from reflectionsonfilm

Film Capsule has recently been contributing to Indiewire’s weekly survey of film critics, which poses some great questions to film writers around the Internet. This week’s Criticwire Survey was a particularly tricky one: “What late filmmaker would most benefit from being alive today and having access to modern filmmaking technology?” My answer was Andrei Tarkovsky, but although digital technology may have afforded the great director tempting new possibilities, how would he have reacted to these change in film art?

It’s a difficult question because the digital debate is a very personal issue for filmmakers. With more and more of the world’s great contemporary directors experimenting with digital technology, and the new documentary Side by Side exploring this very issue, the pros and cons of the format have been on a lot of people’s minds. The benefits are easy to see, especially for young, independent filmmakers, but how would Tarkovsky have responded?

Tarkovsky’s films are often remembered for their breathtaking long takes. He understood the raw power of duration in cinema, of communicating specifically through the dimension of time which film affords. For Tarkovsky, this is the essence of film and the task of the filmmaker: to Sculpt in Time, as the title of his book implores. What a boon, then, digital filmmaking would have been for the great Russian director. With nearly no restrictions on the duration and storage of long takes, he could have mounted some remarkable shots like we see in The Mirror or The Sacrifice. Both films feature long takes of burning buildings, and the patience and confident he shows in composing around a dramatic event is remarkable. During the barn fire in The Mirror, Tarkovsky lingers inside an empty house, slowly moving to revealing to the fire raging outside. He had one chance to get the shot he envisioned—he couldn’t burn down the barn twice—yet his commitment to the long take is inspirational.

With digital technology, the logistics of producing long takes would have been drastically simplified. Tarkovsky could have saved time and money, and may have been encouraged to attempt even more ambitious shots. While a roll of film only lasts so long, digital takes have almost no limit, giving him an even greater canvas to sculpt in time.

Since the first actualities of the Lumiere Brothers, however, many film scholars have linked the importance of cinema’s ability to take an imprint of time to the “reality” of images recorded on film. The direct result of light emanating from bodies and reacting with chemicals on celluloid, film takes a true imprint of the world. With digital cameras, however, the light hitting the sensor undergoes an extra layer of abstraction, as the image’s source in reality is translated into 1s and 0s. This separation may have been important for Tarkvosky, deeply aware of the philosophical implications of cinema. He was a pensive filmmaker who articulated with great self-reflection his own relationship with film. It’s hard to know what Tarkovsky would have thought about digital filmmaking, but his films and his writing serve as a reminder that ultimately it’s up to each artist to decide what cinema means to them.

Active Ingredients: Unpredictability; Indie charm
Side Effects: Sense of mystery; Lack of cohesion

Cultures and identities blend and sublimate in the international indie curiosity Magic and Loss, which makes its North American premiere at the Koren American Film Festival in New York on June 5th. Produced by and starring Kiki Sugino (“muse of the Asian independent cinema,” according to the Tokyo IFF), the film follows two women, one Japanese one Korean, on a vacation to an eerie Hong Kong resort. They’ve both won some sort of contest, driven together by a mysterious force, the film would have us believe. The two develop a friendship and quickly begin spending their days together, alternately exploring the grounds as giggling tourists or in a trance-like possession. A lonely hotel concierge, representing yet another nationality, becomes intrigued with the ladies, but struggles to communicate through a verbal stew of four different languages.

Magic and Loss is a strange film, quietly and unselfconsciously mystifying the audience with unexplained dalliances and incongruous scenes. I didn’t get much from its narrative besides a vague thematic interest in dreams and connecting with others, but I have to respect the film’s unpredictability and idiosyncrasies. Director Lim Kah Wai and his cast, all collaborators in the Asian independent scene which seems a bit like our mumblecore, certainly don’t want for strange ideas and inspiration, and their film feels unpretentious and confident, but it embraces a thin dream logic without cohesion. Furthermore, though ominous music signals some sort of mystery, Lim doesn’t convey the same mood visually, preferring a staid, low-fi aesthetic to visual abstraction or the varied tempos afforded by montage.

