Random Thoughts

I forgot to watch this when I watched all the other films in the Pearls of the Czech New Wave box set, but Emacs reminded me.

This is very stylish.

And I’m guessing very symbolic and stuff?

Is that handsy guy supposed to symbolise the Russians? I can smell symbolism going on. Or are the posh people supposed to represent the Czech leadership and the handsy guy and his friends are the people?

He seems too smug and weird to be the people.

Or perhaps it’s just a horror movie — it’s got a classic start: Some twits go into the forest and meet scary, possibly deranged locals that terrorise them.

But with a Kafka twist, because art.

OK, that guy is Russia.

Anyway, it’s great.

A Report on the Party and Guests. Jan Němec. 1966.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

This is kinda brilliant? And so weird.

It’s about Samoan gangs in LA.

OH MY GOD! This is where Cabaret Voltaire sampled that whole long speech from! *gasp*

Heh, the video is just bits from this film! Man it’s so weird when you’ve listened to an album half your life and then finally stumble on the source of a sample. And this is basically the entire track.

That’s me!

Oh! It’s not a documentary? I thought this was a documentary, but with some creative flourishes, like that talking car. But it’s scripted? Or… documentary with some scripted bits? That Gorin guy is so slippery; I love it. Is the slang even real?

I’m still not at all sure what Gorin is doing here… but… he cuts to (apparently) real crime scene photos with dead people and a ton of gore at random, and that’s… OK, I can see the logic, but it’s a bit wha

The last third of this lost the weird nerve this movie had going on, unfortunately.

OK, now I have to find out whether any of this was real.

Uhm… the interwebs don’t seem to have too much to say about this movie.

Nope. Even the liner notes on the DVD only says that it “seems to have been arrived to by mutual accord”. I.e., that the (supposed) gang bangers have collaborated with Gorin with the staging when reenacting things that have happened. But I wondered whether the people were actually part of a theatre troupe and not actually criminals at all?

I have no idea, but the movie is brilliant anyway.

My Crasy Life. Jean-Pierre Gorin. 1992.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Everybody lives in fear of the dentist, surely.

After a series of Kurosawa duds, this starts off in a pretty interesting way, at least. I mean, it’s not original or anything, but it’s got some interesting flourishes.

Good old-man acting!

Anyway, this is really good — it’s about fambly (FAMBLY!) and fear of the H-Bomb and stuff. But more importantly, it’s got compelling pacing and cinematography. And it doesn’t have cloying and annoying scoring (like so many of his earlier movies), but instead the scenes are given an opportunity to breathe, and to find an emotional core without the musical crutches.

That said, the last half hour or so is pretty turgid. It’s like Kurosawa went “how can I make this more didactic” and then did that. Still pretty good.

I Live In Fear. Akira Kurosawa. 1955.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

This is the kind of documentary that could be a lot of fun — it’s a filmmaker drilling down into a group of people being really passionate about something. But… Gorin just doesn’t seem that interested, really? And I can see why; it’s really hard to see how you could find anything interesting here. It’s about a group of people who’s doing a model railroad thing, and…

It’s just not interesting?

Perhaps I’m just not the right audience for this:

Great care was made to capture the action and the love of members for the layout and the prototype. The layout is quite complicated and has excellent detail. Model railroaders will want to watch it over and over again to experience all of it.

I can’t even tell if that’s sarcasm or not!

But then the movie changes, at about the same time they switch to colour, and things become a whole lot more interesting.

(They’re looking at a passing train.)

This movie starts off a bit wobbly — but probably on purpose, because it’s that’s kind of movie it is. And then it’s suddenly brilliant, and weirdly resonant.

So:

Routine Pleasures. Jean-Pierre Gorin. 1986.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Oh, this is the Fyodor novel…

And it’s three hours long aaaaa

Err… that’s a lot of exposition…

… and it just goes on and on.

And now there’s a voiceover offering more exposition!

Aha!

It was originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes. After a single, poorly received, screening of the full-length version, the film was severely cut at the request of the studio. This was against Kurosawa’s wishes. When the re-edited version was also deemed too long by the studio, Kurosawa sardonically suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead.

What a card. (But I’m assuming that it was funnier in the original Japanese, where perhaps “cut lengthwise” isn’t a semi-synonym for “cut for length”.)

Anyway, I assume that all the exposition and the voiceover is a replacement for the the two hours that was cut.

Well, that looks good…

Yeah, that’s totally how I have my bathroom mirror mounted — to make it easy for a camera to get an over-the-shoulder shot at the mirror.

One grammidiot says:

The Idiot is overwrought, over-long and ultimate quite a chore through which to sit.

I bet he got a Gold Star from his third grade English teacher?

But he’s right in essence — this movie is even worse than the previous Kurosawa movies.

OK, I can’t take this any more — I’m 70 minutes in, and the movie is consistently annoying. Overwrought, constantly scored with maudlin music telling you how to feel every second, and just… awful.

The Idiot. Akira Kurosawa. 1951.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.