—he may be play of gazes that the film achieves
rewriting the past, but what he truly and through surprising shifts in points of view.
desperately wants is to forestall the future. Just as Serra’s previous narrative feature,
An earlier revolutionary era comes to The Death of Louis XIV, concerned not only
light—or rather, a dim, penumbral half- death but its representation, this plotless yet
light—in Albert Serra’s Liberté, by far the eventful film engages themes of desire,
most anomalous film at this year’s festival. decadence, morality, perversity, and the A lifetime of cinematic
Serra has made a specialty of bringing the erotic imagination while posing formal and writing culminates
weight of lived experience to depictions of moral questions about the representation
the distant past, and he returns here to the of the sex act, and indeed the limits of the in this breathtaking
late 18th century, in effect staging scenes
from Sade within a setting out of Frago-
representable. There is a fair amount of
unsimulated action, but Liberté resembles
statement on film’s
nard. Liberté unfolds over the course of one no pornography you’ve ever seen. Exploit- unique ability to
night in a European forest clearing where a
retinue of libertines have gathered to par-
ing shadow and off-screen space, Serra
heightens the tensions between the visible
move us
take of a wide range of sexual practices that and the hidden, the seen and the heard;
contemporary parlance would term BDSM. some of the most shocking acts are not per-
A born provocateur, Serra has worked formed but recounted (in copious detail),
“How fortunate that Gilberto
productively across artistic forms in recent reverberating as mental images. To invoke Perez finished this book
years, emphasizing cinematic qualities of Amos Vogel, Liberté is some kind of land- before his untimely death.”
duration and immersion in gallery and the- mark in the history of film as a subversive —Jonathan Rosenbaum,
ater contexts. Liberté is the third and final art: at once mesmerizing and enervating, film critic and author of
iteration of a project that was first staged as structured around nothing but a pursuit of
a play at the Volksbühne in Berlin (also carnal gratification that never arrives.
Cinematic Encounters
University of Minnesota Press

www.upress.umn.edu | (800) 621-2736
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@FilmComment
Liberté
THE BIG SCREEN
Reviews of notable new films opening in theaters (hopefully near you)
Sunset’s Jesse (Ethan Hawke) was already architectural irregularities in the remote
Where’d feeling existential about aging, musing to
his partner in pontification, Celine, about
hills of Seattle with her driven, emotionally
lucid daughter Bee (Emma Nelson) and
You Go, what matters in the ever-spectacular now:
“This is it! This is actually happening. What
geekily opaque husband Elgin Branch
(Billy Crudup), a tech research bigwig
Bernadette do you think is interesting? What do you
think is funny? What do you think is
whose computer animation program was
bought by Microsoft, necessitating the
BY MICHAEL KORESKY important? You know, every day is our last.” family’s move to the Pacific Northwest.
In his latest film, Linklater confronts the Intensely disliked by many acquain-
Director: Richard Linklater gap between youthful expectation and the tances, including soccer-mom neighbor
Country/Distributor: USA, Annapurna specter of failure. As the wayward title Audrey (a nuanced Kristen Wiig, never set-
Opening: August 16 character in Where’d You Go, Bernadette, tling for stereotype), with whom she has an
based on the 2012 novel by Maria Semple, ongoing feud over encroaching blackberry
O
ne could say that any serious Cate Blanchett might as well be playing bushes, and her husband’s icy coworker
work of cinema, theater, literature, one of the questing teen philosophers from Soo-Lin (Zoë Chao), Bernadette is some-
music, painting, photography, or Linklater’s early films, all grown up and thing of a proud pariah among the city’s
critical writing is in essence an unspoken chafing at the bonds of an unwanted moneyed class (“the gnats,” as she calls
WILSON WEBB/ANNAPURNA PICTURES
search for meaning; Richard Linklater’s domestic life. Bernadette Fox is lost, but them). Everything is worrisome in her life,
oeuvre has been explicit in dramatizing she was never a slacker. Trapped in a suffo- and Linklater masterfully (perhaps to some,
these aims. The writer-director may have cating bourgeois box that is partly of her frustratingly) plunks the viewer down in the
shifted to a more mainstream narrative own making, Bernadette at first appears middle of an off-kilter interior world with-
register over the years, but the ethos he to be an idle neurotic, an intelligent out much context. Plagued by insomnia,
espoused in such epochal, millennium- woman full of promise made invisible, agoraphobia, and social anxiety, and
adjacent works as Slacker, Before Sunrise, even deranged, by economic or prejudicial gifted with a brain that seems to run miles
and Waking Life—in which his characters circumstance (a Blanchett specialty, seen to faster than even her motormouth can
wandered as they wondered about the varying degrees in Blue Jasmine and Carol). keep up with, Bernadette appears always
point of it all—has remained detectable Bernadette is living unhappily in a leaky, uncomfortable in her skin and surround-
throughout. In his early thirties, Before labyrinthine house of nooks, crannies, and ings. “I want you to know how hard it is
Where’d You Go, Bernadette is about love, but for an American film, it’s something even rarer—a film
about the rekindling of a woman’s brilliant career.
for me sometimes,” she tells her daughter at City” and dropped out of sight.
one moment of clarity. Nerves slowly shred- Now that we know that Bernadette’s
ding at the thought of an upcoming trip to disquietude—mercurially embodied by
Antarctica she promised to Bee, Bernadette Blanchett—is fueled by professional and
tries to get a prescription for an anti- personal trauma, the remainder of Link-
psychotic drug that could help alleviate sea- later’s film becomes a poignant adventure
sickness, which raises alarm bells for an story chronicling the character’s journey
already concerned Elgin. It’s all so unsettling toward extrication and rejuvenation. Link-
that when we first see her pacing her house later risks broadness, yet never pushes
and chatting with Manjula, her virtual assis- things into satire, taking Bernadette from an
tant from Delhi, it takes a moment to realize angry yet realistically modulated confronta-
she isn’t talking to herself à la Blue Jasmine. tion with Audrey to a nearly screwball inter- SHORT TAKE midst of encounter-
In a clever and effective structural vention scene to a satisfyingly implausible WHAT YOU ing violence or
gambit, Linklater waits a spell to give us disappearance to Antarctica—without Bee GONNA DO WHEN financial uncertain-
a full picture of the motivations and and Elgin, who’d intended to accompany THE WORLD’S ties, we look to our
backstory for her dissatisfactions. It isn’t her. Husband and daughter are hot on ON FIRE? elders. My favorite
until a fawning young fan approaches Bernadette’s trail, always just missing her as scenes in the movie
her on the street that we are clued in that she bops from kayak getaway to science Director: are those of com-
Bernadette Fox is no mere local eccentric. research outpost, and all but smuggles her- Roberto Minervini munal connection:
She’s “one of architecture’s true enigmas,” self to the off-limits South Pole; while this Country/Distributor: Ronaldo and Titus
explains an amusing online video essay, extended climax could have gestured toward Italy/USA/France, observing atten-
watched by Bernadette with mounting hor- last-minute farce, Linklater and Blanchett KimStim tively as Kevin tries
ror, which tells the story of her early career treat Bernadette’s self-rediscovery with the Opening: August 16 to fix their bike,
as a MacArthur Genius and her landmark proper gravity. It’s in this unexpected space Judy cooking
L.A. constructions: the Beeber Bifocal, that the film’s emotional center fully reveals “Every word they gumbo with her
which converted an industrial factory into itself, not least in the often-unreadable spoke, I ate it with a grandmother, Black
a skylight-roofed home decorated with Elgin’s touching acknowledgment of the role spoon,” says Judy Panthers knocking
glass lenses and frames; and the proto- he played in Bernadette’s breakdown, admit- of her elders in on doors looking for
green-living Twenty-Mile House, for which ting he didn’t encourage her to make her art What You Gonna answers about
everything in and of the house comes (Elgin is a great showcase for Crudup’s Do When the deaths. Minervini’s
from materials found in a 20-mile radius. brand of disconcerting calm). No longer sti- World’s on Fire?. use of black-and-
(Linklater brings Semple’s architectural fled by domesticity or Seattle, Bernadette Judy, the owner of white photography
concepts to life with convincing sketches will soon be free and clear to rebuild her life, a struggling bar, is befits these con-
and composites.) After seeing her work quite literally. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is one of many faces texts, casting wrin-
destroyed by greedy landowners—and suf- about love, but for an American film, it’s and personalities kles and beads of
fering a series of miscarriages—Bernadette something even rarer—a film about the that populate the sweat or tears in
followed Elgin to Washington’s “Emerald rekindling of a woman’s brilliant career. screen in Roberto sharp focus. The film
Minervini’s film, teems with beauty.
