Edward Yang and the nature of art.

This comes a little late but I was shocked and really saddened this week at the death of Edward Yang. Yang, the revered Taiwanese filmmaker of Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day passed away after a battle with cancer at only 59. I have never seen an Edward Yang film, and really only very little of the Taiwanese New Wave that he was a part of. But his passing really affected me. Just the thought of an artist dieing before his time, an artist that I was not familiar with but wished to be, just kills me. There is a sadness to the finality of a filmmakers body of work. One day soon I will see Yi Yi or another Yang film, and perhaps I will love him. I might seek out all his other terribly hard to find films but eventually that will be it, I have seen everything he made. There will be no feeling of waiting for that next film, waiting for another potential masterpiece.

But why do films matter, anyway? Why does any art or artist matter in the world? It is a difficult question, and one that I have been thinking about every day for the last few weeks. My answer, and the only one that rings true for me, is that art is not merely a facsimile or representation of the world. Art, true art, in films or any other form is not a replacement for real experiences. Art and especially film can connect you to people, to worlds, to life in a way that you could not necessarily experience otherwise. Watching great films is like being taken into a world or introduced to characters and experiencing it and them through the eyes of someone that understands more about that place and those people than perhaps I ever could. Watching Abbas Kiarostami or Hou Hsiao Hsien I understand more about Iran or Taiwan than I could watching the news, visiting as a tourist, or possibly even than I could get from a good documentary. Watching Hawks or Cassavetes gives me insight into the relationship of men and women. Tati teaches me about the modern world and what we have lost. Malick makes me experience the natural world and why people and nature are integrally combined. Woody Allen tells me to laugh at sadness, Welles warns me of fascism and brings me a living Shakespeare. Watching Godard answers my questions about art and poses a thousand more.

Why do films matter? When I watch films, when anyone watches good films, I feel more connected to all the varieties of the world. Why are we here? I think it is so that we can learn more about the people, places and things that make up our world and to find a place in it that we can contribute to the good of all. Watching films helps to make a connection to the world in a profound way that is good for the viewer. From a film that calls to social action to a film that just helps you understand better your family, your friends or a stranger on the street, taking these journeys and listening to the artists brings me closer to the world and the people in it.

Avalon co-op

No one else might know it, but the Avalon co-op in Austin was a pretty amazing place to live during 2003-2004. We were a close group of artists, politicos and just plain cool people. Two more of those great housemates have really fantastic blogs: Kevin covers politics from the center in DC over at Mulling it over from the Middle while Joel, who seems to have learned a new language every time I talk to him, continues his great journalism in more depth at The Wandering.

Check out their stuff, both are great reads.

Pure cinema.

All films, good and bad, fall along a spectrum that spans from Tati to Godard. At one end is Godard,the champion of a "mixed cinema", combining image-sound-text-language. His films combine poetic and chaotic images and sounds with language and polemic, a Godard film is intellectual view of the world. At the other end of the spectrum is the "pure cinema" of Tati, audio visual works that eschew verbal language and even intellectualization to deliver their ideas with a sensory and emotional appeal to the viewer. An example from Playtime (1967):

The scene is a great study in contrasts. The businessman, all right angles and precision, versus loveable M. Hulot, a picture of an unkempt and thoroughly unmodern man. Hulot's amazement with his environment seems almost childlike in comparison to the urban businessman. Yet I have no doubt that it is Hulot that is experiencing life, while the businessman will be continually checking his watch. It is Hulot's anachronism, his wonder at the sound of the cushions and the sounds of the businessman's movements, that sets him apart and makes him warm in this otherwise cold, hermetically sealed world. Through the images of Hulot, the businessman and the office and through the sounds of those cushions and that briefcase, Tati subtly brings up his distaste with the modern world and his love of those gentle and silly people who can no longer find a place in it.

In Godard's hands the scene would have played as Marxist critique, as the comic fool pointing out the damnable folly in the businessman. There would be text, speeches and a feeling of intellectual rigour. From Tati the scene is gentler, with a lighter touch that is no less damning but that plays more toward sadness than fire. Hulot may be one of the last gentle souls on Earth, but he handles it with a perplexed sigh, gently walking towards the edge of the frame after being rebuked, confident in his own time.

Is it too early to talk about fall yet?

