Cockfighter (1974)

“Cockfighter” (1974)

IMDb

white background

I really have a sympathy for the kind of film-making this film aims at. I respect the intentions, i am always able to live in the environments films like this try to create. But when this sort of film fails, it’s never a glorious failure, nor an interesting one. The thing slides to fields of boredom and emptiness.

For what concerns direction and, to me, acting, this film fails totally. Not because it’s incompetent, simply because it’s not engaging, there is not a visual idea Hellman tries to explore. This is his only film i’ve seen so far; here he connects his narrative to the character, the actor (who apparently starred in many of his other movies). It is what certain film writers define as “character study”. Well, i think that may be done, if the character is interesting, and that depends on whether the actor is interesting as an actor and as a person. So this drastically reduces the possibilities of success in such a kind of film. I didn’t think Warren Oates was interesting enough for me to follow him willingly. This made the film as uninteresting in its content as the life of the straightforward cock trainer.

But something redeems all these flaws. the cinematography is unobtrusive and beautiful in many ways. Almendros was one of the cinematographers who could masterfully move away from protagonism and yet build a worthy mood we want to get into. Pairing with Truffaut, he gave us some exquisite moments of minimal photography, in the sense that he transcends through an apparent “naturalism”. Striking… If you watch this film you may be led to believe, like i did, that some of it was bureaucratic work Almendros had to do to narrate the boring character Hellman proposes, but other moments are shining and worth watching. Among those are the cock fights. the cock close-ups are beautiful, and the careful editing allows the fight scenes to be really tough. The inner sets, when associated to intimacy, are also cozy and mood evoking. Apart from those, you’ll want to see a certain scene: it’s by a lake, the protagonist and his lover caress each other, and talk about their life and relation. The shot starts as a close-up of their faces, over a totally white background. Than the camera slowly zooms out, reveals the environment, and that’s when we get the lake. All this is done with a subtlety which is really hard to see. This shot will be with me for a long long time.

My opinion: 3/5 watch it, for the cinematography, only.

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Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007)

IMDb

harmonic tragedy

Several things can, and have been praised about this film, on different levels. Some are competent, others rather interesting, and another one absolutely remarkable.

Here we find a top director at the top of his game in what concerns exploiting actors. He pushes where he knows he can and should push, and he reaches peaks of useful intensity that few other directors are able to reach. Hoffman is a natural choice for the kind of work Lumet does. He is one of the most focused and self-conscious actors these days, and what he does here is as coherent as it is punctuated by eternal moments. One of those moments (the hysterical breakdown in the car, with Tomei) is absolutely on both actors hands, and Lumet only had basically the more expressive moments of each actor. But another scene is a beautiful collaboration between Lumet and Hoffman: the monologue at the drug dealer’s home. There we had a transcending actor, and the director of ‘12 angry men’: centered on characters, yet spatial. It is that space awareness that, to me, makes me go to Lumet’s films. There is not one single inner set where space isn’t taken care of, whether we have camera movement or not. Notice, it is the character, and not the space, that determines the movement, the pace, the ton. But the space is fully exploited to serve it. I think we have that in some moments with Antonioni, but no one does it so consistently as Lumet has done it through all his career.

For more than once, i remarked on how i don’t like Ethan Hawke. His interview on the making of of this film underlines the reasons why i don’t like him. But i admit he fits well in the melodramatic tapestry Lumet created here. Again, like in ‘Great Expectations’, he is as clueless about anything as his character, but here he understands the pace. I suppose Lumet is to be reckoned for that as well.

The other point that interests is how the narrative is shaped. What we have here comes in the line of what Iñarritu/Arriaga have done, eventually some Figgis’ work. It doesn’t advance in anyway anything of what they have done, but it is pretty impressive how Lumet acknowledged the storytelling evolution and merged his cinematic talent with it. What evolution is that? Basically, it is the consideration of a complex world in which we don’t follow a single line, instead several of them, which intersect, each one with the potential power to affect all the others. It’s a matter of considering the harmony of 3 different melodies juxtaposed, instead of just following one of them. That’s what cinema has been doing.

