Movies Serious Movie Discussion

Its been awhile but for me Jackie Brown just seemed to loose a bit of what made him interesting, becoming more of a standard crime thriller, some people semed to want his career to go in that direction but I'm glad it didnt.

I felt that visually Hateful Eight was quite a shift for him in terms of focusing strongly on visuals, maybe because the script had been leaked previously and he felt he needed to offer something else?
 
I’m just fully on board with the storyline and the performances are great. Quintessential Sam Jackson performance as the villain, Grier and Forster are great. DeNiro makes his mark in a rare supporting role.

great use of music, too.

De Niro actually has a bit more of a supporting resume than some think. Two of my favorite movies of his are Great Expectations and Backdraft. Then there's Angel Heart and Cop Land and Sleepers. That's all back in his relative prime but of course he has kind of turned into a supporting guy the last decade with Joy, Silver Linings Playbook and Joker.

I do remember Strawberry Letter 23 in Jackie Brown and you can never go wrong with that.
 
De Niro actually has a bit more of a supporting resume than some think. Two of my favorite movies of his are Great Expectations and Backdraft. Then there's Angel Heart and Cop Land and Sleepers. That's all back in his relative prime but of course he has kind of turned into a supporting guy the last decade with Joy, Silver Linings Playbook and Joker.

I do remember Strawberry Letter 23 in Jackie Brown and you can never go wrong with that.

that’s an excellent point. I guess with Jackie brown it was the nature of his character that stood out to me. Sort of just a sad sack dude lol. A bit of a change of pace for him. But you’re right. He kills it in supporting roles and has for a long time.

Copland is one of my favorites. “I offered you the chance to do the right thing and you BLEWWW it!”
 
First off, I think the dynamic between Pam Grier and Robert Forster is so damn good. Probably my favorite Tarantino duo other than Cliff and Rick Dalton lol.

second, there are scenes that are just so effectively done but that are still a bit restrained. Don’t get me wrong, there is no sequence as masterfully effective as, say, the two best sequences in Inglorious, but there’s one scene where Sam goes to feel out whether Jackie will fink on him to avoid jail time/potentially silence her that is just visually really well done and tense. The culminates in Grier going full-on 70s style badass but, again, not over the top like say when Rosario Dawson and co. start ax kicking Stuntman Mike lol.

I’m just fully on board with the storyline and the performances are great. Quintessential Sam Jackson performance as the villain, Grier and Forster are great. DeNiro makes his mark in a rare supporting role. Fonda is memorable and the way we see the deterioration between her relationship with DeNiro over the course of the film is really done well, too.

great use of music, too.
One of the best crime moves ever made. No doubt about that. I rate OUATIH even higher on Tarantino's filmography because of its thematic complexity, but JB is way more likeable.
 
De Niro actually has a bit more of a supporting resume than some think. Two of my favorite movies of his are Great Expectations and Backdraft. Then there's Angel Heart and Cop Land and Sleepers. That's all back in his relative prime but of course he has kind of turned into a supporting guy the last decade with Joy, Silver Linings Playbook and Joker.

I do remember Strawberry Letter 23 in Jackie Brown and you can never go wrong with that.

During his prime years I suspect part of it was that supporting roles were a way of breaking out of being typecast as the brooding loner, Angel Heart for example Parker offered him the lead but he went for playing old Nick instead.
 
Just revisited Barry Lyndon and I think you are 100% right. The movie is based on 19th century social satire novel by the English writer William Makepeace Thackeray. The novel is unreliably narrated by the Irish protagonist. Kubrick shifts the narration on third person and doing so kind of reveals the bias: The actual, true narrator is Thackeray who's approach makes fun of the opportunist upstart Irishman, while Kubrick shows the actual complexities of such a character contrasting snobby narrator and the actual sentiments brilliantly shown by his direction. Having read only a summary of the book I naturally can't be sure of this, but it would explain the shift of narration and the contrast to what is shown.
Few days ago I watched a favourite of Kubrick: Lola Montez (1955) by Max Ophüls. My expectation was that it would be kind of she-Barry Lyndon and that was somewhat the case. A based on real life story of a 19th century cabaret dancer who was the most scandalous character of her era and finally become a circus act a bit like Buffalo Bill. Spectacular stage show narrated by the circus master (Peter Ustinov) tells her life story while flashbacks tell the true story from Lola’s point of view. So the idea is the same as in Barry Lyndon regarding the narrator: Sensationalism vs. the real person behind it.
 
