by Dean | Jun 15, 2017 | General
Cover via Amazon
In his review of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Charles Thomas Samuels wrote, “Bunuel’s film doesn’t deserve to be called surrealistic because its dislocation of reality isn’t dictated by theme but by narrative opportunism.” Is there a theme in this French-language attempt at surrealism? I think so: the theme that the middle class is blind—to everything.
Bunuel himself was blind. He and co-writer Jean-Claude Carriere produced a script wherein “the dislocation of reality” and frequent satire do not mesh at all. When Bunuel satirizes a clergyman who kills the murderer of his parents, before which he introduces a working-class woman who murmurs, “I do not like Jesus Christ,” he is merely indulging his atheism. Too, fascinated as he is by domestic terrorists, he appears to be a political ignoramus; but, as Samuels indicated, it is only the narrative opportunism and not this political dimension that’s behind the surrealism. Or “surrealism.”
by Dean | Jun 13, 2017 | General
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Frenchman Jean ceases to love Helene, who in turn plots to avenge herself on him. She starts financially supporting Agnes, a destitute cabaret dancer, and Agnes’s mother with the objective of introducing Agnes to Jean, sensing that he will fall for her. He does, but without knowing that Agnes is less than respectable—as ashamed, indeed, as she is cynical.
This is what goes on in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1944), Robert Bresson‘s second film. The tale is lifted from a Diderot novel, though it seems very Henry Jamesian, infused with Bresson’s perennial Catholic morality. With a moving last scene, it’s quite a good love story (between Jean and Agnes), and by no means are the characters two-dimensional. They are intelligently acted by Maria Casares (Helene), a not-miscast Elina Labourdette (Agnes), and Lucienne Bogaert (Agnes’s mother). Paul Bernard, however, is deplorably charmless as Jean.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | Jun 12, 2017 | General
The whole physical package of Gal Gadot—pro-Israel and former Miss Israel—is stunningly gorgeous, and the character she plays, Wonder Woman (or Diana), in Wonder Woman (2017), is truly morally good. Which only adds to her irresistible being.
Directed by Patty Jenkins, the film may prove to be the summer’s best pop feature. Diana is a princess on a splendid all-female island, and when she saves the life of a World War I pilot (Chris Pine), pulling his drenched body to the island’s beach where other Amazon inhabitants join the pair, it is the kind of rich, spectacular sequence Fellini would have enjoyed shooting had the technology been available in his day. Jenkins has an eye for grandeur and wide scopes, and is adeptly served by her team of technicians.
Granted, Wonder Woman is imperfect but certainly watchable, and thrilling. It has beauty and violence but neither is overdone. Moreover, well, it’s a rather confused religious film (three men, by the way, devised the story here). In the final scenes, Wonder Woman begins to represent the ascent of Christ-as-God, of Christianity, and—because she mightily battles Ares, the god of war—the elimination of mean pagan gods. The puzzling thing is that Diana, from that all-female island, was created out of clay by Zeus (!), and he too is ripe for elimination.
Oh, well. I liked the flick more than I do most superhero movies. . . Gee, those Middle Eastern Arabs who refuse to see Wonder Woman because it stars a pro-Israel Jew don’t know what they’re missing. Get a life!
by Dean | Jun 8, 2017 | General
Cover of Twilight
A very fine Paul Newman entertainment of post-studio system film is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, not the 1998 Twilight. A very fine detective entertainment of post-studio system film is Chinatown, not the 1998 Twilight. In this Robert Benton movie in which Newman plays an aging P.I., many of the details are a load of bull, especially in light of how many shootings take place.
Further, most crime dramas of the Sixties and early Seventies are candid but not vulgar (exception: Dirty Harry); Twilight is both. Floating around is a rumor that Newman’s P.I. had his “pecker” accidentally shot off by a 17-year-old girl. A man acted by James Garner urinates off his elevated terrace instead of in a toilet bowl, nearly hitting the P.I. Part of the bull I mentioned consists in these scenes. About the header on this review, let me say that much of the dialogue alone in the film proves it’s the work of a hack.
by Dean | Jun 6, 2017 | General
In the first-rate Iranian film, The Salesman (2016), by Asghar Farhadi, Emad, the main character, is not a salesman. He is a schoolteacher who plays a salesman—Willy Loman—in a local production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, but this is not the only role he is drawn to assume. A second role is that of vengeful husband after he discovers the man who mistook Emad’s wife Rana for a prostitute and may have impulsively abused her. Although he’s a smart man who surely knows how to leave well enough alone, Emad, failing to do this, acts the dishonored avenger; and it ends badly.
Human weakness and fault are all over this downer of a film, but as well people are trying to adjust to, and stay alive in, urban society in general and Iranian society in particular. The old apartment building where Emad and Rana live begins to collapse due to nearby construction work. The former apartment of a prostitute, the couple’s new home, invites some aggression. That the police are never called to investigate the situation has something to do with the fact that, as Anthony Lane puts it, “The woman [in Iran] is the guilty party until proven innocent.”
Life in The Salesman has people limping along day after day, and even those who charge ahead, as Emad does, are limping. What Farhadi’s men believe themselves justified in doing—and they do gain our sympathy—suddenly pushes them and their wives against the wall. Both sexes demonstrate their vulnerability, in a marriage, alas, which may be in jeopardy. Is there a new role to take on that will salvage this?
(In Farsi with English subtitles)
