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Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 14, Week 4

With nods to both Homer and L. Frank Baum (or perhaps I should say Victor Fleming), the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou is a whimsical romp that apparently is (as I learned this past week from over a dozen of you) a favorite of moms everywhere. It might not be one of their best, but it has rewatchability factor on par with Goodfellas. John Goodman's performance as the cycloptic Big Dan Teague ("I'm gonna propose you a proposition!") is but one of many highlights. I'll never forget Owen Gleiberman's pan of the film in EW, in which he called it a "misanthropic flimflam" and likened it to "an extended Three Stooges episode featuring an even stupider version of the cast of Hee Haw." Misanthropic flimflam? I thought Todd Solondz owned the rights to that genre. This week: my recent post about dysfunctional relationships and crumbling marriages in this year's NYFF got me thinking about great movies on that theme, which is itself already too much of a hint. The couple below may look happy, but I assure you it's only fleeting. Name the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

The Year of Living Unfaithfully (or: Unhappily Ever After)

"Adultery is the vice of equivocation." – Alexander Theroux As anyone who has covered a film festival can attest, one of the unavoidable effects of seeing so many quality films in a relatively short time frame is that you begin to notice shared elements between films. These can range from the superficial – for example, hearing Blondie songs in multiple films – to the interesting-but-still-purely-coincidental fact that trains played significant roles in several titles (Paranoid Park, The Darjeeling Limited, I Just Didn't Do It, Alexandra). Yet beyond these bits of happenstance, there was something more substantial at play this year in an overwhelming numbers of films – an almost universally negative (and even cynical) view towards marriage, and a preponderance of infidelity. Does this say anything about the current state of world cinema, or is it merely a glimpse into (or measure of) an early 21st century cultural zeitgeist? Don't get me wrong – I'm not complaining. I'd much rather watch the dissolution of a relationship for two hours than bear five minutes of a meet-cute scenario, but I was surprised that, of all films, No Country For Old Men was the lone title that came closest to portraying happily married couples. And though a few films featured people who were looking for it, I can't recall a single instance of somebody actually falling in love. Is l'amour totally passé nowadays? Though the settings couldn't be more different, Ira Sachs' Married Life and Carlos Reygadas' Stellet Licht basically tell the same tale of a relatively happy married man who has fallen for another woman, yet neither can bring it over himself to hurt his wife. Stuck with this dilemma, the modern-day Mennonite slips into a crisis of faith, while the 1940s businessman decides murdering his wife is a more charitable act than simply leaving her. And though both films find resolutions that avoid the outright tragic (thanks to a literal deus ex machina in one case), it would be incorrect to call them happy endings. There's a hint of the cynical in regards to the sacrifices and compromises made to arrive at their respective conclusions. The unfaithful spouse is no stranger to French cinema, and both Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two and Breillat's The Last Mistress revolve around bedswervers involved in sexually obsessive relationships – each a morality play with apt (and not-unexpected) tragic outcomes. As in the Sachs and Reygadas films, neither husband here finds himself in a troubled marriage – quite the opposite in fact. Yet unlike those films, neither Chabrol's Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand) nor Breillat's Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aatou) ever consider their mistresses as potential replacements for wives that already offer them everything – love, passion, and even social standing. (In this regard, it is interesting to note that the wives in both Married Life and Stellet Licht are archetypal housewife/mother figures, as opposed to the upper crust societal wives of A Girl Cut in Two and The Last Mistress.) These extramarital liaisons are built on physical desire – relationships which, as we've learned from countless other films, can only end in tragedy. Though it wasn't always central to the plot, spouse-breach played a significant role in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Actresses, Margot at the Wedding, and, to a lesser extent, I'm Not There. In fact, relationships as a whole didn't fare too well, and outside of the aforementioned Coen brothers film, positive representations of coupling (of any sort) were virtually nonexistent. Rather than dissect each film, I created the following relationship misery chart that  conveniently spells it all out:

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, according to some) I missed the Rohmer film, which, going by its title (The Romance of Astree and Celadon) sounds like it could have been a genuine love story, but I'm not sure. All I've heard about is half-naked maidens prancing about. It's a shame Hong Sang-soo didn't have a film in the festival this year. Somebody's always falling in love in his films, even if for the wrong reasons. Is cinematic love, like, so last century? Has that infernal machine on the left coast that continues to pump out one cloying RomCom after another sullied the waters forever? Or are these films a genuine reflection of a post-whatever malaise that has succeeded in driving us apart from one another? Hell if I know. I'm gonna go watch Wild at Heart – now there's a romance for the ages.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 14, Week 3

"You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. And humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omelet stinks." That's just one of the many darkly philosophical lines spewed from the mouth of David Thewlis' Johnny in Mike Leigh's brilliant but brutal Naked. Though Gina McKee might not have been instantly recognizable (she has only a small role in the film), I thought the particular blueness of the walls (the dominant color of the film) would have been something of a giveaway. Congrats to the few that guessed it. Last week, I extended my natalitious twenty-four hours into a decadent forty-eight, which explains why I never completed my NYFF wrap-up piece. Then came the news earlier today about James Lipton's Parisian pimpin' past, and all bets were off. Check back tomorrow. This week: I may have used this film in the past -- I honestly can't recall. Regardless, I'm fairly confident the image is unique. Name the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 14, Week 2

Once, there was this guy who/Murdered little children cause he said he couldn't help it/And when they finally caught him/They...saw...that it was just Peter Lorre/Mmm mmm mmm mmm... I received a bit of a dressing down from not one but two Canadian readers, annoyed that my exposure to the Crash Test Dummies was limited to their lone US hit, 1993's Mmm Mmm Mmm. To them, and to all of Canada, all I can say is, sorry. Yes, that enlarged fingerprint comes from Fritz Lang's first talkie, M, still one of Peter Lorre's finest performances in his overwhelmingly prolific career. I've never seen Joseph Losey's 1951 remake, but I've heard that it's an almost shot-for-shot affair. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Would love to see it, but it's awfully hard to track down. The NYFF has finally ended, and I still have visions of 28 films dancing in my head. It was a strong festival overall, and there were more than a few unexpected surprises. Even the disappointments were better than in recent years. As for flat-out duds, only Redacted and Calle Santa Fe were time wasters. Now it's time to catch up with the theatrical releases I've missed over the past four weeks. First up? Across the Universe. (Woo-hoo!) This week: That poster for Verdi's Attila isn't terribly significant, though the film certainly has its share of barbarism. Name the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

