Hard Eight (1996)

QFS No. 140 - The invitation for May 15, 2024
This is our first QFS selection of a Paul Thomas Anderson film. You know him from all of his great work over the last 25 years but Hard Eight was his first feature. I’ve seen so many of his films but I’ve never seen the first one so this week’s selection addresses that to remedy that shortcoming.

PT Anderson made Hard Eight when he was about 26 years old. What’s almost as infuriating as that is the next year, in 1997, he makes Boogie Nights and then two years later makes Magnolia (1999). By my count, that’s three major motion pictures before he was 30 – including two of those films, Magnolia and Boogie Nights I’d put up there as downright modern auteurist classics. The amount of stars he directed before 30 years old rivals any of the great filmmakers of all time.

Now, whether you enjoy his films or not is a matter of opinion of course. Although he has been Oscar-nominated eleven (11!) times for screenplay (5), directing (3) and best picture (3), he has never won one. This is probably bad luck and circumstance, but it also could be an indication of how people have mixed opinions on PT Anderson’s work.

For example, if you’re a fan of “The Rewatchables” podcast like I am, you probably know that they consider Boogie Nights one of the greatest films ever made. Personally, I enjoyed Magnolia more than Boogie Nights as a film, but even Magnolia is ripe for criticism – frogs and Aimee Mann and whatnot – and is not universally loved. PT Anderson has the young pre-fame filmmaking pedigree of Steven Spielberg in a way, but Anderson’s films are not mainstream nor are they small artistic and abstract explorations of the soul. He’s Martin Scorsese with less benefit of the doubt from critics. Both of them make movies lauded for artistry even though the narrative may not be so clean, but it feels like Scorsese’s long life as a dedicated artist gives him leeway with the public in ways that Anderson may not.

Of course, there is no perfect film devoid of criticism. For me his greatest achievement is There Will Be Blood (2012) one of three of his films nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture along with Phantom Thread (2018) and Licorice Pizza (2022). There Will Be Blood is a singular accomplishment of filmmaking in terms of its scope and its exploration of power, ambition, religion and will. Not to mention the sheer production feat of making a period film with an oil well explosion.

Apparently, PT Anderson’s next film will be released in 2025. All I know is that it’s his first film with Leonardo DiCaprio, which feels like a good fit when making the comparison with Scorsese. Scorsese is undoubtedly one of the greatest filmmakers of the second-half of the 20th Century, and continued on into this one. When we look back in a couple of decades about the greatest filmmakers at the start of the 21st Century, it’s hard to debate PT Anderson including at or near the top of the list. I’m looking forward to finally seeing his first one.

 Join me in seeing Hard Eight (1996) and discuss with us!

Hard Eight (1996) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Reactions and Analyses:

High and Low (1963)

QFS No. 139 - The invitation for May 8, 2024
It’s been entirely too long since we’ve selected an Akira Kurosawa film here at Quarantine Film Society. It was way back in July 2020 when we were young and terrified, but watched the masterpiece Yojimo (1961, QFS No. 13). The offending parties to this nearly four-year gap have been reassigned to new minor roles within The Society.

High and Low has been on my list for a long time and I’m a little upset I haven’t seen it yet. Several months ago, I finally saw Ikiru (1952) in the theater at the New Beverly and though it instantly became one of my favorite films, I was simultaneously upset that it had taken so long before watching such a gem.

And so, lo and behold, the New Beverly just screened High and Low to come to my rescue. I was about to select it anyway (seriously – I have notes to prove it!) and so once again the stars align. I have not seen many of Kurosawa’s non-samurai period films, so it’ll be excellent to finally get a chance to see this one.

But also, excellent to watch at home! Then join the discussion of High and Low below if you can!

High and Low (1963) Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Reactions and Analyses:
High and Low (1960) has two halves, almost two separate movies. This has long been discussed over the years and by our QFS discussion tackled this as well. But one of our members, a cinematographer, picked up on something I hadn’t noticed – a slight but deliberate change in camera use between the halves.

The first half deals with the kidnapping of Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), mistaken for the wealthy child of Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), and Gondo’s decision whether or not to pay a huge sum to this mysterious kidnapper. Shinichi is Aoki’s son, played with excruciating grief and torment by Yutaka Sada. This half of the film takes place all in Gondo’s home, with everyone awaiting the kidnapper’s next call and us as the audience, trying to determine what Gondo will decide.

The first half of High and Low (1963) showcases director Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of staging - wide frames and compositions with deliberate camera moves when necessary, and takes place entirely in the Gondos’ home. Body language becomes an important aspect of the storytelling when using wide frames.

The camerawork in the first half is composed as if on a stage, with actors blocked in ways where sometimes someone’s back is to us, but their body language speaks volumes. The camera moves, when they happen, are also steady, composed, operated on a gear head for smooth and precise movements. 

The second half – the camera is freed. We’re out in the world, on the case, trying to find the kidnapper and also Gondo’s money. It’s likely Kurosawa had seen many of the films of the burgeoning French New Wave movement where the camera is liberated from the tripod and thrust into the dirty, complex world. Kurosawa’s version is still precise and deliberate, but there’s a greater urgency and rapid movement that evokes a handheld style, if not deliberately handheld.

Kurosawa throws the camera into the world as the hunt for the kidnappers unfolds. The camera, too, is free - some handheld, moving camera that hand off from one detective to another in pursuit.

High and Low becomes an elevated police procedural.

Detectives stuck watching from the car as the suspect encounters Mr. Gondo in person.

Following the suspect through the seedy underbelly of Yokohama. The heroin den sequence evokes the imagery now found in modern post-apocalyptic movies and dramas.

These two styles mimic the change in style, change in movie, change in tone and the change in focus. The drama in the first half of the film is almost entirely internal, just as it is internal in this house. It’s Gondo’s furrowed self-exploration of what to do, whether to give in to the demands and destroy the career and life he’s built for one his personal staff members. It’s the visible anguish on Aoki’s face, at first pleading and then prepared to sacrifice his son in order to save his boss’s livelihood (and, also, his own). There’s his wife Reiko (Kyoko Kagawa) who acts as the moral compass, pleading with Gondo to save the child, that she doesn’t need this home and this wealth.

Reiko pleads with Gondo, and she’s ultimately proved right - even though it costs them both in the end.

But is that true? Gondo reminds her that she was born into wealth and has never had to live as he had to growing up so she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Which then in turn a revelation – that Gondo got a boost early in his career from a dowry from Reiko’s wealthy family.

All of these internal struggles mirror the setting and pace and blocking of the first half perfectly. Kurosawa exhibits his mastery of composition, placing some people in the frame looking towards us and others looking away to enhance their position. Or to have a small sliver of light come through the curtains to bring our focus to a certain place. Kurosawa places Gondo in foreground on the phone, for example, when in the background Aoki anguishes alone and small in the frame. Another moment, when Aoki pleads with Gondo, the two are on opposite sides of the frame – Gondo barely able to look at him.

Gondo, tormented, only his face is in darkness in this shot - a way to use light to tell the story of an internal struggle.

This deliberate staging allows Kurosawa to play with power dynamics – who is big in the frame, who is small? Who is forced at the edge and who is covered in darkness. It’s brilliant and textbook and requires care to execute. (Of course it doesn’t hurt to have the extraordinary Mifune as one of your chess pieces to play on the board.)

Gondo deciding not to pay the ransom. Body language, choice of staging, attention still brought to the center. Mastery in blocking for the camera.

High and Low goes from a story about executive-level business intrigue, to a hostage thriller, to a story exploring social dynamics and issues of wealth, power and poverty before becoming a detective and police procedural with stunning set pieces including the seedy underbelly of 1960s Yokohama.

Kurosawa somehow pulls all of this off without any sense of whiplash or asymmetry. The master clearly at the top of his game is able to balance all of these elements in just about the most seamless way a bifurcated story could be crafted. And he doesn’t abandon elements from first half into the second half – we are reminded of Gondo’s sacrifice when later we see him mowing the lawn. Or when Aoki takes Shinichi back on the path to find the kidnappers’ lair – the detectives catch up with him and Aoki reveals that Gondo told him they won’t need to drive to Gondo’s shoe factory any more, having been forced out as they all knew he would be. We are given glimpses into Gondo’s life changing, even though he barely appears in the second half and we’re more interested in hunt and pursuit of the wrongdoers.

Kurosawa uses this efficiency in his story telling throughout. For example, the bald, sweaty detective Bos’n Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) – he’s the detective who is rough around the edges but a joking, committed bloodhound. But he’s on the screen so little, how do we know that? Just in a few words, we learn he disdains the wealthy so when Gondo sacrifices we see Bos’n’s admiration. And in behavior – he’s always sweaty and rubbing his head – Kurosawa is a master of tagging a character with a physical tic (see Mifune as “Sanjuro” with the shoulder twitch in Yojimbo, 1961 QFS No. 13). So when this hardened detective breaks down when Aoki and Shinichi reunite, we understand this man and he, in some ways, is a stand in for us as the audience. It’s incredibly moving.

That scene in particular contains another example of Kurosawa’s brilliance. The detectives are in the foreground, their backs to the camera as Aoki runs full speed away from us, towards Shinichi in the distance who runs as well. But the camera stays with the detectives – we see Bos’n holding back tears as he turns towards profile, and Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) gives the command that kicks off the second half: “For Mr. Gondo’s sake, be bloodhounds!”

Father and son reunited and moments before Detective Tokura says “For Mr. Gondo’s sake, be bloodhounds!”

And so the second half they’re off, trying to get the kidnapper and recover Gondo’s money.

There are so many points of entry into this film that it’s almost overwhelming to analyze. The bullet train sequence is a masterpiece in suspense. Gondo’s secretary Kwanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi) and his double cross that backfires give us a sense that Gondo is right that his stature is perilous – and Reiko is right ultimately that Gondo’s sacrifice is the correct action ultimately. We also see Kurosawa’s version of a zombie apocalypse film as we explore a heroin den – dreary, seemingly dangerous, the shuffling feet of the addicted clinking on unseen glass vials and bottles. And the plot itself, the suspense and the central question of who is the kidnapper?

He must be the kidnapper! Who else would wear mirrored glasses indoors?!

Several of the QFS discussion members, myself included, were certain that the other board members of the National Shoe Company arranged for this attempted kidnapping of Gondo’s son. The beginning of the film sets up that premise, which is a great narrative device to send us down that path. But ultimately, it’s a psychopath (but is he a psychopath?), a poor medical intern who looks up at Gondos’ castle above his poor slum. The explanation is that it drove him crazy to see that every day, looking down on them, and that he wanted to teach the man a lesson.

This final scene in the prison between Gondo and Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki in the only scene where he speaks) gives the kidnapper a chance to explain to Gondo and to us the why. I asked our group the question is this scene necessary. Without it, the scene ends with Mr. and Mrs. Gondo in their emptying house, the auctioneers measuring the furniture for their upcoming auction. For me, that felt like the appropriate conclusion to Gondo’s story and several felt similarly.

However, we would be left wondering why and missing out on any sort of explanation. And though Taekuchi’s motives felt thin – how could he be driven so far when there are probably a couple thousand people in the same situation who saw that same house and lived all around him – who didn’t think kidnap and murder were the solutions. So we’re left with psychosis, something that’s born out by the final images of the film as he’s dragged away, the security gate comes down, and Gondo’s image reflected in the mirror of both lives forever torn.

Gondo meets the kidnapper face-to-face a second time.

The final image in the movie in a scene that arguably did not have to be in the film. Up for debate!

While I personally would have preferred a stronger rationale for the film’s antagonist, this is a minor story objection to what is one of the greatest films by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Much of Kurosawa’s work should be essential viewing for filmmakers, but High and Low contains it all – blocking, camerawork, pacing, framing, character development, performance, to name a few. It’s clear to me now that the master’s masterclass for all of us is High and Low.

Wanda (1971)

QFS No. 138 - The invitation for May 1, 2024
I’m sure you all have seen this movie because it’s the 48th Greatest Film of All Time™.

Wanda – according to the oft derided/lauded* British Film Institute Sight and Sound Greatest Movies of All Time List released every ten years – is the 48th Greatest Film of All Time. Forty-eighth! Following a two-way tie between North by Northwest (1959) and Barry Lyndon (1975) at No. 45 and tied at 48 with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet (1955).   

Woah, what’s that you say? You’ve never heard of Wanda? That’s outrageous, well I oughta…

Okay fine. Neither had I.

Wanda falls firmly into the Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, QFS No. 98) territory here – a film from the 1970s that’s highly acclaimed by critics and filmmakers and one I have never heard of. (Not stylistically, just in terms of obscurity… for me at least.) I do feel some measure of shame for not knowing about both Wanda and of course Jeanne Dielman from before. So here we go again, firming up our film nerd cred by watching and discussing Wanda as a film and of course whether there are only 47 greater films ever made than it. I know very little about this movie but what I do know is that it is significantly shorter than Jeanne Dielman.

For those of you keeping score at home, this happens to be our tenth selection from the BFI top 100 list. We’ve previously selected No. 1 Jeanne Dielman, No. 5 In the Mood for Love (2000, QFS No. 105), No. 11 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, QFS No. 104), No. 30 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, QFS No. 114), No. 43 Stalker (1979, QFS No. 25), No. 60 Daughters of the Dust (1991, QFS No. 18), No. 67 The Red Shoes (1948, QFS No. 52), No. 72 L’Avventura (1960, QFS No. 116), and No. 95 A Man Escaped (1956, QFS No. 9).

I have seen 60 films in the Top 100 and yes, I just them up counted now. Am I proud of this or a little concerned? I’d say both. Looking forward to knocking No. 48 off the list! Watch Wanda and return here to discuss!

*I both laud and deride the list routinely.

Wanda (1971) Directed by Barbara Loden.

Reactions and Analyses:
It’s hard to watch Wanda and separate the narrative from the craft. The story, though thin on a driving narrative, is still compelling. And the reason to keep watching is Wanda (Barbara Loden), seeing what happens to her as she drifts through her life. The movie is also about how Loden made it and what that evokes in us as a viewer. This is true for many films to some extent – the how did they do that idea ­– but there’s something different about the “how” with Wanda and it in some ways fleshes out the “why.”

Barbara Loden in Wanda (1970) directed by Barbara Loden.

Shot mostly on 16mm reversal stock – which is cheaper but less forgiving than negative film and more in line with budget-strapped documentarians of the day – Wanda, though restored, retains the grainy immediacy of the shooting format. Which makes it feel like a time piece. Stores that no longer exist populate the world (Woolworths and Korvette), the clothes, the rampant smoking, the cars that are easy to break into and hotwire. Although it’s not a documentary and it’s not New Wave, it has a feeling of being a loose and free portrait of a time, place and character where we’re experiencing the world with Wanda because we experience almost the entire film through her perspective.

Our group had a very mixed set of reactions to the film. Wanda gives so little information that the viewer pieces backstory and character motivation together with the clues that are in there throughout. Motivation is a tricky word because … is there motivation? Is Wanda motivated at all? She’s the biggest enigma of the film. Her expression and her emotions are minimal. She’s in court and does the opposite what we’d expect – she doesn’t fight for custody of her children at all. She can’t care for them but also doesn’t seem to even acknowledge them. The children, shockingly, don’t acknowledge her at all.

Wanda in court, not interested in her children and they feel the same - at least in this scene.

This speaks volumes and breaks with audience expectations of how a woman, a mother, would behave when around her children. The children perhaps no longer know Wanda as their mother at all.

When I saw this scene, I felt I knew Wanda or at least understood her backstory. She felt like people I know who I grew up with in the Midwest and so I extrapolated what I felt I knew about her. She is from a place and time where women aren’t getting a great education and are likely expected to marry at a young age. She’s attractive, so I imagined she got by on her looks, married young, had children young, and suffers from depression – or at least this sense that she never had direction in her life.

And true enough, the film starts to bear this out. Wanda does in fact get by on her looks – she’s robbed, has no money, but sleeps with a man who’s paid for her drink and then abandons her at an ice cream stand (who also takes pity on her and gives her an ice cream cone, unbidden). She’s directionless and just pulled along by whatever happens to her, getting swept up with a two-bit crook Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) and ends up being his accomplice (but it’s not clear she really wants to?). No one shows her any kindness without it being transactional - for sex, usually - except the guy with the ice cream cone and a brief moment when Mr. Higgins tells her she did good in their taking of hostages. The smallest of smiles crosses Wanda’s face and you get the sense that nobody has given her an earnest compliment in a long time, or maybe ever.

The one earnest compliment and the one actual smile from Wanda in Wanda.

Wanda does push back at one point, vomiting from nerves before the ill-conceived heist and saying she doesn’t want to go through with it. It’s one of two times she takes real action and shows agency. (Of course, she gives in and goes through with the bank robbery anyway.) The second time is near the end of the film when the airborne officer attempts to rape her in his car and she actually fights back and escapes.

The passivity and the narrative ambiguity proved to be too much for several of the QFS members. For me, I was taken along with the filmmaking and the storytelling but I definitely can understand how frustrating Wanda could be as a character. What is motivating her? What is she living for or striving for? Nothing? It must be nothing.

The filmmaking, however, is pretty remarkable. As mentioned earlier, this is one of the cases where I find it’s hard to separate the film from the filmmaking, or the feat of how they made the film. It has that lean, free-camera feeling of an expert filmmaker, not a first-timer with a crew of … four!

For example – the early shot in the film, when Wanda leaves what has to be one of the bleakest houses ever portrayed in cinema as it’s immediately adjacent to a coal strip mine. Wearing light colors, she walks through a black landscape, coal all around, the camera feels like it’s a mile away and she’s very tiny in the frame. The shot continues for a long time. Too long, contemporary audiences complained. To which she explained in an interview (as retold in Current), “I wanted to show that it took a long time to get from there to there.”

One of the early shots of Wanda - very long take of Wanda, in mostly white, against a start black landscape with piles of coal and the bleak world around her.

