new review

Tokyo-Ga

2011-06-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

Tokyo-Ga (Wim Wenders documentary tribute to Japanese filmmaker, Yosujiro Ozu) is an exercise in paradox. It captures something infinitesimally complex, while remaining utterly simple. It not only is related to Ozu, but rather, it embodies Ozu to such an extent that one might say it IS Ozu, embodied in the celluloid itself. The images of Japan, particularly of the "fake food," show something of the culture clash in which Ozu was continually interested. As the fake food is made more and more to look like real food, the real food itself begins to resemble more and more the fake food (or so one might suppose from the subtle hints given in Tokyo-Ga). Thus, the modern, mass-produced consumer society becomes increasingly inauthentic, while the traditional, minimally-produced past remains as a memory of a truly authentic life. And yet, it's not so clear as that, is it? We also see the craft and the artist's attention to detail in these foods, we see an authentic appreciation for their own work and the work of others in their field. And we see women throughout the cityscape of Tokyo; confident and self-assured women, emancipated from the shackles of a bygone era. In this sense, the past becomes a memory plagued by codes of conduct and expectation which are ultimately inauthentic in their insistence on binary-gender roles. Tokyo-Ga, in all of its delicate subtlety shows, as does the best work of Ozu, the clash between modernity and tradition. It reveals to us our own inward sense of distrust for both tradition and modernity and begs us to demand a third way, a symbiotic embrace of means beyond the confines of both what has been and what is yet to be.

Godfrey Reggio

2010-02-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

"I had the chance to see a film that actually provided me with a spiritual experience like I'd never received before...I was so moved myself by that personal experience I had, that it was not about entertainment, it was someone using an artform of the twentieth century to touch the souls of other people."

--Godfrey Reggio

Shoah

2009-12-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

Sitting through this nine hour film was a heavy task. Shoah, a film by Claude Lanzmann, has wrecked me. It wasn't the duration of the piece which did the most damage, it was the incredibly insightful yet terrifying content. Shoah consists almost entirely of interviews with people who were involved in various ways in the Holocaust (both survivors and perpetrators), and visits to places that are discussed in the film. The interviews themselves are revelatory as they show the deep anguish and endless resilience of these individuals who survived the Nazi death camps. Shoah reveals itself like an onion, layer by layer, beginning slowly while progressively going deeper and deeper into the sordid realities of the concentration camps. Claude Lanzmann reveals the inner-workings of the death camps through many interviews with ex-Nazi officials, provoking them to explain in horrifying detail the minutiae of their operations. To see and hear the whole thing laid out so meticulously with such particularity was to feel my soul shudder. This is one of the most important documentaries ever made. Shoah offers a compendium of stories which must be told in order that we as human beings never forget that such tragedy is part of our collective history. Lanzmann's film shook me to the core, yet still, I'd rather accept this knowledge of tragedy and history than remain comfortable yet ignorant (or complacent).

--Art Kasmer

Nobody Knows

2009-11-30T11:29:00.000-08:00

Nobody Knows is a quiet, powerful film, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. I was moved almost to tears upon entering the beautiful, tortured world of this film. Something stirred deep within my consciousness and a sensation of overwhelming sympathy gripped me so tightly that I could hardly think of moving. The story centers around a group of brothers and sisters in Japan (the oldest sibling being in the 6th grade) who are abandoned by their mother. They have some cash, but not much else in terms of basic necessities. The enduring thing they have, beyond the cash, is each other. Thus, they've got both love and solidarity amongst their small sibling band. And despite the horror of their circumstances, these children somehow manage to maintain a precious kind of joy amidst their ever-growing sorrow and fear.

I noticed that as the children's situation grew worse, and as their time without a mother grew increasingly longer, the shots and the time in between cuts also grew in length. Kore-eda's use of these filmic elements amounts to a powerful aesthetic. It's a rare case in which the aesthetic temperament completes the mode and tone of the film in an abundant symbiosis of its various parts. Hirokazu Kore-eda cares about the search...the search for meaning, truth, and all those subtle moments where human consciousness is revealed through the cinematic eye. Nobody knows is indeed a quiet film, yet it is this very quality that gives it the force of a powerful explosion in awareness. This film came to me then, like a small voice, uttering simple yet deeply meaningful words of honesty. Yet this quiet voice is not the voice of complicity--No, it is a voice whose lessons demand to be heard. It is a voice provoking contemplation and reflection on the human condition and the search for truth in cinema and life. To be engaged in such a work of art was an abundant pleasure and one which I'll continue to cherish. Thank you, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, for caring.