My opinion: 4/5

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L’homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)

“L’homme qui aimait les femmes” (1977)

IMDb

narrative details

This is one of the most interesting conceptions of a man who spent all his career and life questioning the very conception of cinema and what it meant in every moment. After the adventure of french new wave of the 60’s, Truffaut matured and, to me, he started producing his more focused work. He basically produced some films which were essays on cinema, as well as autobiographical depictions of his thoughts.

So, we have a film about storytelling. A womanizer who writes the story of his life. Every woman in his life is, herself, a story. So the pleasure of being involved with a woman maps the will Truffaut has to tell a story. The fact that Morane writes all the stories, and makes one single big form (a book) with them enhances this.

The woman editor has an important role. She is the key character that Truffaut places above Morane, and she annotates and comments on the whole structure. Her remarks on Morane’s book and personality may as well be taken as commentaries on the very film, and of its director. She is self-reference, she is Truffaut commenting on himself, thus adding reflexivity to the film. That’s why she observes that Morane, the writer, doesn’t reject the “details” others wouldn’t notice, and she literally says that he is basically a storyteller. Also, she is the one who remarks the fact that Morane’s funeral is the perfect ending to the story. I saw all this as reflexive annotations on the very structure of the film and, more generally, on the nature of Truffaut’s cinema. He was through all his life a storyteller, and above any pleasure he took in making a film, there was the pleasure of narrating. Also he took a special interest in filming details, something i think he took from Hitchcock. The hand dialing phone numbers, or turning the pages in the address book, that sort of thing.

Morane’s funeral, which opens and closes the film, gathers all the women around him. It is, like the editor (the second narrator) told, a praising of Morane’s life, the recognizing of his qualities, the celebration of his life (cinema).

This and “La nuit américaine” are so far the best built films by Truffaut that i saw. Many times i think that Truffaut (and Godard!) has spent to much time around things which were not that important, like school kids discussing football teams. But in certain points, he made important contributions to the evolving of cinematic narrative. This is one of them.

My opinion: 4/5

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Sleuth (2007)

“Sleuth” (2007)

IMDb

twists

It is reducing to think of this as a remake of the original. Instead it is much richer to consider it as a film which over layers the original. You really should see the first one in order to magnify the experience of this one. Think of the original, than consider it to be merely a starting point. Than open your mind to this one. You do that, and you will be given one of the best film experiences that deal with the creation of stories. I did.

Schaffer/Mankiewicz’s version was about two characters fighting for the control of the storyline. Their personal game of humiliation and revenge was based on each one creating a story and performing it so convincingly that they would fool the other into believing it. In that version we had toys and animated puppets all around the set to enhance this. It was a masterpiece of film writing that worked because the acting supported it. Laurence Olivier was great there because he constantly explained us the creation of the story as we went along. The film was one of pure males, cocks fight. The woman for whom they were fighting, was in a painting.

Here we start on the footsteps of that film. Two thirds of the thing leave no room for wandering about motivations. If you know the original you will know what to expect. This is wonderfully staged. The woman that causes the game IS the house, which she decorated. So we have her playing the game, much more than we had in the original. Branagh is to be reckoned for the mastery of the thing. The way he handles surveillance cameras invents a third character who is all around, whom we never see. The house is, at the same time, ostensibly a set, designed not for someone to live in it, but to be explored by our characters. But it IS also a house! I’ll mark this as an interesting case of a film which relates cinema and architecture, for how the house/set is handled.

