Various, 2007
Oddly, but also kinda not, this Cannes-anniversary-tribute omnibus is screening as part of the 2008 French Film Festival; each work a three-minute homage to the act of cinema-going, each work directed by a bonafide film-art star.
Note: annoyingly, neither the Coen Bros. nor the Michael Cimino works screened. Apparently the Coen’s has been absent from a number of screenings/dvd’s but appears on the (upcoming?) US dvd, but Cimino’s? Who knows?Apparently it features the long-lost zeppelin being choked by a Cuban singer. Crazy stay crazy, yo. It did, however, feature David Lynch’s “special edition” piece.
Anyway, in order of appearance:
Raymond Depardon’s Open-Air Cinema is the perfect tone-setting opening: straight-forward, subtle; it being merely and nicely the before/during/after of an open-air cinema’s dusk screening. Faces in the dark, friends talking afterwards, all that shit…
Takeshi Kitano’s One Fine Day is a typically broad parody of Anthony Carew viewing a Kitano film. Heavily features Kitano’s wonderful Kids Return!
Theo Angelopoulos’ Three Minutes features regular composer Eleni Karaindrou’s most melodramatic work yet, but is a typically lugubrious affair; it being a melancholic and cryptic homage to Mastroianni (who, here, is actually the entire anthology’s tributary).
Andrei Konchalovsky’s In The Dark is an underbaked portrait of a woman far more interested in watching the films screening in her cinema (particularly 8½) than running the cinema itself.
Nanni Moretti’s Diary Of A Spectator proves furthermore, as if it were needed, that Moretti is possibly the warmest and most curious and informed comedian working in cinema, and here, his accounts of particular films seen in particular cinemas is as personal and indeed funny as his entire body of work.
Hou Hsiau-hsien’s The Electric Princess House is a nostalgic period-piece of sorts that continues his fight against the fade; a gorgeous Terence Davies-esque series of images-within-images (largely from Bresson’s Mouchette) and a potent portrait of missing memories.
The Dardennes’ Darkness begins as a quintessentially realist and typically physical single-shot that, much like much of their work, becomes a moving piece about isolation and connection. Not for nothing, this remarkable piece – the whole’s most intense and least openly celebratory - takes its entire audio from Bresson’s Au Hasard Batlhasar.
David Lynch’s Absurda feels like an outtake from the nu-Lynch canon, a lazily trademarked dream-like collage of unsettling sounds and gee-whiz Americana imagery.
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Anna takes some cues from his epic Babel, this work a perfectly orchestrated single-shot of a blind woman’s emotional response to Godard’s Contempt, and although Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is by far the most gloriously cinematic on show here it is possibly the only overwritten piece in the collection.
Zhang Yimou’s Movie Night surprisingly begins with an explosion of movement and noise, set as it is amongst the quiet and ambient mood-pieces on display here; its crowd-friendly mixture of children and provinciality giving way to become a moving image of community.
Amos Gitai’s The Dybbuk Of Haifa is the most politicised work here, Gitai drawing the oppressive past into the ever-oppressive present. A potent statement about the relationship between the politics of cinema and the politics of government.
Jane Campion’s The Lady Bug, the only female entry here, is a rather Campion-esque cute/not-cute piece “about” a dancing lady bug and the cleaner trying to kill her, her images seemingly speaking to the suppression of the female voice in cinema, or indeed the voice of creativity. Shot by Melbournian DP Greig Fraser.
Atom Egoyan’s Artaud Double Bill, his best work in years, is practically drowning in zeitgeist: two friends both seeing different films (here, Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie and Egoyan’s own early work The Adjuster) sms each other constantly with their evolving opinions on each respective film, eventually just live-streaming each film to the other. “Death”? Life!
Aki Kaurismäki’s The Foundry announces itself instantly as Kaurismäki’s work, his trademarked deadpan hobos - as always, dressed in their father’s clothes - piling in from the production line to watch early Lumiere Bros. test footage.
OliverAssayas’ Upsurge, an oddly meandering b&w piece, is almost as aimless as its lonely bag-thieving protagonist; Assayas’ cinephilic portrayal of cinemas-as-meeting-place nearly buried under the obscurity.
Youssef Chahine’s 47 Years Later is a clunky and uninspiring attempt at Inspirational, Chahine’s Cannes-lifetime-award-speech message to young creators: “It’s worth it, kids!”
