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Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)
Perverse and Fascinating
More than 40 years after its initial release, Salo is still shocking, perverse, fascinating, and darkly funny. Four libertines, powerful fascists in Nazi-controlled Italy, kidnap 18 teenagers and bring them to a hidden palace. There they subject them to torture and sexual abuse. They completely dehumanize their victims, showing them no sympathy and punishing them when they plea for sympathy. The teenagers must play the role of sex toys with no feelings. The libertines enjoy them in perverse, degrading ways, but exquisitely, as an epicurean would enjoy a fine wine. They judge the teenagers like they would prize cattle, appreciating their beauty, but slaughtering them when done with them. All the while they casually discuss the nature of pleasure, power, and life, quoting Nietzsche and other philosophers. The libertines are detached from their victims, as the viewer is detached from both victim and torturer. Pasolini shows in Salo how the powerful dehumanize the powerless. It is graphically sexual and violent without being either a porn or horror flick. The cold detachment, the intelligence, and the strength of the message prevent it from being either. Salo is not for everyone, but for film lovers who can stomach it, it's a must-see.
Love & Friendship (2016)
Funniest and Most Cynical of the Jane Austen Adaptations
Love & Friendship was adapted from Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan, which she wrote when she was 19 and which was not published until long after her death. Like other of Austen's works, the story revolves around women's striving/conniving to marry well in an early 19th century society that offered them limited options. The protagonist, Lady Susan, is uncharacteristic for an Austen heroine; she is selfish, mean, and fiendishly clever. She dominates and manipulates all of the men in her orbit, even if she can't fool the women. This is the least romantic and most cynical of the Austen films. The comedy, acting, costumes, and sets are all spot on, even if the material is lighter than usual for Austen. In particular, Kate Beckinsale's portrayal of Lady Susan and Whit Stillman's screenplay shine. Love & Friendship is a fresh and fun entry in the oeuvre of Jane Austen film adaptations.
Central Park (1989)
Central Park Comes Back to Life
Wiseman's Central Park is three hours of people watching on warm spring days in 1988 NYC's Central Park. There is no story, no narrator, no interviews, no apparent structure; just people going about their lives. We see religious fanatics preaching, actors practicing Shakespeare, the homeless eating lunch, families on Sunday picnics, lovers making out. The film has its share of cameos of the famous, including Mayor Ed Koch, Francis Ford Coppola, and the band Midnight Oil. The person we see the most of is the energetic and controversial NYC parks commissioner Henry Stern, arguing in park commission meetings and at public forums for his plans to upgrade the park. But the film is mostly ordinary people enjoying themselves, roller skating, sunbathing, jogging, listening to music, etc. It's a document of humanity and its idiosyncrasies.
The film is also a remarkable document of its time. Most moving are the photos of the AIDS quilts and of the Pridefest, at a time when there was no treatment for AIDS and AIDS patients were cruelly stigmatized. As Manhattan has gentrified and become the safest big city in America, it is hard to remember the chaos and despair that reigned in the 70s. Just a few years before the film, Central Park was dirty and dangerous, with structures falling apart and drug addicts camping out overnight. Patch by patch the citizens of NYC reclaimed and rebuilt their park. The film captures rich NYC socialite women explaining that Central Park is their front yard. We see them raising ten of millions of dollars to renovate it, and holding a high-society garden party in a recently cleaned up, pleasant,meadow where previously people would have been afraid to walk. Central Park is a documentary of a people taking back their park, and ultimately, their city.
A footnote: if you happen to see the film, you may be interested to know that the citizens groups are ultimately successful in blocking commissioner Stern's plans to tear down the old tennis clubhouse. This ugly, concrete-slab building still stands.
Phoenix (2014)
Weighed Down by Implausibilities
There is a plethora of films dealing with the second world war and the holocaust, but relatively few dealing with Germany after the war and the plight of people returning from concentration or prison camps. So I was happy go see Phoenix. The film successfully captures the period, with brusque American occupation soldiers, Berlin reduced to rubble, and people struggling to survive and adapt to new realities. Unfortunately, the story gets bogged down in one implausible plot contrivance after another, which saps it of any dramatic strength despite fine acting. I won't say what these are in the chance that you may see the film. But consider yourself warned.
