La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1976)
Godard's La Chinoise is a film surrounded by luck. It is his thirteenth narrative. If you're superstitious, this will be triggering your "triskaidekaphobia" (fear of the number 13). If you're a christian, you're thinking of the Epiphany, or the number of participants at the Last Supper (noting that Judas Iscariot, according to the bible, was the thirteenth seat at the table). If you're a overweight middle schooler being picked for dodge ball in Gym, you're holding back tears from being the extra one in line, chosen last, and sure to be the first one pegged once the game begins.
In my case, the way luck factors into my experience in attending La Chinoise is simply this: I am lucky that after seeing this film, I didn't slap a bystander on the street and enter into a hysterical fit out in the open on the corner of Bleecker Street near NYU. I was expecting to be frustrated, as La Chinoise was made during Godard's obnoxious transitional phase. I was expecting a political gab-fest. I was expecting Jean-Pierre Leaud. I was expecting big, interruptive block lettering in between every scene in pretentious half-sentences.
What I wasn't expecting was a cinematic test-tube baby, attempting to fertilize the phallic hollywood conformo-sperm with its round head of concrete narrative and its flapping, chronological, dramatic flagellum, with the natural antithesis disjunctive egg, wrapped in an esoteric membrane of jump cuts, shaking the petri-dish with its blatant mockery and rejection of narrative form. However, Godard delivered.
I sat, for a torturous two hours and twenty minutes in the most uncomfortable seats in history, the Film Forum theater chairs, staring at a 4:3 screen and trying to get my eyes to focus after a tiring transit across the city. We sat in the front row, so that we would be the first to receive the images, a la Bertolluci. In retrospect, the film was even worse up close in your face, and I ended up only being the first to receive a slipped vertebrae.
I have to remind myself that I have a heart, and give some credit where it is due. The restoration was gorgeous (see, positivity!) and Jean-Pierre Leaud always adds a little padding to even the most disappointing films. Godard's funny bone, as usual, irked out as much laughter as a bad toast by the best man at your good friends wedding (not a plentiful amount). Jean-Pierre stole most of the laughs purely with his body language, with a few chuckles also burgled by a series of upper-class urbanite pro-communist rhetoric recitals spouted by Anne Wiazemsky clad in an outfit reminiscent of Patty Hearst (sans automatic rifle, replaced instead with a toy rifle that folds to look like a stereo).
Up to this point everything was fine. It seemed as though all the film was going to chalk up to be in essence was a silly little riff on how trite the "plight" of the activist middle-class youth forever trapped by their trusts and inheritances from becoming the full-fledged, card-carrying, patch-laden, jungle-hardened revolutionaries they so longed to be, complete with sex appeal and guaranteed peer idolization. I didn't think it would be too bad to sit back and compare how little the same psychosis still linger in the "revolutionary" youth of today, in fact, the colors were nice and the subtitles were big, I was set to just roll on through and cross another Godard off my sticky-pad list.
Then, the median point hits in the film. Godard begins at first to start cultivating a dramatic underpinning amongst the hectic group-think bottled up in the small apart where the majority of the film remains (which is an interesting exploration of space in a way, to give a bit more credit). Suddenly the dialogue becomes segmented, divided between the reminiscences of one of the flat mates talking about how the situation was too much for him, interspersed with inane arguments between the several housemates, complete with peaking audio that could skin a cat out of fright, as well as sentences that start to trickle into the surreal (which I would have been fine with had it not come so severely out of left field) with poetic linguistics fogging up any clarity Godard had established with the first half of his film.
The film ended with a suicide, a homicide (with two tries no less!) and a finale featuring the...er...older sister? of Anne Wiazemsky's character shuttling around the now abandoned flat, ending finally with her scolding their ridiculousness and their negligence in allowing the suicide to happen. Then there were some block letters and a nice Michel Legrand song in the credits to stop me from punching a hole in the wall. The Chinese are in China, not in France.
Monday, October 29, 2007
A Short Text About Awe
IN RESPONSE TO:
- A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
- A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
"A Short Text About Awe"
The Careful Conventions of Krzysztof Kieślowski
by H.P. Willis
It has always seemed to me that the majority of humanities most worthy literary greats have very frequently come to verify the importance of their work all in a similar way. Each building upon their predecessor, these titanic figures of print attain their dignitary status once, and only once they have been able to successfully stretch the bounds of their talent into several careful and congruous volumes. These types of laborious works in several installments most effectively demonstrate longevity, close analysis, a tireless work ethic, and if executed correctly, can wonderfully exhibit an author's capability to command attention at length from even the most skeptical reader.
The ability to successfully work in this difficult mode of textual relation known as "cycle" or "series" separates the lesser temporary ambitions of many from the lasting mastery of the epic and harmonious works of few.
This notion of "the more the effort, the more the reward" seems to remain a generally accepted measure of merit. Provided the content fully lives up to the toil of the conquest, a work will always receive an ample boost solely based on its length and effort. This mode of judgement obviously not only exists in literature, but in the common distinction among all other languages of expression between works of attempt and works of accomplishment; between the frailty of aspiration and the power of execution.
If the Cinema, still an infant art form mothered with such heavy influence and parallels in the very same classical writings, has produced any masters of worth to the medium, it is those with a firm grasp of narrative who in the eyes of the public have earned their place amongst the immortals. The ability to transmit a concept or argument with only the purity of visual constructs today seems to be secondary in importance to films offering an audience loaded images that are crutched by either the cheap exit of startling effects, or with the use of heavy handed or superficial dialogue.
Still, the cycle work or the "catalogue" remains the dominant means of proving one's caliber regardless of genre. In the least each director primarily aims to create a basic succession of works wherein the chosen content or visuals will hopefully be able to translate across each episode understandably. Where most fail is in assuming that the content they derive is strong enough to carry itself through several segments without being too easily spelled out before reaching the climax of their order.
The few directors whose creative contributions have warranted being called "masterworks" typically only yield one to two of these works celebrated as "gems of cinematic breadth" throughout their entire careers.
Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland's premier auteur, therefore, is a true rarity in the short history of cinema. His gift has been made apparent in his famous prolificacy, creating his numerous bulk works of near perfection. A brilliant manipulator of alternation, each pack of films acts as a lexicon for his wholesale approach to cinema, as well as and index of the specifics of his artful direction for which he is lauded today.
