The Shock Doctrine

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training them not to think

"Russian television has come a long way from the staid, politically tinged fare of Communist times, and these days there are many channels offering a steady diet of movies, dramas, game shows, soap operas and reality shows — some locally produced, some imported and dubbed.

News programs, which are tightly overseen by President Vladimir V. Putin’s administration, are another story. As in Soviet days, they rarely divert from the Kremlin’s point of view. Barbed political satire, which thrived after the fall of the Soviet Union, has been suppressed.

[...]

Daniil B. Dondurei, editor in chief of Cinema Art magazine, said he saw a darker significance in the success of shows like “Schastlivy Vmeste.”

“Today, people are becoming accustomed to not thinking about life,” he said. “The television is training them to not think about which party is in Parliament, about which laws are being passed, about who will be in charge tomorrow. People have become accustomed to living like children, in the family of a very strong and powerful father. Everything is decided for them.”"
- NYTimes

Post-Mumblecore, pt. 2

"I think that if Mumblecore is more than just a flash in the pan, it is precisely because it will inspire filmmakers around the world to make it their own."
- Matt Riviera, in a comment on a post at Spoutblog


"Only five thousand people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every single one of them started a band."
- Brian Eno

25 Best Non-English language films

In response to Edward Copeland's Choosing the best non-English language films, I present my ballot (my top 25 out of the nominated films):

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)

Flat out the most romantic movie of all time, Umbrellas bursts forth at the seams with exuberant color and all the freshness of youthful visions of the world. The final scene's saudade is eviscerating not because it's tragic, but because it isn't. An unrivalled emotional experience.

2. Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

An intimate epic of resistance that details the codes by which people live under occupation. The opening shot is as powerful and artful as openers get - Nazis marching, triumphantly, in front of the Arc de Triomphe. An epilogue that turns the story of a few individuals into the story of a nation. Tragic, brutal, and human.

3. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)

The mastery of this film is beyond my capacity for speech.

4. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
5. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

What really thrills about Battle of Algiers after all of these years is not that you feel in the midst of events; that's been done too much since to feel freshly radical. Battle's amplified intensity comes from being in the midst of events. It's not spectatorship but intimacy here; Pontecorvo's camera gives up showing in favor of participation. This goes for both sides of the fight - we're as intimate with the general giving a press conference as we are with the young woman cutting her hair to slip past security checkpoints. This is radical, because filmmakers mostly align themselves with the watchers. Pontecorvo, instead, implicates us in both sides of the conflict.

6. Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994)

After seeing this for the first time, I turned to the person sitting next to me and said "If it was playing again right now, I would definitely stay."

7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)

The opening shots of mummified human remains, as my friend said to me afterwards, is like the secret of vampire lore unlocked. "We all die, and these are the stories human beings tell ourselves to help us make sense of the fact that we die." There's nothing left but for me to agree.

8. Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)

The perfect comic exploration of the "man vs. nature" archetype, where nature is the artificial world that man has created.

9. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
10. Rashômon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
11. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
12. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

Though it occassionally teeters on the verge of cloying, it consistently comes out on the right side by virtue a real emotional intimacy with wounded characters who need a bit of a push to have the courage to pursue their happiness.

13. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)

Mein Gott! That opening sequence! Rivalled only by the apocalyptic insanity of Kinski as Aguirre.

14. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
15. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

Not the film people think it is, but a much better one: a sweet mini-romance.

16. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

A medieval morality play both set in and a product of a world in dire need of such stories. A tale of sacrifice and the resurgence of life, of mankind's possibility for goodness in a world run amok with evil. Simple and sublime.

17. Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

A few clues for latecomers: The Madison. The Louvre, quickly. Anna Karina.

18. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
19. The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
20. Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)

A film that builds and builds and builds and builds... until the final edit, a moment of sublime, impossible loss - and beauty.

21. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2001)

Like every time I ever fell in love, only so much more beautiful (if just as tragic).

22. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

Lang's balloons floating in the air and shots of empty stairwells are a masterclass in suspense and the horror of the viewer's imagination. M turns "In the Hall of the Mountain King" into the every parent's worst nightmare.

23. Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
24. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
25. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)


-----

and the 25 best that didn't make the nominees list (in rough order of my preference)*:
An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)
Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)
Tesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996)
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)
The Hunt (Carlos Saura, 1966)
In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa, 2000)
Pepi Luci Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pedro Almodóvar, 1980)
L'Âge D'Or (Luis Buñuel, 1930)
Queimada (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969)
Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)
A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri, 1970)
When A Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)
Sauvage Innocence (Philippe Garrel, 2001)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000)
The Closet (Francis Veber, 2001)
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
I Am Cuba (Mikheil Kalatozishvili, 1964)
Two Women (Vittorio de Sica, 1960)
Even Dwarves Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970)
Sicilia! (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1999)
Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem, 1998)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
Tuvalu (Veit Helmer, 1999)


* I'm not including La Jetée because it's technically not a feature.


To say nothing of Pather Panchali, Flowers of Shanghai, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Viridiana, Vacas, Charulata, Sholay, The Kingdom, and LOADS of films I've forgotten or haven't yet seen.

Update: Results!

The Digital Unconscious

Is Inland Empire a journey into the dark corners of a digital unconscious? (i.e., that of a non-linear editing machine)

Are IE's narrative/editing strategies the technological equivalent of Diane's recombinations/reimaginings in Mulholland Drive?

(Prompted by a post at Digital Poetics)

more to come after a forthcoming re-viewing of DVD.

O Sangue / Casa de Lava

Pedro Costa's O Sangue:
"A very film film, a very cinema film" - Pedro Costa

By which I think he means: It is not realism, but rather a cinema version of reality. Which is to say, a romantic one.

I like the romanticism of this film, and the realistic elements of this film, and even the self-consciously Bresonian gestures (when they don't go too far). From here, Costa could have either have become a subtle but overtly romantic filmmaker, or some variation on the stricter realisms of his later work. Watching O Sangue, I felt a slight feeling of loss for the romantic road not traveled. I can see why he views these impulses as failures or distractions from the real task of (his) cinema; the film isn't entirely successful because it switches between these modes, detaching us from the experience of emotional continuity. Danny's thoughts were insightful - each scene, each shot seems disconnected from the others, independently beautiful in a way that detracts from the whole.



Casa de Lava is Costa's remake of I Walked with a Zombie (seriously!). The film's location was formerly a concentration camp in Cabo Verde for communists deported from Portugal. "It was a mini-Apocalypse Now for me," Costa said, but on set he learned to speak Cape Verdean Crioulo and established the relationships that led him to shoot his next films in Fontainhas.

Casa de Lava is carried by the same luminous actress who starred in O Sangue, Inês de Medeiros.

More notes forthcoming on Costa's later work, his relationship with Straub and Huillet, and Costa's thoughts on cinema.

Forbidden beauty

"Feinstein’s opinion directed my attention to a passage in Maimonides’s legal writings prohibiting various sorts of contact with women. The most evocative bit runs as follows: “Even to smell the perfume upon her is prohibited.” I have never been able to escape the feeling that this is a covert love poem enmeshed in the 14-volume web of dos and don’ts that is Maimonides’s Code of Law. Perfume has not smelled the same to me since."