Few days ago I watched a favourite of Kubrick: Lola Montez (1955) by Max Ophüls. My expectation was that it would be kind of she-Barry Lyndon and that was somewhat the case. A based on real life story of a 19th century cabaret dancer who was the most scandalous character of her era and finally become a circus act a bit like Buffalo Bill. Spectacular stage show narrated by the circus master (Peter Ustinov) tells her life story while flashbacks tell the true story from Lola’s point of view. So the idea is the same as in Barry Lyndon regarding the narrator: Sensationalism vs. the real person behind it.

Sounds very interesting, will definitely check it out. Not one I've heard of before.
 
Sounds very interesting, will definitely check it out. Not one I've heard of before.
It was the most expensive European film produced up to its time and flopped bad. Not a great movie like Barry Lyndon, but an amazing production with very interesting ideas that were supposed to revolutionise the art form. Possibly because the main role was given to the French sex symbol Martine Carol and not someone known as prominent actress there's a non-melodramatic emotional distance running through the movie. Maybe Kubrick used that too as a starting point for BL but adjusted towards low-key naturalism.

The circus part was 100% Ophüls' idea and did not happen irl btw.
 
Il Buco (2021)
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Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco details an expedition by a group of speleologists into a newly discovered cave in the southern Italian region of Calabria in 1961. The title translates as “the hole” and it was thought at the time that this hole - the Bifurto Abyss - was the third deepest on earth. It is a period piece in the literal sense of the term, set as it is in the early 1960s. However, it’s no historical drama. Rather it is a profoundly quiet, almost mystical, dialogue-free exploration of…well, it’s not immediately clear. Frammartino is after what he calls the “cinema of experience” and it definitely doesn’t give up its themes lightly. Of course for me that’s not a bad thing…

In Italy this was a time of transformation - il boom economico. I’d hardly think a translation is needed for that one. Yet as the film tries to explore, not all regions would share in this economic miracle. As the film opens we emerge from the darkness of the abyss into the sun-drenched Calabrian landscape, soon we are in a nearby village where locals huddle round a tiny black-and-white screen.They watch a news program detailing the brand-new Pirellone skyscraper in Milan. From the depths of the abyss to the very height of modern sophistication. Well, it doesn’t take a genius.

But it is these kinds of dichotomies which underpins the film. Urban modernity against agrarian pastoralism, the old ways versus the new, the mundane and the sublime, human time and geological time…The film presents the dangerous descent of the young speleologists with a Herzog-ian authenticity, but contrasts this youthful daring against the ancient wisdom of an old Calabrian shepherd. In an act of cartographic violence these young scientists have come to map and unearth the deep secrets of this ancient landscape.There is much to consider as the film quietly unfolds, but to its credit it wears these themes very lightly as noted. It’s dense, and thought-provoking, without being didactic or overly trite. The viewer is trusted to draw their own conclusions.

Given its aesthetic approach Il Buco would not be much use at all if it was not for the cinematography. On this front the film does not disappoint at all. It is absolutely stunning in its poetic depiction of the Calabrian landscape, there are many frames that wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery. In a different way the incredibly impressive camerawork of the interior cave scenes is also jaw-dropping at several points. A very impressive, meditative film.

I had heard of the directors previous work Le Quattro Volte (2010), but had never got around to it. That will definitely be changed soon on the back of this one.

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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
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Another marvelously absurd tragicomedy from Martin McDonagh. Set on the remote island of Inisherin (a fictionalised Aran Island obviously) in 1923, the film tells a tale of a friendship gone sour. The two friends in question are perhaps an unlikely pair to begin with, bound together by circumstance and the everyday dreariness of life somewhere remote as Inisherin. Pádraic is “one of life's good guys”, an affable dairy farmer content with a simple life. A nice guy, by any measure, but certainly a bit dull. Colm, by contrast, is a talented fiddle-player; more high-minded and more intelligent, if also more conceited. For many years, we are given to assume, Pádraic has called on Colm on his way to the local pub. Certainly there’s not much else to do on Inisherin.