In his lifetime, Kieslowski chose to transcend the "magnum opus" sought after by most filmmakers of the movements he was surrounded by. He worked instead on perfecting a body of gifted sequential panoramas of society and relationships, posing important questions about the human condition and the political climate of his surroundings as well as the greater population of the world. This pattern of intention is exhibited and studied most famously in works like The Decalogue and his Red, White, Blue trilogy.
Each collection's scale eclipses the common limits of the single feature, with a balance of both linear and disjunctive episodes arranged to more wholly capture the universal themes and intentions Kieslowski chooses to observe. The audience's intelligence (for once) is paid compliment, in that each film in Kieslowski's sweeping compositions, he means to challenge the viewer to draw several unspoken connections between each of his careful partitions. The viewer watching each vignette is gradually made aware of the greater significance in the combination of each of the series' parts. Kieslowski intends for this to be achieved through following the carefully threaded but often ambiguous argument or thesis that he rations out carefully between each section of the final work.
Kieslowski seems to have chosen carefully in his designating which of the two films out of his ten part series The Decalogue he wanted to expand further from their already epic original collection. He again chose to refrain from simply stretching short form into feature merely for the construction of an opus. Instead the two were expanded separately still as pieces of a larger whole, only meditated on a bit longer than the rest of the pieces in his ten piece suite.
Having before only seen the short within the series, I still find deep personal resonance in Kieslowski's communication even though its in short, television format. When viewed in solidarity as a more complete thought, Kieslowski's pieces still managed to maintain that resonance and yet pull it further with added detail, but again without exhausting the height of his narrative and cinematographic ability.
Both A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing accomplish an immaculate inspection of two difficult and controversial situations with a skillful composition that obviously denotes experience. Both employ the magic of glass and reflections, heavy psychological lighting achieved with filters and environmental light, a distinct attention to diegetic sound as well as marginal or fractionalized sound, and most noticeably a uniquely visual approach to character development and the establishment of power relationships, as opposed to the trend of simplistic expositional dialogue.
Although our modern commercial market thrives on various types of voyeurism, the sexual taboo of the "Peeping Tom" (or in this case the polish variation "Tomek") is still not endorsed by most of the general population. Outwardly it seems the majority of the film students discussing this piece last week claimed to find no personal connection to the protagonist in Love, or the subject matter at hand. Most admitted instinctively finding Tomek's behavior reproachable, and said they found it difficult to change their perspective after their initial impression of Tomek as well as the film's premise was established.
In reality I'm sure a good number of those same people publicly discrediting scopophilia have in some way or another dealt with the very same issue, or one similar. To claim naiveté in all matters sexual has become the Puritan's monument left for moral impact upon the psychological history of this and several other countries. Its sad to hear such shame in people, especially in the arts.
It has been my understanding that Kieslowski enacts a unique personal communication in his audiences choosing to abandon the interpersonal in favor of a silent exclusivity. Although it seems he intends the opposite, wanting for the human relationship to become more accessible even in the often dire or troubling circumstances his characters are placed within. One of his few faults may be his uncanny ability to create a psychological interior for each central character with the control he exhibits in detailing their internal lives and private nuances.
Like fellow master, Robert Bresson, Kieslowski highlights only the necessary elements (personal possessions, eating habits, tics or quirks) in each character's introduction. He carefully features each element visually, so directly that without a letter of dialogue he assures that his audience will properly assign close to the appropriate level of sympathy to each of the personalities he profiles.
Yet Kieslowski is mindfully inclusive, unlike Bresson, of the marginal, unessential details closely neighboring the elements he chooses to emphasize. Kieslowski specifically seems aware that the chaos provided by these devalued particulars is what normally fills completely the leftover spaces in real life. He gives weight to the unimportant in order to sate the gaps of empty fiction inherent in film's sterile dramatization. This sounds impossible, for a filmmaker to both highlight directly what he chooses, while leaving all of the other scraps and minutia in the visual conversation. Still, using frame and light to the height of their efficiency, Kieslowski can let the camera watch the important with the most direct priority while never neglecting to underscore the unimportant.
His success in exploring the nature of each primary character unintentionally distances many of the characters he has interact in an effort to support human communication and interrelationship. This problem seems only to have been resolved slightly in the Red, White, Blue trio. In each, throughout the first quarter or half of the film, it is clear that we are expected to distinctly identify with the cerebral depth and subconscious nature of the three troubled women, Julie, the composer's widow, Karol, the immigrant, and Valentine, the despondent student, who at the beginning of each plot seem likely to remain the central focus of our attention and sympathy as the films progress.
Each of the three films somehow defeats this idea of the expected singularity of character by first invalidating the innocence of each girl when one or several outside characters interrupts their psychosomatic empathy
by calling them out in some fashion about their inconsistencies or faults. Then Kieslowski enters simultaneously the psyche of one of the secondary characters while still vaguely continuing his earlier observation of the central woman in each film.
In Red, his final film, the main examination of the film ends up having little to do with the girl we've been following, aside from her importance to the climax shared by all three films (a ferry sinking with characters from each of the trilogy's episodes aboard.) The focus gently shifts away from the girl's mental state, as she suddenly is made to act more as a catalyst or, rather, a pivot attaching two external characters who seem to have very little in common. Finally she brings them together without intending to, enabling the two men to discover their similarities and eventually develop a strong fraternal relationship (the theme so unexpectedly imparted by the film.) These three films are unique in their clear cut departures between focal characters abruptly in each episode.
This is not to say that A Short Film About Love or A Short Film About Killing in any way evade human connectivity. Both most certainly address relationships from a dualistic viewpoint, showing the situation from both the perspective of the predatory as well as the perspective of the prey. Both act as separate political commentary on two debated aspects of modern human existence. The films employ a psychological context not easily achieved in films addressing ruthless murder or voyeurism.
Like the rest of The Decalogue, Kieslowski is able to use the sociopolitical backdrop of economic depression within a communist state to heighten the cravings and dependencies of his subjects, weaving a complex membrane intended to rouse his audience into both an open discussion of external global conditions as well as an amazing internal conference about quality of life.
Tomek is unabashed of his anonymous terrorizing of Magda, not once cowering from being called out to reveal himself and admit his obsessions, a trait uncommon among fetishists. Jasek seems to not understand or even regard self control, human decency, or the value of human life, until faced with the violent theft of his own existence, and it is soon apparent that there is a backwards sort of innocence in his callous incomprehension of his actions.
