May 1: Dogtooth (2009 -- Yorgos Lanthimos)

★★

This movie was not what I expected.  I didn’t find it challenging, I didn’t find it original, and I certainly didn’t find it a comedy.

Lanthimos starts with a premise (the parents completely isolate their children from society into young adulthood -- a premise with some promise), and then the film introduces various elements to show how the characters respond.  My problem with that is that people respond in about the way I expected them to, so I got bored in fairly short order. 

And there’s very little narrative arc in the movie, either, unless you count the older daughter’s developing desire to get away.  However, that conflict only inspires a small amount of the action of the film.  Otherwise, there's no real growth in anybody or much of a story structure.

The pathetic situation of the kids and the parents didn’t inspire or illuminate at all.  The action is somewhat predictable and sad, and I can’t imagine how anyone found humor here.

So I’m lost about the critical reception of Dogtooth in some circles.  I like the fractured framing and the soft lighting, but I wasn't very engaged with the characters or story.

April 25: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004 -- Michel Gondry)

★★★★★

April 20: All About Eve (1950 -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

★★★★★

April 18: Sweet Smell of Success (1957 -- Alexander Mackendrick)

★★★★★

April 17: Night of the Hunter (1955 -- Charles Laughton)

★★★★★

Night of the Hunter is one of the most original, successful films I’ve seen in a long time. Where have I been all this time not to even know what’s up with it?

There are many things I like about this movie, but I’d have to say that its mood and psyche of German Expressionism appeals to me the most among them.  The BD notes say the film has a strong German Expressionist element, so I expected some low-angle lighting with big shadows.  And there are low angle lights like when Mitchum goes down the stairs to the cellar, the shadows making him even stranger and more deformed than his psychology already is.  There is a great scene that’s only done in silhouette, too.    However, Night of the Hunter uses a fuller range of expressionist vocabulary.  There are some sets that are over-the-top angled to look like a Caligari exterior, and there’s a weird psychology to the whole film that is elemental, as though all the characters had been dragged up from someone’s id.  Also, you see Expressionist body language, like when Mitchum twists his body to pick up the line of an interior and his twisted posture recalls a gesture in Murnau or the like.  There’s even an Expressionist plot line as the Reverend is caught and the angry townsfolk form a lynch mob to hang him.  At that point, Ben has a flashback to the persecution of his father and suddenly becomes a supporter of the man who would have killed him (and still would). In that scene, the angry mob is clearly out to kill a Frankenstein/Golem character like in a Wegener movie.  The stroke of inspiration here is that Charles Laughton has so fully adapted this anachronistic, foreign film vocabulary to a riverside America in the 30s; it’s a simply perfect fit.

And then there is the disturbing, dreamy quality of so many parts of the film.  The film opens with the head of Lillian Gish at the center of a circle of singing cherubs against the night sky; an image that’s both sweet but vaguely disturbing.  You get the same feeling in the river voyage of the children as they drift by a heavily foregrounded frog and some rabbits, animals that are just there, neither threatening nor helpful but neutrally watching the desperate children alone on the river.  And there’s the beautiful, lyrical disturbing scene of Willa, drowned in car at the bottom of the river with her hair flowing with the river plants.  Dreamy….and creepy.

And what great casting.  The hunky Robert Mitchum would seem to be the opposite of what you’d want in the role as the Reverend, but his good looks, deep voice and out-of-control public image are just perfect. His chemistry with the kids is apparent on screen, too.   And what better saving angel than Lillian Gish, not only Griffith’s regular icon-of-innocence but also identified so strongly with silent film.  Shelley Winters isn’t outstanding here, but she’s not bad, and I think this is one of the earliest roles I’ve seen her in.

Night of the Hunter is so over-the-top and out-of-the-box-- but  so well-done – that I’m planning to push it on everyone I can convince to give it a try.  There’s not a moment in the film to not be looking at the screen.

April 16: Suzhou River (2000 -- Lou Ye)

★★★★

Suzhou River has a couple of very strong points going for it.  For one, its plot seems straightforward at first but soon becomes complicated with stories within stories while one actress plays the female lead in all of them.  I enjoyed this story as it got more and more complicated and, instead of ending, took one more narrative turn.  After its somewhat slow beginning, Suzhou River quickly reeled me in.  I also liked the film’s setting along the Suzhou River in Shanghai.  This is a dirty, misty, industrial, rainy, humid environment – the environment good noir.  I don’t believe I’ll ever think of Shanghai in the same way after watching this film.  Like in African Queen, the setting here is as much a character as any of the people are.

There were some elements of the movie that I didn’t really care for, though.  For one, there’s a voiceover narration throughout the film, and I have a knee-jerk bias against that.  I wish the film could just tell the story with images, but I don’t know how Ye could have done that here.  However, he could have done it more, for sure.  I was slightly disappointed in the way the ending ties up all the ends in the plot and gives us a definitive interpretation of what has happened, too.  The film could have stopped a little earlier and left us with several interesting ways of thinking about what we’d seen, but it goes on to tell us what to think.  And along with the voiceover, a lot of Suzhou River uses a subjective point of view with a wobbly, hand held camera that grows a little old after awhile; and I got impatient with the voiceover and the takes of life along the river at the film’s opening.   I still don’t get how all that fits….

These reservations aside, there’s a lot to like in Suzhou River.  It’s worth the time as a unique vision of a unique place.

April 15: Source Code (2011 -- Duncan Jones)

★★★

This is a fun movie for a Friday night.  Carlos and I checked it out, and I was involved in it almost from the beginning.  I liked the acting (except Joe Wright, whose bad scientist was too over-the-top in the context), and I really enjoyed the story.  I just didn’t see most of the narrative turns coming.

I had some expections for the movie since Jones directed Moon, a sort of intellectual sci-fi movie from last summer which I appreciated.  And I could see the Jones imprint on Source Code, too: a series of shifting frames of reference which kept giving me new ways to interpret what was happening.  Like in Moon, where we keep learning new things about Sam Bell, we keep adjusting our understanding of Colter Stevens and his mission as this movie progresses.

Moon is about identity and what life means, and Source Code approaches the same issues.  But this film is mostly an action romance, great stuff for Fridays.