Yet one day, quite out of the blue, Colm simply decides that he no longer wishes to be friends with Pádraic. Thus setting off a sequence of events which is equal turns hilarious, ludicrous and dark. Determined to make something more of his life in his final years Colm is determined to spend his time writing music rather than chatting idle nonsense in the pub. Suffering from existential despair, he becomes obsessed with the idea of leaving an artistic legacy which will survive him in death and thus give his life meaning. Simply being nice, he tells Pádraic, certainly won’t be enough to get you remembered after you’re gone.

In an attempt to get Pádraic to stop talking to him, he delivers a shockingly absurd ultimatum - each time Pádraic dares to speak to him, he will cut off one of his own fingers with a pair of garden shears. The fingers, we are informed, are to be those of his left hand. The ones he uses to play the fiddle. Of course, it’s all quite insane, but it provides the story with a kind of squeamish momentum.

Naturally, this bleak, insane narrative is undercut with plenty of wit and lots of laughs, of precisely the kind of black comedy we come to expect from McDonagh. It is genuinely very funny, but ultimately it’s a sad and melancholic story. With Gleeson and Farrell back together, the obvious touchstone is In Bruges (2008) certainly the pair are in fine form together again. Yet, with the films setting and it’s focus on the absurdities of small-town (and remote island) Irish life, McDonagh’s earlier plays obviously come to mind too - The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), and then The Banshees of Inisheer, which was never released…until now, in it’s modified filmic form it seems. His brother's films such as Calvary (2014) and The Guard (2011) also, naturally, come to mind.

I suppose time will tell how this one is received in comparison to a classic like In Bruges. All I can say for now is that I enjoyed it very much. If nothing else, it’s very funny as I say; a kind of dark humour that is immediately recognisable to Irish audiences (It’s already 2pm, why wouldn’t Colm be ready to go to the pub?). But of course there is more to the film than just the laughs. It is a black comedy, and just as there is comedy there is also plenty of blackness: the dulling repetition of life, the search for more within the mundane, and the constant grasping for something ineffable and transcendent beyond our everyday boredom. And just as we grasp, life happens and time slips away. Certainly this is what has beset Colm. Yet, as the film explores, what does this all actually mean? What are the human consequences? What does any of it actually mean?

The setting of 1923 was obviously not chosen at random. This was the final year of the Irish Civil War. These violent events are remarked upon with ironic distance by the inhabitants of Inisherin, who can see and hear the explosions and gunfire over on the mainland. It might be tempting to draw some sort of allegory between the broken friendship of the film, and the bloody friend-on-friend conflict of the civil war. Again, McDonagh didn’t choose this setting for no reason. However, I think this juxtaposition is designed to elicit a more thoughtful response than a simple allegory of friend vs. friend. Rather it is more in the reason the friendship broke down in the first place; ie. the things people devote themselves to to give their own life meaning, and the consequences this has.

As I say, time will tell where this ranks in McDonagh’s wider filmography. To me it’s a lot more interesting than stuff like Three Billboards, which I was not particularly a fan of. A great return to Ireland anyway. Definitely recommended. Now where’s my pint……

@HUGHPHUG
 
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
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Another marvelously absurd tragicomedy from Martin McDonagh. Set on the remote island of Inisherin (a fictionalised Aran Island obviously) in 1923, the film tells a tale of a friendship gone sour. The two friends in question are perhaps an unlikely pair to begin with, bound together by circumstance and the everyday dreariness of life somewhere remote as Inisherin. Pádraic is “one of life's good guys”, an affable dairy farmer content with a simple life. A nice guy, by any measure, but certainly a bit dull. Colm, by contrast, is a talented fiddle-player; more high-minded and more intelligent, if also more conceited. For many years, we are given to assume, Pádraic has called on Colm on his way to the local pub. Certainly there’s not much else to do on Inisherin.

Yet one day, quite out of the blue, Colm simply decides that he no longer wishes to be friends with Pádraic. Thus setting off a sequence of events which is equal turns hilarious, ludicrous and dark. Determined to make something more of his life in his final years Colm is determined to spend his time writing music rather than chatting idle nonsense in the pub. Suffering from existential despair, he becomes obsessed with the idea of leaving an artistic legacy which will survive him in death and thus give his life meaning. Simply being nice, he tells Pádraic, certainly won’t be enough to get you remembered after you’re gone.