That’s very telling, and also illustrative of Loden as an artist. She made choices in a film that seems “real” and that we’re watching a real person drift through life. It’s a real tragedy that Loden never made a movie and died a decade later. Her follow up to Wanda would’ve been something very special. The filmmaking of Wanda should be taught to directors just starting out who use their own moxie to pull off something meaningful.

The driving sequences should be necessary film references for any filmmakers shooting from or with a car. Loden has shots looking through the front windshield onto the drivers – which means, given her limited budget, that they had the camera operator strapped to the hood of a moving car. The shots are so lovely for what is probably one of the most awkward road trips ever filmed. During that trip, the camera is in the passenger seat (sometimes the driver’s seat!) looking right at Mr. Higgins or Wanda, and it feels like we’re on the trip with them. But the driving sequence that’s most riveting is the attempted hostage taking and bank heist. The interplay between the two cars, the movement, the camera moves inside the car from Mr. Higgins’ watch to his face for example – these are extraordinary. There is so much dynamism in the sequence, so much tension – especially when Wanda is pulled over for making an illegal U-turn – that it suggests a much more experienced director at the helm than someone making their first film.

Variety of shots while driving, expertly done by Loden and her cinematographer/entire camera crew Nicholas T Proferes.

Wanda evokes Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) – a film that comes out only three years later. (I made a joke in our discussion that this was a much sadder film given the petty and incompetent thief and should be called Sadlands. It got very few laughs but it’s hard to tell on Zoom sometimes, right? Right?) Similarly in the two films there’s the crime, the listless, emotionally detached lead female protagonists who are carried through the story by awful men, taking place in a part of the country that rarely is portrayed authentically on the screen. I have no way of proving the connection, but I discovered that Loden gave a Harold Lloyd Master Seminar at the American Film Institute in 1971 – a time when Malick would’ve been in the audience. I have a theory that Malick was inspired by Loden and what she was able to accomplish on virtually no money and no crew. (Though Malick had young stars, more money and more crew than Loden - but not a lot more.)

Wanda (1970) on the left and Badlands (1973) on the right. I’m sure Loden’s talk at AFI in 1971 helped inspire Terrence Malick to make his first movie, too. (More like “sadlands,” am I right?) I’m compelled to say that I’m a proud alum of the AFI Conservatory and am trying to will this connection into being if it isn’t totally true.

For a film with an inscrutable lead character – or at least one whose motivation can be debated – the most confounding part is the ending. The film concludes on a grainy freeze frame of Wanda, seeking refuge in a bar after nearly being raped (again). Everyone around her is having a good time and laughing it up while she sits and others buy her drinks and food.

But what will happen to her? Will she continue on as she has been? She’s gone through no personal epiphanies, no great character arc. We have no reason to believe that Wanda is going to change. And perhaps this is the lasting idea that Loden wants to leave us with in this image. The world is all having a good time around her, swirling, living life. But she is stuck – literally, since it’s a still image – in her place, dependent upon the goodwill of others and unable to (incapable of?) change. Perhaps it’s a stretch, but the film does begin the way it started – there is no explanation, there is only interpretation.

The final shot, a still frame, in Wanda.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

QFS No. 137 - The invitation for April 24, 2024
Happy Fourth Anniversary!

For our four-year anniversary of the Quarantine Film Society, we decided to select an epic by the great David Lean. Yes, it took us four years to get to a David Lean film, and for the most part it’s because I’ve seen most of the epic classic ones. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) remains one of my favorite films of all time and we could easily have selected it to commemorate our four years of watching and talking about movies. 

But instead, I picked what is my second favorite Lean film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. I’ve seen it in the theater once and probably half a dozen times in total. (I have somehow managed to watch Lawrence of Arabia about six times in the theater over the last 20 years in LA, a personal achievement of which I'm quite proud.) 

One of the things I love about David Lean and why I love his filmmaking is that he makes the epic personal. He crafts giant films on huge tapestries during times of war or conflict – but they are, at their core, character dramas. Lawrence of Arabia is, among other things, an exploration of a man’s identity, of living in between two realities, all set against the World War I proxy conflicts between Turkey and the Arabian kingdoms. A Passage to India (1984) examines race, imperialistic hierarchy, and tolerance during the British Raj rule of India. Doctor Zhivago (1965) is set during the Russian Civil War and beyond but concerns itself mainly with the love story between the two protagonists.

Set during World War II in Burma, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a fascinating tale of duty, of an almost sacred commitment to a task. The film questions whether that task is moral or not. We will discuss this further when we chat about the film, but I’ve always be interested in what is known in Hindu philosophy as dharma – one’s sacred duty – and The Bridge on the River Kwai manages the best portrayal of the concept I’ve come across in Western cinema through Alec Guiness’ character. Again, here the film is not about the war. But war surrounds the story. The epic is backdrop for the personal.

Speaking of epic, just a brief reflection on pulling off a four-year run of Quarantine Film Society. Sure, “pulling off” wasn’t really all that much doing. Simply (a) repeated unemployment of yours truly, (b) stubbornness, (c) an eagerness to write mini-film essays nearly weekly and (d) have at hand a bunch of maniacs willing to watch a film and get on an online video phone to talk about it.

These four years I’ve watched more movies than perhaps any other four year stretch of my life except perhaps for college. I’ve greatly expanded my working knowledge of the craft of cinema, American film history of the 20th Century, and have gained a greater appreciation of film as an art form – in that it can be interpreted less like a sentence in a book and more like a painting in a gallery.

For all of this, I thank you. I hope to keep this up for as long as I can. Join me to discuss The Bridge on the River Kwai as kick off our next four years of world cinema domination.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Directed by David Lean

Reactions and Analyses:
Who is the antagonist in The Bridge on the River Kwai? For a film that has a lot of traditional action elements, it is not an action film in the classic sense. Or a war film in the classic sense, for that matter.

This question, though, of who is the antagonist or “the bad guy” is an interesting one and was quickly brought up by one member of the group. He argues that it’s actually Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness). He’s a maniacal man hellbent on living up to his own moral code, to the point of collaborating with who is his enemy.

Is Colonel Nicholson (Alex Guinness) the antagonist of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)?

This is a fascinating take on the film and several QFS members felt similarly. Nicholson, is governed by a code and cannot waver from it. If anything, his counterpart Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who runs a prison work camp, is downright reasonable by comparison. Nicholson nearly sacrifices not only himself but his officers on principle. He nearly completely and totally collaborates with the enemy, very nearly (inadvertently) foiling the covert mission by his own government. 

Consequently, several QFS members felt that this makes him a merciless sociopath. Sure, I can see that. But also, I’ve always seen him as totally and completely tied to his duty. As I wrote in the invitation to The Bridge on the River Kwai, for me Nicholson evokes the philosophical concept of dharma – which can be translated to spiritual duty, a duty that’s beyond mere obligation but something that’s deep inside of you that you have no choice but to fulfill. There are characters who appear in Hindu mythology who embody the concept, and at times they are unable to do anything other than their duty. They are, as I’ve heard referenced “bound to their dharma.” Rama from the epic The Ramayana has to obey his elders, his father, even when doing so triggers off a curse that leads to his father’s death. (There’s more to it than that but for simplicity’s sake, I’m boiling it down.)

Also, in the other Hindu epic The Mahabharata, the warrior prince Arjuna is on the eve of battle against his family and is paralyzed by inaction. Krishna, who is Lord Vishnu incarnate on earth, guides Arjuna through this crisis by reminding him that his duty is as a warrior for his people, and a warrior fights. Even when it’s going to be against cousins and uncles who he knows and loves – because he is on the side of righteousness. (Again, this is massively oversimplifying the Bhagavad Gita but go with me here.)

Sacred duty, or dharma, is best understood through Krishna’s explanation of the concept to Prince Arjuna on the eve of battle against his relatives in the Bhagavad Gita - depicted here in this artist’s rendition.

Now, I’ve always felt that Nicholson embodies this concept better than almost any character I’ve seen in a Western film that isn’t inspired by Eastern philosophy directly. And I still feel that way, but I noticed something different this time that should’ve been obvious to me before – this is an antiwar film. Nearly every war film is at its core an antiwar film. But The Bridge on the River Kwai is perhaps even darker. It’s not only addressing the cruelty of war, it criticizes the very necessity of war – and of the British Empire. The bridge is more than a bridge - it’s a symbol of colonialization and empire.

If you’re going to have a metaphor, might as well be a big one.

QFS members pointed out the arrogance of Nicholson, claiming their British engineers are superior intellectually to the Japanese ones, their workmanship and organization the model of the world. Some in our group couldn’t really tolerate that, which is totally valid. But this arrogance is entirely David Lean’s point. It’s this arrogance, this expressed superiority – that it’s all nonsense. And, in the end, futile and destructive. Like the British Empire, they’ve gone in with what they believe to be good intentions, but leave behind destruction, ruin, and death in their wake.

Or “Madness,” as the medic Major Clipton (James Donald) says in the last line of the film. And after the destruction, Lean leaves us with a final shot, an aerial pullback, wide, from the sky, with a jaunty British military tune. This is not accidental, and it’s an acerbic, biting final blow against the British. He could’ve chosen somber or desolate music. But the final tune has the flavor of cynical sarcasm to it.

“Madness!”

And yet, it’s Nicholson, bound by dharma, who must build the bridge and can only do so the best he can. He can’t even comprehend what others are telling him when they say to not build it so well. There are many telling exchanges in the film, but this one to me stands out as emblematic of what I mean:

Major Clipton: The fact is, what we're doing could be construed as - forgive me, sir - collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable activity.

Colonel Nicholson: Are you alright, Clipton? We're prisoners of war, we haven't the right to refuse work.

Major Clipton: I understand that, sir. But... must we work so well? Must we build them a better bridge than they could have built for themselves?

Colonel Nicholson: If you had to operate on Saito, would you do your job or would you let him die? Would you prefer to see this battalion disintegrate in idleness? Would you have it said that our chaps can't do a proper job? Don't you realize how important it is to show these people that they can't break us, in body or in spirit? Take a good look, Clipton. One day the war will be over, and I hope that the people who use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built, and who built it. Not a gang of slaves, but soldiers! British soldiers, Clipton, even in captivity.

 The incredible build up is all worth it – the long film, the (perhaps) extraneous William Holden (as “Shears”) sequences, the near suicide of Hayakawa – it is all worth it for that moment when Nicholson discovers that it’s his fellow British soldiers who are trying to blow up the bridge. As if awaked from a trans, Nicholson says What have I done? Truly one of the greatest epiphanies ever filmed, both in terms of performance and payoff. Nicholson remembers that the bridge was his duty, but there was a greater one and it was for the British Army.

Colonel Nicholson sees Sears (William Holden), the moment before his realization. “What have I done?”

 A final note – I thought I had this film figured out. It has remained in my memory as one of my formative movies. But rewatching it and discussing with the QFS group has introduced even more complexity into the story and the themes. Once again, the mark of a truly great work of art and craft by one of the masters of the medium.

Ace in the Hole (1951)

QFS No. 136 - The invitation for March 27, 2024
This is our second Quarantine Film Society selection by the great Billy Wilder, after having seen one of his earlier films The Lost Weekend (1947, QFS No. 84) a couple years ago. Ace in the Hole (1951) has been on my to-see list for some time, so I’m very much looking forward to it.

I was tempted to select a Wilder film I’ve already seen because they are so rewatchable. And I’ve managed to see a great deal of Wilder’s films - Some Like it Hot (1959), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Apartment (1960), Double Indemnity (1944) are such terrific classics - but he made so many that there are a lot left for me to watch. He’s another one, like John Ford, with a very high batting percentage of great hits. I went with Ace in the Hole because, well, don’t we all want to bask in the glow of Kirk Douglas’ chin for nearly two hours?

Ace in the Hole (1951) Directed by Billy Wilder

Reactions and Analyses:
One of the most surprising aspects of Ace in the Hole (1951) is that it’s from 1951 and not 1971. There’s an expectation for many of the post-World War II American films, that they have a Capra-esque quality. A happy ending or at least one that’s, at best, ambiguous or a qualified victory for the protagonist.

A happy ending Ace in the Hole certainly does not have. One of our group members highlighted a shot at the end of the movie, where the crowds have recently left and all that remains is Leo’s father near a sign that reads “Proceeds go to Leo Minosa Rescue Fund.”

The crowds have vanished near the conclusion of Ace in the Hole (1951). Of note - the “re-elect Sheriff Kretzer” sign written directly on the cliffside.

It’s a shot that speaks to the fickle nature of the crowd, the spectacle over, and all that remains is the detritus of the carnival and a family in ruin. Leo (Richard Benedict) has died. His wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) has departed with the masses, just as she intended to early on before Tatum (Kirk Douglas) convinces her that her fortunes will change soon. And Tatum, having used Leo and keeping him trapped longer than necessary in order for him to reap the benefits of the sensational story going viral before “going viral” was a term, also dies. But not before a final act of almost valor.

The 1970s – coming on the heels of New Wave moments throughout Europe which in turn came on the heels of Post WWII neorealism – featured a generation of filmmakers who were raised by people who had witnessed the horrors of humanity and understood that real life had no clean happy endings. Obviously, this is an overgeneralization but the trends are clear to see from the films that came to life in this era in the second half of the 20th Century.

 With its social commentary on human nature and their attraction to spectacle, the media’s role in fanning the flames of that human nature, and a non-Hollywood ending Ace in the Hole feels like an independent film from the 1970s and not a studio release from twenty years earlier. You can easily see a throughline between this and Network (1976), a film whose very essence is an analysis of media, entertainment and sensationalism. The cynicism in Ace in the Hole feels uncommon for the 1950s, with the Cold War in its infancy and the Allies victory in World War II fresh in people’s minds. The fact that it’s Billy Wilder and that the film is twenty years before its time, in some respect, is perhaps why I’m so drawn to it now and why it has been rediscovered as an overlooked classic of the time.

Tatum says early in the film, “You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't say with you. One man's different, you want to know all about him. That's human interest.” Tatum, as an anti-hero, displays a deep understanding of that human nature throughout Ace in the Hole. Sheriff Kretzer (Ray Teal) hates him but Tatum turns him around and knows what the sheriff most wants – to be seen as powerful and important. Tatum tells Sherrif Kretzer how he will promote the sheriff as the man most determined to save Leo and in exchange Tatum gets exclusive access to the mine and the metaphoric gold inside. He convinces Lorraine to stay in town and play the grieving wife because it will make her a star and make all of them money. Tatum is a devious genius and he almost pulls it off.

“Almost” is the operative word. His gamble has proven too costly and Leo dies. And here’s one of our primary debates happened in our QFS discussion group. In the end, does Tatum feel guilty? Is that what drives him at the end? He’s clearly devastated by Leo’s death – but is it because it ruins his own chance at stardom and the heights of journalistic fame? Or is it because he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s Leo’s “murderer,” that he directly caused Leo’s death and consequently has a moment of clarity?

Leo, trying to hang on and trusting Tatum.

Several in the group believed that Tatum has no real remorse. Sure, he didn’t want Leo to die but he also knew that it meant the end of his own life. Others believed that he did in fact feel remorse and you can see it by his solitary act of bringing in the priest to comfort Leo for his final moments. Then, Tatum literally shouts from the mountaintop to tell everyone that Leo is dead and the carnival should go home. If he was truly in for all of this glory himself, he would’ve let Leo die quietly and had the “scoop” on Leo’s final minutes. (“Scoop” in quotes because Leo is the one creating this scoop.)

(Above sequence:) Tatum shouts from hilltop that Leo is dead. Is this the guilt-ridden face of a man full of remorse?

For me, personally, I think he did feel a measure of remorse and guilt but too little too late. And perhaps that’s why he doesn’t seek medical attention after Lorraine stabs him – he knows it’s his penance. He has to now suffer as he’s caused Leo’s suffering for his own gain. Perhaps explains why he accepts this pain without seeking amelioration or offering complaint, but it’s left (deliberately?) ambiguous.

People in our group brought up the cynicism but for me – and I said this early in our discussion – the film didn’t strike me that it was overtly cynical. And that probably says more about me or the time in which I live in now. For the 1950s, sure, the film is more cynical about human nature than popular culture portrayed. But we’ve now lived 75 years or so since then and seen the world revolve around capitalism, social media, hype, and the classically American propensity of squeezing money from every corner of human life. GoFundMe campaigns and “tribute” songs to raise money are the a logical extension of the funds to save Leo in the cave, the altruistic flipside of tragic spectacle. 

And Leo – even the most “sympathetic” character in the film – is a grave robber of Native American artifacts! The person we’re cheering for to survive has, himself, stated that he’s probably cursed by the old spirits for robbing one too many times the burial sites of the indigenous of New Mexico. (Not to mention the studio so disliked the film that after its initial release they pulled it and remaned it “The Big Carnival” because people, you see, like carnivals so they might think it’s a fun movie! Talk about cynicism.) So it’s fair to say Ace in the Hole does have loads of cynicism – on screen and off – even though that’s not what first struck me.

The story is rife with plot holes as pointed out by the group, including the biggest one – why couldn’t Lorraine go down there to talk to Leo? It’s true – once Tatum goes down there frequently and it’s seemingly now safe to talk to Leo, then why can’t people who love him do that, like his parents? Also, is it believable that Tatum would suffer a stomach wound like that for so long? Only if he believes it’s a moral punishment.

And there’s this question – did Tatum ultimately win? He, too, is stuck in a hole – both he and Leo are in a hole together, one actual and one metaphoric. Both are counting on the other to extract them from their personal holes, but both die together. Tatum’s goal was to get back on top, become famous and return to New York. And while he doesn’t make it to New York and out of Albuquerque physically, he has become famous – people are cheering for him, the radio broadcast wants his exclusive thoughts. He is, for a moment, atop the world.

The final confession, near the end for Tatum.

But it’s all fleeting, like the masses who come overnight and leave the next day as the tragedy ends. Ultimately, Tatum will become infamous and perhaps that’s victory enough – especially if you’re a cynic.

