The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chats perchés) A Film by Chris Marker (2004)

At 85 years old, I suppose it's not a surprise to see Chris Marker grappling with the new millennium in a way that feels as if it was being witnessed by a filmmaker in the 1980's. The Case of the Grinning Cat, his hour-long documentary on the public and political changes that have come in the first four years of 21st century both internationally and in his native France, feels, in contrast to some of his groundbreaking films of the 60's and 70's, twenty years behind. Marker's mode of observing the world has remained hands-off and his approach even has a keen similarity to an earlier film of his, Grin Without a Cat (1977).

It seems Marker has carried a very old-world disposition along with him, so his transition to video is somewhat dissonant. The film was aired on French television and understandably so; it doesn't look too far off from a low-budget PBS documentary. The images, as usual, are shot entirely by Marker and have a strictly on-the-fly feel, as if they were taken by a tourist. There is a motorcade of shaky footage as well as clumsy zooms and cuts. News footage, still photos, and intertitles are also cycled into the muffled aesthetic, making it a grab-bag of media matter surrounding events such as 9/11, the French political campaign of 2002 (between Jacques Chirac, a right-wing, and Lionel Jospin, a leftist), and the genesis of the Iraq War. In the midst of these events, Marker watches a graffiti image of his favorite animal, the cat, pop up sporadically in France on buildings, bridges, trees, and in metro stations. The cat is illustrated in sharp, bold lines, has a maniacal grin from cheek to cheek, is colored bright yellow, and is signed "M. Chat". Just as much as the mix of cultural happenings he documents on screen, this rapidly duplicating piece of street art is Marker's focus. He seems to be interested in the evolution of the symbol, at one point appearing haphazardly as if nestled inside tree bark, likening the cat to an owl, and then on a placard amidst a public protest on Parisian streets regarding Bush's decision to invade Iraq. The grinning cat matures from a whimsical street logo meant to elicit smiles from passersby to a far-reaching symbol of freedom making rounds on network news programs.

While Marker does describe this very transition quite plainly himself via intertitles, he still does not give one element in his film higher precedence than another, frequently raising a point and then moving on right when a more manipulative filmmaker would hammer this factoid home with a subjective stance. This is what lifts The Case of the Grinning Cat out of the vat of mediocrity that its aesthetics may suggest it belongs in. If one can tune out the terse narration that was added to the English-language release of the film (not a product of Marker whatsoever), what we get is a characteristic observation of society by a thought-provoking French documentarian. It's just that the film feels so minor and almost pedestrian in comparison to some of his more accomplished works.

The Man From London (A londoni férfi) A Film by Bela Tarr (2007)

When writing about Bela Tarr's cinema, starting with the opening shots of his films is nearly unavoidable. He places so much emphasis on his extraordinarily long, spellbinding first impressions. Seven years after Werckmeister Harmonies, the greatest film of the 21st century thus far in my opinion, he has somehow managed to match the brilliance of its opening shot with The Man From London's, a feat which seemed unimaginable. Beginning on a rope dangling in water as it anchors a boat to shore and concluding with a train leaving its station seen through the wooden supports of a watchtower, the mind-bendingly complex shot tells an entire slow burner of a story that makes up a great chunk of the film's plot: Maloin (Miroslav Krobot), the gloomy watchtower attendant, paces back and forth in his roost and witnesses a classic bit of noirish tomfoolery involving a cloaked man with an ominous suitcase evading the boat guards. The shot is delivered in one swooping motion, first upward and eventually repetitively horizontal, and is far more abstract than the cow trudge of Satantango or the bar dance of Werckmeister Harmonies. A few times, it seems possible that Tarr has actually cut, but what really happens is the frame is variably interrupted by pitch black surfaces, the floor of the watchtower or the thick window frames. We also never get a solid view of the interior of the room from which Maloin is voyeuristically peering, or of Maloin himself in fact; the camera instead crawls in and out of focus directly behind his gaping back, interchanging this with his panoramic view of the pier. After approximately twelve demanding minutes, Tarr has infuriated fans of "getting to the point" and left others, like myself, in mesmerized awe.