**spoilers herein**

The narrative master stroke comes in the last 20 minutes. It’s a special thing which will work with stronger effect because we already have the original film. It’s a kind of twist over what we expect because we saw that other film. Here we feel heavily the hand of Harold Pinter. At a certain point, when our characters are starting the last “set” of their game, we are left undecided oscillating between believing their sincerity or trying to figure who is making the move. The gay theme is introduced, and the play moves to a state of enormous ambiguity, only revealed in the very last minutes. Again, the house (the elevator) provides us a strong last shot, which ends the film in a much more conclusive and effective way than the original. Caine’s character is much more ambiguous, and he is to be credited with his long moments of pure silence in the guest room, as he decides whether to give in to Law’s demands or not. That was great

Jude Law is quite an interesting actor to follow. Besides his obvious qualities, it seems to me he is specially intelligent (or well oriented) in how he chooses the films where he plays. His remakes of Caine’s former roles are good examples of that.

My opinion: 4/5 this is several plays within a play, which becomes a film, framed by other film. You want to watch it.

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Batman (1989)

“Batman” (1989)

IMDb

remembered darkness

Because i saw this film back when i was very young, and before now i hadn’t seen it in a while, i have a personal relation with it. I evolved and the film evolved with me, in my mind.

It really had been a while. And the memory i have of it is much darker than what the film is. Why? I changed; films changed. That’s it. This was supposed to contain a dark world, many call it Gothic. Indeed it has a dark environment in some points, Burton is a specialist in producing certain environments. But it no longer works as a dark world with dark minds, if it ever did. It has now the appeal of teen films: we know where everything is going, but we want to see it anyway. And the world is brighter than that of so many other films not specially remembered for its “darkness” as this is. I suppose that probably has to do with how the cinematic narrative is built. This film relies on its visuals, and that is usually a matter of fashion. It goes away, and when it does, the film will stand or not based on its cinematic content. Burton trusts that showing the world will make us enter it. Well i did enter it 15 years ago, now i only remember i did, but i no longer find the door to it. I suppose Nolan really did replace solidly Burton’s vision, after Schumacher’s disasters. It introduced instability in narrative, in “dark knight” he built a whole narrative out of instability. He understood how he could support a whole visual world consistently adding layers twists, indeed making the whole film a big twist.

Nicholson’s performance is as plastered as his character. It’s based on individual charm, not on a troubled mind. His villain is a non ironic joker. Ledger really pushed the character elsewhere, to the fields where Brando or Depp operate.

This is interesting to watch, for it shows how linked are cinema, cinematic memories, and our own lives.

My opinion: 2/5

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Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993)

“Je vous salue, Sarajevo” (1993)

IMDb

the right frame

Godard is a curious and highly talented filmmaker, yet uneasy to get, arrogant and autistic in so many times. This ruins much of what he makes, but we’re still left with some pearls.

This is one of them. A simple exercise of visual manipulation, minimal in its resources and time extension but which becomes magnificent in its visual power. This short is 2 minutes of multiple framings of one single photography. Every framing will give us a particular reality within, and make us comprehend different worlds within the world which, as the short goes along, we understand to be a single image. These two minutes in Godard are more analytic and meaningful than many of Wenders films which address directly what it means to look for the hidden visual meanings of images. Why couldn’t he be so clear headed in the 20 years preceding this film?

Here, as in a few other Godard films, i was so impressed with how he manipulated me, that i forgave his usually speech, one of underneath political stubbornness and egotism, disguised as a pure humanitarian. I do not reject his intentions, only his attitude.

Also, a question arises here, and in the work of Godard throughout the 90′. More than testing the limits of cinema, here he questions its own definitions. I believe (based on his “history of cinema” episodes) that he pushes his own definitions of cinema to the fields of painting. Yet, i think he becomes more of an image maker and manipulator. Painting, in its cinematic sense, has two ways to be understood: one is with lighting/color/composition, the other is as visual communication/manipulation. Welles/Toland, Conrad Hall, Gordon Willis. Those were painters. Here Godard attempts at manipulating, and wanders in not so explored fields of cinematic narrative.

My opinion: 4/5 watch this.

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Mankind Is No Island. (2008)

“Mankind Is No Island” (2008)

IMDb

deceiving

This is damaged goods. Everything in it may look reliable and powerful, but a careful reviewing will reveal how false it is.

