confessions of an amateur cineaste

My last Janus film was Seven Samurai. I wasn’t entirely sure how it would go because I hadn’t connected with Rashômon and this film is, well, long. My concern was unnecessary, though, as it is long precisely -because- it is giving us the time to get to know & connect with each of the characters. Fantastic!

We caught Hot Fuzz on opening night here, with a more-or-less sold-out crowd, and the verdict? AWESOME. I think it’s better than Shaun of the Dead. Which, don’t get me wrong, I love, but it’s definitely uneven & it’s clear that Wright came from TV. The team’s learned a lot since then, though, and Hot Fuzz manages to be both a great send-up & a great film in its own right. And now I’d really like to see it again.

Last week (on impulse) I went to a free screening of Year of the Dog. I was a little wary, but it was written & directed by Mike White, and the cast included John C Reilly and Peter Sarsgaard, both of whom I have quite a fondness for.

And… I’m still not sure what I think about the movie. I’m torn between not wanting to recommend it and wanting everyone to see it so there can be a discussion.

I’m sure there are people who won’t like it because of marketing issues, but I didn’t see any trailers, so that doesn’t apply. There are others who expect certain things of Molly Shannon, but I love it when actors are given the opportunity to reinvent themselves, so that isn’t it either. I’ve seen two other movies written by Mike White (Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl) so I was expecting my embarrassment squick to take a hard hit, and I was prepared for things to be awkward and vaguely depressing. Finally, there have been concerns raised about how vegans are portrayed, and that might be valid, but I kind of think it could go either way.

None of these things are what bothers me. The thing that bothers me is that I don’t buy White’s conclusion.

I feel like we’re supposed to believe that Peggy’s going to be okay now? That she’s found her calling and will be happy in her new life as an animal activist? Before she leaves for the protest, we get shots of the cubicles of her co-workers, all living in tiny white boxes containing their interests, and that is actually kind of cool. I’m always saying we all have our interests & our obsessions, and just some of them are more socially acceptable than others (the most basic example being sports fans vs fanfic writers).

But. I just don’t believe it. She’s not shown making any sorts of friendships with the activists. Her passion for animals is meant to be not only the hobby that drives her, but also a substitute a romantic relationship, and also friends -and- family? It’s meant to be enough?

I just. don’t. believe it. I mean, I ADORE that there wasn’t an easy solution, that neither men she got involved with were the magical answer and relationship she was looking for, but I still don’t buy that she’s going to be okay.

I was struck by Reihan Salam’s post on the film in Andrew Sullivan’s blog this week. I hadn’t made it to any reviews yet, but I’m in agreement that Manohla Dargis’s summing up of Peggy as finding “her peace of mind, sense of self, grace”, that she contains “touch of the saint” and is “ridiculously, beautifully human”, well, it’s mind-blowing. I wonder if we saw the same movie. I’m much closer to Reihan: “Peggy is less ridiculously, beautifully human at the end of this movie than ridiculously, tragically alone and ridiculously, tragically crazy.”

The Lady Vanishes is, I think, the only Hitchcock in the Janus festival. The majority of the film takes place on a moving train, and is surprisingly funny, but that doesn’t make it any less suspenseful. I hadn’t seen it before, and I would be interested in seeing it again, not only because I enjoyed it immensely, but because I’d like to see exactly how tight of a script it is, the significance of other throwaway-looking moments.

Before I went to see it, I read a lot of debate over which of the Grindhouse features was the best. Watching it I thought I had a clear winner, but the more I think back on it, the more I think they were both just awesome in their own ways. “Planet Terror” was the more obviously entertaining of the two, and I always love a good zombie movie, but “Death Proof” was a well-crafted feature that was basically just a car chase, and -that- is just amazing.

The film’s not doing well, and apparently for the overseas market they’re splitting the two, expanding them, and releasing them separately, which saddens me. I loved both movies, but I also dug on the entire package: the fake trailers, the local ads, the experience of the missing reels, and the whole intertextuality of the two films with each other & with the ads.

I’ve also heard that they’ll be split in DVD release, which is annoying.

Even though it was one of the Janus films I was most excited about, Rashômon has turned out to be my least favorite of the festival. Obviously it’s well-crafted, brilliantly acted, etc, but the characters (in any incarnation, as they’re driven by different motivations in each telling) just didn’t move me like I had hoped.

I’m still glad I saw it (because obviously film has value beyond “I liked that one guy”), but the fundamental unknowability of the characters was a difficulty for me.

More from the Janus festival:

* The Seventh Seal. At first I thought I had made a terrible mistake scheduling a film about death at the end of a really long day, but I was totally taken by surprise by how accessible it was, as well as by the amount of humor. That’s not to say it isn’t a grim film, but it is beautiful & full of humanity.

* Wild Strawberries was simple & beautiful, sad but also hopeful. It’s the one in this set that I am most likely to revisit in future.

* Fanny & Alexander. Sprawling, moving, lusty, colorful. We got the short (3 hour) version in Seattle, but I’d LOVE to see the full 5+ hour version. Luckily it’s available in the Criterion edition, so someday, maybe.

It’s been such an amazing experience getting to see all of these films on the big screen! Television just doesn’t cut it, folks.

There’s a new theater in town, a year-round film festival venue, and to kick it off as it were they’re running a series of world art house cinema — the Janus festival. It is made of awesome, and even though I’m not seeing as many as I had hoped, it still seems to be keeping me too busy to update this space. My first one was La Strada, which is also my first Fellini. I found it sweet & heartbreaking, and now I need to pick up Nights of Cabiria. (It seems kind of ridiculous that I’ve seen Sweet Charity but not Nights, but I have a well-documented thing for Bob Fosse, so there you go.)