So even if there are a couple movies out this summer that seem promising (especially Brad Bird's Ratatouille, which I hope to see this weekend) , but this fall is shaping up to be incredible. In addition to Eastern Promises, which I wrote about yesterday, there are an incredible amount of great films bowing later this year. In my rough order of excitement:

1. The Darjeeling Limited
The new Wes Anderson, and his first sence The Life Aquatic, a film that grows more on me as time goes by. This seems to be another interesting step for Wes, carving out this odd subgenre of the whimsical adventure film. I know that many people, especially those over the age of about 35, seem to not be on his wavelength, but if you talk to the iPod generation he is clearly doing something that speaks to us. His The Royal Tennenbaums is amongst my favorite movies of the decade.

No trailer, so here is the great Wes Anderson AmEx ad from this year:




2. No Country for Old Men
The reports from Cannes have the Coens back on track, though I will defend Intolerable Cruelty from anyone. I am always happy to see their Miller's Crossing side come out again. Based on a novel by the currently en vogue (and recently Pulitzered) Cormac McCarthy, it looks like an absolute showcase for Javier Bardem, though I hear that Josh Brolin steals the show. Not too surprising if you've seen Grindhouse, where he is a blast.




3. There Will be Blood
Punch Drunk Love is the best romantic comedy of the decade, and Magnolia still works almost a decade later, especially during the brilliant John C Reilly scenes. This new film is based on an Upton Sinclair novel and stars Daniel Day Lewis, all good signs. This is by far the biggest film of Anderson's career in scope, let's hope he can handle a canvas this size.


4. Flight of the Red Balloon
Hou Hisao Hsien made a film outside Taiwan? And its in English? And its a remake of the classic short Le ballon rouge? I have to see this.


5. Leatherheads
With echoes of Harold Lloyd's classic The Freshman, the next film from George Clooney as a writer-director-actor is a comedy set in the world of 1920s football. The F. Scott Fitzgerald fan in me is very excited about that setting, and with a script co-written by Clooney and Stephen Soderbergh this might be incredibly fun. Even with the presence of Rene Zellweger.

Again no trailer yet, so how about some vintage "Facts of Life" featuring Clooney:


6. Brief Interview with Hideous Men
So "The Office"'s John Krasinski has adapted and directed a film of a book of avant-garde David Foster Wallace short stories? DFW is one of my favorite authors, but how could this possibly work? The jury is still out on if this could be a film, but the cast is certainly solid: Krasinski, Julianne Nicholson, Will Forte, Christopher Meloni, Josh Charles, and Rashida Jones. Still, how the hell did this get greenlit?

For video on this one, let go with this bit of Roger Federer:

New Cronenberg.

This just looks fantastic:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809794102/video/3182401/

Cronenberg is one of the most masterful directors of the classical Hollywood form still making films. He imbues his personal themes in everything he touches and his high points, especially Dead Ringers, are brilliant looks into strange minds, not the least of which is Cronenberg's himself. With this new film he looks to be expanding on his seemingly superficial thriller mode that he began with A History of Violence. It also doesn't hurt that he re-teams with Viggo Mortenson, who gave a terrifically underrated performance in Violence. There's an essay I should write: David Cronenberg the actor's director. The man has had many brilliant performances in his films, from Jeremy Irons to Peter Weller to Jeff Goldblum. He really would be considered a consummate actor's director if his own voice wasn't as strong in the films as theirs.

Lists of best, greatest, and favorite.

A new blog, and a new AFI List of Greatest films. Though he hasn't responded to this new enumeration, Johnathan Rosenbaum(my favorite American film critic) still had the final word on AFI and these lists in general, and he wrote it 10 years ago.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/100best.html

A choice paragraph:

Yet I'm not sure the AFI can justify getting even two cents for its present agenda. I'm told that when it recently shut down its art theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the AFI's director, Jean Firstenberg, told the press that video made repertory programming unnecessary. If that's what she said and that's what she meant, I'd rather see any NEA funds for the AFI used to reduce it to rubble. And given its egregious industry ass kissing throughout its existence, I'm tempted to conclude that its only substantial contribution to film culture--American or global--was producing David Lynch's Eraserhead at its film school.

