Gates of Heaven (1978)

Directed by Errol Morris

"There's your dog; your dog's dead. But where's the thing that made it move? It had to be something, didn't it?"

When I was very young my family had a beloved pet dog named Thunder. He was a collie and apparently had nine lives like a cat. He loved to chase cars and was run over several times resulting in lots of shed tears and large vet bills, but he always survived. Ultimately, it was heart worms that would take poor Thunder down. The whole family gathered round as he passed-on one sad dark January day. We lived in the country and buried our deceased pets on the land. Most were unceremoniously buried in the woods far from the house. We’d put a big rock on top of the shallow grave to keep other animals from digging them up and that was that. Thunder was different. He was such a beloved part of the family that he was laid to rest in a place of honor under a lovely tree in the back yard. It was unusually cold the morning that my father went out to dig the grave. The ground was cold and hard and Poppy was breathing hard from his efforts. By the time the grave was dug, his beard and mustache were covered in tiny icicles from the condensation of his exhaled breath and his cheeks were bright red. He looked transformed by the experience.

I came across Errol Morris’ documentary film Gates of Heaven which is about a pet cemetery in Southern California while looking at a list compiled by Roger Ebert in 1991 called “The Ten Greatest Films of All Time”. Ebert’s blurb about the film ends like this “in the extraordinary centerpiece of the film, there is the old woman Florence Rasmussen, sitting in the doorway of her home, delivering a spontaneous monolog that Faulkner would have killed to have written.” How could I not be intrigued? I didn’t even add it to my “to watch” list, I just watched it right then and there. Afterall, Ebert admitted to viewing it more than thirty times without ever getting to the bottom of it so I had better not waste any time.

Even though the film is forty-five years old, and the pet industry/culture has grown so exponentially since then that you’d think it would be irrelevent, this was a fascinating film about life and the complexities of existence. The tableaux alone are worth the price of admission, but I love how Morris just lets people talk and reveal themselves. The most profound philosophy often comes from ordinary people who take time to contemplate the irony and mystery they find in their life and to make their own sense of it. There’s a little touch of the blues in there. And like good literature, this film is timeless.

I recommend watching this effervescent review from Siskel & Ebert on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GqWTjtd0ZwU?si=U_jODbGHP7eRCUNT&t=363\

P.S. A few days after watching Gates of Heaven, I watched a short film by Les Blank called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. When I started watching, I was unaware that there was a connection with Gates of Heaven. It seems that Herzog told Morris that if he made the film, he would eat his own shoe — and he did and Les Blank made a film about it!

Hausu (1977)

Directed by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi

I come from a superstitious Southern family. I remember my grandma Ona just about fainting anytime one of us kids put a dining chair on one leg — she thought for sure that we were doomed to bad luck for the rest of our days. I still don’t really understand that one. My mother absolutely adored cats, however, if a black cat crossed her path while she was driving, she would mark an X on the left side of the windshield with her right hand. This was to ward off any bad luck or evil that said cat portended. I find myself compelled to perform the same action to this day even though I’m more apt to think that a black cat (or any cat for that matter) sighting is a good thing.

Our notion that cats are evil or at least supernatural goes way back. Christians in the Middle Ages thought that cats were agents of Satan, witches in disguise, or just plain evil. In Japanese folklore, the shape-shifting ghost/monster cat is called Bakeneko. The mythological Bakeneko are yōkai, or supernatural creatures, that allegedly begin as regular domestic cats. As they age, they become able to transform themselves into other shapes (including human) and gain supernatural powers. 

Cat as consort to witches/evil is one of my favorite movie tropes. There’s the villain Blofeld’s white Persian lap cat in the 007 flick From Russia With Love, or Mr. Bigglesworth the hairless companion of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, or MAD cat the evil companion of Dr. Claw in one of my favorite cartoons of childhood, Inspector Gadget. Blanche the white cat from Hausu is a top-notch over-the-top offering in the category. The first hint that this friendly fluffy feline is something other comes as a little twinkle in the cat’s eye when the troop of teenage girls arrive at auntie’s diabolical house in the country. Before long, this freaky fuzz-ball transforms into a full-fledged Bakeneko. At the wacky climax of the screwball horror film a painted portrait of our feline friend sprouts fangs and begins spewing copious amounts of blood out of its wide-open mouth in true slasher style. At this point, it’s too late for an X on the windshield!

Onibaba (1964)

Directed by Kaneto Shindō

I'm not a demon! I'm a human being!