The impact of The Man from London can therefore be likened to the striking of a chord on the piano which is subsequently left to sustain. This is not to suggest that it declines considerably, because the final ring of the piano strings can be just as beautiful as that initial contact. However, as much as the film establishes what may seem like a plot-heavy noir, Tarr loses a whole bunch of interest in his initial premise (which ultimately finds Maloin with the suitcase of money), instead meditating on the aftermath. He lets the brooding mood of the film's initial minutes simmer over tangentially into the rest of the film. Mihaly Vig's deep, vibrating score continues to underpin, but does so at briefer interjections. A police investigator (István Lénárt) arrives in the small town Maloin inhabits, determined to solve the murder that followed, but goes about his business in a routine manner, only existing in the film through Maloin's immediate awareness and being nearly immaterial due to the fact that the bulk of his discussions are spoken in English, which the French Maloin does not comprehend. So, yes, to an extent, the film is Tarr's most plot-driven piece (perhaps naturally, given its source material is a 1933 Georges Simenon novel), with classic elements such as murder and suitcases of money, but paradoxically continues to treat atmosphere with the same emphasis.



Tarr has stated that he intends on returning to simplicity for his declared "final film", The Turin House, because he felt he maxed out his capacity for technical bravura and narrative complexity with The Man from London. Of course, this comment is coming from the world's greatest arthouse practitioner, a filmmaker who is blind to current cinematic trends, so there is a bit of a knee-jerk response that accompanies it: "Huh? Complex?". Tarr's work is the holy grail of elusive cinematic excellence in the face of extremely modest material. I wouldn't say The Man from London is nearly pandering enough for Tarr to dive back to roots (even though it does have a surprising appearance from Tilda Swinton, an accomplished Hollywood name), but by the same token, he has pushed himself to the more conventional boundaries of his decidedly unconventional vision. Vig's music comes the closest it ever has to serving the classical function of a film score, showing up more frequently to bring mystery to the dullest of moments (Maloin purchasing his daughter Henriette (Erika Bók, the unforgettable little girl from Satantango) a fine scarf in attempt to detour his mind from the guilt of his silent possession of money). The use of Simenon's novel is also a choice that has raised eyebrows from Tarranites, considering it is quite orthodox indeed.

Nonetheless, Tarr's stylistic virtues remain intact. His work with cinematographer Fred Kelemen (a student of Tarr's) is characteristically marvelous. The film's look is a sterling example of chiaroscuro lighting, giving defined crispness to the world-weary wrinkles in his familiar character's faces (I say familiar because we have seen nearly every character in a Tarr film before and they essentially reprise their roles). At times, it was difficult to recall when a particular shot began, largely due to the fact that his stately camera movements travel anywhere and everywhere, showcasing an amazing ability to shift focal planes. As usual, Tarr does the majority of his sound work in post-production, which has admittedly become most noticeable here. The dubbing, while it does sometimes seem to be a choice meant to give a hypersensual quality to voices that succeeds frequently, can be aggravatingly disjointed. Still, Tarr's crystalline handling of the nuances of a bar room's ambiance proves to be one thing that never ceases to be singular; pool ball's rattle around with unimaginable amplification, accordions sound continuously, and the slurping of beer against the lips has wonderful clarity. That being said, the fact that Tarr returns so casually to an almost exact replica of the kind of pub that we saw in Damnation (1988) smacks of regression rather than artistic evolution.

