Random Thoughts

So in the 70s, PBS wanted Malle to do a documentary, and he semi-randomly landed at Glencoe, Minnesota. But there was no budget to edit it, so it languished until 1985.

Nine churches, 5K people.

Perhaps not the ideal stache for a town with 80% German-ancestry population.

It’s a slightly odd documentary — I mean, Malle is really sympathetic to the people he portrays, but they still don’t come off, probably, in the way they want to be portrayed? I’m guessing? He’s sympathetic to them like if as they’re wild animals?

But it’s pretty interesting.

As a documentary, it’s a bit scattershot, but it’s fascinating. It doesn’t quite seem… ethical? But fascinating. Some of the reviews on imdb are hilarious:

I found this film to be the usual French slap in America’s face. The camera, all too often, focuses on fat people, on sloppy homes and on tacky rural areas.

And then Malle is back, six years later, and Miss Litzau is still gardening in her wonderful garden!

He wasn’t quite right about the time schedule (he predicts a Nazi uprising in 1985), but I guess correct in the long run.

Anyway, this is great, so:

God’s Country. Louis Malle. 1985.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

I really disliked the first Kobayashi movie on this Criterion Eclipse box set, but at least it was earnest. This… is a movie about baseball and baseball scouts?

OK, it’s a critical movie about baseball scouts…

This is brutally tedious. The cinematography is OK — the shots generally look nice — but it’s just so uninspiring.

Finally!

I guess the point of all this is to point out that sports is a business and that there’s money involved? I”M SO SHOCKED I CANNOT EVEN TYPE ANY MOR

I wish that were me in the middle there.

Intense showering!!!

Er sure:

Kobayashi wants nothing to do with that – his intentions are to strip away the masks and expose sports as just one manifestation of the human meat market that the economic status quo thrusts nearly all of us into, one way or the other.

Oh! That 30 year old guy is supposed to be a teenager? I guess that makes more sense.

So ironic.

I was almost right up there: This movie is distilled tedium.

But it’s got some nice shots so:

I Will Buy You. Masaki Kobayashi. 1956.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Huh. This is about Japanese war criminals in prisons run by Americans? So we’re supposed to be sympathetic to the Japanese, I think? Because the American guards are portrayed as being kinda uncouth. Not much couth on display.

And whenever an “American” talks we get some side titles. Most of them don’t sound like they have English (or even American) as their native language… are all the non-Japanese actors from Russia or something?

*ssh*

Er uhm me too? Or not?

This movie seems to lack some context… but everything here was probably crystal clear to an audience when the movie was new? But at this remove, it’s pretty opaque.

And really tedious. I don’t know if I’m going to last the duration, because it’s pretty uninspiring: Quotidian cinematography, actors that aren’t really convincing, and a plot that doesn’t seem to be… there?

(I’m using the word “quotidian” here because Louis Malle talked “quotidienne” in last night’s movie and now it’s stuck in by brain.)

This is the worst kind of movie to watch — it’s well-meaning and heartfelt, but just isn’t very good?

It’s nice to have characters in the movie just state the premise of the movie, isn’t it?

It’s interesting that this movie isn’t trying to argue that these people are innocent or antyhing. It’s just about how unfair it is how there people are punished while their superiors are going free?

I realise that this was made in the 50s, and it took courage to even try to do a movie that criticised anything in the Japanese military… but having read more than my fill of Japanese autobio comics (and even some novels) from these years, this movie is really soft-pedalling everything. So there’s a kind of disconnect between the “here’s the truth!” stance of this movie and how much worse it really was.

But positing from the point of view of war criminals is original.

I think that’s an admirable goal.

This is the kind of movie I really want to love? Because it’s heartfelt and admirable? And I can understand what a struggle it must have been to make this?

But it’s just not a good film on any level. So:

The Thick-Walled Room. Masaki Kobayashi. 1956.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.