which takes place in What You Gonna
New Orleans. It Do When the
Nightingale, a movie whose languorous fluctuates between World’s on Fire?
The runtime affords ample mental space to
reflect on one’s culpability. A disquisition
moments in her life is at its best an
and those of young archival document of
Nightingale on the historical crimes subtending the
category “basic white guy,” Jennifer Kent’s
Ronaldo and Titus, a group of people at
beating back bore- a particular time in
BY NATHAN LEE follow-up to The Babadook is another kind of dom in the summer their lives, rather
horror film, in which the monster has crept months; New Black than a launchpad to
Director: Jennifer Kent from the shadows of one woman’s psyche to Panther Party mem- start a conversation
Country/Distributor: brutalize the daylit social field. This crea- bers strategizing about race. Min-
Australia/Canada/USA, IFC Films ture’s name is colonialism, and, unlike the amid the extrajudi- ervini shows what
Opening: August 2 title character of Kent’s breakout, he is very cial killings of Black Black people have
much not going to become a queer meme. people (namely, always done when
N
ot gonna lie, my immediate Hawkins is posted to a penal camp in Alton Sterling, who the world is on fire:
reaction after clapping eyes on 19th-century Tasmania where he oversees a was murdered in live, organize, pro-
British lieutenant Hawkins (Sam small population of Irish prisoners. His Baton Rouge); and tect one another,
Claflin) was, oh hey he’s cute... for a basic attentions center on Clare (Aisling Fran- Chief Kevin, a Mardi and keep our history
white guy. Questionable taste in men, as it ciosi), a young woman seven years into her Gras Indian. at the forefront.
happens, is not beside the point in The sentence for a minor crime. Married to So often in the —Tayler Montague
Baykali Ganambarr gives a nimble performance, but his role is troubling: if The Nightingale is finally a movie devoted to
anti-colonial consciousness-raising, Billy’s central function is to serve as Clare’s Sherpa up the mountain of Wokeness.
SHORT TAKE Gorgeously pho-

RAY & LIZ tographed on 16mm
by Daniel Landin
Director: (Under the Skin), at
Richard Billingham times evoking the
Country/Distributor: work of Nan Goldin
UK, KimStim in its candor, color
Opening: July 10 palette, and atten-
tion to patterns—
A memoir in reen- wallpaper, rugs, lace
actments, Richard curtains, tent
Billingham’s long- dresses, puzzles—
gestating feature Ray & Liz counters fellow prisoner Aidan (Michael Sheasby) The remainder of The Nightingale—
debut unfolds in the grubby, quasi- and mother to a newborn daughter, Clare is there’s quite a bit of it, trudging through
the Black Country authentic tenets of compelled by Hawkins to regale the Brits mud and blood and rubbing our faces in
council flat (west of so-called British mis- with nightly song and then repeatedly raped. both along the way—examines these nested
Birmingham) where erablism with humor, In retrospect, this cliché of the brutalized forms of colonial power. Is Clare’s mania for
he was raised, and beauty, and a sensu- songbird establishes a pattern of platitudes revenge aimed at justice, or does it perpetu-
to which he’s ality that in no way that grows more apparent as the movie ate some fundamental colonial psychosis? Is
returned in his cele- dilutes the hardships works through the reverberations of its trau- she an anti-hero or symptom, or both?
brated photogra- and neglect at its matic first act. I will spare you the details These tough-minded questions sustain a cer-
phy collections and core. Inhabiting that Kent does not; in a scene of unflinching tain critical force in the face of mounting
his documentary cramped rooms nastiness, Clare’s world is shattered, and the bromides. Hawkins is a clownish villain, and
short Fishtank. redolent of cigarette story gets moving as a classical revenge saga. there’s something cheap in the way his acts
Named after his smoke and stasis, Clare employs an Aboriginal guide of brutality bid for our attention. The banal-
parents, Ray & Liz parents and siblings named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help ity of his evil is itself a banality. Ganambarr
slides between are depicted here her track down Hawkins and his goons, gives the more nimble, avid performance,
Billingham’s child- out of a genuine and the first sign that The Nightingale but his role is even more troubling, for if The
hood and adoles- sense of curiosity, might have more on its mind than execut- Nightingale is finally a movie devoted to
cence—where the rather than as ing Clare’s retribution is the way she barks anti-colonial consciousness-raising, Billy’s
narrative focus objects of resent- commands at her “boy.” As they make central function is to serve as Clare’s
comes to settle on ment. And the their way through the jungle, the shape of Sherpa up the mountain of Wokeness.
his little brother soundtrack featuring the revenge epic in progress gradually Lumbering through the final reel, her will
Jason, a cherubic Siouxsie and the takes on the texture of something more to vengeance diffused by the ordeal of her
THE NIGHTINGALE: COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
wanderer subsisting Banshees, Dusty complex, with the sympathy we’re invited journey and displaced by her rapport with
exclusively on Springfield, and to extend to a Woman Wronged starting to Billy, Clare ends up less an audience surro-
boxed bread—and Musical Youth’s fold back on itself. The domination of the gate than an emblem of the film’s wavering
the present day, immortal “Pass the Irish by the British triangulates with the concentration. Kent is a genuine filmmaker
which finds the Dutchie,” dreamily indigenous people enslaved, literally or of ideas, but The Nightingale is clipped by
elderly Ray an alco- phasing in and out of ideologically, by both. Kent slides her problems of form. The movie’s lack of sur-
holic shut-in paid the diegesis, exalts nominal protagonist into this middle posi- prise and resort to cliché are part and parcel
occasional visits by the culture of the era tion with care, gradually subsuming the of its faith that the more you illustrate colo-
Liz, still cantanker- without diffusing injuries Clare suffers into the poisonous nial violence, the closer you get to disclos-
ous, obese, and Billingham’s tacit logic of colonialism. At once victim and ing its terror and denouncing its effects.
cowed by the per- condemnation of perpetrator, rapt in vengeance but blind to
sistent elusiveness Thatcherite policies. her own complicity, Clare is, pointedly, a Nathan Lee is a longtime contributor to
of money. —José Teodoro White Woman Wronged. the magazine.
