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Yeah looks like there is loads of interesting ones from that period. Wanna watch IIyenko's The White Bird Marked with Black at some stage too. I watched his later one A Story of the Forest: Mavka from '81 as well and liked it too.
Mavka seems nice! Viy comes closest to Eve of Ivan Kupalo and is pretty much just as fantastic. Most Russian fairy tale movies are less arthousy but still marvelous entertainment.
 
Hey @Rimbaud82, @moreorless87, and other artsy folks: Are you guys fans of Béla Tarr? I've got one more week of teaching and then I get to enjoy a summer break, during which I'll ideally be able to be in here more talking about the ridiculous amount of awesome movies I've (re)watched for all the classes I've taught this academic year, but I wanted to bring this up since this last week in my film history class I did a big international arthouse week, hit a lot of major directors from around the world (mainly Europe) from the last half century, and then built to a consideration of "slow cinema" and a focus on Tarr, with The Turin Horse as the mandatory screening of the week.

Honestly, the main reason I planned for that week to build to Tarr was because I myself was curious and wanted an excuse to explore more of his films. Way, way, way back in the SMD day, an old regular named flosh got me to watch Werckmeister Harmonies and in the intervening decade I've never forgotten the hauntingly beautiful cinematography and music (top five GOAT film score IMO). Well, in preparation for last week's lecture I watched Damnation, Satan's Tango (took the #1 spot from 1900 as the longest movie I've ever watched), Werckmeister Harmonies, The Man from London, and The Turin Horse. I fucking love this guy. I'm not the biggest Tarkovsky fan, but I love that Tarr is really the first filmmaker (or is there someone I'm forgetting/don't know?) since Tarkovsky to consciously and consistently find and work out a single aesthetic. The long takes, the moving camera, the minimal dialogue, and the music/natural sound is 100% Tarr, his movies look and sound like no one else's ever. And to his credit it's not just formal masturbation, the movies themselves are incredibly engrossing.

I'm torn at the moment between Damnation and The Man from London - neither of which I'd seen before - as my favorite. I know for sure that the early extended sequence in Damnation where the main character watches the bar singer's performance and then is confronted by her angry husband is my favorite scene in Tarr's career. But The Man from London blew me away because it's literally the arthouse version of No Country for Old Men. It even came out the same year!

I haven't had the time to post much in here about all the cool stuff I've been (re)watching, but I had to at least get this out of my system. Hopefully in a week or two I'll be able to properly go through everything I've watched. Lots of cool shit, I assure you.
 
was immediately drawn to Tarr & love his entire body of work. Damnation is my favorite.

speaking of slow cinema, has anyone ventured into Lav Diaz’s filmography? i keep saying i’m going to watch Norte, the End of History but then never do because i’m trash

re: filmmakers who have a singular aesthetic & form like no one else & is 100% the filmmaker - i think Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Emir Kusturica, Roy Andersson & Aleksei German (for contemporaries of Tarr) also fall into that category. curious if anyone else would agree
 
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I'd only seen Werckmeister, Turnin Horse and Damnation but I'd agree the latter is probably my favourite, perhaps because it feels the purest in terms of looking to work almost entirely via tone.

I'v only seen his last two films(hopefully Arrow or someone give My Friend Ivan Lapshin a decent release sooner or latter) but Aleksei German does feel like he would fall under Bullitts description of someone who developed a single aesthetic across his career. Both similar and dissimilar to Tarr and Tarkovsky, heavily focused on atmospheric long takes like them but were as they are slow and formal he's chaotic and seemingly purile. Still though I would rank Hard To Be a God and Khrustalyov, My Car! as two of the best looking films I'v ever seen.
 
Picked up Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but after enjoying rcent hyped arthouse like Monos and Long Days Walk Into Night I found it a little disappointing. On the plus side like those films it does look nice with the harsh costal landscape shot well(although I would have preffer it being a little more expansive in style as the above). On the negative side whilst risking sounding like an old man shaking his fist at Ryan Gosling I felt this crossed over from subtle drama into a simple lack of chemistry between them leads.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Zhivago. Lean really seemed to be one of the best filmmakers of the era when it came to those sprawling, epic types of films. The production values, the acting, the cinematography, and the score all stood out to me. I'm also always impressed with films that have really long runtimes but do not have a bloated quality or a lethargic pace.