Kieslowski has effectively created a rarity in his portrayal of two deviants who, to the audience, may actually appear innocent for momentary glimpses, or even longer. In fact, the typically empowered male predatory degenerate who we are used to seeing control a disturbing sexual or emotional latitude in films both become the casualty of their own passions when Tomek's forthcoming nature reverses the scenario in Magda's favor and Jasek desperately explains his upbringing to the young lawyer.
Kieslowski consumes us in the distress between these two characters in each film, both of whom we sympathize with, choosing not to thoughtlessly exclude either side of the emotional spectrum at play in either film. Another oblique approach Kieslowski engages with Tomek's story is the inclusion of "love" in a piece which, disregarding the title, gives the first impression of a more animalistic study of unwanted exploitation.
The intimacy of Kieslowski's filmmaking exemplified in his attention within both films to a careful intellectually disturbing tone and a calm realism in his violence and sexual tension lends perfectly to a very layered discussion of loneliness, compulsion, and a loss of innocence in both elongated chapters of The Decalogue.
The controversy of each film Kieslowski produces rings to me as not provocative enough in a commercial sense to market as a bankable shock commodity, especially in an America with a deep hatred for subtitles. I still remain reverent of Kieslowski's filmmaking, even his solitary pieces like The Double Life of Veronique. Like the volumes of Dostoevsky, of Chaucer, of Styron, of Salinger, or even the loose encyclopedic legend of Kerouac, Kieslowski's silent wisdom is most evident in his ability to so carefully control a length of time that would seem impossible to most to keep so sensible or collected, while never sacrificing his speculative nature, imaginative content, or any of his dynamic approaches to shooting, framing, lighting, and the power of clarity no film maker should ever think to abandon.
Since my first attempt at soaking in The Decalogue, and after reading for a greater understanding about his handling the span of an epic like the Decalogue in his autobiography Kieslowski on Kieslowski, the only effective word I can use to advertise how his films have affected me and influenced me is the word "awe" returning from the title of this paper. Awe simply because his films are both incredibly disturbing and incredibly beautiful in tandem without a stitch in the middle for you to notice the gap. Awe at a filmmaker who can effortlessly move ideologies and questions that few people dare to address without having to reach for the hysterical or the pacifistic in order to translate both his qualms and his satisfactions about life and humanity with such ease. Awe at a filmmaker who can make films that remain just as classic as the words of any classic book.
- A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
- A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
"A Short Text About Awe"
The Careful Conventions of Krzysztof Kieślowski
by H.P. Willis
It has always seemed to me that the majority of humanities most worthy literary greats have very frequently come to verify the importance of their work all in a similar way. Each building upon their predecessor, these titanic figures of print attain their dignitary status once, and only once they have been able to successfully stretch the bounds of their talent into several careful and congruous volumes. These types of laborious works in several installments most effectively demonstrate longevity, close analysis, a tireless work ethic, and if executed correctly, can wonderfully exhibit an author's capability to command attention at length from even the most skeptical reader.
The ability to successfully work in this difficult mode of textual relation known as "cycle" or "series" separates the lesser temporary ambitions of many from the lasting mastery of the epic and harmonious works of few.
This notion of "the more the effort, the more the reward" seems to remain a generally accepted measure of merit. Provided the content fully lives up to the toil of the conquest, a work will always receive an ample boost solely based on its length and effort. This mode of judgement obviously not only exists in literature, but in the common distinction among all other languages of expression between works of attempt and works of accomplishment; between the frailty of aspiration and the power of execution.
If the Cinema, still an infant art form mothered with such heavy influence and parallels in the very same classical writings, has produced any masters of worth to the medium, it is those with a firm grasp of narrative who in the eyes of the public have earned their place amongst the immortals. The ability to transmit a concept or argument with only the purity of visual constructs today seems to be secondary in importance to films offering an audience loaded images that are crutched by either the cheap exit of startling effects, or with the use of heavy handed or superficial dialogue.
Still, the cycle work or the "catalogue" remains the dominant means of proving one's caliber regardless of genre. In the least each director primarily aims to create a basic succession of works wherein the chosen content or visuals will hopefully be able to translate across each episode understandably. Where most fail is in assuming that the content they derive is strong enough to carry itself through several segments without being too easily spelled out before reaching the climax of their order.
The few directors whose creative contributions have warranted being called "masterworks" typically only yield one to two of these works celebrated as "gems of cinematic breadth" throughout their entire careers.
Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland's premier auteur, therefore, is a true rarity in the short history of cinema. His gift has been made apparent in his famous prolificacy, creating his numerous bulk works of near perfection. A brilliant manipulator of alternation, each pack of films acts as a lexicon for his wholesale approach to cinema, as well as and index of the specifics of his artful direction for which he is lauded today.
In his lifetime, Kieslowski chose to transcend the "magnum opus" sought after by most filmmakers of the movements he was surrounded by. He worked instead on perfecting a body of gifted sequential panoramas of society and relationships, posing important questions about the human condition and the political climate of his surroundings as well as the greater population of the world. This pattern of intention is exhibited and studied most famously in works like The Decalogue and his Red, White, Blue trilogy.
Each collection's scale eclipses the common limits of the single feature, with a balance of both linear and disjunctive episodes arranged to more wholly capture the universal themes and intentions Kieslowski chooses to observe. The audience's intelligence (for once) is paid compliment, in that each film in Kieslowski's sweeping compositions, he means to challenge the viewer to draw several unspoken connections between each of his careful partitions. The viewer watching each vignette is gradually made aware of the greater significance in the combination of each of the series' parts. Kieslowski intends for this to be achieved through following the carefully threaded but often ambiguous argument or thesis that he rations out carefully between each section of the final work.
Kieslowski seems to have chosen carefully in his designating which of the two films out of his ten part series The Decalogue he wanted to expand further from their already epic original collection. He again chose to refrain from simply stretching short form into feature merely for the construction of an opus. Instead the two were expanded separately still as pieces of a larger whole, only meditated on a bit longer than the rest of the pieces in his ten piece suite.
Having before only seen the short within the series, I still find deep personal resonance in Kieslowski's communication even though its in short, television format. When viewed in solidarity as a more complete thought, Kieslowski's pieces still managed to maintain that resonance and yet pull it further with added detail, but again without exhausting the height of his narrative and cinematographic ability.