Magic and Loss is apologetically its own film, and though I get the sense it’s achieved what it intended, I’m not quite sure what that is.

Active Ingredients: Strong sense of mood; Layered, abstract images
Side Effects: Inconsistent use of sound; Digital finale

from mubi.com

Ashes is Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s experimental short created using the LomoKino camera, a small, hand-cranked device that creates dynamic, kinetic images. The camera is a good match for Apichatpong, a filmmaker interested in process, free-flowing creativity and natural beauty. Ideas seem to overflow in his work, unpredictable both formally and narratively. Many of his films, for example, feature sequences comprised of still photographs, and the LomoKino allows Apichatpong to experiment with this stop motion effect, shooting fragments of everyday life either at full speed or in a jumpy collage of animated stills.

Like Apichatpong’s installation artwork, Ashes juxtaposes beautiful abstract images, often in split-screen or superimposition, and it’s here that the film is at its best. Apichatpong has a strong eye for color and the play of hues explored through montage creates a new composite image out of the fragments on which it’s built.

His friends and his beloved Thailand are his subject, and the collection of life, be it human, animal or mineral, gives Ashes vibrancy and vitality. Although the film’s thematic concerns of dreams and memory are a bit opaque, Ashes, like all his films, suggests a strong sense of mood, sun-baked and meditative despite the sputtering motion. The pace of the LomoKino is at odds with the quiet stillness of much of Apichatpong’s work, but the collision is a productive experiment.

[Ashes is available to watch for free at MUBI.com here.]

Active Ingredients: Control over sound and image; Revelation of information
Side Effects: Incomplete ending; Restrictive locations

from clevelandfilm.com

A protegee of Abbas Kiarostami‘s, Moretza Farshbaf exhibits much of the Iranian master’s control and restraint in his debut film, Mourning. Don’t let the title fool you though, Mourning is a vital film, fully realizing the lives of its three central characters. Narratively, it feels neither sombre nor restrictive; on the contrary, the great success of Mourning is how deliberately and convincingly it expands, taking a simple story and opening it up to nuance and complexity, allowing the audience to enter into the world of the film where there are no easy answers.

Like many of Kiarostami’s film, Mourning revolves around driving. After his parents were involved in a serious car accident, a boy is driven by his deaf aunt and uncle through the countryside to a hospital in Tehran. Along the way we learn more about these reluctant new guardians, their close connection, their shared disability, their divergent regrets. They debate the boy’s future and their own as the dynamic among the three characters shifts organically. Farshbaf beautifully utilizes the pacing of his screenplay and his precision in composition and use of sound to allow the characters to flower over the course of the film. He chisels away at them like a sculptor, revealing more of their shape and texture with each pass. As we learn more about the bonds and fractures of the deaf couple, the young boy, too, moves from passive backseat observer to a character that respects the depth and confusion of adolescence.

While the complex characterization and moral ambiguities remind me of last year’s powerful A Separation, Farshbaf’s visual style and pacing owe a debt to Kiarostami. Mourning is a quiet film, aesthetically distanced and even-handed, but never dry or dispassionate. Rather, Farshbaf chooses his sounds and images with conviction, showing great control over the elements of his film and calculating the impact of each decision. The acting of the three leads is equally precise and specific, and each performer achieves naturalism without sacrificing emotional clarity. Mourning is an extremely confident and formally accomplished debut from a promising new global voice.

[Mourning makes its US debut at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts "Global Lens" Film Series on June 9th. To learn more about the series, click here.]

from examiner.com

Oren Moverman’s gritty character study Rampart is a seething slow burn just like the morally compromised cop at its core. It  contracts and expands along with Woody Harrelson‘s David Brown, mirroring his rising anger, frustration and sadness in the way it pitches each scene. It opens, for example, dangerously slow with Brown eating fries with his partners. It’s a banal scene, filmed from a distance and could almost pass for something out of Super Troopers (Harrelson would have been great in that!). Soon, however, we begin to grow accustomed to Rampart‘s rhythms, ping-ponging between the violent, hateful cop and desperate father and family man trapped within the same person.

