My Favorite Films

This review is in a constant state of flux:

Spring Breakers is a glorious accident, not unlike winning 10 million dollars at a lottery. It shouldn't have happened, given the fact that I despise Harmony Korine's Gummo, but it seems that he finally got mature. Spring Breakers is an event that could only happen because every person involved turned out to be either a creative genius or a fitting match within this orgy of creativity.

Right after the cinema wishes you to enjoy your film, a 'big bang' wakes you up immediately when the first logo appears. This was enough for some girls in the audience to start giggling and playing with their mobile phones right off the bat, while not looking seriously at the film anymore. Then the intro credits pop up in the weirdest font you have ever seen, sparkling and radiating flashy colors and shapes. This was enough for some guys in the audience to start discussing the option of leaving the film, for at this point they must have felt cheated out of the t*ts they bought for 9.80 euros per ticket. But then the film starts teasing precisely those guys, by showing them some nice looking teens dancing sexy on spring break, although they had to look past the shaking cellulites *ss immediately after, only to be teased again when Skrillex's Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites suddenly changed from glossy electro into loudly screaming drones ("Oh my God!!"), while seeing one of the most gorgeous pair of t*ts ever to grace the earth totally soaked in beer, filling the entire cinema screen, rotating in slow-motion, in perfect pace with the rhythm of the music, for what were only a few seconds, yet felt like an eternity! It seems they got what they wanted, and in a way they did... and yet I bet they must have been freaked out in the wrong way. They would rather not have been woken up by t*ts, by putting them so close by, but they would rather have wanted to enjoy them comfortably, normally. Then the girls sucking on those colorful ice lollipops like they were sucking on something else entirely, freaked them out as well, because this was not realistic: the film preferred audiovisual qualities above thick and realistic storytelling, and "that sh*t ain't normal".

Spring Breakers is indeed not normal. It is more an experience to undergo, than a film to watch. It is a radical work of audio-visual poetry that is extremely immersive and dream-like ("feels like a dream... feels like a dream"). At first, the film may appear to be either completely lacking in meaning or to be completely obvious and one-dimensional in that regard, but on repeating viewings it becomes clear that it is in fact extremely layered, diffuse and inscrutable. On the one hand it sarcastically contrasts the caricatured spring break 'authenticity' spoken mostly through mobile phones, by its opposite reality, yet on the other hand explores the spring break lifestyle from within, by letting us inhale its vibe as if it were some strange religious drug experience. It is not reducible to a one-dimensional critique or condemnation, as it seems first and foremost to be an attempt to listen and to understand what is happening. If Hegel were alive now, he might have thought of cinema as "your time captured in sound and image." I think that this is what Spring Breakers is. Yet Korine also seems to transcend the one-dimensional post-modern "I'm not allowed to judge" attitude he is usually identified with. It is not entirely neutral, as there is an edge to it, and it is also not reducible to a simple love-letter to the spring breakers, even if it sometimes appears to be. During the scenes where Korine displays the contradictions inherent in the spring break lifestyle, we get a feeling of melancholy mixed with sarcasm, mixed with humor, mixed with a warm and even religious vibe. This is only a small sample of the emotional trip that film unleashes. The melancholy represents the love, sympathy, understanding and sadness that Korine feels for those crazy and confused kids, the sarcasm a critique on the illusions they are caught in, the humor a way to partially undercut the seriousness of that critique by making us laugh about it, the warm religious vibe, on the one hand a way to put us into their shoes and to make it all feel like a love-letter, but on the other hand a way to overdo it so completely as to raise questions again. The meaning of the film is incredibly layered and diffuse for such a seemingly simple and empty story. No easy answers suffice. There are many layers of meaning, and the most obvious ones (the relation between spring break and violence) ultimately seem to be the least interesting and the least important ones, almost as if they were deliberate 'red herrings'. There are more and less central layers, but none of them contains "the meaning" of the film on its own. Moreover, as the film is first and foremost a visceral, audiovisual piece of transcendental art (which is where the film succeeds most unproblematically), the meaning of the film does not take center stage, but constantly resides in the background.

After the first scene is finished we hear a guncock and we are transported to quieter settings. Two girls, Brit (Ashley Benson) and Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) tease each other with highly sexualized gestures, so that they won't be bored to death by their history lesson, but the background tone is completely different here. This is mostly because we hear Cliff Martinez on the score, who does what Thomas Newman did for American beauty: to create a deliciously delicate atmosphere that you can almost breathe in. And what a great job does this man do! I think he out-Newmans Thomas himself, especially on the point of integrating the score in the whole of the film. If it is true that cinema has a visual language, where images carry meaning, it stands to reason that there must be an auditory language as well. If so, then the task of making a film would partially be to integrate those two types of meaning as fully as possible. This is what Spring Breakers does extremely well. When the four Disney girls decide to collect all their money to go on spring break, they celebrate this plan by "experimenting" a bit in their dormitory, but the sensual undertones are not raunchy here: instead, Cliff Martinez makes it sound like poetry, while Korine and Benoît Debie (the cinematographer) make it look like a bunch of spring flowers blosseming. Debie also did Enter the Void (and Irréversible and Calvaire), which is as clearly recognizable as the fact that this outshines all of his earlier work. Legs are thrown in the air with Kubrick-like precision, but then more dynamic and with a more Lynchian Mulholland Drive type of atmosphere. The camera is shaking a little and moving dynamically, but somehow it feels extremely precise.

Pretty soon we start hearing repetitions. There are repetitions in sounds (guncocks on almost every cut) and in one scene we hear the very religious Faith (Selena Gomez) talk about how they see the same things all the time (while seeing Candy faking a pistol with her hands for the tenth time), how the grass is not even green but brown, and how they need their chance to "see something different", and later on in the film we hear a lot of repetitions in lines, which at one occasion felt like twenty (though actually six) times the same lines repeated. Now, all this repetition is the most difficult aspect of the film. It is easy to dismiss the film for this and say that it is symptomatic for a bad script or poverty of ideas, that it is simply filler. After my first viewing I was unsure of what to make of this. But seeing it several times made my views on it more articulate. The repetitions serve several goals. In the scene I just mentioned it serves the goal of radically confronting the cinema viewer with the routine of daily life, from which the spring breaker wants to flee, by breaking the comfortable immersion of an 'enjoyable cinema visit'. Korine did his best not to make us feel comfortable at any point in the film. This is no easy viewing simply to enjoy t*ts for free (or 9.80 euros), even though they often are enjoyable nonetheless. Sometimes, the repetitions are very hypnotic, and serve to increase the absorption into the film. But at other times it has the opposite effect. The hypnotic flow of Korine's Spring Breakers is just as interrupted as Godard's Week End ("Just pretend it's a f*ing video game! Just act like you're in a movie or som'ting!"). Often the repetitions work like tension-builders, holding off orgasm extremely long, making you feel "no not again", while feeling that the sound underneath is swelling up and moving towards a climax, such as the first violent scene of the film. Although I won't spoil its contents, it features one of the best tracking shots I have ever seen, already intensifying the color palette as it is seen later in the film. This scene is similar to the last one, in the sense that tension is built up in the same way, although in preparation for the final scene, we hear the most irritating repetitions of the whole film ("Are you scared? Yeah... I'm real scared.", "Scardipants! Yeah... I'm a big ol' scardipants..."). At this point I saw several people leaving the cinema right before the end. They just couldn't take it anymore. And I understand that. Perhaps it was wrong, and perhaps Korine went over-the-top here. I am still not sure. But I do know that the film can neither be thrown in the trash can because of it, nor even be held back much by it. Because somehow it serves as a backbone, making the film less delicious, thereby reminding me that this film is not to be unproblematically enjoyed. I do not always like these repetitions, but they are no longer an obstacle for me in judging the value that the film has to me. But sometimes the repeated lines were also thoroughly enjoyable or even funny as hell: when the silver-toothed gangster-rapper called Alien (James Franco) said "look at my sh$$tt" with two machine guns in both hands for the tenth time, I couldn't help laughing. ;) The performance and transformation that this guy managed to pull off has to be seen to believed! And this makes the film partially a comedy as well.