Both A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing accomplish an immaculate inspection of two difficult and controversial situations with a skillful composition that obviously denotes experience. Both employ the magic of glass and reflections, heavy psychological lighting achieved with filters and environmental light, a distinct attention to diegetic sound as well as marginal or fractionalized sound, and most noticeably a uniquely visual approach to character development and the establishment of power relationships, as opposed to the trend of simplistic expositional dialogue.
Although our modern commercial market thrives on various types of voyeurism, the sexual taboo of the "Peeping Tom" (or in this case the polish variation "Tomek") is still not endorsed by most of the general population. Outwardly it seems the majority of the film students discussing this piece last week claimed to find no personal connection to the protagonist in Love, or the subject matter at hand. Most admitted instinctively finding Tomek's behavior reproachable, and said they found it difficult to change their perspective after their initial impression of Tomek as well as the film's premise was established.
In reality I'm sure a good number of those same people publicly discrediting scopophilia have in some way or another dealt with the very same issue, or one similar. To claim naiveté in all matters sexual has become the Puritan's monument left for moral impact upon the psychological history of this and several other countries. Its sad to hear such shame in people, especially in the arts.
It has been my understanding that Kieslowski enacts a unique personal communication in his audiences choosing to abandon the interpersonal in favor of a silent exclusivity. Although it seems he intends the opposite, wanting for the human relationship to become more accessible even in the often dire or troubling circumstances his characters are placed within. One of his few faults may be his uncanny ability to create a psychological interior for each central character with the control he exhibits in detailing their internal lives and private nuances.
Like fellow master, Robert Bresson, Kieslowski highlights only the necessary elements (personal possessions, eating habits, tics or quirks) in each character's introduction. He carefully features each element visually, so directly that without a letter of dialogue he assures that his audience will properly assign close to the appropriate level of sympathy to each of the personalities he profiles.
Yet Kieslowski is mindfully inclusive, unlike Bresson, of the marginal, unessential details closely neighboring the elements he chooses to emphasize. Kieslowski specifically seems aware that the chaos provided by these devalued particulars is what normally fills completely the leftover spaces in real life. He gives weight to the unimportant in order to sate the gaps of empty fiction inherent in film's sterile dramatization. This sounds impossible, for a filmmaker to both highlight directly what he chooses, while leaving all of the other scraps and minutia in the visual conversation. Still, using frame and light to the height of their efficiency, Kieslowski can let the camera watch the important with the most direct priority while never neglecting to underscore the unimportant.
His success in exploring the nature of each primary character unintentionally distances many of the characters he has interact in an effort to support human communication and interrelationship. This problem seems only to have been resolved slightly in the Red, White, Blue trio. In each, throughout the first quarter or half of the film, it is clear that we are expected to distinctly identify with the cerebral depth and subconscious nature of the three troubled women, Julie, the composer's widow, Karol, the immigrant, and Valentine, the despondent student, who at the beginning of each plot seem likely to remain the central focus of our attention and sympathy as the films progress.
Each of the three films somehow defeats this idea of the expected singularity of character by first invalidating the innocence of each girl when one or several outside characters interrupts their psychosomatic empathy
by calling them out in some fashion about their inconsistencies or faults. Then Kieslowski enters simultaneously the psyche of one of the secondary characters while still vaguely continuing his earlier observation of the central woman in each film.
In Red, his final film, the main examination of the film ends up having little to do with the girl we've been following, aside from her importance to the climax shared by all three films (a ferry sinking with characters from each of the trilogy's episodes aboard.) The focus gently shifts away from the girl's mental state, as she suddenly is made to act more as a catalyst or, rather, a pivot attaching two external characters who seem to have very little in common. Finally she brings them together without intending to, enabling the two men to discover their similarities and eventually develop a strong fraternal relationship (the theme so unexpectedly imparted by the film.) These three films are unique in their clear cut departures between focal characters abruptly in each episode.
This is not to say that A Short Film About Love or A Short Film About Killing in any way evade human connectivity. Both most certainly address relationships from a dualistic viewpoint, showing the situation from both the perspective of the predatory as well as the perspective of the prey. Both act as separate political commentary on two debated aspects of modern human existence. The films employ a psychological context not easily achieved in films addressing ruthless murder or voyeurism.
Like the rest of The Decalogue, Kieslowski is able to use the sociopolitical backdrop of economic depression within a communist state to heighten the cravings and dependencies of his subjects, weaving a complex membrane intended to rouse his audience into both an open discussion of external global conditions as well as an amazing internal conference about quality of life.
Tomek is unabashed of his anonymous terrorizing of Magda, not once cowering from being called out to reveal himself and admit his obsessions, a trait uncommon among fetishists. Jasek seems to not understand or even regard self control, human decency, or the value of human life, until faced with the violent theft of his own existence, and it is soon apparent that there is a backwards sort of innocence in his callous incomprehension of his actions.
Kieslowski has effectively created a rarity in his portrayal of two deviants who, to the audience, may actually appear innocent for momentary glimpses, or even longer. In fact, the typically empowered male predatory degenerate who we are used to seeing control a disturbing sexual or emotional latitude in films both become the casualty of their own passions when Tomek's forthcoming nature reverses the scenario in Magda's favor and Jasek desperately explains his upbringing to the young lawyer.
Kieslowski consumes us in the distress between these two characters in each film, both of whom we sympathize with, choosing not to thoughtlessly exclude either side of the emotional spectrum at play in either film. Another oblique approach Kieslowski engages with Tomek's story is the inclusion of "love" in a piece which, disregarding the title, gives the first impression of a more animalistic study of unwanted exploitation.
The intimacy of Kieslowski's filmmaking exemplified in his attention within both films to a careful intellectually disturbing tone and a calm realism in his violence and sexual tension lends perfectly to a very layered discussion of loneliness, compulsion, and a loss of innocence in both elongated chapters of The Decalogue.
The controversy of each film Kieslowski produces rings to me as not provocative enough in a commercial sense to market as a bankable shock commodity, especially in an America with a deep hatred for subtitles. I still remain reverent of Kieslowski's filmmaking, even his solitary pieces like The Double Life of Veronique. Like the volumes of Dostoevsky, of Chaucer, of Styron, of Salinger, or even the loose encyclopedic legend of Kerouac, Kieslowski's silent wisdom is most evident in his ability to so carefully control a length of time that would seem impossible to most to keep so sensible or collected, while never sacrificing his speculative nature, imaginative content, or any of his dynamic approaches to shooting, framing, lighting, and the power of clarity no film maker should ever think to abandon.