The slump of Awkafina’s shoulders in The Farewell reflects how journeys home turn us into children again, and the
way the presence of elders makes us shrink into being cared for, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen them.
months. The wedding will give the entire

The Farewell family an opportunity to say goodbye to
Nai Nai without subjecting her to the
BY SORAYA NADIA M C DONALD grief of knowing she is terminally ill.
What ensues is a study in coping with
Director: Lulu Wang grief and familial obligation, and how
Country/Distributor: USA, A24 those obligations strain even those who
Opening: July 12 are committed to upholding them.
The younger generation balks at
S
ecrets are a lot like psycholog- secret-keeping. When Billi arrives in
ical versions of Chekhov’s guns. China for Hao Hao’s wedding, the two of
Stories that introduce them are really them share a shell-shocked half-presence SHORT TAKE dainty silver hammer.
building up to the moment when they’re while the grownups around them try to THE MOUNTAIN The Mountain is
inevitably revealed. But writer/director behave normally. Billi’s father, Haiyan set in a pre–Space
Lulu Wang subverts that dictum with her (Tzi Ma); Hao Hao (Chen Hanwei); and Director: Age ’50s, all colors
second feature, The Farewell, a film “based his father, Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) cope Rick Alverson fading into the wood
on an actual lie,” which Wang shared in a by drinking heavily. The women busy Country/Distributor: panels of a restau-
piece for NPR’s This American Life in 2016. themselves with domestic industriousness: USA, Kino Lorber rant, or the white-
In The Farewell, rapper and actress cooking, cleaning, and monitoring male Opening: July 26 washed walls of an
Awkwafina plays Billi, a young writer living alcohol consumption. asylum. Quirky stag-
in New York. She and her parents moved to Wang’s shots (with DP Anna Franquesa In the 1950s-set road ings freeze into near-
the states when Billi was 6. Now she’s an Solano) frame the family and the story movie The Moun- tableaux; surfaces
adult and her paternal grandmother, Nai with static sobriety until deep into the tain, Rick Alverson, remain opaque,
Nai, has been diagnosed with stage-four third act’s wedding reception. The family whose films anato- depths unfathomed.
lung cancer. Much to Billi’s horror, no one is seated at a round banquet table playing mize American spiri- Aside from the
in her family plans to inform Nai Nai of a drinking game. Poor Hao Hao struggles tual malaise, uses refrain of TV’s Perry
this fatal development. Her Chinese doctors to keep up, and as the room begins to spin that most frontal of Como singing
have followed tradition: they tell Nai Nai’s for him, so does the camera. Until then, metaphors: the “Home on the
younger sister the truth, then leave it to her Alex Weston’s bright classical score adds lobotomy. Tye Sheri- Range,” Alverson
to explain to her sister that her persistent a sense of grandness to an otherwise dan, Ready Player works not through
cough and irregular X-rays are the result of diminutive, if touching, story. One’s gamer boy, stabs of irony but
“benign shadows” on her lungs. “It’s not Mostly, Wang focuses on Billi as she here plays the differ- with a forbiddingly
the cancer that kills you,” Billi’s mother, tries to reconcile a show of love that ently zombified deliberate pace and
Jian (Diana Lin), explains. “It’s the fear.” requires lying by omission. Secret-keeping Andy. His mother straitened actors—a
And so Billi’s extended family has actually functions like a gentlemen’s agree- institutionalized, lobotomized style,
THE FAREWELL: COURTESY OF A24; THE MOUNTAIN: COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
decided to organize a quickie wedding in ment: the keeper tries not to divulge Andy moves in a which further restricts
China for Billi’s cousin, Hao Hao, who has information, and loved ones perform the fugue state, sharpen- Sheridan’s recessive
been dating his apparent fiancée for three requisite obliviousness that allows the lie ing skates and dri- indie-protagonist
ving the Zamboni at role to a few dull
the local ice rink, shades of the same
snowed under with sullen expression.
Freudian dreams. Everyone seems
A father figure exhausted, but Gold-
emerges: Dr. Wallace blum summons a
Fiennes (Jeff Gold- ghost of his caressing
blum), the surgeon wit, wielding it as an
who performed a instrument of control.
transorbital lobot- And cinema’s most
omy on Andy’s sui generis physical
mother. With a presence, Denis
dazed flicker of guilt, Lavant, is a mar-
“Wally” takes Andy velously gestural
on as his factotum as sloppy drunk and
he crisscrosses chilly “Radiant Seeker”—
landscapes like a another of Alverson’s
traveling salesman, total individuals, adrift
his miracle-cure tools and unreconciled.
a long pick and —Mark Asch
With The Art of Self-Defense, Riley Stearns strives for a dark comedy intoned in Yorgos Lanthimos deadpan, but instead
of pushing the absurdity of his uncanny-valley universe as Lanthimos might have, he succumbs to its lack of specificity.
to live, unchallenged. That’s the dynamic “nio nio ne ne” (bratty); then Zhao shrugs
between Billi and her parents: Billi lies to her shoulders and pouts like a petulant
insulate them from her financial and teen, full of exaggerated ennui.
professional disappointments—she’s lost a It’s not until the very end that Wang
Guggenheim fellowship and is a month allows for a release—one that comes from
behind on her rent. realizing how much pain Nai Nai has been
Awkwafina subdues the hammy, suppressing to protect her own family
motormouthed, room-filling affect that’s from her grief. Her grown children long
made for such memorable characters in ago moved to America and Japan, leaving
Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8. The her with a male companion who shuffles
slump of her shoulders at pre-wedding wordlessly through the apartment that
gatherings reflects the stress of lying to they share. Zhao quietly devastates with
SHORT TAKE rank, to stay Nai Nai, but also how long journeys home one gesture, a hand over her mouth, as
THE ART OF emboldened in the turn us into children again, and the way Billi’s taxi to the airport pulls away, when
SELF-DEFENSE “real world”—and the presence of elders makes us shrink finally no one can see her. It almost
through the dojo, into being cared for, no matter how long doesn’t matter if death is imminent or
Director: he satirizes toxic it’s been since we’ve last seen them. Still, not. The Farewell leaves you marveling at
Riley Stearns masculinity’s cult- no one shines quite like Zhao Shuzhen, sincerity, selflessness, and grace, and
Country/Distributor: like pathology of who, as Nai Nai, keeps the film afloat in nursing a need to call your grandmother,
USA, Bleecker Street power. Sensei, the second act, bubbling with warmth and no matter how long it’s been.