I do believe that The Man From London was given an unfair glance by many critics at Cannes two years ago. The resounding verdict was that it was "good but not great Tarr". The film doesn't resonate with as much cosmic multivalence as Werckmeister Harmonies, but there is also an entirely different goal at hand. Tarr's more occupied by Maloin's passivity, a trait that eats away at him, and his desperate need to make something of his humdrum life, made known by the metronome-like rhythms that sometimes reverberate in his head. If the film were treated with the same kind of epic scope of its predecessor, it would have been off base. The Man From London is dealt with exactly as it should be, a reserved examination of the human condition with quiet intensity. It is different than any other Tarr film, and given his apparently impending retirement, it should be savored.

The Ice Storm (1997) A Film by Ang Lee

Fate is the engine that drives The Ice Storm and its cast of characters - the members of two Connecticut upper middle-class suburban families - into a flurry of entanglement that proves devastating. The touch of magic realism that brews beneath the spot-on period piece naturalism should come as no surprise in an Ang Lee film (the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and is all the more respectable for its subtle deployment, the opposite of which contributed to the bloat of a film like American Beauty, another examination of the effects of suburban blues.

The Ice Storm, an adaption of Rick Moody's acclaimed novel, is set in 1973, a few years after the massive cultural and sexual revolution that occurred in the late 1960's. The Hood's and the Carver's are still living within this jostled cultural landscape, either fostering adulterous or criminal habits or experimenting with sex, alcohol, and drugs. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is frequenting the Carver house for afternoon delights with the bored wife Janey (Sigourney Weaver), thus triggering simmering suspicion in Elena Hood (Joan Allen). All of their children have uncertain romantic or scandalous pursuits: the rebellious Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) speaks casually about sexual encounters with her friends at school and is secretly admired by Sandy Carver (Adam Hann-Byrd), to whom she makes the offer, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours.", Sandy's spacey brother Mikey (Elijah Wood) uses Wendy for strictly experimental purposes, and Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) has "that feeling" for a fellow student with knowledge of Dostoevsky and existentialism but with a serious aptitude for heavy drug usage. They are all considerably unsure of their actions, a sentiment that is mirrored by their parents. Ben knows what he's doing is wrong but is too shallow and immersed in himself to properly inform his wife who stubbornly remains silent until the situation intensifies.

The film is structured modularly; to an extent, the scenes that make up the middle portion of the film (all occurring during a Thanksgiving weekend) could be rearranged without risking a loss of clarity. Lee opens the film on the night of the ice storm, revealing small fragments, shifts backwards, and returns to the storm for the final act. Therefore, the motif of ice is omnipresent, with there being nicely detailed shots of freezer trays scattered throughout. Water can frequently stand in as a symbol for sex, in its inexorable renewals and flow, so what exists for the characters is a kind of sexual freeze, a reduction of the sexual act to something that is rigid, cold, devoid of feeling, and ultimately physical. Because sex and sexual anxiety is the source of immaturity and much of the unspoken distress that the characters (both young and old) feel, the ice storm is somewhat of a karma device. It inevitably causes a death that is part of one of nature's domino effects.

To visually convey this metaphorical depth, Lee wisely chooses to not do a tremendous amount with his camera; instead he only occasionally provides gentle shots of the ice frozen solid to tree branches, and more tellingly will shoot through windows at his characters, the precipitation on the windows shrouding a mosaic of the outdoors reflected against the glass and the scene inside to evoke the double lives of his confused souls. The rich cast, made up of established Hollywood actors (Joan Allen being the highlight) and promising newcomers who have only currently become stars (i.e. Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood), does a stellar job of bringing this ennui to life. Christina Ricci's performance is especially fantastic. With its simultaneous period relevance and timelessness (ancient Native American flute reverberates on the soundtrack), The Ice Storm is the most important film of Ang Lee's career.

Sleeper (1973) A Film by Woody Allen

Sleeper may very well have been the first time Woody Allen was able to pull it all together: a story with coherence and flow (the terrain on which Bananas, Take the Money and Run, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask struggled), a pleasing balance of slapstick and verbal wit, and an intellectual undercurrent (which, to be sure, is very much an undercurrent, for it's so disguised underneath Allen's playful whimsy and absurdist logic). Woody was still a young, instinctive director at this point, but with three uproariously original films under his belt, he was beginning to erect the confidence and studio backing he needed to create a sprawling science fiction farce like Sleeper.

