This film hits that experimental cord, a redistribution of qualities in cinema and art back to the complete breakdown of conventions. Adding to the mystery of creativity and creation.
You can describe life as you can describe death, you were once there, you are now gone. Life and death are the same truth it is the living who experience death. The tragedy of death is irremovable.
Kore-eda and Makiko Esumi are vital here giving us a new woman for japanese cinema one that has yet to be defined. I wonder if this was a mark of a new destiny for female leads in japanese cinema? Later films by Kobayashi, Shiota, Yazaki, Suwa, and even Ishii suggests this.
Is there no place lonelier than our past? Our experience is a mirror many lives once lived are lived again.
A great selection of his films including Imposters is available on Fandor instant video!
We don't usually see a filmmaker act completely as a poet he is a director first their poetry is said in gestures, moments and images over a vocation, closer to the painter than the author but with Rappaport his scenes pick up in verses and films a stride, you can see the poet in his poetry. Through some hit or miss acting and his style of writing and narrative is an image that is artistically grounded.
We all sing a song that changes as time passes us by.
A cinematic barometer. Evidence of an interior and self, Aguaespejo couldn't have put it better but It made me wonder if a film could provide another with a self awareness. Short of its own existence, a film (cinema and the image) has its own sense of tragedy almost inherent tragedy one based on the limitations of our creations. So in turn the tragedy is ours because only we can experience it. I can't wait to revisit this and Outer Space together.
I feel like its been a while but I believe I saw many of the same things within the trilogy like he was speaking to the Lumières or to Hitchcock over the audience like he was filming film history but on the other hand I couldn't connect with the overwhelming velocity of a film like Outer Space and L' Arrive and lost interest. Dreamwork i liked the best out of the three I really love Man Ray so in that way the movie clicked. I really need to see them all together again though.
Where I come from lies under rock and water.
The crises of the first part of the last century and our modern society, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, as uniforms of Totalitarianism, and paradoxically of freedom. Questions of our philosophy, how we allow and accept because the human is necessary to himself and disposable to others. Induced by a stasis of imprisonment and seen through the work of Dos Santos as the rational doing away with the sacred. Born from this is a culture that is bottomless and inescapable. Thank the writer because he always feels at home even in prison. And tell the people it doesn't get any better than this : Masterpiece.
A little bit of Yoshida's 'Blood is Dry' and a little bit of 'Rashomon' but with Dos Santos's brilliant satire and irony with an ending that rivals and in my opinion leaves the ending of 'Blood is Dry' in the dust (not Rashomon's of course). Actually Dos Santos uses the 'Rashomon' style flashbacks to poke fun, especially at the melodramatic pop cinema coming out of Brazil and Italy, slowly narrowing down the grand gestures and recollections into real life. ( Dos Santos was big on Italian cinema which was big in south america at the time)It seems from my experience Dos Santos made brilliant satires and had an adept accurate mind for social commentary almost "network" films and he also made 'Vidas Secas'. A man who made films his way and also got to make the film he always wanted to make - Vidas Secas. This film's commercial success actually paved the way for his great masterpiece.
This along with its counterpart Regeneration are the most necessary films of the new millennium because they are vital in redefining our fears. (able to reflect our world and our surroundings) Making this the greatest super-human film ever made. And the most important genre film by far of this decade and the last. Also the scariest, I haven't had such significant nightmares after seeing a film...ever beats The Shinning.
The most inconceivable film ever made almost by far, there isn't an aspect of this film that isn't Fords handy work, not one. You are entering a completely conceived reality. Here Ford is his own animated world something in my viewing experience I only thought Chaplin could do. And to pair this with another personal hero, the only other film I know of that is both its own time and place is 'Japon' by Carlos Reygadas. John Wayne's bravado has never been more fascinating, every single joke, punch or slapstick was shocking and had me rolling it may be the ballsiest comedy I've ever seen which brings me to my last point this trumps Porky's or Animal House as the first true idealized and honest male comedy.
I finally found the crossroads between J.G Ballard and Chuck Palahniuk when it comes to material asphyxia, here in plain view from the best "doom" director to ever live I'll include Tarr as the only contender. Carpenter was able to find the paradoxical and adapt it into normalcy with a whole lot of thrills. Carpenter had an all seeing perspective. I mention Tarr without any real contrast, but both directors are the best I've seen in breathing personality into every person and every thing in their films there are no extras or props everything you see or even hear has personality not just resonance, Carpenter was able to do this with the cinema Tarr with life. You can say Tarr is Bruegel, separated from the cinema, and Carpenter, Hitchcock. In both their films doom is doom but it is also freedom, whether it be freedom from the world or freedom from solitude.