Opening: July 12 evoking a Tyler Dur- grandmotherly playfulness. When Nai Nai
den for the Jordan is coaching Billi on how to behave at the Soraya Nadia McDonald is the culture
Casey (Jesse Eisen- Peterson era, starts wedding, she tells her she cannot be critic for The Undefeated.
berg), a gangly to groom Casey in
bundle of insecurity, his image while
is violently attacked reserving a requisite
by masked motor- contempt for Anna Water takes over the screen, and we take on
cyclists while walk-
ing home one
(Imogen Poots), the
children’s karate
Aquarela the perspective of a drowned man.
Water has always conjured up exposure
evening. Afterward, instructor and, as B Y FAT I M A N AQV I and rescue; since antiquity, it has provided
he’s too afraid to the film’s sole signif- the foil for conceptions of political life. For
leave the house for icant female charac- Director: Victor Kossakovsky the great German thinker Hans Blumen-
work, and considers ter, the punching Country/Distributor: UK/Germany/ berg, the loss of life at sea is a recurring
buying a handbag for his general- Denmark/USA, Sony Pictures Classics theme in philosophical thought: no Horace
gun—until he walks ized sexism. Opening: August 16 or Leibniz, no Zenon or Aristippus without
by a karate dojo Casey lives in a shipwreck. A philosopher who has not
I
and falls in with its nondescript subur- n victor kossakovsky’s masterful experienced near-death on water cannot be
charismatic Sensei bia, surrounded by essay film Aquarela, water in all its forms trusted, writes Blumenberg. Who can teach
(Alessandro Nivola) analog technology provides the scale against which human of last things and next-to-last things if he
and ragtag group and generic brand- life is to be measured. We watch it meta- has not been exposed to them, not under-
of male rejects. ing out of Repo morphose from ice to liquid, snow to rain taken the fateful step from safety to the
Although cordial, Man. Instead of to mist. In the beginning, there are rocky boundless, immoderate waters?
their shared pent- pushing the absur- coasts, barren islands, and sheltering inlets Director Kossakovsky’s team, filming
up aggression dity of his uncanny- from which to espy the surrounding chiefly on watercraft, retraces the philo-
explodes in violent valley universe as waters. It is from an outcropping that we sophical journey par excellence—and its
sparring practices. Lanthimos might first see the vast expanse of Lake Baikal, the near wreckage. In Aquarela’s central seg-
With this follow- have, Stearns suc- world’s most ancient freshwater lake, in a ment on a sailboat, the film sets us adrift
up to 2014’s Faults, cumbs to its lack of languorous pan. We move down to its to inspire awe, evoke terror, and—at 48
Riley Stearns strives specificity. He jokes frozen surface, where men are searching for frames per second—induce vertigo. On a
COURTESY OF BLEECKER STREET
for a dark comedy flatly about the something below—cars that have broken peaceful day, a boat glides into view in
intoned in Yorgos familiar silliness of through the ice. As the film continues, we long shot, its white sails mimicking the sil-
Lanthimos dead- hypermasculinity travel westward toward Greenland, Florida, houettes of the surrounding icebergs. The
pan. He draws while shortchanging and Venezuela. There are less and less peo- winds shift, and two sailors try to steer the
queasy humor from his angle on group ple, more calving glaciers, viscous waves, craft through the resulting squall. The
Casey’s cowardice— psychology, more pounding storms, and shuddering water- audio records the woman’s grunts as she
he custom-orders a tellingly pathetic falls. The shape-shifting, devious element is throws herself into her work, water crash-
yellow leather belt, and disturbing. shown from overhead and underneath; it is ing over her. The lack of dialogue and
matching his karate —Chloe Lizotte also presented from an intimate eye level. camera’s position make clear how serious
Aquarela artfully evokes the legacy of the avant-garde—such as Joris Ivens’s Rain from 1929—to make a
contemporary experimental work, one that embraces total immersion.
SHORT TAKE time if possible.

LUCE That the 44th
President’s name
Director: Julius Onah gets invoked along
Country/Distributor: the way concretizes
USA, NEON Lee’s zeitgeist-
Opening: August 2 baiting aspirations,
and the overall feel-
Julius Onah’s ing of a work styled
Sundance-feted more as a glancing,
the situation is. Aquarela’s crew, invisible Sweden, provides the setting for Kos- adaptation of J.C. fretful inventory of
but ensconced with the seafarers, brings sakovsky’s 2000 film I Loved You. In this Lee’s off-Broadway social concerns is
us into this harrowing situation to make case, a window onto the Baltic plays an play wrings an hard to shake. But
us ponder our total exposure. We don’t important role. In Aquarela, the director intriguing variation there’s also some-
need to be told that the forces unleashed tries to push the cinematic element fur- on the witch-hunt thing to be said for
by global warming will find us when the ther. Crisp zigzags on ice create a lattice; trope, for an era placing provocative
AQUARELA: VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY & BEN BERNHARD/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS; LUCE; COURTESY OF NEON
ice has melted—and the film thankfully water looks like black, viscous oil; an of identity politics. ideas in conversa-
avoids all commentary, even refraining interwoven pattern of brown and yellow Eritrean-born Luce tion, and the actors,
from explanatory intertitles. Although evokes unfurling tapestry. Aquarela (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) especially Harrison
the film ends with a rainbow beneath artfully evokes the legacy of the avant- is as modest as big and Watts, make
the stunning waters of Angel Falls, we feel garde—such as Joris Ivens’s Rain from men on campus for eloquent mouth-
we have only narrowly escaped. And we 1929—to make a contemporary experimen- get, but his African- pieces. The ques-
shouldn’t deem ourselves too secure: tal work, one that embraces total immersion. American history tion of whether
after this film, terra firma no longer feels The Dolby Atmos soundtrack adds to teacher Ms. Wilson Luce’s appropriation
like a given. Reversing directionality the film’s encompassing experience. It care- (Octavia Spencer) as a symbol of
(why is the rainbow below the water?) fully transitions between the Finnish “cello suspects something social progress is
and pulling back to situate us vis-à-vis metal” band Apocalyptica, the sounds sinister beneath the compatible with any
the world’s highest waterfall provide no of water, and human signals for disaster. facade. Her skepti- sort of authentic
solace or grounding. Any comprehensive discussion of this film cism puts her first at humanity is ren-
Kossakovsky’s film is dedicated to fellow will have to account for the syncopated odds, and then— dered excitingly
Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov. In rhythms, the sound bridges, and the after a series indeterminate via
attempting to experiment with new forms sirens; near the beginning, the bursting of of complications Harrison’s perfor-
of representation, Kossakovsky, too, sets the ice on Lake Baikal punctuates the film involving mislaid mance, which sug-
his camera free. If Russian Ark brought images like small explosions, offering an explosives and gests a smart kid
Sokurov to global attention with one glid- ambiguous commentary. The conflagra- accusations of sex- figuring out how to
ing, unbroken long take, Aquarela flies as tions to come, when sea levels rise, may ual impropriety—in do the best imita-
well, across the globe. The camera’s mobil- move this sound out of nature’s register complicitous con- tion of himself at all
ity allows Kossakovsky to abstract from the and back into man’s. In moments like tact with Luce’s times. When Onah
water, creating suggestive patterns from the bursting of the ice, the film, in all its adoptive parents and Lee go for the
both afar and close up. Water has held a grandeur and careful unfolding, becomes (Tim Roth and grand sociological
privileged place in his oeuvre from the out- apocalyptic in its own right. In asking us to Naomi Watts), text- gesture, Luce reeks
set: his first film, Belovy (1992), is set at the contemplate water’s power and its densely book liberals who, of effort, but when it
mouth of a river in a small village between metaphoric nature, we realize our extreme à la Bradley Whit- hunkers down with
Moscow and St. Petersburg; the camera is dependence on it in more senses than one. ford’s pater in Get its characters and
placed on a little boat and travels 1,000 Out, surely would their complications,
kilometers to the North Sea. Bornholm, a Fatima Naqvi teaches German and film have voted for it’s compelling stuff.
