Kuroneko means Black Cat, but the Japanese title is Yabu no naka no kuroneko (The Black Cat from the Grove) I saw this film with my mother shortly after it came out in 1968, probably in 1971 when it had a short run in the U.S. We had returned from living in Japan, with the Army, and in San Francisco we could see Japanese films at the movie theater in Japantown. My mother and I would often have dinner at a little restaurant next to the theater, and we saw lots of great Kurosawa films. This movie was different, very grotesque and stylized. I wasn't old enough to understand it, either emotionally or visually. I just saw it again in the theater, on a new 35 mm print, and it is amazing. The opening of the film is wordless and harrowing. Kuroneko is one of many Japanese films based on ghost stories (kaidan), or more specifically folk tales about ghost-cats (bakeneko-mono).
My idea of posting something about each movie I saw this year bit the dust pretty early; I've been very busy at work this semester, so blogging has fallen by the wayside in general, and the movie posts dropped off (not counting the documentary "Wild China"). I'm itching to write more, but my work is paying off; I made a successful grant application that will allow me to hire a research assistant. Yay!
#8 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (dirs. Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg) This documentary about a year in the life of then 70-year old comedianne may not make you like her any more, but it certainly is engrossing for its portrait of a woman who broke into a men's field, paving the way for others, and who works incredibly hard. I ended up with some respect for her, even as I still dislike the style of comedy she practices (it's too much like some the boys' for my taste). The film itself, as a documentary portrait, is quite good, but was overlooked by the Oscars, of course.
#9 Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (dir. Errol Morris) I want to see all of Errol Morris's films eventually, so I started with this one. I can't recommend it enough. Here's a review by A.O. Scott from the New York Times:
#10 Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh) This one we saw in the cinema, and it was one of the best films of the year, in my mind. This absolutely lovely review is a great way to understand the qualities of the film:
#11 Ondine (dir. Neal Jordan) While not one of Neal Jordan's best films, this is still a gorgeously filmed, enjoyable movie (see Colin Covert's review) not least for the sea and land that is Ireland's coast. I must go back! #12 Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa) I'd seen this in the movie theater when I was a teenager, and was creeped out by the scenes where a medium channels the murdered samurai to tell his own story, but I wanted to see it again because I was reading David Peace's Tokyo: Occupied City, which uses some of the structure of Rashomon to bring in various voices recounting a crime.
#13 Even the Rain (También la lluvia, dir. Iciar Bollain) While this film may seem overly didactic to some, I loved it. With a screenplay by Paul Laverty, whose work with Ken Loach has always been politically challenging (Carla's Song, Bread and Roses, The Wind that Shakes the Barley), it is an absolutely tremendous meditation on colonialism, then and now, and a brilliant portrayal of the "guerra del agua" or water wars in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000. The scenes of popular mobilization, of crowds occupying the city and blockading the roads, of police repression, of seeking a family member victim of violence during the crackdown, are all doubly significant in light of what has been going on in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya in these past weeks: "people power" is an incredible force, and the courage it takes to put your body on the line when faced with well-armed troops is incredible.
The overlay of contemporary neo-liberal colonialism on the stories of Columbus, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, and Fray Antón de Montesinos, and the recreation of scenes of the Spaniards' horrific treatment of the Taínos, work extremely well. One of the best scenes is most powerful for what it does not portray; when the film's director Sebastian tries to get the women extras to enact drowning their children to escape the Spaniards' huge dogs (with the help of dolls), the women simply refuse. It helps that the cast is uniformly brilliant. Gael García Bernal will be more well-known to American audiences, but Luis Tosar (who was so convincing in Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos) is the core of the film, in tandem with Juan Carlos Aduviri who plays Daniel/Hatuey, a local man who is cast as as the Taíno hero Hatuey and who is also a leader in the struggle over water rights. Their scenes together are incredibly powerful. Here's an interview with Paul Laverty that I love for his accent alone!
Today is Three Kings Day, and we got a present, the DVD of Hairspray, not the original John Waters movie from 1988, but the post-Broadway 2007 musical version, directed by Adam Shankman, with production design by David Gropman and costumes by Rita Ryack. My kid and her dad listen to the soundtrack when they bake on the weekends, so he got her the movie.
I ADORE the colors and the costumes! Of his production design, David Gropman says:
"The set sixteen hues that filled the palette of Hairspray were juxtaposed colors fashionable in the early 1960s. “I decided on a very close and specific color palette from the onset. The idea was to take iconic colors from the ‘60s and dull them down enough (dead yellow, muddy salmon, soft aqua, and a heavy dose of my favorite greens) to keep them at arm’s length from musical comedy territory. We ‘published’ the palette so that all departments had the same rule book. Everyone’s close attention to the same sixteen colors helped to give the film a strong, unified look.”
But this is one of those cases where the original still has the most flavor.