The film is apparently born from a clever visual idea, supported by editing. Images caught in two cities, that merge to give us a message. And editing is the key cinematic tool to achieve that message. But the deceit is that, besides a few images of homeless people and true city daily life, all the footage is in fact filmed words edited to make readable sentences. And all the rhythm is given Not by the filmed words, but by the music that follows it. So, we may be led into thinking that this actually has any cinematic value at all, when in fact it is a lazy effort, disguised as an honest amateur work. It took me several viewings to understand what was wrong.

A minor complaint is that the message is patronizing, numb, bloodless. IT tells you what you know, and it doesn’t tell it from any interesting perspective. It’s wrapped with the silly notion of treating viewers like children, in a way not even children (or specially children) should be treated. Many viewers enjoy being treated like that, that’s probably why this film had such a success. Well i don’t.

If you want a piece of editing where images are the key to the emotion and the music is just an additional support, watch this commercial:

Take out the sound in a second viewing and check how the editing stands. Do it with this “mankind…” and see how dead it becomes. IMDb doesn’t file commercials, but comparing the film i’m commenting and the example i’m linking, maybe they should.

My opinion: 1/5

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Great Expectations (1998)

“Great Expectations” (1998)

IMDb

space narrative

This film was directed by one o the most interesting visual minds we have working today. Cuarón knows how to work space, he knows how to move around, he knows how to find or/and create spaces that he can explore, moving around them, find the best view points. In these matters, he probably inherits Orson Welles’ investigations of the days he mastered space exploration and architecture framing. That’s where Cuarón’s mind is centered, i think. Whereas Wenders explores in a pure way bi dimensional images, where Kubrick molds films around narrative constructions, Cuarón does it with space.

Having said this, this specific film is not where he does it the more intensely. I didn’t watch this when it came out, and now that i’ve seen it i’ve already seen Children of Men and the 3rd Harry Potter. Here he probably was more constrained and had less latitude to work his abilities. Yet there are moments, attached to spaces, which are pure visual pearls. So, work your mind in the scenes of the Lost Paradise house. Watch how that space is built to be explored, how big rooms exist to make it worthy for the camera to dance with the characters. Watch how the stairway which goes down to the fountain of the first kiss is there to allow the camera to follow characters as a pretext to exploit space. These moments in the stairway are specially Wellesian. The other space explored is the Hawke’s studio in New York. The space is clear and not mysterious in the way we read it. In other words, you perceive it with a single frame, it is opened, and its composition is perfectly readable. But it is very interesting, the lighting and scale, and Cuarón uses it perfectly. I’m guessing this space is real, where the Lost Paradise is a set.

These moments, which clearly were the most impressive in the film, to me, hang on a story. Borrowed from Dickens, the story has to do with the story itself. Characters exist are manipulators or manipulated (or both, in the case of Paltrow’s character). It’s a story about who is telling the story. At least in the cinematic construction (not the book’s), characters exist to serve narrative construction, and i personally think that it is more effective, in cinema, that it goes like that. So we have to main narrators, but we are only aware of one, so is Hawke. That’s the trick, it’s clever and it certainly is effective, at least here.

I don’t like Ethan Hawke, i admit. I think he is untalented and, worse, he is arrogant in his performances. This means that he does nothing, but truly believes he is giving us something everlasting. Well, usually i’m put away from such performances (in the line of Freeman, Redford, latest Cruise…) but here, considering what his character does in the story, being manipulated in double, i have to admit he is a perfect cast. Like the actor, the character believes he controls the game, but is in fact being used.  Gwyneth Paltrow is concentrated, intelligent, and it seems to me that she works hard to integrate her characters, but her work is invisible in the final product. And that’s great…

My opinion: 4/5

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2 years

It’s been 2 years since i started the idea of this blog. A year ago i remarked the fact that i never believed i could make this last as long as i had than, specially doing it in 3 languages as i proposed. I’ve been managing to do that, and it makes me happy.

So far i’ve commented on 180 films (99 in the last year). It’s not the number of films that establishes any kind of quality of the comments themselves, but i pleases me aswell that i was able to raise the number, this second year.