In an attempt to get Pádraic to stop talking to him, he delivers a shockingly absurd ultimatum - each time Pádraic dares to speak to him, he will cut off one of his own fingers with a pair of garden shears. The fingers, we are informed, are to be those of his left hand. The ones he uses to play the fiddle. Of course, it’s all quite insane, but it provides the story with a kind of squeamish momentum.

Naturally, this bleak, insane narrative is undercut with plenty of wit and lots of laughs, of precisely the kind of black comedy we come to expect from McDonagh. It is genuinely very funny, but ultimately it’s a sad and melancholic story. With Gleeson and Farrell back together, the obvious touchstone is In Bruges (2008) certainly the pair are in fine form together again. Yet, with the films setting and it’s focus on the absurdities of small-town (and remote island) Irish life, McDonagh’s earlier plays obviously come to mind too - The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), and then The Banshees of Inisheer, which was never released…until now, in it’s modified filmic form it seems. His brother's films such as Calvary (2014) and The Guard (2011) also, naturally, come to mind.

I suppose time will tell how this one is received in comparison to a classic like In Bruges. All I can say for now is that I enjoyed it very much. If nothing else, it’s very funny as I say; a kind of dark humour that is immediately recognisable to Irish audiences (It’s already 2pm, why wouldn’t Colm be ready to go to the pub?). But of course there is more to the film than just the laughs. It is a black comedy, and just as there is comedy there is also plenty of blackness: the dulling repetition of life, the search for more within the mundane, and the constant grasping for something ineffable and transcendent beyond our everyday boredom. And just as we grasp, life happens and time slips away. Certainly this is what has beset Colm. Yet, as the film explores, what does this all actually mean? What are the human consequences? What does any of it actually mean?

The setting of 1923 was obviously not chosen at random. This was the final year of the Irish Civil War. These violent events are remarked upon with ironic distance by the inhabitants of Inisherin, who can see and hear the explosions and gunfire over on the mainland. It might be tempting to draw some sort of allegory between the broken friendship of the film, and the bloody friend-on-friend conflict of the civil war. Again, McDonagh didn’t choose this setting for no reason. However, I think this juxtaposition is designed to elicit a more thoughtful response than a simple allegory of friend vs. friend. Rather it is more in the reason the friendship broke down in the first place; ie. the things people devote themselves to to give their own life meaning, and the consequences this has.

As I say, time will tell where this ranks in McDonagh’s wider filmography. To me it’s a lot more interesting than stuff like Three Billboards, which I was not particularly a fan of. A great return to Ireland anyway. Definitely recommended. Now where’s my pint……

@HUGHPHUG
I loved it man, I had a gummie before watching it and I was laughing maybe a little too much in places, but some of the script was genuinely hilarious, especially Barry Keoghan. It really was a gorgeous movie, perfect double bill with Calvary.
I'm not sure how it will be received outside of Ireland/Irish culture, a lot will be lost in translation. I also hope the movie isn't forced down people's throats by the Hollywood press. That's one of the great things about movies like The Guard, Calvary, The Field etc, they are understated perfection that most people haven't seen
 
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
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Christ above, I hated this film. Based on a bestselling ‘80s novel of the same name, a literary sensation and one of those many books deemed to be “unfilmable”. The story it depicts is that of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a wretched orphan in 18th-century France who is born with an exceptional - essentially magical - sense of smell, capable of distinguishing a vast range of scents in the world around him. Grenouille grows into a strange, isolated individual, detached from others in the orphanage and in society at large.

Eventually he finds himself apprenticed to a master perfumier by the name of Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), whose best days are seemingly behind him. Grenouille's genius for smell revives the old man's fortunes, but he becomes disenchanted with Baldini’s methods. He becomes obsessed with the idea of extracting the perfect scent, of preserving the very essence of a thing. To this end he travels to Grasse in the south of France, where the ancient art of enfleurage is practised: the removal of a flower's essential oil. Here Grenouille indulges his secret ambition. In his quest to create the ultimate scent, he begins killing teenage girls in an effort to preserve their scents.