20 Days in Mariupol (2023)

QFS No. 135 - The invitation for March 13, 2024
Long time QFS members know that we rarely select documentary films due to a long-standing bias against them within the ranks of our QFS Council of Excellence. This is only our third documentary selection. The other two – Honeyland (2019, QFS No. 5) and Flee (2021, QFS No. 69) were also both nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards, with Honeyland taking the prize in the 2020 Covid year Oscars. Flee did not win, but was the first film ever to be nominated for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Animated Feature – a feat which is still pretty astonishing. It remains one of my personal favorite films of the decade. 

What both those films had in common were that although documentary films, they felt as if they were scripted narrative features. Honeyland followed an old lady  in Macedonia harvesting honey the old-fashioned way as if it was a scripted movie, in a sense. Flee also had a scripted animated feature film feel – both because of the story of the protagonist’s life and the masterful manner in which it was told.

Which brings us to 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) – a documentary which will likely have a similar narrative action film feeling. The story was introduced to me last year by my brother who sent me this link to an Associated Press story by and about AP journalists trapped in Ukraine as the Russians invaded. They had been reporting from the battlefield and soon discovered that they were also being hunted. As most of you know, my brother is a journalist and he first learned of this incredible story while serving on a committee that selected these reporters for an award. Of course upon reading the story myself, I immediately knew this was a movie and started to look into whether the rights were available. Little did I know that the documentary was being finalized with footage from the frontlines by the journalists themselves. A movie, in some fashion, was already in the works. 

The story is incredible and let me give you the lede right here: “The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.”

If that’s not the way to begin a great story – on screen or in print or otherwise – then I don’t know what is. The fact that it’s also a true story and one that we can watch, well I think we ought to do that.

20 Days in Mariupol (2023) directed by Mstyslav Chernov

Reactions and Analyses:
What can a documentary do that a scripted feature film cannot? This is one of the questions that went through my mind as I watched 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) and one of the first aspects of the film we discussed. In a narrative film, even a bleak film featuring war, desperation, doom and destruction all around – you would be hard pressed to find a movie that didn’t have some inkling of hope. Some path to escape, at least, if not victory outright for the protagonist.

In a documentary, however, there’s no expectation that you will receive that olive branch or lifeline from the filmmaker. The film can be as relentless as it needs to be because this is real. In a feature film, the filmmakers would (rightly?) be trashed for putting the audience through something relentlessly harrowing. In a documentary, you can turn that feeling into something like a duty to watch it. Because providing witness is what the filmmakers are hoping for in showcasing it for an audience.

One in our group put it that way – it felt like our duty to watch 20 Days in Mariupol. In part because the filmmaker-journalists made it their mission to make sure the world knew what was happening in Mariupol. Going into this film, I had some knowledge of what the filmmakers went through, having read the Associated Press reporting and also the story of the filmmakers being personally targeted by the Russian troops. I expected the filmmakers to include themselves in the storytelling, much in the way The Cove (2009) did – also an Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature – as someone in the QFS group brought up that parallel.

Refreshingly, the filmmakers of 20 Days in Mariupol did not give in to making the film about themselves beyond what was necessary to tell the story. Although Mstyslav Chernov’s voice guides us in voiceover, the camera is never turned inward. He reflects on occasion about being Ukrainian and there are artistic vignettes of a hand covered in sand and images of his children playing in safety, for example. But they are, thankfully, very few and used at just the right times and just the right ways to break up the constant movement and bloodshed we witness on screen.

To that point, another in our group brought up the moments where the filmmaker sits down, camera still rolling, and we see a hallway sideways or the ground, not focused on anything in particular. The filmmaker catches his breath, taking in the horror and pausing from showing more if it. The moments are needed relief and are a fascinating way of involving the filmmaker in the story in a subtle way. An editor and director could have easily cut those parts out as they don’t advance the “story” or any narrative, but keeping those moments in both help to humanize our filmmaker guides through the film but also to emphasize that we are in this with them – experiencing this with them.

One member of the group mentioned that we never see the filmmaker’s face (until the very end). And yet, we are riveted – we want him to survive. He is us. In that extraordinary action sequence when they have to escape the occupied city with a Ukrainian special strike force, the filmmaking is as good as any you’ll see in a modern war film or a video game. We’re running, we see the soldier in front of us talking when paused around a corner, we dive when an airplane screams overhead. We’re on the edge of our seat, wondering how the filmmaker will survive. And yet – we’ve never seen his face.

That’s a pretty remarkable feat. Perhaps it’s because it is us. We are looking and experiencing the world with this filmmaker and exclusively through his eyes throughout – which is perhaps another thing documentary does that a feature film wouldn’t be able to get away with necessarily. Not seeing the protagonist at all and playing the film entirely through point of view is a hallmark of “documentary style” but often you see clever ways a narrative filmmaker will at least give us a glimpse of the person holding the fictitious camera. But in the documentary, we don’t see the person holding the camera, favoring instead the horror but not in a gratuitous way – it’s real, seen how a person would. At times directly, at times looking away, searching for something else but drawn back to the calamity. The blood, the babies dying or living, the people grieving the death of a child or other family member. We experience it in what feels like real time through the filmmaker’s eyes.

And finally – since this is such a recent war, one still going on, there are so many elements that make it feel truly “modern.” There’s the mission to get internet. Seeing the dozens of power strips so people can charge their phones just to use them as flashlights. The familiar buildings (e.g. Crossfit gym!) being used as shelters or bombed out malls. And then, the entire social media storyline in which the Russians accuse the reporters of faking the bombed out maternity ward and using crisis actors. “Fake news,” if you will. History isn’t just written by the victors, it’s being written in real time – as one of our QFSers put it.

In Chernov’s Academy Award just a few days ago, he said:

“But I can't change history, I can't change the past, but we are all together, you and I, we are among the most talented people in the world. We can make sure that history is corrected, that the truth prevails. And so that the people of Mariupol who died and those who gave their lives will never be forgotten. Because cinema shapes memories, and memories shape history."

Chernov’s use of footage he shot which then later appears as news footage in television programs around the world is incredibly effective in so many ways, but in one way in particular. It reminds us that one of the main driving narrative thrusts of the film is we need to get the story to the world. To prove it happened and so no one forgets. The fact that it was real, that it was a documentary, makes it more urgent for the filmmakers to share it and for the world’s eyes to see it. They got it out to the world and we’ve seen it. We were witness and it was, indeed, a duty to help shape memories and history.

Past Lives (2023)

QFS No. 134 - The invitation for February 28, 2024
What I know about this film approaches zero. I do know it’s (partly) from South Korea and that it’s Celine Song’s first film after being a staff writer on a major Amazon series. So, you know – pretty amazing, that!

But I’ve deliberately kept myself away from knowledge of the plot and was looking forward to seeing the film. This is our second selection from South Korea, the other being Bong-Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder (2003, QFS No. 112), and many more remain on my to-watch list. The South Korean film industry just keeps blasting home runs all over the place.

Join us this week if you can!

Past Lives (2023) Directed by Celine Song

Reactions and Analyses:
There’s a shot in Past Lives (2023) that essentially tells the premise of the film in one frame. It’s early on, Na Young says goodbye to Hae Sung because her family is immigrating from South Korea. The goodbye is curt and without over-wrought emotion because, well, they’re adolescents.

Then they each walk towards their own homes – Na Young upwards on the right of the frame and Hae Sung on the left, more or less straight, away from us. This image defines, in some ways, their trajectories. It’s simple and straightforward but clear. And it definitely sets a course for the split in their lives.

When I first selected Past Lives, knowing very little about the film besides its accolades and that it’s Oscar nominated for Best Picture, I assumed this was a South Korean film. And after having seen it, I can say that it’s very much an American film, an immigrant’s tale. This splitting or fracturing of a life in divergent storylines. It could’ve been told from my parents’ perspective leaving India in the 1970s.

The point from which their lives split in Past Lives (2023).

I brought this up in our QFS discussion and the others pointed out that this is not just an immigrant’s tale – this is the story of anyone who is forced to split from their home at a young age and has that fondness, that nostalgic remembrance, and that powerlessness to stop that fracturing the familiar. The fact that this is also true and valid illustrates how universal and accessible the story is.

Past Lives makes an argument for the simple film told with tenderness but with just the right amount of layering. The Korean concept of “in-yun” – the layers of interaction between throughout past lives – feels deliberate beyond how it’s used to describe the relationship between Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Na Young/Nora (Greta Lee). Perhaps in-yun is also meant to convey that the film is not as simple as it seems, that it’s layered in unseen ways (which, I’m sure, is me misinterpreting the definition of in-yun but bear with me). That there’s depth between these two childhood friends (sweethearts?) and when they reconnect later in their lives, that connection has meaning beyond how it’s been set up in the film.

The QFS group was split on the strength of this connection. For some, the childhood connection between Na Young/Nora and Hae Sung didn’t suggest a deeper connection later in life. For example, Nora claims to not exactly remember the boys name while talking on the phone with her mother, but then discovers he’s been asking about her whereabouts for a little while now.

After going on their “date.”

For others in our group, their connection in childhood was enough and felt familiar – this idea of two lives, connected through family, culture, and yes, love – two people diverging but when they reconnect, it’s fated they are to be together. Or, more specifically, in-yun. Case in point: your enjoyment of this film is directly related to whether or not you believe that their relationship at the beginning is strong enough that they could reconnect so quickly over such a long span of time.

Past Lives has the ease of a simple film well told but some of the trappings of a first-time filmmaker, several of us felt (including me). For example, there’s a scene where Nora’s (non-Korean) husband Arthur (John Magaro) talks about how they met and became a couple and moved in together and got married so she could get a green card, etc. What’s missing in his description is “love.” The kind of standard American relationship story devoid of cinematic spark or romance, but realistic and familiar. He continues to then say that in this version of the story, Hae Sun – the childhood lover – returns to her life and she realizes that this is who she should’ve been with her whole life. That he, Arthur, is the villain in this story. Hae Sun is more closely suited to her culturally but also very satisfying narratively. Both Nora and Arthur are writers so this aligns with their story-telling impulses.

Now, that’s all true but … we know that already as an audience. The filmmaker seemingly hasn’t trusted us to put that all together and she has a character explain it to us. This, to me, is a significant misstep in a story otherwise hewing close to cinematic realism. The scene, also, continues and Arthur says he started to learn Korean because Nora was talking in her sleep but in Korean. He says “You dream in a language I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside you I can’t go.”

That is beautiful. It’s poetic, it speaks to the character himself, to their relationship, to the thrust and import of that scene. The scene could have very easily started here and it would have spoken volumes. But instead we get the needless explainer. And the ending as well – there’s a version of the film that ends as soon as Hae Sung leaves, wondering if this life is actually a past life and “we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then?”

Again – this is beautiful poetry. One member of the group suggested that ending of the film would be stronger if it ended right here, or right after this and he gets in his airport ride and goes. Instead of the long walk with Nora back to her husband where she cries. (And this is where I offered the additional criticism of staying in a wide shot instead of seeing her face here, for that felt like a payoff to me.) Even the opening shot - there’s an unseen bar patron watching the three in the bar. We push in slowly but instead of trusting the images of these three, with only their expressions and body language to inspire our curiosity, we’re hearing a bar patron who we will never see give us a setup that our eyes would have given us without the help.

Perhaps. These are all counterfactuals and there’s an argument in conducting film criticism that one needs to focus on the film in front of them and not the alternate version in our heads. Yes, valid – but still, the fact that these questions arise are less about how we would’ve done it differently and more about a few small weaknesses in an otherwise solid, simple film. 

Despite some first-time filmmaker criticisms, there are a lot of beautiful uses of visual storytelling throughout - including the use of symmetry across eras between Na Young and Hae Sung.

And in defense of the simple film – I mean “simple” not that it lacks depth or intelligence. Quite the opposite. When the filmmaker has trusted us, we’ve filled in the blanks and walked in the shoes of two people different than ourselves and went on a journey with them. As one person in our group remarked – it’s refreshing to have a film that’s only about 90-minutes, has a simple but tender story, well-acted and executed, that brings up emotions in a natural way. Not overwrought or excessive or gratuitous. (Counterexamples from this award season include Oppenheimer, 2023 and Killer of the Flower Moon, 2023). I believed I added “inoffensive” as a way of describing Past Lives and, once again, I meant it as a compliment. There are no subplots, no side character, no stretching for meaning. It’s all there. Simple.

Whether that simplicity was effective or not, we all were in agreement, however, on this one thing – we are grateful that a movie like this is still being made, is receiving accolades, and that a lot of people have watched and enjoyed it. So consider this an endorsement of the simple film.

Hae Sung and Nora on their non-date date in New York City.

The Holdovers (2023)

QFS No. 133 - The invitation for February 21, 2024
This is our first selection of an Alexander Payne film, one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers. I’ve seen nearly all of his movies, hence its exclusion from the QFS Priority Selection List since I’ve seen nearly all of them. Truly one of the great living screenwriters, a modern auteur.

The first Payne film I saw was Election (1999) at an advance screening in Ann Arbor* while I was in my first screenwriting class. Our professor took us to see it at the State Theater and the film didn’t even have the final credit scroll yet. I saw it a second time at the Michigan Theater during its regular release later that year and it remains one of my favorite viewing experiences – the film brought the house down, especially after one line in particular. Exemplary satire, Election is an underrated modern classic and should have earned Reese Witherspoon at least an Oscar nomination, one of a litany of Oscar Crimes™ over the years (see 2023: Gerwig, Greta).

Payne’s Sideways (2004) not only won him his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay but also single-handedly made Santa Barbara Wine Country overcrowded, drove up the demand for pinot noir production and consumption and destroyed the reputation of the perfectly fine merlot grape. His Nebraska (2015) is a beautiful, melancholic road trip film. Throw in About Schmidt (2002), and The Descendants (2011) for which he won another writing Oscar, and you could call that a pretty terrific career.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to suggest this, but from the way I see it Payne is the Preston Sturges of our times. Sturges, as you recall from QFS No. 2 The Miracle at Morgan Creek (1944), wrote and directed films about ordinary misfits caught in a lie or a deception – as a fake husband in The Miracle at Morgan Creek, Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) as a fake war hero or Sullivan’s Travels (1941) as a filmmaker posing as a fake hobo – as a way into the exploration of humanity, relationships and society. Both have a similar way of capturing a character’s story through humor, often bittersweet, but with the slightest of social commentary. With Sturges that commentary was a little more overt and daring, and Payne’s mission is not cultural or social criticism necessarily. But you can find it in his authentic portrayal of an ordinary person, his or her sense of normalcy upended.

Sturges might’ve used more sweet than bitter in his cinematic concoctions, and Payne can be acerbic and creates some truly uncomfortable and squirm-inducing scenes. So it’s not a perfect comparison but I stand by the assertion. Regardless, both carved out a particular niche in their eras – auteurs whose works relied upon well-told stories with grounded characters in exquisitely crafted scripts as opposed to artistic or visual innovation. With health doses of humor.

I’m very much looking forward to finally seeing another Alexander Payne film, his first in six years, and having a chance to discuss it with you. Please watch The Holdovers at home or in the theater – still playing somewhere near you I believe – and we’ll discuss!

*Home of the current National Champions of College Football.

The Holdovers (2023) Directed by Alexander Payne

Reactions and Analyses:
There’s a moment in The Holdovers (2023) that feels like its heading towards familiar territory. A misunderstood curmudgeon teacher and his misfit students all have to somehow survive the winter together at their private boarding school as they’re stuck with each other until school resumes after the break. With this setup, it’s easy to be prepared for a story in which the students come to understand this man more and the teacher softens and becomes a better person and therefore a better teacher by knowing his students more personally – and everyone learns something about themselves or life that prepares them for the world more than their conventional education ever could.

I’m not trying to sound glib; many an excellent film has done this well and movingly – Dead Poets Society (1989) or The Breakfast Club (1985) come to mind. So that’s the direction Alexander Payne is appearing to veer us towards in The Holdovers.

But then, something happens. All the kids, except for one literally fly away in a helicopter to a mountain top.

Paul (Paul Giamatti) and Angus (Dominic Sessa) are stuck with each other from this point forward in The Holdovers (2023).

What Payne really setting up for is this – don’t expect anything because this movie is not going where you think it is going.

As one of our group members put it, you think it’s going to be a movie about class, but it’s not just that; you think it’s going to be a movie a hardened grump falling in love and being transformed by that, but it’s not; you think it’s about the start of a friendship between a teacher and his student – it’s not that exactly either.

All of those themes are in The Holdovers, to be sure, but just when the narrative goes in the direction you think it’s going to go, it goes somewhere else. That this happened in a film that Alexander Payne directed but did not write – to me, that’s incredibly impressive. He took another script and made it a film that feels very much like his voice.

What Payne has always been good at is making characters feel real, even when they’re a little askew. His characters have believable inner lives, are imperfect, and struggle inwardly but not usually outwardly. What I’ve loved and appreciated about Payne’s movies is that they have a very distinct comedic edge but they’re truly dramas. I empathize with the characters in his movies because they seem so much like humans with familiar struggles. 

The Holdovers caused me to experience something new for me in a Payne film – it made me well up with tears several times. Angus (Dominic Sessa) meets his father (Stephen Thorne) in a mental institution, they hug and Angus tells him he misses him. His father, seemingly moved, can actually only reply that he believes the institution’s staff is poisoning his food. And then you realize that Angus is truly alone and in deep need of love and encouragement. When Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) breaks down at the party about the loss of her son, you feel it deeply, as if she’s been holding it at bay for so long and finally lets her grief go.

Topping off all them, however, is the end. The handshake between Angus and Paul (Paul Giamatti). There is perhaps more power, more earned emotion in that handshake than in any number of romance films or romantic comedies’ climactic kisses. And importantly, it’s not a hug – it would’ve been ruined if it was a hug. It would’ve felt fake, like a movie. Because that’s not their relationship. They’re still teacher and student. They went through a journey together, learned each other’s deepest held secrets, have changed and grown to see each other as lonely, suffering, resilient human beings. And that handshake holds it all, with Paul’s cracking voice and Angus hearing from his teacher – a sort of surrogate father role – that the kid is going to be all right. That’s all Angus needed in his journey, was someone to tell him that. And it was earned, narratively, and paid off in the right way.