Since my first attempt at soaking in The Decalogue, and after reading for a greater understanding about his handling the span of an epic like the Decalogue in his autobiography Kieslowski on Kieslowski, the only effective word I can use to advertise how his films have affected me and influenced me is the word "awe" returning from the title of this paper. Awe simply because his films are both incredibly disturbing and incredibly beautiful in tandem without a stitch in the middle for you to notice the gap. Awe at a filmmaker who can effortlessly move ideologies and questions that few people dare to address without having to reach for the hysterical or the pacifistic in order to translate both his qualms and his satisfactions about life and humanity with such ease. Awe at a filmmaker who can make films that remain just as classic as the words of any classic book.
Control
Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)
The first sentence of this review couldn't be anything other than "this film was absolutely the best film I have seen in over a year and is strongly jockeying for a slot in my all time favorites." Shedding away my established obsession with the film's topic, the band Joy Division and the tumultuous life and untimely suicide of the band's front-man, Ian Curtis, as well as my feverish, fan-boy tachycardia at the slightest mention of the film's wizard of a director, Netherlander Anton Corbijn, I would most assuredly be matched in my enthusiasm for this film had I simply been seeing it without knowing the slightest thing about it.
Biopics seem to have been growing into themselves over the past several years, with each character-study piece being released and directed in a variety diverse modes and formats. This has allowed the biopic as a genus to artfully avoid any major commonalities that would render this newborn "genre" too stale or easily identifiable. The black and white brilliance of Control strengthens this individuality of style, by engaging the genius of Anton Corbijn's photographic fashion of filmmaking with both brilliant acting and a compelling emotional fall-from-grace story (case in point: at the end of the film, I cried really hard, along with most of the theater at the Film Forum; even the snottiest of NYU kitsch mongers was bawling; it was that serious).
The familiarity of Corbijn's distinctive composition and use of ridiculously deep contrast and de-saturation fits this film and its subject matter like a glove. Corbijn, (very seldom recognized despite the success of his work) is responsible for directing some of the most iconic 1980's black and white music videos of his era, many of which are still are played on today's music television. Corbijn worked closely with Curtis and Joy Division from very early on, volunteering as their official photographer. He then later moved on to make dozens of music videos for many renowned music groups, such as Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and most famously his prolific work with the band U2). Many shots in Control were big on the same empty framing and use of lots of negative space, as well as an affinity for hard edges and settings with little ornamentation, all traits that are often associated with his music videos.
Sparsity reigned with triumph throughout the work. Scenes were driven by the majesty of performance for the most part. The backgrounds, conversely, were designed to amplify through minimalism the alienation and tight-lipped poverty of the British countryside during the sixties and seventies.
This design was followed closely, unless, that is, Corbijn awarded that an object was intended to reflect a psychological preoccupation or a physical frailty, in which case lo-fi, hand-made elements, or daily items of the working-class were made to represent their users through association. For example, Corbijn includes the homemade leather journals used by Curtis for writing Joy Division's lyrics, noting that it was this writing that clearly detached Curtis from his quite, antisocial persona.
Curtis also appears with common, boring, or unattractive objects in the film, chosen to better introduce the restless existence of living within the suffocating atmosphere of 1970's rural-gone-industrial Great Britain. We see that Curtis travels several times in the film, with his mysterious look and simple wardrobe, always carrying a large, solid-color royal military rucksack with one long strap hung over his shoulder as he walks. The hulking bag works repeatedly at painting him to be some sort of returning hero fresh from battle, each time lugging it casually as he walks up the lane to his home after a long tour, at least four times throughout the film.
Sam Riley, who played the lead singer of a band called The Fall in another film that briefly studied Joy Division, Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, manages to manifest perfectly not only the pale, sullen severity of Ian Curtis' physical demeanor, but even the spirit of his music. Riley actually performs with his own voice along with the surviving members of Joy Division, recording a near perfect live rendition of Curtis' songs for the film's several concert sequences.
Riley being a spitting image only lends slightly to the actor's talent and ability in reifying the troubled singer's overbearing need for release. Corbijn and Riley obviously put a massive amount of effort into a realistic performance. Samantha Morton, playing Curtis' wife Deborah (who produced the film, and wrote the biography it is based upon) delivers a heart wrenching role as the rejected spouse who falls victim to the temper of a tortured genius, as well as the infidelity of a husband who is also a touring musician. Using the same subtlety and minimalism in her performance, she dramatically achieves the same notions that Corbijn emits with his spotless cinematographic mode.
The actors playing the remaining three in the band (who later formed New Order) are somewhat diminished characters, but they still hit the appropriate emotional tones each time they are brought forward within the narrative. Toby Kebbell cast as the mouthy manager Rob Gretton splices in the necessary lightness in this heavy piece, winning the audience with his verbose insults and seedy quick-talking negotiation tactics. It seems as though, miraculously, anyone who occupied the frame at any time during the film was most certainly highly trained in the art of convincing performance. At no point did I ever drop out of the realm of the film because I recognized anyone's problematic acting.
Curtis in his life suffered from advanced epilepsy, causing him to have seizures off stage, and on stage, during which witnesses of these events claim that he would incorporate the writhing and spastic movements of his fits into his sporadic dancing style. The film chronicles his realization, adaptation, medication and frustration in dealing with this disease, ultimately a factor in his choice to end his own life.
The finale, where Curtis hangs himself in his own kitchen, is too loaded to describe. You have to see for yourself, because that scene, shot-for-shot, trumps all suicides I've ever seen portrayed in films, for a thousand reasons.
Corbijn achieves a Herculean task in aptly recounting the life of such a complex iconic figure in modern music. Control is the first biopic I have seen to extend past the novelty of physical resemblance or "a good impression," as this film almost burglarizes history. This piece penetrates the restlessness of Curtis' byzantine soul, his dark and poetic philosophy, his thick literary perspectives, paradoxical ideologies, and even the confused anger and unpredictability of his neurological distress. Anton Corbijn hasn't made just a biopic, he's made a worthy memorial.
