September Digest

Trying something new (but also stupidly obvious given this is a blog). As life has gotten busier, and writing full length, non-academic essays have become more difficult to stick to, I've begun exploring different avenues as to what type of enriching entries I can produce that are less time consuming but refrain from being casually self-absorbed (essentially a more formal Twitter type forum). I'd still like to keep a standard for how I go about using this medium. So essentially at the end of every month (or even bi-weekly), I'll be posting a random compilation of thoughts on some recent media I've digested, though still mainly centered on film, may also include music, books, articles, and the such that I've formed thoughts on since. Though of course it also won't cover everything I've taken in, either. Simplistic and quick, but in line with how I personally approach this venture. I may even go back and write longer entries for certain things at a later time, but that's inconsequential. Okay, I'll shut up now.

Films and music presented in chronological and alphabetical order.

FILM:

The Blue Sky Maiden (1957) (Dir. Yasuzo Masumara) - Watched on a whim and found lots to like. Plays with melodrama to create a wholesome portrait of a womanhood in development despite its inherently nasty dealings with toxic familial relationships and dated Japanese traditions. It's really quite singular. Introduced me both to actress Ayako Wakao and director Yasuzo Masumura who I definitely am intrigued to see more from. Oh, and there's a great shot in which Wakao, who works as a family maiden, is challenged to a game of table tennis by some sap at a backyard outing, where in the camera in close-up pans down to see her tear off her apron and kick off her heels before smoking the fool into oblivion. I love that a lot.

Barking Water (2009) (Dir. Sterlin Harjo) -  I have almost no experience with Native American cinema (to my shame) and so I checked out this decade old indie by acclaimed Native filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and really dug it. Feels like the type of American indie I wish I saw more of these days, abandoning any sense of higher budget influence, and wholly embracing the idiosyncrasies that can only come from being a low-budget feature. Incredibly heartfelt and opens a window into a facet of American culture not often represented. More films like this at Sundance please.

The Day He Arrives (2011) (Dir. Hong Sang-soo) - With a few more brushes with his work, I truly think I can say that Hong may be one of the finest working contemporary filmmakers. Ending of this both depressed the shit out of me while also making me laugh out loud. What a hoot.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) (Dir. Cathy Yan) - I don't give much of a shit about comic book movies (although this info isn't new to anyone), but found this one in particular well done. Rare exhibition of a studio film both *using* and knowing how to utilize color. I like Margot Robbie but have never been too enamored with any of her past performances so it's quite a surprise to me how much I think her very best is here actually? Suicide Squad Harley is pure shit. Birds of Prey Harley is the shit.

Build the Wall (2020) (Dir. Joe Swanberg) - The year has been lacking in proper feel good cinema. The kind that doesn't bullshit reality but still finds genuine levity within the weary of everyday. Obviously I get why that would be, but also didn't expect it to come in the form of a Swanberg film with an eyebrow-raising title in allusion to.. well... yeah! Shot on the iPhone and seemingly made as a fun side project while the cast was likely just hanging out, Swanberg's newest is a super endearing metaphor about the importance of collectivism always triumphing over individualism. And while to not spoil, I think it's super fucking rad how "build the wall" is recontextualized here and turned into something incredibly moving. There's also a wonderful shot of Jane Adams helping eat olives off a little girl's pizza (again keeping in line with collectivism). One of my favorite new releases so far. Expect it in my top ten.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) (Dir. Charlie Kaufman) - Nope.

MUSIC:

A lot of my music digest and discovery this year has been almost exclusively uniform to Electronic. I don't know why, but it feels strangely fitting.

Marine Flowers (Science Fantasy) (1986) (by Akira Ito) - Another great discovery on behalf of the YouTube algorithm (and its bizarre tendencies towards obscure Japanese pop & electronic albums). Somehow accurately produces the music I wish was naturally playing whenever I go snorkeling in the beautiful turquoise waters of the Philippine tropics.

Trans Canada Highway (2006) (by Boards of Canada) - Late to the party, but been getting really into BoC lately. Left Side Drive is my favorite off this EP.

The Cruel Comic Mischief of THE MOUTH AGAPE

 

After a brief one month hiatus from the blog due to production on my latest cinematic endeavor, I return today with an observation on the causal roots of unsuspecting humor in Maurice Pialat's ice cold portrait of terminal illness and grieving in The Mouth Agape (1974).