When the girls arrive at spring break we see a bunch of people partying wildly and loudly, contrasted by a more quiet, poetic display of after-party relaxation. These things often happen at about the same time, as the time-jumps are so frequent that the divisions between past present and future, are not always clear. This breaks open the narrative structure of the film, as those jumps occur not only between scenes (Pulp Fiction), but also within scenes: the effect is more hypnotic (like in a music-video) than confusing. Skrillex's With You Friends (Long Drive) is played in the background (representing the partying) with a softer nostalgic hum over it, probably done by Martinez (representing the poetry). The beautiful movements of the scooter-lights somehow make it believable that Faith calls Spring Break the most religious place she has ever been in. Faith never wants to leave this place as everything is so nice here. The people are so warm and friendly. At the same time we see Cotty (Rachel Korine) representing the wilder, raunchier side of spring break, in a very brave and respectable, possibly career-damaging, performance that is probably born out of faithfulness to her husband, albeit in paradoxical ways. Often, the religious/nostalgic feelings turn into a melancholic/sarcastic social critique that is also funny: "Yeah, we saw some beautiful things out here", while we see the Disney girls peeing on the side of the road. The spring break notion of authenticity is exposed for the lie that it is: "yeah, we truly found ourselves here! We finally got to see some other parts of the world". And yet the flow, the mood and the utter horniness of the film are so strong that it is hard to see this as a simple generation critique by a grumpy old guy. There is more than enough to enjoy here. Sometimes even so much, that the viewer may feel guilty and besmirched and feel like he or she is watching a stupid exploitation flick. This is all part of Korine's mind-f*ing: it confronts us with the fact that to one-dimensionally condemn the spring breakers for their sex-crazedness and superficiality would be deeply hypocritical, as we are all equally guilty as charged when enjoying the film, whether that enjoyment stems from heavenly audiovisual qualities or from mundane sexual enticement.

When Skrillex's Goin' In starts to play, the partying gets really wild. Lots of *ss shakin', beer drinking, coke snortin' and bodylickin'. Once again, the music and the images form a coherent unity, as the shakin' always coincides with the rhythm of the music. Certain events lead to the introduction of the Alien character. This is where the film introduces more conventional (i.e. comedy) story elements, but certainly does not give up its Malickish liquid narrative. But unlike Malick, Korine combines poetry with dirt, high-art with low-art, beauty with raunchiness, light with darkness. This makes it all so much more palatable. Malick's films are often all sky and no earth, making it float away, causing us to dissociate with it in the long run. By creating this balanced contrast, Korine out-Malicks Terrence himself by a long shot. When we hear this creepy Alien's thoughts, we learn that poetry is on his mind ("These three girls, in front of me... Can't believe what I see. How can this be? The're like mermaids, come up from the sea... Everytime I look, they're like old-fashioned b*tches straight from a book."), and even though this ought to be preposterous (and in a way still is) it somehow manages to be deeply touching. Brit and Candy ("ooh, let me smelll it", "seeing all this money makes my p*ssy wet") slowly unveil the true extent of their psychopathic side and it seems that Benson and Hudgens are a perfect match for Franco, who are all giving the definitive performances of their careers. What a bunch of gorgeous freaks! This compromised poetry culminates in the scene with Britney Spear's "Everytime", with the pink balaclavas, black Down To *beep* trousers and colorful sneakers, making those girls look like strangely cute yet dangerous little bunnies, while the music calmly soared, and my God, how beautiful this was! This would have been my favorite scene of all time, if it were not surpassed by the final scene by a nose length. This final scene is a truly gorgeous audio-visual spectacle in slow-motion, not unlike the finale of 2001, although within the framework of the story, and with a washed-out score underneath. The balaclavas in that scene were fluorescent, neon-colored this time, varying from pink, to blue, to (KKK) white depending on the lighting. And against the background of the pitch-black night, and the bright purple pier this was simply to die for!

(Check out the edit below!)

Although this is part of a triptych anime film called Memories (Memorîzu, 1995 by Studio 4°C), and is usually not reviewed separately from the rest, I would have found it rather unfortunate to have to review the triptych as a whole, because although the second and the third film are very good too, they would have dragged the whole down considerably. This would have been all the more problematic given that part 1 of Memories, "Magnetic Rose" (directed by Koji Morimoto), is quite simply the best animation film I have yet seen, surpassing Angel's Egg (Tenshi No Tamago). Although Angel's Egg is still the greatest example of anime as a pure art-form, and is done with more reserve, subtlety and complexity of imagination, Magnetic Rose has a more overwhelming emotional impact, and establishes a visual supremacy, both in terms of technique and richness, and extends the scope of its vision about as far as 2001: A Space Odyssey, where it has been inspired by, juxtaposing sci-fi with classical architecture and opera. It starts off rather modest: the way the space ships and characters are drawn at that point fails to impress. But when the scenes with the classical architecture come up, the colors spring to life and the details burst open dramatically. The scene with the dead piano and it's living counterpart is one of the most powerful images ever crafted in the history of cinema, and so is the scene with the glass bowl and the cosmic maelstrom around it, or the one with the rose and the space helmet... There are many unforgettable moments here. But truth be told, Magnetic Rose completely goes for lyricism, nosthalghia and anghuish in quite unreserved quantities and in pre-established cultural modalities, and is in that sense not as subtle or daring a statement as Angel's Egg. But on the whole, the film is so overwhelming to the senses that I'll put Magnetic Rose above Angel's Egg. Not only does it get the the golden medal for best animation film, but also for best short film out there, beating Elégia. Nice!

Edit after a rewatch: Judging a film is not primarily a matter of abstract theorizing about possible merits and weaknesses, but first and foremost about emotional impact. If a film takes you on an audiovisual ride that - once it takes hold - doesn't let you go, overwhelms your emotions, overpowers you, attacks your senses with unadulterated beauty in full force, then that takes priority over every weakness your intellect might be able to spot. I do not fully understand why Magnetic Rose has such a strong impact on me, this time even considerably more: I was completely floored by it. The simple drawings in the beginning have little to offer, but the Opera music works wonders already. That music is probably a large part of the magic. But I'm not even a big fan of Opera. Why am I taken so much by it here? Possibly because it is correlated perfectly to the images, especially in the scenes with the classical architecture: that it works together with them to create a magical whole. But even the images themselves at their highest peaks, are so limpid and baroque, that one might begin to wonder why this isn't kitsch? But the fact of the matter is, that it isn't. It's art. But looking at a table full of food, with a pink table-cloth, I see much richness, but why does it have so much impact? Or when I look at a scene with green grass and a blue sky, why am I gasping for air? Isn't this precisely the cliche every overly romantic wannabe poet comes up with? I just don't know. Something in the color toning is just right, the music swelling up hits me at precisely the right moment, where it might not have touched me so much if the colors were slightly different. Possibly it's something like that, but that is a far cry from completely understanding it.

Finally, there remains the question: where to place this film? 2001: A Space Odyssey is a fascinating, beautiful and timeless film, but it does not have the same relentless impact on the emotions and the senses as Magnetic Rose.

It is often said that Godard's golden age lies between 1960 and 1967. This may foreclose any serious attention to middle and late Godard, which is a shame really. Because Hail Mary isn't just in the same league as Le Mépris and Week End; in my opinion it's actually better!
Godard doesn't seem to be the most religious person in the world. In fact his Maoist and Marxist affiliations would seem to make him prone to atheism. How strange it is then to see him make such a transcendent work of art as Hail Mary. It's certainly not straight forwardly religious as it often mocks holy icons. With Week End he already established himself as the purest iconoclast of Cinema. This iconoclasm is now directed at Catholicism, and its myth of the Immaculate Conception. But what is extraordinary is that it is not just empty mockery and recalcitrance, which would be predictable and boring. It's also fascination and reverence. This is Godard's most poetic film. The whole film can be interpreted as a poem dedicated to the miracle of birth and the creation of life, which transcends the limited sphere of human action and comprehension. I have never seen the naked body of a woman portrayed with more nuance and delicacy. The way the soft lighting accentuates it is simply gorgeous. The symbolism is very strong and poignant: for instance, the heavenly bodies are likened to lamps, both verbally and visually, thereby linking the mundane with the ethereal; the rubickx cube represents the tension between chance and creation, and the body of a woman is both a house of banal pleasure and a site of holiness. Side characters are sometimes characters, at other times mouthpieces of a universal poetry: traditional narrativity is transcended not by kicking it in the nuts, but by elevating it to a higher plan. I have never seen a film that walks the fine line between ironic atheism and negative theology better, without being reducible to either. Visually, Le Mépris is better, historically, Week End is more relevant, but personally I'd say that this is Godard's purest and best film.