Well, if the plot sounds incredibly outlandish and bizarre that is definitely how it comes across here. Particularly the absolutely ludicrous climax, though I won’t go into spoilers in case anyone foolishly intends to watch the film. Having not read the book, I can only imagine that the literary style and prose manages to carry this strange story in a way which absolutely doesn’t happen here. Naturally, there might be fascinating things to explore with the connection between smell, emotion and memory. The film utterly fails here though, and leaves us simply with a weird creep cutting about murdering innocent young women.

There is something truly nauseous about the way the film presents these women and their deaths - nothing more than objects to be gazed at, sniffed at, and then murdered by our protagonist. Serial killer fiction is obviously nothing new, and obviously it’s not an inherently taboo subject for a film to deal with, but Silence of the Lambs this is not. To me it was a totally uninteresting exploration of the pathology of a serial killer, or anything else related to that. So again, we are left purely with the sleaze.

It also seems significant, in theory at least, that the film is set in the eighteenth century. The Age of Enlightenment. The narrative itself implies some form of critique of Ancien Regime Europe and of Enlightenment Culture broadly. Connected to this, there also appeared to be some attempts to bring in elements of class criticism. These are things which are inherent to the story that is adapted from the book though, and can be recognised in some opaque way. Once again the film fails absolutely to engage these themes in any kind of thoughtful way. It’s just a bizarre, creepy film.
 
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
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Christ above, I hated this film. Based on a bestselling ‘80s novel of the same name, a literary sensation and one of those many books deemed to be “unfilmable”. The story it depicts is that of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a wretched orphan in 18th-century France who is born with an exceptional - essentially magical - sense of smell, capable of distinguishing a vast range of scents in the world around him. Grenouille grows into a strange, isolated individual, detached from others in the orphanage and in society at large.

Eventually he finds himself apprenticed to a master perfumier by the name of Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), whose best days are seemingly behind him. Grenouille's genius for smell revives the old man's fortunes, but he becomes disenchanted with Baldini’s methods. He becomes obsessed with the idea of extracting the perfect scent, of preserving the very essence of a thing. To this end he travels to Grasse in the south of France, where the ancient art of enfleurage is practised: the removal of a flower's essential oil. Here Grenouille indulges his secret ambition. In his quest to create the ultimate scent, he begins killing teenage girls in an effort to preserve their scents.

Well, if the plot sounds incredibly outlandish and bizarre that is definitely how it comes across here. Particularly the absolutely ludicrous climax, though I won’t go into spoilers in case anyone foolishly intends to watch the film. Having not read the book, I can only imagine that the literary style and prose manages to carry this strange story in a way which absolutely doesn’t happen here. Naturally, there might be fascinating things to explore with the connection between smell, emotion and memory. The film utterly fails here though, and leaves us simply with a weird creep cutting about murdering innocent young women.

There is something truly nauseous about the way the film presents these women and their deaths - nothing more than objects to be gazed at, sniffed at, and then murdered by our protagonist. Serial killer fiction is obviously nothing new, and obviously it’s not an inherently taboo subject for a film to deal with, but Silence of the Lambs this is not. To me it was a totally uninteresting exploration of the pathology of a serial killer, or anything else related to that. So again, we are left purely with the sleaze.

It also seems significant, in theory at least, that the film is set in the eighteenth century. The Age of Enlightenment. The narrative itself implies some form of critique of Ancien Regime Europe and of Enlightenment Culture broadly. Connected to this, there also appeared to be some attempts to bring in elements of class criticism. These are things which are inherent to the story that is adapted from the book though, and can be recognised in some opaque way. Once again the film fails absolutely to engage these themes in any kind of thoughtful way. It’s just a bizarre, creepy film.

Its a rather strange film for the modern(ish) era I would say in that the story and some of the style seem best suited to something more obvious "arthouse" yet its a $60 million film with several big name Hollywood stars in it. That does I think end up with a strange mix were its trying to be some kind of glamorous mainstream period romance AND a film about a serial killer. The protagonist ends up being cast more as a romantic lead who happens to be a serial killer, rather questionable morally although I would say the two styles being merged does make for quite interesting viewing going from memory(havent seen it since its release 15 years ago). Its the kind of thing I think recent Paul Verhoeven probably would have done a better job with though being able to juggle morally with pleasing a wider audience.
 
The Chess Players (1977)
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“We might have invented chess…but the English have also made progress”

Shamefully this is my first Satyajit Ray film, but I was extremely impressed and will have to atone for my sins by watching more.

