Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)
Posted: Wed May 29, 2019 9:08 pm
69. The Image Book (2018, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) - Another one of Godard's collage films, combining film clips, news broadcasts, paintings, drawing, and even internet pornography into bizarre and unrecognizable forms and juxtapositions.
Structurally at least it really does feel like a sequel of sorts to Histoire(s) du cinema, though even after digging through some of the special features I'm not quite seeing the larger picture of The Image Book. At times, Godard seems fascinated by how certain ideas keep being repeated in cinema (Such as people falling in bodies of water, or trains which have been a part of cinema since the time of the Lumieres). A long, Edward Said-esque section of the film focuses on how the west has depicted the Middle East over time, and very much goes into the idea of these depictions being a kind of violence in their own right as having little to nothing in common with reality (And the fact that many countries with diverse histories are even grouped together as a monolithic "Middle East" is something Godard directly criticizes though I currently lack a better way to talk about this topic).
Another memorable bit of the film pokes fun at the Kuleshov effect, by having one of the kids from Todd Browning's Freaks “watch" some rimjob video Godard probably found on Pornhub. It's an interesting sequence not only as an audacious joke about film theory but actually reflects back onto the themes of Browning's film about inner and outer beauty, even if Godard does it in a kind of vulgar way.
How any of this stuff is meant to tie together, if at all, is what eludes me at the moment- I'm not quite sure I see a kind of throughline connecting the Freaks/rimjob bit and the Middle East for example. Still, just on aesthetic I found Image Book to be very absorbing, similar to the affect that Histoire(s) (And from what I can tell Image Book doesn't seem to have quite as shaky of a thesis as Histoire(s)'s “All of film is tainted forever because of the Holocaust" but that's a discussion/debate for another time).
One of the special features on the blu-ray mentions that Godard watches a lot of TCM, apparently. That shouldn't be surprising but oddly enough I found learning that fact to really humanize the man for me.
70. La Chienne (1931, Dir. Jean Renoir) - Oh Renoir, how I've missed you. A prostitute and her pimp con a painter out of his money and his work. Meanwhile the painter puts up with his wife who still pines for her first husband- a war hero.
Things get complicated in that way only the French can complicate things when the dead husband turns out to be not so dead and has merely been avoiding his wife this for years now and the painter seems to cause the death of the prostitute, though whether it was an accident or a deliberate attack is left ambiguous.
I'd have to imagine that Jean Renoir was particularly interested in the painter angle of this film considering who his father was, though I don't know enough to say how much of it, if anything, is particularly biographical.
Fritz Lang remade this in the 40's in Hollywood with Edward G. Robinson of all people as a film called Scarlet Street. I'm not familiar with the remake though I'm very curious about it.
71. Thief (1981, Dir. Michael Mann) - I haven't seen too many of Mann's films (Other than this I've watched Collateral which I think is great and Blackhat which…isn't) but Thief is excellent. This is stylish as hell (Some the neon, rain-soaked nighttime streets of Chicago even seem to predict Blade Runner coming a year later as many critics have pointed out) and James Caan kills it as the lead. And the actual heist scenes themselves are super cool.
The whole thing really reminded me of something like Drive (Vaguely neo-noirish, electronic-ishs soundtrack etc.), and while I really liked Drive I feel like this one-ups it in nearly every way.
72. Le coup du berger (1956, Dir. Jacques Rivette) - This is the first Rivette I've ever seen (And it was cowritten by Claude Chabrol as well, another New Wave disciple I just don't have any familiarity with outside of a cameo appearance in Welles' The Other Side of the Wind). The story follows a woman receiving a fur coat from her lover as a gift but trying to make sure her husband doesn't find out, but there may be more going on than she realizes. I have to be honest though, this left basically no real impact on me.
Still, its only a short film at the beginning of Rivette's career so I'm sure his later stuff is better. Godard's early short films weren't the best either.
73. The Mule (2018, Dir. Clint Eastwood) - It's a shame that this film is a victim of being mismarketed a thriller and a rather bad SNL bit, because I found it to be a rather good drama about ageing, trying to make amends, and trying to be decent despite the biases you've grown up with.
The story revolves around Eastwood's character, a horticulturist who has become estranged from his family and has lost his business, becoming a drug mule for the cartel. This is the kind of film that focuses more on the driving itself and what Eastwood does on his trips (Such as, say, listening to Johnny Cash music on the radio or stopping to help troubled drivers on the road) than it is about typical gangster drama about betrayals or cops hunting after dealers. That isn't to say that stuff isn't in the film, because it absolutely is and yet it is secondary to Eastwood's thematic interests about trying to be decent and grow even when you've been left behind culturally for decades and still carrying troublesome biases and faults from the past.