Danish island off the southern coast of studies at Yale University. Obama a third —Adam Nayman
HOME
DV D/ D E B U T
B L U - R AY/ D E B U T
Cinema spun,
STREAMING streamed, and
E XC L U S I V E TO VO D
beamed
MOVIES
Where Is the Friend’s House? Through the Olive Trees And Life Goes On
Seeing Is Believing
B Y A Z A D E H J A FA R I
The Koker Trilogy: Three Films by Abbas Kiarostami role in Where Is the Friend’s House?, yet he is forced to perform
Where Is the Friend’s House?, 1987; And Life Goes On, 1992; the “reality” that his house has not been destroyed. The protago-
Through the Olive Trees, 1994; The Criterion Collection nist—a surrogate for Kiarostami—replies, “After all, this house
has survived, so it is real.” Reality is artifice, documentary is fic-
I
n the late ’80s and early ’90s, the films of the koker tion, and, as Kiarostami once said, lying is the only way to the
trilogy—Where Is the Friend’s House?, And Life Goes On, and truth in cinema.
Through the Olive Trees—elevated Abbas Kiarostami to the These are the central themes of Through the Olive Trees as
pantheon of the world’s great filmmakers and inaugurated a path well, which follows the efforts of a director to make a film with
toward his now well-known austere style, humanistic philosophy, nonprofessional locals. Though the directors—real or fictional—
and modernist self-reflexivity. All three are now available in a throughout The Koker Trilogy have the power to design, shape,
new set from Criterion (as well as in a touring retrospective that and distort reality, the characters often resist their roles in the
begins July 26). filmic universe or in the filmmaking process: the little boy’s defi-
Where Is the Friend’s House? is depicted through the eyes of ance of his mother and grandfather in Where Is the Friend’s
a little boy desperate to find his classmate; yet on the way he House?, the old man’s discontent with his fictional role in And
encounters a variety of villagers, allowing the director to repre- Life Goes On; actor Tahereh’s refusal to obey the surrogate direc-
sent a wider swath of daily life and explore the meaning of tor and co-star Hossein’s unstoppable pursuit of Tahereh in
friendship. Kiarostami twice leaves the boy’s perspective to focus Through the Olive Trees.
on two of the older men in the village, through them contrast- The great final shot of Through the Olive Trees can be read as
ing rigid social orthodoxies and humanist values. the apotheosis of one of Kiarostami’s recurring themes, “Who
The paradoxes and incongruities that are so significant in has the power to shape reality?” And as the Iranian critic Vahid
Kiarostami’s later works can be subtly detected in And Life Goes Mortazavi asked, “Who has the power to look?” Though severely
On, a film that returns to Koker, the town in northern Iran criticized in Iran because of its exoticizing approach, pastoral
where the previous film was shot, and explores the boundaries simplicity, and formal austerity, The Koker Trilogy now stands as
between father and son, the urban and the rural, the beauty and the strong foundation of Kiarostami’s later masterpieces and his
destruction of nature, and ultimately fiction and documentary. manifesto of uncompromised filmmaking.
The village has since experienced a catastrophic earthquake, and
a fictional film director and his son have come to find that earlier Azadeh Jafari is an Iranian film critic and translator. She has written
film’s young star. One old man they meet says that he played a for Cinema Scope, Reverse Shot, and various Iranian magazines.
While the elegant Mitchell Leisen lacked Billy Wilder’s puckishness, he expertly navigates the melodramatic mine-
fields of suave Charles Boyer’s seduction-for-citizenship of ingenuous Olivia de Havilland in Hold Back the Dawn.
The Edge of Democracy 20 DISCS

Petra Costa, Brazil, 2019; Netflix TO WATCH
timely and globally relevant, Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democ- Adam at 6 A.M. Robert
racy documents Brazil’s recent descent into right-wing authoritari- Scheerer, USA, 1970; Paramount
anism by interweaving the Costa family’s rich relationship with Amazing Grace Sydney
politics (on both sides of the spectrum) and in-the-trenches Pollack, USA, 2018; Universal
reportage on democratic socialist President Dilma Rousseff ’s The Baker’s Wife
impeachment by forces that paved the way for the Trump-esque Jair Marcel Pagnol, France, 1938;
Bolsonaro. Fueled by a heritage of activism, Costa covers several The Criterion Collection
decades of Brazil’s complex, tragic history, attempting to understand Between the Lines
how a country that took so long to climb out from under dicta- Joan Micklin Silver, USA, 1977;
torial rule would so willingly return to it. At times this makes Cohen Media Group
her—despite intense footage of street skirmishes and in-the- Blood Paradise
moment interviews with Rousseff and her predecessor, the now Patrick von Barkenberg, Sweden/
imprisoned Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—situate the realpolitik in USA, 2018; Artsploitation Films
broad context. But it also allows her to insinuate connections to Bob le Flambeur
similar phenomena across the world, especially in populism’s Jean-Pierre Melville, France,
appeal to the dispossessed and in the links between political par- 1956; Kino Classics
ties and big business.–michael joshua rowin Buñuel x 2: Death in the
Garden, France/Mexico, 1956;
Hold Back the Dawn The Milky Way, France/Italy,
Mitchell Leisen, USA, 1941; Arrow Academy 1969; Kino Lorber
Dead of Night Alberto
it all started with a cockroach—or, rather, without one. Charles Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton,
Boyer’s refusal to perform a scene co-scripted by Billy Wilder in Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer,
which his character, a Romanian gigolo, tells his troubles to a parasite UK, 1945; Kino Lorber
in his room—and director Mitchell Leisen’s capitulation to the star’s Fragment of an Empire
misplaced sense of dignity—led the enraged Wilder to direct all his Fridrikh Ermler, Soviet Union,
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY: PHOTO BY ORLANDO BRITO; THE UNCANNY: COURTESY OF SEVERIN FILMS
own work thenceforth. But while the elegant Leisen lacked the Aus- 1929; Flicker Alley
trian sprite’s puckishness, he expertly navigates the melodramatic Hail Satan? Penny Lane, USA,
minefields of suave Boyer’s seduction-for-citizenship of ingenuous 2019; Magnolia Pictures
Olivia de Havilland (eschewing mawkishness in a luminous turn). Hale County This Morning,
This neglected gem, restored to former glory by Arrow’s extras- This Evening RaMell Ross, USA,
packed Blu-ray, offers a timeless account of the resilience and for- 2018; Cinema Guild
titude of refugees. As for Wilder’s roach, he proved as deathless as Heroes Shed No Tears
urban legend attests, turning up years later as a fly in the cockpit John Woo, Hong Kong, 1986;
of Jimmy Stewart’s plane in The Spirit of St. Louis.–steven mears Film Movement
High Life Claire Denis,
The Uncanny UK/France/Germany/Poland/USA,
Denis Héroux, Canada/UK, 1977; Severin Films 2018; Lionsgate
The Leopard Man
the 1977 british-canadian horror anthology The Uncanny resem- Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1943;
bles similar Hammer and Amicus fare, but with one important twist: Shout! Factory
all the tales of terror here involve cats. Peter Cushing plays an The President’s Lady
apparently crackpot writer whose latest book contains “true” sto- Henry Levin, USA, 1953;
ries intended to expose felines as agents of evil. His publisher (Ray Twilight Time
Milland), a cat owner himself, is understandably dubious, and Shiraz: A Romance of India
Cushing sets out to convince him with three stories in which vengeful Franz Osten, India/UK/Germany,
felines plot, claw, bite, and kill: viciously protecting their inheritance 1928; Juno Films
from would-be thieves, dabbling in witchcraft, and “dropping the cur- Ten North Frederick
tain” on a murderous movie star in tongue-in-cheek, EC Comics Philip Dunne, USA, 1958;
fashion. The presence of screen gentlemen Cushing, Milland, and Twilight Time
Donald Pleasence (playing a scenery-chewing actor with glee) lends a Transit Christian Petzold,
stately gravitas to the proceedings. Denis Héroux’s film turns out to be Germany/France, 2018; Music
genuinely creepy, thanks in large part to lonely locations and moody Box Films
photography, with enough gruesome violence to recommend it to Tuff Turf Fritz Kiersch, USA,
horror fans and give pause (or paws) to cat lovers.–chris shields 1985; Kino Lorber
Through 16 newly remastered short works, Vivian Ostrovsky sculpts hypnotic timescapes out of archival material
and her own Super 8 footage, quoting sources as diverse as Cukor, Tati, and Deleuze.