The Chess Players is set in Lucknow, India in 1856. For nearly a century this city has been one of the most important in the kingdom of Oudh, a wealthy successor state which arose following the disintegration of the Mughal Empire. Yet for just as long, British colonialists have looked upon this region with covetous eyes. Once a British protectorate from which they were able to exploit significant commercial gain, as the film opens the region was about to enter one of the most fateful years in its history.

No longer content with the quasi-independence which had long been the order of the day, the British East India Company is now resolved to fully annex the state. Using the so-called doctrine of lapse, they use the pretense of the kings misrule to seize control. The king in question, Wajid Ali Shah, is a hedonistic poet, playwright, and patron of the arts; no hardened warlord who might to oppose the Company. Not a bad man, perhaps, but not a great king given the circumstances.

The film opens with a pleasingly didactic sequence providing this necessary historical exposition, with some animated sequences almost in the style of Terry Gilliam. Yet while our backdrop may be such momentous processes as the consolidation of power by the forces of British Imperialism, The Chess Players deals more with irony than high politics. At least in terms of the immediate narrative. The opening sequence establishes the stakes; but the majority of the film shows us two noblemen who are comically obsessed with playing chess to the point of farce. To this end they are oblivious not only to the impending annexation of their kingdom, but also to ever-increasing resentment of their wives.

Some of this is played for comedy. It is very wry and humorous at points, but the film's tone and pace is quiet and contemplative overall. The allegory of chess and high politics, the “great game” of the British Empire, is an obvious enough one and to the film's credit it doesn’t try to be overly clever with this. It’s played straight. “Do they find our game slow?” one of our noblemen asks when being informed on the difference between the English rules of chess and the Hindustani version. The allegory is clear. Chess may have originated as chaturaṅga, but it is the faster English game which dominates today. To this fact, our feckless nobles our entirely ignorant until the very end.

The pace and style of The Chess Players takes a little bit of getting used to, but on the whole I found the film's subtle approach to these events extremely rewarding. For a film about British colonialism it is not as incendiary as you might expect. Although there is certainly criticism, there is also an attempt to understand historical actors on their own merits - the sense of duty which compels one, against the desire for peace and quiet, or the love of art, which compels another. There aren’t black-and-white villains and heroes here. Nonetheless, while the latter may be sympathetic, one way or the other the British are coming and sleepwalking into a checkmate does not augur well for the history of this region…

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Its been awhile but for me Jackie Brown just seemed to loose a bit of what made him interesting, becoming more of a standard crime thriller, some people semed to want his career to go in that direction but I'm glad it didnt.

I felt that visually Hateful Eight was quite a shift for him in terms of focusing strongly on visuals, maybe because the script had been leaked previously and he felt he needed to offer something else?

It seemed to me the new visual style started with Inglourious Basterds and continued through the next three movies...and hopefully into the next one.
 
Godland (2022)
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Saw this screened as part of the Belfast Film Festival this year, an impressive third-film from Hlynur Pálmason! Set at the end of the nineteenth century, Godland tells the story of a young Lutheran priest who travels from Denmark to a remote corner of Iceland in order to build a church and photograph the local inhabitants. Before long this arduous journey becomes something of a “dark night of the soul” for our young priest, with the sublime terror of the Icelandic wilderness cast as his own personal heart of darkness.

Given this synopsis I went in expecting some sort of Icelandic take on Diary of a Country Priest. I have seen at least one critic invoke the hallowed name of Bresson when discussing the film. However, while Godland is certainly rather austere in its tone, I didn’t really find Bresson to be an apt comparison. Unlike Bresson’s priest, our protagonist here (Lucas) is not particularly sympathetic for a start. He may be dealing with some similar sense of spiritual hunger and religious doubt, but he is a fairly distasteful character, filled with pride and arrogance. Deeply unpleasant; though of course human, all too human.

Although the English title is “Godland”, the film's immediate concerns are in fact much more human than this would suggest. The original title gives a better impression perhaps, that is Volaða land. Well, I say title but in fact there are two titles: Volaða land in Icelandic and Vanskabte Land in Danish. Both have essentially the same meaning, not Godland but something more like “Wretched Land” or “Miserable Place.”. This gets us closer to the film's themes I would say. It is a wretched land because of what it reflects back at its inhabitants and would-be settlers, not because of something inherent to the country. If there was criticism to be made, it is perhaps that the film doesn’t quite interrogate the full psychological depths of its characters in this fashion.