Sharif was really good in the lead role. The character was nuanced, likable, introspective. I think that made him sort of a difficult character to portray because he had to convey a lot without speaking much. Sharif did a great job of conveying what was going on under the surface. The rest of the cast was uniformly strong. Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin were excellent. Steiger and Tom Courtenay gave intense performances.

I have often had this thought about certain films from the 50s and 60s. Because they were unable to really depict disturbing material in a graphic manner (certainly not with any degree of frankness or explicitness that movies today do), the filmmakers instead managed to build a tension or unnerving quality that comes across as palpable because of what is implied rather than directly stated or shown. To give the example, Scorsese's Cape Fear was on the other day. I like it but I don't love it. I think the 1962 film is a lot better. And I think one of the key differences there is the way Max Cady's menace with Mitchum in the original film is more disturbing to me than DeNiro's more over-the-top maniacal violence. In Doctor Zhivago, there are some scenes with Rod Steiger in the earlygoing that really gave me the creeps. Merely the way his character looked at or lingered in the presence of Julie Christie's character reeked of something disturbing/nefarious.

I also recently watched Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. I had read Wharton's novel prior to seeing it. One thing that I felt both Zhivago and Age of Innocence did really well as film adaptations of literary works was in the use of narration. In both cases, there is a narrator who provides exposition of plot at various points throughout the film. In the case of Innocence, it's a third-person omniscient offscreen narrator. In Zhivago, it's the character that Alec Guinness portrays, the half-brother of the title protagonist. Using a narrator in these types of adaptations strikes me as an easy way for the screenwriter to integrate key descriptions from the text into the film. But what I really appreciated with both of these films was the selective way the device was used. The narration was not jarring because it was never overwhelming. Instead, it was used sparingly and, as such, had more of an impact in the few scenes when it was utilized.

I particularly liked the use of it in the scene where Guinness' character describes the way that the Marxist and revolutionary-minded individuals in Russia viewed World War I. It fit really well into the overall flow of the film.

Speaking of Guinness, the film has an awesome ending scene too. A bit ambiguous. Somewhat hopeful. But really hit home with the performance by the great Guinness who with one look conveys a lot of emotion.
 
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Watched Ravenous.

Weird little Cannibal Western/Dark Comedy.
Highly enjoyable.
It's steeped in native american lore (Windigo).Using that myth as a metaphor for american western expansion.

A really good little cast.
Robert Carlisle absolutely owns this Film.He's funny and intimidating at the same time..

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Guy Pearce is the veeeery flawed Protagonist, an almost irredeemable coward.
Jeffrey Jones,Neal McDonagh,Stephen Spinella ,Joseph Runningfox,Sheila Tousey,David Arquette provide great support.

It has a pretty original score by Damon Albarn & Michael Nyman, which i found a bit too invasive at times.1 pursuit scene that should be really tense is almost ruined by constant Banjo tones.

Well worth a watch if you havent seen it.


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Touki Bouki (1973)
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Two young lovers dream of leaving Senegal behind for the glitz and glamour of Paris. Dreaming of the wealth and fame that will surely follow this move to Paris they come up with a range of schemes to raise the money needed. But as they say about best-laid plans...

It was a weird one alright. Transposes some of the visual language of the French New Wave - I am thinking something like Pierrot Le Fou in particular - to 1970s Senegal, while also remaining deeply rooted in traditional African culture and aesthetics . There is, for instance, a heavy dose of vodun mysticism which permeates the film. The pace is slow and languid throughout, occasionally punctuated by startling juxtapositions and editing choices. I have to say at times it could be a little confusing. Not to the point that I was ever totally lost, just mildly bewildered. Provides a curious blend of realism, with an extremely vivid portrayal of life in Dakar, with more fantastical elements.

