Leave No Traces (Jan P. Matsuszynski, 2021)

 

Jan P. Matsuszynski’s Leave No Traces doesn’t make for the most comfortable viewing at a time of enforced deportations based on unfounded allegations and disregard for due process and constitutional rights; over more than two and a half hours, it patiently and (appropriately) drainingly explores a Polish legal system of astounding self-righteous malevolence, capable of drawing on seemingly unlimited resources for the sake of self-preservation. It focuses on the real-life case of Grzegorz Przemyk, an 18-year-old student who was detained by police in 1983 for trivial reasons and hideously beaten by them, dying of his internal injuries within a few days; given all the evidence, including a friend’s eye-witness testimony, the focus of investigation ought to be clear, but it comes more naturally to the authorities to slander, deflect and lie, most poignantly here in the character of an innocent paramedic who transported the already doomed Przemyk to hospital, targeted as a more acceptable scapegoat and placed under impossible pressure to make a false confession. The activity isn’t confined to the shadowy depths: when the country’s chief prosecutor (one of the few people in the film with an apparent ethical compass) comments that the whole thing would have been long forgotten if not for the near-crazed focus on protecting the identified officers, the next scene contains a radio news announcement that he’s been removed from his post. But the film, pointedly, excludes any examination of the offenders’ state of mind, of whether they feel guilt or remorse, this being irrelevant to the workings of the system. The viewer feels increasingly drained, furious, afraid, and hemmed in: early on, the BBC’s reporting, and considerations relating to an upcoming Papal visit, provide some momentum toward objectivity and transparency, but these eventually fall out of the picture, the process following no logic or morality but its own, even the sanest and most determined witness barely able to withstand the onslaught.

Ararat (Atom Egoyan, 2002)

 

Atom Egoyan’s Ararat is fairly typical of the director’s post-peak works: meticulously controlled, preoccupied with weighty themes, its structural intricacy spanning the public and the intimate; and, sadly, almost completely lacking in impact. The film concerns itself with the 1915 Armenian genocide, both as a valid subject for modern-day film-making (Charles Aznavour plays a director making a film called Ararat) and as a continuing source of preoccupation and trauma, both directly (Egoyan lumberingly contrives a reason for a customs officer to be discussing the history at length with a suspected drug smuggler) and by generational and cultural proximity (that same suspect’s father, an Armenian activist, was shot dead while attempting to kill a Turkish diplomat). The film’s thicket of interconnections (for example, the custom’s officer’s son is in a relationship with an actor in the movie, on which the suspect also works as a production assistant), seemingly intended to establish a sense of layered complexity, mostly feels over-determined and airless: the film lacks any hint of spontaneity or true discovery, its artifices and inventions at odds with any possibility of more than superficial empathy. It does evoke a nagging suspicion (or maybe it’s just a faintly benevolent hope) that Egoyan is playing a particularly sophisticated game (for example, why should we believe that a flashback seemingly showing the truth about a past death is any more reliable than the material we see being shot in a studio), that the earnestness and speechifying are parodic, mocking the whole notion that commercial cinema could possibly make a meaningful contribution to historical memory and understanding. But the weight of evidence indicates that the film is indeed as turgidly self-important as one experiences it as being. The actors are at best dull and poorly utilized (Marie-Josee Croze is one of the few centres of energy), and at worst (Elias Koteas is a prime offender) barely watchable.

Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1981)

 

