How do you feel about Satyajit Ray? Personally, I’ve been very affected by most of Ray’s work. His films have a quiet lyrical beauty to them. His characters are vivid and full of life. The Apu Trilogy is his most famous work and it is hailed as a masterpiece by many. Ray not only directed but wrote the screenplays, scored the music and even did most of the camerawork for a lot of his films. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Martin Scorcese, Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson. I believe that he is the single greatest filmmaker to come out of South Asia.
I’ve been very affected by most of Ray’s work. His films have a quiet lyrical beauty to them. His characters are vivid and full of life. Ray not only directed but wrote the screenplays, scored the music and even did most of the camerawork for a lot of his films. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Martin Scorcese, Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson. I believe that he is the single greatest filmmaker to come out of South Asia.
Ray and Boyle are two completely different directors and their styles are poles apart. Even though Ray and Boyle have both been criticised for exploiting poverty, they stand on two different grounds. Unlike Boyle, Ray was a realist. Danny Boyle’s story all magical, its a fairytale and its shot like one, sweeping panoramas, riveting colours and jarring edits. Ray’s was a more subtle style. He showed you the bitter reality of poverty in Pather Panchali. But even this was poetic and beautiful. Slumdog Millionaire’s beauty lies in the frame, the cinematography and the Disney story. Beauty in Ray’s films, especially the Apu Trilogy, comes from the characters, their interactions, their lives and everything in the film from cinematography to music, serves to characterise.
Boyle did what he could. Bollywood still hasn’t picked up on the cue.
Some other Ray movies that are amazing and can be obtained relatively easily compared to some others:
The Home and the World (Ghare-Baire)
Distant Thunder (Asani Sanket)
The Chess Players (Satranj ke khiladi)
I know there is a thread about La Jetee but I would like to talk about Chris Marker himself. His work is notoriously hard to find and I searched long and hard for most of his works to no avail. I was writing a film paper on Marker, concentrating on the concept of time and the reality of images in La Jetee and Sans Soleil. But Marker is amazing. His films are so thoughtful and inspiring. Every Marker film I’ve seen has left me just thinking more and more. He is a philosopher in the guise of a filmmaker. Also, he is one of the very few remaining nouvelle vague directors (others include Godard and Varda). How do people feel about him? His films? Sans Soleil in particular?
The films I’ve seen of his are: La Jetee, Sans Soleil, A Grin Without a Cat, The Case of the Grinning Cat and Remembrance of Things to Come.
The Apu Trilogy by Ray.
And The Shining is a great adaptation. A Clockwork Orange ain’t too bad either. But both as stand alone films, not as faithful adaptations.
I only just saw Antonioni’s Eclipse and thought maybe I should comment here.
It was an experience unlike any other. This was my first Antonioni film and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Antonioni seems to be driven by theme and composition rather than plot or dialogue. In fact, there is very little of plot or dialogue in Eclipse, the focus instead is on the themes of the abstraction of feelings and emotions, the material world versus the intensely personal one and the gradual way in which material reality swallows up anything personal. In part, this theme is what is echoed so wonderfully through the last seven minutes. As Vittoria and Piero plan to meet the crossroads of the Eur, we are instead treated to multiple shots (not a long take as someone above me suggested) of ordinary things happening, only with an ominous undertone. There is silence, and there is emptiness, like in an eclipse, we feel something missing. Vittoria and Piero are missing and their love, like the water flowing out the barrel where Vittoria’s stick of wood and Piero’s matchbox float, is leaving them. This loss of love is referred to in another clever oblique way, that of the man who turns off the sprinkler that is spraying water everywhere. I understood this as a symbolic turning off of their feelings for each other.
Eclipse needs to be understood as a film that doesn’t give in to conventions. Besides the flimsy plot and the spare dialogue, Antonioni switches to an almost documentarian eye when shooting the Rome Stock Exchange and again, when shooting the scenes out of the plane’s window. But again, Antonioni doesn’t stick to these either. His shots are fragmented and he seems to delight in synecdoches. The openings shots to the film establish nothing. There is no establishing shot, no diagetic zero, simply a shot of an elbow that we only understand to be an elbow when the camera pans to the right. We are treated to various shots from different sides of the apartment but never given a feel of what the apartment exactly is like. There are numerous shots later in the film where Antonioni uses a high angle, the head or the shoulders outlined against the sky or trees or foliage. These shots have an unsettling effect. They serve to isolate the characters from their comfortable backgrounds because in a way, Eclipse is a film about contrasts and discomfort. The earliest hint of this comes in the credits where the popular upbeat swing song fades out in the middle to an atonal, disruptive sound/music. Antonioni is challenging the viewers even at this earliest moment, before the film has even begun, that this film is a film about discomfort.