Brown is under fire for police brutality (a scene which Moverman calmly glosses over), and as his paranoia mounts he begins to suspect mass corruption in the department. The mystery, though, is a red herring and Moverman is more interested in tracking Brown’s denial and the inability to adapt which makes him so angry and lonely. Harrelson is terrific, naked and fragile but emotionally specific, and he plays Brown with sympathy and an understanding for his paradoxical desire to be loved and refusal to let others in. The film itself is pulled between these two poles, but Brown’s family struggles are considerably weaker and Moverman too often looks to Brown’s two daughters for raw emotional impact, not Harrelson himself.

Rampart is a tricky portrait of a true antihero, but Harrelson’s presence and Moverman’s sensibilities to the flow of his story make it work.

Active Ingredients: Split time between heroes; Individual arcs; Hulk
Side Effects: Villains; Humor; Samuel L. Jackson; Pacing

from nytimes.com

It seems obvious now that The Avengers was going to be a huge success. Drawing on fans of both the previous Marvel Comics films and of writer/director Joss Whedon, the film has shattered box office records. There’s no doubt The Avengers was intricately planned, with belabored tie-ins in multiple films all culminating in one action epic. Still, it surprised me that the film works as well as it does. Dividing screentime between at least 6 main characters is no easy task, but the amount of narrative threads isn’t a hindrance to The Avengers, it’s an attribute. Working on established backstory from the previous films, Whedon gives each Avenger precisely one personal element to explore, and since there are so many characters, when one thread loses steam, he simply switches to another. The Hulk has his rage issues, Iron Man is selfish and Captain America is old-fashioned (a bit thin, but OK). It doesn’t matter that there’s not much depth to these storylines; when one doesn’t hit, there’s another to replace it shortly.

This may seem like a backhanded compliment, but the vaguest characterization is all we need—The Avengers is the rare film for me where more is actually more. Of course, there’s action too, mostly coming from two extended setpieces, and Whedon executes his large-scale battles nicely, catapulting from one hero to another, as exemplified by one stylish long take. It all seems a bit silly (Why are they saving one busload of civilians when there most be thousands dead all over the city?), but silliness has proven to pair nicely with superheroes. Still, I’d prefer the old-fashioned fun that this film, and Captain America before it, think they deliver to Whedon’s snarky humor, all of which misses the mark for me. He’s known for his ironic comic voice, of course, but I wish he would play up the greater writing skill he’s shown in work like Serenity: a good eye for group dynamics.

Active Ingredients: Dense atmosphere; Restrained pace; Creature design
Side Effects: Jump scares

from horrorphile.net

Alien or Aliens? It seems like everyone has to choose one, and the last twenty years or so of blockbusters makes James Cameron’s action sequel look influential and prescient. Really, though, the two films couldn’t be more different, and for me Ridley Scott’s tension built from a combination of intricate production design and uncommon patience far surpasses Cameron’s cheesy machismo.

Alien is justly remembered for its classic sci-fi and horror moments (face-huggingly, chest-burstingly awesome), and one of the scariest monsters in film history, but rewatching the film today it’s the eerie, slow pace and stifling ambiance that define the experience. The set of the spaceship Nastromo is crammed with blinking monitors, computer readouts, flashing lights and steam. Scott composes shots and builds scenes around these elements, beautifully using colors and textures in depth in the frame. The sound design matches the aesthetic with an arsenal of sirens, hissing motors and electronic beeps. Despite the extreme detail and complexity in set design and cinematography, however, Alien feels remarkably light, even graceful, and this perfectly calibrated juxtaposition creates the film’s unique mood and stands as Scott’s greatest accomplishment.

Scott’s next film was Blade Runner, but already in Alien themes of the tenuous value of human life emerge. There’s lots of talk about life of all kinds: “the perfect organism” of the alien, the simulated life of robots, and the fragility and expendability of humans. Even the Nostromo, with its ubiquitous computing and the disembodied “Mother” that communicates orders to the crew, beats and pulses like a heart, its own macro-organism in space. Alien has probably supported fewer existential essays than Blade Runner, yet the content is there, subtle and complex.