Overall a very interesting film. Of course, it is not perfect and the strange pace especially may put off some. However it is an extremely unique, imaginative film which provides a thoroughly phantasmagorical depiction of Senegalese culture. One that has me curious to dig a bit deeper into African cinema.
 
La Haine (1995)
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I vaguely remember first watching La Haine several years ago when I was about 17 or 18. I had just watched Taxi Driver (presumably attracted by the stills of Vinz's own Travis Bickle homage) . Back then I didn't know much about film and I remembered very little of the plot itself this time round. However, the one thing that seemed to stay in my mind was the raw intensity of the films portrayal of life in the banlieue.

This intensity comes through just as much on the second occasion, but my appreciation was a lot deeper this time round. This is partly a result of my further 'education' in arthouse and world cinema, but equally I would say my literal education. I probably had a very vague conception of this watching it as a teenager, but watching this time I also had much greater appreciation of the complexity and nuance of the socio-political critique provided in the film. With a deliberate lack of plot, it gives us a "day in the life" of three young disenfranchised men. Is it any wonder I didn't remember much of the plot itself, because for large periods nothing actually 'happens' in any conventional sense. Yet this narrative choice, combined with a fractured and erratic editing style, does better than most at conveying the deep sense of malaise inherent to these housing projects.

Yet the film isn't oversimplistic in it's portrayal either. It doesn't eulogise these young men - from non-white backgrounds it should be emphasised. They aren't saints or martyrs, they have flaws and at times their actions are completely unsavoury. More than stock characters they contain a lot of emotional and psychological depth. What they are more than anything else is a product of a particular environment and a particular set of circumstances which is beyond their control. It is these circumstances which define them - both in terms of how they are seen by others and by the roles which they feel compelled to play for themselves.

La Haine s so brutally effective because of how it walks this tightrope of complete listlessness with an undercurrent of anger and violence....while still managing to slowly build the intensity until the films shattering conclusion. It's just a truly brilliant film which, while managing to treat it's themes in a varied and complex way rather than simply black-and-white still contains an acute sense of injustice. It wasn't intentional, but perhaps there was something subconscious in my decision to rewatch La Haine right now. In light of the current civic unrest around the world, not to mention continued social inequality, it remains startlingly relevant 25 years after it's release, Simply a complete masterpiece in both form and function and simply one of the best films of past few decades,m if not one of the best of all time.
 
Hey, @Rimbaud82: I have a peace offering. Even though I hated both The Witch and The Lighthouse (to be fair, I at least finished The Witch and even bumped it up a few notches thanks to @europe1's analysis of it - The Lighthouse on the other hand was absolute garbage, I couldn't even make it half an hour), both of which I know you are quite fond of, I thoroughly enjoyed Midsommar. Did you ever see that one? If so, what did you think of it?

I'd been meaning to watch it ever since a friend of mine saw it on the big screen. In fact, the reason that it took me so long was precisely because of how underwhelming I found The Witch. However, the reason that I finally took the plunge (pun intended) was because for all of its flaws I do respect what Ari Aster did with Hereditary and I wanted to see what his next outing would be like. Now, I have to say that the opening was fucking dreadful and I almost stopped watching after that comically retarded suicide scene. But from the festival on it just got better and better. A quintessential "slow burn" film. It was by no means flawless - the stupid, forced, unnecessary, on-the-nose artsy-fartsy wannabe deep Mona Lisa smile ending ruined what could've/should've been an awesome ending - but it's another step in the right direction after Hereditary. Hereditary is probably the technically better film - Midsommar is a little sloppier, it felt like some things got away from him at times - but Midsommar is the more intriguing and the world that he created really drew me in. For several days after I watched it, I kept thinking about it, which is always a nice experience.

I also had this powerful feeling of familiarity while I was watching the film, and finally I realized that it was very similar to a book I read a long time ago called Harvest Home. I prefer the latter - much more potent on the horror front with a legitimately devastating ending - but the similarities were such that Midsommar realized on film much of the eeriness that made Harvest Home such a great read back in the day.