The first sentence of this review couldn't be anything other than "this film was absolutely the best film I have seen in over a year and is strongly jockeying for a slot in my all time favorites." Shedding away my established obsession with the film's topic, the band Joy Division and the tumultuous life and untimely suicide of the band's front-man, Ian Curtis, as well as my feverish, fan-boy tachycardia at the slightest mention of the film's wizard of a director, Netherlander Anton Corbijn, I would most assuredly be matched in my enthusiasm for this film had I simply been seeing it without knowing the slightest thing about it.
Biopics seem to have been growing into themselves over the past several years, with each character-study piece being released and directed in a variety diverse modes and formats. This has allowed the biopic as a genus to artfully avoid any major commonalities that would render this newborn "genre" too stale or easily identifiable. The black and white brilliance of Control strengthens this individuality of style, by engaging the genius of Anton Corbijn's photographic fashion of filmmaking with both brilliant acting and a compelling emotional fall-from-grace story (case in point: at the end of the film, I cried really hard, along with most of the theater at the Film Forum; even the snottiest of NYU kitsch mongers was bawling; it was that serious).
The familiarity of Corbijn's distinctive composition and use of ridiculously deep contrast and de-saturation fits this film and its subject matter like a glove. Corbijn, (very seldom recognized despite the success of his work) is responsible for directing some of the most iconic 1980's black and white music videos of his era, many of which are still are played on today's music television. Corbijn worked closely with Curtis and Joy Division from very early on, volunteering as their official photographer. He then later moved on to make dozens of music videos for many renowned music groups, such as Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and most famously his prolific work with the band U2). Many shots in Control were big on the same empty framing and use of lots of negative space, as well as an affinity for hard edges and settings with little ornamentation, all traits that are often associated with his music videos.
Sparsity reigned with triumph throughout the work. Scenes were driven by the majesty of performance for the most part. The backgrounds, conversely, were designed to amplify through minimalism the alienation and tight-lipped poverty of the British countryside during the sixties and seventies.
This design was followed closely, unless, that is, Corbijn awarded that an object was intended to reflect a psychological preoccupation or a physical frailty, in which case lo-fi, hand-made elements, or daily items of the working-class were made to represent their users through association. For example, Corbijn includes the homemade leather journals used by Curtis for writing Joy Division's lyrics, noting that it was this writing that clearly detached Curtis from his quite, antisocial persona.
Curtis also appears with common, boring, or unattractive objects in the film, chosen to better introduce the restless existence of living within the suffocating atmosphere of 1970's rural-gone-industrial Great Britain. We see that Curtis travels several times in the film, with his mysterious look and simple wardrobe, always carrying a large, solid-color royal military rucksack with one long strap hung over his shoulder as he walks. The hulking bag works repeatedly at painting him to be some sort of returning hero fresh from battle, each time lugging it casually as he walks up the lane to his home after a long tour, at least four times throughout the film.
Sam Riley, who played the lead singer of a band called The Fall in another film that briefly studied Joy Division, Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, manages to manifest perfectly not only the pale, sullen severity of Ian Curtis' physical demeanor, but even the spirit of his music. Riley actually performs with his own voice along with the surviving members of Joy Division, recording a near perfect live rendition of Curtis' songs for the film's several concert sequences.
Riley being a spitting image only lends slightly to the actor's talent and ability in reifying the troubled singer's overbearing need for release. Corbijn and Riley obviously put a massive amount of effort into a realistic performance. Samantha Morton, playing Curtis' wife Deborah (who produced the film, and wrote the biography it is based upon) delivers a heart wrenching role as the rejected spouse who falls victim to the temper of a tortured genius, as well as the infidelity of a husband who is also a touring musician. Using the same subtlety and minimalism in her performance, she dramatically achieves the same notions that Corbijn emits with his spotless cinematographic mode.
The actors playing the remaining three in the band (who later formed New Order) are somewhat diminished characters, but they still hit the appropriate emotional tones each time they are brought forward within the narrative. Toby Kebbell cast as the mouthy manager Rob Gretton splices in the necessary lightness in this heavy piece, winning the audience with his verbose insults and seedy quick-talking negotiation tactics. It seems as though, miraculously, anyone who occupied the frame at any time during the film was most certainly highly trained in the art of convincing performance. At no point did I ever drop out of the realm of the film because I recognized anyone's problematic acting.
Curtis in his life suffered from advanced epilepsy, causing him to have seizures off stage, and on stage, during which witnesses of these events claim that he would incorporate the writhing and spastic movements of his fits into his sporadic dancing style. The film chronicles his realization, adaptation, medication and frustration in dealing with this disease, ultimately a factor in his choice to end his own life.
The finale, where Curtis hangs himself in his own kitchen, is too loaded to describe. You have to see for yourself, because that scene, shot-for-shot, trumps all suicides I've ever seen portrayed in films, for a thousand reasons.
Corbijn achieves a Herculean task in aptly recounting the life of such a complex iconic figure in modern music. Control is the first biopic I have seen to extend past the novelty of physical resemblance or "a good impression," as this film almost burglarizes history. This piece penetrates the restlessness of Curtis' byzantine soul, his dark and poetic philosophy, his thick literary perspectives, paradoxical ideologies, and even the confused anger and unpredictability of his neurological distress. Anton Corbijn hasn't made just a biopic, he's made a worthy memorial.
Vagabond
Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985)
Being left out in the cold is the role of a vagabond, a transient, a bum. It is not the role, however, of a viewer or critic, which is exactly what Vagabond does both unintentionally, and yet with total intention at the same time. It is fitting that both the title Vagabond as well as the release title in France, Sans toit ni loi (meaning "without roof or law") immediately conjure the distinct image of a despotic transient, trapped in an existence where the rules neither apply nor provide any order to the unforgiving world around said individual.
Agnes Varda seems to be working without any set of cinematic or conceptual laws at all, regardless of whether these laws appear helpful or hindering. In her disorderliness, Varda sadly leaves her ideals and intentions neglectfully exposed to the harsh elements, with no roof to house her aesthetics or ideologies, providing nothing to protect them from the almost certain thunderstorm of criticism looming directly above this film. She has unfortunately refused to use any form of readable exposition or minimally translated revelation to move the elements along, however they are ordered, within her film. She appears to be striving in vain for a difficult form of artistry at the excessive risk of dismantling both her film's worth and understandability.