The 1981 Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man is probably no one’s favourite Bernardo Bertolucci movie, feeling throughout more confined and murky and just plain small than his greatest works, even as it sporadically evokes them. And yet, the film rewards contemplation and re-viewing; its central enigma coming to seem more genuinely tragic (even if it does generate an almost strenuously happy ending, to the degree that the character’s voice over can’t even try to grapple with it), assessed both personally and politically. Ugo Tognazzi plays Spaggiari, the owner of a rural cheese factory with financial problems whose son Giovanni is kidnapped, the requested ransom threatening to take down the business, if not Spaggiari’s entire bourgeois-styled life; when it appears Giovanni is dead, Spaggiari evolves a plan of seeming to pay over the money he’s raised from here and there, while keeping it to plough back into the business. Spaggiari’s titular “ridiculousness” is partly a matter of background, of not being born among the elite, and partly of temperament, of overestimating his capacity for control and action (there’s a strong element of predestination in how he happens to be on the roof, with a new pair of binoculars, just in time to witness the kidnapping, and as noted the film’s final note is one of bewildered resignation). In turn, the viewer is likely to feel almost as unmoored: the two employees who agree to help Spaggiari in his scheme clearly know more than he’s aware of (and at one point the police search his house for unspecified reasons going beyond the kidnapping), and the film entertains competing notions (such as that of turning the factory into a workers’ collective) that seem easy to sloganize than implement. But as always, Bertolucci crafts a fascinatingly textured surface, constantly punctured by eruptions of eccentricity, of strange but humanizing detail, of sheer filmmaking panache.

Stars at Noon (Claire Denis, 2022)

 

Any brief account of Claire Denis’ grievously overlooked Stars at Noon must surely start with Margaret Qualley’s blistering lead performance as Trish, a remarkable creation of shifting registers and moods, capable of going in seconds from calculating and conniving to wildly spontaneous and eccentric, drinking to excess at all times of day and conveying utter sexual self-determination, which encompasses regularly using her body to make money. More officially though she’s a journalist, stuck in sweltering, volatile Nicaragua without resources or even a passport, her main object being to get over the border to Costa Rica, connecting with Joe Alwyn’s Daniel, a somewhat mysterious Englishman who has a gun in his bag but is less attuned than her to local complexities and players; the connection between the two has a classic romantic contour and physical combustibility, while infused with Denis’ immense customary vivacity, her bottomless capacity to render what’s coming next entirely unpredictable, without sacrificing an overall sense of control or coherence. The achievement is all the more remarkable for the utter lack of spoon-feeding, even the most basic information emerging only in sometimes offhand spurts, and all the dots by no means completely joined, which here seems entirely true to the depiction of individuals caught up (as we all are, in generally less cinematic manner) in events the totality of which they can only glimpse. But the film pulsates with a genuine sense of threat, again embodied in Trish’s almost wantonly vulnerability-defying behaviour; it feels deeply and worrying suspenseful even when mostly defined by torpor and inaction. And as always, Denis ventilates even the briefest encounters with glancing references to past encounters, with laden looks and remarks or shards of eccentricity; in her brilliant, generous hands, a mundane exchange in a dingy setting generates more excitement than the high-stakes encounters of lesser films,

Coup de chance (Woody Allen, 2023)

 

Woody Allen’s French-language Coup de chance might represent the “time-filler” in its purest, most luminous state, a film that exists only because its maker likes making movies and was able to put together the deal (as of the time of writing, the last one in Allen’s career), unlikely to offend or particularly bore the audience but with virtually no chance of elevating or informing them: the smooth, almost wall-to-wall jazz soundtrack, easy on the ear as it is, seems to confirm the project’s essential aimlessness, the impossibility that anything we’re given will ever result in revelation. The title, and the film’s final “twist,” refer to the role of randomness in our life, expressed several times in terms of the vast odds against any of us being alive in the first place as an argument for further surrendering to the possibilities of chance and coincidence, but the film represents just about the tritest application possible of such “philosophy.” It starts with young writer Alain recognizing Fannie, a girl he loved years ago from a distance, in the street; she’s now married to the wealthy Jean, living a bygone notion of upper-crust life involving frequent weekend hunting trips to their country home. Fannie and Alain start an affair; Jean finds out and taps into the same pool of practiced cold-bloodedness which had him dispose of an inconvenient past business partner; Fannie’s mother is the first to start putting pieces together. Despite the plot’s melodramatic highs and lows, and the capable if unremarkable cast, it all feels strangely even-keeled, the affair devoid of much passion, the ratcheting up of the plot devoid of much suspense or menace, the surprise denouement devoid of much sense of release or closure; it would be no surprise if the film were to go on for longer or, for that matter, if it were somehow to be revealed that it never really existed at all.