La Haine (1995)

I had a student in my last film history class write his final paper on this movie. I rewatched it myself not too long ago and, while I wouldn't go as far as to call it brilliant, it's still a damn good movie and, like you said, still very relevant.
 
I’m undecided about Lighthouse. Even though the cinematography was mangificent, I didn’t enjoy it that much rightaway, because it seemed like such a mess. I’ve thought about it every now and then afterwards and it has actually started to make sense. At first I was baffled by the Prometheus refenence in the end, when the seagulls were pulling Pattinson’s guts out after he had reached the top of the lighthouse and stumbled down again. Later I read a detailed analysis of the Prometheus aspect, but was still confuced, as Prometheus is a very herioc legend. Then I realized, that this is a generation movie: Millenial fights hard to reach the mythical Boomer Olympos to steal the fire. Nothing really is gained, but at least he reached his goal and kept his pride. Achievement unlocked and it’s not about the goal but the journey.
 
Hey, @Rimbaud82: I have a peace offering. Even though I hated both The Witch and The Lighthouse (to be fair, I at least finished The Witch and even bumped it up a few notches thanks to @europe1's analysis of it - The Lighthouse on the other hand was absolute garbage, I couldn't even make it half an hour), both of which I know you are quite fond of, I thoroughly enjoyed Midsommar. Did you ever see that one? If so, what did you think of it?

I'd been meaning to watch it ever since a friend of mine saw it on the big screen. In fact, the reason that it took me so long was precisely because of how underwhelming I found The Witch. However, the reason that I finally took the plunge (pun intended) was because for all of its flaws I do respect what Ari Aster did with Hereditary and I wanted to see what his next outing would be like. Now, I have to say that the opening was fucking dreadful and I almost stopped watching after that comically retarded suicide scene. But from the festival on it just got better and better. A quintessential "slow burn" film. It was by no means flawless - the stupid, forced, unnecessary, on-the-nose artsy-fartsy wannabe deep Mona Lisa smile ending ruined what could've/should've been an awesome ending - but it's another step in the right direction after Hereditary. Hereditary is probably the technically better film - Midsommar is a little sloppier, it felt like some things got away from him at times - but Midsommar is the more intriguing and the world that he created really drew me in. For several days after I watched it, I kept thinking about it, which is always a nice experience.

I also had this powerful feeling of familiarity while I was watching the film, and finally I realized that it was very similar to a book I read a long time ago called Harvest Home. I prefer the latter - much more potent on the horror front with a legitimately devastating ending - but the similarities were such that Midsommar realized on film much of the eeriness that made Harvest Home such a great read back in the day.

Midsommar
is kinda shit until they get to the actual camp, then it gets good.It's also way too long.
The Wicker Man is superior in every way.
 
I’m undecided about Lighthouse. Even though the cinematography was mangificent, I didn’t enjoy it that much rightaway, because it seemed like such a mess. I’ve thought about it every now and then afterwards and it has actually started to make sense. At first I was baffled by the Prometheus refenence in the end, when the seagulls were pulling Pattinson’s guts out after he had reached the top of the lighthouse and stumbled down again. Later I read a detailed analysis of the Prometheus aspect, but was still confuced, as Prometheus is a very herioc legend. Then I realized, that this is a generation movie: Millenial fights hard to reach the mythical Boomer Olympos to steal the fire. Nothing really is gained, but at least he reached his goal and kept his pride. Achievement unlocked and it’s not about the goal but the journey.

I think that you're trying harder than the film deserves. You're right when you say that it's a mess. And I'll go one further: The cinematography isn't even that good. He did the black-and-white "Look at this serious art film" thing but that's it. Nothing stood out to me as even noteworthy much less magnificent. Béla Tarr uses black-and-white, but he also brilliantly composes and lights his shots, his camera movements are intricate and elegant. (I was extra pissed while trying to watch The Lighthouse because it seemed like such an incompetent ripoff of The Turin Horse.) Even Ari Aster, to stick to the thread of my previous post, blows Robert Eggers' shit off the screen. Midsommar is one of the most aesthetically impressive films that I've seen in recent memory, a virtual masterclass in composition to say nothing of the way that he used movement and color.