Vagabond slips hard onto its side while struggling so valiantly to strap on the boots of Robert Bresson and his removal of significant events in a narrative. Varda apparently believes her profundity can only blossom out of a dogged reliance on pure imagery and silent expressions to drive her artwork (which is a highly valid argument that I normally would jump to agree with.) However, her belief in the power of image gradually loses its efficacy through her mostly poor execution and redundancy of form. As more and more the film's progression crutches its content on a dissembled chronology meant to add the "wow-factor" to the content, the emptiness of this story leads, as the title implies, to no place of shelter.
Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) steadily tows the viewer in so many different visual directions that without Varda somehow cushioning this classical model of alternative narrative with any subtext, emotion, or even the slightest object of sympathy for the audience to identify with, one begins to wait impatiently for the film to end. Manipulating the temporal elements of the film usually spices up a bland piece of writing, but combining the cut and dry narrative with quasi-documentarian camera work and a disjunctive plot progression, after a point, becomes not only obnoxious and overdone, but it makes Varda seem flashy and condescending, a notion one never wants to project to a critical gathering.
Beautifully shot, Bonnaire at least provides, (as petty as this sounds), some form of eye candy. Also, the setting luckily does not always remain so aggravatingly static (the vineyards were nice) and therefore Varda nabs some points out of the visuals she hangs on to so hard. However, aside from what Bonnaire is able to irk out with her facial muscles every now and again, and a couple of nice choices in framing and shooting hour and location, Vagabond ultimately succeeded in making me feel cinematically homeless.
Maybe if the film's public defense was that the intention of the film was to actually displease the audience beyond the common problem of attention span, by literally creating the anger and dejection within the viewer of the common vagrant, I would have significantly more praise for Vagabond's structure and direction.
Instead, this film's meandering becomes more and more intolerable with each step. The accidental Hubris of the director wears the skin in one's heel like a bleeding blister, soon exhausting itself quite thoroughly to a point of sheer delirium in both its reception by the audience, as well as its actual production. A quaint, realist attempt at intellectual expanse, this piece tragically goes no deeper than the road it treads, ultimately collapsing only to freeze to death in the cruel, well traveled ditch of anti-chronology and failed insight.
Being left out in the cold is the role of a vagabond, a transient, a bum. It is not the role, however, of a viewer or critic, which is exactly what Vagabond does both unintentionally, and yet with total intention at the same time. It is fitting that both the title Vagabond as well as the release title in France, Sans toit ni loi (meaning "without roof or law") immediately conjure the distinct image of a despotic transient, trapped in an existence where the rules neither apply nor provide any order to the unforgiving world around said individual.
Agnes Varda seems to be working without any set of cinematic or conceptual laws at all, regardless of whether these laws appear helpful or hindering. In her disorderliness, Varda sadly leaves her ideals and intentions neglectfully exposed to the harsh elements, with no roof to house her aesthetics or ideologies, providing nothing to protect them from the almost certain thunderstorm of criticism looming directly above this film. She has unfortunately refused to use any form of readable exposition or minimally translated revelation to move the elements along, however they are ordered, within her film. She appears to be striving in vain for a difficult form of artistry at the excessive risk of dismantling both her film's worth and understandability.
Vagabond slips hard onto its side while struggling so valiantly to strap on the boots of Robert Bresson and his removal of significant events in a narrative. Varda apparently believes her profundity can only blossom out of a dogged reliance on pure imagery and silent expressions to drive her artwork (which is a highly valid argument that I normally would jump to agree with.) However, her belief in the power of image gradually loses its efficacy through her mostly poor execution and redundancy of form. As more and more the film's progression crutches its content on a dissembled chronology meant to add the "wow-factor" to the content, the emptiness of this story leads, as the title implies, to no place of shelter.
Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) steadily tows the viewer in so many different visual directions that without Varda somehow cushioning this classical model of alternative narrative with any subtext, emotion, or even the slightest object of sympathy for the audience to identify with, one begins to wait impatiently for the film to end. Manipulating the temporal elements of the film usually spices up a bland piece of writing, but combining the cut and dry narrative with quasi-documentarian camera work and a disjunctive plot progression, after a point, becomes not only obnoxious and overdone, but it makes Varda seem flashy and condescending, a notion one never wants to project to a critical gathering.
Beautifully shot, Bonnaire at least provides, (as petty as this sounds), some form of eye candy. Also, the setting luckily does not always remain so aggravatingly static (the vineyards were nice) and therefore Varda nabs some points out of the visuals she hangs on to so hard. However, aside from what Bonnaire is able to irk out with her facial muscles every now and again, and a couple of nice choices in framing and shooting hour and location, Vagabond ultimately succeeded in making me feel cinematically homeless.
Maybe if the film's public defense was that the intention of the film was to actually displease the audience beyond the common problem of attention span, by literally creating the anger and dejection within the viewer of the common vagrant, I would have significantly more praise for Vagabond's structure and direction.
Instead, this film's meandering becomes more and more intolerable with each step. The accidental Hubris of the director wears the skin in one's heel like a bleeding blister, soon exhausting itself quite thoroughly to a point of sheer delirium in both its reception by the audience, as well as its actual production. A quaint, realist attempt at intellectual expanse, this piece tragically goes no deeper than the road it treads, ultimately collapsing only to freeze to death in the cruel, well traveled ditch of anti-chronology and failed insight.
Blue Velvet
Blue Velvet
I like to imagine that if Bobby Vinton, the crooner who's rendition of the song Blue Velvet so eloquently ties down the structure of David Lynch's masterpiece by the same name, were to sit today in a small, lush home theater and screen this film to himself in solitude, he would soon realize how unexpectedly his song translates into the world of rape, murder, and masochism.
Upon viewing Blue Velvet for a third time, I find myself less at the helm of the investigation at hand, and more able to behold the intensity of the heavy, tenebrous psychodrama that Lynch so aptly cloaks with the guise of a discernible thriller.
On first viewing, Lynch leads your nose to snooping with his trademark mystery wandering as though it actually has an end, embellished by his penchant for americana as well as elements of autobiography. His misleading build-up throughout the first half to three quarters is not meant to sucker in mass audiences (although this is often a laughable side-effect) but rather to establish an organized, logical world with which his baroque violence may later be compared.