Edit after a rewatch: Position confirmed. There are a few great moments in the beginning, but in the middle part they become much more thinly spread, mixed with some rather mediocre moments. However, patience and openness will be rewarded from the the 50th minute or so on. The final 25 minutes of this movie are nothing short of breathtaking, pure poetry instead of the usual prose. This is what I look for in a movie!

Edit after a rewatch: Upon several rewatches, more and more details of this complex masterpiece have fallen into place, and the film feels more and more integrated and consistent as a whole. A top ten position is called for.

Edit after a rewatch on Blu-ray: The more I see this movie, the more I fall in love with it. This is audiovisual poetry from start to finish, edited like no other movie has been edited before or after!

To my mind, this profound visual-philosophical masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick is the best film ever crafted! Instead of giving us all the answers through a conventional narrative, 2001 uses gorgeous imagery to raise questions that actually made me think about the development of mankind, the limits that technology and instrumentality impose on it and about the possibilities of transcending those limits.

For a more extensive philosophical review in Dutch, see:
[link]http://thaumaonline.nl/?cat=8[/link]

Edit after a rewatch: new position confirmed.

A heart-wrenching piece that affects me on an even deeper level than its already brilliant cinematic accomplishments would have suggested. Maria Falconetti's performance as Jeanne d'Arc is nothing short of sublime. Just to see the picture of Joan with the crown on her head is almost unbearably moving. In her tears we can see the suffering of the world reflected. This is one of the very few films about which I do not have even the slightest bit of doubt regarding its status as a work of art. The emotions, the cinematographic techniques and the decors all possess the clarity and precision of a perfectly polished diamond, that does not appear to be the product of a merely human technē. And even if it is the product of a human technē, it concerns technē (and truth) in the apophantic Heideggerian sense of the word as unconcealment or world-disclosure. La passion de Jeanne d'Arc doesn't try to be a work of art: it simply is.

Edit: a re-watch confirms this position above Napoleon, although I'm not entirely sure anymore it needs to be below 2001. It might very well be the best film ever made. I also want to point out how heart-achingly beautiful Einhorn's music is, especially when combined with the film. I have watched it twice now with his music underneath it, but I will also have to watch it in complete silence at some point. Also notable are the carves, lines and subtle nuances on everyone's faces that help to constitute very powerful facial expressions, underlining the fact that this is the first film where the actors didn't have to hide their faces underneath thick layers of make-up. Whereas the claustrophobic close-ups and the overwhelming emotions take center-stage on first viewing, on second viewing I payed more attention to the actual conversations that were going on and they are also marvelous: the interrogators play a game to get her convicted by making her confess, and they take on false identities by playing this game, but while Jeanne also participates in that game in order to undercut their traps, she doesn't exactly take on a poker-face to hide who she really is: she retains her true identity and at the same time she plays the game like a grand-master:

Interrogator: "Do you not feel that these learned doctors are wiser than you?"

We see Jeanne wisper "oui" and then she says: "but God is even wiser!"

Edit after a rewatch in silence: La passion de Jeanne d'Arc without Einhorn's Voices of Light is, regrettably, less lyrical, less emotionally intense and less good. When I tried to watch it recently I was a bit tired and I wasn't drawn into the film at all, so I turned it off quickly. Now I tried it again. And indeed the first fifteen minutes or so are somewhat difficult to fully concentrate on. You have to invest a lot of effort and concentration into it, because silence is truly very... well you know... silent. Being well rested and drinking lots of caffeine beforehand is perhaps a prerequisite for watching a silent movie in silence. But the interrogations slowly draw you in and after a while the emotional ties are forged again. Later on in the film, the immersion becomes very strong again, and relies less on personal effort to keep it in tact. The lack of sound matters less and less, the more the story progresses. I was still very much touched by this film. It remains profound and meaningful and it has lost none of its dignity. And it remains quite an overwhelming experience, the best example of realized mysticism in film I know. The story and the dialogue remain untouched and very pure. And the expressive power of the images is extraordinary, very minimalistic and honest: and that carries a lot of weight. In silence the film is more restrained, less over-abundant in terms of emotion. It forces itself less upon you and invites more of your own participation. And that is not necessarily always captured best in terms of better or worse. Also, without sound the screams of the interrogators are heard more intensely in your imagination, because there is more room for them in your head. This adds to the horror. Still, there is no denying that Voices of Light is a highly valuable addition to the film that ultimately makes it significantly better. But it is also clear to me that it retains its position above Napoléon, which is, when all is said and done, a relief.

Abel Gance's Napoléon is the most ambitious film ever made. It is a totally crazy, megalomanic and ultimately glorious attempt at the realization of the essence of film, conceived as the old Wagnerian dream of the "Gesamtkunstwerk". It is a total attack on the senses, making Kubrick's 2001 appear almost modest in comparison. In that regard Abel Gance resembles Napoleon himself, whom he also glorifies without bounds. One could argue that the film oversteps itself in the will to show the rise of Napoleon from a total, absolute, or God's eye perspective: "the world-spirit on horseback" as Hegel called this little general. One of the ways in which the film arguably oversteps itself is the three way split screen at the end of the film: it tries to show a total perspective of the war on Italy, but even though it is more than glorious, it actually provides more of a scattered and disorienting view, although this might be due to Coppola's reduction of the three different theater screens to three small blocks on a small stroke on your television screen which obscures many of the details. Also the abundant use of the blending of images, for example the image of an eagle onto the face of Napoleon, isn't a sure sign of subtlety in taste, although this particular instance does reveal something important about Napoleon. Yet despite these 'faults' if one could speak in such terms, the film is positively roaring with energy, liveliness and grandeur in every frame: and even at the moments it 'fails' because of its proportions, it paradoxically also succeeds, because the ridiculousness of these proportions suit the main protagonist of this film very well. Imagine to see the final scene on three different theater screens! How wonderfully megalomaniac would it be to experience that! The snow-ball fight scene at the beginning is almost surrealistic in its drunken dynamism. If modern viewers are disoriented by it, then viewers in 1927 must have been positively freaked out of their minds by it! Then there is a brilliant chase scene using rapid-fire cutting and handheld-cameras for the first time in film history complete with a camera on top of a horseback to show Napoleon's own perspective, culminating in Napoleon's escape by boat, fighting a sea storm that blends together with images from a chaotic Paris Convention, with the camera rocking on the waves of the boat as it moves freely and violently through the shouting masses at the convention. In the siege of Toulon, the composition of every frame is majestic and brilliant. At all times we can feel the weight of enormous historical forces working through this little man on the screen, culminating in such proclamations as: "I am the revolution!" His eagle-like eyes alone are able to silence his opponents and his over-ambition, his complete disregard for authority and his brilliant eye for military tactics ultimately made him into a revered general. The reign of terror by Robbespierre (causing the imprisonment of Napoleon) is the only part where the film tempers its energy, but only a little bit, which is recovered as soon as Napoleon is released to save France. A dance scene at one of the ensuing festivities, isn't just a dance scene: we see through a drunken camera, moving in a chaotic yet controlled manner that is way ahead of its time, waltzing through a crowd of dancing men and women, while some of the women are showing a dangerous amount of flesh for a film made in the twenties. The film never lags or bores, despite its 4 hour running time. It goes on and and on with a constant, mythical enthusiasm. When Napoleon rides in a coach towards Italy, it doesn't go fast enough for him, so he starts to ride on a horseback instead to further the energy of an already energetic scene. Throughout the movie we hear nationalistic music, and the three-way split screen ultimately culminates in the blue white and red colors of the French flag. The film conveniently forgets to mention the crimes of Napoleon and shows him not as the oppressor, but as the liberator of Europe. That is not very truthful, but without this blindness the film could never have been as big as it is now, and its proportions are not only the cause of its 'faults', but also of its major and overwhelming success: it is - save Kubrick's 2001 and Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc - the most brilliant cinematic achievement ever!