(via)

Lesson From The Kama Sutra

Lesson From The Kama Sutra
by Mahmoud Darwish

Wait for her with an azure cup.
Wait for her in the evening at the spring, among perfumed roses.
Wait for her with the patience of a horse trained for mountains.
Wait for her with the distinctive, aesthetic taste of a prince.
Wait for her with the seven pillows of cloud.
Wait for her with strands of womanly incense wafting.
Wait for her with the manly scent of sandalwood on horseback.
Wait for her and do not rush.
If she arrives late, wait for her.
If she arrives early, wait for her.
Do not frighten the birds in her braided hair.
Take her to the balcony to watch the moon drowning in milk.
Wait for her and offer her water before wine.
Do not glance at the twin partridges sleeping on her chest.
Wait and gently touch her hand as she sets a cup on marble.
As if you are carrying the dew for her, wait.
Speak to her as a flute would to a frightened violin string,
As if you knew what tomorrow would bring.
Wait, and polish the night for her ring by ring.
Wait for her until the night speaks to you thus:
There is no one alive but the two of you.
So take her gently to the death you so desire,
and wait.



(via, via)

The Bourne Perception

David Borwell's recent post Unsteadicam chronicles discusses Paul Greengrass's use of technique to obscure reality in the most recent Bourne film. As good as this piece is, I think it misses one significant effect of Greengrass's style. For me, the main effect of Greengrass's stylization is to represent Jason Bourne's subjective perception as different from our own. Greengrass uses style to explore the notion of Bourne's, well, supremacy.

Some quotes from Bordwell's article (all emphases mine; not quoted in their original order):

"Later in Supremacy, the camera jerks across a computer display and suddenly focuses itself, evoking the jumpy saccadic flicks with which we scan our world."

"Essentially, intensified continuity is about using brief shots to maintain the audience’s interest but also making each shot yield a single point, a bit of information. Got it? On to the next shot. Greengrass’s camera technique makes the shot’s point a little harder to get at first sight. Instead of a glance, he gives us a glimpse.

"In United 93, the technique could work because we’re all minimally familiar with the geography of a passenger jet. But in The Bourne Ultimatum, could anybody reconstruct any of these stations, streets, or apartment blocks on the strength of what we see? Of course, some will say, that’s the point. Jason himself is dizzyingly preoccupied by the immediacy of the action, and so are we. Yet Jason must know the layout in detail, if he’s able to pursue others and escape so efficiently. Moreover, we can justify any fuzziness in any piece of storytelling as reflecting a confused protagonist. This rationale puts us close to Poe’s suggestion that we shouldn’t confuse obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity."

"But our point of view isn’t confined to what Bourne or anybody else sees and knows. The whole movie relies on crosscutting to create an omniscient awareness of various CIA maneuvers to trap him. And if Bourne saw his enemies in the flashes we get, he couldn’t wreck them so thoroughly."

What we're really learning here is that Jason Bourne's perception - and ability to put 2 and 2 together in order to respond to the situation - is superhuman. We get flashes of enough length to understand that the information is both too fast and too little to be adequately processed - by everyone except Jason Bourne.

Update: In the comments, I admit I was stretching this point, and propose a related thesis.

Post-Mumblecore

"In light of all this, “Hannah” plays like an incidental swan song, a signpost marking the point when mumblecore became a nostalgic label rather than a present-tense cultural force, and its most acclaimed practitioners moved on to bigger things. Mr. Swanberg’s third movie is a graduation photo in motion: D.I.Y., class of ’07."
- Matt Zoller Seitz, in his review of Hannah Takes the Stairs

Matt Dentler has distributed various Hannah related interviews amongst the indie film blogosphere.

J. Hoberman: It's Mumblecore!

The New Talkies: Generation DIY starts today at IFC Center

it will be enjoyable because it will be true, and new

"The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them. It may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening; the story of a trip, a sickness, their military service, their marriage, their last vacation...and it will be enjoyable because it will be true, and new...The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. The film of tomorrow will be an act of love."
- Francois Truffaut

clearness and distinctness

"In general the real philosopher will always look for clearness and distinctness; he will invariably try to resemble not a turbid, impetuous torrent, but rather a Swiss lake which by its calm combines great depth with great clearness, the depth revealing itself precisely through the clearness."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
via Tractatus Blogico-Philosophicus