In this style, the denouement's abrupt turn towards the cryptic still succeeds in allowing Lynch the freedom of real expression and time to cater to his obsessions (disfigurement, depravity, and hallucinatory episodes to name a few) without alienating his audience. He does not tire a less savvy crowd of viewers with the immediate onset of his artistic presence in the film, allowing instead a gradual comfort to accumulate wherein only moments of discomfort allude to the baroque fourth act of the film. It is the trickery of his seemingly purposeless narrative that lends the interference necessary for Blue Velvet's success in using diversion to communicate concept.
Jeffrey Beaumont mirrors the pet-shop naiveté of the virgin audience, trying to make sense of all the out of place and somewhat gruesome interruptions that seem to be appearing out of nowhere within the easily reproducible working-class landscape surrounding him. On this go around, however, I purposefully removed myself from the comfort zone of MacLachlan's impeccable comb-over to better observe the loose threads Lynch leaves sticking up out of the carpeting, unraveling each bit of evidence Lynch loosens intentionally to its shocking source.
The masculinity sought after by Jeffrey's Heineken lust works as a notion to be dwarfed by Frank Booth's rampant drug and booze virility. The somber severity on the faces of several of the men (namely Frank Booth) during Dorothy's performance at the Slow Club works to hint at an unstable male interaction that later snowballs into sadomasochism and forcing Jeffrey to strip at knifepoint. The over-pacifistic tone of Sandy's father when discussing the severed ear Jeffrey discovers rings softly of hushed control covering some internal mania, whispering some sort of connection between the figures of authority and the criminal conspiracy Lynch unveils suddenly towards the end of the film.
It is in these bread crumb trails that the mastery of Lynch's hand as an auteur is most strikingly beautiful, weaving an accessible neo-noir artifice with dozens of his obvious rations of absurdity. Lynch does so in such a calculated way that even as conspicuous and jarring as these moments appear, the audience still happily digests enough of Lynch's spoon-fed madness to send them fat and happy over the edge just as the plot deviates towards Blue Velvet's feast of lunacy and vicious hallucination served as the final entree of the film.
Lynch's talent for distraction and irrational attention allow his ambitious ideas and images, his intricacy in all aspects of design (mise-en-scene), his sense of language and sound and their powerful flexibility, and his reverence for human nature, human sexuality, and primal instinct, to seep into his governable viewers typically with little to no resistance. Unaware for most of the film of the cardinal directives Lynch is portraying, things usually seen by common society as difficult are discussed amidst the film's totality because Lynch is willing to be patient with sharing his theorems and ideologies, showing a respect for his viewers that is mindful of the individual appetite for new thought held by each different member of his audience.
I like to imagine that if Bobby Vinton, the crooner who's rendition of the song Blue Velvet so eloquently ties down the structure of David Lynch's masterpiece by the same name, were to sit today in a small, lush home theater and screen this film to himself in solitude, he would soon realize how unexpectedly his song translates into the world of rape, murder, and masochism.
Upon viewing Blue Velvet for a third time, I find myself less at the helm of the investigation at hand, and more able to behold the intensity of the heavy, tenebrous psychodrama that Lynch so aptly cloaks with the guise of a discernible thriller.
On first viewing, Lynch leads your nose to snooping with his trademark mystery wandering as though it actually has an end, embellished by his penchant for americana as well as elements of autobiography. His misleading build-up throughout the first half to three quarters is not meant to sucker in mass audiences (although this is often a laughable side-effect) but rather to establish an organized, logical world with which his baroque violence may later be compared.
In this style, the denouement's abrupt turn towards the cryptic still succeeds in allowing Lynch the freedom of real expression and time to cater to his obsessions (disfigurement, depravity, and hallucinatory episodes to name a few) without alienating his audience. He does not tire a less savvy crowd of viewers with the immediate onset of his artistic presence in the film, allowing instead a gradual comfort to accumulate wherein only moments of discomfort allude to the baroque fourth act of the film. It is the trickery of his seemingly purposeless narrative that lends the interference necessary for Blue Velvet's success in using diversion to communicate concept.
Jeffrey Beaumont mirrors the pet-shop naiveté of the virgin audience, trying to make sense of all the out of place and somewhat gruesome interruptions that seem to be appearing out of nowhere within the easily reproducible working-class landscape surrounding him. On this go around, however, I purposefully removed myself from the comfort zone of MacLachlan's impeccable comb-over to better observe the loose threads Lynch leaves sticking up out of the carpeting, unraveling each bit of evidence Lynch loosens intentionally to its shocking source.
The masculinity sought after by Jeffrey's Heineken lust works as a notion to be dwarfed by Frank Booth's rampant drug and booze virility. The somber severity on the faces of several of the men (namely Frank Booth) during Dorothy's performance at the Slow Club works to hint at an unstable male interaction that later snowballs into sadomasochism and forcing Jeffrey to strip at knifepoint. The over-pacifistic tone of Sandy's father when discussing the severed ear Jeffrey discovers rings softly of hushed control covering some internal mania, whispering some sort of connection between the figures of authority and the criminal conspiracy Lynch unveils suddenly towards the end of the film.
It is in these bread crumb trails that the mastery of Lynch's hand as an auteur is most strikingly beautiful, weaving an accessible neo-noir artifice with dozens of his obvious rations of absurdity. Lynch does so in such a calculated way that even as conspicuous and jarring as these moments appear, the audience still happily digests enough of Lynch's spoon-fed madness to send them fat and happy over the edge just as the plot deviates towards Blue Velvet's feast of lunacy and vicious hallucination served as the final entree of the film.
Lynch's talent for distraction and irrational attention allow his ambitious ideas and images, his intricacy in all aspects of design (mise-en-scene), his sense of language and sound and their powerful flexibility, and his reverence for human nature, human sexuality, and primal instinct, to seep into his governable viewers typically with little to no resistance. Unaware for most of the film of the cardinal directives Lynch is portraying, things usually seen by common society as difficult are discussed amidst the film's totality because Lynch is willing to be patient with sharing his theorems and ideologies, showing a respect for his viewers that is mindful of the individual appetite for new thought held by each different member of his audience.
Introduction
Hello inter-world
I have a bunch of these blog things.
This one's strictly for film reviews/essays.
If you're reading this you probably got linked from my site or elsewhere
Or you have a really strong google search and you're stalking me.
Stop it.
-H.P. Willis
I have a bunch of these blog things.
This one's strictly for film reviews/essays.
If you're reading this you probably got linked from my site or elsewhere
Or you have a really strong google search and you're stalking me.
Stop it.
-H.P. Willis
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