To preface, the film is my formal introduction to Pialat and of all the ones I could've chosen to break the ice with, this was perhaps the most unfitting and ill-timed given recent, upsetting events. Feeling the same edge of weight as I'm sure most are currently, the ultimate sense of guilty realization hit me like a ton of bricks halfway through as the concatenation of misogynistic male libido amongst the harrowing permeation of tragic mortality excavated deep laughs I wasn't even aware existed for a film such as this one. I was both immediately shocked and horrified by what Pialat had managed to do, and how invisibly this manipulation comes about. A little over a week removed from my initial viewing, I find myself still wrestling with how exactly Pialat's extract of humor where there virtually is none, arises. Is it an act of deliberation, or am I just potty brained? Both are likely true. 

I think I have some explanation, but it surely isn't complete either. But let's dig into what floored me.

The film follows Philippe (played by Philippe Leotard), a young Frenchman who finds himself back in close acquaintance with his sickly mother Monique (played by Monique Melinand). Philippe is acquiescent and seemingly absent-minded about what goes on in and around his immediate settings. His one facial expression, which is that of a simplistic cherubic grin, is worn for duration without change. Philippe is doltish and devoid of agency and as we come to find out through an earlier conversation with Monique (capped off by an amazing diegetic reprieve), is also unfaithful to his girlfriend Nathalie (played by Nathalie Baye). Philippe is simply a pathetic potato of a man, a character who follows in the footsteps of his father Roger, played by (you guessed it) Hubert Deschamps, a droopy faced man with a hunched figure and always seen with a cigarette protruding like a proud phallic symbol from his lips. First acknowledged in the same conversation by Monique but not present in the film til a little later, Roger's perverse proclivities may simply be the most turgid displays of male horniness ever committed to celluloid, given what is happening at the center. And it also happens to be some of the funniest shit ever.

As Monique's health begins to gradually deteriorate, the weight of her impending mortality becomes ever so clearer. At first transitioning to an extended hospital stay to at-home hospice care, the physical transformation Monique undergoes from mild fatigue to being bed ridden, gray skinned, and reduced vocally to incoherent screeches for speech is not only incredibly harrowing, but depressing to the most lifeless degree. Monique is dying a slow and painful death. So what do her husband and son do amidst this crisis? They turn to their genitals for consolation.

From the time Monique's two immediate family are tasked with aiding in her departure, laced in within this grief stricken drama, is a surprise sex comedy that sees the gross libidinous exploits of Philippe and Roger during this process. Philippe casually sleeps with a younger woman behind Nathalie's back before endlessly engaging in all forms of shameless coital acts upon her return (often in the same house as his dying mother nonetheless) and Roger makes consistent attempts for his own hot action with a woman who frequents the family shop (even happily fondling her breasts at one point). While not completely abandoning Monique, as the two men still show intimate care during bedside visits, however abhorrent each may be, this excess of behavior obviously renders as flat out repulsive. 

So why do I find this so funny? It stems from Pialat's dryest of dry approach to the entire thing, which then renders as deadpan. It's so bafflingly preposterous, that Philippe and Roger's cruel and aloof steadfastness manages to cross over into the surreal. The antics of the men are too ludicrous to comprehend, yet the film sees this as it does the rest of the material, for what it is. So the excess cannot be helped but seen as some hidden gesturing for farce. What rouses my intrigue most is how meticulously Pialat constructs his reality by merely observing what is immediately before him. I refer to his approach as deadpan, but that startling realization doesn't make itself known right away. For the duration of the film, Pialat refrains from any empathetic leaning. What is most often seen in the mise-en-scene is shot composition so neutral and editing cut so subjectively, that it leaves no room for narrative bias to sprout. We are left to our own devices. The images are composites for each's own temporal subjectivity. And it is within this formal structuring that allows for Pialat to mischievously mine for laughs. We don't expect Philippe and Roger's shenanigans to escalate like they do, and when it happens, they go unpunished. It is neither played up or played down. They just do like its justifiably second nature. The film permits these two walking pairs of testicles to gallivant without any moral posturing. For as pitiful as all of it is, you really can't help but laugh, both in astonishment and in buffoonery.

While Pialat reconfigures again for the film's final moments, resulting in an inevitable confrontation for the two men, the time spent keeping their second heads in check sees the film stand out as one of the more idiosyncratic portraits of grief and mourning in cinema. Pialat so effortlessly plays with the varying avenues of which grief can manifest and in this case, takes the form of constant sexual fulfillment. But it is this acting out as response to grief which opens up a revelation so sly, yet abundantly obvious, that Pialat's kitsch gains a profound new level of audacity for me. The title of the film is itself an inside joke. There is obvious allusion to Monique's later physical stage, which sees her mouth often left open, accompanied by low droning gurgles and other inaudible vocalizations as she mercilessly fights for her life, but it also refers to the vacancy of Philippe and Roger as two bumbling idiots for men. All three have their mouths agape and so does ours at the sheer lunacy of it all.... brilliant.