NYFF Review: In the City of Sylvia

A darkened room, occasionally bathed in the transient light of a passing car. A map and a numbered key; a hotel room. The same room the next morning. A young would-be poet (replete in white dress shirt and black vest) sits cross-legged on the bed, writing. He pauses for an extended period, the camera fixed on him, lost in creative thought as he searches for that perfect word. The long take that opens José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia (En la cuidad de Sylvia) is more than a mere stylistic choice, for this is a film built entirely around gazes. Alternating between the objective (the "camera") and the subjective (through the eyes of the young man), it tells its story not through dialog (there's probably no more than twenty lines spoken) but via this brilliant use of shifting perspective. At its most basic, In the City of Sylvia is about the male gaze on the female, and much of its 84 minutes is spent lingering on a seemingly endless sea of beautiful female faces. It's the type of film that could easily slip into pretentious twaddle, but skillfully manages to avoid doing so. Divided into three distinct chapters (1st, 2nd and 3rd night - interesting, considering that the bulk of the action takes place in the daytime), it's not until around the halfway point that we get any semblance of a story. Our unnamed poet/dreamer has returned to Strasbourg, hoping to locate the titular Sylvia, a woman he met there six years earlier. What happened between the two of them is unknown, but the intensity of his quest indicates that it was more than a random encounter. Spending his days at an outdoor cafe in front of a dramatic arts college, he scans the crowd, pausing every so often on particular women, many of whom he will sketch in his notebook, though with barely enough detail to distinguish them as individuals. (One drawing is simply labeled 'elles'.) The cafe scenes begin in a wide shot, and much like that final scene in Caché, we're not sure where our eye is meant to land. The soundtrack is a steady hum of ambient cafe babble, though at times snippets of conversations are intentionally brought to the foreground -- a French couple arguing, Germans discussing their vacation, etc. Suddenly we spot the young man, staring. We then cut to his perspective, seeing exactly who it is he is looking at. Characters in the fore- and background are blurred, though the next time we see this same shot the focus will have changed to whomever he is gazing upon at that moment. There's a remarkable effect as the perspective shifts from the objective, where we are given the opportunity to set our eyes on any number of characters, to the forced subjective gaze of the poet. This shared subjective gaze naturally gives rise to a level of objectification, while at the same resulting in our own objective blindness. It's a gaze that captures, and at the same time is captured. Though our poet is clearly the sensitive, romantic type (and devilishly handsome to boot), there is a level of creepiness to the whole affair, particularly when he begins following (read: stalking) a woman for about thirty minutes through the labyrinthine streets of Strasbourg. Guerín doesn't allow the film to slip into the romantic pretentiousness of, say, a Téchiné film, and it is for this reason alone that the film succeeds in actually being about something, and not a shallow excuse to stare at beautiful women. What we have is a film that manages to capture desire and a sense of loss, and the lack of a detailed storyline only serves to distill them to their purest forms. The film's final chapter finds Guerín repeating much of the previous day's events, but through a level of abstraction that plays with our senses. Snippets of conversation, or music, are reheard, but in unlikely places. Characters reappear unexpectedly. Ultimately, the film winds up subverting the very ideas of perspective that formed the first two-thirds, with windows, mirrors and reflections making it impossible to latch on to exactly what we are seeing, let alone how and why.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 14, Week 1

From the depths of the emotional and physical frazzle that is NYFF burnout, where hangovers and sleep deprivation have become the order of the day, comes the start of round 14 of Filmbrain's weekly screen capture quiz! Along with the fatigue that comes with having attended nearly every NYFF press screening, things have been super-busy with Benten Films, and I've spent a fair amount of time over the past few weeks negotiating deals for two new titles, as well as finalizing the design concept for the Quiet City & Dance Party, USA release. There's been precious little time to catch up on reviews, which is annoying considering how many interesting films I've seen. (I'm been dying to write about In the City of Sylvia, which now surpasses Silent Light as the best film at the festival. I've managed to churn out only three sentences so far.) However, Aaron and I have had a lot of fun recording a series of NYFF podcasts for Greencine.com with guest critics Manohla Dargis, Glenn Kenny, Charles Taylor, Amy Taubin, Andrew O'Hehir, and Mike D'Angelo. Press screenings end this week, and with any luck I'll find the time to actually write about them. For the benefit of the newcomers, a quick rundown of the way the game is played: Each Wednesday morning a new screen quiz will be posted. Answers may be submitted, via email, up until the morning of the following quiz. (Please don't post answers in the comments section.) Some quizzes will contain an additional bonus point question, which is a good opportunity to flex your cinephilic muscles and clobber the competition. At the end of twelve weeks, the top three scorers will be allowed to choose any DVD used in the round as a prize. We'll start off, as usual, with an easy one.  Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 13 - The Winners!

Walter Lang's On the Riviera is by no means a great film – it's solidly mediocre at best. However, this musical comedy of errors does star the beautiful Ms. Tierney (looking undeniably gorgeous), with Danny Kaye doing a fine job in dual roles as an entertainer and a wealthy businessman. (Hence the alt-text clue, "Gene with two Ks.") But what makes the film truly interesting is that it features the actual painting of Gene Tierney that got Dana Andrews all hot and bothered in Preminger's Laura. It's a rare opportunity to see the painting in color. Yeah, it's kind of geeky, but I bought the DVD for that reason alone. We're in the middle of week three of NYFF press screenings, and I've just seen Gus van Sant's Paranoid Park (one of his best), and Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, which I'm sad to report was a bit of a letdown. Oh well. . . Though many of you racked up an impressive 10-13 points this round, only three people managed to get a perfect score of 14 (12 + 2 bonus questions.) They are: Mike F, Max G, and JK M. Congrats you three – once again any DVD used in this round is yours for the asking. (Sorry though, I can't offer the Cassavetes box.) Thanks to all who participated in what was a fairly difficult round. Be sure to check back next week for the start of Round 14. Tell your friends!