But to return to the Bresson comparison, the difference is of course more than simply comparing each films’ respective priests. Godland did not strike me as operating in the same mode as Bresson’s films. Of course, this is simply an observation; not a criticism. Where Bresson foregrounds the overwhelming repetitiveness of the day-to-day as a method of reaching the underlying transcendent, Pálmason is operating in a realm closer to Tarkovsky and slow cinema. He approaches the human from the other side, as it were.. As befits the style, many portions of the film are incredibly boring. That is, wonderfully and intensely boring. Profoundly boring. The good kind. Closer even to Malick than Bresson I would say.

Over and against our flawed human characters the film frequently gives us an incredibly vivid Icelandic landscape which threatens to swallow them whole. The film's visuals are certainly one of its strongest points. It is shot in a narrow 1.33.1 aspect ratio (so you know it’s an artsy film of course), which looks absolutely stunning. The film was inspired by a collection of wet plate photographs of rural Iceland taken by a priest in the late 1800s; the first photographs ever seen of that region. So the visual language, particularly the framing, is particularly suggestive of this original context. Though of course the story is basically completely fiction. Either way it is incredibly beautiful.

Godland is definitely a somewhat difficult film to sink your teeth into. The pacing is rather slow, to put it nicely. And despite what the English title suggests, it is more than a film about religion (not to say this is entirely absent). In place of organised religion Godland tries to give us spirituality without dogma, nature as a form of spirituality. But at the core it is a film about a clash of identities and a clash of languages. Knowing at least something of Iceland’s historic domination by the kingdom of Denmark would certainly be a benefit on this front. All in all, it’s far from a perfect film; not an easy one, but an impressive take overall.
 
Khartoum (1966)
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Visually stunning, occasionally entertaining, but ultimately nothing more than a dull imperial hagiography. Khartoum is a good old-fashioned historical epic/adventure film, replete with an extravagant overture, intermission break, entr’acte, and exit music. The last film to be shot in Ultra Panavision 70 until Tarantino came along, it certainly looks the part too; with sweeping vistas of the desert landscape and some fantastic imagery. For a while this atmosphere of old-timey Hollywood adventure carries things along admirably enough, and there are a few fine set-pieces, but it all loses steam before long.

There are some decent performances, but the script isn’t intelligent enough to seriously sustain interest over the full running time. It fails to probe into the historical events with any kind of complexity, and attempts to analyse the intense religiosity of its two main characters - General Gordon and Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi - are so surface-level as to be essentially worthless. It should go without saying that it’s a rather rosy version of British imperialism. Olivier is inherently absurd as a blackface version of this complicated Nubian prophet, while Charlton Heston’s take on Gordon toys with a few intriguing ideas, before ultimately settling into standard tropes of imperial martyrdom.

If you’re gonna go with some good ol’ imperial nostalgia you’d be better sticking with Laurence of Arabia (1962) or Zulu (1964) which remain better remembered for a reason. Simply much better films.

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De Niro actually has a bit more of a supporting resume than some think. Two of my favorite movies of his are Great Expectations and Backdraft. Then there's Angel Heart and Cop Land and Sleepers. That's all back in his relative prime but of course he has kind of turned into a supporting guy the last decade with Joy, Silver Linings Playbook and Joker.

I do remember Strawberry Letter 23 in Jackie Brown and you can never go wrong with that.
I think his Silver Linings character was so layered and perfectly done. He is excellent if he is front or in the back, just as long as his material is worthy. I have had the chance to meet him in the city several times. He is NOTHING like the larger than life people he plays. He is a little old man lol....
 
Khartoum (1966)
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Visually stunning, occasionally entertaining, but ultimately nothing more than a dull imperial hagiography. Khartoum is a good old-fashioned historical epic/adventure film, replete with an extravagant overture, intermission break, entr’acte, and exit music. The last film to be shot in Ultra Panavision 70 until Tarantino came along, it certainly looks the part too; with sweeping vistas of the desert landscape and some fantastic imagery. For a while this atmosphere of old-timey Hollywood adventure carries things along admirably enough, and there are a few fine set-pieces, but it all loses steam before long.