20 TITLES Vivian Ostrovsky: Plunge

TO STREAM 16 films, 1982-2014; Re:Voir (PAL)
All Is Well Eva Trobisch, a compelling presentation of Vivian Ostrovsky’s prolific career
Germany, 2018; Netflix in experimental moving image, the aptly titled Plunge dives deep
The Card Ronald Neame, into the artist-curator’s singularly playful mode of collage filmmak-
UK, 1952; The Criterion Channel ing. Through 16 newly remastered shorts, Ostrovsky sculpts hypnotic
Cuadecuc, vampir timescapes out of archival material and her own Super 8 footage,
Pere Portabella, Spain, 1971; quoting sources as diverse as Cukor, Tati, and Deleuze. In titles like
Amazon & Kanopy Ice/Sea (2005) and Eat (1988), Ostrovsky’s multicultural upbringing
Friendship’s Death comes to the fore; the filmmaker displays an uncanny ability to track
Peter Wollen, UK, 1987; BFI routine gestures as they circulate and tessellate, resonating in multiple
Player Classics on Roku languages and transmuting across species. The collection’s second vol-
The Hours and Times ume is dominated by her 21st-century digital work, including richly
Christopher Munch, USA, 1991; textured biographical films. Across events and mediums, Ostrovsky
The Criterion Channel & Kanopy remains devoted to multidimensionality, building complex sound-
I Am Mother Grant scapes on top of a Deren-esque fragmented cartography, creating
Sputore, Australia, 2019; Netflix films that chuckle wryly at their own acrobatics.–madeleine collier
Mid-Century Loves
Mario Chiari, Pietro Germi, When They See Us
Glauco Pellegrini, Antonio Ava DuVernay, USA, 2019; Netflix
Pietrangeli & Roberto Rossellini,
Italy, 1954; Amazon a large part of the impact of When They See Us—Ava DuVernay’s
The Nightshifter four-part miniseries about the five wrongfully convicted youths in
WHEN THEY SEE US: ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/NETFLIX; THE WILD HEART: MARY EVANS/RONALD GRANT/EVERETT COLLECTION
Dennison Ramalho, Brazil, the 1989 “Central Park Jogger” case—is durational. Instead of a
2018; Shudder feature-length TV movie to shock and dismay us in one sensational
Old Boyfriends package (and, in fact, one does exist), DuVernay’s treatment takes
Joan Tewkesbury, USA, us through multiple, torturous phases of the story: the night of the
1979; Kanopy assault and the overnight NYPD interrogation of Kevin Richardson,
The Perfection Richard Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana;
Shepard, USA, 2018; Netflix the compromised court trial; the jail sentences and post-release
Pool of London adjustment; and the aftermath when the actual guilty party was
Basil Dearden, UK, 1951; The ID’ed in 2002. Despite weak points elsewhere, in Wise’s solitary
Criterion Channel confinement the series stares into the abyss, as time—and life—are
Prairie Trilogy cruelly wasted. Restoring the young men’s POVs (without
John Hanson & Rob Nilsson, sidelining brutalized jogger Trisha Meili), DuVernay carries out
Prairie Fire, USA, 1978; Rebel an overdue corrective to a notorious public drama of injustice
Earth, USA, 1980; Survivor, and racism.–nicolas rapold
USA, 1980; OVID.tv
Red Cow Tsivia Barkai, The Wild Heart/Gone to Earth
Israel, 2018; Kanopy Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1952/1950; Kino Lorber
Rough Aunties
Kim Longinotto, UK/South powell and pressburger’s Gone to Earth is distinguished by rap-
Africa, 2008; OVID.tv turous Technicolor photography of the Shropshire countryside, as
Sarah Plays a Werewolf well as a reaffirmation of Powell’s allegiance to the powerfully
Katharina Wyss, Switzerland/ metaphorical filmmaking of silent movies. The story plays as a North
Germany, 2017; MUBI Country variation on Duel in the Sun, which might explain why
Los silencios Beatriz David O. Selznick thought it an appropriate vehicle for Jennifer Jones,
Seigner, Brazil/France/ always his obsession. Jones plays a country girl whom a lusty squire
Colombia, 2018; HBO Go (David Farrar) wants, and whom a gentle vicar (Cyril Cusack) loves
The Titfield Thunderbolt so much he can’t bear to take her to bed even after they’re married.
Charles Crichton, UK, 1953; Guess who gets the girl. Selznick had the contractual right to re-edit
BFI Player Classics on Roku the film for America, and after canvassing King Vidor, William Wyler,
True Warriors Niklas and Josef von Sternberg, he got Rouben Mamoulian to direct retakes
Schenck, Ronja von Wurmb- written by Ben Hecht, and made some cuts in the original. The result,
Seibel & Lukas Augustin, The Wild Heart, rendered an original film full of circumspect story-
Germany/Afghanistan, 2017; telling too blunt by half. Kino Lorber has put both films on one disc
Pantaflix that could have the umbrella title Anatomy of a Murder.–scott eyman
Criterion’s opening-day “Columbia Noir” series played not unlike a repertory program, with time-limited offerings
whose context and presentation allow viewers to shift their understanding of a given subject, production mode, or genre.