Above all, i’ve been using, as i always said, the pretext of commenting films to learn about them, to learn about cinema and, as a consequence, to learn about myself. It is an adventure to be able to really explor films, with no fear, like the majority of people who watch them has. It is an adventure to get in a film, either good or bad, it’s always an experiment in which we find what we take with us, what we are. There are films that change my life when i watch them, and those are the ones i search, even when i don’t find them.

The statistics in wordpress (which unfortunately only show “on site” visits) count at this moment:

7Olhares:___ 27 827 visitas (14 290 this year)

7Eyes: ________6 700 visitas ( 3 989 this year)

7Ojos: _________8 596 visitas ( 4 422 this year)

_________43 123 visitas (22 701 this year)

To be visited gives me strenght to go on, in 3 languages. I always appreciate suggestions, on site, by email, as i have already received. Above all, i believe in the possibility that internet gives to get to know opinions, knowledge, people.

Lisboa de Hoje e de Amanhã (1948)

“Lisboa de Hoje e de Amanhã” (1948)

what now?

This is a terribly meaningful documentary for any Portuguese, certainly more now than when it was made. Placed in the right context, and with you having the right information to support it, may let you conclude terrible frightening things. I think watching now this as well as reflecting in the last 35 years of Portuguese can be more clarifying than any film, documentary, book, or anything made after April 25th and grasping the theme.

This is an example of propaganda documentary. This means we will watch a totally partial point of view, in every line favourable to the regime in question. In this case we watch all kinds of complements to the urban politics of Lisbon, 60 years ago. Basically this plan is the work of a remarkable man, Duarte Pacheco, who was not visionary, because he didn’t predict anything that wasn’t being done in other places, but he had the merit of updating Lisbon’s urban politics – which in those is the same to say that he actually created one. That plan is remarkable, though dated today, specially in the ideas of dwelling in urban contexts, in terms of typology (single and twin family houses in highly urban contexts is dreadful politics today) and social agglomeration (low cost housing, grouping all the disfavoured, also dated politics today). Of course the success and efficiency of the plan depended on Pacheco (who died 5 years before this documentary) having full power to build and destroy, without negotiating with the populations involved. More interesting than anything is the idea of the “urban lung”, materialized in the big Monsanto. Some dwelling projects are quite interesting, namely Alvalade. And of course, the rings that surround the city, is something contemporary and planned with a visionary scale (yes, here it was visionary), even though i think (not sure) not all the plan was completed.

The documentary has one great quality. It actually explains the plan, the idea, on location, on plant, on models. It does not depend of useless conceptual demonstrations, because people in those days didn’t depend on being shown iconic images as we do today. But many of the things we see there and especially most of the things we hear are perfectly laughable, and were already laughable in those days for anyone with a brain. The idea of making “monumental” so no one can be “ashamed” of the capital is ridiculous, as it is ridiculous the pride they take in grouping poor people like cattle by the more uninteresting parts of the city, while “beautiful houses” exist by the water side. Well, maybe we should treasure these commentaries, they are naive and for that less hypocrite than what we hear these days.

A much more sad thing is to think that the documentary is totally centered in an underdeveloped capital of a than terribly underdeveloped country and that the works we see being made to modernize the place were insufficient to make the city have the conditions of other European cities, and worst than that, were the only ones made in that scale in the whole country. So, we have that ugly fascist principle of making one single enterprise stand for the whole country, who slowly died in those days.

But the really sad thing is this: these guys, 60 years ago, had the same speech as the nerds we have today ruling the country. They had the speech of “this was all wrong and now we’re cleaning the country”. Basically, deviating the responsibility for their inability and the little ambition they place in the errors “someone” made in the past. So if they updated what was behind them, and for the last 35 years we’ve been updating what those guys left us, who will update the things we are Not making now? See the sad thing about this? When will we start doing something good, instead of just “making up” for what others have done? What a vicious circle.

My opinion: 4/5

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