There are some decent performances, but the script isn’t intelligent enough to seriously sustain interest over the full running time. It fails to probe into the historical events with any kind of complexity, and attempts to analyse the intense religiosity of its two main characters - General Gordon and Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi - are so surface-level as to be essentially worthless. It should go without saying that it’s a rather rosy version of British imperialism. Olivier is inherently absurd as a blackface version of this complicated Nubian prophet, while Charlton Heston’s take on Gordon toys with a few intriguing ideas, before ultimately settling into standard tropes of imperial martyrdom.

If you’re gonna go with some good ol’ imperial nostalgia you’d be better sticking with Laurence of Arabia (1962) or Zulu (1964) which remain better remembered for a reason. Simply much better films.

Yes I agree. Khartoum is a movie only saved by its grand-scale visuals.

But let's be real though... Oliver's accent is waaaaaay worse than the blackface. Its absolutely ridiculous. He sounds like Apu trying to be an Dictator. I haven't seen this movie in 5 years and still that farcical drawl is ringing inside my ears.

To show that I haven't completely lost my art-house credentials, I recently watched Mother Joan of the Angels.

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Members who mention Tarkovsky every 5th post (you people know who you are) should definitively check this one out. It's about a covenant of nuns who suffers demonic possession and the resulting Excorcism. Spectacular black-and-white photography.

The main actress Lucyna Winnicka does an amazing job. During her possession she goes pretty loco. This girl pinballs between Friedkin-style Excorcism, the Joker, freaking Golumn, and a brand of devil-possessed delirium idiosyncratic to her own.

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(I mean just look at this troll face!)

What the movie has to say about "possession" is also interesting. In the stifling, formalistic environs of an Medieval cloister... the nun's possession comes off more like a need to: "Be Seen." Insanity is a state you enter in desperate yearning to connect and express yourself unburdened by religious constraints. A "warped" expression of emotions, you can say. "Warped" since "possession" is the only "in-house" avenue with which a nun could ever ventilate her psychological yearnings. The moral lesson of the story is: "Don't go postal with the self-denial, kids!"

The movie did have a few "loose strands" that could have been expanded upon which drags it down a bit.

At one point the Catholic priests consults a local Jew about how to conduct exorcisms which... well, conceptually its just pretty hilarious, I feel. The scene itself is a serious discussion about the nature of man though.
 
Yes I agree. Khartoum is a movie only saved by its grand-scale visuals.

But let's be real though... Oliver's accent is waaaaaay worse than the blackface. Its absolutely ridiculous. He sounds like Apu trying to be an Dictator. I haven't seen this movie in 5 years and still that farcical drawl is ringing inside my ears.

True that was especially horrendous, I heard one reviewer describe it as "like Sebastian, the singing Caribbean crab from Disney's The Little Mermaid, pretending to be a Russian spy." Which is spot on <45>

To show that I haven't completely lost my art-house credentials, I recently watched Mother Joan of the Angels.

image-w856.jpg


Members who mention Tarkovsky every 5th post (you people know who you are) should definitively check this one out. It's about a covenant of nuns who suffers demonic possession and the resulting Excorcism. Spectacular black-and-white photography.

The main actress Lucyna Winnicka does an amazing job. During her possession she goes pretty loco. This girl pinballs between Friedkin-style Excorcism, the Joker, freaking Golumn, and a brand of devil-possessed delirium idiosyncratic to her own.

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(I mean just look at this troll face!)

What the movie has to say about "possession" is also interesting. In the stifling, formalistic environs of an Medieval cloister... the nun's possession comes off more like a need to: "Be Seen." Insanity is a state you enter in desperate yearning to connect and express yourself unburdened by religious constraints. A "warped" expression of emotions, you can say. "Warped" since "possession" is the only "in-house" avenue with which a nun could ever ventilate her psychological yearnings. The moral lesson of the story is: "Don't go postal with the self-denial, kids!"

The movie did have a few "loose strands" that could have been expanded upon which drags it down a bit.

At one point the Catholic priests consults a local Jew about how to conduct exorcisms which... well, conceptually its just pretty hilarious, I feel. The scene itself is a serious discussion about the nature of man though.

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I confess I have not seen it, but sounds very interesting.
 
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