WISH LIST
SPIKE OF BENSONHURST
If movies serve as a mode of

time travel, the most consis-
tently entertaining, and
endearingly awkward, era to
return to is the 1980s. And in
the case of Spike of Benson-
hurst, a long-extinct late-’80s
Brooklyn. Although criticized
at the time of release for its
liberal inclusion of racial
stereotypes—which is saying
something during such an un-
PC decade—this offbeat com-
edy written and directed by
Clockwise from top left: Experiment in Terror, Kaili Blues, The Lineup, Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Airing Out the Vault

B Y L AW R E N C E G A R C I A
The Criterion Channel Streaming Service in Terror (1962), both exemplary genre pictures
that tend to be overlooked in their respective
S
ince the criterion channel’s first directors’ oeuvres. Indeed, the “Columbia Noir”
announcement, it was clear that its success series played not unlike a repertory program, with
would be measured against that of Film- time-limited offerings whose context and presen-
Struck—the streaming service started by TCM, tation allow viewers to shift their understanding of
which abruptly, regrettably shuttered last November. a given subject, production mode, or genre.
That the much-anticipated service’s catalog would Browsing the Channel’s library also turns up
include titles from The Criterion Collection and titles from relevant contemporary auteurs. Estab-
Janus Films was never in doubt—which already lished directors like Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong
puts it ahead of sundry sites that neglect classic Weerasethakul, and Hong Sang-soo are all repre- Paul Morrissey is in any case a
film fare. The question was what the Channel sented, as are newer directors still in the process of charming relic, focusing on a
would offer cinephiles beyond those expectations. breaking out. Fans of Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey cocky yet irresistible aspiring
As of this writing, two months after its April Into Night can catch up with his audacious feature boxer (played by the dreamy
launch, the Criterion Channel has amassed over debut, Kaili Blues (2015). Likewise, as Joanna Sasha Mitchell) with severely
1,600 films; roughly a third of them are in the Hogg’s The Souvenir continues its theatrical run, dysfunctional parents. He’s run
spine-numbered Criterion Collection, and a good subscribers can watch her supremely assured Exhi- out of a heavily Italian Benson-
deal more seem to fall under a similar program- bition (2013). Though Criterion is perhaps more hurst by the mafia after get-
ming prerogative. But the remaining titles—licensed associated with films of the past, such newer titles ting involved with the Boss’s
from studios and specialty distributors like Sony serve to further broaden the Channel’s appeal. daughter, but falls for another
Pictures, Warner Bros., MGM, Cinema Guild, and Still, the streaming service inevitably reflects girl (an even dreamier Talisa
Grasshopper Film—together constitute a concerted some limitations of Criterion’s main catalog. Soto) in his new Puerto Rican
attempt to look beyond the Criterion brand. John Woo’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979), for hood. Nowhere to be found on
Key to such efforts are the Channel’s “themati- example, is one of only nine Hong Kong films any digital format or streaming
cally programmed” collections. While most of in the current library—which is indicative of a platform, YouTube included—
these are sorted by director (e.g., “George Cukor’s general dearth of Asian titles outside Japan. That in its entirety anyway—this film
Women”), others are devoted to specific artists said, the new service demonstrates a clear desire deserves to exist as more than
(Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico), to not just expand on, but also provide a correc- a pleasant repeat-VHS-viewing
and others still are arranged by loose themes tive to Criterion’s base of titles. distant memory, even if just for
(“Mommy Issues”). Among the service’s launch- its fun supporting cast that
day series, the most notable was a 12-film set of Lawrence Garcia is a Vancouver-based film writer includes Ernest Borgnine and
Columbia Pictures noirs that included Don Siegel’s and a frequent contributor to Cinema Scope and the recently departed Sylvia
The Lineup (1958) and Blake Edwards’s Experiment MUBI Notebook. Miles.—Laura Kern
READINGS Books about all aspects of filmmaking and film culture
Cinema demonstrates, he had an acute sense of his own histori-

cal position: “I was a surrealist, a futurist, a Dadaist, and a Marxist
all at the same time.”
On Cinema collects articles and essays from three hitherto
untranslated books: A Critical Review of Brazilian Cinema, The
Cinema Novo Revolution, and the posthumously published The
Century of Cinema. In the first, Rocha acknowledges his Brazilian
predecessors, Humberto Mauro and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. In
the second, he explicates Cinema Novo (“an evolving collection of
films which will eventually give to the public an awareness of its
own existence”) and issues a few succinct Third Worldist mani-
festos, notably “An Aesthetics of Hunger” and “Tropicalism,
Anthropology, Myth, Ideography.” There’s also a fantastic shpritz
that begins with Brecht and ends, by way of Lola Montès, with
Cahiers du Cinéma.
As a critical theorist, Rocha is brash and humble, hyperbolic
and shrewd. He combines a bracing hostility to Hollywood
(“the most aggressive and widespread form of American culture
inflicted upon the world”) with an impressive knowledge of its
movies, demonstrated by his readings of Westerns and ’50s
youth films, not to mention his speculation that “the genuine
modern character” Che Guevara was influenced by Henry Fonda
in The Grapes of Wrath.
Rocha’s writing on other directors is marked by pithy analyses
(Kubrick “can take any theme and make it the starting point from
The Good Fight which to denounce man and his circumstances”) and total hero
worship. Buñuel, Rossellini, and to some extent Antonioni are his
Cinema Novo mastermind Glauber Rocha masters. And then there is “the greatest filmmaker since Eisen-
pulled no punches as a critic stein died,” Jean-Luc Godard; per Rocha, he “is worth, just by
BY J. HOBERMAN himself, all of American cinema!” Rocha continues: “He has
achieved in six years that which hundreds of filmmakers
achieved in sixty. He has completely reformulated cinema,
On Cinema learning the lessons of Roberto
By Glauber Rocha, edited by Ismail Xavier [Rossellini] with all the humility of
I.B. Tauris, $99 a disciple. It is from this humility
Y
GLAUBER ROCHA: EVERETT COLLECTION
that he was able, bringing together
ou might say that on cinema, a compilation of the various lines of crisis, to cata-
the Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha’s writings, is logue modern culture in a great
cinema. To read it is to experience in concentrated work composed of small-yet-great
form the cinephilia of the late ’60s: Rocha was not films, the peak of which, up till
only a filmmaker but, as Jonas Mekas called himself, a “raving now, has been Pierrot le fou, the
maniac of cinema.” modern tragedy par excellence.”
As the best-known representative of Brazil’s Cinema Novo, Thus Rocha reveals himself to
Rocha (1939-1981) is arguably the preeminent figure in Brazilian be the ’60s cineaste par excellence.
film history—first, because he makes an impassioned intellectual Had this collection been published
case for Cinema Novo as the successor movement to the French in 1970, it would have been on
New Wave and Italian neorealism, and second, because as On every film student’s shelf.