Simba: the King of the Beasts (Martin & Osa Johnson, 1928)

 

Martin and Osa Johnson’s silent 1928 African-made Simba: the King of the Beasts remains fascinating viewing, at times poignant in the abundance of life before the camera (will anyone ever photograph rhinos in such quantities again?), amusingly quaint in such shots as the vintage cars struggling to stay upright on rocky terrain or to make it across a river; it’s at its best in simply observing elephants or lions in their naturally sustainable (if eternally parched and brutal) ecosystem. Martin Johnson is a largely reticent figure, certainly in contrast to his often gun-brandishing wife: she brings down several magnificent animals in the course of the film (the deaths are all presented here as them-or-her necessities, but who knows…), while also finding time in the final moments to bake a celebratory apple pie. The film sadly comes with much attitudinal baggage, ranging from a reductively anthropomorphic approach to the animals (variously described as among the happiest on earth, as being inveterate trouble-makers, as declaring “Wait for me,” etc. etc.- and of course the Johnsons are hardly cinema’s only offenders in this respect) to a relentlessly belittling attitude toward indigenous Africans (the very first shot of Osa shows her seeming to needlessly chide an over-burdened servant for dropping an item), labeled among other things as “half-savage,” or “half-civilized” (interesting notions, if they were at all interrogated); the film tells us there are more lions in a particular area “than any Black man” can count to, opines that an aging Queen is “no beauty,” and stupidly compares the local dress to that of the then fashionable flapper girls, just to give a few examples. Still, despite those not insignificant caveats, and notwithstanding the overly repetitive insistence on the mortal danger in which the Johnsons willingly placed themselves, the film easily earns one’s overall admiration.

Paradise Calling (Arielle Dombasle, 1988)

 

A cinematic oddity for sure, Arielle Dombasle’s Les pyramides bleues features half the principal cast of Eric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach (herself, Pascal Greggory, Rosette), but could hardly be more tonally and narratively distant. She plays Elise, the partner of the wealthy Alex (Omar Sharif), increasingly uneasy at their decadent life (the breaking point comes when he randomly fires a gun into the jungle and kills a pet dog) and eventually fleeing to a convent in France; Alex and his main lieutenant (Pedro Armendariz Jr.) evolve a convoluted plan to get her back, involving a new-age religious cult that’s all too ready to compromise its supposed principles for financial gain. The film contains several gratuitous-seeming scenes of female nudity, a few times involving Dombasle herself; if there’s any attempt here to resist the objectification of male-dominated commercial cinema, it’s sadly hard to detect. But then, almost everything about the film is either disappointing or mystifying or both (it doesn’t help that one is most likely to come across the English version, titled Paradise Calling, in which just about everyone other than Sharif is lifelessly dubbed). For a film that’s notionally about shifting concepts of faith, it’s relentlessly superficial in probing everything from the contours of Elise’s beliefs, to the supposed theology of the cult (which doesn’t seem to go much beyond “God is love”), to Alex’s seemingly genuine change of heart in the closing stretch (evidenced by his riding a bus among the common people and enjoying it, and filling a room in the house with religious icons); the relish with which the cult leader embraces corruption is more eye-rolling than chilling. And as if all of that wasn’t enough, the film contains the primary narrative within a clunky framing device closing on an apparent promise of seduction and a spirited but hardly reflection-aiding performance of Guantanmera.

Torch Singer (Alexander Hall & George Somnes, 1933)

 

