KILLER OF SHEEP (1978) (Dir. Charles Burnett) - What fascinates me most about Burnett from the two films of his I've seen (the other being the criminally unknown My Brother's Wedding) is his ability to mask a seemingly languid, vignette structure and invisibly devise it into something far more meticulous later on. Similarly to how Burnett calculates the dilemma in My Brother's Wedding leading to the sleekest representation of real time conflict I can ever recall, he does the same here lifting significant dramatic weight for Stan as his shortcomings parlay into one another. But beneath it is something even more pressing than working class tumult which is the cycle of patriarchal superiority that is observed throughout the entire runtime, clouding the final scene between the women with a hidden melancholy the surface film doesn't codify. With these two films alone, Burnett proves himself as a master of structure. Maybe even one of the best to do it in the American cinema.
GODZILLA (1998) (Dir. Roland Emmerich) - Randomly yanked this off the DVD shelf one night and put it right into my player out of sheer impulse. You'd be surprised to learn as I was revisiting it how much I honestly dug this. Not to praise Emmerich's jingoism, but his inability to read the room in regards to domestic terrorism brought on by the military industrial complex ends up emulating, with near acuity, the satirization of Paul Verhoeven as seen in RoboCop and Starship Troopers. If you like Verhoeven's run of mockish blockbusters, then Emmerich's Godzilla can most certainly be appreciated in the same light. Also, as a card carrying member of the Jean Reno fan club, his mythologizing here is fucking amazing. What's a French legionnaire in America to do but put holes in freakish lizards and chew bubble gum?
BEAU TRAVAIL (1999) (Dir. Claire Denis) - Denis' formal elusiveness in this film is one of the rare examples for me where the full embrace of esotericism ends up revealing more than any regimented form of didacticism could ever. Witnessing the harsh physicality of the legionnaires during drill routines blur seamlessly into dance with just the blink of an eye as to make the subjective objective is nothing short of a perceptive enigma. Like the landscapes before them, of which they eventually blend into, are hostile and jagged, but simultaneously bear an elemental beauty in plain sight. Where elementalism and humanism intersect. I find it fun to note that near the start of my viewing, out of nowhere, my mother sat down to join me which at first really freaked me out given this type of thing being as distant from her viewing norms as possible, but to my surprise, she followed it through and got on its wavelength enough to be compelled to finish. She still felt a bit bored with it in the end, but all I really cared about was her making it to see Denis Lavant go ape shit over Rhythm of the Night of which she then just repeatedly mouthed "oh my god" about two or three times over the course of its duration. For as long as I've waited to finally see this film, getting to first experience it via the new Janus restoration on Blu-ray whilst witnessing my mother's pure reaction to the ending is as perfect a first time viewing as I could've ever wished for.
BATTLE IN HEAVEN (2005) (Dir. Carlos Reygadas) - Personal thanks to my wonderful mentor and film professor for urging me to finally get started with Reygadas. Despite seemingly being his most hated, my decision to start with this one in particular all comes from seeing its climax referenced to in Mark Cousins' The Story of Film back in high school. The one take camera sweep out of Ana's apartment to gaze around the surrounding environment in god's eye view before returning to bay really resonated well with me so it was time I experience the full thing in proper. Which brings me to my summative take which is what I lack. No other film I've taken in this year has put me into the ideological struggle this personally has. Part of it is my own register of Reygadas' obvious, near caricature attempt at extreme provocation with his use of unsimulated sex and deliberate one-note aims for moral deviancy, yet despite this, it all still renders as genuinely felt to me. I should hate it by all conceits, like much of Lars von Trier's stuff who I share an equivalent relationship with, but I don't. In fact, I love the film a bunch. Like many of the best films for me, it resists categorization.
I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (2019/20) (Dir. Angela Schanelec) - Going to be brief since I want to save my words for my eventual favorites of 2020 list, but Schanelec's newest is everything I wished I saw more of in contemporary filmmaking. Less emphasis of the motion picture as a conventional storytelling device as it is an advanced canvas for idiosyncratic image making and temporal rendering. No other new release left me as viscerally inspired like this did.
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (2019/20) (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa) - An online buddy partly praised this for being a film made entirely up of set pieces that naturally flow from thing to the next and I've since found that to be the proper descriptor for why I left this feeling impressed beyond words despite its constantly fleeting structure. Begins like a culturally specific spin on Antonioni's The Passenger before morphing into a Sound of Music riff. Excuse me for the Ehrlich-ism, but that's how I can best describe it without drawing out an entire critique. In a time where I feel like feature length cinema has exhausted its handful of ways for constructing narrative, Kurosawa refreshingly breaks the stagnation. Atsuke Maeda gives what is sure to be the most memorable performance for me from this cursed year of mubis.
MUSIC:
OPEN AND CLOSE (1971)/ ZOMBIE (1977) (by Fela Kuti) - Kuti is my big music discovery of the year (which means almost next to nothing given how little exploration I've done) but still. No individual tracks I cling to most since each collective album is that damn good all around. Uncommon for me to feel that way actually since I am one to typically obsess over a couple tracks over the entirety.
SIXTEEN OCEANS (2020) (by Four Tet) - Personally boring for me. With the exception of 'Romantics' being a very good anomaly, this is quite disposable fare to be honest. Disappointing.
ARTICLE:
Adult Problems: An Interview with Dan Sallitt (by Vincent Poli) - Discovering the work of Dan Sallitt this year has proven major for me as I further hone my perspective outlook of the film medium, both as a viewer and as a creator. His singular approach to cinephilia and filmmaking as a working class individual is kindred to my own ruminations as someone who is also unabashedly dedicated to spelunking the endless void of cinema and aspiring to artistically contribute humbly. Therefore, his candidness here to link his two passions together in a sort of creative homeostasis is nothing but of pure interest and inspiration. When pursuing an independent filmmaking career feels so much like a stressful burden in the current moment, with an illusory competitive anxiety to be the best at it, Sallitt's grounding of the endeavor as a privilege that can wait to be acted on is sobering and relieving to the admittance of my own personal tensions. It's made me reflect on how it is I even want to go down in the cultural canon. Not to be narcissistic or too self conscious about the potential effect, but taking note of how I'd like to be perceived will ultimately temper the energy of how I create. Of course the more success the merrier, but I also wouldn't be hurt either if I just managed to crank out a small handful of features in my lifetime and let them be discussed and held by the same niche communities that'd likely be the only ones to see them in the first place. Either is fine to me. At the advent, getting the chance to make a film at all and have it find an audience is a blessing in itself, its critical reception inconsequential. Like Sallitt, filmmaking is a natural desire for myself and that itself is a beautiful thing to do. Have only seen two of his five features and I hope to get to the rest in due time. Dude has grown to be among my very favorite personalities in the film world and will likely continue to be. In fact his blog, Thanks for the Use of the Hall, was key for me starting this one.
Links:
https://read.kinoscope.org/2019/10/18/adult-problems-an-interview-with-dan-sallitt/
http://sallitt.blogspot.com/
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