The Lighthouse struck me immediately as one of those films that spends its entire running time trying to score cheap arthouse points in lieu of being a good movie.

Midsommar is kinda shit until they get to the actual camp, then it gets good.

Yep.

It's also way too long.

They could've just skipped the beginning crap and that would've shaved off 20-30 minutes and brought it down to a nice two hours. There's really no reason why we couldn't have opened on the way to, or at, the airport and then received the necessary exposition - sister killed herself and parents died, couple on the outs - between departure and arrival.

The Wicker Man is superior in every way.

I saw that ages ago, when I was like 13, and only remember not liking it very much. That one could definitely do with a rewatch.
 
I think that you're trying harder than the film deserves.
If a movie keeps intruguing me six months after seeing it, then it does deserve my attention. Calling Lighthouse a movie that wants it self taken seriously is retarded thing to say. It was utterly silly and pround of it. Also, fuck compositions and fuck elegant camera movement too. In it’s core cinematography is about capturing light on film and in that’s what Eggers does beautifully.
 
Yotsuya, you're clearly in a feisty mood, so I'm going to respond at the risk of getting more of my tail feathers singed in the effort to dodge any more fire that you spit my way...

If a movie keeps intruguing me six months after seeing it, then it does deserve my attention.

Hey, you're the one that called it a mess. I was just agreeing with you and encouraging you to move on to movies that you don't have to clean up for the filmmakers. But if you want to spend time trying to clean the mess up inside your head, knock yourself out.

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Calling Lighthouse a movie that wants it self taken seriously is retarded thing to say. It was utterly silly and pround of it.

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Are you high right now or something? Or did we suddenly stop talking about The Lighthouse? If you enjoyed it, fine, but let's not pretend that we're talking about a light and fun little romp à la Dumb and Dumber. We're talking about a movie with outrageously complicated technical work behind it, an admittedly self-conscious effort to call up at once 1940s classical Hollywood cinema and the art films of Bergman and Tarr, and a story with pretensions to psychoanalytic and mythological profundities. It was trying so hard to be a serious art film that when I typed "The Lighthouse art film" into Google the first result was an article (https://qctimes.com/entertainment/c...cle_db20edac-86a7-54e2-96da-71673302b42c.html) in which the author constantly repeats in all caps "THIS IS AN ART FILM," which is exactly what it feels like the film itself is doing every thirty seconds, just screaming that out of the screen at anyone who happens to be on the other side of it.

Also, fuck compositions and fuck elegant camera movement too. In it’s core cinematography is about capturing light on film and in that’s what Eggers does beautifully.

I'll leave aside the "fuck compositions and fuck elegant camera movement" craziness and focus on your "core" argument. Editing at its core is going from one shot to another, but, call me crazy, if I'm going to use the word "magnificent" to describe a film's editing then I'm going to need a little more than that. Yes, Eggers managed to capture light on film - there were lights and the cameras were turned on - but, call me crazy, I think that we should reserve words like "magnificent" for cinematography that accomplishes a bit more.
 
Now that I'm on the Criterion Channel, I might be tagging you artsy-fartsies @Rimbaud82, @moreorless87, and @HenryFlower a lot in the next few weeks. I hope that it's not too annoying. I'm definitely going to try to watch as many movies as I can this weekend, so buckle up ;)

For starters, I decided to make today a Carl Theodor Dreyer day. I didn't go all the way back to his silent films, but I did go through all of his sound films: Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud. I'd seen them all before - Vampyr many times over the years, Ordet twice, and Day of Wrath and Gertrud just once each - but it'd been a while since I'd seen any of them and around a decade since I'd seen the last two.

Vampyr is still awesome. That was another movie that I thought of while watching The Lighthouse. Dreyer was so many decades ahead of his time with the disorienting surreal-ish horror thing that it's just crazy to watch that almost 100-year-old experiment today. It's definitely clunky, what with the low budget and the early sound technology, but the visuals alone are worth it. Still a classic.