Perhaps the most meaningful handshake in recent movie history. And then Angus is gone.

In the invitation to this week’s selection, I mentioned Payne as our era’s Preston Struges. And I think this film helps bolster that case. Let’s set aside how both auteurs deftly use comedy to tell a dramatic story in ways both narratively interesting but grounded in truth. There’s also the social criticisms embedded in their films.

Payne addresses class in The Holdovers in several ways but most importantly it’s woven into the DNA of the main character Paul. When we learn about his backstory, Paul reveals he was kicked out of Harvard because of allegations of plagiarism by the son of a famous person at Harvard – when it was actually the opposite, the son copied Paul’s work. But the administration wouldn’t have sided with a kid who left his abusive father and extricated himself from poverty and ended up at Harvard through his own means. The fact that he’s cut down by the wall of privilege is devastating in the retelling and is evident in the unresolved grief that Paul contains within.

Similarly, we hear about Mary’s late son who couldn’t get a scholarship to pay enough for college, went off to the army with the hopes of eventually going to college, only to have him die fighting in Vietnam. Mary’s story touches on race too – it’s never said but you know that he was the only Black kid in his class, whose mother worked there just so he could go to school and have a chance.

Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) in her sister’s simple room. She gives her son’s baby shoes and other baby clothes in a exquisitely moving scene. Even the set dressing and set here is a depiction of class - a Black middle class home set against the wealth privilege of Dalton from the rest of the film.

In all these ways, Payne is making an oblique criticism of the system that rewards the wealthy and well connected, but not through didactic speechifying, but through the story, through the setting, and through the characters. Simply pointing out it exists in the way it exists and portraying it in a way that shows it’s real and not a narrative contrivance is perhaps one of the best ways a filmmaker can illustrate how inequitable things truly are.

Sturges’ social criticisms of a different era centered around poverty and concepts of masculinity/military might. In Sullivan’s Travels (1945), Sullivan (Joel McCrea) a Hollywood director wants to make a movie about hobos. To do so, he goes and lives as one. But it’s skin deep – he can escape this any time so there’s no real lesson learned and he’s only doing this as a temporary means to an end. Through a series of circumstances, he ends up homeless and without memory and actually has to live as a vagrant. In both The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944, QFS No. 2) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), the main character has to pose as a military man or a masculine husband figure despite being just an ordinary guy who gets caught up in a… well not quite lies, but untruths let’s say.

(Above) Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels on the left (1944) and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers on the right. Completely different storylines in these specific films, but both filmmakers auteurs wield comedy to tell dramatic stories with an embedded criticism of class. Auteurs of their times.

Sturges uses more narrative contrivances than Payne does but both point out some of the unfairness or absurdity of life through a lived experience of a character, through the use of humor and poignancy – with near perfect writing and performances. Again, it’s not a perfect comparison but both Payne and Sturges were auteurs who had something to say about our current world and about humanity that is revealing while simultaneously being entertaining.

Another member of the group put it this way – I thank the film gods that a movie like The Holdovers is still being made. Writing, directing, acting, an adult storyline and grown-up themes. This is the film that has become an endangered species in the era of limited series and the mid-budget character driven dramas ending up on screening services instead of movie screens. Thank the film gods indeed for giving us Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in these roles, and for seeing Paul Giamatti corner the market on the curmudgeon with the soft center. And thank the film gods for Alexander Payne continuing to use his formidable might to bring these stories to life.

A Night at the Opera (1935)

QFS No. 132 - The invitation for December 20, 2023
For our final 2023 selection, we’re going to a holiday classic!

Okay fine, so it’s not exactly a holiday classic, but doesn’t this time of year seem like a perfect opportunity to watch a Marx Brothers film? We haven’t yet selected a film by the comedy legends, and A Night at the Opera is widely known as one of their best films.

I know I’ve seen parts of many of their movies, but I believe I’ve only seen Duck Soup (1933) from start to finish. I have a feeling the redeeming artistic value of this movie might be minimal. But movies are a lot of things – and sometimes they’re just pure entertainment. Comedies are difficult and require so much technical skill, so it should be fun to take a closer look at how they pull of the perfect banana cream pie toss.

And with the holiday break and kids are off of school, this might be a fun one to watch with them for all the gags and mayhem and the answer to difficult trivia questions. For example – can you name all of the Marx Brothers? I got three out of five (answers below)*.

So join us for the final QFS of 2023. I’d love to do more before the calendar turns, but wouldn’t you know it? The strike ended and now there is finally directing work. It’s back to the TV mill for me, hence there will be some pauses coming up for the movie group.

Enjoy A Night at the Opera as we wrap up QFS for 2023!

*Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo. I totally missed Chico and Gummo, in part because Gummo was not in any movies. I have no excuse for missing Chico.

A Night at the Opera (1935) Directed by Sam Wood

Reactions and Analyses:
Comedy doesn’t always transcend eras. Some can be very specific to the time in which it was created, with cultural references or styles of speaking that become outdated. The Marx Brothers are among those who have managed to create works of comedy that endures beyond their lifetimes.

True, in A Night at the Opera (1935), there are minor handful of contemporary jokes lost on modern audiences. But even in those – such as the one about “quintuplets up in Canada” – the content of the joke itself may not have lasted, but the delivery and Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx)’s reaction and delivery of the line still gets a laugh: “Well, I wouldn't know about that; I haven't been in Canada in years.”

Any discussion about A Night of the Opera is going to center on the Marx Brothers, of course, because when you get down to it, that’s really primarily what the movie is – a launching point for their comedy. Much of our discussion was about the brothers and almost no talk about the plot or the filmmaking. Which is the point; it is, after all, a Marx Brothers movie.

The cabin-filling sequence in A Night at the Opera (1933) is peak Marx Brothers.

In addition to Groucho’s near-perfect, constant one-liner deliveries, the Marx Brothers are simply the greatest agents of chaos in movie history. Throw them into any situation, and that’s what you get – chaos. That’s the hallmark of a Marx Brothers movie. The difference, perhaps, in this film is with the inclusion of some musical numbers, the attempt at a love story, and only minor social commentary (as opposed to the more direct commentary in Duck Soup, 1933)

Several QFS members pointed out how one can see their influence on future comedians - Martin Short came to mind, the magic of Penn and Teller, and even Mel Brooks. Rodney Dangerfield is the clearest heir to Groucho Marx we could think of and the discovery of that delighted me immensely.

One QFSer felt less sanguine about the film, that it was repetitive and there wasn’t a story – as compared to a Charlie Chaplin film, for example. Chaplin’s films, though often featuring the same Tramp character, had a strong storyline, a social commentary, pathos, and of course groundbreaking visual comedy and sight gags. Marx Brothers movies, however, were merely a way to setup the Marx Brothers wreaking havoc in a straight world around them. Both are funny, both have endured, and both have stood the test of time. Where Chaplin used artistry to enhance his comedy, the Marx Brothers relied on their on-screen personas and vaudevillian skills to enhance theirs.

One way of thinking about this, to me, is there are movies that are funny (Chaplin’s Modern Times, 1936) and there are funny movies (A Night at the Opera). Movies that are funny are films with a compelling driving narrative that’s told in a funny and artful way. Funny movies are comedies that favor humor and gags above the plot and storyline. This is an utterly unsophisticated way of putting this, but a distinction between styles of films that make audiences laugh is worth considering. How do you make someone laugh? There’s no one way and the differences between how Chaplain does it and the Marx Brothers do it provide some insight into that. A deep dive into this comedy would be, of course, a lot of fun.

Generally speaking, the group agreed that though the plot was thin and perhaps unnecessary even, this is a film that you can probably just pick up at any point and simply enjoy the gags – the absurd amount of people in the cabin, the disappearing beds, the contract negotiation, the final opera, and so on. Perhaps a funny movie doesn’t need to be much more than that.

Black Narcissus (1947)

QFS No. 131 - The invitation for December 13, 2023
Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell are the powerhouse directing duo from England whose legendary work includes The Red Shoes (1948, QFS No. 52), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), 49th Parallel (1941) with Laurence Olivier, The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), and of course this week’s selection The Black Narcissus. I’ve only scratched the surface myself with their career work but everything I’ve seen has been incredibly impressive. It’s no wonder they are so influential to the following generation of filmmakers – Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee to name two – and I feel they need to be studied further by us and future filmmakers.

One of the hallmarks of Pressburger and Powell is their masterly grasp of film craft. The cinematography in their films is legendary and was duly awarded throughout their careers. Their art direction, costumes and set design are unforgettable. I point you to The Red Shoes for a textbook in the complementary usof all those elements as a case in point. Their numerous Oscar nominations for screenwriting and several for editing illustrate their excellence in storytelling for the visual medium.

Black Narcissus is one of those films I should have seen already. I know about its enduring cinematography and some of the story elements, but I’ve never seen it. It’s a big oversight in my viewing history that I’m happy to remedy now. I’m excited to finally see it and continue with my exploration of Pressburger and Powell.

Black Narcisscus (1947) Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Reactions and Analyses:
The wind. Besides the sweeping vistas, the first thing you really become aware of in Black Narcissus is the wind. Before we even physically arrive at the monastery, the characters make mention of how the wind is unavoidable up there, on the cliffside in the Himalayas above the village in the valley below.

And throughout the film, the wind is a nearly constant. It blows the fringes of the habits of the nuns, shakes the flowering tree branches and the tassels on the drapes. No matter what anyone does, the wind can never be dominated. There is an uncontrollable force that can never be mastered out there all around you and it’s folly for anyone who tries to master it. Worse – the attempt to control an unseen force like that can lead to suffering and madness.

To me, this is one of the overarching metaphors of the film. A group of white nuns come to a palace no longer used in order to turn it into a missionary, to bring their teachings, medicine and religion to a place and people who believe in other ways of being. The group is small and recent; the people already there are ancient and vast.

One way of looking at Black Narcissus is that it’s an interpretation of British colonialism, specifically in South Asia. A small group of people, atop a hill looking down on and away from the locals, are trying to remake a world they’re not normally part of. And they cannot. They can’t control the primal, human nature of the place. (The nuns, are temporary – the winds live forever. India achieves independence from England in 1947, which is the year Black Narcissus is released so this is a very plausible interpretation as it would’ve been on the mind of writer-director Brits Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.)

From Black Narcissus (1947) where you can see branches pushed back and the nun’s habit fluttering.

The wind took up a good amount of our discussion about the film. To one QFSer, the wind felt as if it represented the spirit of one’s past, haunting you. Another said he felt the wind revealed yourself to yourself, like a mirror in which you are forced to look at your own image and reflect. It reveals yourself to you. Several of the nuns have joined the order because they have a past they were trying to leave, especially Sister Clodaugh (Deborah Kerr). The solitude of the place, the natural elements, the long vista horizon – Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson) mentions she’s staring to lose faith upon seeing the infinite up there – forces each to confront something about themselves.

For Sister Clodaugh, she hadn’t even thought about her old lover since joining the order – not until she was up on the mountain at the monastery. Then the place, the wind, brought those memories back to her. The primal forces bringing to life primal emotions and urges.

It’s impossible to watch this film and not be utterly swept away by the filmmaking craft. If ever there was a film in which you could feel the hand of a master filmmaker carrying you along, it’s this. (Or master filmmakers to be more accurate.) Everything is tightly constructed and deliberate. The camera pushes in slowly in mid-conversation, but only when needed. Sister Coldaugh puts out her hand to shake Mr. Dean (David Farrar)’s hand, but he instead grasps it gently and squeezes ever so slightly – an intimate moment played entirely in a medium 2-shot with a wide enough lens that the action in the background of the nuns leaving can still be seen. I couldn’t help but say that producers on shows I’ve directed would’ve been horrified if I didn’t shoot a close ups on each person and then an insert on the hand to really hammer it home. But here, the directors choose to play it in a medium 2-shot – so simple, so perfect, and conveys intimacy, sensuality and their connection.

Pressburger and Powell also use canted/Dutch angles selectively but that are so well composed that one QFSer mentioned that they convey motion and movement without actually moving the camera. The close ups fill the frame, with extreme close ups on the eyes or on lipstick being applied to the lips. Contrast that with the wide vistas throughout the picture. The control and firm tightness of the film definitely evoked their The Red Shoes (1948) that the duo makes the year after this movie.

Speaking of those vistas, those matte paintings – for me, this is one of the greatest films ever shot on stage that looks like it wasn’t shot on stage. (One in the group disagreed with me so there’s a difference of opinion on that.) Another QFSer brought up that by using the images of the Himalayas in that particular style (black-and-white photographs painted with chalk), the filmmakers set up the painterly aspect of the film from the start. It’s not “reality” but it’s a painted reality – something that’s heightened and even more beautiful than reality. This painterly set up allows you to accept those vistas and the disappear into the story.

Epic matte paintings throughout Black Narcicuss of the vast vistas and grandeur around them, giving the film a painterly quality.

But it’s not just that they are beautiful, it’s what they represent. The vastness, the superiority of creation all around them, to me, makes the nuns not only smaller, but their mission almost meaningless and futile in the face of the abyss, the infinite around them. In particular, the part of the set with the huge church bell. The staging of this is astonishing. Not only is it on the edge and gives us a feeling that these nuns are all teetering on the precipice of stability, but the sheer (pun intended) technical feat of this – the directors had to have multiple matte painting backgrounds to simulate reality. There are the wide shots from behind the bell looking out towards the mountains. Then there are angles that show the bell, the nuns on the left of the frame, and the valley stretching out into the distance. And then, to top it off, there’s a high angle matte painting – a shot from above the bell looking down into the distant canyon floor below. All of these had to be conceived, planned out, then rendered in advance. The filmmakers couldn’t just walk on set and choose where to put the camera because they had to create that reality beforehand according to their vision in advance. It’s all so astonishing and inspiring.

This is perhaps my favorite shot of the Black Narcissus, just from the sheer (pun intended) complex planning this required to ensure there was a matte painting created for this perspective. It also enhances the distance of the characters from the village, introduces an element of danger, and symbolically shows the nuns living on the egde - literally and metaphorically.

It's been documented that Pressburger and Powell took inspiration from the Dutch painter Vermeer and his landscapes. A member of the group pointed out that it has a lot of single source lighting as well, evocative of the painting of Caravaggio. Which is no small feat for Technicolor stock that required far more light to properly expose than the human eye requires. Painterly is definitely an apt word for this film.

Vermeer has been cited by cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a reference for the vast lanscapes of Black Narcisuss, but we could see also detect similarities to Caravaggio, as depected here in The Calling of St. Matthew (1600).

What genre is this movie? That is a question someone in the group asked. Of course, it’s drama – but could it also be a thriller, with a horror-like climactic resolution? There’s a warning early on by Mr. Dean that they won’t make it until the rains come. And, ultimately, that happens. But Black Narcissus in one way of looking at it is akin to a closed-room thriller where they all start to go crazy and then one attempts to kill one of them.

In an admittedly strange comparison, I brought up Danny Boyle’s overlooked Sunshine (2007) that features a mission to the sun to launch nuclear weapons into it in order to kickstart the failing sun’s heat. In Sunshine, everyone is on a mission, they start going crazy, and there’s somehow an entity on board who tries to kill them as the film goes on. It’s not a perfect parallel, but after seeing the slow burn of Black Narcissus there’s an argument to be made that this can be considered a thriller in many ways. (Another in the group brought up Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, 1940, for its feel in the same filmmaking era.)

A QFSer brought up this exchange and its potential importance, which reflects the film’s title:

Young Prince: Do you like it, Sister Ruth? It's called Black Narcissus. Comes from the Army-Navy Stores in London.

Sister Ruth: Black Narcissus. I don't like scent at all.

Young Prince: Oh, Sister, don't you think it's rather common to smell of ourselves?

The group member’s assessment is that this is the thematic statement of the film. Here is something that’s being done to cover ourselves, to mask our natural scent. We humans all create a natural smell but we tend to hide it with something. For the nuns, it’s their faith masks their natural self (literally and figuratively), obscures their personal pasts. But you can only cover it – there’s the inner animalistic nature that we all have that either remains suppressed or emerges with time. And it can emerge in scary, deadly ways as it does with Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron).

In the scene where Sister Ruth puts on her make up – something that covers up something natural – Sister Clodaugh picks up the bible. Is this her cover? Is that what the directors are saying, that religion is a cover for the natural animal of ourselves? Perhaps, which sounds like a pretty subversive criticism of organized religion if that’s their intention.

There’s also something to the sadhu, the holy man who sits in reverent silence on the mountain top. Different religions orders come and go, but he remains there, unfazed. The image of an ascetic praying at the mountain, selfless, having achieved enlightenment and a oneness with everything around them is a common one in Hindu literary and religious traditions. Lord Shiva is often portrayed this way, long locks of matted hair, seated atop the Himalayas. This feels like the filmmakers are tying this into theme of colonialism trying to corral an ancient people and its faith, but it could also be an endorsement of a more mystical an ancient spirituality that worships out in the world and not confined within stone walls.

Left to right - Shiva statue atop Shiva Mandir in Bangalore (credit Darshan Karia), the holy man (uncredited or least I can’t find it) from Black Narcissus, Illustration of Shiva (artist credit unknown). Note Jean Simmons (Kanchi), the Indian bowing before him who is, notably, not actually Indian.