America: Films from Elsewhere Shanay Jhaveri writes, “equally culture, history and landscape,
Punishment Park
Edited by Shanay Jhaveri interested in the films as reflec- but also the effects of these
The Shoestring Publisher, $34.99 tions on America as it is in the forces upon the viewer: the young
creative process and what Amer- Chantal Akerman’s formative feast
A generously illustrated, wide- ica enables as a site of produc- on the avant-garde at Anthology
ranging selection of essays on tion.” Rooted in seminal analyses Film Archives, the unlocking of
American films helmed by non- from the likes of Tocqueville and Paul Verhoeven’s latent auteurism,
American filmmakers, America: Baudrillard, the writings explore or the curdling of Jacques Demy’s
Films from Elsewhere is, as editor not only outsider views of U.S. counterculture idealism.
At once a celebration of and a farewell to life, My Mother Laughs brims with vulnerability, wisdom, and the
visual and rhythmic inventiveness that characterizes Chantal Akerman’s filmmaking.
xx
No Home Movie x 2
Maternal Instincts reads as a tribute to the resilience that continues to drive Natalia
decades after losing her parents and extended family in con-
Chantal Akerman’s writings contemplated life centration camps. In one poignant passage, Akerman adopts her
with and without her ever-central mother mother’s perspective to describe how her obsession with order
and cleanliness developed as a reaction to Auschwitz’s harrowing
BY YONCA TALU conditions. While frustrated with Natalia’s remarks about her
disheveled appearance, Akerman identifies with her need for
My Mother Laughs beauty and harmony, and recalls being entranced by her mother’s
By Chantal Akerman, translated by Corina Copp looks and clothes as a little girl. This vibrant youthfulness contrasts
The Song Cave, $20 with the old woman’s crippled body and her aching moans and
O
gasping breaths—which we hear continuously in No Home Movie
riginally published in french in 2013, and now as we watch Natalia go about her daily routine with the help of her
available in an English translation by the poet and caretaker, Clara (also a recurrent figure in My Mother Laughs).
critic Corina Copp, the late Belgian filmmaker Regarding herself as an “old child” at odds with adult society,
Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs is a shattering Akerman muses on her own morbid urges. (She committed
memoir about her octogenarian mother’s final years and an suicide in October 2015.) But unlike No Home Movie, My Mother
intimate companion piece to her documentary on the same Laughs ends on a rather lighthearted note as Akerman comes to
subject, 2015’s No Home Movie. Unfolding in a nonlinear terms with the futility of trying to prepare for her mother’s death
associational style that mirrors Akerman’s fluctuating psyche and grounds herself back in
during trying times, My Mother Laughs charts her symbiotic the present by reuniting with
love-hate relationship with her mother Natalia, an Auschwitz a former girlfriend. At once a
survivor whose traumatic past never ceased to haunt the director celebration of and a farewell
and her work since her seminal 1975 breakthrough, Jeanne to life, My Mother Laughs
Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. brims with vulnerability,
Filled with joie de vivre despite her physical disintegration, wisdom, and the visual and
Natalia clings to small quotidian pleasures like taking a warm bath rhythmic inventiveness that
or eating her favorite seafood, while her daughter struggles with the characterizes Akerman’s
awareness of her mother’s impending death. Unable to imagine a filmmaking. Moving toward
future without her but also avoiding her company for fear of being the universal with cathartic
overwhelmed, Akerman exorcises her demons by writing in the effect, it is destined to take its
back room of Natalia’s apartment in Brussels, where she delves into place among literature’s most
her childhood memories and dissects her recently ended toxic heartfelt accounts of the patient,
affair with a younger woman in New York. unconditional love binding
Although permeated with existential malaise, My Mother Laughs mothers and daughters.
There’s little on European- Things courtesy of Jonathan Goldsmith and Rachael Rakes paramount deficit is its lack of exe-
born studio-era giants—Lang, Rosenbaum. Rather, the high- regard as particularly incisive in gesis on the view from Canada,
Curtiz, Hitchcock, Ophüls, Renoir, lights of Films from Elsewhere its use of the American desert as with Cronenberg, Peter Mettler,
Siodmak, et al—and Jahveri focus on lesser-known works such “the very heart of the nation’s and Michael Snow being but a few
deliberately avoided soliciting as Babette Mangolte’s The Sky conflictual energies,” and its filmmakers whose perspectives
commentary on one canonical on Location, Sophie Calle and vision of the country in a “condi- benefit from immediate proximity.
work, Paris, Texas, though there Greg Shephard’s No Sex Last tion of permanent division.” But Jhaveri’s idea is so generative
are new considerations of Wen- Night, and Peter Watkins’s I may be biased, but it strikes that a second volume wouldn’t be
ders’s Hammett and The State of Punishment Park, which Leo me that Films from Elsewhere’s unwelcome.—José Teodoro
G R A P H I C D E TA I L The art of the movie poster by Adrian Curry
TO M I U N G E R E R
W
hen otto preminger was looking to
get with the times in the late 1960s and
optioned John Hersey’s youth-centric
LSD novel Too Far to Walk, he bypassed his regular
designer Saul Bass (with whom he’d been working
since 1953) and instead hired counterculture phe-
nomenon Tomi Ungerer to create some preproduction
key art. Ungerer, who died earlier this year at the age
of 87, was at the time among the most famous chil-
dren’s book authors and illustrators in America, but
also a notorious maverick. In 1967 he made a searing
statement with a series of anti–Vietnam War posters,
the most famous of which shows a white arm shoving
the Statue of Liberty down a yellow figure’s throat.
Ungerer, who was born in 1931 in the French-German
province of Alsace—he never felt either French or
German—moved to New York in 1956 with $60 and a
stack of artworks (which he carted around in a Trojan
condom box) during the golden age of Madison
Avenue illustration. His spare, sketchy style, coupled
with his acerbic humor and satirical bent, was a breath
of fresh air in both advertising and children’s books.
He found almost immediate success with his first
book The Mellops Go Flying in 1957, and published
over 140 more in his lifetime. For his friend Stanley
Kubrick, he illustrated the poster for Dr. Strangelove
(a rejected design on his website shows a general with
a mushroom cloud in place of a head). He created
iconic posters for The Village Voice (“Expect the Unex-
pected”) and The New York Times, but made only one
other movie poster: for D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey
Pop in 1968—a bawdy, ejaculatory piece pointing
toward the erotic art that became his major interest in
the early ’70s and got his children’s books banned
from libraries in the U.S. for over 40 years. Ungerer
POSTERS COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS AND TOMIUNGERER.COM

left New York for Nova Scotia and then rural Ireland,
and became a somewhat forgotten man, though in the
last decade or so of his life the opening of the Tomi
Ungerer museum in Strasbourg, France, the repub-
lishing of his books in the U.S., and the wonderful
2012 documentary Far Out Isn’t Far Enough reestab-
lished his reputation. Too Far to Walk, meanwhile, was
never made; Preminger channeled his counterculture
energy into Skidoo instead, the poster for which has a
tiny Ungerer-esque character (unsigned but probably
his) popping out of a pair of unbuttoned pants.
Adrian Curry writes about movie posters for

mubi.com and is the design director for Zeitgeist
Films and Kino Lorber.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying

and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA, 1964)
Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, USA, 1968)
Too Far to Walk (Otto Preminger, unrealized)
57th
New York
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A T W O - PA R T H B O C R I M E D O C U M E N TA R Y B Y E R I N L E E C A R R

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