Roma ore 11 (1952)
Little Seen Italian Neo-Realist Gem
I saw this film at the National Gallery of Art knowing little about it. Apparently it has had minimal exposure outside of Italy. This is too bad, because the film is thoroughly engaging. It is based on a true story of a tragic accident in Rome, which was a national sensation at the time. About 200 women line up in the stairwell of a building to interview for a modest typist position. The film introduces the women, and their economic desperation. Then tragedy strikes, as the staircase collapses in a harrowing scene. Most of the film is dedicated to the aftermath. The director interviewed some of the women involved. The film follows the stories of ten women. They are working class people in 1950 Italy. You see their dreams and their struggles. There is some comic relief and melodrama, but the film is always deeply sympathetic to ordinary people in postwar Italy.
Viola (2012)
Shakespeare without the Wit
Viola is a short film which follows a troop of young women actors putting on a production of Shakespeare in Buenos Aires. There is much talk and little action. While the acting and direction are excellent, the conversations veer off into pretentiousness and boredom. There is a sequence where two actors rehearse the same scene from Twelfth Night six times. True, with each rehearsal they get physically and sexually closer. But these variations are not enough to keep it interesting; it is a puzzling bore. The film is talky like an Eric Rohmer film, with attractive young people discussing their love lives or life philosophy. But Rohmer's films have insight into character and amusing plots. The director should go watch some of his films.
Ex Machina (2014)
If machines could think and feel, would they like us?
Stagey but engaging, Ex Machina is a like play with three characters; the brilliant young programmer Caleb, the charismatic and bullying genius Nathan, and the seductive android Ava. The movie plays out largely in just a few rooms in an underground research center. The titled chapters suggest the scenes of a theater piece. For a sci-fi film there are remarkably few special effects. The three characters are involved in a great mind game. Who's fooling whom? What are their motives? The film poses questions we may have to deal with as artificial intelligence advances: how would a newly conscious machine grow in understanding? Would it be like us? Would it like us? The film has an ominous tone throughout; you sense that whatever the ending is, it won't be a happy one.
Hecho en México (2012)
More of an Extended Music Video than a Movie, but what Music
Hecho en Mexico presents a heady mix of Mexican folk, pop, and rap traditions. It showcases many of Mexico's biggest stars, such as Gloria Trevi and Julieta Venegas, though they are not likely to be familiar to English-speaking audiences. The editing is brilliant as songs meld seamlessly from one artist to the next. The performances are packed with heart and wit. I keep watching the DVD over and over. The music is interspersed with discussion by various Mexican artists and intellectuals. These range from insightful to left-wing banalities, which are the film's only weakness. Whether the film can rightly be called a documentary is open to question. There is no theme or story to tell, just a stream of music. The performances are captured live in nonstudio settings. However, they are staged and not performed in front of large audiences. This is not meant as a criticism. If you want to see some of today's Mexico's best music, Hecho en Mexico is a good place to start.
Boyhood (2014)
Boyhood would be a Bore if it weren't so Annoying
Worse than just being overly long and tedious, Boyhood it is packed with annoying, dysfunctional characters, really more clichés than troubled human beings, and tells no stories. There is no character to admire or sympathize with, and we don't even understand why these people behave the way they do. There is no story or drama to catch your interest, and much of transpired was unbelievable. The daughter is endlessly insolent to her mother; I don't know any girls like that, and I can't imagine any mother would take it the way she did. The professor is over-the-top creepy and phony from the start, and turns out to be a monster. Why would the mother go for him? I could go on, it is all grating.
I can't help compare Boyhood with The Tree of Life, another overly long, ponderous, potentially tedious film about a boy growing up. But Tree of Life is redeemed by enormous humanity, intelligent and real people, and a boy who learns about life in front of our eyes. The father, played by Brad Pitt, can be horrible to his wife and kids, but often wonderful to them too, and in a completely believable, fully fleshed out human way, unlike the series of cardboard creeps Boyhood tries to pass off as men.