Which leads me to brown face. Do I Iike all the brown face, all the white actors playing South Asians in this film? I do not. I understand this is a “product of the time” and that argument is used as way to blow past criticism of using Jean Simmons (Kanchi), Esmond Knight (The Old General) and May Hallatt (Angu Ayah) as South Asians. But … come on. At the time they’re making Black Narcissus, India has a robust and growing film industry with many terrific actors who all are fluent in English. And though the film is being produced when the British are being finally kicked out of India, they are still intertwined in the Subcontinent. Pressburger and Powell could have easily gotten an Indian actor up to the standards of an international production and gotten them a ticket to London. I would almost buy the dearth-of-local-talent argument if Black Narcissus had been shot in 1946 Los Angeles where South Asians would’ve numbered at best in the dozens, as opposed to 1946 England where there are literally hundreds of South Asians at this time. As (soon-to-be-former) members of the British Empire who could study in London, just as Mohandas Gandhi and others had, there was a South Asian diaspora already living there. The production could easily have had a casting search for these actors but the fact is (and by that, I mean my educated guess) they simply didn’t want to because “at the time” people didn’t really care if they cast white Europeans and painted their face brown to make them ethnic. So it’s not lack of South Asian talent at fault here, but a lack of production effort. (Okay, end of rant. As a South Asian American, this rant has been my special privilege to contribute here.)

Aside from this (and from the utterly preposterous series of costume choices for Mr. Dean) Black Narcissus is an essential work. The conclusion is masterful. I was clutching my seat, not knowing who would die in the final scene. The deranged look of Sister Ruth – a look that one of our group pointed out must’ve influenced Stanley Kubrick a generation later – as she emerges, skeletal and red-eyed, as she emerges from the doorway is pure horror film perfection. And then that shot, looking up at Sister Clodaugh with the bell swinging behind her head as she gazes in horror down into the abyss has left an indelible imprint in my mind.

The final harrowing confrontation between Sister Ruth and Sister Clodaugh with its gripping imagery.

The rains eventually come and indeed, Mr. Dean is right – they made it until the rains but no more. You know it’s not a Hollywood film of the era. Here, someone at the beginning predicts the protagonists will fail and then they eventually do just that. There are scores of other films that would’ve seen these nuns triumph and overcome adversity. But the mission is doomed from the start. And in one of the final shots, the fog covers up the monastery high above as they are all leaving. This, like all of the shots in Pressburger and Powell’s masterpiece, is deliberate and not just a beautiful and poignant image. There are forces in the world that are too powerful for humans to control – from the external world to our inner nature – let alone comprehend, and an attempt to do so will certainly lead to doom.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969)

QFS No. 130 - The invitation for December 6, 2023
As I know you’re aware, this here is simply your standard Soviet-Armenian fare that we’ve been bombarded with in the cinemas over the years.

Truly, I know almost nothing about the film except that it is frequently included in filmmakers’ favorite movie lists. It’s even in the top 250 in the British Film Institute’s expanded Best Films of All Time list, clocking in at No. 122* (No. 93 on the Director’s Poll). For list lovers, The Color of Pomegranates is in a six-way tie at 122 with There Will Be Blood (2007), The Matrix (1999), Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), the French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Only Angels Have Wings (1939), which is a Howard Hawks classic.

Martin Scorsese compared The Color of Pomegranates to “opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed.” I am here and ready to walk into another dimension.

The only other thing I know about the film is that it is short (1 hour and 19 minutes) and will be the second-shortest QFS selection since A Christmas Carol (1938) that we watched over our first lockdown Christmas in 2020, a slender 1:09. So at the very least, this will take up only a small amount of your precious social media doomscrolling time.

 Anyway, do join me to discuss The Color of Pomegranates.  

*Interestingly, a four-way tie just before that at No. 118 includes three QFS Selections: The Thing (1987, QFS No. 115), Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972, QFS No. 40), The Conformist (1970, QFS No. 107) and to round it all out, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which we haven’t selected… yet.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969) Directed by Sergei Parajanov

Reactions and Analyses:
A common question that we tangle with at QFS is what can you consider a film versus art? Of course, a film can be both. But when approaching an experimental or surrealist work made for the screen, it’s a valid question. Does a film require an overt narrative, or at least a narrative that can be interpreted? Or is a film anything you point a camera at, that a filmmaker assembles and showcases for an audience? Is it somewhere in between?

From our discussion, everyone agreed that The Color of Pomegranates (1969) is undoubtedly a work of art. One QFSer said that you could imagine seeing this projected or displayed at a museum of modern or contemporary art. Or even a selection of the images. Indeed, even the director Sergei Parajanov stated that instead of bringing “art to life” he was bringing “life to art.” And you can see in his compositions that they resemble illuminated manuscripts or two-dimensional artwork common to Persia and in the Transcaucasus region - Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan - where the story takes place. Select a frame from the film and you could imagine seeing it literally framed and in a museum.

Scene from The Color of Pomegranates (1969) directed by Sergei Parajanov.

But does that make it a film? There’s no answer to the question, and I personally have trouble tangling with distinguishing between a film and art and whether a line exists between then, fuzzy though it may be. For me, as I watch a film, my mind immediately tries to latch on to a narrative, a story, a character whose journey we’re following. I have tolerance for vagueness, but it’s on a scale. Ambiguity and vagueness are fine if I’m brought into the film through the craft, the style, dare I say, the art of the filmmaking. So when I watched The Color of Pomegranates, I had to actively suppress my desire to understand what it “means” or to tease out a story. And yet, I was transported into the tableaus and the world created enough to be brought along for the ride.

Early on in QFS we selected Eraserhead (1977, QFS No. 22), a film I hadn’t seen before (I was shamed to admit this, especially since I share an alma mater with the director). When watching it back then, I remember having to turn off the part of my mind that was trying to find the story and instead I allowed myself to just experience. I had the same feeling while watching this movie. A QFSer pointed out, rightly, that Eraserhead teases a narrative enough to draw you in, but then pulls the rug out from you and you’re left with the film’s haunting imagery.

Others in the group brought up Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, QFS No. 98) - a film that required merely observing a life. And it’s interesting - one member of our group brought up the difference between how each Jeanne Dielman and The Color of Pomegranates grabs your attention. In Jeanne Dielman, you’re brought into the film - a slow film with very few edits - because you feel like you’re a fly on the wall of a life that’s rooted in a familiar reality. In The Color of Pomegranates, you’re brought into the film because of the visuals and that it’s unfamiliar and surreal. You don’t know what’s happening next and even if you do, you don’t really know why or what it means. What’s fascinating is that this is enough to pull you along and to see what happens next.

After watching the film, I needed to learn more about the filmmaker, the poet, Armenia, early Christianity - basically everting. My curiosity was very much piqued. I highly recommend the Criterion Channel’s 40-minute visual essay by James Steffen about the film. He goes through shot-by-shot and helps give context and suggests meaning throughout. If you look closely, you can definitely see that it follows a boy as he grows up into a man and ultimately dies at the film’s conclusion, leaving behind only his muse and his work. I’m not saying I knew this when I watched it, but having a guide with me in this way was a boon. Much like a guided tour at an art museum.

How do you visualize poetry? Or how do you render the life of a poet - someone who looks at the world and tries to synthesize all around him or her and turn it into an exploration of existence. How in a film do you go about doing that? One way is a more straightforward biopic. Another way is Parajanov’s way - tell it as a visual poem. His is laced with Christian metaphors (which evoked, for me possibly because we recently watched it, The Seventh Seal, 1957, QFS No. 127) and imagery that evokes childhood (the books, his teachers), adolescence (spying on a woman bathing, the chicken-blood ritual), adulthood (learning the instrument, working as a priest), old age (surrounded by angels and holding a helmeted skull), and death (lying dead among candles… and chickens). It’s not a filmmaking style that comes naturally to me, but it’s something that I deeply admire and enjoy watching on screen - and will likely use as a visual reference in the future.

“Sergei Parajanov, the Serious Wes Anderson.”
Top: Asteroid City (2023) Directed by Wes Anderson. Bottom: The Color of Pomegranates (1969) Directed by Sergei Parajanov.

One final thought - a member of our group said that the filmmaking was like “a serious Wes Anderson.” Which is a terrific insight. When you see the film’s flat space framing and use of colors, you can seemingly draw a straight line to Wes Anderson, but through Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch. It’s easy to see why The Color of Pomegranates continues to inspire filmmakers even know. His imagery, abstraction and experimental surrealism carves out a unique legacy for a filmmaker - artist? - that keeps Parajanov relevant for us to study today.

Planes, Trains and Automobies (1987)

QFS No. 129 - The invitation for November 22, 2023
John Hughes is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and, I dare say, one of the reasons I wanted to become one myself. The only reason we haven’t selected one of his movies yet is that I have seen basically all of them – especially the ones he directed. There are a few he wrote that I haven’t yet seen, but truly it’s hard to remember a time when I hadn’t seen a John Hughes film.

While he wrote and produced a ton, he only directed eight movies.** Most of those eight have withstood the test of time and to talk about Hughes is to talk in superlatives. There might be no better movie about ditching school and having a dream day than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) – easily one of my favorite films of all time, one that takes on a mythic status for kids who grew up near the city of Chicago. The Breakfast Club (1985) is class struggle as told through high school and has never been topped. Sixteen Candles (1984) is a defining movie of the 1980s coming-of-age subgenre and Weird Science (1985) is a true teen boy’s dream film. Uncle Buck (1989), though perhaps on the second tier of his work, is one of the great John Candy performances of all time – topped only by this week’s selection.

And that’s only his directing work. He produced a ton of films and also wrote ones he didn’t direct, including National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) – probably the most quoted road-trip movie of all time – and Home Alone (1990), which exploded across the screens when it came out and remains arguably one of the greatest Christmas films ever made.

Which brings me to this week’s selection. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of those films that, when you came across it on television back when we used to channel surf, you had to just sit down and watch it. It sucks you in. A prefect odd couple road trip movie, set just before Thanksgiving with two men trying to get to Chicago in time for the family dinner. Steve Martin as his strait-laced uncomfortable best; John Candy in a performance has depth and heart that undergirds the sweet annoying comedic veneer. Consider that this and Midnight Run (1988, QFS No. 64) came out within one year of each other – two classic odd couple road trip films that are up there with some of the great comedies of all time. Well, that’s pretty terrific.

John Hughes was great at setting up a finish line, a destination or an event that the film was building up towards. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off it’s the end of the school day. In Some Kind of Wonderful (1985) directed by Howie Deutch, it’s the prom. In Vacation, it’s getting to Wally World. Here, it’s Thanksgiving, just over the horizon, Chicago as the film’s Oz. Hughes was a master of mainstream storytelling, but with depth and heart. He just knew how to make his comedies feel somehow meaningful in a bigger way but simple and grounded. I once worked with Howie Deutch, one of his long-time partners, so I have a few fun stories I remember that I’ll try to share in the film chat.

So watch (or rewatch for the 523rd time) Planes, Trains and Automobiles and join us to chat about it. I have two extra tickets to go see it at the New Beverly on Tuesday, so hit me up if you want one. This is going to be a great one to see with a crowd.

It’ll be our last group chat for a couple weeks, so I hope you’ll be able to join on Thanksgiving Eve and discuss what we’re grateful for – which hopefully includes the work of John Hughes. See you then!

*Low bar, I know. I can’t think of an actual “Thanksgiving movie” but this one comes close, even though I’d call it a buddy picture-road trip movie more than a Thanksgiving movie. Scent of a Woman (1992) could arguably make the same claim, but that too is a sort of road trip movie over Thanksgiving weekend. 

**This surprised me, given his outsized influence on the 1980s in general and my childhood in particular.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

Reactions and Analyses:
I have seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) so many times it’s virtually impossible to remember a time when I didn’t know every word of the film. Not only because I love the movie, but also I grew up in a time when it would rerun on television quite a bit, and when it did I was powerless but to sit down and watch it. But I had never seen it in the theater before – I would’ve been a tad too young in 1987 to see this one when it came out – so when it appeared on the New Beverly calendar during Thanksgiving week, I had to take the chance to see it. And since we hadn’t selected any of John Hughes’ work for QFS, an opportunity for an in-person viewing for an online discussion was one we couldn’t pass up.

At its core, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a story about class. Hughes says it himself in this terrific oral history of the making of the film published by Vanity Fair November 2022:

I like taking dissimilar people, putting them together, and finding what’s common to us all. Part of the point is there are a privileged few who operate between New York and Los Angeles or London and Paris. But if something screws up and they get off the exclusive track, it’s someone like Del Griffith who knows how to get them home. What kept the movie going was the opposites—two dissimilar guys. If it weren’t for a storm, someone like Neal Page would never meet a guy like Del.

We see this in so many of his films, most notably The Breakfast Club (1985), where students from different social classes are forced to meet and work together. It struck us in the group that there is no current filmmaker filling this role, as it pertains to class, at least no one that comes to mind. And definitely no one doing it as authentically as Hughes – perhaps Harold Ramis and John Landis come close. Frank Capra is the one who probably came closest to Hughes forty years earlier. The Capra comparison is probably most apt, though I’d argue that Hughes seasons his happy endings with a little bittersweetness whereas Capra I’d say applies a little syrup.

And in many ways, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is entirely about class privilege. Neal (Steve Martin) can usually skate by with his wealth and status, but right away, his first indignity, is having to take a city bus to the airport. His next one is being denied his rightful place in first class. Until his credit cards burn to a crisp in the car fire, he’s able to rely completely without physical cash whereas Del Griffith (John Candy) has to count every coin and needs to use his wits (shower rings as earrings!) to scrape together additional cash. And its upon Del that Neal depends – he sees the benefit of kindness and being content with your true self. And Neal, too, by eventually coming around and seeing Del’s innate kindness, gets Del to finally admit that his wife is dead and he has no place to really go home to.

Neal and Del in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

The beauty in this film (and perhaps all of Hughes’ work) is that no person is all one thing – Del is not all annoying; Neil isn’t just a jerk. They’re humans, with flaws, but with several dimensions to them (The Breakfast Club does this particularly well… and you can argue that Ferris in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, is the one Hughes character that’s less flawed than his other characters). And it’s through Hughes’ writing and casting that he’s able to make this happen. Few people humanize and cast “real” seeming people like Hughes can, and for a moment let’s set aside the obvious goofy charm of John Candy in this legendary performance. Look at all the other minor characters in the film – they’re all incredibly quirky but they feel fully real, fully human. Owen who takes them to Wichita (Dylan Baker), Edie McClurg as the rental car agent with probably the greatest button to a scene you can have, long-time character actor Larry Hankin as “Doobie” the cab driver, the hotel clerk (Martin Ferrero), Michael Mckean as the cop who pulls them over – all feel “real” (with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as probably the best example of this, but you can see it in this film as well). Hughes’ world feels like our world because it’s populated by real people. Compare this with, say, the Farrelly Brothers or even the Coen Brothers who rely more upon caricatures and quirk than humanity.

There are so many scenes that come to mind, aside from the profanity laden minute-long rant by Neal, which of course is legendary as the only reason the movie receives and “R” rating. The first time Neal talks with Del in the airport. When they’re on the plane together. The first Neal rant in the hotel is so eviscerating and bitterly hilarious that I had forgotten it happens so early in the film. The car burning down and then them driving it, and in particular the scene when they’re pulled over - which is a scene that makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Watching this again, I argued that some of the 1980s cheesiness doesn’t hold up but much - the use of still frames and sappy music in particular. That didn’t bother the rest of the group. For me,it’s this scene that feels definitely of its time: when Neal verbally tears into Del at the hotel, Del is deeply hurt as he takes it in stride, but he’s also self-aware of his personal flaws. At that moment, the music comes in and for my taste, this lays it on too much. John Candy is so good, so empathetic in his performance in that scene that for me, the music is unnecessary. Hughes uses it and, for the time, would definitely be in line with the practices of a mainstream film. The ending montage of Neal piecing together that Del has been lying about his wife and home as a similar feeling of maybe a touch out of date. But yet, it still is an effective way of being in Neal’s mind at that time. And the conclusion of the film, though satisfying, lays it on thick. Long live the ’80s!

That is to say, much of the film still retains an emotional gravity, especially given that it’s a comedy. When Neal later in the film is able to pay for a hotel room by batering his fancy watch, Del can’t do the same (despite having a Casio) and is stuck in the burnt out car. Neal looks out the window - and again, he’s not just a jerk, he’s just wound tight - he relents and asks Del to come inside and stay with him. It’s sweet and still pretty moving, given how many times I’ve seen the film.

A final note on my attachment to Hughes - he’ s a fellow Chicagoan. What this meant for me, growing up near Chicago when his movies came out, is that he captured a feeling of the city as a place that felt like the center of the world (with Ferris Buller’s Day Off being the prime example - they literally treat Chicago as their playground and hallowed escape from the drudgery of high school). The city was the center of my world, to be sure, and I was surprised when I got older and found out that Hughes’ movies set in and around Chicago was an outlier, not the norm.

From Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes. I’m required by Chicagoan law to tell you that this skyline is fiction. There’s no view of the Chicago skyline like this off of that expressway in Chicago.

But being from the Midwest more broadly I think informs Hughes’ filmmaking as well. He writes about people that were familiar to him, about people he likely grew up around. It’s dangerous, of course, to generalize about a people of a paritcular region, but I always found that there are some common traits in the people I grew up with: unpretentious, generally kind, would bristle against injustice, and yes, you would run into someone like Del Griffith - chatty, no filter, unable to turn it off, generous to their core. And you’d also find people like Neal Page - prickly, uncomfortable in their own skin, but deep inside are reluctantly kind. Hughes captures these people in all their glory, throws them together, and creates true and earnest portrayals of humans in a way that we need to have return to big screens now and forever.

Klute (1971)

QFS No. 127 - The invitation for November 15, 2023
Alan Pakula is one of the great workman filmmakers who seemingly gets overlooked in conversations about the best directors of an era. His films speak for themselves. All the President’s Men (1976) is just an utterly stellar film that really showcases an incredibly adept filmmaker at the top of his game. Throw in The Parallax View (1974), Sophie’s Choice (1982), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Pelican Brief (1993) along with Klute and that alone would be enough to call it a career. Add the fact that he produced To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – really an amazing body of work. 