Tsai Ming-liang’s It’s A Dream is a predictably rapturous and gorgeous work of “pure cinema”, his always densely composed imagery itself a constant tribute to cinema, and here his temporal collage of the personal melting into the collective becomes the whole’s most delicately cinematic piece, and my personal favourite.
Lars von Trier’s Occupations is the piece most of us would have made, a cathartic fantasy-fulfillment that is as surprisingly violent as it is, of course, predictable. However, more so than any other entry this piece’s title invites further examination, prompting one to query renowned asshole von Trier’s own seemingly astute perception of himself and, indeed, his work.
Raoul Ruiz’s The Gift has one thing no other piece does: the beautiful Michael Lonsdale. Ostensibly about the differing values societies place on the medium itself, it is surprisingly (or perhaps not) the only effort to feature two people talking to each other mid-screening (ok, so that’s two things).
Claude Lelouch’s The Cinema Around The Corner, as the punning title suggests, is adrift in a sea of Golden Hollywood; a touching and personal telling of Lelouch’s in-utero cinematic education.
Gus Van Sant’s First Kiss embodies everything his critics loathe: vapid imagery, the over-prioritisation of sexuality and an attendant lustful gaze. It is kinda pointless and dull, three minutes being far less luxury than his masterful features – with their re-visited actions and polymorphous meanings – enjoy.
Roman Polanski’s stupid Cinema Erotique is basically a fucking Tropfest gag, and actually says nothing about cinema. Possibly my least favourite work.
David Cronenberg’s At The Suicide Of The Last Jew In The World In The Last Cinema In The World, a nice companion piece to his 2000 death-in-the-cinema short Camera, is again the dystopian voice up in this party. Starring Cronenberg himself, it is cynical enough to carry its single bitter premise, it being a cultural call-to-arms of sorts that is both frighteningly prescient and funny.
Wong Kar Wai’s I Travelled 9,000km To Give It To You, much like Van Sant’s, could be characterised as totally Wong Kar Wai: all impressionistic style and hollow imagery. Taking its titular inspiration from Godard’s Alphaville, its tissue-thin physicality seems to be, nonetheless, from a different film.
Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is My Romeo? continues his preoccupation with the real-life narratives contained in the human face, here taken from a crowd of women watching Romeo And Juliet’s famous denouement. It is emotional and compelling, Kiarostami’s experiment seemingly an endless revelation.
Billie August’s The Last Dating Show was, I think, the longest work here, or at least it seemed that way. By far the most narrative-driven of the whole, the shaggy-dog-story contained here could have taken place in a supermarket or a park; this entry - much like Polanski’s - seemingly devoid of any real meaning, or at least anything greater than “first dates are cute, and sometimes they happen in cinemas”.
Elia Suleiman’s Irtebak is a painfully unfunny effort that is at once both simple and complicated, his typically deadpan dramatisation of a ”painfully unfunny” director’s Q&A another surprisingly empty statement.
Manoel de Oliveira’s Sole Meeting is kinda exactly what one could expect from the entire damn planet’s oldest living filmmaker: a near-senile bit about Nikita Khrushchev meeting the fucking Pope. That it has absolutely nothing to do with cinema is likely the result of this piece having been made two years prior.
Walter Salles’ 5,557 Miles From Cannes, which isn’t about Truffaut’s The 400 Blows at all, would have been much more entertaining were I more of a Latin music enthusiast. Alas…
Wim Wenders’ War In Peace features, possibly, a very bad idea: showing some Congolese men – enjoying a year of peace after a century of war - Ridley Scott’s war-porn Black Hawk Down in a makeshift clay hut. I mean, maybe not all three hours of Kings Of The Road, but was nothing else available?
Chen Kaige’s Zhanxiou Village conjures up memories of Cinema Paradiso, a paean to cinephilia that I really thought would be over-reproduced here. Another b&w period piece, it resembles the structure of the classic ”you, your son, and your father” generation freeze-frame: a 2007 short film about some boys in 1950 watching Chaplin’s 1928 classic The Circus.
Ken Loach’s Happy Ending hilariously bitchslaps Hollywood in what is, ultimately, the whole’s perfect finale. There is, indeed, nothing on. Fuck the Odeon!
