Author: stevensonale

There’s nothing obvious about Lars Von Trier’s filmmaking. There’s irony aplenty, sure, along with the other standard tropes of the sophisticated artist: misdirection; idiosyncratic pacing and camera work; ambiguity; inscrutable characters; misplaced and/or unexpected humor; all the standard devices that cushion and separate the viewer from the action at hand, drawing his or her attention, instead, to style, manner, technique.

The net effect of these tics, in the horrific THTHB, does not soften the film’s ultimate impact. But they do build in breathing room between the blows. You see, Jack (Matt Dillon) is a quirky guy. He’s not only an engineer, a frustrated architect, and a serial killer. He also has OCD. Thus we are provided with the undeniably humorous image of Jack returning, again and again, to the scene of a just-committed murder, checking, again and again, for incriminating blood stains.

Then there’s the go-to tool for keeping the viewer in “it’s just a movie” mind: a protagonist who relates directly to the viewer, in this case proxied by Verge, a nonjudgmental confessor a la Virgil.

Verite American films from the 70s incite a feeling of nostalgia in me that might best be compared to Eliot’s cruel April. For one thing, it was the time of my own transition from boy to man. And in those budding sensations, those erotic exploration, my own world paralled those of the larger society.

For, while the “sexual revolution” occurred in the hothouse of 60s counterculture, it seems as though the following decade saw these primal urges became part of the mainstream, funneled into common discourse, no longer as shocking as they were titillating, still novel enough to excite, yet not new.

Open discussions of sexuality no longer broke barriers; experimentation was no longer as much a radical reaction as it was part of a more widely accepted movement toward self-actualization. Pornography hit the mainstream with “Deep Throat” and “Behind the Green Door.” Key parties came to the suburbs.

In this environment, Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge was a smart, thoughtful foray into the world of how men saw women, as represented by the unlikely duo of Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel), college roommates at a tony New England college who span the spectrum of male ignorance. Sandy knows almost nothing about women, dating, and sex, and is not afraid to admit it. Jonathan, a Lothario without scruples, shows a bravado that masks his own cluelessness.

Ultimately, both paths prove less than successful. Sandy’s lack of confidence and self-knowledge dooms his relationships with Susan (Candice Bergen) and Cindy, an opportunistic manipulator. Both women betray him with Jonathan, showing their own inability to reconcile the yin and yang, responsible vs. daring, that defines the two men.

Jonathan’s progress increasingly highlights his narcissism. When he finds a woman who meets his physical requirements in Bobbie (Ann-Margret), he finds fault with her anyway, making it clear that his problem finding a compatible woman lies with him, not the women.

Ultimately, the only women who will inhabit Jonathan’s delusional world of self-love are those who are paid to do so. And Sandy’s comment about his new young lover, that “she knows worlds which I cannot begin to touch yet” leaves us ambivalent regarding his own growth. Is he suggesting that they share a deep communication, or merely that his penchant for idolizing women, “putting them on a pedestal,” has simply taken a new form, cutting off the possibility of a more intimate connection.

Thus, the film’s title is both ironic and true. While the two men’s understanding of carnal matters, as far as any mutuality between the sexes, has developed little since their college days, knowledge of the body is perhaps all that they have, defeated as they have been in developing a bond that goes beyond the physical.

I was just reminded that I wanted to say something about Paul Schrader’s wonderful (is that the right word for such dark beauty?) 1991 film The Comfort of Strangers. What can I say? That part of its charm lies in the inscrutability of Walken’s character, the complete opaqueness of this stranger. What is the comfort Robert and Mary provide? Or is the word completely ironic? Things to ponder.

Douglas Sirk seems like the quintessential 1950s filmmaker. As much as his films strain against the conventional norms of that time, they inevitably end up snapping back into line, tacitly approving the limits that corral his characters’ more rebellious impulses.

In There’s Always Tomorrow, based on a novel by Ursula Parrott (which also inspired a 1934 film version), Sirk finds a suitable subject, one that fits his penchant for romantic longing curbed by, but undimmed by realism.

The stars make the film so much more than a cliched romance. Who could more fittingly convey the good 1950s husband, trapped in the stifling embrace of a family that has no longer respects him, crippling his own sense of himself as a man, than Fred MacMurray, playing Clifford Groves. And who could be the better counterpoint to MacMurray’s quietly expressive hound dog face and distinctive baritone, clotted with emotion, than Barbara Stanwyck’s Norma Vail, who has learned the lessons of desire and love lost, and who can guide MacMurray, with great humanity, beyond his personal travails, to a wider view.