In Antonioni’s shots, we find a thematic link that brings together form and content. Many simply dismiss Antonioni and Eclipse as simply a ‘stylistic’ film and to those who love the film, as being victims of the so-called aesthetic of ‘style over substance.’ I disagree wholeheartedly. In fact, style is substance and vice versa. Eclipse doesn’t seem to be lacking in either. Style is evident in the strange angles, the long takes, the abrupt cutting, the use of ellipses, synecdoches, the 180 degree rule transgressions, the digressive takes and shots, etc etc. I could argue for substance based simply on these stylistic choices but for those inclined otherwise, substances comes from the junction of style and content. The film is about Vittoria’s alienation from the world, her gradual separation from personal intimacies and contacts. It is her giving in to the sublime, the contemplative. Often, we find Vittoria intensely studying some movement, whether it is the rustling of foliage or the movement of a stick of wood in a barrel. Her way of seeing the world is in clear aesthetic terms. Piero who comes from an ordered numbered world (that of accounting), doesn’t understand Vittoria. He doesn’t see what Vittoria sees. And what Vittoria sees is alluded to in the opening where she reaches into an empty picture frame and moves objects through them, arranging them in a style suitable to her. When Vittoria’s alienation reaches its zenith, we are at the end of the film, where Vittoria herself is absent. In a way, she has disappeared and what has taken her, and Piero’s place, are the ordinary banal objects that were always there: the trees, the crossroads, the buses, the ordinary people milling around, the buildings. In effect, Vittoria has disappeared. Her alienation from the material world is complete.
The influence of Hitchcock’s Veritgo on Chris Marker is undeniable. When Marker calls Vertigo the only film capable of accurately portraying “impossible memory” what do you think he means? And isn’t La Jetee’s memorable image, the one that really marks the protagonist, the same kind of impossible memory?
What do you think are the implicit connections between La Jetee and Vertigo? What is it about Vertigo that so fascinates Marker?
@Berjuan: How is the memory from La Jetee, that of his own death, an “impossible memory” comparable to that of Madeleine, whose memory is simply a construct? This is the connection that Marker makes first in La Jetee and once again, in Sans Soleil. Is this Marker’s way of saying that all memory is a construct? Madeleine’s memory is clearly impossible in Vertigo, given that it is all a show that she is putting on for Johnny’s benefit but in La Jetee, there is no show. There is a very real image, and a very real memory and while this memory might be a forever entrapping one, how can it be argued that it is impossible?
@Berjuan: How is the memory from La Jetee, that of his own death, an “impossible memory” comparable to that of Madeleine, whose memory is simply a construct? This is the connection that Marker makes first in La Jetee and once again, in Sans Soleil. Is this Marker’s way of saying that all memory is a construct? Madeleine’s memory is clearly impossible in Vertigo, given that it is all a show that she is putting on for Johnny’s benefit but in La Jetee, there is no show. There is a very real image, and a very real memory and while this memory might be a forever entrapping one, how can it be argued that it is impossible?
favorite short film. about 3 years ago
La Jetee – Chris Marker
Me La Debes – Carlos Cuaron
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Satyajit Ray about 3 years ago
How do you feel about Satyajit Ray? Personally, I’ve been very affected by most of Ray’s work. His films have a quiet lyrical beauty to them. His characters are vivid and full of life. The Apu Trilogy is his most famous work and it is hailed as a masterpiece by many. Ray not only directed but wrote the screenplays, scored the music and even did most of the camerawork for a lot of his films. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Martin Scorcese, Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson. I believe that he is the single greatest filmmaker to come out of South Asia.
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Good Movies to Watch Instantly On Netflix about 3 years ago
Dreams by Kurosawa. I still can’t believe its on Netflix instant watch.
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WHO IS / WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM ACTRESS EVER? about 3 years ago
Anna Karina in Vivre sa vie
Jean Seberg in Breathless
Marilyn Monroe in everything
Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep
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TOP BERGMAN about 3 years ago
Fanny och Alexander (Bergman’s magnum opus. Amazing.)