Klute along with The Parallax View and All the President’s Men is considered part of an unofficial “paranoia trilogy” – thrillers with that extra paranoid* edge that came to define a mood of the 1970s. I think it’s an excellent time to dip into this, don’t you? I haven’t yet seen Klute but I have heard good things and excited to watch.  

Pakula died in a tragic car accident when he was still a viable director, having directed Harrison Ford in The Devil’s Own (1997) a year earlier. Although he was 70, I’m sure we were robbed of a few more excellent films from a very skilled hand at the helm. Nevertheless, his mark on the American film landscape is indelible.

Klute features a great cast, including Jane Fonda who won an Oscar for this and with Donald Sutherland in the title role, a legendary cinematographer in Gordon Willis, and some probably terrifically outdated 1970s social mores. I’m looking forward to finally seeing this and discussing with you next week!

Klute (1971) Directed by Alan J. Pakula

Reactions and Analyses:
A scene early in Klute (1971) is perhaps its most subersive. A wide shot, flat, with women sitting beneath modern artwork. We soon hear the model talent scout, who is entirely off camera, face never clearly seen, talk about each woman as if they’re commodoties. It’s incredibly dehumanizing and, likely, accurate. This is the improbable introduction into Jane Fonda’s character “Bree” who is one of the women and, it turns out, has bad hands. She, and the other women, are treated in such a callous and disposable fashion we immediately sympathize with her even before we know much about her. She’s soon ushered out and the next group of models are brought in (and clearly the agency asked for “ethnic” choices because the next group are mostly Black - which is a really subtle but fine touch by the filmmaker).

Bree (Jane Fonda) treated as a commodity in Klute (1971) Directed by Alan J. Pakula.

Aside from the character introduction, this is a scene that gives us a glimpse into Alan Pakula’s filmmaking. The dialogue, though only spoken by characters we don’t see or have their backs to us, has the feeling of natural conversation - overlapping, easy flowing, conversational and matter-of-fact. Bree, when revealed, is on the side of the frame, partially blocked by the talent scouts in the frame. The choice of shots are both cinematic and photojournalistic - the feeling we’re spying on something real.

This is Pakula’s particular genius, and one that comes out even more clearly in his masterpiece All the President’s Men (1976) - this style I would characterize as “cinematic realism.” It’s not pure realism or documentary style, though his style does make you feel like you’re witnessing something real, like you’re hiding in the room and watching. This is enhanced by the great Gordon Willis, who makes the lighting feel natural and real but uses shadows for creative and thematic effect. Hence the “cinematic” part of "cinematic realism.” There’s still very much the hand of the filmmakers present, with deliberate feeling choices throughout.

This is a style, for me, that I strive whenever I have a chance to make something original. Or, I should say, this is the style that most naturally comes to me. It is, I’d argue, one of the more difficult styles of filmmaking to pull off - to feel both invisible and visible as a filmmaker. To maniuplate the audience but also make it seem like you are not doing so overtly. Pakula shows his mastery of it throughout his work.

In Klute, most of us in the QFS group felt that the thriller aspects of the film to be vastly inferior to mood and themes of the film. The plot is not terribly straightforward, slightly convoluted, with a handful of gaping holes. But the plot is secondary to what the filmmakers are trying to explore about human relationships, about being a woman in a world where a woman has little to no power, about addiction and the human mind.

Bree can’t stop turning tricks, and in the narrative device of the confessional with the therapist, she shares why. She’s in control, she has power and agency. And we see it in the first scene where she has a john and convinces him to pay more. She treats him like he’s the only thing in the world but we, as the audience spying on this scene, see her check the time on her watch.

Donald Sutherland’s “John Klute” on the other hand is such a thinly constructed character of whom we know so little about. When Bree finally seduces him, several of us in the group felt that this was going to go in a familiar way - oh, he’s going to be obsessed about Bree and driven to madness. But the script does something unexpected - she actually falls in love with him. You see it in the fruit buying scene. It’s so subtle, but she wants to reach out and feel for him and it’s clear that she’s found stability or something like love and is unprepared for it. So much so she tries to go back to her old pimp (Roy Scheider’s “Frank”) and … gets high? Or just drunk? Something that requires Klute to help her recover.

Fonda won the Oscar for her role but said afterwards, “I'm not very happy about what the picture is saying to women, which is, if you get a good shrink and a good guy, everything will turn out all right, and I don't think that's true." And that is definitely a problematic takeaway from the film.

But the film’s lasting value is in its style. One OFSer pointed out that when Bree gets a call for a job, she steps into a shadow, literally stepping into the dark and away from the light. There are other really memorable uses of light and dar - when Klute watches Bree undress for the older fabric salesman he’s in the shadow; the silhouettes in the very first wide shot at dinner where the foreground diners are in shadow but the background ones against the window are lit; when Bree is talking to Peter Cable (played by Charles Cioffi), her face is lit but everything behind her is in shadow; in the basement when Klute is searching for an intruder and all we see is what the flashlight sees.

Basement chase scene, illuminated by only a flashlight (more or less) by the great Gordon Willis in Klute (1971).

The overall sense of watching from afar as a voyeur pervades the film in the shots through a window from across a street or from atop a building looking down at Bree and Klute entering through a doorway down blow - enhanced by the unsettling score by Michael Small. The performances and filmmaking are extraordinary throughout, despite the flaws in the plot and thematic elements.

Long shots from afar enhance the sense of being spied on or surveilled in Klute (1971).

Finally, it struck many of us that this is a film that could not be even pitched now. A medium-budgeted thriller with a terrible title (why is this film called “Klute” and not “Bree” when clearly it’s her story?) - seems more in line for a limited series on a middling streamer. Which is a shame. Klute reminds me once again that the 1970s is arguably the greatest decade of American filmmaking where directors were given the chance to explore, innovate and create.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

QFS No. 127 - The invitation from November 8, 2023
Sweden’s legendary director Ingmar Bergman is one of those essential filmmakers whose work you’re required to familiarize yourself with if you go to film school and intend to be a director. And with good reason. His films are deeply empathetic and explore what it means to be human in a style that I would characterize as part of the Neorealist movement that swept through post-war Europe. But Bergman’s films have something even deeper and more meditative, a true journey into the soul that grapples with questions of morality and spirituality at their core. 

Incredibly influential to filmmakers after him, Bergman wrote most of his own work and was a true auteur in film and television. Just look at some of his accolades – it’s pretty impressive to be Oscar-nominated five times for Best Original Screenplay when you’re not writing in the English language. To me, that’s astonishing. It’s a high bar for Academy members to look past the language barrier and to nominate a film for its written work - and Bergman did it five times over several decades! 

For me, I’m still making my way through Bergman’s work – especially Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1983) which are high on my list of movies to see. His Wild Strawberries (1957), however, is a film I’ve seen in the theater and is a true masterpiece in its structure, style, pacing and exploration of a complex life lived. And, amazingly, he made it in the same year as he made this week’s selection The Seventh Seal. Two classics released in the same year has to be up there as one of the greatest single-year outputs by a filmmaker, rivaling Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 (The Godfather Part II and The Conversation) and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 (Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park).  

As for The Seventh Seal – I’ve seen it once before but never in a theater so I’m looking forward to catching it at The New Beverly. I don’t want to ruin it for you if you haven’t yet seen it, but it’s probably the best Swedish movie to be spoofed in one of the films in the Bill and Ted’s Adventure Trilogy.  

The Seventh Seal is an iconic, classic film and I’m excited to watch it again and discuss with you.

The Seventh Seal (1957) Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Reactions and Analyses:
Volumes have been written about The Seventh Seal and it has inspired a generation of filmmakers after it. The film comes out in 1957 and is perhaps one of the first instances in the West where the main thrust of the film is a philosophical one - is there a God and if there is, why is He/She/It silent? Not that a philosophical question hadn’t been posed in a film before, but here the film openly debates in both dialogue and in metaphoric action the philosophical question of whtehter or not there is a higher purpose. The knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) spends the entire time literally dealing with Death - an embodied death (Bengt Ekerot) in the form of a grim reaper with whom he plays chess. So the existential question of what comes after death is more than just an undercurrent - it is the current. Philosophizing about the existence of a higher power is not just theme it’s also plot in The Seventh Seal.

As someone who was not raised in the Christian tradition but grew up in a mostly Catholic neighborhood, some of the symbolism was familiar to me but there is a lot that I missed. So I turned to members of our group who had that religious background to fill in some details. One idea that came up was - is the knight dead the entire time? The film opens on the shoreline and the squire Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) lies facedown - dead? Sleeping? Even the knight is lying on his side when he sees Death approaching. Is it possible that he, like Christ, is close to death and dying himself and actually on a metaphoric cross contemplating the existence of God, begging for an answer? It might not be as straightforward as that, but there are definitely nods to this aspect of Christ’s divinity and story throughout.

The knight played by Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal (1957), showing reverence towards Death.

Examples abound. There’s Jof (or “Joseph” played by Nils Poppe) and Mia (which is a Swedish abbreviation of “Maria,” played by Bibi Andersson) - Jof literally sees visions of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, of ghosts, of Death at the end, and Mia has an infant son Mikael (reference to the Archangel Michael?) with whom they travel around as itinerant performers. They gather a band of misfits and travel a ravaged, doomed countryside, rife with sinners and stricken by the plague at the end of the Crusades. The parallels to the life of Christ are easy to find if you just scratch the surface.

Aside from the symbolism, the central question Ingmar Bergman asks: with all this evil and destruction in the world, how is it possible there’s a benevolent God out there? From interviews, we know that Bergman was raised in a religious family and was terrified by death, seeing Albuertus Pictor’s church paintings depicting death playing chess against a knight. He says he wrote the film “to conjure up on his fear of death.” In the film we see a woman burned alive, a parade of people self-flagellating, people who died and just rotted away in place, others consumed by the plague. An entire village is empty. The group felt clear that Bergman answered the question, that the silence from heaven is what he fears - we are alone in a cruel world.

Parade of the flagellants from The Seventh Seal (1957) Directed by Ingmar Bergman.

And yet, there’s the one scene where he is picnicking with Jof and their family. In the idyllic setting, with a slow pullback as he talks to reveal more of the setting, the knight says he’s truly happy. He’s saying that life is worth living here and now, and not for the afterlife because who knows whether there is one or not. For me, this scene is the one that gives me hope for the film. That there is beauty in the world, and that it lies in friendship and moments of sublimity. QFSers in the discussion pointed out that Bergman provides an answer of what to do if there is indeed no higher being - do good acts. “One meaningful deed” as the knight strives to do.

A film is not the same thing as an essay, and except for the most experimental films, generally speaking a film needs a plot. So aside from a parallel Christ story, Bergan borrows from other familiar literary traditions of the knight returning home, his squire at his side. There are echoes of Don Quixote and Sanch Panza, but without the fool’s errand aspect. Here in The Seventh Seal, the knight is the serious, questioning soul and the squire is the cynic, who says, for example, “Our crusade was so stupid that only a true idealist could have thought it up.” This is quite an indictment of someone who was part of waging a literal holy war. Although lightly plotted, the knight has a mission to ensure the life of that family - his one meaningful deed - all while keeping Death at bay. It’s this adventure tale, interwoven with the mystical, that keeps the film moving through the more philosophical aspects. And, for me at least, herein lies Bergman’s genius - you’re pulled in by the intriguing plot device and narrative, and you’re led to contemplate the meaning of something bigger as the story unfolds. Bergman asks: Are we alone? Bergman also answers: If we are, let’s do something righteous and live for the here and the now.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

QFS No. 126 - The invitation for November 1, 2023
As you all know, this is the most recent film directed by Martin Scorsese, Patron Saint of QFS. It’s his 26th feature film and our second Scorsese selection after After Hours (1985, QFS No. 85) last year. And, crucially, the first of his films made during the QFS Pandemic Era. Scorsese is about to turn 81-years old in a couple of weeks and it is entirely possible that this is his final movie. For that reason alone, it’s worth seeing Killers of the Flower Moon in the theater – the way the master undoubtedly intended.

Since I’ve already seen the film and don’t want to spoil anything, we’ll keep this week’s missive short. But do go and see the film if you can. It is, I’m sure you’ve heard, on the long side and will come in just one minute short of our longest QFS selection, Ben-Hur (1959, QFS No. 35). So get all the snacks you can gather up and go see Killers of the Flower Moon if you haven’t already!

Killes of the Flower Moon (2023) Directed by Martin Scorsese

Reactions and Analyses
This feels like both a Scorsese film and unlike a Scorsese film. There are several Martin Scorsese hallmarks throughout and echoes of films past - The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), Silence (2016), I’d say even Taxi Driver (1976) to name a few - the untidy storyline, the violence, a gloom that hangs over the protagonists, a main character who’s lost and difficult to root for. The complicated morality and dilemmas faced by the characters especially the protagonist (who, maybe, is also the antagonist?). But it’s unlike a Scorsese film in that it felt like his most political, at least since perhaps The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Political in the following sense: taking something that has an established narrative and then exploring that narrative and telling it in a radical new way. By its very nature, that new telling becomes hotly contested or protested. In The Last Temptation of Christ, he portrays Jesus Christ’s thoughts as he’s on the cross and an imagining of his own humanity in an alternate reality. The public outcry and backlash against the film has been well documented.

For Killers of the Flower Moon, here we are watching a film that explores a part of American history - the interaction between descendants of Europeans in the Americas and the indigenous people of the Americas - but not in the way that Westerns of the past characterized it. A past that’s been told one way for so long but is told here by Scorsese in almost the inverse. A true story that has been buried about a wealthy tribe bled to death - literally, and of its wealth - by the White people who were thought to be their friends and allies. And Scorsese brings it to life in a way only he can. Not to raise awareness necessarily or to make a politcal statement, but his sheer act of humanizing the Osage and this particular story seems radical to me. The casual racism and nod to white supremacy feels both on point for the time and not gratutious but also extremely upsetting and provocative at the same time. (Perhaps a little more explanation/exposition about how money was doled out to the Osage only when someone had a White sponsor would’ve been useful, but I sort of got it from the subtle dialogue and a cursory knowledge of that history.)

Initially, when the opening montage intercut with newsreels and expository title cards, I could not help but feeling struck by how little I knew about the murders of the Osage and that they were, per capita, the wealthiest people in the world at the time. It reminded me of the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 of “Black Wall Street” - a shockingly awful episode in American history I knew virutally nothing about, the horror and scope of which I didn’t fully comprehend until it was portrayed in HBO’s The Watchmen. (I’d like to point out that I believe myself to be highly educated and a student of history - and yet, here I was in the theater, my own ignorance very much exposed.) Scorsese has the Osage characters in the film worry about suffering the same fate after seeing a newsreel of the massacre. The Tulsa Massacre’s inclusion in the film by Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth is no accident, of course. And I know that there have been Indigenous critics who have complained about the portrayal once again of Native Americans as victims, which is a valid criticism of course. To me - these characters are portayed as humans with agency, with fears and hopes, with love and hatred. Mollie has a strong will and won’t back down (perhaps Scorsese’s strongest ever female character), heading to Washington, DC even when she can barely walk. She is the true hero of the film and acts with courage and determination even when she’s being steadily poisoned by the person who should be the closest to her - her husband. When Mollie wails after learning her child was killed in the home blast, it sent chills down my spine. Her ex-husband confesses that he’s lonely and afraid. These are primal human emotions and scenes that have been so few and far between for Native American characters in the long and troubled history of the Western in American cinema.

The group discussed the choice of storytelling. It’s been widely documented that the original screenplay focused on the nascent FBI and its investigation of the murders, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the Tom White role. When Scorsese and Roth reconceived the script and made it into a more psychological drama by hitching it to the relationship between Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest Burkhart, DiCaprio switched roles to the more expanded one - and the most emotionally complex one, a true Scorsese protagonist.

Some brought up this alternative treatment of the story: remove the financial obstacles to making this film and the incentive to tell it through its white stars, what would’ve the story been like if it was entirely told from Mollie’s point of view? We’re with the Osage Nation and people are dying in mysterious ways. Then the FBI shows up - what would this story be like? Perhaps Scorsese isn’t the filmmaker to tell that story, or perhaps he would receive criticism for being an 80-year-old White man telling a story with Indigenous protagonists. It’s an interesting counterfactual to consider.

One of my main questions was - did Ernest love her? Some in the group speculated whether Ernest was smart enough to know what love is. Was he only in it for the money or did he develop an actual affection for Mollie? For me, I think he did love her. But he was easily manipulated. He gleefully professes his greed and love of money very early on in the film. He does terrible things and takes part in steadily killing off her family. He makes sure Mollie’s sister is buried with her jewelry just so they can rob the grave later on. And so on and so on. But when he’s on the stand and he’s torn up, his inner turmoil is apparent.

But he’s also consistently manipulated - primarily by William Hale (Robert DeNiro), later by the FBI who sweep him up and turn him into a witness without him really even seeming to understand what that means. And then even by Hale’s lawyers who almost convince him to do a total 180. Some in the QFS group argued - Ernest is not without agency. He is complict in poisoning Mollie but he could’ve chosen to not go through with it. I still think that he’s a simpleton who was conflicted but lacked courage and a backbone to do what is right. As one of the writers in our group pointed out, Scorsese doesn’t let him off the hook. Ernest doesn’t get a chance to confess, come clean, pay penance and be redeemed. That’s not Scorsese’s way - not here and not usually in any of his films. This White guy isn’t getting a pass for all the bad things he’s done because he finally does the right thing in helping send Hale to prison.

Hale is one of the more fascinating and complex antagonists portayed by DeNiro, even given DeNiro’s long career in portraying antagonists. He’s akin to the Sacklers of today - people who are on their surface philanthropists and have done good in the world, but at the same time were ruthless greed-driven psychopaths who either directly or indirectly kill people with impunity. Hale speaks the Osage language, he knows everybody in town, people love him - and yet, he’s their destroyer. It’s so good and so perfect for today and historically as well. If this is intended as a metaphor for America’s relationship with the native peoples of this continent, then it works - at least it did for me.