The film satirizes America of the 70's by projecting society's foolishness into that of a totalitarian police state of 2173. It's an intriguing concept, because when Woody's character discusses American history to awestruck future humans, they laugh at the seeming idiocy. In turn, the audience laughs, likely for the same reasons they do, so the film is able to induce the same kind of hypnotized state in its audience that it reveals with its characters, reflecting how easily people can be blinded by the delusions of their situation. Allen stars as Miles Monroe, a jazz clarinetist and health-foods store owner in Greenwich Village who is cryogenically frozen following an operation only to wake up 200 years later in the presence of some dissidents hoping to use him as a method of obtaining secrets from the government in light of his complete anonymity (in this society, punctilious records are kept on everyone). Being the neurotic pipsqueak he is, Miles flees just at the suggestion of possible capture, eventually finding his way out of desperation into the suit of one of the many household robots.

He is delivered to the house of Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), a complacent ignoramus with acclaim as a poet, who hasn't the slightest of suspicion regarding her new assistant. Once his identity is threatened, however, he reveals himself to Luna and takes her under his wing in his mission to avoid capture, in the process inadvertently transforming her into a pseudo-intellectual that spits out factoids about Karl Marx. Ultimately, she ends up serving the role that Keaton always does for Allen: the optimistic free-spirit who gives him upbeat fodder against which he can unleash his quick-witted, nervous chattering. In Sleeper, this ability to interact on some human level is especially valued by Allen's character given the sexual frigidity and displaced moral stance of the futuristic society (a device called an Orgazmatron is used to eschew the act of sex entirely).

The film has some of the most accomplished visuals of Allen's early work. With slick, sterile set design that is often meant to emulate that of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sleeper exhibits a canned futuristic look brought to life by dynamic camerawork and Allen's uninhibited physical liveliness. Against the strictness of the society and its architecture, Allen slapstick gestures are especially potent. As in a Buster Keaton film, the camera trains itself on Allen's spontaneously silly behavior, such as when he sneaks into police-run territory to steal food for him and Luna in their forest hideaway (he is trying to acquire oversized bananas and strawberries, which are popularly regarded as unhealthy while cigarettes are considered nutritious). The film's roaring jazz soundtrack (on which Allen himself played clarinet) dominates during these outlandish romps, presenting yet another exuberant contrast to the cold features of the milieu. Miles and Luna pass themselves off in one last ditch effort as doctors familiar with cloning, sparking the arrival of the film's hilarious finale, which speaks to the hilarity of Allen's vision: they fudge a cloning of the dictator, who has been reduced to a lone nose.

Ulysses' Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea) A Film by Theodoros Angelopoulos (1995)

Becoming enraptured by the elegiac beauty that permeates Theodoros Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze is not a difficult task. Unraveling its dense symbology and digesting the barrage of thematic material that Angelopoulos fires at the audience however, is. Of course, there is a wealth of conceptual ideas that do hit home with ease, most notably the congruence of Harvey Keitel's search for primitive film footage shot by the Manakis brothers (the first ever reels of Balkan film) to the odyssey of Homer. Keitel, playing a Greek filmmaker coming back to his homeland after 35 years in America, wanders from Greece to Sarajevo while being consistently haunted by memories or ghostly relics of the past: his loves (or perhaps, singular), all played by Maia Morgenstern, his family, the colleagues of the Mannakis brothers themselves, and the primordial, undeveloped footage of observational cinema that the Mannakis brothers recorded - their first "gaze" at the world.