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Satyajit Ray about 3 years ago
Sorry. Didn’t realize there was one already. Could an admin close this down?
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Satyajit Ray about 3 years ago
I’ve been very affected by most of Ray’s work. His films have a quiet lyrical beauty to them. His characters are vivid and full of life. Ray not only directed but wrote the screenplays, scored the music and even did most of the camerawork for a lot of his films. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Martin Scorcese, Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson. I believe that he is the single greatest filmmaker to come out of South Asia.
Ray and Boyle are two completely different directors and their styles are poles apart. Even though Ray and Boyle have both been criticised for exploiting poverty, they stand on two different grounds. Unlike Boyle, Ray was a realist. Danny Boyle’s story all magical, its a fairytale and its shot like one, sweeping panoramas, riveting colours and jarring edits. Ray’s was a more subtle style. He showed you the bitter reality of poverty in Pather Panchali. But even this was poetic and beautiful. Slumdog Millionaire’s beauty lies in the frame, the cinematography and the Disney story. Beauty in Ray’s films, especially the Apu Trilogy, comes from the characters, their interactions, their lives and everything in the film from cinematography to music, serves to characterise.
Boyle did what he could. Bollywood still hasn’t picked up on the cue.
Some other Ray movies that are amazing and can be obtained relatively easily compared to some others:
The Home and the World (Ghare-Baire)
Distant Thunder (Asani Sanket)
The Chess Players (Satranj ke khiladi)
Go to Comment
Chris Marker about 3 years ago
I know there is a thread about La Jetee but I would like to talk about Chris Marker himself. His work is notoriously hard to find and I searched long and hard for most of his works to no avail. I was writing a film paper on Marker, concentrating on the concept of time and the reality of images in La Jetee and Sans Soleil. But Marker is amazing. His films are so thoughtful and inspiring. Every Marker film I’ve seen has left me just thinking more and more. He is a philosopher in the guise of a filmmaker. Also, he is one of the very few remaining nouvelle vague directors (others include Godard and Varda). How do people feel about him? His films? Sans Soleil in particular?
The films I’ve seen of his are: La Jetee, Sans Soleil, A Grin Without a Cat, The Case of the Grinning Cat and Remembrance of Things to Come.
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Where are you from? about 3 years ago
Nepal.
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Films that made you physically ill after watching about 3 years ago
Irreversible by Gaspar Noe.
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Age / Level of education? (An informal poll) about 3 years ago
22. Creative writing and film at college.
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Is The Shining the best novel to film adaptation? about 3 years ago
The Apu Trilogy by Ray.
And The Shining is a great adaptation. A Clockwork Orange ain’t too bad either. But both as stand alone films, not as faithful adaptations.
Also, The Lord of the Rings was pretty epic.
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Is The Shining the best novel to film adaptation? about 3 years ago
Also, No Country for Old Men.
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What is (are) your favorite frame(s)? about 3 years ago
The moving image in La Jetee.
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l'eclisse...what the hell? over 2 years ago
I only just saw Antonioni’s Eclipse and thought maybe I should comment here.
It was an experience unlike any other. This was my first Antonioni film and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Antonioni seems to be driven by theme and composition rather than plot or dialogue. In fact, there is very little of plot or dialogue in Eclipse, the focus instead is on the themes of the abstraction of feelings and emotions, the material world versus the intensely personal one and the gradual way in which material reality swallows up anything personal. In part, this theme is what is echoed so wonderfully through the last seven minutes. As Vittoria and Piero plan to meet the crossroads of the Eur, we are instead treated to multiple shots (not a long take as someone above me suggested) of ordinary things happening, only with an ominous undertone. There is silence, and there is emptiness, like in an eclipse, we feel something missing. Vittoria and Piero are missing and their love, like the water flowing out the barrel where Vittoria’s stick of wood and Piero’s matchbox float, is leaving them. This loss of love is referred to in another clever oblique way, that of the man who turns off the sprinkler that is spraying water everywhere. I understood this as a symbolic turning off of their feelings for each other.
