Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Exploring Agnes Varda, Andrei Tarkovsky, et al.
Herewith, the next batch of films for this year’s 30x90 project, capsules below. Like last year, I’m awarding a score on a 10.0 scale, along with what I’m calling a Relevancy score out of five stars. For that score, even if I wasn’t wild about the picture, this score suggests the significance of the film in the overall appreciation of cinematic history.
1. A League of Their Own (1992): This is one of those films I inexplicably missed upon its release (given the time frame, I was likely away working at summer camp), but have heard about endlessly ever since. Not just because of its most famous line (RE: crying, baseball), but also because it helped cement the stardom of its two leads, Tom Hanks and Geena Davis. Both had done high-profile films before (Hanks, working with League director Penny Marshall in Big; Davis in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise), but this film, with all its geniality and big studio polish, offered them a chance at a pair of indelible roles they absolutely owned. Considering the Hollywoodishness of it — the big personality casting of Rosie O’donnell and Madonna in supporting roles; the throughline subplot between Davis’ Dottie Hinson and her kid sister, Kit (Lori Petty); the coda of the present day women attending their entrance into the hall of fame in Cooperstown — the fact that it retains at least some bite feels like a success. I suspect this is largely because the screenwriting team included the producers of the documentary the film was based upon, and much of the experience — at least beyond the cornball theatrics of the plot — was factual (a similar reason why Bull Durham and Slap Shot retain their potency, decades after their release). It also strikes an early and arresting blow for feminism, albeit decked out in short-skirts and with characters’ sexuality safely tucked in (beyond Madonna’s obligatory hedonist “All-the-way” Mae). The point of the film, and the doc that preceded it, wasn’t so much the novelty of having an all-female baseball league, but that these women could actually hit the cover off the ball in the process. Score: 6 Relevancy: 2.5/5
2. Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962): Agnes Varda’s film, set more or less in real time (and helpfully time stamped at each chapter), about a young, glamorous singer (Corrine Marchand) in Paris, expecting terrible news from her doctor, works on several levels, but most compellingly as a time capsule of early ’60s France. Flitting about, from pubs, to hat shopping, spending a brief interlude at her apartment going over new songs with her writing partners, meeting with a model friend, and, eventually, possibly even falling in love, Cleo sweeps through a wide array of Paris, across many different arrondissement and architectural styles (we begin deeply urban and claustrophobic; and end in a open-air park). In mid-french New Wave style, Varda’s film leans heavily on verité accents — natural lighting and sets, a penchant for documentary-style street shots — but also utilizes flourishes of more experimental jump editing; and, in one powerful sequence, a series of filmed portraits of some of the people and objects Cleo has been in contact with as her day progresses — that adds depth to the conceit. Like Antonioni’s Blow Up (one of last year’s 30x30 films), the film works perfectly well on its own, but as a kind of history record — with France in armed dispute with Algeria; Khrushchev tweaking Kennedy before the Bay of Pigs; the coming pop culture explosion — it’s near indispensible viewing. Score: 7.6 Relevancy: 4/5
3. Stalker (1979): A famously difficult production that involved budget problems, extensive reshoots, technical complications, two different DPS, and, possibly, the hastened death of three key figures in the shoot (including director Andrei Tarkovsky) due to the dangerous shooting conditions in Estonia. Tarkovsky’s film plays like a slightly demented combination of Annhilation and The Wizard of Oz. The story concerns a Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), who takes woebegone travelers through a forbidden section of Russia, believed to be hit by an alien meteorite, now known only as the “Zone.” The film opens in sepia tone, as the Stalker defies his wife (Alisa Freyndilkh) to take another trip past the heavily guarded entrance of the staked-off area. The Stalker guides a “Writer” (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and a “Professor” (Nikolay Grinko) through a series of rutted tunnels, and dilapidated buildings towards the “Room,” a place where it is said wishes are granted. Naturally, this being a Tarkovsky film, things get metaphysical and multi-layered in a hurry. The late director said of watching it for the first time, not to get caught up in trying to understand it, that one should simply let it wash over them without injevcting their own interpretations. To that end, it helps immensely that the cinematography and composition (crafted mainly by Knyazhinskiy and Georgi Rerberg) is absolutely stunning, as is the sound design (by Vladimir Sharun), which draws attention to the smallest drips from a broken pipe, and the faintest of footfalls on a stream of broken rocks. Tarkovsky’s storytelling, which heavily favors long-held shots that ever so slowly move closer to their subjects, completes the atmospheric vibe with a master class in his use of pace to dictate tension. In fairness to his wishes, though, it’s almost impossible not to speculate as to the meaning(s) of the film’s goings-on. It lacks Kafka’s dark absurdity, but in the director’s extensive use of open-ended metaphor, it’s a film of which one would imagine the Czech writer would have heartily approved. Score: 8 Relevancy: 5/5
4. Kill List (2011): Ben Wheatley is a director, not unlike Yorgos Lanthimos, who embraces extreme violence with both arms open wide; but there’s a price to be paid for any audience members coming in for those anticipated cheap thrills. Both directors make their screen blood and gore so visceral, gruesome and realistic, there is no chance for retreat. Instead, you are forced to come to terms with the carnage as grotesquerie — unless you are either keeping your eyes shut tight or are emotionally denuded — and deal with the explicit nature of our basest instincts in all their unmasked horror. Part explosive domestic drama between a jagged hitman, Jay (Neil Maskell), and his in-the-know wife, Shel (Myanna Buring), and part murderous thriller, when Jay once again is coerced to team up with his best mate, Gal (Michael Smiley), to do another job, the film swerves from one type of violence (verbal), to another (physical), and back again. Rising in tension, the film ramps up the bloodshed as its plot intentionally begins to fray and twist back on itself, culminating in a Midsommar-like pagan ritual that comes like a cross between The Descent and Eyes Wide Shut. Smartly shot, and slickly produced, Wheatley’s second feature garnered enough attention for his career to take off, and there is certainly enough here for one to take notice, even if it culminates into sadistic trifle, a demo reel of hyper-violent nihilism. Better things were to come.
Score: 6.4 Relevancy: 2/5