Playtime

I mention Tati's film Playtime in the last post on nonsense architecture.  It is much bigger than that and wanted to show you the trailer by way of apology.  I have small hopes that the new Pixar film Wall-e is silent the way through as we don't watch enough silent movies these days and the laugh without a 'joke' is much different.  For this, I recommend Tati more than anyone (although this Chaplin fellow isn't bad either).  

Son of Rambow

I've been excited about this one for quite some time and, now, a trailer.  It's like all the movies we made as children with a much, much bigger budget. 

Missed Opportunities: A Further Note on Jodorowsky

Not that Jodorowsky can't speak for himself (see the man do it well here or on youtube), but I would love one small chance to talk about the director and also to lament the Dune he never made.  

Mime, clown, actor, writer, director, comic book author, somewhat psychoanalyst, therapist, and historian of the tarot card, Jodorowsky is obviously more interesting than Josh Hartnett.  This isn't to say he's a perfect artist, but his heart is in the right place and El Topo is the rare bit of pastiche that is paradoxically, truly unique.  Nice things out of the way, J is also a child of the mid-20th century and as such he bit far too blindly into the human potential movement and both continental philosophy (Satre and kids) and psychoanalysis.  This doesn't make him unpleasant -- he did so with great optimism and errs on the positive sides of both the latters -- but it does lead him to be false in spots and dates the otherwise timeless aspects of his films.  Can you fault people's want to believe or be certain?  Their want?  Certainly not. 

[For the record, lots of people did and still do buy into psychoanalysis and continental philosophy as if they were (cargo cult) beliefs, and they have gone on to rubbish people's minds with generic advice, taken as fact, or to obscure the truth and derail humanities departments at the world's best universities.  You can't blame Freud for the ideologues who followed him (well, he did overstate the truth in his theories), but you can blame Satre for an opportunistic psychobabble that was, in all likelihood, designed to conceal the crapper parts of his theories.] 

And now to Dune.  I've never read the book, but I have seen parts of the mini-series and the David Lynch version which, yes yes, is not tops.  Now consider Jodorowsky's: Mick Jagger, Gloria Swanson, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali to act (with others I assume); Jean Giraud (Moebius) and HR Giger (later of Alien) to make it look great; Pink Floyd (hm) on sound; and ten hours for the whole thing to play out into.  I don't miss the movie because I'm certain it would be great.  I miss it because I'm certain it would have surprised.  Epic stories should be given more time to play out in (I'm concerned about The Watchmen adaptation) and they should retain some of the ambiguity that it's so easy to maintain on paper and so tempting to do away with on screen.  Plus, the talent lined up for this movie ostensibly went on to create the claustrophobic image of the future you see in Alien and the dismal, vertical noir you see in Blade Runner.  So, influential in the least. 

2 From Jodorowsky

We are the lucky ones.  Films that one would otherwise have had to stay awake until midnight for can now be watched from the comfort of midday; other films that one would never have been able to see, are now available at fine rental agencies (Blockbuster excepted) or the mailbox.   

Two such films that are now handily available from Abcko, set-boxed, are Alexandro Jodorowsky's El Topo and The Holy Mountain.  And, if you fancy seeing mystical cowboys, poo made into gold, toads and gilla monsters reenact the conquest of Mexico, or perhaps the really warm (I think) love between a broken man and a dwarf, they are well worth the click and time.  

El Topo is, as fairly criticized, a synthesis of Fellini, Buñuel, and the Spaghetti Western, but one must admit that's a pretty great mix and the film shines brightly with wide-angled imagery, long, mysterious takes, and subtle mysticism.  It begins with the dark cowboy in the desert, his naked son and the ritualistic burying of a teddy bear and picture of his mother in the sand.  From then on out its gunslinging with odd villains, an ambitious woman, a problem, more initiation rituals, a quest to be the best in the West, so to speak, and then a final quest to still the violence in the black cowboy.  It's all wonderfully enigmatic, like David Lynch south of the border (Lynch must have been a fan).  Like the best midnight movies, I can only stab at its intended meaning but have a small one of my own that I'll keep to myself.  

To say The Holy Mountain is not as good is really a way of saying El Topo is really, really good.  Mountain is piled high with a meaningless mess of religious symbols: we've got a Christ factory, a zen karate alchemist in fighting tefillin, a woman tattooed with trigrams and hebrew, and backstories drawn from the tarot.  The film, like much of the 'theosophistry' that inspires it, looses sense in the random picking and choosing.  Where El Topo was content to confuse, this one looses any subtle subtlety early on.  This dates the film, sadly (oh the period ending, perhaps mind-blowing at the time but, then again, what wasn't?), but it must be said that it still feels personal despite the mix of universal symbolism unlike, say, the Cremaster Cycle (odd, given that the Cremaster series uses a very insular set of symbols to create mystery).  And it is funny!  Watch this scene below.