Eclipse needs to be understood as a film that doesn’t give in to conventions. Besides the flimsy plot and the spare dialogue, Antonioni switches to an almost documentarian eye when shooting the Rome Stock Exchange and again, when shooting the scenes out of the plane’s window. But again, Antonioni doesn’t stick to these either. His shots are fragmented and he seems to delight in synecdoches. The openings shots to the film establish nothing. There is no establishing shot, no diagetic zero, simply a shot of an elbow that we only understand to be an elbow when the camera pans to the right. We are treated to various shots from different sides of the apartment but never given a feel of what the apartment exactly is like. There are numerous shots later in the film where Antonioni uses a high angle, the head or the shoulders outlined against the sky or trees or foliage. These shots have an unsettling effect. They serve to isolate the characters from their comfortable backgrounds because in a way, Eclipse is a film about contrasts and discomfort. The earliest hint of this comes in the credits where the popular upbeat swing song fades out in the middle to an atonal, disruptive sound/music. Antonioni is challenging the viewers even at this earliest moment, before the film has even begun, that this film is a film about discomfort.
In Antonioni’s shots, we find a thematic link that brings together form and content. Many simply dismiss Antonioni and Eclipse as simply a ‘stylistic’ film and to those who love the film, as being victims of the so-called aesthetic of ‘style over substance.’ I disagree wholeheartedly. In fact, style is substance and vice versa. Eclipse doesn’t seem to be lacking in either. Style is evident in the strange angles, the long takes, the abrupt cutting, the use of ellipses, synecdoches, the 180 degree rule transgressions, the digressive takes and shots, etc etc. I could argue for substance based simply on these stylistic choices but for those inclined otherwise, substances comes from the junction of style and content. The film is about Vittoria’s alienation from the world, her gradual separation from personal intimacies and contacts. It is her giving in to the sublime, the contemplative. Often, we find Vittoria intensely studying some movement, whether it is the rustling of foliage or the movement of a stick of wood in a barrel. Her way of seeing the world is in clear aesthetic terms. Piero who comes from an ordered numbered world (that of accounting), doesn’t understand Vittoria. He doesn’t see what Vittoria sees. And what Vittoria sees is alluded to in the opening where she reaches into an empty picture frame and moves objects through them, arranging them in a style suitable to her. When Vittoria’s alienation reaches its zenith, we are at the end of the film, where Vittoria herself is absent. In a way, she has disappeared and what has taken her, and Piero’s place, are the ordinary banal objects that were always there: the trees, the crossroads, the buses, the ordinary people milling around, the buildings. In effect, Vittoria has disappeared. Her alienation from the material world is complete.
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l'eclisse...what the hell? over 2 years ago
polarsdib – the exact same thing happened in my class. what school do/did you go to?
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La Jetee / Sans Soleil over 2 years ago
The influence of Hitchcock’s Veritgo on Chris Marker is undeniable. When Marker calls Vertigo the only film capable of accurately portraying “impossible memory” what do you think he means? And isn’t La Jetee’s memorable image, the one that really marks the protagonist, the same kind of impossible memory?
What do you think are the implicit connections between La Jetee and Vertigo? What is it about Vertigo that so fascinates Marker?
Go to Comment
La Jetee / Sans Soleil over 2 years ago
@Berjuan: How is the memory from La Jetee, that of his own death, an “impossible memory” comparable to that of Madeleine, whose memory is simply a construct? This is the connection that Marker makes first in La Jetee and once again, in Sans Soleil. Is this Marker’s way of saying that all memory is a construct? Madeleine’s memory is clearly impossible in Vertigo, given that it is all a show that she is putting on for Johnny’s benefit but in La Jetee, there is no show. There is a very real image, and a very real memory and while this memory might be a forever entrapping one, how can it be argued that it is impossible?
Go to Comment
La Jetee / Sans Soleil over 2 years ago
@Berjuan: How is the memory from La Jetee, that of his own death, an “impossible memory” comparable to that of Madeleine, whose memory is simply a construct? This is the connection that Marker makes first in La Jetee and once again, in Sans Soleil. Is this Marker’s way of saying that all memory is a construct? Madeleine’s memory is clearly impossible in Vertigo, given that it is all a show that she is putting on for Johnny’s benefit but in La Jetee, there is no show. There is a very real image, and a very real memory and while this memory might be a forever entrapping one, how can it be argued that it is impossible?
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mock, faux, fake or pseudodocumentaries about 2 years ago
What about Godard’s La Chinoise?
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