Structurally at least it really does feel like a sequel of sorts to Histoire(s) du cinema, though even after digging through some of the special features I'm not quite seeing the larger picture of The Image Book. At times, Godard seems fascinated by how certain ideas keep being repeated in cinema (Such as people falling in bodies of water, or trains which have been a part of cinema since the time of the Lumieres). A long, Edward Said-esque section of the film focuses on how the west has depicted the Middle East over time, and very much goes into the idea of these depictions being a kind of violence in their own right as having little to nothing in common with reality (And the fact that many countries with diverse histories are even grouped together as a monolithic "Middle East" is something Godard directly criticizes though I currently lack a better way to talk about this topic).
Another memorable bit of the film pokes fun at the Kuleshov effect, by having one of the kids from Todd Browning's Freaks “watch" some rimjob video Godard probably found on Pornhub. It's an interesting sequence not only as an audacious joke about film theory but actually reflects back onto the themes of Browning's film about inner and outer beauty, even if Godard does it in a kind of vulgar way.
How any of this stuff is meant to tie together, if at all, is what eludes me at the moment- I'm not quite sure I see a kind of throughline connecting the Freaks/rimjob bit and the Middle East for example. Still, just on aesthetic I found Image Book to be very absorbing, similar to the affect that Histoire(s) (And from what I can tell Image Book doesn't seem to have quite as shaky of a thesis as Histoire(s)'s “All of film is tainted forever because of the Holocaust" but that's a discussion/debate for another time).
One of the special features on the blu-ray mentions that Godard watches a lot of TCM, apparently. That shouldn't be surprising but oddly enough I found learning that fact to really humanize the man for me.
70. La Chienne (1931, Dir. Jean Renoir) - Oh Renoir, how I've missed you. A prostitute and her pimp con a painter out of his money and his work. Meanwhile the painter puts up with his wife who still pines for her first husband- a war hero.
Things get complicated in that way only the French can complicate things when the dead husband turns out to be not so dead and has merely been avoiding his wife this for years now and the painter seems to cause the death of the prostitute, though whether it was an accident or a deliberate attack is left ambiguous.
I'd have to imagine that Jean Renoir was particularly interested in the painter angle of this film considering who his father was, though I don't know enough to say how much of it, if anything, is particularly biographical.
Fritz Lang remade this in the 40's in Hollywood with Edward G. Robinson of all people as a film called Scarlet Street. I'm not familiar with the remake though I'm very curious about it.
71. Thief (1981, Dir. Michael Mann) - I haven't seen too many of Mann's films (Other than this I've watched Collateral which I think is great and Blackhat which…isn't) but Thief is excellent. This is stylish as hell (Some the neon, rain-soaked nighttime streets of Chicago even seem to predict Blade Runner coming a year later as many critics have pointed out) and James Caan kills it as the lead. And the actual heist scenes themselves are super cool.
The whole thing really reminded me of something like Drive (Vaguely neo-noirish, electronic-ishs soundtrack etc.), and while I really liked Drive I feel like this one-ups it in nearly every way.
72. Le coup du berger (1956, Dir. Jacques Rivette) - This is the first Rivette I've ever seen (And it was cowritten by Claude Chabrol as well, another New Wave disciple I just don't have any familiarity with outside of a cameo appearance in Welles' The Other Side of the Wind). The story follows a woman receiving a fur coat from her lover as a gift but trying to make sure her husband doesn't find out, but there may be more going on than she realizes. I have to be honest though, this left basically no real impact on me.
Still, its only a short film at the beginning of Rivette's career so I'm sure his later stuff is better. Godard's early short films weren't the best either.
73. The Mule (2018, Dir. Clint Eastwood) - It's a shame that this film is a victim of being mismarketed a thriller and a rather bad SNL bit, because I found it to be a rather good drama about ageing, trying to make amends, and trying to be decent despite the biases you've grown up with.
The story revolves around Eastwood's character, a horticulturist who has become estranged from his family and has lost his business, becoming a drug mule for the cartel. This is the kind of film that focuses more on the driving itself and what Eastwood does on his trips (Such as, say, listening to Johnny Cash music on the radio or stopping to help troubled drivers on the road) than it is about typical gangster drama about betrayals or cops hunting after dealers. That isn't to say that stuff isn't in the film, because it absolutely is and yet it is secondary to Eastwood's thematic interests about trying to be decent and grow even when you've been left behind culturally for decades and still carrying troublesome biases and faults from the past.