Before I stop, let me quote Roger Ebert, because he has something very important to say about this film and about silent films in general:

"One thing we members of the talkie era forget is that characters in a talking movie are forced, by and large, to speak in everyday language or risk sounding ridiculous. And their realistic speech tends to anchor the movies themselves in the realm of literal possibility. Gance's "Napoleon" has no such limitations. The movie boldly uses symbolism, highly dramatic cross-cutting, spilt-screen images and special effects to pound us over the head with its fantasy and idealism." [link]http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19810227%2FREVIEWS%2F100509988[/link]

Note: This review is based on Carmine Coppola's highly crippled 1981 version which is the only one allowed for U.S. distribution by his son Francis Ford Coppola, which is cut down to 4 hours and given a faster frame-rate in order for Carmine's score to fit under it. The bastards! Unfortunately a large part of the original 9 hours is forever lost, but Brownlow re-edited the film in 1980 and later in 2000. He has added some lost footage to it and restored it to 5 and a half hours and corrected the frame-rate. I will have to see that version somehow, as it is often remarked that this one is so much better than Coppola's, although it has never been released for home-viewing and most likely never will be. This is due to Coppola's stupid restriction that the film should have his father's score under it: he has managed to legally suppress Browlow's superior version for more than 30 years, but recently it has been screened in the Oakland theatre with the finale on three different screens! However, it is not certain that I will be able to see it. The last screening of it in the Oakland theater - complete with a huge live orchestra - was precisely yesterday! I should have been there *beep*dammit! However, maybe it will be screened again in London on November 30th, 2013.

Note2: After watching the (80's?) Brownlow edit with Carl Davis' score on VHS-quality, I can definitely say its an improvement, although the triptych is excluded in this one, so I also rewatched this last scene in the Coppola version. But its got clearer pictures, a more natural frame-rate, more logical continuity qua story and less nationalistic and more fitting music, which makes the film more subtle. On the whole it gives an even better view at an already magnificent film, although it does not become an altogether different film. The cinema version should be great though. For now, position confirmed.

Edit after a rewatch in the Royal Festival Hall in Londen: A magnificent experience! See my review on http://www.moviemeter.nl/film/5161/info/0#4079730, as the review-entry on IMDB is getting too big.

Dear god... This film is totally off the charts!!! It is absolutely weird, shocking, original, disturbing, dumbfounding, ridiculous, irritating, deep, pretentious, nauseating, laughable, breathtaking, surreal, nonsensical, excellent, amazing and a whole lot more... But for all that, it manages to be a great flim (though not a horror film as I first thought). If you want some points of reference, think of Lynch (Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Inland Empire) mixed with Cronenberg (Videodrome, Eastern Promises), mixed with Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing), mixed with Polanski (Repulsion, the Ninth Gate), mixed with something you don't wanna know... Ehm... ever heard of Japanese tentacle erotica?

Edit: As it lingered on in my subconscious (It seems like I am possessed as well) this film steadily worked its way towards the top 10. Not even the godawful acting of Heinz Bennent was able to stop it!

Edit after a rewatch: A personal favorite if there ever was one. This speaks to me on such a deeply personal level, I can't even begin to explain. I felt I was able to embrace it - and its imperfections - completely this time; having seen quite a bit more weird/trippy *beep* after my first viewing made it 'easier' to watch, even though this is probably as far away from easy viewing as you can get. This film is extremely raw, unpolished, intense and beautiful, pounding you over the head with a sledgehammer several times, with out-of-the-roof performances by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil. The ultimate film to watch on your first date. ;)

Let me start off by warmly thanking Onderhond for putting this wonderful film in his top 10 (in the third place), thereby bringing it to my attention. Judging by the cover-art and the IMDB-rating (7.7) you might think that this is just your average art-house approved Hero-clone, as in beautiful-but-recycled colors paired to a decent story adding up to something fairly enjoyable but nothing all too memorable (although Hero itself is better than that). You'd be wrong. Even apart from the stunning visuals and the unique style, this film is intensely sad and sensitive: in those last regards it is only rivaled by La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, although Dolls has little else in common with Dreyer's silent masterpiece. What it reminds me of most is Miyazaki's animation. Kitano creates the sort of dream-like atmosphere only seen in the finest of Japanese animation, although it is not surrealistic in the Lynchian sense of the word. In fact the film is quite brutal in its realism: often using only the simplest of tools, this film is so sad that it is totally devastating, without ever becoming over-sentimental or even remotely conventional. Still, you shouldn't be surprised or ashamed if you cannot keep your eyes fully dry: it proves you're still human. And don't write it off as a generic emo-tearjerker either, for it is highly profound; when Sawako sheds her tears at the end, she came to understand something on an emotional level which her mind could not grasp yet, which supports Heidegger's thesis that mood is more intelligent than reason: "Vielleicht ist jedoch das, was wir hier und in ähnlichen Fällen Gefühl oder Stimmung nennen, vernünftiger, nämlich vernehmender, weil dem Sein offener als die Vernunft" (Ursprung des Kunstwerkes 1960: 9).

Edit: rewatching Dolls was every bit as intense as the first time, if not more. I knew what was coming, but still I was devastated by its atmosphere, colors, landscapes, music, symbolism and extremely concise moments of excruciatingly painful yet serene drama, like strokes of a samurai sword straight to the heart. Also, the parts that didn't fall entirely into place the first time seemed much more appropriate and meaningful the second time: there were no real lesser parts or boring parts, only less and more intense parts. The fact that I am more used to the typical style of Kitano was also helpful: things that appeared to be slightly flawed disruptions of drama the first time, seemed more like unconventional yet successful juxtapositions of dramatic atmosphere with typically Kitano-style hardly-noticable humor. Often Kitano repeats two thematically isomorphic scenes, one wryly humoristic and one intensely sad, and somehow manages to intensify and deepen both through relating and contrasting them, which also makes both scenes less one-dimensional and the film less safely art-house approved (think the pop song in the middle). He even succeeds in presenting both scenes as two sides of the same coin, because in Kitano's universe, fate definitely has a sense of irony.

The maker of the beautiful Tokyo.Sora has outdone himself with what is one of the most touching love stories ever made. The film starts with two teenagers who fall in love but are unable to express themselves romantically. Every (awkward) silence seems filled with meaning and things left unspoken, accompanied by a guitar play which is constantly repeated but never fails to beguile us. Years later they meet again...

Edit: rewatching Su-ki-da was an amazing experience. All my lingering doubts about the second part being significantly less good, or the silent moments perhaps being a bit too much stretched out have vanished into thin air. What a glorious film! The meaning of the film has become much clearer now. Ishikawa creates meaning not by plot complexities, but through the perfect simplicity of atmosphere, perfectly precise framing, perfectly subtle coloring, perfectly natural acting purified of all the remnants of theatricality which the medium never succeeded to fully shake off (not even through the work of Ozu), and by letting the open sky envelop the main characters as a rejuvinating force, that can grant us warmth and happiness on the one hand, yet can overwhelm and numb us on the other hand, if we fail to open ourselves up to it entirely. In the latter part, the sky is covered up by the drabness of city-life. Life is but a mere shadow of the past now and possibilities are reduced to the roads that lead only to the familiar. The more we yearn for the past, the more it slips out of our grasp. But even then, there is hope.

A 7 hour long film, whose long takes slowly start to creep under your skin. In an almost abandoned village, the remaining villagers plot and scheme to get away with the money, but are all conned out of it by the false prophet Irimias. The story might appear to be about the end of communism or the exploitations of capitalism, but this is not the case. At the heart of this story lies the plight of a traumatized child (Estike) and an old recluse (Doctor). They are the true victims of a monstrous scheme which deprived them not of their money, but of their hope for a full, rich and human life and ultimately of their lives as such. What they were confronted with was a picture of a society in which cold, heartless human beings destroyed their own lives and those of others through their low-life plodding, drinking, fornicating - in short - through their unrelenting, drunken dance of satan. It was this picture that killed them.