NYFF Review: Stellet Licht (Silent Light)

I'll admit to having engaged in a fair amount of eye rolling when I first read that Stellet Licht, Carlos Reygadas' third feature, was to be a tale of adultery set in a north Mexico Mennonite community, with dialog entirely in Plautdietsch to boot. For even though Battle in Heaven made my Top Ten of 2006, it bothered me that Reygadas would once again build a film around a (potentially) controversial conceit. Yet perhaps it's fair to ask – would Japón have received as much attention without the explicit octogenarian sex? Would Battle in Heaven have landed US distribution were it not for its beauty and the beast blowjob scene? Probably not. But has it reached the point where cinematic provocation is now de rigueur for Reygadas? Thankfully, no. The microcosm that is the world of Stellet Licht is no gimmick, but rather the perfect stage for this passion play that is as much about spirituality and sacrifice as it is sex and love. Yet Reygadas isn't interested in ethnography – all we glean of Mennonite culture is that they are a deeply pious bunch with familial and societal roles that are both traditional and unambiguous. Reygadas sees them as archetypes, and in a recent interview explained how this enabled him to "concentrate on the essential: the love story." On the surface we have a simple love triangle – Johan (Cornelio Wall Feher), husband to Esther (Miriam Toews) and father of six, is having an affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz). Though completely open about the affair with both friends and family, Johan suffers a crisis of faith (is Marianne a test from god, or the devil himself?) as well as a struggle of the heart over which woman to choose. (In this regard the film shares quite a bit with Valeska Grisebach's Sehnsucht.) As with his other films, Stellet Licht's tremendous power comes not from its narrative, but from Reygadas' aesthetics; a masterful, poetic blending of son et image. The film exists at the intersection of John Ford and Terrence Malick, what with its epic landscapes, use of shadow, and depiction of nature and the elements as almost sentient beings. (A minor character wears a highly conspicuous 'Ford Country' shirt.) Spiritually there is an obvious nod to Dreyer's Ordet, though the human drama unfolds in way that is decidedly Bergmanesque. The film opens (appropriately enough) with a breathtaking six-minute shot that is no less a recreation of the opening passages of Genesis, with its separating of light from the darkness. The silence soon gives rise to increasingly louder caterwauls of livestock, and finally we are introduced to Johan and his family, sitting in silent prayer around the breakfast table, the ticking of a clock the only sound we hear. The dawn of man indeed. The remaining two-plus hours consist of one jaw-dropping sequence after another, yet not once does it venture into style-over-substance territory. There's a heightened sense of naturalism to it all, particularly in the relationships between the characters themselves, and the physical world in which the film is set. A scene with Johan and his family at a bathing pool is harmonious to the point of feeling more like a bit of cinéma vérité than scripted drama. A close-up extended kiss between Johan and Marianne in a field of flowers (complete with lens flare) feels almost intrusive. Still, Reygadas does add a few playful surprises including an unexpected weather reveal, and an even more unexpected appearance of Jacques Brel. The sacrificial act that closes the film (a point of contention for some critics) is at once both a depiction of spiritual immanence (not always easy to achieve in film), as well as a testament to the selfless power of love; equal parts sacred and profane. (In some ways the film is the antipode of Secret Sunshine, but that's a topic for a separate post.) Stellet Licht has stayed with me more than any of the other fifteen films I've seen so far at the festival. A near-masterpiece that should silence detractors who view Reygadas as little more than a courter of controversy. This is a work of sheer beauty -- a film that serves to remind us why it is we love the art of cinema so much. Stellet Licht screens at the New York Film Festival on  Tuesday 2 October @ 6:00, and Wednesday 3 October @ 9:15. Sell your body or your soul to get a ticket. Bonus feature: Aaron Hillis and I chatted with Salon's Andrew O'Hehir about Stellet Licht for the Greencine NYFF podcast. Listen or download here.