Lily Gladstone is unreal and should be simply handed the Oscar for Leading Actress right now. The entire cast - DiCaprio has taken on a persona I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him, with what must be a prosthetic mouthpiece for that sneer that goes along with the terrific slouch. So much conveyed in that body language, a Caliban-esque creature taking orders from DeNiro’s Propsero. DeNiro who manages to restrain his New York accent (with maybe a few times that it almost slipped out) but also restrains his performance, making it that much more powerful in portraying a White man in power who doesn’t need to raise his voice or even really do anything violent himself (other than paddle Ernest - which, I read, was an actual paddling).

The ensemble is so good it’s criminal - Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser who just brings the heat from the moment you first see him, randomly Jason Isbell who is solid. The courtroom scenes feel almost like a second film but the tenstion and the performances are so wonderful that, for me at least, it folds right into the film as a new movement of the symphony. But special shoutout to Ty Mitchell, the dude with the cataracts in one eye (I believe that’s what he has). That guy just brings the house down - he’s so natural, so excellent, and such a lynchpin for all the bad deeds and then for all of them to come crashing down. He has loyalty to only himself but also he has blood on his hands from all he’s done, morally okay with killing if they’re “Indians.”

Lastly, we discussed, at length, that there may not be another filmmaker who, at the tail end of a long career and in old age, can still make a movie so vibrant, so new, and such a piece of film art. Who else is doing that in his 80s? Who else can make a 3-hour commercial film that’s also an artistic exploration of human greed and desire? Someone pointed out that Stanley Kurbrick — though not in his 80s when he died — chose to make Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his exploration into love, marriage, relationship, lust, desire. So vastly different than his previous work, and though imperfect, has many of the hallmarks of Kubrick’s lifetime of creation. The parallels between that and Scorsese’s work here are spot on, in my opinion.

Late career artistic magic - who else? Perhaps Ingmar Bergman? Steven Spielberg? Akira Kurosawa? Scorsese’s last few films are as follows: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Silence, The Irishman (2019) and now Killers of the Flower Moon. Those four films would be considered masterpieces in a lot of other careers. For Scorsese, those may not crack the top ten of his best films - though I would argue that his latest does. He’s truly a national treasure and this film was more than worthy of inclusion in the legacy he’ll leave behind as a filmmaker. A legacy still unfinished, I hope. I’m not yet prepared to have seen the final Scorsese film.

Beetlejuice (1988)

QFS No. 125 - The invitation for Ocboter 25, 2023
Well, it’s been 124 films in and we’re just now getting to see our first QFS selection of a Tim Burton film. I’m pretty surprised by that, but perhaps it’s because I’ve seen pretty much all of his films from his golden era of the mid 1980s until the 2000s. And then the 2000s hit and, well, the films start getting to be very much hit or miss.

Anyway, we’ll discuss Tim Burton’s legacy and work together so let’s save it for then! But let’s go back to the late 1980s when Beetlejuice comes out. Tim Burton comes out of Cal Arts as an artist with a through knowledge of the horror films from a generation before him. He hit the film scene with a terrific visual style and a unique take on the macabre, the unusual that’s on the fringe of horror and camp, between something that feels like a B-movie and something that feels like a big-budget whimsical fairytale. It’s hard to refute, but there are few directors of the last 40 years who have carved out a visual style so distinctive that their very name becomes shorthand for that style – “Burton-esque” if you will.

Burton’s first feature film was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) which is a very goofy film road-trip adventure with the eponymous main character who is somewhere between an adult and a child. Not that long after that, he’s hired to direct Batman (1989) – which is astonishing when you think about it. A major studio put a legendary comic book in the hands of Tim Burton, to be the first one to create the Batman movie franchise. It would be akin to Wes Anderson given the reigns to Star Wars.

Burton pulls it off and puts his indelible stamp on Batman, very much leaning into the comic book and not the campy 1960s TV show – but also not the nihilistic action films they become under Christopher Nolan 25 years later. Burton brings a comic book to life and focuses on the eccentric as he does in all his films. Note how this approach, however, failed years earlier with David Lynch at the helm of Dune (1984), in which Lynch focuses on the unusual and grotesque above the adventure and main plot. It’s amazing a studio was still willing to give someone like Burton a shot given how much of a disaster Dune was financially.

Continuing on with Burton – Edward Scissorhands (1990) is quintessential Burton in its art direction, its unusual main character and it’s off-kilter and melancholic feel. Ed Wood (1994), continues in that fashion. There are number of hits he has going forward that feel original – Big Fish (2003), Sleepy Hollow (1999) and his various stop-motion animated films.

But I feel Burton went awry when given the duty of remaking films. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is a real doozy as is Planet of the Apes (2001) – a film so bad that they remade it a few years later as if this one hadn’t happened, consequently launching an entirely “new*” franchise on the backs of very mediocre films (which we call it in the industry with the technical term: “today’s Hollywood”). Alice in Wonderland (2010) is utterly dreadful and borderline embarrassing as is Dumbo (2019). I could go on about this but you get what I’m saying – Burton’s work is (or was) at its best when he was given freedom to create something original.

And in those films, you’ll see one major common element: off-balance main character anti-heroes. If Edward Scissorhands is quintessential Burton, then this week’s film is probably peak Burton in that regard. (Note I have not mentioned the name of this week’s film three times because I know what happens when you do.) What is the difference between “quintessential” and “peak,” you ask? Well, join us to discuss this, Beetlejuice and also the legacy of Tim Burton.

Beetlejuice (1988) Directed by Tim Burton

Reaction and Analyses
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Beetlejuice is in its conception of the afterlife. With film’s ability to portray a physical realm with , verisimilitude what happens after you die has been a source of curiosity of filmmakers for more than a century. Constained only by one’s own imagination and influenced by religious traditions, previous artistic renderings of the afterlife, the post-death speculation has been rendered in the movies quite a bit, of course. Examples range from the painterly What Dreams May Come (1998) to the simple pulsating points of light of angels communicating from the stars in It’s A Wonderful Life (1947). There are courts for adjudication as in Defending Your Life (1991) or documentary testimonial interviews in the simple but terrific Afterlife (1998). There are so many more visions of the world of the dead - Coco (2017), Heaven Can Wait (1943 and 1978), Enter the Void (2009) - but these are a few that came to mind. And that doesn’t even touch upon the spirits of the dead walking among us with something left to do (Sixth Sense, 1999, or Ghost, 1990, for example).

Beetlejuice envisions a waiting room, akin to American DVM or any other bureaucratic institution, processesing and helping the recently (or not-so-recently) deceased continue into the afterlife. The afterlife waiting room scene is a pure stroke of Burton-esque genius. Every single character in that scene has a story about their life and their death just by seeing them. There is almost no explanation needed because the costumes of each dead person is so vividly portrayed. The magician’s assistant sawed in half, the office worker who’s been flattened by a car, and of course the hunter with the shrunken head and the tribesman - an entire story unto itself. These scenes are so genius and evoke the Star Wars (1977) cantina. Both are vibrant and bursting with the imagination of the filmmakers and tell stories all their own. (Also - this is the first time I caught that everyone working in the Beetlejuice waiting room all had committed suicide, now doomed to an eternity in civil service. Otho was right!)

The post-mortem processing center, as envisioned by director Tim Burton in Beetlejuice (1988). Those who committed suicide are condemned to work in the civil service - Burton’s trademark grim humor.

Most everyone (but, importantly, not everyone) in the QFS group had seen Beeltejuice but it had been some time. A few things stood out upon this rewatch and the first most obvious aspect is that the title character is barely on screen. He is on screen for 17 minutes. Seventeen! He’s teased and referred to quite a bit, of course, and appears in an “ad” on television, but in my memory of the film he has an outsized portion of screentime. That’s the kind of impact the character leaves on the memory, because when Michael Keaton comes on screen he just completely takes over, with that manic Jim Carrey-energy. He’s so obnoxious and simply lights the film on fire whenever he’s on screen. And man is Beetlejuice perverted. To distract him they have to create an afterlife brothel, which is pretty hilarious. That, in addition to glib jokes about suicide including Lydia (Winona Ryder) actively planning to do herself in - it struck me that this is definitely a film made in 1988 and not 2018.

The story at its core conceit is in part about the perils of making a pact with a gangster, a madman, a devil - and what the costs are. The costs here are that Lydia will be doomed to be stuck with a gross fellow. Yeah, that’s a sort of high price? The script, though textbook, has flaws that became apparent during viewing and discussion that I’ll get to below.

The opening shot of this film is excellent. What appears to be a helicopter or crane shot over the village, combined with Danny Elfman’s unforgettable score only to land on a wide shot of the (model) home. It’s not until the tarantula crests the roof and Adam (Alec Baldwin)’s hand reaches down to pick it up do you realize you’ve been seeing a model for the duration of that shot.

Opening shot of Beetlejuice (1988) is not a helicopter shot over a small town, it turns out.

Katherine O’Hara is so fantastic, especially when they’re possesed and singing “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” - boy that scene just comes out of nowhere and still is such goofy fun. The performances, everyone agreed, are overall solid but I personally felt that Winona Ryder was … not. Or was she just in a different movie? When Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam are trying to scare off the family but they fail and Beetlejuice, when they first “hire” him, becomes a giant snake, Ryder’s Lydia screams “I hate you! I hate all of you!” and it’s just totally odd. But now I’m thinking that this is a flaw of screenwriting to some extent. She is playing the quintessential Burton misunderstood teen goth girl, but isn’t given enough rope or scenes to be truly surprised, develop a rapport, then to earn a feeling of betrayal at that moment. The film, though following a sort of textbook “Save the Cat” type of script, it felt that it was thin with a noticeable lag in the middle of the script. Also, when Barbara comes in riding a snake, they’re violating the mythology of the story. No where beforehand was the snake anything other than something preventing their escape from the home. Where did she get the idea to do this? And how? And how did that work so easily? The filmmakers blow past the logic there in order to tie it up with a bang. Also - no one really has a character arc.

And yet, it’s still a classic, unique story that still holds up - Beetlejuice’s perversity aside. In fact, several in the group agreed that the scene where Otho conjurs up Adam and Barbara in their wedding clothes and they steadily age and start to die as a particularly harrowing and moving scene. It’s one that stayed with me, and several of us, over the years.

Last point - it’s truly amazing to me is that someone at a studio saw Tim Burton’s work and said “yes, that’s the man who we want to direct Batman (1989)!” In similar fashion, George Lucas strongly considered David Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi (1983) - Lynch of coruse did go on to direct a (rightly) trashed Dune (1984). Regardless of the results, the very fact of this is really astonishing. Both are such visionaries but with such avant-garde or “quirky” filmmaking styles, making movies in the equivalent of a hand-painted VW van, were given the keys to drive a street-racing Ferrari. What a different time! Nowadays, if you make some really terrific independent film or two, you could be considered for a Marvel film or perhaps helm a spinoff for a big-budget streaming series. But to launch the Batman franchise and truly ignite an era of comic book film adaptations? Amazing. Instead of dwelling on that long-gone past where studio executives were willing to take high risks, I’m choosing to see that as inspiration for all of us working away here in Hollywoodland.

This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019)

QFS No. 124 - The invitation for October 11, 2023
I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but this will be our first Quarantine Film Society selection from Lesotho. The country has about 2 million people – which is, I believe, still smaller than what the population of Los Angeles would be if the San Fernando Valley succession happened in 2002. Lesotho is completely surrounded by South Africa and the country’s motto was “No, not Swaziland – the other one.” (At least that’s what I assume it was before Swaziland changed their name to Eswatini.) Lesotho remains a really great answer in geographic trivia. That’s about all I know. The fact that there exists a film from Lesotho (pronounced “le-SUE-to”)* that’s available for us to see it pretty terrific and I want us to see it.

Also, this is our first film from anywhere in Africa since our seventh ever selection way back in 2020, the obscure Air Conditioner (2020, QFS No. 7) from Angola. This is a shameful tally, I admit, and it’s mostly due to me and the QFS Selection Committee knowing almost nothing about films that come out of Africa. It’s also true that very few films from Africa are being widely distributed in the US. Nollywood – the moniker given to Nigerian films, the most prolific filmmaking nation outside of India – is still completely obscure to me, but I hope to select a film from there in the future. Regardless, three years is a long time between films from an entire region of the world. The QFS Selection Committee Member responsible for this digression has been reassigned.

As for This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection** – this is not a movie I know a whole lot about, other than it was featured on the Criterion Channel which got me curious to read a tiny bit about it earlier this year. Enough to get me interested in seeing it. As you all know by now, I firmly believe in film’s ability to transport you into a person, a being, or a place completely and utterly unknown to you and, if done well, can take you on a journey that is extremely unique and specific to that world but touches on something of a shared humanity we have with people unlike us. I hope this week’s selection is able to do just that.

Either way, it will be pretty fun to take a trip to Lesotho for a couple hours. Join me in watching This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection and we’ll discuss!

*Believe it or not, I have actually been to and stayed in Swaziland for a week, back in 2010 (before it was renamed Eswatini). I was helping a friend shoot a documentary in Swaziland and South Africa. It is here were I learned, crucially, how to correctly pronounce “Lesotho.”

 **This is one of our few QFS selections where the title could also be a complete sentence. The others: Knives Out (2019, QFS No. 6), A Man Escaped (1956, QFS No. 9), Dolemite is My Name (2019, QFS No. 15), The Lady Vanishes (1936, QFS No. 24), You Can’t Take it With You (1938, QFS No. 47), Escape from New York (1981, QFS No. 61), Flee (2021, QFS No. 69), Enter the Dragon (1973, QFS No. 73), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, QFS No. 75) and though it might be not intended this way, How Green Was My Valley (1941, QFS No. 121) could be an exclamatory sentence or a question. True, Knives Out, Escape from New York, Enter the Dragon and Flee all would have to be commands (imperatives, if you will: “Flee!”), I think it’s hilarious that someone could order you to “Enter the Dragon” in a non-ironic way. This is the important high level analysis you can expect from the crack team here at QFS.

This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

 Reactions and Analyses
I can safely say, this is my favorite film from Lesotho. The best way to describe this movie is that it is a visual poem. Everything is lyrical, from the narration to the vistas and the composition. There’s quite a long time until a plot device appears, and when it does it has a familiarity to it - a simple person fighting for tradition and standing up to “progress.” A faceless march of time that will literally wash away this place.

The pace is languid and so much rests on the window Mantoa’s face. Portrayed by the late Mary Twala Mhlongo, her face tells so much of the story. She is the strength of the story as much as the visuals are. This is Not a Burial is more fable than movie.

The unforgettable face of the late Mary Twala as “Mantoa” in This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) does much of the heavy lifting in a languidly paced film.

Pace is such an fascinating thing in film. This movie isn’t that long as a matter of real time, but it feels long. In part because the plot is thin but it also makes sense because it feels like the pace of village life. The pace of the film mimicking the pace of the locale.

The “burial” in question is her own - she prepares for it and asks a fellow villager to dig a grave for her. She ends up having to do it herself, covered in sweat, under the cover of darkness. The “resurrection” - here’s where the group had some disagreement about. Not that the resurrection as such doesn’t happen, but it’s very subtle and at first I didn’t quite grasp it. Mantoa decides to stay on the land and not leave with her fellow villagers who are being relocated to the capital Maseru (yes I had to look up the capital of Lesotho), moving towards … soldiers? Government workers at the very least. And she disrobes, moving towards them to a certain death.

But - how does it, her death, happen? Do they shoot her? It doesn’t seem like they’d concern themselves too much with one 80-year-old (naked) woman to actually kill her - they could just simply work around her. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, what matters is that this is her death or it will be soon. Her “burial,” and her “resurrection” is the little girl who watches her in this act of martydom - yes?

Mantoa (Mary Twala), digging her own grave (literally, not figuratively).

To me, that felt a little thin. To others, it made sense. For a film that’s a visual poem and rests on lyricism, concrete answers are not necessary. The film is a tone, a mood, and on that alone it’s really quite lovely to watch and explore its meanings. The film’s title could easily be This is not a film, it’s a fable - a lyrical visual poem that feels as if it’s a local legend one would share with a friend. A fable that’s bittersweet, hopeful and a cautionary tale of indigenous peoples facing the unreleting march of time and modernity.

The Player (1992)

QFS No. 123 - The invitation for October 4, 2023
The Player will be our first selection from the works of master Robert Altman since way back in 2000 with one of our early QFS selections, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, QFS No. 11). Unlike the Western setting of that film, The Player storyline takes place and is set in Hollywood.

 I know the basic setting and concept only from people who have told me about the movie because … I have never seen this film. This admission is usually met with the following response: What – but you work in the film industry! Yes, dingbat, I know that and yes, you’re right, it’s borderline shameful I haven’t seen it. I have no excuse, though I have attempted but failed over the years to remedy this problem by finally seeing it, including at numerous local theatrical screenings that I’ve missed for one reason or another.

Which is why I’m excited to see this now and discuss with you! I’m also curious to know what 1990s Hollywood thought about working in 1990s Hollywood and what it’s like to be working in that same industry 33 years later. I remain a big fan of Mr. Altman’s filmmaking and this is a major gap in my knowledge of his work that will soon be addressed.

The Player (1992) Directed by Robert Altman

Reactions and Analyses:
As someone who works in the film business - as do most people in the QFS discussion group - I was struck how deeply cynical The Player (1992) is. I shouldn’t have been; the spirit of the film reflects what was almost certainly Robert Altman’s perception of the industry at this point in his career.

Altman comes to prominence in the 1970s with the great wave of American auteurs and finds critical acclaim for his films, especially Nashville (1975), MASH (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). These films all feature his voice as a filmmaker, with long fluid camera movement and at times a documentary-type approach to dialogue and interaction between the characters in the film.

But then, in 1980, he directs Popeye (1980) which utterly bombs in the box office. You could see the aftershocks int he 1980s - Altman has a long string of unremarkable films. Or at least films that have not endured the way his other films have. While other ’70s auteurs, like Martin Scorsese, Alan Pakula, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma find their way with bigger budgets and films - not to mention George Lucas and Steven Spielberg - it’s Altman who is likely up against forces attempting to curtain his maverick spirit. He’s coming up against corporate filmmaking and isn’t really able to break through.