--Art Kasmer

Mouchette

2009-09-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Minimal. Brutal. Perfect. Mouchette is the tale of a tortured young girl in a world overcome by corruption. There is no break for the viewer, no respite. We are not let off so easily. There is Mouchette herself. Her goodness goes unseen and completely rejected by all but a few characters within the film. And we suspect that even those few don't really understand her, or don't really care as much as they'd like us to believe. Director Robert Bresson, portrays a world full of maddness, not only through the narrative construct, but through his characteristically sharp editing and unobtrusive camera. He deals it out raw, unheeded by the trappings of hollywood melodrama or theater's emotional manipulation. Bresson has chosen abnegation over the pleasures of visual and auditory (emotional) immersion, but the result is all-encompassing. We're drawn in so completely into Bresson's vision. Its simplicity hammers home a reality that is nothing short of life itself; full of mystery and complexity. Beware and take heed, for Mouchette will change you.

--Art Kasmer

Francois Truffaut

2009-07-24T23:48:00.001-07:00

"Is cinema more important than life?" --Francois Truffaut

"Taste is the result of a thousand distastes." --Francoise Truffaut

Wedlock House: an intercourse

2009-07-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

Wedlock House: an intercourse, is an incredible film made by avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage in 1959. I just saw this film for the first time and I'm practically speechless. The subtle visual aroma drifting from the screen had me enraptured. The film is completely silent. It chronicles the daily struggles and cyclical encounters inherent in the nature of relationships between couples in the post-modern world. The couple in question are none other than Stan and Jane Brakhage. Through the filmmaking process, Brakhage thrusts their life onto the screen...gives it to us in full. But his exposition of life's pains and forebearances comes to us through a poetic juxtaposition of images culled from the pragmatic poetry of being. His work screams at us with a visceral aesthetic so true to life, that it calls upon the viewer to question the relationship of cinema to life and vice versa. This film seems to call us out on our own shortcomings as it begs us to engage with not only the film itself, but with our own lives in new and potent ways. We're forced into admitting our own complicity with failure, while at the same time being compelled to build something new...something lasting.

--Art Kasmer

Reflections by Nathaniel Dorsky

2009-07-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

“Many films are delicately subservient to an idea or theme and consequently the images are never allowed to exist as themselves. They illustrate a scripted, written reality or concept. Even if they are visual, they are self-consciously so. They represent another form, a literary one, rather than manifesting directly as vision. This subtle distortion of the vision-language violates the primordial strength of what cinema has to offer.
It flattens our reality and flattens our cinema.”

from the book Devotional Cinema by Nathaniel Dorsky

Solyaris (Solaris)

2009-06-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

Directed by Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky in 1972, Solaris is a masterwork. Tarkovsky took a pulpy science fiction novel, and transformed it into visceral, visual poetry. This is something one can hardly even begin to describe, but I was utterly changed after watching this incredible work of art. Solaris probes deep into the human condition. It's a story about three people on an isolated science station, floating over a mysterious extra-terrestrial ocean known as Solaris. The inhabitants of the station discover that the ocean itself has a way of materializing their thoughts in unexpected ways...ways they never could have foreseen. And this discovery, with its diabolical consequences, leads the characters to seek after a kind of transcendent awakening. Yet their own myopic tendencies toward self-absorption seriously hinder any higher endeavors. This is a film not to be simply watched, but to be experienced (as are, I supposed, all good films--but Tarkovsky's style in particular draws this out and asks us to bear witness to our own frailties and assertions).

--Art Kasmer

Nói albínói

2009-06-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

Dagur Kari directed this excellent Icelandic film. I pondered this film for days after watching it recently. Through my many moments of reflection, I've come to see Nói albínói as an exercise in Kierkegaardian thought. Soren Kierkegaard was the Danish philosopher who developed the ideas inherent in the philosophy of existentialism. Dagur Kari takes up the task of laying out Kiekegaard's philosophical paradoxes through the vehicle of cinematic aesthetics. In other words, he shows visually what Kierkegaard said lyrically. The paradox with which Nói wrestles with in the film is this: Escape is at the same time both immanent and impossible. His very existence seems to condescend his own will to be free from perpetual abuse. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Nói (and all of humanity really) must either accept and embrace the seeming paradoxes of existence, or those same paradoxes will instead sink us. They'll grab us by the ankles, hold us hostage, and suffocate our will to see beyond ourselves. They'll destroy our ability to see the promised land, leaving us to wander endlessly through deserts of retraction and self-destruction. This film precipitates a kind of learning curve, descendent not of proximity to pop culture, but more akin to the likes of Dreyer, Pasolini, or Godard. Nói albínói is the pulse beating deep beneath or collective lives. It's the forest encroaching on our concrete jungle, heralding destruction and sending apathy to the gallows. Pomposity is no virtue here, its a kind of heretical vice. And the point must be made that, within the context of the film, death may or may not be immanent...but either way, it doesn't matter. The point, is that death simply IS. As we live, surely, we die. It's where these realizations take us that really matters, that's what counts! As Nói is ultimately faced with the reality of either imprisonment or emancipation, so too are we implicitly caught up in a similarly tumultuous web. We must let it roll onward however, as there's no way we're ever going to stay the same. And though we'll never stay the same, maybe, just maybe, there's a way to find out who we truly are...

