Whether via Tarkovsky’s plaintively spiritual pacing or Dumont’s steely resolve to resist expressive embellishment, these kinds of films are not as much about ideas and gestures as they are about passing time in a particular way – in Revanche for example, passing time after a staggering personal loss.
For Buñuel, the absurdity of the world is only matched by those who attempt to redeem it by placing themselves in its context. It is this movement of the Church that Buñuel attempts to expose as a Dadaist banality, an undoing of the very thing it seeks to do. Nazarín is the parable of a Church caught up in the very system it is seeking to subvert, only to discover that it has itself been subverted by Orwell’s bootheel, Hitchen’s Missionary Position, the faceless horror of Camus’ prison.
The Secret Name of Cinema is Transformation Transform, transform anything everything — stairways into planets buttercups into navals icebergs into elephants — everywhere everything the old scene renewed by seeing the unseen seen anew transformed (James Broughton – Seeing the Light) A few days ago, the Boston Globe’s website released a series of stunning photographs […]
I was very pleasantly surprised last night while browsing possible DVR candidates that TCM is showing both Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie again today. It wasn’t too long ago that Michael Guillen over at The Evening Class hosted a Val Lewton blogathon with a plethora of links to good commentary on both […]
Phew! There is still time to catch both of the current free programs at The Auteurs in the Cinematheque section. Every month they host a number of free films according to a theme or historical context. This selection almost always includes: A. At least a few things you have never seen before. B. At least […]
Much of the NFB’s library is online, but it can be intimidating to search through, so Filmwell presents a look at three of its finest short films.
But in Filmwell terms, many of the book’s cutting edges correspond to all those moments in which the cinema becomes a storied means of self-critique or unexpectedly shifts the brackets of our cherished assumptions. We tend to shorthand these experiences as transcendental, or expressionist, or a range of stylistic terms whose Venn diagram intersection is the constructive experience of doubt, fear, and ideological shell-shock.
It obliges us to envision a world dark and terrible and chaotic. It compels us to consider a realm beyond even Chesterton’s remote and lonely star. And it forces us to wonder if that imagined place is far nearer than we ever would have believed.
I have been a long time follower of Tuttle’s blog, which seems to have evolved into the beautifully designed Unspoken – Journal For Contemplative Cinema. The inaugural issue is focused on the films of Bela Tarr, and covers Damnation, Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies, and related material. Harry Tuttle has an imaginative reflection on Family Nest, that […]