Until he makes The Player, ironically, in 1992. His scathing indictment of the Hollywood system is the film that actually brings him back into the Hollywood fold. As one member of the QFS discussion group posited - this is a really bad movie about making really bad movies.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a really bad movie but it’s definitely a movie that skewers movie conventions. It’s spoofs crime movies, romance movies, thrillers, and of course - the repeated take down of the long-standing complaint of filmmakers everywhere: Hollywood’s desire for a happy ending. The nearly eight-minute opening shot is of course often discussed - a continuous tracking shot complete with zooms gives allows us to spy. We listen in through windows or walk-and-talking conversations about movies, film gossip, and truly terrible script pitches. The Graduate 2, pitched by the writer of The Graduate (1968), Buck Henry, is straight-up genius. It sets up the gossipy world we’re about to enter and is reminiscent of the terrific camera work that’s a hallmark of all Altman’s films. I was particularly reminded of Nashville, another exploration of an entertainment industry but with a less acerbic tone.

Part of the nearly eight-minute long opening shot from The Player (1992) Directed by Robert Altman

But back to Hollywood’s ubiquitous desire for happy endings - this is probably Altman’s biggest gripe and obviously the thing he never really does in his films. They usually end with something ambiguous or even tragic, as in McCabe & Mrs. Miller or bittersweet and off-kilter as in The Long Goodbye. Here, to achieve his happy ending, it’s all satire. Tim Robbins as “Griffin Mill” is struggling to keep his prominence in the studio, fighting the upstart Peter Gallagher (“Larry Levy”). He’s being stalked, then kills someone. He’s then suspected of murder. Then runs from the law. Then is caught. But then a year later, he’s running the studio. And gets the girl. It’s searing and brutal what Altman is saying here - immoral psychopaths run the film business. Altman has claimed this is light satire, but this feels more like a brutal takedown and indictment.

The fascinating thing about this movie is the abundance of cameos. It features the most amount of Oscar nominees in a single film - because they’re all playing themselves. Except then you get Whoopie Goldberg (“Detective Susan Avery”) who shows up and is holding an Oscar in her first scene - but she’s not playing herself, an Oscar winner and former host. It’s just on the edge of being too cute for its own good.

Flowers and the perfect life crowd the frame in the final shot of The Player (1992), a parody of Hollywood’s desire for happy endings.

Shameless people who will suffer no consequences - if this ever was a film for the #metoo era, or to show the conditions that bring about people who act without fear of repercussions, this is it. It was particularly unnerving to watch this during the WGA strike - not only does a studio executive actually murder someone, but there is another studio executive (Larry Levy) who comes up with a story idea just by reading the paper and says writers can be eliminated. Despite being definitely a product of the early 1990s - as evidenced by the phones and in-car fax - it is more than relevant for today in that respect.

The entire film is worth it to see the payoff of Habeas Corpus coming together and basically doing all the things that the director claimed they wouldn’t do - sell out and make it commercial. The fact that they have Bruce Willis, who is probably in the top 3 greatest action stars in the world at this time along with rising star Julia Roberts in this fake movie within the movie is truly fantastic. And the movie is so bad that it’s perfect for the “light satire” Altman wants to portray here.

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

QFS No. 122 - The invitation for September 27, 2023
Another Italian* film, you say? Well, you longtime members of QFS will remember that Sharat is making his way through the film requirements he was supposed to be have finished before beginning as a grad student at the American Film Institute. We previously watched A Man Escaped (1956, QFS No. 9), Burnt by the Sun (1994, QFS No. 58) and Swept Away (1974, QFS No. 82). Rocco and His Brothers is another one of those films** that Sharat needs to complete 22 years ago.  

Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti is a favorite of Martin Scorsese, calling him “one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema.” Scorsese listed Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) as one of his favorite films from the Criterion Collection, and I was lucky enough to catch The Leopard at the Aero Theater recently in Santa Monica. The Leopard is a lush production with a great cast unfolding a story over nearly three hours.

 I can’t say if Rocco and His Brothers will be the same, but the length sure is. I really enjoyed The Leopard and need to expand my knowledge of Visconti more in order to be a more effective filmmaker at the AFI Conservatory circa 2001. So thank you for helping me complete my AFI coursework! Join me to discuss.

*With this selection, Italy vaults back into the lead with most QFS films from a single country with six, over taking India’s five. Related, the best restaurant in Los Angeles is Pijja Palace in Echo Park which is an Indian-Italian fusion sports bar. Pijja Palace is No. 1 on the QFS Restaurant Critic’s list of Best Places for Sharat to Attempt to Eat More Food Than He Can Physically Consume list.

**The remaining, since you asked: Intimate Lighting (1966) directed by Ivan Passer; Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945) directed by Marcel Carne; Blue (1993) directed by Krzysztog Kieslowski and part of his “Colors” trilogy; La Guerre Est Finie (1959) directed by Alain Resnais; Vagabond (1985) directed by Agnes Varda. Either my final boss to defeat in this game will be La Guerre Est Finie – not available online and French – or Les Enfants Du Paradis, which clocks in at more than three hours long and is also French. Stay tuned!

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti

Reactions and Analyses:
Early in the film, when the family has moved into their basement dwelling in Milan fresh their migration from the south, Nadia (Annie Girardot) seeks refuge in their home. We’ve barely met the brothers and they all are somewhat indistinguishable from each other. Each handsome in different ways, a couple of them seem a little younger. But they feel somewhat broadly drawn.

As the film unfolds, we get a gradual fleshing out of each brother, as if from a fog with a detail of one becoming clearer. And then another and another as the film evolves. This continues, interwoven, as each “chapter” introduces a brother one-by-one. But the narrative continues forwards as well and at some point, perhaps halfway through the film, I felt as if I knew each of these brothers intimately. I did, because Luchino Visconti makes sure of it.

This is a remarkable feat for a film that has five main male leads in it, a mother, a female lead, and a few supporting characters as well. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is a thoroughly rich world created by a director who's known for creating rich worlds (case in point: The Leopard, 1963). If I hadn’t already known it going in, I would’ve guessed this influenced the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (his inspiration for the brothers in The Godfather, 1972) and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese in particular - the boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers are incredibly intimate, with the camera inside the ring right next to Rocco (Alain Delon) in his fight enhancing its intimacy. Scorsese goes even further in Raging Bull (1980) with his use of speeds and cutting. But in Rocco and His Brothers - the use of the crowd, the black and white cinematography, the lighting on the boxing ring, the cutting to the crowd - all of it feels like an origin story for Scorsese. For Coppola, it’s been well documented how he fashioned the Corleone brothers after the Parondi brothers. Not to mention hiring Nino Rota to create the score for The Godfather (1972). The Rocco and His Brothers score definitely gives birth to The Godfather’s.

Boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti. Twenty years later, Martin Scorsese makes Raging Bull (1980), influenced by Visconti’s work here.

What’s additionally fascinating for a film so long and sprawling is that Rocco and His Brothers has no central narrative. It is the tale of a family, an “immigrant” tale, and how a family evolves, fractures, and attempts to survive in the city. To tell a story about without a gripping plot, you need to have fully realistic characters - people who feel like real humans who you care about or at the very least are curious about.

Simone (Renato Salvatori) starts as sort of a lovable brute with base instincts, undisciplined, but when driven by jealousy or shame, he drops the “lovable” almost entirely - and yet, you understand him. Or at least, I feel like I’ve known “Simones” in my life. Rocco (Alain Delon) is selfless, blinded by loving his brother but also genuinely in love with Nadia. And Nadia genuinely falls in love with Rocco as opposed to using Simone. And she gets revenge on Simone by dragging him down by using his obsession against him - but it kills her too. It’s all sordid and when written out like that seems more like a soap opera. And yet, Rocco and His Brothers rarely feels overly melodramatic (caveat: this is a film from Italy; some melodrama can be excused).

The film, of course, takes an incredibly dark turn and features what is probably one of the most disturbing rape scenes in cinema history. Not the most graphic, but definitely among the most disturbing. And, I’d argue, perhaps one of the most disturbing knife killing in cinema history.

A QFS member brought up that this felt like a dark Grapes of Wrath. Which is a pretty spot on way to look at it. A family, driven by poverty, forced to migrate within their country and find shelter, comfort, and a living in a strange place.

I’ve noticed a common thread I’ve noticed in many QFS selections, that of this immigrant or migrant story. Human migration is a source of so much drama, such fascinating stories - and it spans eras and nations. Our most recent selection, How Green Was My Valley (1941, QFS No. 121), is in part about the causes of migration. America America (1963, QFS No. 87), directed by Elia Kazan only three years after Rocco and His Brothers, tells that tale from Turkey through poor Greeks leaving their homes. Apur Sansar (1959, QFS No. 16) is in many ways a story about what happens when a migrant from the impoverished countryside tries to make it in the city. And even L’Avventura (1960, QFS No. 116), made in a vastly different style by fellow Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni in the same year - there’s an undercurrent of class. The protagonists are wealthy but there are plenty of interactions with the poorer class and there an undercurrent of post-war Italy that both L’Avventura and Rocco and His Brothers portray in their own ways.

Close up of Alain Delon (“Rocco”) in Rocco and His Brothers (1960).

Rocco and His Brothers is a textbook in character portrayal, but it’s also a textbook in cinematography. The night work in this film are astonishing with big broad light and sharp shadows thrown against buildings. The close-ups are gorgeous (Pauline Kael criticized the lighting on Alain Delon: “who at times seems to be lighted as if he were Hedy Lamarr”) and the cathedral rooftop scene in particular could be a masterclass in blocking for actors and the camera. Rocco turns into a close up and a tear falls from his eye perfectly. I loved it - a QFSer who is an actor felt it was a little too much. He also felt that everyone in Parondi family needs therapy. Absolutely true, and yet it would’ve been a much shorter film had they done so.

As mentioned in the QFS invitation above, Rocco and His Brothers was on my list of films to see before starting at AFI. I’m more than a little upset it took me so long to finally see it. Not only is it historically important given how many filmmakers it influenced, but it is truly a spectacular film in all aspects - performance, cinematography, music, storytelling. One that AFI is right to require its incoming directors to watch. Rocco and His Brothers is, for me, an ideal balance of realism and artistry to tell a very true, human story of a family struggling to stay together.

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

QFS No. 121 - The invitation for September 6, 2023
We return to legendary John Ford, last seen in 2020 for QFS No. 26 with his Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), a film he made two years earlier than this week’s selection. The great American filmmaker turns his gaze outside the US in a film that won five Academy Awards including Best Picture. But to me it has always been known as “the film that beat out Citizen Kane (1941).”

Perhaps that’s why it’s taken me so long to actually sit down and watch this movie. I’m sure I’ll be upset that How Green Was My Valley is inferior in its filmmaking to Orson Welles’ masterpiece, right? Citizen Kane has endured the test of time, gathering momentum over the 20th Century as arguably the greatest film ever made. Or at least one of them. Whereas How Green Was My Valley is probably most remembered for beating out Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon for Best Picture and for being one of John Ford’s 10 best films.

But Ford’s film batting average puts him in the directing hall of fame. He has a very very high percentage of excellence in his moviemaking, so I’m quite certain this will live up to expectations of a John Ford film. Also – and this is perhaps the best part of this week’s selection – the star of How Green Was My Valley is Walter Pidgeon, who was last seen in the 23rd Century as Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet (1956, QFS No. 119). So I’m going into this film considering it a Dr. Morbius origin story, before his brain capacity was expanded.

Join us in honoring the labor movement by seeing How Green Was My Valley over Labor Day weekend. See you then, comrade!

How Green Was My Valley (1941) Directed by John Ford

Reactions and Analyses:
How Green Was My Valley (1941) is the origin point of the immigrant tale. The village, provincial with generation after generation living in the same place, are dependent on a coal mine. The fate of that coal mine determines the fate of the people who live there. Eventually, men and women become faced with a choice - live as their ancestors have in a valley that’s steadily dying, or leave to greener pastures. (Note - “greener.”)

I was struck while I was watching How Green Was My Valley that this film could very easily have been adapted to India, from where my parents immigrated. I know others in the QFS group felt that it could’ve been from where their family original came from as well. There’s a universality to it that endures even now.

It’s a wonder how this film has been lost among John Ford’s others and has been overshadowed by Citizen Kane (1941). As mentioned above, I went into this film with the knowledge that it beat Orson Welles’ masterpiece for Best Picture at the Oscars. So comparing the two is inevitable so let’s take a moment to do so.

Why has Citizen Kane endured while How Green Was My Valley has less so? The group discussed this at length, but let me start with my takeaway between the two. How Green Was My Valley is beautiful, emotional and sentimental. It’s a story that feels specific to the characters but also universal in its emotional appeal, doing what cinema does best. Citizen Kane feels more intellectual, an exploration into the meaning of one specific life of fame, prestige and meaning. It’s perhaps deeper into its dive into the human condition in a way. It’s easy for me to see how Citizen Kane would influence the next generation of auteurs; Welles’ directing is the hand of an artist, using the cinematic tools to push the visual image and storytelling techniques to new places.

The steel mill looms over everything in How Green Was My Valley (1941) Directed by John Ford.

Ford’s hand in How Green Was My Valley is characteristically invisible - you don’t feel the heavy hand of the director. It’s there, for sure - Ford is using all his skill to tell this story in the way he knows how. But his way is less overt, letting the characters, the story, and the more traditional cinematography doing the talking.

Other QFSers in the group felt like Citizen Kane is complicated and feels “important” in a way that you’re told something is important. Whereas How Green Was My Valley is just a good, solid story created in a way that you’re guided along the narrative and live with the people in this town as if you’re one of them. Citizen Kane - you’re kept at arm’s length. And this is, in part, Welles’ design - Charles Kane is an enigma that we’re unravelling in the film. Ford has us as a member of this village, rooted in Huw’s story (played by Roddy McDowell). We don’t even go up into the mine atop the hill until Huw does very late in the film.

How Green Was My Valley stands on its own as opposed to being the historic foil to Citizen Kane at the Oscars. In many ways, the bigger upset at those Oscars was that Gregg Toland’s astonishing and groundbreaking cinematography from Citizen Kane lost to Arthur C. Miller’s in this film.

In any event, How Green Was My Valley should instead be compared to Ford’s other films. There is no one like Ford in placing humans against vast landscapes. From the very opening, you see humans set against the large world around them, the hills rolling in the distance. Wide vistas with men in foregrounds and mid-grounds. The looming presence of the mill always hovering about the town, a clear symbol of dominance told visually.

Coal miners hoping for work in How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Echoes of Ford’s word abound in How Green Was My Valley. Stagecoach (1939), Rio Grande (1950) and The Searchers (1956) come to mind seeing these Welsh landscapes. The Searchers in particular. Ford uses dark interiors with low ceilings that open up into the vastness of the exteriors - that’s done here throughout, but is of course legendary in the opening shot from The Searchers. Then for the story, you can see The Grapes of Wrath (1940) clearly in the pathos of the characters, their circumstances and being at the mercy of a faceless industry or corporation. Even Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) is analogous to Mrs. Morgan (Sara Allgood), long-suffering but spirited mothers trying to keep the family afloat. You can even find a man walking along the horizon in How Green Was My Valley in the way Ford shows Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln - where the preacher Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) has the nearly identical righteousness as Fonda’s Lincoln.

Similar use of horizon and vistas across John Ford’s films - left to right: Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Stagecoach (1939).

(Brief pause here to point out that Ford made from 1939-1941 - Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, AND How Green Was My Valley?! That’s utterly incredible. I’ve left out Drums Along the Mohawk, 1939, The Long Voyage Home, 1940 and Tobacco Road, 1941 which are lesser films for Ford - all made before he left to serve and make films for the US Navy in World War II.)

A QFSer brought up that the film is a remembrance of the experience rather than the experience itself. The narration looks back at the events of the film with fondness but there’s tragedy and heartbreak in this old town. So the question is - why does Huw stay? He gets a scholarship to study in the city after doing well at school and even his father wants him to take that opportunity. After all, his brother died in the mine, people are dying all the time there. He likes school - but he decides to stay. We know he does because in very opening of the narration he says he says in the valley for fifty years. Still, the allure of staying and working in a very dangerous industry is not clear to me other than he’s attracted to the widow Bronwyn - who is of course far older than him. I understand this is what his family has done for generations. But he has a ticket out. I guess that’s a sign of good filmmaking in that this decision frustrated me and led to the somewhat tragedy of his father dying in the coal mines.

We watched this film in the thick of the Writers’ Guild strike against the studios, right as Labor Day was approaching. The images in How Green Was My Valley of the strike stretching into the winter definitely hit close to home. Ford portrays the despair of this labor dispute with the coldness of the season and shows the desperation but determination of the workers. It’s easy to see the parallel between this and The Grapes of Wrath, how something wrought by a faceless entity, out one’s - drought, bank failures, coal-mining greed - can decimate the working class and their families. It’s not exactly the same for us in the film industry, but I definitely feel some aspect of how Ford shows us this struggle.

Strike stretches into the winter?! This hits a little too close to home - from How Green Was My Valley (1941).

How Green Was My Valley may not have endured the test of time in the minds of filmmakers or people who study cinema, but it’s not because of lack of merit. Perhaps just circumstance or timing or the fact that Ford’s work is so vast and so full of hits that this one just has fallen by the wayside. It’s no small feat to tell this tale - even though it has periodic narration from an older Huw, he’s not necessarily the main character. There is no one protagonist - it’s a story of a family and a village, featuring a truly excellent drunken party scene where people are drinking out of literal hats. To tell a sprawling tale like this is no small feat and can only be done if you care deeply about the characters, their story, and their struggle. It’s no secret that Ford is one of the all-time masters of this, and How Green Was My Valley is one of the many examples of why one must continue to study his filmmaking - even in some of his less remembered films.