As summer gave way to autumn here in Northern New Mexico, I began taking long walks upon the mesa where I live. There are many varieties of grasses that grow here, and I often stopped to admire their golden color in the low afternoon sunlight. As the season progressed, I began collecting grass seed to bring back to my yard in hopes of a future moment when I might look out my window to watch the blades of grass swaying in the wind.

It’s this swaying of blades of grass filmed in black and white and accompanied by a wild roiling mid-century jazz track that set the stage in the opening sequence of Onibaba. The entire film is set in a thick claustrophobic prairie of susuki grass which is much like pampas grass and grows to an average height of seven feet. The characters live in grass huts surrounded by grass that cuts off the view of everything outside of the grass. The environment dominates and it is beautiful and unrelenting at the same time.

It reminds me of another great Japanese film that also came out in 1964; Woman in the Dunes directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara. In this film the environment, sand rather than grass, also provides a constantly shifting setting. Both are endless and serve as an illustration of the temporality of human existence – they were there before and will be there after this messy human drama unfolds and will cover over everything. This existential dread is the beating heart of each film and is certainly something that I think about often as I make a home for myself in the wilderness.

Touki Bouki (1973)

Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment.
chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.

The joys of love are but a moment long
The pain of love endures the whole life long

I’m back!!! The 1973 Senegalese film Touki Bouki seems like a good reentry point. This film has been on my watch list for some time and when it came to the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe where I recently started working, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see it on the big screen. I really know nothing about African film let along African politics, so I’ll leave that angle alone and focus on a couple of things, out of many, that caught my attention while watching.

This film had been described as “sonic soup” and indeed the soundtrack seems, much to my delight, at times to exist autonomously from the visual. What we hear directs us as much as what we see on the screen and sometimes it directs us to places of confusion. There are many sounds, like a baby crying, that invade a scene from off screen and leave one wondering at the significance. There are also sounds, like crashing ocean waves, that comingle with and epically describe the visual that is only hinted at on screen. And … there is plenty of music. Like Mambéty’s use of Josephine Baker’s “Paris, Paris” for instance, which eloquently illustrates the two young lovers’ desire to leave Dakar for the glamour and opportunity of Paris.

Along these lines, I was particularly struck by Mado Robin singing Johann Martini's song “Plaisir d’amour” or “Pleasure of Love” – a classical French love song from the eighteenth century. Translated lyrics of this song appear on the screen as subtitles and go something like, “The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, the grief of love lasts a lifetime.” The lines from this two-hundred-year-old song seem not only to foreshadow the outcome of Mory and Anta’s love affair but also to dig at something a little deeper. Falling in love requires optimism. To lose oneself in the possibilities presented by love might lead one ultimately to deny or ignore the certain temporality of life. Mory and Anta are in love with the fantasy of Paris. They play dress-up and fantasize about the power of wealth. They are focused on what the Paris of their dreams can offer them and they ignore the possibility of struggle and hardship that would likely befall them as immigrants in a foreign and inhospitable land.

As I was looking for more information on “Plaisir d’amour” I came across some interesting videos – a very young and angelic Marianne Faithfull for one. I also discovered the Elvis Presley song “Can’t Help Falling in Love” uses the same melody. From there, I just had to watch my favorite Elvis video – one of his final performances where he belts out “Unchained Melody” with so much raw emotion and power. I love when he looks out at the audience and a lovely grin spreads across his face that lights it up with the spirit of youth. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efg4l3brInU

North by Northwest (1959)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if my problems and your plans were somehow connected?”

North by Northwest is a gorgeous American pilgrimage and classic mistaken identity thriller from Alfred Hitchcock that starts in New York City and ends at Mount Rushmore, America’s “Shrine of Democracy”. Earlier this week, in the American Landscape art history class that I am taking, there was a discussion about Mount Rushmore. This class is largely focused on the role of art in imperialist nation-building. There is much critique of colonialism in class and this day there was much critique of this tumid display of American ego. Ironically, the Department of Interior and the National Park Service objected quite vehemently to Hitchcock’s film noting (without irony) that the portrayal of violence desecrated the national monument.

I think of Mount Rushmore as a bad tattoo on the flexed bicep of a muscle-tee wearing mullet-headed country. I have to wonder what this Brit saw in the location. Was it just a plot coupon or is there some sort of critique? When the film was made, the monument was less than twenty years old. Hitchcock told the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, “I always wanted to do a chase scene across the faces of Mt. Rushmore,” and that was the starting point for the movie. Or rather the ending point. Citing “patent desecration” the Department of Interior would not allow Hitchcock to film on the monument. So, he had a large replica built in a Hollywood studio where the chase scene was filmed. Even after filming switched to the set in Culver City, the Department of Interior instructed Hitchcock/MGM not to show anything above the Presidential chins when shooting the Mount Rushmore scenes. Amusingly, the working title for the film was “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose”. Hitchcock reportedly had wanted to film a humorous scene of Cary Grant having a sneezing fit while standing in Lincoln’s nostril.

