I’ve been assigned the task of beefing up my blog for marketing purposes. Whatever that means.
I’ve been having trouble getting a groove going on this here maryamurphy site, so I’m going to try to spew forth a bit about movies I’ve seen in recent days.
THE CLASS: As vivid and painful and fascinating as your own high school experience was while you were living it. So patient, unsensational, real. And that teacher guy is hot. It takes its time allowing the massive wall of students to develop into individuals and never imbues them with precociousness. We don’t see their troubled home lives, as the cliché would have it. Inarticulate glimpses in parent/teacher meetings are all we’re privy to, because that’s all the teacher sees. The central conflict is slight, but affecting. We’re moved more by the immersion in a full year of teaching. Very few false notes. Scenes continue beyond where most films would cut away. Punchline, cut? No…. let’s take it further until it becomes almost a spectacle of mundanity. The earnestness and misguidedness of the teachers are gently portrayed. Mistakes are made, battles won and lost, the world keeps on turning. The children are fantastic.
FORT APACHE: “A stench in the nostrils of honest men.” What else do I need from a film? Interesting to see John Wayne in a small role, but still quietly commanding every scene he’s in. His star power is has such a different flavor from Fonda’s. Fonda is necessarily weak next to him, but appropriately so. He’s a martinet. But they do dazzle together. I love movie stars.
GERRY: You gerried the rendezvous! I was crowsnesting, but you gerried the rendezvous! I haven’t been wild about the recent Van Sant trilogy. Elephant had some appeal, Paranoid Park not much, but Gerry… Gerry I really dug. Maybe the meandering, vérité nothingness worked better for me because they were charismatic movie stars? (See “I love movie stars,” ref. above.) Beautifully realized suspense. But I’d laud it for the creative language alone.
COBRA VERDE: I have such mixed feelings about Herzog. I could watch him cook and eat his shoe all day. It’s kind of like Dickens. I love Dickens’ stories, but the execution bores the crap out of me. Herzog is brilliant and his obsession with insane dreamers is a worthy one. Grizzly Man is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. Kasper Hauser – woo! But what is it about most of his films? They fascinate me, but they don’t make me feel, I guess. Herzog doesn’t love his crazy dreamer characters. He identifies with them closely, yes. Is it self-hatred that comes through, then? Is that what makes it hard for me to muddle through? His self-adoration comes through too, of course. Herzog films may be more Herzog than any other director’s. Which may be his primary brilliance. Oh, right. Cobra Verde. Eh. But man, is Klaus Kinski watchable.
WENDY AND LUCY: A meditation on the vulnerability of a woman alone without even her dog to protect her. I disliked Reichart’s Old Joy, other than the brilliant ending. Wendy and Lucy was just consistent. A consistent gentle terror. I haven’t been broke in a long time, and it recalled vividly the stomach-dropping pain of unexpected expense. Williams played it very well. Understated, intense but not particularly bright girl, in over her head but unable to really react to any of it. A cipherish character. Beaten down. Surviving by a vague, untethered tenacity.
GOODBYE SOLO: A tour-de-force charismatic performance by Souleymane Sy Savane. I saw this film at a super-secret cult meeting of film-goers who arrive without knowing which movie they’re about to watch. The experience was delightful. I missed the opening credits (if there were any), and did not know the director was Iranian-American. But throughout I kept thinking, “This feels so Iranian!” Certainly there was the thematic affinity with A Taste of Cherry, but also in tone and pacing it felt like something Kiarostami might have made. Some weak performances, some stretched-thin plot elements, some flat-out bad movie-making, but Solo I could watch sleeping and be riveted.
SHINING THROUGH: Melanie Griffith and Michael Douglas – two of my most hated movie stars. And yet, not bad! Now remake it with people I can stomach.
MAN ON WIRE: Okay, so I didn’t even finish this, and I hear the end was very moving and beautiful. I think it would have benefited from linearity. The great thing was that someone had a movie camera and was shooting everything at the time. It makes me want to shoot everything that’s happening around me all the time, just in case it can be used in 20 years. Which reminds me. Future Art Historians: I apologize to you now for throwing away most of my daughter’s precious drawings and paintings. Rent me a warehouse and I’ll be happy to preserve it all for posterity.
THE BAND’S VISIT: I had the feeling at first that this was going to be about the death of formality. And, sure, there’s a bit of that. But it’s surprisingly lacking any agenda. A lovely film. Inconsistent in tone and style, but very full of heart. The best scene has the young, hot band member teaching the terrified local how to seduce a girl at a roller rink.
THX-1138: Okay, seriously, what happened to George Lucas? This is such an intelligent, daring, provocative movie. The man who made this cannot have made Episodes 1-3. I know this has been said a thousand zillion times. But it’s all one can really think when watching THX-1138.
I give up for tonight. Many more to battle through. I’ll get better at this.