And yet I still watched the list when it aired, getting incensed at inclusions (Titanic? The Sound of Music?) and omissions (Cassavetes? Malick?). For all my complaining, I am happier to have something to argue against than a truly perfect list for me, since that would still limit the conversation.

Now, the AFI list obviously gets a few things correct, Citizen Kane, Singin' in the Rain and Casablanca are still stellar works a full 66, 57 and 64 years on. I still have problems proclaiming the Godfather films as anything other than expert craftsmanship, though. Operatic and silly, those films showcase great acting and technical skill but they don't move me as much as a single frame of Cassavetes or Scorscese, whose Raging Bull is great but not at the level of After Hours or Goodfellas. Gone with the Wind leaves me cold unless Gable is on screen, and Lawrence of Arabia is British to its core, not American. Vertigo is amazing, but Schindler's List is maudlin and Wizard of Oz is not the equal of many other of those classic 1939 films left off the list, like His Girl Friday.

So what is my top 10 list? That was a children's game I played on my last blog, but a damn fun one. I won't worry about my top 100, which seems to have even more potential to leave off brilliant films. I also can't limit it to American films, another distinction that feels silly. I will limit it to one film per director, just for variety. So here's how I feel today:

1. Pierrot le Fou (Jean Luc Godard, 1965)
2. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
3. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
4. Days of Heaven (Terrance Malick, 1978)
5. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
6. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
7. Celine et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
8. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
9. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1939)
10. Ta'm e guilass (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

Discovering a director.

There is probably no bigger rush for me than discovering a director. From someone I had heard about forever and finally saw a film by (John Cassavetes a couple of years back for me), to stumbling on someone for another reason, a new director to watch and explore helps to remind there no matter how many films I have seen and all I might think I know there is so much more.

Currently the object of my affections is Michael Winterbottom. I saw Tristram Shandy when it came out on video last year and it blew me away. But I saw the film for Steve Coogan and the concept, I had heard of but knew nothing about Winterbottom. Then today I watch Road to Guantanamo and I had that feeling, that since of personal discovery. There are some filmmakers that I love that I have to get attuned to (like Godard) and some that I feel immediately (like Malick) but few that instantly work for me intellectually. Winterbottom might fall into that category. With the two films I have seen I get the feeling that I am having a conversation with a man that thinks the same way I do.

Godard was too esoteric, to intimidating for me to love immediately (even Pierrot seemed off putting at first), though now I think he is the greatest filmmaker of the 20th century, and perhaps the 21st if I could only see more of his current films. With Malick there was little to know thought at all: the films wash over me as pure audio-visual experiences. Winterbottom, with his loose Cassavetian style and his instance on politics in his work, reminds me of sitting in college with my friends and talking art and news. With Tristram Shandy he talked about the nature of cinema and of the politics of celebrity, and Coogan should have won some award simply for allowing himself to be portrayed as such a fucking bastard. The film is a free ranging discussion on forms of art and of human relationships, while being damn funny as well.

Instead of the leisurely, joyous and sad intellectual discourse of Shandy, Road to Guantanamo feels like a friend just burst into your room shouting "listen to this". Yes, the film does hash out many things I have heard and seen before. No, it does not reveal any new grand facts that we all didn't know about the national shame that are those camps. But what does is call you to action. Weather that is to write a letter or renounce your citizenship is up to you, but it leaves you changed just because of the direct appeal of it. It functions in certain ways like Dancer in the Dark for capitol punishment. Say what you will about that film but when I saw it growing up in a tiny Texas town it immediately changed my opinion on the death penalty. All I can say is that Guantanamo spoke to me in exactly that way, and I hope there is a kid in a tiny town somewhere that sees it, maybe on a whim, and feels differently afterward.

Winterbottom speaks to me with a direct voice, and hearing it for the first time makes me ready for more, and with 24 Hour Party People on my shelf and A Might Heart in the theaters that should be soon. Thank God for Austin, with Vulcan and I Love Video, that it is easy for me to find his and other's films, new and obscure. Thank God for Netflix and Greencine for providing those kids in small towns with the same access. Thank God for movies for surprising me with those new voices and making me feel that rush of discovery.

Oh and to top things off, a list of five directors I hope to get to know as soon as I can:
Jean Eustache
Samuel Fuller
Tsai Ming Liang
Eric Rohmer
The Dardenne Brothers