What is perhaps most striking is the relation between this film and Tarkvosky's work. I think that, although this remains highly speculative, Tarr has taken up Tarkovsky's work as the thesis of a Hegelian dialectical triad. The thesis is the subjective, poetic and intimate splendour of a girl, Estike, sitting perfectly still with a purring a cat on her lap, a scene which lasts for minutes! So far Tarr's images are the offspring of Tarkovsky's work, although Tarr's long takes seem to capture the core of someones existence with concrete textures in an almost sculpture-like way, whereas Tarkovsky's images seem to be focused entirely on their poetic nature. The antithesis however is the introduction of an ethical dimension: we learn that Estike is not only a deep girl who has an openness towards the sublime, but is actually a traumatized child with very very deep psychological problems, because we actually see her torturing and killing her cat and finally killing herself. Thus the poetic image is interrupted by an objective antithesis: this is perhaps Tarr's critique of Tarkovsky! This ethical moment ultimately solidifies itself as a social and political moment, in that society's nihilism is identified as the cause of Estike's tragedy. However, the ethical, the social and the political are ultimately dismissed as one-sided, because the conduct of Irimias and the total abandonment of Doctor shows us that the ethical fate of society and the individual human being, cannot ultimately be determined by political means alone, but also demands a more radical transformation of man, perhaps an openness towards the sublime, which yields a synthesis between, the poetical, the intimate and the sublime with the ethical the social and the political. What is thoroughly un-Hegelian however, is the way in which Tarr ultimately sketches a very bleak picture of society, in which this synthesis is far from realised, and gives us nothing in the way of assurances that it is in fact realisable: on the contrary, it shows us only the dance of satan.

Edit after a rewatch: I thought that after my recent devaluations of Tarkovsky (which will probably extend beyond Stalker) and Bergman, it would only be fair to put Satantango to the test.

I said that Stalker could have done with some serious cutting in the final hour. Satantango could have done with some serious cutting as well: from the fifth and the sixth hour, 30 minutes or so could have been cut, as the film started to wear me out at that point a bit too much, although the final half an hour was a return to form. What is remarkable though is that up until the fourth hour I wouldn't have cut a single frame. Yes, the film is painfully slow at times, but in the first two acts this is almost always for a reason: for instance to show the abandonment of Doctor we stay a long time with him, hear him breathe, see him walk which hurts his over-sized body, see the detailed living-room (in other words: the booze-dispensing machine) he has grown together with like a tree planted in the ground. Normally this would have been cut away, but it is precisely the 'economic' mindset behind this cutting that is most damaging to people like Doctor. The cinematography in many of the early walking scenes is gorgeous, often even awe-inspiring. When the theme music is heard for the first time, the tracking shot that accompanies it is jaw-dropping. The walking scene with Irimias in the town with the storm blowing away all the papers is overpowering. The scene with Estike sitting with the purring cat on her lap is sublime (although I'm not very comfortable with what happens next). The shot with her sitting in front of the barn is a work of art, with the little white smudge of dirt on her left boot having precisely the right shape needed within the composition of the frame. This is why the first four hours are so brilliant.

I criticized Stalker for imposing Tarkovsky's world-view on the viewer: contrary to my earlier review, it is not the introduction of an ethical dimension which distinguishes Tarr from Tarkovsky, let alone seeing that as something positive. The positive difference lies however in the way that Tarr handles this compared to Tarkovsky. Although Tarr tells a moralizing tale and singles out the victims, he mostly uses very powerful images to do so, which makes it more palatable than most moralizing tales: to see the look in Estike's eyes after she peeks through the window is unforgettable, knowing what this meant for her. Tarr isn't trying to teach us something about the "selflessness of art", but simply tries to make us feel the negative effects of neglect and abandonment and tries to investigate its causes: this is not altogether inhuman I would say. Although humor is used to criticize the greed and the pig-like nature of the towns people, Tarr ultimately points towards larger social issues which makes this less a condemnation than a diagnosis. Also, the ambiguous role of the scene with the type-writer, gives the film a certain amount of open-endedness which counterbalances some of the more judgmental aspects. All in all I didn't get the feeling that Tarr wanted to shove something down our throats: he wanted to raise questions more than answer them, even if he provided some of the answers.

Where to place this film? Ultimately, the story is a bit anti-climactic when the fifth and the sixth hour have less intense cinematography and more story (which isn't the greatest aspect). This is where the film loses points, because anything short of greatness becomes tiresome and painful after four hours. Still, the film also gains many (but not all) of those points back in the final hour where especially the final scenes with Doctor are top-notch again. What is the impact of the lesser hours on the current position? Although it would make sense to lower the position slightly, there is also something about the long duration that adds to Satantango's greatness as a movie. Short movies are often featherlight and have to impress in every in minute to gain some weight. Ultra-long movies can build up weight over time, and are able to deal with the impact of its lesser moments to some extent, because weight is also inertia: the more overwhelming impressions in the beginning keep their pull over the lesser ones in the end. Satantango is the heaviest-weighing movie I have ever seen, like a dilapidated cathedral, its extension over time has become an integral part of the stone-like presence of its images.

Position confirmed.

Kubrick's controversial Clockwork Orange is packed with beautifully rendered "ultra-violence", yet despite this aesthetization of violence, it does not glorify it. Instead it raises a question: what if the attempts to control violence usually stem from a source that is even more corrupt and despicable than Alex and his droogs? From a society that has become mechanical to such an extent that it has lost its humanity altogether? Is Alex, despite his monstrosities, perhaps more alive, more human, more in touch with the sublime - exemplified by his love of the "glorious ninth" - than this Clockwork Orange? Such is the bleak picture of society that lurks behind the candy-coated colors of this film.

Edit after a rewatch: No doubt this masterpiece by Kubrick is one of the most stunning, visionary pieces of cinema ever crafted. But my top 10 is getting crowded now, and I had to let a favorite film go to let another one in. There are no free tickets anymore, not even for Kubrick. Still, what makes this film so great is the perfection and the vision behind the compositions of many shots, the strangely beautiful color-explosions wrung out of an otherwise ugly and stale seventies aesthetics, the quircky and captivating performance by Malcolm McDowell, through whose distorted glazzies we viddie the world, created by Bog, uhm... I mean Kubrick. But even Bog makes mistakes. Let me name a few:

• A Clockwork Orange is not a timeless film. It is a product of the seventies. Its 'modern' interior designs are dated.
• Even though the ugly seventies aesthetics is transformed into something much more engaging, it also seeps through often enough.
• The stiff/old-fashioned acting by many side-characters is often painfully ineffective and often also unfunny when it desperately tries to be funny. Think the first scene with Mr. Deltoid and the ham-handed denture-'joke'. This is probably the dark side of perfectionism. It is difficult to allow funny moments or spontaneous acting to happen, when you're such a control freak like Kubrick. You have to be able to let go as well and he couldn't do that. Still, he was a genius enough to try to build this fault into one of his strengths. Because we see the world through the eyes of Alex, we see everything enlarged as it were. But the ineffectiveness on this domain remains.
• The philosophy behind the film is sometimes too literally mentioned by the characters. A more open-ended approach would probably have done the film good, although it would then probably also have been even more misunderstood than it already was.

Ok, what does this all boil down to? Well, to be perfectly honest, the criticisms above don't make a whole lot of difference in the final assessment. Such is the strength of the glorious vision that inspired Kubrick to make this film. Still, time wears on all things, even those things we once deemed timeless.

Well, to start off I must say I was a bit sceptical about this film, position number six of Onderhond's top ten. It's basically a custom-made visualization to Autechre-like IDM, or to put it another way: it's like the cover art of an Autechre album, but then in motion and synchronized to the sound. I thought it would be amateurish, boring and jarring. But instead this film is very professional, even though the makers let you acquire the 5.1 DVD (or a smaller stereo version) for free under a creative commons license (see: [link]http://www.umfeld.tv/[/link]). I haven't heard the 5.1 version, because I don't have the setup for it, but the stereo version is already very impressive. I mean, sure you have to like the kind of music Autechre makes, because otherwise you'll probably just hear irritating noises and cracks instead of music, but I am pretty fond of this kind of music and so I was very much able to enjoy the way the visuals and the music melted together to create not so much a static as a dynamic, flowing experience. The effects (often mixing in architectural scenes from Rotterdam) are not so much jarring as they are ingeniously crafted: they are perfectly synchronized to sound, creating a true synaesthetic experience, that is somewhat mind-bending. It is like a work of art, but nihilistically so, in the sense that it is purely there for our entertainment, not for us to learn anything from it, not for us to become better or more intelligent persons by it. It is simply there to freak or stretch our minds out with weird visuals and loud sounds, and as such it is a success. Still, it remains a tiny bit generic, random and kitschy, but I think those limitations are practically unavoidable with a film like this. Some might question if this is a film at all, but I think this only underlines it's ability to seek (or perhaps stretch?) out the limits of the medium. If Brakhage is allowed to do it, then why not Pagano?