The women are the wise ones, after all. There’s a temptation to villify Cliff’s wife, Marion, who seems to exemplify the benign neglect which has brought him to the breaking point. But there is a scene late in the film, when Marion demonstrates true solicitude for her husband’s troubled state of mind, which suggests that her love is real, and takes the form of a quiet constancy, and that Cliff’s discontent may be more the result of a desire for novelty than love for Norma. “You know me better than I know myself,” Cliff admits.

Marion and Norma ultimately speak with one voice, which is the voice of Sirk himself.

This first installment of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, while charming, ultimately struggles under the weight of its singular focus, held for more than 90 minutes: the initial meeting and flirtations between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy).

During the course of one long day and night the two wander the streets of Vienna, sharing with us the discoveries, protestations, fears, and often pseudo-profound musings of young love overwhelmed by its own idealistic passion and determined to make a one-night stand into something more. The heaviness comes from this minimal action and its predictability and, sadly, from the city itself, which is given importance largely as a prop, a frame, for the wanderings and reflections of these two attractive youngsters.

At one point, while they toy with the tempting fantasy that their brief tryst will blossom into something long-lasting (lacking, of course, the fore-knowledge that this will in fact occur), Jesse talks about his fear that, like every couple, they will grow to know each other too well, each anticipating the others reactions, knowing the others stories, tiring of their partner’s mannerisms.

This is not the movie’s first example of Jesse’s tendency toward self-hatred and, as such, it makes the audience weary of him, even if Celine has not yet begun to do so.

Often Ethan Hawke does not help Jesse’s cause (Jesse, described by the Criterion Channel synopsis as “scrappy”) armed as he is with a studied array of well-worn facial expressions: the reflective; the impish; the daringly flirtatious or spontaneously unpredictable; the long stare of deep reflection.

Celine seems equally smitten by all the different Jesses, and her susceptibility and bemused smile become as mildly tedious as her beau’s boyish pretensions.

But then this is perhaps the point; perhaps this is the Jesse that Hawke intends to convey, true to the character’s self-doubt and insecurity, and perhaps Delpy’s reactions are on point as well. I won’t know until I watch the rest of the trilogy …. if I have the patience to do so.

What was it about that era, 20-30 years ago, that produced such vapid American movies? While watching Light Sleeper, an offering from 1992, I’m struck by its colorlessness. Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, fine actors both, play-act at being a drug dealer and supplier. Uh-huh. Sarandon wears pants suits and Dafoe presents as a moderately successful accountant. Everyone in their circle speaks well (no shouting, God forbid) and observes the social graces.

The movie’s world, as for so many films of the period, seems to exist in a bubble, uninformed by the existential threats of our current age (e.g., climate change, terrorism), and deliberately innocent even by the standards of earlier movies. There is no socially-conscious agenda, no concerns outside the tightly-defined worries dictated by plot.

Of course there’s nothing that says a film has to engage with the issues of the day. Plenty of my favorite films assiduously avoid such engagement, yet still manage to construct a world of gravitas and heft. Their characters find moments of insight amid an environment that feels real, because it manages to capture hints of the broken, flawed world that we know and inhabit.

Films like Light Sleeper seem to inhabit a parallel universe, a world that has only a limited number of worries, and that promises to tie up any of its loose ends by film’s end.

I recently watched Crime of Passion on Criterion and found it a really odd film. It’s amazing to me that it was made the year I was born. The whole environment of the film seems soooo long ago. I guess 1957 was a long time ago! The accepted roles of men and women, attitudes toward marriage and sex, dress, smoking, drinking, etc.

Of course all the stifling mores are just a setup to give Stanwyck’s rebellion meaning, but still, I imagine her behavior was probably more outside the norm than what she rebelled against.

More than anything, I was struck by the film’s lack of interiority. Probably there is a point in film history when movies began figuring out a way to gain access to the interior lives of their characters, and cared to do so. Maybe in the 60s? Or was it more an American thing to create plots that move characters around like puzzle pieces, sometimes without a rationale that is really consistent or apparent to the viewer? I’m thinking for example of Stanwyck’s character’s initial views on marriage, followed by the quick turnaround in marrying Hayden’s character. Or the decision to murder Burr’s character. The latter act seemed not only out of character, but apparently resulted from a jumble of motives, none of which made sense to me without more access to her character’s inner workings.