Day of Wrath is probably his most popular film other than The Passion of Joan of Arc but I find it a little underwhelming, mainly because the cast is so weak. Lisbeth Movin as Anne and Anna Svierkier as Herlofs Marte are the only actors who brought it. Everyone else was weaksauce, especially the lifeless Thorkild Roose and his bland nothing son Preben Lerdorff Rye. The most powerful scenes were the scenes with Svierkier suffering her torture before being burned at the stake, which of course recalled The Passion of Joan of Arc, and then the scenes with Movin first getting her mother-in-law's goat with her Bible reading and then "killing" her husband. On the whole, though, this is rather light by Dreyer's standards, merely a fraction of the greatness of The Passion of Joan of Arc cut with a more traditional family piece hearkening back to something like Master of the House.

Ordet is his sound masterpiece. Nothing beats The Passion of Joan of Arc IMO, that's Dreyer's crowning achievement, but Ordet is right there in the #2 spot IMO. Excellent script, great ensemble acting from everyone involved, and masterful staging and cinematography. In The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer really went to town with close-ups, but more often than not he was a filmmaker who liked to utilize space. Well, Day of Wrath only hinted at the mastery of space that Dreyer would boast come Ordet. Dreyer is seldom referenced when discussing filmmakers who use long takes, and it's because they're seamlessly integrated in a very precise and intricate overall design, one where neither the visual storytelling nor the verbal storytelling takes precedence. This is also IMO Dreyer's best use of religious material. I love the Christ allegory, but even more I love that Dreyer doesn't stop there. Yes, Ordet is basically a retelling of the Christ saga, particularly the Gospel of John, but the Christ figure isn't the main character. He's the Looney Tune brother kept off to the side for the majority of the action. Instead, Dreyer fully immerses us in the family life, in the loving marriage that will be threatened by a difficult pregnancy, in the young love that is threatened by parental interference, and in familial and social lives threatened by egotistical stubbornness. There's really no shortage of compliments to be paid to this film. I really love this one and am glad I got to rewatch it.

Gertrud is the one I remembered the least but I loved this one, too. Not quite as good as Ordet but very close. It's clearly a member, though interestingly a non-Hollywood member, of what Stanley Cavell called "the melodrama of the unknown woman" (his exemplary films were Stella Dallas, Now, Voyager, Gaslight, and Letter from an Unknown Woman), and the female protagonist is most certainly a fascinating character, but I was most impressed with the aesthetics. I think that Ordet is Dreyer's most fully realized sound film with reference to the harmony between visual and verbal storytelling, but Gertrud is his most aesthetically impressive film IMO. Not only is it a long take masterclass, it's just generally a masterclass in mise en scène. I have no idea why this movie hasn't been referenced or analyzed more in my scholarly neck of the woods, the brilliance of the compositions, the camera movements, the lighting, the production design, the blocking, it was utterly staggering. This is definitely Dreyer's most French film, very much in line with the French films of the era (Last Year at Marienbad and Cléo from 5 to 7 were the two that jumped out at me immediately) while also pointing the way towards later arthouse films like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Veronika Voss, yet it's also the closest that he ever came to a classical Hollywood genre piece, with the conventions of melodrama working in full force but worked out according to a characteristically intricate visual design.

So that was day one with my Criterion Channel subscription. Speaking of French films, I've decided to go on a big French movie binge next, specifically targeting Marcel Carné, Max Ophüls, and Robert Bresson for some (re)watches. What do you guys think of Dreyer and these French filmmakers?
 
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Yotsuya, you're clearly in a feisty mood, so I'm going to respond at the risk of getting more of my tail feathers singed in the effort to dodge any more fire that you spit my way...



Hey, you're the one that called it a mess. I was just agreeing with you and encouraging you to move on to movies that you don't have to clean up for the filmmakers. But if you want to spend time trying to clean the mess up inside your head, knock yourself out.