Edit: After a re-watch in more ideal conditions (with darker surroundings and the immersive effect of headphones, without having to lower the speaker volume for the neighbors) I was even more impressed than the first time! To put it bluntly: this is just fu|<ing brilliant! So what if it's also bad taste? I don't care, 'cause I love it to bits. When the closing credits appeared after 56 minutes I was really disappointed that it was over: I could probably watch this for ever and ever without ever getting bored! How often do you come across a film like that? Only when you know you've watched a really great film!

Edit2: What has become apparent after several re-watches is that a large part of the success of Umfeld is dependent on the co-originarity of sound and image. In the process of its making, the images were not only synchronized to the sounds, but the sounds also to the images. This was done in close reciprocal cooperation between Pagano and Paap, in such a way that both image and sound have become part of an inseparable whole, that seems to be prior to both: they both seem to stem from a source that is wholly indefinable and incomprehensible. The distinguished film theorist Rudolf Arheim thought that the transition from the silent film to the talkie would cause the demise of film as art, because a talkie is an incoherent compromise between two distinct art forms. Perhaps Umfeld is the answer to Arnheim. Perhaps the highest potential of the sound film is not to find an agreeable compromise between image and sound so that both can live together quietly, but to let both of them stem from a source that is prior to and more originary than both, in order to truly guarantee the coherence of the artistic medium.

Edit3: Finally added to IMDb! Also watched for the first time on DVD, which is like watching it for the first time. A shame that I had to remove this from my top 10, as this is still the most progressive film I have ever seen. Though certainly not perfect in execution, and surpassed by several more competent but slightly lower aiming films, Umfeld is, more than any other film I have seen, a conceptual blueprint for the kind of things that the ultimate film should do, and considering that Umfeld leaves lots to be desired, it follows that there must still be a vast undiscovered territory out there. Cinema is still in its infancy.

This is David Lynch' most intense nightmare transported magically onto celluloid. "In heaven, everything is fine". True, but what about on earth? Well, everything is not fine.

Edit: Fractured images of a disturbed sociality, straight from the deranged mind of David Lynch. A direct confrontation with, pure, unadulterated fear. The boredom and the horrible concreteness of have-to's and cannot's weighing like an elephant upon your shoulders. Eraserheads, rolling out of the factory, one by one, while you can't even remember when last you had a good night's sleep.

Position confirmed.

Just a film without any b*llsh*t. That doesn't sound like a big compliment but it really is, because there are so many fantastic films out there that are still not entirely free of b*llsh*t. It breaks though the American Dream like American Beauty, but without the polished surface and the neat voice-over. Its freestyle, sarcastic and cynical like Pulp Fiction, but without any of the teenage jokes. Its gritty, violent and real and yet it is deeply touching at the same time. Vincent Gallo is a true genius, because both his directing and his acting are really great.

Edit after a rewatch: Once in a while you come across a film that may not be perfect, but nonetheless perfectly defines what you look for in a film. A film that is completely yours. Buffalo '66 is one of those films. Gallo commands the screen, and manages to be likable even at his most despicably narcissistic moments, even when he is repeating himself constantly, while behaving like an absolute *beep*hole. But it is in the quieter moments that the film is truly heartfelt. An impossible romance is created not by direct physical consummation, but by distance and the slow melting of ice caps of pain, built up over the years, starting from Billy's youth. The relationship to his irresponsible trailer trash parents feels extremely personal, as if they were caricatures of Gallo's own parents. The cinematography and especially the color design of the film is impeccable, contrasting warm, beautiful colors with scruffy, greasy surroundings. Many single images could be hung up on a wall or win prizes at professional photography competitions. The music selection is also outstanding. It is indeed a shame that Gallo stopped making films and that his latest film Promises Written in Water would not be released but would, instead, be "allowed to rest in peace, and stored without being exposed to the dark energies from the public." He pulled off a similar thing before: "I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings; and I did it out of spite." Gallo is indeed an arrogant, chronically narcissistic *beep*hole with very very deep issues no doubt. But from his tormented soul at least one glorious piece of cinematic art was born.

A story about opportunism, luck, coldness and misfortune, played out on a moving and visually exquisite painting from the 18th century, whose characters are completely defined by the canvas which they can never leave.

This is some really (and I mean really!) crazy stuff! It's not really violent (as this kind of craziness usually is): this time around it is more like playful, silly and cute! But mostly it's just hilarious! Believe me, you'll be laughing your ass off, without always knowing why. I know, I know... in the end even kids need to grow up... but just let me play for a little while longer, will ye! :)

Push the button!
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p.s.1 Don't read any summaries or watch any trailers, because they can only spoil the fun. Just go there with a totally blank mind!
p.s.2 We Dutch have saying: "leedvermaak is het leukste vermaak!" ([link]http://translate.google.be/?q=leedvermaak%20is%20het%20leukste%20vermaak!&sugexp=chrome,mod%3D6&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wT[/link])
p.s.3 Click on the following link to watch the trailer: [link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI8iLOSpeXc[/link]

Edit after a rewatch: still very funny the second time. Very cool that a film can make you laugh out loud and think at the same time. A philosophical and comical exploration of the more or less Hegelian hypothesis that world-history and all its follies is nothing but the playground of God's existential struggles towards self-becoming. Perhaps the biggest reason why I like this film so much and find it cathartic even, is that it unifies two disparate, seemingly incompatible elements of my own personality: a love for "onderbroekenlol" (toilet humor?) and philosophy.

This is really impressive cinema. Contrary to Dolls, there is a bit of emo going on in this one, but luckily nothing generic. The colors, while a tiny bit too flashy for my taste, are actually really well done and reminded me a bit of Godard. There are also some references to Tarkovsky, most notably a direct spatial reference to Stalker. The drama and the acting vary between fairly believable to completely heart-breaking and the film squarely confronts us with the pain of loneliness, while criticizing its own visual flashiness and dramatic overtures as an inauthentic release from that pain, just like all idle entertainment. It is also worth mentioning that the film avoids cliché at the most crucial moments.

Edit: After a rewatch I placed this higher. Being a little more used to Japanese films, I am no longer slightly bothered by the visual flashiness of the film, and am able to appreciated it for what it adds to the mood and the story. This is a very pure and cathargic story with a lasting impact. The acting performances, especially that of Ayako Fujitani, are outstanding and the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

Edit after a rewatch: Remains one of my strongest personal favorites. Moved this up a few notches.

There are essentially two kinds of perfection if you ask me. Lets call 'm negative and positive perfection (for the record: I don't know if these terms already exist). Most conventional narrative masterpieces fall under the category of negative perfection, but only few of them are positively perfect. On the other hand, few films that are not entirely narrative-based, fall under the category of negative perfection, even though they may be positively perfect. Under negative perfection I understand the absence of identifiable faults, mistakes or bad directorial decisions. Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, etc., are all plausible examples. Still, they are not on the absolute top of my list, because while its very hard to find any clearly identifiable faults with them, it is not clear that their qualities are the ultimate in what could be desired of cinema as such. Films like 2001 or La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc seem to me to be rare cases of films that share both negative and positive perfection (lets call this absolute perfection). Under positive perfection I understand the presence of certain qualities that are of such tremendous (subjective) importance, that, whether or not there are any faults present, the films under this category may on balance still equal or outweigh films that fall only under the category of negative perfection. Films like Possession, Dolls or Umfeld are good examples of positive perfection, but not of negative perfection. Enter the Void also falls into that category. There are a lot of things that it does wrong. For instance, the film is too long. At least half an hour, but probably more should have been cut. While the visual trip goes on and on, I feel that at times it loses some of its effectiveness, and there are some repetitions in the scenes and there is some superfluous material. Also, the film is a tiny bit pretentious, though not nearly as much as I thought on first viewing. Actually, the theme of reincarnation truly rang home this time, and I found the ending tremendously meaningful and touching this time, which effectively balanced some less meaningful material in the middle parts. Also, the coherence of the material is lacking, not all characters are as interesting as they should be given the time spent with them, the story as a whole is somewhat confused and not as meaningful as it pretends to be. It is therefore pretty clear that it cannot be an instance of negative perfection, and I have no quarrel with that. It is also clear to me however, that it is an instance of positive perfection. The cinematography is so unbelievably good, that it constitutes a visual trip that is on par with that of 2001. It delivers for 2 and a half hours of almost non stop visual gorgeousness. This in itself is an absorptive experience unlike anything in the history of cinema. This is the kind of film that breaks through unknown barriers, towards uncharted territory, finds new ways of expression and leaves the viewer in awe. Although its faults are not merely rational afterthoughts that can be easily shut out during the experience of watching the film, the positive qualities of the film are so unbelievably good that they can survive the diminishing impact of the film's faults, and even beat many faultless films. If one lets the criteria of negative perfection one-sidedly determine the scope of one's concept of perfection, than Enter the Void is a 7/10, or a rather low 8/10 at most, which was basically what happened after my first viewing. If one broadens that scope, well, then one may find that it is actually a 10/10 and pretty close in quality to the aforementioned examples of absolute perfection.