Nothing could be built, even temporarily, at the Mount Rushmore site. Therefore the iconic mid-century modern Vandamm house was also a set constructed in Hollywood. The exterior shots of the house, reminiscent of a Julius Schulman Case Study photograph, is a matte painting (a pre-digital effect when a real set or location was combined with a painting). Hitchcock had wanted to get Frank Lloyd Wright to design the house, but his fee was too high for the film’s budget. Instead, they just dreamed up a house that looked like it could have been designed by Wright and built it in Culver City. The house featured the ubiquitous modernist cantilever design, but it had no glass in the windows (to avoid reflections while filming) and the limestone walls were just plaster.

In the introduction to this blog, I mentioned that I may have been intoxicated while watching these films in my youth. I remember waking up on more than one occasion and quoting Roger Thornhill, “They tried to kill me with bourbon!” This time around, I was completely sober – just eating pumpkin pie and drinking tea and loving every minute of this film.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Directed by George A. Romero

I’ve been thinking about the portrayal of family and domesticity in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Living Dead films. According to Merriam-Webster, the term “nuclear family” was first coined in 1920s by social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and refers to “the core members of a family, usually parents and children.” Increased industrialization of the 1920s led young people to leave their place at the farm table and move to urban areas in search of employment in factories. As a result, families became small detached “nuclear” units. 

By the 1950s marriage and children had become a national agenda item in cold war America. The nuclear family unit became the normative model of family life, and the image of the happy family was powerful propaganda in the effort to show American superiority over communism. The basic tenet of the nuclear family (as envisioned by the conservative white male leadership) was that of a marriage (between a man and woman) that is sacred (monogamous) and with the ultimate purpose of procreation (progeny). Within this framework gender roles were clearly defined. Women were relegated to the home, expected to be submissive to their husbands and attentive to their children, divorce was taboo, adultery was forbidden, abortion unthinkable. The nuclear family was promoted as a stable and satisfying way of life and the pursuit of it was enthusiastically encouraged.  

By the end of the 1960s the fragility of the ideal of the nuclear family is uncovered, and the structure begins to crumble as a code of self-expression, self-reliance, and self-fulfillment (rugged individualism) comes to the fore. “The period when the nuclear family flourished was not normal. It was a freakish historical moment when all of society conspired to obscure its essential fragility.” Brooks continues, “Over the past several decades, the decline of the nuclear family has created an epidemic of trauma—millions have been set adrift because what should have been the most loving and secure relationship in their life broke. Slowly, but with increasing frequency, these drifting individuals are coming together to create forged families.” [David Brooks. The Atlantic] Sounds like a zombie flick to me.

In Night of the Living Dead, Romero rather heavy-handedly critiques a range of social stereotypes of femineity in the female characters of the catatonic Barbara, the exasperated wife Helen, the lover Judy, and the matricidal daughter Karen. Romero “disrupts any fixed notions we have about women (in film), as one by one each archetypal female figure and what she represents is annihilated (i.e. “wife/mother,” “virgin,” “good girl,” “daddy’s girl,” and “lover”).” [Natasha Patterson] By the time we get to Dawn of the Dead, Romero gives us one female character to focus on – Fran. She is a successful white career woman who, it turns out is pregnant and unmarried. This character would have been an impossibility in the 1950s. Natasha Patterson again, “In Dawn, once the men find out that Fran is pregnant, there is considerable change in their behavior toward her – a chauvinistic attitude that seems oddly out of place and somewhat ridiculous in light of the circumstances surrounding them. Fran questions the men and thereby patriarchal definitions of femininity, telling the men:

I’m sorry you found out I’m pregnant because I don’t want to be treated any differently than you treat each other … and I’m not going to be den mother for you guys and I want to know what’s going on, and I want to have something to say about the plans. There’s four of us, okay?” 

