Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)

No director who has only made four films in nearly 35 years is as acclaimed as Terrence Malick. While I don't necessarily have a problem with that (for once), I am a little confused. Sure, his movies (I've seen them all but The Thin Red Line) are beautiful and contemplative, but I've never thought they had enough character development to be considered true masterpieces. Badlands is the same. Malick's debut, a film he almost seems to remake with Days of Heaven 2 years later, focuses on Kit Carruthers, a violent 25-year-old garbageman who meets Holly, a 15-year-old girl, and they fall in love. Well, they fall in puppy love, but when Kit kills Holly's father ("We'll have to talk about that sometime" is my favorite line of the film), they run away together across the badlands, a desolate place where Kit kills four or five other people and Holly watches. The most fascinating part about the film is the total lack of awareness in Holly, played blankly (and perfectly) by Sissy Spacek. She is 15, it's 1959, so there is undoubtedly going to be a sense of naivete about her, but she doesn't even question Kit until it is far too late. Most any person with as solid a relationship as Holly seems to have with her father would have been destroyed by her father's murder by her boyfriend, but Holly doesn't even cry. She just follows Kit (Martin Sheen, as a killer who is not even sure why he's killing) as he lights her house on fire and leaves town forever. Holly is not a real person, a girl in her most formative stage; she mentions in the film (and it's even on the poster) that she doesn't really have any friends, so perhaps she's just grateful that someone loves her as she is? But she never seems desperate for love, just passive and willing to go with the flow, no matter what happens. Until it's too late. Holly's resistance near the end of the film is what brings their run to its end, a surprisingly strong statement from a girl who had yet to do much of anything in the film. The movie is a comment on restless youth (Kit is compared to James Dean more than once), on female roles (Holly is always a companion to either her father and then Kit), on the desolate nature of the American wild and the American spirit, and one that is infinitely more interesting to think about than actually watch (as I've realized while writing this). Malick uses his simple characters to convey the complexities of the American self, class differences, violent nature, and all. 7/10

Stumble It!

The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)

If you had told me that I would love a film whose plot points included a reenactment of the conquest of Mexico by frogs, turning excrement into gold, a pet snake who wears a sweater, and a beautiful woman who has a constant monkey companion, I would probably have been insulted. Avant-garde filmmaking always treads that thin line between making a point (maybe) and being unintentionally funny, but Alejandro Jodorowsky, in his cult classic The Holy Mountain, portrays all those things and more in a way that is clever, meaningful, and exceptionally beautiful. The plot centers around a thief who is crucified, but doesn't die and instead meets up with an alchemist and a group of eight others who are seeking the secrets of immortality. But the plot says little to nothing about the film itself, which is, without a doubt, the most beautiful I've ever seen. The entire movie made my jaw drop, in its audacity and gorgeous visuals, and it ends by pulling back the curtain on the filmmaking process. Jodorowsky, whose Fando & Lis I really enjoyed, really hit it out of the park with this one. This film deserves the beautiful transfer the DVD has to offer, and the (too-brief) extras are entertaining. If you love avant-garde film, or if you don't, I definitely suggest watching The Holy Mountain. It will surprise you, and it might even leave you speechless. 9/10

Stumble It!

Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)

I have a pretty small attention span for movies sometimes. I really like movies that intersperse their talkiness with sex or laughs or whatever. It's a product of my generation, I guess. But every once in a while, a movie like Scenes from a Marriage comes along to prove me wrong. Every single scene is pure talk, mostly between Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann), the couple whose marriage and aftermath are detailed in the film. (Note: I watched the 2.5 hour theatrical version available on the Criterion disc, but I will definitely be going back for the 5 hour TV version someday.) Johan and Marianne start the film as a young-ish couple, married for ten years, being interviewed by a local paper. Johan is dominating the conversation, almost uncomfortably so, and whenever Marianne starts talking personally, the interviewer interrupts to take a picture or ask another question. This sets the tone for the film - Marianne's dominance by Johan, and how she finds and defines herself. Johan has a similar quest, but one that is more complex than Marianne's. Both start these quests only after their separation and divorce. The whole film is pretty much in closeup, examining the expressions of these people, and how they fit or contradict their words. Bergman is very interested in this film in the dichotomy of actions vs. words, as Johan claims to want a divorce, yet pretty desperately fights against it. The scene (episode on Swedish TV) where Johan and Marianne sign the divorce papers is a harrowing, intense one that made me feel a little wiped out after watching it, but the characters obviously felt the same way, as their relationship improves exponentially after that. I don't want to give too much of the details away, because even though this is a film built on ideas rather than actions, it's an amazing experience to see how these people change and evolve. I can't say enough about this film; it's honestly Bergman's masterpiece and one of the best films ever made. This review was a little babbling, but I could honestly go on forever about this film (and I probably will one day) about the rawly honest emotions portrayed in the movie. It's life, it's real, and it's amazing. 9.5/10 (I'm wary to give any movie a 10, but this might deserve it) RIYL: Fanny & Alexander

Stumble It!