Edit after a rewatch: the story has grown more on me and I felt more absorbed in it. It could still gain from some cutting, but I no longer feel it is absolutely necessary. It also felt more meaningful and less pretentious this time. Debie's cinematography still has the wow factor, but a little less this time, because Spring Breakers is clearly more beautiful (though less trippy) in that department, combined with a much better soundtrack/score and audiovisual integration which makes for a much more absorptive experience. Both the gains and the losses cancel each other out, so Enter the Void retains its position. I don't think that the distinction between positive and negative perfection works though, because that would confuse us by deviating too much from standard usage and because it would imply that something with faults can be in a sense perfect, which is false. But personal favorites don't have to be perfect to get the maximum score. They just have to feature lots of your favorite cinematic qualities, that's all. And Enter the Void remains most generous in that department.

It's like this film is saying: "Alright, I'm gonna admit it flat out: I'm not original, it's all been done before by Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining), Godard (Week End, Pierrot Le Fou), Tarrantino (Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs) and Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). But now shut the *beep* up and enjoy this *beep* hilarious film!"

I used to think that Sokurov was gifted but not nearly as good as Tarkovsky. However, with Mat i syn, the student has actually outdone the master! What he achieves here is of monumental importance: he uses a camera in much the same way as painter uses a canvas, breaking through the mimetic ideal. Using the camera as a canvas was done before in Barry Lyndon, but that film stayed squarely within the mimetic ideal of Rococo. Sokurov may also not be the first to break with the mimetic ideal: the beginning of Lynch's Eraserhead is certainly not ideal in the mimetic sense of the word. However, that kind of breakthrough depends more on what is filmed than on how it is filmed. Apart from the grainy picture quality and the sometimes indescribable objects Lynch filmed, the way the pictures were registered still seems to fall within the mimetic ideal. Man with the Movie Camera registered different pictures at different places and showed them at different time-frames, but each picture taken on its own was still mimetic. The ending of 2001 was of course non-mimetic but the sharpness of the images still allowed for a continuity between those scenes and the mimetic scenes seen before and after it: in a way it still remained bound to the mimetic ideal because of the latent but always present capacity of the Nasa lenses to register the outside world in sharp mimetic detail. The same goes for Brakhage and similar experimentalists, who still used relatively sharp cameras to create their strange effects that were more abstract in terms of content but not in terms of the devices that captured the content. Sokurov does something altogether different: through painted glass filters, mirrors and other ingenious devices he diminishes the sharpness of the images and uses the lowest quality camera he can find to distort reality in much the same way as Van Gogh or Monet painted reality in broad strokes instead of minute detail. Some have compaired this to oil painting, and although that may be aesthetically accurate and even though Sokurov claims to have been inspired by Romanticism (he mentioned David Caspar Friedrich), I think that in the deepest sense Sokurov was really after the subjective impression of reality that separated early Modern art from Romanticism. Of course, Modern art had a long way to go from Van Gogh to a total breakthrough of the mimetic ideal in abstract art, but it was a highly important first step nonetheless. The result of Sokurov's breakthrough is extremely beautiful and poetic, reminding us of all the virtues of a good Tarkovsky, but with a distinctly recognizable style. It has reduced dialog to a bare minimum which is probably for the better, because dialog and narrative aren't Sokurov's strongest points: he is a painter using a camera.

Edit: after a re-watch I was surprised to see how much of the film is actually carried by the story and the (often non-verbal) dialog after all. Taken as stand-alone paintings many of the images don't work half as well compared to the way they are integrated within the atmosphere of the story, a deeply touching story about a son taking care of his dying mother in the most sensitive way imaginable.

Edit after a rewatch: Mat i syn remains every bit as powerful. It's images are of an otherwordly beauty and the story is very minimalistic, heartfelt and powerful. The film cannot be accused of plain moralizing or mere sentimentality, as it taps into something far more basic: the primal love between a mother and a son.

Position confirmed.

In one word: devasting! Granted, the quality of the acting varies. Although many performances are deeply moving, there are moments when it feels like you are watching a B movie. However, its absolutely shocking depiction of Nazi crimes, reinforced by a suffocating atmosphere, will leave its mark on you for the rest of your life. The film is like a black hole, destroying all the light that comes into its path.

This is the best in art-house horror! Its not for people with a weak stomach though. Again Vincent Gallo delivers in spades in terms of inspired acting. I was also pleasantly surprised by the music of the Tindersticks: I never heard of them before but they really create a fantastic mood for the film. Reminds me a bit of Massive Attack, my second best band. The direction of Claire Denis is also great: the camerawork was really accurate and disturbing and although the story was perhaps a bit confusing at times, that was probably just me not paying enough attention. I think that the transitions between the slow build up and the all-out freaky scenes are remarkably well done: it feels like a coherent whole. About those freaky scenes: they are completely over-the-top but they actually seem to contribute to the subtle atmosphere of the film. This is really great stuff, but I guess its pretty hard to swallow for most people.

Edit: This is Claire Denis' lowest scoring film. I also watched L'intrus and Beau Travail which score much higher but I couldn't care much for them. Cannes audiences and critics loved those two films while panning Trouble Every Day. To me this proves that most art-house fans - who rightly criticize Hollywood for its many generic feature-films and its quick money-grabbing culture - are themselves also much too afraid to step outside of their comfort zone: if it's not a painfully slow politically correct Iranian film about women's rights, mostly showing their totally uninteresting daily activities without any cinematographic quality whatsoever, they feel like it's not "relevant" or not "touching" enough. Bleh!

Edit after a rewatch: On the surface, Trouble Every Day's narrative appears to be deeply flawed. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, and it doesn't progress much. And yet the mood of this film is so beautiful, horrifying and intense that it starts to make sense again on an instinctive, animalistic level. The music by the Tindersticks creates a meditative atmosphere. And when we see Béatrice Dalle and Vincent Gallo struggling together in one scene, we see perhaps the two strangest creatures inhabiting the world of cinema. Gallo, the arrogant and deeply troubled, narcissistic prick, and Dalle, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Beast all in one. The thing is that they have such a unique personality, that, when casted right they don't have to act: they have been 'method acting' for their whole lives, because they really are the *beep* up people the film makes them out to be. But ultimately, it is Claire Denis who is the genius behind all this. She chose to film it all with a poetic sensibility. She chose to let Dalle paint a Jackson Pollock in blood on the wall and make it look like the best modern piece of art ever created. She chose to let Dalle walk in front of this wall, with a dreamy, meditative expression, feeling invigorated by having the forces of life and death squirt freely in all directions . The lowest and the highest impulses of human nature are in perfect harmony here, while the viewer is always sitting in the eye of the storm, calmly registering.

There is still room for a significant upgrade.