--Art Kasmer

Bicycle Thieves

2009-04-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Vittoria De Sica's film, Bicycle Thieves, has moved me yet again to a place of deep emotion and sorrow almost beyond what words can quantify. A human being driven to poverty through a harrowing array of events, searches desperately to find his lost bicycle. He hopes beyond relief to retain his new job in a time when work is scarce and opportunities are few. To watch him disintegrate as poverty drives this man deeper and deeper into his personal hell, is to watch a life unravel before your very eyes. And poverty in De Sica's vision not only makes a person destitute, it strips people of their innermost soul, of the ability to care for others and to seek some kind of enlightenment. De Sica's worker disdains his wife and calls her stupid, hits his son, refusing to apologize, and offers little pity towards anyone else around him. Poverty has driven him mad! Social inequality has plunged this man into the darkest recesses of despair, with little to no hope in sight. Bicycle Thieves is a rallying cry against classism and all the barbarities that follow in its wake. It's a subversive film grounded in the common humanity of which we all partake. If there's any hope at all to be found here in De Sica's film, it may be found in the cinematic recognition of our collective sorrow. When times are tough and only the richest prevail, art may be the last refuge in which our calloused hearts and minds can find some peace. And Vittorio De Sica's turbulent cinematic vision, utilizing non-actors with real workers and real locations, may be the cataclysmic bitter pill we need to see us through to brighter days.

--Art Kasmer

Wendy and Lucy

2009-02-25T14:56:00.001-08:00

This is a truly independent film, made by a truly independent director: Kelly Reichardt. Imagine, if you will, actors who work to work, not for the money. Imagine a filmmaker making films to reveal the beauty and tragedy of our human condition; not merely to please a crass desire for shallow entertainment. If you let your imagination take you far enough, you’ll find Wendy and Lucy, a poetic, true-to-life film in the vein of the Italian Neo Realists (Umberto D and Bicycle Thief come to mind). Reichardt’s film is a real shakedown in the so called independent film world, a film made far away from the over-produced world of contemporary non-hollywood films. There’s a raw, natural quality to the images, something not predisposed to vanity (as in many other indie films today), but rather, to discovery. The film tells the tale of a young woman who’s lost her dog and is on a desperate search to find him, all the while battling her own economic desparity. It’s a simultaneously personal and political film, dealing with an inner journey towards self-actualization and the outer social realities which serve to hinder that very same journey. I was moved by Reichardt’s accomplished poetic reflections and I left the cinema with a concrete realization of the interplay between despair and hope that one must face in times of crisis.

--Art Kasmer

Early Summer

2009-02-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

Profound...Subtlety. Early Summer, directed by Yasujiro Ozu, echoes in defiant tones against the tumultuous world of familial and generational pressure. But it's all so subtle that one just might miss the deeply rooted critiques in this beast of a film. For almost the entirety of the film, Noriko's family puts pressure on her to marry, and when she finally gives in, finally chooses a partner to marry, her decision tears the family apart. Noriko chooses not the man her family wants, but a man who lives far away from their collective home in Tokyo. Without Noriko's income, the family can no longer keep the home they've held together for generations. Thus, the grandparents are forced out into the country to live with relatives, while the rest of the family is dispersed throughout the city. And this moment happens nearly at the end of the film--blink and you'll miss it, or at least, you'll miss the true nature of what has really occurred. Family pressure. Generational pressure. Gender biased pressure. Societal pressure to conform. It's all here, it's all so simple and yet so complex. Every image of a cloud, or a bird, or children on the roadway, brings out the conflicts and secures patterns we so easily miss. Ozu brings them to us and lulls us awake, slowly, but surely, until our eyes are fixed on the naked reality of the world in all its complexities. And through the watchful eyes of Ozu, we can find it within ourselves to bear the inequities foisted upon us, and somehow still keep moving down the road of life; our souls still intact, though our hearts may be shattered.
--Art Kasmer

Ariel

2009-01-29T15:42:00.001-08:00

I just finished watching the Criterion version of Ariel, by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. My first impression was that if Robert Bresson had directed an existential comedy, it would look and feel something like this. The pacing is succinct and meditative and no shot seems too long or too short--Kaurismaki maintains a perceptive economy of vision and he knows how to use it. The film is sad and joyful sometimes mixing the two so well I don't know how to feel, or rather, I feel too much and don't know how to deal with the contradictions within. The film is, in that way, quite profound. It makes humor out of death, and death out of humor, if you will. There's a sense that we can find ourselves facing the harsh elements of life, and we must make a choice. We must ultimately choose what our disposition will be. And if we can't bring ourselves to move, maybe we can at least lean in the direction we'd like to go. Karismaki's characters lean decidedly towards anticipation for the unknown future, maybe toward hope. And though everything seems to fail them, they keep leaning in existential anticipation of something else; not something better mind you, but something else.

--Art Kasmer