After this scene, Fran further claims her agency by demanding that she be taught how to fly the helicopter and how to shoot a gun. She abandons the antiquated notion that women must look to men for safety and protection and essentially saves herself. “While the interracial coupling is intriguing in light of the racial tensions of the 1970s, what is also notable is the lack of any romantic trappings in this scene. Peter and Fran survive and escape, and whatever affiliation they will form, presumable at some point including Fran’s child, shows no sign of resembling anything like the traditional family.” [Phillips]

Changing notions of domestic space are also explored in George Romero’s films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The central setting for Night of the Living Dead is a traditional (familiar therefore safe) farmhouse where worn and shabby furniture is dismantled to transform the structure into a fortress that the zombies cannot penetrate. In “The Rise of the New Paradigm”, Kyle William Bishop points out that “The farmhouse itself symbolizes the comforting idea that one’s home is a place of security…”. Bishop continues, “By setting the action in a typical house, Romero is addressing cultural anxieties connected to the American family of the 1960s, emphasizing in particular the breakdown of the nuclear family…”. This is illustrated in interactions between the members of the nuclear family hiding in the basement – the wife is clearly agitated by her husband’s hot-headed attitude as well as his inability to be effective in the face of danger, finally the zombified daughter brutally murders and devours her. It is interesting that all of the protagonist’s die within the structure that they thought would keep them safe. “On one level, there seems a clear message about the failure of the domestic structure fashioned around the nuclear family. The domestic space of the house in Night becomes more a scene of internal strife than any genuine safe-haven, and the one actual family unit that finds itself within the house, the Coopers, paints a fairly grim picture of familial relations.” [Phillips]

The traditional nuclear family and the physical structure that contains it is completely absent in Romero’s following film Dawn of the Dead. In this film, set in a suburban shopping mall, the idea of family and domesticity is portrayed as a tenuous fantasy. While they wait out the zombie epidemic, the “family” of survivors sets up a very fashionable makeshift home including the latest in décor trends scavenged from the department stores at the mall that houses them. The chic furniture stands in sharp contrast to the cardboard boxes that act as barricades and the TV screen that is filled with static. The central characters, initially overjoyed at having access to their every material desire, drift into boredom and malaise once they realize their lives effectively are meaningless and without purpose. They should have gotten married and had some kids!

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Produced by Val Lewton. RKO pictures.

Everything good dies here.

I have just started my second year of graduate school at the University of New Mexico. This semester I am taking a film theory class focused on zombie movies. When asked what my favorite film is, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead often comes to mind and I love horror movies in general, so this class seemed right up my alley. Each week we are to watch a zombie movie, moving chronologically from early zombie fare to more recent efforts. Last week I watched White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi. I was struck by how insignificant and non-threatening the actual zombies were in that film. The real fear is not being attacked by zombies but in being turned into a zombie - not the flesh eating kind but a simple mindless fuck. The same is true with I Walked with a Zombie. In fact, we are never sure that the zombies are really zombies in this film and maybe the film is not really about zombies at all in the end. 

The symbolic use of the arrow ravaged Saint Sebastian (in this film, set on the fictional island of San Sebastian, is represented by “Ti Misery” the figure head from a slave ship that is now part of the sugar plantation garden) is a rather interesting contrast to the voodoo religion of the islanders. Sebastian, before being martyred, was ordered to be killed by arrows. He survived and was nursed back to health by a Christian widow named Irene (obvious parallels to nurse Betsy and zombie Jessica who should be martyred for putting up with her insufferable husband). Interestingly, Saint Sebastian is also the patron of plague victims. Each character in this film seems plagued by some different flavor of torment that human beings bring upon themselves.

Early in the film, we get our first introduction to the zombie concept as it is mansplained to Betsy. (Zombies, and I don’t mean the cocktail!) I was struck by this seemingly oddball reference to the Zombie cocktail which dates to 1934 and the rise of “tiki culture”, an appropriation and amalgamation merging products and culture from the Caribbean islands with those of the South Pacific – if you’ve seen one island savage, you’ve seen them all. So, pour me another glass of rum.

Blood Simple (1984)

Directed by Joel Coen. Produced by Ethan Coen. With John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh.

The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own.

In an interesting coincidence, Blood Simple is a perverse inversion of the title of the last film I watched, Wise Blood. The term "blood simple" comes from the Dashiell Hammett novel, Red Harvest, and describes the way people seem to grow dumber after prolonged exposure to stressful, violent situations. Beyond the title reference, the voice over and opening scene — a rainy night, a desolate highway, a double-cross, a man and a woman — direct our thoughts immediately toward the golden age of the film noir tradition. The term film noir was first applied by the French film critic Nino Frank in 1946 to the Hollywood films: The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet. In the 50s, the term became used more broadly to describe the wave of American crime films after World War II that featured insulted, beaten heroes driven by desperation to acts of violence.