Elégia is a fearlessly abstract color film that actually continues to explore the possibilities of rapid-fire cutting invented in the silent era, a technique left behind at the transition to the talkies, where images were no longer thought to bear the responsibility of expression, because the spoken word would be able to take care of that department. Although this does not start immediately, Elégia consists almost wholly of an hypnotic string of rat tat tat images, moving from cracks in the dried earth (accompanied by electronic cracks) to horses walking in stunning landscapes, or horses blinking their eyes, sometimes filmed behind glass filters. There is one scene however, that I feared would come, but knocked me over the head with such brute force, that I wasn't even prepared for it at all. Beware: this film is positively draining! I had some internal moral conflicts about that scene, but this is just how the world really is and I can't blame the film for showing it to us with brutal honesty. In the end I have to conclude that it's a masterpiece unlike anything you have ever seen.

Edit after a rewatch: Moved this up, as this is right up there with Eraserhead and Idi I Smotri in terms of devastating impact. As such it is the best short film I have yet seen.

This is Onderhond's favorite film. I hear you asking "Who the *beep* is Onderhond?" Well, he is a Japanese-film-loving-western-classics-basher, whose reviews both fascinate and amuse me (see my comment on Casablanca). Its as interesting to see which films he likes as it is to see which ones he hates. I already saw Tokyo.Sora (also in his top ten) and it was surprisingly good. Now I have seen Avalon, and... its ok. Its neither perfect, nor brilliant, but its not bad either. It could easily have been vulgar wank-material for special-effects loving teenage gamers, but luckily its a lot better than that. Narratively, visually and musically it ranges from generic to highly original. Its a film in the same category as The Matrix and Inception and although its not as good as those two, its not a whole lot worse either.

Edit after a rewatch: I'm at a loss here. I don't know how to rate this one. Current range of possible ratings: 7/10 to 10/10, possibly scoring higher than Angel's Egg! This might very well be Oshii's masterpiece. The problem is as follows. Taken in complete isolation, the first part is a 7/10, which lasts for eighty minutes. Taken in complete isolation, the second part is an 8/10 which lasts for 15 minutes. If each moment were equally important, then the first part would tip the balance for the total score to a 7/10. But why then, is this a potential 10/10? This is because we do not watch the first and the second part in isolation. It is their contrast which does all the magic. So after having watched the first part I would have given a 7/10 for the film. Then the second part starts and the inevitable contrast with the first part lifts those final 15 minutes to a 10/10. But then, the first part would still be a 7/10, right? So then, if time were equally weighed, it would still not be possible to get to a 10/10 in total (an 8/10 at best), right? Now, there are three possible strategies to tackle that claim. The first one would be to deny that time should be weighed equally. So then you could say that the final fifteen minutes weigh, for instance, five times as much per minute as the first part. In that case, they would weigh equally, and perhaps the total score could tip over to a 9/10. You could also say that time should not be measured or weighed at all, but that scoring is all subjective and related to the meaning of the whole of the film, and not to a calculation of its constituent parts. That would, probably, be my response. Yet this solves the puzzle only partially, because does the first part not remain a millstone hanging on the feet of the film, dragging it down? It ought to count for something, foreclosing at least a top 100 score, right? And here the last strategy comes in. Because I would say, that despite the fact that the first part was a clear 7/10 after I saw it, it might very well be that this score gets an upgrade after the fact, by being contrasted with the second part. There are two reasons why this is probably so. The first one is that the first part, despite all the audiovisual gamer's fetish and virtualized ugliness (mixed with beauty) that weighs it down, is ultimately revealed as an absolutely necessary condition for the possibility of lifting the experience of the final fifteen minutes from an 8/10 to a 10/10. So that part is no longer a mistake, bad taste or what have you, but completely intentional and also justified. Does that not heighten the score for that part by at least one point? Then the second reason is that the scenes themselves become better by being contrasted with the second part, not only as conditions for experiencing the second part properly, but also in light of the second part. For instance, the very same seemingly generic gamer's score, gets a whole new level of depth in retrospect, by being presented in a totally different context. Something similar goes for the visual genericness. So could the first part not be a 9/10 in retrospect as well? Possibly. That would make it perfectly conceivable that this film scores higher than Angel's Egg. But of course one could easily object that this is all so far-fetched. Indeed it seems to be. And therefore, the 7/10 remains a possibility as well.
To be continued...

Edit after another rewatch: the first and the second part have grown a little towards each other, making the rift a little smaller and the film 'easier' to rate. What stands out here is vision, not beauty or emotion per se, although that is there too. The line between computer game special effects and real shots has faded, sepia ugliness and beauty intertwine and this creates bewilderment and alienation. The story feels like it came straight out of a computer game, and yet there are deeper layers as well and it takes time for quiter moments. The real beauty is in the way the girl prepares food for her dog, or in the mysterious expression of the ghost, the music that feels generic first and deeply touching in the end. And then of course the brilliant transition scene. But the final shots are also gold. I think that the vision lifts this above Jin-Rôh, although Tenshi No Tamago remains Oshii's unbeaten masterpiece, mostly because I have a stronger personal connection to that film as a whole.

Edit after a rewatch: Avalon is definitely a grower. Visually, it totally upsets conventional relations between (filtered) live action, anime and cgi, for instance by combining them in strange ways, using the one as if it were the other, or by blurring the distinctions between them. Many of the visual effects may appear like cheap gamer fetish on first sight, but on repeated viewings I began to see the in-the-fleshness (Husserl: 'leibhaftigkeit') of the reality underlying them, which is also the reason why this film isn't dated. I now see a lot of beauty in those effects. The atmosphere is really intense, and the score contributes a lot to this as well. The film also has much philosophical depth in the way the reality/virtual reality theme is worked out. The fact that Oshii was willing to risk his film being mistaken for something generic shows that he had a lot of balls: someone like Tarkovsky would never have dared this, always catering to the same public with the same themes and kinds of conversations, being granted "depth" almost by default. The fact that Oshii chose to hide the deeper layers of Avalon in one of the supposedly most superficial phenomena out there (a first person shooter computer game and all the technical jargon that comes with that) gives the film a lot of backbone. I am not at all sure if this is better than Angel's Egg, but the latter film definitely needs to go up on a rewatch if it is to stay ahead of Avalon.

A very sad story about a girl, Mouchette, who learned the hard way that innocence is only greeted with cruelty. The things that happen to her are quite terrible, yet they are not isolated events, but part of a larger context, which tells us that she has not been treated as a full human being for years; this is also the way in which she came to understand herself. Yes, she also acts cruelly towards some others herself, but understand this: traumatized people are usually not the meek lambs we want them to be. It is precisely their trauma, which usually makes them very difficult to deal with. To be able to feel genuine sympathy and sadness for her instead of anger for her own misbehavior is to transcend the mass-produced abstract thinking - as Hegel would call it - of looking only at specific situations and actions and condemning her for it, while forgetting the social context in which her psychological trauma and - consequently - her own misbehavior arose in the first place. I suspect that Bresson was testing the moral strength of his audience with this film.

Edit after a rewatch: I lowered the position for Mouchette recently, after lowering Au Hasard Balthazar (which in itself was slightly too harsh, because the film does linger on my mind for a long time). I was curious if lowering Mouchette was a right decision and decided that I had to rewatch it. Au contrare. The second time I was totally blown away by this film! Perhaps seeing this in the double bill with the schmalzy Hachiko, brought out its strengths more. While Mouchette has less iconic imagery than Au Hasard, the individual scenes are far more powerful and fitting to me, as the film has a flow to it that Au Hasard lacks, and does not wander off or lose focus for once. It is tragic down to the core and as pure as film can get. What is so powerful is how we are put in Mouchette's shoes, if only by the clunking sounds that those wooden lumps make, feeling the shame that is accompanied by her low self-esteem, for which only the circumstances were to blame. The way Bresson imposes the harsh concreteness and materiality of his world upon the viewer is breathtaking: it is part and parcel of the cinematography (especially the dark contrasts) and the hard-hitting sounds that different objects make, while often interacting with each other to create a tormenting rythm. This concrete world kept hitting Mouchette over the head for no reason, with an unrelenting force, and she kept hitting back at the world, and when we open ourselves up to the tragedy of her situation, this is hardly a mystery. But no matter how hard she hit back, the world kept hitting her harder. And then there is the end scene, which is Bresson's most powerful scene. To surpass the end scene of Au Hasard, which carried a lot of weight for that movie, was a difficult task indeed, but Bresson showed that he was capable of doing so. To me, Mouchette is Bresson's ultimate masterpiece.