What makes it so fascinating is that Carpenters style actually contradicts the twist and storyline so the mental madhouse eventually begins to represents the film itself. As a result the tongue and cheek in this film takes on an opposite affect then in would in some of his greater films (from what I've seen) it may be a downside but the film has its masterful points, we get to see his Hitchcockian side in that you cant simply watch the film it requires you to become obsessed with it.
The first 30 minutes is Ford contradicting Ford poetics the american heartland erupts and from the first dissolve on Carpenter takes the film through levels of satire and the devolving culture reveals a life of its own. The big F-U in the end along with the fight scene has more social-political resonance then anything because Carpenter is able to stick it in everyones face weather you get it or not. This is Chaplin/Kubrick territory.
Documentary as cinemas destined role. The birth of cinema was a religious endeavor we can continue to share and relive, and our creativity operates from the spirit because it requires you remove any fear of being wrong. This was one of the greatest feelings of childhood.
What was once complicated is now simple, this is the difference between New-Wave and Novo. Such an uncanny spiritual experience this film is, never leave out uncertainty in your life. Either you find it or it will find you.
The subtleties of men seen through a woman's heart. Tourneur was able to turn tragedy into injustice. Also the scenes between Anne and the doctor is something to be marveled at how easy and simple it was for Tourneur to be provocative. And of course romantic. A great film.
Only Sogo Ishii could do this.
In cinema truth is free so a masterpiece like this one is a religious experience.
A film that transcends a modern value system, something shaped by the strength and shame money can bring on humanity. This is the best film I have ever seen on its subject, each scene is a punch in the gut in a 16 round fight. I can't properly explain the film only that there is a great difference in the world between opposing value's or value systems that seem to cancel each other out, and that its the greatest commentary on money I have ever seen achieving new ground in the the great satirical Iranian comedies we've come accustom to.
Cinema trumps photography because it can objectify both experience and time outside of space. Where we can fill in the blanks and at the same time experience. So this film is like a photo or a painting to be observed but it also brings forth the cinema's organic powers and can take on even a psychological state in the viewer, and still represent itself as simply a lemon, which is art, but in a sense cinema can make it real.
I'll take all the implied horrors of the past for its romance. Even to the end. I've never seen the hero and anti hero, or the west like this before.This film left the biggest grin on my face and its still there straight from the magic of a western that is both the truth and the myth without one stomping out the other they both find there ground in this adventure, I hope there is many more like it. Thanks to Jack and Jerry for putting us on to this one and ucla for bringing it to the screen because this film should be seen.
Once again Bunuel looks at something infallible and laughs in its face, how a drunken night on a streetcar can tear through a nations fabric. For the betterment of our humanity he was the sharpest of them all. But the importance of sentimentality in this film, the only feelings personally I can find a kinship with is in A Christmas Carol as far as this works impact. I already want to see it again. I really wish Criterion would do a Bunuel in Mexico eclipse series I find it really surprising these films remain unnoticed.
Its a rare opportunity to see an artist tell you everything about life and about his art-form To is now both the symbol and the image and has seemed to reach a place where he can do and say anything and you may not even bat an eye its so in place. It seems like cinema has reached a singularity as other users have pointed out in the post below but to see "OUR" film on that screen after all the scenes before this for me and this is personal as stunning as the monolith as the film has met itself short of existence. And somehow To made this all simple the greatest movie ever made boy I'm blown away.
A soldier remains pure by following his commander but first he must become a soldier.
A piece of life of existence, things I know but yet with each aching moment the image is a complete phenomenon absolutely present and as perfect as my next breath.
the man was also at least 20 years ahead of his time in his use of color. How is it that I see Hou, Oliveira, Benning, Reis, even Erice in these images he neutralizes color to have a real living impact so you are observing there isn't a single color I've seen in one of his films that is artificial everything is essential. The kind of truth that doesn't need describing.
When the ego struggles we become an object of our own misfortune. I wanted so badly to see her confront her loneliness and have her beaten down by her expectations but being able to let go will suffice for lost time and a perfect moment to share with my own troubles. Cinema that can provide what is necessary for us today in correspondence and kinship between audience and artist. I'm not sure but for me this is a first lasting imprint from what I've seen directly associated with what we (maybe for lack of a better term or ideal understanding) call mumblecore. I know there is a huge understated importance seen in cinema recently not merely a breath of fresh air.
The hardest thing to be is right.
This film shows us our everlasting bond to the church not by way of inheritance and control but through spiritual misfortune helping are ego's tame our free will and the many truths in the world.