Angelopoulos sanctions the idea of time as a continuum, of the past always being relevant to social and cultural identity in the present and frequently being the source of irreparable damage. That damage is evident in Angelopoulos' subjective view of Greece and of the surrounding nations: cold, wintry, foggy, dilapidated, and ugly. Scattered refugees limp through the barren terrain, the "snow and silence", Keitel calls it, in one of the film's most mournful travel sequences. He frequently converses in the film with people who speak of the problematic, irresolvable nature of the Balkans, that although the country converted to nationalism, it cannot escape the communism of the Eastern bloc. A gargantuan statue of Lenin is carried downriver with Keitel seated beside it (reminiscent of the hand in Landscape in the Mist), standing in as figurative proof. This is the most ceaselessly nagging metaphor in Ulysses' Gaze. Angelopoulos hangs on it for so long that he undermines the inherent hands-off approach of his meditative style to begin with; in such instances, the technique becomes as manipulative as a frenetically edited action picture. There are several times when Angelopoulos' long-take mastery feels portentous and exhaustive, such as when Keitel's character surveys the passing years of his family's New Year's party; in one static shot, the family waltzes from 1945 to 1950, an interesting idea at its root but which comes off as tedious.

Despite these occasional bouts of self-indulgence though, the film, as an elegy on the dissolution of geographical identity (Keitel stomps over borders with little perceivable distinction), has a magnificently sorrowful, dreamlike beauty. Ruins hold mysteries undiscovered, such as the rundown cinema that holds the Mannakis reels which is located in the midst of the Yugoslavian war that the filmmaker travels through. In one transfixing shot, the camera moves from Keitel's somber glance past the dirty screen to reveal snow falling outside a hole in the wall above it. Two other memorable scenes stand out: early in the film, Keitel follows a woman he believes he once knew through the shadowy streets of Greece only to be sandwiched by a crowd of torch bearers and another of policeman and civilians holding umbrellas. Towards the end, following Keitel's direct exposure to wartime horror, which felt disjointed and lacked the emotional punch it intended for, a small orchestra and children's choir plays in a frost-bitten park to a frozen audience. Although it is never as emotionally devastating as his masterpiece, Landscape in the Mist, Ulysses' Gaze is worth experiencing for these kinds of transcendent pleasures.

My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami) A Film by Patrice Leconte (2006)

My Best Friend is the kind of film that is bound to elicit unabashed waves of light compliments, most specifically describing it as "cute". In truth however, the flimsy charm that the film dishes out disguises what is by all means a pedestrian, predictable, aggravatingly unrealistic film. Certainly it is enjoyable to an extent, but French director Patrice Leconte is dressing up something that is really closer to a schematic (in the worst way) scriptwriting exercise as a sophisticated parable.

The premise feels off-kilter to begin with: an uptight, unsociable antique dealer named Francois (Daniel Auteuil) strikes up a silly bet with a co-worker stating that if he can prove to her that he has a best friend, he will be able to keep the company vase he received in an auction. Unfortunately for Francois, he does not have a best friend, or any real friends for that matter, so his pursuit of friendship becomes an increasingly absurd expedition whose solution is, of course, "right under his nose". He milks the sociable gifts off of a kind, chatty taxi driver only to realize in the end that doing so was insincere in the face of a simple bet he had placed. And quite conveniently, Francois learns lessons that tip him off towards the meaning of true friendship.

Leconte may have forgotten at some point that he's dealing with adults here. In his hands, Francois is a dimwitted fool - it is a surprise that he has a job in the first place - and those around him are no less juvenile. It has somehow escaped him that the people he knew and considered "friends" in high school are leading entirely separate lives and would inevitably be unhinged by the less than ideal meetings he has with them, all in an attempt to be coincidental. Auteuil does his best to deal with his character's clueless nature, but even his mature acting, which is the high point of the film, cannot overturn the fact that he is set astray from the realities of upper class adults. Of course, adults can at times be as immature as children, but My Best Friend's treatment is undeniably hyperbolic.