True to the film noir genre, Blood Simple’s plot revolves around the central characters’ various misunderstandings of the evidence left at a crime scene. Each of them acts on the basis of a fundamental misconception of what’s going on, what he’s doing, and what the others are after. The film noir imagery and story are mixed with horror movie gore, suspense, and absurdism. One of my favorite nods to absurdism is that our brother shamus/hired gun drives a comical VW Bug, wears an ill-fitting pale yellow leisure suit, pockets stuffed with cash, and carries a lighter inscribed with his name in looping rope font and ‘Elks Man of the Year’. Details! Then there is the corpse that won’t die, the blood that won’t wash away, the gun that gets passed around like a hot potato. Frances McDormand’s femme fatale is a combination of shrewdness, toughness, and intelligence that won’t be defeated. And so she walks away from the muddled madness that left three men dead.

Wise Blood (1979)

Directed by Jhon Huston. Starring Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Amy Wright, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ned Beatty. Based on the 1952 novel Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”

I feel like Hazel Motes as I try to write about this film – struggling with the God that is Flannery O’Connor. A voice far more commanding than even John Huston’s. I tried to ignore the novel and just approach the film but once you’ve walked the garden path with O’Connor there is no backsliding. Redemption (serenity) comes by way of heeling to the things one cannot change.

In the opening credits Huston’s name is misspelled, purposefully, and it made me wonder if he was going to take additional cheap jabs at southern stereotypes rather than be true to O’Connor’s darkly humorous investigation into the complexities of Southern humanity. While the characters are absurd, they work hard to honestly portray the wild contradictions inherent in living a Christian life. In the south in particular, religion is not a side dish offered up on Sundays but the main dish of life for many. Southern folks have doggedly managed to hold tight to the spiritual as a way of living a meaningful life despite the modern capitalist insistence on consumerism as the meaning of life.

As I watched the film, I was struck by the realization (something that I hadn’t remembered from reading the book) that Hazel Motes is a true loner not so much by choice but by circumstance. He’s lost his family and the only home, albeit a troubled one, that he’s ever known. He’s a soldier that apparently has returned from action, though of what nature is not clear. Still, this experience with the world sets him up for some serious potential for disillusionment. 

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.” You can never go home boys! But, who you are is shaped by who raised you up – the wise blood that courses through your veins compels you. In some respect, you never leave home. After all the internal struggles and external conflicts are said and done, we realize that we are what we are in spite of ourselves. So, you may as well get on out there and do some things you never have done before and if a good car comes your way you won’t need any justification.

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

Directed by Jean Cocteau with Jean Marais and Josette Day

“let me pronounce four magic words, that veritable Open Sesame, once upon a time…”

For me, the magic of great filmmaking is its ability to elicit our childlike capacity for enchantment, as Cocteau openly asks from us in the film’s introduction, while simultaneously telling the paradoxical tale of our grown-up obsessions with desire and fear. Cocteau based his magical version of Beauty and the Beast on the 18th-century story by Madame Leprince de Beaumont. He modeled the surrealistic realm of the beast – a place of shadow, romance, and dreams – on Gustave Doré’s illustrations and the diurnal world of Beauty’s familial life of servitude on paintings by Vermeer. As I watched the film, on several occasions I was reminded of scenes from other great films that echo Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast: the somnambulist watching Jane sleep in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1920); the image of James Stewart carrying Kim Novak’s limp body in front of the Golden Gate bridge in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958); the long hotel hallway with billowing red curtains in Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000). 

In addition to the obvious, the contrast of beauty and ugliness is illustrated in the use of darkness and light, and the duality of our human nature can be read in the juxtaposition of interior and exterior worlds. The opening scene of Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast shows a small dog (a “tamed” beast) sleeping indoors, surrounded by three fussing women, who is then very nearly pierced by an arrow carelessly launched through an open window by a couple of silly boys playing outdoors. Later in the film, after she arrives at his castle the beast carries Beauty’s limp body into the bedroom that he has prepared for her. As they move through the threshold of the room, her dress transforms from that of a peasant to a princess. The bedroom appears to reside in a liminal space between interior and exterior where twisting vines surround the bed and the floor appears to be earth. Beauty exists in both the world of her father and the world of the Beast as a prisoner and no matter which world she inhabits there is something or someone that she longs for in the other. She peers into the magic mirror seeking a glimpse not of herself but of the person that she has left behind who is dying as a result of her absence. In the end, Beauty’s kindness frees the Beast from his prison but it seems that Beauty is forever to be ensnared by desire.

La Jetée (1962)

Directed by Chris Marker

“...he understood there was no way to escape Time, and that this moment he had been granted to watch as a child, which had never ceased to obsess him, was the moment of his own death.”