The 1933 Torch Singer, directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes, is a calculatingly melodramatic star vehicle for Claudette Colbert, but rooted in a still-bracing initial frankness as her pregnant character Sally shows up penniless at what we understand is one of the few New York hospitals willing to extend charity to an expectant mother who won’t name the father (he’s a wealthy businessman who’s in China for some unspecified reason, not knowing what he’s left behind); for a year or so afterwards she manages to make it alone (an extended scene of Sally during bathtime with her own and her roommate’s baby showcases why the expressive “Baby LeRoy” was deemed worthy of star billing for a brief period), but eventually gives up the child to adoption, and thereafter achieves notorious stardom under the snappier stage name of Mimi Benton (while eventually picking up a contrasting sideline as the sweet-voiced “Aunt Jenny” on a daily kid-oriented radio broadcast). Colbert is magnetic and alluring throughout, not least modeling a series of perilously low-cut dresses, but one’s attention is even more fully drawn to Mildred Washington as her maid Carrie, emanating an alertly playful intelligence, all the more fascinating for the knowledge that the actress died of peritonitis in the year of the film’s release; it's a funny coincidence (presumably) that one of the film’s other most striking presences is also Black, the uncredited 4-year-old Carlena Beard delivering a sweetly unaffected-seeming minute or two, Colbert seeming genuinely charmed by her. The film becomes more conventional and less interesting once Sally’s lost love reappears on the scene and she becomes ever more preoccupied with regaining her child (which, hardly a spoiler, the movie accomplishes with not a thought for the rights or emotional investment of the adoptive parents), and the final moments feel as resigned as they do triumphant.

Peau d'ane (Jacques Demy, 1970)

 

Jacques Demy’s Peau d’ane might appear to be among the most purest-hearted of films, if one focused only on the tangible pleasure of its inventions – a donkey that excretes gold and jewels, an old woman who coughs up frogs, dresses that look like the weather and the moon and the sun, fairy godmothers, a talking rose; underlying all of this though is a sense of adult mores and anxieties, evidenced in particular by how the plot turns on a father’s incestuous wish to marry his daughter (the film acknowledges that all little girls may at some point express such a wish regarding their fathers, but the sensibility here is plainly pitched beyond such innocent naivete). Like so many mythic narratives, the film would seem arbitrary in its twistedness – why did the route to save the princess from her father’s desire and to deliver her into the arms of her true love have to follow such a highly specific course? – if not for Demy’s unwavering specificity and deliberation, for the sense that the obstacle- and oddity-strewn world here reflects the complexities of our own more earthly strivings (even that fairy godmother is highly fallible, her decisions coloured by some hinted-at romantic grievance against the king). One feels that Demy would have rejected digital trickery even if it had been available to him: such is the tangible sense of delight in, for example, painting the faces and horses and prevailing décor of one kingdom in blue and of another in red, or in the physically very varied casting; he refers to technologies that don’t yet exist in the world of the film (and ultimately even has a helicopter touch down) and has the princess take a puff on a pipe (which duly makes her cough), all of this held in mysteriously perfect balance by the director’s immensely infectious, even if vaguely melancholic, belief.

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

 

First-time viewers of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, drawn by its ever-growing reputation, may be surprised to discover that it begins with scenes of blue-collar men at work, allotting the top-billing not to Gena Rowlands but to Peter Falk: it’s an early indication of how the film is as much, if not more, about the “influence” as about the woman. Rowlands’ Mabel has no job, no close friends that we’re shown (albeit that her husband Nick is easily capable of filling up the house for an impromptu party), no apparent interests; after working all night on what was supposed to be a date night, he brings his crew back to the house for an early morning group meal, which of course she’s expected to spring into action to prepare. This all flows into the film’s abiding core mystery, how much of Mabel’s unusual or outright “crazy” behaviour is the “fault” of society, and of her husband in particular, a necessary release valve of sorts in a life which would otherwise be intolerably dull and repetitive; one wonders whether she might be demonstrating, in some sense at least, the most fully-inhabited, boundary-testing consciousness in the whole movie. Rowlands is as remarkable as everyone says, at once laceratingly present and comprehensively unknowable, funny and intimate and loving and scarily possessed. The film’s home stretch, after Mabel returns from some six months in an institution (of which, again, we see nothing), at first seeming weary and subdued, then gradually reclaiming some version of her old self, sums up all its worrying mysteries: is Nick helping her back toward something true, or bullying her into being the unusual but essentially submissive woman to which he’s accustomed? The final images of routine domesticity reasserting itself suggest a recovered equilibrium, but few will read it as an entirely happy ending.