An article by Colin Colvert in the Strib on the topic of good movies from 2010 that one might have overlooked reminded me that I had meant to see the "Red Riding" British film trilogy in the theaters, but I had missed it. This trio of films was made for British television, with screenplays by Tony Grisoni, based on the novels by novelist David Peace, who grew up in the area and wrote about how the Yorkshire Ripper haunted his childhood imaginary. Thanks to Netflix streaming, we watched the first film: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974. It's grim fare about corruption in Yorkshire society from 1974-1983, the period when the infamous Yorkshire Ripper attacked dozens of women, killing many of them although some survived. Although the murders in the first film are fictional, the real events are intertwined with them. As much as a story, like so much crime fiction, what's at stake is getting to the feel of the place and time, the grim social and political conflicts, the paranoia, the helplessness, the moral choices made by people on the edge. When one of the characters says "every city has its death squads," the protagonist scoffs. But this was precisely the time when death squads were at work all over the world.
"The three films are directed by three notable filmmakers--Julian Jarrold (BRIDESHEAD REVISITED), Academy-Award(R)-winner James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE) and Anand Tucker (SHOPGIRL). Each boasts a stellar British cast that includes Andrew Garfield (THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS), Sean Bean (LORD OF THE RINGS), Paddy Considine (DEAD MAN'S SHOES), Rebecca Hall (VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA), and Peter Mullan (TRAINSPOTTING)."
As David Fincher did in Zodiac (another film about a journalist feverishly hunting a serial killer that is a portrait of a time and place) the director and designers have recreated the period in vivid detail: the clothes, the smoke-filled pubs, the tacky wallpaper, the grim urban settings and desolate rural landscapes always under a cloud that is just about to rain, the quality of the images made with the 16mm film stock of the time.
The actor Andrew Garfield speaks with the same almost unintelligible Yorkshire accent as the rest of the cast. He is now on to glossier stardom after his turn in The Social Network and the upcoming Spiderman reboot.
I know I saw the original when the movie True Grit came out in 1969. I was 10 or 11, but I don't recall that I identified that strongly with the character Mattie Ross, although she was one of the few "spunky girl" characters I would have seen in a movie. Maybe it was because she was played by an actress who was 21 at the time, and who was overpowered by John Wayne, in the role that won him his Oscar? Maybe it was the "wink wink" musical score? Glen Campbell as a Texas Ranger? The unabashed celebration of John Wayne's character?
The Coen brothers remake of True Grit purports to be more true to the novel, and stars Hailee Steinfield, who holds her own with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and assorted varmints. This version shows the ugliness and brutality of the Western frontier: the casual racism, the grime, the tenuousness of law vs. will on the edge of "Indian Territory" in Fort Smith, Arkansas: who was a soldier, who was one of Quantrill's raider during the Civil War? who was a thief, who was a deputy marshall? what's the difference between hanging? murder? revenge? how many people are killed in the movie? (If you don't want any spoilers, don't watch this trailer)
I think that if I had seen this version when I was young I would have been both fascinated by the girl's spirit, and repelled by her self-righteousness, the two sides of the strength that helps her survive. And I would have cried at the sacrifice in the end. Kelli Marshall initiated a spirited discussion of how this film fits in the Hollywood tradition of punishing strong female characters. Her post led me to Lance Mannion's post comparing the novel (also a favorite of George Pelecanos) with both films. Unlike them, I was neither attached to an earlier versions, nor do I think a Western can leave a strong female character unpunished. There is no simply no conceivable place for an independent woman the frontier, because she is an affront to the underlying colonial structures that organize it. If I were writing more about this than I want to here, I'd want to analyze the many displacements of rape that occur in the film: in addition to all the guns and knives, the firings and misfirings: Mattie wakes up to find LaBouef in her bedroom smoking a pipe; LaBoeuf spanks and then whips Mattie with a switch to try to undo her contract with Cogburn, only to be stopped by Cogburn's gun; after she finally kills her quarry and joins the men as one of them (another killer), she is bitten by a rattlesnake just as she tries to pull a skeleton wearing a knife closer to her; Cogburn stabs the horse Little Blackie with a knife to keep him running to death, Little Blackie, the horse that forded the river for her, that bore her throughout the perils of this journey, that makes it possible to be one of the men, dies against the backdrop of the starry night, shot by Cogburn as Mattie finally cries. In the end, Mattie has one arm and is a bitter unmarried spinster because she has been castrated. She can't be allowed to have "sand" in a Western. This isn't an anti-romance, although it turns the romance inside out. ************* *The film is also the source of a well-loved insult, when Ned Pepper says to Rooster Cogburn: "I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man."
New Year's resolution: blog the movies I see this year! Technically, I saw The King's Speech on the last day of 2010, so I'll start with #1 Black Swan. Warning: this film has a high ick factor if you have any skin issues (and I do), but I do love overheated melodrama.
I was fortunate enough to see Cynthia Gregory dance in Swan Lake in San Francisco before she retired. She was so exciting!
Roberto Bolle and Svetlana Zakharova showcase the character of Odile:
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