The name Chris Marker crossed my path within the last month. At the time, I did not investigate who he was but filed it away in the to-do-later brain pocket. Tonight, I was scrolling through Criterion Channel recommendations looking for a film to watch and in the “art house classics” section I came across La Jetée. I remembered the name Chris Marker so I decided to give it a whirl. I had no idea!

First off, I noticed that the opening image of the last film that I watched for this project, Stranger Than Paradise, is remarkably similar to this film. Go ahead and take a look at the image that I used on that post and compare it to the one on this post. It’s just too similar to be a mere coincidence. Perhaps also the lone woman in Jarmusch’s New York airport scene is a nod to the lone woman on the observation deck at Orly La Jetee?

Do a quick googling and you’ll learn that this film has been immensely inspirational to many filmmakers that followed – famously Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. It is a film that was made in tribute to another great film, Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s no wonder then that as I watched, I kept thinking of my friend Bob White’s animated sci-fi films. In particular, his 1996 film Terri Lovenote that features a voiceover narration in a voice that sounds similar to the voices of the scientists in La Jetée. I texted Bob immediately to ask him about it. He confirmed his debts, adding that every semester for the past fifty years he has shown this film to his students at Simmons College. I may have to add it to my Intro to Photo class syllabus next semester.

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

It's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and he's a wild man, so bug off.

In the opening of Stranger Than Paradise, we follow Eva, just landed in New York from Hungary, as she makes her way through the dingy streets of the Lower East Side in search of her cousin’s flat. She is not a tourist. As she walks, she takes a portable cassette tape player from her baggage and introduces us to her personal theme song and the signature track of the film, the voodoo blues vamp “I Put a Spell on You” by Screaming Jay Hawkins. Incidentally, Screaming Jay hails from Cleveland – the second, and much bleaker, location we follow Eva to in the film. The choice of this song and that it reappears throughout the film, however, is certainly not incidental. It’s not so much a soundtrack as it is another character or perhaps a sort of narrator providing a philosophical undertone.

As I watched, I was thinking about Jarmusch’s relationship to music as a filmmaker. With the help of Wikipedia, I discovered that the trio of actors in Stranger Than Paradise are also musicians. [jazz musician John Lurie, former Sonic Youth drummer-turned-actor Richard Edson, and Hungarian-born actress and violinist Eszter Balint] The casting of musicians as actors is not anomalous to Stranger Than Paradise. We see “wild man” Hawkins appear in the flesh in Jarmusch’s 1989 film Mystery Train. There’s Down By Law (1986) with Tom Waits and the musical ensemble of Coffee & Cigarettes (2003). He has a long history of working with musicians both as sonic spell casters and as actors. Jarmusch employs music like some filmmakers use lighting to create atmosphere, or as a backstory to underscore a way of life. He is clearly has a deep understanding of the way that music enriches our experiences – how it casts a spell on us.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick with Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones

“Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, post-war environments: one where you got 20 million people killed, and the other where you got 150 million people killed!”

I often thought of Dr. Strangelove over the past four years as we collectively endured the mind-boggling buffoonery of the Trump circus. Now that we have been released, scarred but still intact, from the villainous grip of the orange tyrant, I felt it was safe to venture back to Kubrick’s Cold War satire.

Before I watched Dr. Strangelove again, I read a little bit of Roger Ebert’s 1999 review. Ebert wrote this review after watching the film for perhaps the tenth time. He begins by stating that every time one watches a great film something new comes to light. Ebert happens to zero in on the performance given by George C. Scott as General Turgidson – particularly what he does with his face, the tics and twitches, the comic plasticity of his over-the-top expressions. So, that is what I paid attention to as I watched the film again. In my past viewings, I’m sure that I paid most attention to Peter Sellers’ characters and the delightfully bizarre general Jack D. Ripper played by Sterling Hayden. I’m glad that Ebert steered me toward Scott’s exuberant performance – it’s brilliant comedy. Also brilliant is Ebert’s review and critique of the film. He offers great insights. I suggest you see for yourself: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-dr-strangelove-1964

One insight offered in Ebert’s review is related to the War Room set which was designed by Ken Adam. While I had certainly been aware of the brilliance of that set, I’d never really considered its design and creation. Upon further investigation, I learned that Ken Adam, having worked on over 75 films during his 60 year career, has a long list of equally brilliant sets to his name. For instance, Adam is the vision behind the futuristic secret volcanic lair of the international terrorist organization Spectre in the Bond film, You Only Live Twice. The following anecdote about Adam’s war room set pretty well sums up how convincing and influential his vision was: “Shortly after being elected president of the United States in 1981, Ronald Reagan was shown around the Pentagon by his chief of staff, James Baker. At the end of the tour, Reagan asked why they hadn't seen the War Room. Baker explained that it didn't exist, except in a movie.”