Where Leconte falters most heavily is in his unsubtle storytelling. Everything that occurs in the film is in direct relation to Francois, either augmenting his feelings of isolation (the consecutive sights of friendly people on the streets, the fact that everywhere he goes someone or a billboard is telegraphing the importance of friendship) or balancing his smug side and his newly sociable side. In Leconte's Paris, it seems no ordinary life is in motion; everyone walks the streets in order to make a connection with Francois for better or worse, teaching him how he should act in life or denying his kindly offers at the bar. After Francois' shallow pursuit of companionship and his bet fall apart right before his eyes and those of his co-workers and the taxi driver friend whose graciousness he is blind to, his life becomes worse off than it was to begin with.

So, detrimentally, Leconte concludes the film with an arbitrary plot turn. The taxi driver, whose vat of trivial knowledge is well known, makes his way onto the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and eventually is desperate and must phone a friend. Francois is, of course, not his true friend, but knows the answer. This sequitur, which felt like Slumdog Millionaire all over again with its implausibly coincidental questions, was too ham-fisted a way of revealing the true emotions of the two men. My Best Friend is as flat and contrived as the expression of the host on the show.

Black Sunday: The Mask of Satan (La maschera del demonio) A Film by Mario Bava (1960)

The iconic symbols of Italian Gothic horror films have somewhat made their way, not always knowingly, into the film world's collective consciousness, and perhaps the most stylish purveyor of these types of images is Mario Bava. Despite never before seeing his debut Black Sunday (or The Mask of Satan), I found myself recognizing his certain phantasmagorical ways of seeing things, of giving them a durable horror that is tried-and-true. Imagine the best haunted front lawn you've seen on Halloween, magnify that bravura tenfold, and extend it to feature length and you'll get Bava's seminal work of Italian horror. It's the kind of familiar storyworld where characters are always decoding inscriptions, making haste, rushing to complete tasks "before the sun goes down", and being enveloped in sinister curses.

The film has lost some of its terror as years have past, with camp taking its place, but what remains can be attributed more to the indelible face of Barbara Steele in the the unsettling double role, to the otherworldliness that her mere corporeity sheds off, than the actual plot of the film. Steele, who would later appear in a different light in Fellini's 8 1/2, plays both Katia Vajda, the alluring daughter of a 19th century patriarch, and Princess Asa Vajda, a seductress who has long been dead and entombed for her wrongdoings in the 17th century. Befitting the title, Asa was walloped with a spiked mask said to carry the spirit of Satan and subsequently charged with death by fire to rid of the evil spirits entirely. However, when rain from above - as if sent be some supernal force - washed out the fire, Asa was simply buried in a decrepit vault. Of course, material things such as vaults can not contain the elusive power of evil, so when Asa is awoken by a doctor and his colleague who were sent to Katia's village with healing duties, she wreaks all kinds of sadistic havoc on the townspeople, also spawning the revival of the brute warrior she was killed with. The vampiric look of Steele, with her extensive forehead, defined cheekbones, and pointed eyes, is pivotal to the success of her performance.

What's most fascinating about the film however is Bava's careful control of the mise-en-scene, the blatantly manufactured milieu of doom that he creates. Restless fog rolls over the swampy forests that outline the village and, even in night scenes, there is a mystical light that diffuses through the lively tree limbs that hang like tentacles over the environment. Although it is always obvious that studio lighting or fog machines are situated somewhere not too far from the confines of the frame, Bava's intricate settings never come across cheaply. Known for an equally prolific career in cinematography, Bava takes the director of photography role as well. In keeping with a classic horror staple, Black Sunday thrives on its chiaroscuro look, its deft shadow and compositional play. The production is as sparkling accomplished as Hollywood studio dramas (complicated dolly shots that compliment action, slow zooms to elevate fear), only there is an added grit when the high contrast images are coupled with their ominous, cobweb-laden settings. The film is a prime look at how Mario Bava's technical mastery was omnipresent, even at such an early stage in his career.