Masculin feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)

 

Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Feminin is typically characterized by citing its line about the “children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” which in tandem with one of its main characters being a budding pop star (number six in Japan!) would likely lead one to expect this to be one of the director’s more colourful films. In fact though, the movie (shot in black and white) is one of Godard’s more melancholy works of the period, with little exuberance or display of pleasure, not least regarding the central relationship between the singer Madeline (Chantal Goya) and the bouncing-around-jobs Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud), which is more talked about, often in unenthused terms, than depicted. It contains several acts of sudden and inexplicable violence, reflecting global conflicts in the background, but these acts fail to move those who observe them, embodying a pervasive sense of denial and willed ignorance, feeding into a worryingly drained human fabric (even going to the cinema is unsatisfying, both because of the unpersuasive narratives, and the technical flaws of the projection). This culminates in a sense of erasure: the film’s final stretch spends extended time on another couple, with Paul last seen and heard expressing his dissatisfaction with his work, before a last scene in which he’s gone altogether, and Madeline is alone with a horrible choice to make, almost frozen in indecision (a state likely reflected in the viewer, given the withholding of much relevant information). But at the same time, of course, the film teems with possibility: that one could indeed be such a pop star, or take advantage of the era’s gadgety innovations, or fool the military into sending round a chauffeured limousine, or spot Brigitte Bardot at a nearby table, or (in one deadpan moment) step into the shoes of someone else to see, as per the adage, if that yields any great revelation (it doesn’t).

The Sleepy Time Gal (Christopher Munch, 2001)

 

The many alluring wonders of Christopher Munch’s The Sleepy Time Gal start with that title, seeming to promise a bedtime-worthy child’s tale, but instead concerning itself with deep-rooted matters of separation and absence, of lives still structured and shadowed by the events of decades earlier. Its main character, Frances (one of Jacqueline Bisset’s best-ever roles, her unexplained accent aiding the mysterious undercurrent) was once a late-night radio broadcaster under the titular title, although that doesn’t seem particularly important in how she assesses her own life; of the many details and bits of personal history that tumble through the movie, the most hauntingly recurring is the memory of the daughter she gave up for adoption, Rebecca, played in adulthood by Martha Plimpton. Rebecca’s life as a New York corporate lawyer bears little obvious relationship to that of the money-strapped Frances, but Munch weaves in multiple correspondences, even suggesting the two women may have slept with the same man, decades apart. The film has a recurring lightness, an openness to possibility, yielding structurally unimportant but pointedly lovely scenes such as Frances’ encounter with a French tourist who’s out foraging for mushrooms, or a glimpse of her photographer son instructing a subject to get naked, or many little bits of history and commemoration (spanning George Washington to the dawn of a Black-oriented radio station); all of this partially offset though by darker intimations (the other son is in Britain, barely in contact, the movie suggesting he may be in dire straits). Munch’s finely calibrated work ultimately denies the form of closure we might have hoped for and expected (the two lead actresses never even share the same scene), while beguilingly asserting a form of reconciliation and understanding that transcend death and distance, intertwined with the power of art to forge connections that would otherwise be beyond one’s imagination or grasp.

One Way or Another (Sara Gomez, 1975)

 

Sara Gomez’s One Way or Another is a highly arresting blend of fact and fiction, announcing itself at the outset as a story of people some real and some not, never quite clarifying where the lines are drawn. The movie is in part the story of a relationship, between Mario, a manual worker, and Yolanda, a teacher, the class and other differences between the two embodying the broader cultural and structural divides that post-revolution Cuba struggles to integrate (the film’s rough-hewn black and white visuals and tentative or retrograde aspects often make it feel older than it actually is). For Mario, this means suppressing his natural tendency toward domination (Gomez’s My Contribution delved more specifically into the country’s engrained machismo); at times he seems gripped by frustration at all that he has to carry and calibrate within himself (several people suggest the relationship is changing him for the worst), his tension exacerbated by a workplace dilemma that pits personal loyalty against the collective good. For all its open-mindedness, the film betrays little skepticism regarding the righteousness of Cuba’s trajectory and dominant ideology, analyzing the lower classes in terms of their lack of access to capital, and coming close to condescension in noting how access to more modern housing and amenities doesn’t necessarily cause a break with the old, marginalizing worldviews and rituals (sacrificing a goat, for instance). When Yolanda is chided by her colleagues for talking too impatiently and stridently to the less-educated parents who fail to get the message about parental discipline and involvement, it's hard not to think her frustration is partly also Gomez’s own. But the film is by no means heavy going, although even its moments of lightheartedness – such as a bedroom scene when Yolanda teases Mario with her impression of how he walks differently with men than he does with her – carry a pointed undercurrent.  

Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Saul Swimmer, 1968)

 

Saul Swimmer’s Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter is a strange and rather downbeat showcase for the pop group Herman’s Hermits, following the general blueprint of  A Hard Day’s Night and others but with limited sense of exuberance, almost seeming inclined to hold the pop music racket at arm’s length. The peculiarly conceived plot revolves around a racing greyhound (the Mrs. Brown of the title) owned by Peter Noone’s Herman, he and his four friends (largely interchangeable in their blandness, physically and otherwise) seemingly keeping the band going mainly as a way of financing the dog’s activities; when it goes missing they return to their various menial jobs, apparently not much caring. The film feels somewhat depressing from its very first shots, driving through a horrifyingly derelict Manchester: a scene in a raucous local pub built around an old-timer singing My Old Man’s a Dustman carries much more spirit than its tentative ventures into “Swinging Sixties” territory, which carry an air of merely hoping to get out alive. The film’s diffidence extends to its romantic inventions: Herman barely acknowledges Tulip, the neighbourhood girl who openly pines for him, falling instead for an out-of-his-league model, but in the end the model is working in Italy and thereby seemingly unattainable, so it seems Herman will probably settle for Tulip anyway, as long as she realizes she may be cooking and cleaning for five men (no problem!) The songs are tuneful enough (There’s a Kind of Hush is likely to be the most recognizable nowadays, largely by virtue of the Carpenters’ cover) but it doesn’t say much for the Hermits’ legacy that the two musical highlights focus on others: a silly song about the joys of selling fruit and vegetables performed by Stanley Holloway, and a plaintive number about love being mainly for the young, somewhat reminiscent of Gigi’s I Remember It Well.

Caligula: the Ultimate Cut (Tinto Brass, 2023)

 

Even in its restored “ultimate cut” version, Tinto Brass’s Caligula is mostly a joyless one-note slog, its almost three-hour length often feeling static and repetitive. The film’s signature move sets its main actors against multi-layered backdrops of eye-filling activity: people juggling, fire-eating, (very often) copulating or masturbating, or just hanging around with sex organs exposed, none of this yielding much sense though of circus-like decadence, let alone of historical engagement or exactitude. Malcolm McDowell easily embodies the ruler’s perverse, wayward self-righteousness, but his performance is pitched throughout at the same impervious level, allowing little sense of the unraveling that causes his downfall. The narrative starts with him in bed with his sister (Teresa Ann Savoy), proceeds through his murder of the ailing emperor Tiberius (Peter O’Toole, wearily ranting and made up to look ravaged) and spends much time on his selection of and apparent increasing co-dependency on a wife (Helen Mirren, seeming to be exploring a parallel universe in which her career became mired in Euro-trash). One perks up a bit on a few occasions when the movie shakes things up, such as in depicting Caligula’s perverse fixation on the wedding of one of his soldiers, which he disrupts in depraved fashion, or in the sequence of his would-be invasion of Britain, consisting of traveling a few miles from Rome and sending hoards of naked men into the water to reap papyrus, which he then brings back as “proof” of his triumph. Time and again, the movie pushes its people into strange poses and gestures and interactions, the sum of which might have cast a mysterious displaced spell if it didn’t all seem so arbitrary: sometimes one wonders if it would have been happier dispensing with any pretense of narrative, organizing itself instead as a series of ornate fragments. At other times, studying the dutifully but mostly unexcitingly staged creations, I started thinking about Peter Greenaway might have done with all this (and without even cutting back on the nudity…)