The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) (1957)

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

“Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way - despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of?”

Woody Allen calls Bergman’s The Seventh Seal a sinister fairy tale. In a sense it is as it involves a fantastical being (Oh, Death!) but it is a tale of maturity for those who have experienced the world and are perplexed by it – not children. It is the tale of a journey, or more accurately, an urgent quest by a weary man of intellect and experience, who feels death is near, to find meaning in a life that seems at times senseless. Bergman offers a critique of the absurdity of faith and brings to light the natural sweetness of living and loving. 

Sweetness such as sharing a simple meal of just picked wild strawberries and fresh milk. Or the touch of his wife’s hand on his face when he returns to his home to find her at the hearth after his ten-year absence. This story deals with the core ideas of love, self-sacrifice, pain, and death. The play between humor and darkness highlights the contradictory elements of human nature. The lightness of the family of actors contrasting with the darkness and cynicism of the troubled Knight and his misogynistic companion. 

The film quotes the biblical book of Revelations: And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.” There are scenes that are set in natural surroundings where the call of birds is quite audible – at the sea and in the forest. I wonder is the sounding of these winged creatures in these locations where one might feel closest to “god” intentional or happenstance.

Auntie Mame (1958)

Directed by Morton DaCosta. Starring Rosalind Russell.

“Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

I associate Auntie Mame with Christmas. It’s an absurd and delightful sign of the season that brings me as much joy as that talking snowman and island of misfit toys did when I was a child. Rosalind Russell is an endearing master of ceremonies in this over-the-top Technicolor escapade.

I also associate Auntie Mame with my favorite bartender, Randy Hedrick (RIP). I first met Randy in 1999 in Boston at the Lenox Hotel bar Anago. Anago was a rather swanky place for riff-raff like me to be hanging out in. Randy had previously been employed at Jack Lynch’s Webster Lounge, a less tony establishment that existed in a strange place on the edge of a parking garage overlooking the expressway. I never went there but my drinking buddies Bob and Nat were regulars there and followed Randy to Anago when Jack Lynch’s closed. When I started hanging around with those two degenerates, I also started visiting Randy on a regular basis. He made a fine cocktail. He knew what you drank and how you liked it. Like Auntie Mame, he was good looking, witty, and charming as hell. Naturally, he loved Auntie Mame and quoted the film all the time as he danced behind the bar from cocktail to cocktail.

One of my favorite holiday memories was orchestrated by Randy. On a cold night in December, Bob, Nat, and I decided to head to Anago. Uncharacteristically, we called ahead to tell Randy that we were coming and that we would like to request eggnog as our drink of the evening. Anago was not a large bar, there were maybe 8 or 10 seats at the bar and it was usually full, especially during the holidays. When we arrived, there were three empty seats, each with a glass of eggnog waiting. When we three ragamuffins made our entrance and were shown to our beverages all the fancy heads turned. It was an absurd and delightful event – a memory of a man and a time that I hold dear.

Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

Directed by Chantal Ackerman.

How could you know? You're not a woman. Lights out?

I was recently reading about Samuel Clemens and how he came to his more well-known sobriquet of Mark Twain. It was applied to him by the steamboat captain, John Bixby, with whom he apprenticed. ‘Mark Twain’ is a river term for measuring water depth, meaning two fathoms deep (that’s twelve feet for all you landlubbers out there). Bixby taught Twain the need to read surface for indications of depth; how small perturbations might infer large submerged truths. So it is with Jeanne Dielman.

I had never heard of this film but it kept appearing in those ubiquitous “best films of all-time” lists – which of course I look at. Touted as an experimental feminist classic and coming in at three hours and twenty-one minutes running time, I was saving it for a wretched afternoon when I would have no interest in going outside. After watching this claustrophobia-inducing film, I felt a need to be out on a mountain breathing in the fresh air and taking in the long view. Or, if I couldn’t go outside, I wanted to make a mess, to have an orgasm, to drink a glass of whiskey, and dance like a fool. Jeanne Dielman’s life is order personified. The film is shot in tight spaces, so many grids, so many doors opening and closing, so many lights being turned on and turned off. So much time spent inside - indoors and inside the head, arranging and ordering. So little pleasure taken.

It is a long film, but it is completely mesmerizing. The way that such small details, presented in the context of the mundane, work to instill anxiety in the viewer is fascinating. A dropped brush, an over-cooked potato, a missing button. The meat kneading scene sent me over the edge. The pace of the film allows time for the quiet details to speak. I began to detest this woman that I felt sorry for at first. The absurdism is an acquiescent Tati, the melodrama a blanched Sirk. It is a three hour still life that slowly crumbles before your eyes. Did the potato fiasco push her over the edge? Ackerman was twenty-five when she made this film. I wonder what she thought of it as she approached the age of Jeanne Dielman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pSNOEYSIlg

Badlands (1973)

Directed by Terrence Malick. With Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen.