Don Juan (Or If Don Juan Were a Woman) (Roger Vadim, 1973)

For her last film, Brigitte Bardot again teamed up with the man who made her famous, Roger Vadim, who directed her in ...And God Created Woman. That film was a brightly colored story of a married woman who acts out sexually in the idyllic St. Tropez. Don Juan couldn't be further from their first film, and couldn't be more of a fitting vehicle for Bardot's last film. There are so many layers of meaning in this film; audiences at the time would probably have had God in mind, as well as Bardot's reputation as a sexpot in real life and on the screen and Bardot and Vadim's real life failed marriage. That's a lot of subtext! But I didn't really think about much of these before seeing the film, but I still thoroughly enjoyed Don Juan as a campy, colorful, erotic piece of film history. Bardot plays Jeanne, a man-eater who is growing tired of her lifestyle. She recounts to her priest cousin the stories of several men whose lives she has ruined, including one who killed himself after their encounter. There's really no more to the plot than that, as Bardot is deliciously amoral as a woman who deliberately ruins two men's lives, but feels surprisingly guilty about the suicide victim. One story deals with a man whose wife and child left him after finding out about his affair with Jeanne, and he plays a pivotal role in the (heavy-handed) finale. Another story is about a man who is so cruel to his wife (played by Jane Birkin!) that Jeanne seduces the wife to teach him a lesson. These highly erotic scenes with Brigitte and Jane, including them naked in bed together, are the highlight of the film. It was wonderful to see Serge Gainsbourg's two main ladies getting cozy. Most of the film is very sexy and erotic in that 1970s way, meaning not dirty and not particularly explicit. The ending is done rather heavy-handedly, and seems out of place in the movie, but it can either be taken literally (Bardot pays for her sins, rather misogynistically), or Vadim and/or Bardot kissing off Bardot's screen career with a deadly finale. I prefer to interpret it the second way, as the film then seems like a kiss-off to Bardot's sex-kitten image, rather than an almost Biblical punishment. I definitely recommend this for fans of 1970s softcore, Brigitte Bardot, or those who might just want to check out the super surreal settings (Jeanne lives in an ultra-mod submarine!). 8.5/10 RIYL: Radley Metzger, ...And God Created Woman

Stumble It!

Day for Night (Francois Truffaut, 1973)

Day for Night is a kind of holy grail for people who love auteur theory and metafiction as much as I do (wow, that sounded pretentious). Francois Truffaut directs a film about making a film (May I Present Pamela, the kind of film that Truffaut, at this time, would have scoffed at, but doesn't present it as such) where Truffaut is the director Ferrand, starring, among others, Alphonse (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, Truffaut's most important actor in real life - and one of my favorite actors ever - with the same name as Leaud's famous character Antoine Doinel's son). Wow. It makes my head spin a little thinking about it, but it flows so well in the movie. This film works just as well if you don't know anything about Truffaut's career, a pretty great feat onto itself. But onto the plot of the film: Ferrand is making a big studio picture, with a washed up star (Severine), a closeted gay older actor (Alexandre), a young, very immature, star (Alphonse) who is in love with a script girl (Liliane, played by Dani, who also played Leaud's lover in Love on the Run), and a British/American actress (Julie) who has had several nervous breakdowns and recently married her much-older doctor. The movie is about the hardships and triumphs of making a movie, and on this production, nearly everything that could go wrong, does. It never feels unrealistic or silly, though; the problems are caused by the personalities of those making the movie. Truffaut is very interested in how important the cinema is, and the fact that film is more important than life to those involved. The movie is certainly more about personalities than a plot - the film itself is contained completely within the filming of the movie. The first shot, a huge crowd scene which is echoed near the end of the film, is gorgeous, and really conveys Truffaut's love of making movies, as well as watching them. That love and joy is what makes this film so brilliant. All subtext aside, this is a portrait of a time in film that really can't be duplicated, where good directors (as Ferrand seems to be) were able to make huge, if not silly, pictures. Ferrand (speaking as Truffaut?!) himself says that Pamela is the end of an era, and now, instead of studio pictures, anyone can take a camera on the street and film. While that isn't really true, it is striking that Ferrand says that, because the French New Wave, of which Truffaut is a leading figure, was pretty much people taking cameras onto the street and shooting realism. This film is a simple, entertaining story, an in-joke, and a piece of metafiction all in one. This is my second favorite Truffaut picture (after Bed and Board), and a must for those who love film. 9/10 RIYL: Wes Anderson (he is clearly very influenced by this film, go carts and all), Godard

Stumble It!