But, of course, what most take away from the film is the alien, and what a creature it is, with its slick curved head, double mouth and acid blood. Dan O’Bannon, who went on to direct the zany The Return of the Living Dead, helped write the story and design the creature, and though it’s thoroughly modern in its ferocity, something about its implementation in the film, often just a man in a costume, recalls with fondness early creature features of the 1950s like Creature from the Black Lagoon. Scott relies on ambiance, pacing and editing for tension, not special effects, and Alien reminds us that as the technical possibilities of cinema continue to advance, there’s still no substitute for creativity, in sci-fi, horror or any other genre.

Active Ingredients: Unpredictability; Characterization of two leads
Side Effects: A few too many twists, dead ends

from andsoitbeginsfilms.com

The Double Hour is a twisty Italian thriller, dangerously proud of its own intricate design but ultimately saved by delivering a solid character drama that most genre films forgo. The film is often compared to Tell No One, but the differences between the films illustrate where The Double Hour succeeds and the earlier French thriller fails. The story revolves (and that is the correct word) around Sonia, a Slovenian immigrant living and working as a hotel maid in Turin, Italy. She seems lost, mysterious, a bit opaque. She tries speed dating to fill some void in her life, but even then is reluctant to let others in. She recognizes her own trust issues in Guido, and finally allows herself to hope for a better life—until a violent encounter sends Sonia and the film reeling, and calls into question everything we thought we knew earlier.

As the story begins to circle back in on itself, small gestures, figures and characters from earlier are repeated with variations. As the title suggests, there are at least two versions of most scenes and the audience is always left unsure which way each event truly played out. Rigorous formal structures like this one can often feel inert, as if the filmmaker forgot to supplement them with anything else. The Double Hour, happily, uses the twinning of its story as a nice parallel to the emotional wounds and trust issues of Sonia and Guido, themes to which the film is always sure to return. The piles of plot twists and surprise reversals don’t all pack the punch director Giuseppe Capotondi intends, but they deliver just enough excitement and intrigue to support the subtle and unpredictable twin character study at the film’s heart.

This is my 100th post on Film Capsule! It’s been a lot of fun writing so much about film the last year and I look forward to a lot more material to come. Some of the highlights for me have been attending and covering last year’s New York Film Festival, recording two podcasts with my friend Ian and getting the opportunity to meet and interact with other critics around the web.

I may have been a bit slow getting to my 100th post so this is the perfect forum to vow to reach 200 much faster! I plan to continue writing a mix of capsules on films new and old, and also to try out new features and segments. I recently linked to the new Film Capsule Vimeo page, and I hope to add more video content there in the future. I’ve also been working on a new design for the blog that I’m excited to implement soon.

Lastly, I’d really like to find more opportunities to interact with whoever’s reading, through comments, polls or other means. As always, I encourage any thoughts or feedback on content you’d like to see. And most importantly, thank you for reading and following, and remember to take two daily.

- John

The Western is one of my favorite film genres. Something about the quintessentially American story that all Westerns tell has captivated audiences for over 100 years. Maybe its satisfying, consistent narrative arch resonated with the American creativity. Or perhaps the genre’s familiar symbols (guns, mountains, horses) are responsible. A cultural need to romanticize our country’s history may also account for the Western’s unique draw. Or just a longing for simple virtues and unbridled heroism.

In an effort to pay homage to the American story, to the Western, I created a montage film culled from 7 different Westerns from the genre’s creative highpoint, 1950-1960. This short film recreates the classic Western narrative with clips from the movies themselves. The lone hero, the guns, the whiskey, the women: the elements of America’s great film genre.

You can also check out the film on my new Vimeo page (vimeo.com/filmcapsule), where I’ll be posting other projects. You’ll see clips from Shane (George Stevens), Winchester ’73 and The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann), Rio Grande (John Ford), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks), and Decision at Sundown and Comanche Station (Budd Boetticher). Here’s a closer look of the shots I used.

Stats on the film