At this moment, I didn't feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you're sitting there and all the water's run out of the bathtub.

I was so happy when I got an e-mail from Criterion Channel announcing that Badlands would be streaming in December. This film has legendary status in my memory and I have been eager to watch it again. It has not fallen from its legendary status after a second viewing. This is great storytelling, great acting, great filmmaking.

I have been thinking a lot about how stories get attached to landscapes. In my mind, South Dakota is forever attached to this film, this story, this couple – Holly and Kit. There’s also Kansas and In Cold Blood. Is there something about the endless plains that inspires murderous sprees? Toward the end of Badlands, when Kit has stopped running and is waiting for the law to catch up with him, he builds a cairn at the side of the road. The cairn is a holdover from the ‘old world’ – a monument and a waymarker, a collection of traveler’s stories. When the arresting officers finally take him, he points it out to them, certain that they will want to return to the exact spot later to tell their own story. He’s built a monument to himself or to his story and their stories. I think of maps as a way to connect stories, waymarkers for meaning-making. Each point or line on a map is a story, has a story, relates a story, collects more stories, connects to another story. Maps are lyrical. Maps are songs. Badlands is a lyrical film. It is a murder ballad. A holdover from the ‘old world’. It is a cairn, a commemoration, and a marker, a story to which we gravitate, a fairy tale, a myth, a legend. It tells us something about how we navigate our world.

The World According to Garp (1982)

Directed by George Roy Hill with Robin Williams, Glenn Close, and John Lithgow. Adapted from John Irving’s novel of the same title.

“You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.”

Well, I reckon that I’m glad that I finally watched this movie that I’ve been hearing about for years. It was an entertaining romp – charming, whimsical, dark, and full of foreshadowing. Glen Close and Robin Williams probably get more attention for their lead roles, but if it weren’t for John Lithgow in his role as a trans woman this film would not be nearly as interesting. After watching it, I thought about Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing character in the film Tootsie, which I loved as a kid, and which, incidentally, was also released in 1982. I'm no women’s studies scholar, but I do think it is interesting that these two well-loved films, released in the same year, present feminist ideas to main-stream audiences with a dose of humor. A spoonful of sugar, you know.

An Angel at My Table (1991)

Directed by Jane Campion

I regretted that with our parents’ lives spent almost entirely in feeding, clothing, sheltering us, we had little time to know and be friends with them.

One of the many wonderful things about the early stages of a  new relationship is the pleasure found in discovering the things this other person brings to the table. Especially those things that they are passionate about. So it is with this film. I saw Jane Campion’s The Piano back in the day and loved it but never went on to explore her other work. An Angel at My Table is a film about New Zealand author Janet Frame’s life. It is based on Frame’s autobiography. It is also one of Kai’s favorites so I was excited to watch it with him. He also promised to tickle me if I started to fall asleep. It is a rather lengthy film having been originally produced as a TV miniseries but I only had to be tickled once. 

The story of Frame’s life is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Campion has the patience to let it unfold at an unhurried pace and we are allowed to revel in the beauty of a childhood that is graced with love and affection if not wealth and material goods. She has the wisdom not to dwell on the awful parts giving us just enough of a glimpse to effectively illustrate how writing truly saved Frame’s life. And, she has the eye to captivate us with a lushness of detail - every scene is a visual delight that I just want to sink into. I had never heard of Janet Frame before. After seeing this film I am inspired to seek out her writing.

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

Directed by Seijun Suzuki

"I need no dreams; if it's a flower, flowers scatter, dreams dissolve, the flower of man scatters after all; I threw away love, for honor... ah, Tokyo drifter"

I adore Seijun Suzuki’s take on the yakuza story. That powder blue suit that Tetsu “the Phoenix” wears gets me every time. He’s the hippest gangster ever to capture my adoration. Tokyo Drifter has been described as a Day-Glo noir hanging on a tenuous plot thread. Indeed, I could watch it without subtitles and enjoy it just as much. Except, I really love the song that returns throughout the movie and I think its lyrics are more important than following along with the gangster plot. Suzuki is a visionary director. This film is absurd; surreal. It is pop art; pop culture; candy. It’s a cartoon. It’s devastating when he walks away from Chiharu, the woman who wants to love him so desperately. Listen to the theme song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw2GvUvaDy4