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jon-stewart-confused-what.gif


Are you high right now or something? Or did we suddenly stop talking about The Lighthouse? If you enjoyed it, fine, but let's not pretend that we're talking about a light and fun little romp à la Dumb and Dumber. We're talking about a movie with outrageously complicated technical work behind it, an admittedly self-conscious effort to call up at once 1940s classical Hollywood cinema and the art films of Bergman and Tarr, and a story with pretensions to psychoanalytic and mythological profundities. It was trying so hard to be a serious art film that when I typed "The Lighthouse art film" into Google the first result was an article (https://qctimes.com/entertainment/c...cle_db20edac-86a7-54e2-96da-71673302b42c.html) in which the author constantly repeats in all caps "THIS IS AN ART FILM," which is exactly what it feels like the film itself is doing every thirty seconds, just screaming that out of the screen at anyone who happens to be on the other side of it.



I'll leave aside the "fuck compositions and fuck elegant camera movement" craziness and focus on your "core" argument. Editing at its core is going from one shot to another, but, call me crazy, if I'm going to use the word "magnificent" to describe a film's editing then I'm going to need a little more than that. Yes, Eggers managed to capture light on film - there were lights and the cameras were turned on - but, call me crazy, I think that we should reserve words like "magnificent" for cinematography that accomplishes a bit more.
1) What seemed like distasteful mess at first revealed an actually thoughtful and fun mess after further consideration.

2) Art house movies can be silly too. In fact, all the highpoints of Lighthouse I can remember were profoundly and deliberately silly. The movie was not taking itself too seriously, but goofing around for further kicks. That’s one of it’s appeals. It’s both highbrow and lowbrow.

3) In it’s core black and white cinematography is about the use of lenses to achieve the look and mood intended. Compositions and camera movement are the toppings.
 
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Vampyr is still awesome

I'm entering that horrific age when I cannot remember enough details about movies I saw 15 years ago except saying: Yeah it's awesome.:D

and in familial and social lives threatened by egotistical stubbornness

Everyone in that movie is so soft-worded and mellow-sounding that when I first saw it and the movie calls out their egotistical obstinance I went: "Huh!? Waaaa? Oh shit wait a minute, these people really are egotistical!" It's kind of brilliant how they juxstapose the mellowness of what is being presented with the raw humanistic injustice of it all. It mirrors how the characters can't see their own flaws of pride with how us ordinary oftentimes suffer the same issue.

Or maybe that was just me being inattentive and stooped in my ear-straining comprehension of the Danish language. <45>

This is also IMO Dreyer's best use of religious material

Similar to how Catholic filmmakers are often steeped in an age-old Catholic tradition when constructing their movies, I just love the "Luteranism" of Ordet. It feels so deliberately anti-iconic. Everything feels material. The miracle isn't presented as some grand supernatural event but an flesh-and-blood occurence, a space in time, an actual thing that happens without any fanfare or parting of the heavens or any of that pazzazz. It's a religious movie that completely eschews the metaphysical. That's pretty damn revolutionary and cool.

I mean shit, even Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew -- which is often lauded for doing similar things -- at least starts blasting the triumpant soundtrack whenever a miracle occurs. Dryer has the cools to avoid even that.

Yes, Ordet is basically a retelling of the Christ saga, particularly the Gospel of John

That allusion completely flew over my head. But then again... John is the worst of the Gospels so I guess I don't keep track of that stuff.:cool:
 
tag away @Bullitt68

i’ve always liked reading your thoughts on film/films since your posts are always well written & usually well argued, even if i disagree w/ you or your post makes me grit my teeth & want to yank my hair out. god you can be so fucking frustrating sometimes & it’s even more annoying because you are always frustrating in an eloquent way.

i will have to ask you to abstain from tagging me if you plan on talking shit about my manlet hero though. or else we’ll have to scrap.

(will check out that last post in a bit. need to get some shit done around the house before i can sit down & relax. i did catch that you plan on watching some Ophüls though, down at the end of your post, & i support that decision wholeheartedly)
 
I would say Bresson would likely be very much up your street Bullit, especially A Man Escaped.
 
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